Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  He paused to let the implications register. The tower had been in operation for about a week under the control of the raiders. People with relay experience had captured a tower, stolen the master code book, and practiced on the bearnflash line for a week. Then they had left, killing those who had not died in the initiai attack and burning the evidence.

  "The Marshal chose to ignore the maggots. Perhaps he had been bribed." Suddenly his composure shattered. "My beautiful Mikki was killed by them!" he shouted.

  There was stunned silence. The last person to shout at the Highliber had been the Chief of Cataloguing, and he was now a multiplier.

  "Please go on," said Highliber Zarvora quietly. "My brilliant Mikki," moaned Nikalan without apologizing. "If you think that I'm a skilled calculator, O Highliber, my abilities are nothing beside hers. I knew that they would strike again, and that this time they would try to keep control of a tower for months, or even years. To do that they would probably pose as genuine relay recruits and infiltrate the staff at some isolated repeater.

  "With the stolen code book they could wield the power of Mayors by tampering with supposedly secure messages. They could make fortunes for people, ruin careers, start wars.." but they did not know I was stalking them. I had been working in Walgett tower during the week that Ballerie Vale was in their hands, and I remembered some of the odd quirks in the data traffic from when those murderers had been in control. I arranged a transfer to Darlington, a relay tower with a lot of traffic."

  "Why not the great node at Griffith?" asked Lemorel. "No, Darlington was an unpopular and isolated tower where I could quickly become a supervisor. I needed to be a supervisor so that I could falsify entries in the data-traffic logs. Since then I have watched and waited."

  Lemorel was staggered by his bravery and dedication. Nikalan's quest to avenge his sweetheart had led to him gaining as much power to manipulate the network as the Wirrinya conspirators, yet he had remained true to his purpose: avenging the death of his lover. He could have made himself a Castellan and amassed a fortune, yet he was faithful to his dead Mikki. Why couldn't any of her own lovers be so faithful, Lemorel wondered with a pang that almost made her convulse.

  "Opinions?" asked the Highliber. Lemorel took two deep breaths to steady her voice. "It's possible," she agreed. "Tracts copied from a master code book were found at Wirrinya. I suggest that Griffith be advised. The master code book of the Central Confederation must be replaced."

  "That will be done," said Zarvora, "but there is something important that puzzles me, Nikalan. Why did you merely clean up the Wirdnya messages? Why did you not alert the Marshal at Griffith and have a squad of cavalry sent to capture them?"

  "Me trust a Marshal, Highliber? Spies would have alerted the conspirators before the Marshal's squad had left the city gates. The bastards would have been into the Weddin Mountains and across the Southmoor border in no time. I wanted revenge, and I was only a week from breaking their masters' code when someone here beat me to it and set them killing each other."

  "Beat you to it?" said Lemorel. "But you were the one who ordered her--I mean it--to break the code."

  "No, no ... she helped me to... avenge Mikki." He sat down and rubbed his face in his hands. After years of stalking the conspirators the daemon that had driven him was finally gone, leaving him exhausted and directionless. All that he could think of now was the fantastic possibility that there was another like Mikki. Only Lemorel knew that his ally was a chimaera of herself and a fantastic machine.

  "If you are telling the truth..." Zarvora began, then she paused. "I don't know what to think." "Highliber, please let me meet her. I never dreamed that there could be another like Mikki, yet there she was at the other end of the beam flash line."

  "But you issued the commands--" "No! She came to my aid. Highliber, I could have fled to the Confederation. Instead I've given up everything to meet this lady. Please, let me meet Geldiva, the Weaver of Illusions."

  "Meet her? Impossible!"

  "You owe it to me!" It was clear that he was close to a nervous breakdown, and that threats would have no effect on him. Lemorel withdrew her hands into her sleeves so that nobody could see that they were shaking. Tarrin cleared his throat.

  "I suggest that we, ah, introduce them, Highliber. That should bring him to his senses."

  "Yes, yes, take me to her now!"

  "Meet the Calculor?" exclaimed Zarvora, shaking her head in exasperation. "You are sounding like Lewrick."

  "No, no, let's just take him to the duty controller's gallery and let him see for himself." Zarvora looked to her other advisers, but only Lemorel shook her head. "Highliber, one look at the Calculor, and--well, its obvious what will happen in his present condition. Let him rest for a few days."

  "No! Don't listen, Highliber. Let me meet her now." Zarvora thought for a moment, then shrugged and beckoned for them to follow her. They walked the short distance slowly, to the rhythmic jingle of Nikalan's shackles. Two armed guards unlocked and unbolted an ironbound red gum door, and as it opened the distant cacophony of whirrs, clicks, and hum ming wires that was the Calculor's heartbeat spilled out. Almost frantic with apprehension and guilt, Lemorel seized Nikalan's arm as the others entered.

  "I tried to warn you," she whispered, but he scowled and pulled away. They entered the gallery and looked down over the railing. "There is Geldiva," said Zarvora. "A thousand people chained to desks and split into two cross-verifying arithmetic processors. Eight hundred abacus units, two hundred higher functions, and several thousand yards of communication wires on pulleys to carry the data--are you all right?"

  Nikalan was slowly sinking to the floor of the gallery. His mouth was open, his eyes were bulging, and tears were on his cheeks. Zarvora knelt beside him.

  "This is what you call Geldiva. One machine made of a thousand souls. Many of them are convicted felons. Could this be the wonderful lady who helped you?"

  "No," Nikalan said very softly.

  "Now, how did you learn the command structure of my machine? Was it by monitoring my remote sessions during my visit to Griffith last year?" "No, no, no! Mikki--Geldiva! Where are you? Geldiva!" The sanity was already gone from Nikalan's voice as his mind leaped into its own abyss to escape from this second terrible loss. His screams turned every head in the hall. For a moment the entire Calculor interrupted its work to stare up at the gallery. The guards dragged him away, but he would not stop screaming.

  Lemorel took a deep breath.

  "Highliber--"

  "Yes, you were right, that was horrible--but precisely what has been going on? Walk with me."

  Nikalan's screams stayed within Lemorel's head as they slowly walked the corridors. Zarvora was disturbed and baffled.

  "Mathematics, love, and revenge," she muttered with her head bent forward. "What an incredible romance." Lemorel had walked the precipice and survived--but at Nikalan's expense. She had won prizes in mathematics and optics, yet her calculating skills were not in the same class as those of Nikalan or Mikki. She had gained his love while directing the greatest calculating machine in the world, but without it she could not be Geldiva. Glasken had betrayed her, and now she had betrayed Nikalan. She was down in the same pigsty as Glasken, and there was only one way to climb out: she had to become Geldiva.

  "His devotion touched and disturbed me," Zarvora was saying.

  "And me, Highliber."

  "I did not think men like that existed. Why cannot I meet them?"

  "You just did, Highliber."

  "Have you ever had such a romance?"

  "My liaisons have all been failures, Highliber."

  "There must be others. Must one post a notice at the University?

  MAN

  WANTED: MUST BE YOUNG, HANDSOME, BRAVE, HIGHLY ROMANTIC,

  GOOD IN BED, AND A BRILLIANT MATHEMATICIAN SPECIALIZING

  IN APPLIED NUMERICAL VECTORS AND LOGIC."

  "You could look in the Calculor, Highliber." "Very funny. You may return to your work. Try to w
rite something coherent about the past hour and have it on my desk by this afternoon."

  Alone in her study, Zarvora activated her Calculor console, rubbed her fingertips together, stared out the window, deactivated her console, then paced in circles around her mechanical orrery. Abruptly she flung off her cloak and tunic and stared at herself in a mirror, bare to the waist and with her hands on her hips. Her body tapered to a very narrow waist from moderately sized but well-formed breasts. She leafed through an art book and held up several sketches of nude women for comparison, giving each a rating out of ten. She stared at herself again.

  "Realistically speaking.." eight!" she concluded with relief.

  After getting dressed she rang for her lackey. CALL

  "I want the personnel files of all FUNCTION components in the Calculor: all shifts plus the spares pool," she ordered.

  "That's six hundred and twenty files," he gasped.

  "Correct. I want them in my office in a quarter hour, then I want complete privacy for the rest of the day." Maralinga had been transformed from a rail side to a garrison within a week of the Ghan raid. There were never fewer than four wind trains parked on the sidings at any time, magnificent with their high white rotor towers painted in red and gold spirals, and they had brought musketeers, engineers, new rail side staff, and the Assistant Commissioner of the Paraline Authority himself.

  Maralinga was part of the Woomera Confederation. Although Woomera controlled more land than the Southeast Alliance, it had only a twentieth of its neighbor's population. Much of its defense strategy was based on isolation. It had used the desert as a shield for its Northern boundaries, but suddenly the shield had crumbled. If nations beyond the red desert were developing the ability to strike over immense distances, then Woomera would need allies.

  Rochester was a convenient, if distant, ally. The Highliber sent a galley train with troops and beam flash staff to rig up an emergency link between the Tarcoola and Maralinga rail sides Military observers in the other may orates of the Alliance were alarmed by the operation. How had Mayor Jefton managed to secretly develop the prefabricated wooden beam flash towers, and the new segmented, self propelled military galley trains that could carry materials and troops a thousand miles within days? Three weeks after the raid was reported, Maralinga was commissioned as a permanent part of the beam flash network.

  The strategic implications of the feat caused sleepless nights for many mayors and their advisers. Zarvora had been reluctant to deploy the towers because the operation would display little Rochester's astonishing new strengths. The trains and towers had been kept ready as disassembled piles of stores and inventoried as parts of unrelated civilian equipment. The Calculor coordinated the assembly and packing of the trains at speeds beyond the comprehension of shipping clerks. Because the towers were made of interlocking parts that required no specialist artisans to assemble them, the work was done by military engineers using manuals that they had studied on the trip west.

  Each of the galley trains was pulled by three galley engines, and each of these was propelled by a hundred navvys. The machines had been derived from the smaller civilian trains and shunting galleys. They were independent of the wind, carded their own rail-repair equipment, and could move a small army to the most remote railhead in days. No sooner had these swift military machines rumbled across their territory than many mayors hastily passed laws limiting the movement of such trains in the future. At the same time they began programs to develop and construct their own galley engines.

  The Marshal of Maralinga was from the Woomera Paraline Guard, but took his orders from Rochester. Eager to learn anything about the way that the Call had been defied by the raiders, Zarvora also rushed a team of edutors to Maralinga. Darien was put in charge of the investigation. The raid was an open secret among the may orates but the fact that it had taken place during a Call was known to only Zarvora and a few of her advisers.

  The investigations at the rail side were thorough. Scraps of vine, dead leaves, and hairs were collected and sent to the Highliber under guard. Rubbish and broken equipment left by the raiders was examined and sketched, and the weapons and timer from the lancer that Darien had shot were sent to the Overmarshal of Woomera for evaluation. Trackers traced the trail of the Ghans back north until they reached where they had emerged from the sand dunes, confirming that they had been traveling directly south when they had seen the rail side The trackers were sent along the par aline for two hundred miles to either side of Maralinga to confirm that the remaining lancers had not crossed it again on the way north. Observers in the portable beam flash tower monitored the southern part of the plain for the returning Ghan lancers, but saw nothing.

  Sentry posts were established a mile out of Maralinga at each point of the compass. They were no more than wooden barricades under an awning, each manned by five Woomeran musketeers and a Rochestrian sergeant. Two terriers were assigned to each post, and the northern post doubled as a Call-warning station.

  The western post was beside the par aline and the sentries were not surprised when a hermit came tramping along beside the rails from the west. There were several dozen hermits scattered along the length of the par aline all earning their supplies by doing occasional maintenance on the rails. This one set the demi terriers barking. It was the morning of the 15th of October 1699 GW, a month after the Ghan raid.

  "Something about his scent," said the Rochestrian sergeant. "Dirbok, keep the dogs on a head-hand switch. Jaysec, train your musket between his eyes." "But Fras, he wears no vines," said Jaysec.

  "He has a body anchor and robes like those from the lancer that the Deputy Overliber shot," said the sergeant. The hermit stopped, nervously smiling and bowing. "Fras, hermits scavenge from the bodies in the desert," said Jaysec. "There are some flea-ridden scavengers dressed as richly as mayors along this part of the par aline

  The sergeant stroked his beard. He walked forward, leaving a clear line of fire for Jaysec's gun.

  "A par aline hermit should know our languages. You! Speak Austaric?"

  The hermit smiled and bowed again but said nothing. The dogs continued to bark.

  "The dogs think he's the vine man Fras," Jaysec decided, coming over to the sergeant's opinion.

  "Perhaps the dogs bark at what smells like a Ghan lancer," said Dirbok. The sergeant held up a length of rope and put his wrists together. The hermit hesitated, then comprehended the gesture and held his hands out to be bound.

  "Fagh! Smells of camel," said the sergeant. "But he's scabby like a hermit." Jaysec escorted the hermit back to Maralinga. The Marshal was informed, and after inspecting the enigmatic newcomer he decided to present him to the Deputy Overliber. The hermit was stripped naked and issued with trews and a tunic, then shackled to a bench in the library while Darien was sent for.

  "His face and hands are burned and peeled, as if he's unused to the sun," the Marshal told Darien as they walked along the pink limestone cloisters to the library. "There was something odd about his behavior, too. He gaped and gawked in wonder at the wind trains when he was brought inside the walls. Paraline hermits know wind trains as well as their own fleas. Some are even members of the Peterborough Train Spotters Brotherhood."

  Darien nodded, then bowed her thanks at the library door. As the Marshal unlocked the door she scribbled out a question with a char black stylus.

  HAS HE BEEN GIVEN FOOD AND DRINK'?.

  "Frelle, he's only a hermit. He smells like a camel's fart."

  IN ROCHESTRIAN SOCIETY POLITE HOSTS, NO MATTER WHAT THEIR RANK,

  ALWAYS GREET TRAVELERS WITH FOOD AND DRINK.

  "As you will, Frelle." The Marshal tramped off, muttering to himself. He returned with a pitcher of water and lime juice in a demi jar and a plate of seed cakes and dates on a tray.

  Darien took the tray and the Marshal's keys after gesturing to him not to follow her.

  "Frelle Deputy Overliber, he might be dangerous,"

  Darien shrugged and faced the door. The Marshal opened
it, glared at the shackled hermit as Darien entered, then pulled it closed. In Ghan nations, only servants served the food. Being a Ghan, the hermit took Darien for a servant at once, in fact a servant that he already knew. His peeling, gaunt but handsome face was not familiar to her and his voice was no longer muffled, yet she recognized him and smiled. His eyes were bright with apprehension until she put a finger to her lips, smiled again, and shook her head. She unlocked his shackles, and noted the way that the muscles of his jaw un tensed and his shoulders sagged with relief.

  "So, you are not going to denounce me," he said, taking the drink that she offered him. "Thank you. I'm glad you survived. Did you know that Kharec's officers actually argued over who had the right to kill you? You have no voice, and nobody would return to see your body. Ah yes, rape was promised to be who killed you, yet death was the real reward that lay in wait. How I smiled, beneath my mask of leaves. Now I am the prisoner of your people, and nobody can understand what I say. What will happen to me? How can I plead for mercy when I have no words, my pretty? You of all people should know.." yet you cannot understand my language."

  He munched a seed cake and stared through a window at the wind trains in the sidings. One was being readied to return to Woomera, and the engine was slowly shunting carriages, driven by the gleaming rotor towers, which spun in the ceaseless wind. The crewmen were dwarfed by the great vehicle, and the carriages clanged together like distant bombards firing. On a siding beside it was a dark, sleek galley train. Light bombards protruded from low turrets on its roof. The vine man shook his head.

  "All those huge machines that roll along the iron bars, and carry hundreds of warriors without camels. Kharec could never have known your people's real strength."