The Court of the Air j-1

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘This is the filly?’ asked the cardsharp, looking Molly over. ‘Looks like a Middlesteel girl through and through.’

  ‘Keep your eyes to yourself, engine boy,’ said Molly. ‘And your hands.’

  ‘Just taking an interest, love,’ said the cardsharp. ‘No need to take on airs. Coppertracks, you got what we agreed?’

  Coppertracks’ dome skull lit up the dark corner as he considered his answer. ‘If you can arrange the access we require, Binchy softbody.’

  ‘When’s old Binchy ever let you down?’ said the cardsharp. ‘And it hasn’t been easy, don’t think it has. I’ve called in favours; lots of friends of friends will be looking the other way this morning.’

  The commodore leant in close to the cardsharp. ‘Good friends are these, Binchy? Like the same clever fellows who got their hands on my charts for the Fire Sea?’

  Binchy flinched back. ‘I told you, Jared. I bleeding told you. Those came from ordinance survey charts based on navy salvage from a wrecked empire boat. You think the God-Emperor knows anything about submarine navigation?’

  ‘Just enough to get the Sprite of the Lake cooked and wrecked off the wicked shores of the Isla Needless.’

  ‘You got back, didn’t you, and a sight wealthier than when you left. You like the sea so bleeding much, Jared, you spend some of your pile on a new boat.’

  ‘Don’t act the blessed fool,’ said the commodore. ‘You know why that would be a bad idea.’

  The cardsharp touched the side of his nose. ‘A nod is as good as a wink, skipper. Wasn’t it old Binchy that came through for you in that little matter as well? Now, given that Coppertracks is somewhat lacking in the old pockets department, I assume that it is you or the filly who is carrying my stuff?’

  The commodore nodded and pulled out a thin parcel wrapped in brown paper from underneath his crimson waistcoat. Binchy caressed it, almost as if he was afraid to touch the parcel lest it disappear, then he carefully folded back the paper to reveal five punch cards, black with trim that shone silver in the tavern’s gas light. Molly peered across to get a better look. The pinholes had left a tattoo of transaction engine code, tantalizing her. She wanted to run her fingers across the pattern, feel the information, hold the cards.

  ‘This will work — or at least help?’ asked Binchy.

  ‘At least help,’ said Coppertracks. ‘I am a slipthinker, after all.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Binchy. ‘Clever. Bleeding clever, you are Coppertracks. Your thoughts are all energy and light — mine are just clumsy meat. Like butcher’s steak laid out on a slab.’

  ‘Many vessels,’ said Coppertracks — one of the steammen race’s better known mottos.

  ‘Many vessels,’ Binchy sighed. ‘Some better made than others. I’ll leave now. You follow me in three minutes. Go through the gate opposite, no one will challenge you. I’ll meet you inside.’

  Molly watched as the press of workers in the pub absorbed the curly-haired weasel. ‘He’s willing to get dismissed from Greenhall for the price of a few engine cards?’

  ‘Ah, lass, I doubt if old Binchy does much work in Greenhall,’ said the commodore. ‘He’s burrowed in deep, like a tapeworm he is. They’ll never turf him out.’

  ‘The transaction engines inside Greenhall are massive, complex,’ said Coppertracks. ‘System upon system, added to over the ages. Primitive but powerful. The engine men that tend them understand the parts but no longer comprehend the whole, and like any sufficiently complex system, the engines develop parasites and diseases — information sickness. Binchy’s wife worked here with him as a cardsharp, but she was infected by one of the parasites — an occupational hazard that the engine men risk.’

  ‘Dear, blessed Becky,’ said the commodore. ‘A mortal shame, the poor girl lying in bed all day and night, babbling nonsense in binary.’

  ‘Those cards are a cure?’ said Molly.

  ‘I fear not,’ said Coppertracks. ‘The ecosystem of a transaction engine is fixed, Molly softbody. I can cure such a sickness in the drums, boards and switches of a transaction engine, but once an information sickness has jumped across to one of your minds it evolves as fast as I can develop predator maths to remove it. Those cards will give Binchy softbody perhaps a day of lucidity with his life mate. Then she will be overcome by the parasite again, and return to her madness.’

  They gave the cardsharp a couple of minutes’ lead, then departed the Jingo Dancer and followed the clerks and bureaucrats in through the gate opposite. While the officials pushed small identity punch cards into a turnstile reader, a Greenhall whipper opened a small gate at the side for Molly, Coppertracks and the commodore. Surreptitiously the guard glanced about to make sure that nobody had noticed their passage through the staff entrance, then silently returned to his duties. Binchy had greased the right palms this time.

  As was their wont, the mandarins and courtiers of Greenhall had not stinted on their accommodation; acres of interconnected marble floors branched out in front of the three visitors — storey after storey of higher levels rising off the expansive atrium. Greenhall worked with the House of Guardians as assiduously as they had served the kings that had preceded them. No doubt if the Carlists had their way and the boulevards were decorated with the corpses of democrats and merchant lords, the one unchanging constant at the heart of Jackals would be the bureaucrats in this palace of paper and administration. Molly did not doubt that the mandarins of Greenhall would diligently draw up the lists of notables to be fed into the Gideon’s Collar if it meant they could keep safe their comfortable positions.

  Binchy came out from behind a row of busts on tall graniteplinths. He had with him a small handcart piled with formstied with green ribbon. ‘Molly, yes? You push this.Coppertracks you act flash with that head of yours. As foryou, skipper-’ Binchy tossed the commodore a cane. ‘Justlook permanently dissatisfied; that should come naturallyenough to you. Anyone tries to talk to us, you scowl at them.’

  Commodore Black examined the cane. ‘A Roarer? I’ve never voted Roarer in my blessed life.’

  ‘Maybe not, but you look like you could lay about you with that stick good and proper, so Roarer it is.’

  The odd-looking party walked through a series of passages and chambers. Molly was amazed nobody challenged them. But then, these corridors did not seem home to any of the bustle she had seen at the mills, tanneries and laundries she had been hawked out to by the poor board at Sun Gate. None of the anxiety of meeting targets and piece-work quotas. The underlying fear that if you got sick, ill or fell behind, or if Jackals’ economy entered one of its regular recessions, your cog-like position would prove infinitely exchangeable with other members of the desperate horde of Middlesteel’s deserving poor. People walked the corridors of Greenhall as if they were taking a morning constitutional along the topiary gardens of Goldhair Park.

  Molly’s heart nearly stopped when a craynarbian passed them and nodded a greeting at them. ‘Que seog ti nam engine?’

  ‘Ho ton or mal,’ replied Binchy.

  ‘That old language,’ said Commodore Black as the craynarbian disappeared down the hall. ‘Must you lot in here always be blabbering on in it?’

  ‘It has a certain elegance,’ said Binchy, ‘once you get used to it. Besides, it’s the sorcerer’s cloak.’

  Molly looked at the man. ‘Sorcerer’s cloak?’

  ‘Same reason that worldsingers wear their purple robes, Molly, same reason magistrates and doomsmen put on their wigs and powder, same reason engine men talk about taking transaction drums offsteam rather than just saying turn them off. Every trade likes to talk up their job with a little mystique and hide its doings with a lot of words that don’t do much more than make what is very simple very complex.’ Binchy nodded at another passing civil servant. ‘Keeps wages up, makes what you do seem bleeding important, and stops your profession from being flooded by Johnny-come-lately types setting up shop in competition just down the street. As for you, Jared, you’re a fine one to be lecturing m
e. You forgot the time you forced me along to the colonies on that iron bucket of yours, you and those salty coves of yours? Hard to port, hard to starboard, down inclination four degrees … or is that left, right, up and down? I never heard so much meaningless cant as when I was under the waves with you on the Sprite of the Lake.’

  A set of sweeping stairs and ramps took them down to a smaller corridor lined in red Jackelian oak wood. There was a doorless lift waiting there, dozens of ivory button pulls indicating the depths to which Greenhall had encroached. Some of the lower floors probably shook when the atmospheric fired past.

  ‘Department of Blood is on this level,’ explained Binchy. ‘Its transaction engines are down for emergency maintenance this morning — well, that’s what the staff have been told anyway. Just some of my people there pretending to be busy.’

  ‘An effective ruse, Binchy softbody,’ said Coppertracks.

  ‘Some of the medical people are pretty fair mechomancers in their own right, old steamer,’ said Binchy. ‘But anyone who knows enough to challenge us received an invitation from the university for a seminar running today on developments in blood cataloguing. You see-’ he tapped the side of his head ‘-forward thinking. The mark of all geniuses.’

  Cogs and calculation drums littered the floor of the chamber that Binchy directed them to. Engine men in brown leather aprons were climbing up into the room. Molly peered over the edge of the railed balcony where their ladder emerged. Bank after bank of house-sized transaction engines receded into the distance, some with calculation drums as wide as the jinn barrels in the Angel’s Crust, hundreds of them revolving and clacking in the half-light. Engine boys sailed over the subterranean hall on pulleys, grease cans at the ready where bearings had started smoking.

  Binchy pointed at the mechanisms and control drums on the floor. ‘Hey, I need this bleeding working.’

  ‘Keep your hair on, Bincher,’ one of the engine men called back. ‘These are the spare parts we pulled from the Bessy ninety-eight over at Prisons and Corrective — you told us to make it look offsteam. Hanging up an out of order sign wasn’t going to do it, was it?’

  Binchy winked at Coppertracks. ‘Initiative, ain’t it?’ He went over to a panel overlooking the transaction engine pit and pulled a speaking tube out of its copper clip. ‘This is the Department of Blood, room five, level one. Stoke up all the furnaces for us, we’re going to be running live tests until lunch.’

  Replacing the speaking tube on the wall, he walked over to a card puncher where a couple of the brown-aproned engine men were working.

  ‘Bincher, you’ve got head of department access from here now,’ said the taller of the two workers to Binchy. His companion pushed a bank of equipment mounted on rollers around behind their station; Molly prodded the machine — it was full of miniature gears and switches, but on the front facing them stood row after row of tiny square cubes — like an abacus with a thousand too many beads.

  ‘Latest issue,’ said the cardsharp, patting the contraption. ‘Just coming in from the royal workshops at Exwater this summer.’

  Molly rolled one of the square beads between her fingers — each side of the cube was alternating white and black. ‘So, this is a substitute for a tape printer? The cubes can be rotated to make patterns — shapes, words, maybe even pictures.’

  ‘Blimey,’ exclaimed Binchy. ‘You a subscriber to the Journalof Philosophical Transactions or something, girl? You can’t have seen a Radnedge Rotator before. There’s only four of them in all of Greenhall.’

  ‘I’ve sat in the stalls at the theatre when they’ve been showing daguerreotype images of explorations and far-off lands,’ said Molly. ‘This looks like the same thing. But for transaction engines, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Binchy looked suspiciously at the girl. ‘Listen, Molly, you get any more ideas like that before you see the gear, you come and see the Bincher. I’ll introduce you to my friends up in the patent office.’

  ‘Molly softbody seems to have an intuitive talent for such matters,’ said Coppertracks.

  Binchy looked with interest at Molly. ‘Does she now?’ He loaded a deck of blank cards into the station’s punch machine. Its keyboard was as wide as the piano that Damson Darnay used to play for the children in the workhouse, but far more complex, numbers and alphabetical script supplemented by hundreds of keys painted with the symbolic logic language cardsharps ironically called Simple.

  ‘Let’s see what we can see,’ said Binchy. ‘Molly, you know your citizen number?’

  Molly closed her eyes and reeled off the personal twenty-digit code that was drilled into each Jackelian child, Binchy’s fingers dancing across the keyboard as she talked.

  ‘Good memory, girl.’

  ‘I had to give it to my employers too,’ said Molly. ‘I had a lot of them.’

  ‘Can’t settle to a trade? I was that way myself before my cousin got my engine man apprenticeship sorted.’ Binchy passed the serrated card he had typed to Commodore Black. ‘Skipper, can you do the honours, please?’

  Commodore Black fed the card into the reader and pulled the loading lever. Down in the transaction engine pit the background noise of the rotating drums picked up into a symphony of tapping and cracking, like the sound of a whole forest of trees being snapped apart by a clumsy giant. ‘Ah, Binchy. It’s just like being back on the Sprite of the Lake. Navigating the Fire Sea blind with nothing but the maths of a roll of stolen charts to see us through.’

  On the Radnedge Rotator thousands of beads started to flip and turn, revealing a string of pictograms across four columns. ‘Not a lot of detail,’ said Binchy, translating. ‘Standard census gubbins, basically what the poorhouse needed to submit to claim its funding for you. Estimated date of birth, ward ownership claim, state approval of the same, personal details.’ He glanced at Molly. ‘Jigger me, you weren’t joking were you. Is there a mill or workshop in Sun Gate that didn’t try and take you on?’

  Coppertracks scanned the lines of Simple. ‘There is an anomaly in this record. It is my understanding there should be a softbody blood identification attached to the file?’

  ‘There is,’ said Binchy, tracing the pictograms. ‘It’s … Circle, it’s gone. But it was in there once, look, the surrounding maths has been set up. If it had never been entered that part of the record would be blank.’

  ‘But they took another blood sample from me only last year,’ said Molly. ‘Pre-registration for my voter franchise. Some cheap penny-cure surgeon — my arm bled for a week. Why would the sample not be in my records?’

  Binchy whistled. ‘Nora! If we were caught in here we’d get the boat for sure, but this, this is altering a record — a capital offence. Some card scythe has written an engine ripper to go into the system and monkey with your files, Molly.

  ‘That sounds blessed bad,’ said Commodore Black.

  ‘Cardsharps write them for excitement or for mischief,’ said Binchy. ‘Let’s do a little nosing about. See if our friend has left a trail.’ His fingers dashed across the keyboard, another punch card thumping out a few minutes later. It was loaded up and Binchy nervously tapped his fingers while he waited for the Rotator to catch up with the latest instruction set. New symbols began to flow down the engine bank, a column at a time.

  ‘It looks like the deletion is a side-effect of an illegal search. The engine ripper had to slip in through the back door to escape being noticed by the engine control and it broke the record it was poking for. Someone was doing a hunt for certain blood types and yours was a match.’

  ‘Blood, mortal blood,’ said the commodore. ‘It always comesback to that. The poor devils left on the streets by the PittHill Slayer as empty husks, and now Nickleby has draggedus into his hare-brained quest for the truth as always. PoorMolly with a thirsty vampire on her trail and me just wantinga few miserable years of peace to enjoy what little life have left.’

  ‘Your theory may have some merit, Jared softbody,’ said Coppertracks. ‘Excuse me, if I may.’ H
e rolled up to the keyboard and began to write a new card. Binchy watched with anticipation; the steamman’s iron fingers were almost too large for the ivory keys. Molly guessed Coppertracks would normally have used one of his drone bodies for this sort of work — but bringing his entire retinue along to Greenhall would have attracted far too much attention.

  Binchy removed the completed card and stared at the hundreds of fine holes Coppertracks had punched. ‘Some sort of poke, yes?’ He slid the card into the transaction engine’s feeder.

  ‘I would like to see how many other files share a similar anomaly to Molly’s record,’ said Coppertracks. ‘This will cross-reference the null field maths and produce a table of matches.’

  Symbols started raining down the rotator. Binchy traced the lines of pictograms with a finger, mouthing silently to himself as he translated the Simple. Next door to him, Coppertracks’ mind danced with tendrils of energy as the steamman did the same.

  The cardsharp’s lips pursed and he slumped down on the station’s chair. Coppertracks was silent in contemplation.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the commodore. ‘Aliquot Coppertracks, what has your talent with these blessed thinking contraptions revealed? Don’t be silent so, you’re scaring the lass.’

  ‘You bleeding tell her,’ said Binchy. ‘Please.’

  ‘Come on,’ Molly demanded. ‘Have you found out who my parents are, old steamer?’

  ‘Not that,’ said Coppertracks. ‘Dear mammal, something else links these records.’ The steamman pointed to the rotator board. ‘This is the missing blood field. And adjacent to it are the Ham Yard investigation summary notes. Molly softbody, there are over seventy names on this list, and everyone else whose record shares your anomaly has either been murdered or has been reported missing. I still don’t know why you are being hunted, but whatever the reason may be, I think you are the last one left alive.’

  Deep in the bowels of Greenhall’s engine halls something that had been sleeping for over a year roused from its slumber. It checked its own integrity for signs of tampering and found no alterations. Then it moved through the switches and valves, tentatively searching for signs of other watchers. Nothing. So it had successfully remained hidden where it had burrowed in. True emotions were beyond the thing but it noted something akin to self-satisfaction. Not that the presence of the cardsharps’ primitive sentinels worried it, those it could handle. It was the other things that moved through the wilds of the system it needed to avoid, breeding and replicating on old transaction engine drums which had been upgraded and replaced, but wisely never quite retired for fear of breaking chains of structure in the legacy systems. These things it feared. Nests of clever malevolent mathematics which would gladly consume it and make it part of their collective.