Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  " "Abbess Theresla, where are you reading this? It must be in the shady red sandstone cloisters at Glenellen." "

  "I didn't write that!" Ilyire exclaimed, sitting bolt upright with a convulsion of alarm.

  Theresla held a finger to her lips. She was reading from extra pages at the core of his roll. " "Ilyire must have just returned, the sole survivor of the squad led by Kharec. He has presented a roll of papers sealed in wax cloth to you, but there are twelve extra pages enclosed, close written, with this at the start. Yes, I gave written orders for Ilyire to be held for the night while I wrote all this out. Abbess Theresla, greetings from Deputy Overliber Darien." "

  By now Ilyire was sitting on the edge of the wicker bench, wringing his hands and writhing in mortification. Even though he had dreamed of nothing else but returning to the terraced gardens of Glenellen for over a year, he now wished that he could be anywhere else in the world. Theresla looked up from the page again. Her large, violet eyes held his gaze for a moment, just long enough to assert her authority.

  It was a very, very complete account of all that Darien had seen of the lancers and the vine man from the raid on the rail side to Ilyire's enforced bath on the rail side terrace. Theresla read aloud, slowly and clearly, so that Ilyire would not miss a single word. She was standing beside a red sandstone table whose inlaid black opal grotesquery seemed to mock him. On the table lay a long, thin knife with a blood wood handle, holding down the wax cloth wrapper that it had sliced open half an hour earlier. He toyed with the idea of lunging for the knife and cutting his throat to end the humiliation.

  The voluminous black robes that Theresla's hair cascaded over were meant to enhance her helplessness as a woman, yet she wore them as if they were shackles that barely restrained her. There were stories about her, stories that she prowled the roofs and parapets of the convent at night, naked, but smeared with lampblack and mutton fat. She was Ilyire's mad god, and it was exhilarating to serve her. She was also his bottle imp, but the cork that confined her was crumbling. "This makes amazing reading," Theresla said as she finished the main part of the text. The smile on her intense, bone-white face did nothing to calm Ilyire, whose suntanned face was also more pale.

  "She understood everything I said," he whispered, utterly desolate, his hands pressing against his cheeks. "A linguist without a voice!"

  "I am proud of you, Ilyire. Your hands did as mine would have--more or less."

  "I swear that I behaved with honor!"

  "And I believe you. I have Darien's word on it, after all. Now shush, there is a little more to read." "I must end with a warning, and my warning is the reason that I have written this long story. The Mayor's hold on his western states is weak, and the dispatches that I have seen suggest that he may resort to something terrible, now that Kharec's raid has shown the west to be vulnerable. He has a weapon, a terrible and ultimate weapon. The Mayor could have five hundred camels brought to Maralinga Railside and loaded with poisoned meat. When these camels follow the Call and feed those huge fish many of them will die, and their retribution will be swift and terrible. The Call will reach out to your inland kingdoms, and it will last for weeks, not hours. Your people will strive to answer it until they starve in their Call shelters or at the ends of their tethers. Do not credit us with too much power, however. We know only a little of the Call's origin from our his tories, just enough to manipulate it.

  "I am committing treason by writing this to you, for I am giving warning to an enemy of the Mayor. Gather your loved ones together, train as many as you can to resist the Call. Organize those people to care for those in the grip of the Call but who are as yet untrained. With luck you may save perhaps a few dozen lives. I wish to help you out of gratitude, yet can do no more than give this warning for I am only a Deputy Overliber. One offset by a dozen.

  "Yours in hope and shame, Deputy Ovefliber Darien vis Babessa." They sat in silence for long minutes. Leaves and cycad fronds stirred slightly in the breeze from the sun engine. Theresla absently plaited strands of her deadly black hair as she puzzled over writing on the back of the page.

  "That is all," she declared at last. "There is some writing in their language on the back of the last page, but I cannot read it. What do you think, Ilyire? Could those people beyond the red deserts destroy us by using the Call?"

  "Yes, they could do it," replied Ilyire in a choked whisper. "They will strike before we have enough warriors who are trained to resist the Call. Imagine how they see us now: they think we are training an army that can fight through a Call. Such an army would be almost invincible. They will hit us with the Call itself, and we'll be wiped out. They had a year to prepare while I was returning." He stood up and paced the red flagstones restlessly. "But why do it this way? She could have shown me these pages back at the Maralinga Railside."

  "You told her many intimate things, Ilyire, thinking that she did not under stand. She may have feared your anger."

  "Feared my anger? I was the soul of kindness with her, I lavished such affection on her that--ah..."

  Theresla raised her eyebrows and smiled. "Perhaps my hands have been up to more than either you or Darien have confessed."

  "No! I swear--"

  "I'm sure you do, but let us return to her warning. Something will have to be done." Ilyire walked to the edge of the terrace and looked out over dark blue waters of the gorge, past the red sandstone cliffs and buildings, and to the south. Theresla came up beside him with a soft rustling of cloth and put an arm around him. "What is your plan, half-brother?"

  "I could go south again. I could lie in wait at the cliffs and cut the poisoned loads from the camels. Five hundred camels.." yes, perhaps I could manage."

  "And if they booby-trapped some of the loads with gunpowder? No, my dear brother, there is only one way to save the beautiful people and cities of Alspring. This Mayor must learn my secret of resisting the Call. Then he would not fear us enough to exterminate us."

  "But you are the only teacher, Theresla." "Very true, and once I leave this convent I shall be condemned as a renegade and a wanton by the Council of Elders. I shall go south and you will be my guide."

  "Leave? You?" exclaimed Ilyire, horrified. "No! Absolutely not! You're an abbess, you're a noble's daughter--you're a woman!"

  Theresla leaned on the stone railing and looked out across the blue waters of the gorge.

  "Remember the last time that you said those three words to me, Ilyire?" she asked.

  Ilyire shuddered. "You pushed me over the railing and held me by my robes for at least ten minutes."

  "It was a few seconds."

  "It seemed like ten minutes. All those neophytes on the terrace below looking up at my, ah--"

  "Do not avoid the issue, half-brother. I held you with one hand, and pulled you back with one hand. I am very strong."

  "After all those years of climbing about in the roofs, hunting sparrows, I'm not surprised." "I am strong and resourceful, and I shall go south," she stated. "You will be my guide." "No! Scripture is quite specific. "Protect thy women from the beast in the soul of man. Cloister thy women and children from unjust harm. Adore thy women as the vessels of destiny. Protect--"

  "--thy women from their own follies." Yes, Ilyire, I know the scripture as well as you, if not better. The third dictate is the reason that I must go. This is a matter of destiny. Either I go with you to Maralinga or there will be total destruction."

  "It would be a violation of scripture." "The destruction of the Alspring people would be the greatest possible violation of scripture. You would be killing thousands of women and children, Ilyire. Could you stand before the Deity and explain why you allowed that to happen?"

  He squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered.

  "You taught me, I can teach others," he said in desperation. Theresla smiled, then lashed at him teasingly with her black tresses. "Excellent I shall call a neophyte, and if you can teach her how to resist the Call within a week, I shall let you go alone."

  Ilyire sto
od with his head bowed while Theresla waited for an answer. At last he shook his head. She patted him on the back. "Besides, I taught you nothing." "What?"

  "Never mind. Hurry, we shall need two riding camels, four pack camels, and enough stores to last us three months.." ah yes, and robes to disguise me as a mercenary lancer. We shall leave tonight."

  "It would be better to go during a Call."

  "But Calls are cast as far inland as this only two or three times in a year,

  and we cannot afford to wait. If the Deity is pleased with what we intend to do,

  he may send a Call." Ilyire went to buy camels and stores, while Theresla returned to her cell to pack. There would be a Call to cover their flight, there was no doubt of that. She had refined her knowledge of the Call in Ilyire's absence, and could now detect the approach of one within twelve hours. Soon she would tell him that, and more. Soon, but not yet.

  By the light of a smoky olive-oil lamp Theresla unfolded the last page of Darien's letter. It was a coded message, which she had hastily unraveled in her head while in the garden. Now she wrote it out carefully, to be quite sure.

  "One offset by twelve, Frelle Theresla, such a simple code, yet I doubt that Ilyire will break it. In the pages you have read you have seen that women of talent can

  COUP

  reach positions of great power in our nation, yet enjoy much freedom as well. That is half of my reason for telling this story. The other half is to frighten Ilyire into helping you come to us if you wish. Are you happy with such a cloistered and restricted life, even as an abbess? Do you wish to continue to live and explore through Ilyire? If not, I can offer you escape, Frelle Theresla.

  "There is no ultimate weapon, I made up that scheme of poisoned meat and the Call. Before Ilyire gazed over that cliff we had no idea what lay behind the Call either. If you are happy with your lot as abbess, then decode this for Ilyire, laugh at my guiles, and go on with your lives. If you wish to exchange your rank of Abbess for that of Overliber Dragon Silver, then Highliber Cybeline herself has authorized me to bid you welcome. H" do I know this so soon, when Libris is many days away, even by wind train? Come to us and find out. Combine our command of physical machineries with your mastery of the mind, Theresla, and we may even break the curse of the Call itself. Think about it, then come to Maralinga Railside and ask for your friend and servant,

  "Frelle Deputy Overliber Darien vis Babessa."

  Theresla smiled at the words. "In all the world there are now two women and one man who know the source of the Call," she told the reed paper page, then touched its edge to the flame of the olive-oil lamp. The material burned slowly, reluctantly, as if it disapproved of her decision.

  To the older staff of Libris it seemed that the end of the century was bringing with it the end of their world as well. Under Highliber Zarvora books were no longer revered as the symbol of civilization's former greatness and ikons of un attainable power: they had become mere tools for answering questions. There were no long, leisurely committee meetings about the finer points of cataloguing, no ceremonies in the cloisters to celebrate important lost books being recovered, and no excursions of senior staff to examine Rutherglen's libraries during the annual Drinkfest. Life in the new Libris was full of production schedules, time tables, relocations, and messages on paper tape punched full of holes. The number of staff had doubled in just three years, yet everyone was doing more work. The fastest-working cataloguer had processed two hundred times the weekly average of five years earlier, yet even his record would probably last a mere month.

  The matter of just what the extra staff were doing remained unclear. The library network now effectively ran both the beam flash and par aline networks, and provided a host of other services to the Mayor's administration. During a brief but savage border war with the Southmoors at Talangatta it was again clear that Libris played an important role in Rutherglen's small but well-equipped army. Astute observers realized that the little may orate real military potential might be hidden from sight. Again its military galley trains and portable beam flash towers had materialized out of uninteresting piles of spare parts in less than a day when the Southmoors had mounted what they thought was a surprise attack. What else lay waiting to be assembled in Rochester?

  Spies from other may orates noted that far more food went into the Libris signaling annex than the staff listed as working there could eat, and rumors of a vast team of calculating lackeys had even spread as far as the common folk of the city. That team was known to be hungry for new recruits. Men and women in all walks of life professed ignorance of mathematics for fear of being recruited by a blow on the head during some moonless night. Enrollments for mathematical subjects in schools and universities across the Southeast Alliance fell to a tenth of what they had been a year before, and students had to be granted the status of Dragon White Librarian before they would set foot in a mathematics class or lecture. Many mathematics edutors fled to the Central Confederation and even the Southmoors. They could not be persuaded to return until Mayor Jefton proclaimed them all to have the rank of Dragon Red and to be under mayoral protection

  The Calculor demanded ever more components, however. The Highliber's military galley trains had poured reinforcements into the battle zone at an unheard of rate to crush the Southmoors at Talangatta, generating a lot of goodwill toward Libris. Zarvora's inspectors had been allowed to comb the Islamic prisoners for those who were numerate. Seven hundred recruits were culled from five thousand prisoners, along with ninety bilingual translators. To accommodate the extra components almost a fifth of the books in Libris were moved into the mayoral palace for storage, together with a complement of Dragon Librarians and lackeys.

  Lemorel learned from Tarrin that the Southmoor prisoners had been assembled into a little dual processor unit housed where the Classics and Epics book stacks had been. There were 150 components per processor running in two shifts, but the Highliber was negotiating for yet more numerate Southmoors from the sporadic fighting on the Deniliquin border. This Calculor, the Islamic Machine as the librarians called it, was particularly fast with control and decoding calculations, and freed up time on the main Calculor for the Highliber's work.

  The nature of that work remained a mystery. Some of it involved the calculation of all lunar and solar eclipses for centuries past, and other processing work had Dragon Whites and lackeys searching card drawers and books for references to astronomical events. Then there was the work on orbital mechanics.

  Calculations on the production of tiny orbiting blocks, and calculations on geometries of particles with strange vectors acting on them. Neither components nor librarians understood what was behind their calculations.

  Lemorel's work on Call vectors, historical drifts, and changes in Call paths continued to have a low priority, although she had improved rights of access on the Islamic Calculor. She was a Dragon Silver, and her research work produced verifiable data. That carried weight. As Tarrin was always saying, the Highliber did not have much in the way of idle conversation, but she took note of results.

  A very strange decree was delivered by the System Herald one day when Glasken was about to finish a shift. Henceforth all regulators, managers, and guards were to wear masks over their eyes while working with the Calculor's components, and were to be known by codes and numbers. Lemorel was MAN AGER 37, he noted as a list was read out for the first and only time.

  Vellum Drusas was careful to keep in contact with everyone that he had ever helped, yet he also subscribed to the old saying that fish and visitors grew stale after three days. A large number of librarians throughout the Alliance saw him only occasionally and briefly, yet held him in high regard. Lemorel was a prime example of Drusas' friends; indeed, he considered his decision to send her to Libris to be one of the wisest moves of his career.

  "Lemorel Milderellen, author of nine papers on the Call, and soon to be Lemorel Milderellen, EdR in Observational Philosophy," Drusas said as they sat together on the balcony of the Dragon S
ilver refectory. "Just three years ago who would have known it?"

  She folded her arms and sat back, still a little nervous at his overfamiliar mannerisms. "I had thought you suspected some talent in me when we met in Rutherglen, Fras Vellum. Why else would you have recommended me for the Dragon Red tests?"

  "Genius is a fine balance, Frelle. It is easily upset, yet if given a chance it can soar above the clouds. That's what I love about my work as Inspector. I may be on the heavy side and as slow as a river barge, yet I can give others a chance to fly. When do you present your thesis?"

  "June 1700 GW. My father will be traveling from Rutherglen for my graduation '

  Drusas laughed affably and snapped his fingers for another drink. "I'm glad of, it does my heart good. With the exception of Dragon Yellow all your librarian ship ranks have been presented in a rather makeshift fashion. That's bad for tradition. Libris has changed so much and so quickly. Why, every one of my own re gradings was carried out with full ceremony: processions, oaths, dinners, robes, everything."

  "Tradition must give way to need sometimes." "Perhaps, perhaps," he conceded, arching his eyebrows and stroking the multiple folds beneath his chin. "But surely when need is great and the work is so hard, one should work hardest at preserving a little tradition and ceremony. Think back on the three most precious moments of your life, Frelle--now, right away!"

  He gave her a moment to think, looking away at the petals cascading from an ornamental apple tree in the light breeze.

  "Now, at least one of those moments was your Dragon Yellow ceremony, am I not right?"

  "Yes Fras, but--"

  "Yet you have received more promotions than that. You remember Dragon Yellow because of the ceremony."

  "Where is this leading, Fras Vellum?" "Nowhere in particular. I just want you to remember that Highliber Zarvora will not be here in a century, but Libris will certainly endure. Spare a little time for tradition, pay a little heed for the old ways. I have worked in Libris during the full glory of the old traditions and it was indeed glorious."