Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  "Tasteless ... but rampantly lustful," said Dolorian, pouting. "As long as you know what to expect--" "Ah, but I did not expect it. Glasken had played the virtuous and faithful romantic to me. I had him sent to the Calculor, and now I make sure that he draws his weapon for nothing more than passing water. Three months. It's probably the longest he's been without access to the nest of paradise since he learned the facts of life." "But Frelle, all manner of men would do the same. I've been betrayed too,

  but with more discretion." "Glasken knows no guilt, that's his difference. I want him punished, but before she was imprisoned the Highliber was considering a limited release for him. He knows chemistric, and she needs graduates of that science to help develop a new type of beam flash flare. All the magnesium in the known world comes from a single pre-Greatwinter warehouse in a Central Confederation abandon. The price is going up as stocks run low, yet beam flash traffic at night is increasing. I don't want Glasken free."

  Dolorian squeezed her hand.

  "How old are you, Frelle Lemorel?"

  "Nearly twenty-two."

  "Nine years my junior. Let the years pass and you will learn not to bite so hard."

  "My friends call me Lem. I do have friends, believe it or not."

  "Mine call me Loft, and I have fewer good friends than you'd think. Was 3084 your only betrayal?" "In a manner of speaking. In my very distant past... I had a lover and it was I who did the betraying. Perhaps Glasken was the payback that fate owed to me. On the other hand, perhaps I was the payback that fate owed him in turn. He sampled women like warm, succulent pies: now he gets bread and water."

  "So you too have been a betrayer, Lem. I can't imagine you doing anything beyond the rules." "I've learned my lesson. A roll in the hay with the village stud is not a good reason to betray yourself or anyone else. For me it was calamitous."

  "One infidelity? A few tears and sharp words are nothing." "I've never talked about this.." but it hardly seems to matter these days, so why not? I had a lover in Rutherglen. Nothing was consummated, then one night

  I let myself be seduced by somebody else. It was all so stupid."

  "If nobody was hurt then why worry?" "Somebody was hurt, Lori, believe me. Brunthorp, my seducer, had another girl, yet he could not abide the fact that a weedy little sod like my lover Semidor began bedding the girl that he had deflowered. He courted me again, urging me to leave Semidor. I refused. He told Semidor about what I had done with him. That very evening Semidor killed himself.

  "It was an evil, hideous night. Before he learned that Semidor was dead Brunthorp came over and told me that he'd told my poet-lover who had taken my virginity--and under what circumstances. I ran to Semidor's parents' house at once, but found him dead. There was an inquiry, but Brunthorp was exonerated. That was not good enough for me. What would you have done, Frelle Loft?"

  Dolorian was sitting and listening very quietly, knees together and hands clasped, hunched over a little as if pressed down by the weight of the story.

  "Nobody has ever killed themselves over me. Once I discovered that a lover was playing me doubles and I poured rancid fish oil along the length of his bed on the evening that he had hoped to share it with another. That was when I was younger and less resigned to the ways of the heart. What was your revenge?"

  "I killed a great number of people." "Lemorel!"

  "It shocks you?"

  "It does indeed. Why bother? Was justice achieved? Was the world a better place for it?"

  "Three questions.." to which I say I don't know, yes, and no. Will you hear the full story?"

  "If you wish to tell it. This is like some lurid novel come to life." "After Brunthorp was exonerated I registered a challenge with the magistrate. Brunthorp and I were called to the dueling chambers for a formal heating. His father was a friend of the Mayor, and the decision went against me. I challenged the decision. The magistrate's champion entered, and I was shown the weapons of settlement. Still I did not withdraw. The champion selected a gun and aimed at a target. He hit it two points below the eye at forty paces. I took a gun and aimed--there would be no case if I could not better him--but I hit the bull squarely.

  "Both the champion and Brunthorp were badly shaken. During my childhood my father let me test the guns whose mechanisms he had repaired as contract work for gunsmiths. I became a very good shot, I probably have a natural talent. I stood back to back with the champion, he called, oh, thirty paces. We walked, turned, and fired. I hit him squarely in the center of the chest. His ball raked my side and broke a rib. With blood trickling down my side and half crazed with pain, I challenged Brunthorp.

  "It was like the night that he took my virginity. Pain, guilt, and blood on my skin. Perhaps the memory of it made me spurn the formal apology that Brunthorp delivered on his knees. I wanted to kill him, and I'd earned the right to a judgment duel. He was white with fear. In spite of his hale and manly image and the pistol that he wore in public, he was not a good shot. He called fifty paces, perhaps hoping that we would both miss. I did not miss. I hit him just above the right eye, and his head burst like the melons that I had been practicing with. I dropped to my knees and threw up. When I stood again I was dizzy from loss of blood.

  "When we emerged from the dueling chambers the magistrate was bound to silence by law, but not me. I let people know why I had challenged, and how Brunthorp had pleaded for his life. By law I was the victor in a trial by combat, yet I was marked from then on. I was dangerous, I was a killer. The horrible thing is that I had not loved Semidor so very much. Oh, he was a sweet little sod, but he was also rigid, opinionated, and a terrible poet. If he'd showed any sort of initiative over the previous year he could have had what Brunthorp had appropriated. Instead, I dragged him closer to me, so close that he would be terribly hurt when Brunthorp exposed our sordid little romp. Perhaps Semidor would not have fallen so hopelessly in love with me had I not introduced him to the pleasure and closeness of sex, but who is to know?"

  Dolorian shivered. The air was cold, and sitting very still while Lemorel talked was chilling her as surely as the tale itself. Lemorel took a sip of coffee and scratched at a heart carved in the tabletop.

  "I wonder why I'm telling you this, Frelle Dolorian. I came to Libris to escape from that past, to make myself over. Now I'm telling a stranger who might gossip it all over Libris."

  "You need an artisan of the heart. As you know guns, I know passions." "So what is your advice?"

  "First, could you tell me what happened after the duel?" "More deaths. Brunthorp's family were newly rich merchant nothings and were relieved that I didn't pursue them for damages. Not so his girl. She was an estatant's daughter, and she sent her brothers out on an illegal vendetta. My brother died by a bullet meant for me. I was granted a legal vendetta from the magistrate, and I went to the estate and killed four guards, the three brothers, and the girl herself. Her parents petitioned the magistrate for peace and gave half of their estate to the may orate in fines.

  "Once more I had won, but at a terrible price. People shunned me henceforth. While other girls had their sweethearts, the boys--justifiably, I suppose--feared me. I had to leave Rutherglen, and the library system was my path. Now here I am, in Libris. The present magistrate's champion in Rutherglen is technically my deputy and I still have an executioner's practice, would you believe that?" Dolorian sat shivering and rubbing her arms. "What do you think of me now, Frelle Dolorian?"

  "Lem, what can I say? You're hopeless. Listening to you is like watching me trying to shoot. People... people in my life have never taken dalliances as seriously as that. I'm truly sorry for you."

  Lemorel smiled ruefully, then gave a soft, breathy laugh, the laugh of an exhausted soul. "Glasken is getting off lightly compared to other men in my past." "We need to find you a wonderful lover." "Oh but I have met someone wonderful."

  "Oh-ho, now the full truth comes out. Who is he, what does he do?" "He's a guest of the Mayor of Rochester, and he's doing life." "Oh Lem! You can't go on l
ike this." "Then what should I do?"

  "Keep company with me, learn to take men and the games that we play with them less seriously. Agreed?"

  "Done--but look at the sun. It's time I was back in Libris. Now, what do we owe--no, put away your purse, rank pays today." After Dolorian had left, Lemorel sat thinking for a while. Her friendships with women were so civilized, while her dealings with men turned into such disasters. Down near the shore of the lake a troupe of itinerant players was rehearsing a street burlesque. Acting! That was it. With men she tended to play a role, with women she was Lemorel. Was acting to blame? Was she at fault for trying to be what she was not?

  She took a breath, tried to whisper her thoughts but found she could not. She resolved not to breathe out until she had spoken.

  "I'm proud of what I am." The admission did not sound as foolish as she had feared, and came as a great relief. Many people liked her for what she was, and if others did not, it was their loss. The serving men had begun packing the tables and benches onto a cart as she paid for the coffee.

  The walk back to Libris took Lemorel through a city very different from the one it was before the Highliber's arrest. The riot shutters were up on most buildings, and the street stalls that were still open were guarded by varying numbers of armed men. The Constable's Runners were in disarray, and were more interested in protecting their own homes from the increasing chaos than obeying the orders of a mayor who was clearly demented. They were good times for the preachers of doomsday, however, and religious orators of every kind were attracting anxious crowds and fueling their worst fears. Lemorel noted that the message of every orator she passed was the same: Rochester was a null zone, it was never swept by the Call. It was an evil place where the hand of heaven never culled the guilty.

  Religious opinions differed about Rochester. The smaller fundamentalist groups wanted the entire area abandoned, but established faiths all had churches, : temples, and shrines in the null zone. The inhabitants of the may orate needed. ministering to, after all, and senior church officials vied with each other for the right to suffer the torment of Rochester's pleasures. The library system had no need for such justifications. Having no Calls to interrupt work meant that the part of the beam flash network controlled by Libris handled more traffic and coding than even Griffith. Rochester did Call tracking and forecasting for the whole of the beam flash network now, even for areas where predicting the Call was seen as thwarting the will of God.

  The guards saluted as Lemorel entered Libris, but behind the facade of security and order the situation was, in a subtle way, worse than outside. The systems that Zarvora had designed were falling apart. Tarrin was working frantically to keep the Calculor services going, but he was at best only a diligent administrator and was not equal to the task. Walking out onto the observation gallery Lemorel gazed down at Nikalan as he sat at his FUNCTION desk. She still felt guilty about him. He had been such an admirable person before his breakdown. Still, she was done with acting so there was no point pretending to be someone else to make up for what she had done to him. Lemorel thought of exercises that she had run against the Calculor using her own brain and nothing more. She was good, but she could never compare to Nikalan--or Mikki. How could she win his admiration, and perhaps his love, as she was? By being clever in her own way, perhaps? By making the Calculor far more than the Highliber intended it to be? It was an interesting thought.

  She sought Tarrin and told him that she had some ideas about restoring the Calculor to a more reliable state. He gave her the master password with something akin to relief. Now she sat in the Highliber's study without fear of arrest, playing at the keys of the silent harpsichord and reading the messages of the gearwheels and mechanical animals. Zarvora's lackey hovered about constantly. He had meals brought to Lemorel, had a bunk moved into the study, and cleaned the place only when she took her daily break to meet Dolorian in the shooting gallery. It was yet another revelation for Lemorel: elite people had elite servants.

  Getting the Calculor functioning for specific tasks was not as hard as she had feared, and after a few days she had it restored for reasonably efficient standalone operation. Its relationship with the external world was the real problem. Lemorel decided to begin by going over the records of her illicit session on the Calculor. The bank-tally reference archives were held in Libris. They contained encoding checks, simple checksum digits which were meant to guard against errors, rather than tampering. Lemorel accessed the account that she had created in September with seven hundred gold royals. The seven hundred gold royals were still there.

  Those seven hundred royals did not exist, of course. She had not altered the grand tally register to increase it by seven hundred, but that would never be checked unless someone tried to draw on the account. The owner of the account was dead, however, but it could not be reclaimed into the Mayor's Consolidated Revenue for another seven years, because he had been a foreigner. Some accountant would then throw up his hands in horror, but the trail would be cold. To guard against even that danger she would have had to alter the grand tally itself, and that was not an option. It was held in too many reports and documents, and too many accountants had the monthly grand tallies for the past ten years committed to memory. Lemorel had certainly remembered that tally for that month with no trouble. She tried to access the tally to check her memory, but accidentally set the Calculor adding the individual account registers to arrive at the figure. When it arrived it was seven hundred royals short!

  She sat up straight in surprise, popping the joints in her spine. The message on the wheels of the output register was clear, but not possible. She remembered particularly that the last three digits should have been 777, the incorrect figure. Now they were 077, matching the real tally. Seven hundred gold royals sponged from somewhere. The actual amount was too much of a coincidence for it to be theft by some Dragon Librarian.

  The grand tally did not have a checksum digit because it was known to the public and verifiable. All the individual tallies did. A few strokes on the keys set the Calculor verifying checksums against tally amounts. The task estimate came in at three hours, not because of the processing involved, but due to the bottleneck of lackeys having to copy figures from tally cards.

  Now she turned to the thornier problem of restoring the Calculor's contact with the outside world. The mail register was full of communications data and coded requests that Tarrin could not translate into instructions for the Calculor. Lemorel read through the index, hoping to pick out patterns that might group the requests into like types. The patterns were certainly there, although unraveling them would be no easy task. She stopped abruptly at the name of Deputy Overliber Darien vis Barbessa. Her message was a dozen pages long, and had come over the beam flash with a high-security code. Darien's letters to Lemorel had been bland and friendly, and emphasized that she was working very hard in a particularly boring rail side Twelve pages of expensive beam flash time seemed unlikely if the far west was really as quiet as Darien made out. Lemorel typed ACCESS and waited for the file runner to arrive.

  The file arrived in a sealed red folder, and Lemorel signed for it. Tarrin had given her a free hand, so why not? Maralinga Railside was a familiar name, but the account quickly expanded to Alspring, Glenellen, the Ghans, and the alarmingly strange Abbess Theresla. There was a man who could defy the Call by wearing a suit of living vines--a suit which he turned out not to need at all. Then came the description of the source of the Call. Had Darien lost her mind?

  "This is too fanciful for words," Lemorel told a mechanical owl. The last page revealed that a copy had been sent to Abbess Theresla. It was as much a report to the Abbess as to the Highliber. If true, it was beyond the wildest imaginings of the greatest philosophers in history.

  There were other notes in the file. Zarvora had been doing research using .. the vast resources of Libris. There was the transcript of a sixth-century chronicler's account of a crude experiment with the Kooree nomads. A warrior philosopher from the cave st
ronghold at Naracoorte had led several dozen lancers to raid a Kooree tribe, and after a sharp, intense battle five of the nomads were taken prisoner. They were held in the Gambier Abandon, where tests with tripwires and tethers were done during seven Calls. There was no question of it, the Kooree were able to make themselves collapse as the Call passed over them.

  Attempts were made to learn the Koorees' secret, and these attempts escalated into torture. The warrior philosopher sent a detailed letter back to his mayor, reporting that although some of the Kooree were trying to cooperate, their explanations involved concepts that were too alien to grasp. Nothing more was heard from him. When a squad of lancers arrived at the abandon later they found evidence of an attack by a larger group of Koorees, but no graves or bodies. There were, however, the smashed remains of sixty-two anchor timers.

  A brutal and ruthless way to confirm a legend, thought Lemorel as the out put bell rang, and the hens pecked data into their paper tape. She tore off the tape and held it to the lemon glow of the oil lamp. Seven hundred gold royals had been debited from the bank tally of Archbishop James of Numurkah, but the checksum digit did not match. That was the only anomaly in the whole scan, but the recalculated grand tally was still seven hundred royals short of the original total. The credit on Lemorel's bogus account and the debit from the archbishop's account should have canceled to give the correct total. Someone had tried to implicate the archbishop in the Wirrinya-tower incident, and they had assumed that the seven hundred royals had already been included in the grand tally.

  The monthly aldirectum revealed that Archbishop James of Numurkah had been appointed as adviser to the Council of Mayors at Rochester in 1698 GW. He lived in the grand manse at the east end of the mayoral palace.." and had the status of duel judge to the Magistrate of Rochester. He was one of those who had presided over the Highliber's challenge against the Mayor. There was, of course, no record of how he had voted.