Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  The shunting engine clanged into the coach's couplings, and the crew un hitched it from the train. With a crash the gearings beneath both wind rotors were switched to reverse and her coach was drawn off. She was committed to stay now, and her welcome was the heat, the flies, the fine gritty dust on the relentless wind, the stench of rancid lubricating oil, and the chatter of six nervous strangers. Other passengers began to disembark for a brief walk on solid ground before the train pulled out again. The porter opened the shutters of a little kiosk filled with souvenirs, candied fruit, and jars of cistern water. A crowd quickly collected.

  "You can take off your body anchor, Frelle Overliber," the Watermonger said as they began to walk from the platform to the buildings of the rail side "There's a mercy wall to the south, and a Call is unlikely for several days."

  She turned. A great circular wall encircled the rail side with interlocked wings to allow wind trains to pass through. At the southernmost point was a filed shelter. The Call always came from the south here. If it had come at that very moment, they would have all blindly walked south until reaching the mercy wall and been directed to the shelter. She unbuckled her body anchor and the Watermonger proudly carried the ticking mechanism for her.

  The rail side was amazingly cool within. Gleaming limestone walls reflected the worst of the sun's heat away, and convective ventilation ducts were built into every building. They climbed two floors to the observation terrace, where the Provindor had laid out the coffee setting at a table overlooking the shunting yard. As the Railmaster went through the formalities of the coffee ceremony Darien watched the wind train preparing to depart. The shunting engine was returning and a few passengers were being herded back aboard. The little engine crashed into the rear carriage's couplings with an echoing boom, the guard blew his whistle, and the rapidly spinning rotors on the express engine suddenly slowed as the gears were engaged. Slowly the line of green-and-yellow-striped carriages began to back out of the buffers, and the train rumbled back onto the main line, rattling over the points and stopping with a shudder of brakes. The shunting engine was uncoupled, the yard inspector blew his whistle twice, and the train moved off, resuming its journey west. The shunting engine pushed for a few yards, then dropped behind to return to the staging yard. "... Which brings us to your business, Frelle Overliber. What can we do to assist with your visit?"

  Darien had a folder full of cards already prepared. She selected the appropriate card and handed it to him.

  I APOLOGIZE FOR HAVING NO VOICE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TROUBLE. I

  SHALL NEED ONLY SOME SPACE IN YOUR LIBRARY AND ACCESS TO THE ENTIRE

  RAIL SIDE I HAVE A SURVEY TO DO. THE MAYORS OF ROCHESTER AND

  WOO MERA

  REQUIRE THIS RAILSlDE TO BE EXTENDED.

  He handed the card onto the Watermonger, and it was passed among the others as he continued the conversation. "Frelle Deputy Overliber, I am gratified that my requests for extensions to the yards, cisterns, and warehouses have been recognized by His Highness the Mayor and your own monarch. I shall prepare a memo of thanks at once for you to take back to court."

  Darien had not been briefed about his request, so now she had to correct a misunderstanding. She began writing on a blank card with a char black stylus. The monitors waited eagerly, yet she would not let herself be forced into undignified scribble. At last she handed the note across.

  THE EXTENSIONS ARE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR REQUEST, ALTHOUGH

  WHAT YOU PROPOSE IS ENCOMPASSED BY THEM.

  While he puzzled over the words she selected another card.

  THE MAIN SIGNAL TOWER IS TO BE TRIPLED IN HEIGHT. THE STAFF WILL BE

  INCREASED TOO. OTHER FACILITIES WILL BE EXPANDED ACCORDINGLY.

  "But that's wonderful!" exclaimed the Railmaster. Before he could say anything more she handed him yet another prepared card.

  MARALINGA RAIL SIDE WILL BE RECLASSIFIED AS A FIRST-CLASS OUTPOST. IF

  ANY CURRENT MEMBERS OF THE STAFF WISH TO RETAIN THEIR RELATIVE

  RANK

  THEY WILL HAVE TO SIT FOR EXAMINATIONS. The mood changed abruptly as the card made its rounds, almost as if the controllers had allowed themselves to be struck dumb in honor of their mute,

  distinguished guest. Darien based herself in the library for the next four days, as she made a detailed inspection of the main tower against the original plans. Her findings confirmed what the planning consentium in Libris already suspected. The foundations were inadequate to support a new structure, and much of the existing stonework was built to interlock on the existing height-to-weight ratio. It would be quicker and easier to dig new foundations and build a new stone tower. On the other hand a timber extension could be added without straining the foundations. It could also be completed in a tenth of the time that a new stone tower would take.

  The bearers of bad news are never popular with those who suffer the con sequences. Apart from meals and formal coffee Darien was shunned by the sulking controllers, and she spent the evenings going through the library's collection of books found with the bodies in the desert. The enigmatic books were in what she knew as a dialect of the Northmoors, Ghan nomadic. They painted an exotic but severe picture of the distant society. Honor, service, loyalty, and ruthless discipline among warriors held the various nations together in a harsh and arid land. Women and children were cloistered and protected past the point of imprisonment. Much of the romantic poetry was about yearning and longing, of love unfulfilled, of secret notes smuggled past watchful elders. Women could only travel by cart or sedan chair if they ventured beyond the compound of a building. It was fascinating yet repelling for Darien. She was, after all, a powerful woman, holding the careers of a dozen men in her hands as she wrote out her recommendations and reports.

  On the morning of the fourth day she had just dressed and was preparing for the day's work when the Call swept over the rail side There was a sweet and familiar feeling of falling away into surrender, followed by waking to bruises and torn fingernails. It had caught her in a corridor, but she had been attached to a shackle rail by her waist tether. Buildings were dangerous. Without a tether one might walk to the southernmost window and fall several floors during a Call. Darien awoke on the thick carpet of the library, bound hand and foot!

  It was impossible. Nobody could have walked about freely while the Call swept over the rail side The others were awake and calling out now. The Railmaster, the Watermonger, the mechanics, all were shouting that they had been bound during the Call. Then she heard slow, shambling footsteps in the cloisters outside. A thing out of a nightmare stopped at the doorway and peered in at her through mirrors set a hand span apart on its face, its eyes gleaming in the depths of the reflections.

  "So, one woman among twelve men," it said in a deep, muffled voice. It was a language borrowing heavily from the North Mulgarian tongue in accent, but was pure Ghan nomadic in structure.

  "Your people's language makes no sense to me," the thing went on, yet she could have done nothing but stare in reply, even if she had had a voice. A man completely enmeshed in living vines, vines that were trained, grown and woven to cover him like a suit, a man wearing a jacket of olive-green leaves and thick, cumbersome knee-boots which smelled of wet soil and mulch. His arms tapered into mittens of finely woven tendrils.

  The Call beckoned to all living things larger than a cat, so that a man walking about freely during a Call was no less amazing to Darien than levitation. The black Kooree nomads of the northern deserts were known to go into a trance when the Call seized them, collapsing to the ground for two hours. Thus they escaped the Call, but they did not resist it. Darien stared in amazement. The man wore a living robe: did that make him immune to the Call's allure? She had been bound during the Call, what else could explain it? The consequences screamed within her mind: his suit was a weapon that nothing could stand against.

  Very soon other Ghans swarmed into the rail side They were dressed in robes like those of the bodies in the desert, and they reeked of pers
piration and camel. Darien was carried into the cloisters with the rail side staff. None of the Ghans could speak their tongue, and none of the staff could understand the Ghans. This was established after an hour of beatings, kicks, and shouting. They also realized that Darien was mute, but not that she understood everything they said.

  "So this is the source of the Call," declared Kharec, their captain. "It comes from the strips of iron in the desert."

  "Not so, Captain," said the man clothed in vines. There was a sudden hiss of many breaths sharply drawn, and Kharec turned on him.

  "You question my word, vine man he snapped. "I would never question your informed word, Captain. It is just that I know what you do not. I saw a feral goat in the grip of the Call cross those metal rails and continue south. You could not have seen that, being in the Call's grip your self."

  Kharec turned away from the man of vines and mirrored eyes, and the tension dissipated. He had saved face and was satisfied. Kharec was powerful and dangerous yet the other had the confidence of one who knows that he is indispensable.

  "Frelle Overliber, can you understand them?" whispered the Railmaster, who was lying beside Darien. She shook her head as Kharec strode up and kicked him in the face.

  "So you can't speak the Alspring tongue!" he shouted at them. "Well that's sign language for no whispering." Darien was taken away to the Railmaster's quarters, where she was chained to the eyebolt beside the bed. Kharec strode about the room, puzzling over the equipment, books, and maps; then he stood staring at her.

  "A woman with no voice, a woman who cannot answer back. Such a luxury." He said this to another who never left his side, a small, relaxed, but observant man who seemed more of a spy than a bodyguard. Darien had expected to be ravished then and there, but they left without another word.

  The Ghans hastily fortified the rail side posting lookouts and barricading outer windows and doors. There were forty of them, including the vine man Dar ien was forced to cook and wait upon them, and thus she heard most of their discussions. They argued about the nature of the para lines about the source of the dried meat and fruit in the stores, even about the limestone blocks that the rail side was built from. The vine man stayed outside in the sun while the others gorged themselves on the stores and water. They had taken three months to reach the rail side and had come due south across an immense expanse of sand, stunted scrub, and salt pans There had been very little water along the way, and almost no game. Some of the Kooree nomad tribes had attacked the Ghans and had killed at least a dozen.

  After the evening meal on the first day Kharec held a council with his officers. Darien served water from the deepest, coldest cistern.." and coffee. They knew coffee, but it appeared to have the value of gold in their society. She learned that Kharec was looking for new lands to conquer. The Ghan kingdoms had been at peace for eighteen years, and their rulers wished to retain that peace. Thus ambitious nobles could not better themselves by conquest, and because Kharec was the youngest son of a noble family he could expect little from inheritance either. If he could find unaligned cities to attack, however, he could have conquests without violating any truce. Oddly enough, the Ghans were officially on a scientific expedition, and were funded by a woman whom they called the Ab bess. Both the man who shadowed Kharec and the vine man were her personal agents, but Kharec was the commander.

  They could make little sense of the rail side or par aline The wind engines, wagons, and carriages were made to roll along the rails, but there were no camels to pull them!

  "The place is built as solidly as a fort, yet the gates and doors are wide and undefended," Kharec declared, scowling. "If their towns are as badly guarded, we could make quick strikes and carry off enough gold to raise a force of five hundred lancers. Then we could return and conquer these mice and make a new kingdom. It seems too easy. Why haven't others done it already?"

  "But where are the cities?" asked Calderen, the oldest officer. "There are no roads, only that pair of iron bars laid from horizon to horizon."

  "I have found maps. There are marks and lines that cannot be anything else but cities and roads."

  "But we cannot read them, and none of these people here speak Alspring.

  We don't even know which dot on a map is this place."

  "There is a way. Yuragii has made a discovery." Kharec let the words hang. The officers looked from one to the other, then back to Kharec. Before the short, thin officer could explain, Kharec clapped twice for Darien's attention, then pointed to a tray of food and gestured to the observation terrace where the vine man sat basking in the horizontal rays of the sunset.

  She walked out of the hall, changed her tether to the outside shackle rail, then climbed the stone stairs to the terrace. "Ah, someone remembered me," the vine man said as she stood before him with the tray. He did something with the vines and tendrils over his mouth, then lifted a flap to reveal his lips.

  "A good and simple system," he said, taking a goblet of water from the tray. "If a Call comes while I hold the flap open, I will drop it even as I respond to the Call, and so will be protected by this suit again. Hmm, such a serious little face. You do not understand a word that I say, do you?"

  Something in his manner was reassuring, and Darien smiled at him. "A smile for me. How pleasant. Not many people smile at me when I wear my vines. The last to smile for me was a lady in Glenellen, a very important lady. She is the abbess of a great convent, one of our centers of learning. Ah yes, she smiled at me, but then she is very strange herself. She eats grilled mice on toast and washes her hair in oils of nightshade. Such hair, it hangs in black curls and reaches past her waist."

  A woman who could rise to such a position of power in his society would be truly remarkable, Darien thought. He began to eat, taking dates and roasted nuts from the tray and crunching them beneath his mask of woven vines. The sun struck crimson highlights from the mirrors and tubes that led down to his eyes, then winked beneath the horizon. In the gathering shadows his human out line was even less distinct, and he became an animate plant preying on the dates and nuts with deliberate, rustling movements.

  "Has Kharec raped you? I should think not, Makkigi watches him like a hawk. Our patroness is the Abbess of Scalattera Convent in Glenellen, and she paid for this expedition. She said that an expedition with a woman as its patron must not result in any other woman being raped. Makkigi was sent along to make sure that Kharec complies. I am watching him too."

  Darien lit an olive-oil thumb lamp with her striker and held it up for him to eat by. He leaned closer, and his mirrors peered at her face. For an instant she saw two eyes, gleaming at the bottom of the dark tubes by the smoky flame; then he straightened again. There was cursing and rowdy singing echoing down the corridors.

  "Isn't that a funny story? A pity that you cannot understand me, it would reassure you a little. Ah, you are perhaps thirty-three, I can see that: your face is beautiful with experience, rather than innocence. Do you hate me? Yes, you must, but I am not like the rest. I am a scholar, would you have thought it? My teacher is the great Abbess Theresla of Glenellen herself."

  The one-sided conversation continued until he handed the tray back to her and gave a rustling bow. Then, as she picked up her thumb lamp he took her by the wrist and raised her little lamp to one of his mirrors. All at once light glowed from beneath the woven vines that covered his face, reflected by the mirrors just below his eyes. His eyes and the upper part of his face were visible, as if through a veil lit from behind. His grip was gentle; he wanted to reassure her that a human lived beneath the woven vines.

  "I am blinded by the flame," he said as he lowered the lamp and released her. "How ironic. I must be dazzled so that you may see my face."

  The vine man turned out to be right about Kharec. For all of the time that the Ghan lancers were at Maralinga Railside he did no more than slap Darien about and force her to do menial tasks. A Deputy Overliber under the protection of an abbess hundreds of miles away: the irony was not lost on her. O
nly the night before the Call had come she had shuddered at the strictures on women in the distant Ghan society as she read their books.

  The screaming started on the morning after the rail side had been invaded. It was the Provindor's voice at first, then it was joined by that of the Railmaster, and soon all the staff were screaming in agony. As the hours passed the voices grew less and less recognizable. The cries were pleading yet hopeless, the cries of those tortured pointlessly. Darien did not realize that they were being tortured to reveal just who had been translating passages of Ghan books in the library.

  At the end of the second day Kharec called a meeting of the Ghan officers to discuss what they had learned--which was nothing. Two of the Railside staff were already dead and three more would not last another day, yet still nobody would answer them in their own language. Darien served, cowered, and was ignored. The days passed, and although her reward for feigning slow wits and incomprehension was kicks and slaps, she alone was not tortured. When not cooking or serving she was kept in a hostelry room overlooking the observation terrace where the vine man sat sunning himself.

  At mealtimes she always took food to the vine man as he sat in the sun, reading books from his saddlebags and writing notes on reed-pith paper with a char black stylus. He always had a few words for her. On the evening of the third day his patience with Kharec ran out.

  "It is as well that you understand none of this," he said as Darien gave him his tray of dried fruits and water. His voice was so low that it was almost inaudible beneath his mask of woven vines. "Kharec is torturing your people because he knows someone here can speak our language. A copy of one of our holy books was found in the library with a partial translation into your language beside it. Your people are brave, none will admit to it."

  Horror crawled over her with tiny, icy feet. So she had been the cause of all that the controllers were going through. She could stop it at once by merely writing a note and showing it to Kharec, yet she knew what he wanted, too. He wanted maps translated and interpreted so that he could find settlements to attack. Let the torture continue or betray her own people: she struggled between the ghastly alternatives for a moment before the vine man came to her rescue.