Darwinia

He turned.

Erasmus.

“Tom figured you’d show up here,” the snake herder said.

Erasmus fed him real food, lent him a bedroll, and promised to take him and Evangeline back to his makeshift ranch beyond the Rheinfelden, just a few days overland; then Guilford could hitch a ride downriver when Erasmus floated his winter stock to market.

“You talked to Tom Compton? He’s alive?”

“He stopped by the kraal on his way to Jayville. Told me to look out for you. He ran into bandits after he left you and Finch. Too many to fight. So he came north and left decoy fires and generally took ’em on a goose chase all the way to the Bodensee. Saved your bacon, Mr. Law, though I guess not Preston Finch.”

“No, not Finch,” Guilford said.

They paralleled the Rhine Gorge, following the land route Erasmus had established. The snake herder called a halt at a pool of water fed by an u

Erasmus put up the tent and scratched out a pit for the fire while Guilford dried and dressed.

They shared ca

The snake herder had something on his mind.

“Tom told me about the city,” Erasmus said, “about what happened to you there.”

“You know him that well?”

“We know each other, put it that way. The co

Guilford shot him a wary glance. Erasmus gave him back a neutral expression.

“Hell,” the snake herder said, “I would of sold Tom those twenty head if he’d asked. Yeah, we go back some. But Finch showed up all blood and thunder, pissed me off… not to speak ill of the dead.”

Erasmus found a pipe in his saddlebag, filled it and tamped it and lit it with a wooden match. He smoked tobacco, not river weed. The smell was exotic, rich with memory. It smelled like leather-bound books and deep upholstery. It smelled like civilization.

“Both of us died in the Great War,” Erasmus said. “In the Other World, I mean. Both of us talked to our own ghosts.”

Guilford shivered. He didn’t want to hear this. Anything but this: not more madness, not now.

“Basically,” Erasmus said, “I’m just a small-potatoes third-generation Heinie out of Wisconsin. My father worked in a bottling company most of his life and I would of done the same if I hadn’t shied off to Jeffersonville. But there’s this Other World where the Kaiser got into a tangle with the Brits and the French and the Russians. A lot of Americans got drafted and shipped off to fight, 1917, 1918, a lot of ’em killed, too.” He hawked and spat a brown wad into the fire. “In that Other World I’m a ghost, and in this one I’m still flesh and blood. You with me so far?”

Guilford was silent.

“But the two worlds aren’t strictly separate anymore. That’s what the Conversion of Europe was all about, not to mention that so-called city you wintered in. The two Worlds are tangled up because there’s something wants to destroy ’em both. Maybe not destroy, more like eat — well, it’s complicated.

“Some of us died in the Other World and went on living in this one, and that makes us special. We have a job ahead of us, Guilford Law, and it’s not an easy job. I don’t mean to sound as if I know all the details. I don’t. But it’s a long and nasty job and it falls on us.”

Guilford said nothing, thought nothing.

“The two worlds get a little closer all the time. Tom didn’t know that when he walked into the city — though he may have had an inkling — but he knew it for sure by the time he left. He knows it now. And I think you do, too.”

“People believe a lot of things,” Guilford said.

“And people refuse to believe a lot of things.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. You’re one of us, Guilford Law. You don’t want to admit it. You have a wife and daughter and you’d just as soon not be recruited into Armageddon, and I can hardly blame you for that. But it’s for their sake, too — your children, your grandchildren.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Guilford managed.

“That’s too bad, because the ghosts believe in you. And some of those ghosts would like to see you dead. Good ghosts and bad ghosts, there’s both kinds.”

I won’t entertain this fantasy, Guilford thought. Maybe he’d seen a few things in his dreams. In the well at the center of the ruined city. But that proved nothing.

(How could Erasmus have known about the picket? Sullivan’s cryptic last words: You died fighting the Boche… No, set that aside; think about it later. Yield nothing. Go home to Caroline.)

“The city,” he heard himself whisper…

“The city is one of theirs. They didn’t want it found. And they’re going to great lengths to keep it hidden. Go there in six months, a year, you won’t find it. They’re stitching up that valley like a sack of flour. They can do that. Pinch off a piece of the world from human knowledge. Oh, maybe you or I could find it, but not an ordinary man.”

“I’m an ordinary man, Erasmus.”

“Wishing won’t make it so, my mother used to say. Anyhow.” The snake herder groaned and stood. “Get some sleep, Guilford Law. We still have a distance to travel.”

Erasmus didn’t raise the issue again, and Guilford refused to consider it. He had other problems, more pressing.

His physical health improved at the snake farm. By the time the stock boats arrived from Jeffersonville he was able to walk a distance without limping. He thanked Erasmus for his help and offered to ship him Argosy on a regular basis.

“Good idea. That book of Finch’s was a slow read. Maybe National Geographic, too?”

“Sure thing.”

“Science and Invention?”

“Erasmus, you saved my life at the Bodensee. Anything you want.”

“Well — I won’t get greedy. And I doubt I saved your life. Whether you live or die is out of my hands.”

Erasmus had loaded his stock into two flat-bottomed river boats piloted by a Jeffersonville broker. It was Guilford’s ride back to the coast. He offered the snake herder his hand.

Guilford said, “About Evangeline—”

“Don’t worry about Evangeline. She can go wild if she likes. Once people name an animal it’s too late for common sense to prevail.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll meet again,” Erasmus said. “Think about what I said, Guilford.”

“I will.”

But not now.

The riverboat captain told him there had been trouble with England. A battle at sea, he said, and strictly limited news over the wireless, “though I hear we’re walkin’ all over ’em.”

The snakeboats made good time as the Rhine broadened into the lowlands. The days were warmer now, the Rhinish marshes emerald-green under a bright spring sky.

He took Erasmus’ advice and arrived in Jeffersonville anonymously. The town had grown since Guilford last saw it, more fishermen’s shacks and three new permanent structures on the firm ground by the docks. More boats were anchored in the bay, but nothing military; the Navy had a base fifty miles south. Nothing commercial was sailing for London — nothing legal, anyway.

He looked for Tom Compton, but the frontiersman’s cabin was vacant.

At the Jeffersonville Western Union office he arranged for a bank transfer from his personal account in Boston, hoping Caroline hadn’t closed it out on the assumption he had died. The money arrived without a problem, but he couldn’t get a message through to London. “From what I hear,” the telegraph operator told him, “there’s nobody there to receive it.”