The Daemon in the Machine

by Felicity Savage

  “Your syntax is getting confused. How old are you?”

  Her eyes burned. She wrenched away. “Twenty years this winter.”

  He was shocked and excited but would not show it. “You have the face of a child.”

  “I am a Lamaroon. The earth doesn’t drag at us the way it does at you northerners.”

  The upstairs hall was quiet but for the sound of her quick breath, and the trickling in some nearby water pipes. Crispin felt ebullient. It would be all right. “Girl—Miss—”

  “Yleini Scaame. Miss Scaame to you.”

  “Miss Scaame, I’m a Lamaroon, too; we’re as good as related. Do me a favor. When Yamaxi asks you where I went, say you never saw me. I’ll tell you where I’m going, and that’s to this place you mentioned, the Yard. It sounds like somewhere a man could go underground without too much trouble. Will you meet me there later—name a place, I’ll find it—and tell me if they were angry, whether they’re likely to look for me, and so on, so I’ll know how the land lies? I’ll compensate you for your trouble, of course.” He had no money; he would find some other way to make it up to her.

  He might as well not have spoken. Pushing her face toward him, she hissed with an intensity that made him blink: “Are you deaf? I told you my master is dangerous! You are no Likrekian or you’d know better than to think you could get away with slipping out of the back door of this house!”

  She obviously spoke from experience. Prudence tempered Crispin’s determination. Always remember that the locals know better than you do. Millsy had said that in the far distant past, when Crispin had been lured by a pack of Ferupian boys into a back alley where they had given him bruises that lasted for months. “Just out of curiosity, then,” he said carefully, “what would you suggest I do?”

  “Are you so determined not to enter my master’s employ?”

  With an effort he prevented his rage from bubbling up again. “I am.”

  “It is not my place to understand why.”

  He felt ashamed. “I’d put it to you in reasonable terms if we had time to talk. All I can say now is that I am determined.” Whatever I came to Lamaroon for, I know it wasn’t to fall in with smugglers and get back on that fucking boat again!

  Yleini Scaame scrunched up her childish face, as if advising anyone to defy her master required physical fortitude. “Go back to the parlor and tell them nicely what you’ve decided, then,” she said at last. “They’ll try to make you change your mind. They may keep you for hours; they will certainly ply you with drink; they will turn it into a contest of wills, three against one. But if you are as steadfast as you seem, you’ll walk away with your skin whole and your pride—”

  “ Whaaat?”

  She blinked at him.

  “ ‘Tell them nicely’?”

  “If you refuse, what can they do? They must needs accept it.”

  “Or I could finish at the bottom of Redeuiina Bay!”

  “That will not be the case. We in Lamaroon have hot tempers but no steel; or that is how my master puts it, and I do not think he means it kindly—but what the elders of my diin used to say is that there is no use in arguing over absolutes, in a world where there are none. The things that matter, we Lamaroons do not speak of. Therefore you can be sure that anything which we put to you in plain words is not a matter of life and death. My master may be foreign, but he does business like a Lamaroon. You are in no danger as long as you keep to our rules and do not treat with him on the terms you and he are both used to. Then he will shrug his shoulders and crack a different coconut, and perhaps he will invite you to dinner in a month or two,”

  “Good thing I asked your advice,” Crispin said skeptically.

  “You do not trust me.”

  “A basis for trust has yet to be established.” He took a deep breath. “But if I take your advice, and if you were to meet me tonight in the Yard, then I would have reason indeed to believe you are a woman of your word.”

  She looked disconcerted for a minute. Then she laughed. “The Yard!” She bowed away from him. “It sounds so funny when you say it—”

  “You will be there?”

  “The Yaaawd! You are funny, lightskin!” Giggling, she darted around the corner and was gone, leaving the tassels on the hall table swinging.

  Crispin stared after her. She didn’t return. At last he gathered himself and went back downstairs. Yamaxi, Jiharzii, and Beiin greeted him with jokes and enthusiasm, as if he’d been gone only for a moment. It was harder than ever not to tell them exactly what he thought of them. But he was resolved neither to lose his temper, nor to give way to their bonhomie, which, as soon as he made his refusal explicit, became insistence, and then cajoling. It wasn’t as easy as the girl Yleini Scaame had made it sound—but in the end, he had his way. Beiin and Jiharzii seemed mystified, a little hurt; the lizard governor Yamaxi, the impossible smuggler, finished by condescending to Crispin as if to a willful child. He implied that Crispin was hurting only himself with his rigid adherence to principles the governor termed “military propaganda... You must discard such fantasies, my boy, if you are to make a life for yourself in the real world.”

  Not bloody likely! Crispin thought.

  He left the house in the middle of the night, alone, feeling bruised. His determination was battered to a nub, and he was more than three-quarters drunk.

  And the girl was there. Not in the Yard, but waiting for him in the street, wearing a bulky coat over her maid’s outfit. She came out of the shadows and attached herself to him as if her rightful place were at his side. When he lowered his face to whisper that he had to find somewhere to sleep, he had nowhere to go, she whispered in Lamaroon: “I’ll find you a place, lightskin.”

  His brain stumbled over the strange syllables, then embraced them and interpreted them. As a natural follow-up, he embraced her. “I want to interpret you,” he muttered, kissing her clumsily, aware he was acting like a boor, astonished and a little suspicious that she didn’t seem to care. He couldn’t believe she’d waited for him. He had to make it worth it to her. The sky was blue-dark over the bay.

  “You aren’t like my countrymen,” she whispered. “Your hair.” She put her hand to his matted curls. “Your face.” Her finger traced down his jaw. “You didn’t want to go to sea for my master. Any of my cousins would have jumped at the chance.”

  “I’m picky about who I work for.” Instantly he knew he’d offended her.

  “You did what you thought was right,” she whispered intensely. “I trust you. And I’m glad you’re not going to sea.”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say. He was rather stunned. But she didn’t seem to want a reply. She took him to her room in the lodging house in the Yard, and he didn’t leave until long afterward, until his near brush with the smuggling industry had practically faded from his mind.

  2 Jevanary 1897 A.D. Lamaroon: Redeuiina: the Yard

  In between expeditions with the Parrot Girl, Beiin also lodged in the Yard, in the fisherfolk’s slums by the beach. But instead of returning to his rooms or going to an eatery (as Crispin had hoped, angling at least to get a free dinner out of this encounter) he suggested they take a walk on the shore. Crispin wondered what the trickster had to say that required the ultimate privacy of outdoors. But he would have agreed to anything just to get it over with. As they followed the twisty, tiny streets down to the sea, Beiin’s face took on an uncharacteristic cast of gloom. He looked ill fed, or possibly just miserable. And everyone they encountered seemed to recognize him. Men and women ducked their heads in respect. One burly fisherman held his chin high as he passed, staring with what looked like a mixture of fear and contempt. Beiin glanced away as if deferring to him, but Crispin saw a sad little smirk on the genius player’s face, and a second later a daemon exploded into the air, whirring like a monstrous dragonfly. “Yaaah!” it shouted in its hoarse voice. “Delicious shad steaks with benibean sauce only twenty sigils! Why are you leaving me, darling? I shall pine to a raveling!”
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br />   The fisherman let out a strangled yell and fled, light on his feet as even the biggest Lamaroons could be when they wanted.

  The daemon vanished in mid-sentence.

  Crispin laughed in spite of himself. “Still up to your old tricks!”

  Beiin pulled a face. “Fear is universal. Sometimes I despise my countrymen almost as much as I despise the colonials.”

  A cold wind skirled between the houses. They were nearing the sea. Crispin decided not to alienate the genius player with open impatience. After all, Beiin was a Lamaroon man like any other, and he might have some insight into the peculiarities of his countrywomen.

  “Yet the colonials hold the key to the future. Such are life’s ironies.”

  This grand and seemingly irrelevant statement made Crispin do a double take. He squinted at the genius player. “If you’re going to talk about the demise of trickery again, for one thing my opinion is that it would be all for the good; and for another, you’re wrong. Every single day I see some man with a daemon or two trailing after him. Tiddlers, mostly; but still. And besides, I’m tired of hearing about it.”

  “They know I am the most skilled genius player to come from the mountains for fifty years,” Beiin said pensively. “That is why they are afraid of me. A much more complex and informed fear than that of the Kirekunis! Yet it is mingled with a certain contempt because they know in their hearts that if not the last, I am the second or third to the last. And I am a Myrhhean. Lamaroon, contaminated as it is, has long stopped producing great genius players.”

  Crispin snorted. “I said it two months ago, and I’ll say it again. Genius playing is one thing; handling is another. If Yamaxi thinks his bloody Western gadgets are going to take the place of transformation engines, he’s got another think coming.” On the night when he refused Yamaxi’s offer of employment, he hadn’t expressed his contempt for the whole enterprise; here was a belated chance to say exactly what he thought. He waved his hands, feeling his original outrage bubbling back up. “It was a ridiculous idea in the first place, and it still is. The things are expensive, messy, and any fool can learn to drive them. If they ever got cheap enough for the masses—which is another impossibility—you’d be setting yourself up for clogged cities, stinking air, and gridlock every time there’s an accident. Even I have to admit that daemonology is a nicely balanced thing, I mean it’s so difficult to master that it’s never been populized. I don’t care if motorcars are all the rage in the lands across the seas. They’re a bad idea. One has to think of—of social equilibrium. A daemon handler is a professional, but a man driving a motorcar is a child playing with a toy. A dangerous toy. You can’t have too many of those zipping around.”

  Beiin shook his head emphatically. “My friend, you have misremembered. If your reluctance to bring diesel engines to the masses is all that’s stopping you from joining our expedition, you may dismiss your doubts. It is not Devi, but myself, who believes that motorcars will eventually replace all the current forms of transportation: not only daemon vehicles, but beast-drawn conveyances, and rickeys.”

  “And shank’s mare, I suppose,” Crispin said disbelievingly.

  “Perhaps. I do not pretend to be a prophet, only an objective observer. I am able to see the future clearly because I have no stake in it. Devi perceives the fashion for motorcars only in terms of his own investment. He is not marketing his engines to the masses, but rather as luxury items for the rich and fashionable, in cities far from the heart of the world, to members of the elite who, on hearing of the disaster that has befallen the real heart of the world, hope to make their own city into the next Okimako.”

  “And Yamaxi”—Crispin could not refer to the unscrupulous little smuggling lord by his first name—“will pander to their misguided hopes, thus lining his own pockets.”

  “And yours, should you choose to join in our expedition. The offer stands; you are aware of that.”

  Crispin chose to ignore the challenge. He was intent on calling Beiin’s bluff. He welcomed the distraction from his own troubles. They emerged from the last of the fish sheds and walked between gigantic stone cutting blocks, racks of drying nets, and tarp-covered fishing boats dry-docked in wooden frames, down onto the pebbled beach. “And your pockets! So what of your objectivity when smuggling has made you rich, M’sieu Objective Observer?”

  “Rich! Hah! I would make better money as a poacher, were I willing. Professional handling is more honorable than poaching, but it is only the best I can do—my meager share of the profits are more than offset by my knowledge that I am taking part in the downfall of genius playing.” Beiin sounded so intense that Crispin was inclined to believe him. Even in the wind he could feel the prickle of daemons on his skin. Beiin’s daemons abutted their master’s consciousness on so many levels that they functioned as a rude barometer of his emotions. “It is dirty money. Money drawn like blood from the corpse of genius.”

  “Well, it’s better than scaring people into giving you beer for free, isn’t it?” Crispin said, wrapping his coat tightly about him. The wind cut like steel. “A steady income is nothing to sneeze at.” They emerged from between the last rank of fishing boats. Beyond the deserted strand, the sea spread grayly to the horizon. Whitecaps lashed the ends of the piers that sheltered the bay and lapped shoreward, reduced to malicious wavelets. “Whose idea was it to come down here anyway?”

  “I can see you’re living as a native. But you’re no longer putting on your splinteron song-and-dance show. I would have heard.”

  “I have a job,” Crispin interrupted defensively, “at the docks. Jiharzii got it for me, as a matter of fact. He was very gentlemanly about the whole thing. He used his good offices with the harbormaster of the East Pier. I owe him one, but, with all respect, I don’t owe you anything.”

  “I am not speaking of myself. I am speaking of you. You cannot possibly be content, Kateralbin. Once rootless, always rootless! Come with us!”

  Feeling threatened, Crispin evaded the challenge. “I thought you were off the island, actually. The Parrot Girl isn’t tied up at the East Pier, where she was.”

  “No. Jiharzii took her to pick up merchandise from Myrhhe, Esseine, and the smaller islands. I felt myself solvent enough this time that I could afford not to accompany him. He hired an itinerant genius player, I believe. He will return in a month or two—or three—depending on the storms. Devi postponed the next continental expedition because he hesitates to set sail for the east without a Ferupian on board. But he is growing impatient. He knows that while his merchandise sits in the warehouse, other businessmen are reaping fat profits from the wealthy folk of Cype, of southern Ferupe, Izte Kchebuk’ara, and Eo Ioria. He will probably decide to dispatch Jiharzii with a consultant or without one, though it goes against his professional instincts. I anticipate setting sail as soon as the skipper returns.”

  Crispin kicked at the picked-over storm debris, bodies of seabirds and driftwood from wrecks, that littered the high-tide line. “Why doesn’t he just look elsewhere for a consultant? I’m not the only Ferupian in Redeuiina. In fact, I know a fellow at the docks. I could put it to him.”

  He glanced at Beiin and saw real frustration on the man’s face.

  “For the last two months I have been endeavoring to find a suitable person! But the Ferupians who have been here since before the occupation are all middle-aged now, and have come to terms with their ignominy. The very suggestion of involvement with the colonial government terrifies them. And the younger ones are riffraff. That man you know—is his name Chisholm?”

  “Chisholm—Eddie! Yes!”

  “He is a scoundrel worse than the rest. He was convicted of murder on three counts in Naftha.”

  “Well, well,” Crispin said. Quiet, vague Eddie—a murderer? Of course, most murderers weren’t slavering psychopaths—at least, if I have drool coming out of my mouth and if I mutter to myself on the job, no one’s told me yet—but all the same, you’d think to sense somehow...

  But he knew
very little about the men with whom he worked. There was constant banter, and they sometimes went for drinks after their shifts ended, but Crispin had no idea where most of them lived or whether they were married, whether their fathers before them had been dockhands or whether it was the only job they’d been able to get in time to escape the recent recruitment sweeps, pursuant to the renewal this winter of the Kirekuni war effort, that had scooped up 90 percent of Redeuiina’s unemployed young men and turned them out in uniform, raw, ready, and terrified. Rumors had come of troop movements in the Southern Raw, even breakthroughs into Ferupe, and as the war machine rumbled back into gear it required more and more fuel. Crispin was exempt—for now—because he was a skilled municipal worker. But hardly any of his mates were daemon handlers, qualified to drive trucks and forklifts—they were chronically unskilled laborers. Crispin had to be always on his guard in order not to think of them as stupid. They lived in fear of the black ships’ return and took their lunch breaks at the end of the pier so as to keep an eye on the horizon.

  “Look, if you’re going to be high-minded about it, I’m worse than Chisholm,” he said to Beiin. “I killed Significant knows how many men in the QAF. Why aren’t I a scoundrel?”

  “I have vouched for you. I am still prepared to vouch for you.”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  “We sailed together for twenty days. That is time enough to tell if a man is balanced in his mind, I think.”

  “But you must have vouched for me back in Sjintang, or else why would Jiharzii have offered me passage to Redeuiina? You were hoping to get in good with Yamaxi by bringing him a lamb for the slaughter.”

  Beiin’s face shimmered in a haze that clung to his head and shoulders, and wasn’t dispelled by the wind, because it existed in a dimension separate from salt and spume. “I vouched for you because you are a genius player, of course. Regardless of a man’s character, if he has an affinity for genius, I know that he is trustworthy. I trusted you from the moment I met you in the old city of Okimako.”