The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Read online

  "I knew it would get you up," said the agitated Deviatka. He flourished a newspaper in the other man's face. "Look!"

  Adewole took the proffered paper and woke up entirely. In giant type across all six columns, legible without his reading glasses, read the following headline:

  LANDING DAY!!!

  Hildegard Goldstein Makes Historic Flight to Inselmond!!!

  Adewole found his spectacles and scanned the article. "How is this possible? You told me once about that autogyro thing yourself--you said it could not get more than ten feet off the ground, and the island is a mile up."

  Deviatka retrieved the paper and backhanded it. "The lamp fuel."

  "That 'black mercury' you put on the wick last night?" Adewole glanced at the table where the innocent-looking lamp sat. They hadn't even trimmed the wick the entire evening.

  "Just that. She got her hands on some--who knows how, I thought I had a lock on it--and the idiot put it in her autogyro boiler." Deviatka paced the room.

  "I should hardly think she is an idiot, my friend, it worked," said Adewole.

  Deviatka stopped in his tracks and fixed his friend with a half-crazed stare. "I've been experimenting along similar lines, though not on this scale, and made the mistake of showing Blessing." He shook the paper. "Then this--this--happens. I can only assume he sold my work to the Goldsteins, the money-grubbing bastard! You know what just the smallest amount can do--you've seen it. What powers our lamp is less than half a drop, and we have to be careful we don't burn the house down. But that woman filled an engine with it and had the audacity to ride it a mile into the air!" Deviatka burst into laughter. "I hate to say it, but she's my kind of woman."

  As Adewole rushed through his morning wardrobe, the newspaper headline tumbled around in his head. Deviatka focused on the engineering achievement, but all Adewole could think about was what this Hildegard Goldstein discovered. Several myths insisted the island hid a sophisticated civilization, its science so far beyond the modern world's it approached magic, its people near-immortal and approaching the god-like. How could anyone survive up there? Living people or no, there had to be artifacts, clues as to what cataclysmic event had thrown the island into the sky to cast its shadow over every culture in the world.

  He had to get there, but he was a visiting professor, holding a despised chair in a despised department. At least, Dean Blessing, the man who'd be choosing the University's research team, despised him. His name would not be on the list.

  How cruel, thought Adewole, that he should be driven from his home to Eisenstadt, only to have this waved in his face.

  A knock at the door broke his thoughts. At Deviatka's invitation, the housemaid popped in, all calico and flutters. "Message for you, Professor," she said, handing Deviatka a note before vanishing again.

  Deviatka unfolded the sheet. "It's from the Ministry of State. Minister Faber wishes to see both of us first thing this morning."

  Adewole and Deviatka walked together to the Ministry building. "I cannot imagine why Madam Faber wishes to see me," said Adewole. "You, that is understandable. You are an expert in the study of black mercury."

  "I have military experience as well--served a hitch and left a captain, in fact. But you are the world's pre-eminent folklorist."

  That's not what his colleagues in Jero had thought, but Adewole was a proud enough man to stay silent. "She cannot wish to talk about folklore."

  "You speak something like a dozen and a half languages and're an expert on sigils in general and world mythology surrounding Inselmond in particular. I can't imagine anyone not choosing you to go."

  "You exaggerate, I do not speak a dozen and a half languages." Deviatka gave him a hard squint. "I am truly fluent only in ten," Adewole amended.

  "You can make yourself understood in at least nine more languages than I can, at any rate. I suppose I can read Old Rhendalian like any professor, but my diction is terrible. If I ran into an Old Rhendalian I'd be in a bad way. Good thing they're all dead." They up the Ministry building's broad stairs; Deviatka held open the heavy, brass-framed glass door set in the grim granite facade, and Adewole stepped through.

  They stood inside a great marble-floored lobby; above them soared a surprising, ornate domed ceiling, gilded and painted with scenes of the city-state's greatest achievements in the last century's most florid style. In the most prominent mural, two beautiful half-naked women flanked a god-like, half-naked man; the three were hanging garlands round the neck of a stern-looking matriarch in classical robes. Beneath, in gold lettering, read the inscription, "Fortune, Strength and Wisdom Honor Founder Eiden."

  Deviatka handed his card to the young woman at the lobby desk; she smiled and pushed a button. A crisp man popped from a doorway like a figurine on a clock, took both professors in tow and led them up the majestic stairs to the Minister's antechamber; voices and typewriters buzzed just within hearing.

  The crisp man placed them in a private conference room, where thick carpet smothered the floors in dark reds, blues and golds. Adewole's nerves kept him on the tufted leather sofa's edge; Deviatka lounged beside him. "You are so familiar with the great figures of the day that you sit at your ease, eh?"

  The engineering professor shrugged. "Cecile Faber is a person like anyone else. Once my family moved in the same circles as the Fabers." Deviatka's face darkened, but cleared as the crisp man popped in again from a side door, carrying a tray. The man set its contents down on a table one by one: a spirit burner, a long-handled copper pot, a grater, softly rounded golden cakes piled in a small bowl, an enameled tin, two small cups on saucers. The man lit the burner, filled the copper pot with water from a pitcher and set it to boil on the burner. He lifted the lid on the tin. Adewole sat up even straighter, his nose craning toward it. A familiar scent filled the air, reminding him of fresh oranges, warm river breezes, contentment and morning sunshine. "Coffee!" exclaimed Adewole.

  "I thought perhaps you might prefer it to tea, Professor," came a charming, dry voice from the main door. It belonged to a woman of his mother's generation; she stood ramrod straight and elegant in a rich, dark blue business dress, her silver hair piled atop her head. Pinchnose reading glasses dangled from a handsome beaded chain round her neck. Piercing blue eyes fixed themselves on the two men.

  Adewole and Deviatka stood, the one hasty, the other languid. "Minister Cecile Faber, may I introduce Professor Oladel Adewole of Jero, current holder of the University of Eisenstadt's Mueller Chair in the Humanities," said Deviatka.

  Adewole extended his hand; the woman took it in a dry, firm grip and gave it a decided shake. "Have you had coffee?" she said in Jerian.

  Adewole laughed, delighted. "That is how we say 'how do you do' in Jerian, Deviatka--we ask one another if we have had coffee. No, Madam Faber, I have not had coffee in many a day."

  "Then please," she said, indicating the couches.

  They sat themselves down, Minister Faber on one side of the table and the professors on the other. Deviatka poured himself tea from a smaller, less honored pot the crisp man had brought in after the coffee paraphernalia. At Adewole's inquisitive glance, he said, "More for you, Adewole. I've never cared for coffee at any price."

  "Professor, will you do the honors?" said the Minister. "Make it to your preference."

  Adewole took a little golden cake from the bowl. Palm sugar! More than he could have hoped for, so far from home. The water had come to a boil; he set the copper pot on a trivet before him and grated the palm sugar cake into the water. Sweet, he must have his first coffee in months sweet and thick and dark. The sugar dissolved, he stirred in fragrant grounds spooned up from the enameled tin and put the pot back on the burner to boil again as the Minister and Deviatka engaged in small talk. Adewole took no part in the conversation, though he didn't wish to be rude; all his greedy attention focused on the foamy, ink-black coffee he poured into the two little cups.

  He took in a savoring breath; coffee smelled of home and happier times. A sip: thick, strong and
sweetened just right. He hadn't lost the knack. An ecstatic, un-professorial grin split his face.

  Minister Faber smiled back. "So! The current holder of the Mueller Chair. I'm very pleased to meet you, Professor. I have spent much time in Jero--what person could consider herself well-traveled, well-educated, well-bred, without an extended visit to the Shining City? I hope to return to the Chano River's banks some day, to drink coffee and eat oranges among the palms."

  The coffee and the woman's evocation of Jero brought on a deep homesickness; Adewole yearned for the warm banks of the Chano himself. He swallowed in determination and smiled again. "Your presence would surely grace and honor Jero. Perhaps one day we shall both find ourselves drinking coffee there together."

  "Perhaps." She sat back against the sofa, her elegant, spare fingers balancing her coffee cup on her knee; a nod from her, and the crisp man marched off through the side door and snapped it shut behind him. "I always expect a little chime and a report on the weather or the phase of the moon when Trinke comes in and out of doors like that," the Minister said meditatively. "Now, Professor Adewole, let's get further acquainted. I have heard a great deal of your talents."

  "I am not sure what you've been told, Madam Minister."

  "Nothing I wasn't able to confirm on my own. You're a brilliant scholar, and under-appreciated both at your home University and here at Eisenstadt."

  Adewole's face grew hot. "That is an exaggeration, ma'am, at least on the first part."

  "And the second part?" Adewole kept silent. The coffee's surface rippled in the cup; his hand shook minutely. He put the cup down. "You were denied tenure," she resumed, "for reasons that seem to have more to do with academic politics than scholarship, and everyone knows Dean Blessing's attitude. In fact, he told me nothing of you even though he knew we needed your exact talents. Henrik never did like anything he couldn't count in coins."

  Deviatka let out a short, barking laugh.

  "I am very happy to be at the University, Madam Minister," said Adewole, shooting his friend a quelling glance that failed utterly.

  "I'm sure you are. I know I'm happy you're here. The Ministry needs you, Professor."

  "For what?"

  "You are a master of many languages old and new--"

  Even Deviatka sat up straight. "Translators? There are people on Inselmond, then?" exclaimed Adewole. People! People who would know the history, the folklore--and Faber was asking him to be among the first to speak with them! It was almost more happiness than Adewole could bear. "But the government must have translators of its own," he said, his hope slipping.

  "None so esoteric as you. We have only the barest idea what we will find up there. Miss Goldstein didn't stay long enough to get acquainted. I need someone in the party who will have some chance at understanding the natives, however slight. You have made Inselmond a major component of your research, yes?"

  "In part," the distracted Adewole said. He blinked himself out of his contemplation, rubbed the top of his head, and expelled a long breath. "No, well, study--it depends on what you mean by study. I have not studied the island itself. I have studied universal stories about it."

  "In truth, it has been your greatest interest, no?" Faber leaned forward. "Why did it take you so long to come to Eisenstadt?"

  "Why?" Adewole plucked at his bright tangerine kikoi's fringe. The University of Jero was the world's most prestigious institution of learning, in the world's greatest city-state. Why would he leave until he had to? "I had always intended to come, but I felt it too soon to leave my position at Jero."

  "And then there was your little sister, no?"

  Adewole's fingers stopped playing with the kikoi's fringe; his hands dropped into his lap, stilled by the grief flowing so close beneath his skin. "You are well-briefed, ma'am," he said as the ache spread in his chest. "I was not sure I could properly care for Ofira in a foreign country, and with our mother dead I could not leave her. I was going to wait until I had gotten tenure, and she was older." He paused and reached into his suit jacket. Inside his wallet he found a fading photograph: Ofira's bright little face. He turned it to face the Minister. "She would have loved Eisenstadt. She loved birds, and talking ones would have…" The ache nearly won, and he stopped to recollect himself, replacing her picture in his wallet. "River fever took her from me last year. She was only nine."

  "You've never told me any of this," said Deviatka.

  "It is hard for me to speak of it," murmured Adewole. "I have neither tenure nor sister now. The Creator, I suppose, took away my obstacles. She has played a fine joke on me."

  Deviatka wrinkled his nose at the religious reference, but Minister Faber remained the diplomat. "I am sorry about your sister, Professor. To have her taken from you so young must be quite, quite difficult. But your Creator has not, perhaps, played a joke on you. Perhaps she has placed you exactly where you need to be at exactly the right moment. If I believed in a Creator, that's what I would say, Professor, because you are exactly the man I need right now." Adewole sat back in his chair, stunned. To be the first anthropologist on Erukso'i--on Inselmond, use the Rhendalian he reminded himself--was more than he had ever conceived. He looked over at Deviatka; his friend had the look of a dog who'd just learned a walk is in the offing.

  Minister Faber rinsed the coffee pot and poured the grounds into an elegant basin before she refilled it and placed it back on the burner. "I will not lie to you. This is a risky endeavor. You will be translator to a military scouting mission. You will report to Major Florenz Berger, an experienced diplomat as well as soldier. Professor Deviatka has been selected for both his military experience and his understanding of the black mercury powering the autogyros. Miss Goldstein and her crew will be piloting your autogyros and will return for a second group of soldiers to help secure a base of operations. Your group will be in radio contact as much as possible with both your base and the ground, but should things go wrong, you will be on your own for a time. We have few autogyros yet, after all. The mission will require diplomacy and tact. Major Berger has experience assisting me as military attaché, but your tact and knowledge will be essential. If you have come this far without cursing Dean Blessing to his face, I believe you can handle any wild Inselmonders you may find--and yes," she added at his eager face, "we expect you will find some. The mission leaves Juni the 15th."

  "So soon? Today is Mai 6th!" exclaimed Adewole.

  "'So soon?' I'm ready to go right now!" laughed Deviatka.

  "I'm afraid there is some legislative business to attend to first," said the Minister. "We must amend the Schmidt Act first."

  "I am not perhaps as familiar with your laws as you are," said Adewole.

  Minister Faber smiled. "No one is familiar with the Schmidt Act. It passed a hundred-some-odd years ago."

  Deviatka sat up and snapped his fingers. "I remember. Some crackpot had the idea to build a great tower that reached all the way up to Inselmond."

  "A mile-high tower? Is that even possible?" said Adewole.

  Deviatka thrust his lower lip outward in thought. "Couldn't do it now, let alone a hundred years ago, but a couple of speculators got hold of the idea and convinced everyone it was possible. Bilked a lot of people out of a lot of money. Anyway, this Schmidt character was an investor, and he got his act pushed through the Senate. Basically, it says if you manage to make it to Inselmond first and prove it, everything on the island is yours. Salvage rights."

  "But there may be people up there. How can you claim salvage rights from people who are still alive?"

  "No one knew that a hundred years ago," said Madam Faber. "The Ministry of State is worried if salvage crews were to make it to the island first and claim rights, we'd find ourselves at war--or worse, a hostile force might take over the island and hold it over our heads."

  "Ha, hold it over our heads!" crowed Deviatka, quickly turning serious. "Just imagine someone dropping a rock off it into the city." He opened his hands and eyes wide. "Boom!"

  Minister Fabe
r nodded. "We must get the salvage act repealed, and then we must get there first. Now, Professor Adewole, shall we see what your cup says?"

  Adewole stared like a fish beached on the mud of those warm Chano River banks. "Do you read?"

  "Of course."

  Adewole finished his coffee while Minister Faber prepared the next cup. As the highly amused Deviatka looked on, the Jerian swirled his dregs three times, holding the cup near his heart, before putting the saucer atop it and turning it upside down. Minister Faber laid a gold mark atop the cup to cool it faster. When it was ready, she turned the cup right side up; all three peered inside it. "Does it speak?" whispered Deviatka.

  "Hush," said Minister Faber. She put her pinchnose spectacles on and studied the shapes in the grounds. "A broken heart, but it appears on the right."

  "What does that mean?" said Deviatka.

  "The right means the symbol is good, the left means it is bad. I hardly think a broken heart is good," said Adewole, thinking of all he'd lost in Jero.

  "A bird, also on the right." Faber laughed. "Do you play an instrument, Professor?"

  The grounds had sketched a guitar on the left. "Oh dear," said Deviatka. "Perhaps we should stop our nightly music before Mrs. Trudge snaps and slashes your throat with the carving knife." Adewole frowned, until Deviatka gave him his sunniest grin.

  Faber rinsed out the cup and poured the fresh brew into it. "Well, Professor Adewole? Can I count you among my team members?"

  The autogyro frightened him, and Dean Blessing would come down on him like thunder--but what matter? Adewole grabbed his newly-filled cup, downed a mighty gulp and burned his tongue. "Yeth!" he croaked.