Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  "Fras Denkar, your consort. Fras! A pleasure."

  Denkar, crushed in the Mayor of Kalgoorlie's embrace, wheezed, "De lighted." Bouros stood back to regard him. "Ah yes, reserved, and keen eyes, intelligent eyes. Don't tell me, Frelle, but he is an engineer. No, the mighty Frelle Zarvora Cybeline, Highliber of Libris, Mayor of Rochester and Overmayor of the Southern Alliance, could take none other but an engineer for a consort. Tell me, Fras, what is your field?" he said, putting an arm around Denkar's shoulders.

  "I--ah, applied mathematical systems." "Mathematics and engineering! The Empress of Sciences and--" Bouros suddenly raised a hand, then put a finger to his lips. "Ah, Frelle Zarvora, how could I be so indiscreet? An engineer of systems that.." cannot be spoken of Fras Denkar, I too am an engineer, but merely of structures, and of fluid dynamics. I am a graduate of the University of Oldenberg."

  "I taught there for five years," Denkar exclaimed. "You taught at my old university?" Bouros said, his voice booming out again. "Frelle Zarvora, your good taste never ceases to amaze me. Ah, but what manner of barbarian am I? You must be desperate to greet your magnificent twin sons yet I stand blocking the path. Dahz!"

  "What's this? Are you a widow?" Denkar hissed to Zarvora behind his hand. Zarvora whispered urgently back in Denkar's ear. "Please, just play along.

  Say that you like the names. Bouros helped choose them, and he is a fanatical admirer of Brunel."

  "Brunel?" whispered Denkar. "Was he your husband?"

  Her elbow dug into his ribs. "No, you are my only husband. These are our sons."

  "Frelle Zarvora, Fras Denkar, here are your boys, safe and hale," Bouros announced proudly. Zarvora lifted the toddlers from the pony and the bewildered Denkar was glad that he had to kneel to embrace them. "Charles, Isambard, this is your father," Zarvora said gently while Mayor Bouros led the cheering. The twins were still at an age when they greeted all strangers without reserve, and they hugged and kissed Denkar at once.

  "This Daddy?" Isambard asked Zarvora, who nodded. "Isambard was my humble suggestion, after Brunel," explained Bouros. "Zarvora named Charles after the legendary Babbage. But come now, I have had a welcome prepared for you both for a day past, but the winds saw fit to thwart me."

  Bouros led them to a cable terminus where his private tramcar was waiting. The tram cars worked whether the Call was sweeping over the city or not, and were powered by a wind pulley farm backed up by a water-drop wheel station. The capital was situated over a complex of old mine shafts and much of it had been built down rather than up. The most prominent exception was the mayoral palace and its soaring beam flash tower.

  "Oh, my head," Glasken groaned, wincing at the pain of his hangover. He could not bear to speak again. Where am I? he wondered. Big arches, incense, drapes and pictures on the walls, colored glass in the windows.." looks like a church. Maybe I'm dead. Wonder who the mourners will be... but this is a bed. Haven't slept in a proper bed since... 1701?

  "Fras Tiger Dragon, are you awake?" whispered a light female voice from somewhere under the covers beside him.

  "Ah--aye." An ann and a leg snaked over him, and black hair washed across his face. Almost at once the opiates of arousal began to blunt the ferocity of Glasken's headache. He noticed a gold wirework coronet still tangled in her curly hair.

  "I have never, never met a man like you," said the woman, who looked to be in her late twenties. While not actually fat, she had certainly had access to fine food and drink for most of her life. Glasken found the effect quite pleasing after the privations of Baelsha. Her skin was light brown, its natural Color rather than from tanning. "Do you still like me, Jack, now that it is morning?" she crooned.

  "I always choose with good taste, Frelle."

  "But, dear Fras Jack, would you have chosen me from all those others were I not the sister of the Mayor?" Glasken's hangover vanished, sucked down into an enormous chasm that had opened up at the bottom of his stomach. He was thankful that he was already lying down, and that she was whispering into his ear and not watching his face go pale. The sister of the Mayor! He did not even know her name. He did not even know the Mayor's name if it came to that.

  CAHTRIP As the Glenellen lancers formed up against the Neverland freebooter cavalry, the city's battle calculor made an outline assessment of both the terrain and the enemy. Scribes pushed colored blocks about on the scenario ground sheet and runners hurried about with weighting cards that identified the speed, weapons, and experience of the various blocks of fighters. Senior components studied tactical cards detailing freebooter behavior in past battles. Glenellen's battle calculor was no longer a novelty in the Alspring cities; in fact, this was its fourth use in anger. Its record was thus far flawless.

  Overhand Baragania frowned and tugged hard at his beard as he surveyed the scenario ground sheet "The Nevefland freebooters are a weak but difficult enemy," he said to his deputy, Mundaer. "Their ranks are open and they are lightly armed and armored, yet they are fast." He shrugged and spread his fingers. "They can do us little damage, but we cannot catch them."

  "Except in a trap," said Mundaer smugly, straightening his ochre robes. The Boardmaster was hovering beside them with his cue ready. "Would they but come here, to this plain south of the hills, we could let them exhaust their attack parameters on our heavy brigades," he said eagerly. "All the while we would be encircling them with mounted archers disguised as lancers." "Except that they are not obliging us," replied Baragania simply.

  "But it's their move!" exclaimed the Boardmaster, as if it were a game of chess.

  "But they do not move. We are stuck here, with the heat, flies, and red dust."

  The Boardmaster cursed sharply, then flung a block in the Neverlander colors to the ground and stamped on it. "Svmtathetic marc. Boardmaster?" asked Mundaer mirthlessly. Mundaer walked around the scenario ground sheet several times while the Overhand and Boardmaster stood watching. Scribes respectfully moved back and forth out of the way as he paced, and he occasionally bent to tap terrain pins and nudge blocks with his riding whip. Moving and reconfiguring the ground sheet was not easy, and the scribes and Boardmaster were as anxious as the Overhand and his deputy to confront the Neverlanders with a decisive battle.

  "With respect, Commander, but why not move our trap?" Mundaer said with a flourish of his whip. "We need to fight on a plain, otherwise we can't maintain our communications, as the battle calculor requires. The ground is hilly where the Neveflanders are sheltering."

  "But we can make a plain! If we send in a dozen small units of heavies with heliostats to take the hilltops and dig trench forts they will have a view of the whole area. The Neverlanders may attack one individual hilltop with overwhelming numbers, but meantime we can use the cover of the hills to guide in our mounted archers unseen--the battle calculor can give us the optimal path."

  "Hills that are really a plain, invisible archers.." this is all very appealing, but it relies totally on the heliostat signals."

  "How can they fail, Commander? The sky is cloudless, the air is still, and there is little grass for the freebooters to set afire." Baragania glanced from the map to the hills, then back to the map. Five weeks of desert skirmishes and discomfort had worn down the resolve of his troops and lancers, but for the Neverland freebooters the parched, dusty landscape was home. There was a subtle danger, of course. The freebooters could swamp one of the hilltop positions and annihilate the troops there in a fast and furious strike, then retreat and claim a victory. A Glenellen position wiped out by freebooters: the emotional impact on the Glenellen Makulad was likely to be far worse than the military significance. Overhand Baragania fingered his neck nervously at the prospect of explaining something like that to his master.

  "Major-Director Mundaer, have the battle calculor work out times for every possible route the mounted archers would need to reach each hill. Tell me the longest."

  "Already done, Commander. Nineteen minutes is the longest." "As long as that? Too long--but wait. If the mounted archers
could be split into two groups and deployed at either end of the hills, then that time would be halved and they could arrive in time to blunt any attack. Meantime, the rest would arrive as a second wave. Yes, I like that. Tell the calculor translators what we want, then begin the deployment of our men in the hills."

  The deployment took five hours, which was roughly what the battle calculor had predicted. Both the Glenellen officers and their men were eager for a fight, so eager that they were willing to look for one. "There now, a heliostat signal," said Baragania. "Mundaer, what is it?"

  "Neverlander movement, Commander. Grid 44 by 79 with a vector of A9 at 40 degrees." "That threatens our battle calculor!" exclaimed the Boardmaster as he moved his blocks and scanned the overview of the battlefield. "They're coming here, through those smooth, shallow gullies." He jabbed at char black shading on the ground sheet

  "We're dug down behind lancers and archers," said Baragania. "We stay." The Neverlanders did not attack the battle calculor. Instead they rode for the line of sight between Baragania's command group and the hills. They appeared to be leading packhorses, and as the Glenellen officers watched, the freebooters cut the packs free and abandoned them. Smoke began to belch from the fallen packs: thick, acrid, black smoke.

  "Smokepots?" wondered Mundaer, scratching his neck at the base of his helmet. "But they can scarcely hide behind--"

  "Regroup, here!" shouted Baragania. "Transmit the message now!" "Commander?" "Do as I say!" Mundaer barked an order to the heliostat operator and Baragania listened to the click of the mechanism while watching the nearest hilltop through his tele scope. Tendrils of smoke began to drift across the field of view.

  "What are they waiting for?" he shouted, then he saw a faint twinkle through the smoke. "What was their message?"

  "REQUEST CONFIRMATION," replied the observer at the large telescope beside the heliostat mirror.

  "Send confirmation!" called Baragania frantically, but heavier billows of smoke were already across the field of view.

  "The battle calculor has worked out six possible scenarios," began Mundaer, unsure of what was unfolding. "Damnation to that, we've lost already!" said the Overhand quietly, shaking his head. "Our signals are cut and our men are trained to fight only under instruction Their first blow was a gash above our eyes to blind us with our own blood."

  "There!" cried Mundaer, pointing at a dust cloud. "Something in those gullies, look at all that dust! Freebooter cavalry, about six thousand, at least half of their force. They're going to hit the calculor."

  "Break post, go, move! Get the battle calculor moving. Make for the smoke pots first. We'll use their own smoke as cover, and then dash for the nearest hilltop."

  The battle calculor and its escort were already moving when scouts reported that the dust was being raised by a few dozen freebooters trailing ropes and sacking behind their horses and camels. Baragania decided that the nearest hilltop, the one designated by the scribes as Hill Alpha, was still the safest position. In the distance they could hear trumpets and whistles, and the sounds of a conflict. The smoke pots were flaming out as they passed them, and the air was clear to the hill.

  Abruptly arrows began to pour down from Hill Alpha. The freebooters had captured it behind the screen of smoke. Overhand Baragania led them to a rocky outcrop that was within sight of the hills but still held by his own men.

  "They can't have taken more than one hill," insisted Mundaer, who was struggling to understand what was happening. "The battle calculor proved there was no time."

  "Masterful," said the Boardmaster. "They took the very hill that would cause us the greatest delay setting up the battle calculor again. What say the heliostats?"

  "We're just getting their attention," replied Mundaer. "Green flare, fire when ready." The arc of green smoke drew heliostat reports from two hilltops, and the twinkling signals began to tell their story. Hill Alpha had been attacked almost as soon as the pall of smoke had gone up, smothered in a suicidal charge by Neverlanders who had paid with casualties of at least ten to one to buy their victory. The smoke pots and riders trailing dust-raisers had added to the confusion, but the other eleven hills were secure, as were the two groups of mounted archers.

  Mundaer began to regain confidence when he realized that very little real damage had been done to the Glenellen forces, aside from the loss of the men on Hill Alpha. The Overhand Baragania was less optimistic.

  "Signal the archers to converge to this outcrop," ordered Baragania. "Then we'll go from hill to hill, collecting our garrisons in greater strength."

  For a moment the Overhand's composure cracked. He seized the Major Director by his pennant scarf and shook him roughly. "Of all the stupid..." Then, just as quickly, his control returned. "Where are the Neverlanders?"

  "On Hill Alpha," replied the confused and uncomprehending officer, "and riding about with dust-raisers and smoke bombs."

  "I say that only ten percent of Neverlander men are accounted for there." "There's more than that. The battle calculor estimates that eleven point two percent of their known forces are all that are required for--"

  "Damn you, Major-Director! Can't you see? All those dozens of men with their cumbersome folding desks, cards, and abacus frames can better my experience by only one point in a hundred! Gah, the battle calculor can screw itself, I'm done with it. Now get the archers back here before something else goes wrong for us." ' The mounted archers of his first group rode to skirt a ridge adjoining Hill Alpha. The ridge had not been adequately scouted for the Glenellen archers, yet they chose to skirt it as the shortest route available to regroup. As they were riding through the neighboring gorge a cloudburst of arrows descended upon them from the main force of Nevedander freebooters, who had been concealed there. Within minutes there was blind panic among the Glenellen archers. Many fled up the slopes of Hill Alpha, forgetting that it was in freebooter hands. These were slaughtered. Others reached the summits of Hills Beta, Gamma, and Delta. The second group of archers made it safely to the outcrop of rock where the Overhand was sheltering.

  By late in the afternoon the Neverlanders had brought in more smoke pots and were again disrupting the signals between the hilltop positions and the Glenellen Commander. Scouts and messengers were ridden down and slaughtered by what appeared to be elite freebooter squads assigned specifically to that purpose, yet some Glenellen messengers managed to reach their assigned hills with their messages. By morning, Hills Kappa, Mu, Theta, and Lambda had been evacuated and the garrisons consolidated with the main group. It was a feat of desperation that seemed to surprise even the Nevedanders.

  "They're treating this like the Surgeon's Gambit in the champions board game," Baragania told a meeting of his officers and nobles. "Who can tell me what that is?"

  A captain from Hill Lambda shook a tasseled lance with his unit's colors. "Esteemed Overhand, the enemy's forces are mostly left on the board until the king is ready to fall."

  "Right, and that king is ours! We need to get our remaining hilltop garrisons back together, but I estimate six thousand of the enemy are in the hills in a rapid strike force. We have been evacuating hills singly, and I think that they will rush to the next garrison that shows signs of movement. Instead, we shall move all seven remaining garrisons at once. One or two could be trapped and wiped out, but that's better than losing them all one by one."

  The Neverland freebooters had another surprise. They were known not to have bombards, only siege rockets that were lighter and could be transported in racks by camels. These had not been modeled on the scenario board, as they were notoriously inaccurate. At extreme range they could barely hit a 100yard diameter circle.." yet the main Glenellen encampment was significantly bigger than this. The first of the rockets plunged down and exploded among the Glenellen men a quarter hour after the tactical meeting. The warhead flung deadly metal shards into humans, horses, and camels.

  By the time the consolidation order went out from the Overhand's heliostat there was rebellion in some of the garris
ons. They did not want to add their own bodies to a shooting gallery for the Neverlander rocket artillery. At last three garrisons were convinced to rejoin the main force, but two were mauled by the freebooters. Rockets continued to plunge into the main Glenellen encampment at the rate of one every five minutes.

  Overhand Baragania finally decided to cut his losses and return to Glenellen. He had over half of his original force, which was still double the Neverlander numbers, and his men were adequately provisioned for the three-week journey back. Their morale improved at once, for they would now be out of reach of the siege rockets.

  "This is a miracle," declared Baragania as he rode. "This morning I expected to be lying dead in the sand by noon, yet here I am at the head of an orderly retreat of over half my men."

  Mundaer was looking back toward the hills. "There! Another puff of smoke. They're using the siege rockets on our four rebel garrisons." "Good, it will keep the Neverlanders occupied while we run and it saves us the trouble of executing our own traitors. Boardmaster, what estimate would you give for reaching Glenellen?" he called.

  The Boardmaster rode his camel over. "No less than two weeks, no more than three, Overhand." "We shall, of course, be executed for our trouble. The invincible battle calculor has been humbled. There's been four men out of every ten dead, and a great boost to the confidence of the Neverlanders."

  "Why then are we returning?" asked Mundaer morosely.

  "Why? To deliver ten thousand troops to the city for its defense and for the protection of our families from ruin and slavery."

  "I can't understand what went wrong with the battle calculor!" exclaimed the Boardmaster. "Ah, but nothing went wrong. From what I can tell, however, the Nevedand freebooters were commanded by someone who knew exactly what a battle calculor can do, and what it cannot. That was what defeated us."

  The gardens of the mayoral palace of Kalgoorlie had been designed by the grand father of the current Mayor, and specifically with dalliance in mind. There was a true maze of hedges, bushes, and hidden alcoves, surrounded by a cloister square fifty yards on a side. Couples not only had privacy, but they could hear others approaching by the crunch of pebbles underfoot. To Glasken, the gardens were also a discreet and direct route from the main gate to Varsellia's rooms, and he had become quite familiar with them since arriving in Kalgoorlie. To Ilyire, the gardens were a place where he could be alone without leaving the city, and he needed to be alone increasingly often.