"Me, sir? A mere sub-overhand? Surely Commander Lemorel would suited if any less in stature than yourself were to go?" ' "I want to remain here and insure that some hothead does not seize and resume the siege. If Commander Lemorel is insulted, I offer my life 8in payment. Unlike a few of the hypocrites in this place, I really am willing to my life to protect the innocent of this city. See to it."
"Yes, sir, Overhand and Grand Interim."
The Overhand turned away to gaze through the window over the city as began to walk away. "And Dalin!" "Sir?"
"Discreetly arrange a tragic accident for the throne-room captain and six guards if you manage to survive the next couple of hours."
"Sir. As good as done." Denkar's escape from Macedon went horribly wrong about fifteen miles walls. He had thought the huge lizard to be a log until it charged out at him a collapsed and overgrown ruin in the abandon. Partly by reflex, mostly he fired both barrels of his Morelac 50-point into its mouth, and one of the balls tore through the great reptile's brain. He sought open ground, and kept improvised lance across his knees as he sat reloading the pistol.
He was about to leave when Theresla seemed to materialize from the In spite of her emu-leather bush jacket and lace-up boots, she still looked svelte and shapely.
"Denkar, you're here alone," she said in a disapproving tone. "Why did the Mayor of Macedon let you come here without an escort?"
"How about something like "Welcome, Fras Invel-Spouse'?" he replied. She halted a few paces away and regarded him with hands on hips. "Take it as said," she said impatiently. "Why did they allow you come here alone?"
Denkar remained seated. He was somewhat annoyed at his blunt reception. "They didn't. I was to wait with them for a week while some men could be freed from digging an irrigation canal, and soon that week stretched beyond a fortnight. In the meantime their edutors were anxious to get me involved in the development of their calculor, and as for my sleeping arrangements!"
"Ah yes, very.." hospitable. Zarvora and I decided that you would have enough on your mind without.." anticipating your reception at Macedon."
"Very considerate of you." Someone in the early twenty-first century had built a very solid dwelling, even to the point of using steel beams and interlocking terra cotta tiles for the roof. It still provided shelter with a view after two thousand years, and Theresla had cleaned out the accumulated creepers and nests. Denkar was surprised at how neat and orderly the place was, given her behavior in human society.
"Vermin accumulate after a time," she explained. "Every month I seal the doors and windows and light a fire on the ground floor, using the branches of certain trees and bushes. I also move my bed around. I am nomadic within my own house."
He glanced about approvingly. The lines, space, and lighting were well evident, even after two millennia.
"A pleasant house, too."
"A house built of greed, Fras Invel-Spouse. Only four people lived here, yet it can hold thirty."
"Thirty! But four would be needed merely to maintain it." "No, they had machines to do that. There are piles of overgrown rust and oxides that were once their vehicles, there is a tiled cistern that they appeared to use for swimming, and there may even be a flying machine behind the house. The building that sheltered it has collapsed and been overgrown by blackberry tangles." She went to the wide window and stood proudly framing herself against the scenery. "There are thousands of similar dwellings nearby, and more under the water."
They had a meal of nuts, raisins, and wild oranges on a balcony overlooking the bay. Theresla explained about her explorations and researches. Her estimate was that the Melbourne abandon had once housed three million people.
"That seems fanciful," he said, rubbing at his temples. "No city could sup SEAN McMULLEN
port so many people in such a small area. The place should be covered in the remains of para lines and beam flash towers." A dirk fang cat jumped into his lap and began to purr. Theresla lay down on the rugs and cushions beside him and held up a complex lump of corrosion about the size of her hand.
"Remember that they could use electro force devices like this might been, and that they had personal carriages driven by steam and turbine cycle engines." '
"Three million people with their own steam tractors!" he scoffed. "Yes, and this city was no exception. It is hardly a surprise that so many of the surviving books speak of the air being rank with fumes. There is hardly any evidence of books, however. No bookcases in the houses, no neighborhood libraries, only one huge library in the central city area. I've checked it, but books that survived the mold, insects, rats, and mice for two millennia have been, taken by other avia ds It seems to have been more of a museum for books a working library as we know them. I don't know what to make of this city,
Denkar: such a huge, advanced yet illiterate society."
"Not so illiterate as you may think."
"How so?" she asked, lying up against him with an arm draped over his chest. He ran his fingers idly through her hair, straining to assemble thoughts into common language. "I've done some experiments on that electro, force calculor that Zarvora and Bouros built at Kalgoorlie. I took a words from a romantic novel and keyed them into what I have called the memory, to be stored as positions of switches held either open or closed electromagnetic relays. I could read the entire text back on the display."
"As on paper tape with punched holes?" "No, I designed a row of one hundred thin wheels on a common axle, with the letters of the alphabet, numerals, and common punctuation painted the rims. They are spun by gears connected to the calculor to present a line text at a frame window, just like a line of text in a book or scroll. I read thousand words of text back with no errors at all. Next I tried moving s from one place to another, like letters in a printing press. That worked well."
"An expensive way to store a page of words." "Indeed, but with a hundred years of development one may reduce devices to the size of a small room and store thousands of whole books them. When I switched off the electro force current to the calculor, the were all reset to a zero representation and my page was lost. Think upon that.":
Denkar gingerly lifted the dirk fang cat and sat up to pour out some the soupy yet flavorsome tea that Theresla had brewed out of local herbs. ceramic oot was a oriceless Anlaic artifact that she had found somewhere, were the matching cups. His head was still pounding from being denied coffee for more than a day, and he attempted to use a Southmoor breathing technique that Ettenbar, the new System Controller of the main Kalgoorlie calculor, had taught him. The afternoon was becoming overcast, and a light wind had made the water of the bay choppy.
Theresla sipped quietly at her tea, her mind turning over possibilities. "You are saying that the Anglaic publishers put all their books into electro force calculors," she said at last. "When the supply of electro force stopped, the books were all lost."
"There is more to it than that, but--" "A stupid idea, even their engineers must have been humble enough to accept that even the best machines have failures. Still... I have met a lot of stupid engineers since I came south from the Alspring cities--present company excepted It would explain why books were already rare even before Greatwinter. Zarvora has told me of a legend that people actually mined a huge library in the Canberra Abandon for books to burn."
Denkar put his finger to her lips. "As I was trying to say, I think there was more to it than that. In another experiment I channeled my thousand words of magnetically held text onto a reel of paper tape."
"Pointless. You can read the symbols represented by the punched holes with out a calculor." "Yes, but the calculor can read it too, and present it back in a much more readable form than punched-hole code. Just imagine a vast library of paper tape reels connected to as many as a hundred calculors. If these calculors were connected by wires to a device in a house like this, then those living here could read whatever they wanted in that library without ever having to open a book or even walk out of the door."
Theresla was
impressed by the idea. "Cumbersome... but it makes sense." "It did until the anarchic wars of Greatwinter. Some may orates must have built the Wanderers in order to cripple the electro force libraries of their rivals." "So their governments were based on libraries too, just as ours are now?" "Undoubtedly. With the calculors gone, the books and documents were just too hard to read directly from paper tape. Chaos and anarchy followed. Without books their ideas and sciences quickly became distorted and went into decline. There must have been other factors as well, but that would account for the lack of books."
"But what of the religious proscription upon heat engines?" "Just think: the furnaces of three million steam cars in a city such as this would produce a lot of heat. Perhaps the combined steam cars of the whole world were heating and poisoning the air. I hope it is not true, for I have a weakness for engines."
Some time later the sun set amid a scatter of clouds with a slash of Mirrorsun band across its disk. Theresla and Denkar were in each other's arms beneath a blanket, already settled down for the night.
The following morning Theresla took her visitor down to the new foreshore, where a chill steady wind was driving heavy waves onto a jumble of sand, rubble, and mined buildings. They had taken a small telescope with them.
"Be careful of any concealment like those walls over to the left," she advised. him. "Large, amphibious carnivores that the ancients called sea lions keep up a sort of patrol here. They are clumsy but powerful, and the cetezoid Call creatures use them as we use guard dogs."
Denkar was peering out to sea through the telescope. "I see a dark, body from time to time, and sometimes a jet of water." "They are the dolphins that have this bay as their territory. They generate i what is known as the Rochester south Callsweep. They have some sympathy fori us land animals, and dislike the sea lions
"They lure thousands to their death, yet they have sympathy for is?" "Be grateful, Fras Denkar. They deliberately start their Callsweep instead of farther north. That is why Rochester and Oldenberg never feel the Call."
He looked around at her, astonished. "By heaven--the great mystery of thousand years, yet you toss it to me as casually as a bone to a dog?"
"Your explanation of why books were in decline before Greatwinter was no less wondrous to me, my clever and resourceful lover."
"So you can communicate with these, ah, dolphins?" "I have learned to, yes. One needs a very nonhuman attitude, but it can done by someone like.." me." She snapped her teeth at him, but he did not flinch. "I have studied the dolphins near the Perth Abandon as well, and situation with them is the same. They are forced to cast the Call by other, creatures. Those are called cetezoids, and they appeared in the oceans about time of Greatwinter. The dolphins are treated like tenant shepherds or and my Bay Dolphins resent it. At the edge of the Nullarbor Plain the themselves make the Call. It is a special place where they give birth."
"What do the Bay Dolphins think of us avia ds "They are fascinated, they want to know more. I am actually negotiating casting of a null zone over Macedon, so that aviad children can be brought free from the dangers of contact with humans. See that large lump in the across there? Watch."
Theresla made a series of hissing, sibilant sounds and Denkar thought he heard something pattering through the bushes. Presently a small, tabby emerged from nearby cover, crawling with its belly against the ground, toward the dark shape in the seaweed. The cat sprang and sank its long
CHAOS
into the blubber of the sea lion back. There was a roar that sounded more like outrage than pain, and the cat bounded away as the sea lion reared up. With a surly glance at the two avia ds it turned to shuffle away toward the water. "It was stalking us," Theresla explained. "And the cats obey you?"
"Well... I'm their leader, one might say."
They walked down to the water's edge. Denkar splashed his hand in it and tasted salt. He shivered in the stiff wind.
"Are we going to meet your Bay Dolphins?" "Not today. They are easily confused and worried by new sounds, scents, and tastes. Their speech is all clicks, whistles, touches, and postures. The cetezoids use other means to communicate. I have devised other means to study the Call and overhear their thoughts. They speak with thought exchange, and that is why we use the older dolphin language here: we cannot be overheard. The cetezoids do not approve of fraternization."
"Cetezoids. Where does the word come from?" "It was a thought-form that I learned in my first attempt to eavesdrop at the Nullarbor cliffs. It is their name for themselves, but it also seems to be an old human word."
Glasken entered the control room of the Kalgoorlie calculor and received two surprises. Firstly, it was no more than a medium-sized room cluttered with the familiar half-harpsichord input keyboards, some very functional paper tape engines for output, and a wall full of gearwheel registers. Only a half dozen operators were on duty, chatting and drinking the bitter local coffee sweetened with banks ia honey. The second surprise was the System Controller.
"Fras--ah, Fras... FUNCTION 795?" stammered Glasken from the doorway. "No, 797, that was it." The System Controller left his work desk and came across to greet him. "Ah, Fras FUNCTION 3084, it is indeed a pleasure to meet with you again, and praise be to Allah that your life was spared over these years past. But your name: you are Fras John Balmak Glasken now, the great Frelle Overmayor sent me a personal communication that you would be arriving."
"Yes, but FUNCTION--no, please, what is your real name?" "Ettenbar Alroymeril, good Fras. Ettenbar to my friends. Ha-ha, Fras Glasken, I have not yet given up my hope of converting you to the path of Islam, or have you already forgotten?"
Glasken thought of his years in Baelsha and shuddered at the prospect of yet another future without alcohol.
"Well, that could be harder now. I have spent five years as a novice in a strict Christian monastery."
"Fras Glasken! You?"
"Brother Glasken, actually, but Fras is good enough between friends."
"But you were born a Gentheist."
"Correct, but I was raised as a Christian, and that was sufficient for Baelsha." '
"Well then, Fras, what are you doing here?" "My last and most difficult test, Fras Ettenbar. I must spend a year abroad in the world, alone while I fight the temptations of the devil. Greed, the drink, and the lovely form of the female body combined with the enchanting female face anticipating the feel of female skin against my own while--"
"No, no, Fras Glasken, please do not torture yourself to demonstrate your great faith."
Glasken dropped his pack to the floor, then stretched the stiffness out of his shoulders as he looked around.
"So where's this calculor, then? In the basement?"
"Not so, Fras, it lies a full half mile below us in ancient tunnels."
"In tunnels! Poor devils, I say. I may be free, but I'll always feel sympathy for the components." "Ah, but these are happy components," said Ettenbar slyly. "Their work is faster than that of the Libris machine, even though they do not have the
FUNCTION versatility as in Libris."
Glasken stared at him intently. "Is this a test of intelligence, and am I failing "No, Fras, but there are certain matters about its architecture that I may not divulge to you." Ettenbar took him by the arm and whispered conspiratorially in his ear. "It only has one processor, but makes no errors at all."
"The devil you say! Only one processor! Hi then, are there any pretty components or regulators?"
"For shame, Fras, and from you who aspire to the clergy!" Glasken quickly settled into his duties of converting chemical test data into opo timization-curve programs for use in the underground calculor. He, like everyone else on the project, assumed that Zarvora was designing new weapom'y for the Mayor of Kalgoorlie. He was surprised at the power of the explosives, as well as their instability. After nearly blowing his foot off with a single drop of liquid he decided to leave the mixing of glycerine and concentrated acids to whoever else was foolish enough to volunteer.
The ro
cketry tests were done on the dry bed of Lake Cowan, generally with rockets no more than a yard in length. There were several impressive explosions, and several more rocket flights where the little missiles flew right out of sight and could not be found again. All the while Glasken carefully invested in the property market of Kalgoorlie, maintained his liaison with Jernli, and paid an occasional visit to the Mayor's sister. Life was becoming comfortable and prosperous yet there were some habits that never left him.
He trained at the martial-arts exercises he had learnt at Baelsha for two hours every day without fail, and the sight of a monk of any denomination or creed would make him duck for cover. Whenever Calls swept over Kalgoorlie he practiced balancing the allure against his self-discipline. In all of the world Glasken was the only human who could maintain even limited movement and control when the Call swept over him, and the talent was growing all the time.
Living up to her reputation, Lemorel taxed Alspring heavily in terms of wealth, weapons, livestock, and recruits, but there were no atrocities that could not be attributed to criminals taking advantage of the disruption. She was now the un disputed ruler of the entire center of the vast continent.
As an exercise in logistics, she soon launched what she termed a thunderbolt strike to the north, at the Carpentarian cities. Rather than following tradition, with all supplies carried on the attack camels, the lancers were backed up by armed supply caravans that stood well back from the fighting. Several Carpentarian patrols were wiped out or captured; then a regional city was captured within four days. The shock caused the other cities to seal themselves into siege law, leaving the countryside, roads, farms, and canals in the hands of Lemorel's invaders. Each city was isolated, then led to believe that all the others had fallen. Mere brigades of lancers gathered groups of tens of thousands of Carpentarian peasants near the besieged cities, giving the impression of enormous armies. Surrenders were generally swift, and within three months every city was under Lemorel's administration. A population of 900,000, which was not even registered on the Libris Calculor's data cards, had been subdued at the cost of 860 lives.
Souls in the Great Machine Page 46