Secrets of the Fire Sea j-4

by Stephen Hunt

  'What are you doing?' cried Rudge, his head barely able to follow her from his position wedged under the suit's leg. 'I told you to get back up the shaft. I ordered-'

  'Be quiet,' retorted Hannah. 'The charge-master sent me down here because I've got a brain and I'm going to use it.'

  'You're not going to think a couple of tonnes of suit off me, grub. You've done the job we came down here to do, so get out of the shaft now!'

  She was at the controls of the primitive steam-driven thinking machine, ignoring the navvy's shouts while she put the small portable punch-card writer to good use. One more card. One last chance. There was another creak from the gate underneath them. It was getting noticeably noisier – the pressure building up below. 'T-face,' Hannah shouted down to the ab-lock pacing behind his fallen master. 'Get ready to pull him out.'

  'You're not going to do what I think you…?'

  Hannah inserted the punch card. 'What do you care? You're going to die anyway if this doesn't work.'

  The drums in the transaction engine on the wall began to rotate as her punch card instructions were received and processed. Please, let there still be enough steam left in its reservoir to do the job.

  Rudge was tearing the sleeve off his body suit, wrapping the material around his eyes. 'Cover your face, grub.'

  Hannah ripped a line of cotton material off her own body suit, bundling the makeshift sweat-soaked bandanna around her eyes.

  The tolerances. It was all down to the tolerances now. Her best guess at the weight of the suit and the intense pressure of the steam tap below the gate, and…

  The blast came like a lightning bolt cast from the gates of the hell they denied.

  …how wide the opening of a single vane would have to be to shift the suit, and…

  Hannah was thrown back into the wall, blind behind her bandanna, deafened by the crash of the displaced suit.

  …how long to leave it open without cooking the three of them…

  Hannah yelled as she realized she had fallen forward onto the oven-hot pressure gate, the thick iron burning into her hands as she pushed herself up and tore off her blindfold. It was like being inside a surface mist, now, but she could see that T-face was dragging Rudge away – his fallen suit shifted over to the other side of the shaft by the force of the volcano of steam Hannah had briefly allowed through that single open vane.

  Some piece of gear on Rudge's suit had smacked him when it had shifted, though. Rudge was bleeding from the head and unconscious. Hannah climbed back up to the transaction-engine platform, closely followed by T-face bearing the weight of his master's body, and she was about to reach for the single dangling rappel line attached to her suit, when she realized that it had vanished. Oh, sweet Circle. It was on the metal gate below her – her line must have become dislodged when she steam-blasted Rudge's suit away from his broken body. Hannah's suit was still lodged far above them, though. Far enough that there was no way she was going to be able to climb up the shaft's smooth walls to reach it. T-face was shifting from foot to foot, moaning as he took in their hopeless predicament. Hannah fought down the sense of mounting panic. How to get out? She couldn't signal the turbine workers with the transaction engine to call for help. That was the whole point of it. An independent steam-driven node with only one purpose, controlling the gate. Could she open the pressure gate again, blast herself, Rudge and the ab-lock up to her suit, using Rudge's suit as a lifting platform? No, that was suicide. Just a second with a single vane being opened had nearly killed them both. She might reach her suit, but it would be without her skin.

  'Damn you!' Hannah yelled up the shaft. 'Damn you for sending me down here to die.' Was that for Vardan Flail? For the master of the turbine halls? For everyone on Jago who needed the dark energy that was going to end up killing her? It hardly mattered anymore. Rudge was starting to wake, but not to full sensibility, drifting in and out of a shivering half-awareness. He was muttering something, and Hannah bent down to hear him better.

  'Winch.'

  She looked up at her suit, its flickering lantern signalling teasingly to her. There was a winch hook on the right leg of the suit. It was designed for dragging broken turbines out of the way on the floor of the halls above, but if she could get it to lower itself down, then they could shimmy up the line. The winch's activation lever was up there too. Thirty feet above her head, but it might as well have been in the clouds for all that she could reach it. Unless…Leaping down onto the burning hot gate, Hannah retrieved Rudge's tool kit and brought it back to her ledge. She rifled through the contents of until she found it, a lone signal flare.

  'One shot,' mumbled Rudge.

  One shot. She had better make it a good one. Hannah pointed the red tube up at the winch lever, aiming it as well as she could without a sight, and pressed down on the trigger, the recoil of the escaping firework nearly sending the tube leaping out of her sweating fingers. Arcing up, the flare hit near the winch drum and went spinning off to the side of the shaft, a useless sparking comet.

  Hannah growled through gritted teeth. 'Missed!'

  But Rudge didn't hear her, he had passed out again. If he was lucky, maybe he would stay unconscious through their deaths too. T-face howled in surprise as the hook of the winch came plummeting down from the suit's leg and bounced off the pressure gate as the metal line whipped dangerously across the passage. Hannah stared up in amazement. She had missed the winch lever, missed it by a country mile, she could have sworn she had, and yet it had…the stories of the suit-ghosts came back to her.

  She looked at the ab-lock, who seemed as spooked by the winch activating as she was. 'Can you carry him up to my suit? You'll need to hold onto him as I climb up the shaft – the cabin only fits one.' Did he understand her? To emphasize the words, she pointed at Rudge and then mimicked climbing up the rope with the young man tossed over a shoulder.

  Hannah realized how desperate she sounded and how dangerous the situation was. What did she know of ab-locks and their taming? If T-face turned feral now, she didn't even have a suit whip to lash him into line.

  T-face responded by slinging the passed-out navvy across his back, his leathery scarred face wobbling from side to side as he emitted a stream of growls. It almost sounded as if the creature was trying to say something back to her, the noises from its mangled throat rising and falling in a mockery of speech. The ab-lock seemed to grasp what was needed for them all to survive, though, seizing the winch line and shinning back up with his master.

  Below Hannah's ledge the gate gave a hungry anticipatory shudder.

  Hannah leapt off the transaction-engine platform and caught the winch cable, clambering up the line after T-face and Rudge, abandoning the mobile punch-card writer, Rudge's tools and his fallen suit down below. How far did the steam tap travel towards the centre of the earth? Hannah didn't intend to be around to find out when the gate retracted. Hannah pushed her suit out of the steam tap, into the turbine hall, the clangs of a dozen retracted pressure gates still ringing in her ears. Her hands were so sweaty now that the control cage inside her suit's cabin had begun slipping off her skin. The chimney door was shutting behind her when the lights on the vault's wall began to flash, the steam tap returning to operation. Blast doors pulled into the ceiling at the other end of the vault and a mob of suited workers returned from the safety of the adjoining turbine hall. She had done it. All around Hannah, the turbines were spinning back into life, the eerily silent hall filling with the racket of rotating blades. Fingers of vapour were already leaking from the pipes. Soon, the hall would once again be the steam-filled hell she had stepped out into earlier in the day.

  T-face leapt down from the perch moulded onto the suit's back, landing on the floor with the still-unconscious navvy.

  At the head of the gang of returning guildsmen was the red chequerboard-patterned hull of the charge-master. 'You're down a suit.' His bluff voice echoed from Hannah's earphones.

  'A steam spill sent Rudge's suit crashing down the shaft, well be
low the electric limit of its circuits, charge-master.'

  The head of the turbine hall grunted and turned to one of his retinue. 'Do you slackers think you're still on a break? Take our lad down to the infirmary before the field begins to build back up.' The charge-master swivelled his head dome down to stare at T-face and made a jabbing motion back to the other end of the chamber. 'Return to stables. Chop-chop. Assigned to another hand while boss man in infirmary.' He ejected his whip in case the ab-lock hadn't got the message,

  T-face bent his head sadly and trotted off.

  Hannah thought she saw the charge-master's eyes staring at her through the dome on top of his suit. 'Adequate for your first day. For a coder.'

  He walked off, leaving Hannah unsure whether she was meant to go back to the suiting hall or continue her training with the rest of the workers out here.

  Something about the charge-master's words stayed with her. Our lad.

  Young Rudge never had got round to telling her who his father was in the turbine halls.

  Our lad. Nandi stepped out of the transport capsule and down onto the platform of the guild's atmospheric station, the young priest from the cathedral, Father Baine, close on her heels.

  Vardan Flail was waiting for them in front of the lockers holding the guild's visitors' suits, a retinue of red-cowled guildsmen standing behind the high guild master's twisted form.

  One of the guildsmen stepped forward as she approached. 'Damson Tibar-Wellking, I will be your assistant for the rest of your research session within the great archive. I am archivist Trope.'

  'That's very kind of you,' smiled Nandi, looking meaningfully at the high guild master. 'But I believe my research will be taking me a little further afield than the guild's transaction-engine vaults. And that's not why I'm here today, as I suspect you well know.' She indicated the young priest following behind her.

  Baine caught up with Nandi and stopped in front of Vardan Flail. 'By the authority of the unified arch-diocese of Jago and the rational order of the Circlist church I present an examination notice for Damson Hannah Conquest.'

  Vardan Flail looked irritated. 'If it's an observance of the formalities you want, perhaps the cathedral should have sent Father Blackwater to me rather than a mere pup.'

  'The examination notice duly ratified and sealed by order of the stained senate,' added the young priest, not rising to the insult.

  'Oh, very well,' snapped Vardan Flail. 'Your examination notice is accepted and I do hereby authorize release of Initiate Conquest of the Guild of Valvemen into your custody.' He clicked his fingers for one of his minions to fetch the girl. 'The temporary release, pending the results of the church examination.'

  'The church examination which will be marked manually for this test,' Nandi added. 'Rather than by your transaction engines.'

  'Manually! Isn't that quaint. I still expect to see the results myself,' snapped Vardan Flail. 'To ensure that there is no favouritism in the grading of one of my initiates.'

  'Perish the thought,' said Father Baine.

  'You probably still remember the test yourself,' said Vardan Flail. 'You hardly look old enough to shave.'

  'I remember the test as being very easy. Anyone can pass, really.'

  A group of staff-wielding guildsmen entered the station hall and parted to reveal Hannah Conquest, still wearing the grey cotton body suit of a turbine hall worker. She was soaked with sweat and swaying slightly on her feet.

  'What have you done to her?' cried Father Baine. 'She looks like she hasn't slept in a week.'

  'The city demands much of the guild,' retorted Vardan Flail. 'It is only dedicated toil that keeps the turbine halls running. Perhaps the church authorities might remember that in future, rather than twisting the law to try to circumvent the draft ballot for their favourites.'

  Nandi grabbed one of Hannah's arms while Father Baine supported her other side, leading the girl stumbling towards the transport capsule.

  'Don't worry,' Vardan Flail sneered after them. 'The church examinations are easy, anyone can pass them.'

  Nandi shook her head in disgust and shut off her view of the high guild master's hooded face with the closing of the carriage's door.

  Her arm still held by Father Baine, Hannah straightened up, wiping the sweat off her face as though she was a drunk who had suddenly transitioned into stone-cold sobriety.

  Hannah winked towards the shocked young priest and Nandi. 'Well, my suit was logging double shifts down in the turbine halls, but it doesn't mean that it always had to be me inside it.' With a shudder, the carriage entered the airless atmospheric tunnel, leaving the guild's vaults. 'It's good to have friends, isn't it?' 'Quick,' Jethro said to Hannah, 'your favourite hymn from the cathedral…?'

  'My knowledge, my soul,' said Hannah, looking at the books spread across the table in the inquisition agent's hotel room. 'Will that be part of the church's entrance exam?'

  'No,' said Jethro. 'I just wanted to see which hymn you liked best. That question can reveal a lot about a candidate.'

  And he could see; he could see Alice's mark all over the young girl, little reflections of the things he remembered and loved about his ex-fiancee. The way Hannah thought, the way she acted. Truly, Alice had been the mother than Hannah had lost, and for Alice, perhaps, the daughter that Jethro's defrocking and the breaking of their engagement had denied her. Denied them.

  'Then it won't help me pass,' said Hannah. 'I hear you sing to yourself all the time, Mister Daunt. But only tavern songs, never Circlist hymns.'

  'No, I don't sing those any more,' admitted the ex-parson. 'I don't feel I have the right to them. And you should call me Jethro.' He picked up the books they had been cramming from, borrowed from the acting archbishop's office. 'You have an exceedingly good mind – first rate, in fact. The way you can pick apart the components of synthetic morality and put them back together again puts me in mind of Alice.'

  'Alice was the cleverest person I'd ever met.'

  'Myself also,' said Jethro. Until now, that is, his mind silently retorted. 'But she had her weaknesses and I think you share them too. Circlism is not just about knowledge and enlightenment. It is about embracing our humanity. Each of us is cupped out from the one sea of consciousness and poured into these mortal vessels. You – I – everyone we know is the same. It is only the nature of reality that makes us feel alone, which tricks us into seeing difference where none exists. But it is a false illusion, for when you pour a cup of water back into the river, where do the cup's contents end and the river's begin? All is motion, all is the river.'

  'Even for Alice's killers?' asked Hannah.

  'A Circlist would say the killer only killed themselves. Lack of knowledge tends to do that.'

  'I don't think I can ever see them as part of me enough to forgive them.'

  'We are all but human,' said Jethro.

  'What they did to Alice,' said Hannah quietly, looking down at the tome in front of her as if it was all of her world. 'It wasn't just to make it look like an ursk attack, was it? She was tortured to try and find out something.'

  'I won't let the killer touch you,' promised Jethro. 'I arrived here too late to save Alice, but I'm just in time for you.' The girl that Alice had raised as her own, the child that should have been theirs. 'Isn't that right, old steamer?'

  The steamman was standing in the doorway bearing a tray of steaming tea cups procured from the hotel's staff.

  'Indeed it is, Hannah softbody,' said Boxiron. 'We have faced evil and criminals many times together, yet by combining my intellect and Jethro Daunt's famous brawn, we have always triumphed.'

  'You are exceedingly obliging,' said Jethro, taking the tray. 'With both your refreshments and your humour.'

  Boxiron tapped the armour on his chest, the transaction-engine drum buried there slowly rotating. 'My 'intellect' is, I fear, a little scratched by the Jackelian underworld's pistols. I'm sure you will forgive me.'

  'Let's get back to your studying,' said Jethro, tapping the
tomes in front of Hannah. For if Hannah failed to gain entrance to the church, the next place she would be going was straight back to the Guild of Valvemen and into the clutches of Vardan Flail.

  And that was no longer something Jethro could allow – not for Alice's sake or his own. Jethro Daunt found it hard to suppress a smile when he saw the number of people gathered in the cathedral's testing room – rarely, he suspected, would it have been busier than this. Not just with those sitting the examination, their heads swelled to gargantuan size by the Entick machinery, but with the observers trying not to trip over the trailing cables or get in the way of the priests behind the testing tables. There were twelve examinees sitting the tests this day, but only one of them was responsible for drawing in all these extra people. Commodore Black, Nandi, Boxiron, Chalph urs Chalph, Ortin urs Ortin, half the cathedral's off-duty staff – all to see if Damson Hannah Conquest could throw off the guild's shackles – with a few of the crimson-robed crows sitting silently in the corner. Briefed, Jethro was sure, to try and detect the slightest deviation from the usual form of the church's examination. Anything that would allow the guild to nullify the results of the test.

  And the results were hardly in doubt, for Hannah Conquest had both nature and nurture on her side. The offspring of two of the brightest scholars Jackelian academia had ever produced, tutored by Alice in every mathematical nuance of synthetic morality. Even so, Jethro could sense the amazement the priests testing Hannah felt at the speed she was going through the large leather-bound tomes of questions piled on top of each table. Knocking down their questions as fast as they could fire them at her. And the scariest thing of all was that it was obvious to him that she wasn't even trying. This was just what Hannah Conquest needed, to earn what she believed would be a life of quiet contemplation. To get everyone off her back for good.

  Jethro glanced across at Nandi and the commodore. Of course, the young academic had been right. None of them could tell Hannah what they had discovered in the Pericurian embassy, not before she'd sat the exam. There was no telling how Hannah would react, and she needed her head clear and focused right now. Able to conjure up, as she was at the moment, a formula to prove how allocation of food to female children during a time of famine would prove the optimum stabilising force within a democracy – with a sidebar question on how the allocation would need to change for a classic autocracy.