Of Machines & Magics (2 page)

They entered, climbed the stairs. Roli took the basket of fruit and vegetables to the kitchen, Calistrope continued on to his study.

A moment later he stopped and stood, rooted to the spot, aghast at what he saw. For many minutes he stood silently.

The house waited.

“Roli,” he whispered at length, staring at the empty cases and the open doors. “Roli.” Even his whispers stirred long blue and purple sparks from the air. Quivering phantasms hung about him and winced with each new imprecation; outside, above the front door, the Gargoyle thrust stony fingers into its ears and cowered.

Roli heard the whispers and came running.

“Master?”

“Larceny,” he hissed, his voice low and hard. “Roli, you are the authority in these matters. Tell me,
who
would rob the manse of a Master Sorcerer?”

“Master! Who would dare? Surely no one but another sorcerer.” The air carried the odor of lightning, Roli sneezed.

“Of course,” Calistrope nodded slowly, “who else?” he paced his study and dust wheelers scattered before his feet, scurried for safety in the wainscoting. “None but another,” he repeated. “Look there,” he grasped Roli’s shoulder and pointed at a bare expanse of wall. “There was a tapestry there. Each stitch was a microscopic knot tied by manikins from my vats, an old century in the weaving and not done yet. Oh, I shall have revenge for this! Bring me food—food to stoke my wrath.”

Calistrope looked from one empty place to another.
My marionettes,
he bemoaned and wrung his hands,
each with its own personality and volition. My liqueurs, a thousand years in the amassing.
He flicked his fingers
. Gone in an eye blink.

“Roli, food. I grow faint with hunger.”

“Here Master, right here.”

“What’s this?” Calistrope poked at the dish, sniffed at the carafe. “Pickled fish? Green wine?” Calistrope shook his head and then paused, his mind going on to other matters. “Roli. What
did
the Gargoyle say? Exactly?”

“It said…” Roli screwed up his face in concentration, “Near as I can remember, ‘Visitors? I saw no visitors.’”

“Well now, that’s near enough. The Gargoyle has been interfered with, compromised. The thing prevaricated. Hmm. I’ll have anchovies on a bed of samphire. Leave the wine.”

Hardly had Roli gone when there came an insistent tapping at the window. Outside, a silver sphere with iridescent highlights bobbed and floated, a bubble of quicksilver. Calistrope was not in the mood to listen to messages; in high dudgeon he crossed to the casement and opened it, the sphere drifted in, rising and falling in the air currents left by the Sorcerer’s recent rantings. It came to rest, or nearly so, in front of Calistrope; he reached out and touched a fingertip to its cool surface. The film coruscated, broke, vaporized.

“This,” spoke a sibilant voice, “is Voss.”

“Who else would it be?” Calistrope muttered. “The Despondent One. Still, he is one who
has
grown in wisdom since he suckled at his mother’s breast.”

“A meeting is called for the twelfth hour. I have selected
you
, Calistrope, to be honored in a quite extraordinary way.”

The message sphere reproduced the words, the precise timbre of Voss’ voice. Calistrope’s imagination supplied the gloomy features, the compelling eyes, the thin lips and narrow nose.

“I look forward to your attending.” And the silence drifted slowly back as Calistrope connected thefts and invitation.

“Your meal master,” Roli stood in the doorway, bearing a wooden tray.

Calistrope looked at the food and shook his head. “My appetite has gone, I’m afraid.” And his mind turned over the injustices done him.
Who had been paramount in advocating those experiments that he had castigated?

Voss the Mirthless.

Who had watched as each boulder was ignited to burn with an eternal flame or to glow with a self perpetuating heat?

Voss the Somber.

And who had been the most irritated at Calistrope’s remarks?

Calistrope nodded.

Voss of the Thin Smile
.

“Voss,” Roli. It was Voss who came here while we were away. Voss the Despondent. Who else would dare to enter the manse of a fellow mage?”

Calistrope had been right in his criticism of course. No man-made fire could replace the sun’s waning energy, not a thousand, not a million. But the Mage was guilty of being tactless, worse—of expressing his doubts in front of others and worse of all, Calistrope had been right. Voss, he had no doubt at all, was taking his revenge.

The Mage left the room and took the winding staircase within the north branch; he crossed an aerial walkway to his sleeping chamber and passed through to the dressing room. Here he glanced from the window, the weather—as almost always—was calm and chill.

He chose garments from his wardrobe: a pair of grey leather breeches tooled with convoluted patterns, a pair of boots of similar color with blue inlay and a matching tunic with blue enameled plates of insect chitin on the epaulettes.

He glanced in the mirror. The effects of his choice of garment were as he expected. They signified aloofness, reserved judgment, dignity.

The College had been constructed with the successful intention of making it the most impressive building in the City. It was a single slender shining column of fused basalt rising over a thousand spans in height which to the citizenry
was
Sachavesku: the City without its spire, the College without its jewel-like setting could not be imagined. The interior of the column was separated into two hundred and seventy seven lecture theatres and laboratories and in its heyday—when the sun still blazed a golden orange, every level was occupied. The lower floors thronged with students, while the middle and upper floors became steadily less crowded until only savants, mages and archmages were left from the lengthy climb to knowledge.

Calistrope entered the ground floor, a vast circular space with floors decorated with tiled tessellation; tall windows behind each dark wood lectern illuminated the manuscripts from which masters once lectured the novitiates in the elements of their selected profession. Entrants were few in these latter days, few enough for instruction to be carried out on an individual basis so that vast areas of the College were empty, dark and dusty places visited only by echoes.

There were ten portals spaced evenly around the walls, stairs led from floor to floor as far as the seventh level, beyond that, there were only smooth bare shafts. It was considered that anyone aspiring to rise beyond the seventh level must be able to do so by their own efforts entirely.

Calistrope entered the nearest portal and exerting a minor effort, levitated himself to the highest floor. Here, the meager rays of the latter-day sun shone through sloping casements decorated with richly colored designs and pictures of ancient events.

The Great Hall of Assembly exerted a curious influence on many who gathered there. Most were content to contribute nothing more than an occasional
Hear, hear
or an
Aha
to the debate, to utter a discrete cough or a telling shake of the head. However, those who addressed their fellow Mages were often afflicted with an excess of gravity. Gestures grew slow and ponderous, words were burdened with portent, speech became pompous and grandiloquent.

The Mage was aware of this bizarre effect. When called upon to speak, he acceded with reluctance; he took pains to be brief, eschewed sarcasm, avoided malice. Though each of his fellows professed the same self-control, Calistrope considered himself to be the only true master of the terse remark, the concise exposition.

Calistrope took his seat precisely as the tall pendulum clock struck the twelfth hour on its thick glass bell. Voss the Despondent, who had been at the head of the table for some minutes, struck the small iron gong and called the meeting to order. His long lugubrious face was occasionally known to smile briefly but there was no trace of such an expression now.

“I and two of my fellow Archmages have completed a new task. As a result, I have decided on a new undertaking,” he told them somberly, without preamble. “This is the only possibility we have found which may ensure the survival of the human race.”

A murmur ran the length of the immense table, Voss waited patiently for the sound to subside. “Our present power is insufficient to rejuvenate the sun or to find alternatives to its heat and light which dwindle as we talk.”

Calistrope considered clearing his throat but decided that silence was the more pointed comment.

Voss raised his eyebrows a fraction, surprised that Calistrope should waste the opportunity of making a remark.

“We have made a new search of the archives; we have a new course of action,” Voss sat back and flicked dust from his sleeve. “Since arcane powers are no longer enough, we must restart the engines at the heart of the world. As the sun shrinks, the Earth must be made to follow it.”

A shocked silence followed his words, a silence which stretched on and on before being gradually filled with the sounds of breathing, of murmured comments, scraps of conversation.

“Move the world?” said someone, disbelief writ large in the tone.

Voss lifted his voice somewhat. “Accordingly, we have conferred with those who have a more exact record of history. The Ants.”

Pandemonium broke out. Arguments, comments, oaths, counter arguments… all of which dwindled to a most unusual silence. In ones and twos, in groups, the gathering became aware of the new presence at the head of the table—polished chitin, spiky red whiskers, black faceted eyes, trembling antennae.

“May I introduce Micca, the Ant? I have requested engineer Micca join us and address us.”

The magicians gazed at the ant. She stood as high as an average man, her chitin armor shining dully with ruddy highlights, there was a faint susurration—the sound of her tracheal bellows. She raised her antennae and a hum filled the air as they vibrated. After a few seconds, the tone became modulated and the insect essayed an imitation of human speech.

“Venerations,” she greeted and tilted her head in a series of small jerks as her glittering black eyes were brought to bear on each of the sorcerers in turn. “At the request of the Archmage Voss, we have made an examination of the Nest’s records; we have established several unquestionable facts.” The insect moved two of its legs, they made a metallic scraping sound on the floor and as she shifted, the sunlight struck a series of green iridescences from her thorax. The ant’s exhalations imparted a faint acid quality to the air in the chamber.

“The Earth’s orbit was once inside that of the cinder world, Mars. Humans constructed engines which moved the Earth from there to its present position, beyond the reach of the sun which was expanding into its red giant stage.”

Impassively, the ant waited as a new round of conversation swelled. A sorcerer at the table’s far end signaled for silence, the murmurous dissonance diminished. Sarra Rivera looked along the stretch of ebony wood with its shell and scarab wing inlay; he held Micca’s attention with his cold, silver gaze. “This notion is a myth, a story the
Ephemerals
tell each other for comfort. The movement of a whole world at the bidding of a human being is ludicrous.”

“Yet it happened,” said Micca. “I have seen the memories stored in our records. The journey had already been under way for half a million old years when my species recorded the helium flash.”

“The possibility is discounted by the Sorceress Almatirra’s
Principle of Equivalent Mass,”
Rivera continued, hardly listening to what the ant had said.

The ant nodded, a peculiarly human gesture which seemed at variance with the insect’s anatomy. “Your objection is perfectly valid—according to the tenets of
your
science.”

Voss nodded and spoke to Rivera. “The universe is stranger than you imagine, Sir, stranger than you
can
imagine.”

“Quite so,” added Micca. “The ancient science of physics places no such restrictions upon the possible—fortunately. The sun is now shrinking to its dwarf stage and the Nest agrees the Earth must be returned to a narrower orbit.”

“And how,” asked Issla the Inquisitive, “is this to be done?”

“The mechanisms which control the engines are in the eternal City of Schune,” Voss interjected. “Oh yes,” he said as he saw expressions of disbelief about him, the City exists.”

Issla continued with her doubts. “The Ants have never been interested in helping the Human Race before, why should we believe what she says?” She gestured dismissively at Micca. “Can she persuade us of her goodwill?”

Voss was at a loss but Micca, to whom rancor was an alien concept answered without acrimony. “The Nest draws its power from the remnant heat of the world’s core. It will last us many millions of years, far longer than either of your species. However, the sun will last us longer if we follow it.”

“
Either
species?” Queried Calistrope.

“The
Ephemerals
and ourselves,” Voss explained.