The Books of the Wars (8 page)

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The Government made a great play of the expedition. Although the initial mission of reaching the Yards had been a failure, they had defeated a great and ominous force that would have threatened future travelers. No official mention was made of Miolnor; the immortal grapevine took care of that. The man in golden mail was soon interpreted not as being a lowly ghost, but a truly divine power—the Caroline had God on her side.

All mutant strength, as later expeditions were to discover, had been wiped out along with the dark beings who had stood upon the rafts. The Vale was still a hell, but at least it was one devoid of devils.

A huge pylon of polished steel and iron was erected on the south shore of bloody Ford, amid the battle wreckage. At the bottom of the tower were inscribed over five hundred names of those who had fallen; admittedly, some of the names were changed to provide a glorious death for the bounder sons of some of the better families, or a cover story for certain political undesirables who had vanished from their homes late at night, but on the whole, those who fulfilled Toriman's scheme were given full honors.

Edmund Moresly and his men had left Caltroon as soon as the General had issued their orders. Toriman had given them a cargo of long, thin packing cases and a strange black banner, inscribed with the ancient crest of Mourne's leaders and with many of the indecipherable runes that the natives of the Imperial Vale used for script. Moresly had only a vague idea of what the flag stood for, but this belief was strengthened by the effect it had on the Vale's inhabitants: one moment they were screaming like the hounds of hell and the next all fawning attention and mumbled courtesies.

They had been conveyed to a large cave from which the mind mutants exercised their dominion over the Vale. He could not understand a word of their insane babbling, but that was hardly necessary. The flag was presented to the rulers, amid intense whisperings, and then a scroll, engraved in a similar manner. Moresly correctly guessed that the scroll contained information to the effect that mankind was plotting an expedition against the Vale; Moresly also made other correct guesses about his superior's plans as things logically fitted into place.

Next, still following the explicit instructions, Moresly's men brought up the thirty cases from the boat and removed their contents. They looked like staves, but from the expressions on the faces of the mutant rulers, Moresly supposed them to be weapons of some sort.

Moresly's admiration for Toriman reached something of a zenith as he perceived the grand sweep of history that he had become part of.

Upon his return to the Caroline, he found that the General had died, leaving him another, more complex set of orders and a transfer to the Office of Reconstruction.

He was ushered into Limpkin'soffice and asked to sit down. "Moresly," Limpkin began, "you realize, of course, that you are here through the late General's recommendations. He held you in high esteem." Moresly bowed his head slightly and said nothing. "You have heard of the ship?"

"Yes, sir. I've heard what your Office wanted the people to hear, and the General told me the rest."

"Then you are fully aware of the details of this, ah, plot."

"Fully. And the particular detail which at the moment concerns myself is the leadership of the agency that is to redirect the
Victory
's enthusiasm and efforts back into the main body of the Caroline. Since what this office is supposed to do would be viewed by the public as sabotage, at the moment at least, it will be a covert operation; the Office of Procurement—the General thought we should call it that, nice, pedestrian, not very illuminating. Am I correct, sir?" Moresly asked a trifle solicitously.

Taken aback by the man's knowledge of highly secret information, Limpkin slowly answered, "Yes, quite correct. You seem to know more about the project than I do."

"I do, sir; that's why I'm here." Limpkin felt a flash of irritation at the man's confidence, but then he remembered that, as Moresly had just said,
was
why he was here.

"Then you should not mind if I voice one or two objections I have of my own." Moresly nodded assent, and Limpkin went on. "I frankly do not like this idea of creating a whole new caste of people who know of the real mission of the ship, to direct the actions of the rest of the people. These men and women, the saboteurs as you put it, under your office, and the technicians under my ultimate command who will supervise the ship's construction, constitute a virtual priesthood. And all these almost childish devices which you and Toriman have provided to set the elite apart from the rabble: badges, black suits, segregated living conditions, separate schools, and that sort of nonsense. Is it all really necessary? I always pictured the ship as inspiring one huge unified effort by the nation, with only the very highest echelons knowing what was really going on. It almost seems that the General was attempting to set up some sort of tension or conflict whose eventual purpose I cannot fathom but which could, I think, someday explode into class warfare."

Moresly shifted around in his chair and for the first time looked a little distressed. "Yes, well, these fears are perfectly logical. I might say that they occurred to me at one time or another. But I think that the General was correct in setting up this ruling class. First off, notice that when you envision this unified effort to build the ship, you are presupposing a society of total equals. We have an extremely stratified society in the Caroline as it is now. In effect all we are doing is consolidating the social, intellectual, and economic classes into two great emotional classes. The tension is unavoidable, the General said to me once, for thousands must know what it is about, how to falsify reports and test readings so that the machinery that could never really function will at least give the appearance of success.

"I honestly believe that at the worst we will end up with an enlightened, albeit temporarily embattled, oligarchy.

"Also, we must have paragons to which the people can look to be suitably inspired," Limpkin did not look very satisfied. "Of course," Moresly went on, "I can't expect you to accept so rough an explanation; the General's communications and directives . . . "

"They comment only upon the actual mechanics of establishing the classes."

"Well, I fear then, we must trust in the wisdom of the General. He was an extraordinary man, sir, and, if nothing else, he will be remembered for what has happened in the past months: the feeling of purpose and mission—the unity! Why, even in the great legends there is no record of such a feeling, so totally galvanizing the World. The atmosphere surrounding the tales of Miolnor's first march into the Imperial Vale and the vague accounts of the wars against the Dark Powers a thousand years ago are the only things that compare with it."

Limpkin sighed as he remembered Toriman; indeed, he was an extraordinary, a great man, and perhaps it was the way things were if such as he saw fault or purposelessness in the General's ideas. "But I have a more concrete and immediate point I should like explained. The General had picked the Armories as the site for the Office of Procurement. Now why should Toriman picked a half demolished system of old caves so near to the nation that its purpose might be easily discovered."

Moresly interrupted. "But the blast at the Armories occurred after the General's death; he could know nothing of it."

"Then why not just move to a more convenient place?"

"But, sir, surely you realize that it was the General's
expressed wish
that my office be located . . . "

"I am perfectly aware of the General's expressed wishes, but I cannot see why we should endanger this project in the slightest detail. I should think that, say, Gun Hill or the Grayfields, wherever they might be, would be much better suited to your purposes: they're secluded, protected by superstition, and closer to your work."

Moresly suddenly rose from his chair and made as to leave. His tone was that of ice. "Sir Henry, if this is to be my Office, run by myself in the manner that the General prescribed, then I must demand that this issue be settled according to the original plans. In my view the best possible location for the Office of Procurement is still the Armories and if you feel so strongly about it you can hire someone else whose methods are less exacting than mine."

Limpkin stared at the man, not knowing what to do. Then it seemed to him that they were quibbling over a trivial point; Moresly was obviously a good, competent man, as was everything connected with the late General's plans and operations. To lose him over a detail would be stupid, Limpkin told himself, but beneath it lay a fear that the lightest interference with Toriman's divinely inspired scheme might botch everything, as Moresly said. "Hardly any need to do that, Moresly," he said in as conciliatory a tone as his professional dignity would permit. "If the Armories mean that much to you and if you honestly think that the efficiency of your new Office will suffer if it is not there, then the Armories are yours."

Moresly continued to look like outraged Justice. "My thanks, Sir Henry. I'm sure the General would approve of your decision."

Limpkin rose, trying to look as miffed as his new subordinate, but not bringing it off as well. He handed Moresly a letter of authority from George XXVIII authorizing the establishment of his Office, its immunity from normal Governmental procedures, and a blanket requisition for anything that might be needed to put the Armories into proper condition. The two men shook hands and Moresly departed.

The riverboat
Kestral
tied up at the wharf and Limpkin stepped off into the Yards.

They had passed Gun Hill yesterday and the civil servant had thought that its monumental dimensions would have insulated him against the impact of the Yards. The Hill was a vast mound a mile in diameter at the base, rising gradually to a height of just over two hundred feet. He had viewed it through a heavy telescope; it was now overgrown with vegetation, but the trees and grasses failed to conceal the two structures at the top. Placed a quarter of a mile apart, they nevertheless crowded the Hill with their incredible bulk. One of the crew had told him that they had, indeed, once mounted great siege guns and that they had been instrumental in the defeat of the Dark Powers.

Vast hydraulic cylinders, ten feet in diameter by Limpkin's reckoning, studded the machines; pipes and fittings of every conceivable shape and size ran along the bases of the mounts, climbed up their sides and ended, twisted, in empty air. Shell carriages, big as First World trucks, stood scattered all over the Hill, their chrome steel bodies rusting into dust.

The Hill had been the first of the great First World relics that Limpkin had ever seen. They had drifted past the Hill as the sun was falling behind the western mountains and it seemed as if the guns'fire were still scourging the evil darkness there. Limpkin had moved into a near dream and found himself listening for the thunder of the guns' report and watching for the yellow-white flash from their muzzles; all the tales of his rural youth flooded back to him. He was moving through a land which did not exist for most of the World; the Dark Powers, the Builders of the Yards, the whole lot of it belonged to another creation.

As they had passed from under the Hill's shadow, a grassy plain reaching all the way to the distant mountains unrolled itself on the western bank. Limpkin had felt a sadness descend upon him, and he noticed it in the wrinkled expressions and staring eyes of the
Kestral
's crew.

When the Powers had finally been defeated a millennium ago and thrown back past the western peaks, a final stand had been taken by their most powerful elements. The Battle of the Westwatch was supposed to have finally ended the First World and marked the almost-triumph of the World. The plain that ran for fifty miles from the Tyne to the foothills of the mountains was now said to be a graveyard for the battle's First World victims; the dead lay shoulder to shoulder, head to foot, for virtually the entire expanse of the field. Limpkin tended to view any account of so huge a battle as being more myth than anything else, yet the stupendous fortifications of Gun Hill and the Fortress were quite real, as was the sorrow that he and his men then felt.

They had moored several miles upstream from the delta, for the river had not yet been safely charted for night travel. At dawn they had cast off again and had tied up at the Yards shortly afterward.

Immediately any sadness that Limpkin had carried with him from Gun Hill was swept away by the scope of the Yards, by the height of Westwatch and by the sinister immensity of the Fortress. He walked away from the ancient pier, his mind spinning, for before him, all the way to the ring of small mountains that surrounded the eastern bank of the delta—or so it seemed—lay stretched a field of concrete. Here and there the first small cranes that the first work crews had begun reconditioning stood like candles in the middle of an enormous birthday cake; they only served to accentuate the sense of vastness, of unbelievable space. Limpkin turned to the southeast and saw the ways that were to eventually cradle the
Victory.
Even though its slope into the Sea was most gradual, the near end was still almost fifty feet in the air before the colossal support ribs began.

A year ago Limpkin had sweated over the construction of a ten mile drainage ditch in the Randau Basin and now he had inherited from a vanished race an enterprise so vast that, as one of his reports had told him, the ways must arch slightly to compensate for the curvature of the Earth. Limpkin could not help laughing to himself.

As he walked, not having any idea of exactly where he was going, he noticed that the field was not as featureless as he had supposed. Sharply outlined platforms of rusted metal were set flush with the concrete at random intervals, varying in size from four foot squares to rectangles a hundred feet long and fifty wide; Limpkin supposed them to be freight elevators. Steel tracks were recessed into the surface and wandered, again without obvious purpose, across the official's path. Wondering at the excellent condition of the metal, Limpkin bent over to find the grooves, some of them a yard across, were filled with a clear plastic material.