Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  "Remember, I'll not be the last component to be released," he warned before turning his back on them and walking out.

  "Why?" asked Tarrin as he hurried after him. "To improve their behavior toward the other components," replied without breaking stride. "A parting gift to my former comrades in slavery."

  "You escaped death by no more than good luck!" barked Tarrin. "Why did you really do it?" Denkar stopped and whirled around so suddenly that Tarrin nearly collided with him. The former FUNCTION's expression was one of unsettling perception,

  "There's more going on than just my release from the Calculor, or you would be marching me straight back to my cell after my canteen trick. What is going on?"

  Tarrin stared at the floor. "The Overmayor only tells me--"

  "Very little at best, and nothing if she can help it. All right then, what is your theory?"

  "Many important components in the early Calculor were, like you, ah..." "Kidnapped." Tarfin stepped around him and continued down the corridor with his hands clasped behind his back. Denkar stared after him for a moment, his hands still on his hips, then he shrugged and strode after him. "We prefer the term conscripted," said Tarrin. "Yes, I admit that several dozen components were inducted without being felons. We needed their skills, both to run the Calculor and to train the felons. The battle calculor has been known to the outside world for years and the Libris Calculor has become an open secret. There is no point in keeping you here either to protect a secret, or for skills that are no longer unique."

  "So even the mighty Highliber-Overmayor can no longer keep innocent components imprisoned--as opposed to criminal components?"

  "That's the gist of it." "Well, Fras Tarrin, I don't believe you, but that's hardly relevant to anything, is it? Meantime, let's get me paid off and outside the walls before the urge to shoot at a Dragon Librarian seizes me."

  "Again." Thousands of miles to the west another captive was about to find freedom, although it would be by escape rather than release. A procession of burlap-clad figures trudged in single file across the desert landscape of frost-shattered pbbles and red sand. Leading them was the abbot of Baelsha Monastery, and their objective was a cairn of rocks containing a shallow cave. The abbot walked around the cairn once after they arrived, then entered the cramped alcove within it. Presently he had satisfied himself that all was in order. The monks went to work as he stood back.

  The place was swept clean, and the heavy cistern bolted to the wall of the shelter was checked. Two of the monks unpacked flat bread and dates wrapped in grease paper and stored the food on a rock ledge that served as a pantry. Finally they unlaced the necks of four goatskins of water and emptied them into the cistern.

  Venturing back outside, the abbot gestured to three other monks who had been waiting in the intense sunlight. The tallest of them began to strip off his clothing of burlap and cotton, and finally surrendered his flat wicker hat. A gesture from the abbot sent the other monks running to make a row behind their now naked companion. They stood to attention with their feet together.

  "Re!" barked the abbot, and all bowed from the waist. The abbot took a small book from the sling bag across his back and beckoned the naked monk to step forward. He handed the book to him, then stepped back. They bowed to each other again.

  "Brother Glasken, you are embarking upon the most important ten days of your life," the abbot said sternly as Glasken stood before him, clutching the book. "This is the culmination of five years of celibacy, abstinence, prayer, fasting, freedom from the vices of the world, and training in the ways of our pure but demanding martial arts. There were many times, Brother Glasken, that I thought you would fall from our regime but you proved me wrong. Here now is your final and greatest test.

  "In five days or so, the Call will come. When the seductive touch of Call reaches into your soul, you must resist it with no more than your mind willpower, as we have taught you. With no tether, sand anchor, trained terriers, or Call walls, you will resist its allure. You have nothing to wear, and only straw to sleep beneath in the cold of the desert night. The cave faces south" and nothing hereabouts can be used to tether yourself. Brother Glasken, do you wish to take this final test?"

  "I do, Your Reverence." "Brother Glasken, you can return with us to Baelsha Monastery. The string tendon in your right leg will be severed, but nothing more will befall you and you can live out your life as a gardener with us. It would be an existence of prayer and meditation. Do you wish to step back from this test?"

  "I do not, Your Reverence." "Brother Glasken, should you resist the Call you will become a monk Baelsha, bound by your vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, bound to my authority, and bound by death should you ever try to leave. Should it be God' will that the Call prove too strong for you, you will follow it into the desert die. Do you wish to step back from this final test?"

  "I do not, Your Reverence."

  "Then by your own free will you challenge the Call. Re I"

  They all bowed from the waist again. The abbot stepped forward with smile and shook Glasken's hand. "Please, get out of the sun and into the shelter, Brother Glasken," he genially. "Pray and prepare yourself, but have no fear. Should you fail, you be in paradise within a few days."

  "But if I should resist the Call, Your Reverence, it would lifetime between me and paradise. You make failure sound attractive." The abbot put a fatherly ann across the naked monk's shoulder and to the shelter. "I know what you mean, Brother Glasken, but hold the set of' mind very carefully. Should you have a desire to surrender to the Call, why would be suicide. That would be jumping into hell!"

  "Your Reverence, I understand. Even after all these five years at sometimes a little joke slips past my guard." "Ah, Brother Glasken, guard against laughter. Remember, all laughter is the expense of someone, and in this case it is yourself. Should the devil you chuckle just as the Call arrives, you may have his company for all of nity."

  "Your warning is the staff with which I shall beat him, Your Reverence.""

  "God's will be done. Work hard and pass the test, Brother Glasken. You:; have been my greatest challenge."

  Five figures left the cairn, this time in a less formal step. The abbot's head was low as he walked.

  "Five years ago he crawled out of the desert, starving and crazed with thirst," the abbot said to the others. "Could he really have come all the way from the Alspring cities, as he claimed? And if so, what drove him to face the immensity of the desert?"

  "A fugitive from justice, Your Reverence?" said the monk carrying Glasken's clothing and hat. "Perhaps. Or perhaps he really is what he says he is: a lost philosopher and explorer, who had been charting the extent of the land. A strange and.." a driven man is Brother Glasken."

  Glasken watched the monks fading into the heat shimmers at the horizon. He was gibbering softly to himself. "Alone at last, alone for ten days. Soon there will be others I can talk to-aside from myself. Myself! The only civilized company at Baelsha, that's what you are, Johnny Glasken. Ah... I've kept myself sane by talking to you for five years, but soon Glasken will talk to Glasken no more."

  Once he judged that the monks really were gone he darted into the shelter. Reaching into the cistern, he stretched down until his head was almost submerged. There they were! Dozens of pebbles wrapped in squares of cloth, and ten tightly tied leather bundles. Glasken fished them out by the handful, giggling.

  "Ten little waterskins of rat, cat, and bird, thirty squares of cloth, and the thread and thonging that bound them while they traveled within the waterskins. Now, little prayer book, answer my prayers." He eased back the cover boards of the prayer book and peered between the spine and the binding. "A scrap of razor and a needle--everything's here, everything!"

  He began to sew the squares together, his fingers flashing along to leave well-practiced stitches. He muttered dementedly as he worked.

  "My magic carpet to carry me to the western may orates to women, wine, revels, seduction, women, money, gambling, women, more wome
n..." Once his kilt and a sun cape were complete, Glasken used the razor to dress some of the straw, which he quickly wove into a wide conical hat. His water pouches seemed depressingly small as he filled them, but he also gorged himself on water, dates, and flat bread Every so often he checked outside, making sure that the abbot had not decided to return.

  Using some of the thonging, Glasken strapped several pieces of flat bread and some dates between the hat and his shaven head. He carefully left the book in a corner, open in mid prayer then he rumpled the straw as if he had been sleeping in it. Stepping outside, Glasken estimated that the sun had less than an hour to set. He looked to the west, where the abbot and other monks had gone. He laughed loudly and spoke to the horizon.

  "Careful you were to inspect me, Abbot Haleforth, but you never thought that I'd break into your rooms and inspect your pack, aye, and put a needle and razor into that little book you've been torturing me with for five years. I know you packed a telescope, you scabby old fox, I know you're sitting out there squinting back at me. Well roast in the sun while I recline and feast in the cool of my stone verandah. Roast, for when you set forth for your monastery at sunset, I'll set forth too, but I'll be going south. Roast, all you lazy lackey monks who wondered which kind and charitable soul had already filled those goatskins with water when you came into the kitchen at dawn--aye, and laced up the necks good and tight!"

  As the last glow of the sun faded from the sky Glasken drank from the cistern until he was almost sick, then set off for the south. He moved at a slow, shambling pace to leave tracks as if he were in the grip of the Call. As he walked he glanced to the west, where Baelsha lay.

  "Goodbye, Baelsha," said Glasken with a wave to the faintly glowing horizon. "Give me long enough and I'll bed a wench and drink a pint for each and every one of you, aye, even though you number twice twelve dozen."

  Using the stars and Mirrorsun as clock and compass, Glasken continued south. When the waning moon rose to augment Mirrosun's orange light he broke I into a steady jog-trot across the rocky sand. Often he stumbled, sometimes he fell, but he pressed on in high spirits.

  Denkar stepped hesitantly through the gates of the Libris forecourt and into streets of Rochester. The sky was luridly bright after ten years inside the huge library and he shaded his eyes as he walked. There would be eyes watching, he was sure of that. He bought a honey pastry with a gold royal and told the astonished vendor to keep the change. At the par aline terminus he booked a passage to Oldenberg, but the pedal train was not due to leave for hours. Tarrin had given him a voucher for the Cafe Marellia, an expensive eatery just across Paraline Square.

  I'm meant to go here, Denkar decided. As he reached the door he beckoned to a man standing in the street.

  "Did you mean me, Fras?"

  "Yes, come in, call all your friends who are watching me from greater distances."

  "I don't understand, Fras."

  "Of course you do. I want my shadows to have a coffee with me. I'll pay, of course." ' The man turned and walked away briskly. Denkar entered the cafe, and a waiter hurried across to him, wax gleaming on his hair and long mustache like dark, textured wood that had just been varnished. P

  SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE

  y in reserve bower, Fras," he murmured, his eyebrows arching. "Liking your company, she is." Denkar was well beyond surprise by now. "Indeed. But I may not be liking her company, Fras waiter." He winked and pressed a silver noble into his hand. "Tell me, is she pretty?"

  The waiter smiled knowingly. "Thank you, generous Fras. Beautiful lady, Fras, beautiful lady. Fine, delicate face, with bushy black hair untied--and such eyes! Expensive silver or bile combs in hair, hah, from rich husband too busy making money, yes?" He nudged Denkar's arm. "Big eyes like velvet--"

  "Stop! Enough. Either she tipped you more than I did, or she really is all these things. Tell me, though, is she a Dragon Librarian?"

  "No uniform, Fras."

  "Indeed. In a way I'm disappointed, but I'm relieved as well. Lead the way, Fras waiter." They walked among chunky but polished redwood tables and benches, at which a cross-section of the bland, bored upper class of Rochester was seated before their eggshell coffee cups and dainty squares of bread with emu liver pate. Denkar noted that body-hugging shirts with loose sleeves were the current fashion.

  The reserve bowers were a row of rooms running down the center of the cafe, with doors on either side. The waiter gestured to a lattice door, then left. Denkar rapped at the door, and a resonant, honeyed contralto voice responded, "Enter." He pressed the latch down and opened the door to the candlelit bower.

  Her face was partly shadowed, but there was absolutely no doubt of her identity. "Highliber!"

  "Close the door behind you, Fras Denkar." Denkar sat down warily on the leather of the bench seat, the horsehair padding scrunching in the silence like the crackle of kindling in a fire. Zarvora's hair was unbound and bushy, embroidered with a few gray strands and pinned to frame her face. Her face was relaxed and remarkably winsome in the privacy of the bower. He had only ever seen her being rigidly formal at official announcements, or with her features contorted by rage when she had visited the Calculor in a vile temper because of some malfunction. Here she was now, the very wellspring of his enslavement. He noted with odd detachment that no hate was blazing up within him. She was like Tarrin, or the door of his cell: just a thing that had once confined him. Unlike Tarrin, however, she was very attractive. Do you wish me to apologize for your decade of slavery, Fras Denkar?"

  she asked after an awkward silence.

  Death hovered just behind Denkar, awaiting the one word of defiance. He Swallowed, steadied his breath, then replied.

  "Yes." Death's scythe began to swing.

  "Then for you alone, I apologize." The scythe was checked. Denkar felt giddy. In spite of his quite bitterness he somehow wanted to be pleasant to her. She had apologized. NoN what?

  "I wish to become the Dragon Gold in charge of the Calculor."

  "The post is not vacant."

  "You are Highliber--and Overmayor."

  Zarvora considered for a moment, then stood up.

  "So I am," she said as she left the bower. Moments later she and sat down again.

  "How do you find freedom?" she asked awkwardly. "Pleasant beyond telling, but..." "But?" "The years in the Calculor were fascinating. I learned such skills at ma tics as I could never have done at Oldenberg, and I made discoveries in culating theory, too. I have friends in there, I may even meet them again, willing."

  She nodded, her eyes never leaving him. Denkar held her gaze for then looked down, unsettled.

  "Interesting," she said. "Now what are you going to do? Return home.

  in the taverns, chase wenches?"

  "Home, well.." they may even remember me there. I'd certainly like of black beer. You forbid that to your components."

  "Black beer? That must be an old regulation from earlier, more des times. It will be repealed by tomorrow."

  Denkar inclined his head. "You're generous. As for wenches, I do have a. ah, request to make in that regard." Zarvora said nothing, but continued to watch him. It seemed to she was preparing to pounce and snatch something away. He took a deep then another. Finally he leaned toward her, defiantly looking into her dark, eyes. "I have--there was a Black Runner who would visit me in the of the confinement cells."

  "Ah yes, the solitary confinement cells. Do you know that they have once been used to punish anyone by solitary confinement for the whole of the Calculor? They are rather heavily booked for private assignations librarians and components, however."

  "Highliber, I never saw her face but she was lovely beyond telling.

  I

  to stay in Rochester to try to meet her as one free citizen to another." "Stay in Rochester! So, Tarrin was right. Denkar, I left some very business in Libris to meet with you like this. I really want you in Kalgoorlie."

  "I want to stay."

  "I am used to getting my way! Kalgoorlie--
" "Highliber, I'm serious. If not in Libris, I could work as an edutor at Roch ester University. You see, I do love Black Alpha. I think that she loves me, and she knows what I look like. If I stay in Rochester she will see me one day. She will come to me, I know it."

  "She has work elsewhere."

  "So you do know her!" he exclaimed, his arms laid along the table, his hands open and pleading. "Please, what is her name?"

  She shook her head. "Youmytu free me, then you bind my life as tightly as if I were still a prisoner." He rose to his feet, the menu he had been fiddling with crushed in his hand. "Well, you can have me dragged back to the Calculor for all I--"

  "Denkar! Please lower your voice and sit down--and notice that I said please. Thank you. Now hold out your hand--please." Denkar felt a slight crawling of revulsion as she reached out her small, bone white hands. She took the crushed menu and placed it with her own. He had expected her skin to be moist and as cold as porcelain, yet it was very warm and dry, somehow familiar. She leaned forward until her face was very close.

  "I love you too, Fras Denkar, and I am touched by your devotion to me " There were no words that could have possibly had a place in the moments that followed. For a time he sat staring into her huge, green eyes; then he reached out to touch her hair. It was oddly bushy, much like his own. He closed his very eyes as his fingers caressed her face. His fingertips told him that there was no doubt at all.

  "It/s you," he whispered. "But your voice, it was much lighter."

  "You mean like this?" she chirped.

  In spite of the intensity of the moment, he found himself giggling. "Oh, Highliber."

  "Frelle Zarvora, although you can continue to call me Black Alpha. I prefer

  "But--Frelle, ah, Zar--Highliber, why me?" "Why you, Denkar? Come around to my bench and sit beside me, there is much to tell." Denkar hesitated only for a moment, then shuffled awkwardly around in the cramped space. Zarvora took his hand again. "Firstly, why you? That is not easy."

  Zarvora put her hand to his cheek, then ran her fingers through his hair. Although she was trying to explain some important matters, the heady sensuality of her presence made it hard for Denkar to concentrate. The huge green eyes, the warm, dry tingling touch of her fingers, the musky, feathery scent of her hair... With an effort he brought himself back to what she was saying. She explained about avia ds and the Call, and about his own hair. Finally she explained about! their romance.