Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  Glasken sat up at once with a loud gasp. "Frelle Overmayor! She--I mean I--surely you don't think that I'm working with her?" "Not anymore. An evil, difficult war has broken out, Glasken. I did not foresee it, but I managed to escape to rally my armies. The trouble is that there will be no quick and convincing victories through my innovations and ingenious engines, just a lot of desperate men shooting muskets at each other in fields. Still, what is the alternative?"

  Glasken began to reply, then seemed to think better of it. He hunched over again, almost collapsing in the gloom. Zarvora watched him carefully.

  "What were you going to say, Fras Glasken?" He raised his head and looked directly at her. "I lived among the Alspring Ghans, at one of their desert outposts. They're not monsters. Should it matter if they conquer and rule us?"

  Glasken expected an outburst, but she was pensive at his proposal. "I have friends who are Southmoors, Glasken, and I SUllose I could live under Southmoor rule, yet still I have fought many wars against the Southmoor cities and states. As for the war with Tandara, why they were neighbors."

  "Agreed, Frelle."

  "There is more to this than just a stupid struggle for power, Glasken.

  I

  sometimes feel as if I am trapped in a pit and trying to build a ladder to escape,

  yet my fellow prisoners keep trying to snatch the wood away to stoke their fires.

  It annoys me intensely." Zarvora said no more, but slowly pulled herself up by the cabin Call railing and stood beside Captain Wilsart, who had returned from his inspection. They stood talking, looking out into the darkness ahead of the galley engine. Glasken rewound his Call anchor's timer, then joined them.

  "The Firefly is traveling at its top endurance cruise speed," the captain commented, a strangely dispassionate inflection in his voice.

  "Are you worried about the Ghans or their agents tearing up the tracks or laying mines," said Zarvora.

  "Were I a Ghan, that I'd be doing." "But it's not a Ghan leading the Ghans, Fras. Their leader knows the value of track work and captured roiling stock for the transport of her own troops. I'll wager that they cut only the track near Burra or Eudunda, or even mount an attack on the bridge across the river at Morgan. They need transport between towns more than we do, so out here we should be safe."

  Glasken moved across to the open side window and stood in silence, reassured yet shivering with more than the chill of the night air. He had told Zarvora only part of the truth. He had really gone to her aid because she was female.

  Theresla was right. He liked women in general, not just sex. If it had been, say, Mayor Jefton, he might have been able to rationalize an excuse to run. He looked across at Zarvora, standing beside Captain Wilsart in the gloom. Zarvora: inhumanly strong, unnaturally light, but still a woman. Now she was being civil to him, she actually seemed to respect him. Glasken had to admit feeling pride and loyalty.

  "Pride and loyalty can get you killed," he murmured to himself, but the words were insufficient to stoke his fears. "One last matter, Fras Glasken," said Zarvora as she returned. She led him down to the now unmanned gunner's chamber. "There are spies within my great system of para lines and beam flash towers, yet I have my own agents too. Using them, and carder pigeons, I can get messages through to Kalgoodie. At Morgan

  I shall be sending a message back with a lot of coded instructions. You are on intimate terms with an artisan from the Southeast named Jernli Cogsworth."

  "Ah yes, a fine--" "--tall figure of a woman who is probably quite entertaining in bed. I can find no records of Jemli using beam flash transmission, except on your business."

  "That's rieht, she thinks the charee ter word is too hieh." "All of her communications with her husband in Rochester are by letter, and those letters have all been checked. They carry false reports about the working conditions and cost of living in Kalgoorlie. Meantime she runs your mercantile interests rather well and she has made friends with your other lover Varsellia.

  She is living in the mayoral palace itself just now."

  "They probably talk about me all the time." "You flatter yourself. Has she ever asked you about calculor programming, or my rocket-fuel development, or the electro force experiments in the old mine shafts of Kalgoodie?"

  "Only in terms of how long I would be away, whether I was in bed with other women, and if I was would it change things between us. Oh, and those metal and coil switches. She once asked if the market for them was liable to trail off in the near future."

  "Did she? Was that all? Did she ask you for figures? What did you tell her?" "I had just asked her to be assistant manager of the newly renamed Glasken Enterprises and Imports. I was offering her ten gold royals a month to forget clock making and work for me full time. I was more than fair, and I also offered her--"

  "--a twenty-percent partnership and seneschal status if your growth index exceeded fifteen percent in the first year. Anything else? Dealings with my staff, edutors, or other associates?"

  "She once said that she fancied Ilyire."

  "Ahhh, yes."

  "What? What do you know?" "Everything."

  Glasken's blush went unseen in the gloom. "Well as I once said to her, better him than some riffraff churl with the pox. I trust Jemli as I trust no other woman, Frelle Overmayor, in the counting room as well as in bed. She has a strategic outlook and an excellent head for figures."

  "She ought to. Her maiden name is Milderellen and her sister is Lemorel." Zarvora shot out a hand and caught Glasken as he reeled and fell from his seat. Some minutes and quite a lot of brandy later he was recovering. Zarvora held his face into the wind stream from the side window. As they sat back she held up a folded square of poor paper

  "After I intercepted this I decided that the worst of my suspicions were correct, and that Jemli was a spy for Lemorel, that she was trying to wheedle her way into places where she could do damage at the highest of levels. I drew up and signed the order for her death, Fras Glasken, but your words saved her life. Just as well, I did not want to kill a woman who is five months pregnant."

  She took the death notice from her jacket and dipped it down the funnel of a pin lamp It burned quickly, flaring up bright in the dark of the cabin. Glasken sat watching, barely comprehending.

  "Highliber, your wisdom and mercy--Pregnant? Jemli?" Glasken held up his fingers and began to count. "January, December, November, October, September--oi, then I'm the father!"

  Glasken suddenly realized that he was embracing Zarvora. He hastily released her and backed off a step; then she handed the square of poor paper to him.

  "It is a beam flash message. It has been chasing you around the beam flash network for some days. I just happened to notice it in the routing buffer while I was in the Peterborough beam flash gallery. Varsellia's pregnant too. It should have a bad effect on Ilyire's sex life."

  Glasken unfolded the poor paper fumbling with both haste and confusion, then he dropped his hands and stared at Zarvora. His face was a study in baffled amazement, and he shook his head as if struggling out of a dream.

  "I don't understand you, Frelle. You joke about a woman whose death order was in your pocket until just moments ago." She smiled and touched his arm. "Fras Glasken, I had to turn Jemli into a thing before I could have her killed. Now I need to turn her back into a person. Turning people into things is dangerous, Fras. I thought of the Calculor components as things for many years, then discovered that I loved one of them. That shook my nerve, and I can no longer kill and imprison so easily."

  "Lemorel will scream hellfire when she finds out about me and Jemli." "If she ever conquers Kalgoorlie..."

  Glasken raised his hands. "That's enough, I'll fight in your army." Morgan was on full war alert when they arrived there at 3 A.M. Several suspected Ghan agents and agitators had been lynched from the par aline signal towers, and the bodies swung in the Firefly's slipstream as it rolled into the rail side Zarvora went to the beam flash tower and established a link to Tarrin at Rochester. Her hope
had been to bring the Libris Calculor straight into the war, but the process was slower than she had planned. The Calculor itself had been saved by the siege of its own components, but civil lawsuits had released many components and forced the introduction of several inefficient work practices. On Zarvora's instruction, Tarrin began to restore the vast machine to what it had once been, but that process was disruptive in itself.

  Without the Libris Calculor it was difficult to route military trains through the system optimally and new, secure beam flash codes could not be generated fast enough. Resource and stores inventory cards and punched tapes were beyond access, except through the Libris Calculor, yet Tarrin had taken some initiatives of value. The strategic resources and garrisons communications throughout the Southeast Alliance were temporarily transmitted in unsecured beam flash codes to the War Assembly of Mayors. His reasoning was that it was better to risk disclosure to the enemy than not to use the resources at all. Zarvora agreed, having no choice.

  Beamflash reports confirmed what she already suspected. The invaders were isolating the cities and towns while dominating the countryside. Zarvora acted at once to neutralize the Ghan strategy, ordering the destruction of all bridges and par aline links in isolated stretches of track. Beamflash towers were to be defended most strongly of all. Supplies that could not be carried into towns were to be destroyed, and cattle in farms threatened by the Ghans were to be shot or turned loose to be taken by the next Call.

  The third experimental rocket was located in the marshaling yards, and Zarvora immediately ordered that a narrow-gauge coach be demolished down to the base frame to take the rocket on to Rochester. Glasken and Ettenbar joined in the work, along with Captain Wilsart of the Firefly.

  "Nothing I like better than smashing up narrer-gauge rolling stock," Captain Wilsart laughed as he swung his axe in the lamplight. "Well mind the base, we want that left usable," called Glasken. He was already supervising a team of carpenters who were rigging a cradle for the cumbersome first stage.

  "What's this rocket for anyway?" Captain Wilsart asked. "If I knew I'd be shot for telling you. Ettenbar, have the men clear that wood from the line. Captain, have the Firefly haul the rocket out of the marshaling yards and bring it alongside this wagon."

  Another half hour passed, and the eastern sky began to brighten. Glasken saw the Firefly moving through the yards across sets of points and heard the muffled shanty of the nav vies as they pushed the pedals. Captain Wilsart was . down on the tracks, throwing the switches in person, while he communicated with his driver via signals from his shutter lantern.

  The Firefly was turned on the turntable, and finally began to rumble toward them. Glasken saw Captain Wilsart suddenly work the lantern frantically, then drop it and dash along the tracks in the path of the train. As he knelt between the tracks and began striking at something a shot rang out from a nearby carriage, then another. The captain slumped as Glasken aimed for the window where the gun flashes had been and fired at the varnished canvas just below the window shutter. He was rewarded with a thin scream, then he ran for where Captain Wilsart was crawling from the tracks. The Firefly approached, its brakes beginning to squeal and its gears grinding as the driver tried to engage reverse gearing.

  Glasken was too late. The Firefly's fore wheel passed over Captain Wilsart,

  nearly cutting him in two before the huge machine shuddered to a stop. Glasken came running up with two of the carpenters as the crew of the galley engine jumped to the ground. The captain was still pinned beneath a wheel.

  "Easy with him," said Glasken as they tried to make the man more comfortable Captain Wilsart was breathing, but there was nothing that anyone could do for him.

  "Mine, between tracks," he whispered. "Jammed dagger.." into re lease..." ' Glasken looked between the tracks and noted the dark lump just behind the fore wheels In the distance the last of the Ghan raiding party was being hunted down by a squad of Zarvora's Tiger Dragons. Glasken swore softly to himself; then, as sunlight began to spill into the marshaling yards, he crawled beneath the engine and examined the mine. Gingerly he peeled the covering cloth back from the spring-loaded trigger transfixed by Captain Wilsart's dagger. The design was Rochestrian. He reached in and unscrewed the detonator, then returned to the bloodied figure of Captain Wilsart. As Zarvora arrived he held up the detonator.

  "How is he?" asked Zarvora, although Captain Wilsart's fate was beyond question. Glasken drew a finger across his throat and shrugged.

  "Captain, I shall never forget what you did for the Alliance and for me," Zarvora whispered to him. Captain Wilsart coughed blood, which dribbled down his chin and onto his collar. "Died... for her honor," he said, reaching up and patting the traction wheel that was pinning him to the rail. "Glad it wasn't one o' those damned narrer-gauge engines as done it," he declared with his last breath.

  Zarvora sat back, Captain Wilsart's blood on her hands, and soaking the knees of her trousers. "Brunel? Broad-gauge para lines Now he dies for his engine's honor."

  "But you fought for your Calculor's honor," observed Glasken. "I fought for control of my Calculor, not its honor. This is... incomprehensible! I am surrounded by lunatics, madmen, and fanatical engineers."

  "True, Frelle Overmayor, but at least we're loyal to you." Lemorel had known from the start that the invasion of the Southern Alliance would be an order of magnitude more difficult than all of her previous campaigns, yet her army was larger than ever before and she was striking across desert, across the very country that her enemies had relied upon for a shield. Her spies and agents had also prepared her targets well.

  The Woomera Confederation was in her hands within nine days. The city of Woomera itself was besieged, along with a few fortified beam flash towers, but nearly every big town had fallen in the surprise of the first onslaught. Some beam flash towers along the par aline had fallen to her men and bombards, but the price had been high. The towers were equipped with even newer Inglewood bombards than Lemorel's, and they had a greater range. Maralinga was the western most point of her conquests, yet it had fallen to guile instead of assault. A hundred Ghans posing as coffee merchants had infiltrated the place and had seized it at the command of a coded message on the beam flash network itself.

  The broad-gauge par aline was almost undamaged from the Lake to Maralinga, and Lemorel used it to fortify Maralinga against invasion from! Kalgoorlie. The deserts and the Nullarbor Plain combined to channel everything that passed between east and west along the par aline Kalgoorlie was powerless to ship troops or send messages farther east than Fisher.

  It did not go all Lemorel's way, however. Even faced with torture and the staff of Great Western Paraline Authority were nothing less than The Ghans were finally reduced to pulling trucks of supplies along the to Maralinga using camels and horses. A scant twenty miles farther west the and galley trains were running along newly repaired track, supplying a barricade that would require the full weight of the Ghan army to breach, providing materials to repair beam flash towers that had been incapacitated out precaution. Out in the deserts, the western Kooree tribes were unhappy about Ghan raiding parties dashing across their land, and were quick to fight back. There could be no Ghan invasion of the western may orates for a long time.

  Zarvora had expected that the invaders would attack Morgan and but Lemorel had another surprise for her. Over the following fortnight she directly east across the Barrier Grasslands, sending squads of lancers ahead spread havoc. She met with Southmoor envoys and the Central agreed to remain neutral while the Southmoors and Alspring Ghans fought Southern Alliance. In return for the dry and sprawling Balranald Emirate, Southmoors would be given all the Alliance Mayorates as far west as and Ghan troops and lancers would advance no further than the

  River. The Southmoors would strike at the eastern border while the Ghans Mildura, Wentworth, Robinvale, and all the western par aline and

  Unfortunately for Lemorel, Zarvora was not above preemptive strikes In March, and against the advice of her War
Assembly of Mayors, she a massive assault across the eastern border, striking deep into Southmoor centers, smashing bridges and physically removing par aline rails on such a that Southmoor transport was reduced to a tenth of normal capacity. She timed the strike with beam flash network reports of un seasonally heavy rains riving from the west. The Southmoor prohibition on beam flash worked against them, and they were unable to coordinate their defenses Ghans. Meantime the Ghan offensive in the west had been brought to shivering halt, as they were unused to fighting in cold, continuous, in lushly vegetated country.

  By April, Zarvora had earned some respite and was fighting back in that the Ghans found bewildering. When the Ghans struck deep into enemy ri tory to frighten the cities into siege mode, the Alliance lancers would strike their supply depots and harass them until they were forced to withdraw. Ghan victories became hard-won, bloody, and transitory, rather than glorious, quick, and decisive. Try as she might, Lemorel could cut neither the beam flash nor par aline links any farther east than Morgan.

  For all her successes, Zarvora remained objective. Her ever-rebellious western castellanies had gone over to Lemorel without a fight, and the Southmoors were slowly beating her troops back out of their lands in the east. In mid-April the city of Woomera fell, and Lemorel shocked even her own over hands by burning the stubbornly defiant capital of the Woomera Confederation to a warren of smoking shells without allowing any inhabitants to escape. The end of the siege freed seventy thousand Ghan troops and siege engineers. She decided to bring them to bear against Robinvale, a key beam flash link whose capture would isolate a third of Zarvora's territory.

  Meanwhile there were numerous inconclusive strikes and probes for weaknesses At Dareton a hastily trained line of musketeers faced and broke a charge by five brigades of Ghan lancers. A pin bearing crossed muskets was pressed into Zarvora's wall map to denote the battle, while a scribe added crossed sabers to a map in Lemorel's distant command tent. Within the Libris Calculor, a large vector was added at Dareton for the 105th Calculor Musketeer and it was assigned several parameters of movement.