On the way, he bumped into the nurse Hannah, who put a hand to her mouth in shock and said, “John, what’s wrong?”
He looked her up and down critically. She seemed a great deal less pretty and pleasant than he’d previously thought. He pushed past her without a word.
In the upper corridors of the House, he passed Dr. Alverhuysen’s pet idiot Maggfrid, who stood in his way and seemed too confused to get out of it, and it took all Creedmoor’s strength to restrain the urge to kill him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
He climbed out a window onto the roof and started drinking.
Linesmen watched him through their spyglasses from the edge of the canyon. They hid among rocks and anthills. No ordinary man would have been able to see them, but Creedmoor could.
—They may fire on you. Go back inside.
—They will not risk it. Battle here might awake the Spirit; might kill the General.
—We would risk it.
—They are not us.
—No.
He drank and watched the sun slowly turn red and set.
—It was Black Casca who introduced me to Abban. This was back in Gibson City, thirty years ago.
—We recall.
—I loved her then. What happened to her?
—She died, Creedmoor. In the destruction of the Tilden Shipyards. Many years ago.
—So you told me. I was not there. We were enemies by then.
—She died. One day, so will you.
—She loved Abban, too, and therefore I tolerated him.
—He was stronger than you, Creedmoor.
—He probably was. Dead now, though.
—I remember once we fled together into the southern swamps at Black River—’63, ’64. Cypress and slime and shadows and black muck and stink. We hid together in a half-rotted hut that I would swear once belong to a witch. Why were we there? Yes. Yes. We were hiding a letter, I remember. A perfumed letter. It was to be used to blackmail a wealthy Smiler gentleman in Jasper City. Aircraft hunted us. Hot wet rain. Alligators. We ate snakes. Abban hated it, he was a desert creature. I cannot say it was a great pleasure for me. Two weeks together. We did not kill each other. That’s almost a friendship, isn’t it?
—We know all this, Creedmoor. We were there.
—Your servants are too good for you.
—You are drunk, Creedmoor.
—Yes.
It was dark. He stood and threw the bottles from the roof.
—I am drunk. Steady me.
He dropped clumsily from the roof, clutched hold of a drainpipe. He swung loosely for a moment. Something warm in the night air closed around him and steadied him.
—Thank you.
He climbed in through the window of Liv’s office.
He slumped down in her chair and rifled through her papers. The General’s file was one of the thick ones.
—She’s been busy. Look at all this. What does it mean?
—We do not know.
—Not bad-looking, either. No life for a woman, this.
It might as well have been in code. Perhaps it was. Day 17—Card A-3; “church spire” (father? Cf. Card E-2, Day 9). Rubbish! Day 20—constant on axis 1, axis 2. Naumann’s Conjecture? Cant! Day 22 - 3 bursts f. current at .5 = min. seizing; exc. sp. re: “horses” (cf 9, 12) Gibberish!
“Please, Dr. A.,” he said. “I am a simple drinking man; can you not write in a simple honest tongue?” It was only thanks to a heroic effort of will, and Marmion hissing in his mind,
—Control yourself, Creedmoor.
. . . that he was able to resist the urge to rip the absurd things to shreds and scatter them petulantly around the room.
He caught sight of himself in the little polished desk mirror and realized that he was becoming unattractive. He pushed his sweaty hair back behind his ears and breathed deeply.
He stole the keys from Liv’s desk and stalked down through the empty corridors into the patients’ cells. He unlocked the door to the General’s cell and stepped inside.
The old man sat awake in the corner of the cell. Erect in his chair, dark liver-spotted hands folded on his lap in the moonlight. He fixed gray-green eyes on Creedmoor, who closed the cell door silently behind him and stood there panting, glaring.
He said, “Well?”
The General did not respond. And slowly Creedmoor realized that the General’s eyes weren’t focused on him, but on a point slightly to his left—the door handle.
“You want to get out of here, old man? Well, maybe. Maybe soon. First we talk.