Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

I looked at Muntle and Muntle looked at me. We both shared a look with the other occupants of our crowded gaol cell, as well: Mulberry Timberry, his father Charles, and Herbert Fagin.

“What is happening?” I finally asked.

“The Moles are being killed,” said Muntle.

“How do you know?”

“Consider that they comprised the crowd that passed the Inn-of-Justice ninety or so minutes ago. Did we not surmise that they had scheduled their departure for to-day instead of the 15th?” Muntle bounded up from his cot. “Gaoler! Bullamy! Get yourself back here! Where are you?”

Muntle began to strike his pannikin hard against the iron bars of our cell to make a noisy clatter. “Bullamy! Bullamy!”

A plump, paunch-bellied man with a gloomy, sallow face shambled into the anteroom. “D’you hear it? They’s some shooting going on out there. Do you think it be the deputies what are taking those to the picnic, Sheriff — I mean, Mr. Muntle-who-ain’t-the-sheriff-no-more? Be they a’shootin’ at some Scadgers or some wild East Enders d’you think?”

“That wasn’t the sound of a dozen pistols we just heard, Bullamy,” replied Muntle. “The reports were much louder, much stronger. Those were Outland guns: rifles, carbines, whatever else is used by Beyonders these days.”

“Who d’you be thinking they was shooting at — them gun-carrying Outlanders?”

“The Dinglians that went to the Summit would be my guess. Now why don’t you unlock this cell so that we can find out what’s going on?”

Bullamy shook his head. “The sheriff who be the new sheriff, not you who be the old sheriff, left word that I was not to let a single soul out of this place on no condition. So I’ll be getting back to my desk now, Mr. Muntle, and wait for my next orders.”

“And what if the new sheriff just happens to be dead, Bullamy?”

“Why would he be dead, Sheriff — I mean Mr. Muntle?”

“That’s what I’d like to find out.”

“We’ll all find out together when he comes back here. He’ll tell us if he’s dead or not, then.” With that, the fat, ridiculous turnkey returned himself to the room from which he’d just emerged (and returned himself, as well, to the nap that the gunshots had rudely interrupted.)

“The man’s a two-florin idiot,” said Muntle. “Well, of course, it makes perfect sense that Billy would leave him in charge. There is such brilliant logic to everything that elephant-eared half-wit does.”

“Why would they kill them — all those who went up to the Summit?” asked Mulberry. “I thought they were being given free passage out of Dingley Dell.”

“Maybe it was never the Project’s intent to allow any of them to leave,” I offered.“Maybe the plan had been all along to execute them with all of the rest of us — only, maybe a couple of hours sooner in their case.”

“It juggles the brains,” said Mulberry’s father, shaking his head slowly, incredulously.

“The Moles knew too much,” I expounded. “They knew that the valley’s days were numbered. Let’s say that there was never a plan in place to permit them to emigrate — to remove them from harm’s way. Wouldn’t the Project administrators have been fools to tell them? They had to set up this ruse, or else the Pupkers and the Towlinsons and all the M.P.P.’s would have found no further profit in doing their bidding. My guess is that they had to be lulled into thinking that they were being allowed to leave, or else they would have been inclined to band together with the rest of us, to use their far greater resources to help us stand our ground.”

“As theories go, Trimmers, I can think of none better.”

“Or none more ghastly,” put in Herbert Fagin. “What of your niece, Trimmers? Was she with them?”

“I fear that she was.” I felt slightly light-headed and sat down. “We have to get out of here, Muntle. Right now. We have to get all of these people to safety before they blow up the Tiadaghton Dam upriver. Can you not make another appeal to this idiot Bullamy?”

But Muntle didn’t have to. At just that moment Harry Scadger and his brother Mel stepped into the anteroom, Harry in possession of the key to our holding cell. Harry had something else in his hand — something that I could not identify. Mel was in possession of his precious recently acquired revolving pistol. The men were well armed, it appeared, and I could not have been happier.

As we passed out of the anteroom to a different room, which communicated with the women’s cells, I looked in on the ridiculous Mr. Bullamy. He writhed upon the floor as if in the midst of some fit.

“What has happened to the man?” I called to Melchisedech Scadger.

“He’s been electri fried ,” said Mel. “By your brother Harry and his magical Taser. Fried him up pretty good, don’t you think?”

he shots were heard throughout the Dell by every ear save those of Jack Snicks and that small group of other Dinglians who were equally deaf. The deputies, who had heard them best of all, had scattered in a panic, but then, regaining their wits (along with a little of their lost mettle), regrouped, and headed back to Milltown with no desire to confirm any more for themselves than that which their imaginations had gruesomely constructed.

There were even those outside the valley who had heard the gunfire. Three men who were climbing through the woods to reach the mountaintop had gained a point halfway to their destination when the shots rang out. They heard not only the shots themselves, but also the anguished screams and cries of those upon whom the guns were trained. The jeweller knew what it all meant and explained it to the Senator and to the nonagenarian snake handler in stark terms. The snake handler nodded and accepted the intelligence without questioning it, for he had seen what Outlanders were capable of doing. He knew the hearts of those who administered the Project and he had watched those hearts grow blacker and blacker with the years.

The men did not know whether or no they should proceed, for they did not wish to risk injury or even death at the hands of those who would bring an end to all things Dinglian and to all those who knew what Dingley Dell was. For his part, Rugg could not move on even if he most desired it, for what little stamina he possessed had been drained away by the hard climb. “I will stop here,” he said. “Here is the end for me.”

“We’ll go to the mountaintop and find out what has happened,” replied the Senator. “And then we’ll return and take you back down.”

“Go if you wish, Senator. But all that you shall find upon your return will be a body to collect.”

Phillips studied the grim face of the Senator. The legislator’s gaze was now fixed upon the forest path to the Summit. “Do you still want to go, Senator? After what we’ve just heard?”

The Senator nodded. “Of course, this may be the end of me as well.”

“You would do this?”

“I can’t defend what may be the most impractical decision of my fairly long life, Mr. Phillips, except to say simply this: that millions of my own people perished in Europe because the world paid little attention to what was happening there. Now people are dying on this mountaintop here in my own state, and I cannot simply turn away. If you don’t want to come with me, I’ll go alone.”

“Senator, I’ve spent the last two years of my fairly long life trying to undo the evil that those people do — to the Dinglians, now to my friend Megan, and I don’t intend to suspend my efforts with that evil having reached its culmination. I think that what we’ll find up there will sicken us. But I’m in this thing for the duration, come what may.”