Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded Part 10

He slumped, silent, until she closed the anklet up and handed it to him; then he raised one brushed-bronze eyebrow in a question.

"You will need proof of our skill," she said.

"Should I not take my masterwork, rather than yours?"

"Yours is too useful," she said. "He might take it away." Her left anklet was a measuring device, its belt set with magnifying lenses. She did not mention that she preferred losing her own masterwork to his.

So when the stars to the east started to fade, he rose with her anklet in his hand and trudged into Maturai. He did not return.

Three days and three nights pa.s.sed before she ventured into the city. She waited because flesh women did not conduct business, and because she was ashamed to enter the city with an ankle bare. But she also waited because she wished to trust her husband.

So it is that we can make terrible mistakes with the best of intentions. For by the time she entered the city, her husband was three days dead.

She learned from the flesh people that a metal man had stolen the queen's anklet and tried to sell it to the raja's own artificer. She asked where he was. "With the artificer," they said. "In pieces, by the raja's command. As the thieving device deserves."

She said, "The one you speak of was neither thief nor mere machine, but my husband."

As one, they turned away from her.

So she went to the palace. The raja's guards tried to stop her, of course; her hair filaments were unbraided, her copper skin dented and green in places. But they knew nothing of Pukar's people, of their strength and their speed. The woman of metal brushed them aside and clanged into court, where she cried, "Is this the justice of Maturai? Her raja is a murderer; her queen wears stolen goods."

"The device is raving," said the courtiers. But the queen looked at her and paled. For the copper woman's single anklet was a perfect golden band, just like the queen's two.

The raja said, "What nonsense. My artificer made the queen's anklets himself."

"Perhaps." The woman flexed her finger hinges. "But I made one that she wears."

"Do you claim my artificer lied?"

"Claim?" she said. "Call your artificer, O murderer, and I will prove it."

The raja took an angry breath, then stopped and smiled. "If I shame him so, he will leave," he said, as oiled as the copper woman's hinges. "I must have an artificer."

"Give me his workshop and his goods," she said, "and I will take his place."

The raja called gleefully for his artificer then, and bade the queen slip off her anklet.

The metal woman watched quietly. When the queen had eased an anklet off, she said, "But surely you knew which one you lost? Mine is the other."

The queen flushed and bowed her head, then fumbled her other anklet off. She held it out to the metal woman without looking up.

The artificer came in then, flanked by guards and protesting with every step. "What travesty is this?" he cried. "I have never been so insulted! Majesty, have I given you cause to doubt me? Surely I must know my own work!"

The copper woman said, "Then trigger its mechanism."

"What mechanism?" he sneered. "Do you see seams in my craftwork?" He held the anklet up to the window and turned it in the fractured light. "Do edges glint? Do hinges mar the surface? Show me one single imperfection-Thing."

She took the anklet from him, tapped it, and held it up as it click-whirred open. "In Pukar," she said, "jewellery is more than merely art."

The raja had his artificer put to death. The copper woman watched and smiled. She smiled more when the raja cast suspicious glances towards his queen.

And so the woman of Pukar became a raja's artificer. But she did not promise him loyalty, for she was too honorable to lie.

In the workshop she found her husband's armpieces, legpieces, breastplate, and skull. She found his gears arranged by size. She found a dozen plates, a thousand screws, a counterspring, a ratchet spring, a regulating spring. If she had found his heartspring intact, she might not have destroyed Maturai.

But she had given the old artificer three days and three nights with the body, and the flesh people have always wanted to know how heartsprings work. She could not repair it. Her husband was truly dead. And she had never told him that she treasured his anklet over her own. Her own heartspring might have broken then. It tightened, instead, in anger.

So she promised the raja a present in thanks for his justice, and she locked herself away. She kept her heartspring tight, and thought only of her art. For nine months she made children, scavenged from her husband's parts and her own. Nine monstrous children, each with one leg, one arm, and one eye. Each eye was a stone from her astrological anklet.

From the remaining parts she made a bird, copper from its tailfeathers to its wingtips. But its beak was the bronze of her husband's skin, and its articulated hands were human.

She was barely a framework by then. She unscrewed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, filled their cups with gems from workshop stores, and with poison; then she soldered them together. She told her children their task: hop to the funerary grounds, steal burning branches from the pyres, and set Maturai aflame. She wound their heartsprings so tightly that they could think of nothing else. Then she set them loose.

Finally she clasped her measuring anklet around the bird's neck, pulled out her heartspring, and in one automated movement transferred it into the copper bird.

Then she stretched out her wings and flew.

She flew first into the raja's court, holding the sphere made from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; and there she dropped it. It hit the marble tiles and burst open (for solder is not strong). Shining gems bounced everywhere. Some cut gashes in the courtiers and guards. They did not care. The copper bird's last view of the court of Maturai was a frenzy of men and women grabbing for rubies, emeralds, pearls; and every stone was coated in poison.

HEARTSPRINGS.

"Poison kills flesh very quickly," said the Artificer thoughtfully. "And carved-wood buildings burn fast. So ended Maturai and so, as I flew high above and far away, was justice finally done."

There was a silence in the workshop when she finished. Even the flock was a little bit impressed, and the Emperor looked at his friend with a first hint of fear. She was both teacher and maker; just how tightly was her heartspring wound?

The flock recovered first. "Your price has been met," they warbled, "and we outnumber you still. If you will not give us your anklet, we will rip it from your neck."

"But the story is not done," said the Artificer. "For I made you, and I must tell you one thing more. I made you in the image of the temple dancers of golden Pukar, those who stole away my husband for one long and heartsore year. I even named the first of you after them: Devadasi. They were beautiful and skilled, and their grace was unmatched in this world."

As one, the flock preened.

"Yes, you were made in their image," said the Artificer. "But what I must tell you is that I failed. My skill was not sufficient. They are still unmatched, for they were better than you."

And hearing this, the entire flock's heartsprings broke in one discordant tw.a.n.g, and they fell, littering the floor, the table, the cabinets.

The Shah-en-Shah flinched. He looked around, a dreamer slowly waking into nightmare. Tears formed in his eyes. "What have I done?" he said.

The Artificer collected Devadasi bodies. She cut feathers and plates and counter-nuts apart. "You have learned something, my friend," she said, pulling heartsprings out of their hidden drawers. "The hard way, of course, like all the young."

And she set to remaking the birds of the aviary.

AKBAR.

He did learn, that young ruler. He learned whom to trust, and whom to heed, and that the two are not always the same. And that is surely why he lives to tell you this story today.

O One.

Chris Roberson.

CHRIS ROBERSON has published some three dozen short stories and more than a dozen novels, including the Celestial Empire series (The Dragon's Nine Sons, Three Unbroken, and Iron Jaw and Hummingbird) and the Bonaventure-Carmody sequence (Here, There & Everywhere, Paragea: A Planetary Romance, Set the Seas on Fire, End of the Century, and Book of Secrets), and his comic book work includes the miniseries Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, and the ongoing series I, Zombie, both from Vertigo. Along with his business partner and spouse Allison Baker, he is the publisher of MonkeyBrain Books, an independent publishing house specializing in genre fiction and nonfiction genre studies. Visit him online at www.chrisroberson.net. "At the 2001 World Fantasy Convention in Montreal, anthologist and editor Lou Anders invited me to submit a story to his Live Without a Net. On the flight home, I outlined a story ent.i.tled 'O One,' which featured a conflation of an incident from Richard Feynman's autobiography Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! with the story of John Henry and the steam engine, set in an alternate history heavily inspired by Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. The resulting story ultimately appeared in the anthology, and went on to be nominated for a World Fantasy Award and to win a Sidewise Award for Short Form Alternate History."

TSUI STOOD IN the golden morning light of the Ornamental Garden, looking over the still waters of the abacus fish ponds and thinking about infinity. Beyond the walls, the Forbidden City already hummed with the activity of innumerable servants, eunuchs, and ministers bustling along in the Emperor's service, but in the garden itself was only silence and serenity.

Apart from the Imperial House of Calculation, which Tsui had served as Chief Computator since the death of his predecessor and father years before, the Ornamental Garden was the only place he lingered. The constant susurration of beads shuttling and clacking over oiled rods was the only music he could abide, and as dear to him as the beating of his own heart, but there were times still when the rhythms of that symphony began to wear on him. On these rare occasions the silence of the fish ponds and the sculpted grounds surrounding them was the only solace he had found.

His father, when he had been Chief Computator and Tsui not yet an apprentice, had explained that time and resources were the princ.i.p.al enemies of calculation. One man, with one abacus and an unlimited amount of time, could solve every mathematical operation imaginable, just as an unlimited number of men working with an infinite number of abacuses could solve every operation imaginable in an instant; but no man had an infinity in which to work, and no emperor could marshal to his service an infinite number of men. It was the task of the Chief Computator to strike the appropriate balance. The men of the Imperial House of Calculation worked in their hundreds, delicately manipulating the beads of their abacuses to provide the answers the Emperor required. That every click of bead on bead was followed a moment of silence, however brief, served only to remind Tsui of the limits this balance demanded. In that brief instant the enemies of calculation were the victors.

As a child Tsui had dreamt of an endless plain, filled with men as far as the eye could see. Every man in his dream was hunched over a small wooden frame, his fingers dancing over cherry-wood beads, and together they simultaneously solved every possible operation, a man for each calculation. In his dream, though, Tsui had not heard the same clatter and click he'd found so often at his father's side; with an endless number of permutations, every potential silence was filled with the noise of another bead striking bead somewhere else. The resulting sound was steady and even, a constant hum, no instant distinguishable from any other.

Only in pure silence had Tsui ever found another sensation quite like that, and the only silence he had found pure enough was that of the Ornamental Garden. Without speaking or moving, he could stand with eyes closed at the water's edge and imagine himself on that infinite plain, the answer to every problem close at hand.

The sound of feet scuffing on flagstone broke Tsui from his reverie, and he looked up to see Royal Inspector Bai walking leisurely through the garden's gate. Like Tsui, the Royal Inspector seemed to find comfort within the walls of silence, and the two men frequently exchanged a word of pleasantry on their chance encounters.

"A good morning, Chief Computator?" Bai asked. He approached the fish ponds, a package of waxed paper in his hands. He stopped opposite Tsui at the water's edge of the southernmost of the two ponds and, unwrapping his package with deft maneuvers, revealed a slab of cold pork between two slices of bread. A concept imported from the cold and distant England on the far side of the world, it was a dish that had never appealed to Tsui, more traditional in his tastes than the adventurous Inspector.

"As good as I might deserve, Inspector," Tsui answered, inclining his head a fraction. As he was responsible for the work of hundreds, Tsui technically ranked above the Inspector in the hierarchy of palace life, but considering the extensive influence and lat.i.tude granted the latter by imperial decree, the Chief Computator always displayed respect shading into submissiveness as a matter of course.

Bai nodded in reply and, tearing pieces of bread from either slice, dropped them onto the water before him. The abacus fish in the southern pond, of a precise but slow strain, moved in a languid dance to nibble the crumbs floating on the water's surface. The brilliant gold hue of their scales, iridescent in the shifting light, prismed through the slowly shifting water's surface, sparkled from below like prized gems. The fish, the result of a failed experiment years before to remove man from the process of calculation, had been bred from ornamentals chosen for their instinct of swimming in schools of close formation. In tests of the system, though, with a single agent flashing a series of lights at the water's edge representing a string of digits and the appropriate operation, it was found that while accurate to a high degree, the slowness of their movements made them no more effective than any apprentice of the House of Calculation. The biological and chemical agents used in breeding them from true, however, had left the scales of the languid abacus fish and their descendants much more striking that those of the base stock, and so a place was found for the failed experiment in the gardens.

"Your pardon, O Chief Computator," Bai remarked, shaking the last dusty crumbs from the pork and moving to the northern pond. "But it seems to me, at such times, that the movements of these poor doomed creatures still suggests the motions of your beads over rods, even in their feeding the fish arranging themselves in columns and rows of varying number."

Tearing off strips of pork, the Inspector tossed them onto the water, which frothed and bubbled the instant the meat hit the surface. Silt, kicked up by the force of the sudden circulation, colored the water a dusty gray.

"I can only agree, of course," Tsui answered, drawing alongside the Inspector and looking down on the erratic dance beneath the surface of the pond. This strain of abacus fish was, in contrast to its languid neighbor, much swifter but likewise far less consistent. They had been mutated from a breed of carnivorous fish from the Western Hemisphere's southern continent, the instinct of hunger incarnate. The operations they performed, cued by motions in the air above and enticed by offerings of raw flesh, were done faster than any but the most accomplished human operator could match, but with an unacceptably high degree of error. Like their languid cousins before them these fierce creatures were highly prized for their appearance, strangely viridescent scales offset by razor teeth and jagged fins, and so they were relocated from the Imperial Ministry of Experimentation into the garden when Tsui was only a child. "They mimic the process of calculation as a mina bird does that of human speech. Ignorant, and without any comprehension. Man does not, as yet, have any replacement."

"Hmm," the Inspector hummed, tossing the last of the pork into the water. "But what does the abacus bead know of its use? Is it not the computator only who must understand the greater meaning?"

"Perhaps, O Inspector, this may be how the Emperor himself, the-equal-of-heaven and may-he-reign-ten-thousand-years, rules over the lives and destinies of men. Each of us need not know how we work into the grander scheme, so long as the Emperor's hand guides us." It was not a precise representation of Tsui's thoughts on the matter, but a more politic answer than that which immediately suggested itself, and one better fit for the ears of the Emperor's justice.

The Inspector hummed again, and wiped his fingers clean on the hems of his sleeves. Looking past Tsui's shoulder at the garden's entrance, Bai raised his eyebrows a fraction and nodded.

"You may be right, Chief Computator," the Inspector answered, grinning slightly. "I believe either of two beads, you or I, will in short order be guided from here. Can you guess which?"

Tsui turned his chin over his shoulder, and saw the approach of the Imperial page.

"Neither can I," the Inspector said before Tsui could answer. When the page presented the parchment summons to the Chief Computator with an abbreviated bow, Bai smiled and nodded again, and turned his attention back to the abacus fish. The last of the pork was gone, but white foam still frothed over the silty gray waters.

Within the hall they waited, ministers and courtiers, eunuchs and servants, the Empress Dowager behind her screens, her ladies with faces made painted masks, and the Emperor himself upon the Golden Dragon Throne. All watching the still form of the infernal machine, squatting oily and threatening like a venomous toad on the lacquered wooden floor, its foreign devil master standing nervously to one side.

Tsui was met in the antechamber by the Lord Chamberlain. With a look of stern reproach for the Chief Computator's late arrival, the Chamberlain led Tsui into the hall, where they both knelt and kowtowed to the Emperor, touching foreheads to cold floor twice before waiting to be received.

"The Emperor does not like to be kept waiting," said the Emperor, lazily running his fingers along the surface of the scarlet and gold object in his hands. "Begin."

As the Emperor leaned forward, elbows resting on the carved arms of the ancient Manchurian throne, Tsui could see that the object in his hand was a representation in miniature of the proposed Imperial s.p.a.ce Craft. A much larger version, at fifty-percent scale, hung from the rafters of the hall overhead. It presented an imposing image of lacquered red cherry-wood and finely wrought gold, delicately sweeping fins and the imperial seal worked into the bulkheads above the forward viewing ports. That the Emperor did not like to be kept waiting was no secret. Since he'd first ascended to the Dragon Throne a decade before, he'd wanted nothing more than to travel to the heavens and had dedicated the resources of the world's most powerful nation to that end. His ancestors had conquered three-quarters of the world centuries before, his grandfather and then his father had gone on to bring the remaining rogue states under the red banner of China, and now the Emperor of the Earth would conquer the stars.

In the years of the Emperor's reign, four out of every five mathematical operations sent to the Imperial House of Calculation had been generated by the Ministry of Celestial Excursion, the bureau established to develop and perfect the art of flying into the heavens. Tsui had never given it a great deal of thought. When reviewing the produced solutions, approving the quality of each before affixing his chop and the ideogram, which represented both "Completion" and "Satisfaction," he had never paused to wonder why the scientists, sages, and alchemists might need these answers. The work of the Chief Computator was the calculation, and the use to which the results were put the concern of someone else.

Now, called for the first time to appear before his Emperor, it occurred to Tsui that he might, at last, be that someone else.

The Lord Chamberlain, at Tsui's side, motioned for the foreign devil to step forward. A tall, thin white man, he had a pile of pale brown hair on his head, and wispy mustaches which crept around the corners of his mouth towards his chin. A pair of round-framed gla.s.ses pinched the bridge of his nose, and his black wool suit was worn at the edges, the knees worn thin and shiny.

"Ten thousand pardons, Your Majesty," the Lord Chamberlain began, bowing from the waist, "but may I introduce to you the Proctor Napier, scientific attache to the Imperial Capital from the subjugated land of Britain, conquered in centuries past by your glorious ancestors."

The Emperor inclined his head slightly, indicating that the foreign devil could continue.

"Many thanks for this indulgence, O Emperor," Proctor Napier began. "I come seeking your patronage."

The Emperor twitched the fingers of one hand, a precise motion.

"I was sent to these sh.o.r.es by your servant government in my home island," Napier continued, "to a.s.sist in Imperial research. My specialty is logic, and the ordering of information, and over the course of the past years I have become increasingly involved with the questions of computation. The grand designs of Your Majesty's long-range plans, whether to explore the moon and far planets, or to chart the course of the stars across the heavens, demands that complex calculations be performed at every step, and each of these calculations requires both men, materials, and time. It is my hope that each of these three prerequisites might be eliminated to a degree, so as to speed the progress towards your goals."

Tsui, not certain before this moment why he had been called before the Emperor, now harbored a suspicion, and stifled the desire to shout down the foreign devil. At the Chamberlain's side, he listened on, his hands curled into tense fists in his long sleeves.

"With Your Majesty's kind indulgence," Napier said, "I would take a moment to explain the fundaments of my invention." With a timid hand, he gestured towards the oily contraption on the floor behind him. "The basic principle of its operation is a number system of only two values. I call this system 'binary.' Though an innovation of Europe, this system has its basis in the ancient wisdom of China, and as such it seems appropriate that Your Divine Majesty is the one to whom it is presented.

"The trigrams of the I Ching are based on the structure of Yin and Yang, the complementary forces of nature. These trigrams, the building blocks of the I Ching, are composed either of broken or of unbroken lines. Starting from this pair of values, any number of combinations can be generated. Gottfried Leibniz, a German sage, adapted this basic structure some two hundred years ago into a full number system, capable of encoding any value using only two symbols.

He chose the Arabic numerals '1' and '0,' but the ideograms for Yin and Yang can be subst.i.tuted and the system still functions the same. The decoding is key. Using the Arabic notation, the number 1 is represented as '1,' the number two as '10,' the number three as '11,' the number four as '100,' and so on."

The Emperor sighed, pointedly, and glanced to the s.p.a.ce craft model in his lap, signifying that he was growing weary of the presentation.

"Oh, dear," Napier whispered under his breath, and then hastened to add, "Which brings me to my invention." He turned, and stepped to the side of the construct of oily metal and wood on the floor. It was about the height of a man's knee, almost as wide, a roughly cubical shape of copper and iron, plain and unadorned. The top face was surmounted by a bra.s.s frame, into which was set a series of wooden blocks, each face of which was carved with a number or symbol. On the cube face presented towards the Emperor was centered an array of articulated bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, three rows of fifteen, the bra.s.sy sheen dulled by smudges of oil and grime.

"I call it the a.n.a.lytical Engine. Powered by a simple motor, the engine comprises a series of switches, each of which can be set either to an 'on' or 'off' state by the manipulation of gears and cogs. By a.s.signing a binary value to each of the two states, we are then able to represent with the engine any numerical value conceivable, so long as there are a sufficient number of switches available. With the inclusion of five operational variables, and the ability to display results immediately," he indicated the series of blocks crowning the device, "a fully functional a.n.a.lytical Engine would theoretically be capable of solving quickly any equation put to it. Anyone with a rudimentary ability to read and input values can produce results more quickly and efficiently than a team of trained abacists. This is only a prototype model, of course, capable of working only up to a limited number of digits, but with the proper funding I'm confident we could construct an engine free of this limitation."

Tsui's pulse raged in his ears, though he kept silent and calm in the view of the Emperor.

"If I may?" Napier said, glancing from the Emperor to his invention with an eyebrow raised.

The Emperor twitched, almost imperceptibly, and in response the Chamberlain stepped forward.

"You may exhibit your device," the Chamberlain announced, bowing his head fractionally but never letting his eyes leave Napier's.

Wiping his hands nervously on the thin fabric of his pants, Napier crouched down and gripped the wood-handled crank at the rear of the engine. Leaning in, the strain showing on his pale face, he cranked through a dozen revolutions that produced a grinding clatter that set Tsui's teeth on edge. Finally, when the Chief Computator was sure he could stand the torture no longer, the engine sputtered, coughed, and vibrated to clanking life. Little plumes of acrid smoke bellowed up from the corners of the metal cube, and a slow drip of oil from one side puddled in a growing pool on the lacquered floor.

Licking his lips, Napier worked his way around to the front of the device, and rested his fingers on the rows of bra.s.s b.u.t.tons.

"I'll start with a simple operation," he announced. "Can anyone provide two numbers?"

No one ventured an answer, all too occupied with the clattering machine on the floor, afraid that it might do them some harm.

"You, sir?" Napier said, pointing at Tsui. "Can you provide me with two numbers for my experiment?"

All eyes on him, not least of which the Emperor's, Tsui could only nod, biting back the answer that crouched behind his teeth, hoping to pounce.