Eyes of the Calculor (55 page)

"Both are excellent, would I have been sent over otherwise?" replied Shadowmouse, wondering what was to be his fate.

I he following day Shadowmouse awoke in a room of the mayoral palace of Launceston, which was a low, rambling building of salvaged bricks, abandonstone, and newly cut timber. His bed was a bunk with a tentcloth mattress stuffed with dried eucalyptus leaves, and the blankets were rough woven wool. Breakfast was sheep milk cheese, scrambled eggs, and rainwater, and was at the table of the mayor.

"I'll not say that I approve of you being here," the mayor stated quite bluntly. "We can recruit volunteers for our defence machines from those already here."

"Perhaps I was considered to be a superior recruit." "Fras, I hope for your sake that you are a superior recruit. Two out of three do not survive beyond six weeks. You weigh, say, a

hundred seventy pounds in your clothes. That could have been one hundred and seventy pounds of tools, medicines, seeds, fertile chicken eggs, or three children. Every pound of anything that crosses the Strait is a miracle."

Shadowmouse bristled.

"It may not have crossed your mind, but many of my people have died or been captured to make sure that aviad children and artisans reach the secret mainland wingfields," he retorted.

"Do you know how many have died crossing Bass Strait?"

"No! And that is because once your wings are in the air we never hear back from you. Oh, there are letters, tightly cribbed missives along the lines of 'Mama, Papa, I love you, it is wonderful here,' and shared with a dozen others on pieces of poorpaper that would fit onto the palm of my hand with space left over."

"Even those papers cost compression spirit. We have lost nine kitewings in the past half year."

"But there must be thousands of people here. A kitewing can barely carry two adults."

"Originally we had better."

A teenage boy came in to clear away the plates and mugs, all of which had been salvaged from the abandon and were two thousand years old. The mayor pushed away from the table and beckoned for Shadowmouse to follow.

The palace was at the edge of the wingfield. Beside it were the buildings and workshops of the Launceston Technical Academy, and alongside was the Kitewing Research Institute. Thatch-roof shelters for the aircraft were lined up in a row, and some hundreds of yards farther away was the compression-spirit plant.

"Artisans are trained in the Academy, and compression engines are built next door in the Research Institute. Every engine is a work of research, Fras Shadowmouse. In the years before last September we brought thousands of aviads over here using the electrical essence sunwings."

"Those sent down from Mirrorsun?"

"Yes, and most were lost in the Melting. This one was an exception."

In the first thatch-roof shelter was a large and elegant sailwing, but its twin engines and cockpit showed signs of burning. Seven very young-looking aviads were carefully boring holes in the engine mountings.

"This sunwing ferry was on the ground when everything electrical melted. From its condition, you may well imagine what happened to those that were in the air. One of the young artisans has an idea to mount compression engines and control wires and get it flying again. The airframe weighs a fifth of what we can build, and it could carry four adults. The trouble is that it has to be fed with sugar."

"Fed?"

"Yes. In a strange manner that we do not even begin to understand, it is alive."

Shadowmouse looked along to the next shelter, where an edutor was lecturing students on an aircraft that had three tiered wings.

"That is a very advanced-looking machine," said Shadowmouse as he pointed.

"Yes, it is, and it can exceed two hundred miles per hour in a dive. Look there, a kitewing trainer is being readied to ascend."

A chugging steam engine on a trolley was being used to spin up the compression engine on what was no more than a double boxkite on wheels. Once the compression engine caught, the flyer supervised while his trainee strapped himself into the lower of the main wings.

The mayor began walking slowly along the dispersal path, and Shadowmouse fell in with him.

"A long time ago, during the Milderellen Invasion, one of the sparkflash radio units invented by Highliber Zarvora detected messages from a very advanced civilization in the mountains of old North America," the mayor explained. "From the first few messages we realized that they had compression engines and small flying machines. Although it was not a very warlike society, their guns were vastly more advanced than ours, and this inspired certain factions in Avianese politics to propose theft on a grand scale. Theft of weapons, gunwings, artisans, and tools."

"But Highliber Zarvora was supplying far more advanced ma-

chines, such as that one back there, using the old Mirrorsun factories."

"Highliber Zarvora had an idea to fly aviads out to empty islands like this one and build aviad mayorates that were independent of humans. Other factions thought to take over Australica instead. The more benign of them wanted the humans enslaved, the extremists wanted them exterminated. When Zarvora was killed, the extremists had a problem. It would take centuries to learn the secrets of the sunwing machines, but the secrets of the guns and gunwings of North America required no more than good teachers and a few examples to allow us to master them. Sunwings, bigger versions of the one we just saw, were used to ferry Avianese agents over to the other side of the world, and after a time guns, aircraft, and artisans began to arrive here. Some of the later artisans spoke on the radio devices of a war breaking out between two mayorates called Yarron and Bar-tolica, a war that we started. Apparently the war did not go well for our faction, and finally our main base reported being under attack by a vast flock of Yarronese wings. Very soon after that the spark-flash went silent, and some hours later the Melting happened and the Call stopped. We were again very much on our own."

"With only a few stolen air machines left for contact with the mainland," said Shadowmouse, nodding.

"You have it. Much to our surprise, however, an American sail-wing arrived here two months ago. The Americans had forgiven us for the invasion but wanted help transporting horses back to their homeland, to help colonize their former Calldeath lands."

"Of course! They had no choice but to turn to us. All the mainland, human mayorates have religious prohibitions on fueled engines."

"Yes. Our relationship is one of a marriage of convenience, but we are still on honeymoon and there is plenty of goodwill in evidence."

Out on the ascent strip the kitewing's flyer opened the throttle of the compression engine and it began rolling along and gathering speed. After what seemed like a much longer run than the super-regal had needed, it lifted into the air and climbed in a straight line

until it was several times the height of the nearby trees. It began a wide circle of the wingfield.

"So why are you using those dangerous string bags?" asked Sha-dowmouse. "You have at least a dozen stolen air machines under these shelters."

"And we used them, too. We knew that the easy times were over, so we flew tools, books and rare materials across by the wingload. Sometimes we made five flights a day, but then parts started to wear out, highly specialized engine parts that we could not hope to duplicate. Finally a twin-engine wing seized one engine on a flight to King Gate Wingfield and was nearly lost. We began to cannibalize parts to make a few reliable engines out of many, but even these wore out eventually. Other wings were actually lost in Bass Strait so we grounded all the North American wings, but by then sufficient kitewings were in service. They are not much, but they are all that we have and we do know how to build them. The students of the Institute have been slowly rebuilding the worn American parts and restoring the stolen wings to service, but so far only three of them are cleared to ascend. Our facilities are so limited that we have to have many parts forged and machined secretly on the mainland."

"And is this all that you have? This single town and wingfield?"

"Yes, there are no other settlements larger than fifty souls. We cannot afford to waste resources with transport. Farms have been established to grow seeds and grains to make compression spirit, as well as to feed us. As you can see, we are surviving but are in a precarious state."

Shadowmouse was given a tour of the gun workshops, which were producing heavy reaction guns that could be used either by infantry or be fitted to the kitewings. He spoke to many of the children living in the dormitories and working the farms between school classes, and found them to be healthy and generally happy.

"And the North Americans, how do they fit in?" Shadowmouse asked an artisan at the Institute over a lunch of boiled potatoes and goat milk butter.

"The first of them overflew us on the second day of February, and one parachuted down to this very wingfield. They wanted to

trade horses for gold, but we wanted engines, tools, and skills—and we had no horses. We made an agreement that we would make horses available on the mainland if they would ferry a few aviads over here before flying on with their horses. They will also be sending tools and artisans to help us build better wings. Why, one compression-spirit artisan has already been brought over, and the efficiency of our plant has been improved fifteen percent."

"The first one to land here, was his name Sair Serjon Fey-damor?"

"Why, yes, that was him. Fine fellow, and so young."

"I had the honor of meeting him."

Early in the afternoon Shadowmouse was preparing to ascend to overview the capital, and to experience a kitewing for himself. The flyer helped him strap in, lying flat along the lower main wing.

"Compression-spirit stores are low, due to the volume that the super-regals need, so we make sure that all flights are training flights," he explained. "This kitewing has dual controls, and after we ascend you will take over and learn a few basics."

After a mere two hours Shadowmouse made a solo flight in a tiny armed kitewing. He made several passes at a target kite, shooting at ribbons suspended from its tail. When he landed he was put through a short ceremony declaring him a flyer of the Avian Flock, while a band of two flutes, a trumpet, and two drums supplied the music.

His flyer's badge had not been on his cloak for two minutes when the wingfield adjunct came over to speak with him.

"So, Fras Shadowmouse, you have no sweetheart or children, and your parents think you are dead," declared the adjunct, reading from a slate.

"That describes me," said Shadowmouse.

"Were you to die, none would be told."

"In my case, none would care."

"Splendid. Come this way, now, and see the ancient weapons. They do not need compression engines, and were originally developed in case the Americans attacked."

"But they are intended to stop the Gentheists now?"

"Yes. Gentheist experiments are under way to develop massive galley airships, held aloft by hot air and powered by hundreds of pedaling musketeers. The humans could reach this island and wipe us out, they could make hundreds of those things from just cloth and wooden frames while we struggle to put a half dozen compression engines together. But we also have ancient weaponry, Fras Shadow-mouse. Dangerous, barely understood, highly unstable, but devastat-ingly effective. In time we shall make them safer, but for now the Skyfire weapons are prematurely in production because we need them. People like you are being asked to die in them for just that reason as well."

Peterborough, the Woomeran Confederation

Whatever one might say about prophets, dreamers, and visionaries, it is fair to say that they do get inspiration from somewhere. Four decades earlier the young Zarvora Cybeline had sitting in the University Library, lamenting the demise of the ancient civilization's intelligent calculating machines and contemplating the vast amount of calculation needed to determine when Mirrorsun would complete itself and unfurl in the skies of Earth. All around her were her fellow students of mathematics, all hard at work with their calculations. Suddenly the thought struck her: she was surrounded by intelligent calculating machines. All that she needed was a system to coordinate them, a few hundred abacus frames and benches, leg shackles, guards with whips, a shift roster, the money to feed the slaves and pay the guards, and sufficient power to put anyone who objected before a firing squad. Six years later she was the Highliber of Libris and the first unhappy components were being chained into the original Calculor of Libris.

Although publically a Gentheist, Zarvora had been an agnostic, and often maintained that she would have been an atheist but she did not have sufficient faith to deny the existence of a god, deity, or any other manifestation of an all-powerful being. Thus she put her inspiration for the first calculor down to sheer intelligence, of which

she did have a great deal. The idea had come to her in midafternoon, on a bright, sunny day, and in a public place. She did not leap out of a bath shouting "Eureka!" She merely drew a diagram and wrote down some figures. She then walked across the city to Libris, demanded a Dragon White examination, and passed it with a perfect score. She then demanded to sit the examinations for Dragon Yellow, Dragon Orange, Dragon Red, and Dragon Green. By midnight she walked back to her university college of residence with the color of a Dragon Green pinned to her tunic, and by noon the following day she had killed her first supervisor in a duel over an accusation of fraud. She demanded, and was given, her supervisor's rank.

Thus, although Zarvora's rise through fifteen year's worth of seniority in twenty-four hours might have been considered miraculous, nothing had taken place that intelligence, a sound education, sheer talent, good flintlock targetry, and an absolutely psychopathic dedication to the salvation of civilization could not explain. This was not the case with Jemli Milderellen, four decades later.

A reciprocating clock was clanging out the hour of midnight in the mayoral palace of Peterborough as Jemli sat contemplating a portrait of her sister Lemorel on the wall. Lemorel had experienced the most tragic of romantic losses, then set out to conquer the continent. She had very nearly done it, too, and it had taken the cosmic might of Mirrorsun to stop her army.