The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Read online

  The formation crested the edge, not ten feet from the sudden ground; Adewole resisted the urge to pull his feet up under himself. Hildy Goldstein led them in a tight curve over an open field, where she floated her autogyro down like a brass feather. Still in formation, the other four landed beside her. When the rotors came to a complete halt, Hildy unstrapped herself, stood up, pulled off her muffler and goggles, and grinned round at them all. Into the sudden silence, she said, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Inselmond."

  Green--green everywhere, trees, grass, crops. They'd landed in a thickly planted field--turnips, perhaps. To the group's right, a pond rippled; on its manmade stone banks grew a spreading willow. About a hundred yards away on a small rise stood a cob-and-thatch barn. Yes, people lived on Inselmond.

  Adewole wanted to charge into the barn, find the farmer, start asking questions. Instead, the farmer came to him; a man ran down from the barn, shouting and waving his arms. The Inselmonder stopped dead in his tracks, took a long look at the assemblage of people and machines, let out a startled yip and turned tail; he ran past the barn out of sight. "Keep your coilguns charged, but don't pull them unless necessary," said Major Berger. "Miss Goldstein, you may wish to set your pilots to inspecting the autogyros, just in case we need to get away in a hurry."

  Wind eddied around them, sometimes carrying off words, but no mechanical sounds came to Adewole's ears--no sounds but the wind and the birds. "Where do you suppose we might find the government, if there is one?" he said.

  Deviatka pointed ahead. "The government looks to be coming to us."

  Over the barn came three owls, flying low. "A government of owls?" said Adewole.

  "Professor Deviatka makes a pun," said the Major. "A group of owls is called a parliament, and for a reason. I forget you're not as conversant with birds as we are in Eisenstadt--those of us in regions with proper birds use owls as negotiation partners. I wish now I'd brought Portis--I may call for her later. I shall do the talking, if these owls talk--ah, but I may need you, Professor Adewole. We don't know their language yet." Owl was not among Adewole's many languages, but he squared his shoulders and hoped for the best.

  The owls finished their approach and took up perches in the branches of the willow overlooking the pond, each a careful distance from the other two. Adewole followed Major Berger to stand before them. The owls' feathers ranged from tawny to chestnut; black framed their large amber eyes, and a fringe of white feathers surrounded their faces. If Adewole hadn't known they were there, they might have blended into the tree bark entirely. The largest one blinked solemnly, while the two smaller ones swiveled their heads from side to side, scrutinizing the Eisenstadters. "Greetings, owls. We come from the land below and would meet the humans of this place," said the Major.

  The two swiveling heads stopped abruptly. All three birds stared at him, then swiveled their heads in unison to stare at Adewole. "Perhaps they cannot speak?" murmured Adewole.

  "We speak fine," rasped the largest owl. "Here you shall find t'is you that speak bad. We understand one another, but you mayn't understand t'unfeathered 'uns hereabouts, nor they you. Not easy, any road."

  The owl spoke in a strange, rough lilt, heavily inflected in a way reminding Adewole of Middle Rhendalian; the words were more or less modern despite the pronunciation, though sprinkled with anachronisms. "Why would that be?" he asked, shifting his speech more toward theirs.

  "The geese speak your way. Do they need rest, they stop over and give us news. They on'y speak with feathered folk. Unfeathered 'uns eat 'em. Some geese that land here don't speak. They gabble--make no sense. Times are allus hard. Best not ask, and feed your nestlings when you can. So think t'unfeathered 'uns, and I can't say they're wrong. Geese are stupid even when they can speak." The owl blinked its huge amber eyes. "You're a high learned 'un. Owls like such. Do you need help, ask any feathered 'un for me."

  "Whom do I ask for?"

  "Volekiller! Volekiller Daughter of Mouseterror!" screeched the owl. The other two let out screeches supporting their leader's reputation as a mighty killer of voles.

  Adewole suppressed a wild giggle. "Volekiller, can you tell me where to find the leaders of--t'unfeathered 'uns here?"

  Volekiller swiveled her head behind her. "Unfeathered 'uns come now. Ask 'em."

  Adewole and the Ambassador peered past the willow toward the barn. Four figures approached. The excitable man led the group, a spear in his hand. Behind him came a middle-aged woman and two spear-carrying younger men. All wore stained and somewhat threadbare linen tunics and simple trousers, the legs gartered down the calves; the woman wore a large apron encasing her like a dress.

  "Thank you, Volekiller," said Adewole. Uncertain of bird etiquette, he sketched a bow before he and the Major walked toward the natives. "Sir, I thought you were to do the talking?"

  "That was some accent. I caught every third word," he answered. "What did it say?" Adewole recounted the conversation, and he smiled. "Volekiller, I caught the name. Portis's owl name is Shrikehunter. They all have names like that, and they're impossible to say with a straight face. If you continue to work with her, you'll need to give her a human name. They don't mind as long as it's an honored one. I named Portis after my mother. Now, this time I really will do the talking, and you shall interpret."

  The two groups stopped ten yards from one another. Adewole eyed the spears. Two had tiny metal points apparently salvaged from something else; the third came to a fire-hardened point, wicked nonetheless. He dared a glance back at the expedition; Captain Lentzen and the other soldiers had all drawn their coilguns, keeping them pointed at the ground. While provocation worried him, he wished the soldiers were closer.

  "Greetings, gentlemen and lady," began Major Berger. The Inselmonders blinked at him and looked at one another. "Professor?" he murmured.

  "What cheer, gentles," said Adewole in what he hoped was the correct dialect. "Can you understand me?"

  "Aye, well enow," said the woman. "Though just enow. What are you called, and what d'you want in our turnip field?"

  "I am called Professor Oladel Adewole. This gentleman is called Major Florenz Berger. We come to your people from Eisenstadt."

  "Speak slow," growled the youngest spearman, though the Inselmonders themselves spoke at a fast enough clip.

  Adewole repeated himself at half speed, trying to match the islanders' inflections. "Eye-sen-stat? Never hear of it," said the woman. "Nor see we a man of your looks. Dark as a shadow, you are."

  Adewole held up his hand and translated what she'd said to the Major. "We are from the world below," Berger answered.

  Adewole translated again, and the woman frowned. "That cannot be. None but feathered 'uns go from that to here, and then on'y geese and such."

  "We came on flying machines," said the Major through Adewole. "See behind us."

  The group looked past the two Eisenstadters past the soldiers to the autogyros. All let out gasps and cries; the three spears came up, and the older man jumped up and down. "I told you!" he shrieked. "Oathbreakers! Magic and metal! Oathbreakers!"

  Chapter Five

  Adewole didn't dare turn around, but he sensed the soldiers creeping forward. "Major, get behind us," called Lieutenant Lentzen.

  "No need for alarm yet, Izzy," murmured Berger.

  "Dark man, do you tell 'em we mean to take 'em in to see the Council--by force do we mun," the woman called to Adewole. "We're on'y four, but more are on the way."

  "Nay, that is to our liking," the professor responded. "We wish to speak with those who lead you."

  "Totty's the talk wi' the noose round yer neck!" yelled the excitable man. "The Council square oathbreakers up right!"

  Adewole turned to the Major. "They say we are oathbreakers--I do not know what that means--they consider us under arrest, and they say more of their people are on the way. They want to take us to see the Council, which I believe to be their government." He decided leaving out the man's further remarks was for the best.

>   "Tell them we look forward to speaking to their Council and will come along peacefully but under no restraint," said Major Berger. "Captain Lentzen, please return and tell the autogyros to be ready to leave. Is Oberman's radio set up?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Tell him to notify the ground we've found people on Inselmond and to ready the support troops for the second wave. Cam, you have ten minutes to get those autogyros unloaded." Jagels snapped a salute and jogged back to the autogyros, the two corporals on her heels. "Izzy," the Major added to Lentzen, "you five pilots will return to the air field once Jagels is finished."

  "Sir, I have never cared for this plan. That leaves you with six military personnel, including yourself, and two civilians."

  "All of whom will be armed, and despite Professor Adewole's reluctance to engage in battle I'm fairly sure he'll stick up for us if push comes to shove. Professor, can you please explain to these people we mean to make a small demonstration as to what will happen if we are attacked? Captain Lentzen, our excitable friend if you please, and aim for an arm or a leg. Anesthetic, not poison." Lentzen tensed, but he nodded.

  Adewole hesitantly translated to the Inselmonders. "Show us what ye mun," grunted the woman, "but you go to the City, and that--" she waved at the autogyros-- "that're in our turnip field, that makes 'em ours, and I mean to have 'em afore the Kolbs hear."

  Berger nodded to Captain Lentzen; he hefted his heavy coilgun rifle, squinted down the barrel and fired. A needle whistled into the excitable man's bony left thigh just above the knee. The gun's capacitor whined as it charged for a second shot, and the man fell over. "My leg! My leg is dead!" he howled. "He kilt it! Oh--" the man yawned. "I'm feelin' a bit queer..."

  "What do you do to my da!" yelled the youngest spearman. He charged, and Lentzen dropped him with a tidy needle to the neck.

  The last spearman stepped between the others and the Eisenstadters, his hands twisting on the spear's haft; the woman threw up her hands and dropped to her knees beside the unconscious boy. "Mercy on us! You kilt 'em!"

  "They'll be on their feet in an hour or so. Tell them so, Professor Adewole. Add if anything untoward happens to any of our people--or our vehicles--we will do far worse than knock out some young hothead. Clean my language up a bit," he smiled, "but get the gist of it across, please."

  In short order, Sergeant Jagels and her crew unloaded and sorted the supplies, Signalman Oberman set up his radio and reported in, and the pilots began the return trip to the ground. Adewole used soothing words, and some trade goods from Jagels' supplies, to calm the woman, who said her family name was Oster. The spearmen were her two sons and her husband, a former policeman of some sort who "weren't right in the head" after an accident. "What did Master Oster mean when he said we were oathbreakers--something about magic and metal?" said Adewole.

  Mistress Oster's eyes flicked to the autogyros and away; all the Osters' faces turned gray and queasy. "About the metal," she said. "One of your machines makes you the richest on Risenton. All of 'em together, you're worth more'n all that ever lived here." Her youngest son, the hothead, had awakened from his drugged sleep; he yawned that all that metal was bound to tempt a raiding party once word got round. Adewole replied ten more soldiers were on their way to secure the camp. "Kolb won't like it," said Mistress Oster, shaking her head, "and what about my turnips?"

  "She'll be compensated," said Jagels to Adewole. "Ask her where we might obtain pack animals."

  Adewole translated. "'Pack animals?'" said the oldest of the Oster sons, a strapping young man named Peter. "What nature of animal's that, then?"

  "Animals which carry burdens--horses, oxen?" said the professor.

  "Horses? Do you be a-listenin' to fairy tales?" Peter's face sobered as he looked Adewole over. "Eh, well, you come from a fairy tale."

  "You say you see a horse?" said Mistress Oster.

  "Aye, ridden one," said Adewole.

  "Ah, g'wan, then," said the youngest spearman, still groggy and squinting from the anesthetic. "Ma, do you believe such as that?"

  "A fortune in metal fall from the sky into our turnip field, Will, and a man the color of a ploughed furrow beside, and do I believe such as horses? Who knows what's down below?" shrugged his mother.

  "We wish to tell everyone on Inselmond what is down below," said Adewole.

  "Inselmond?"

  "What they call this place in Eisenstadt--the city directly below you. It means 'island moon.' In my own language we call it Erukso'i, which means 'floating island.'"

  "We call it Risenton," said Peter.

  "You come from else as the rest, then," said Mistress Oster.

  Adewole nodded. "I am from a place called Jero. There, everyone is tall and dark like me, and it is much, much warmer. The others hail from Eisenstadt, the city below--eh--Risenton. What do you call the place down below?"

  Peter looked puzzled. "We call it Down Below," though the term came out sounding like Dunalow to an Eisenstadter ear. He nodded his head at Jagels' neatly piled supplies. "Any road, you pack all that yourself. I push a barrow full of tools and such all the day every day, from the Grosse Baum to the Great Cache to Eichelgate to that I'm needed, and home again! Pack animal," he snorted. "Do a man not pack a thing, that thing do stay behind."

  "Not a problem," said Jagels when Adewole told her what the young man said. "Soldiers make the best pack animals--worth asking, though. We're not taking it all, anyway."

  Nevertheless, help could be had. Major Berger decided to take on Peter Oster as a barrowman and guide, hired criminally cheap by Eisenstadt standards, criminally lucrative by Risenton ones. Peter received three bright red bandanas from Jagels' stores; Major Berger augmented his pay with two copper coins and a promise for more at journey's end. "We don't know how long we will need you," said the Major through Adewole, "but will this suffice for now?"

  "Need me for a month, then?" said Peter, "for that would buy such."

  "A year more like," gleefully whispered his younger brother; Peter silenced him with a surreptitious stomp to the toes.

  The autogyros returned with the support crew, the mission readied itself, and the explorers moved out. Sergeant Jagels and Corporal Wirtz took picket. Peter Oster followed; the two professors and Major Berger walked beside him. Signalman Oberman rode herd over Doctor Ansel, who was forever finding matters of high biological interest on the roadside, and Lieutenant Lentzen and Corporal von Sülzle brought up the rear.

  The journey took them along what Peter called the Great Road, which he said ran around the island's entire circumference: "They do say a wall once stood here, all round the island." A pastiche of stone and bricks, many crumbling, made up the road's surface, repaired piecemeal over centuries. Time had eroded what must have been wheel ruts; animals had once drawn carts here. No carts traveled the road now as far as Adewole could tell. Barrowmen and fast-moving people on foot passed them in both directions, most hailing Peter Oster and goggling at the expedition, especially Adewole. Those on foot--the ones Peter called couriers, who delivered small packages and messages--slowed down to stare at the party, often walking backwards to get a good long look. No one ever stopped; Peter said unlike him, they couldn't afford to. "Couriers and such, their job's in not stoppin'. Do I stop, I get work. Not them. See Kolbsgate in the distance?" said Peter, nodding toward a stone edifice far off down the road. "Thass that we go to."

  "How far is it to the City from your farm?" asked Adewole.

  "Oh, not far. About 25 or so furlongs to Kolbsgate, another 30 or so to the City."

  Adewole translated for Deviatka. "Alas, I do not know how long a 'furlong' is," he added.

  "I do," said Deviatka, "it's an obsolete measurement." He looked up toward his eyebrows, running calculations in his head. "About three miles to this gate thing, three and a half or so to this 'City.' So, we'll be walking six and a half miles overall. Ask him how long it takes him to get there."

  "Do you lug a barrow and not stop along, four hours," said Peter, shifting
his grip on the barrow's handles. "Do you not lug a barrow, two hours, but I never. I stop along and pass the news. Thass rude, to go by and not pass the news. More like half a day or more I take sometimes, do the news fill my mouth--or my ear. But do they have work, I work, and they feed me, even do they have nobbut angler bugs."

  Adewole shifted the pack on his back. "What is your work?"

  "That work that can be had," said Peter. "I mend things, most orfen furniture, sometimes I plug walls, but I dig a ditch or plough a field as any 'un would. I can thatch, but the thatchers'ud be after me if word got round, so I on'y mend our own roofs."

  "Ask him why his old man called us oathbreakers," said Deviatka.

  Peter's broad mouth flattened into a line; he bit his lip and looked away. "You use metal in ways we swear not to."

  "What kind of ways?" said Adewole.

  "For makin' things go without a body pushin', mostly. Seems a waste to use it for such when you have two good arms and two good legs, and you need metal for so much else." Adewole could draw no more from him, though clearly more might be said.

  They trotted along, taking in the scenery: crops packed tight into carefully tended fields; thatch-roofed cob-and-stone houses no bigger than Adewole's apartment that Peter swore housed whole families, grandparents, aunties and all; tiny goats cropping the marginal land on the outside edge of the Great Road. "I wonder if they fall off," said Deviatka.

  "I would hope not," called Doctor Ansel, "they're a most unusual creature, so compact and yet fully grown!"

  Occasionally a native glanced their way and did a double-take, standing agape in a doorway or dropping a hoe in astonishment. Peter waved at a few and winked at a few more; he'd be trading stories about the Eisenstadters in exchange for hospitality, for a long time to come.

  Two hours later, they came to the massive stone arch called Kolbsgate. Through it lay another track Peter called the Risenton Road; he said it ran down the island's center. The ancient gateway's stones might once have been covered in tiles or marble. Adewole's spirits soared. This had to be a remnant of whatever city had existed before the Rising, and confirmed Peter's story of a long-gone wall; Kolbsgate must have guarded the entrance to the old city.