Souls in the Great Machine

by Sean McMullen

  SEAN McMULLEN nents struggled to hide under their desks and benches. Another guard fired, dropping a FUNCTION to Glasken's left. They're shooting at random, he thought as he took out the second Morelac and checked the strikers. His shot hit another guard in the gallery, who collapsed over the stone railing. The others backed off out of sight. Another figure appeared at an access hole cut in the brickwork for extensions that had never been continued because of the Kalgoorlie calculor's success. A Dragon Librarian clothed in black. Tarrin! Glasken took aim and squeezed the trigger The flint stalker shattered, but the gun did not discharge.

  "Fargh dummart gunsmiths, pox 'em all!" shouted Glasken as he frantically unclamped the flint from the other striker. By the time he was ready for another shot, Tan'in was nowhere to be seen.." and a fantastic headdress of gunmetal barrels and wooden stocks ringed Glasken's scalp, all with guards or regulators at the other end. Glasken lowered his Morelac to the floor very, very slowly.

  It was late in the afternoon before anyone saw fit to get back to Glasken. Two guards and one FUNCTION were dead. Over a hundred components had been injured, and a lot of damage had been done by trampling feet and components smashing mechanisms under desks as they sought cover. The Libris Calculor had been disabled for the longest time since its commissioning. All of those who would have questioned Glasken were needed for the repairs.

  Glasken's first message reached Theresla on the shores of the Phillip Bay. Its simple instruction was BEGIN, because aviad agents were ready in Rochester. She entered the water at once to communicate with the dolphins and relay to them a request for help. The dolphins deliberated, decided, then acted. A Call rolled over Rochester for the first time in recorded history.

  The city had not been designed for safety during a Call. There were no mercy walls, Call rails, watch birds or trained terriers, and nobody wore anchors and timer belts. Ilyire raced through the corridors of Libris opening doors and un locking gates amid crowds of mindless, shambling people who could do nothing but walk south. Librarians, technicians, guards, senior staff, and readers wandered into the streets of Rochester and joined the crowds making for the south of the city. A ring road inside the wall led to the south gate and out across a wide stone bridge over the shallow lake and into the suburbs. The main gate was closed, and only a trickle of people were getting through the access door beside it. Ilyire hurried to the gatehouse, where he threw levers and chopped ropes until he could raise the drop gate Once it was two yards clear of the ground he jammed the windlass using the gate captain's halberd of office. The crowd poured under it ...... and across the bridge.

  This Call did not last two or three hours, as it did everywhere else on the continent: it continued for five. Libris emptied, the mayoral palace emptied. The Constable's Watchhouse, the markets, the University, the shops, the houses, the hostelries, the taverns, the brothels, the blockhouses of the fortifications, every part of the city was purged of its citizens. A few were left, trapped in blind lane ways and corners, or locked in watch house cells or the stocks. Those locked in the cells of the mayoral palace and Libris were all of unquestioned loyalty to Zarvora and were mainly Dragon Librarians.

  Ilyire wheeled a cartload of gunpowder into the middle of the main bridge after four hours had passed; then he released the main drop gate and secured it. The cart blew a span out of the heavy stone bridge. There were other bridges across the lake and dozens of boats, but the south bridge was wide and strong, a perfect route for a massed attack.

  Suddenly the aberrant Call ceased. Most of the people of Rochester, Oldenberg, and all of the small towns in the null zone that was the Rochester Mayorate found themselves in open fields, about fifteen miles from home. All at once a rush began in the opposite direction. Tarrin managed to rally several hundred Dragon Librarians and lead them to the forefront of the horde of citizens. Their only weapons were pistols and sabers: those with muskets had dropped them the moment that the Call began.

  "Nothing like it's ever happened," panted Tarrin as he jogged along with the others.

  "Could the enemy be commanding the Call?" asked a Dragon Gold.

  "Impossible," puffed the already winded Tarrin. "We must be first back. At least nobody else was better prepared." But the loyal Dragon Librarians that Ilyire had just released from the Libris and palace cells were far better prepared. Ilyire had freed and armed them as soon as the Call ceased. The Calculor components had been just as safe, being imprisoned as well, and Ilyire had disarmed and chained up their regulators. The Dragon Librarians loyal to Zarvora were outnumbered, but they had the advantage of being behind high walls and having all the bombards and muskets that they could use. They also had the leadership of a hero of Ravensworth bridge: Captain John Glasken.

  Zarvora had also been ready, with small spark flash transceivers stationed at the four compass points around Rochester. As soon as the extraordinary Call began she was informed, and commenced moving her troops in from loyal centers by galley train. For several days the fighting continued in the outer suburbs of Rochester and around the lake, but once Zarvora's troops had fought past par aline centers under Tarrin's control the end was a foregone conclusion. Tarrin was no warrior and for once the situation needed tactical rather than strategic skills. He was caught, tried, and sentenced in very short order, and was already hanging dead on a scaffold by the time Jefton was found hiding in a farmyard shed near Euroa. The Mayor-Seneschal of Rochester could only be tried and executed by his peers, and it would be many months before the assembled Mayors of the Southeast Alliance sat in judgment over him, then knelt in their splendid robes and raised their muskets at the command of Overmayor Zarvora Cybeline.

  The street-to-street fighting was still raging in Rochester's suburbs when Zarvora entered inner Rochester across one of the footbridges. With her were Denkar, Bouros, and several dozen Tiger Dragons. Glasken was nowhere to be seen, but was said to be directing bombard fire at rebel concentrations in the lakeside suburbs from the inner city walls. Zarvora's group split up after a hasty conferral and Bouros made for the artillery position. The Mayor of Kalgoorlie had never actually set eyes on Glasken, and he also had the mistaken idea that his own fame was so widespread that everyone knew him by sight.

  "Where is that Glasken who got my sister with child?" he said to the bombardiers.

  Muskets appeared from everywhere, pointing at Bouros.

  "You leave Captain alone, an' back away," snarled a strong east Highland accent.

  "Yes, mind your place, Kalgoorlie Callbait," added an educated Rochestrian voice.

  "Touch our Captain we blow ugly head off," called a Southmoor.

  Bouros thought for a moment. Rule one in engineering, he thought to himself:

  Meet the functional requirements.

  "Fras Glasken!" bellowed Bouros at the top of his lungs. "Your lady's in labor. Get to the beam flash tower!"

  A tall, powerfully built man gave a start, then bolted in the direction of the tower.

  Glasken stumbled out of the lift into the beam flash gallery, panting and flushed.

  "Glasken!" shouted Zarvora from the beam flash transmitter mechanism.

  "Do you take Jemli Milderellen as your lawful primary wife?"

  "Who, me? But what of her husband?" Glasken called back. "The Black Runners located him last week and persuaded him to sign an adultery admission," said Zarvora as she robbed her temples. "They are divorced."

  "Then yes!"

  Denkar led him to where Zarvora was tapping out a beam flash transmission.

  "And now we wait," she concluded. "Wait for the beam flash to Kalgoorlie?" cried Glasken. "My child will be born, grown, and halfway through University--and still a bastard--before the reply returns."

  "Not so, Fras," Denkar assured him. "A spark flash unit stands at the base of the Kerang tower and it's linked to another at the Kalgoorlie palace."

  Zarvora was trying to massage a migraine from behind her left eye and she seemed to have aged several years in a matter of weeks.
>
  "I am legitimizing your child because I owe you a lot, Glasken," she said hoarsely, "but in the name of the Deity will you settle down and sort out your love life?"

  Zarvora gazed patiently through the eyepiece of the beam flash telescope as Denkar rubbed a wet towel across the back of her neck. She read the sparkles of code from the distant tower's heliostat out aloud, not bothering to work the key of the tape punch. Glasken was lying against a nearby pillar.

  "Baby girl, Jemli well, weight at birth.." thirteen pounds! The poor woman.

  Hmm, wrong blood type for Ilyire, but right for you."

  "Can you send a reply?" asked Glasken.

  "And an aviad," Zarvora continued, looking worse with each passing minute. "What is her name to be?"

  "Call her Lessimar, after my stepmother." Denkar rattled the door of the medic ian closet. When it did not open Glasken drew his Gimley 40-bore and blew the lock off. Zarvora slowly lowered her hands from her ears, drew a key from her jacket, and tossed it to the flagstones beside Glasken. Denkar pulled the shattered lock away and took a jar from the closet. After pouring some whisky into two measure-glasses he tossed the jar to Glasken.

  "Lameroo Medicinal Rye?" Glasken commented as he removed the cork. "What's this for? Changing my bandages?" "To Lessimar Glasken," declared Denkar, holding up his measure-glass. Zarvora delicately dipped a fingertip into her measure-glass and licked it. Glasken swallowed several mouthfuls.

  "Jemli and I tested as human," gasped Glasken once he had finished coughing.

  "So did my parents," Denkar assured him. "It's rare, but avia ds can be born to humans. Genototem scholars can explain it."

  "As Overmayor I also have a magistrate's authority. I picked up this blank marriage certificate on the way here, so..." She scratched at the parchment with a goose quill from beside the gallery's attendance roster, then handed it to Glasken. Moments later he was gone, in search of better company for a revel.

  "Although pregnant, Jemli has been keeping company with estatiers, Costassian in particular," Zarvora remarked in a flat, cool voice.

  "Ilyire is no longer there to occupy her," replied Denkar. "Wrong. Glasken introduced her to life above her station, he taught her to mix with highborn, rich, vindictive nobodies with no dreams or vision. Now she wants an estate and a rich husband with a rifle." "Glasken meets those criteria. One day he will be a mayor, too."

  "And will still be Glasken. She will eventually demand refinement, Den, and that will cause grief. Still, for now I rewarded him with what he wanted, even if what he needed may not be her."

  There were many treaties and arrangements signed over the weeks following Tarrin's defeat. The Southmoors broke into a number of small may orates and emirates, leaving the Emir of Cowra in charge of his immediate emirate and nothing more. Many of the new and smaller states were well disposed to the Southern Alliance.

  The Alspring Ghans began returning to their desert cities, not so much in defeat as with the promise of something better than conquest. Six months of trying to control the staff of the Great Western Paraline Authority had backfired very seriously. Many Ghans had become hopelessly entranced by broad-gauge wind and galley trains, and they were scouring the desert for ancient iron rails and suitable track routes. A seven-foot-gauge par aline was to be built linking Alspring to Woomera, but in the meantime camel trains were opening up a flourishing trade.

  The strange annihilation at Ravensworth was the subject of a great number of studies, and early in August an intermayorate conference of edutors at Griffith concluded that it had been caused by an excess of conductive smoke from many cooking fires combined with ionized paths traced by mortar shells and the proximity of a great deal of metal weaponry. It had induced a type of massive and localized lightning, providing proof that the prohibition on steam engines was based in physics and not religious mysticism. Metal, steam, and smoke were pronounced a deadly combination. It was definitely unwise to concentrate heavy industry in any one place or use steam engines to power trains.

  Zarvora, Denkar, and Bouros knew differently, but chose to remain silent. They knew that Mirrorsun, the huge band with a potential surface area greater than that of the entire moon, was alive and conscious. With the war over they turned to the problems of communicating with it. It took time, but contact was established and a translation code agreed upon.

  The Mirrorsun band had heard their spark flash radios in an otherwise lonely cosmos. When Dolodan sent out her message from Ravensworth about defeat and death being close, Mirrorsun interpreted the words as allies of the Wanderers attacking one of its fellow intelligences. It focused a massive blast of radiation on the area that Dolorian had radioed as being covered by enemy forces.

  Nor was Mirrorsun the only voice on the radio bands. On another continent, Col-Arado had a single transceiver, operating from a Christian monastery. Before suddenly going silent it had told of a great and strange civilization in what had once been the Rocky Mountains of America. The gathering together of the ancient civilization's legacy accelerated beyond Zarvora's wildest dreams. "Nobody but you should hold the key to Mirrorsun," Denkar told her.

  "I

  would have used its power as a weapon, but you would not. That earned you the right to deal with it."

  "That may have just been my weakness," she countered.

  "Then it's a weakness that we can all learn from. Where do we go from here with Mirrorsun?" "More study and better communication. I shall use a Bouros calculor for an encryption interface. It can be housed in the old Calculor hall."

  "But the hall still contains the Libris Calculor, Zar." "It is no longer sufficiently fast or accurate, it must be decommissioned. The components can be given a general amnesty and a bag of royals each."

  "But Zar, many don't want to go, remember? Tarrin tried to disband them on the eve of the war and they barricaded themselves inside. They saved the Libris Calculor for your use in your war with Lemorel and there are still five thousand components who want to stay. That's a lot of skilled, talented people,

  Zarvora looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. It took her some moments to gather together the words of a reply.

  "To me it was just a tool.." yet you are telling me that it is a whole world to those living within it."

  "Perhaps not a world, but a home."

  "All right, I did not fight the war to throw my troops out of home. Tell me what would please them." The components of the Calculor were subdued and morose as they obeyed the SYSTEM HALT command and gathered, along with those off-duty, to attend Zarvora's briefing. When it had been the Rochester and Southeast Alliance Human Rights Association attempting to destroy the Calculor they could imagine there was a mistake. With Zarvora, there could be no doubt about it.

  "Wish it was some new configuration," said PORT 3A sadly as they sat waiting.

  "We could get together outside once in a while," MULTIPLIER 17 suggested. "You know, meet with abacus frames and run the machine." "Oh yea, it could be in the meeting hall of the Echuca Library. We could invite some Dragon Librarians to walk among us with canes, hitting anyone who makes a mistake and dragging an occasional component off to the broom closet for some solitary confinement."

  "A few of us have not thought it such a stupid idea--Ah now, here she comes." '

  This time there was applause for Zarvora instead of cowering and terrified silence. She mounted the rostrum, then spoke in a more muted voice than they were used to. Many ,rr,." l 1""4o , *,; ....... ," SEAH McMULLEH

  "Components of the great machine known as the Calculor, today is a day of destiny for you all. Today you will go free, but being free does not mean that you cannot work in the Libris Calculor."

  At this there was a flurry of whispers. "Some of you may know that a new electro force calculor has been brought from Kalgoorlie. It is a thousand times smaller than the Libris Calculor, yet a thousand times faster. Now, imagine your Calculor in its current form being expanded a thousand times. The demand for regulators and
technicians would be enormous. In a way, the electro force calculor is no different. I have great need of experienced folk to convert programs written in Calculor Conversation Protocol to the electro force calculor's language, CIND--Calculor Instruction Numeric Dio ale ct This will be a massive task, yet there is more again. Mayor Bouros of Kalgoorlie estimates a two-hundredfold increase in calculor speed by this time next year."

  There was another wave of incredulous whispers. "Those of you who stay in Libris will be paid as regulators to tend the new, electro force calculor. It will be harder work, with no more blind following of instructions. You will have to think. Take my offer seriously, you have five days to decide. Thank you once more for all the work that you have done here as souls in the great machine, the Libris Calculor. You changed the world."

  The components had begun talking among themselves already. For the first time in over a decade, Zarvora had found herself ignored.

  "So, it be a new configuration after all," said PORT 3A.

  "New configuration be buggered, it's a complete rebuild," replied MULTIPLIER 17. "Do they have any manuals or diagrams, I wonder?"

  "Look there, by the door. It's FUNCTION 9."

  "Hey there, FUNCTION 9!" called MULTIPLIER 17 as they both hurried over to Denkar. "Where have you been for the past eighteen months?"

  ' 3A, 17, the day's fortune to you. Will you stay?"

  "Oh aye, they'll need me," said PORT 3A. "It's all very well for a toy sized model, but not on the scale of the Libris Calculor." "Not so. We've had prototypes working for months. I've been developing the CIND language myself. It's faster for writing programs because you can write out the whole thing in numerical symbols."

  "Numerical?" said MULTIPLIER 17. "When can we see it?"

  A crowd was beginning to gather around them by now, both regulators and components. Zarvora called for attention. "I want volunteers to carry in boxes, pedal on the galley wagons, and to break up desks to make room."