it was not uncommon to see a small family of them, if that is the right word, in the fields of a farm as you passed by or doing the worst work of any particular town. It mostly went unremarked-on. Liberationists did not get much of an audience out on the Rim. That was how it was in Ford, and Hamlin, and Izar, and other places. Ford was also haunted by a Spirit that resembled ball-lightning and darted up and down Main Street at dusk, causing strange moods in women. I did not see it myself but I heard about it and have no reason to doubt it, having seen stranger things in my time.
We stayed at one Mr. Bob Bolton’s farm on top of Blue Hill. He was too poor for slaves but he had goats and an ear-trumpet and three beautiful daughters. This sounds like the start of a filthy joke but there is no punch-line. He’d had sons too but they had all gone off to be soldiers for one side or another, and most of them were dead. Down below in Sholl there was a post-office, and I spent all afternoon sitting on a fence beside a cold brown field composing letters to May, Jess, and Sue, and also to Mr. Alfred Baxter, though I did not send that last one. Miss Elizabeth Harper taught me a great deal about spelling and commas.
In the next town over I nearly fought a duel with a man who claimed I had stolen the plans from the Apparatus from him. I was too proud to back down, although I am a poor shot, not least because I have next to no sight in my left eye, as I believe I have mentioned. Fortunately when dawn came, bleak and wintry, he was so drunk that at the signal he turned and walked ten paces at a forty-five-degree angle to true and right into a tree, concussing himself.
In the town after that three salesmen of the Northern Lighting Corporation jumped me in the darkness and beat me for a minute or two.
II. The Northern Lighting Corporation
New Dreyfus was a mining town. It was like East Conlan only smaller and wilder and younger and more crowded, and it was built on lead-zinc, not coal, and there were slaves in the mines, which there were not in East Conlan. There were company stores and saloons all along New Dreyfus’s Lead Street. It was a town that was suddenly rich in a way it did not know what to do with. I called in at the most prominent saloon— it had three stories, one more than any of its competitors, and the girls who waved from its balcony were the prettiest and best-dressed in town. I gambled for a while, losing money but making friends, which is my usual practice in a new town. Then I started in pitching the Ransom Process to anyone who would listen.
The saloon’s owner leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table and hooked his thumbs in a self-satisfied way into his lapels and said, “I’m surprised you haven’t heard, Professor. Seeing as you said you knew all about New Dreyfus and what a fine little town it is and how you came here especially to visit us. We have all the electric-light we could ever need, and N.D. does not go dark at night.”
My heart sank but I kept smiling.
The saloon owner winked, and got up from the table, and beckoned me to follow him upstairs. He told his lieutenants at the table we would be but a moment, and I agreed, and told them we would talk further when I returned. He led me up and out onto the balcony, where he shooed away the pretty girls and said, “See?”
I saw. While I had been idling in the saloon and drifting from table to table and talking about myself, evening had fallen. A switch had been thrown— I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. It now became apparent that all along Lead Street arc lights squatted on the rooftops. In the bustle of the afternoon I had not noticed them. They cast a cold white light that to my eye was hideous.
“The Northern Lighting Corporation fixed us up six months ago,” he said. “N.D. does not sleep.” There was indeed something manic and sleepless-looking and herky-jerky about the people below, caught in that
We stayed at one Mr. Bob Bolton’s farm on top of Blue Hill. He was too poor for slaves but he had goats and an ear-trumpet and three beautiful daughters. This sounds like the start of a filthy joke but there is no punch-line. He’d had sons too but they had all gone off to be soldiers for one side or another, and most of them were dead. Down below in Sholl there was a post-office, and I spent all afternoon sitting on a fence beside a cold brown field composing letters to May, Jess, and Sue, and also to Mr. Alfred Baxter, though I did not send that last one. Miss Elizabeth Harper taught me a great deal about spelling and commas.
In the next town over I nearly fought a duel with a man who claimed I had stolen the plans from the Apparatus from him. I was too proud to back down, although I am a poor shot, not least because I have next to no sight in my left eye, as I believe I have mentioned. Fortunately when dawn came, bleak and wintry, he was so drunk that at the signal he turned and walked ten paces at a forty-five-degree angle to true and right into a tree, concussing himself.
In the town after that three salesmen of the Northern Lighting Corporation jumped me in the darkness and beat me for a minute or two.
II. The Northern Lighting Corporation
New Dreyfus was a mining town. It was like East Conlan only smaller and wilder and younger and more crowded, and it was built on lead-zinc, not coal, and there were slaves in the mines, which there were not in East Conlan. There were company stores and saloons all along New Dreyfus’s Lead Street. It was a town that was suddenly rich in a way it did not know what to do with. I called in at the most prominent saloon— it had three stories, one more than any of its competitors, and the girls who waved from its balcony were the prettiest and best-dressed in town. I gambled for a while, losing money but making friends, which is my usual practice in a new town. Then I started in pitching the Ransom Process to anyone who would listen.
The saloon’s owner leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table and hooked his thumbs in a self-satisfied way into his lapels and said, “I’m surprised you haven’t heard, Professor. Seeing as you said you knew all about New Dreyfus and what a fine little town it is and how you came here especially to visit us. We have all the electric-light we could ever need, and N.D. does not go dark at night.”
My heart sank but I kept smiling.
The saloon owner winked, and got up from the table, and beckoned me to follow him upstairs. He told his lieutenants at the table we would be but a moment, and I agreed, and told them we would talk further when I returned. He led me up and out onto the balcony, where he shooed away the pretty girls and said, “See?”
I saw. While I had been idling in the saloon and drifting from table to table and talking about myself, evening had fallen. A switch had been thrown— I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. It now became apparent that all along Lead Street arc lights squatted on the rooftops. In the bustle of the afternoon I had not noticed them. They cast a cold white light that to my eye was hideous.
“The Northern Lighting Corporation fixed us up six months ago,” he said. “N.D. does not sleep.” There was indeed something manic and sleepless-looking and herky-jerky about the people below, caught in that
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