The Crystal City

17

Foundation

Alvin leaned on the fireplace, watching Margaret nurse little Vigor. "Got a mighty good suction in him," said Alvin.

"Like a tick," said Margaret. "Can't pry him loose till he's full."

"He's getting strong, don't you think?

"Getting some muscle on him," said Margaret. "But I don't think he'll ever be one of those fat little babies."

"That's fine," said Alvin. "Don't want to raise a spoiled child."

"You'll raise him whatever he is," said Margaret. "And if anyone's likely to spoil him, it's you."

"That's my plan, more or less," said Alvin.

"Don't want him to be spoiled, but you plan to spoil him."

"Can't help it. Only way to save this boy is to have another child to divide up my doting."

"I'll do my best," said Margaret.

"Do you mind, not traveling now, not being in the world of affairs?"

"I don't look beyond this town now," said Margaret. "I try to forget that the world outside is maneuvering itself toward war. I pretend that somehow it will stay beyond the borders of our little county."

"Not so little. Very and Abe got us good boundaries. Lots of room to grow."

"I'm more concerned about how much our people grow inside them."

"Can't make them," said Alvin.

"I know."

Vigor was done with breakfast, and now Alvin cracked the boiled eggs and sliced them onto a plate for his and Margaret's breakfast.

"Mayor of the fastest-growing city in Noisy River, and you have to fix your own breakfast."

"I'm fixing your breakfast, and that's all the difference."

"My but we're in love," said Margaret.

Old pain and ancient loneliness hung in the air between them.

"Alvin," said Margaret. "I always tried to do what was best."

"I know," said Alvin.

"And sometimes what was best was not to tell you all that I knew."

Alvin said nothing.

"You never would have gone to Barcy," she said. "We never would have had all these people, the core of this City of Makers."

"Might have gone to Barcy all the same," said Alvin.

"But you would never have gone near Rien."

"You sure that saving her was what spread the fever?"

"In all the paths where you never met her, she died without a single other soul catching the disease."

Alvin smiled a wan smile and stuffed an entire egg into his mouth. "At least I've got good manners," he said, spraying bits of yolk onto the table.

"Yes, I can see that all those lessons I gave you have paid off. I can't take you out in company."

"Guess we'll just have to stay in."

"You'll never listen to me again, will you?" she said.

"I'm listening right now."

"But you'll never do something just because I tell you that you ought to."

"Have you changed?" asked Alvin. "Or do you still think you're the one best able to decide whether I should know the consequences of my deeds?"

"I've already promised a dozen times over."

"But I don't believe you," said Alvin. "I believe you mean it now, but in the moment, when you're deciding what to tell me and what not to tell, I think you'll hold back the things I most want to know, if you're afraid that knowing will cause me harm."

"You're not the most important thing in the world to me now, you know," said Margaret.

"Am so," said Alvin.

"The baby is."

"The baby's just little and he can't get into much trouble yet."

"You did."

"You got the habit of looking out for me too deep set. I can't trust you to let me decide for myself."

"Yes you can," said Margaret. "Besides, you don't need me to tell you everything now."

"I can't control what the crystal ball shows me. It's not like your knack."

"It's better."

"I think the blood and water make more of a mirror than a window."

"I think it shows good people how to do good, and bad people how to do bad. You won't come asking me what to do, when you can see what's good and right in the walls of the house you're building."

"Don't know if we should rightly call it a house," said Alvin.

"It's not a chapel-nobody's going to preach."

"A factory, maybe," said Alvin. "Or a house of mirrors, like in that carnival in New Amsterdam."

"Then it's a house after all," said Margaret. "And I was right."

"Didn't say you weren't right," said Alvin. "Just said I'd like to have chosen for myself."

"You'd rather have chosen wrong, knowing, than chosen right, not knowing."

"Well, when you put it that way, it makes me sound like a dunce on purpose."

"Indeedy," said Margaret.

"Do I have to be mayor?" said Alvin. "I'd rather just spend my time building the ... crystal."

"They all look to you, anyway, whether you have the title or not. You're the one who looks out for them, who watches the borders. You're the one who causes the slave-catchers who come near here to keep losing their way. You're the one who figured out that draining the swamp would stop the malaria."

"It was Measure who suggested it," said Alvin.

"You're the one who watches over everybody like a mother hen."

"Then let me run for mother hen."

"Alvin," said Margaret. "So what if you don't care for the title? You're going to be doing the job anyway, and it would be quite unkind of you to make someone else take the title, when everybody will know you're the real leader. Take the name upon you, and don't burden someone else with it, when they'll never have the authority."

"Didn't think of someone else having to do it," said Alvin.

"I know you didn't," said Margaret primly. "Because you're still a hopelessly ignorant journeyman smith."

"I am, you know," said Alvin.

"You know I was teasing," said Margaret.

"But I am," said Alvin. "'Cause the thing I'm building, it's not some cathedral made of visionary crystal. It's the city. It's the people. And I can make the blocks of crystal water as pure as can be, I can make the webs of blood that hold them up strong and true, we can plumb the walls straight, we can dwell inside it all the livelong day and see great visions and small memories according to our own desires. But I can't make one bad person good."

"You can make many a good person better."

"Can't," said Alvin. "They have to do it their own selves."

"Well, of course, but you help."

"I'm trying to knit everybody together as one people, and I don't think it can be done. Now that the journey's over, the French folks suddenly don't want much to do with the former slaves. And the former house slaves lord it over the former field slaves, and the blacks who were already free in Barcy lord it over all of them, and the ones who still remember Africa think they're the kings of creation-"

"The queens, more likely," said Margaret.

"And then there's all the folks who've been close to me for years, they come here and think they know everything, but they weren't on the journey, they didn't cross over Pontchartrain on that crystal bridge, they didn't camp in a circle of fog, they didn't run before the face of the Mizzippy dam, they didn't live being fed by reds on the far side of the river. You see? They think they're closest to me, but they went down a different road and there's nothing but divisions among the people and I can't make it right. Even Verily can't do more than patch up some of the tears in the fabric here and there, and that's his knack!"

"Give it time."

"Will it last, Margaret?" asked Alvin. "Will the things I'm building outlast me?"

"I haven't looked," said Margaret.

"And you expect me to believe you?"

"I can't always see, when it comes to you and your works."

"You've looked, and you've seen. You just don't want to tell me."

A single tear spilled over one eyelid, and Margaret looked away. "Some of the things you're building will outlast you."

"Which ones?"

"Arthur Stuart," said Margaret. "You're building him, and you've done a fine job."

"He builds himself."

"Alvin," she said sharply. Then softer: "Alvin, my love, if there's anyone in the world who understands this, it's you. Everything you make builds itself, or thinks it does. That's what making is, isn't it? To persuade things to want to be the way they need to be. People are the hardest to persuade, that's all."

"Is Arthur Stuart the only thing I've created that outlasts me?"

She shook her head. "I see now that you were right. I can't keep my promise. I can't tell you everything." She faced him, and now her cheeks were striped with tears, and her eyes were full of longing and regret. "But not because I'm trying to manipulate you or control you or get you to do something you wouldn't otherwise do, I promise that, and I'm keeping that promise."

"So why won't you tell me?"

"Because I hate knowing the future," said Margaret. "It robs the present of its joy. And I won't make you live the way I do, seeing the end of everything when it's still young and hopeful to everyone else."

"So the city fails."

"Your life," said Margaret, "is a life of great accomplishments, and the best things you make will last for as many lifetimes as I can see." Then she raised the baby higher in her arms, and though little Vigor was sleeping, she buried her face in the blanket he was wrapped in and wept.

Alvin knelt beside her and put an arm around her and nuzzled her shoulder. "I'm a bad husband, to plague you like this."

"No you're not," she said, her voice muffled by the baby, by weeping.

"Am so."

"You're the husband I want."

"Your bad judgment."

"I know."

"You tell me what I need to know to be a good man," said Alvin.

"But you are one, always, whether I tell you anything or not."

"You tell me that much, and I won't ask for more." He kissed her. "And I'm sorry that you carry the burden that you do."

"I'm not sorry for it," she said. "It's who I am. But I wouldn't wish it on anyone else, that's all."

Arthur Stuart watched the men digging the foundation of the observatory-for so Verily insisted on calling it, and Arthur liked the name. They dug deep to bedrock all the way around the outcropping of stone where the water came out. That would not be touched-it would remain inside, forever pouring its water out to flow in a clear, cold stream down the bluff and into the Mizzippy. It was the dry season now and other streams had slackened or gone dry, but this one flowed exactly as it had all summer.

The men digging the foundation trench-did they know that Alvin could have cleared this all away in just a few minutes? That he could have made the topsoil and the rocky subsoil flow upward and pour out onto the outside of the trench just by showing the dirt what he wanted it to do?

It was one of the perverse things Alvin had always done, making Arthur Stuart labor with his hands to make things that Alvin could have made in a moment. Like the time Alvin made him work half the summer making a canoe, burning and digging at a thick log until it was hollowed out. Now Arthur had learned enough makery that he could do it in ten minutes; it hardly mattered that Alvin could do it in ten seconds, ten minutes was good enough for Arthur Stuart.

But now Arthur was beginning to see what Alvin had been after, all that time. It wasn't that digging the canoe helped Arthur learn how to use the hidden powers of makery, not at all. It was the deeper, truer lesson: That the maker is the one who is part of what he makes. If Alvin had simply made the canoe, then it would have been Alvin's canoe. But because Arthur Stuart worked so hard to make it, it was his canoe, too. He was part of it. And if he had not gotten to know the wood-the shape of it inside the tree, the hard and soft of it, the way it burned slow and held its strength and even got harder where it had been scorched-then would he now be able to send his doodlebug through it and understand the virtue of the living wood? Could he be the maker that he was, if he had not been the clumsy boy with sweat pouring down his face and back, laboring with his hands?

These men who were putting in their day, digging the foundation, they couldn't drip their blood into the Mizzippy and come up with blocks of visionary crystal. But they could dig into the earth, so when the finished observatory rose into the sky and people went inside to see what they could see, to learn what they might be, these men would be able to say, that building stands on the foundation I dug. I helped make that miraculous place. It has my sweat in it, along with Alvin Maker's blood.

There was a man standing on the far side of the cleared land, watching, not the diggers, but Arthur Stuart. It took a moment for Arthur to realize who it was.

"Taleswapper!" he cried, and he ran full tilt right toward him, leaping over the trench just as a man was about to pitch a spadeful of earth, earning Arthur an irritated curse as the man had to stop himself in midswing and spill half the dirt back into the hole. "Taleswapper, I thought that you were dead!"

Taleswapper greeted him with an embrace, and his arms were stronger than Arthur had feared, but feeble indeed compared to what they had been, years before, when last they met.

"You'll know when I'm dead," said Taleswapper. "Because suddenly all the jokes will run dry and all the gossip will go silent and people will just sit and look glum because they got no tales to tell."

"I reckon you heard what we were doing here and had to come and add it to your book."

"I don't think so," said Taleswapper. "I filled it already." He slid a thick volume from inside his deerskin jacket. "Every page in it, full, and I even added a few scraps to make more pages than the blamed thing had. No, I think I'm here because what you're building, it'll take the place of books like mine."

"I hope not," said Arthur Stuart. "I hope never."

"Well, we'll see," said Taleswapper. "You've grown a lot taller, but not a whit smarter, as far as I can see."

"Can't see smart," said Arthur Stuart.

"I can," said Taleswapper.

"Come on, then," said Arthur Stuart. "Even I'm smart enough to know Alvin and Peggy'll want to see you forth with."

"Forthwith?" asked Taleswapper.

"Abe Lincoln is reading law with Verily Cooper, and they let me listen in."

"I'd rather you kept on speaking English like the rest of us."

"Law is the biggest mishmash of languages. Two kinds of Latin, two kinds of French, and three kinds of English all made into a soup that nobody can understand except a lawyer."

"That's what it's for," said Taleswapper. "It's how lawyers make sure they'll always have work, cause nobody can understand what they wrote down except another lawyer."

Arthur led him down off the bluff to the flatland leading to the river. The trees were mostly gone from this area, cut down and turned into cabins and fence rails. "Eight thousand people living here now," said Arthur.

"Still more than half of them runaway slaves, though, right?" said Taleswapper. "And therefore subject to being taken back south?"

"All citizens here," said Arthur Stuart. "Ain't no catcher been able to claim a soul yet."

"Word outside is that Furrowspring County is in virtual rebellion against the laws of the United States, refusing to accept the Supreme Court ruling that slaveowners can recover their escaped property."

"I reckon so," said Arthur Stuart proudly.

"There's war fever, and those as want to prevent the war, they might decide to sacrifice this town."

"As if they could," said Arthur Stuart. "With Alvin watching out for us!"

Taleswapper only shook his head.

They found Alvin down by the river, up to his knees in mud, helping with the sinking of posts to support a riverboat dock. "Howdy, Taleswapper!" cried Alvin. "About time you got here! You've missed all the best stories already, poor fellow. Too old to keep up with us boys, I reckon!"

"Reckon so," said Taleswapper. "But I got sense enough not to stand up to my neck in mud."

"This ain't just ordinary mud," said Alvin. "This is Mizzippy clay. It gets ahold of you and steals the boots right off your feet."

"Well, that's a recommendation for it. Make a cup out of such clay and it'll suck the tea right out of your mouth, is that the way of it?"

Alvin and all the men laughed. "Make a jar from it and it'll collect water from dry air."

"So you carry a bit of the Mizzippy with you even into dry land," said Taleswapper. "Why, with advertising like that, I reckon you could sell such jars for a dollar each and make fifty bucks in every town, as long as you hightailed it out before they found out the jars don't work."

"They'd work if Alvin made 'em!" shouted a man. That was enough to rouse a bit of a cheer for Alvin Maker, much to his embarrassment.

"Well, if you're gonna waste time cheering a man covered in mud, I reckon I'll leave you to your own work and go show my good friend just what a perfect baby looks like."

"Show him your son, too, while you're at it!" shouted one of the workers, which was good for another laugh and another cheer for Alvin.

Alvin clambered out of the water and up the bank, and Arthur took due note that the mud just slid off his clothes and the water dried while he was watching and thirty steps from the river you'd never guess what Alvin had been working on not two minutes before. He won't use his knack to spare these men a moment's work, but he'll use it to spare himself a bath! Or at least to spare Peggy the task of cleaning up after a muddy husband ... so that was all right.

They passed Measure, who was leading a team of men and horses doing stump removal. Arthur Stuart knew perfectly well that Measure was using as much makery as he had mastered to help free up the roots from the deep soil. But since there was still plenty of hard work for the men and teams to do, Alvin didn't say anything about it to him, and Arthur Stuart figured that as long as Measure kept his makery secret, nobody would give him the credit for how fast the clearing of the land was going.

But Measure left the work and came along. And when they got to Alvin's cabin, there inside it were a gaggle of women. La Tia seemed like the president of the women of Furrow-spring County, and what had gathered here might have been the great council: the leading women of the exodus, including Marie d'Espoir, Rien, and Mama Squirrel, and some of the women who had known Alvin and Peggy in years past, come to be part of the long-awaited city. Purity, a young preacher against Puritanism from New England, who still seemed to be in love with Verily Cooper-who hardly noticed she was there-and Fishy, a former slave from Camelot who had become something of a great woman among the abolitionists of the north in the years since her escape. And, of course, Peggy.

"I can't stay in this room," said Taleswapper. "So many glorious women, I have no choice but to be in love with all of you at once. It'll tear me apart."

"Live with it," said Peggy dryly. "I think you know them all."

"Them as I don't know, I hope I soon will," said Tale-swapper. "If I don't die in the next few minutes from pure happiness."

"That man talk some," said La Tia appreciatively.

"I didn't know there was a meeting," said Alvin.

"You wasn't invite," said La Tia. "My meeting. But you welcome a stay."

"What's the topic?" asked Alvin.

"The name of that thing what you build," said La Tia. "I don't like what Verily call it, me."

Peggy laughed. "Nobody likes what anybody calls it," she said. "But La Tia was reading in the Bible and she has a name."

"You lead us out like Moses," said La Tia. "And Arthur Stuart, he lead us like Joshua when you gone. Not like Aaron, no! We got no golden calf! But we the book of Exodus, us. So this thing you build, I find out in the Bible, she a tabernacle."

Alvin frowned. "Makes it sound like a church meeting place."

"Oui!" cried Rien. "Only instead of you go and a priest pretend to be God, we go inside and find out where he live in our heart!"

"For a building that don't exist yet, everybody's got a good idea of how it's gonna work," said Alvin.

But of course they did. Alvin had already made thirty-two of the crystal blocks-big ones, heavy, hard to haul. They were stacked up waiting to be laid down as foundation stones, but there was hardly a soul in Furrowspring County what hadn't walked the corridor between those blocks and looked into their infinite depth. You walk among them and it feels like you're in a place larger than the whole world, with all of what was and is and is yet to come beside you on either hand, and the ordinary world looks so small and narrow, when you see it at the end of that glistening corridor. But then you walk away from the stacked up blocks and they get to looking small, and quite plain. Shimmery, yes, reflecting the trees and the sky, the clouds and the river, if you're standing where the reflection of the Mizzippy could be seen. Small on the outside, huge on the inside-oh, they all knew what this building was going to be like, when it was done.

"In the Bible," said Marie d'Espoir, "the tabernacle was a place where only the priest could go. He'd come out and tell everyone what he saw. But our tabernacle, everybody's the priest, everybody can go inside, man and woman, to see what they see and hear what they hear."

"It suits me fine," said Alvin. "I know I don't want it to be a church or school or such. Tabernacle's as fitting a name as any, and better than most. Though I know Verily's gonna be disappointed to find out you didn't like 'observatory.' "

"I like it," said La Tia. "But I don't can say it, me."

That issue decided, the women went on talking about which families didn't have clothes enough for their children, and which houses weren't big enough or warm enough, and who was sick and needed help. It was a good work they were doing, but the men weren't needed in the discussion and soon Arthur Stuart found himself outside. But not with Alvin and Taleswapper-they were off looking at the big house where Papa Moose's and Mama Squirrel's family were living even as the house was still being built. "Fifty-seven children," said Taleswapper. "And all of them born to this Mama Squirrel herself."

"We have the legal documentation," said Alvin. "Not only that, but we know of another half dozen on the way."

"A remarkable pregnancy," said Taleswapper. "And such a small woman, she seemed, from what I saw of her."

Arthur Stuart stood outside the house and looked up at the bluff. The house was well placed. At the back door, you could look out onto the river and see any boat that might tie up at the new dock. And out the front door, you could see where the ... tabernacle would stand, and even now you could see the two rows of stacked up crystal blocks waiting to be laid in place.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

He jumped. "Marie," he said. "You startled me."

"I meant to," she said. "All your makery, but you still don't notice a woman at all."

"Oh, I notice you," said Arthur Stuart.

"I know," said Marie, "You notice me all the time. You make sure you know exactly where I am, so you can always be somewhere else."

"Oh, I don't think that's what I'm..."

But it was what he was doing. He just hadn't realized it.

"You afraid I kiss you again?" asked Marie.

"I didn't mind it, you know," he said.

"Or you afraid I won't?"

"I can live without it, if that's how you want it."

"Ignorant boy," she said. "You are supposed to say, I can't live without your kisses."

"But I can," said Arthur Stuart.

"All right," said Marie. She playfully slapped his shoulder as if brushing dust from it. Then she started to walk back to the house.

"But I don't want to," said Arthur Stuart.

He wasn't quite sure where he had found the courage to say it. Except maybe the fact that it was true, that he hardly went an hour without thinking about her and wondering whether she had kissed him to tease him or whether it meant something and how would he go about finding out. And so the words just spilled out of him.

She turned around and came back to him. "How much do you not want to live without my kisses?"

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her, with perhaps more fervor than skill, but she didn't seem disposed to criticize. "Enough to do that in front of God and everybody," he said.

"Ah, look what you've done now," said Marie.

"What?"

"You kiss me so hard, now I'm going to have a baby."

It took him a moment to realize that she was joking, but in the meantime he'd been standing there with such a stupid look on his face that no wonder she laughed at him. "Why are you always so serious?" she said.

"Because when I kiss you," he said, "it's not a game to me."

"Life is a game," she said. "But you and me, I think we can win it together."

"You proposing something?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"Maybe," she said.

"Like marriage?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"Maybe a man should propose such a thing."

"And if I did, would you say yes?"

"I will say yes," said Marie, "as soon as Purity says yes to Verily Cooper."

"But he ain't asked her," said Arthur Stuart.

Marie laughed gaily and darted back into the cabin.

Leaving Arthur Stuart convinced that something really deep was going on between him and Marie d'Espoir, and he didn't have the least idea what it was.

He turned around and looked back at the rows of crystal blocks up on the bluff, and saw two men standing between them, looking into the walls. He knew them at once, without even sending his doodlebug out to confirm their identity. Jim Bowie and Calvin Miller.

"Alvin," he murmured softly, then jogged around the cabin to where he could see the new house of Moose and Squirrel. Alvin and Taleswapper were out front, with Papa Moose talking all about this and that-he had so many plans for the house that now and then people had to remind him it was just a building-but Arthur Stuart could see that Alvin was looking up at the blocks and seeing just what Arthur Stuart had seen.

Alvin started moving away from the others and jogging toward the bluff. Taleswapper and Papa Moose followed behind, more slowly.

Arthur Stuart ducked inside the cabin again. "Peggy," he said, and beckoned.

"No, don't do that way," said La Tia. "You take her, all we talk about is why she go. Take us all!"

"Calvin's back," said Arthur Stuart. "And the man that's with him, he's a killer. I knew him on the river and in Mexico. "I should've known when I left him in True Cross that he'd join up with Calvin again."

The women started out of the house behind him, but Arthur Stuart didn't wait for them. He ran up the bluff and arrived just as Alvin did. They stood at the end of the corridor between the blocks.

"Calvin," said Alvin softly. "Glad to see you here."

"Could you lend a hand here?" said Calvin. "Seems old Jim Bowie here just can't tear himself away from whatever he's seeing in these mirrors of yours."

"He's seeing himself," said Alvin. "Like you did."

"I think he's seeing more than that," said Calvin. "Though I can't think what."

Was it possible that Calvin saw nothing but his own reflection, as simple as a mirror, when he looked into these walls? Arthur Stuart thought it might just be possible-Calvin wasn't known for being a deep thinker, and maybe the walls had no more depth than the person looking into them. But it was more likely that Calvin saw the same kinds of visions as everyone else, but just couldn't bring himself to tell the truth about it, any more than he could tell the truth about much of anything else.

Alvin walked between the blocks, and when he reached Jim Bowie, put a hand on his shoulder. Immediately Bowie looked at him, grinned. "Why, I was seeing you in there, and seeing you out here, it's like the same vision. With just one tiny difference."

"I don't want to hear about it," said Alvin. "Come on out of here, both of you." He began to lead them along.

"The difference was, in the wall there I saw you full of bulletholes," said Jim Bowie. "But how could a thing like that happen? Imagine the bullet that could hit you!"

"Just wishful thinking on your part," said Alvin.

"Bulletholes!" said Calvin. "What a cheerful mural to put on public display, Alvin."

They reached the end of the corridor where Arthur Stuart was waiting.

"Howdy, Calvin," said Arthur. "I see you made it out of Mexico City after all."

"No thanks to you," said Calvin. "Leaving me there to die like the others."

Arthur didn't bother to argue. He knew Alvin already knew the truth, and would not be inclined to believe Calvin's version, which was naturally designed to pick a fight between Alvin and Arthur Stuart.

"I know Alvin's glad you lived," said Arthur Stuart. No need to say that Alvin was about the only one, apart from their mother and father.

"And I've forgiven Jim here for leaving me to have my heart ripped out."

Jim Bowie didn't rise to the bait, either. His attention was directed entirely toward Alvin. "Calvin told me what you're building here," said Bowie. "I want to be part of it."

"Yes," said Calvin. "If it's a city of makers, how could you think to do it without the only other living maker." He grinned at Arthur.

"We're all makers here," said Alvin, ignoring the fact that Calvin already knew how offensive his words were. "Come on along, my house is just down here."

They met the women on the way, and Alvin introduced everybody to everybody. Jim Bowie was, to Arthur's surprise, quite a charmer, able to put on elegant Camelot manners when there was someone to impress. Calvin was his normal saucy self-but Rien seemed to enjoy his banter, much to Arthur's disgust, and when Calvin showered flattery on Marie d'Espoir, Arthur Stuart thought about causing him a subtle but permanent internal injury-but of course did nothing at all. You don't start a duel with a maker who has more power and fewer scruples than you.

They got to the house and Alvin invited them inside to sit down. The furniture, except for Peggy's rocking chair, was all rough-hewn benches and stools, but they were good enough to sit on-and Arthur had heard Peggy say that she didn't wish for more comfortable furniture, because if the chairs were softer, company would be inclined to stay longer.

Calvin seemed to want to talk about his narrow escape from Mexico City, but since Tenskwa-Tawa had already told Alvin and Arthur Stuart all about it as soon as Arthur got back from his mission there, they were not inclined to hear a version of the story that made Calvin out to be something of a hero. "I'm glad you got out all right," said Alvin-and meant it, which was more than Arthur Stuart could say for himself. "And Jim, I think you know that your going along with Arthur Stuart here probably saved the lives of all the other men who went with you, since they might not have gone if you had refused."

"I don't plan to die for any cause," said Jim Bowie. "Nor any man, excepting only myself. I know that ain't noble, but it prolongs my days, which is philosophy enough for me."

He expected, Arthur thought, a bit more amusement or admiration for his attitude-but this wasn't a saloon, and nobody here was drunk, and so it rang a little hollow. There were people here who would die for a cause, or for someone else's sake.

It was Peggy, bless her heart, who came right to the point. "So where will you go now, Calvin?"

"Go?" said Calvin. "Why, this is the city of makers, and here I am. I had some experiences-I was just about to get to them, but I know when it's not time for a tale-I had some experiences that made me realize how much I wished I'd paid more attention to Alvin back when he was trying to teach me stuff. I'm an impatient pupil, I reckon, so no wonder he kicked me out of school!"

Even this was a lie, and everyone there knew it, and it occurred to Arthur Stuart once again that Calvin seemed to lie just because he liked the sound of it, and not to be believed.

"I'm glad to have you," said Alvin. "Whatever you're willing to learn, I'll be happy to teach, if I know it, or someone else will, if it's something they know better than me."

"That's a short list," said Calvin, chuckling. It should have been a compliment to the breadth of Alvin's knack-but it came out sounding as if it were an accusation of vanity.

Arthur didn't have to be told that his sister was furious that Calvin was staying and Alvin was welcoming him. He knew Peggy thought that Calvin would one day cause his brother's death. But she said nothing about that, and instead turned to Jim Bowie. "And you, sir? Whither now?"

"I reckon I'll stay, too," said Bowie. "I liked what I saw up there. Well, no, not what I saw in the glass-don't misunderstand me, Alvin-but the manner of seeing. What an achievement! There's kings and queens would give up their kingdoms for an hour in that place."

"I'm afraid," said Alvin, "that you won't be welcome inside when the tabernacle is built."

Bowie's expression darkened. "Why, I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Might I ask why?"

"There's some as finds the future in there," said Alvin. "But a man who kills his enemies shouldn't have access to a place that might show him where his future victims might be."

Bowie barked out a laugh. "Oh, I'm too much of a killer for your tabernacle, is that it? Well, here's a thought. Everybody here who has ever killed a man in anger, stand up with me!" Bowie rose to his feet and looked around. "What, am I the only one?" Then he grinned at Alvin. "Am I?"

Reluctantly, Alvin rose to his feet.

"Ah," said Bowie. "Glad to know you admit it. I saw it in you from the start. You've killed, and killed with relish. You enjoyed it."

"He killed the man who killed my mother!" cried Peggy.

"And he enjoyed it," Bowie said again. "But it's your place for visions, Al, I won't dispute you about it. You can invite whoever you please. But that only applies to the building, Al. This is a free country, and a citizen of it can move to any town or county and take up residence and there ain't a soul can stop him. Am I right?"

"I thought you were a subject of the King, from the Crown Colonies," said Peggy.

"You know that an Englishman has only to cross the border and he's a citizen of the U.S.A.," said Bowie. "But I've gone them one better, and taken the oath just like a ... Frenchman."

He grinned at Rien. "I think I know you, ma'am," he said to her.

She looked at him with eyes like stones.

"I'll be your neighbor like it or not," said Bowie. "But I hope you like it, because I intend to be a peaceable citizen and make a lot of friends. Why, I might even run for office. I have a bent for politics, having once made a try at being emperor of Mexico."

"As you said," Alvin answered quietly. "It's a free country."

"I will admit I thought I'd get a warmer welcome from old friends." He grinned at Arthur Stuart. "This lad saved my life in Mexico. Even though he surely would rather not have done it. I'll never forget that."

Arthur Stuart nodded. He knew which part Bowie would never forget.

"Well," said Bowie. "The good cheer and bonhomie in this room is just too much for me. I'll have to find a place where I find less cheer and more alcohol, if you catch my drift. I hear it may take going into Warsaw County to get that particular thirst satisfied. But I'll be back to build me a cabin on some plot of land. Good day to you all."

Bowie got up and left the cabin.

"An obnoxious fellow," said Calvin loudly-Bowie could certainly hear him, even outside the door. "I don't know how I managed the journey from Barcy to here without quarreling with him. Maybe it was his big knife that kept the peace." Calvin had a remarkable ability to laugh at his own jokes with such gusto that one could miss the fact that he was the only one laughing.

Calvin turned to Arthur Stuart. "Of course, I could have got here sooner if somebody had bothered to take me along the way you did with Jim and his crew. He says you were able to make them run like they were flying, as if the ground rose up to meet their feet and trees got right out of their way.

But I suppose I'm not worthy of such transportation."

"I offered to let you come along," said Arthur Stuart-and then immediately regretted it. Arguing with Calvin's lies just made him more enthusiastic.

"If you'd told me about this-greensong, was it?-I'd have come with you in a second. But to come along just because the Red Prophet was making threats-well, I reckon he wanted to conquer Mexico as bad as we did, and he got there first. Now he's got the empire, and I'm just an ordinary fellow-well, as ordinary as a maker can ever be. You, Alvin, you pretend to be ordinary, don't you? But you always manage to let people see a bit of what you can do. I understand! You want to be thought modest, but at the same time, nobody thinks a man's modest unless they know what great things he's being modest about, eh?" He laughed and laughed at that one.

The baby was fussy tonight, and since Margaret had already fed him and Alvin had changed his diaper, there was nothing for it but to carry him around and sing to him. Alvin had long since learned that it was his voice that Vigor wanted- something about the deep male tones vibrating in Alvin's chest, right next to the baby's head. So he let Margaret go back to sleep and walked outside in the air of a warm September evening.

He expected to be the only person abroad in the night, except for the night watchmen with their lanterns, and they'd be more on the outskirts of town, one along the river and the other along the edge of the bluff. But to Alvin's surprise, someone else soon fell into step beside him. His brother, Measure.

"Evening, Al," said Measure.

"Evening yourself," said Alvin. "Baby was fussy."

"I was the fussy one in my house. 1 sent myself out so I wouldn't cause any trouble."

"Calvin's staying with you, then?"

"I never could figure out why Ma and Pa felt the need to have the one more child. Not like there was a shortage."

"They didn't know what he'd be," said Alvin. "There's never too many children in the house, Measure. But you're not responsible for what they want, only for what you teach them."

"Alvin, I'm afraid," said Measure.

"Big man like you," said Alvin. "That's just silly."

"What we're doing here, it's wonderful. But how folks hate us and fear us and talk against us, that's pretty fierce. The law's against us-oh, I know, that charter is mighty fine, but it'll never stand up, not with us resisting the fugitive slave law. And with Calvin here-I don't know how, but he's going to cause trouble."

"It's the Unmaker," said Alvin. "It always is. No matter how fast you build things up, he's there, trying to tear it down even faster."

"Then he's bound to win, isn't he?"

"That's the funny thing," said Alvin. "All my life, I've seen that all I can build is just a little bit, and he tears down so much. And yet... things keep getting built, don't they? Good things. And I finally realized, here in this town, watching all these people-the reason the Unmaker is gonna lose, in the long run, isn't because somebody like me or you does some big heroic deed and knocks him for a loop. It'll be because of all these people, hundreds of them, thousands of them, each building something in his own way-a family, a marriage, a house, a farm, a sturdy machine, a tabernacle, a classroom full of students just a little wiser than they were. Something. And after a while, you come to realize that all those somethings, they add up to everything, and all the Unmaker's nothings, you put them all together and they're still nothing. You see what I mean?"

"You must be smarter than Plato," said Measure, "because I can understand him."

"Oh, you understood me," said Alvin. "The question is, when we go down this dangerous road, with so many hands against us, will you be there with me, Measure? Will you stand beside me?"

"I will, to the end," said Measure. "And not just because you saved my life that time, you know."

"Oh, that wasn't much. You were trying to save mine, as I recall, so it was a fair trade on the spot."

"That's how I see it," said Measure.

"So why will you stand beside me? Because you love me so much?" He said it jokingly, but he thought that it was true.

"No," said Measure. "I love all my brothers, you know. Even Calvin."

"Why, then?"

"Because the things you make, I want them to be made. You see? I love the work. I want it to be."

"And you're willing to pay for it, right along with me?"

"You'll see," said Measure.

They stood facing the rows of crystal blocks, ready to become the gleaming tabernacle of the Crystal City. The baby was asleep. But Alvin tilted him up anyway, just enough that his little sleeping face was pointed toward the blocks. "Look at this place," he said to Vigor-and to Measure, too. "I didn't choose this place. I didn't choose my life, or the powers I have, or even most of the things that have happened to me. But for all the things that have been forced on me, I'm still a free man. And you know why? Because I choose them anyway. What was forced on me, I choose just the same." He turned and faced Measure. "Like you, Measure. I choose to be a maker, because I love the making."

Acknowledgments

So much of what a novelist does is made up at the moment of composition-details of milieu and character, questions that need to be answered, a secondary character's hopes and fears-that it is impossible, over the years between volumes of an ongoing series like this, to remember everything. As a result, there are contradictions between volumes (or even within a volume), threads that are left dangling, questions that remain unanswered.

Unless the novelist is fortunate enough to have a group of readers who are willing to collaborate by checking the current composition against what went before. In the online community that has formed at our Hatrack River Web site (http:// www.hatrack.com) there were several generous and careful readers who volunteered to vet this manuscript for just such problems.

Undoubtedly there are still problems remaining. During my years as a professional proofreader and copy editor I learned that no matter how careful you are and no matter how many proofreaders and editors go over it, in a work of any length some problems will always get through. The errors that remain are entirely my fault, but the errors you don't see were corrected because of the work of Michael Sloan ("Papa Moose" on Hatrack), Noah Siegel ("Calvin Maker"), Adam Spieckermann, Anna Jo Isabell ("BannaOj"), "Kayla," and the most dedicated of all, Andy Wahr ("Hobbes").

In addition, Michael Sloan won a trivia contest at EnderCon in July of 2002, and the prize was to have a character named after you in a future book of mine. My intention-which everyone understood-was that this would be a "cameo," a momentary appearance of a character with the contest winner's name. But it happened that Michael Sloan wrote a fascinating autobiographical note as his "thousandth post" on the Hatrack River forum that triggered some interesting possibilities in my mind, and as a result the character named for him-"Papa Moose," his online identity at Hatrack-became considerably more important in the story than either he or I had expected. Since his wife has long been nicknamed Squirrel, as a reference by the two of them to the famous moose and squirrel of television cartoon fame, I naturally gave that name to the character's wife. So the characters of Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel in this book are named, not for Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose, but for two longtime readers of my work and contributors to the life of the Hatrack River community.

Oh, all right, I admit that I enjoyed having Rocky and Bullwinkle references in the book. If I could have George Washington beheaded in the first volume and have Alvin dream the plot of Lord of the Rings in a later one, why shouldn't I welcome a chance to allude to a masterpiece of comic fantasy from my childhood?

Roland Brown read the novel just after it was finished, and offered wise suggestions on the character of Old Bart and several other points, which I gratefully accepted.

My editor, Beth Meacham, and my publisher, Tom Doherty, deserve great thanks for their patience with my unpredictable delivery dates and for the wonderful things they do for and with my books after I turn them in. It was because Tom and Beth took a chance on this strange American fantasy series back in 1983-based on, of all things, an epic poem I wrote- that I was able to leave fulltime employment for the second time and return to the freelance writing life for the past twenty years.

Barbara Bova, my agent since 1978, has watched over my career assiduously, and she and her husband, Ben Bova-the Analog editor who discovered me back in 1976-have been dear friends all this time. This book, like all my others, exists because Barbara won for me a place in the commerce of books that allows me time enough to write.

Family members and friends have also read this book, chapter by chapter, as I wrote it, catching errors, reminding me of questions still unanswered, and making occasional suggestions that opened doors to my imagination. Erin and Phillip Absher, Kathryn H. Kidd, and my son Geoffrey were all of great help to me.

My wife, Kristine, remains my first reader, the one who receives my pages at her bedside when I finally crawl downstairs at three or five or seven a.m. after yet another late-night writing session. She also tends to the family and business matters that would, if I had to attend to them, seriously interfere with my ability to concentrate on my writing. The most important work of my life has been and continues to be my family, and she is my collaborator and partner in every aspect of that oeuvre.

And to Zina, our nine-year-old, my thanks for her patience with a father who vanishes for hours and days at a time, only to emerge with books she does not yet enjoy reading. So I'll leave her to the pleasures of Lemony Snicket, Harry Potter, Avalon, and the many other books that accompany her throughout her life, hoping someday to earn a place on that illustrious list.

I began writing this book on my laptop while my daughter Emily drove along I-40 toward Los Angeles. I continued writing at my cousin Mark's house in L.A., at my home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and on the highway between Greensboro and Buena Vista, Virginia, while Kristine drove the car. I finished the book in Avon, a town on Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I crossed a lot of water, but always on bridges.

The Tales of Alvin Maker "With delicacy and insight, incorporating folk tales and folk magic with mountain lore and other authentic details, Orson Scott Card has evoked a vision of America as it might have been."

-Greensboro Tribune-Review Using the lore and the folk-magic of the men and women who settled North America, Orson Scott Card has created an alternate world where magic works, and where that magic has colored the entire history of the colonies. Charms and beseechings, hexes and potions, all have a place in the lives of the people of this world. Dowsers find water, the second sight warns of dangers to come, and a torch can read a person's future-or their heart.

In this world where "knacks" abound, Alvin, the seventh son of a seventh son, is a very special man indeed. He's a Maker; he has the knack of understanding how things are put together, how to create them, repair them, keep them whole, or tear them down. He can heal hearts as well as bones, he can build a house, he can calm the waters or blow up a storm. And he can teach his knack to others, to the measure of their own talent.

Alvin has been trying to avert the terrible war that his wife, Peggy, a torch of extraordinary power, has seen down the life-lines of every American. Now she has lent him down the Mizzippy to the city of New Orleans, or Nueva Barcelona as they call it under Spanish occupation. Alvin doesn't know exactly why he's there, but when he and his brother-in-law, Arthur Stuart, find lodgings with a family of abolitionists who know Peggy, he suspects he'll find out soon.

But Nueva Barcelona is about to experience a plague, and Alvin's efforts to protect his friends by keeping them healthy will create more danger than he could ever have suspected. And in saving the poor people of the city, Alvin will be put to the greatest test of his life-a test that will draw on all his power. For the time has come for him to turn to his old friend Tenskwa-Tawa, the Red Prophet who controls the lands to the west of the Mizzippy. Now Alvin must take the first steps on the road to the Crystal City that was shown to him in a vision so long ago.