Sir Henry Limpkin's head servant had brought him word of the proposed meeting at a little past midnight; he had been sitting in his study sometimes drowsing, but he had been fully awake when the man entered and thus did not fly into his customary rage. An Office of Reconstruction officer treasures his sleep as some do pearls, but tonight it was not to be had.
When he was told that General Toriman's batman had brought a summons to his residence, he had slipped out of his smoking jacket and into a warm sports coat even before the servant had returned with his greatcoat and boots.
A hansom cab was called, and Limpkin left as soon as it arrived at his doorstep, leaving word that Lady Limpkin was not to be disturbed and that she should not worry if he did not return by morning.
Normally it is about a twenty minute drive to General Toriman's castle on the slopes of Mount Royal, but the icy slush slowed the cab's horse considerably. In the half hour that it took to reach his destination, Limpkin had a chance to think, his concentration broken only by an occasional curse from the freezing driver above and the hard thump of the iron shod wheels hitting a pothole.
After some ten minutes of driving they came to the city walls, were identified, and passed through, leaving the North Gate behind. They took the seldom-used River Road that curves off to the northwest just past the northern extremity of the walls; after a bit of fast trotting, Limpkin could spot the lights of Caltroon against the hulking immensity of Mount Royal.
Limpkin dismissed the cab at the castle's main gate (being careful to generously tip the frozen driver) and rang for admittance. "Your business, sir?" called a voice from the high battlements. Limpkin looked up but all he could discern were three flagpoles: to the right, Toriman's personal flag with the family coat of arms; to the left, the regimental banner of the 42nd Imperial Hussars, Toriman's unit before he retired, with a tangle of battle streamers flying above it; and in the center, the black and silver of the Caroline Republic. "Sir Henry Limpkin to see General Toriman, as requested," he shouted at the bodiless voice.
A small door opened on Limpkin's left; a man appeared with a lantern and a polite, "Follow me, if you please, sir?"
Limpkin was led across the icy courtyard, through Caltroon's second wall, past the now lifeless formal gardens, and finally into the Great Keep.
Caltroon's history could be traced back almost seven hundred years to the time when it had been but a small, fortified outpost of a forgotten empire. Since then at least thirty nations and a hundred great men had added walls, fortifications, towers, and, five hundred years after Caltroon's birth, the Great Keep.
It was a place of great antiquity, where the inherited relics of a thousand defeated nations lay, where crossbow-men of Toriman's personal guard patrolled over stone-filled shafts, housing the rusting shells of ballistic missiles six centuries old. The Toriman coat of arms, brought from distant Mourne with its mailed fist and winged horse, hung beside those of the greatest men that ever strode the World in those pathetic days. Everywhere one looked, his eye would alight upon the beautiful or the awesome, never anything else. For it was an identifying characteristic of the masters of Caltroon that they should prize beauty, because their lives were so often devoid of it, and power, because without that they would soon have no life at all.
Limpkin thought of all this as he was led through the labyrinthine rooms and halls. The bloodied lance of the present and the pitted rifle of past ages hung between a piece of exquisite crystal sculpture from Bannon der-Main and an illuminated manuscript from the Black Library at Calnarith. But the dust was gathering on the beautiful and the powerful alike. The castle and its master were, by slow degrees, dying. As am I, thought Limpkin wearily, as is the Caroline Republic, as is the World. The lot of them would never actually fall, but the dust would simply keep on piling up until they were all buried.
Limpkin absently recalled that once, when he had had lunch with Toriman and several other officers and civilians from the War Office, he had remarked to the General that mankind seemed to have lost something a very long time ago. As to what it was or as to when it had disappeared, Limpkin could give no clue. And Toriman had turned to him and said that he often got the same feeling; perhaps the missing essence could be found? Perhaps. Toriman was credited with stranger feats, and Limpkin had received unofficial word that the General had been wandering around the western wastes for the past four and a half months; perhaps this meeting . . .
Limpkin quickly abandoned this line of thought as the servant opened a door and stood to one side. "The General is waiting for you in his study, sir," he murmured, and vanished into the shadows behind Limpkin.
General Toriman's study was a colossal room more reminiscent of the nave of a cathedral rather than the cozy, walnut paneled dens that one usually associates with gentlemen's studies. Its wall consisted of hardwood bookcases running the length of the room. Row upon row of finely bound volumes, richly inlaid map trays, and celestial globes of all sizes filled the walls and dotted the floors on either hand. The far wall was dominated by a huge walk-in fireplace; its fire, along with four wrought iron chandeliers, lighted the vast room with a warm, pulsating glow. Replicas of the three flags that Limpkin had seen flying from the walls stood by the fireplace, their brocaded insignia glowing in the rust-yellow light. And once again, the Toriman coat of arms, this time made of burnished steel and brass, hung directly above the mantle. The rest of the wall was paneled with a deeply stained mahogany.
As Limpkin walked into the cavernous room, he became aware of the floor: black and white checkered marble. Even a room as large as this one could have been made more pleasant by the vast quantity of books and artifacts at hand; the warm fire, the soft light and darkness, the smell of fine leathers, paper, and rare wood were all canceled out by that cold floor. Leaf through one of the volumes and a soft rustling would be heard; listen to the fire: a pleasant crackling. But walk upon the floor, with the regimental insignia of the Army graven into the black squares, and you put a frigid screen over the soft beauty of the place. Limpkin crossed the floor quickly, his steel-tipped traveling boots clanking harshly on the polished marble.
Toriman's desk was set directly in front of the fireplace; it was almost as impressive as the room itself. It was at least seventeen feet long, made of a single slab of rosewood; it was supported by four thin, almost delicate legs which, along with the border that hung down about five inches from the rosewood sheet, were richly carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Complicated but not profuse gilt moldings ran around the desk.
Turned toward the fire was a rather large, high-backed chair; it too was done in rosewood with gilt embellishments. It was upholstered in black and gold brocade. General Toriman sat there, leafing through an ancient folio with the General's crest on the covers.
Toriman was old now, almost sixty-eight, and his face showed the reflected horror and misery of a lifetime spent on the battlefield. His hair, iron gray, was combed back severely and was remarkably thick for a man of his age. His face, with its interlacing network of lines and old scars, was a marvel of shadows; his deeply set eyes sat in two dark caves, betraying their presence only by an occasional glint as they caught the firelight. His sharp nose, solid jaw and almost lipless mouth completed the cold portrait.
As he rose to greet Limpkin, one could see that his marvelous physique of latter days had deteriorated only slightly; the General still carried his bulk with the brutal grace of an Imperial Hussar. Limpkin felt as if he had moved under a thunder cloud.
The two men were not the best of friends. Toriman had no real friends, but for the past ten years they had known each other fairly well. Toriman was the first to speak, apologizing for his dragging Limpkin out on such a beastly night, but he thought that he had come upon something which he and his Office should know about as soon as possible. He motioned toward another high-backed chair, this one not quite so large, which Limpkin pulled close by the fire. A servant brought in some wine, and the General produced a small walnut thermidor from amid the clutter of maps and documents on the desk.
When both men had settled down with their goblets and cigars, Toriman spoke. "Limpkin, I hope that you will forgive the faulty memory of an old man, but am I correct in saying that your job involves something to do with the development of the nation? I think you told me at a party once, but as I said . . . " Toriman touched a finger to his forehead; firelight glinted off a gold ring.
"Yes. 'Getting the country back on its feet' is the usual phrase. Although I am, at times, really quite confounded as to how I am to recreate a world that I know nothing about and one which might"—Limpkin's voice dropped slightly—"exist only in legend." He brightened a bit. "But, it's an easy job; most hopeless ones are. I can sit in my fine office on George Street and fire off no end of orders and plans. And the results? My dear Toriman, you can see as well as I that the Caroline Republic and the rest of the World is nothing more than a sometimes-freezing, sometimes-burning hell hole. It appears that it has, for all intents and purposes, always been so and will continue to be so, or worse, until some benevolent deity chooses to bring it to an end."
"You paint a discouragingly black picture."
"The model is black"—Limpkin paused—"a fact which the exploits of the 42nd Imperial Hussars and other elements of other armies have not helped."
Instead of being insulted Toriman only seemed to relax a little. "Correct, more or less; I offer no apologies and no excuses. Those days are dead now." Toriman drew thoughtfully on his cigar and stared into the fire. "But we can hardly allow the unalterable past to sully the plotting of a brighter future, can we?"
"Hardly. Please continue," breathed Limpkin, more relieved than anything else.
"Do you remember, once, several years ago, I had had lunch with you and several other officials? And do you remember that you had taken me aside and remarked that the trouble with the World lay not in its barren fields, but within the spirits of the men who inhabit them?"
"Yes, of course. As a matter of fact, I had been thinking of that very instance on the walk here."
"Good, fine. I have a report"—Toriman lifted a fat folder from the desk—"whose contents I will not bore you with." He dropped it with a slight smile. "In substance, though, it says almost exactly what you had suspected: something has been lost. Call it the ego, the will to power, or whatever you mean; we both know what I am talking about."
"Then I was right?" Limpkin asked a little incredulously.
"Oh, quite right. Now, don't go complimenting yourself," Toriman said, smiling, the firelight glittering off his shadow-cloaked eyes. "Many men have suspected it before. The trouble is that few could prove it and fewer still would admit it to themselves. I must confess that even I had some trouble in getting used to the idea that most of the people alive today are virtually emotional eunuchs.
"But that is true, as I said, of only most. I hope that I am not being overly vain in considering myself in the minority. And I hope that my estimation of you, Limpkin, is equally correct. But back to the report. . . ." Toriman picked up the folder once again and began leafing through it.
"This essence, which neither of us can precisely name, was probably lost long before any modern records were penned. But the legends, as far as I can tell, contain a great deal of truth. I have traveled much in the service of my country"—Limpkin thought he could detect a trace of disgust, but he chose to disregard it—"into many strange—the rabble would call them enchanted—lands and I have seen many of the relics that our fathers left behind. They are older than you or I can ever possibly imagine; their character strikes the people dumb with awe—which, of course, defines our whole problem right there. The Grayfields with its fleets of spectral aircraft, overgrown with fireweeds and vines, but as real as my hand. The Fortress at the mouth of the Tyne River—beside it even my ancient and mighty Caltroon appears to be a wooden lash-up built only yesterday."
Limpkin was amazed and somewhat frightened to find the myths of his provincial childhood suddenly acquiring awesome substance; but he also found an odd comfort in it. "Please go on."
Toriman looked into his eyes for an instant and nodded. "Go on? How far shall I go on? For every legend there are ten actual wonders. The hulks of great ships, aircraft, and machines litter the edges of the World, and not even the legends attempt to understand them."
"Just by way of curiosity, why have we not heard more of these things?"
Toriman shrugged. "Who can say? The World is an incredibly vast place, far outpacing the estimates of even the wisest geographers. It is easy for even works of the Tyne Fortress' magnitude to become lost in it.
"Our World, Limpkin, the civilized one, is but a small island. The ravages of a hundred thousand pogroms, wars, inquisitions, and 'rectifications of history' have further helped to erase any sure knowledge of the past. The might and power and skills have almost all been purged from the earth."
Limpkin nodded and then simply asked, "How did it happen?"
"What happen?"
"The end of the First Days."
"Oh? Not even the Black Libraries can tell us that, but I can make a guess as to how long ago it happened: three thousand years."
"Small wonder that traces of the old World are so hard to find. It must have been an incredible cataclysm."
"Perhaps. Some volumes in the Black Library at Calnarith hypothesize an Apocalypse of some sort, but these accounts are always submerged in so much religious rot—Second Comings and the like—as to be almost useless. But whether our loss in man occurred just before any Armageddon or, more likely, as the result of one, is irrelevant. The thing was lost and then all the horrible decline followed. Perhaps men just went to bed one night, and when they awoke they found that the night had stolen something from them.
"In some places the fall was rapid and absolute, as it is in the far west and south. In other places, here for instance, the fall was slow and agonizing. Hell, Limpkin, if I see aright, we are still sliding and won't stop until our lands are as sterile as the Black Barrens, our cities occupied by dry rot and worms, and our descendants the pets of lizards."
"And now it is you, my dear General, who is painting the black picture. Obviously, you have brought me here to present a scheme for relieving the blackness. What do you suggest?"
Toriman blew a smoke ring and lightly said, "Rebuild."
Limpkin had expected something a trifle more original. He let out a little laugh. "General, I realize that that is the way out but certain rather formidable obstacles stand in one's way."
"Overcome them." The General seemed to have sunk into a pocket of conceit arising from his very evident ignorance of the real state of the nation; Limpkin wondered, for the smallest of moments, if the man was going senile. Limpkin patiently pointed out, "My Office has been working on that problem for the past century and we have come no closer . . . "
"That is because you were not working with the right tools nor with the right technique," Toriman said amiably.
Limpkin was beginning to get upset. "Perhaps being always on the business of war, dashing across the country from one campaign to another, you have not been able to examine the land and the common people as closely as I have.
"I admit that, by comparison, the Caroline is in pretty fair shape; but what we are comparing it to . . . dammit, Toriman, stop grinning at me!"
"Sorry, Limpkin." But he kept his grin.
"The land is destitute; the collections of hovels that we call towns and cities are virtually ruled by juvenile gangs and vice lords; industry, such as it is, has maintained a steady 2.8–2.6% annual decline." He shot a frigid glance at Toriman. "And foreign wars ravage our fields, destroy our finest men, and bleed the state treasury white."
"Why?"
"What?"
"I asked, why haven't these faults, which I have already outlined (so you see I am not a total dunce), been corrected by your Office."
Limpkin was getting progressively more irritated. "We have tried. Didn't I tell you that? The cellars of the Office are glutted with copies of orders and directives to the Government, our own regional offices, to the people themselves; some of these orders are more than eighty years old! We've sent out every kind of order, used every kind of appeal, threat, or tactic that we could think of, but the letters go out and that is the last we ever hear of them. Send a man out and he comes back empty-handed or beaten to a pulp, depending upon the temperament of the people.
"Ah, the people! The bloody-damn, sacred people! Tell them that their very lives depend upon a dam or upon the repair of a city's walls and it's like talking down an empty well. It's almost as if the men were less than men, as if"—Limpkin lifted an eyebrow—"they had lost something." Toriman smiled briefly, his face a harlequin mask of shifting light. "All right then, once again we have come upon this fact. Now what?"
"First of all, my agitated friend, perhaps we should qualify ourselves by saying that this essence has not really been lost, but rather has been, ah, anesthetized by three millennia of simple hell. Acceptable?"
"It seems to be your conversation."
"All right, we don't have to go traipsing off into the Barrens or some other objectionable place looking for enchanted vials with this thing in them. All we have to do is awaken it in the citizenry."
"Ah, there you are. Just what my Office and its counterparts have been trying for years to find. With all due respect, General, you have told me nothing that I did not already suspect, and if you can offer nothing more original and concrete than these philosophical or psychological meanderings, then we can both count the night a failure."
Toriman took a puff on his cigar and then suddenly crushed it in an ebony ash tray on the desk. "Yes, quite right. We have had enough of cigar and brandy talk. Enjoyable, but time consuming." The General's voice shifted emphasis subtly. He heaved himself out of the chair and vanished into the shadows past the fireplace. He was back in a second, towing a wheeled frame with a map strung between its uprights. He pushed the chart in front of the fire so that the translucent vellum took on a three-dimensional aspect when view from the front.
Limpkin studied the map. To his right in the east was the Sea and the coastline of the World. He could recognize the Maritime Republics, New Svald, and the Dresau Islands off the Talbight Estuary. Above and below this, the seacoast was pockmarked by minor nations with progressively unfamiliar names (some of which, such as Truden and Dorn, he had previously thought of as existing only in children's tales).
He caught a reference point, the free city of Enador to the south of the Talbight Estuary, and followed the Donnigol Trace westward until it reached the southern extremity of the Caroline. Around his homeland were her neighbors and their sister nations; very comforting, but the eye could not help but notice that they comprised only a very small portion of the map.
Ignoring the smile of satisfaction that Toriman was wearing, Limpkin got up and unabashedly gawked at the illuminated chart. The fire behind it made it look as if the World were floating on a sea of molten glass. The cartography was flawless; mountains appeared to be in relief and the rivers seemed to flow with turquoise water. Many of the countries had their national standards painted under their names: the golden eagle of the House of Raud, the winged horse and mailed fist of Toriman's own Mourne, the four stars of Svald and the seven of New Svald, and the indecipherable rune-standard of the tribes which laid claim to the heraldry from Heaven and Earth and less savory realms and deposited them on this fantastic map.
Toriman eased back into his chair and began talking. Limpkin at once saw that his was to be a virtual lecture and the guise of dialogue would be discarded. Toriman began. "Limpkin, before you lies the concentrated knowledge of too many years spent in places that I and the other people who helped to make this map had no business being in. Rather like a partial outline of . . . "
"Hell," Limpkin meekly offered. Torman accepted it without notice and moved on.
" . . . of hell, although I must own that Purgatory seems like a better term; more varied, you know.
"The map itself represents an unknown percentage of the World. Beyond its precincts lie, one would suppose, more lands and seas and oceans, but of them we have not even legends. But for all intents and purposes, this map will be more than adequate." Toriman got up from his chair again and stood before the glimmering charts; he lit another cigar and used it like a pointer. "Now, here we are. Around us, of course, are ringed our neighboring states. Direct your attention, if you please, to our northernmost province, number 18, which goes by the name of Tarbormin, I believe. Up there, in those desolate highlands, lies a lake, unnamed, from which springs a river, also unnamed. It flows down, out onto this plain"—tracing the course of an incredibly thin streak of blue with the glowing cigar—"where it crosses into our illustrious and thoroughly detestable sister state of Yuma.
"It continues across Yuma, having acquired a name, the Tyne, and quite a bit more water, past the Armories, and finally down into the Imperial Vale where it is lost to common knowledge.
"Once into the Vale, the Tyne becomes quite a large river. In one spot, Bloody Ford, it's almost a mile across. That name is mine, I'm afraid." Toriman's voice shifted slightly, away from the tone of absolute command. "The 42nd had been pursuing bandits and we were quite taken up in the chase until the half-men and their wild dogs set upon us." Toriman gazed off into the pulsating darkness for a moment and then returned his eyes to the map. "Forgive me, Limpkin, I will try to stick to essentials; but there are so many memories here, all either bitter or awesome ones, never beautiful, except for one." Again his eyes wandered, this time to the northern reaches of the World where the coastline dissolves into a shattered patchwork of fjords and inlets. The tight skin went slack about his face and his eye-pits fell to the cold marble floor. "Again, Limpkin, your pardon. This is almost turning into an expedition into a life I would rather forget."
"A woman?" Limpkin questioned, hardly knowing he had said it.
"Yes," replied Toriman in a distracted manner. Limpkin was mildly astounded that Toriman was capable of even approaching such a thing as affection.
"And now?"
"Dead, for this was in my youth, so very, very long ago; dead by my own hand, I suppose, but that was in the days when we still used the Plague as a tactical weapon." He. shook his head like a man rising from a heavy sleep. "The Tyne," he continued abruptly, the scarred skin again drawn tautly against the skull, the eyes flashing in their dark sockets; so sudden was the change that Limpkin instantly dropped the thought of questioning the General on a point: that the Caroline Army had never used the Plague as a weapon because of its unpredictability. "The Tyne exits the Imperial Vale here, after about six hundred miles, and curves southward until it finally reaches down to here." Toriman outlined an area near the bottom of the map. "It enters the Black Barrens where, through some ancient wizardry, or more likely radiation poisoning, the land is as sterile as an operating theater. Finally the Tyne flows into the sea, whose probing arm you can just see here along the bottom of the map; here we find our elusive goal.
"On the western side of the delta stands the Tyne Fortress, which I told you about earlier, and on the other bank, the eastern one, lie the Yards."
"Yards . . . ?" Once again Limpkin was totally in the dark.
Toriman looked slightly exasperated. "No legends? Curious, the people of western Yuma certainly have enough about it." Toriman resumed his seat and picked several sheets of paper from a folder. "Briefly, the Yards are an enigmatic, to say the least, expanse of concrete situated on the banks of the Tyne delta. I have no absolutely sure information on who might have built them, for what purpose, or anything along those lines; but I can guess that the Fortress and a rather curious structure several miles upriver called Gun Hill were constructed for its defense." The General looked at the papers on the desk for a moment. "Just as an aside of no significance, all the main armament of the Fortress and what is left of Gun Hill's battery are pointed west; but all of these affairs are of great antiquity so I shouldn't think that any menace they were supposed to combat is still alive.
"The Yards themselves are approximately four miles wide, five where they reach down to the Sea, and about nine miles long. Along the middle of this field, and running about ninety percent of its length, is a huge elevated ramp or slipway of truly titanic dimensions; this ramp runs into the Sea and drops off into an excavated trench leading to deep water. All about the Yards lie mile upon mile of rail track with what appear to be carriages for cranes still on them and in operating condition.
"There are huge storage caverns emplaced under the surface of the concrete, which are filled with more machinery and equipment; also, there are vast rooms apparently devoted to the design of—but more of that later.
"I spent quite some time in and around the Yards—I was almost killed when I strayed into one of the Fortress' minefields. One can still trace out what must have been a complex of roads leading away from the Yards and through what I think may be the remains of a town that surrounded them. Of these ruins, there is little except for a spectacular tower located in the middle of the Delta. Its name was Westwatch; once it might have been tied to the Yards and the Fortress by several large bridges, but this is almost pure speculation.
"So here we have four structures. The tower is but a hollow shell now, but its thousand foot height might have been used to watch for whatever the Fortress was supposed to fight. But it would be best to leave the Fortress alone, for I suspect that despite its fantastic age the equipment inside of it is still quite alive and eminently capable of accomplishing its purpose: killing. Then there is Gun Hill. Who can fathom it? Huge, incomprehensible machines which remind my military mind of nothing so much as the mounts for siege cannon." Toriman paused for a sip of wine.
"I am astounded," mumbled Limpkin in a dazed voice. "They must have been incredible men."
"If they were men at all. No, now don't look so surprised." Toriman's expression changed from one of complete command to one of perplexed doubt; the eyebrows arched and the lips were tightly pursed. The voice, usually so beautifully sure and commanding or reaching downward for some lost, gentle sorrow, was now halting and confused. "I know very little of those that built the Yards and the Fortress and I can only express a personal opinion of them: they were not"—the General stopped uneasily and searched for the words—"not of my kind of flesh and blood. They were different, Limpkin, and fanatically dedicated to ideals totally at odds with those I hold eternally sacred; I can only feel this, smell it in the wind that blows from Gun Hill or the Fortress, but I feel it as strongly as I feel the strength of Caltroon's walls. There is an essence inhabiting those ruins which I cannot help but feel would, if given physical substance, try to kill me. Lord, just talking about it brings a fear to my heart; can you feel it too, Limpkin?"
Limpkin said yes, he did, but in a guarded tone, for while he knew that anything Toriman could fear should have thrown him into a panic, all he could feel was a great deal of puzzlement at the General's reaction and an irrepressible sense of worshipful pride in hearing of the great buildings. It was almost as if he had been descended from the race that Toriman now said he hated. Limpkin thought it best to try to return the conversation to its original course. "But what has this to do with us? The builders are dead, they must be, for such great power in the hands of the living could hardly have escaped the World's notice."
Toriman brightened at this. "Quite right, Limpkin; just a personal opinion, but one which I think you will share more closely when you see the Yards for yourself. But even if you do not feel it as strongly as I when you look upon the land, you will feel a deep fear for the countries that surround it and us. And if not fear, then hate; the World is up to here with it. The World is your hell, my purgatory; it is a . . . "
" . . . prison," Limpkin again filled in unexpectedly; Toriman's mask-face broke into something really approaching a wide grin.
"Precisely. And when a man is unjustly condemned to a prison, what is his first desire?"
"Why, to escape, naturally."
"Again right. But in our case the prison, the World, is so escapeproof that the sheer weight of despair has weighed us down and killed hope itself. This is why that sleeping bit of motivation has never awakened. Even if it did, it would probably die of starvation. Despair, Limpkin, is the key. What we need is the antithesis of despair: hope."
"Obviously, but isn't this just . . . "
The General held up his hand. "From the brief sketch I have given you, what do the Yards sound like they were built for?"
Limpkin thought for a moment. "A shipyard?" he asked in a cracked voice.
Toriman's fear of a moment ago was now completely banished by this new factor. "Yes, quite, exactly. A shipyard, the obvious conclusion. And I will further confess to you that any ships that might have issued from the Yards did not sail upon any sea."
"Meaning?"
"The night sky . . . "
"A starship!" Limpkin almost screamed with rage that Toriman should climax his tale with such an absurdity. "Toriman, is this your great antithesis of fear? This?"
Again Toriman halted him with a gesture of the hand and a turning of the head. "I am dead serious. No proof, none at all, but this conclusion is inescapable."
"But no nation, not even the whole World, could have actually built . . . " Limpkin rolled his eyes at the mere thought of the size of such a ship.
"Why not? Someone built the Fortress and the Yards; remember, they were not crippled by the dead air of the World. Now, what I propose is that the Caroline build a duplicate; I have found quite a few fragmentary plans left, and the Yards' cellars are filled with parts. Make it the escape route, the way out of this vile prison."
"Escape to where, if I might ask?"
"That," said Toriman with a wave of his hand, "is a minor detail."
"I'm afraid, General, that I have been led into too many pits of ignorance by your convoluted manner of speaking. The idea of a starship lifting us all to a, hopefully, better world is certainly intriguing, if impossible."
"But the ship's primary purpose will not be one of simple transportation, but that of a Cause, the thing about which all the dormant hopes of our nation can crystallize.
"And here is the trick: the ship will betray the people for their own good. Here, look at this." Toriman unfolded one of the sheets he had removed from the folder. Standing up, he laid the report aside and spread the paper out on the desk. Limpkin also rose and saw on it a beautifully executed "artist's conception" of what must be Toriman's ship.
It was an overpowering thing; incredibly long and thin, it looked exactly as one might suppose a starship to look like. Its sharp, pointed nose hovered far above the flat expanse of the Yards; the body curved back, dolphin-like, to a pointed tail atop which grew a single vertical fin of unimagined height. The delta wings started about one-quarter of the way down the hull, slanting to a sharper angle as they grew, and finally ending in a straight dropoff at right angles to the ship.
"Beautiful, Toriman, just magnificent. The engineer who conceived of it had the soul of an artist," said Limpkin, half joking.
"This total plan was designed, as were most of the things for which we have no plans, by a psychologist. As a mere carrier of human freight, it would be a practical failure, but it is a lot more likely to capture the imagination of an illiterate peasant than a dun colored sphere."
"How large will, ah, would she be?"
Toriman turned to Limpkin. "She'll be about seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter, and have a maximum wingspread of three and a half miles. The tail will rise about five-eighths of a mile above the hull." Toriman sipped some wine; Limpkin collapsed into his chair, trying to decide whether to laugh or pity Toriman. "Has it captured your imagination, Limpkin?" questioned Toriman solicitously.
Limpkin could only grimace. "Are you serious about this thing? Really? Even if those of the First or some other World could build it, this World hasn't a chance."
"I agree it is beyond us now, and perhaps it shall remain so forever, but this is a minor consideration. The real point here is that the original builders left enough material to start. We've even a set of engines, or what seems to be a set, sitting below the Yards." The General lit another cigar; Limpkin saw that the gold ring on his left hand had, predictably, the horse and hand crest on its face. "Here, then, is my plan. First, we must establish a route to the Yards; once Yuma is removed through a minor war, the Tyne River will serve us splendidly. Once the way to the Yards is open, the building of the ship may commence. I estimate that a proper schedule should allow for about two hundred and fifty years." Limpkin coughed lightly. "But of course the ship will never be completed.
"You see, Limpkin, the main, indeed the only purpose of the ship will be to become a rallying point about which the will to power may awaken and be nourished. And, here comes the tricky part.
"All the plans that I have shown you for the ship are completely theoretical. Even those that I found in the Yards have translated from their rune-language into our own on a very unsure basis. For all we know the ship might collapse of its own weight, or might blow up on takeoff, or—the possibilities are endless and this is why we must never allow the ship to be finished. The effort that will flow from the resurrected spirit of the people and directed at the ship to make it their escape hatch must be covertly rechanneled back into the body of the nation proper.
"Allow me to elaborate. You, man, today go out to one of our outlying villages and issue an order: build a dam here. Why? the people ask you. For your own betterment, you answer, and for the growth and strength of mother Caroline. Yes sir, right away, sir, they answer. They will attack the stream immediately with gratifying fervor, until one of them notices the land about him. He and his father and his ancestors for a thousand years before him have worked that sterile soil, died of the plagues left in it from a hundred dark ages. Why build the dam? What good will it do? Nothing can touch this land, nothing can change the cast of the hell that he has been born into. And for mother Caroline? Was it mother Doria so many years ago? or mother Aberdeen? or . . . " Toriman shrugged. "The man is impermanent, the states transient, the efforts at improvement swallowed by the everlasting agony of the World; only the World exists and will continue to exist and to bend to it one's will appears to be beyond the power of God Himself.
"But a year later you return to the settlement; the spring floods have washed away the pathetic efforts of last year. You issue the same order. But this time when they ask you why, you will have a different answer: 'You, my beloved people, will build a dam for the ship. You will build it so that eight power lines may run into a far-off place called the Yards where this mighty mechanism is abuilding. A starship, a way out. I do not ask you to try to tame this hostile land, I only ask you to honestly work upon it so that we may someday leave it behind.' Then you will produce illustrated diagrams of the ship. Imagine their expressions, Limpkin, when you start to describe the dimensions of the ship in miles instead of mere feet. And then they will look about them, at the same land and a new thought will arise: escape from this World where before the only escape had been death.
"Your men must be skilled, Limpkin. They must speak like prophets and engrave this silver fantasy upon those torpid, withered brains. And if your Office is skillful, every time a peasant looks at the land his eyes will rise to the sky, and at night they will stand out under the stars for hours, dreaming of their new destiny; they will not make it, you must tell them that, nor will their sons, but someday their seed and their spirits will be freed from the shackles of this dismal prison.
" 'Where will my son's son go?' they will ask. It hardly matters what you answer. Use your ingenuity, but make sure the story is always the same. Legend has it that men, before the end of the First World, journeyed to the stars; pick a star, dream up a planet green and golden in the light of its young sun. Tell them that there are homes and factories and roads there, left behind and carefully preserved when the dying First World called its children home in a last effort to save itself. Paragon, Harbor, Home, name it whatever your Office chooses, but make it a paradise, and one as filled with man-made wonders as those of nature, for my psychologists tell me that if the people are told that their new world is ready for instant, comfortable occupation with a minimum of struggle, it will be all that more desirable. A world fit for the habitation of men, and nothing less.
"So the people will set to work with the monstrous shadow of the ship, graceful as a cormorant and powerful as an awakened god, casting the hideous Earth into servile darkness. But here is where the ship will begin her betrayal. The dam will be, if my and many others' estimation of human nature is correct, completed and the eight power lines will stretch to the southeast. Here is where your Office will move in. Only two lines will eventually reach the ship; the other six will be diverted into an area that truly needs them. Their places will be taken by empty dummy cables. And if anyone ever asks about any of this, simply tell them that it is 'for the ship.'
"As more and more of these efforts are diverted back into the nation, the land will become more bearable and more profitable. At first there will be a steadily ascending curve of work, then a zenith will be reached when the people finally begin to realize that the previously unyielding land has changed. As the land grows richer and richer, interest in the ship will taper off, for now the people's will to power will have awakened and fed upon a sufficient quantity of simple hope to allow it to live and grow.
"So you see that the ship's ultimate aim is to become a half-finished hulk. Her reality will be in her building, not in any never-to-be-taken trip into space.
"Who knows"—Toriman drew deeply on his cigar; firelight glinted off his golden ring—"perhaps someday, when the World has grown a great deal more like the First World, the ship will be completed. But then it will rise from the World in the spirit of adventure and not as a beaten fugitive."
For at least a minute neither man spoke. The General had outlined the battle plan and now his chosen lieutenant tried to digest its essentials. Another minute passed; Toriman's gaze drifted to the map and stopped over the tangled northern coastline. At last Limpkin spoke. "Seven miles long; seven miles long and three wide . . . "
Toriman chuckled with satisfaction. "Exactly, my good civil servant, seven miles long. Think of it! Seven miles by three miles! Think of it blotting out half the sky while thirty thousand feet up; see it rumbling down its ways to meet the Sea, for no runway possible could ever support its weight. And think, Limpkin, as will the people, of a day that will never come, when they will file into the cabins and leave the world behind them. Then the thunder, the Sea thrown into confusion, its surface boiling from the engines' breath. Slowly, very slowly at first, she will start to move; then faster with a tidal wave wake trailing aft. Then up into the air, the shock wave of compressed air traveling before her like a terrible herald, flattening mountains." Again the stillness.
Limpkin finally roused himself. "I find your scheme entirely impractical."
"We are in an impractical position."
"My mind refuses to accept the sheer size of the thing. But then my imagination takes over, with a vengeance in this case. Could we not just use the pretense of building the ship?"
"I admit that it would be more inexpensive, but no, I'm afraid that the ship must be built. Perhaps a man of your stature, one who has read some of the First World and now knows that the stories of its might are true, can be excited merely by the idea of the ship. But here we are trying to inspire the slow-minded, dull, witless people, and several generations of them at that. They must be able to go to the Yards and come back to their godforsaken villages and tell of the glory and power of the ship. The Yards are many leagues from here and you can be sure that with every step the pilgrim travels back toward his home, the ship will grow just that much more magnificent. The ship, the ship, the ship, this must be their only thought until the land begins to bend, as it must, to their will."
"The ship could easily become a god," intoned Limpkin as the thought grew in him.
"Only if she grows too fast. Only if she absorbs the imagination instead of merely capturing it. That is the job of your Office."
Limpkin now turned to the painting of the ship. "And her name?" he inquired, not raising his eyes.
"Victory."
"Victory, Victory . . . " Limpkin repeated. "And I suppose that your psychologists dreamed that up too."
"Of course. That and much more." Toriman walked over to one of the thin map drawers that, twenty deep, ran along each wall; he flipped out the end of a blueprint and a sheet of mathematical notations, normal numbers and symbols ranged beside an apparently corresponding row of rune-figures. "The ship," said Toriman, gesturing at the rest of the library, "and the knowledge to build and sail her."
Limpkin sensed that the audience was over. He put on his coat and waited for a sign from Toriman. "I hope that I have not kept you too long, Limpkin. Here, I'll walk you to the gate." Toriman produced a fur-collared jacket with the silver piping of a field officer.
When they had reached the main courtyard, between the two walls, Limpkin could see that dawn was growing beyond the distant city. One of the general's carriages, complete with footmen and heavy chasseur escort, was waiting.
As Limpkin boarded the coach, he turned again to the east to see the clouds of a young snow storm already shrouding the sun. "A dark dawn," he observed with as much dignity as he could summon up at that early hour.
"Perhaps others will be brighter," Toriman rejoined. "Many others besides myself have had a hand in this plan, Limpkin. Many more able and knowing than either you or I shall ever be; we are not alone in this, and we never shall be."
A footman shut the door and the convoy rumbled out of Caltroon and down to the River Road.
About a mile from the castle, while adjusting his blanket and warming pan, Limpkin came upon a present from the General. It was a small model of the Victory, wrought from solid silver, and beautiful detailed. Limpkin held it up to the feeble light of dawn until they reached the city walls; seven miles!