David Nickle - Eutopia

“And you have carved a fine place from it,” said Andrew.

“It is not I,” said Harper. “It is the fine men, and their wives and their sons, who have done the work. Many of them we selected for the task based on their strength and intellect—but it is not just strong men who make a community. They must be motivated—to a common purpose.”

“Yes,” said Andrew. He recalled discussion along those lines when he first arrived. “What has this to do with Mister Juke?”

Harper drained his cup and set it in its saucer. “Why everything,” he said. “This—discovery, of Dr. Bergstrom’s… it is…”

“An answer to your prayers?” interjected Sam Green. Harper scowled at him, then turned his attention back to Waggoner.

“You must share your observations about these creatures with Dr. Bergstrom,” he said. “He has not spoken to me about the creature’s reproductive habits—but we have spoken extensively, about the positive influence the creature has had on the hospital staff and those who work with him.”

“The positive influence?”

“I suppose one might mistake it for religious feeling. But really, it is much more efficacious than simple superstition.”

“How do you mean?” asked Andrew.

“What does this creature do, but infuse a sense of community, of belonging, in those it infects? Assuredly, combining this—well, shall we call it patriotism?—let us do so—this patriotism with firm, wise and benevolent leadership—a strong sense of societal ethics—and what have we? Nothing less, Doctor, than Heaven on earth. True Utopia.”

Andrew finished his coffee, which had grown cool in the bottom of his cup. Heaven on earth. He thought about the vision that the Juke had given him—of his own Heaven on earth, in a way, that crazed and idealized vision of a Parisian cityscape. With a mad Dauphin at its centre, demanding supplication and sacrifice, offering forgiveness for sins that in the glimmer of hindsight seemed entirely manufactured. What, he wondered, had Mr. Harper seen when he met the Juke? Some well-run factory—some town of dutiful workers who sang their employer’s praises rather than plotted strikes and sabotage? Strong, smart and loyal all at once?

“You are building a religion,” said Andrew.

For an instant, this seemed to take Harper by surprise. But only an instant. “It is not a religion. It is simply a community—a place, where the creature might rest comfortably and according to its needs. Because as we both know—” he leaned forward “—the creature does have needs.”

“Yes,” said Andrew, “it does. As I believe we discussed. It rapes young women, destroys them from the interior or starves their babies—then in adulthood demands and receives utter loyalty.”

Harper pretended not to have heard. “It needs to be fed, of course,” he said. “But are we not well-suited to do so, a community of several hundred strong men, and the machinery of industry to create surplus in all regards? You must agree that it is one thing for these subsistent folk to offer up livestock and grain and whatever else the creature desires, when they can barely scratch together enough to feed themselves. Yet something entirely different, for us to do so.”

“Here in Utopia,” said Andrew, shifting on his stool. Harper was playing with fire.

“Indeed,” said Harper. “Now see here, Doctor. I understand that you’ve been through a horrifying ordeal, at the hands of those who would see this experiment fail. But I brought you on because I thought you’d make a contribution. You are no naysayer. You’ve had your share of them, I’ll wager, pulling yourself up into the medical profession as you have. But you’re saying nay now, aren’t you? You think this is a lot of bunk.”

Andrew started to rise. “Sir, if you had seen what I’ve—”

Harper put up his hand. “Enough. There is no harm in that. In fact, a day from now, the riverboat Eliada will be casting off for Bonner’s Ferry. I am already sending back two others who unwittingly stand in the way of this enterprise. Would you like to join them?”

“Two—”

“Jason Thistledown,” said Sam Green, “and that aunt of his.”

Harper turned to look directly up at the Pinkerton. “Yes,” he said. “Mrs. Frost’s nephew. Mr. Green, why don’t you make yourself useful around here, and go rouse them?”

Sam nodded slowly and gave Andrew a wink. “Take care of yourself while I’m gone, Doctor,” he said and turned to leave.

When he was gone, Harper noted that their cups were empty. “Would you care for more coffee?” he asked.

Andrew shook his head. “If it’s all right,” he said, “I’d like some tea. I’ve got the fixings for it in my bag, if you’d care to join me.”

Andrew pulled the cloth from his bag, and pulled free a handful of the mixture he’d rescued from the Tavish clan.

He found a clay teapot that was empty on a sideboard, and he wasted no time filling it with the mixture, and hot water from the stove.

The tea was steeped and ready to drink just as the servants brought their breakfasts—fried eggs with bread and a generous helping of bacon. Andrew downed his quickly, as he’d learned from Norma, and advised Mr. Harper to do the same.

Harper sniffed at it, and made a face. “Perhaps later,” he said.

“As your physician,” said Waggoner, “I’d advise it sooner than later. You see, there is something else—something, I believe, that is on its way here.”

Harper sighed, and brought the cup to his lips. Andrew was considering how he’d explain the next part—the massacre he’d escaped; the sure sense he had, that the dying baby Juke had called that massacre down—when Sam Green, ashen-faced, hurried back into the kitchen.

Harper set the tea down and glared at the man.

Sam spoke very quietly as he relayed what he’d learned. Jason Thistledown, he said, was missing from his room.

Also absent, said Sam, was Mr. Harper’s daughter Ruth and her friend Louise Butler.

“And it appears,” said Sam, his moustache tucked close over tense lips, “that Mrs. Frost is also abroad this morning.”

“Abroad?” demanded Harper, half-standing. “Where?”

“No one will admit to knowing,” said Sam Green. “I’m sorry sir, but that’s the full of it.”

The old man sitting back in the chair across the room did not affect to notice Jason. The wooden chair legs creaked as he pushed back on two of them, leaning the back of the chair against the wall beside the window. He smoked as he sat there, his eyes focused on the glowing bowl of the pipe. The stem of it disappeared behind a thick moustache, over a whitening beard that drooped down onto his shirt. Hanging from a peg on the wall was a long white sheet that reached the floor.

Jason lay very still on the cot. The only move he’d made, he figured, was his eyes opening up and there was nothing to be done about that. He kept them narrow, so maybe this fellow wouldn’t see, and think him still unconscious.

Jason had in fact been awake off and on for some time. He first came to slung over the shoulder of a sheet-backed man, as his own shoulder banged against a door jamb that he thought might have been part of the rear door of the hospital. He’d gasped and passed out again, and then thought his eyes might have opened in a brighter room, looking up at a couple of ghosts in sheets talking about something. He might have seen Dr. Bergstrom at one point, or he might not have. Because here in this little hospital room, with a window just starting to lighten with the pre-dawn sky and the light just so and the quiet man who had no obvious gun on him, Jason thought that he was finally coming properly back to his own mind. Those things outside—the first one and maybe the others—they’d done something to him, whether with the whistling or the stuff the first one had coughed at him.