The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Page 6

  Major Berger called a halt. "Mr. Oster tells me through the Professor we must deal with some sort of gate attendant, and we may as well rest the civilians for a moment. I'm not getting any younger myself," he murmured to his aide.

  Captain Lentzen unslung his coilgun and scanned the landscape. "We are a small party, sir."

  "I would imagine the professors are capable enough in a fight--the Inselmonder, too."

  "I don't like depending on foreigners. They have no reason for loyalty beyond their pay."

  Adewole bowed minutely. "I might remind you, Captain: I am a foreigner among you." The young man blushed in dismay and stumbled out an apology, but Adewole waved him off, no longer formal. "You meant no harm. I am getting the impression these are very poor people, Major Berger. Pay might inspire the greatest loyalty imaginable in young Mr. Oster."

  "And we must remember, Izzy," the Major said to his aide, "we are the foreigners here." Lentzen grimaced but started organizing his people.

  A small knot of people stood beside a little cob hut beside the gate, a man in a small, conical hat at the fore. "A road warden," said Peter. "Don't know why his whole family down to the second cousins be here, though. Best let me do the talking."

  The road warden and his kin asked Peter many questions in a fast patter; Adewole had trouble keeping up. The warden knew about the expedition from Dunalow already. Were they oathbreakers? Not as far as he knew, Peter said, since they hadn't taken the oath to begin with, but yes, they did have metal flying machines as they'd heard; Peter had seen them himself. Adewole wondered how the warden had learned about them. Many couriers had passed them, but all at a fast walk not a run; none had stopped to talk, and none as far as he knew had seen the flying machines.

  "Anything to give him?" Peter asked Adewole.

  "Do we need to bribe him to get through the gate?" said the Major through Adewole.

  "Nay, there's nowt blockin' the way," Peter answered. He waved at the gate's portal, which once might have sported wooden doors or iron grilles but now gaped open onto the Risenton Road. "But do you carry a cargo," Peter continued, "thass tradition, to tip a little something into the warden's cup." The Major took out his coin purse, and Peter hissed, "Nay, nay, man! Metal's too dear! Do you tip him that, he thinks we're up to some great devilry! For all I know, you are, handing out metal like oatstraw," he muttered.

  Quartermaster Jagels dug through her supplies. Peter rejected a little mirror and another cotton bandana, a lithograph of the mural gracing the Ministry of State's grand lobby--"Paper? Do you be mad, flinging paper about?" said Peter--until she found a simple wooden cooking spoon in her personal pack. "That'll do, I guess," he grunted. The warden accepted the wooden spoon from Major Berger, blinking with pleasure; his family crowded around, cooing as he bowed over and over.

  Though the walk hadn't tired him, Adewole was ravenous. He dropped his burden to the ground, folded his long frame down beside it and dug into the waxed-paper packet his landlady had pressed into his hands just this morning, though it seemed like days before. Deviatka settled beside him and did the same. "Knew you'd want it. What was all that about?" he added, gesturing toward the excited warden and his family.

  "He already knew about our arrival and asked Peter Oster all kinds of questions."

  "How could he have known?"

  Over a nearby grain field, a flash of brown and white wings drew Adewole's eye. A familiar owl quartered the field, flying low and slow. The owl swooped down feet first, arising with a mouse clutched in her talons. She flew to a high road marker not far from where Adewole sat, swallowed the mouse head-first, and clacked her beak a few times in satisfaction. "I think I know how," Adewole told Deviatka. "Good afternoon, Volekiller," he called in the local human dialect.

  "Afternoon," she said in the same.

  "Did you tell the warden we were coming?"

  "Could have done," said the bird.

  Peter Oster settled down next to the two professors. "Owls stir the pot now and again," he said.

  Volekiller closed one great glowing eye. "Unfeathered 'uns need the pot stirred now and again."

  "Volekiller," said Adewole, "do you mind if I call you something else?"

  "Such as?"

  Adewole remembered Major Berger had named his owl companion after his mother: an honored name. His mother's name, Chiku? No, this mischievous owl was nothing like his mother. Mischievous-- "I thought I might give you my sister's name."

  "Your sister? Tell me summat of her, and I'll tell you do I take the name."

  Adewole told her as much about Ofira as he could: how loving she was, how fond of little pranks, how gracefully she danced, how her eyes were almost as big and amber as the owl's, and how her skin matched the tawny, dark brown of the bird's feathers. He left out her penchant for breaking knickknacks, but left in her love of little superstitions, like her lucky bead. "Thass nothing bad," interrupted the bird. "Luck is real."

  Adewole showed her the picture he carried in his wallet, and the lucky bead on his watch fob. "Ofira loved birds. She would have loved to meet you." His heart turned itself inside out and the familiar ache beneath his eyes threatened tears, but he found himself smiling instead, imagining the sheer joy a talking bird would have given his sister.

  Peter Oster wiped at his eyes.

  The owl considered. "Thass an honored name. You may call me Ofira, then." The newly-renamed owl blinked her eyes, rose into the air and returned to quartering the field.

  Adewole turned to his own lunch. As he munched on a thick ham sandwich, he noticed Peter Oster's curious gaze. "Wassat, then?" said the young man.

  "A ham sandwich--ham is a kind of meat, from an animal called a pig." To Deviatka, Adewole said, "He is asking about our food."

  The engineer grinned, fished a sandwich from Adewole's packet and handed it over to the young man. "Do that be 'ham,' too? We have no animal called 'pig,'" said Peter.

  "No, it is beef. It is from an animal rather like a horse, except it is bigger, and horse meat is usually fed to dogs, not people." Peter stared at him. "Ah, you do not know what a horse is," said Adewole. "Er, steer--ox--cow?"

  "I hear of cows, they're summat like giant goats say the old stories. Your bread's odd, too." Peter nibbled the sandwich. "That tastes nowt of goat. Thass meat, though." He took a huge bite, gave a perfunctory chew and swallowed. "Dogs're Dunalow? Next you tell me cats're there, too!" He studied Adewole's face. "Do cats be there? Yes? Do they spit fire from out their eyes as the tales go?" Adewole explained cats as best he could, and added most people Down Below ate neither cats nor dogs. The decadent, wasteful idea of pets scandalized the young man.

  Peter sat down next to Deviatka to finish his sandwich. "Ask him what they eat here," said Deviatka.

  Peter shrugged at Adewole's translated question. "Depends on what's to hand. Ma does well with frog, rat or snake--rabbit and goat when times're good, but most all our rabbit and goat go to the City. Most everything goes to the City."

  "And when times are bad?"

  "Times're allus bad. Thass what angler bugs're for."

  "Ask him what an angler bug is," said Deviatka.

  "Angler bugs?" said Peter, eyes open wide. "Do you have no anglers Dunalow? What do your poor folk eat, then? They're everywhere about. Yea big--" he spread his fingers to an apple's width--"not countin' their pole."

  "Pole? You have a bug which uses tools?" said Adewole.

  "Nay, nay, o' course not!" said Peter with an affectionate, tolerant look. "A lightcrystal like, at the end of a pole on 'is head--a feeler. Wait." Peter disappeared into the scrub; the bushes rattled; a triumphant "Ha!" and Peter returned with the bug in question. Adewole motioned to Doctor Ansel.

  "By the Founder," gasped Ansel, "What a find! It's nondescript--unidentified--I've never seen or heard of anything like it either in my own work or in my reading." It was, as Peter had mimed, an enormous beetle about as long as an apple is wide. Breathtaking iridescent blues rippled across its black shell in the s
unlight. A feeler sprouted from its head, a milky little node at its tip.

  "That lights up at night," said Peter. "Littler bugs come near to it, and the angler here snaps 'em up. They sleep during the day and do you know where to dig 'em up--well, everyone knows where to dig 'em up. You eat 'em raw do you mun, but cooked tastes better."

  "Ask him what they taste like!" said the horrified and fascinated Deviatka.

  Peter gave him the same look he'd given Adewole. "Like angler bugs." He let the beetle go; it scuttled back into the brush, the cursing Siegfried Ansel scuttling after it muttering something about a loss to the Society, and how could the man be so stupid as to let such a specimen escape?

  Peter dug into the pouch hanging at his belt and handed each of the professors a flatbread, split down the middle and smeared with a light brown, herb-speckled paste. "'Ere, thass Ma's angler mash. She's the best cook I know, and a dab hand with a needle, too."

  Adewole sniffed at the flatbread. The bread itself looked like oaten flour and had a pleasant, sour smell; the paste gave off an odd, savory aroma reminding him of the thin, dark brown sauce the Shuchuni poured over everything they ate. He took a tentative nibble. The angler bug paste was smooth, thick and as savory as it smelled, and the herbs bore the flavor of celery and onions. "It is quite edible, Karl," he said. "Not the best thing I have ever eaten, but far from foul."

  Deviatka took a bite. "Needs salt." He pulled out the little twist of salt Mrs. Trudge had included in her waxed-paper packages.

  "That salt? You are rich, then!" Peter gawped.

  "You have no salt? Well, no, that stands to reason on an island this size," said Adewole.

  "We have salt, but Saltern sends everything to the City, and I hear the salt's runnin' out. Most everyone sends everything to the City. The quality buy the best, and we get the rest. That yellow stuff's tasty," he added, licking mustard off his fingers.

  Adewole picked up the other half of Mrs. Trudge's sandwich, feeling another set of eyes on him. Finished with her hunting, Ofira had drifted silently down from the marker to the grass beside him. "Wassat, then?"

  "You name it, you feed it," grinned Deviatka.

  Adewole threw a bit of ham at the owl; her beak snatched it from midair, but she spit it out. "Thass dead! Unfeathered 'uns--I never figure you."

  In due course, the expedition resumed its journey, Ofira flying ahead and rejoining them when she felt like it, settling sometimes on the dismayed Adewole's pack, other times on the unflappable Peter's barrow. "Not much further," said Peter.

  Chapter Six

  Risenton Road ran straight over almost flat country; any unevenness folded more like a wrinkle in a sheet than a hill. As they walked along, the roadside became less rural and more urban.

  Within two hours, they entered the City. The buildings here were far, far older than anything they'd seen elsewhere on the island, or in Eisenstadt, where old buildings tended to be torn down and replaced. Soaring buttresses, arches and magnificent carvings reminded Adewole of the thousand-year-old cathedrals and palaces found on the Rhendalian plains, decorated with chiseled mottoes only scholars like Adewole could read these days--mottoes much like the ones he found inscribed all around him. Even among these ancient and impressive structures, newer cob buildings and larger ones of salvaged stone squatted in the margins, their roofs thatched and their few windows unglazed.

  People bustled to and fro, most too busy to notice the dusty foreigners, much like cities elsewhere but for the absence of wagons and horses. Barrowmen carted burdens; men carrying covered chairs suspended between two poles transported what must be the island's rich. For all the bustle, the surroundings were scaled for a much larger city than this.

  A square opened up ahead; a large knot of people stood at one end, but the square itself was empty. "Seems we're expected," said Lieutenant Lentzen.

  "We haven't exactly been subtle, Izzy," said the Major, "and we had witnesses to our arrival." He gestured at the tawny owl now perched on Adewole's pack.

  "Ofira, did you tell the Council we were coming?" said Adewole, shifting so the bird had to find a new perch.

  She settled on a nearby road marker. "I told t'unfeathered 'uns what I knew. No one likes surprises, learnèd 'un."

  "I do not like them, either. I wish you had told me." In response, the owl closed an eye and swiveled her head away.

  "Mischief makers, owls," remarked Peter.

  They walked on toward the gathering, Major Berger, Adewole and Sergeant Jagels in the lead with Deviatka and Lentzen close behind. An avenue led from the square's right hand side into a complex of ancient buildings; above the avenue rose a freestanding stone arch. Once, iron gates must have spanned it. Carved along the arch's curve, an inscription read:

  To know the world is to know God

  "Pardon me, Peter, but does this archway lead to some kind of college or university? Or perhaps a church?"

  "T'old university, how d'you know that?"

  "From the inscription. Can you not read it?"

  "No use for such as reading in my line. Can you?"

  "Aye," said the professor and read the inscription aloud before he realized Peter couldn't understand it; it was written in a runic form of Old Rhendalian, not the Middle Rhendalian dialect spoken here. He switched gears and translated.

  "To know God?" Peter hissed. "Why would anyone want to do that? And lower your voice."

  Question him as he might, Adewole could get no further explanation from the young man; for some reason religion wasn't just an impolite topic, it was forbidden. He made a note to tell Major Berger. Though the Eisenstadters were not a religious people on the whole, some--mostly immigrants--did ascribe to one belief or another. He reflected on his own relationship with Jero's gods. Did he have one, now he was a man? His devout mother would cry at his even asking the question, but she was five years gone.

  Surely something greater than humanity existed. What else could have thrown the island into the air?

  Adewole emerged from his woolgathering; they were close now to the crowd. Barrowmen, women with market baskets over their arms, the apparent aristocrats and their chair-men, all stared at the Eisenstadters--especially at him. The crowd's murmuring grew louder. "Are you catching anything, Professor?" said Major Berger at his elbow.

  "It is largely about our foreign clothes, and the color of my skin. Also, we should expect a visit from the local constabulary any moment."

  The crowd parted; three men and two women marched up to the delegation. Each wore a brownish-yellow conical hat and armor-like vests covered in iridescent angler bug shells. "The City Guard," said Peter Oster. "Thass Captain Winston in the lead--a good 'un."

  "Why aren't they armed, like those dopes back at the turnip patch?" said Corporal von Sülzle in a stage whisper.

  "Silence in the ranks," growled Sergeant Jagels.

  A grizzled older man who must be Winston stepped forward. "What's all this, then, Peter Oster? I never see nowt as this lot ever in life." He squinted at Adewole murmuring translations into the Major's ear. "Do the dark 'un fall in a nut-brown dyepot?"

  "I was born this color, sir," frowned Adewole, unaccustomed to such remarks.

  "Professor Adewole, I don't know what he said to provoke you, but please keep your temper," said the Major. "Tell them we are a peaceful delegation from Eisenstadt and wish to speak to their Council."

  "Eye-sen-such? Where's that?" said Captain Winston to Adewole's translation.

  "Peter Oster tells me you call it Dunalow," replied Adewole.

  Word spread through the onlookers; those behind jostled those in front to see the poor mad people who thought they were from Dunalow. The Guard captain frowned, but didn't seem surprised. "Time enow to gawk but not now," he shouted at the crowd. "Make way for the Council, they'll sort out do this lot be sick in the head or oathbreakers or both."

  The Guards elbowed a path through the crowd. Three men and three women emerged, each dressed in lustrous silk trousers and linen tunic
s dyed and embroidered in bright colors. They stood out among the drab people surrounding them--parrots among pigeons. One of the three women looked to be about Adewole's age, the rest of the Council at least in their fifties or older.

  Major Berger stepped forward, Adewole beside him, and the rest close behind. The most regal man stepped forward. Silver filtered through his brown hair and beard, and his shrewd eyes flicked over the foreigners. A curious chain made of little gears wreathed his shoulders; a swirling gray pattern like oil on the surface of rippling water marked the metal. "Greetings, gentles. I am Councilman Eichel."

  "I am Major Berger of the Eisenstadt Defense Corps," said the mission leader through Adewole, who introduced himself as well. "We bring you greetings of peace and friendship from Eisenstadt--your Down Below."

  "Dunalow? That is an extraordinary statement, sir," replied Eichel, his accent far more sophisticated than the people they'd met so far--almost understandable. He gestured over the Eisenstadters' heads.

  "Guards are filling in behind us, sir, and this new lot are toting spears," reported Sergeant Jagels. She fingered her coilgun's grip, but kept it in its holster.

  "Keep a sharp lookout, people, guns away for now," said Berger.

  "Oster," called a Council member, an irritable-looking man in blue, "what are you doing here?"

  Peter's face veiled itself in stupidity; he touched a knuckle to his forehead. "They landed in the turnip field, sir. Asked me to come with."

  "And you let them? Who are you to let a gaggle of--of clearly deranged people onto my property!"

  "Peter Oster, move off," called Captain Winston. "These are none of yours."

  "He is our guide," said Major Berger through Adewole. "We would prefer he stay with us--and he can tell you what he has seen himself."