Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  "I designed it, right down to the last bead on the lowest component' saba cus," she replied listlessly. "It cannot be alive." One hundred and thirty yards away a marksman squinted down the tunnel sight of a flintlock musket as he crouched beside a gargoyle on the Libris roof. His target was pacing constantly, so he could not aim well enough to be sure of a kill.

  "Highliber, you used fragments of the old science, and we know that before Greatwinter some machines really were alive. Perhaps the patterns of the machines were alive, rather than the beads and wires. By using the old patterns you may have accidentally re-created some sort of life. Perhaps the data that you play into the Calculor's keyboard is educating it. Some of it is astrological, remember."

  "No, no, no!" insisted Zarvora, sitting down before the champions table and pounding the edge. "Only astronomical data has been fed into the Calculor: positions of the planets relative to each other, motions of the moon, motions of lesser bodies. The equations to describe their movements are modern Southmooric, and are based on all orbits being elliptical. It is exact, measurable science."

  "Astrological influences may--"

  "No! This is astronomy, not witchcraft." The marksman aimed slightly above the seated Zarvora's head and waited for a slight puff of wind to disperse. Counting slowly, he squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp click as the flint hit the fizz en but the flash pan cover did not lift and the gun did not discharge. Zarvora stood up and began pacing again. With a soft but eloquent curse the marksman took a small screwdriver from a ring on his belt and loosened the bolt in the pan cover bearing.

  "I have a theory about Greatwinter, that its return can be predicted from planetary motions," Zarvora explained as she resumed her pacing. "Using the Calculor I worked out when a second Greatwinter will come."

  Lewrick stared at her, aghast. "But it can't!" he exclaimed. "It was caused by ancient weapons, bombs that caused 'nuclear' winters around their victims. The bombs were used too often, so that the whole world froze for decades."

  "Wrong, Fras Lewrick. It can and will happen again, and soon. We are very lucky."

  "Lucky! How can annihilation be lucky?" "Being forewarned about a great disaster is worth more than wagon loads of gold, and brings more power than the mightiest army. I need a more exact date for Greatwinter's return, but even the Calculor will take years to provide it. For such long and complex calculations, even one error oer month i. intcdo.rahl The Calculor's administrative work slows my research even further, but it pays for its own running." '

  "Perhaps if you talk to the Calculor, Highliber, request that it be more careful

  "If I thought that it was alive I would threaten it, not plead. Still, it is just a glorified abacus." "Highliber, how can I convince you? You sit up here and play in your instructions, yet down in the Calculor hall one can see rhythms in the patterns of beads on the large abacus frames above the rows of desks. The whispering of the moving beads often seems to form real words, yet I cannot quite catch their meaning. There are harmonious chords in the wires when the two processors of the Calculor are in agreement, yet discords when they arrive at different answers and have to repeat everything. One can hear life pulsing all around the hall."

  "Chords, Fras Lewrick?" cried Zarvora, whirling to face him so abruptly that he sat back with a start. The distant marksman took aim at Zarvora's chest, because a crossbeam obscured her head. "Come down now, and show me where I might hear--"

  The bullet smashed through a pane of lead light glass and struck the back of Lewrick's skull just as he stood up. A moment later the assassin saw the window explode outward through the cloud of smoke from his shot. He gasped with surprise, unable to guess what had happened. Instead of scurrying down his escape rope he stood up beside the gargoyle for a better view. What he saw was the Highliber kneeling on the roof amid shattered glass and lead strip, and the flash from the muzzle of her flintlock.

  Six hours later Zarvora was still shaking as she stood between the two processors in the Calculor hall. Lewrick's killer had not been a member of the Libris staff, and nobody could identify the corpse. There was, however, not the slightest doubt that the System Controller had stopped a bullet meant for her. The forces of tradition in Libris were going beyond petitions, resolutions, and even duels to halt her modernizations.

  Behind the screens on either side of her the components of the two processors worked hard at a diagnostic problem. As Lewrick had said, the Calculor made a whirring, bustling mixture of sounds when working at full capacity, and there was nothing else in the world that was even remotely like it. The hiss and click of tens of thousands of abacus beads underlaid the soft rattle and clatter of gears and register levers, while the many banks of transfer wires hummed in weird chords that were sometimes strung into unsettling melodies.

  Zarvora stood absolutely still, breathing shallowly. A deep chord sounded close by as the output wires from Dexter processor strained against the gate of the Verification Unit. A gear whirred for a moment; then a rack of levers was released for the wires to pull them into "yes" or "no" positions. While the levers were clacking into place, an identical chord sounded from the output wires of Sinister. Both processors had arrived at the same answer to some part of the diagnostic calculation.

  Those in charge of the output registers were Dragon Green Librarians, not prisoners. Zarvora had earlier decided that this work was too important to entrust to components, but perhaps she had been mistaken. Dragon Colors were free to conspire in secret--over dinner, in taverns, in bed. Dragon Colors did not live in the same fear of punishment as the components. They could get lazy.

  Again the chord sounded from Dexter processor's bank of output wires, but this time there was a slight mismatch in the sound from Sinister! Zarvora's lips parted slightly in anticipation. Before the gear on Sinister had released its bank of levers the left's wires slackened again, and from behind the left screen there was the clicking of a register being reset. Again the wires from Sinister were tensed, but this time the chord from it matched that from Dexter. The Dragon Green on Sinister was matching his output to that from Dexter by tuning the sound of the transfer wires while they were under tension.

  Lemorel noticed unusual activity on the Libris upper floors and roofs as she was escorted from the Library complex by a grim-faced pair of Tiger Dragons. Nothing unusual had happened within the Calculor, in fact it was still in operation as far as she knew. The Highliber had walked past her desk moments before the Tiger Dragons had arrived, but there was nothing unusual about that. Just beyond the main doors was a group of thirty or so librarians milling about uncertainly, and she recognized Hirolec Var from Systems Design. When the Tiger Dragons released her the others crowded around.

  "Hirolec, what's happened?" she asked.

  "We thought you might know," he said, clearly disappointed.

  "Overliber Jandrel's lackey said she heard two shots and the sound of breaking glass," said one of the Dragon Reds from Reference.

  "Some say the Highliber's been killed," said Hirolec.

  "But I saw her not five minutes ago, she walked past my desk," Lemorel countered. There was a collective exclamation, many different words superimposed. Lemorel did have news after all: the Highliber was alive. They waited in the plaza before the main doors. Another twenty Dragon Greens and Blues were ejected, singly and in groups. From these they learned that the Highliber had survived an assassination attempt. Gargoyles leered down at them in the lateafternoon light and Tiger Dragons patrolling the roof cast them an occasional glance. Extra guards were brought in from the mayoral palace, and they marched across the mosaic starburst of the plaza with their ceremonial halberds, wearing yellow slash work uniforms that flashed strips of red as they swung their arms.

  Lemorel left after an hour. She was clearly not wanted on dntv until further notice and the sun was low in the sky, so she returned to the hostelry. Darien was already there, but knew nothing more about the afternoon's events.

  "Two shots, and some broken glass n
ear the rooftop offices," Lemorel said as she chopped a parsnip for the soup. "The Highliber's still alive, in fact all the senior Dragons from that level have been seen alive since the shots were fired."

  "Perhaps the Tiger Dragons shot an intruder," Darien signed with flour caked fingers. "Possibly. The Highliber would be badly rattled if any intruder managed to get as close to her chambers as that. She likes total control."

  "Any progress on the Calculor's fault?"

  "Not as yet. It's very discouraging but we can't give up." Lemorel poured part of a jar of Rutherglen Broadbank '91 into the soup and Darien put her honey cakes into the oven box to bake. Other librarians knocked on the door from time to time, asking for news or sharing rumors.

  After dinner Lemorel stripped down her ram lock mechanism to file the lever slot wider. Darien tried to read, but could not concentrate. Instead she unpacked her body-anchor belt and Call timer, and dismantled it for a service. The mechanism was in good condition, so the work did not take long.

  Lemorel reassembled the ram lock and when she drew back the ram stud and pulled the trigger the ram snapped forward to spray a shower of sparks into the flash pan The musket that she had bought months ago was now unrecognizable. Its barrel had been polished until it gleamed like a weapon of the palace guard, and she had carved a new stock, one tailored to fit her arms and shoulder.

  "I often wonder about the Call," Darien signed with languid, oil-stained fingers. "I just feel a quick plunging away, then I wake up. It seems unrelated to anything else in my experience, yet there's still a thrilling feel to it."

  Being relaxed and feeling pleased with her work on the ram lock Lemorel replied without thinking. "There's something in my past akin to the Call. Whenever it sweeps over me, I'm taken back to that very moment. I..." She suddenly caught herself. "I

  wish that I could scour the feeling away with sand soap

  Darien sat up. "Tell me, Lem. Was it a lover?" "Not just one lover, I--Do we really have to talk about it?" She cocked the ram lock again and fired a shower of sparks at the stars beyond the open window. "I wish that I could point a gun at my memories and blast them away."

  Darien crossed the room and put a hand against Lemorel's cheek, gently turning her head away from the window. "There was a bully boy who lived in my street when I was young," she signed, her fingers very close to Lemorel's face. "He would chase me and do cruel things because he knew I could not cry out. Fear of him gave me nightmares, and I became frightened to go outside. I spent more and more time indoors, reading. I became so good at schoolwork that I won scholarships. Five years ago I saw him again, on a visit to my family. He was a brushwood carter, fond of the drink and with a long history of time in the stocks. I was a Dragon Blue." "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "You need to look back at old problems every so often, even if it hurts. They always diminish with time."

  "My own past is worse than a nightmare, Dar. There's a blood-spattered demon--"

  "He cannot have hurt you too badly, you have no scars."

  "The demon is me." Darien stepped back, wringing her hands together. Cradling the musket as if it were her only friend in the world, Lemorel closed her eyes and leaned against the wickerwork back of the chair.

  "I'd rather not add you to the people who fear me," she said, even as a hand began to stroke her hair. The touch was curiously soft, the soothing caress of a nurse rather than the tingling play of a lover. With her eyes closed, Lemorel felt herself speaking into nothingness. I'll tell you what reminds me of the Call," she finally decided.

  "During my last year of median school I had a boyfriend named Semidor. He was.." a bit precious: a poet, an artist. If you could imagine someone who was not a great scholar, but loved the idea of being a scholar, then you would have him. At that time I was a studious girl with a gift for mathematics and tightly bound hair. My mother had died when I was eight, and my father raised me and my sister like apprentices. I became quite a good shot from testing gun mechanisms, I knew about clockwork and the mathematics of lenses, and I suppose I neglected my appearance a little.

  "So, I was an ideal match for an eccentric scholar like Semidon, and we held hands and kept company with each other for about two years. To me it was just a comfortable friendship, but to him it was quite a lot more. I was, unfortunately, too young to understand that. Gradually I outgrew him. While he dreamed of being some sort of mendicant songwriter and hard, I dreamed of entering the service of the Dragon Librarians. For a country girl with a brain it's either the convent or the library, nothing else. Still, we stayed together, perhaps by habit. We passed our median-school exams and I was recruited to the Rutherglen Unitech library as a Dragon White. I studied for my first letters in my spare time. Semidor's parents paid for him to study there too, perhaps to distract him from becoming a wandering songwriter.

  "After a time I began to make friends among the Dragon Librarians. They encouraged me to be a little more sociable, and even to go to the regional fairs and dances. Semidor refused to go. According to him, serious scholars did not do that sort of thing. On the final day of the harvest festival there was a small arms shooting match, and I won. At the revel that night I became a little drunk, and a youth named Brunthorp began paying me court.

  "He knew his business, as I realized later. He gave me all of his attention, flattered me in seemingly unconscious ways, and listened to everything that I said and built upon it. After being an audience of one to Semidor's scholarly discourses and poetry for years, I found this a pleasant change. Soon we had our arms around each other, we kissed, and he steered me outside the barn and into a nearby field. There was a hayloft in a small shed, and he made a show of being surprised at finding it. We lay down and began to fondle each other very ardently. I thought of Semidor. I wanted to be loyal to him, but in a strange moment of surrender I made myself angry with him, convinced myself that he deserved me to be unfaithful. That's what reminds me of the Call, that little moment of surrender, that decision to do something reproachful. The Call is knowing that I shall always surrender, and I hate it." Lemorel opened her eyes and looked up at Darien. "So now you know."

  "You hate the Call but still you study it?" she signed.

  "I study it to break its grip."

  "Was it so very bad in the hayloft?"

  Lemorel looked out through the window to the night sky again. "I said "Yes." He ran his hand up my leg and rolled on top of me. I was very tense and tight, in fact it was quite painful. He asked if it was my first time. I admitted that it was and said that I hadn't thought it would hurt so much. He said that I felt wonderful to him, but his words did not really cheer me at all. That was it, I suppose. Pain, mess, and a lot of guilt over betraying Semidor as soon as it was over.

  "In the days that followed I was torn apart with fear and remorse, and I decided that if I had become pregnant, it should seem to be by Semidor. That was not as easy as it might sound. He had some odd notions about the purity of romantic love. It took several nights of awkward urging but I finally seduced him. Through sheer luck I did not become pregnant to either my seducer or my seducee. Semidor soon decided that passion had a place in pure romantic love after all--but not babies. We began to use sheep gut armor for all our dalliances. Every thing seemed to settle down."

  Lemorel opened her eyes and turned to Darien. Her fingers whirled briefly. "Semidor must have found out." "Semidor certainly did, and things went badly wrong. I threw myself into my Unitech studies and my Dragon Yellow regrading. Luck was with me. I had a natural talent for mathematics, and just then Highliber Zarvora was scouring the known world for librarian-mathematicians."

  Away in the distance they could hear boots on a stairway, marching in step. "Enough of my past," Lemorel concluded. "How were you first seduced?"

  Darien blinked in shock and hid her hands behind her back. The boots were louder now, in their wing of the hostelry.

  "Let me guess, was it one of the Libris Dragons?" Lemorel speculated with a knowing leer. Darien's
hands reappeared. "I was quite in control for the whole time. I rendered him staggering drunk first, and to this day he does not know what he did."

  "Ah Darien, what a wise little girl you were."

  "Little girl? It was last January!" Lemorel burst out laughing and Darien clapped her hands. The marching boots were at the landing of their floor now, and the two women suddenly sat up in alarm as the marchers tramped down the corridor and stopped at their door. The knock was an insistent pounding, the blow of a fist rather than a polite rapping of knuckles. Lemorel handed the unloaded musket to Darien and walked to the door. Three Tiger Dragons were outside, all male, all armed. They were clearly tense, but not about being at that particular door. "Lemorel Milderellen?" asked the squad leader. "Yes, that's me."

  "You're registered as a reserve magistrate's champion in the Mayorate of

  Rutherglen as a result of ordeal by dueling."

  "Correct."

  "Change into full Dragon Color uniform, Frelle Milderellen."

  "I--can you tell me why?"

  "Highliber's orders. By law, civil firing squads must be captained by a magistrate's champion." They escorted Lemorel to Libris. In one of the small assembly rooms close to the Calculor hall she was put in charge of a squad of twenty-three Dragon Blue Librarians. The Libris Marshal entered, unlocked a gun rack and handed a Tolleni matchlock to each of them. After they had checked and loaded their guns the Marshal took them back, added a musket that he had been holding, and removed another. The lackey distributed the guns again.

  "One may not be loaded," the Marshal explained as a Dragon Red walked along lighting the match fuses with a taper. It was not necessary to elaborate further. Lemorel eyed her gun suspiciously.