All The Turns of Light (5 page)

A rain?

A mere rain?

“A few clouds perhaps, to lend the scene plausibility. But certainly no giant renditions of myself, towering up into the sky.”

The crows hopped and flapped, leaving Meralda to wonder if their motions were some sort of odd equivalent to laughter.

If ye wish it so,
said one at last.

Clouds and rain,
added the other, its tone disapproving.
Thy ways are strange, Lady Mage.
But we shall honor them.

Then they flapped and vanished.

A knock sounded at the door.

“It’s urgent, Mage,” said the Captain of the Watch, from beyond the door.

Meralda groaned. Mug turned his eyes upon her.

“I’ll bet a pot of good peat moss he’s here to tell you the fire was no accident,” he said. “Not that I had any doubt.”

“Hush.” Meralda rose and made for the door. “Coming, Captain.”

When she opened it, the Captain darted in and pushed the great banded oak doors quickly shut.

He nodded at Mug, then dropped his voice to a whisper.

“Someone set that fire at the Docks, Mage.”

Mug hooted. “I knew it! Bet you found a box of Vonat matches next to a pile of oily rags.”

The Captain glared.

Meralda led him to a seat. “You look exhausted. Rest a moment, and tell me what you found.”

“Nothing so obvious as the houseplant thinks. Someone removed two of your spark arrestors at the Number Three filling station, and set a pile of drawings on fire.”

Mug emulated a long low whistle.

Meralda frowned. “Did you locate my spark arrestors?”

“Not yet. That’s why I’m here. Is there a way you can trace the arrestors? You know, magically?” He made waving motions with his hands.

“I’m afraid you wasted a trip,” she said. “There’s nothing traceable about the arrestors.”

The Captain shrugged. “Was worth a try. Probably at the bottom of a streetcorner trash bin by now anyway.”

“Or on some Vonat wizard’s secret workbench,” Mug said. “Being studied so they can render them useless the next time they want to blow up an airship.”

The Captain started to mouth a retort, but then thought it over. “The houseplant might have a point,” he said. “Could someone do that, Mage? Snuff them out from a distance?”

Meralda pondered for a moment. “It wouldn’t be easy. But…”
But yes,
she decided.
Yes, it could be done. Which means I’ll have to design an entirely new spark suppressing spell and latch it to all six hundred and eighty-six suppressors on the Intrepid.

Meralda sank into her chair.

“Have to replace them all, Mage?” asked the Captain.

“Oh, it’ll be great fun,” Meralda muttered. “Who wouldn’t want to cast the same spell, over and over, seven hundred times? I’ll get to stay up nights and go cross-eyed from tedium.”

“She stays up nights mooning anyway,” Mug offered. He fell silent when she shot him a warning glare.

The Captain stood. “I suppose we’ll all be missing sleep for a bit,” he said. “I’ll be chasing our arsonist.”

“I’d start looking on the road to Vonath,” Mug said. “You know it had to be them.”

“Quite a few people closer to home don’t want us to establish ties with the Hang,” the Captain pointed out.

“You believe a Tirl might have set the fire?”

“I don’t believe anything yet. By the way, Mage, work crews gathered up fifty-seven wheelbarrows of what appear to be Great Sea tuna dropped during your deluge at the Dock. Any chance the people who eat them will sprout horns or turn into pumpkins?”

Meralda looked up from the new combustion inhibiting spell she’d begun to doodle on her desk blotter.

“Pumpkins? No, of course not, why?”

The Captain smiled. “Just asking. Have a good night. I’ll send word if I catch our arsonist. Evening, houseplant.”

Mug waved a tangle of vines at the departing Captain, his eyes moving to focus on Meralda’s new spell.

“Interesting,” he said, as the Laboratory doors closed softly. “You could cast three or four of these at once. And you could stay home altogether if you resigned your post as Mage.”

“Hush.” Meralda’s pen scratched on the paper.

“It’s a thought. A brilliant one, really.”

But Meralda ignored him and tore away the drawing she’d begun. She stretched out a fresh sheet of blank paper, and began to fill it with diagrams and spellwork mathematics.

Mug sighed and watched in silence.

By midnight, Meralda had filled five pages with drawings and equations. Mug was dozing. Meralda put down her pencil and resolved to go home, and then quickly to bed.

She rose, stretching and yawning, and at that moment Phillitrep’s Thinking Engine rang a small silver bell, and for the first time in six centuries the gentle clacking and whirring of its levers and gears fell silent.

“Mug!” shouted Meralda, as she snatched up his birdcage. “Wake up!”

Mug’s leaves stirred, and a dozen of his eyes opened to slits. “What is it, Mistress?” he asked, his words slurred. “It’s not morning.”

Meralda hurried to the great copper bulk of the Thinking Engine and put Mug’s cage down at her feet.

“After all this time,” Meralda said. “Let’s see what you have to say.”

Phillitrep’s notes concerning his masterpiece were hardly exhaustive, but the old wizard had written down the basics, and Meralda had studied them intently even before she was ever allowed into the Laboratory as a first-year student. She slid the Questioner’s Console cover to the right, revealing what Phillitrep had dubbed the heart of his machine.

Beneath the cover was a wide silver tray, held aloft by four intricate silver arms. The tray was full of metal cubes, and on each face of each cube a letter, number, or symbol was engraved in ornate Old Kingdom script.

The tray began to shake as the arms rose and fell with precise motions too fast for Meralda’s eyes to follow. “Mug, you will want to see this,” Meralda said.

Mug’s coils buzzed, and his cage rose up by Meralda’s shoulder. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

When the tray stopped shaking, the metal cubes were arranged in neat rows, and the letters on their faces spelled out words.

SOURCE OF THAUMIC REVERBERATION LOCATED, the cubes read. ORIGIN IS REALM YEAR 1971. MARGIN OF ERROR IS PLUS OR MINUS FOUR YEARS. MAGNITUDE INDICATES FINAL COSMIC EVENT.

ASK ANOTHER QUESTION? PRESS Y OR N.

The remainder of Mug’s eyes snapped wide open. “I do not like the sound of that,” he said. “Final cosmic event? That cannot be good.”

Meralda studied the rows of buttons above the spelling tray. “I’m sure it’s not as dire as it sounds,” she said. Excitement drove her weariness away. “Mug, this is Phillitrep’s Engine! Mages have spent hundreds of years pondering the significance of Phillitrep’s final question–and now we will be the first to find out precisely what that was.”

She found and pressed the Y button. A bell sounded, and then Meralda reached down and started rearranging the lettered cubes until her own question was spelled out.

REPEAT YOUR LAST ENQUIRY, read the blocks.

“What now?” asked Mug.

“We’re about to find out what Phillitrep’s last question was,” Meralda said. She pressed the button marked THINK.

The Machine stirred, gears and levers turning and moving. After a moment, the tray began to shake, and soon the silver bell rang and a message appeared.

DETERMINE TIME OF CATASTROPHIC THAUMIC EVENT MEASURED BY TOKORS SUBTLE SCALES, the blocks read. STATE MAGNITUDE OF ORIGINAL EVENT. ASK ANOTHER QUESTION? PRESS Y OR N.

“He said catastrophic,” Mug said. “Do you see that? Cosmic and catastrophic. What’s a Tokor’s Subtle Scale?”

“It was alleged to have measured the age of the universe,” Meralda replied. She frowned. “It was also rumored to have predicted the universe’s end, but that was simply a rumor. It was destroyed in the Palace fire of 1406.”

Mug moved his cage away from the Engine. “Well, maybe it’s all nonsense anyway,” he said. “Just like Sookcat’s Weather Vane. Hasn’t gotten anything right in two hundred years.”

“Or Fallet’s Rapid Calculator,” Meralda added.

“Right, the one that just makes up numbers if the answer is over a thousand?” Mug snorted. “Yes, I’m sure this is just more of the same.”

Meralda studied the letter blocks. “Probably,” she said. “But still.” Her hands moved, spelling out DEFINE THE TERM FINAL COSMIC EVENT.

She pressed the THINK button. The Engine stirred briefly to life, and the spelling tray shook.

AN EVENT SO ENERGETIC NO MATTER SURVIVES EXCEPT AS AN EXPANDING VOLUME OF HOT GAS, spelled the blocks. FURTHER INFORMATION

CONCERNING THE FINAL EVENT UNAVAILABLE. ASK ANOTHER QUESTION? PRESS Y OR N.

“Mistress,” Mug said, his eyes darting wildly about. “Turn it off. Don’t ask anything else. It’s talking about the end of the world, and that’s a conversation I’d rather not conduct.”

“Hush, Mug,” Meralda said, though shivers raced up and down her spine.

WHAT TRIGGERS THIS EVENT? Meralda asked, spelling out each word with the blocks.

YOU DO, replied the Engine. YOU OR THE OTHER. DETERMINATION NOT POSSIBLE. END EVENT ANNIHILATES ALL INFORMATION. Before Meralda could reach for the blocks, the tray shook again. WEALTHY BLUE EGGSHELLS, spelled the Engine. MY GOAT SEWS A BASKET OF TEA. ASK ANOTHER BUTTER? REPLY 5 OR QKLT.

Mug let out a bark of laughter. “Well. That was amusing,” he said, flying his cage back to Meralda’s desk. “It had me scared there for a moment.”

Meralda found the red button labeled RESTART ON ERROR. She pressed it, and the Engine began to clack and whir.

RESTARTING, it spelled out. SERVICE RESTORED IN SIX HOURS. BATCAKES, FLURRY, SSSRRRTTT.

“Let’s go home,” Meralda said. She forced a smile. Mug rose to her side, and as they closed the Laboratory, they could both hear the Engine, clacking away as it had for centuries.

“Pity about the poor old thing,” Mug said. “But it just goes to show the ultimate futility of good hard work.”

Meralda bit back a retort. It’s too late, she thought, and I’m too tired–but something about the Engine’s first message still chilled her to the bone.

Final cosmic event. The end of everything. YOU DO.

“Hurry, Mug,” she said, and she didn’t chase the shivers away until she was wrapped in two blankets in her very own bed.

* * *

Just before dawn, two ragged crows flapped down from the shadows, lighting on the gleaming copper chassis of Phillitrep’s Thinking Engine.

One of the crows pecked idly at a slow-turning gear. The other cocked its head at the letter tray, glaring at the Engine first with one black eye, and then the other.

It is as we feared
, one crow said.

Infernal device
, added the other.
Master would have rent it asunder long ago.

Master is gone.

The crows were silent for a time.

It must be done,
one said at last, flapping its wings in a corvine display of reluctance.

Aye,
replied the other.
It must.
It bent and began to arrange the letter-cubes, balancing on one foot while it worked.

What counsel would the Master speak, I wonde
r, asked one, as the Engine clattered and whirred.
Would he say we save the world, or doom it?

The second crow bobbed its head in a brief crow shrug, and then both black birds vanished into the dark recesses of the Laboratory’s storage shelves. Soon, scrapes and knocks emerged from the dark, while Phillitrep’s Engine worked furiously to complete its latest instructions.

The sun rose and the Palace awoke. The crows hurriedly completed weaving their contrivance, a thing of silver wires and copper coils. When it was done, one of the crows wrapped a single strand of Meralda’s hair into the frame, while the other scratched out her name in the dust on the floor.

A small bell chimed once from deep inside Phillitrep’s Engine. A crow spoke in a long, harsh croak, and the glittering thing before him faded and vanished.

Let us see,
said the crow. Both took to the air and lit atop the Engine. The crows regarded the letter tiles with unblinking eyes.

I hoped for better,
said one.

Tis all we can do,
replied the other.

After a time one of them troubled the spelling tray with his claw until the message was well and truly gone.

~~~

From the private journal of Mugglesworth Ovis, Novembre 9, RY 1969