Eyes of the Calculor (7 page)

"Starflower's guns jammed while I was in the chasing climb, Sair Adjunct. It was only a matter of time before Drell realized that I was not able to shoot back, and after that he could keep doing

break passes until he hit me. I decided to tempt him into a dive, hoping to make him think that I had lost my nerve and fled to make a touch. I was successful."

From behind her there was cry of surprise from the crewmen examining Starflower.

"These cartridges, midway in the belts," shouted the armorer. "They're stuck in with resin!"

The result was awarded to Samondel, and the scandalized Forian officials launched an immediate investigation of the sabotage to her ammunition belts. The airlords took early leave of the engagement celebration and returned to the palace. The late Drell's vote was struck from the proceedings of the previous meeting, and Venture Australica was signed into law.

As the sun was setting Airlord Sartov found Samondel at the crater in the wingfleld that had been blasted out by Dirkfang's crash.

"The last time I was standing by such a pit was at a coronation in Condelor, just before the Great War," she said. "I never dreamed that the next one I stood beside would be that of my own victim."

In the fading light Sartov could see that there were tears on her face.

"Did you know him?" the Airlord of Yarron asked.

"Yes. Last year there was talk of an alliance between Montrass and Greater Bartolica. A marriage between a prince and princess would have greatly aided negotiations. I traveled to Montrass to meet Drell. He stole a kiss in the palace gardens one afternoon. I pinched his bottom, he squeezed my breast, and I accidentally pulled his codpiece off just as our chaperons returned to check on us. There was meant to be a big reception that night to welcome me to Montrass, but even as I was dressing for it in my newest gown a Bar-tolican regal arrived and flew me back to Condelor. I thought it was because the prince and I had been behaving in a rather too familiar manner with each other, but the next day I discovered that our domains were at war."

"I'm sorry. The duel was your choice, however."

"And I stand by my choice. Walk safely in the great blackness,

Saireme Drell," Samondel said to the sky. "You were diverting to be with."

They began to walk back to the tents at the edge of the wingfield, and their path took them past the strange wing that had arrived the night before. Its upper surface was charred and shriveled, and the inside of the cockpit was a blackened ruin.

"This is how the featherheads got here from Australica," said Sartov. "It was built by intelligent machines in Mirrorsun's mines and factories on the moon. Fantastically light and powered by the sun during daylight. Apparently stored electrical essence drove it by night."

"Who destroyed it?"

"Nobody. The guards said that it suddenly began burning in the early hours of the morning. Some electrical devices in the University of Forian also burned about the same time."

"Vandalism. Perhaps by the same enemy who tampered with my ammunition?" asked Samondel.

"The damage was spontaneous, it just happened. Perhaps it was something to do with the Call vanishing."

Samondel touched the tip of a wing. To her surprise she realized that she could move it easily.

"Unbelievably light, and the structure seems to be intact," said Sartov. "With some innovative repairs and a pair of conventional compression engines installed it could be of use in your Venture Australica. Its range could well exceed that of a super-regal, or so I am advised."

"When it is available, be sure to let me know. In the meantime, I had better get some experience at the controls of a super-regal."

They began to walk on.

"Airlord Samondel, do you have a feel for how far away Australica really is?" asked Sartov, bowing his head and folding his arms as he walked. "Sheer statistics say that one of my super-regals would have to fly for three days continuously to reach it."

"Legend has it that our ancestors took three days to fly to the moon. Three men flew in a spacewing, and they slept in shifts."

"I doubt that we can afford the luxury of three men in our crews. Two flyers only, and very small flyers at that. Flyers weighing less than one hundred and twenty pounds. Our wardens and flyers will have to go on diets."

"A half hour ago the wingfield physician weighed me, as naked as the day I was born. I was one hundred and five pounds. What was Warden Bronlar's registration weight yesterday?"

What Samondel had neglected to say was that she had drunk one mug of water and had not eaten at all for twenty-four hours, but Sartov did not need to know that. They stopped at the adjunct's office and being the presiding airlord of the council, Sartov could access the records of registration weights. Bronlar's kitted weight was 132 pounds, and a standard kit weighed thirty-five.

"A growing girl," said Samondel.

"Your weights are practically the same, and Warden Jemarial is known for her distance flying."

"Warden Jemarial is both unstable and insane, Saireme Sartov. Would you chose her as your envoy to the Australians?"

Sartov would have cheerfully appointed the chicken that had laid his breakfast egg as Australican envoy before he would have appointed Bronlar.

"I am inclined to favor you" said Sartov, "but your lack of navigation skills counts against you."

"Navigation skills can be learned, and / am a scholar!"

"You will be looking for very small islands over very large distances," Sartov warned. "One little mistake in navigation could kill you and lose a very expensive multiengined wing that is sorely needed in Mounthaven. We don't even know the weather patterns over midocean."

"I shall find out for you."

"The sheer amount of fuel to get the first six horses back will be more than any one of my super-regals burned for the entire war."

"And how long will we have fuel in such quantities, Airlord Sartov? Just now we have reserves, but in a year or two the guild systems will be breaking down as people leave to hunt, farm, and build their own little empires in the frontier lands. With horses we

can maintain civilization. Without them, you will soon be looking down upon a frontier filled with barbarians and anarchy from your carefully conserved super-regals. Either we move now or we are lost."

"Oh, I agree, Saireme Samondel of Leover, otherwise I would not have pledged my super-regals to your venture, as well as commissioning two more. This will be a more difficult feat than winning the Great War, but at least we shall be fighting on the same side."

"We are on the same side, but there will be no fighting, Saireme Airlord. My feeling is that all of the islands were scoured clear of humans when the Call began."

"Ah yes, I had forgotten that matter," replied Sartov, nodding.

Within a quarter hour Samondel was eating a dinner that would soon restore her body weight to a something more normal for her. At the same time Sartov was giving a secret audience to Serjon and Bronlar.

"You will be flying revolutionary sailwings," said Sartov. "Each stretch will be twenty hours or more, and you will be flying alone."

"We always fly alone," replied Bronlar.

The Rochestrian Commonwealth, Eastern Australica

Being under martial law, the citizens of Rochester were being particularly quiet and well behaved. During the night all electrical machines had burned and melted. Then the Dragon Librarian Service began abducting everyone who could count. Some people had noticed that Mirrorsun had stopped twinkling. Streetside preachers of the Reformed Gentheist Church Against the Electrical Essence Heresy loudly proclaimed that the Deity had just indicated that He did not like electrical engines any more than steam engines. Martial law was declared, and soon the preachers were being moved on by the city militia. Those who stopped and began preaching again were arrested. Those who resisted arrest were shot.

In his administrative chambers in Libris, Highliber Dramoren

was pacing before a very nervous Dragon Green and flourishing a list of names.

"So let us go over it again," said Dramoren. "You signed off Rangen Derris as class R for Rejected, as opposed to class C for Calculor."

"Well, yes, I did just that, Highliber."

"Fras, Rangen Derris is not only a part-time edutor at the Department of Mathematics, he has topped the department's examinations five half years in a row. It is one hundred and thirty years since anyone else has done as well. He has even had papers on deductive logic published."

"His notes were all on languages, Highliber, and he said that languages were his field of study. He must have worked out what was happening and lied."

"Nobody else did."

"As you said, Highliber, the youth is truly exceptional and deductive logic is his greatest strength."

"Pah, and it is probably too late. The clever wretch probably bought a wig, shaved, then boarded a wind train wearing a skirt over a couple of oranges strapped to his chest and a pillow around his hips. No good will it do him, though. Every mayorate in the Commonwealth will soon be recruiting components for my manual calculor. We have depended on calculors for three decades, Fras. The need remains, even though the electrical calculors have melted, so we are returning to halls full of slaves with abacus frames. I want first choice of the best components."

The Kalgoorlie Empire, Western Australica

Jemli vil Amarana held high rank, yet was no more than a pawn in the politics of the Kalgoorlie Empire. Once she had been a mayor, but now she was merely the Kalgoorlie Overmayor's consort, cheated into surrendering her powers by the very man whom she had married. She had been promised the joint rule of a new alliance

known as the Kalgoorie Empire, she had even betrayed Mayor Glas-ken, her former husband. And all for what?

She was in her early forties and had given birth to two more children by her second husband, but now he had other women to divert him. She remained attractive, but was well over six feet tall and had unfashionably broad shoulders. She admitted to herself that perhaps the Overmayor had always kept the dainty courtesans that were so much more to his taste than her, but had maintained discretion until his position was secure. Jemli looked up at the portrait of herself as Mayor of Kalgoorlie, painted when she had just been widowed. A single year, that was all that she had had in power, and she still had her mayoral robes, locked away in a trunk. There had once been pageants in her honor, royal receptions, tours of the provinces, but now . . . She picked up a petition from eleven members of the Reformed Gentheist Church Against the Electrical Essence Heresy requesting her to speak at their prayer meeting. Jemli had ordered a few steam engines smashed as part of a coup against her first husband, and she still gave streetside sermons against fueled engines to keep from dropping out of the public eye. That's ecumenism for you, she thought as she began to read the petition.

"New world order . . . cast down the sinners . . . raise up the righteous ... lay waste the cities of iniquity with hellfire from heaven . . . Day of Judgment ... tax concessions for the Reformed Gentheist Church Against the Electrical Essence Heresy . . ."

Jemli quite enjoyed public speaking, so she reached for a goose quill and scrawled her acceptance at the bottom of the petition.

"Why not; at least it's an audience," she said to herself.

From somewhere close by there was a giggle. Obviously her husband with some courtesan, but Jemli was not jealous, in fact she was relieved to be left to herself. She tapped some figures into her desktop electric calculor. Relays clattered, display wheels spun—and there was a crackling sizzle before acrid fumes belched out of the ventilation grille. Jemli stood up and backed away.

"Shyte, it's never done that before!" she exclaimed softly.

Now she noticed that the new electrical clock on the wall was smoking too, in fact it was actually on fire. Hearing cries of alarm,

Jemli went to the window and looked down to the pedal sheds. The generator navvies were milling around outside and gesticulating while smoke poured from the open door. She walked out onto a balcony and looked over the walls of the Overmayor's palace to the city. Everywhere smoke was curling up into the night sky, lit from below by hundreds of small fires.

Electrical devices were burning, Jemli realized. Everywhere. All across the city. If all across the city, why not all across the continent? The tirade against electrical engines in the petition from the Reformed Gentheist Church Against the Electrical Essence Heresy was fresh in her mind. She could recall it practically word for word. Jemli became aware that her heart was racing. There was a sickly sweet taste in her mouth, the type that came when one had just been propositioned by some ambitious but desirable young man at a mayoral reception and had thought "Why not?" It was the feeling of intense anticipation, laced with uncertainty and even danger. The end of electricity—again. The universe had changed, barely a minute ago. Old rules no longer applied, new rules were waiting to be written. Old rulers were only on their thrones because nobody had thought to push them off. Yet. Returning inside, Jemli went to her study, where the calculor and clock were still smoldering. She pushed a decorative stud on the wall, then twisted it clockwise and pressed it again. There was a soft click. She slid a nearby panel aside.

Kelliana tumbled and giggled with the Overmayor on a pile of silk cushions as he sought to unlace her bodice from behind. The courtesan was lying facedown when the monarch suddenly rose clear of her.

"Hie, dummart, what do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

As Relliana tried to think what he might mean there was a blast, unbearably loud and percussive within the confines of the room. She rolled over and scrambled to her feet, trying to stuff her breasts back into her partly unlaced bodice as she backed away from the figure advancing through a cloud of gunsmoke with a flintlock raised. The last thing that Relliana saw was a flash from the left barrel of the

Morelac. It had been barely two minutes since the electrical machines had begun to burn.