by Frank Tuttle
“Hush.” Meralda’s pen scratched on the paper.
“It’s a thought. A brilliant one, really.”
But Meralda ignored him and tore away the drawing she’d begun. She stretched out a fresh sheet of blank paper, and began to fill it with diagrams and spellwork mathematics.
Mug sighed and watched in silence.
By midnight, Meralda had filled five pages with drawings and equations. Mug was dozing. Meralda put down her pencil and resolved to go home, and then quickly to bed.
She rose, stretching and yawning, and at that moment Phillitrep’s Thinking Engine rang a small silver bell, and for the first time in six centuries the gentle clacking and whirring of its levers and gears fell silent.
“Mug!” shouted Meralda, as she snatched up his birdcage. “Wake up!”
Mug’s leaves stirred, and a dozen of his eyes opened to slits. “What is it, Mistress?” he asked, his words slurred. “It’s not morning.”
Meralda hurried to the great copper bulk of the Thinking Engine and put Mug’s cage down at her feet.
“After all this time,” Meralda said. “Let’s see what you have to say.”
Phillitrep’s notes concerning his masterpiece were hardly exhaustive, but the old wizard had written down the basics, and Meralda had studied them intently even before she was ever allowed into the Laboratory as a first-year student. She slid the Questioner’s Console cover to the right, revealing what Phillitrep had dubbed the heart of his machine.
Beneath the cover was a wide silver tray, held aloft by four intricate silver arms. The tray was full of metal cubes, and on each face of each cube a letter, number, or symbol was engraved in ornate Old Kingdom script.
The tray began to shake as the arms rose and fell with precise motions too fast for Meralda’s eyes to follow. “Mug, you will want to see this,” Meralda said.
Mug’s coils buzzed, and his cage rose up by Meralda’s shoulder. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
When the tray stopped shaking, the metal cubes were arranged in neat rows, and the letters on their faces spelled out words.
SOURCE OF THAUMIC REVERBERATION LOCATED, the cubes read. ORIGIN IS REALM YEAR 1971. MARGIN OF ERROR IS PLUS OR MINUS FOUR YEARS. MAGNITUDE INDICATES FINAL COSMIC EVENT.
ASK ANOTHER QUESTION? PRESS Y OR N.
The remainder of Mug’s eyes snapped wide open. “I do not like the sound of that,” he said. “Final cosmic event? That cannot be good.”
Meralda studied the rows of buttons above the spelling tray. “I’m sure it’s not as dire as it sounds,” she said. Excitement drove her weariness away. “Mug, this is Phillitrep’s Engine! Mages have spent hundreds of years pondering the significance of Phillitrep’s final question–and now we will be the first to find out precisely what that was.”
She found and pressed the Y button. A bell sounded, and then Meralda reached down and started rearranging the lettered cubes until her own question was spelled out.
REPEAT YOUR LAST ENQUIRY, read the blocks.
“What now?” asked Mug.
“We’re about to find out what Phillitrep’s last question was,” Meralda said. She pressed the button marked THINK.
The Machine stirred, gears and levers turning and moving. After a moment, the tray began to shake, and soon the silver bell rang and a message appeared.
DETERMINE TIME OF CATASTROPHIC THAUMIC EVENT MEASURED BY TOKORS SUBTLE SCALES, the blocks read. STATE MAGNITUDE OF ORIGINAL EVENT. ASK ANOTHER QUESTION? PRESS Y OR N.
“He said catastrophic,” Mug said. “Do you see that? Cosmic and catastrophic. What’s a Tokor’s Subtle Scale?”
“It was alleged to have measured the age of the universe,” Meralda replied. She frowned. “It was also rumored to have predicted the universe’s end, but that was simply a rumor. It was destroyed in the Palace fire of 1406.”
Mug moved his cage away from the Engine. “Well, maybe it’s all nonsense anyway,” he said. “Just like Sookcat’s Weather Vane. Hasn’t gotten anything right in two hundred years.”
“Or Fallet’s Rapid Calculator,” Meralda added.
“Right, the one that just makes up numbers if the answer is over a thousand?” Mug snorted. “Yes, I’m sure this is just more of the same.”
Meralda studied the letter blocks. “Probably,” she said. “But still.” Her hands moved, spelling out DEFINE THE TERM FINAL COSMIC EVENT.
She pressed the THINK button. The Engine stirred briefly to life, and the spelling tray shook.
AN EVENT SO ENERGETIC NO MATTER SURVIVES EXCEPT AS AN EXPANDING VOLUME OF HOT GAS, spelled the blocks. FURTHER INFORMATION
CONCERNING THE FINAL EVENT UNAVAILABLE. ASK ANOTHER QUESTION? PRESS Y OR N.
“Mistress,” Mug said, his eyes darting wildly about. “Turn it off. Don’t ask anything else. It’s talking about the end of the world, and that’s a conversation I’d rather not conduct.”
“Hush, Mug,” Meralda said, though shivers raced up and down her spine.
WHAT TRIGGERS THIS EVENT? Meralda asked, spelling out each word with the blocks.
YOU DO, replied the Engine. YOU OR THE OTHER. DETERMINATION NOT POSSIBLE. END EVENT ANNIHILATES ALL INFORMATION. Before Meralda could reach for the blocks, the tray shook again. WEALTHY BLUE EGGSHELLS, spelled the Engine. MY GOAT SEWS A BASKET OF TEA. ASK ANOTHER BUTTER? REPLY 5 OR QKLT.
Mug let out a bark of laughter. “Well. That was amusing,” he said, flying his cage back to Meralda’s desk. “It had me scared there for a moment.”
Meralda found the red button labeled RESTART ON ERROR. She pressed it, and the Engine began to clack and whir.
RESTARTING, it spelled out. SERVICE RESTORED IN SIX HOURS. BATCAKES, FLURRY, SSSRRRTTT.
“Let’s go home,” Meralda said. She forced a smile. Mug rose to her side, and as they closed the Laboratory, they could both hear the Engine, clacking away as it had for centuries.
“Pity about the poor old thing,” Mug said. “But it just goes to show the ultimate futility of good hard work.”
Meralda bit back a retort. It’s too late, she thought, and I’m too tired–but something about the Engine’s first message still chilled her to the bone.
Final cosmic event. The end of everything. YOU DO.
“Hurry, Mug,” she said, and she didn’t chase the shivers away until she was wrapped in two blankets in her very own bed.
* * *
Just before dawn, two ragged crows flapped down from the shadows, lighting on the gleaming copper chassis of Phillitrep’s Thinking Engine.
One of the crows pecked idly at a slow-turning gear. The other cocked its head at the letter tray, glaring at the Engine first with one black eye, and then the other.
It is as we feared, one crow said.
Infernal device, added the other. Master would have rent it asunder long ago.
Master is gone.
The crows were silent for a time.
It must be done, one said at last, flapping its wings in a corvine display of reluctance.
Aye, replied the other. It must. It bent and began to arrange the letter-cubes, balancing on one foot while it worked.
What counsel would the Master speak, I wonder, asked one, as the Engine clattered and whirred. Would he say we save the world, or doom it?
The second crow bobbed its head in a brief crow shrug, and then both black birds vanished into the dark recesses of the Laboratory’s storage shelves. Soon, scrapes and knocks emerged from the dark, while Phillitrep’s Engine worked furiously to complete its latest instructions.
The sun rose and the Palace awoke. The crows hurriedly completed weaving their contrivance, a thing of silver wires and copper coils. When it was done, one of the crows wrapped a single strand of Meralda’s hair into the frame, while the other scratched out her name in the dust on the floor.
A small bell chimed once from deep inside Phillitrep’s Engine. A crow spoke in a long, harsh croak, and the glittering thing before him faded and vanished.
Let us see,
said the crow. Both took to the air and lit atop the Engine. The crows regarded the letter tiles with unblinking eyes.
I hoped for better, said one.
Tis all we can do, replied the other.
After a time one of them troubled the spelling tray with his claw until the message was well and truly gone.
~~~
From the private journal of Mugglesworth Ovis, Novembre 9, RY 1969
I tell you, that blasted airship is cursed.
First there was the fire. Then poor Meralda had to cast and latch seven hundred spark arrestor spells. Then a storm blew in and caught the Intrepid grounded, and lightning and wind nearly accomplished what the firebug didn’t.
The firebug is still on the loose, by the way. The Captain and the City Watch lost a lot of sleep chasing the fiend, but they might as well have tried to bottle the sky.
Mistress is a mess. She lives in the Laboratory now. She sleeps in her chair, eats in her chair, frets and moons and glares in her chair. When she’s not sitting, she is pacing and muttering.
I wish the Hang had stayed on their side of the Great Sea, or come a hundred years ago, or a hundred years hence. Then we wouldn’t be forced to make this daft journey at all.
But try it we will. Tower brought word last night from the secret Hang speaking machine. The Long Dragon has passed. Shame. He was a nice old fellow, and though only a handful of people in the Realms know this, the Intrepid sets off across the Sea in five days, ready or not, come fire, wind, or further calamity. Meralda’s parents were coming for a visit in three weeks. She’ll miss seeing them, because how long we’ll stay—in the unlikely event we survive the crossing—is very much up to our Hang hosts.
Donchen seems to think they’ll insist on two months at a minimum, because apparently state funerals in Hang are far more involved than simply digging a hole, saying a few kind words, and planting nice flowers.
Unless common sense prevails, we will take to the skies on the morning of the fourteenth and hope to accomplish what no vessel of the Realms has ever managed. We’ll have to cross twenty-five thousand miles of open water, and do it in an airship which thus far has yet to traverse a single pair of city blocks without provoking conflagration and disaster.
I will board with my Mistress, brave to the last.
Please see that the sentence above is read aloud during my eulogy.
Set down this day the 9th of Novembre in the Year of the Realms 1969.
Don’t say I didn’t warn them,
Mugglesworth Ovis
Chapter 5
And just like that, the Intrepid took to the sky.
Meralda realized she was holding her breath and let it out slowly, hoping Mug didn’t notice.
“Well that’s it,” he said, hovering so close to the brass-trimmed salon porthole that the bars of his flying birdcage touched the thick glass. “We’re done for now.”
Meralda pretended not to hear.
The ground fell away. The lights and crowds gathered for the early evening launch in the Park shrank, slowly disappearing as the Intrepid calmly turned her face eastward.
Three bells rang, filling Meralda’s cabin with sound.
“Three bells, three hundred feet,” Mug reported, as if she didn’t know what the bells meant. “Still not too late to steal the flying launch and sneak home.”
Meralda stood perfectly still, trying to discern any hint of movement, but the Intrepid’s gentle ascent was subtle and steady.
Mug turned half of his eyes downward. “Look at those lucky wights waving and jumping.”
Meralda turned away from the porthole. She’d watched Donchen wave sadly before vanishing into the crowd, well before the Intrepid cast off her lines. He had left before he had to watch her go.
Thirty-four days to cross the Great Sea. If all went according to plan.
Two months, perhaps, languishing in a palace somewhere as guests of the Hang. Then another thirty-four days home.
“We’ll be home before you know it, Mistress,” Mug said. He flew his cage to bob at eye level with Meralda. “Unless we crash, that is.”
“We are not going to crash, and I will hear no more such talk.”
“As you wish, Mistress, although I reserve the right to scream as we fall helplessly to our doom. Now then. We’re aloft, and if I recall the schedule correctly that gives you two hours before your first appearance on the bridge for introductions to the officers and crew.”
Mug flew to her side, all his eyes upon her.
“Why don’t I have the Bellringers bring you some coffee?” he asked. “Might as well make the best of it.”
Before Meralda could answer, the speaking tube on her nightstand coughed, buzzed, and issued a sudden harsh bugle-note.
“Attention,” said a voice. “Attention. This is the Captain speaking. Prepare at once for acceleration. I repeat, prepare for emergency acceleration. Stow any loose baggage and seat yourself. You have half a minute. This is not a drill. Captain Fairweather out.”
The speaking tube fell silent.
Mug raised his cage, his miniature flying coils buzzing like a handful of angry hornets.
“That’s not on the official schedule, is it, Mistress?”
“No. It isn’t.”
Meralda rose from her berth, and moved to the plain wooden chair which sat before her tiny desk. She sat down, grasping the arms of the chair and counting off the seconds.
Mug floated at her side, his eyes swinging wildly around the room. “I wonder what’s the matter. Air pirates? Vonats? Dragons?”
“Twenty-seven,” Meralda said just as the Intrepid lurched forward.
Her bags tumbled, sliding across the polished wooden deck. Her chair jerked, but the legs were bolted to the deck and held fast.
Crashes, thumps and shouts echoed from beyond the door. The Intrepid continued to pick up speed, and the airship’s frame began to hum. Meralda recognized the sound immediately. “They’ve engaged the flying coils!”
Meralda stood, leaning into the force pushing her back with implacable, invisible hands. “If they keep this up the coils will soon be at full saturation. What are they doing?”
Mug rose with her, keeping his flying birdcage aloft, expertly matching the Intrepid’s increasing speed.
“Mistress,” he said, “might I ask where you are going, and why you feel it necessary to go there right this minute?”
“They’re about to heat my coils past their endurance,” Meralda replied, fighting to reach her door. “I wrote a great detailed manual, did I not? I specifically stated the need for a ten-hour burn-in, did I not?”
The Intrepid began to shake. The wind rushing past keened and howled. Glass shattered and men shouted. Abruptly, the Intrepid lifted her nose toward the stars and the angry hornet’s humming of her flying coils grew loud and she hurled herself skyward, her decks tilting precariously.
Meralda lost her balance, and fell to her knees. Within seconds she joined her bags huddled in a heap against the bulkhead.
“Mistress! Are you all right?”
Meralda gritted her teeth.
“If we are at full acceleration we are gaining 32 feet of speed per second, every second. Count the seconds, Mug!”
“One. Two. Three…” Mug counted off.
Meralda juggled numbers in her head, trying and failing to rise or walk.
“… thirteen,” Mug intoned.
The roaring of the wind subsided. The deep bass humming of the flying coils did not cease, but it diminished until it was barely audible.
The Intrepid leveled out, and Meralda leaped to her feet.
“Thirteen seconds,” Meralda panted. “That’s a final speed of two hundred and ninety-one miles an hour.”
“Fascinating,” Mug said. “But are we crashing?”
The speaking tube coughed again.
“This is the Captain. We have resumed normal flight. Damage control teams, all decks, report in five. Officers to the bridge. I repeat, officers to the bridge
.”
“That’s you, Chief Engineer Ovis,” Mug said. “I’m coming along.”
Meralda stood. She recognized the determination in Mug’s voice and gave him a nod. If the Captain doesn’t want Mug in his wheelhouse he can order him out himself, she thought. And if he damaged my flying coils with this mad ascent I may leave with Mug.
“Let’s go set this lot straight, shall we, Chief Engineer Ovis?”
“Yes, let’s,” Meralda agreed, as she marched for the door.
* * *
The passageway outside Meralda’s cabin was chaos. Luggage lay scattered. Some of the bags had spilled open, resulting in a veritable flood of unmentionables that were now being trodden underfoot by rushing crewmen and panicked dignitaries. Here and there, uniformed Guardsmen knelt by supine figures, applying bandages or helping them to their feet.
The Bellringer twins, Meralda’s personal guards, spotted Meralda and rushed to her side, their identical brows creased by the same wrinkle of worry.
“Mage!” said Kervis.
“Are you hurt?” asked Tervis.
“Are we crashing?” asked Kervis.
“Hello, no, thank you for asking, and certainly not,” Meralda replied.
The Bellringer brothers fell into place, Kervis on her right, Tervis on her left.
“Help with the injured,” she suggested. “I’m heading for the bridge. I promise not to be taken hostage along the way. Scoot.”
The Bellringers grinned and trotted away.
Mug buzzed beside her, dodging wide-eyed guards and passengers as he flew among them.
“I know you have an estimate of how high we just climbed,” he said. “Care to share?”
“Fifteen thousand feet,” Meralda said. She stepped aside to let a pair of Guards bearing a makeshift stretcher pass. “What was that daft Captain thinking?”
“I’d be a bit hesitant to speak the words daft and Captain so close together, Mistress,” Mug said, casting his red eyes about warily. “This isn’t the Palace.”
Meralda nodded. “You’re right about that. Even King Yvin never managed to shake the Palace so severely people were knocked from their feet.”