Felix Gilman - Lightbringers and Rainmakers: A Tor.Com Original

Hello May.

I havent written in a while and maybe it seems I only write when theres bad news. Well, this is not the exception that proves the rule, if you know what I mean.

I lost almost all my business cards. If you got my last letter, youll remember I sent you one of them, so that you can see what your prodigal kid brothers up to these days and maybe be proud, maybe just a little. If you didnt get my letterand who knows these days?then they had my name, Professor Harry Ransom, Professor like that, in what they call quotes, because I always say Im nothing if not honest, as best I can be, and at least I never claim to be anything Im not. There were lightning bolts printed on either side of my name. Those cost extra. Under my name it said Lightbringer , then Licensed and then By Appointment , which werent exactly true but didnt mean anything either way, as I saw it, and then below that Inventor of the Ransom Process for &c &c , which is true. A dollar for fifty at Tallys Printers on Tenth Avenue in Melville City, and I bought two hundred-fifty, and in consequence went hungry for a week, and so did good old never-complaining Carver, my assistant, who Im sure Ive mentioned before.

Also I have lost my Apparatus, and my wagon, and Sasha (the horse), and just about everything else in the world I own except the white suit and my wits.

If you got my last letter youll be thinking, Not again . So am I, believe me, so am I. The strange thing is that when I think back on the incident what I first recall is those business cards sticking up in the mud in the tire tracks where theyd been scattered by those awful wings and how they looked like little white tombstones for the very tiny dead, all with my name on them, kind of funny in a way, only not really. I can picture that so clearly, but I cant remember the name of the town at all. Memorys strange, or at least mine is.

This is where youd cross your arms and say, Get to the point, Harry. Well, okay.

I was putting on the usual show. I have told you about it before more than once and it was the same as those times, only in a new town and for a new bunch of Investors. The Apparatus was set up right in the middle of town and I had the white suit on and Carver was hunkered down the way he gets ready to work the pedals and the Demonstration was ready to commence. I have told you before that I dont like to describe the Apparatus in writing, not because I dont trust you, May, but because I dont trust the mail. There are always snoops, in particular if the mail goes across Line Territories, as it must to get to you. And as I have confessed before, the status of my patents is questionable. So no more on that except to say that the sun had come out after a morning of rain and the Glass shone in it and so did the copper coils, everything shining like a premonition of that greater and perpetual Light that was to come next, was to come as soon as Carver threw the switch. Or so I hoped, the Apparatus not in fact being reliable always, or even often, as I have always been honest about, at least with you, May, at least with you.

So I stood before the assembled citizenry of Wherever-It-Was and opened my arms wide and said: Ladies . And before I could get as far as Gentlemen there was a terrible roaring sound. Gentlemen , I said anyway. Behold . Then I shut up.

A dirt road led into town, into to the heart of Whatever-They-Called-It. Up that road five or maybe six motor cars were approaching. They roared and threw up dust and smoked in the way of all the things of the Line. A moment later two of their Heavier-Than-Air Vessels appeared in the sky like theyd dropped from the clouds, and they circled, iron wings a-clatter, spyglasses keenly glinting. Same oily black smoke, always the same. The motor cars roared into the center of town and circled like wolves while the Vessels watched overhead.

I have never liked to be upstaged.

One of the motor cars crashed straight through my Apparatus, leaving broken glass and wire in its wake and the very expensive and rare acids and alkalis pooling in its tracks. The citizens of I-Dont-Know-Where screamed, or threw themselves down in the mud in attitudes of surrender or maybe worship, or ran for the hills, which I guess is what I should have been doing but I didnt seem to be able to move. All I could do was stand there and think, Not again.

So every so often one of the motor cars stopped, and an Officer of the Line got out, black-uniformed and scowling, and some unlucky citizen got lifted roughly by his collar and got questions barked in his face. I dont know about what. Out here on the western rim of the world, which is a war zone these days, you learn that theres always some reason, theres always about a thousand different ways anyone might have offended against the Authority the Line claims, so who knows what the citizens of Wherever might have done. Smuggling? Seditious publications? Or maybe they were harboring Agents of the you-know-what. Or maybe theyd done nothing at all. I saw some young people cuffed and shoved into the back of the cars and about a dozen women lined up against a wall weeping, and I guess I should have mentioned earlier that there was some shooting, too, and one or two of Wherevers buildings were on fire. Also the beating iron wings of the Vessels had blown my business cards off the table where Id arranged them, carefully, in a fan, and the wings had blown them off the table and into the mud, like I said, the tiny tombstones &c.

May, I do not want to frighten or upset you. Youll already have figured that your long-prodigal brother is not dead, nor in a Line jail. What happened next was that one of the Linesman Officers shouted You, yeah you , and he pointed, and I just about, well, it would be vulgar to write what I just about did, you know. And I guess he was pointing at a citizen of Wherever, not me, because he then wrestled him to the groundthe officer wrestled the civilian, I mean. That unfroze me. Sometimes when you pass an Electric jolt through a dead frog or bird it seems to come to life again for an instant. It was like that. I backed slowly away and did not start to run until out of sight. If you ever run afoul of the forces of the Line, and I pray that you and East Condon remain in the neutral zone forever, but if you do I recommend this approach. It has always worked for me.

If youre wondering what had happened to Mr. Carver, well, so was I.

I stood, panting, heart pounding, sweating, alone in the hills outside of town.

He stepped from behind a tree.

I greeted him. Mr. Carver.

His long black hair was wild and a little singed. Otherwise he was the same as ever.

He gave me a curt nod, as if to say, See youre not dead, then . As if to say, It goes on. Carver speaks very little, but his silences are expressive.

Yes, I said. I guess. I dont suppose you saved any of the

He hadnt, of course.

Lets take stock. I said this to Carver, and Im saying it to you now, but I guess most of all I was saying it to myself, the first time and this time too, if you follow me.

So this is the third time something like this has happened. There was Kloan, a couple months back, and Im counting Melville City too.

If you got my letters, May, you know what happened in Kloan and in Melville.

There comes a time when a man has to consider the possibility that he may be taking the wrong direction in life. That he may be pushing against a door thats just closed to him, and thats all there is to it, and the harder he pushes the more hell hurt himself.