The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “Follow it?”

  “Betcha!” He looks off in the direction of the trail of droppings. “Yu go fust, G. Yu da one wit’ da killah nose.”

  A machine and a cow intersect, puzzles the Librarian. Maybe this pile of salvage really was a street cleaner. He wonders if whatever cannibalized the machine had its way with the cow, too. Animal scents are pungent. Easy to follow. This rich spoor is all the more articulate for being laid down in an otherwise odorless environment. The Librarian applies his nasal analysis.

  “Cow. Cows, yes. Goat also. Sheep, maybe.”

  “Sheep! A ’hole farm, den? Wadda ’bout sum peeble?”

  “Some also. Yes.” The human scents are several, and they tickle the back of his brain with a feathery familiarity. An older knowing. It’ll take him a while to search through the centuries of records archived in his head. Forgetting is never the problem, just locating the appropriate layer. In a few more blocks, he’ll probably remember whose scents these remind him of.

  The trail leads them in a path as random as the route they’ve already taken, a few blocks in one direction, a few in another.

  “Dese folk doan know weah dey goin’ needer,” Stoksie decides. “Explorin’. Lookin’ fer sumpin.”

  “Like us.”

  Stoksie nods. “Dey woan hab no ansers, den.”

  “Answers?”

  “Aboud weah ta find da One.”

  “Guess not.” Still, following a living trace seems more purposeful than wandering about at a total loss. The Librarian stays on the scent, down the next block, around the next corner, down several more blocks. More abandoned machinery turns up along the way, some as big as the street cleaner, most of it smaller, but all of it as unidentifiable as the first. Other than their dismantled state, the machines look out-of-the-box new and spotlessly clean. Stoksie shakes his head, disapproving of the waste.

  “Not wasted. Recycled,” the Librarian offers, to humor him. But really, in a city where the buildings or pavements show no sign of age or wear, why should its machinery be any different? It’s as if there’s no weather here. The idea stops the Librarian short. He stumbles, halfway into his next step. No weather. Of course!

  “Yu alri’, G?”

  “Artificial,” he mumbles.

  “Wat iz?” Stoksie has on his humoring tone again.

  “All this.” It has to be. He does a full turn with his arms spread, and is proud of not tripping over his own amazement. “All.”

  Stoksie frowns, struggling to take in his meaning. “Da hole ciddy, yu mean?” He cranes his neck toward the narrow slice of blue between the surrounding towers. “My da tole me onct ’bout dis ciddy undah a reel big dome, like on da moon. He nevah seenit, bud he heerd aboudit. Das wat yu mean?”

  The Librarian nods. Maybe a dome is what he means. He isn’t sure. The insight came to him as they often do, without all its attendant evidence and explanations. He has learned to accept such understanding as visitors from elsewhere, from his dragon perhaps. At least, he’s always hoped she was the source.

  The hum in his head is getting louder again, except this time, it seems to be outside his head as well.

  “Yu heer dat?” Stoksie asks.

  “Betcha. You, too?” The Librarian is ecstatic to have the vagaries of his unruly senses for once confirmed.

  “Frum ’roun’ da nex cornah, sounds like.”

  They steal up to the mouth of the intersection. The crossing street is wider than usual. To the left, it travels for a short block, then passes through an open square. The external hum is coming from that direction. They forsake the livestock track in order to investigate.

  “Git aginst da wall, nah,” Stoksie advises.

  When they’re halfway down the block, the strong black-and-white design of the square’s paving stones comes into focus. The Librarian squints at it eagerly. At last, a bit of visual interest! He fondly recalls the transformational geometrics of the twentieth century artist M. C. Escher, which this very much resembles.

  In the middle of the pattern, two sprawling machines move in perfect tandem across the square. The exact nature of their work is not immediately apparent, mainly because what they’re doing, while obvious to any eye, defies normal logic.

  “Dey doin’ wat it look like der doin’?”

  It looks like one machine is pulling up the intricately laid tiles and piling them behind it according to shape and color. The other is taking up the neat piles and laying the tiles right back down again, in the same exact pattern.

  “Routine maintenance?” suggests the Librarian, only half seriously.

  “Das preddy weerd.”

  “Indeed.” He listens for some hint of malfunction in the hum, but hears only smoothly functioning components. As with the derelict street cleaner, the Librarian is drawn to these devices. At least these are still functional. His inner hum is less chaotic now, he notices. He can detect patterns, a few more coherent lines among the general noise and static. While Stoksie hangs back, he moves out into the bright, hard light. The volume is deafening. He suffers it, like a man in a hailstorm, for the sake of curiosity. Hunched against the aural hammering, he totters up to the nearest machine and around it. It pays him no mind, but out of the agonizing clangor, two signals gradually resolve. This bit of ordering lessens the Librarian’s pain. The signals coalesce into digital mutterings. Machine mutterings, about process and pattern and instruction. He senses no consciousness, no awareness. Less than in a barn he’d once had, where he would listen to the nighttime animal music, the murmurings and munchings, and learn entire histories of the day just past. He watches the mechanical pavers pick up tiles and put them back again, pondering their inchoate mysteries, until Stoksie edges up beside him.

  “Yu bearin’ up, G?”

  “Not so bad, now.”

  “Wat nex?”

  These machines have given up all their answers, if indeed they ever had any to offer the likes of Reuben Stokes, hardened rationalist. The Librarian turns away, regretful to leave them but glad to slink back into shadow, away from the discordant light. They retrace their steps to pick up the livestock trace. It moves straight ahead, block after block without turning. They pass no more machinery, abandoned or functional, for a long while. Then the quality of the trail changes. The Librarian slows to analyze the difference. Does adrenaline have an odor? He’s sure he can smell it, just as he can smell fear.

  “Running now.” He points ahead, along the trace.

  “Runnin’?”

  “Running away.”

  Stoksie peers at the ground as if it might show footprints. “Wat frum?”

  The Librarian is tempted to remind his friend that he’s not clairvoyant. How different many things would be if he was. He’s saved by the view at the next intersection: another black-and-white square, another audible hum. Here, the machine is stationed at a corner of the pattern, slowing and meticulously cleaning invisible dirt from the grout lines between the tiles.

  “Wudn’t be dat one, I guez.”

  The Librarian grunts his agreement.

  “No wondah dis town’s so clean!”

  “Disapproving again, Stokes?”

  “Me? Yah! Watta waste, yu know? Cud be doin’ sumpin useful.”

  “Like what?”

  Stoksie scowls at the slow, oblivious machine. “Doan know, G. Jes’ sumpin beddah dan dat!”

  The next square has a machine in it also, but this time, no new hum has announced its presence. It sits in the center of yet another elaborate trompe l’oeil pavement, intact and shining, and seems to be doing absolutely nothing at all.

  They study it from the shade at the perimeter of the square.

  “Das a big one, nah.”

  The Librarian nods. Bigger than any they’ve seen so far.

  “Nobuddy bin stealin’ dis one’s parts. Yu t’ink its workin’?”

  He shuffles to the edge of the shadow. “No sound from it.”

  Stoksie plucks at his sleeve. “Less leevit, G. Do
an like dis one.”

  “Why? Arachnoid?”

  “Waddevah. Jes’ creepy.”

  The Librarian waves him back and ventures out into the light alone. Actually, the machine has only four supports, not eight. But its peculiar crouched-up position makes it look like a spider ready to pounce. Unlike the others they’ve encountered, this design is definitely based on an organic model, differentiating body parts to form a torso, legs, a head, even several protuberances that call to mind mouth parts, like jaws and teeth.

  The Librarian pads across the pavement, once again braving the pounding light for the sake of his heedless curiosity. He’s standing within four meters of the machine when he hears it switch on.

  A click, a hum. The sighing of hydraulics.

  Some miraculous instinct fires his usually somnolent reflexes and he’s stepping backward and sideways before the crouching machine has fully raised itself, first on four legs, then on two. The front and smaller pair lift as arms, equipped with pincers jointed as precisely as dragon’s claws.

  “Run!” he yells at Stoksie.

  The machine’s head swivels. It aims itself directly at him, moving slowly. He doesn’t hear its processing, as he’d heard the others’. It seems to be warming up. For the Librarian, who has never met a machine he didn’t like, this one’s aggressive stance has yet to be interpreted. He’s not afraid. Not yet. Backing away at the same deliberate speed with which the machine is waking, he studies it with inadvertent delight. Several of his later boyhoods involved a fascination with dinosaurs. The organic model for this device just had to be Tyrannosaurus Rex. What is it for, he wonders? Who would build such a thing? If it decides to speed up, there’s no way he can outrun it. It stands about six meters tall. Its powerful rear legs are streamlined for rapid travel. He’s dimly aware that Stoksie is shouting at him. Why is the man still here?

  “Run!” he bellows again.

  “Yu run!” Stoksie bellows back.

  He can’t imagine himself running. Besides, in a city without doors, where could he run to that would shelter him from such a monster? The four facades fronting this little square are each as blank as a sheet of paper. On the other hand, if he did try to run, he could lead it away from Stoksie who, with a bad hip, stands as little chance of escaping as he does.

  Step by step, the Librarian eases backward, spiraling toward the far side of the square. The machina rex turns with him, keeping him within range of its small but beady visual sensors. It’s taking in his data, reading his every detail. He’s surprised that it doesn’t attack. Perhaps it thinks it can just frighten him to death. Perhaps it doesn’t think at all. It saddens him that someone might create such a magnificent folly, and withhold from it the means of self-determination. The Librarian opens his hand to it, a gesture of sympathy.

  He’s almost to the edge of the building shadow, directly across the square from where Stoksie dances in helpless horror. For a moment, he fears the Tinker will do something suicidal and heroic, like charge in among the machine’s hind legs to distract it. But Stoksie has found the limits to his courage. He fears both the saurian form and the machine nature of this monster. It’s too much like a dragon. His pleading stare demands that the Librarian produce a miracle that will save them both. The Librarian rues anything he’s ever said or done that’s given rise to such unrealistic expectations. He backs up a few more steps. He’s in the shade now. He can think more clearly, but he still has no idea what to do. The machina rex advances, servos whining.

  Away from the punishing light, the Librarian becomes aware of another coherency emerging from the ubiquitous noise. This one’s directional, like the signals from the paving machines, and it sounds like a summons. All other options gone, he backs toward it. Soon, he’s flat up against the side of a building. His palms brush a surface as hard and granular as stone. The machina takes a long step forward, then another. Now it’s looming over him. The sharp light glitters on its rows of metallic teeth. It eyes him with articulate intent, then throws up its silvery head to roar in convincing imitation of its ancient prototype.

  The Librarian focuses on the new signal. He’s certain it’s calling him. Or at least offering direction. It’s behind him. In the wall. No, in the building. Inside the building. The building has an inside. The Librarian imagines the signal as a path. It draws him sideways. A little more to the right. There.

  The machina rex snaps its jaws like a cartoon predator and lunges for him. The Librarian retreats another step backward, where a step should not be possible. He backs into an open doorway. The metal jaws clash in front of his nose. Two more steps back. He’s in a dim space, undefined except by the wall in front of him and the door opening where the hard light pours in. It silhouettes the machine as it rakes its steel claws against the stonework and tries to force its bulk through the narrow opening.

  The Librarian breathes again, amazed to be still among the living.

  Now, that’s what I call a proper fire wall.

  The door slams shut, enveloping him in darkness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When she can stand without wobbling, Erde hurries to help Luther sit up. “Oh, I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault!”

  IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT.

  Earth’s great head looms over them. The dogs look on with concern.

  “I mean, it’s my fault he came at all!”

  Luther’s eyes flutter open. “We dere yet?”

  “Yes, yes, we are. Somewhere.” Kneeling beside him, Erde gazes around at the Mage City. The portal has winked out of existence without admitting a single white rider. She cherishes the thought of Brother Guillemo gnashing his teeth in frustration in the snows of 913.

  Just try to find me here, you filthy man!

  DO NOT MAKE RECKLESS INVITATIONS. IF HE IS FIRE’S CREATURE, HE WILL KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. ALWAYS.

  But how? I don’t even know where I am.

  REMEMBER THAT YOUR SENDINGS ARE OFTEN STRONGER THAN YOU INTEND.

  Her Sendings. Yes, she had forgotten. Or perhaps willed herself to forget what she’d done on the hill at Deep Moor.

  But it was just that once, and never again!

  NOT BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T . . . BECAUSE YOU WOULDN’T.

  Yes. She’d hated how it felt, and the pain it caused Rose, the most Sensitive of the Deep Moor women. She likes even less the dragon’s implication that her ability could betray her, nay, all of them, to the hell-priest. What if she was the cause of his coming to Deep Moor?

  It’s too much to think about. Too much worry and confusion. Erde glances up at the bronze mountain beside her and changes the subject. “Dragon, you’ve grown again!”

  YES. I FEEL . . . I FEEL . . .

  EXPANDED? Water has reappeared in her flock-of-butterflies incarnation, a glimmer of color and motion against the pale, static cityscape.

  YES! AS IF ENLARGED BY EVERY BREATH. DO YOU FEEL DIFFERENT, SISTER?

  The blue flutter of iridescence shivers and dances. NOT REALLY.

  Erde is still contemplating the problem of Brother Guillemo. Fire’s creature. It’s a relief to think of the hell-priest that way. To explain her uncanny link to him, the way he can pick her out of a crowd, the way she always senses when he’s near—all this is Fire’s doing, and not some fault, or even evil, inherent in her own nature. She’s glad to be rid of that guilty suspicion. She’s been plagued by it for too long. If it’s Fire’s fault, she can deal with it.

  She scrambles to her feet, flushed with new resolve. She plants her hands on her hips, like she’s seen the men do in the practice yard, and gives the much-sought-after Mage City a long hard look. Its scale is daunting. Such topless towers could only be held up by magic. But what she finds most intimidating is the city’s formal blandness, the total lack of welcome. If she were the Mages, she’d never choose to live in this hard, bright, silent place that seems entirely devoid of life.

  “There aren’t even any trees!” she exclaims to Luther, who is fending off the ministrations of two particularly
earnest hounds. “Not even a blade of grass!”

  Luther blinks, still gathering his senses. “Itsa neet cleen place, alri’.”

  “It’s too clean, Luther! It looks like nobody lives here!”

  “Leest it’s warm agin.” Luther peels off the first of his heavy layers. One of the dogs grabs his sleeve. “Git off me, yu mutt!”

  Erde giggles. “She’s trying to get your attention. Look, they’ve all gathered again.”

  THEY WISH US TO KEEP FOLLOWING THE TRAIL.

  “Oh, my goodness, of course! Dragon, shall we?”

  WE CAN LEARN LITTLE BY STANDING STILL.

  As large as Earth has become, the wide white streets are larger still. It’s a city made for giants. So where are those giants? Erde notes that the dog pack does not bound ahead on the scent as they had at Deep Moor. Though they seem confident about the direction of the trail, they are less bold, unwilling to lose sight of the dragons and humans, as if at each corner, they are fearful of what might be around it.

  After several blocks for each of several changes of direction, Erde realizes that the city is not just huge in vertical scale, its spread is enormous as well.

  “A city as big as a kingdom,” she complains to Luther. “The streets are so straight, like the squares on a chessboard. And not a bit of green anywhere! You’d think there’d be a weed or two at least!” She recalls the only other great city she’s been in. “There were lots of weeds in Big Albin.”

  Luther rolls his eyes at the featureless walls rising to either side. “Nah, gal. Big Albin’s a reel city.”

  “This is a real city. How else could we be walking in it?”

  Mid-stride, he taps his foot on the smooth white pavement. “Well, I doan know ’bout dat. But first, it doan look like a reel city. An’ two, doan it stand ta reezin dat if dis is a magic city, it otta be sumplace diffrint an’ speshul?”

  “Of course, but special can be real, can’t it? Deep Moor was special, a secret, special place, until Fra Guill nosed it out, may he die a thousand deaths and rot in hell for what he’s done!”