The Revolutions (58 page)

Authors: Felix Gilman

BOOK: The Revolutions

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She continued to sicken, but still didn’t die. She liked to say that she knew a thing or two about death, and would not be going anywhere until she was
quite
sure that the destination was to her liking. Her winter jamborees were repeated in ’29 through ’33, regular as clockwork or Christmas, newspaper outrage and visit from the police and all.

She ended them in ’33. Her young friend (and occasional lawyer) Mr Merriweather asked why, and she said, as if it were obvious, that she’d already learned all there was to learn that way. He didn’t know quite what she meant, but that was all right. He rarely did. He was relieved, as her occasional lawyer, not to have to deal with the Chief of Police yelling at him anymore.

A round and pleasant and baby-faced fellow of twenty-seven, Merriweather had grown up reading
The Wings of Mars
and
The Vaults of Mars
and Captain Syme’s other adventurers, and rather idolised their author. He said that in his opinion she was far superior to Edgar Rice Burroughs, who’d stolen all his best ideas from her anyhow, and he’d fight any man who said different if it came to it, which it never did. He considered her a kind of grand English dame. He was pretty sure she was English; she was certainly grand.

In ’35 a Hollywood man came to town and Merriweather got to talking to him at the bar of his hotel. Merriweather was also a big admirer of the moving pictures.

“You know what,” Merriweather said. “We got a famous author right here in town. What I wouldn’t give to see Mars in the moving pictures, just the way she writes it—you should talk to her. I happen to know her as well as anyone.”

The Hollywood man shook his head. “What do you think brings me to town? Your Madam Grand and Famous Author doesn’t believe in telephones, I guess. Well, I don’t mind sweet-talking the old lady a little. But she’s crazy, you know that? She’s crazy. Maybe she’s sick, I don’t know. She says she doesn’t care for the money. Worse—I swear—she believes every word of it. They’ve had moving pictures on Mars for a thousand years, she says. Crazy. More trouble than it’s worth.”

“Listen, friend—there’s no call for that sort of talk.”

Merriweather had been thinking of buying the Hollywood man a drink and trying to talk business. Instead he picked up his hat and walked away.

* * *

In ’36 Merriweather was permitted to visit the author’s study, to discuss her will. By that late date she’d become something of a hermit. He dressed up in honour of the solemn occasion. There were heaps and drifts of paper in the study, pages densely covered with the author’s handwriting. At a single furtive glance it was clear that they concerned Mars, but not the Mars of Captain Syme, but a Mars of white moons and red, and flowers. The author informed Merriweather that they were written in a trance. He took that to be a figure of speech. When he tried to read more, the author rapped his knuckles—by God, she was still quicker than she looked—and advised him in a croak not to pry into secrets that did not concern him.

He reported to his wife that night that the author was at work on one last story. He waited anxiously for further news. The old woman was clearly on her last legs. Terrible to think she might die with her last work undone. He invented excuses to write and call, but the author had ceased to answer her mail, and rarely answered her telephone. She’d never liked telephones. She said they were too lonely.

He drove out past the author’s house a few times but got no answer at the door. On one of the rare occasions when the author
did
answer the telephone, she apologised and said that she’d been travelling. Merriweather took that for a joke. She was too ill to go anywhere these days.

He asked after the progress of the book.

“Oh, that. I think I’ve written quite enough books, Mr Merriweather.”

“Not in my opinion, ma’am.”

“God bless you; but everything must end, and there comes a time when one must turn one’s thoughts to what comes after.”

“Oh, ma’am, I don’t know about that.”

“You remind me of him sometimes, Mr Merriweather.”

He took her to be referring to her first husband, the lost love of her youth—the one who’d died in an accident, or of an illness, or whatever the sad story was. In another country, and before the War. She talked about him more often these days.

“But of course,” she said, “we were very young then.”

“He must have been quite a fellow,” Merriweather said.

“He is,” she said.

“Oh. I thought—that is, ah, I didn’t know he was alive—I guess I don’t know who we’re talking about, ma’am.”

“Oh, no.” She smiled distantly. “Oh, no, no, Mr Merriweather.” She didn’t seem inclined to explain further. He supposed perhaps she was getting confused. Or perhaps the dead man seemed alive to her now; surely she expected to meet him again soon.

Merriweather was a Baptist, himself, and he guessed he believed in an afterlife. He didn’t really know. One of those things folks couldn’t see clearly in their own minds until they started to get old.

“The pearly gates,” he said, to fill the silence. “Ah-ha. The angelic host with their wings and harps. Of course.”

“Wings, Mr Merriweather? That would be something to look forward to, wouldn’t it?”

“Hmm, hmm,” he agreed.

“Have you ever thought of writing, Mr Merriweather?”

“Stories, you mean? Oh, no, ma’am. Don’t have the head for it. Couldn’t keep all the names straight. I write a mean will, though.” Then he blushed, and stammered. “I mean, a lease, or something.” But she hadn’t taken offense, or even noticed.

“I could tell you a story or two, Mr Merriweather.”

“I bet you could, ma’am. By God, I bet you could.”

* * *

It seemed like the next thing Merriweather knew—business boomed and time flew and his wife and his law partner both thought he was spending altogether too much time on that old woman, who, after all, was just a crazy old recluse who’d once written some children’s books—anyhow, the next thing he knew, he was getting a call from his friend the Chief of Police to say that the author was dead. A fire had destroyed most of her property overnight. There were clear signs of arson. In confidence, the Chief of Police informed Merriweather that it was quite probable that the author herself had set the blaze. Virtually everything was gone. A tragedy. She’d left $250,000 to Merriweather, along with a box of papers which she’d placed in the care of the post-office.

“By God,” Merriweather said. He held out the telephone at arm’s length and stared at it, as if it had appeared in his hand by magic.

The author herself had not perished in the blaze, but had been found lying out under the sky on the low hill at the southern corner of her land. She wore a simple white shift; beneath it she was skin and bone. Her arms were folded. There was frost in her hair—not remarkable, given the cold—and some weird pinkish flowers. The flowers blew away when the firefighters moved the body, and they couldn’t say what they had been—roses maybe. She was dead of exposure. Who could blame her, said the Chief of Police; it beat waiting for the cancer.

When Merriweather visited the author in the morgue, on his way to pick up the papers from the post-office, there was a photographer there from New York. They both agreed that she had a remarkably beatific smile for a corpse, and the photographer had seen a lot of corpses in his line of work. That evening Merriweather drove out past the house, but there was nothing to see from the road but a ruin, which still seemed to give off a few ghostly wisps of smoke. Behind it, the sky was warm violet and the stars were coming out.

TOR BOOKS BY FELIX GILMAN

The Half-Made World

The Rise of Ransom City

The Revolutions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Felix Gilman has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award and the Locus Award for best new writer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed
Thunderer, Gears of the City, The Half-Made World,
which was listed by Amazon as one of the Ten Best SF/F novels of 2010, and
The Rise of Ransom City
. He lives with his family in New York City.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.