“What’s somewhat erratically?”
Hayes sighed. “It means he panicked. Thought it was the scaffold for him, or prison, or something idiotic. And he weighed his chances and he… well, he leaped out the closest window when I had my back turned.”
Garvey stared at him. He opened his mouth to say something but stopped as he did some quick math. “Wait, Ferguson? As in James Ferguson?”
“That would be the one.”
“Jesus, you were involved in that? I read about that in the papers.”
“Yes,” said Hayes softly. “I’d expect you would have. They told me to go careful. I understand he was much esteemed. But I suppose I forgot.”
“Would this have something to do with why you’re drying out?”
Hayes smiled weakly at him.
“So you’re on the outs,” said Garvey. “Just when I need it least.”
“I’m not on the outs,” he said. He fumbled in his coat and produced a small slip of paper. “They sent me this the other day. Said to come in and speak to Evans. Later this morning, as a matter of fact.”
“They sent you a telegram? Rather than talk to you?”
“Yes. I’m poison right now, I guess. Trying to keep me at a distance. Mind giving me a lift?”
Garvey glared at him. “I guess I can. I need you more than ever these days. I hope they’re not just bringing you in to fire you for good, though.”
“I hope so, too,” Hayes said mildly, and climbed into the car. Garvey started it up again and wheeled it east, back across the city to the green-topped tower that seemed to dominate the horizon, no matter where you stood.
CHAPTER THREE
Each day in Evesden it was estimated that somewhere between two and three thousand people migrated to the city, more than anywhere else in America and possibly the world. This statistic was, of course, just short of a wild guess, since a fair majority of new immigrants came by illegal means, trafficked in from the Pacific in the bellies of immense iron ships, and so went uncounted. The workmen from the plains and the mountains to the east found more reputable passage, coming by train or by car or bus, and only the wealthiest and most privileged traveler came by air, drifting in on one of the many airship channels running that day. Much like the present population of Evesden, they were a motley band of people, coming from many states and countries and for many reasons, but it was always easy to tell new Evesdeners by the way they stared around themselves and the one question they would all eventually ask:
“How?” they would say, their eyes often resting on the enormous jade tower standing on the western skyline. How had they done it? How had McNaughton made the city and remade the world itself, and in only a handful of years? How had this tiny corner of the Western shore become the center of the globe overnight?
It was a perplexing question in the rest of the world, but in Evesden itself it was considered silly and naive, a badge of ignorance that marked the rubes. Answering it was thought great sport for most of Evesden’s veteran population, forgetting that they had almost all been new arrivals once. They often answered with lies, or folktales, or silly superstitions, or they claimed some secret knowledge the rest of the city was not yet privy to. The seamstresses in the Lynn workhouses would often say that the Nail had always been there, that when the sea receded from the land it was revealed to be standing up like a huge spike, with all of McNaughton’s astounding inventions already piled up within it. The trolley workers wryly told the new boys that the company brain trust had found hidden messages in the Bible. Why, they decoded passages of the Old Testament according to some codex, of course, and found the designs for their creations within the first pages of the Good Book itself. And still more whispered that the McNaughton Corporation had been kidnapping brilliant minds from abroad from the beginning, and forcing them to come up with ingenious new innovations. They could not possibly churn out wonders with such speed, they said, unless it was forced.
But for once, the truth was possibly almost as interesting as the myths. Historians and businessmen who were well versed in the actual story agreed that the origins of the McNaughton Corporation were practically predestined. Fated even. Its birth was so perfectly coincidental it had to be the hand of God himself, working just off the cold waters of Puget Sound.
It had inauspiciously begun in the summer of 1872 when lumber entrepreneur William McNaughton started scouting the fledgling port cities around the Sound, seeking a way to establish trade to San Francisco to the south. Yet before he could begin, his party soon came under storm and was forced to seek shelter in the house of a nearby fisherman, just outside what was then the tiny fishing hamlet of Evesden, a bit south of Discovery Bay. The old man who lived there was accommodating enough, allowing them to bed down and sharing what little food he had, and he introduced himself as Mr. Lawrence Kulahee.
Of the many essays that would come to be written about Mr. Kulahee, most of them would focus on his unspectacular appearance and lifestyle. To the average eye he must have seemed to be no more than a common fisherman, and the few photos taken of him showed a squat, dour-looking man with a head not unlike a potato and eyes both suspicious and shallow. The photos certainly didn’t suggest their subject to be anything close to “the Leonardo da Vinci of the nineteenth century,” as he would eventually be called. Later generations of phrenologists, denied the right to study Kulahee’s remains, eyeballed the photos and proclaimed his skull structure synonymous with brilliance, but most scholars admitted they saw nothing in those little brown eyes. No spark of genius, no glimmer of intellect. It just goes to show, they all agreed, how appearances can be wildly deceiving.
After the storm ended William McNaughton found the road ahead was washed out, and while his companions chose to travel back he decided to remain with Kulahee and wait for the way ahead to become safer. Kulahee said it didn’t matter much to him, so long as McNaughton was willing to help him out with a few of his daily chores. At first McNaughton dreaded the idea of being dragged around by the little old man all day, but his curiosity grew when they went around back to draw water and stopped at a curious little device mounted in the ground.
The machine immediately caught the eye. It was no more than two or three feet high, a strange creation of gears and pulleys set in a long, tight frame with a wide flat hat that kept the rain from entering its inner workings. On one end there was a crank with a small metal switch, and on the other was a short, slanted snout. Kulahee put the bucket before the snout, then began gently cranking the device, the little gears snapping and clacking like hail. McNaughton watched, curious, and then felt a slight vibration below his feet. Something shuddered and squalled and moaned down in the earth, just a few yards below the grass, and he stepped back, certain something would pierce the sodden ground and rise up. Kulahee paid no mind, still cranking away. The noises died to a low thrum and a small rope of steam grew from somewhere among the gears of the machine. It quivered slightly, as though in anticipation, and then it almost seemed to sigh as it produced the goal of all its exertion.
A thin stream of water began to trickle from the snout and down into the bucket. Kulahee stopped cranking and then pressed the switch on the side of the device. The trickle grew to a steady flow, filling up the bucket in moments. Then he hit the switch again, let the flow of water die off, and picked the bucket up and began walking away.
McNaughton stood and watched him leave, stunned. Then he struggled to catch up, asking, “What was that?”
“What was what?” asked Kulahee.
“That thing you used. What was that?”
“Oh,” he said. “It’s just a pump I made. A little hand pump.”
“I’ve never seen a pump like that,” McNaughton said.
Kulahee nodded, not paying attention.
“You say you made it?” McNaughton asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It takes the creek water. Not from the creek. But below it. Took me a bit to figure out how. But I did it. I make a lot of things,” he added.
“A lot of things?”
“Yeah.”
“What sort of things?” asked McNaughton.
