Eyes of the Calculor

by Sean McMullen

  bore down on him, expecting him to surrender or run, but Shadow-mouse lay flat with the Clastini held in both hands. He fired.

  The incident took place within view of Traralgon Castle, and it was not long before a squad of lancers rode out to investigate. Sha-dowmouse stood over his dead gelding, the Clastini in his right hand, pointed straight up to the sky. The warlord was at the head of the squad, and had his own Clastini. Galdane reined in his mount, surveying Shadowmouse, the Clastini, and the dead horses and lancers.

  "This demands vengeance," began Galdane.

  "Who owns these fools?" demanded Shadowmouse.

  Nobody had ever spoken to Galdane like that. The intruder had one of the strange and wonderful gun machines. Galdane had used nearly all of his own ammunition impressing his men, but even owning a Clastini gave one a certain aura. Ever anxious not to lose face before either his enemies or warriors, Galdane thought quickly.

  "My men were told to watch for a different warrior," rumbled the warlord.

  Shadowmouse recognized the lie for what it was.

  "I was told only to follow the path to Traralgon Castle," he replied smoothly.

  "Everybody knows not to take the road unless wearing the yellow tunic of the slave or peasant—"

  "Not from as far away as my people come from!" interjected Shadowmouse. "So, you are the warlord that my servant Serjon selected. Where is the wingfield?"

  At the sound of Serjon's name Galdane's doubts collapsed. He ordered one of his lancers to stand guard over the bodies of the fallen while Shadowmouse took his horse. The other lancers were sent back to the castle.

  "Those sons of slaves should have checked whether there were papers beneath your cloak before shooting," said Galdane as they set off. "You shall have their weapons, gold, and women."

  "Thank you, but I live only to serve my airlord and may own nothing but my clothing and weapons. Has Fras Serjon been an agreeable envoy?"

  "Yes, yes, he promised one of these pistol machines and a thou-

  sand shots for every five fine, strong young horses. Two male and three female. I—"

  "May I?" asked Shadowmouse, holding his hand out for the Clastini.

  Galdane hesitated, then reluctantly surrendered the gun. Shadow-mouse examined it, checking the clip. The clip was down to five bullets, and there was grit in the mechanism already. Without proper maintenance it would soon fail. The option catch was set to reaction. Shadowmouse took three rounds from his pocket and added them to the warlord's. Galdane's eyes widened with the joy of a child confronted with a particularly large birthday present.

  "See this catch?" he said as he handed the weapon back. "Push in and twist. That's right. Now fire."

  Galdane aimed at a rock nearby, and a single shot barked out. He held up the gun and stared at it, then fired at the rock again.

  "Hah! Now it shoots once for each pull of the trigger," Galdane exclaimed, not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed.

  "Serjon should have showed you that option, it saves you wasting shots. In my may orate, reaction mode is said to be only for battle, or for the unskilled."

  "But why did he not tell me?"

  "To make you waste shots in reaction mode, to make you pay more horses for fresh shots. Here is a little secret, Fras Galdane. Serjon is a good and brave warrior but his father was a merchant. It is in his blood to haggle and swindle."

  Suddenly Galdane caught on, and began to laugh. Here was a true noble from the distant mayorates. He could fight, ride well, he spoke with only a slight accent, and he held merchants in contempt. Soon the warlord was talking freely about Serjon's mishaps while learning to ride, and revealing when the sky machines arrived to carry off horses and certain mysterious people who arrived on foot, by the road.

  "The sky machines come down every ten days, and one is due tonight," said the warlord. "Seven children and one guard are waiting at the wingfield."

  "And horses?"

  "Oh, yes, five fine young horses, just weaned. Young people and young horses, all will fly together."

  All will fly, thought Shadowmouse.

  They reached the wingfield, which was just a level stretch of land about half a mile long that trailed off into dense woodland. Piles of dry leaves and branches were at each corner of an oblong strip, and these had been built on the ashes of earlier bonfires.

  "Listen, Galdane, the children's guard needs to learn the ways of horses and lancers, or he will become like Serjon," suggested Shadowmouse. "Why not take him back to your castle, riding this horse? Give him over to the women of the warriors that I killed, ply him with drink, teach him the way of lancers."

  "That is very generous of you, the act of a true warlord. Ach, Shadowmouse, are you sure that you are not a warlord going about in disguise?"

  "Truly I am not, Fras, but it is my duty to act as my warlord would because I act in his name."

  The group of children was hidden in the trees as Shadowmouse dismounted, saluted Galdane with arms crossed over his chest, then walked over to where the guard stood. The man regarded him uneasily as he approached, but the reaction pistol was visible in his belt and gave him credibility.

  "A change of orders, I am to fly out with the children," said Shadowmouse.

  "What? It was my turn—I, I was not told."

  "You are being told now! Fras Serjon says that Horsebreath over there needs to be watched more carefully. I had to kill three of his lancers on the way here."

  "You—How?"

  Shadowmouse tapped the Clastini with a finger. "We need an envoy in Traralgon, and Galdane has agreed to accept you."

  "But what must I do?"

  "Whatever is expected of you! Drink, fornicate, sing about fighting, and vomit when the need takes you. It should not be much longer than a month."

  "A month," said the man, stroking his beard as he weighed up

  the possible virtues of this temporary change in career paths. "No more than a month?"

  "One month, and then you get a flight out, a medal, and a bath." Shadowmouse watched the guard ride away with Galdane, and he hoisted one of the children onto his shoulders to wave. The child was very light, and had a subtle fluffyness about his hair. Pyres were to be lit when a flare appeared in the sky one hour after sunset, the guard had said before leaving. Shadowmouse checked his pocket watch, then shepherded the children back among the trees to feed the tethered horses.

  When the super-regal landed, it was all that Shadowmouse could do to keep his senses from giving in and leaving him reeling. A vast, silent blackness swept in over the woodland and came to earth with a squeal of wheels on the ascent strip's surface. The flames of the pyres were already dying down as Shadowmouse hurried over. By now the thing had begun chuffing softly in the darkness, and two darkly dressed men were there to meet him. First the horses were led up aboard, then the children followed.

  "I note five horses, seven children, and you," said one of the dark figures in accented Austaric.

  "Then you have us all," replied Shadowmouse.

  "Give me your hand, feel that handle?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, start turning it, the hatch needs to be up and bolted before we ascend."

  The engines revved, but at first they just taxied around the newly leveled turning circle. Abruptly the engines roared, and they soon had the sensation of speed, then everything tilted and the children screamed. The rumbling of wheels stopped, and there was a smooth, floating feeling, like that of cantering along on horseback at night.

  Launceston, Tasmania Island

  I he flight lasted two hours and a half, which was a lot less than Shadowmouse had expected. The first that Shadowmouse knew of arrival in Launceston was a heavy jolt and squeal of wheels, then they were rumbling along some wingfleld. The hatchway was opened, but this time there were lanterns outside. The same two men herded Shadowmouse and the seven children out of the Albatross.

  Shadowmouse turned back to see ten huge, circular areas of shimmer at the rear of the win
g, and the compression engines continued to chug. Two wagons of barrels were nearby, and teams of men and women were hard at work pumping fuel up into the body of the immense wing.

  "No need to hurry or hide now; you are in Avian's capital," said a woman who had apparently come to take charge of the children. "There's hot drinks ready, and then you can watch the Albatross ascend."

  Avian. The American flyers were dealing with the people of Avian. Shadowmouse struggled to make sense of it. The Avianese had no inhibitions about technology and engines, even the Liberal Gentheists among them believed that as long as the fuel came from harvested plants, then steam and compression engines were morally defensible. Shadowmouse sat down with his back against a stack of compression-spirit barrels, staring into space. He was here at last, to die, and soon he really would die. He began to weep with desolation. There was a touch on his shoulder. A child of about six was standing before him, a boy.

  "You shouldn't let the other children see you cry, Fras," he said. "They would remember their own mothers and fathers, and how they'll never see them again, and soon everyone will be crying."

  Shadowmouse sighed. "Quite right, young Fras. I was thinking of my lost Ladyfrelle. Very selfish of me."

  "My mother and father are dead, so I know all about crying. I have had to look after the others for weeks. Cry, cry, cry, that's all they did."

  The boy sat down beside Shadowmouse.

  "So, what are you going to be?" Shadowmouse asked.

  "A flyer," replied the child without hesitation. "And you?"

  "Oh, a flyer too. But much sooner, I expect."

  A quarter of an hour later Shadowmouse and his young friend watched the immense black patch of sleekness roar up into the now overcast night while the other aviad children clapped and cheered.

  "Ah, Fras, forgive me, but I have not been told your name or skill," the woman said to Shadowmouse.

  "My name is Shadowmouse, and I am here to see the mayor of this place," he bluffed.

  "I am Mariar Lanstor, the mayor's wife," the woman replied. "What is your business with him?"

  "I am a coordinator of Airfox, and I volunteered to come here."

  "I do not understand."

  "My identity has been exposed, and thus I am no longer of use to Airfox. I was told you have a use for the redundant."

  "Were you indeed? Well, Fras, you do not look stupid, so you must be very, very brave. Do you have good eyesight, and how are your reactions?"

  "Both are excellent, would I have been sent over otherwise?" replied Shadowmouse, wondering what was to be his fate.

  I he following day Shadowmouse awoke in a room of the mayoral palace of Launceston, which was a low, rambling building of salvaged bricks, abandonstone, and newly cut timber. His bed was a bunk with a tentcloth mattress stuffed with dried eucalyptus leaves, and the blankets were rough woven wool. Breakfast was sheep milk cheese, scrambled eggs, and rainwater, and was at the table of the mayor.

  "I'll not say that I approve of you being here," the mayor stated quite bluntly. "We can recruit volunteers for our defence machines from those already here."

  "Perhaps I was considered to be a superior recruit." "Fras, I hope for your sake that you are a superior recruit. Two out of three do not survive beyond six weeks. You weigh, say, a

  hundred seventy pounds in your clothes. That could have been one hundred and seventy pounds of tools, medicines, seeds, fertile chicken eggs, or three children. Every pound of anything that crosses the Strait is a miracle."

  Shadowmouse bristled.

  "It may not have crossed your mind, but many of my people have died or been captured to make sure that aviad children and artisans reach the secret mainland wingfields," he retorted.

  "Do you know how many have died crossing Bass Strait?"

  "No! And that is because once your wings are in the air we never hear back from you. Oh, there are letters, tightly cribbed missives along the lines of 'Mama, Papa, I love you, it is wonderful here,' and shared with a dozen others on pieces of poorpaper that would fit onto the palm of my hand with space left over."

  "Even those papers cost compression spirit. We have lost nine kitewings in the past half year."

  "But there must be thousands of people here. A kitewing can barely carry two adults."

  "Originally we had better."

  A teenage boy came in to clear away the plates and mugs, all of which had been salvaged from the abandon and were two thousand years old. The mayor pushed away from the table and beckoned for Shadowmouse to follow.

  The palace was at the edge of the wingfield. Beside it were the buildings and workshops of the Launceston Technical Academy, and alongside was the Kitewing Research Institute. Thatch-roof shelters for the aircraft were lined up in a row, and some hundreds of yards farther away was the compression-spirit plant.

  "Artisans are trained in the Academy, and compression engines are built next door in the Research Institute. Every engine is a work of research, Fras Shadowmouse. In the years before last September we brought thousands of aviads over here using the electrical essence sunwings."

  "Those sent down from Mirrorsun?"

  "Yes, and most were lost in the Melting. This one was an exception."

  In the first thatch-roof shelter was a large and elegant sailwing, but its twin engines and cockpit showed signs of burning. Seven very young-looking aviads were carefully boring holes in the engine mountings.

  "This sunwing ferry was on the ground when everything electrical melted. From its condition, you may well imagine what happened to those that were in the air. One of the young artisans has an idea to mount compression engines and control wires and get it flying again. The airframe weighs a fifth of what we can build, and it could carry four adults. The trouble is that it has to be fed with sugar."

  "Fed?"

  "Yes. In a strange manner that we do not even begin to understand, it is alive."

  Shadowmouse looked along to the next shelter, where an edutor was lecturing students on an aircraft that had three tiered wings.

  "That is a very advanced-looking machine," said Shadowmouse as he pointed.

  "Yes, it is, and it can exceed two hundred miles per hour in a dive. Look there, a kitewing trainer is being readied to ascend."

  A chugging steam engine on a trolley was being used to spin up the compression engine on what was no more than a double boxkite on wheels. Once the compression engine caught, the flyer supervised while his trainee strapped himself into the lower of the main wings.

  The mayor began walking slowly along the dispersal path, and Shadowmouse fell in with him.

  "A long time ago, during the Milderellen Invasion, one of the sparkflash radio units invented by Highliber Zarvora detected messages from a very advanced civilization in the mountains of old North America," the mayor explained. "From the first few messages we realized that they had compression engines and small flying machines. Although it was not a very warlike society, their guns were vastly more advanced than ours, and this inspired certain factions in Avianese politics to propose theft on a grand scale. Theft of weapons, gunwings, artisans, and tools."

  "But Highliber Zarvora was supplying far more advanced ma-

  chines, such as that one back there, using the old Mirrorsun factories."

  "Highliber Zarvora had an idea to fly aviads out to empty islands like this one and build aviad mayorates that were independent of humans. Other factions thought to take over Australica instead. The more benign of them wanted the humans enslaved, the extremists wanted them exterminated. When Zarvora was killed, the extremists had a problem. It would take centuries to learn the secrets of the sunwing machines, but the secrets of the guns and gunwings of North America required no more than good teachers and a few examples to allow us to master them. Sunwings, bigger versions of the one we just saw, were used to ferry Avianese agents over to the other side of the world, and after a time guns, aircraft, and artisans began to arrive here. Some of the later artisans spoke on the radio device
s of a war breaking out between two mayorates called Yarron and Bar-tolica, a war that we started. Apparently the war did not go well for our faction, and finally our main base reported being under attack by a vast flock of Yarronese wings. Very soon after that the spark-flash went silent, and some hours later the Melting happened and the Call stopped. We were again very much on our own."

  "With only a few stolen air machines left for contact with the mainland," said Shadowmouse, nodding.

  "You have it. Much to our surprise, however, an American sail-wing arrived here two months ago. The Americans had forgiven us for the invasion but wanted help transporting horses back to their homeland, to help colonize their former Calldeath lands."

  "Of course! They had no choice but to turn to us. All the mainland, human mayorates have religious prohibitions on fueled engines."

  "Yes. Our relationship is one of a marriage of convenience, but we are still on honeymoon and there is plenty of goodwill in evidence."

  Out on the ascent strip the kitewing's flyer opened the throttle of the compression engine and it began rolling along and gathering speed. After what seemed like a much longer run than the super-regal had needed, it lifted into the air and climbed in a straight line

  until it was several times the height of the nearby trees. It began a wide circle of the wingfield.

  "So why are you using those dangerous string bags?" asked Sha-dowmouse. "You have at least a dozen stolen air machines under these shelters."

  "And we used them, too. We knew that the easy times were over, so we flew tools, books and rare materials across by the wingload. Sometimes we made five flights a day, but then parts started to wear out, highly specialized engine parts that we could not hope to duplicate. Finally a twin-engine wing seized one engine on a flight to King Gate Wingfield and was nearly lost. We began to cannibalize parts to make a few reliable engines out of many, but even these wore out eventually. Other wings were actually lost in Bass Strait so we grounded all the North American wings, but by then sufficient kitewings were in service. They are not much, but they are all that we have and we do know how to build them. The students of the Institute have been slowly rebuilding the worn American parts and restoring the stolen wings to service, but so far only three of them are cleared to ascend. Our facilities are so limited that we have to have many parts forged and machined secretly on the mainland."