Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  "My lady, no!" he shouted. "To mock the strength of men is sinful, the scriptures teach--Haargh!" The Marshal burst the door open with his shoulder in time to see Darien empty the pitcher over the prisoner's head, laughing soundlessly all the while. "Frelle, Frelle, what did he say, what--"

  She held a finger to her lips and gestured that Ilyire was to be washed and fed. The Marshal smiled maliciously and saluted smartly. "I'll get the five strongest engine-scrubbers in the rail side to fill a tub with chilled water," he said to the uncomprehending Ilyire before marching out.

  The Ghan stared at Darien. "You seem to be more than a serving maid he whispered, his voice so soft that Darien scarcely caught the words. With a final kiss to his forehead she left him to his fate.

  Ilyire's clothing and pack roll were held for examination in one of the hostelry rooms while he howled and cursed in his bath on the terrace. There was nothing out of the ordinary within the pack roll except for the roll of reed paper pages wrapped in protective wax cloth It was an account of what he had discovered at the source of the Call, written with a char black stylus. The text paralleled what he had told her in the library, with certain notable omissions. Darien left instructions that the hermit was to be locked in a cell until the morning, then released with all his possessions and as much food and water as he wanted.

  The climb to the gallery of the beam flash tower was all by ladders. The tower's prefabricated extension had no luxuries such as pulley lifts, and the sensitivity of Darien's message was such that she had to key it herself. The sky was cloudless, and it was almost noon. The beam flash heliostat would throw a strong signal east on its first leap toward Rochester.

  What had crossed half a continent as twinkling pinpoints of light was pecked into a strip of paper tape by the Highliber's battery of silver hens. As the message reeled out into view, Zarvora had her back to the mechanism and was speaking to Vellum Drusas.

  "The libraries of the Southeast have been squeezed dry, Highliber," Drusas said as he spread his open, empty hands. "There are more Dragon Librarians in the may orates of the Alliance than there are in Libris," she replied unsympathetically. "I am talking about another hundred Blues and Greens out of more than a thousand."

  "But Highliber, they have duties that must be performed. Beamflash towers to run, classes to teach, books to distribute and collect, even ceremonies to per form. The mayors are already complaining about you taking their best people. I have formal complaints from the mayors of Hopetoun, Warracknabeal, Litchfield, and Tandara. Libris is becoming unpopular."

  Zarvora reached behind her and tore off the paper tape, but did not look at it.

  "The Warren has contacts in the Central Confederation," she said as if she considered it a reasonable option. Drusas was aghast.

  "You would have them abduct Dragon Librarians, Frelle Highliber?" "Could it be done?" Drnsas took out a handkerchief and mopped at his face. She had listened patiently to his opinion on the recruitment problems, and the abduction alternative was clearly meant as a reasonable suggestion.

  "Yes, perhaps, in a limited way ... yes," he replied reluctantly, aware that it would be dangerous to give her too many negatives. "It would have to seem like random kidnappings, and be over a vast area, otherwise we would be detected

  "How many would that gain us?"

  "I could promise thirty or so of mixed ranks. No more."

  "That is barely a third of what I require." "Please Highliber! The Central Confederation is our ally and trading partner, and all prisoners would have to be brought across Southmoor territory. If the Emir found out that Confederation citizens were being abducted by us he would fall over himself to shout it to the whole Southeast. He has had to make many concessions over that business of the rogue beam flash tower, but this would help him save face."

  Zarvora had begun to read the message as he was talking.

  / MARALINGA <> DA RIEN VIS BABESSA <> CODE CY900 <> VINE MAN

  SURVIVED THE JOURNEY AND SAW THE SOURCE OF THE CALL. ALL OTHER

  GHAN LANCERS ARE DEAD. THERE IS A CHANCE TO RECRUIT THE ABBESS

  HERSELF. MAY I PROMISE HER A DRAGON RANK IN LIBRIS? /

  She looked up. Drusas was opening a folder of letters bearing a bishop's crest. "Highliber, abductions from the Central Confederation are so risky as to not be worth the trouble. Once again, I implore you to consider the monasteries. Monks are diligent, well educated, and disciplined, and the Archbishop is willing to offer us very enerous terms." "What about the ban on them living in Rochester?" she said dreamily, reading the holes in the paper tape over and over.

  "For a reasonable fee per recruit, perhaps he could justify it to the College of Peers."

  "Arrange a meeting with him." "He cannot come to Rochester." "I shall go to him." Drusas sat back, puzzled. He had never seen her so agreeable. "Is there good news on your paper ribbon, Highliber?" "Yes, Fras Inspector. I took a great gamble and won."

  While Drusas saw the Highliber's lackey about arranging a visit to the Bishop, Zarvora keyed a message for the beam flash address of Maralinga and coded it CY900. It read ACT AS I WOULD / and was directed to Darien vis Babessa.

  Darien returned to the beam flash gallery in the late afternoon, when the Highliber's reply was due. As she expected, Zarvora had lost no time in replying. It was a short message, only four words, yet it gave her a free hand. Back in her room she began to write out her own account of the raid on Maralinga Railside. It was midnight before she was finished. As she wrapped the pages at the core of Ilyire's own roll of notes she paused to reread the final page, laughing silently at the words.

  John Glasken had also been recruited into the Highliber's service, but under very different circumstances. Blindfolded, bound, and gagged he was bundled into a wagon and driven away from the par aline terminus and through the streets of Rochester. From the street cries, sounds of working artisans, and challenges from guards he could tell that he was being taken to the area of the palace and Libris, then inside. The air around him became cold as the doors rumbled shut behind the wagon, and he was lifted from the tray by someone of great strength and held upright. His shackle was struck off with a chisel; then he was carried for some distance, through doors and past the challenges of several guards. They ascended two flights of stairs before he was put down on a hard bench.

  His hands and feet were untied, and his gag and blindfold came off last of all. Before him was a burly Dragon Red Librarian, armed only with a heavy truncheon. He was obviously what Glasken was meant to see first, an incentive to behave. The room was small, with a barred skylight in the ceiling. On one wall was a blackboard and box of chalk. A door on his right opened and a thin, middle-aged Dragon Red came in, a striped uniform over his ann.

  "I am your instructor," he said, throwing the uniform on the bench, then standing back with his arms folded. "Put those on." Glasken had only the watch house britches to remove. The new uniform was clean and comfortable. "Prisoner John Glasken, you have been redirected from six decades on a chain gang because of your training in arithmetic," the librarian told him as he took a piece of chalk from the box. "You will be well fed and clothed, and there will be no heavy work. You will work hard, however. The Mayor needs calculation and arithmetic, and you will provide it."

  He turned to the board and drew five small circles in a row, then another just above them. "This top circle is myself," he said, pointing with the chalk. "These down here are people like you. Now, I have been given a long calculation, one that would take me ten days of tedious arithmetic. Instead I take half a day breaking the task into five parts then share them among my five assistants. They work for two days. I spend a half day putting the results together, and I have the task done more than three times faster. Do you follow?"

  "Ah, yes, Fras Dragon Red." "Good. Now, I can work no more than twelve hours a day, and neither can you. If I have ten people available, I could have another shift working while you sleep, and the solution would take only two days. What would you do to get the sol
ution even faster?"

  "Get twenty people?" "Fool!" he spat, flinging his chalk in Glasken's face. "It still takes me time to split the task up. What I must do is have the task split up by another team of calculators, and then I can get better speed. If I get two people to split up the task into twenty parts, then I can increase the speed. What good would it be if I

  had the task calculated in a few minutes if it takes me a day to prepare it?" Something more agreeable than six decades in the desert was obviously on offer, and Glasken was anxious to please. "What sort of problems are calculated?" he asked, hoping to sound intelligent.

  "Does a rower ask where a battle galley on the river is being steered? Would the knowledge help him row better? What we have here is indeed very like a river or a par aline galley, Fras Glasken. It is a machine of a thousand people,

  with three shifts to spread the work. This machine has hundreds of times more calculating power than an individual. It never sleeps, gets sick, or dies."

  "But what if someone makes a mistake in the middle of one of the big team calculations? How would you know the answer is wrong?"

  "The machine is divided into two identical halves, and these run in parallel.

  If the answers are different then they repeat the calculation until both halves agree.

  I am now going to train you to be the most basic component of all, an ADDER.

  You will also cease to be John Glasken. You are ADDER 3084-T." And so it went, seemingly for hours. Glasken was told the punishments for mistakes and misbehavior, taught the daily routines, taught the ranks of guards and Dragon Librarians, and had the tasks of his fellow prisoners outlined to him.

  He was given trials at a desk with a large frame abacus and three rows of levers, and taught to recognize a number from a row of metal flags in various combinations of up and down. He had to take the numbers specified by the top row and put them onto the abacus. He would then press a pedal and another number would appear on the row, and he would add this to the first on the abacus. When the list was complete all the levers on the flag row clicked to the top position, and he keyed his answer into the bottom row of levers and pressed a pedal. When the next list was due all the levers on the top row fell to the bottom position, and when he pressed the pedal, the first number appeared. He learned about the other levers later.

  Although the skylights showed day and night, he began to lose track of time. He was told that the guards who patrolled the aisles were called regulators They punished, kept order, and sorted out problems with equipment and components. During his training Glasken saw nobody except his instructor and some silent prisoners who brought meals. The meals were constipating and the drinks infrequent, except after training sessions had just finished. Privy breaks were not encouraged during the sessions, each of which were four hours long. At the end of each day he was locked in a small room with four bed cells and he would collapse into one of the low cells as exhausted as if he had been breaking stone.

  One day, without warning, he was sent down a new corridor and into a vast, brightly lit hall. It was the Calculor itself, not a training rig. Glasken was awe struck. There were dozens of rows of desks and wires crisscrossed above them. Some wires carded little message cylinders from point to point, others hummed under tension. What really made him uneasy was that there was no conversation, in spite of there being so many people. The only sounds were a continuous swishing of beads on wires and a clacking of levers like a field of muted crickets in the evening. After puzzling over the partition curtain that ran down the center of the hall Glasken suddenly realized that he was seeing only one of the huge machine's processors.

  He was shown to a seat at the rear of the Calculor, and was shackled to a bench by irons padded with leather. The chains were light and bound with felt to muffle the clinking. Every care had been taken to keep the components comfortable and free from distraction. Glasken's instructor stood behind him and pulled a lever from NEUTRAL to STAND

  READY. "You will have light work for the first two hours, while you adjust to the routine," he said quietly, his voice barely more than a whisper. "If you perform up to your training standard, you will be put on the full rate until the half-shift break. While you have your coffee we will assess your work, and after that you may be classed as an installed component."

  "What happens if I don't perform well enough?" Glaskea asked, ever anxious about the consequences of failure.

  "You will be given another week of training. If that does not do any good, you will be discarded."

  "Does that mean I go to the deserts to lay par aline tracks?"

  "I'm afraid not," he said gravely, shaking his head. Glasken shivered visibly. The instructor moved the lever to ACTIVE. The sweat soaked Glasken's tunic as he began to work, but after a while he realized that the work was easier than what he had been doing at the training desk. When the rate went up he was able to cope with no trouble at all. At the half-session break three Dragon Reds came over, smiling and nodding, and unpinned the "T' on his badge. By the end of eight hours Glasken was weary, hungry, and desperate for a trip to the privy, but sure that he would not be discarded. His instructor congratulated him, then led him off to a different cell. He was to share this one with three other men, all from his shift.

  Two of them were in their mid-thirties, and the other old enough to be quite grey. Meals were handed to them in tin bowls.

  "So you're new, then?" asked MULTIPLIER 901. "My first shift today," Glasken said between mouthfuls of stew. "Congratulations," said the old man, CONVERTER 15. "Some new components don't get through the tests the first time. A few never get through, apparently."

  "Does being discarded mean what I think it does?" Glasken asked. CONVERTER nodded. "Have you ever heard of the Calculor outside, ADD?" asked PORT 72. "Thought not. None of the newcomers ever have. That means that none leave here alive, or there would at least be rumors."

  Glasken paused between mouthfuls and belched contentedly. "I suppose that means we're in here for life." "Nay, in here until you cannot perform at least as a basic component," said CONVERTER. "But don't worry, lad. They give you reasonable repair time when you get sick, and there's a pool of spare components to relieve us on fortnightly rest days or when we're sick. Watch your health and you could live to a ripe old age and die in bed before your quota of repair days is used up."

  Glasken was unsure whether or not to feel relieved. CONVERTER went to a corner and began to use the piss-jar.

  "Has anyone tried to escape?" the Calculor's newest component asked

  MULTIPLIER. "Aye. Every so often someone thumps a guard and runs down the corridor, but they get caught and clubbed down. Get past the clubs and there are guns. Ever hear of anyone getting to the guns, CON?"

  "Last one was in '97, not long after the Calculor was set up," he said over his shoulder. "Before my time, mind. I'd say, oh, twenty or more have been discarded for becoming doubles, though."

  "Doubles?"

  "Trying to escape twice, ADD. Any component doing that gets discarded automatically."

  That was a pity, thought Glasken. One could not build up escape skills by trial and error.

  "Just one more question," Glasken said as he scraped up the last of his stew. "Who are you all--you for example, PORT?" "I used to be a money changer," said PORT. "Then I got caught for short changing. Been here four years. We're all petty felons, ADD, just like you. No body misses us."

  Glasken pondered that for a long time. It hurt, but he had to admit that it was true. Ilyire's journey north was far more arduous than when he had been going south with the squad of lancers. Being immune to the Call offered little protection when one was moving against the Call's direction. He detoured a long way east, to avoid the Kooree tribes that Kharec had fought with. The journey lasted a year, as his camel died in the parched wilderness and he was forced to walk. He hunted, hid, and fought when cornered. At last he reached Fostoria, which he had once considered to be on the edge of nothingness. Slowly he recovered, and whil
e he looked for work as a driver on a caravan returning to Glenellen he noticed that there were at least two men in the oasis who spoke a language very like that of the people beyond the southern deserts. Ilyire speculated that perhaps there might be safer routes south than the one he had taken.

  It was another two months before he stood before his half-sister and presented the sealed scroll that described the source of the Call. She had not changed at all, but Ilyire was scarred and tanned by the long and harrowing expedition. They embraced briefly and formally, as was prescribed in the scriptures, yet Ilyire trembled with his eagerness to tell of how he had carried out her orders so very well.

  "I am pleased to see you alive, Ilyire," said Theresla, mocking the formal, prudish restraint of Alspring manners.

  "I have survived to stand before you again, half-sister," he replied with a sinuous flourish of his hand, joining in the game.

  "Had you died I would have lost my right arm."

  "Your right arm is as strong as ever," he said proudly, sweeping back his sleeve and flexing his hard, stringy muscles. Theresla sliced the wax cloth open and unrolled the pages. The distant chanting of her nuns was punctuated by birdsong as Ilyire sat back to bathe in her praise. She read quickly, but it was a long account. Water tinkled in a small fountain somewhere out of sight, and a sun engine blew a gentle breeze through the garden of vines, cycads, and sandstone pillars. Ilyire knew the desert well and could survive there as well as anyone, yet he did not love it. The cool shade and greenery in the convent was far more to his taste. Spray from a nearby fountain drifted across his face and he closed his eyes. It was now Theresla who was out in the blazing deserts that he had endured for sixteen months, but she was safe from the heat and danger, and would return in the time that it took to read his words. Suddenly she began to read aloud.