Devices and Desires

by K. J. Parker

  “So long as it worked,” she replied. She took a deep breath. “So,” she went on, “roughly how much are we talking about?”

  She couldn’t hear it, of course, the soft click of the component dropping into place. Ziani kept the smile off his face, and answered her question. As he’d expected, she looked rather unwell for a moment; then she said, “All right.” After that, they talked about timescales and materials and money for a while; then she went away. She was looking tired, Ziani reckoned, as though she was carrying a heavy weight.

  He went back to the tower after she’d gone. There was something about it that appealed to him; the view, perhaps, or the confined nature of the space, maybe just the fact that it was a comfortable temperature in the fierce midday heat. In an hour or so, when it was cool enough for work, the builders would be arriving to start work on the footings for the foundry house. Something tangible, even if it was only a hole in the flagstones, a pile of sand, a stack of bricks: something he could see with his eyes rather than just his mind, to confirm that the design was starting to take shape.

  Starting; there was still a long way to go. The factory, the Duke’s involvement, making scorpions, all the individual components that were also intricate mechanisms in themselves; if only, he couldn’t help thinking, all this inventiveness and ingenuity could be spent on something truly worthwhile, such as a modified dividing head for the vertical mills at the ordnance factory in Mezentia; if only his talent could be used for something other than abomination.

  He’d heard a story once; about the old days, the very early days of the Guilds, before the Specifications were drawn up and the world was made fixed. Once, according to the story, there lived in the City a great engineer, who worked in the first of the new-style factories as a toolmaker. One day there was a terrible accident with one of the machines, and he lost both his hands. It happened that he was much afflicted by an itch in the middle of his back, something he’d lived with for years. Without hands, he couldn’t scratch; so he summoned his two ablest assistants and with their help designed and built a machine, operated by the feet, which would scratch his back for him. It was frighteningly complicated, and in the process of getting it to work he thought up and perfected a number of mechanical innovations (the universal joint, according to some versions of the story; or the ratchet and escapement). When it was finished, all the cleverest designers in the Guild came to look at it. They were filled with admiration, and praised him for his skill and cunning. “Yes,” he replied sadly, “that’s all very well; but I’d much rather use my hand, like I did before.”

  All that invention and application, to make a machine to do a task a small child could do without thinking; there was undoubtedly a lesson there (all stories from the old days had morals, it was practically a legal requirement) but he’d never been sure till quite recently what it was. Now of course he knew, but that wasn’t really much comfort to him.

  When the men eventually showed up — the Eremian nation had many virtues, of which punctuality wasn’t one — he went down to show them what to do and where to do it, then escaped back to his tower, the shade and the coolness of the massive stone blocks it was built from. He should have been down below — he had work to do, a machine to build, he ought by rights to be alive again, not a ghost haunting himself — but there were issues to be resolved before he could apply an uncluttered mind to the serious business of cutting and bending steel. He summoned a general parliament of his thoughts, and put the motion to be debated.

  It could be argued (he opened, for the prosecution) that he’d come a long way — away from the ordnance factory, the City, his home. Now he was in a place that was in many respects unsatisfactory, but which he could survive in, more or less. It might be hard to live here, but he could work, which was what really mattered. So long as he could work, he could exist. In a tenuous sort of a way (but the only one that mattered) he could be happy. A proverb says that the beating of the heart and the action of the lungs are a useful prevarication, keeping all options open. He’d lost everything he’d ever had, but he was still on his feet, able to move, able to scribe a line and hold a file. The world hadn’t ended, the day they came for him — Compliance, with their writ and their investigating officer and the armed men from the Guildhall. Now he was here, and there wasn’t any real need (was there?) to build and set in motion the enormous machine that so far existed only in his mind. He was here; he could stay here, settle down, start a business. A lot of people did that, lesser men than himself. So could he.

  But (replied the defense) he could only do this if he was still, at heart, the man he’d been the day before they came for him. If leaving there and coming here had changed him, damaged him (that was what he was getting at, surely), then the absolute priority must be to put the damage right; and only the machine could do that.

  Query (the prosecution rejoined) the motivation behind the machine. Consider the man in the story; did he build his machine just to scratch his back, or because he was an engineer, because he could? Consider himself; was the purpose of the machine as simple, small and pure as he wanted this court to believe, or was it something darker and vaguer? An inevitable result of engaging the machine would be the end of the world; he’d admitted and regretted it as an unavoidable piece of collateral damage, but what if it was really his principal motive? What if he was building the machine out of a desire to punish them, or (punishment sublimated) to destroy an evil? What if the real reason for the machine was just revenge?

  What nonsense (the defense replied). He could only desire revenge against the Republic if he hated it, and he didn’t; nor did he want to change it, except in one very small way. He had no quarrel with the Guilds, or Specification, or anything big and important; the constitution, operating procedures and internal structures were as near perfect as they could be, given that the Republic was built from fallible human flesh rather than reliable materials like stone and steel. One small adjustment was all he was after; a little thing, a trifle, something a fourth-level clerk in Central Office could grant with a pen-stroke. It was only because he was out here, outside, unable to follow the ordained procedure, that he had need to resort to the machine. Since his exclusion wasn’t his fault, the damage the machine would do wouldn’t be his fault either. It was a shame that it had to be done this way, but that one little adjustment wasn’t negotiable. He had to have it; and if it meant the end of the world, that wasn’t his problem.

  I’ve changed, he recognized. Something has happened to me. I never used to be like this. On the other hand, I was never in this situation before. Maybe I’ve simply grown to fit, rather than changed.

  Nevertheless; the machine, the overthrow of nations, the deaths of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, just so I can scratch my itching back; I have to ask myself whether it’s justified.

  He thought about it, and the little thing he wanted to achieve; and he realized that the debate was irrelevant. He had no choice, as far as the little thing was concerned. He could no more turn his back on it than a stone dropped from a tower could refrain from falling. Most men, desiring this thing, wouldn’t build the machine, but only because they wouldn’t know how to. He knew; so he had to build it. He couldn’t pretend it was beyond him, because he knew it wasn’t. The little thing — the most powerful, destructive force in the world, the cause of all true suffering, the one thing everybody wants most of all — was pulling on him like the force that pulls the falling stone, and there was nothing he could do to resist it.

  Debate adjourned.

  He stood up; his back was slightly stiff, from leaning up against the wall as he squatted on the tower floor. He narrowed the focus of his mind, crowding out the bigger picture until all he could see was the frame, cycle parts and mechanism of a scorpion. First, he said to himself, I’ll need thirty-two feet of half-inch square section steel bar…

  Valens Valentinianus to Veatriz Sirupati, greetings.

  I have read your letter.

  I know what y
ou want; you want me to tell you how sympathetic I feel, how I know how difficult it must be for you, how brave you’re being, how awful it is, you poor thing. I’d really like to be able to oblige, but that’s not how my mind works, unfortunately. I read your letter, and at once I start thinking about ways and means; things you could do, things I could do, things to be taken account of in deciding what’s the best thing to be done. Only a few lines in, and already I have a mind full of things.

  Which is the difference between you and me. You live in a world of people, I live in a world of things. To you, what matters is thoughts, feelings, love and hurt and pain and distress, with joy squeezing in wherever it can, in little cracks, like light; in small observations, which you are kind enough to share with me. I, on the other hand, was brought up by my vicious bastard of a father to play chess with my life; a piece, a thing, manipulated here and there to bring about a desired result; an action taken, a move made, and I get what I want — the wolf driven into the net, the boar enfiladed by archers in covert, the enemy driven off with heavy losses, the famine averted, the nation saved. When I was a boy — when all men were boys, they lived from one toy to the next, their lives were charted out by a relay of things longed for (a new bow, a new horse, a new doublet, a new girl, an education, enlightenment, a crown), laid out alongside the desert road like way-stations to get you home at last to wherever it is you’re supposed to be going.

  I’ve always lived for things; some of them I can touch, some of them are abstracts (glory, honor, justice, prosperity, peace); all of them are beads on a wire with which to tally the score. I have, of course, never married; and it’s a very long time now since I was last in love. Accordingly, I’ve never brutalized myself by turning love into another thing-to-be-acquired (I’ve brutalized myself in lots of other ways, mind you, but not that one); so there’s a sort of virginal innocence about me when I read your letter, and instantly start translating your feelings into my list-of-things-to-be-done, the way bankers convert one currency into another.

  Put it another way. Having read your letter, I’m bursting like a cracked dam with suggestions about how to make things better. But, because I am more than the sum of my upbringing and environment, I am managing, just about, not to. Congratulate me.

  You poor thing. It sounds absolutely awful. I feel for you.

  The trouble is, when I write that, I mean it; buggered if I know how to say it so it sounds sincere. When I was a boy I learned hunting, fencing and how to rule a small country. Self-expression was optional, and I took self-pity instead. It was more boring, but I liked the teacher better.

  Poor Orsea. I wish he and I weren’t enemies; in fact, I have an idea that we’d have got on well together, if we’d met many years ago, and all the things had been different. He and I are very different; opposites, in most respects. I think I would have liked him. I believe he can see beyond things to people; it’s a blessing to him, and a curse. If he plays chess and sacrifices a knight to gain a winning advantage, I expect he can hear the knight scream as it dies. There are many wonderful uses in this world for a man like him; it’s a pity he was forced into the wrong one.

  We took out the new lymers today; we found in the long cover, ran the boar out onto the downs, finally killed in a little spinney, where he turned at bay. I ran in as soon as he stopped running and turned his head; I was so concerned about the dogs not getting hurt (because I’ve only just got them; they’re my newest things, you see) that I went at the boar front-on, just me; staring into his eyes, with nothing between us except eight feet of ash pole with a spike on the end. As he charged, he hated me; because he hated me, he charged; because he charged, he lost. I’m not strong enough to drive a spearblade through all that hide, muscle and bone, but he is. His hate was his undoing, so it served him right. The hunter never hates his quarry; it’s a thing which he wants to get, to reduce into possession, so how could he hate it? The boar only hated me because he recognized he’d been manipulated into an impossible situation, where he couldn’t win or survive. I can understand that. I made him hate me; but hate is unforgivable, so it served him right. It was my fault that he was brought to bay, but he was responsible for his own undoing. I think. It’s hard to be sure. I think it’s the gray areas that I find most satisfying.

  (Molyttus, too, used the hunt as an allegory for human passions and feelings. Strictly speaking, he was more a neo-Mannerist than a Romantic, I feel, but that’s a largely subjective judgment.)

  Poor Orsea. I feel for him, too. If there’s anything you’d like me to do, just say.

  That made the tenth time he’d read it, and it still said the same.

  Miel folded the letter up again and put it back in the chest; he turned the key, took it out, put it away. There, now; nobody but he knew where it was, or even that it existed (but he could feel it, through an inch of oak, as though it was watching him and grinning).

  A sensible man would burn it, he told himself. Get rid of it, pretend he’d never seen it, wipe it out of his life and hope it’d go away forever. That was what a sensible man would do.

  He went down the stairs and walked briskly to the long solar, where Orsea would be waiting for him. His clothes felt clammy against his skin, and his hands itched where he’d touched the parchment.

  “Miel.” Orsea was sitting in a big chair with broad, flat arms; he had his feet up on a table, and he was reading a book.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  “You aren’t.” Orsea put the book face down on his knee. “Against an unarmored opponent, the common pitchfork is a more effective weapon than a conventional spear; discuss.”

  Miel raised both eyebrows. “Good heavens,” he said, “let me think. Well, you’ve got the advantage of the bit in the middle, I suppose, where the two arms of the fork join; you can use it for blocking against a sword or an axe, or binding and jamming a spear or a halberd. Or you could use it to trap the other man by the neck without injuring him.” He paused; Orsea was still looking at him. “You can’t overpenetrate, because the fork stops you going too far in, so you can disengage quicker. How’m I doing?”

  Orsea nodded. “This man here,” he said, waggling the book, “reckons the pitchfork is the ideal weapon for hastily levied troops in time of emergency. Actually, he’s full of bright ideas; for instance, there’s the triple-armed man.”

  “A man with three arms?”

  “No.” Orsea shook his head. “It’s like this. You’ve got your bow and arrow, right? Strapped to your left wrist — which is extended holding the bow — you’ve got your pike. Finally, you’ve got your sword at your side, if all else fails. Or there’s a really good one here; you’ve got your heavy siege catapults drawn up behind your infantry line, and instead of rocks you load them with poisonous snakes. As soon as the enemy charge, you let go, and down come the snakes like a heavy shower.”

  Miel frowned. “Who is this clown?”

  Orsea lifted the book so Miel could see the spine. “His name,” Orsea said, “isn’t actually recorded; it just says, A Treatise on the National Defense, by a Patriot.” He held the book out at arm’s length and let it fall to the floor. “The snake idea is particularly silly,” he said. “I can see it now; you spend a year poking round under rocks to find all these snakes, you pack them up in jars or wicker baskets or whatever you keep snakes in; you’ve got special snake-wardens, hired at fabulous expense, and a separate wagon train to carry them, plus all their food and fresh water and God knows what else; somehow or other you get them to the battle, along with two dozen huge great catapults, which you’ve somehow contrived to lug through the mountain passes without smashing them to splinters; you wind back the catapults and you’re all ready, the enemy’s about to charge, so you give the order, break out the snakes; so they open up the jars, and find all the snakes have died in the night, just to spite you.” He sighed. “I won’t tell you what he said about the military uses of honey. It’s one of those things that gets inside your head and lies dormant for a while, and the
n you go mad.”

  Miel shrugged. “Why are you wasting your time with this stuff?” he said.

  “Desperation, I think,” Orsea replied. “I asked the librarian to look out anything he could find that looked like a military manual or textbook. So far, that was the pick of the bunch.”

  Miel frowned. “The spy business,” he said. “You’re worried they’re planning to invade.”

  “Yes,” Orsea said. “It’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Say what you like about the Republic, they don’t waste money. If they’re spying on us, it must mean they’re planning an attack. And when it comes, we don’t stand a chance.”

  Miel shifted slightly. “There are other explanations,” he said. “We’ve been through all this.”

  Orsea slid his face between his hands. “There ought to be something we could do,” he said. “I know this sounds really stupid, but I’ve got this horrible picture in my mind; one of those fancy illuminated histories, where you get charts of kings and queens; and there’s one that says, ‘The Dukes of Eremia,’ and there’s all the names, with dates and who they married, and right at the bottom, there’s me: Orsea Orseolus, and nothing to follow. I hate the thought that it’s all going to end with me, and all because —”

  “Pull yourself together, for God’s sake,” Miel said. He hadn’t meant to say it so loud. Orsea looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Orsea said wearily. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we can still get out of this in one piece. But if we don’t, whose fault will it be? I can’t seem to get past that, somehow.”

  Miel took a deep breath, and let it go slowly. “Think about it, will you?” he said. “Like you said yourself, the Mezentines don’t waste money. We aren’t a threat to them, not now; it’d take a fortune in money and God knows how many lives to take the city. They aren’t going to do it. What would it achieve for them, apart from wiping out thousands of customers for all that useless junk they churn out?”