Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  An oar barge was being held ready at the Wahgunyah wharves, and a bribe had insured that no questions were being asked. When the pony dray arrived, five sacks were unloaded and stored under cover. The abductors pushed the barge away from the wharf and began rowing into the gloom. The tall man wiped condensation from the bow lamp concave, then turned up the wick. A dim but focused beam swept the river ahead for shoal buoys and snags. Once the barge was out of sight of the wharves, the sacks were opened and the prisoners were made to help with the oars.

  "I'm not built for a life of rowing," said Jaas sullenly. "There's not a barge master on the river as would pay good silver for me." "Rowin's not the value on you," said the tall man. "What then?"

  "You all can count. The Warren pays gold royals for those as can count."

  "The Warren!" exclaimed the tax clerk. "Since when has the Warren been across more than stolen dry goods "The price is two gold royals for souls as can count and speak Austadc. We've done well baggin' Southmoor teachers from mosques near the border. Got seventeen over the past five months, an' nine of them spoke Austaric. That's twenty-four gold royals--"

  "Mabak!" barked the leader. "Hold your talk or wear a gag."

  The tall man snorted and spat into the river, but obeyed. One hundred miles to the west, in Rochester, the machine that would soon swallow them was being shut down for the night. Having given the Highliber her victory at champions it was dissolving into its exhausted components.

  As the door of the cell thudded shut behind them the four men collapsed, two onto the lower bunks and two onto the straw that covered the flagstones.

  "Told you this would be a bad day," said ADDER 17. "Whenever the whole nine dozen of us are assembled in the late afternoon, you can be sure that the correlator components will be worked like a harlot's door knocker

  MULTIPLIER 8 lay on the floor with his eyes closed and his fingers twitching "We need more multipliers," he said. "When the load is on it all comes to us for verification and we can't keep that sort of pace up for long."

  They lay there in silence for some minutes, then ADDER 17 sat up on the edge of his bunk. He reeled slightly from the movement, then shook his head and stood up.

  "Anyone interested in a meal?" he asked, but received only groans and mutters by way of reply. He shuffled through the straw and pulled the slatted pantry door open.

  "A pot of hot stew!" he said in surprise. "With fresh bread and a jar of beer."

  "Mayoral Standard?" asked PORT 3A.

  "No, just tourney beer."

  "It's always tourney beer. Why can't we have something strong?" "For the same reason that kavelars in a tournament have to drink it," said FUNCTION 9. "We need to be refreshed, not drunk. Could you pass me a bowl of stew, ADD?"

  As the lowest-ranking component in the cell, ADDER 17 was servant and housekeeper to the rest. He began to ladle out the meal.

  "Clean straw, clean blankets, and sulphur's been burned to kill the vermin," he remarked. "They're rewarding us." "I expected a beating," said MULTIPLIER 8, rubbing his hands together to steady them. "The way they questioned us in the training hall after leaving the Calculor had me thinking the machine had failed."

  "Nay, I remember an orderly HALT MODE coming up on my frame," said PORT 3A. "They use FREEZE if something's wrong." They ate in silence for a while, and a Dragon Red Librarian looked in briefly for the evening inspection. She told them that some repositioning was to be done in the Calculor room before the next working session, and that there would be a training run to accustom them to the new arrangement.

  ADDER 17 mopped out his bowl with a crust, then poured a measure of beer into it. The others were still eating, as their hands were too swollen and painful to handle spoons easily.

  "I keep wondering what it's all for," he said after his first sip. MULTIPLIER 8 gave a groan of derision and held out his hand for the jar of beer. "To torture us, what else? A new punishment for felons," he said as he mixed beer with his stew.

  "I disagree," said FUNCTION 9. "I was an edutor in Oldenberg University, and I'd never stolen so much as a copper--or made a political statement. There I was, walking in the cloisters after dinner when clout! When the blindfold came off I was here."

  "Some rival may have wanted your job." "There was not that sort of rivalry for the chair of Arithmetic Fundamentals. No, I think I was kidnapped especially to work here. Seven of the ten FUNCTIONS were kidnapped from provincial colleges, and all prisoners who work here used arithmetic in their work. Then again, most of the people here are those with backgrounds that.." well, nobody would miss them greatly. Felons, the lonely, the friendless, those whose loved ones are too poor to have proper inquiries made, and those wastrels whose loved ones are rich enough to bribe officials not to have proper inquiries made. Anyone who can be easily trained to work the beads, frames, and levers of the Calculor has a welcome. For many it's the best home they ever had."

  "Surely someone with your background would be missed," said MULTI

  PLIER 8. "Not so. My wife had a lover, a romantic dandy with no money. With me gone they got the house, my library, and an estate worth thirty-five gold royals-as well as each other. No, I would not have been missed. Someone did their homework well on me."

  PORT 3A was asleep, his beer untouched, as ADDER 17 began to collect the bowls. He lifted the exhausted man's legs onto the bunk, covered him with a blanket, then drained his beer. The gong rang for a half hour to lights out.

  "Anyone have time for a game of champions?" ADDER 17 asked as he stacked the bowls in the pantry. "Got plenty," said MULTIPLIER 8. "The magistrate gave me nine years." "And for manipulating shipping registers, as I recall," added FUNCTION 9. "It was a very clever scheme, as you explained it. The rectifier who caught you out must have been a skilled mathematician."

  "Never met the bastard," he said as ADDER 17 set up the board and pieces. "Right out of the blue the Constable's Runners turned up with a couple of dozen sheets of poor paper showing how I'd managed to pocket one gold royal for every thousand I handled. The churls I worked with stole from the shipments too, but none of them are here. It's damn unfair!"

  "They were of no interest to the Calculor's master. You stole using arithmetic, they just pilfered from the cargoes. You are here because you showed skill with numbers in your crime."

  MULTIPLIER 8 turned to the board and drew a straw from a pair in ADDER 17's fist. It was the longer, and he sighed with satisfaction as he shifted a pawn for his opening move.

  "At last something went right for me today," he said.

  FUNCTION 9 climbed up to his bunk and began leafing through a slim training book.

  "Did it ever cross your mind, MULT, that the rectifier who caught you out was actually the Calculor?" he asked casually.

  It had not. MULTIPLIER 8 gave such a start that he upset the champions board. "I--yes, yes, that makes sense," he said in wonder at FUNCTION 9's powers of deduction. "It would not take long for the Calculor to unravel it. But why pick on me?"

  "It probably examined the figures from every shipping register from every river port for a couple of months, looking for anomalies. Your scheme was invisible to human checking, because nobody would have the time to look at the registers in such detail. The Calculor, however, has greater patience and power than the mortals who comprise it--us."

  "The devil you say!" "There's more likely to be one very clever edutor or noble behind the Calculor than the devil. Just think of it. If the Mayor can plug the many thousands of holes through which his taxes and shipping levees are diminished, why he could double his income."

  "So that's what the Calculor's for," MULTIPLIER 8 said in awe, turning back to help ADDER 17 set up the board again. "You know, it makes me feel proud in a way. It's like serving the Mayor as a soldier."

  "Except that you gets shot at in the army," said ADDER 17, extending his forearm to display a well-healed but ugly scar.

  "Hah, try to escape and see who gets shot at. You start this time, ADD. It was I who tipped the
board." In seven moves MULTIPLIER 8 moved a knight to crush two pawns and tilt his opponent's bishop. This exposed his own bishop to an opposition archer, who had a "ready" weighting. ADDER 17 rotated the archer through half a circle, then removed the bishop.

  "Damnhell, but I always forget what archers can do," MULTIPLIER 8

  grumbled. "What I need is the Calculor to work out the choices for me." "But then it wouldn't be you playing," said ADDER 17. "Nonetheless, the idea is sound," said FUNCTION 9, looking up from his book. "In playing champions you are always dealing with patterns and values. Anything that can be reduced to numbers can be handled by the Calculor."

  MULTIPLIER 8 checked the status of his own archers but found that none of them had a worthy target. In peevish frustration he reversed one and shot down a pawn.

  "I bet the Calculor could give the Mayor's Gamesmaster a run for his money," he muttered. "It will probably never happen," said FUNCTION 9. "If it can snare felons it can be used to do far more important things than playing champions." "Such as?"

  "I'm trying to work that out at this very moment. Just what can one use a huge capacity for arithmetic to do? One of the few surviving fragments from before Greatwinter mentions that calculating machines were used for everything from guiding ships to toasting bread. Most edutors would tell you that the writer was constructing some sort of allegory, but after spending a year in here I'm not so sure anymore."

  FUNCTION 9 lapsed into thought. MULTIPLIER 8's knights took an enemy keep, but he forgot about an archer that ADDER 17 had used two moves to give a three-quarter wind--so that it could shoot diagonally. It shot his king across six spaces. MULTIPLIER 8 damned all archers, and the duty Dragon Red arrived to quench the lamp that illuminated their cell through a heavy glass block.

  "I have a prediction," said FUNCTION 9, and a questioning grunt floated up from the darkness below. "Before long the Calculor will be made at least three times bigger. What is more, it will run for twenty-four hours every day, in shifts."

  "What use is thatT" muttered MULTIPLIER 8 sleepily.

  "What use is a Mayor who never sleeps?" CAPITAL Lemorel caught sight of the Libris beam flash tower an hour before she could see the walls of Rochester. She was gazing at the forest through the slot beside her headrest as the galley train rounded a long curve, and suddenly there it was, like a mighty pointed spearhead above the trees. After savoring the sight of the white tower for a moment she pushed harder against the pedal bars, adding slightly more impetus to that of the other passengers on the train. Its speed was not great. This train's passengers had a higher than usual proportion of the old, unfit, or indolent, and those who were either willing or able to pedal were being worked particularly hard.

  Some minutes later they reached the border of the Mayorate of Rochester. The city of Rochester itself might have been the capital of the Southeast Alliance, but the may orate was a tiny scrap of territory. The forward and rear gunners screwed down the brakes and the train shuddered to a halt as the clamps pressed against the wheels. Lemorel slumped in her seat, her tunic cold with perspiration. She was unsteady on her feet when she finally stood and stretched. The rail side accountant came striding out of his office, a thin, angular man who reminded Lemorel of the wading birds that lived by the irrigation canals of Rutherglen. He took the logbook from the rear gunner and looked over the figures, then inspected the stroke counters of the leading passengers. He came to Lemorel last. As he stooped to read her stroke counter his head lunged forward while his shoulders remained still, as if he were pecking the figures off.

  "Excellent, excellent, excellent," he said as he straightened. "Strong, strong girl, eh?"

  Lemorel nodded in reply. "The train's log says.." says you should finish the trip with a credit--a credit, at least five silver nobles. Now, now, you rank third on the train, but first among the female passengers. So you may go first. Go first! Go, go."

  She shambled off to the rail side privy. Hard work was rewarded with more than just journey credit. Priority use of facilities at each rail side was a further incentive to pedal harder to drive the train. She unclipped her hair before the mirror beneath the skylight. This would be the last chance to touch up her appearance before she reached the terminus at Rochester. She peered at herself carefully. No lines on her face as yet.." but a gray hair. And another! She plucked another five before rebinding and fastening her hair. She reeked of perspiration and her clothes were damp, but at least she would not look disheveled. By the time she had brought water and pine seed cakes at the kiosk the Inspector of Customs was checking her roll pack If the rail side accountant was a stork, this man was a ferret: small, agile, and sharp-eyed.

  "You can afford a Morelac twin-barrel, yet you travel in the galley train?" he said, turning the worn but polished weapon over with nimble, dancing fingers.

  "A gift from my family, Fras Inspector," she replied, carefully casting her eyes down to the platform rather than locking stares with him. "Hah! Rich family, then, but that's none of my business." The inspector opened her border pass. "Dragon Orange, and you're only nineteen. Impressive." The clockwork timer of Lemorel's body anchor clattered a warning, and she reached down to reset and rewind it. The inspector laughed. "No need for that now, Dragon Orange Milderellen, you're in the Rochester Null Zone. The Call never comes to this little may orate

  "No Call, Fras Inspector?" she asked, for no better reason than to practice small talk with a stranger. "No Call, Frelle, but plenty of danger. The scum of the southeast gather in Rochester. Those who come here because they are too lax to wind a Call timer are too lax to mind their morals either. Rochester suits them. I spend time in neighboring may orates every year, so that the Call can put strength back into my heart. Everyone should do it, especially a young innocent like you. Are you to work in Libris?"

  "Yes," she whispered, almost beside herself with pride at being called in nocent. "Then take my advice and live in the Libris hostelry. Stay out of the city. Perdition, so much perdition in Rochester." He handed back the flintlock. "If some town rake accosts you in an alleyway and makes lewd suggestions, just shoot him with your fine gun. Don't even bother to talk. You're a Dragon Librarian, the magistrates always believe the word of a Dragon Librarian. Can you shoot?" "Why of course, I--I passed the test for Dragon Orange."

  "Ah yes, but always keep practicing. Never be afraid to shoot in your own defense, especially in Rochester."

  "It's a comfort to know that not all Rochestrians are bad, Fras Inspector," she replied. He blushed. His lackey wrote out a customs ticket at his portable desk and the inspector peered over his shoulder as he worked, calling out items and values from memory.

  "I marked down the value of your Morelac," he said as he handed the ticket to her. "The modern flintlock mechanism obviously reduces its value as an antique He winked at her. "You are only a poor country girl whose family probably saved a long time for that gun." "Thank you, Fras Inspector, thank you so much. I shall be very careful in Rochester."

  As she strapped herself back into her seat Lemorel tried to come to terms with what had just happened. Someone had read her name without asking if she was the Lemorel Milderellen. Could she shoot, he had asked. Wonderful! Perhaps she really had come far enough to escape her past. She fingered the little eight point star at her throat. The inspector had probably been a Gentheist. They believed that the Call was sent by their gods to strengthen the character of the human race.

  "At the ready!" the rear gunner cried, and Lemorel strained against the pedals. The front and rear gunners unscrewed the brakes and the five-carriage train began to ease forward. "Under way!" cried the rear gunner as the brake pads came clear of the wheels. The train began to gather speed.

  So they were in the Null Zone. To Lemorel, life without the Call was unimaginable. How could she live with the idea of never having to be vigilant against wandering off into oblivion? Could she afford to lose her survival habits while staying in Rochester? How long would she stay? Did she really need to leave Rochester
every so often?

  Rochester stood on an immense plain of low eucalypt forest, but the area close to the city was cleared for fanning. The par aline abruptly emerged from the forest into ploughed fields and vineyards, with a scattering of fortified manors. So, they must have freebooter raids even here, Lemorel thought to herself as she surveyed the walls and gun slits A small beam flash tower stood in the grounds of each manor.

  The walls of the city were streaky gray abandon stone capped with slitted battlements. The city proper was on an island at the center of a shallow lake, with a wooden road bridge and two para lines on trestles crossing it. Lemorel looked to her travel book as she pushed at the pedals and the train rumbled smoothly through the fields. The walled inner city was roughly elliptical, and five miles by eight. Surplus population had spilled into a band of suburbs halfway around the shores of the lake.

  At the outer wall a switcher joined the train, and guided it through a maze of points and signals in the shunting yards. Great wind-train engines towered over them, with spiral painted rotor towers spinning lazily in the slight breeze. The burly crews of navvy engines looked across contemptuously from their stocky, powerful shunters. Suddenly the jangling confusion gave way to the trestle bridge across the lake, and the ride was smooth again. The city entrance was an archway in the wall, and the train was at dead slow as it passed through. The Rochester terminus was a long roofed rail side sheltering the platforms and a maze of gates, fences, and small offices.

  Lemorel unbuckled herself from the seat and stiffly paced beside the train while she waited for her meter to be read by a rail side accountant. After the gate tax and weapons levee she had made three silver nobles on the trip. Walking slowly, her legs like lead weights, she made her way past inspectors at the plat form gate, customs gate, tax gate, City Constable's gate, and finally the rail side gate. Amid the gaggle of signs with names that people in the crowd were holding up was one that read MILDER ELLEN--DRAGON ORANGE. Lemorel walked across to the woman holding it. She was five or six years older than Lemorel, with braided brown hair. Her gray librarian's uniform had a Dragon Blue band on the right arm.