Souls in the Great Machine Read online

  souls in the great machine by

  Sean McMullan

  GREAT MACHINE In Sean McMullen's glittering, dynamic, and exotic world two millennia from now, there is no more electricity, wind engines are leading-edge technology, librarians fight duels to settle disputes, steam power is banned by every major religion, and a mysterious siren "Call" lures people to their death. Nevertheless, the brilliant and ruthless Zarvora intends to start a war in space against inconceivably ancient nuclear battle stations.

  Unbeknownst to Zarvora, however, the greatest threat to humanity is neither a machine nor a force but her demented and implacable enemy Lemorel, who has resurrected an obscene and evil concept from the distant past: Total War. Souls in the Great Machine is the first volume of Sean McMullen's brilliant future history of the world of Greatwinter.

  SOULS

  IN THE

  GREAT

  MACHINE TOR BOOKS BY SEAN MCMULLEN The Centurion's Empire Souls in the Great Machine This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE

  Copyright 1999 by Sean McMullen

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Edited by Jack Dann

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  Tor Books on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.tor.com

  Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  Designed by Lisa Pifher

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McMullen, Sean.

  Souls in the great machine / Sean McMullen.--lst ed.

  p. em.

  "A Tor book."

  ISBN 0312870558

  I. Title.

  PR9619.3.M3268S6 1999

  823c21 99-21934

  CIP

  First Edition: June 1999

  Printed in the United States of America 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To

  Jack Dann, who has made so many things possible in Australia PROLOGUE The girl moved with the calm confidence of a thief who knew that she would not be disturbed. The crew of the three-hundred-foot tower had deserted the beam flash gallery at its summit, and the great eye of their receptor telescope stared blankly at a tower on the eastern horizon. Although mounted to look perpetually east for signals from the Numurkah tower, the communications telescope could be moved through a few degrees for adjustment and servicing. Unclamping the control wheels of the telescope, she spun them, slowly turning the glass to where the moon was rising. A reciprocating clock on the wall tinkled as it reached 9:45. The calendar wheels beside it declared that it was the 26th day of September in the Year of Greatwinter's Waning 1684.

  The lunar surface was the familiar jumble of craters and mountains, along with a faint tracery of ancient strip mines. A few deft twists detached the standard eyepiece, but her own array of lenses and caliper screws took longer to install and adjust. The clock rang out the tenth hour past noon. The moon was 5 degrees above the horizon when she finished.

  The increased magnification gave a washed-out image that danced in the air currents. Because the moon was a little past full there were shadows near the edge, exactly where she needed them. She adjusted movable crosshairs within her eyepiece, glanced at the clock, then measured the length of a shadow cast by the cut of a strip mine. She gasped, then fought down her excitement.

  She repeated the measurement, then made it again with her other eye. The readings were identical. The clock announced 10:15. She scrawled down the figures selected another shadow, and took more measurements. By 10:30 the elevation was nearly 10 degrees. Time seemed to accelerate as she measured a third strip's shadow--and suddenly one of the wheels raising the telescope reached its maximum elevation and jammed. The vista of lunar strip mines slid out of the field of the eyepiece.

  She was aching to look back to her measurements as she lowered the tele scope, reinstalled the standard eyepiece, and focused on the beam flash gallery at the summit of the Numurkah tower. Some rough calculations verified what she had already worked out in her head: the first of the three strips that she had measured was significantly deeper than it had been a year ago.

  With a final glance around the beam flash gallery, she left for the stairwell and began the long descent. All the way down, her mind was racing with the implications of a 5 percent deepening in a scratch on the lunar surface. Walking into the deserted streets of the river port, she paused to look up at the moon. It was such a momentous discovery, yet she could tell no one. Her entire life was becoming a catalogue of secrets she could not share.

  "Fantastic, even after two thousand years their machines still work," Zarvora Cybeline said aloud; then she turned to the jumble of moonlit buildings that was the Echuca Unitech's library. "Time to build my own machine."

  CHAMPIONS

  Fergen had not noticed a suspicious pattern in the pieces on the board by the seventh move. Champions was his best game and he had even its most exotic strategies and scenarios memorized. The Highliber advanced a pawn to threaten his archer. The move was pure impudence, a lame ploy to tempt him to waste the archer's shot. He moved the archer to one side, so that his knight's flank was covered.

  The Highliber sat back and tapped at the silent keys of an old harpsichord that had been cut in half and bolted to the wall of her office. Fergen rubbed plaster dust from his fingers. All the pieces were covered in dust, as were the board, the furniture, and the floor. The place was a shambles. Wires hung from holes in the ceiling, partly completed systems of rods, pulleys, levers, pawls, gears, and shafts were visible through gaps in the paneling, and other brass and steel mechanisms protruded from holes in the floor. Occasionally a mechanism would move.

  Fergen gave the game his full attention, but Highliber Zarvora tapped idly at the harpsichord keys and seldom glanced at the board. A rack of several dozen marked gearwheels rearranged their alignment with a soft rattle. The mechanisms were part of a signal system, the Highliber had explained. Libris, the mayor ai library, had grown so big that it was no longer possible to administer it using clerks and messengers alone.

  The Highliber leaned over and picked up a knight. With its base she tipped over one of her own pawns, then another. Fergen had never realized that she had such small, pale hands. Her knight toppled yet another of her pawns, then turned as it finally claimed an enemy piece. Such a tall, commanding woman, yet such small hands, thought Fergen, mesmerized. The knight knocked another of its own pawns aside; then his king fell.

  For some moments he stared at the carnage on the board, the shock of his defeat taking time to register. Anger, astonishment, suspicion, incomprehension, and fear tore at him in turn. At last he looked up at the Highliber.

  "I must apologize for the surroundings again," she said in the remote yet casual manner that she used even with the Mayor. "Did the mayhem in here disturb your concentration?"

  "Not at all," replied Fergen, rubbing his eye. Behind it the early symptoms of a migraine headache were building. "I could play in a cow shed and still beat anyone in the known world in less than fifty moves.

  Do you know when I was last beaten at champions?"

  The question had been rhetorical, but the Highliber knew the answer.

  "1671 GW."

  She tapped again at the silent keyboard. The little gears marked with white dots clicked and rattled in their polished wooden frame.

  "And now it's 1696," he said ruefully. "I've played you before, but you never, never
made moves like these."

  "I have been practicing," she volunteered. "You take a long time between moves, but oh, what moves. I have learned more from this game than my previous hundred. You could take my title from me, Highliber Zarvora, I know mastery when I see it."

  The Highliber continued to tap the silent keys and glance at the row of gears. The same slim, confident fingers that had harvested his king so easily now flickered over the softly clacking keys in patterns that were meaningless to Fergen.

  "I am already the Highliber, the Mayor's Librarian," she said without turning to him. "My library is Libris, the biggest in the world and the hub of a network of libraries stretching over many may orates My staff is more than half that of the mayoral palace. Why should your position interest me?"

  "But, but a Master of the Mayor ranks above a mere librarian," spluttered Fergen. "Only in heraldic convention, Fras Gamesmaster. I enjoy a game of champions, but my library means more to me. I shall tell nobody about your defeat."

  Fergen's face was burning hot. She could take his position, but she did not want it! Was an insult intended? Were there grounds for a duel? The Highliber was known to be a deadly shot with a flintlock, and had killed several of her own staff in duels over her modernizations in the huge library.

  "Would you like another game?" asked the Highliber, facing him but still striking at the keys. "My head.." feels like it's been used as an anvil, Frelle Highliber." "Well then return later," she said, typing her own symbols for / CHAMPIONS: ELAPSED TIME? / then pressing a lever with her foot. Fergen heard the hum of tensed wires, and the clatter of levers and gears from within the wall. "I could teach you nothing," he said in despair.

  "You are the finest opponent that I have," replied the Highliber. "I think it--"

  She stopped in mid-sentence, staring at the row of gears.

  "You will excuse me, please, there is something I must attend to," she said, her voice suddenly tense, "The gears and their dots have a message?" "Yes, yes, a simple code," she said, standing quickly and taking him by the arm. "Afternoon's compliments, Fras Gamesmaster, may your headache pass quickly."

  Fergen rubbed his arm as the Highliber's lackey showed him out. The woman had all but lifted him from the ground! Amazing strength, but to Fergen no more amazing than her victory at the champions board.

  Zarvora slammed a small wooden panel in the wall aside and pulled at one of the wires dangling from the roof. After a moment a metallic twittering and clatter arose from the brass plate set in the recess.

  "System Control here, Highliber," declared a faint, hollow voice. "What is the Calculor's status?" she snapped. "Status HALT MODE replied the distant speaker. "What is in the request register at present?"

  "MODE'CHAMPIONS;COMMAND'ELAPSED TIME?"

  "And the response register?" "46:30.4, Highliber." "Forty-six hours for a twenty-minute game of champions, Fras Controller?" shouted Zarvora, her self-control slipping for a rare moment. "Explain."

  There was a pause, punctuated by the rattle of gears. Zarvora drummed her fingers against the wall and stared at a slate where she had written 46:30.4.

  "System Controller, Highliber. Both Dexter and Sinister Registers confirm the figure."

  "How could both processors come up with the same ludicrous time?"

  "Why... yes, it is odd, but it's the sort of error that even skilled clerks make sometimes." "The Calculor is not a skilled clerk, Fras Lewrick. It is a hundred times more powerful at arithmetic, and with its built-in verifications it should be absolutely free of errors. I want it frozen exactly as it was during that last calculation."

  "That's not possible, Highliber. Many of the components from the correlator were exhausted by the end of the game. They were relieved by components from the spares pool."

  Too late, thought Zarvora. "We shall run a set of diagnostic calculations for the next hour," she said. "Do not change any tired components. If some fall over at their desks, mark them before they are replaced."

  "Highliber, the Calculor is tired. It's not wise."

  "The Calculor is made of people, Fras Lewrick. People get tired, but the Calculor merely slows down."

  "I'm down inside it all the time. It has moods, it feels--"

  "I designed the Calculor, Lewrick! I know its workings better than anyone." "As you will, Highliber." Zarvora rubbed at her temples. She too had a headache now, but thanks to the long vibrating wire beneath the brass plate her discomfort remained unseen.

  "You are trying to tell me something, Fras Lewrick. What is it--and please be honest."

  "The Calculor is like a river galley or an army, Frelle Highliber. There is a certain.." spirit or soul about it. I mean, ah, that just as a river galley is more than a pile of planks, oars, and sailors, so too is the Calculor more than just a mighty engine for arithmetic. When it is fired, perhaps it sometimes lets a bad calculation through rather than bothering to repeat it."

  "It is not alive," she replied emphatically. "It is just a simple, powerful machine. The problem is human in origin."

  "Very good, Highliber," Lewrick said stiffly. "Shall I have the correlator components flogged?" "No! Do nothing out of the ordinary. Just check each of the function registers on both sides of the machine as you run the diagnostic calculations. We must make it repeat its error, then isolate the section at fault. Oh, and send a jar of tourney beer to each cell when the components are dismissed. The Calculor played well before that error."

  "That would encourage the culprit, Highliber." "Perhaps, but it is also important to reward hard work. The problem is a hole in my design, Fras Lewrick, not the component who causes problems through it. We could take all the components out into the courtyard and shoot them, but the hole would remain for some newly trained component to crawl through."

  Libris was Rochester's mayoral library. Its stone beam flash communications tower was over 600 feet high and dominated the skyline of the city. Unofficially, the Highliber of Libris was second only to the Mayor in power, and she controlled a network of libraries and librarians scattered over dozens of may orates and thousands of miles. In many ways the Highliber was even more powerful than the Mayor. There was no dominant religion across the may orates of the Southeast, so the library system performed many functions of a powerful clergy. The education, communication, and transport of every may orate in the Southeast Alliance was under the discreet but firm coordination of the Highliber of Rochester.

  Rochester itself was not a powerful state; in fact, the other may orates of the Southeast Alliance deliberately kept it as no more than a rallying point, a political convenience. Neighboring may orates such as Tandara, Deniliquin, and Wangaratta held the real power, and wielded it shamelessly in the Councilium Chambers at Rochester. Mayor Jefton of Rochester was the constitutional Overmayor of the Councilium, but in practice he was of little more consequence to his peers than the servants who scrubbed the floor, dusted the tapestries, and polished the broad red river gum table at which the meetings were held.

  Libris was the very reason that Rochester was kept weak. A powerful may orate controlling the vast and influential library network would quickly become strong enough to rule the entire Alliance. The Councilium was wary of that. Zarvora had been appointed recently, replacing a man eighty years her senior. She had become a Dragon Silver at twenty-foul, and after two years had jumped the Dragon Gold level to be appointed Dragon Black--the Highliber's rank. There had been some luck involved: Mayor Jefton also happened to be young and ambitious, and was weary of elderly men and women telling him what he could or could not do. Zarvora offered him the chance to make Rochester powerful, and outlined some radical but plausible ways of doing it. He proposed her name to the Councilium, giving her the chance to address the Mayors in person. She promised to make both Libris and the beam flash network pay for themselves within three years or resign. The Mayors were impressed and appointed her.

  Zarvora became Highliber in 1696 GW and massive changes followed. The Tiger Dragons, Libris' internal guard, were
tripled and a branch of them was turned into the Black Runners, a secret constabulary. Parts of Libris were rebuilt and extended, and staff and books were moved into other areas. In the workshops of the expanded library artisans toiled through twelve-hour shifts, day after day, month after month, making strange machinery and furniture. Carpenters, black smiths, and clock makers were recruited from far afield, and the edutors at the University were contracted to solve odd problems in symbolic logic. Large areas of Libris were sealed from outside scrutiny.

  Zarvora explained that Libris had become too big to govern manually, and that a vast signaling and coordinating division of clerks, lackeys, and librarians had been set up to manage its books and coordinate its activities. Indeed the efficiency of Libris' activities improved dramatically in only a few months, and by the end of 1696 GW the Mayor could see real savings set against the Highliber's expenses.

  There were also drastic changes in the staffing of Libris. Examinations for Dragon Red and Green were changed to favor candidates with mathematical and mechanical backgrounds, rather than just knowledge of library theory and the classics. No recruit was older than thirty-five, and several accepted options to study further at Rochester's University. The changes did not go uncriticized, but the Highliber was dedicated and ruthless. She lobbied, fought duels, had officials assassinated.." and even had the more numerate of her opponents abducted for a new and novel form of forced labor. When those obstructing her had been outside Libris, it had been necessary to arrange other means to push them aside. In the case of Fertokli Fergen, Master of Mayoral Boardgames, she had used humiliation.

  The Call moved across the land at a walking pace, visible only by the creatures that were swept along by its allure. It moved southeast, and within its six-mile depth were dogs, sheep, an occasional horse, and even a scattering of humans. Although it had begun far away in the Willandra Drylands, none of the animals it had first gathered were still walking within its influence, or even alive. Few creatures drawn away by the Call ever reached its source.

  Ettenbar was a Southmoor shepherd, living a precarious existence near the border river between his Emir's lands and the Rutherglen Mayorate. His sheep grazed placidly in a ragged circle, all tied to the central stake that he had knocked in that morning, while his emus walked free among the sheep with great mincing steps, all neck, legs, and shaggy feathers. Striped chicks ran about at their feet.