Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  "Fras, I understand what a strain has been upon you--" "Then get to the point."

  The Confederation officer glanced about, puzzled and disappointed that there was no ancient super weapon to be seen in the scruffy but defiant little outpost.

  He turned his attention back to Glasken. "Last night the Ghan commanders summoned us to demand the use of the Haytown bridges. We were in their camp when the sky to the south was filled with a blue, flickering glow. A vast humming followed, then fires began below the horizon. It lasted only a few heartbeats. The Ghans sent scouts out, and they said everything was burning within seven miles of the bridge near Ravensworth. It seems now that a small circle at the center of that circle is the site of your camp."

  Glasken felt himself go hollow inside, but tried not to show it. "It was not us." '

  "The Alspring Ghan delegation cites evidence that the Overmayor Zarvora was bringing ancient weapons to life." "The Overmayor's experiments are pure science." He turned and pointed at the Ghans. "You Ghans, you attacked her testing ground at Woomera and killed her engineers and scholars. Can you swear by the Deity that you found anything there like this vast expanse of charring?"

  The Ghans remained silent behind their veils.

  "If this is the work of the Deity, however, then we were spared while the Ghans and Southmoors were annihilated," Glasken concluded. An uneasy tone entered the pennant bearer's voice. "Why should the Deity favor you? What special righteousness and virtue does the Alliance have?"

  "Look for evil, not righteousness," cried Glasken, turning back to the Con federation's pennant bearer. "Look to the Alspring leader who brought this calamitous war upon us. An Alliance renegade and outlaw, who wins her victories by stealth and betrayal. It is her the Deity is displeased with."

  "Fine words from the man who ravished our Commander when she was a girl," Baragania interjected, tiding forward from his group. Glasken rounded on him sharply. "I have never ravished anyone. My charm alone has always been sufficient, and my charm seduced Lemorel--But why look to my own sorry encounter with her? In our countless nights together her sister, Jemli Milderellen, told me--"

  Lemorel's shot silenced Glasken. An instant later five dozen muskets were trained on the truce delegation, yet several of the Ghans had their own flintlocks trained on Lemorel as well. She extended her arm outward, then dropped her Morelac to the ground, one barrel still unspent. Glasken lay in the mud, shot sid eon high in the chest. The dark splotches of blood across his left bicep and chest mingled with the red mud that already smeared him.

  "Medician!" someone called from the Alspring musketeers. "Don't bother, I never miss," snapped Lemorel, tearing her veil away and sliding from her horse, but her face was pale and fearful. She had killed to cover her own lies, and now she had to conjure a very convincing reason. Dolorian noted her former friend's expression with grim interest, then walked forward to stand protectively astride Glasken's body.

  "He abandoned me to the desert," Lemorel shouted in an Alspring dialect to Baragania. "He defiled me, then he defiled my sister!"

  "You shot our commanding officer under the cover of a truce!" Dolorian screamed in Austaric.

  "Austaric, all speak in Austaric!" demanded the Confederation's pennant bearer. "As Captain Glasken's second-in-command I demand satisfaction," cried Dolorian. She shrugged off her jacket and stood before them in a blouse stained with river water from several days past. "Name your seconds and have them search me for hidden armor," she said with her hands on her hips and her breasts thrust out.

  Lemorel raised her eyebrows, but did not smile. "You should know better than to challenge your teacher. This is a joke." "Afraid of me?" asked Dolorian. "Commander accepts!" shouted Baragania.

  Lemorel whirled around in fury and glared at him. He stared back steadily. "Do you need a second, Commander?" he asked calmly.

  "What good is a dead man as a second?" she replied. I'll fight alone."

  She tore off her outer robe, then strode across to Dolorian who held her arms out as she approached.

  "Impressive breasts, Frelle Dolorian," said Lemorel as she checked for hidden armor. She stood back and held her own arms up for Dolorian. "Medician, check her for armor," said Dolorian, folding her arms beneath her breasts as well as she could. Lemorel's face contorted at the slight, and something like a muffled squeal escaped her.

  Because a Confederation truce had been violated, the pennant bearer was declared overseer by acclaim. He named four observers.

  "As the challenged party, choose the weapons," he said to Lemorel. "Amnessons. Your officers have them as standard issue." "Nice choice," Dolorian replied, rolling her hips for the benefit of the onlookers. "Long barrel, lightweight, and a friction trap for the recoil."

  Lemorel sneered to hear her own lessons of seven years earlier quoted. Two guns were selected and brought over. Lemorel snatched one weapon and slashed the air with it, feeling the weight and balance. "Your target, Frelle Challenged," urged Dolodan.

  Gyrom had found a sheet of poor paper and some colored pins in the command tent. The Confederation officers watched carefully as he pinned the paper in place, with a wide, black shield pin at the center.

  Lemorel hefted the gun again, then walked to the target and paced back. Without warning she whirled and fired, and a hole appeared beside the black pin. She was giving Dolorian the chance to better it if she could.

  Dolorian pouted. She went down on one knee, supporting her left elbow with it as her hand steadied the long, functional barrel. Slowly she squeezed the trigger. The blast echoed into the silent, charred landscape. The shot smashed the pin.

  "That was stupid of you, Frelle," snapped Lemorel, who had never before been beaten at the target. "You bettered my shot so you have the right to fight me, but do you think that I'll give you a chance to kneel down and aim like that?"

  "No, Frelle, but I'll still try." "You never learn, do you? Never discuss tactics with your enemy." They stood back to back. Reloaded pistols were returned to them. "Call your distance, Lieutenant Dolorian," the overseer said clearly.

  "One hundred and fifty," said Dolorian, and there was a faint hiss of breath from Lemorel.

  It was a very, very long call. The count began, and took quite some time. "... one hundred forty-nine, one hundred fifty!" As Lemorel whirled she judged the distance, noted that Dolorian was beginning to kneel, then fired--just as her opponent suddenly bobbed up straight. Her shot took Dolorian low in the rib cage, a little to the left--but below the heart, where Lemorel had been aiming. The image of Dolorian falling was hazy through the gunsmoke as Lemorel lowered her arm. She shook her head, then turned to the overseer for a verdict.." just as the clearing smoke revealed Dolorian lying flat, and bracing her elbows in the red mud as she took aim. Her shot hit Lemorel side-on, in the right of her chest. The ball passed through her heart.

  She toppled to the red mud, her face a death mask of surprise. The overseer looked to the observers, who inspected the two women. Lemorel was dead. Dolorian was still alive, and thus declared the winner. Medician Torumasen tore the fabric away from an ugly wound below Dolorian's left breast.

  "Not good with pain," she whimpered through clenched teeth, tears flowing across her mud-stained cheeks. "But... got her!" "I've checked the Captain," said Torumasen as he pressed cotton wadding soaked in eucalyptus oil against the wound. "He's alive. The shot passed through his arm, smashed the shaft of his crutch and deflected, then broke a rib and tore a furrow through his skin. He's in shock and unconscious, but he'll live. Lie still, your bleeding is very bad."

  "Tell him.." feared reaching forty. Worse ways to go." "Don't talk. Relax and you will bleed less." Dolorian looked into his eyes. "Fras Medician, you can.." rip my blouse.." anytime."

  "Not unless you're alive," he replied, feeling his heart wrench. "Don't drop your pack. There's everything for you to live for." She pouted at Torumasen, then closed her eyes as he brushed his lips against hers. Moments later she was dead. As Torumasen pumped at her hea
rt and breathed into her lips, the attention returned to the delegation.

  "I appear to be in command," Sergeant Gyrom said to Overhand Baragania. "Are you through with spying on our defenses under the cover of truce, or should I line my men up for inspection?"

  "We go," Baragania said, folding his arms and looking sadly down at Lemorel's body. "War with honor I understand. Not this. What happened here is... evil, obscene thing."

  "Follow a devil, and such like will befall you."

  "Devil has good disguises."

  "You should have looked for the forked tail."

  "Is hard to see when her hand be on your shoulder." The Overhand gestured across to Lemorel's body. "You bury our Commander?"

  "Why not? I've become good at it, thanks to her." One of Dolorian's crew transmitted the news back to Oldenberg. Within two days the fighting had stopped everywhere and the opposing armies were pulling back to truce lines. Lemorel was buffed on the battlefield, with all the other dead. Dolorian's body vanished.

  The Southmoors ceded a buffer province to the Southeast Alliance that reached to the Central Confederation, while the Balranald Emirate declared itself independent of the other Southmoor nations. Other matters were not settled so easily. The Ghans who were holding the Woomera Confederation's cities refused to give them up. After annexing all independent castellanies as far as Peterborough, Zarvora's forces laid siege to the town, then sent three brigades north to Hawker and took that town in a surprise attack.

  Tarrin sat in Zarvora's Libris study, listening in amazement while she finally explained the workings of her radio system to him, and how she had used it as a parallel and secure command network in the closing weeks of the war. There was also the matter of what had happened at Ravensworth.

  "It was linked to the spark flash of that I am sure," she said. "The Mirrorsun band was involved. I think that it was an intense, hollow cone of heat, probably what it used to destroy the Wanderer stars."

  "You mean it attacked the spark flash yet spared the very center, where the wagons were positioned?" "Believe me, Tarrin, I have given it a great deal of thought. My feeling is that it could be a matter of aiming. Aim at a target using a drop-compensator sight, and the bead of the sight will cover the target itself."

  "But why cover what you are shooting at?" "The Wanderers were big, they may have been more than two hundred yards across. A direct hit would be a kill, even if the center was spared." She waved her hands in circles, then let them fall. "That theory will have to do for now."

  Tarrin was less than convinced. "But the spark flash transmitters have been used since the Night of Fire." "Yes..." Zarvora frowned at her mechanical orrery as she assembled a few of her speculations into the bones of a theory. "Perhaps there was some code used that made the Mirrorsun identify Sparkflash Seven as one of the Wanderers. That code triggered the response.." and it could happen again. I have set the Calculor analyzing Dolorian's last transmissions for clues, and when the fighting to free Woomera is done I may conduct experiments in the desert using cleared areas and a single transmitter. Until then, I have had all spark flash wagons returned to Oldenberg, where they are to be kept under guard."

  "Until the end of the war?" "That will be soon. My overhand at Peterborough predicts capitulation within three days. I shall go there to preside over the treason trials. Peterborough will be the interim capital of the Woomera Confederation until the city of Woomera is set free."

  "But Lemorel had the Mayor of Woomera killed when the city fell, Frelle Highliber." "His heir was studying at Rochester University at the time. Guard my spark flash wagons well while I am away, Fras Tarrin. If fools or traitors get hold of them it could be truly horrendous."

  Glasken spent three weeks in a hospitalry near the slave markets at Balranald. His left arm was heavily bandaged, but his leg was soon well enough healed to carry his weight. On the day that he was due to be discharged and return to the 105th he was visited by Vellum Drusas of the Libris Inspectorate.

  "Fras Glasken, the great hero of Ravensworth," boomed the inspector in a mellow and cheery voice. "Are you recovered enough to be honored?"

  Glasken was sitting on the edge of the bed, easing his boot on over the bandages. To anyone who knew him well, he looked rather subdued. "If truth be known, I'm feeling just a trifle flat," he said as he drew the laces tight. "My closest friends in the brigade were killed, and I've been three weeks in an Islamic hospital where I can't get anything stronger than coffee and the only nurses they let near me are men." Glasken fell silent, his fingers idle on the boot laces, then he looked up at Drusas. "All that sorrow leaves me sickened."

  Drnsas put a hand on Glasken's shoulder and adopted the positive tone of a good counselor. "Well Fras Glasken, I can cure a little of that. I'm here to take you to the par aline terminus and send you to Rochester for a great and fabulous ceremony. It's not only your own medal. The late Frelle Dolorian's parents have asked that you accept her medal and honors on her behalf."

  Glasken picked up his pack roll He looked around one last time, as if he was about to leave something of great importance forever; then he limped out of the room with Drusas.

  "Doesn't seem fair," he said as he signed for his musket, saber, flintlock, and dagger at the locker desk. "There's many as did braver than me. I just survived."

  The hospitalry staff and many of the patients saw him off, hailing him as the liberator of the Emirate of Balranald, the man who held the bridge at Ravensworth against odds of a hundred to one, the man whom Lemorel ould not kill, the man who broke the army of the Ghan invaders. Drusas had a gig waiting, and an escort of a dozen lancers.

  "Balranald's like home," said Glasken as they drove along the streets. "It's a par aline terminus town like Sundew, a big place with lots of industry and wind trains taking crates and bales away to places with wonderful names." He gazed about at the turbulent bustle of town life, letting his nostalgia for Sundew wash over the memories of war. "Look there, the slave markets where I was sold for three hundred silver rikne--that's nine royals--back in 1700 after I'd escaped the battle calculor with Nikalan."

  "Hah, a real bargain," laughed Drusas. "And there, a rail-capping foundry, just like Sundew's. I was born in a lathe and-mud bond tenement like that one over there. My father was a par aline ganger."

  "Well he obviously found better times," said Drusas, genuinely impressed and trying to show it. "Saving the fees for University is not common among gangers."

  Glasken seemed hardly to hear him. "Look, a narrow-gauge par aline truck with Great Western colors and markings. It must be from their mixed-gauge par aline

  "The war scattered rolling stock widely, Fras." "Aye, like people by the Call. That's how my stepmother died. One day I was in school and the Call rolled over, but we were tethered so it was nothing special. Then some lad burst in and said my mother was taken. I hardly cried, I just felt numb. A few weeks later Dad told me that we'd come into a lot of money. He also told me that I was a bastard--a real one, that is. My real mother was a big, jolly woman who cooked well and went in beer races. He married her once we were out of mourning and bought a share in a vineyard. It was odd, but I always remember how my first mother used to be so proud of me whenever 416

  SEAN.McMULLEN I got honors at that ratty little alms-school near the rail yards I always thought that those big sad eyes of my first mother only brightened when I studied well. Eventually I won a Mechanics Institute Scholarship to Rochester."

  Drusas was unprepared to hear someone with Glasken's reputation speaking like this--and at such length. His own replies sounded awkward and forced, and he was very surprised to find his usual eloquence failing.

  "But why did it take you eight years to get a four-year degree?" "Not sure. In Rochester I had a lot of time to myself, and that led to thinking that whatever I did, my first mother would not be there when I graduated. Drink, revels, and wenches were there on offer, so that's why I'm what you see today." He sat up straight and clapped Drusas on the shoulder. "Here now,
the par aline terminus."

  "And here I must leave you, my remarkable scholar and man of action,"

  said Drusas with some relief. "In your exalted future, spare a thought for old

  Fras Drusas."

  I'll even spare you a drink, Fras." With Glasken aboard the train Drusas drove through the city to the new Alliance embassy where he filed a sheaf of forms. He also collected a purse and spent an entertaining night watching the dance festival in the market sector of the city with two shadow hands ever close behind to guard his purse and back. While they were with him he had no fear of darkened lanes and shadowed doorways.

  The night was enjoyable, yet there was no wine to be had in the Islamic city. The dancing was a wildly exciting spectacle, however, starring nomad performers from the north, many of them from Christian and Gentheist tribes. For the first time in many months Drusas felt a stirring at his loins as the show whirled to a climax. At his request one of the shadow hands indicated which streets might harbor harlots, and Drusas hurried along between the narrow, darkened buildings, sniffing at traces of perfume and gaping at forms outlined against gauze shutters.

  Suddenly something made him stumble and he careered into the gloom of a deep-set doorway. Drusas was appalled to find an arm hooked under his chin and his feet free of the ground. By the Mirrorsun light he could make out a dagger point before his eyes, and there was wet blood gleaming on the blade.

  "Glasken where?" said an accented voice. "Embassy say returned to regiment. Not so. Don't struggle. Shadowhands dead."

  "Know--nothing," gasped Drusas frantically, his fingers scrabbling at a thin,

  hard ann.

  "Order for Glasken from Overmayor. Go to occupation army at Peterborough."

  "I'm only an Inspector. I just filed forms."

  The blade point dropped, to begin pressing into the skin over his heart.

  "I,"BusinessI can't .... with" Glasken. Where is?" The dagger point was through Drusas' skin and pressing deeper.