The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Read online

  "Wait," said Adewole, "when will I be ready?"

  "When I say you are," Doctor Ansel called over his shoulder.

  Adewole settled back on the pillows, now arranged against the white iron headboard. Why had Alleine not stopped Deviatka? Perhaps it had never occurred to her she might do so. Even Vatterbroch's death had disturbed her; she might have killed him, but instead she just tried to get away. How many thousands she'd killed in the end, not meaning to. Poor child, poor child. He had to find her before Deviatka succeeded--or the military found her. Florenz Berger was a good and honorable man, but he was a major in the Eisenstadt Defense Force first. If a powerful new weapon could be had, any soldier worth a damn would secure it for his country. Only Adewole understood just how dangerous Alleine was, even in all her innocence, and duty would obligate Berger to ignore him.

  Adewole's body still didn't fully answer his commands, but he'd get back up there somehow.

  Two days after he regained consciousness, Adewole's condition had improved. Major Berger's attaché Isidore Lentzen had been by to see him, asking whether the professor knew where Deviatka might have gone to ground. He could say no with a clear conscience, as he was unsure himself. Doctor Ansel allowed him cautious walks through the hallways, clutching the ratty bathrobe Mrs. Trudge had brought from his wardrobe; a nurse always followed behind toting the basket crammed full of food Mrs. Trudge sent daily--far, far more than he could eat. He'd been passing it out to the other patients, a plausible excuse to get out of bed and a chance to scope out the hospital. Doctor Ansel's caution emanated from nothing more sinister than concern for his patient, but Adewole increasingly felt held prisoner. Back on his feet now, he had to plot an escape.

  "Where are my clothes?" he asked his nurse, doing his utmost to make the question sound offhand.

  "We had to burn them, Professor. They were in no way able to be cleaned, I'm afraid."

  "Oh, dear," he replied mildly. "Might I get a message to Mrs. Trudge? I would just like a few of my things, linen, trousers, stockings, shoes and so on. And kikois--I suppose you would call them a shawl, you've seen Jerians wearing them, yes? Mrs. Trudge knows what they are. I am rather chilly, and a kikoi is a comfort to a cold, homesick Jerian," he smiled. "Getting up and getting dressed would be so pleasant, even for part of the day."

  A bundle appeared the next day along with another food hamper. Adewole handed out half its contents to the less fortunate patients on the ward and stashed the half-empty hamper in a closet. He had the hospital exits mapped in his head, enough clothing to be decent if not quite warm enough for Risenton, supplies, and a plan for getting back to the island.

  Adewole leaned against a brick building, not far from Hildegard Goldstein's hangar; his breath puffed in the night air, and his blood pulsed against his tender, still-bandaged, new scar. Doctor Ansel had dictated rest, and now he knew the rightness of the prescription. But he'd escaped from the hospital and had almost reached his goal. The hamper stuffed with food and his kikois hung heavy in his hands as he straightened and walked toward the fenced-off hangar.

  "Halt," commanded a young soldier armed with a coilgun rifle, one of a pair of guards at the front gate. She squinted. "Hey, Professor! It's Corporal von Sülzle, sir, how are you? It's all right, Rosberg, I know him, it's Professor Adewole--we went up together in the first mission. You know, the Jerian guy in the newspapers, begging your pardon, sir! What're you doing here at this hour?"

  "Corporal von Sülzle, how very good to see you!" said Adewole, hoping his exhausted smile didn't quiver too much. "Minister Faber has sent me. It is very important I speak with Miss Goldstein. Is she about?"

  "Yeah, sure," said von Sülzle, shrugging a shoulder at the hangar. "She and her gang, they live here pretty much these days. She's moved some of her operation over, guess you'd say the finishing touches part and the maintenance part. They're sure turning out gyros, sir, like you wouldn't believe."

  "At this point, Corporal, I think it is fair to say I would believe almost anything. May I go in, please?" Corporal von Sülzle not only let Adewole in, she carried the heavy hamper, an unexpected relief.

  It had been some months since Adewole had been back to the airfield, at least when he'd been conscious. Bright lights flooded the hangar, shiny new aircraft filling its once-yawning cavern almost over-full; von Sülzle had not been exaggerating. With a cheerful "Stay right here, sir," the corporal plopped the hamper at his feet and went off in search of Miss Goldstein. Adewole looked around. No chairs, nothing like a chair at all, and his strength was fading.

  Just as he considered whether the hamper might bear his weight, Hildy Goldstein herself appeared, wiping her hands on a red shop rag and wearing her habitual coveralls. She shook his hand in both her own. "I'm so very happy to see you, Professor! You didn't look at all well the last time I saw you, you know. You look a little peakèd still, are you sure you should be out? Come on in to my office, no, no, let me get the hamper." She ushered him into a cramped back room. Blueprints, spare parts, photographs of her smiling nephew in front of his racing autocarriage, newspaper clippings on the Inselmond expedition, and the ephemera of an overactive mind filled every vertical and horizontal surface. Miss Goldstein shut the door and motioned to the room's one chair, sitting on the edge of the desk herself. "Please, have a seat. What's this all about? Von Sülzle said Madam Faber sent you. I'm surprised you're up and about at all, let alone at this hour. I'm the one who flew you down from Inselmond--I just happened to be up at East Camp when Siegfried's call came through. You looked in a rough way."

  "I thank you sincerely for my rescue. I was in a rough way, they tell me. I do not remember much past the initial attack. You have heard, perhaps, it was Karl Deviatka who tried to kill me."

  Miss Goldstein's face dropped. "No. Karl? By the Founder, that's hard news. I trusted him. You were such great friends."

  Adewole had already tired of the reminder. "Yes. Well. Miss Goldstein--Hildy--it is vitally important I return to Risenton as quickly as possible. I must find Deviatka. He has something of mine I must get back."

  He felt like a guttering candle and by the way Hildy squinted at him, he looked like one, too. "If it's something like your honor he's taken, Ollie, I can't help you," she said. "Revenge is a dish best not served at all, and I certainly won't help you if that's what you're after."

  Adewole let out a hissing breath. "The honor lost is his. He has taken my trust, to be sure, but I can never get that back. No, he has taken a physical thing, a very precious thing. In a way, I suppose it deals with my honor," he mused, "for if I do not get her back I have broken a promise, perhaps the most important one I have ever made. Will you help me?"

  She crossed her arms. "Not without knowing what you're up to. What do you mean by 'her?' 'Her' like a woman or 'her' like a gyro? Don't tell me you fell out over some Inselmond girl."

  "Nothing like," said Adewole, rubbing a long hand over his tired eyes. In a way, they had fallen out over an Inselmond girl, just not the kind Hildy thought. What could he tell her? Vatterbroch's hideous, fascinating work might be too tempting for an engineer like her to pass up. He tried to imagine Hildy Goldstein ripping the bones from a living child, and could not. He could imagine Deviatka doing it. Deviatka'd already shown he cared nothing about anything but regaining his family's wealth. "If I get this missing…girl…back, telling you will not matter anyway," he sighed. "No one shall ever know what I have found, but if I do not get her back everyone will know, in the worst way possible. May I have some water, please?"

  Hildy poured him a glass, pretending not to notice how his hand shook; Adewole managed to drink it without spilling the water all over himself. "Without getting into details," he said, "I have discovered an ancient Risentoner technology among the books at their University. It is powerful, ludicrously so. Dangerously so."

  "What does it do?"

  "Whatever its wielder wants."

  "I'm not following. What do you mean, whatever he wants?"

  A
dewole peered up into Hildy's gray eyes, the frown on her pale face at odds with the laugh lines life had left on it. He took the risk. "The last one to use it accidentally created the sentient birds and threw an entire city into the air a thousand years ago."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hildy gasped and stood up from her perch on the desk. "You can't expect me to believe that. A technology that powerful--that's approaching magic!"

  "Magic, yes, it does sound like that, does it not?" Adewole switched tacks. "What makes black mercury so powerful, Hildy? Have you isolated what it might be?"

  "Black mercury? What about it? What does it have to do with the rising of the island?"

  "The ancients of Cherholtz--the city that became Risenton--called it ichor. It means 'blood of the gods.' It is more than a mechanical propellant. Yes, it can be used for that, but if one knows the old secrets it can be used for magic. The Risentoners make an oath at thirteen never to use magic and metal together, and I have discovered why: the ultimate fusing of magic and metal to create power akin to a god's, a Machine God, if you will." Hildy cocked her head and crossed her arms, but he pressed on. "The manuscript I have found details how to make such a god, and I have discovered what happened when he did. The God raised the island a thousand years ago. Thousands, perhaps tens, hundreds of thousands, died." At this point, her not believing him almost appealed. He could say, Ha ha, I was only joking, Miss Goldstein, no, I really need to get back up there because… Because what?

  Hildy sank back down on the desk; she contemplated the folds in her coveralls, absent fingers tracing their furrows, before looking up again. "It does explain the Oath, doesn't it? Magic and metal no more." At Adewole's widening eyes she added, "I got it out of that old coot at Camp Turnip, Peter Oster's dad--I picked up the language pretty quickly, thanks to you. He kept calling me an oathbreaker. I finally asked what he meant and he told me. I confess to thanking him politely and laughing my head off as soon as I was around the corner. That's what I get for dismissing old coots."

  "I am surprised you are taking this at face value, and so calmly," said Adewole.

  "Inselmond gets you thinking, doesn't it?" she said. "How did it get there? I've always wondered. You have to, living here. Whatever it was, it had to be the most powerful force ever. I mean, it couldn't be natural or there'd be at least one other floating island somewhere in the world I should think. But there isn't." She leaned forward, stained hands braced on her thighs. "This technology, magic or not--think how it might serve the world. So many problems might be solved. Hunger, disease, poverty, natural disaster--we could even end warfare."

  "Or we might make our problems worse. I do not intend to release these secrets. I intend to destroy them."

  "You're saying you've discovered technology which might benefit the entire world, and you refuse to share it? Ollie, think what you're saying."

  "It might benefit the entire world, or it might benefit just one part of it--or one person. The man who created it was no altruist. Were I to recount his methods you might renounce engineering entirely. Everything Karl Deviatka needs to re-create this Machine God is in his hands, or will be soon, and now the army is after it as well."

  "It sounds like one of those fantastical dramas on the radio, a madman holding the reins of an ultimate weapon," said Hildy, waving her hand.

  Adewole's mouth twisted. "Karl Deviatka is not mad. He is doing what he is doing with a clear conscience and a clearer mind, and I need your help to find him before Berger does. The government nearly seized all this," he said, gesturing to encompass the hangar. "You know what it is like to have your life's work taken from you. This is far worse."

  Hildy nodded, her face darkening for a moment. "Goldstein and Adewole save the world, eh?" she said, giving him a wry look.

  "I am not interested in saving the world," said Adewole, "I am interested in saving one frightened little girl."

  "How is a child wrapped up in this?"

  "Her spirit is what powers the Machine God. Though she has technically lived a thousand years, she is in reality only nine. Hildy, she was murdered to make this thing. Would you want such power in the hands of someone as--as evil as Deviatka--" here he choked, "--or in those of a terrified nine-year-old in terrible pain?"

  Hildy's kind face crumpled, her fair eyebrows drawn together. She composed herself, rose and tugged down her coveralls. "All right then, let's get going. I'll have to fly you up myself. No one cares whether I fly or not, but they watch everyone else like hawks. I'll have to explain it at some point, but who cares right now." She tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "Mind riding in a cargo pod? Because I'm going to have to smuggle you. Til's around here somewhere, and I trust him with my life every day. We'll make it happen between us. Stay here." She strode off, turning back at the door. "Who are you handing this off to up top?"

  "No one," said Adewole. "The locals are in no mood to help a foreigner, and I cannot trust the army."

  Hildy faced him, both hands on the door frame and a far less promising look on her face. "You're in no condition to fight Karl Deviatka."

  "I agree," he said, "which is why I am hoping I might get my little girl to fight for herself."

  "Let me help you."

  "Your presence is likely to frighten Alleine further. I must go alone."

  Hildy shook her head. "I don't understand. Ollie, you're an academic, not a soldier. Why you?"

  "Because…" He had known Alleine a few days, but she fit into the hole in his chest where his sister Ofira had been, not filling it entirely--no one ever could--but giving him someone to belong to again after the death of the little girl who'd bound him to this world. Did he love Alleine? Perhaps. He thought so. Perhaps it was compassion for a child's helplessness, or perhaps after years of doing it he just needed to be a brother. In a deep sense, he and Alleine belonged to one another. "Because someone I feel responsible for is trapped in the heart of this Machine God," he resumed, "and I am the only one she can understand. No one else alive speaks her language. She is alone and in pain. I must do what I can for her, and in the process stop Karl Deviatka. If I cannot, it falls to you to tell Major Berger what has happened. My dear Miss Goldstein, please, please may we get under way?"

  Adewole unfolded himself from the cargo pod. He ached all over, and not just from his injuries; the ride up from Eisenstadt had been extraordinarily rough. Even through his borrowed flight coat, gloves and hat the cold ate into his flesh, leaving his teeth chattering in the chill fall night. Inside the coat, alien to him in every way, nestled an old coilgun, another gift from the insistent Miss Goldstein who wasn't even sure it worked any more, "but better some gun than no gun."

  Hildy wrestled Mrs. Trudge's battered hamper from the pod as Adewole folded the flight coat into it. "I put you down on the western side of the island, just as you asked me to," she said. She'd landed not far from the Ossuary, where he intended to hole up until morning. It was unlikely Deviatka had returned to it; Adewole would look there first, after all. "Rather a bumpy ride, sorry about that," continued Hildy as she lugged the hamper toward the cave entrance. She stopped at the ruined gate. "My, isn't this cozy. Mind if I don't go in?"

  Near-silent wings behind him prompted Adewole to turn around. "Ofira," he called, "is it you?"

  The owl floated down from the nearby trees. "Everyone thinks you're dead, learnèd 'un," she said. "I knew better. Do you be dead, I'd've known. Who's this?"

  "Who's this?" said Hildy almost at the same time.

  "This is Ofira, named for my sister," he said. In the Risenton dialect, he introduced Hildy to the owl.

  "Ah, this is the owl who came for Siegfried and me at East Camp. Handy owl, that. I'll leave you in her good hands, ah, wings," smiled Hildy. She turned serious. "Ollie, are you sure you must do this alone? I can stay."

  "Alleine will not listen to anyone else--no one else can talk to her, and the presence of strangers might upset her. I do not know what she will do if so. Please keep this secret for now, Hildy, I b
eg of you."

  "What if you fail?"

  "My friend here will alert Berger, will you not, Ofira?"

  "Go tell t'unfeathered 'un with the metal birds? Do I mun."

  "I'm not promising anything," said Hildy, "but at the least I'll give you some running room."

  It would have to do. They said their goodbyes, and as Hildy soared away Adewole managed to get Mrs. Trudge's hamper inside the Ossuary on his own. He had no intention of going all the way back to the Machine God's shrine, just to shelter within the cave's mouth until morning. What he would do then, he didn't know.

  Ofira toddled after him on her little short legs, solemn, comical and dignified. "I hear things about t'other learnèd 'un. Your friend."

  "He is not my friend," said Adewole, pulling supplies from the hamper.

  "Shouldn't think so, seeing as how he tried to kill you. Why'd he do such?"

  For a story he'd sworn never to reveal, Adewole could not believe how many times he'd told it. "You must tell no one else, Ofira, not feathered 'uns or unfeathered 'uns," he finished.

  "Owls keep secrets," she said, winking an amber eye, "and besides, I on'y minded the part where you had summat grand t'other 'un wanted, and he took it. And the part about trying to kill you."

  "That is the gist of it, yes." By now, Adewole had lit a small black mercury lantern and poured a cup from a vacuum bottle of tea. Disgusting or no, it was hot and he'd drink it. He huddled under his extra kikois and sipped at the acrid brew, blessing the warmth spreading throughout him. Thank the gods the good woman didn't believe in hospital food, he thought as he downed a sausage hand pie. "Do you know how the search is going for Deviatka?"

  "Go ask t'unfeathered 'uns from Dunalow."