Darien held up her hands and began to sign a greeting, but llyire shot out a hand and twisted her arm up behind her back. She struggled silently, her face contorted with pain. He grasped her other arm and bound her hands behind her, and only then did he walk in front of the Dragon Silver Librarian. Her eyes were wide and white with fear, and she was shaking her head from side. He spoke to her in Alspring Ghan.
"No? You shake your head for no. Only yes and no are left to you, my little assassin, my dangerous vixen. Your voice is crippled, but you are deadly. You betrayed my master, Fras Glasken. Drusas delivered him to you and you gave him over to that filthy worm, Tarrin. Poor Master, betrayed after fighting so valiantly and suffering so much." Darien shook her head again and struggled against her bonds.
"Darien, Frelle Darien, I am disappointed in you, and in myself. You are a traitor, but I love you still. Still, I must kill you. You once wanted me to break my slavish, perverted adoration for you and I have done just that. Alas, you will die because I have changed into what you wanted me to become."
He examined the papers in her sling bag and in her pockets. There were sealed orders for Glasken which seemed to be genuinely from Zarvora, but when he broke the seal the contents were in some military code that he could not follow. Other papers and border passes were made out to himself, and there were detailed instructions for breaking into Libris and locating Glasken. Most of the papers referred to Parvarial Konteriaz.
"Who is Frelle Parvarial, and how did you kill her? Poor girl. You had a mind to lure me to Rochester with genuine papers for my master from the Overmayor, then deliver both papers and myself to Fras Pretender-Liber Tarrin. Well then, the papers will reach my master, but your Tarrin will be disappointed." He pocketed the papers.
"A Call is close, Frelle Darien. Very soon your mind will be lured away and I shall unbind you and turn you loose to wander south to your death. Perhaps the Deity will spare you as he spares one in a thousand, that is the only chance I can give you. By rights I should plunge a knife into your heart--but I cannot do that."
He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment.
"Not long now. I--I want to kiss you goodbye, but that would be obscene. Darien, Darien, do you wish for me to be as I was?" The question was rhetorical, but to his surprise Darien gave a weak smile, stared straight at him, and shook her head. A moment later the Call blotted out the intelligence behind her eyes, and she was mindlessly striving to go south. Ilyire untied the cord that bound her wrists, unclipped the Call tether that held her to the room's railing, and led her outside. He held her facing south down the street, then released her. She walked away at a steady pace, never once looking back.
"Even facing death you loved me just a little," he said to her distant back, then he turned away, his face in his hands. Glasken looked up from a copy of Systems Enhancement Abstracts as the hooded regulator turned a key in the lock of his cell. Without a word he beckoned Glasken to follow, but not any of his cellmates. They went to an empty tutorial room. The regulator latched the door and turned to face Glasken--who exclaimed in disbelief as the hood fell back.
"Ilyire!" "No less, Fras Master. My humble self." 426
SEAN McMULLEH
"Theresla, she sent you."
"My silly sister? Hah!"
"Just wait a minute! What's this Master bit and who really sent you?" "Overmayor... little bit, Fras Master." "Zarvora was assassinated."
"Not so. Still alive, still unpleasant."
"Tarrin! That lying fykart Tarrin told me she was dead."
"Is more. Men in cassocks and sandals seek you. Come to Kalgoorlie, go everywhere, even palace. Want you."
"Baelsha and its bloody abbot, I should have known. Nobody ever escaped from Baelsha before me. Are they far behind you?"
"Long way, Master. Killed five."
"You managed to kill five monks from Baelsha?" "Not easy. Spending weeks to recover." "Unbelievable. Can you get me out of Libris?"
"Mmnm... can do, but stay first. Overmayor instructions for to follow."
"I was afraid of that. Ah, my friend, it will take a long night of drinking to tell you my story."
"Not so, Fras. I with you since Woomera."
"What?" "I see all. You rescue Highliber at Peterborough, lead charge against South moors at Ravensworth, roger Frelle Dolorian. I carry you from battlefield, Master."
"What? But why?" "You bury bones of Ervelle at Maralinga. Now I repay. I vow any man threaten master, I cut out his heart. Too late I discover Vellum Drusas false." "What did you do?" "I cut out his heart."
"Oop--That's it, no more! What do I have to do for the Overmayor?"
Ilyire handed across the coded instructions to Glasken, who read them slowly and carefully.
"A bold and delicate scheme, Fras Ilyire, and quite a role for you as well.
Listen carefully." Glasken sat at the specialized FUNCTION desk in the Calculor, trying not to look suspicious or guilty but feeling as conspicuous as an emu in the stocks. Contrary to the falsely embellished tales of continual grinding work in the great machine, there were extended periods of inactivity for many of the components during a normal shift. An algorithm written in by Zarvora in 1696 rotated the workload across components to keep the loadings even, but it had not been updated in twelve years, Now the Calculor was forty-six times larger. Glasken knew that he would have five or ten minutes of slack once a particular pattern of work was cleared.
The bypass scheme that Denkar had developed in 1698 had not been updated either, and Glasken wondered whether it would still work. Sighing as if he had been hard done by, he began to set patterns of values in his transmission registers according to the instructions that Ilyire had brought. It took two minutes, according to the reciprocating clock above the observation gallery, and he silently thanked whoever had installed a minute hand since he had last worked there.
With three minutes left the status flag snapped to the ENTER position, giving Glasken such a start that he flinched on his seat and muttered "Fykart" under his breath. FUNCTION 12472 looked around. Glasken muttered "No fykart peace for wicked" by way of explanation as he flicked the beads back and forth to code a message that existed in his mind alone. FUNCTION 12472 wrote his name in her disruption complaints log and put a cross against it. He dumped the last of the code patterns to the output registers, then added the routing protocols for Rushworth, Seymour, and, and... He could not remember the name of the beam flash tower that sat on private land south of Seymour, on the edge of the Calldeath lands. There were nine such towers, he did remember that. Only one thing to do, he decided as his input register flag snapped up to signal that legitimate work had arrived: he followed SEYMOUR with COMMON.
A request from Zarvora to Theresla via Macedon went out to nine stations. This is it, thought Glasken as he worked the beads for a par aline routing problem between wind and galley trains at the Euroa interchange. There was a half hour to go before the end of the shift; then he had study time and a meal break. It would take only minutes for the message to reach each of the outpost towers, and while the local lackeys were scratching their heads over the odd code one tower in particular would be sending it on to Macedon. By the time he was leaving his shift a decoded transcript would be strapped to the back of an emu running from the township to the Melbourne Abandon, where Theresla lived. How long would that take? Hours? Days? Glasken was uncertain about distances beyond the Calldeath boundary. And if Theresla was not home? Then what?
"Can a bloody bird work a letterbox?" he asked out aloud, and FUNCTION 12472 frowned and put another cross against his name. His mind returned to the other eight outpost towers while his fingers and feet did their Calculor work. By now the more conscientious operators would be reaching for their code books. Ten, fifteen minutes remained at most. A few would assume it was a military transmission gone astray and destroy it. Someone would have returned it to the beam flash tower above him by the time he was walking out of the hall. Someone else would put it aside in the Inward
s Anomalies basket. After an hour, perhaps two, but no more than four, it would be put to the Calculor for decoding. In very little time it would show up as uncrackable to the decoding routines. There would be a trace of the message, which would end up back at the output buffers of the Libris Calculor itself. I must be clear of the place by then, he reminded himself.
The System Herald declared the shift ended. Glasken stood up and stretched after locking his registers. He winked at FUNCTION 12472, who colored and made to put yet another mark against his name before she realized that he had not actually caused a disruption that time.
In his cell again, Glasken found that his cellmates were asleep. The door was locked, as Tarrin had brought back the old, penal Calculor conditions. Minutes passed. Ilyire did not come. Glasken waited until the regulators had ceased to walk past before extracting a snap wire from its hiding place and turning to the lock. After several minutes the lock had not yielded and his patience was beginning to fray. He carried on a running dialogue under his breath as he continued to work the lock.
"What sort of fykart administrator wouldn't change the fykart algorithms in twelve years but spends a bleeding fortune of my fykart taxes on new fykart locks to keep dummart components in fykart cells that they're not wanting to leave anyway--"
"I have key, Fras Master," murmured a voice under his bunk.
Glasken leaped aside, bringing his guard up, then collided with the cell wall and fell across his writing desk.
"Ilyire! Damn you! The others will wake."
"They bound and gagged, Master."
"I--Well then, let's hurry. The bloody place will be down about our ears in four hours."
"Did message reach Theresla?"
"Aye, but in a damn sloppy way. It's four hours before the screaming starts,
I figure, just after midmorning coffee break. The security regulators had better be wearing their brown trews, that's all I can say."
"I don't understand, Fras."
"Ach, just give me the key. Do you know where we can hde.
"Yes Master." When they were securely hidden in a stores loft Glasken began to relax. "Nothing to do but wait," he said. "One matter, though. Where is the agent that Zarvora sent with you? She had better be safe and secure somewhere, for real chaos starts soon."
"She was traitor. I avenged you, Master. I send her into Call." "The devil you did!" "Once--still--love her." "You love--Darien!" Glasken suddenly went pale in the dim light. "Gah, shaddup. Fargh Alspring fykart dummart. Did you read what the
Highliber said in my instructions?"
"In code, Master."
"But, but--no, I'm not about to tell you in case you do some fykart dummart thing as is worse."
Glasken sat in silence, thinking and weighing up risks. Ilyire became increasingly restive.
"Ilyire, how many guns have ye?"
"Two twin-barrel Morelacs."
"Aye, the Lemorel special. Give 'em here--and that throwing knife." "Master, what to do?"
"Get myself killed, dummart, that's what."
"Not without my helping!"
"Thank you for the kind offer, but--Hey, who's that?"
w here. Glasken brought the butt of a Morelac down on Ilyire's head as he turned away. He caught the Ghan as he fell and eased him to the floor.
"Call's touch, but it still feels good to do that after Maralinga in 1701." Brother Alex stared at his notes and transcriptions, his mind almost numb with horror. The Australicans were fighting a war with over a quarter of a million warriors and tens of thousands had been killed within a few months. In Mounthaven the wars were highly ritualized, being fought between Airlords and flocks of wardens, and to very strict rules. No more than a few dozen rich noblemen would die in any conflict in Mounthaven, but the Australicans were burning whole cities.
As if that was not bad enough, the strange and distant continent's people had a religious revulsion for fuel-burning engines, yet Mounthaven's entire society, economy, and nobility was founded on diesel-powered gun wings and sail wings of the nobility, and the steam trams used by merchants and commoners. Chivalric air combat went back over a thousand years, yet here was a vast and populous continent that regarded them as heretics and devils.
Worst of all had been the contact with a group calling themselves the Radicals They said they were a persecuted minority, that they wanted Mounthaven technology. Their weapons were flintlock guns, but Brother Alex had unwittingly told them of gun wings armed with reaction guns that could fire 300 shells per minute. They wanted to know more, they wanted details, specifications, and ideas... They wanted to kill their enemies by the millions.
Brother Alex disconnected his transceiver from its power pile, methodically dismantled it, and smashed the components. Into the fire in which he burned the boards and coils of his radio he dropped his neatly stacked and sealed notes, diagrams and tables detailing both how to build the equipment and what it had revealed to him. Behind him young Brother James swept up the stray fragments, slowly shaking his head at both the waste and loss to scholarship. He was pleased with himself for having secretly copied out a few key passages and diagrams.
Work in the Libris Calculor was never so pleasant that components would go out of their way to do two shifts in one day. Thus there was no procedure to catch a component returning for a second, consecutive shift. Glasken hurried down the corridors, then slowed at the sight of the registration desk. There were four Dragon Orange guards there and a Dragon Red seated on the corner of the desk.
"And where might ye be goin'?" he asked as Glasken smiled and made to pass.
"I, ah, had to see the medic ian Ah--headache."
The Dragon Red turned to the register. "No names listed as is taking leave of the Calculor hall during this shift."
"I was, that is, I was in so much pain that I was carried out. I couldn't sign."
"Were that the case yer escort would have signed for ye, and there's no signature by anyone. Where's yer escort?"
"He stayed with the medic ian He's... got a headache too."
"And now ye haven't?" "Ah, well it's a good medic ian you've got here, nothing but the best for us components." ..... The Dragon Red slid from the desk and advanced on Glasken. Garlic was strong on the breath that he exhaled up at the much taller component. Glasken backed away until stopped by the wall. The Dragon Red's eyes were close-set ...... and red-rimmed, and when he held a hand up to wave his finger in Glasken's face, he exposed a dotted line around the wrist with CUT HERE, SOUTH MOOR CALLBA1T tattooed beside it.
"I think ye're just late, FUNCTION 3084, I think that ye're so late that ye'll break the record set in 1699. Get over to that book and sign in under the red line on the Inwards column!"
Glasken signed. The five who were guarding the door were enjoying themselves, and were unlikely to search him.
"Ye'll get a demotion at next Humiliation Day," said the Dragon Red as
Glasken straightened. "Now get in there and rattle the beads." Instead of making for the FUNCTION desks or the relief pool room, Glasken went straight to the privies and entered the door reserved for FUNCTIONS. It was nearly four hours into the shift, and not far from the beginning of the staggered coffee break. He took DISABLED signs from the mop closet and hung them on all privy doors but one. In this one he waited until the sound of approaching footsteps announced the first FUNCTION. There was an exasperated curse from outside and then his door was pushed open. Glasken's fist slammed into the man's midriff; then he hit a precisely chosen spot on the FUNCTION's jaw with the point of his elbow. Within seconds he had removed the DISABLED signs from the other doors and returned to the cubicle to tie his unconscious victim and appropriate the desk identification badge from his tunic. In a gesture of compassion he unlaced the man's trews and propped him over the dump-hole, then jumped the locked door.
The desk assigned to his victim was in LOCK mode and as Glasken returned it to ACTIVE he glanced to the FUNCTIONS either side of him and tapped his forehead. They nodded back, satis
fied that he was from the spares pool and re placing a component with a headache. A scan of the registers showed that heavy diagnostic work was in progress using decoding algorithms. They were already on to him. He suspected that traps had been set for the code pattern that he had used to send the message to Seymour, but he had to use the same pattern, and even the same addressing, if he wanted to contact Macedon. His fingers flew over the beads; then he set the registers, broke into the data-transmission stream, and began to set up his output registers to transmit to the beam flash network. They were sure to stop the message at the gallery above him--then he stopped and thought. Was there a direct link to Euroa? He set up a routing string through Euroa that might have only existed in his conjecture. Reaching under his tunic, he pulled back the strikers on both Morelacs. There was an emphatic click as he dispatched the contents of his output register.
Glasken's legitimate work was piling up by now, and it would not be long before a regulator was sent to check on him. He tried to drag recollections of beam flash procedure manuals out of a memory that had never been particularly willing to accept them. In normal routing practice--no, but this would be war routing, and there would be a contingency check before any transmission. The follow-up would catch his use of the same anomalous code, and they would send a HOLD command directly to Seymour. Unless, of course, something distracted them. He frantically typed the first two lines of a Rochester University drinking song in the code pattern and routed it directly to Seymour and the nine towers beyond. He dispatched it.
Almost at once a bell jangled somewhere high above him in the observation gallery. They had picked up the message. Regulators would be sent to detain him within seconds. What else to do? He drew a Morelac and fired at the gearbox of the main reciprocating clock.
Amid the screams and cries that erupted with the echoes of the shot, something whizzed past Glasken's ear and smashed into his output register. Automatically he turned and fired the second barrel at the observation gallery. A guard tumbled over the stone railing, screaming as he fell, and crashed to the desks below. Senior, un chained components were now dashing about in a panic while lower-level compo 432
Souls in the Great Machine Page 59
