Of Machines & Magics (26 page)

“Here now. My office.”

The office was a space between buttresses supporting the wall of the main hall, it had been closed off by sheets of glass. Inside, there was a hard-looking bench and several wheeled trolleys piled with enigmatic equipment. Brighter lights flared as they entered the enclosure, the beams centered upon a dusty couch.

“There,” said the creature. Muscles bunched along the length of the great hairy arm, muscles magnificent enough to make Ponderos feel inadequate, a finger the size of a cucumber pointed to the couch.

Somewhat anxious, Calistrope raised his voice. “By what authority do you haul me off and sequester my companions?”

Calistrope’s bluster was hardly noticed, the great rumbling, clanging voice, even at its mildest, was sufficiently stentorian to cow the Mage a dozen times over. “I am the curator,” announced the creature. “You enter my domain; you place your fate in my hands. Now lie down.”

The curator propelled Calistrope with a gentle but irresistible push back on to the couch. Calistrope collapsed onto it. A cloud of dust arose around him, bringing tears to his eyes and a sneeze to his nose.

“I am responsible for all this.” The great hand swung to and fro and Calistrope considered making another break for freedom but the hand swept back towards him, two fingers rested upon his midriff. Escape was a fantasy. “I procure new specimens, spruce up the old.”

Contriving to keep Calistrope pinioned, the curator reached across the space with his extensible arm and pulled a trolley towards him on squeaking wheels. Outside of Calistrope’s view, it made adjustments, pushed switches, plugged plugs. A humming sound began behind Calistrope’s head. “Now lie still. Do not move. Have I made this clear?”

Calistrope nodded.

“Don’t move, I said.”

“Yes,” said Calistrope, “Er, no.”

A few moments later something appeared at the top of Calistrope’s field of vision. It crept over him, an oval pod on the end of a thin rod. The pod moved on—a sensing device, Calistrope assumed as it crept over his torso, down along his legs and stopped at his feet. The hum ceased, a thin whine commenced and the sensor was retracted.

“Ah, well,” said Calistrope and sat up. “Interesting. I must be away now…”

The hand reappeared, pushed him back to a semi-reclining position. “Be still. Memories now.” The trolley with squeaky wheels went away, another on silent suspensors was pulled forward to where it hovered in front of his face. A fourth arm, one which Calistrope had only had a glimpse of before, came into use; it supported a hand with long thin digits—each with five or six or more knuckles.

Small verniers were set, toggles snapped back and forth and then power was switched on. The machine flashed and crackled, a smell which Calistrope associated with overheated galvanic machinery, assailed his nostrils.

“Memories?” asked Calistrope, a trifle plaintively.

“Quite painless, I assure you, heh heh.” Two sniggers like snare drums. “You will not remember a thing.”

Calistrope was suddenly alarmed, very alarmed. “What do you mean? It takes my memories, is that what you mean?”

The curator shrugged—a minor dislocation of tin cans and brass barrels and cast iron pipes. “The equipment is old, unreliable,” it told Calistrope sadly. “However, rest assured they will be perfectly preserved in your simulacrum. I shall replay them again and again, it will be like living your life over and over again.”

“But I shan’t experience them. They’re mine, they make me,
me
!” And Calistrope struggled to such effect that he wriggled down and almost out from beneath the curator’s great fingers.

“You will begin to accumulate more immediately. It will do you no harm, I may even leave some for you in your brain. Deliberately, the curator tapped a stud and the recording machine began to hum.

Calistrope’s last sight was of a dewdrop hanging from an overhead girder. A huge drop of water which stretched out impossibly and then fell to the floor. His vision darkened, his mind lost volition.

A succession of memories paraded before Calistrope’s inner sight, memories so old that he could not remember where they had been acquired… a small boy playing on a grassy slope, the sky was blue; sunlight a blinding light overhead… A waterfall against a black sky with stars as hard and as sharp as diamond shards… a woman’s face which brought sudden tears to his eyes…

Calistrope opened his eyes, rubbed them and found himself staring at a puddle of clear liquid on the tile floor of the curator’s office. The puddle bulged upwards at its center and continued to rise for some seconds. The top swelled out a little, there was the suggestion of a head with features. Shoulders broadened outward, arms separated from the main mass, the lower part bifurcated and became legs.

“Morph!” Calistrope breathed the word in amazement. “Am I remembering you?”

Chapter 20

The curator was bending over Calistrope, and one of its long, slim fingers was poised above the activation button. “What was that you said? I must calibrate the equipment, and then we shall begin properly.”

As Calistrope watched, the translucent being moved on silent feet to one side, gaining in color and solidity as it moved. It crept up to the curator’s side and pulled at the memory recorder, which slid easily on its suspensor field. Momentum carried it out of the curator’s immediate reach and it caromed into a row of glass cases, sending them crashing. “What is
this
?” cried the curator, its voice suddenly as thin and as high as a distant shriek of tortured metal. “An alien! I declare it to be an alien!”

The curator danced carefully in the confined space, its huge feet cracking and gouging at the floor tiles. “Centuries?” it mused as it shot out a hand. “No, I am wrong!” The hand had evidently missed its target, for it struck again. “Millennia! It has been seven millennia since I last had an alien life form to prepare for my museum.” The curator’s arm retracted, and Morph was securely gripped by metal fingers interlocked about the waist.

“Go, Calistrope! Do not fear for me—
go!
” Morph’s right eyelid drooped in a slow-motion wink. “Leave this juggernaut to me.”

Calistrope sidled around the curator’s back as Morph lost some of its rigidity and slid partly through the curator’s fingers. “Oops,” said the curator in astonishment as it used another hand to hold on to Morph’s gradually elongating body. As Calistrope left the doorway, the curator was already employing all four hands to hold onto the lengthening alien. Outside, Calistrope looked left, then right. To the right were scuff marks in the layer of dust that covered the floor of the hall; Calistrope followed them and within ten minutes was back at the entrance where his two comrades were still imprisoned.

“Calistrope! You got away—or perhaps you disabled the grotesque thing?”

“Morph helped me. He distracted the curator while I escaped.”

“Morph is dead, Calistrope,” Ponderos shook his head, wondering if this was a sign of instability since his friend’s accident. “Does your head hurt?”

“My head?” Calistrope put a hand to his head. “No. There’s nothing wrong with my head.”

“Perhaps you saw another of his kind,” Roli suggested.

Calistrope shook his head irritably. “Morph spoke to me. I don’t know how he survived but it
was
Morph—there is no doubt of it.”

“Well! Let us just be thankful,” Ponderos thought it better to let the matter drop. “How can we get out of here?”

Calistrope inspected the walls to either side of the doors where the light beams emanated from a number of small holes. There were no visible switches or knobs, no controls of any kind. “It’s only light, when all is said and done. Surely we can block it,” Calistrope mused. He looked around and spied a sheet of dark material. “This should do! It will absorb the light.”

He picked it up and discovered that it was heavy. “Metal! There is metal everywhere in here—ransom for a thousand grandees!” Callistrope thrust it into the path of the light beams and the metal bagan to sizzle. The coating burned away and three holes appeared—large enough to put a finger through.

“So much for that! A mirror then, a mirror is what we need,” he said as he looked around again. “A mirror, or perhaps a bright, shiny piece of metal!” Calistrope bent over and picked up a piece of polished, silvery stuff. Back at the enclosure he tried again, gingerly. The green light beams were deflected upwards and a blackened track appeared on the ceiling material where the light touched it. “Quickly now, this is working.”

Ponderos and Roli came through the gap, stepping over the lowest beam that was still functional, and ducking the higher ones above the reach of the deflector. Just as Calistrope was about to pull the metal plate out, he cried out and dropped it. “It’s hot,” he explained. “It got very hot suddenly.”

“We’re still on the wrong side of the door,” Roli grumbled.

“But free to roam about. There must be other exits,” he replied. The hall could have been as much as a league in length, and they had entered through one of the shorter walls—a furlong wide, perhaps. Tall double doors occurred every one or two chains, and each of the first four were closed and refused to open to Calistrope’s hand. The next exit, which was the fifth, was also closed and unresponsive to Calistrope’s touch.

“Uh-oh,” Roli pointed to their left. “The curator!” They had been following an aisle which paralleled the wall; here, its inner side was lined with a row of cabinets depicting the evolution of a tall, dignified biped from a frog-like creature. The development was detailed, the line of cabinets long and some above head-height. Beyond this line, following some avenue nearer the center, the curator’s head and shoulders could be seen and occasionally, one or more arms were being brandished in the air.

“What now? Where do we go?”

“These are the last doors along this side,” Calistrope said and sniffed the air. “There’s that smell again—you remember? Magic?”

Ponderos sniffed as well. “Well…” he sniffed again, harder, longer. “Yes. Yes I
do
smell something now.”

“The curator!” Roli was anxious.

“Yes, well—keep low and we’ll go on, as far as the end wall. Even if the thing sees us, we can keep well ahead now that we know about it. As a curator, it is not likely to crash its way through the exhibits; we can circle around as long as is necessary.”

Ponderos’ stomach rumbled loudly, “And how long is that? I’m still hungry—we don’t know if the curator even eats.”

“For the moment, we must go on,” Calistrope prodded. They bent low and scuttled along the aisle until it turned at right angles. Here, they could move in either direction to keep out of the curator’s sight.

“There’s another door there,” Roli pointed. “A small one.” The other two looked. Two buttresses had been erected at some time to take the strain imposed by a crack in the rock face which ran jaggedly out across both the floor and the ceiling. Between the two was a doorway closed by a panel displaying the familiar dark grey circle. The smell of magic issuing from the crack was strong enough to make even Roli’s nose itch, and he sneezed violently. They crossed to the door.

Calistrope made a face. “Well?”

“Try it,” Ponderos shrugged. “There is nothing to lose.”

With a dramatic flourish, Calistrope slapped his hand against the circle. The door panel vanished and out rolled a waft of hot dry air accompanied by a smell of overheated copper. The interior was lit by a fitful red glow. Cautiously they entered—Calistrope, Ponderos and finally, Roli.

The room was small, little more than an alcove and the crack which had split the wall outside ran across the floor and appeared as a deep fissure in the inner wall. Calistrope noticed this peripherally as he stepped across the gap in the floor, what took his primary attention was the simple-seeming apparatus at the center.

Two slim cones, each an ell or so in length with their narrow ends fused together formed a venturi. The device rested vertically upright in a stand with the lower end clear of the floor and apparently open. The open ends of seven square-shaped wave guides were arranged around the narrow waist and merged into a single square-sectioned duct which disappeared into a void cut into the chamber’s wall. None of the seven pipes actually touched the venturi although they were machined to precisely match its contours.

From the top of the upper cone, a dull red glow suffused the atmosphere. It radiated heat, air was evidently drawn in at the bottom, was heated by whatever process went on inside and exited from the top taking with it some of the energy gathered within the device. Calistrope supposed this to be a side effect of the real process of energy production.

“Magic,” said Calistrope at last, gesturing toward the device. “Magic extracted from the ether.”

“How though?” Ponderos scratched his gleaming pate. “Roli has demonstrated that magic proceeds from living things, particularly from people. We have found it available only where there are a number of people living in a community.”

Roli shook his head. “Ponderos is right. There has been no usable magic in the ether until now. The machine apes whatever is inside a person, it manufactures magic. The magic you are using must be a leakage from the machine.”

Both Calistrope and Ponderos looked blankly at the younger man for quite some time. This was a new concept—the debating of advanced theories with an apprentice of scarcely an old year’s standing.

“The major part is collected by these… these things,” Roli pointed to the square tubes which girdled the mechanism.

Calistrope nodded slowly. “Well, the proposition has merit,” he said.

“It covers the known facts,” allowed Ponderos. “But what is the magic manufactured from?”

“That is a different question.”

“You have a bright student there, my friend.”

“Hmm,” Calistrope felt a certain envy. Had he been as quick, as discerning in his youth? The question was academic, the answer buried in his archive and Voss had the memory vault. Even if he cared to search out his early memories, the means were not to hand.

He stirred himself from his reverie. “You are right of course, Ponderos. However, while there is magic to be used, let us use it,” Calistrope grinned, uncharacteristically jolly. “Didn’t I say that I could smell magic, way back?”

“You did, back when you had fallen down that cleft…”

“And you thought me befuddled?” Calistrope chuckled.

“Befuddled? A good word,” Ponderos chuckled as well and admitted it. “I do… I did think that, yes.”

All three seemed to shine now, with excess energy. Their flesh was firm, muscles solid; their step was springy, paces long and assertive. Even their clothes were renewed: the many tears and catches were gone, the faded colors now brilliant and fresh. For Roli, the feeling was new, heady; his face shone with good health and the boundless energy of more than just youth.

Calistrope opened the door and stepped backward almost at once. Before the panel materialized, all had seen the figure of the curator standing outside.

Calistrope replied to Ponderos’ and Roli’s unspoken question. “We have a great deal of power to wield, far more than we should need or even use. Roli, you are inexperienced, you must stay behind us and observe—no more. Ponderos, we must synchronize our efforts.”

A few moments later, Calistrope deactivated the door panel and almost at once, two of the curator’s arms stretched out towards them, the hands flexing eagerly.

The two Mages flung a barrier field at the curator. The field lifted the being and swept it back into a diorama opposite the door. The curator’s limbs swung around wildly, dismembering the model of a mantis and destroying several small mountains in the background. Bits and pieces flew off the curator, an arm, chest plates, nuts, bolts… A steel-clawed hand came to rest at Calistrope’s feet.

When the thing came to rest, it moved feebly for a minute or two and then became still. Only the incongruously blue eyes swiveled this way and that until it focused on the three humans. “Now what have you done to me?”… A slow roll of kettle drums.

“We defended ourselves. That is all.”

“Go. Leave me. Leave my museum.”… Empty brass vessels falling down stairs. “Go.”

“We go.”

At the doorway out of the curator’s exhibition hall, Ponderos and Roli took cover while Calistrope readied his armament. He formed his will, a tall cylinder of energy hung before the door, Calistrope triggered it. The cylinder imploded into a narrow streak of incandescence and then exploded with a resounded concussion.

Several showcases to either side of the doorway disintegrated into matchwood, those further along were swept away. Stone and metalwork around the door was chipped or twisted.

“Care. Take care.” The stentorian roar somehow conveyed anguish, distress. “Oh no.” This was in a much quieter tone, almost resigned. “Not you, too?”

The door panel itself stood there unscathed, untouched, pristine. Calistrope took a pace forward and touched it. As firm, as immovable as before.

“I think,” he said after a moment or two, “this is an energy field and cannot be broken by projecting energy against it. Indeed, it may even be augmented by my attempt.”

“We should therefore think sideways.”

“Another insight, Roli?”

“Not me,” declared Roli, “I said nothing,” he looked around, “Well now, it
is
our friend Morph.”

Calistrope looked where Roli was pointing. “Morph? You got away from the curator?”

“As you see.”

Ponderos grinned. The creature’s apparent death had saddened them and its sudden reappearance delighted them all the more.

Ponderos, thought back to the plant which had swallowed Morph. He queried, “How did you get away?”

“From that overgrown dandelion?” the small figure asked—perhaps lifting the idea from Ponderos’ head.

“More to the point,” Roli interrupted. “How do we get out of here before the curator recovers himself?”

“We use the curator’s hand,” replied Morph, holding up the steel claw that had come loose when the two Mages attacked it.

“Well, thank you,” Calistrope took the metal claw and crossed to the doorway. He pressed it against the dark colored circle on the door and the door vanished. “Excellent, Morph! What made you bring it?”

“I had observed the comings and goings of the artificial creature earlier, while I waited for you. He merely had to touch the doors and they opened.” The doors reappeared behind them, sealing them out of the curator’s hall. They were in the same corridor as before or one which seemed identical.

“You were waiting for us? Here?”

“Oh yes. I made that carnivorous plant belch me out by kicking at the stomach walls until it was sick. Then I followed after you. I have been here quite a long time.”

“But you didn’t catch up to us before?”

Morph shook its head. “The river slowed my progress. I found I could not swim, and moving underwater was too slow. So I followed along the bank—I was just in time to see you embark from the village, but too slow to join you.”