by Frank Tuttle
“Be quiet and let the Mage think,” Fromarch said. He peered over his glasses at Meralda. “Have you got Phillitrep’s Thinking Engine working on anything? I might turn it loose on a pattern search, once I get the whole thing slowed down and put in a form the Engine can use.”
Meralda nodded. “No, go ahead, the Engine isn’t pondering anything at the moment.”
Shingvere joined Meralda as she paced. “The song is just noise, to our ears. Getting the words out, that’s going to be the real trick here.”
Meralda nodded. “I don’t even think the rate of compression is linear. It just gets packed more and more, faster and faster. You get twenty seconds in, and the information is so dense it might as well be solid.”
Shingvere nodded. “I saw some of the drawings on your desk. Got a name for the new machine yet?”
“A decompressor. So far, I’ve just wasted a lot of paper.”
Shingvere shrugged. “That’s all part of the process. I’ll bring you fresh coffee. Oh. We’re having our meals catered now. The menu is on your desk, just check off what you’d like, slip it under the doors and into the hall, and lunch will arrive at noon. Like magic. War footing, you know. An army travels on its stomach!”
A Bellringer knocked at the door before opening it. Mug flew inside, followed by two flour-dusted crows.
The crows immediately vanished in the shadows of the Laboratory’s deep ranks of shelves.
“Ha! Go hide, you chickens. They all saw you covered in flour. Dusted them both, I did! Good morning, Mages.” Mug flew close to Meralda, his eyes all darting about. “I see you’ve spruced the place up a bit!”
“The Mages made some improvements.”
Mug darted near the coffee machine. “King Yvin will swallow his beard.” Half his eyes turned to face Meralda. “Mistress, I dare you to install an oven and hire a personal baker.”
“Mug,” Meralda warned.
“All right, all right. Down to work.” Mug hovered above Mera;da’s shoulder. “Still determined to decompress the song?”
“I am,” Meralda replied. She glanced toward the papers and discarded devices littering her desk. “But perhaps I need a new approach.”
“What is it you always say, Mistress? Turn the problem around. Look at it in a different light.”
Meralda stopped pacing.
“Light. Mug, you’re a genius,” she said.
“Well, yes. Everyone knows that.”
“I’ll convert the sound to light. I’ll need Evert’s Slow Glass.”
“Haven’t seen that in years,” Mug replied. “Isn’t that the dingus you used in your senior year thesis?”
“I can control its rate of delay,” Meralda said, excitement creeping into her tone. “Even if the song’s rate of compression is exponential.”
“I’ll fetch the Slow Glass,” Shingvere said. “What else will you need, Mage?”
“The big thaumeter. Orson’s Musical Flames. Half a dozen fresh holdstones. This might work.” Meralda rushed to her desk and shoved everything off it. Then she began to scribble.
Mug watched, bemused. He landed on a corner of the desk, turned off his flying coils with a tiny click, and watched Meralda fill the page with calculations.
* * *
“Cheer up, Mage,” Shingvere said, as he and Meralda watched Mortmop’s Articulate Handler sweep the shattered remains of the Slow Glass into a dustbin. “We’ve all blown up a few priceless magical artifacts now and then.”
“I never did,” Fromarch muttered. Mug glared at the elderly wizard with twenty of his eyes. “Well, I didn’t.”
“Don’t mind him, Mistress,” Mug said. “You’ll make something better. Besides, who could have imagined the thermal content? No one in this room, I’m sure.”
Meralda sighed and shifted her feet. There was a small crunching sound as glass dust ground beneath her soles.
“It was working,” she said. “I’m sure we captured a full second of the slowed song before the Slow Glass exploded.” Her face froze in a pensive frown, her gaze directed toward the empty, smoking frame of the former Slow Glass.
“You’re having an epiphany,” Mug said, hovering close.
“One pane of glass was overwhelmed,” she replied, still frowning. “The information density is even greater than I estimated. But it did work until the light became so intense it generated heat.”
“Cool it with water?” asked Mug.
“That might delay the inevitable, but not prevent it,” Meralda replied. She grabbed a pen and paper. “Instead, we’ll need more panes of slow glass. Divide the Song into intervals. Feed an interval to a pane, then move to the next.”
“Store and recombine the decompressed signal,” Shingvere said. He slapped his knee. “You’ll have it up and working by suppertime, or I’m a spotted toad!”
“Sounds like a glassmaker is going to get rich today,” Fromarch said.
Meralda’s pen scratched. Mug turned half his eyes on her calculations, hovering close.
“I’ll send for a pair of carpenters,” whispered Fromarch. “No matter what she comes up with, the glass will need frames.”
Mug watched as Meralda began to sketch the apparatus. “Better call for a dozen carpenters,” Mug said. “This thing isn’t going to fit on any single table-top.”
Fromarch shrugged and slipped quietly out the door.
5
Mister Mug’s Musings, Tuesday, October 12th, 1970
This article originally appeared in the Tirlin Times
It has been an exciting week at the Palace, gentle readers, and your humble correspondent has been right in the thick of things.
But before we delve into mysteries deep and perhaps even eldritch, I must first issue clarifications for some of my comments in last week’s column.
I referred to the City Crier as being uniquely suited as a wrapping for fresh fish. I suggested the pages of the Examiner were better employed as kindling than a source of news. Finally, I noted that the Daily Report lacked either of these worthy attributes, implying that even its free Saturday evening editions are overpriced.
Mr. Grigsby of the City Crier was the first to refute my assertions, in his column of October 9. Among other things, Mr. Grigsby chided me for my ‘intemperate, inflammatory remarks,’ and went on to suggest I was deliberately provocative in the interest of selling papers.
I confess at being a bit surprised Mr. Grigbsy, or anyone at the Crier, is even cognizant of the concept of ‘selling papers,’ as the Crier’s readership has dwindled to levels that suggest the only remaining subscribers are Mr. Grigsby and his lone friend. Now, before the Examiner puffs out its poorly printed chest with pride, can any publication that boasts an average daily output of only thirty-two pages truly be called a newspaper? Perhaps ‘periodical pamphlet’ or simply ‘use this to wipe that spill up’ would be more accurate descriptions.
And as for the Daily Report – I quite forgot about it, as has everyone else.
But back to the Palace. As you know, I am privileged to observe the arcane activities in the Royal Laboratory, and while I certainly cannot reveal every wonder I am witness to I can say this much – Mage Meralda is very close to unraveling the secrets hidden in the Arc’s mysterious song.
The Mage’s indefatigable labors, along with the able assistance of retired Mages Fromarch and Shingvere, promise results very soon.
Am I telling you everything, gentle readers?
As always, I am telling you all that you may safely know. Even so, I wish to address a few of the wilder rumors spreading perniciously through Tirlin of late.
Is the Arc some monstrous weapon, and its song a warning of mayhem to come?
Certainly not.
Does the Arc portend some catastrophic event, perhaps something referenced in Vonat folklore?
Nonsense. As one with no small understanding of the sciences himself, I can say without equivocation that the Arc is no more a portend than a full Moon or the morning cry of a rooster. As for
Vonat folklore – well. If we are to ascribe validity to such rustic nonsense, then we should also take to divination as revealed in tea-cups.
I shall trust my learned associates at the Crier and the Examiner to fully explore that particular idea.
What better way to line the bottom of your wastebasket?
6
Meralda pulled her dark-lensed goggles down over her eyes. Fromarch and Shingvere did the same, and Mug landed his cage behind a thick sheet of smoked glass set in a sturdy oak frame.
“Everyone ready?’ Meralda asked.
“Ready,” Shingvere replied, his gloved hand closed around a massive steel lever.
“Well, of course, I’m ready,” Fromarch muttered. He hunched over a makeshift panel festooned with dials and switches. “Let’s do this.”
“Commence the mayhem,” Mug replied, closing all but one of his eyes. “I have the Fire Brigade standing ready. They do enjoy explosions and conflagrations.”
Meralda nodded and spoke the word that activated the machine.
The Laboratory, usually shadowed and dimmed, instantly filled with dazzling white light. The sound of gears whirring and sparks crawling across resistance gaps joined the glow after a moment.
“Tower, commence interval releases,” Meralda said.
“As you wish,” Tower replied, from Goboy’s Glass. The Arc’s mysterious Song began to sound in fits and starts, each burst of static louder and higher-pitched than the last.
One by one, each of the three hundred and fourteen upright panes of slow glass that formed the long spine of Meralda’s new machine began to light up. With each addition to the machine’s active portion, the Song grew louder. So did the clankings and shuttlings from within the mechanisms that connected the panes.
Meralda watched as a quarter of the machine’s length began to glow.
“We’re heating up,” Fromarch grumbled. “Three-quarters to the melting point of glass and climbing.”
The Arc’s song continued. Meralda counted the seconds — five full seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
More panes lit up. The smell of hot metal filled the Laboratory, and Meralda heard furtive scrapes and scrambling as the most timid of the mobile mechanisms crept for the safety of the Stacks.
“Eight out of ten for heat, Mage,” Fromarch said. “Nine out of ten.”
“Abandon ship!” piped Mug.
Meralda bit back a decidedly un-magical word. “Disengage,” she said. “Disengage all. Activate the fans.”
Pane by pane, the lit sections of the machine fell dark. The mechanisms between them slowed, stopping as the many fans arrayed throughout the spine began to turn.
There was a single loud crack as a pane shattered. Shingvere cussed, and Meralda held her breath, but a long moment passed with no other sounds of breaking glass.
“Pane eighty-three,” Fromarch said, squinting at his panel. “But the temperatures are falling. I think we’re going to have an intact machine with which to try again.”
“We got forty seconds,” Shingvere crowed, waving his stopwatch. “Forty seconds!”
Meralda pulled her goggles onto her forehead and stalked about the machine, inspecting the mechanisms for any sign of damage. “I suppose that’s workable,” she said. “Forty seconds out of eight minutes of Song.”
Shingvere laughed. “You need to work on your battle cries, Mage,” he hooted. “Workable, indeed. Forty seconds is amazing!”
“Don’t go dancing any Eryan jigs just yet,” Fromarch snapped. He worked at his console, glaring and twisting knobs. “Those forty seconds of Song will take a full seventeen hours to feed to Phillitrep’s Thinking Engine. And who knows how long to ponder.” He looked up at Meralda, his eyes glittering beneath bushy eyebrows. “Shall I start the transfer, Mage? See if the Engine can sort out the patterns for us?”
Meralda nodded, yawning.
Mug flew from behind his smoked glass shield to join Meralda.
“Look, you two can sort that bit out, and replace pane eighty-three,” he said. He whirled to face Meralda, punctuating his words with a tiny pointing vine. “You’ve been awake for the better part of three days. You’ve worked yourself half to death, drunk your weight in coffee, and now it’s time you got a good night’s rest.”
Much to Mug’s surprise, Meralda only nodded.
Mug swung five of his eyes onto the vine he had used as a pointing finger. “All these years of trying to talk sense to you, and that’s all it took? Pointing?”
“It just so happens that this time, you are correct,” Meralda replied. “Gentlemen, I’m going home. I urge you to do the same. We’ve all over exerted ourselves of late.” She rose and made for the coat rack by the Laboratory doors.
“We won’t be far behind you,” Shingvere said, with a wink. “Forty seconds of Song – I wonder what we’ll know, by this time tomorrow?”
I’ll know what it feels like to have bathed and slept and rested my feet, Meralda thought. But she just smiled, put on her coat, and made her way as quickly as she could toward home.
Much later, after Fromarch and Shingvere had departed, the crows descended from the shadows. They perched atop Phillitrep’s engine, each regarding the turning gears and moving levers beneath the glass dome with shiny black corvid eyes.
“Caw,” spoke one, in a tone of profound disapproval.
The other shrugged with a flap of its wings. The crows leaped into the air, vanishing through the Laboratory’s ceiling, and Phillitrep’s Engine clicked and whirred throughout the night.
* * *
The machine burst eleven more panes of slow glass before taking in another few portions of the Arc’s fractured song.
Eleven panes, and four days. By sunset on the fourth day, Phillitrep’s Engine had to be cooled with buckets of ice circled around its broad brass base. Nevertheless, on it pondered, loading the complete song, bit by bit, all the while trying to make sense of the portions already received.
Meralda did the same, pouring over sheet after sheet of numbers copied in neat columns and orderly rows by Single’s Marvelous Pens.
“No,” Mug said. He hovered by Meralda’s right shoulder. He turned his eyes on Fromarch, who was approaching Meralda with a fresh cup of coffee, just made by the gleaming coffee machine by the wall. “No more coffee. She’s had five cups this afternoon.” He aimed a trio of accusing eyes at Meralda. “She’s not a machine, you know. Even if she thinks she is.”
“Oh, bring it here,” Meralda said. “I barely touched the last two cups.” She dropped her pencil, leaned back in her new chair, and lifted her arms above her head in a stretch. “None of this is making any sense.”
Fromarch grunted and set the coffee carefully down before her. “Nothing makes sense until it does. You want your faithful assistants to have a look, while you have a rest? Fresh eyes, and all that.”
Meralda sighed. “I am aware you printed copies of everything, and you’ve been working on them every bit as hard as I have. With, I gather, no success.”
Shingvere shuffled up, brushing donuts crumbs from the front of his wrinkled workman’s shirt. “None whatsoever,” he said, cheerfully. “Simple math, and then – that.” He pointed at the stack of papers on Meralda’s desk. “But don’t despair. The Engine is working on it, too. Faster than all three of us put together. We just need to be patient.”
Meralda sighed. “What if there is no pattern? What if the Song is so alien, it’s simply incomprehensible?”
“If that were true, why would it start out so simply?” asked Fromarch. “No, there’s a key to all this. We just haven’t seen it yet.”
Meralda sipped at her coffee. It is excellent coffee, she thought, allowing herself a moment of pure relaxation. Moreover, Yvin didn’t even lift an eyebrow at the sight of the new brewing machine when he came to visit.
“What’s the houseplant doing?” Shingvere asked, breaking Meralda out of her reverie.
Mug was poking eye after eye through the bars of his cage, fixing each
of them over a portion of the page Meralda had been studying.
“Mug?”
“Hold a moment, Mistress,” Mug said. There was no hint of humor in his tone. “I want to be very sure about this. Oh, and one of you lesser wizards – you’ll want to write all this down, for the history books.”
The old Mages exchanged puzzled glances but remained silent as Mug’s eyes darted back and forth.
“It’s not doing math at all.” All Mug’s eyes fixed on the paper. “Mistress, it’s drawing.”
Meralda sat upright, her fatigue forgotten. “Drawing? How?”
“It taught us how it counts in the simple part,” Mug replied. “It taught us the noises it uses for numbers. Fine, we’ve been printing the noises as numbers, laying them out as one line of numbers after another. That worked for the first part. But it has changed. Look. I know this will be hard to see, with just two eyes. But if you lay all this out in boxes, one hundred and forty-four numbers wide and one hundred forty-four deep and across, and then you give each number a shade – zero being white, six gray, twelve black – then little pictures appear.”
“Pictures of what?” Fromarch asked, his brow furrowing.
“Lines. Triangles. Squares. Circles. Mistress. It’s trying to teach us geometry.”
Meralda snatched up the topmost sheet and inspected it with growing wonder. “Shingvere. Have the Marvelous Pens reprint this. According to Mug’s instructions.”
“At once,” said the Eryan mage, with a wink.
Mug pulled his eyes back into his cage. “I’ll expect a statue,” he proclaimed airily. “At the very least.”
In a far corner of the Laboratory, Single’s Marvelous Pens began to move. Meralda cleared her desk, dumping stacks of papers on the floor beside the wastebasket, which was already overflowing.
Meralda rubbed her hands together. We’re about to discover something wondrous, she thought. The Arc, or its creators, might even reveal themselves.
A knock sounded at the door. “Mage,” shouted a Bellringer, from the hall. “The mail has arrived.”