"Dummart, she's stopped on a proceed," shouted a signalman from across the gallery. "Right across trailing points, too." "Switch out the para lines then halt all traffic on accident alert," the Overswitch called. "Aye, and send a runner to the captain of the Highliber's train to ask what her pleasure is. As Highliber asks, Highliber gets."
Theresla's keen eyes picked out the captain of her own train walking across to the newly arrived galley engine. He was carrying a black dispatch bag.
"We should go down to the Highliber, Frelle," Theresla's interpreter suggested, but she shook her head. Too many people were jumping at the Highliber's word, barely pausing to ask how high. She would make her wait.
Far below, Zarvora broke the seal on the dispatch bag from Maralinga and took out Lemorel's papers. Most of it was reports that expanded on what had already been said by beam flash but there were also three slim packages that also bore Lemorel's seal: they were marked THERESLA, LYIe, E, and GLASKEN.
She broke the seals and unpacked a brass microscope from her instrument case. Under the objective, lying together on the slide, the Ghans' samples looked like long, fine feathers. Zarvora sat back and folded her arms, nodding to herself. She took a little scalpel from the instrument case and cut the end of one of her own hairs. Laid between those of Theresla and Ilyire, it became another long, fine feather in the eyepiece. Glasken's hair was a plain rod, like that of any human.
There was no fanfare or ceremony for the meeting of Zarvora and Theresla. The Overswitch assumed that Theresla was a senior Dragon Librarian reporting to the Highliber on some matter of the highest importance, but he was puzzled by his visitor's odd ignorance of geography. The Highliber's galley engine was being reversed on the turntable. It would not be long before the shunting yards were back to normal, he thought with relief.
Zarvora was standing with Darien beside her as Theresla and her interpreter entered the coach. Theresla folded her arms, then swept them open and to her sides, palms outward. Zarvora bowed from the waist.
"Is men's greeting in Alspring," Theresla said as she walked forward. "For bidden to women."
"I shall not report you," Zarvora replied. "How confident are you with our language?"
"Having words for to order bat for breakfast, or lackey beheaded." "That seems sufficient. Frelle Darien, would you take the Abbess' interpreter to the next compartment and take her report---but be ready to return should we need you."
Darien nodded and turned for the door, but Theresla seized her arm. "You are Darien, with no voice. My brother, ah, besotted with you." Darien blushed, then held up a card with THANK YOU written on it. "We speaking later, yes?" said Theresla as she released her.
Alone with Theresla, the Highliber sat at her desk beside the window while her guest lay on a leather couch on the other side of the coach.
"Moving palace," Theresla observed, looking over the opulent fittings. "It belonged to our Mayor, but is now surplus to his needs." There was a heavy rumble as the galley engine rolled backward off the turn table, building up to a heavy lurch as its couplings crashed into those of the coach and engaged them. Moments later the coach was moving forward, rattling over a set of points. Theresla watched the vista of track work and parked trains passing the window and seemed disinclined to speak.
"You have never been able to teach anyone but Ilyire to defy the Call," Zarvora stated flatly, not trying to disguise her impatience.
Theresla looked around slowly. "You cannot know, Frelle Highliber." "I did not go to so much trouble to make you welcome just to endure a display of pouting and posing, Abbess. Either we act as equals or I shall have you returned to Maralinga and turned loose to do as you will."
Theresla looked out of the window again, in time to see the train pass through the gates in the town wall. Beyond was scrubby grassland grazed by tethered sheep.
"But we are not equals, Frelle Highliber," she said without turning back. "I can defy the Call, like this Call..." She raised a hand. "Now."
She dropped her hand. Almost at once a dead hand alarm clanged somewhere at the front of the train as the Call swept over them.
"Ah, you can anticipate the Call," said Zarvora. "A good trick, Frelle Ab bess, you must teach it to me some time." Theresla cried out in surprise and whirled around so fast that she lost her balance and tumbled from the couch, thudding to the floor. Zarvora was sitting at her microscope, calmly peering through the eyepiece.
"Why are you sitting on the floor with your mouth open, Frelle Abbess?" she asked, glancing up. "It does not become you."
"But how? I, I--you..." "I was born with latent resistance to the Call, as were you and Ilyire. You have much to offer, but not a method to resist it. If we are to work together, we need some mutual respect. Agreed?"
Theresla remained sitting on the floor, speechless. Her wildest fantasies of this meeting had not included anything like this.
"You have rankings above me..." she began; then her pride smothered the rest of the admission. "In your patriarchal society you dealt with those with power over you by keeping them guessing, playing the part of a deranged genius. You see, I am not so very insensitive, am I? Frelle Theresla, you do not need to do that anymore. Dragon Silver confers status, freedom, and power. What more do you want?" '
By now Theresla was back on the couch, but she sat hunched forward, staring at Zarvora intently. Zarvora noticed a glistening at the edge of her eyelid.
"Frelle Zarvora, very hard, this, for me. I never trust. Not even Ilyire. Having no equals."
"Neither have I, Frelle. Now then, do you understand microscopes?"
The train had finally rolled to a halt, its crew and navvy pedalers all in the grip of the Call. Theresla walked over to Zarvora's desk.
"Wish Ilyire been sister," she said, putting an arm around Zarvora's shoulders. Zarvora reached up and gave her hand a short, convulsive squeeze. "At least you had a brother to love, Frelle. I had nobody." She gestured to the microscope. "Please, look through the eyepiece."
Theresla squinted down the tube. "Looking as would.." three emu feathers, ah, with string across them." "The feather on the right is a length of your hair, collected by the beam flash inspector at Maralinga. That on the right is from Ilyire, the strand in the middle is one of my mine, and the plain one lying across them is from a human."
Theresla straightened, then walked to a window and looked out at the tethered sheep, all straining to walk east. Emus were walking among them, quite unaffected.
"Birds feel no Call. You, I feel no Call, have feather-hair too. We bird human are, yes?"
"Yes. When did you learn that you could resist it?" "Turning twelve. Am older than Ilyire. I tried teaching him. No good. Suddenly, he learn. Was fourteen. I tried teaching my nuns. No good."
"Just as I thought, the skill is linked to puberty. I was eleven years old when a Call swept over me and did no more than give me a sort of shivery tingle. Over the years I have examined the hair of hundreds of people, but not one strand was as mine is. Not that of my parents, nobody."
Theresla sat on the edge of the desk, then suddenly lay out flat across Zarvora's papers and closed her eyes.
"Is ancient word for blasphemy against Diety's will. Gen-kehic, tamper in god works
"It is in my books as genetics, a medical skill. Today medicians could, say, cut off your ears, but before Greatwinter the medicians could change you inside so that your children would be born without ears too. Perhaps when the Call first medicians some of feature of birds into a few humans so that began some put they could resist the Call. Every so often an echo of that work arises, and beings like us are born."
"But why ancients, ah, not change all people to be as birds?" "There was a war that caused Greatwinter. Many arts and sciences were lost. I have rediscovered the art of building calculation engines, calculors, but only by using thousands of slaves. The ancients had calculors called computers that worked by, ah, the essence of lightning, as from clouds in a storm."
"Elt'ronik. Essence
of devil. Deity sent angel. Angel scouring elt'ronik from Earth. Scouring still, or so scriptures tell." "Libris has books talking about an "EMP' cannon, which destroys electro force machines. I do not know what the letters stand for, but the same book mentions that they were installed on 'orbiters." "Orbiter' is an ambiguous word, but it can mean artificial moon."
"The dawn and dusk travelers that wander among the fixed stars?" "The Wanderers. Some of them appear to be ancient weapons, designed to detect and destroy electro force devices. They are why our attempts to build simple electro force machines always end with the wires glowing red and melting soon after they are activated."
Glasken had eluded his guards by climbing out of a window, and disguising himself by shaving off his beard. He had an assignation. She was a Dragon Orange, a plump, jolly girl with a very pretty face. She alone had been willing to defy the prohibition on dalliance with him that Theresla had ordered. It had not been easy. Winks, simpering looks, and finally notes had been exchanged. Glasken crawled along the stone guttering, then dropped to a courtyard and made his way to the stables.
As Weldie had promised, the stable hands were gone, even though it was only late afternoon. A soft voice called from the hayloft, and Glasken scrabbled up the ladder. Weldie was there, out of her accursed Libris uniform, and wearing a cotton blouse and a lyre-print skirt.
"You escaped, Fras Glasken, I knew you could do it."
"Darling Weldie, call me Johnny."
"Hoof Johnny, so very ardent!" she exclaimed as he ran his hands up her legs.
"Please Frelle, please none of this foreplay business, just this once. I have been tortured for months by foreplay without after play "Johnny, Johnny, of course. I love to be desired by a man who can't wait to have me."
"Then I'm your man. Oh, you're soft, you're paradise."
"Fras Johnny, my hero warrior."
In spite of the heaving and thrashing in the hayloft, nobody came to investigate. Across the continent, to the east, it was already sunset. Zavora had ordered the train stopped so that she and Theresla could make accurate measurements of the band across the setting sun. The Tiger Dragons paced uneasily, their weapons at the ready. They were on a stretch of track that was not visible to lookouts on the beam flash towers.
"Its thickness seems stable now," Zarvora concluded.
"Is wobbling in orbit," said Theresla. "Soon to leave face of sun, then return. You predicted band, Frelle?" "Yes, but from sparse clues. I found a reference to a thing called a 'nanocomposite constructor," an electro force machine that does certain work but also makes copies of itself. One was sent to the moon just before Greatwinter." Zarvora explained the rest as they packed up the telescope.
"What is plan, you have?" Theresla asked as they walked back to the train in the sunset's glow. "The band in the sky is an intelligent machine. It was built to serve us, so perhaps it can be persuaded to disassemble itself if we can contact it. Otherwise,
I shall attack." "You?" "Me."
"Attack that?" Theresla exclaimed, pointing to the setting sun's bisected disk.
"Yes."
"You being demented as me, but more. We to be getting along, ah, fantastically." They climbed back into the mayoral coach, and the captain ordered the brake blocks unscrewed. The train began accelerating slowly and smoothly.
"I want to contact more people like us," said Zarvora. "I have begun with a survey of all the, ah, slaves in my Calculor. My study is piled deep with hair samples, just now. They will take days to check."
"Fetch other.." microscope, is name? I help." "Well, thank you. I need help to explore cites in the Calldeath lands for the ancient weapons and machines. Radios, Fa'eighteens, rockets, plasma cannons
"Working, would they? Two thousand years is old." Fr
SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE
"
""Something called shrink-wrap prevents aging, or so I have read.
"Speaking to Call creatures, maybe I can. Stop Call over Calldeath abandons.
Glasken is key. Call using lust as hook. Glasken having lust with no relenting. Have developed technique with lusting tension."
"Glasken. The name is vaguely familiar. I shall check with my Calculor and find his history."
"With only Glasken, it works. Tried others. Guarding carefully, Glasken."
"Inspector Milderellen will do that, have no fear." Glasken and Weldie had been in the hayloft for an hour when the butt of a twin barrel Morelac obliterated his reverie. Weldie had been kneeling in the hay while Glasken introduced her to the bull-and-cow position. She heard a heavy thump and Glasken had slid off her.
"Sorry I could not get here earlier," said Lemorel as she turned Glasken's body over.
"That's all right, Frelle Inspector. Shames me to say that I quite enjoyed him."
"There's no accounting for taste. Help me get him back into his trousers."
"I made sure that he kept most of his other clothes on."
"Up, lift, push him down the chute--there. Now go! There's ten gold royals waiting beneath your pillow. Forget this ever happened."
"Good fortune, Frelle Inspector. You'll not kill him, will you? I mean, he was, well--"
"I need him alive more than you could believe. Now go!" For all her skill with a flintlock, Lemorel was not exceptionally strong. Glasken, clubbed and bound, still weighed over 220 pounds. The camels padded about restlessly as she dragged him across the stables.
"Down! Down, damn you!" she hissed at the Alspring camels--that did not understand commands in Austaric and remained standing.
"Permitting me help, Frelle," said a voice from the darkness.
Lemorel dropped at once and rolled behind Glasken's body, the Morelac in her hand.
"Shooting not, Frelle. Sound bring soldiers." The voice was soft, conspiratorial. "Come out where I can see you" was all that Lemorel would concede. Lemorel watched as Ilyire emerged from a corner and into the light diffusing in from the lamps outside. He tugged at a camel's reins and softly barked "Kush! Kush!" It knelt at once. He took Glasken under the arms and heaved him into the saddle, then strapped him securely to the frame.
"Shill! Shill!" he hissed, and the camel stood up. "Kush, down. Shill, up. Remembering, please to. How to saddle and load others, you did?"
"I had a stable hand to do it hours ago. There's nothing suspicious about strapping saddle packs onto camels."
"Ah, but camel turd Glasken suspicious, yes? Why you wanting him?" "To guide me to a man named Nikalan."
"Sickly one, Ni-kalan? Glenellen, is taken there. All I know. Making maggot rescue Nikalan?"
"Glasken's the guide, I'll do the rescuing."
Ilyire's composure slipped, and he seemed really aghast.
"You? Woman rescuing? Pervert acting, no, no, scriptures tell protect women." The light was bad, and he barely noticed Lemorel's hand flicker. A palm sized metal star thudded into a post beside his head. He gasped and jerked aside, leaving several hairs stuck to the post.
"Fras Ilyire, in Austaric society you must choose the people that you insult with exquisite care. Insults lead to duels, and duels are to the death."
"Frelle, I... warn, only. Scriptures say protecting of women." He took a breath and swallowed. "You dress as man, act as man, yes? If not, bad morals. Priests lock you in convent, nuns reading scriptures to you, many years."
Lemorel nodded, and began to relax. "So your people have some sort of protection rule, like the purdah of the Southmoor women. I see your point. I must dress like a man to move freely in the Alspring cities. Meantime, you should take care who you insult. Understand? Insults kill."
"Gratitude for lesson. Make Glasken turd teach Alspring. Has few words useful." "But I speak Alspring," Lemorel said, suddenly realizing that her grasp of it was better than Ilyire's Austafic. They changed languages at once.
"Where did you learn Alspring?"
"A linguist friend of mine gave me lessons." "A linguist without a voice?" "Yes, as it happens. Darien."
"I must meet
her again, I love her."
"I think she has a lover in Rochester, but--"
"I kill him!" Glasken groaned and tried to move against the saddle straps. Lemorel reached up with a pitchfork handle and beat him over the head. He slumped in the saddle again. Ilyire's teeth gleamed in a smile.
"Good Frelle, listen carefully. Go north to the sand hills then northwest, for five days. Then north, for a long time, months. The land is harsh, so there are not many Kooree tribes to avoid. Avoid them, try never to fight, that is their protocol. It took me a year last time and I had many battles, but the bad will from Kharec's crossing was fresh then. Fifty days, it may take you fifty days. Dress
SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE
as a man, ask the way to Glenellen when you meet anyone. Tell them that Glasken is your eunuch. Better still, make it true."
"Why haven't you killed him if you hate him so much?" Lemorel asked as she climbed the railings and stepped into her own saddle.
"I gave an oath to my sister not to harm the camel turd." He gave a low, oddly deep laugh. "I have kept my oath to the very letter."
"That you have, Fras. Now open the gates, if you please."
"Frelle Inspector, you will make the camel turd suffer, please? Fortune be yours." At Lemorel's suggestion the Marshal and other senior officers of Maralinga had gathered in the beam flash gallery for a small but exclusive celebration. A lackey brought around a tray with a jar of wine and polished silver goblets as they waited for her to arrive.
"The Inspector is pleased," the Marshal declared to the beam flash captain. "The Abbess is safely with the Highliber and the upgrade of the beam flash procedures is complete."
"But where is the Inspector?" asked Captain Burla.
The Marshall glanced around the crowded gallery. "Delayed with work I presume."
"Perhaps a little toast before she arrives?" "Why not, she is surely sour company," he whispered, nudging the Captain in the ribs before raising his voice. "Your attention, good folk," he said as he raised his goblet in a toast. "Listen carefully while I--"
A flash of light from down in the shunting yards was followed by a heavy detonation. Flaming debris arced through the air above the shunting yards as shots popped like fireworks in the darkness.
Souls in the Great Machine Page 31