"Ilyire, wake up! A Call." Ilyire's muscles rippled but he opened his eyes without jumping up or saying a word. Seeing only Theresla he rose slowly from his sand mat and looked to the sun.
"Nearly sunset, that's good. The Call will stop soon and become a null zone right over us. We'll be protected for the night. Maralinga Railside is not far now. We can throw this turd on their dung heap and be about your business with their mayor." '
Theresla lay stretched out on her sand mat in much the same position that she had been in when Glasken had tried to bestride her, gazing at the ruddy furnace of the setting sun amid the flaming ribbons of cloud. The air was already notice ably cooler.
"We're so close to the Edge of the World, it seems a pity not to go on," she said as Ilyire began to repack the dried meat. "The wind trains will take us far away, to see the Mayor and Highliber."
"But I have seen the Edge for you," quavered Ilyire, like an artisan whose craftsmanship had been questioned.
"I must go there myself. I have tests to perform."
"I did every test that you ordered."
"But I developed new tests and techniques to probe the Call while you were away. I can sense a Call coming, did you realize that?" Ilyire stared at her with suspicion. He had not realized it, and with a sudden twinge of horror he twisted around to look at Glasken--who was still straggling mindlessly at the end of his tether. No, not possible, he concluded, and turned back to Theresla.
"All right then, we go to the Edge. We can leave this maggot of a camel's turd tethered within sight of Maralinga."
"He will come with us to the Edge." "With--never! Give me one good reason." "There is a thin black band across the sun." Ilyire turned and stared at the sun, which was just touching the horizon. Across its disk was a thin, black line which had been swamped by the glare while it was higher in the sky.
"What is it?" he asked, wide-eyed and incredulous.
"The end of the world, and the reason why Glasken must come to the Edge with us."
"It's just a cloud."
"Have you ever seen such a cloud?" Wringing his hands, Ilyire looked from the sunset to Glasken. "Theresla, dearest sister... I've seen him glancing at you, running his eyes under your robes. Every time he licks his lips I just know that he dreams of running his tongue over your nipples, his filthy mind is filled with thoughts of defiling--" "So what would you have him do, Ilyire? Ogle you instead?" "What? I'd shoot him for a sodomite!"
"So you'd kill him whatever the case. Why not kill him now, while he's helpless?" "Ladyship, sister, honor forbids that. He just needs to learn his place--" "And he does know his place! Why else would he be furtive about glancing at me? Be sensible, half-brother. The man is a rascal, but we have learned much from him. Besides, I need him for some experiments at the Edge."
Ilyire jumped to his feet. "What? You? Him? Experiments? What sort of experiments?"
"Experiments that require someone not trained to resist the Call." "Use a camel! Anything would be better than Glasken."
Theresla thought for a moment, looking across to the rapidly vanishing sun. Ilyire followed her gaze.
"There is a risk, of course. A risk that my experiments will fail, and that Glasken will be drawn over the Edge by the Call."
Ilyire was tom between hope and disbelief. "In what manner?" he asked, twisting strands of his beard until the roots hurt.
"I mean to hold him against the Call without a tether." The disk of the sun winked out below the horizon, taking the black stripe with it. Ilyire's shoulders sagged with relief with it out of sight. He turned back to his sister, but she was solemnly shaking a finger at him.
"It is still there, my brother, an arch of black nothingness where the stars are obscured."
Ilyire shut his eyes tightly. "All right, all right. I understand nothing, but Glasken can come with us."
CATASTROPHE Early the next morning they broke camp as the Call began to move, and before the sun was high they were within sight of the pale, gleaming walls of Maralinga Railside. As they reached the rails of the par aline Ilyire pointed to a dark shape in the distance, and they could hear a rumble above the wind. They crossed the par aline and let the camels go a hundred paces farther south before reining in and looking back.
"See, that long, low thing with the striped cylinders pointing to the sky?" Ilyire said as he pointed to the machine approaching from the west. "That is a travel machine."
Theresla stared as it drew near, amazed as its sheer size grew increasingly apparent. The rumble in the air seemed to beat against her, and she could hardly believe that there were no horses or camels pulling it. It passed them, an immense complexity of tubular rotors, balance booms, wheels, and masts, and behind it were coaches as featureless as the engine was complex. " "Great Western Paraline Authority," " Theresla read from the Austaric lettering beneath the windows. They watched it dwindle away toward Maralinga Railside.
"How does the machine's driver resist the Call?" Theresla asked.
"He doesn't. It runs by itself until it's required to stop. Watch, listen." As it reached the rail side outer mercy wall, there was a clang as a brake post beside the rails tripped a lever protruding from the engine. It began to slow at once as the drop chocks gripped the wheels, screeching and belching smoke, but soon all except the spinning rotor towers and masts were obscured behind the wall. There was an echoing boom from the impact of the train against the buffers that had brought it to rest.
"All automata, no humans needed," explained Ilyire, attempting to seem casual about the wonder of it all.
"The sheer scale of their machines is a wonder," said Theresla with undisguised awe. They stopped again just before noon, and while Ilyire tethered Glasken and the camels, Theresla found a boulder that was passably level and set up a brass crosspiece on screw down feet and adjusted it with a spirit level. As solar noon passed she noted the length of the edge pole shadow and direction on a pair of marked scales.
"I have an absolute north from the noon shadow Ilyire. Come and adjust your compass." He was pouting a little of his drinking water on his hands, a ritual that he performed each time he was forced to touch Glasken.
"What is our parallel of latitude?" he asked as he loosened a clamp and nudged the reference ann on his compass.
"Thirty-one degrees, six minutes." He paused to estimate figures and distances. "Our southwest beating is five two, and we are following the Call's new bearing precisely, so... the Edge is thirty-five miles away." .
As she began to dismantle her sighting platform she held up a brass plate with a tiny hole at the center and projected an image of the sun onto the rock face. Compared to the previous sunset and the morning's sunrise, the band across the sun had moved a little higher, and was thicker.
"Hold this for me, and hold it still," she said to Ilyire. He muttered something about blasphemy but did as she said.Theresla took out a pair of dividers and measured the band's thickness and its position on the solar face.
"The Call that we travel in will stop for the night perhaps six miles from the Edge, am I tight?" Theresla asked.
"That is probable." Theresla gave him her most unsettling smile. "Good, good, that suits me very well. You say that the Call sweeps across this treeless plain quite often?"
"Yes, every three or four days. It's odd, because there are very few animals here. Perhaps the great fish who project it are somehow aware of the Austatic speakers in their wind trains."
Theresla set a timer to wake them two hours before dawn the next day, and they dragged their camels along before the Call began to move. The waning moon rose with Venus to light their way through the stunted bushes and broken rock. Glasken gave a yawn truncated by a gasp as they passed through the stationary leading edge of the Call.
"A Call!" he shouted in alarm, and Ilyire laughed.
"A Call, Fras Glasken. Too right, you are." "It's You are right," Glasken angrily corrected him as he glanced about. "But I was lying--ah, in a camp, and it was daylight. Now it's night and-
-look at the moon! I must have been mindless for days. What has... I mean, I don't understand."
"You are slow, even with all studying," laughed Theresla. "Phase of moon show one passing day only."
"And you anchored us out of the Call so we are going.." north? No, the
Call doesn't move at night. Besides, look at the stars: we're going south!" "Very good," mocked Ilyire.
"But how can anyone escape a stationary Call? It's not possible, unless an anchor holds you until the Call moves on." "Have you not, ah, realized, Fras Glasken?" said Theresla. "Asking how did rescue you from camel train during Call? Call does not touching me and Ilyire."
Her revelation silenced Glasken as he recalled breasts of the most exquisite shape and symmetry hanging above him, breasts which then descended to press lightly against his pectorals. Then the Call had blotted it all out. What had he done as the Call had struck? Obviously Ilyire had stayed asleep: his head was still attached, he thought as he rubbed his neck.
It was dawn when they stopped. Theresla took sightings from the rising sun and measured what seemed to Glasken to be an oddly regular band of cloud across its face. There was a strange, rhythmic rumble in the distance and tang of salt on the air.
"The Edge is very close," Ilyire whispered to Theresla in Alspring, and pointed out an odd parallel below the horizon.
"Time to unpack and secure the camels," Theresla decided.
"Hey, lazy turd of camel have anus disease, you carry rocks, make Call shield wall Ilyire shouted to Glasken, who sullenly obeyed.
Theresla unpacked a length of rope and some instruments; then she and Ilyire walked toward the Edge. "A band of perpetual Call extends a few hundred paces back from the Edge," Ilyire explained. "That cairn marks it, I built it last year."
"Yes, I sense it," Theresla agreed. "If the moving Call is like a net, this one is like a fence. Whatever is beyond the Edge does not want to be seen." Glasken watched them walk some way toward the odd, double horizon, then vanish. Clearly there was a cave in the plain that they had entered to explore, but that was none of his business. He dropped the last of the rocks to complete the V-shaped deflection wall and piled their gear behind it. When the Call came past later that morning they would not be trampled by passing animals.." except that Theresla and Ilyire were immune to the Call. That perplexed him, yet he was curiously heartened as well.
He reached down to lift one of Ilyire's saddle packs--and was alarmed to feel air rushing past his hands. As he stood frozen the air rushed back the other way. A giant down there, breathing, he thought for a moment. A flat, pink rock beneath the saddle packs appeared to be coveting the mouth of a small cave. Ilyire's gear was right over it... very significant. Glasken grinned and looked to the horizon. No sign of them. He moved the saddle packs and seized the edge of the rock. It was heavy, but he was strong and raised it without much trouble. There was Alspring writing cut into the lip of the little cave, and he recognized Ilyire's script.
Glasken found the entrance a tight fit, and his eyes took some time to accustom themselves to the gloom. He went in a short way and stopped. The place was suffused with the soft gleaming of gold and swirling clouds capes of blue opal, shot with sparkles of gemstones. For a time his mind seemed to blank out; it was almost as if he was in a Call. The trance passed and his thoughts raced. Two pack camels could carry the lot, he could flee north and flag down a Great Western wind train on the par aline but Ilyire was fast and deadly, and more to the point he was immune to the Call. He stared at the piles of wealth again, this time assessing and estimating. The air in the cave continued to move, as if he were in the mouth of a breathing dragon. It continually underlined the danger he was in.
His saddle pack was not full, and he could stuff the remaining space with enough gold coins and small jewelry so that the loss from the hoard and the change in his baggage would not be noticed. Even that would be the worth of the crown jewels in some small may orates He could go to the Emir of Cowra as a refugee Islamic prince from the far west, buy an estate with farmlands, buy five wives, buy enough wine to--but wine would be a problem with the Southmoors. Better to flee west as a refugee prince from the east. He made a hasty but careful selection of items and emerged from the breathing cave. The others were still out of sight.
After replacing the flat rock and Ilyire's gear he carefully hid the wealth of the Call victims in his saddle pack As he pulled the final strap tight he noticed that Theresla had emerged again, and was hurriedly pulling up a rope from somewhere.
She walked back with brisk strides, casting a long shadow in the morning sun. The rope was coiled about her shoulder. "Where were you, Frelle Abbess?" Glasken asked.
"Climbing over Edge... the world, of."
"Climbing over the edge of the world--you were what?"
"I were--was--making experiments. Watching marvels are, not for your eyes. My Austaric is bettering?"
"Is better, yes, but, but--" "Ilyire is, ah, left down, under ledge, near water. Ilyire is ordered to experimenting for me." She slipped the rope from her shoulder and held it up. "Ilyire is not happy."
Glasken returned her little grin with a knowing leer, yet his mind was racing all the while. With Ilyire out of the way he could bind Theresla, then empty the treasure cave and take the lot north on the pack camels. The Abbess would fetch a good price in the slave markets of the Southmoors, and he could buy a small may orate for what was in the cave. But first... "Fras Glasken, we have business for finishing," she prompted, as if reading his last thought.
"Please, Frelle Abbess, no lengthy preamble this time," he said, tugging at the knot of his belt. She spread a sand mat on the pink dust and broken stones, then began to undo her robes. Glasken stood naked facing into the morning sun as she stood with her back to it, holding her robes open.
"Come to me Fras Johnny Glasken. Come do what you will--" The front of the Call rolled over them. Passion, pheromones, animal and mental cues mingled and balanced. Glasken's muscles crawled and twitched... but Theresla held him against the Call across a narrow gap of air, using no physical tether. In a different age, in a different science, it would have been called a tuned circuit.
What was set up between Glasken and Theresla was more than just an in visible tether; it interacted with the Call itself and tuned signals out of the world's two-thousand-year-old affliction. The Call was from the voices of the Callers, and as Theresla had hoped, they used the voices to communicate. It had always been known that the Call did not affect birds or reptiles, or mammals under a certain size, but nobody had ever traced its allure to sexuality. Most people surrendered to the Call as if being seduced, and Theresla had developed a theory that some rare individuals might surrender to sex so completely that in some circumstances even the Call could not quite draw them away. Glasken was the living verification of her theory, and she knew that she could use him to modulate and amplify the voices behind the Call into speech.
Theresla listened, her eyes unfocused. There were feelings and concepts rather than words at first, but she knew that they came from the shapes in the water beyond the cliffs. Or some of them, at any rate. Ilyire had been right. Sheep and shepherds. Shepherds calling food for their sheep with fantastic horns that were heard without ears. Meat for fishes. Animals being dragged along by the Call were bounding past now, but the deflection wall kept Theresla and Glasken undisturbed. She noted distant bodies tumbling over the cliff. Small, sharp sensations of satisfaction came to her, and the taste of blood in the water. These would be those sleek and fantastic sheep bleating with pleasure.
The sensations of the shepherds were softer, but more complex. At first she just noted the patterns and feelings without understanding them, but as speech it was simple, she came to realize. These were not elite scholars, they were as simple as human shepherds, she told herself. The patterns were odd, but would not be hard to project. There was a temptation to shout to them, but she hesitated. A sage or yogi seeing a huge fish emerge from a river and speaking a jumble of human w
ords might well recognize a fellow intelligence and try to converse. A simple shepherd would probably reach for his fox gun Theresla listened, watched through other eyes, felt herself float and swim. Words began to match with understandings and perceptions. The shepherds were conversing idly while projecting the Call. They were ideal for Theresla's purpose.
Sooner than she wished, the Call ran its course. She felt the trailing edge approaching, reluctantly broke her self-induced trance, and waited. Her back had been to the sun as she held her robes open, so she had been well protected. Glasken had stood facing her, totally naked, for hours. He was sunburned deep pink.
As his mind returned he cried out in pain and surprise, then collapsed as Theresla swept her robes back across her nakedness. He had sunburn all down the front of his body, although slightly more on the right than the left because of the angle of the sun. She splashed some water from a skin over his head. "Get dressed, Glasken. Ilyire to be getting rope back." "Galloping Callbait, I'm roasted," he groaned. "What, how?" "Dressing. Quickly!"
"My cod! It burns like a dose of pox."
She threw his tunic to him and he put an arm into one sleeve.
"Argh, no. The cloth's agony to my skin." "Suit yourself," she said simply, picking up a tether. "Now be still, this be for your good health." Glasken howled as the strap rubbed against his skin.
By the time Ilyire crawled back over the Edge Glasken was still lying naked on his back. "What in the name of--he's naked!" Ilyire thundered as they approached. "A painful experiment, you should be pleased," Theresla explained.
Glasken continued to groan. Suddenly Ilyire gasped, then smiled beatifically as he realized that Glasken was burned only on the front of his body.
"Darling, wise, just, beautiful sister, you staked him naked in the sun for the whole of the Call! How could I ever have doubted you? Please, will you ever forgive your silly brother?"
Theresla forced back a smile. "You can start by robbing ointment on his skin and bandaging him so that he can stand to be clothed again."
Souls in the Great Machine Page 29