The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by MeiLin Miranda

"He most certainly can, Professor," said the man Deviatka had called Cas. "Almost as well as I can!"

  "Says you," laughed Deviatka.

  Adewole pulled on his goggles, fastened his duster and jumped into the passenger seat; Cas showed him how to strap himself in. "Do not kill us, Deviatka," Adewole shouted over the engine.

  "Right-o!" Deviatka whooped and hit the throttle; off the little autogyro went.

  The craft's vibrations shook Adewole's teeth, and Minister Faber's death grip on the frame no longer seemed quite so comical. The tarmac rushed under his feet at alarming speed. "Don't look down!" bellowed Deviatka. "Look straight ahead! Damn you, Ollie, don't look down!"

  The obedient Adewole snapped his gaze onto the horizon; it grew and flattened as the autogyro rose from the tarmac into the air. The vibrations smoothed out and his teeth stopped rattling, but he had to work to keep his breathing steady against the rushing wind. He would have to work out a mask for his mouth--perhaps a more thickly-woven kikoi might work. Deviatka took them three times round the field before he set the craft down and taxied to the hangar. "Neat as a pin!" said Cas.

  "Why did you not trust me enough to tell me?" demanded Adewole that night after dinner.

  "It had nothing to do with trust, old thing, I wanted to surprise you," said Deviatka, tuning his guitar.

  "Well, you succeeded. I must say, I was most surprised to walk away from the experience."

  "Say now, three trips round the field in my hands, and nary a bump nor a scrape on take-off or landing! Cas says any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. His aunt Hildy has decided it's the first rule of flying. He's a character, though, that Cas. He almost didn't walk away from some of his early landings, but then he had the same problem when he raced autocarriages. Now he's talking about founding an air racing league, if he can get the government to loosen its stranglehold on the autogyros. Unlikely, I think."

  "'Hildy' and 'Cas.' You are on better terms with the Goldsteins than I would have expected."

  Deviatka looked up from the tuning pegs. "What? Oh, that. Turns out Blessing had nothing to do with it. Hildy's brother has connections at Diederich, and that's where she got the black mercury. We were just thinking along the same lines. It happens. She's some woman, all right. Not bad looking, either."

  "Is she not a little old for you?"

  "A man notices beauty at any age," retorted Deviatka. "She's interested, but who has time?"

  Miss Goldstein must be showing interest when he wasn't around, thought Adewole, but aloud he said, "You are hardly so busy you cannot pursue a little romance, if not with this lady then another."

  "I'm about to become a lot busier, my friend, and so are you." Deviatka opened the folio of Simon Ritter's lieder and handed Adewole his bansu. "I like the way you sing 'This Night of Tears and Shooting Stars'--let's play it while we have the chance."

  The group flew every day after that.

  The final practice day before the great expedition, the flight crew loaded sandbags onto all five aircraft to simulate their cargo. The autogyros took off in formation, Hildy Goldstein on point, all passengers aboard and black mercury in the boilers.

  They flew over Lake Sherrat, low enough to make white caps on the water and to see the ferry passengers wave their hats. When they flew over the University, Adewole realized the yellow-and-red brick courtyards taken together made a larger pattern, a checkerboarded star. Was it intentional? Adewole wondered how many patterns could only be seen from the air.

  The formation took no chances and skirted the financial district's steel towers, though they did fly into the Drift, beneath the island itself. Adewole did his best to stare up through the spinning rotors to study its underside, but he couldn't make out much detail.

  By the time Miss Goldstein decided they'd had enough and guided them back to the hangar, Adewole was frozen through. He must wear heavier clothes under his duster, add ear muffs under his leather cap and silk liners to his gloves. Back in the hangar, he accepted a mug of tea just to have the warmth in his hands, if not to drink it.

  Trinke whipped out his ever-present notebook. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, we will speak to the press. They're gathered just outside the hangar waiting for us." The delegation let out a collective groan. "None of that. We promised them a nice long press conference in exchange for leaving you alone."

  "Leaving us alone?" echoed Doctor Ansel, the team's physician and biologist. "I've been trailed everywhere I've gone for the last month!" Murmurs of assent rumbled through the group.

  "Did anyone actually approach you or ask any questions?"

  Ansel screwed up his wide mouth. "No, but--"

  "Well, then." Trinke snapped the notebook shut. "Let's not keep the press corps waiting."

  The group marched dutifully through the hangar to find a long table on a dais, thirteen chairs behind it and a crowd of reporters and photographers before it. Minister Faber sat in the middle, Major Berger to her right and Adewole to her left. Trinke ran the press conference from beside the table and called on the shouting, jostling reporters by name. "What message will you be taking to the Inselmonders, Major Berger--if there are any?" said a squinting man in a tweed cap.

  "There are most definitely people up there," interrupted Miss Goldstein. "I've seen their buildings and fields." The journalists scribbled frantically.

  "We will be bringing a message of peace," said the Major.

  "If the message is peace, why are you leading the delegation, Major? Will you be bringing weapons?" shouted a woman at crowd's edge. Berger remained unruffled, but his aide, Captain Lentzen, sat up straighter.

  Trinke pointed to a more friendly-looking man toward the front. "Mr. Zirbes? You have a question?"

  "Yes, sir, for Captain Lentzen. Are you proud to be our Army's first pilot, sir?"

  Yes, Captain Lentzen was very proud; Miss Goldstein looked forward to building many autogyros for the government; Doctor Ansel assured they would bring back no exotic diseases; and Professor Deviatka felt certain there would be technological innovations aplenty.

  A raw-boned man in a coat with sleeves far too short for him raised his hand. "Professor AAA-dee-wole?"

  "Ah-DEH-woh-leh," said Trinke.

  "Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it?" said the man. "He's a Jerian. Why is he part of an Eisenstadt military delegation?"

  "A very good question," muttered Dean Blessing. The pencils scribbled further.

  Major Berger's open face became a diplomatic block of ice. "Professor Adewole is the Ministry of State's special attaché for cultural affairs. He will serve as translator."

  "But why not an Eisenstadter?" persisted the man. Blessing's pleasure at this line of questioning took on a life of its own and danced around the crowd. Adewole wanted to crawl under the table and throw his kikoi over his head.

  A clear voice cut across the pack's mutterings. "I chose him myself," said Minister Faber. She placed a knobby hand, firm and reassuring, on his shoulder. "Professor Adewole is one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists, and arguably its pre-eminent comparative folklorist. He speaks more than a dozen languages old and new, can read sigils few know anything about, and has made Inselmond mythology his specialty. No one in this delegation is more qualified to be in it than he is. As to his being a Jerian, it is Eisenstadt's show of good faith to the world: we come in peace for all humankind."

  The mutterings turned approving, the approval to outright applause; even the raw-boned man's expression went from hostile to dubious. A dozen flashpots poofed, the smoke redolent of Midsummer's Night fireworks. Adewole's cheeks turned hot, and Dean Blessing looked ready to blow his waistcoat buttons. "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes question time," said Trinke. "Tomorrow, we fly."

  Chapter Four

  Juni 15th: Expedition Day

  To Adewole, the early morning darkness possessed a surface tension holding back the sun. Even the lamp light in Mrs. Trudge's dining room struggled against it. The room felt encaps
ulated and small, and Adewole fidgeted. "Mrs. Trudge," he said, "you did not need to get up before dawn and see us off."

  "How was I to stay in bed, knowing two of my lodgers are about to make history!" she exclaimed, shoveling fish onto his plate. "No, no, no, if you're going to risk your lives in those flimsy mechanical whirlybirds, you'll do it with food on your stomachs." Adewole winced at the word "flimsy."

  Deviatka saluted him over an enormous pile of fried potatoes. "Eat up, old thing! Death is optional, but Mrs. Trudge's breakfast is inevitable."

  On the center of the table between the toast rack and jam pots lay the newspaper. A photograph of the delegation press conference took up most of the paper above the fold, but for the masthead and a six-column headline screaming:

  EXPEDITION DAY!!!

  Explorers Depart for Dangerous Journey!

  The Question: Is There Civilization on Inselmond?

  Adewole turned it over. Below the fold another picture, this one across two columns, bore the caption Minister Faber and Famed Jerian Scholar Odalay Adelwode. Adewole winced. "They could have at least spelled your name correctly," said Deviatka.

  "They should have left the picture out entirely!"

  Deviatka gave him a sympathetic look. "I suppose some of us are more used to that sort of thing," he said.

  Adewole picked up his fork, put it down, picked it up again and tried to eat. As soon as he'd picked apart half a little fish, Mrs. Trudge moved to fill the empty spot on his plate. "No, no, ma'am, please, it is delicious as usual and I cannot eat what is already here, I assure you I cannot."

  The front door bell rang; Mrs. Trudge's maid trotted into the dining room and exclaimed, "A great autocarriage is outside, sirs, a-waiting on you!" The professors wiped their mouths and hurried to their rooms for their few things not already packed on board the autogyro. At the door, Mrs. Trudge pressed waxed-paper packets of sandwiches and hand pies on them, the maid wiped her eyes on her apron, and the two women stood on the stoop beside the drooping geraniums, waving until the autocarriage turned the corner and cut them out of sight.

  "What am I to do with this?" said Adewole, holding the large waxed paper parcel in both hands.

  "Save it for later, then give it to me if you still don't want it. The woman's a frump, but she's quite the cook." Deviatka leaned against the autocarriage's doorframe; he pushed a hand through his shaggy hair and tapped his fingers against his lips. "Listen, Oladel, I need you to do something for me."

  "Of course, I would do anything in my power for you."

  "I'm going to be on the lookout for technology."

  "I would assume so," smiled Adewole.

  "No, I mean any engineering innovations Blessing might want." By now, Deviatka's right leg jounced up and down; had they been in their sitting room, he would have been pacing.

  "What do you wish me to do?"

  Deviatka turned to face him, every muscle in his face so taut Adewole expected a twang like a broken guitar string. "If you find anything you think I'd be interested in, don't show it to anyone else until you've shown it to me. Blessing mustn't see anything useful this time. I refuse to let him steal from me again."

  "Dean Blessing is not coming with us."

  "Even so."

  A vague uneasiness washed over the Jerian, and for a moment he stayed silent. "Is Blessing as bad as all that? I mean, you have complained of his extreme venality, and I do not doubt it, but what we may discover is surely the government's, is it not?"

  Deviatka's usual wry grin spread almost mechanically. "Oh yes, we come in peace for all humanity." The smile switched off. "It's how the man makes his money. I'm telling you, Ollie, we have to watch out for him. He has serious contacts in industry. Whatever we find up there he thinks he can sell, he'll find a way to sell it."

  "If it is as bad as all that, why do you not report him to someone?"

  "To whom? He has the Ministry of Education and the University's benefactors wrapped around his thumb--some are the very men who buy my discoveries from him."

  "Well…surely there is the press?"

  "Ah, that involves losing my job, tenured or no." Deviatka patted him on the shoulder and leaned back into the corner once again. "Never mind, I'll trip him up yet."

  "I just do not understand why he hates me so much."

  "Nothing personal, I assure you. He just hasn't figured out how to turn your work to a profit yet, for the University or for himself. Nothing annoys him more."

  "How did he get to be the Dean if he is so corrupt?"

  "He's the Chancellor's brother-in-law. He's also a great engineer, one of the best I've ever known, and not a bad man on the whole. Kind to dogs and children and all that," said Deviatka, "but when it comes to money, he's a venal bastard."

  They kept silent now, Deviatka peering out the autocarriage's windows at the brightening sky and Adewole turning inward, contemplating the journey ahead and lecturing his stomach to stop churning. On the one hand, flying to Inselmond fulfilled a childhood dream. On the other, flying to Inselmond in an improbable contraption, powered by a new energy source, and piloted by a man with less than a month's experience in the air was more of a nightmare.

  By the time they arrived at the improvised air field, the sun had broken past the horizon, proclaiming a bright, cloudless day. A crowd pressed against the fences and lined the roadway. Children sat atop their fathers' shoulders so they might see. Many spectators waved little Eisenstadter pennants, but as the autocarriage drew closer to the hangar, the pennants shifted from Eisenstadt's red, black and yellow bars to Jero's white, eight-pointed star against a gleaming green field the color of the fat, fertile Chano River. Bright kikois and faces dark like Adewole's own lined the roadway; the local Jerian community had arrived even earlier than the Eisenstadters. When Adewole stepped from the autocarriage, a hidden voice in the crowd shouted in Jerian: "Son of the Shining City! Make us proud!" The other Jerian expatriates took up a rhythmic chant, calling "Adewole! Son of the Shining City!" as they bounced from one foot to the other in the traditional celebration dance.

  Since he'd left Jero, bitter and ashamed, Adewole's homesickness had battled anger. Now, pride in his people overwhelmed him; his head grew light. Their confidence lifted him up. Was he not still a son of the Shining City--the greatest civilization ever seen, whence all the world's goodness came? He would show no fear, no matter how afraid he was. He smiled and waved to the crowd; they went wild.

  Deviatka took him by the arm as they walked into the hangar. "Well! Aren't you the hero of the hour."

  "They are happy to see their countryman make history. It has nothing to do with me." Even though he knew the words to be true, a cloud rose from Adewole's heart, and he faced the autogyros with a new determination to make Jero proud.

  Dean Blessing waited in the hangar beside Minister of State Faber and the General of the Eisenstadt Defense Force. To Adewole's surprise, Blessing greeted him brusquely but professionally. "A momentous day, gentlemen. I hope we are all prepared for it?"

  "As best we can be," answered Deviatka.

  "Good," said Blessing, clapping him on the arm. He shook hands with Deviatka and then with the astonished Jerian. "Karl, Adewole, safe journey."

  "Safe journey, sir," blinked Adewole.

  "See?" said Deviatka as the Dean stumped away. "Not all that bad a man, really, but I'll be damned if I let him sell anything more out from under me, and that's a promise, friend."

  In short order, the rest of the mission arrived. Trinke lined them all up before a bank of photographers. The military men wore light wool, dull gray uniforms trimmed in lighter gray piping, the trousers tucked into brown knee-high boots. The women--Quartermaster Cam Jagels and a corporal named von Sülzle--dressed much the same, their uniform trousers fuller than the men's. As civilians, Deviatka and Adewole wore black, high-necked, practical jackets and trousers also of wool, white linen shirts underneath and sturdy black field boots on their feet. A turquoise kikoi, the warmest one he had, rested ro
und Adewole's shoulders. Hildy Goldstein's crew all wore their usual blue-gray coveralls, but brand-new and unstained. All wore heavy canvas dusters, leather gloves, silk mufflers and caps like Hildy's; their goggles hung round their necks. Cas Goldstein held up a confident thumb, and even Dean Blessing smiled for the cameras. The flash pans went off with a poof-bang so dazzling Adewole wished he'd been wearing his goggles.

  The flight crews rolled the autogyros onto the tarmac in formation: Hildy Goldstein on point, Til Mencken and Captain Lentzen on her left wing and Cas and Deviatka on the right. Supplies bulged from all five, spare fuel carefully stored away from the boilers. All the passengers put on their goggles, wrapped their scarves and mufflers round their faces, strapped themselves in and waited…and waited…as the pilots and flight crews went over their crafts, checking and re-checking.

  Finally the pilots climbed into their seats and fastened themselves in; one by one in formation, the five machines taxied out onto the tarmac. Adewole went all over cold and clammy; the boost the Jerians' cheers had given his courage faltered. Too late; the autogyros rushed down the tarmac, picking up speed, their engines roaring. The black mercury's hair-raising scent filled the air, ozone and a coppery tang Adewole's nose correlated with blood. As the tooth-rattling tarmac fell away, the autogyro lifted into the air. Deviatka let out a triumphant yell.

  Hildy Goldstein led the wing over the city center once in a salute and flew east toward Inselmond. Once all were in position, she revved her engine three times--the signal. As one, all five craft streaked upward toward the floating island.

  Speed pressed Adewole back against his seat. His nerves shrieked, and he might have shrieked aloud; he wasn't sure. His ears rang over the rush of wind. He couldn't look away from the island, even though the autogyro shook so hard his sight blurred; it made him more than a little airsick. Inselmond stayed far away in the distance, until it was all he could see. This time he could make out the underside. The island's bottom resembled a roughly carved bowl of rock; roots dangled into thin air around the island's fringes.