The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  back matter

  About the Drifting Isle Chronicles

  Acknowledgments

  The Machine God

  (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

  by

  MeiLin Miranda

  For the 147 people who backed this project on Kickstarter,

  For Joseph Robert Lewis, Charlotte E. English, Kat Parrish and Coral Moore for creating the Drifting Isle with me,

  For my wonderful family,

  And for Manoki. She knows why.

  Chapter One

  Eisenstadt, Mai 4th

  Professor Oladel Adewole put his cup down on the coffeehouse table. Thin, insipid, badly roasted, outrageously expensive--Eisenstadters called this coffee? At least the early Mai day was reasonably warm, warm enough to sit outside; still, scudding clouds just touched Erukso'i, the enormous island floating in the east above the city. The locals called the island Inselmond--he must learn to call it by its Eisenstadter name. He drummed his long brown fingers on the table and resumed nibbling on the sugared biscuit he'd gotten to wash the coffee down. At least these people knew how to make decent pastry.

  A tiny rustling brought his attention toward his feet; small birds were searching the cobblestones for crumbs. They resembled the tiny yellow sparrows back home in Jero, but dun-colored and drab--rather a good comparison between Jero and Eisenstadt. A little brown sparrow hopped away from the clump toward him. "Tsee! Tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee-Hi! You finishing that? Tsee? Tsee?"

  Jero's tiny yellow sparrows did not accost coffeehouse patrons. "Pardon?" said Adewole.

  "Tsee-tsee-tseeee simple question!" said another sparrow.

  "Tsee? Tsee? Share? Yes? Tsee?" chirped the little birds, hopping by cautious, hopeful degrees toward the astonished man. Adewole crumbled up the biscuit's corner and scattered it on the pavement; the birds settled down to business, hurrying from crumb to crumb until one let out a shriek. "Cat! Cat!" The sparrows united into a flock and streaked to an overhead wire, where they abused a disappointed orange tom standing where the birds had lately been. "Tsee-tsee-tsee Bad kitty! Bad kitty!"

  Adewole wondered which would be harder for him to accept: Eisenstadt's aggressively sentient birds or the coffee. No, hardest to accept would be the losses that led to this backwater. Definitely that. He reached a hand into his pocket for his watch fob, and absently rolled the good luck bead attached to it.

  The sky darkened, and the temperature dropped; Inselmond's shadow approached the coffeehouse as it did this time every morning. Time to go. He paid his bill, adjusted the bright purple-striped wool kikoi cloth draped across his suit-clad shoulders, and headed toward his lodgings. Perhaps his last trunk had finally caught up. He'd been here more than a month, and it still had not arrived.

  When he'd first told his colleagues in Jero he'd accepted a visiting professorship at Eisenstadt--the Mueller Chair in the Humanities--they'd peppered him with advice:

  "Wear the dark pants and jackets the locals do, but bring kikois to wear over them--wool or silk, not cotton. It's cold even in the summer!"

  "You can find real adeesah in the city--when the other expatriates trust you, they'll point you to which Jerian restaurants use black market chicken suppliers. The others serve rabbit stew with red pepper and garlic waved over the top, slop it over the wrong kind of rice and call it adeesah. All the birds talk there, even the chickens, the stupid things! And bring plenty of dried red pepper. Those people do not believe in food with flavor."

  "Also fill one of your trunks with green coffee beans and bring a stovetop roaster with you. Not that trunk. The big one. The locals don't believe in coffee, either, and those beans will be worth their weight in gold with the Jerians there--get you introduced into all kinds of society."

  The advice most often given: "Don't live near the Drift. It's cold and it's dangerous." Adewole glanced again at the island's approaching shadow above the city, the shadow the locals called the Drift. The University had arranged his lodgings before his arrival. They'd given him many possibilities, but unlike some academics he did not possess independent means and lived on his salary alone; he'd had to settle for a neighborhood in the penumbra. The street lights didn't come on in the day as they did in the full Drift, but he would have preferred lodgings altogether outside the shadow's path.

  As he walked, the streets darkened around him, and he realized he'd taken a wrong turn; he was walking straight into the Drift. He cast about for the penumbra, but the rows of houses made it difficult. Timers inside the street lamps ticked and tocked; the lamps flickered into life. Adewole paused, trying to regain his bearings.

  "Hey, bean pole," said a young, nasal voice behind him. Something sharp poked him low in the ribs. "Don't screw around. Put yer hands up and let Artur here in yer pockets." Another boy who must have been Artur appeared. He couldn't have been more than twelve, and Adewole towered over him. A dirty bandana covered his round face; squinting eyes appeared beneath a ragged cap's brim.

  "Are you mugging me, little boy?" said Adewole.

  The something-sharp poked him again, harder. "Shaddup, hands up, let's get this over with, bird-eater!"

  Adewole shrugged and raised his hands above his head. "If you had asked me, I would have given you what I have, though you shall be disappointed--it is not much." Children were his soft spot, especially in recent days, and besides, better lose two pfennigs than take a knife in the ribs even if he did need the pfennigs.

  A whistle shrilled. "Hoi! Stop! Hoi!" a man shouted. The something-sharp retreated. Artur and the boy with the something-sharp took off running, away from the street lamps and deeper into the Drift. "Hoi!" yelled the man again. "They went that way!" Three sturdy young men in policeman's uniforms ran after the muggers, arms and legs pumping. They were faster, but those boys were probably trickier. The whistle-blower came to a stop beside him. "ARE…YOU…HURT……SIR?" he bellowed up at Adewole.

  "No, nor am I deaf, officer," winced the tall Jerian. "But I am still new to your city and would appreciate directions back to my lodgings."

  "Begging pardon, sir, not everyone who comes from elsewhere speaks the lingo," smiled the police officer.

  As he followed the policeman's directions back to his flat, Adewole pondered the years he'd spent learning "the lingo." Whose lingo, he'd never been fussy about; he'd always been a natural polyglot, and his mother had been a translator and teacher to Jero's many immigrant communities and tourists. The language of symbols--pictographs, hieroglyphs, talismans, runes of all kinds--fascinated him as well; so many appeared across cultures, some across every culture, and figured in his work.

  Adewole glanced at Inselmond, floating in the sky to the east, perhaps the biggest symbol of them all. The island wasn't one of the world's marvels, it was the very marvel itself. Whatever event had thrown it into the air reverberated throughout the world. People everywhere told stories about the island, even in far-away Shuchun. All speculated on how the island came to be and what was up there; most stories involved an angry god, a concept frustrated agnostics like Adewole himself found hard to believe but f
ascinating all the same. The same stuff wove through so many stories around the world, and Adewole had made it his life's work to trace the threads. He'd always intended to come to Eisenstadt but on his own terms, not like this.

  He arrived at Mrs. Trudge's boarding house, a shabby-genteel, three-story brick building stucco'ed in faded yellow plaster. Coral-red geraniums drooped in the planter boxes below each window; the Drift's penumbra starved them of just enough light they would never thrive, but not so much they would die. "Little flower," he murmured, gently flicking a petal, "I know just how you feel." He climbed the steps and went inside.

  Adewole continued up the stairs to the sitting room he shared with another young professor, Karl Deviatka. Though Deviatka was a newly-made full professor in engineering--the University's most celebrated department--and Adewole held a chair in the most neglected department, they'd become fast friends almost from the moment of their meeting here at Mrs. Trudge's house.

  "Do you have a few pfennigs to buy standing-room tickets to the Opera House, old thing?" called Deviatka from his bedroom.

  Adewole opened the case of his two-stringed Jerian bansu. "Why?"

  "Johanna Diederich is singing Simon Ritter's new piece two nights from now. I never really cared for sopranos before, but by the Founder that girl can sing!"

  "I shall search my desk drawer tomorrow. Listen now, it is amusing you should mention it. I felt expansive today. I spent all but two of my last spare pfennigs on a horrid cup of coffee--and Ritter's new lieder collection."

  Deviatka popped his head through the door, pushing his over-long hair from his eyes. "Hope Never Dies in the Faithful Heart?"

  "The very same."

  Deviatka hurried in, guitar in hand. "Well, then! Let's get to it! We have the day off, we may as well spend it usefully!"

  "We must improvise, I am afraid. I will arrange the music for us in the next week."

  Rhendalian guitar and Jerian bansu duets were perhaps an acquired taste; Mrs. Trudge was occasionally heard grumbling about "the racket upstairs." The two men themselves were as different as the six-string and the two-string. Deviatka was a man of medium height, mercurial brown eyes, wavy hair in desperate need of a trim, and had just been awarded tenure. Adewole stood several inches taller, and had been denied tenure at Jero.

  There were times when Adewole looked at his friend and wondered at the world; both were too young to have been considered for tenure at all. When Adewole's name was submitted, he thought his colleagues at Jero must have had it in mind to give it to him--else why bring it up? But it hadn't turned out that way. Deviatka's colleagues had been kinder.

  Footsteps on the landing below warned them Mrs. Trudge was nearby, but the professors ignored any potential protests. Deviatka played guitar accompaniment, and Adewole carried the melody in either his strong, mellow baritone or on the bansu, though its swooping, bent notes gave Ritter's lieder a quality that sounded foreign even to Adewole.

  After music and dinner, Deviatka lit his one nightly meditative pipe as they sipped a little--a very little--brandy and water. They always retired early; neither could afford the candles or lamp oil to stay up too late after dark, nor the heat, tobacco and brandy that made staying up pleasant. Even though Adewole fretted over every pfennig, Deviatka behaved as if he were much worse off; in fact, Adewole usually paid for the brandy and lamp oil. A tenured professor in a favored college should be making far more than the modest stipend attached to the Mueller Chair Adewole himself received, and it puzzled him. "Tell me now," he began as he thumbed through sheet music, "I know how my Chair is funded, and much of the Humanities department--through the late Hubert Mueller's largesse. Where does the Engineering College receive its funding?"

  "Research, mostly."

  The Jerian raised an eyebrow. "I conduct research, but no one outside of academia seems to find it of monetary value."

  "Ah, this is where the sciences outstrip arts and letters," grinned Deviatka.

  "Then I do wonder, Karl--it is impertinent, I know--"

  "Why am I so poor?" The engineer pulled on his pipe and stared at the smoke for so long Adewole feared he'd offended the man. "I shouldn't be. The Deviatkas are an old family in Eisenstadt, gentility of the highest order, accepted--courted--everywhere. My father was…improvident when it came to money, and my mother equally so when it came to bearing children. I am the oldest of eight, five of whom are still at home. My father left behind quite substantial debts. No one knew how deeply he'd dug himself into a hole until he was killed in an accident on the lake. There's some question he might have preferred dying to…" He trailed off.

  Adewole winced; this was more than he'd intended to solicit. "I am sorry to have asked, my friend. I do not wish to stir bad memories."

  "No, no," said Deviatka. "It's all right. It helps to talk about it." He puffed hard for a few moments, the pipe's coal glowing red through the smoke surrounding his head. "My mother can't bear the debts alone, she's quite unable to work now and wasn't raised to it besides. Before my father died, we were very used to the greatest luxuries, but the creditors came and took everything. Now we all struggle just to stay out of the workhouse--or worse, debtor's prison. My oldest sisters and I work to keep the household afloat, but it's taking everything we earn besides my barest living expenses. I'd live with Mother and the children, as my sisters do, but I just can't bear it. The noise, you see. I can't think."

  Adewole's sister had been noisy, prone to singing and dancing like their mother. Ofira loved to spin in circles; she called it flying, but her whirling kikoi always cleared unwary knick-knacks and coffee cups off the tables. How he'd lectured her as she cringed over the shards. He'd tried to be gentle with the little girl, but with their mother gone he'd felt his responsibility deeply; he had to raise her right, but what was right, after all? He should have kept the tables clear and let her fly. How silent the house became when she died, how intact the table tops.

  He turned his attention back to his friend, whose face appeared almost sinister in the lamp's flicker. "Some day I swear we will be out from under this shadow and stand again in the light," said Deviatka. "I am sick of lodgings. I am sick of flattering the likes of Mrs. Trudge. I am sick of rationing out my tobacco and brandy. I am sick of--of shabbiness. One day, I swear, we will have what we had before my father died and left us like this. More than what we had."

  "One day I am sure you will inherit Dean Blessing's position, and his good fortune."

  Deviatka snorted. "Blessing. Well-named, that one, the greedy bastard. He sucks the department dry, you know. He's done very well for himself off the work of graduate students and associate professors like me. Sells our better inventions and techniques to the highest bidder and pockets a good chunk of the money. All legal as far as any of us can make out, and we've tried to make it out, believe me. At least his high living gives him the gout." He swirled the liquid in his glass. "Ah, I've said too much. Too much brandy, not enough water."

  The man's mood lightened suddenly; he leaped to his feet. "But I forgot to show you, Adewole! Sometimes the flow of information comes to me, not from me. The most amazing substance has come my way!" He disappeared into his bedroom, returning with a stoppered glass vial; a bright, black liquid filled it. "This!"

  Adewole peered politely at the vial. "What is it?"

  "That's just it, I'm not entirely sure. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. Watch." Deviatka unstoppered the vial and poured a bit into his hand.

  An odd, appealing, but vaguely unsettling scent rose from the liquid; it reminded Adewole of the air during a lightning storm. He waited for it to spread, but it stayed in a tidy, liquid bead. Deviatka carefully rolled it around like a ball from his palm to Adewole's. "Is it some form of mercury, perhaps? I acknowledge I know nothing of these things--"

  "No, no, not a foolish thought at all, it's the first thing I thought, but this is the only property it shares with mercury. Diederich's people tapped into an underground lake of it--it's been gumming up the wor
ks of a particular strike just outside the city," said Deviatka.

  "Diederich's people? Not Johanna Diederich, surely."

  "Oh, no, well, relatives, yes. Diederich Enterprises. Large mining concern, hardly operatic. In any event, they've been pumping it out and storing it in tanks. They haven't known what else to do with it. They sent some to us in hopes we could find a use."

  "And have you?"

  "I think so, yes. Possibly several. Wait a moment." Deviatka fetched an empty oil lamp from his bedchamber to the sitting room table. "It seems to be a super-efficient kind of fuel, at least in part. I've done some experimenting. I wanted to try something here--perhaps solve one of our own little difficulties." He took the lamp apart, removed its wick and unspooled a new one. He smeared the black stuff along the wick, no more than could coat the tip of a nail; for all its propensity to clump, it formed a dirty, almost transparent film, as if Deviatka had wiped a speck of soot on the flat, braided cotton. He replaced it in the lamp.

  "You do not expect that to burn for long, do you?" said Adewole, frowning at it.

  "I tried something similar in the lab and nearly took my eyebrows off. Put too much on it. I think I've got it right now." He lit a paper twist at the table's candle and set it against the wick. A strong blue flame erupted. Deviatka trimmed the wick and replaced the lamp's chimney in satisfaction.

  The two friends sat up until late in the night waiting for the lamp to burn itself out, until Adewole cried off. "Congratulations, Deviatka, you have solved our lighting problem. You may have solved everyone's lighting problem. Everywhere. Forever. How much of this did you say they had?"

  Chapter Two

  Hammering at his bedroom door awoke Adewole the next morning. "Adewole! Adewole! Ollie, old thing, get up, the most extraordinary thing has happened!"

  Grumbling and sleepy, Adewole shrugged a robe over his nightshirt and shuffled into the sitting room on his long, bare feet. "Please do not call me 'Ollie,' Deviatka. 'Old thing' if you must, but never the other. Especially first thing in the morning before I have had my coffee--oh, damn." He scratched the curls sprouting on his head and peered at the early morning light in the window; Ofira had called him "Ollie," but no one else. "Anyway, do not call me that."