The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Page 9

  "What does it say?"

  "The most significant thing I have found in its opening pages is the island was probably a city named Cherholtz before the Rising, but I cannot be sure. I do not know exactly where or when the manuscript was written, though it appears to be pre-Rising." Adewole hesitated. "The rest--and mind, I have read through it roughly, very roughly indeed--the rest does not make sense in the context of the illustrations, at least so far. It appears to be a religious treatise."

  Deviatka arrested his circling. "A religious treatise? What do you mean?"

  "There are many mentions of a god throughout, but which god I cannot say. It does not seem to correspond with anything I know about the old religions of the Rhendalian Plains let alone elsewhere. Of more interest to you is the word 'ichor,' which appears over and over."

  "Ichor--the black mercury?" his friend exclaimed.

  "Do not get over-excited, Deviatka. I do not think I ever told you, but 'ichor' in the language they spoke here pre-Rising means 'blood of the gods.' It might be just another religious reference."

  The air around Deviatka shimmered with repressed excitement. "Adewole, you must translate this, as quickly as possible," he said, grasping at his friend's coat sleeve.

  Adewole started back. He'd hoped his friend would be interested, but he hadn't expected this much interest. "I am working on it, I assure you," he said, wondering.

  Adewole needed no real encouragement. He spent the August days inside the Library rare book room already, at times becoming so intent on his work he'd stay late into the night and fall asleep at his table.

  Wirtz took to visiting him at lunch and tea to make sure he ate something, though he was never allowed inside the locked room. "Sir," he'd bellow, "I will stand here outside the door and bang on a pot until you come out"--words which usually rousted the sullen Adewole at last. He could not bear the shame of a ruckus in a library.

  On the nights he'd remember to come home, Adewole faced Deviatka's interrogation. Had he translated more of the book? Had he figured out what the machine was designed to do? When would he be done?

  "Karl, you have my drawings and you are an engineer, figure it out for yourself. It is a complicated thing, translation," said the exasperated Adewole one night. "I am comparing it against other books, you know. I am reading more than just the one you are interested in."

  "Why can't you read just the one?"

  "Because it refers to the others in places. Some have survived, some have not, and it is taking me time to both find the other books and work out their significance. And I still do not understand what the machine is supposed to do. Have you any ideas?"

  Deviatka took a breath as if to speak, but closed his mouth and shook his head in the end. "What does the text say?"

  "It makes little sense, it goes on about magic and gods and ichor and living machines."

  Deviatka looked sideways at his friend and chewed his lip. "I went back to the Choir, you know, to look at those pendants. They call them Duets. I offered black mercury in exchange for a good look at one, and the Choirmaster said yes straightaway. Seems to be the only person on the island who knows what it is."

  "Did you get permission from Major Berger for this, for giving the Risentoners black mercury?" frowned Adewole.

  Deviatka waved a hand in dismissal. "What does it matter? I'm a researcher. I'm researching. For all that, I cannot for the life of me understand how the pendants work, and the Choirmaster prattles on about magic. He says the black mercury in the pendants amplifies the singer's will. It allows someone who knows the songs and how to focus the music to perform magic."

  "Do you believe them?"

  "I don't know what to believe, but the Choirmaster demonstrated for me--he played on my emotions as if I were a pianoforte."

  "I am often moved by music, and so are you," smiled Adewole. "I recall in particular a night at the Opera when Johanna Diederich made you cry like a child."

  "You misunderstand me." Deviatka picked up his pipe and began packing tobacco into it. "I'm not talking about a normal reaction to music--I couldn't understand the words, to begin with. One moment I was feeling impatient, the next the Choirmaster started singing, and I had this euphoria I couldn't explain. I'd never been happier. And then the song changed and I was angry, the angriest I've ever felt in my life. It changed again and suddenly I couldn't stop crying! Then just as abruptly the song changed and I felt the same calm I'd felt when the Chorister sang to the soldier with the broken leg." He looked down at his agitated hands; he'd packed twice the amount of tobacco in his pipe. "Damn," he said, scraping out the excess. "In any event, I'm almost beginning to believe in magic. Ansel says it's not hypnosis, but neither of us can figure out how else they're doing it. I'm going to hang around a bit with Poole--that translator who quit to join the Choir--and see what more I can learn." He puffed until a fragrant cloud hung round his head. "Do you believe in magic, Ollie?"

  Adewole contemplated his friend, the pragmatic engineer. "Those are the last words I ever expected to emerge from your mouth, Karl."

  "Undoubtedly, but do you?"

  "We are a mile in the air on a floating island, old thing," said Adewole. "Up here, a 'twaddle merchant' like me might be expected to believe anything, but a sober engineer like you?"

  Deviatka smiled. "Perhaps the altitude is getting to me."

  Though he'd officially given the slim, frog leather-bound tome the proper, scholarly name The Notebook of Heicz Vatterbroch, in his own mind Adewole had come to call it The Book of the Machine God. The manuscript repeated the idea over and over, a god-like being of magic and metal; whoever Vatterbroch was, he believed he'd designed one, though Adewole couldn't tell if he'd tried to make one. Could one make a god, or could one merely--merely, he snorted to himself as he sat in his cozy office--give an already-existing god a body? In no other story had he heard of humans creating gods, only gods creating humans. Yet here was a book claiming it contained directions for not just making a god's body, but putting a god inside it.

  Adewole's mother had not been a theologian; she had been a translator. His gift for languages had come from her. Everything he knew about gods--personal gods, not the gods of folk tales and mythologies, but the gods grateful mothers praise, the gods children pray to at night for their mother's recovery, the gods a grieving brother might abandon as he was abandoned--all came from her as well. Nothing he'd read or heard here jibed with anything he knew of gods in folklore, in temple or at home.

  Some of the world's more fantastic stories about the island insisted it held magic and technology far beyond anything known in present times. More than a few crackpots and charlatans had made absurd, imaginary Floating Island "technologies" central tenets of the belief systems they peddled, along with spoon-bending, remote viewing and seances. This machine god sounded less like magical technology and more like a bent spoon, but Deviatka, his pragmatical friend, pored over the original drawings and devoured any new ones. Deviatka's persistence made Adewole more than a little uncomfortable, though he himself had invited it. If Deviatka had figured out whether the diagrams might be used to build something, he wasn't saying; instead, he grew more close-mouthed with every drawing Adewole gave him.

  The translation unfurled. As he read each new page, Adewole's discomfort grew. He now worked on the drawing of a strange…musical instrument, perhaps?…made of bones, and the more he read, the more his hair prickled.

  I betook my subject's bones from its living shell, read the manuscript, to fashion a Lyre, made puissant and eternal through Song and Duet. It must be made from living bone else it will not bind the subject's spirit, and without such the God may not be constrained by Man. When it be my turn to replace my subject within the God, no such Lyre will I need, for I shall wish for no constraining, but to reign through magic and metal.

  No illustration of the "subject" was included.

  He studied the Bone Lyre. What kind of animal had Vatterbroch used to make it? "Living bone" must mean he'd taken
it while the animal still lived. Adewole shuddered--a good thing this Vatterbroch was dead these thousand years. He studied the drawing. A pretty bauble hung with faceted black crystals decorated the Lyre, suspended from one of its grisly arms. Was that one of Deviatka's Duets?

  Magic. Magic…and metal. Adewole thought of Peter Oster. The young man could hardly speak about the oath the Eisenstadters supposedly broke with their autogyros, and hadn't told all. None of Adewole's research had been able to pry it out of anyone else. Perhaps he would visit Deviatka's Choir.

  Chapter Nine

  September 23rd

  The young Chorister serving as Melody Hall's gatekeeper was apologetic but firm: "The Choirmaster cannot see you, nay, he will not see you."

  "But why not?" said Adewole. "Has a bad report of my character come to him? If so, I wish to address it with him, not through third parties."

  "Nay, nay, you have the wrong of it, sir. Choirmaster Chandler turns away all from Dunalow."

  "Why? What has happened?"

  The baby-faced girl frowned. "Have your own folk not told you? Summon from Dunalow stole a Duet, sir--Poole, the creature. That 'un's the prince of all lies," she muttered.

  Adewole must have missed some crucial events while buried in books. "But no one can leave the island without an autogyro, and there are few places to hide here. Surely he has been caught."

  "He has not, else your Major hides him, the false deludin' man. And here I am, made a fool, Duet and heart stole together!" Color mounted high on her cheeks, and her eyes were puffy. "Now go along, sir. The Osters speak well of you, but Choirmaster says no one from Dunalow in the Hall ever again, and that's fine by me."

  Adewole returned to the Library and gently prodded Mr. Buckan's defenses, to no avail; he would not talk about taboo subjects. Questioning set the small man's face in drawn, frightened lines.

  The island's foremost "magician," the Choirmaster, would not speak with him. No theologian lived on this resolutely non-theistic island. He had to find someone to talk with about Risenton's past, and its taboos. Adewole waited until Buckan's disquiet subsided and said in diffidence, "Who would you say is the island's greatest living historian, Mr. Buckan? You?"

  "Me? Oh, no, sir." Mr. Buckan looked around the now-cluttered room: an Eisenstadt chair; a carpet from Dumastra; spare kikois in eye-popping yellows, oranges, purples, turquoises and magentas; stacks of notebooks and foolscap; extra ink bottles and boxes of nibs and holders, stowed carefully away from the books. He shook his head as if to clear the magnificence from it. "I suggest you speak to Councilwoman Lumburgher again. She has the largest collection of privately held books, especially history books."

  When Adewole entered Imogen Lumburgher's sitting room that night after dinner, he found her in a cantankerous mood; there would be no spicebush tea and oatcakes. "Magic? Why talk to me about magic?" said the Councilwoman. "Edward Chandler is the Choirmaster, go talk to him. Oh no, that's right, he took an Eisenstadter thief into the Choir and won't speak to any of you now."

  Adewole suppressed the urge to fidget with the black and royal blue striped kikoi round his shoulders. "I wished to speak with you in any event, ma'am, because I felt Choirmaster Chandler would not be objective enough. As a fellow historian, I knew I could count on you to speak without bias." He was beginning to feel like the smooth talker Deviatka had accused him of becoming.

  "I cannot believe you know nothing of magic. You have starcasters Dunalow, just as we do here," said the old woman.

  "We look upon starcasting as a science, ma'am. It is reproducible, and it follows known laws."

  "So does magic," snapped the Councilwoman.

  "What I am trying to discover," said Adewole, "is whether magic in the days before the Rising was used in tandem with technology. We have no magic Down Below--at least nothing more than conjurers' tricks--and magic here, if that is what the Choir performs, seems limited."

  Councilwoman Lumburgher's patchy face drained of color. "Magic? And machines? That's against the Oath. Do not speak of it. That's against the Oath." She wrung her hands in her lap. "Do not speak of it, I beg you."

  "Why? What will happen if we do? Please tell me, ma'am, I can get no one to speak to me about the Oath, nor about the prohibitions against gods." The woman remained silent, her eyes averted and her bony fingers plucking at the fringe on an imported wool-stuffed pillow beside her. "Surely, Councilwoman Lumburgher, the head of the foremost Family on Risenton can speak to a fellow historian on the subject. You are not conspiring to break the Oath but helping me understand it more fully."

  The old woman closed her eyes. Adewole hadn't ever asked after her age--it didn't seem appropriate--but at this moment, she looked older than anyone he'd ever seen. "You must understand, Professor, that we are inculcated in our childhoods not to speak of it. It is difficult to do so, even when we are willing."

  "It is the nature of taboos, ma'am," he murmured. "Every society has them." He waited, and waited.

  "Ever since the Rising," she began, "we have taken an Oath. We make it at adulthood, when we turn thirteen. 'Magic and metal no more: this I swear.'"

  "Why?"

  She shook her head. At her set face, Adewole took another tack. "And gods?"

  The folds of Councilwoman Lumburgher's face shuddered. "God tried to kill us once."

  "Surely not all gods," said Adewole.

  "What does it matter? If one tries to kill you, you are warned against all."

  "What was this god's name, and how did it try to kill you, ma'am?"

  "Not me," she snapped, "my ancestors, the entire island! The oldest books I own--the ones I can read--say it wasn't an island then."

  "What was it?"

  "Few know this. We were a city, named Cherholtz. What everyone does know is God threw us into the heavens to kill us. We killed it instead. God is dead. We killed it, and we will not allow its return."

  So the Risentoners believed this god rose the island. Adewole digested this. "What was its name?" he asked again. "Was it called the Machine God?"

  Lumburgher paled further. "Its name is lost. But…but that description would be fair."

  "And magic's part in all this? Why is magic not banned?"

  "Magic and metal. To combine magic and metal is to worship the god. We cannot allow it. It is dead and we cannot allow it to return. Worship is enough to bring it back." Imogen Lumburgher leaned toward him, her rheumy blue eyes as sharp as any needle. "We cannot allow it to return, Professor Adewole. You may not have taken the Oath, but if you value your life and the lives of everyone above and below this island, you will respect it. I want to know the past as much as any historian, but if you have found something in those books that would bring God back, you must destroy it--or I will."

  Adewole walked back to his quarters, thinking on gods. Gods of chaos and destruction might do something like throw a city into the sky, but they always paired with gods of order and creation. Often they were two aspects of the same deity. Gods sometimes died in the various holy stories and myths, but humans never killed them. Only gods might kill gods. Risenton's creation myth was one of a kind.

  As for Vatterbroch's notebook, destroying it was out of the question. A primary document, written near the Rising? Just out of the question. He must protect it from Lumburgher, and anyone else who might be superstitious enough to consider it dangerous.

  Ofira the owl swooped down feet first to land on a marker by the University's empty gate; Adewole had been so lost in thought he jumped in surprise. She clacked her beak. "Out late, learnèd 'un."

  Adewole stroked her feathered head. "You too. I thought you were the kind of owl who hunted in the day."

  "I am the kind of owl that do as she please," answered Ofira, "and I hunt in the day but now and again."

  "What do you please to do this evening?"

  The owl's round amber eyes focused on his. "Follow you."

  "Whatever for?"

  "Unfeathered 'uns should not be out this late alone. Scratch th
e back o' my neck that I can't reach."

  Adewole did as she demanded, smiling in genuine pleasure at her concern. He'd grown quite fond of his owl companion in the weeks he'd been on Risenton, a shock considering how much the north's sentient birds bothered him. The taste of adeesah ghosted across his tongue, though it had been months now since he'd savored it. "Ofira, how do you feel about eating birds?"

  "Depends on the bird."

  "How do you mean?"

  Ofira blinked long, inwardly calculating. "Starlings are stupid, and do my clutch need fed, I feed it. No clutch right now, sent 'em off last week."

  Birds eating other birds wasn't quite what he'd meant, but Adewole let it pass. "So the starlings are safe."

  "The starlings are safe," agreed the owl, "but I wonder do you be safe."

  Adewole stopped rubbing Ofira's neck. "What do you mean?"

  Ofira ruffled her feathers, an owl shrug. "Owls get notions."

  What could possibly threaten him? He was an academic--an academic without much standing, though Risenton society looked upon him as something miraculous. His height and dark brown skin were magical enough, but his ability to read the old books put him somewhere in the wizard category. No one would want to do him harm based on that, surely? Councilwoman Lumburgher would be watching him, but not right this minute--he'd just left her. Who among the Eisenstadters would care? Were muggers and footpads hidden in the shadows? "Can you tell me more?"

  "No," said Ofira, "but my fledglings are flown, and you are here. So I watch you now. Owls get notions."

  "So you said," murmured Adewole. He hurried back to his lodgings. The owl hovered near, her wings sweeping low and slow. Adewole considered; she must be moody over her fledglings' departure. He bade her goodnight and went inside.

  He found Deviatka plucking an old song on his guitar. "What kept you out so late?" said the engineer, putting the instrument aside. "Let me guess, a clever Old Rhendalian pun you can't quite translate and maintain its original sense."