Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (4 page)

Tiaan’s room was tiny, but at least she had one. Most of the workers slept in dormitories where privacy was unknown. She climbed into bed but could not stop thinking. The war was delicately poised; it could go either way. Or so they were told. The failure of a few clankers could lose an entire army, and that could lose the war. And
everything
depended on controllers and the hedrons that were the core of them, the only way a human mind could shape and focus the power of the field to control such a massive object as a clanker.

The lyrinx were more than the equal of humans, in every respect. Only clankers could make the difference. Without them, humanity was doomed …

Tiaan slept badly and not for long. Her head was full of brilliant, chopped-up images – crystal dreams. She always had them after work. These ones were about dead soldiers all lying in a row, covered in sheets to conceal their horrible mutilation. Long before a weak autumnal sun skidded over the mountains to blink at the fog and furnace fume, she was back at her bench.

Hunger nipped at her belly. She kept it at bay with sips of tar-flavoured water. The manufactory grew crowded. The artisans worked in their own little building on the cold, southern side, walled away with all the other clean occupations. The workshop had double doors to keep out ash and fumes, but they could not keep out the noise. She closed her door, unable to think with the racket of metal being shaped on a hundred anvils, the shouted conversations, the roars of a score of foremen, and always in the background, the hissing of the bellows and the blast of the furnaces.

The failed hedron was still dead, not a spark left of its potential when shaped by her hands. It was as if it had been drained dry, all that psychic promise withdrawn. Now it was no more than a blank piece of quartz.

Tiaan took her mug to refill it at the barrel outside. On opening the door she was confronted by a dark, wiry man with an eagle beak of a nose. He threw out one arm as if to block her way. His hands were enormous, sinewy, though the rest of him was compact.

‘Overseer Gi-Had!’ She stepped back involuntarily. Though she had been expecting him, his sudden appearance came as a shock.

‘Artisan Tiaan, what progress have you to report?’ Gi-Had’s brows squirmed over those sunken eyes like a pair of hairy grubs. He had a wooden case in his other hand.

‘I –’ she turned back to her bench, where the hedron lay with its spread-out controller apparatus like a disassembled birthday toy. ‘I haven’t found the problem yet. They worked perfectly when I delivered them.’

‘Well, they don’t work now and soldiers are dying.’

‘I know that,’ she said softly, ‘but I can’t tell why. I’ve got to talk to one of the clanker operators.’

‘Ky-Ara is the only one still alive. He should be here tomorrow. He’s been putting a new controller into his clanker. He’s not happy!’

He wouldn’t be, Tiaan thought. The bond between operator and machine was intimate. To have a controller fail on him would be like losing a brother. To then train himself to the idiosyncrasies of a different controller would be gruelling, physically, mentally and emotionally.

‘What have you come up with?’ Gi-Had persisted.

‘There are … t-two possibilities. Either the crystals have invisible flaws or the field has somehow burnt them out …’ She broke off as a third, more alarming possibility occurred to her.

‘Or?’ grated Gi-Had. His heavy-lidded eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Or what, artisan?’

‘Or the enemy has found a way to disable the hedrons,’ she whispered.

‘Better hope they haven’t, or we’ll all end up in the belly of a lyrinx.’

‘I’m working as hard as I can.’

‘But are you working as
smart
as you can?’

‘I –’

‘I’ve got my orders. Now I’m passing them on to you. If you can’t do the job I’ll have to find someone who can, even if I have to bring them a hundred leagues. You’ve got a week to fix this problem, artisan.’

Opening the wooden case, he placed two controllers on her bench, next to the one she’d been working on. ‘Twenty soldiers died because these failed. Another three died recovering them. A
week
, Tiaan.’

‘And if I fail?’ she said slowly.

‘Have you given any thought to your
other
responsibility?’

She stared at him, white-faced. Tiaan could not think what he meant.

‘Your responsibility to mate!’ he said testily. ‘Your foreman spoke to you about it yesterday.’

Was every single person going to remind her of it? ‘N-not yet!’ she stammered. Just the thought of it made her heart race. ‘But I will soon, I promise.’

‘You’ve been saying that for three years, artisan. I’m sorry, but the scrutator is giving me hell and I can’t defend you any longer. If you can’t do your job, and you won’t do your duty –’

‘What?’ she cried.

‘I might have to send you to the breeding factory.’

I
t reminded Tiaan that she had not seen her mother for nearly a month. She did not look forward to it, but it was another sacred obligation. Besides, after Gi-Had’s threat she could hardly think straight so she might as well visit Marnie, who did not think at all.

‘I’m going down to Tiksi,’ she said to Nod at the gate. ‘To see my mother.’

This time he did not ask for her permission chit. ‘I hope you’re coming back, Tee?’ Nod tucked his beard into his belt anxiously, then took it out again.

Nod still held to the old view that men and women were equal, but not everyone did these days. In olden times a woman could do whatever she was capable of, the same as a man. However, the war had taken a heavy toll of humanity. The population was falling and, before anything else, fertile women were expected to breed. Tiaan’s mother was a champion. In twenty-one years she had produced fifteen healthy and surprisingly talented children.

Tiaan did not want to think about that. ‘I’ll be back, don’t worry.’ She buckled her coat, pulled a cloak around her and set off on the long walk down the mountain to Tiksi, thinking about Gi-Had’s words.

The scrutator of Einunar, the great province that included this land, was a shadowy figure, spymaster, head of the provincial secret marshals, adviser to and, word had it, power behind the governor. He was one of a dozen on the Council of Scrutators, which was said to run the affairs of the eastern world. No one knew how the council had come into being, or if it answered to a higher power. Certainly it knew too much ever to be disbanded. That was all she knew, and more than she cared to. No one wanted to come to the notice of the scrutator. Tiaan shivered and walked harder.

The manufactory lay in rugged Glynninar, a minor state of Einunar at the end of an eastern spur of the Great Mountains. That chain of unclimbable peaks ran from beyond Ha-Drow in the icy south, encircling Mirrilladell and Faralladell and disgorging glaciers to the points of the compass, then on to the tip of the fiord-bound peninsula of Einunar, a length of eight hundred leagues. Northward, a mountain chain almost as large ran up the eastern side of the continent of Lauralin to fabled, wealthy and gloriously subtropical Crandor.

With a sigh at the thought of warmth, she trudged on. This was poor, granitic country, no good for anything but growing trees. From spring to autumn it drizzled, when it was not pouring. Cold mists sprang up from nowhere overnight, while the rare warm days ended in clinging fogs that blew up the range from the sea. From autumn to spring it froze – gales, snow and sleet for week after week.

She passed quite a few people on the track, for Tiksi supplied most of the manufactory’s needs. Though Tiaan knew many of the travellers she did not stop to chat. No one had time these days. The best anyone got was a friendly hello, the worst a curt nod. The land bred dour folk hereabouts; the war had made them even more taciturn.

Tiaan was shy and uncomfortable with people. She found it hard to make friends, for she never knew what to say and felt that people judged her, not for what she was, but because she had no father and had been born in the breeding factory. Not all the propaganda of the war could erase that stain, least of all from her own mind. She felt alone in the world.

It began to drizzle. After an hour or two Tiaan sat down, just for a minute. Any longer and the cold would creep into flesh and bones. She contemplated the sombre pines, wreathed in moss and trailing lichens that stood out like banners in the wind. They had a certain stark beauty. Taking up a piece of decaying granite, she crumbled it in her fingers, allowing the grains to spill onto the slush of last night’s snow. Better go. No point putting it off.

Another hour and more passed before Tiksi began to emerge from the grey, a collection of tall but narrow buildings capped by yellow tiled roofs. The doors and window frames were faded blue. Everyone thought alike in Tiksi. With twenty thousand inhabitants, it was the largest city for a hundred leagues.

Even from here she could pick out the breeding factory. The official name was The Mothers’ Palace, but ‘the breeding factory’ was what everyone called it, and the others like it that had sprung up along the coast over the past thirty years. Its yellow stone walls contrasted sharply with the dingy grey of the surrounding buildings. In a hard world it was supposed to symbolise reward for a job well done, the most important work of all. For Tiaan, who had lived there until she was six, the place had a rather different meaning. It epitomised a world that was trying to take away her rights.

Beyond and below Tiksi she caught occasional glimpses of the steel-coloured ocean. Out to sea an iceberg squatted in the water like a snowy plateau. More dotted the surface all the way to the horizon. This year there were more than usual.

There was a fuss at the gates because she had forgotten to bring her manufactory pass. The guard allowed her through, after much debate, though Tiaan knew it would go on her record,
again
. Inside the city gates, she checked passers-by, as always, looking for one particular face, her father’s. Without knowing what he looked like, or even his name, Tiaan was sure that she would recognise him instantly.

As she wove through the markets an elderly matron hissed at her, ‘Go home and do your duty!’ Others cast accusing glances at her slender waist, her ringless fingers. Flushing, Tiaan tried to ignore them. She
was
prepared to do her duty, but not just yet. Turning in at the gates of the breeding factory, she passed through the front door, nodding to the guard. Inside, the place was luxurious, even decadent. Ornately corniced ceilings were painted in a dozen colours. The walls were beautifully papered, while costly paintings and fabrics, and gleaming furniture, were everywhere. A tray of pastries sat neglected on a table. It would probably be thrown out, uneaten. She salivated.

The breeding factory was the most visible propaganda of all, a sign of a future when women might be valued only because they produced the next generation of fodder for the battlefields and maternity wards.

With a heavy sigh she pushed open the door of her mother’s rooms and went in. As one of the best breeders in the history of the place, Marnie had the largest suite with the most luxurious furnishings.

Her bed was larger than Tiaan’s living cubicle in the manufactory. The silk sheets were crimson, the cushions velvet. Marnie lay asprawl on the tangled sheets, a sleeping baby on her belly. A satin nightgown, which to Tiaan’s prudish mind looked positively indecent, was hitched up to the top of her plump thighs. One enormous breast, milky from the baby’s attentions, was fully exposed.

Marnie opened her eyes. ‘Tiaan, my darling!’ she beamed. ‘Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in ages.’

Tiaan bent down to kiss her mother’s cheek. She looked like a pig in a wallow, and neither covered her breast nor drew down her gown. Tiaan could smell her lover on her and was disgusted. Pulling the chair away from the bed, she sat down.

‘I’m sorry, mother. We’ve all been working seven days a week.’

‘Don’t call me mother, call me Marnie! What are you doing way over there? Come closer. I can’t see you.’

‘Sorry, Marnie. I just don’t get any time to myself.’

Marnie’s eyes raked over her. ‘You look awful, Tiaan. Positively
thin!
Why won’t you listen to me? It’s no life for you, working day and night in that horrible manufactory. Come home. Any daughter of mine can have a position here tomorrow. We’ll fatten you up nicely. You can lie in bed all day if you like. You’ll need never work again.’

‘I like to work! I’m good at it and I feel that I’m doing something worthwhile.’ As always, Tiaan could feel her temper going. She tried to rein it in.

‘Any fool can do what you do, fiddling about with dirty bits of machinery!’ One chubby hand found a box of sweetmeats on the bedside cupboard. Tipping the contents onto her ample belly, Marnie sorted through them irritably. One disappeared into her navel. ‘Damn it! All the best ones are gone. Would you like one, darling?’

‘No thanks!’ Tiaan said, though she was starving. Her temper began to flood. Marnie, despite her image as the wonderful earth mother, was as selfish a person as ever lived. She loved her children only while they were infants. Once off the breast she sent them to the creche, and at six indentured them to whoever offered the most for their labour. Marnie was one of the wealthiest women in Tiksi, but her children saw none of it.