Secrets of the Fire Sea (28 page)

‘No!’ said the steamman, so loudly it was almost a warning. ‘It is not what you think it is. I should have listened to the Steamo Loa when it came to me. Read the formula, Jethro softbody, see the symmetry of what has been wrought here.’

Jethro took the papers being neatly piled by Chalph urs Chalph and started to read through them, slowly at first, then more frantically – almost disbelieving – flicking through the sheets and turning them over, tracing the formulae between pages and jumping back and forth until the ex-parson was perspiring. ‘This cannot be!’

‘What is it?’ asked Chalph. ‘Is it something to do with the machine spirit that was trying to possess your metal friend?’

‘So obscene,’ said Jethro. ‘So obvious. Such a fearful symmetry.’

‘What was hidden in the painting?’ demanded Chalph.

‘How do you slay a god?’ asked Jethro, pushing the formula-strewn papers back, sadly, towards Chalph. ‘Why, the easiest way in the world. By becoming a god yourself, a
stronger
god.’

‘Become a god?’ Chalph sounded shocked. ‘Such a thing is not possible.’

Boxiron cleared his voicebox. ‘It should not be. Yet I was burning with just a third of this horror held within my mind.’

‘Sentience is a function of complexity,’ said Jethro, regretfully. ‘To an ant, good ursine, you would look like a god. To an animalcule living on a slide under a microscope, the ant would seem like a god. The purpose of this god-formula would appear to be to focus the complexity of the universe inside a mortal mind and keep on folding it in an infinite loop: infinitely wise, infinitely knowing, and the Circle preserve us, I have no doubt, infinitely mad. And what would emerge from such a fearful recursion would be as far beyond that which we are, as we are beyond an unthinking mote of dust.’

‘I have never encountered such mathematics before,’ admitted Boxiron, his voicebox trembling with awe. ‘The clarity of it, using paradoxes to refocus the great pattern and turn the threads of existence inwards on themselves.’

Jethro sighed. ‘Oh, Bel Bessant. Such genius. But such arrogance to believe her mind could have held the entirety of such a thing and not ended up as dangerous as the divine monsters she had been asked to protect Jago from. A god-formula, of all the things for a Circlist priest to want to create. A
god-formula
.’

‘She had to die,’ said the steamman, simply.

‘Poor William of Flamewall. Close enough to his lover to see what she wanted to become. Close enough to poison Bel Bessant before she could use the formula on herself. Loving enough to take the blame for a crime of passion rather than circulating the dangerous truth behind her work any wider. To go on the run as a murderer rather than being hailed as the hero he deserved to be.’

‘William of Flamewall, he is the one that concealed the code in the painting?’ asked Chalph.

Jethro nodded.

‘If he was willing to murder his own mate to stop the god-formula being used, why preserve it within a series of paintings, why not destroy it instead?’

‘Once created, weapons are never uninvented, they are never forgotten’ said Jethro. ‘If someone was to use this or something similar to raise themselves to godhood, the understanding of the god-formula would be the sole way to stop them – it is virus and vaccine both.’

Boxiron picked up one of the sheets and waved it angrily ‘The Inquisition knew this abomination was here.’

‘It is possible, good steamman. The Inquisition might have held onto this terrible secret for millennia. Why else would they ensure the archbishop of Jago was always one of their officers? But I rather think the recent rediscovery of the god-formula, its unearthing, was the work of the two Doctors Conquest. And Alice was involved somehow; dear Circle, I do hope it wasn’t her that killed Hannah’s parents.’

Chalph shook his head. ‘Come on Jackelian, the archbishop was strict, but—’

Jethro interrupted. ‘You can only ever know yourself, and then barely. Alice was an officer of the Inquisition. If it meant protecting William of Flamewall’s secret, I have little doubt she would have killed everyone in this room to achieve that end.’

‘I have never voiced misgivings about the work you have accepted before,’ said Boxiron, ‘but…’

Jethro spread the sheets containing their painting’s third of the god-formula out in front of him. ‘There is something about this. Something wrong.’

‘Beyond the alarming concept of a completely unworthy mortal transfiguring themselves into a god?’ asked Boxiron.

‘Yes indeed, but bob me sideways, what is it?’ Jethro looked as if he had remembered something, and pulled out
the catalogue he had found in the murdered fence’s hidden storeroom, passing it to his friend. ‘You will find a painting on the last page, old steamer. Another of William of Flamewall’s works.’

‘This is a picture of a picture,’ complained the steamman, leafing to the end of the catalogue. ‘A third-generation copy.’

‘Your best efforts, if you please.’

Boxiron raised the page in front of his vision plate and waited a couple of seconds while he resolved its details. After a moment’s stillness he shuddered back to life. ‘There is nothing there. No sign of steganographic concealment within the image. It is just a simple painting.’

‘You are certain?’

‘As certain as the signature of William of Flamewall scrawled in its right-hand corner. The print quality of the catalogue is such that I would not be able to resolve the detail of a code in the painting, but I
can
see there is no trace of one hidden anywhere on this canvas.’

Jethro smiled. ‘Of course, why would there be?’

‘Old man Sworph was killed for this and there isn’t even a code in it?’ said Chalph, disbelievingly.

‘Not a steganographic code,’ continued Jethro, ‘which makes a strange kind of sense to me. What did you do with the last part of the god-formula, William? Where did you hide it?’

‘I’m glad this affair makes sense to you, Jackelian,’ said Chalph. ‘Because the only thing that makes sense to me right now is getting off Jago before one of the locals skins me for a rug.’

‘This painting is blank,’ explained Jethro, ‘because if it wasn’t, our murderous adversary would have all three parts of the code in his possession and would have already used it to transmigrate, to ascend towards the godhead.’

‘Is it possible that the Inquisition destroyed the third part of the god-formula?’ asked Boxiron. ‘If they were only keeping
the god-formula as a potential counter weapon, then could not two thirds of it have served that purpose? Destroying the third component would ensure the god-formula was never used.’

‘That is so,’ admitted Jethro. ‘But I rather fear the Inquisition was only holding onto two parts of the god-formula because that is all they ever had. The third part has been lost to them, to the world, since its creator was killed.’

‘Your logic is faultless, yet I have to concur with our Pericurian friend,’ said Boxiron. ‘What do you owe the Inquisition that would mean we need to stay here on Jago? It is time, as your people say, to let discretion be the better part of valour. We should leave the island.’

‘This isn’t for them anymore. No, I need just a little longer,’ said Jethro, almost pleading. ‘Just long enough to slay a god.’

H
annah tried to ignore the young navvy’s cries as the heat seeped through the pressure gate and scalded his back. She climbed over the fallen suit to reach the transaction engine. Time to find out if she had fixed it as well as she believed she had.

‘What are you doing?’ cried Rudge, his head barely able to follow her from his position wedged under the suit’s leg. ‘I told you to get back up the shaft. I ordered—’

‘Be quiet,’ retorted Hannah. ‘The charge-master sent me down here because I’ve got a brain and I’m going to use it.’

‘You’re not going to think a couple of tonnes of suit off me, grub. You’ve done the job we came down here to do, so get out of the shaft now!’

She was at the controls of the primitive steam-driven thinking machine, ignoring the navvy’s shouts while she put the small portable punch-card writer to good use. One more card. One last chance. There was another creak from the gate underneath them. It was getting noticeably noisier – the pressure building up below. ‘T-face,’ Hannah shouted down to the ab-lock pacing behind his fallen master. ‘Get ready to pull him out.’

‘You’re not going to do what I think you…?’

Hannah inserted the punch card. ‘What do you care? You’re going to die anyway if this doesn’t work.’

The drums in the transaction engine on the wall began to rotate as her punch card instructions were received and processed. Please, let there still be enough steam left in its reservoir to do the job.

Rudge was tearing the sleeve off his body suit, wrapping the material around his eyes. ‘Cover your face, grub.’

Hannah ripped a line of cotton material off her own body suit, bundling the makeshift sweat-soaked bandanna around her eyes.

The tolerances. It was all down to the tolerances now. Her best guess at the weight of the suit and the intense pressure of the steam tap below the gate, and…

The blast came like a lightning bolt cast from the gates of the hell they denied
.

…how wide the opening of a single vane would have to be to shift the suit, and…

Hannah was thrown back into the wall, blind behind her bandanna, deafened by the crash of the displaced suit.

…how long to leave it open without cooking the three of them…

Hannah yelled as she realized she had fallen forward onto the oven-hot pressure gate, the thick iron burning into her hands as she pushed herself up and tore off her blindfold. It was like being inside a surface mist, now, but she could see that T-face was dragging Rudge away – his fallen suit shifted over to the other side of the shaft by the force of the volcano of steam Hannah had briefly allowed through that single open vane.

Some piece of gear on Rudge’s suit had smacked him when it had shifted, though. Rudge was bleeding from the head and
unconscious. Hannah climbed back up to the transaction-engine platform, closely followed by T-face bearing the weight of his master’s body, and she was about to reach for the single dangling rappel line attached to her suit, when she realized that it had vanished. Oh, sweet Circle. It was on the metal gate below her – her line must have become dislodged when she steam-blasted Rudge’s suit away from his broken body. Hannah’s suit was still lodged far above them, though. Far enough that there was no way she was going to be able to climb up the shaft’s smooth walls to reach it. T-face was shifting from foot to foot, moaning as he took in their hopeless predicament. Hannah fought down the sense of mounting panic. How to get out? She couldn’t signal the turbine workers with the transaction engine to call for help. That was the whole point of it. An independent steam-driven node with only one purpose, controlling the gate. Could she open the pressure gate again, blast herself, Rudge and the ab-lock up to her suit, using Rudge’s suit as a lifting platform? No, that was suicide. Just a second with a single vane being opened had nearly killed them both. She might reach her suit, but it would be without her skin.

‘Damn you!’ Hannah yelled up the shaft. ‘Damn you for sending me down here to die.’ Was that for Vardan Flail? For the master of the turbine halls? For everyone on Jago who needed the dark energy that was going to end up killing her? It hardly mattered anymore. Rudge was starting to wake, but not to full sensibility, drifting in and out of a shivering half-awareness. He was muttering something, and Hannah bent down to hear him better.

‘Winch.’

She looked up at her suit, its flickering lantern signalling teasingly to her. There was a winch hook on the right leg of the suit. It was designed for dragging broken turbines out
of the way on the floor of the halls above, but if she could get it to lower itself down, then they could shimmy up the line. The winch’s activation lever was up there too. Thirty feet above her head, but it might as well have been in the clouds for all that she could reach it. Unless…Leaping down onto the burning hot gate, Hannah retrieved Rudge’s tool kit and brought it back to her ledge. She rifled through the contents of until she found it, a lone signal flare.

‘One shot,’
mumbled Rudge.

One shot. She had better make it a good one. Hannah pointed the red tube up at the winch lever, aiming it as well as she could without a sight, and pressed down on the trigger, the recoil of the escaping firework nearly sending the tube leaping out of her sweating fingers. Arcing up, the flare hit near the winch drum and went spinning off to the side of the shaft, a useless sparking comet.

Hannah growled through gritted teeth. ‘Missed!’

But Rudge didn’t hear her, he had passed out again. If he was lucky, maybe he would stay unconscious through their deaths too. T-face howled in surprise as the hook of the winch came plummeting down from the suit’s leg and bounced off the pressure gate as the metal line whipped dangerously across the passage. Hannah stared up in amazement. She had missed the winch lever, missed it by a country mile, she could have sworn she had, and yet it had…the stories of the suit-ghosts came back to her.

She looked at the ab-lock, who seemed as spooked by the winch activating as she was. ‘Can you carry him up to my suit? You’ll need to hold onto him as I climb up the shaft – the cabin only fits one.’ Did he understand her? To emphasize the words, she pointed at Rudge and then mimicked climbing up the rope with the young man tossed over a shoulder.

Hannah realized how desperate she sounded and how
dangerous the situation was. What did she know of ab-locks and their taming? If T-face turned feral now, she didn’t even have a suit whip to lash him into line.

T-face responded by slinging the passed-out navvy across his back, his leathery scarred face wobbling from side to side as he emitted a stream of growls. It almost sounded as if the creature was trying to say something back to her, the noises from its mangled throat rising and falling in a mockery of speech. The ab-lock seemed to grasp what was needed for them all to survive, though, seizing the winch line and shinning back up with his master.