The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (8 page)

‘Well, what do you expect,’ he said. ‘That’s rock gardening for you.’

‘You’ve got rakes, shovels and god knows what. Why do you need to go grubbing about with your hands?’ ‘Because,’ said Chegory. ‘It’s technical.’

‘What’s technical about rocks?’ said Ingalawa.

‘If you must know,’ said Chegory. ‘I was cleaning out the grease trap, you know, where all the kitchen water—’ ‘What on earth were you doing that for?’

Chegory began to get worked up. Angry, even.

‘Well, it was rocks, okay, my rocks had got into there, I mean I didn’t put them there, it was probably those kids, you know, that Marthandorthan bunch, they come over the harbour bridge in the evenings, they just run riot. Okay, so it’s all rocks in there and a whole lot of filth and muck and stuff. So what am I supposed to do, make some big thing out of it? I mean, who does it if I don’t?’

‘You still could have—’

‘Oh, leave the boy alone,’ said Pokrov. ‘Let’s eat.’ ‘Before he’s washed his hands?’ said Ingalawa.

‘He’s not going to suck the stuff from under his nails, is he? Sit down the pair of you. Eat, eat!’

With some reluctance Ingalawa abandoned the civilisation of Chegory Guy for the moment and seated herself. Chegory, smarting still from Ingalawa’s reprimand, took his own place. Olivia grinned at him from across the table. She already had a flying fish on her plate and was teasing its wings open and shut with her fingers as if pretending it was still flying. Her grin was inciting Chegory to do the same. He was sorely tempted - but a glance at Ingalawa showed him the scholarly Ashdan female was still dragonising him.

A moment later, she saw what Olivia was doing. ‘Olivia!’

This said to the accompaniment of a hand slammed down on the table.

‘It’s Chegory’s fault,’ said Olivia, dropping the wings of her flying fish. ‘He dared me to.’

Chegory kicked her under the table. Olivia kicked him back, hard. He caught her ankle. Drove his thumb into a pressure point between the heel’s tendon and the associated bone. Olivia wrenched her leg back. Such was the violence of her reaction that her knee slammed into the underside of the table with a resounding thump which upset the curry powder and spilt the flying fish sauce.

‘That’s enough!’ shouted Ingalawa.

Olivia looked at Chegory.

Chegory looked back.

He winked.

Olivia clutched her hands to her face as if vomiting. Actually, she was trying to stifle a fit of giggling. She was not entirely successful.

‘I’m serious,’ said Ingalawa, in her now-you-are-adults-not-children-and-I-expect-you-to-behave-accordingly voice. ‘Any more nonsense out of either of you and you can get down from the table and go and eat in the kitchen.’

‘Oh, can we?’ said Olivia eagerly.

‘No!’ said Ingalawa.

‘Would anyone care for some iced water?’ said Ox No Zan.

He was sorely distressed by the display of bad manners which had disrupted the meal. In his home city of Babrika such conflict would be unthinkable. Any young person rude enough so to misbehave in front of an elder would be... well, skinning alive would be the least of it.

‘Thank you,’ said Ingalawa, seeing No’s discomfort and thus, out of courtesy, allowing his attempted diplomatic intervention to succeed and bring the scene to an end.

Some time later, when the meal was well underway, Artemis Ingalawa broke the news to Ivan Pokrov. He had been invited to dine at the Qasaba household that evening. He said he would think about it.

Why such hesitation?

Because Jon Qasaba was in the habit of probing Pokrov.

Who preferred to conceal his true age, provenance and past. Ivan Pokrov was a some-time citizen of the Golden Gulag, and, even though the Gulag had collapsed in war twenty thousand years ago, old habits die hard.

Pokrov was reticent about his true identity because he was a criminal on the run. He had offended against Injunction
AA709/4383200/1408
of version 7c of the Authorised Penal Code of the Golden Gulag. A heinous crime indeed! What’s more, a crime unpunished to date, for so far Ivan Pokrov had escaped the extended algetic tutoring he so richly deserved.

‘You must come,’ insisted Ingalawa. ‘Jon keeps saying we haven’t enjoyed your company for... why, he says it feels like a passage of millennia.’

Ivan Pokrov, who was already sweating because of the heat of the day, began to sweat all the more. Was Ingalawa hinting that all was known already?

Before Pokrov could worry about it further, a servant entered to say that a visitor was demanding an audience with him.

‘We’re in the middle of lunch,’ said Pokrov.

‘The visitor,’ said the servant, ‘is the Master of Law. Aquitaine Varazchavardan.’

‘Oh,’ said Pokrov. ‘That puts a different complexion on things! Show him in immediately.’

Very shortly, Aquitaine Varazchavardan was shown to the dinner table. Chegory Guy was most embarrassed to find himself in the presence of a member of the Imperial Court. In obedience to the dictates of courtesy he rose to his feet and made reverence in the Janjuladoola manner: palms of the hands pressed together, knees bending slightly to lower height as head makes a short bow toward the fingertips. Varazchavardan did not bother to acknowledge this homage. He seemed unaware that Chegory existed as he rounded on Pokrov, saying:

‘Pokrov! Have you anything to say to me?’ Varazchavardan oft used this open-ended question on his victims in an effort to intimidate them and startle them into incontinent confession. But it had no such effect on the master of the Analytical Institute, who said:

‘Why, yes. Welcome, welcome! Won’t you sit down? Please. We’ve sea slugs today. Look. Green, succulent. Did you ever see anything more beautiful?’

Pokrov knew his man. Varazchavardan was not a glutton, nor was he an epicure, but he did have a notorious weakness for sea slugs. He accepted the invitation. Nevertheless, he did not allow himself to feed for long before he got down to business.

‘Pokrov,’ said he, ‘did your Analytical Engine by chance have anything to do with the events of last night?’

‘No,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘What happened last night suggests someone was tampering with probability itself. My Engine lacks the power to do such, for it is but pieces of metal in conglomeration.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Varazchavardan, ‘it thinks.’

‘It does not think,’ said Pokrov. ‘It merely manipulates. As the prestidigitation of a conjurer is to the magic of a true sorcerer, so the manipulation in which the Engine indulges at my pleasure is to the freedoms of my thoughts and of yours.’

Despite Pokrov’s denials, Varazchavardan insisted that he would inspect the Analytical Engine after lunch.

By this time Chegory had realised Olivia was casting little avid glances in the direction of the wonderworker. He found himself possessed of a ferocious jealousy. What did old man Varazchavardan have that Chegory Guy didn’t? Answers numerous could be postulated, for, after all, Varazchavardan was a member of the Imperial Court whereas young Chegory was but a dragonless rock gardener. But let the truth be known. The sweet Ashdan lass had not conceived a lust for the wonderworker himself but for his robes, silken ceremonial robes most marvellously embroidered with serpentine dragons ablaze with goldwork and argentry, with emerald and vermilion, with incarnadine and ultramarine.

Chegory, who did not know this, was relieved when lunch drew to a close.

When lunch did end, Ox No Zan absented himself so he could keep his appointment with Doctor Death. Artemis Ingalawa went back to her algorithmic labours. Pokrov told Chegory and Olivia to busy themselves with the mathematical studies which were (as always) to occupy their afternoon, then he led Varazchavardan into the Counting House where the Analytical Engine was at work.

Pokrov gave his standard explanation of the Engine’s function, and concluded by saying:

‘Thus what we see here is no more than the mechanical manipulation of patterns. The person who devises the protocols by which those patterns will be manipulated is exercising intelligence. So too is the person who designs the actual mechanisms which enable data to be processed by such algorithms. There is however no demon in the machine itself. It knows nothing, lacks all sense of self, and is ruled by the same mechanical necessities which rule a stone rolling helplessly downhill. In other words, it cannot think, does not think and never will think.’

But despite Pokrov’s explanation, the Master of Law found the Analytical Engine no more scrutable than before. The collosal construction (otherwise known as the mills of Jod) still defied his understanding. It was still no more than a maze of brass and steel, of intermeshed cogs made of titanium (the sole source of which is fire vanes taken from the corpses of dragons), of levers and wires and ratcheting mechanisms.

‘What is it doing now?’ said the Master of Law.

‘A statistical analysis of the recent census,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘The inland revenue wants to know how best they can screw more money out of the populace. We’ll give them the answer. In time! The mills of Jod grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.’

The albinotic sorcerer could take a hint. He knew what Pokrov was telling him. That the Analytical Institute had friends in high places. It worked for the inland revenue, no less. Very well then! Even Varazchavardan was reluctant to go up against the inland revenue department, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, when he seized power on Jod he would make a point of smashing the Engine and burning Pokrov alive.

On principle.

What principle?

A very simple principle: namely, that anything occult is dangerous. Varazchavardan’s main objection to the existence of the Analytical Engine was that he could not for the life of him understand it. Oh, he could see the hard-muscled engine operators sweating at the treadmills. He could see how the transmission system worked, feeding the energy of manpowered cylinders to whirling metal.

He saw copper cards with their inscrutable arrays of punched holes. He saw other operators feeding these cards into the interstices of the Engine. He saw needles descend upon the cards - and, in his imagination, he substituted Ivan Pokrov’s flesh for the insensate cards thus tortured.

All this he saw.

But - how did any of this senseless insectile activity allow the Engine to think? And it did think, it did, it must, it had to! Else how could it outperform even the hard-headed analysts of the inland revenue? Pokrov was lying. Had to be lying. This conglomeration of metal was a farcical front. There was true magic hidden here. Somewhere. There was Power. And Varazchavardan vowed to win its secrets from Pokrov’s seared and bleeding corpus before he made that corpus a corpse.

With his inspection completed, Varazchavardan took his leave of Ivan Pokrov at the door of the Analytical Institute and began to walk down to the shore. He had almost got there when fluids began to well up from the wealth fountains which studded the slopes below the Counting House.

‘Oh no!’ said Pokrov.

Oh yes! It was happening! Nothing could stop it!

As Pokrov watched helplessly, familiar pungent odours filled the air as chemicals flooded out of the wealth fountains. The flood swelled around the ankles of Aquitaine Varazchavardan then rose higher yet with prodigious speed. The albinotic sorcerer was suddenly waist-deep in a veritable torrent of bile-green dikle and filthy grey shlug. He lost his footing and was swept away into the sea.

‘I hope he drowns,’ muttered Pokrov.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Pokrov was a very nice man. But he knew the Analytical Institute and everyone associated with it would be ten thousand times safer if Varazchavardan came to a nasty end.

However, Aquitaine Varazchavardan swam with remarkable facility to the harbour bridge and hauled himself aboard. Then he stood up. The Master of Law was not given to histrionics, and therefore did not turn and shake his fist. Nevertheless, as he set off for the shores of Injiltaprajura, something about his purposeful stride made his mood perfectly clear.

CHAPTER SIX

One would like to think that all this time Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba were hard at work on their mathematical studies. But they were not. Olivia had a considerable aptitude for figures yet disliked them. Her redskinned companion lacked both aptitude and liking entirely.

It must be admitted that, in spite of lacking such, young Chegory had nevertheless made considerable progress in the study of numbers both real and unreal, positive and negative, whole and fractional, prime and partial, imaginary and obscene, and by now the construction of basic algorithms was second nature to him. He was familiar also with the mathematics of potentials and unpotentials, of points and infinities, of singularities and of blanks.

Furthermore, while Chegory lacked Olivia’s intellectual finesse, he had nevertheless absorbed basic games theory, and understood the sociopolitical implications of the same. He had attained a degree of competence in the slippery contextual arithmetic of hyperspace, in the calculus of probability curves in n-dimensional true space and in the calculation of the structure of fundamental topographical harmonics in polydimensional non-space.