Rytius Records (Substack Edition), Ch. 15

Chapter 15. Disvotion—February 5, 2143

15. Disvotion—February 5, 2143

At the request of his old friend, Balloony arranged for Ritius to meet Prince Razorbeem atop Orange Mountain Tuesday dawn, at the ruins of the old academy, quite close to Feelharmonica’s construction site, and not far at all from Little Falls dam, which Razorbeem in any case required to inspect. Ritius had two aims: to discover the price of New York’s assistance with his waterways, and to understand the reason for Razorbeem’s deception and subterfuge concealing those questionable arrangements—his strategic objective.

He drove himself.

One black-windowed black armored truck bearing the white-on-navy betentacled Jolly Roger insignia of the King of New York was parked in front of the bronze eagle sculpture, which once welcomed students. The campus was mostly destroyed, but sections of administration buildings remained, as did a complicated maze, a puzzle really, of concrete and steel retaining walls shaped precisely to purposes now unknown, but which forensic architects might one day study and solve.

Ritius rolled past the truck, reversed, and turned his truck to face the other, leaving a good car-length space between the two. He checked his six guns and thought about removing his shotgun from its sling. He did not, but he exited the vehicle deliberately, never taking his eye off the truck before him. He looked for the slightest shake or tremble in its wheelbase as he exited, because if Razorbeem meant him harm, he would surely strike just as Ritius exited, while he was in other motion.

There was no incident of any kind, because the truck was empty. Ritius first held a silent hand up to hail the driver or other occupant, then he spoke a greeting, and then he barked to call them out. He approached the truck against his animal instinct, though in accord with his better judgment, which was coming to understand that things were not as he expected. He had been and remained appropriately alert to danger, but he was also genuinely scared, because his warning systems were in conflict, and he knew that that was precisely the sort of situation in which fatal mistakes are made: in the seconds it takes to realign instinct with judgment, one could easily fail to recognize the place to which the danger had now moved in the new arrangement of circumstances.

“Ritius,” a voice called from behind him. He turned faster than he could ever remember, and he heard the tone indicating that the speaker was not a threat, and did not mean to cause surprise, and he was again disoriented. He stayed his hand from his guns, and wondered whether that was the right thing to do and he had not decided whether it was by the time he actually met Razorbeem’s eyes, and knew that Razorbeem was not a threat. He did not feel good about any of this. “Faithful servant of my brother, Prince Feelharmonica.”

“You know who I am, and I know you as well. Your brother loves you and appreciates your efforts toward the glower of the kingdom.”

Razorbeem smiled softly, and breathed deeply. “My brother may believe this to be a kingdom.”

Ritius pricked up his ears and listened.

“By which he means his kingdom, I suppose,” Razorbeem chuckled and seemed to relax, though he hadn’t seemed tense. “ ‘Daddy made me primo enterprise,’ ” Razorbeem mocked his brother with a simpering whine. “Listen, I don’t know how well you study statecraft, so you may or may not understand me, but this is not a kingdom. Perhaps my father could have founded a kingdom here.”

“We’ll never know.” While on one level, his interaction with Razorbeem was already quite a success, Ritius realized that his warning systems were again crossed. He was calmly speaking with the prince of the northern part of North New Jersey, and he was pleasantly surprised to hear his own ideas spoken back to him, but he was still uneasy, and he thought he was uneasy because Razorbeem was entirely too forthcoming, plainly disrespecting his brother Feelharmonica in Ritius’s face. Such insults not only reflect badly upon the warrior, because disrespect of one’s master is disrespect to one for having chosen such an unworthy master, but they are also direct affronts in themselves, because they are evidence that the speaker holds whatever actions one might take to defend one’s master to be of no account at all. Not even worthy of the slightest dissimulation. Perhaps because the speaker has already decided to do away with the warrior.

“You mock my man, the Prince of New Ark. You know how we live,” Ritius warned Razorbeem precisely, and not merely formally, even through his anxiety and confusion, which remained.

Ritius had not clarified to himself the precise source of his anxiety, given that it was not only the open mockery of Feelharmonica, because it remained after Ritius clearly addressed it, and he still had not figured it out by the time he noticed to himself that they were still alone, standing in front of the bronze eagle. His unease was washed away in a flood of fresh fear sufficient to stop him breathing and to get him expecting a bullet. The bullet did not come in that second or the next, but he had already spoken and it was Razorbeem’s turn again, and he could not under any circumstance convey panic by, for instance, looking around frantically for signs of danger, but he was in such a state that he had to do something immediately to address his security situation.

Razorbeem smiled pleasantly and looked around, breathing deeply of the hilltop air, like a pleasure traveler. “But he is no longer your man, though, is he,” Razorbeem stated, as though it were not a question at all.

And with that strategic embrace, Ritius was no longer afraid for his life, but he was entirely disoriented. He tried to put that aside to deal with the matter immediately at hand. “Where is your bodyguard?” he asked Razorbeem, who was proving himself to be a clever and perhaps wise leader of men.

Without hesitation or artifice Razorbeem answered him “Two in trees and one in the ruins over there.” Razorbeem waved a hand toward the tumbling columns, several dozen yards away.

“Rifles?” Ritius asked.

“With these special laser sights. Have you used them?”

“I have never used one, though I have seen them used.”

“Yeah, the target can’t see…Only the shooter. You need these special goggles.”

“OK, OK,” Ritius relaxed and smiled a small smile of his own, because he could not imagine another scenario here in which he could be surprised or disoriented again. Of course, that was also the problem. His smile vanished in just as relaxed a fashion as it had appeared.

“Shall we walk? I want to see the tower site,” Razorbeem suggested.

“I’m just about sick of this eagle, anyway,” Ritius said, knocking the sculpture on its beak as they passed. “I wonder why it still stands.” Feelharmonica would surely want to destroy any symbol of olden United States patriotism.

“It’s a hawk,” Razorbeem corrected him, turning and starting off down the footworn wooded path toward the east. “Back in the olden days, the university ‘mascot’ was a red man who had the power to turn into a hawk.”

“Was this known at the time or is this new speculative knowledge?”

“The record of images shows his metamorphosis. And the redskins of old were a glowerful people steeped in the magic of their ancient folkways,” Razorbeem stopped to inspect the large tree limb blocking their path, and, deciding that it was too large to move, but too small to walk around, he threw one leg over it. Mid-straddle, he continued. “They had names like Red Hawk and Laughing Bear, which seems to indicate that they themselves knew and celebrated their powers of transformation.”

Razorbeem threw his other leg over and had to hop down to the ground. He was perhaps a head shorter than Ritius, a little smaller than his brother, who stood up to the lobes of Ritius’s ears.

“Watch your leg there…  But don’t forget the snakebearers have ancestors as well, and they feared and never ceased their pursuit of these red men, seeking either to subdue them and steal their magic, or have done with them entirely. The story I have heard, and that I believe, is that Red Hawk was kidnapped in one of many pirate raids the snakebearers visited upon the redskins, always with the excuse that it was revenge for another kidnapping, usually of a young virgin girl. The masters of the academy tortured him to reveal his secrets, and he never told. They failed to replicate his magic, and so they kept him imprisoned, bringing him into the sun only when they needed his magic before sporting events and other ceremonies. But as boys will do, he grew into a man, claiming his full power, and so he made the change and flew away home.”

Ritius climbed over and they continued down the path toward the construction site. They were not far from the clearing near the top of the mountain, over which one could look and see a large portion of northern New Jersey: Paterson off in the distance, the Manhattan skyline beyond them, Eo just south, New Ark a little past that. Feelharmonica’s workers had razed the entire area, and were leveling the ground up so that the tower would be the undisputed king of the mountain. Mounds of earth were pushed back against the wood, and they approached these mounds from behind. They could now feel the rumble of the earthmovers beneath their feet. “The snakebearers would have preferred to ignore the whole thing, but Red Hawk was loved and, moreover, missed. To quell the discontent, the masters of the academy were forced to acknowledge what had happened, and they let the truth be told, changing all images of him to reveal his new form. The people demanded that he also be honored, and that is the meaning of the statue you misunderstand and therefore fail to appreciate.”

Ritius nodded and said nothing as they stepped out into the clearing.

“There’s not a single orange on this mountain,” Razorbeem said, gravely. Then he laughed. “This whole place used to be a volcano, you know. I mean New Ark.”

“I had no idea,” Ritius said, honestly.

“Before people. This area is a big bowl, and it was flooded with lava three times. But with a gap between, so that there’s layers. Just regular dirt and ordinary sediment between the layers of lava rock.”

“Like a cake and icing.”

“That’s right. But then the earth started moving around, making mountains, and some of those layers folded over onto one another, and some just turned over and were driven into the ground.”

“You can’t really fold a cake,” continued Ritius, trying to think of something to compare it to.

“True. Maybe it’s like biscuits or apple turnovers. But the other part—the part that got driven underground—it’s like a slice of cake on its side. And the rain washed the icing away. These ridges, these mountains here, are the pieces of cake left.”

Ritius was impressed with Razorbeem’s geological knowledge.

“Lava rock isn’t the strongest material. It can withstand a bit of rain,” Razorbeem went on. “But if you look across the Bay,” he pointed toward Bergen Neck, and the Bayonne ruins. “The granite starts right there. If New York were a cake, the icing between the layers is schist, a sort of heated and compressed shale, which is already harder than the mud and basalt of the New Ark basin. The cake itself, though, the layers, are made of much stronger stuff—marble, granite, and gneiss.”

“I suppose that’s how it bears such tall buildings.”

“It stands to reason.”