Beneath Ceaseless Skies #86 Read online

  Though I took the rebellious students seriously over the weeks that followed, I did not let them interfere with the main work for which I had come to the fatherland. While I was sympathetic to their plight, the machines held even more of my sympathy, or perhaps my fascination. With permission from my professor, I began a project of my own, working in semi-secret with Eluka’s occasional assistance. I took the courier the professor had first shown me, and I began to change gears around inside its case. When he came in one morning, I said, “I have a surprise for you.”

  He smiled like a father. “Well, now, what is it, Okori?”

  “I have changed this automaton.” And I showed him what it would now do: it was a mechanical tour guide for visitors to the university, or to the emperor’s portions of the city, all the famous sights. It would explain these wonders of the fatherland in terms I had given it, suitable for a bumpkin who was not aware of the finer points of culture.

  The professor followed the automaton and I around the city like a child on an outing, laughing and clapping his hands at each new monument. After the automaton had announced that our next destination would be the Museum of Imperial Art, he said, as if in jest, “Now, Okori, what if I don’t wish to see the Museum of Imperial Art? What if I am such an uncultured lout that I will not appreciate such a thing?”

  I smiled. “Don’t tell me, tell it.”

  He leaned towards the automaton and said, “Don’t take me to the Museum of Imperial Art!”

  “Very well,” said the automaton. “Our next destination will be Marzipan Street.”

  “Okori!” said the professor. “A lout who is not interested in art might well want a pastry.”

  “That was my thought.”

  “And you transferred it to the automaton without a hitch. Oh, well done!”

  I beamed at the praise and accepted his offer to buy me a pastry. The automaton sat with us in the streetside café, watching impassively as powdered sugar and crumbs flaked down our shirts.

  The next day it was hard to believe we were living in the same city. I was awakened at dawn by the sounds of shouting—not the merchants of fish and milk and meat trying to get the best prices for their freshest wares, but angry noises, frightened noises.

  The revolution was at hand.

  Belisse’s quiet friend had gotten her way in one thing at least: the people of the city organized swiftly. They began to build their own barricades, most not even knowing what they were trying to gain or prevent. They knew only that the time was now, the day was today, and they must be part of it, whatever it might become.

  I packed my tools, both of my books and my notes, and the change of clothing I had bought with the master’s gifts. It made a very small bundle for my entire life. I found Eluka in his small, bare room, smaller and more bare even than my own. “Come, brother,” I said. “We will have a part in all this.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at me. “I have hopes that that part will not be my head upon the emperor’s spike.”

  “If you help me, it need not be,” I said. “And may be far, far better than that, for you and for our people. Isn’t that worth some risk?”

  “I hope so,” he said gravely, but he followed me as I had intended, and on my way I told him my plan. As I had hoped, it met with his approval, but I could see that he shared my trepidation about what we would need to do.

  We made our way to the tavern, where my suspicions were confirmed: the heart and soul of the revolt was here. More to the point, the planners were here. Someone had drawn a map of the city streets on cheap paper, and Belisse was gravely pointing out weak spots to runners who left the room to act as human versions of the automaton I had recalibrated for my own purposes. Poor thing; I feared it would be sitting quiet for many days: only a fool would try to see the sights of the great city now.

  “Belisse,” I said, demanding her attention before another runner could ask for it. “Have you thought more of the question of the automata?”

  “I have, and I hope you will help me with the plan,” she said. “We must destroy them.”

  “What?”

  “Foul the gears,” she said brusquely. “Make them grind to a halt.”

  I said, “There may be a better way.”

  Eluka looked at me in startlement, not yet used to men of our race raising their voice in contradiction of those of the fatherland who were so often our masters. But he could grow to like it, I could see in his face.

  I went on boldly: “Why should we abandon the automata when they might be our staunchest allies? If we can have brass and iron as well as flesh and bone on our side, how can the emperor stand against us?”

  I heard someone mutter, “Superstitious islanders.”

  There is nothing to do at such moments but maintain one’s dignity. I said, “It is not a matter of superstition. It is a matter of training. I am myself an automaton mechanic, and I know that their reinforcement of the emperor’s policies is not an act of nature but of human programming.”

  Belisse pursed her lips, giving me a considering look. “And you believe that the same programming could be altered to make them join our side? Would that be better? Wouldn’t they just be our slaves instead of his? Oh.” She looked stricken that she had just accused an islander of being a slaver, but this was how I had hoped the freedom fighters would be, challenging and considering.

  “We are all what we are shaped to be,” I said. “Why not give them the chance to be shaped by free and equal intent instead of slavery? I don’t know whether the automata can be shaped to have their own will yet. But I do know that for the moment, they have not been, and I cannot stand to see such a powerful tool brushed away and abandoned.”

  “The savage is right,” said Vierre, surprising me. “Far better to recalibrate these tools for our use than to throw them away unnecessarily. I would not know, myself, whether it was necessary, but if our islander friend—friends?”

  I bowed. “This is Eluka.”

  “Quite. If our islander friends are willing to take this risk, I am certainly willing to have them do it.”

  Belisse frowned. “Okori, what if you’re caught in this attempt? We may need you to break the automata. If you miss the chance to do so, will anyone else know how it must be done?”

  I smiled ruefully. “Have faith in your own ability to smash and befoul, Belisse. It is far easier to destroy than to create, or even to recalibrate. If the time comes, and if Eluka and I fall, you will think of sticky horrors to dump upon the automata from above or corrosive agents to throw upon them. I will write down the name of a professor at the university who has been kind to me. I don’t know that he will help you, but he may.”

  With that, she was content, or if not precisely content, willing at least to let us try for the greater victory rather than settling for the lesser. I did not notice what she did not say until her quieter friend, the one whose name I never learned, said it herself: “Be careful of yourselves. Do not take unnecessary risks. We would hate to see you lost even for such a cause.”

  “Yes,” Belisse added, surprised. “Take care.”

  I smiled at the quiet one and thanked them both. Eluka hurried out ahead of me to find some tools and things that would be useful for us to take along. Vierre caught my shoulder as I was leaving. “I beg your pardon,” I said as mildly as I could. I hoped I would not have to dislodge him physically, and my hopes were realized: he looked startled and let me go.

  “I wanted a word of you.”

  “Words are free,” I said cautiously.

  He looked at me as though he would like to have me thrashed, but he plunged onward with his intended conversation: “When you have done your task with the automata, what is your plan?”

  “Plan? I had not made one.”

  “I would like to suggest that I might be of assistance to you,” he said, and it sounded as though each word hurt him.

  “I cannot imagine how that could be.”

  He had to take several deep breaths to continue. I d
id not feel I was goading him, but clearly my very presence was an irritant. Which is why, I suppose, I should not have been surprised by what followed. “I had wondered if you might wish to return to your home. Classes at the university are likely to be disrupted for some time, and if things are as you say for your family, you might have hopes of improving their circumstances in the chaos that will follow as we improve our own.”

  I laughed mirthlessly. “Your own background blinds you, rich man. It was difficult enough for me to get here, and I have no means for getting back.”

  “My family owns many ships. If there was passage available to you without having to arrange it personally in advance—without having to pay—”

  “My people are rather suspicious of free passage in your people’s holds,” I said, and there I knew I was goading him.

  “A cabin of your own,” he said through gritted teeth. “Strict instructions that you are a free man. I know that by now, Okori. You are helping to free my own people; I cannot stand by and do nothing for yours.”

  I considered him curiously. Was he truly so wracked by conscience? Or did he merely hate having a man of my race around, reminding him that he was not free by his own people’s toil alone but required alliance with the hated darker race to get there? I didn’t have to know; either motive would get me home safely. I tried to think whether there was anything he might be hiding, anything that might turn on me.

  “Free passage,” I repeated cautiously. “Not to be charged at the other end of the voyage. Not to be seized and made to work it off.”

  “I give you my word,” said Vierre. “In writing if you like.”

  I put my hand out thoughtfully. He took it without a murmur, and we shook on it. “In writing,” I said. “That I may present it to the ship’s captain, and if I have made a mistake, he will say, ‘your pardon, this is the wrong ship,’ rather than clapping me in chains.”

  Vierre pulled parchment from his jacket and begged a pot of ink from the innkeeper. As he began to write, he said, almost absently, “You are rather focused on being clapped in chains, aren’t you?”

  “So would you be,” I replied.

  “I may be clapped in chains myself, when we have finished,” he said.

  And indeed he might be, but if he could not tell the difference, I could not explain it to him. I accepted his parchment with grave thanks and went about the next task of my evening.

  Eluka gave me some of his own old clothes, battered and worn and not fit for a free man. We had to make sure no one considered us threatening, no one considered us worthy of note. We would be two slaves cleaning, little more than automata ourselves. No one would remember our faces, other than their blackness. Our tools would seem those of a menial, if no one looked too closely. We would blend ourselves into the dark background of the risen city.

  On the other hand, every man of our race in the city would be at risk if we succeeded and they managed to figure out how we had done it. But so many people came so near to the emperor’s guards—almost near enough, too near in retrospect to be safe. We judged it worth the risk.

  Bowing and averting our eyes as we passed through the palace grounds, brushing away minuscule bits of dust and debris, we made our way to the barracks. The soldiers and their kit were as uniform and as tightly packed as a shed of automata. The rank and file soldiers gave us no attention, their minds clearly on more important things than two presumed slaves. One of the sergeants ordered us to the courtyard to clean, and we nodded earnestly and scurried along as though intent on obeying him.

  The tool shed where the rows of automata were being calibrated was easy to find by the smells of the metal and machine oil; the debris of the rest of the city’s uproar had not yet reached that section of the imperial palace grounds. We were able to shut ourselves in without anybody outside noticing that anything had gone amiss.

  The artificer inside was another story. He frowned at us without really seeing us and said, “Come back later; I haven’t finished with them.”

  “I’m afraid you have,” Eluka said gently. “We’ll take over from here.”

  “Come now, don’t be ridiculous,” said the artificer, looking at us anew. “They’re not nearly ready to be taken away yet.”

  “You need to leave now and let us work,” I said, in the same voice I would use to speak to a child or a skittish animal. “We are not your slaves. We are not your servants. We have a task to do here, and you need to let us do it.”

  “These are my automata, and you—” The artificer trailed off, staring glumly at the machines. “You are going to destroy my machines, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said. He looked at me incredulously. “We will reprogram them. We will do it with care. You need only stand aside.”

  “This is ludicrous.”

  Eluka made a grim noise in the back of his throat. I sighed deeply.

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” said Eluka, gently, so gently. I looked at my gentle friend, and I saw that he meant it.

  “Come now,” I said, still using the voice I used with strange dogs and sick children. “There are two of us, and we’ve barricaded you in. Your only choice is how it goes for you, how hard.”

  I still regret that we did not check to see if we could revive him when we had finished with our programming. It may have been the difference between his life and his death. Or it may not; he may have had no chance at life left. The wrench Eluka hit him with was heavy, and he bled on it. He may have had no chance at all. But we could have made some effort. He was one of us after all, a man and a maker of automata.

  And he had maintained his charges beautifully. Their cases opened smoothly, without creaking, and the smell of fresh oil greeted us as we replaced—carefully, oh so carefully—the cogs and wheels that governed them, set some of the mechanisms to turning at rates they had not been intended to turn. With our wrenches and our gears, we recalibrated the machines to rebel.

  We couldn’t finish all of them; we were little more than halfway done when there was a hammering at the door, and then the lock we had closed behind us started to turn. We whisked our tools up into our bundles and shut the cases, making sure that the imperial artificer was well hidden behind the crates we climbed to make our way out the window and to freedom.

  Eluka beckoned that I should follow him up to a quiet rooftop a few blocks from the main barricade and above. No one noticed us on our way out, either, for we did not skulk or hurry. We moved with the same purpose we had given the automata, and once we gained the roof, no one looked up to find us there.

  The automata all marched out of the imperial palace in formation, their brass cases glinting in the sun. I fancied that I could tell which ones we had touched, that their steps were crisper and more sure than their brethren, their rifles at a more alert angle, but I knew it was only fancy. We could not yet tell whether we had made a purposeful difference or whether we had broken the machines we loved.

  In the end, it was some of both.

  The citizens of the city, jeering and singing behind their barricade, fell silent as the automata advanced. I thought I could hear a muffled sob behind the barricade, but that was probably as much my fancy as the difference in the automata. The noise of the mechanical men’s feet on the street, the commands the imperial sergeant barked at the artificial platoon—those would have drowned out all but the most piercing wail.

  The city’s people—for the moment, my people—had more pride than to scream their lives out in the implacable face of the automated platoon. They held to that much dignity, at least.

  Then the sergeant gave the order to fall upon the barricade. I could feel Eluka holding his breath beside me. But it happened as we had intended, or mostly so. One of the machines we had altered seized up as a man bitten by a poisonous snake. It fell to the cobblestones and made a horrible tearing, groaning sound.

  The citizens cheered, and I hissed at them.

  It was too late to hear my hissing anyway, too late to hear much of anything afte
r that, for the rest of the automata Eluka and I had altered fell upon their unaltered fellows. Any machine that dared to fire on the barricades was seized by its fellows, its rifle removed and its arms clamped and bent.

  The sergeant tried to adjust on the spot, but he was no artificer, and the mechanical men still under his control were not calibrated to tell the differences among their fellows by behavior, as ours were. He could only insist that they advance onwards, onwards, and our automata assisted by placing their fallen brethren up against the barricades as reinforcements.

  I could not say whether the day was won. But our part of it had succeeded, within tolerances.

  We scrambled down off the roof into the chaos.

  Somehow over the din of the rifle shot hitting the plates of metal and planks of hard wood, I managed to make the two nearest automata hear my command to follow me, and we hurried down a safe alley, one controlled by our people. The machines waited impassively while I asked Eluka whether he wanted to stop for his things before we departed.

  “No, brother,” said Eluka. “I have not been home to the islands since I was a boy. This is my home. I shall stay, I and this machine, and we shall reap what harvest we can.”

  I embraced him briefly, rasp of unshaven cheek against cheek, and I gave his automaton a respectful tap on the shoulder. I turned to my own. “The harbor is our destination,” I said.

  It regarded me wordlessly a moment, then turned to lead the way to the harbor without my directions.

  I trusted that Vierre would be good for our passage, for I knew he would rather have me and the machine where he did not have to look at us, where his mind could remain open at a distance.

  But Eluka will be there. Eluka will be working as I work. And the triumph will be ours not only in the islands, not only in the fatherland, but everywhere.

  I have been refining this machine I bring with me, so that he will know his tasks on the island, and will perform them to perfection.

  There is salt air on my face, and the air has grown warm. Soon I will be home.

  We will burn the main house.

  Only the slave quarters and the tool sheds will be spared.