Secrets Of The Fire Sea Part 15

Nandi shrugged. She didn't give a d.a.m.n about Pericurian politics, and if the amba.s.sador's transaction engines came configured for cipher work, so much the better. What was in here was going to save Hannah from the guild and Nandi would burn out every transaction engine on Jago if it meant saving the young church girl from her tormentors.

The transaction-engine room inside the Pericurian emba.s.sy was a lot more advanced than Nandi had been expecting. In fact, it was a lot more advanced than it had any right to be. How many customs officials on the Jackelian docks had Commodore Black bribed to look the other way while their most advanced transaction-engine models were hustled out of the country for export to the rising power across the sea?

The rattling, steam-driven drums on the Jackelian machinery looked out of place in this chamber, decorated in the Pericurian style with richly carved hardwood panelling across the walls and floors. The windows here were in the circular wooden-framed style known as bulls' eyes back in Jackals. The stained gla.s.s obscured the view beyond, but that had probably been intentional. All of the emba.s.sies were cl.u.s.tered together in a ring on the hollowed-out level of the Horn of Jago know as Emba.s.sy Circle, and had a clear view of the concrete artillery domes around the foot of the mountain. A not-so-subtle reminder of Hermetica City's ability to drop a sh.e.l.l on any unauthorized boat trying to breach the coral line defending the island.

'You're a fine fellow, Ortin,' said the commodore. 'Helping your old shipmates out of a blessed tight spot like this. I'll give you a free berth to Pericur for your troubles, Amba.s.sador, when you want it.'

'What I want is of little consequence, dear boy.' The Pericurian amba.s.sador was still dressed like a Jackelian squire. Perhaps the Jagonese tailor hadn't come to see him yet. 'The only way I'm getting out of my posting here is if the liberal houses come back into power, and I hardly judge that likely at the moment. Besides, annoying the ineptly disguised intelligence officer the archd.u.c.h.ess has watching my every step by allowing you inside our emba.s.sy is worth every ill word in the report she's furiously drafting right now.'

With the machine's operator dismissed from the room, Ortin urs Ortin took an almost childish delight in taking charge of the transaction engine himself, his eyes glinting with manic glee as he transcribed the Joshua Egg's second iteration and sprayed water onto the rotating drums when they started running hot. He put Nandi in mind of her mother watering the roses that wound around the trellises at the back of her cottage, all concentration, lost to the world.

As Nandi had predicted, if there was a curse on the Joshua Egg, it was a particularly Jackelian one, because the engine room in the Pericurian emba.s.sy seemed markedly unaffected by it. The results came rattling back on a large Rutledge Rotator, an abacus-like board of rotating squares. A more detailed breakdown appeared on a winding reel of paper tape, its wheels poorly oiled and squealing like suckling piglets competing for a mother's teat.

When the results were flowing back from the third iteration of the Joshua Egg, Nandi didn't hesitate. She urged the amba.s.sador to toss the newly reformed code back into the decryption run she would have enough time later to leaf through the data spooling out. Nandi might not be as convinced of a curse as the commodore, but she didn't want to tempt fate if there was some mathematical quirk in the code that led to transaction engines overloading as they were teasing meaning out of it.

Again the next level of the Joshua Egg was solved, more data thrown out along with another iteration and she tossed the new code back like a fish that was too small. By the fifth iteration, the Joshua Egg was exhausted. No more iterative pearls to be uncovered, no more compressed data to be drawn out.

Nandi spread the unfurled rolls of printed data across a heavy table meant for use by the engine's cardsharps. Here it was, then. The last legacy of the two Doctors Conquest. Would there be anything in the pages of records they had printed out to help save the daughter they had hardly known? Would there be anything in them to allow Nandi to prove she was at least the equal of every one of the pampered popinjays who had bought their way into Saint Vine's rarefied halls of academia? As Nandi started reading, she was calmly intent on finding out what the guild was so bent on preventing her from discovering. By the time she had finished, though, her hands were shaking and her skin was cold with sweat.

'What is it, la.s.s?' asked the commodore. 'Say this blessed evil code hasn't given you a fever...'

'Not the code,' said Nandi. 'What is inside it. We have to get to Hannah, Jared. We have to get her out of the guild's vaults to hear what I've found here...'

The superst.i.tious commodore was backing away without even realizing it, nearly treading on the riding boots of the large Pericurian amba.s.sador.

'...because she's not going to believe this,' said Nandi.

Jethro Daunt came running back into the hotel room with more thick cream bamboo paper to replace the pile that Boxiron had already used up. The pencil clutched in the steamman's iron fingers moved across the paper so fast it was as if the numbers of the formula he was writing were flowing out of a breached dam. Chalph urs Chalph was gathering up the completed papers, standing back from Boxiron as the steamman moaned about the pain of holding whatever he had found in the painting in his head before it vomited across the papers.

At last the steamman stopped scribbling. He rolled across the floor, whimpering, his stack emitting wheezing bursts of smoke. 'It is gone. It is gone.'

'It has,' rea.s.sured Jethro. 'It is all down here, now. On paper.'

'Such a thing is not meant to be held within a mind,' hissed Boxiron.

'Not held incomplete,' said Jethro. 'Not without being balanced by the other two parts.'

'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 G.o.d?' asked Jethro, pushing the formula-strewn papers back, sadly, towards Chalph. 'Why, the easiest way in the world. By becoming a G.o.d yourself, a stronger stronger G.o.d.' G.o.d.'

'Become a G.o.d?' 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 G.o.d. To an animalcule living on a slide under a microscope, the ant would seem like a G.o.d. The purpose of this G.o.d-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 G.o.d-formula, of all the things for a Circlist priest to want to create. A G.o.d-formula G.o.d-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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.dhood, the understanding of the G.o.d-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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d?' 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, pa.s.sing 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 can see there is no trace of one hidden anywhere on this canvas.' 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.dhead.'

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

'That is so,' admitted Jethro. 'But I rather fear the Inquisition was only holding onto two parts of the G.o.d-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 G.o.d.'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Hannah 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 h.e.l.l 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.

'd.a.m.n you!' Hannah yelled up the shaft. 'd.a.m.n 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. 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sed-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.

Below Hannah's ledge the gate gave a hungry antic.i.p.atory shudder.

Hannah leapt off the transaction-engine platform and caught the winch cable, clambering up the line after T-face and Rudge, abandoning the mobile punch-card writer, Rudge's tools and his fallen suit down below. How far did the steam tap travel towards the centre of the earth? Hannah didn't intend to be around to find out when the gate retracted.

Hannah pushed her suit out of the steam tap, into the turbine hall, the clangs of a dozen retracted pressure gates still ringing in her ears. Her hands were so sweaty now that the control cage inside her suit's cabin had begun slipping off her skin. The chimney door was shutting behind her when the lights on the vault's wall began to flash, the steam tap returning to operation. Blast doors pulled into the ceiling at the other end of the vault and a mob of suited workers returned from the safety of the adjoining turbine hall. She had done it. All around Hannah, the turbines were spinning back into life, the eerily silent hall filling with the racket of rotating blades. Fingers of vapour were already leaking from the pipes. Soon, the hall would once again be the steam-filled h.e.l.l she had stepped out into earlier in the day.

T-face leapt down from the perch moulded onto the suit's back, landing on the floor with the still-unconscious navvy.

At the head of the gang of returning guildsmen was the red chequerboard-patterned hull of the charge-master. 'You're down a suit.' His bluff voice echoed from Hannah's earphones.

'A steam spill sent Rudge's suit crashing down the shaft, well below the electric limit of its circuits, charge-master.'

The head of the turbine hall grunted and turned to one of his retinue. 'Do you slackers think you're still on a break? Take our lad down to the infirmary before the field begins to build back up.' The charge-master swivelled his head dome down to stare at T-face and made a jabbing motion back to the other end of the chamber. 'Return to stables. Chop-chop. a.s.signed to another hand while boss man in infirmary.' He ejected his whip in case the ab-lock hadn't got the message, T-face bent his head sadly and trotted off.

Hannah thought she saw the charge-master's eyes staring at her through the dome on top of his suit. 'Adequate for your first day. For a coder coder.'

He walked off, leaving Hannah unsure whether she was meant to go back to the suiting hall or continue her training with the rest of the workers out here.

Something about the charge-master's words stayed with her. Our lad. Our lad.

Young Rudge never had got round to telling her who his father was in the turbine halls.