Lady of Sin, by Madeline Hunter, page 15
She was even able to restrain her impatience to know what he learned, so she did not bombard him with questions about how well his task was going. In fact, she just sat there, leaning one shoulder against the wall, and watched him. He had pried off the glass and metal faceplate that guarded the inner workings of the player, and exposed a whole range of wires and circuits that would have sent her into instant despair. He had only looked more intrigued, and had begun to cautiously poke at each gleaming joint and intersection.
Now and then he murmured aloud, though she had no illusions that he was addressing her. "Well, if that's a moving part, what's moving it? Although--I don't see why this one should have to move, and it seems to--and where the hell is the power coming from?"
He had extracted the oddest array of tools from his pack, and with these he slowly began disassembling the machine. She bit back an automatic protest ("Don't, you'll break it!"); what more harm could he possibly do? But she could not resist one question. "Do you think you'll be able to put it back together?"
"Uh-huh," he said abstractedly, still completely focused on his work. "But I don't know if I'll be able to put it back so it works."
"Is there anything I can get you?"
"Some water would be nice."
"For the machine?"
At that he did give her his attention, flashing her a quick grin. "No, for me."
She was embarrassed, but how could she know what a piece of equipment might require? "Would you rather have wine? Tea? Juice?"
"Whatever's handiest," he said, and went back to his work. So she fetched him a snack tray--wine, water and pastries--returning to find dozens of unidentifiable parts arranged precisely on a white rag laid on the floor. The hole in the wall had become deep enough for Caleb to insert his head.
"How about some kind of light?" he asked, not even withdrawing his head when he heard her enter. "I can't see everything in here."
"You mean a candle?"
"Is that all you've got?"
"We don't have any electric-powered lights."
"Well--make it an oil lamp, then. I don't want wax falling anywhere inside here."
So then she left to find him a lamp with a glass shade, but the shade was green and he asked if she could find something clear. Because the color made it difficult to ascertain which wire was which. So she left again, returning with the requested item.
"It'll have to do," he said, fitting the shade over the brass casing, "Can you stand here and hold it for me? No, a bit higher. The light has to shine in. Yes, that's right. Hold still."
So she stood there another hour, motionlessly as possible, and thought that this was the pleasantest hour of the day that she had passed so far. It didn't seem to occur to Caleb Augustus that this particular brand of menial labor ranked far below the general run of responsibilities that fell to the Archangel, and obviously she could have assigned someone else the task.
But she liked watching him work.
It was quite late in the day by the time he laid aside his last tool, pulled himself gingerly from the cavern he had excavated, and shook his head. Alleya set the lamp down and rubbed her arm.
"Well?" she asked. "Can you fix it?"
"I don't know," he said. "I can tell what's wrong, I think, but I don't know if I can compensate for it."
Her heart sank; she had been convinced he could help her. "So what's wrong?"
He held up a small cylinder, about the size of his little finger. "As far as I can tell, this is the power source of the machine. I've never seen anything like it. I can't imagine how it works, but somehow it seems to hold stored energy. And when the machine is turned on, this little item releases enough energy to make all the parts go around. But all the energy seems to have been drained away. Therefore, no moving parts. No music."
"So can't you just--do something else to make the things move? "
"That's what I've been trying to determine. But it's a very delicate balance in here. My wires are thick and clumsy things next to theirs--like a rope compared to a length of thread. I could rig a motor that would generate the power you need, but I don't know if I could conduct that power inside the machine without hopelessly tangling up everything inside. Plus--my motor would be fuel-generated, and create fumes and noise, and so you wouldn't want it in the room. Can't really appreciate the sound of Hagar singing when she's competing with a motor making all kinds of racket."
Alleya felt blank. "But then--you're saying--there's nothing you can do?"
"Well, I can try to set up a motor in the hallway, say, and run the wires in, and see if I can generate the juice. You'd have to be careful not to dislodge anything--not trip over anything--and you'd still probably hear some of the noise from the hall."
"The rooms are acoustically perfect, she said automatically. "They deaden all outside noise."
"Well, you wouldn't be able to close the door all the way."
"Ah."
"And if that worked-Have you ever considered having the entire hold wired for electricity?"
She just looked at him for a moment. It was as if he'd asked her if she had ever considered pulling out all her wing feathers, one by one. "It's not--it never crossed my mind one way or the other."
"Well, there would be a lot of advantages," he said. "You could get rid of your gaslight, for one thing. That's always a danger, you know, gas. It can kill a man in a few minutes."
"So can electricity," she answered with asperity, then remembered his father, and wished she hadn't.
But he grinned. "Right. Power is always inherently dangerous. You pick your devils, I suppose. But if you wired for electricity, you could do all sorts of things, not just with lighting. You could have powered lifts to haul items up the mountain, just for instance. One of the Semorrah merchants is having a friend of mine outfit his vaults with electronic locks that can only be opened by himself."
"Well," Alleya began dubiously, "you know I'm not convinced that widespread technology is always a benefit."
He held up the silver music disk as if it were something incalculably precious. "If we understood the principles behind this little gadget, and if we understood how this entire piece of equipment operated, think what you could do then! You could record your own music! These disks are, what, six hundred years old? Hasn't there been other splendid music written in the past six centuries? But you have no way to record it for other generations to hear, do you? It's all"--he waved his hands--"passed on from one generation to the next. Oral history."
"Well, there are ways to write the music down so that you can learn it without having heard it performed--"
He shrugged; clearly an inferior method. "But you don't get that nuance, do you? You don't get to hear the quality of the singer's voice."
"Well, no," Alleya admitted.
"If we could understand this technology"--he turned again to admire the disemboweled machine--"we could record your voice. Delilah's. Think of the possibilities! You wouldn't have to attend the Gloria in person. You could record your masses some day when the weather was good and all your best singers were in attendance, then set up your machine in the middle of the Plain of Sharon, hit a button--and suddenly, all the music of the angels would come pouring out."
Alleya was shocked to her soul. "You couldn't do that!"
"No," he confessed. "Not only do I not know how to record the music, we have a very hazy understanding of how sound is transmitted in the first place. It travels, of course, like a rock ricocheting off a canyon wall, but--"
"I meant, even if the technology existed, you couldn't have--a machine singing the prayers to Jovah!"
That stopped him from a digression into the nature of noise. "What? Why not? I would think it would be a tremendous savings of time and effort."
"But time and individual effort is what the Gloria is all about!" she exclaimed. "It's not just the music--it's what the music represents. All the people of Samaria coming together in harmony, working in concert, proving to the god that they are living in peace. Even if he could be fooled by some mechanical reproduction of those voices--even if that were so, the very thought of such a thing is sacrilegious. Is blasphemy. The idea of the Gloria is not to trick the god. The idea of the Gloria is to keep men from falling into war and destruction."
Her vehemence had pulled him up short. Now he gave her a slow smile and shook his head. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to rouse such passion," he said. "You forget you're not talking to a god-fearing man. I don't tend to think of the divine aspects of things."
"And you forget you're talking to the Archangel," she said tartly. "Jovah is always present in my thoughts."
"I'm constantly amazed at how convinced people like you can be--angels, and most of the Edori, and many other men," he said. "You don't even question. You don't even wonder. You merely say, "Jovah is there," and that is the end to it. No doubt or speculation."
Alleya spread her hands. How could she possibly explain? "I don't understand how you can doubt," she said. "There is proof every day of his existence."
"Proof? I see no thunderbolts, no strikes of lightning. I hear no majestic voice speaking to us from above. I do not--forgive me, angela, but I do not--see him answering the angels' prayers. I would think, these days more than ever, you would have disbelievers in your ranks."
"There are disbelievers, although generally not among the angels," she answered quietly. "And yes, these days Jovah seems deaf to the angels--some of the angels, some of the time. But not deaf to me. I hear him listening to my voice, as you hear a mortal man in the same room listening to your conversation even if he does not reply. The silence is not empty silence. And he responds to my prayers."
"I understand you dissipated the storms over the Galo Mountain when no other angel from Monteverde or the Eyrie could do it."
"Jovah chose to heed me. And even if he had not, I would not have doubted his existence. I have witnessed too many other miracles."
He smiled a little sadly. "I admire your faith, but I have no desire to copy it. I will be a doubter to the end."
She smiled back, lifting her hands in benediction. "Jovah will watch over you nonetheless," she said.
He glanced around at the mess he had made on the floor. "I need to put all this back together--but, if you don't mind, I'd rather leave it till I've seen what I can do with a motor. It might take me a day or two to rig what I need. Will that be a problem?"
Her eyes traced the same circuit across the scattered coils and pans. "I don't think so. No one comes into these rooms anymore since the equipment failed. We can leave a note on the door. Nothing will be disturbed."
"Good. I'll be back in the morning if I can scrounge up a motor."
"You know about the Edori Daniel in Velora?"
"That's the first place I intend to go."
"And do you have accommodations in the city? Or would you like me to see what might be available here?"
"I'd prefer the city, thank you. But I was wondering--"
"Yes?"
He seemed to speak with unwonted formality; perhaps, for a change, he was the one who was embarrassed. "If your duties permit, I would like to have dinner with you tonight. I enjoyed our last meal tremendously."
She had thousands of domestic details to attend to, and she was half-promised to Samuel for the evening meal, but suddenly she could not bear the thought of denying herself one brief opportunity to escape. "Oh, yes, that would be lovely," she said, before she had time to think about it too long.
"Can you go now?"
"I need an hour or so to take care of some things. We could meet in Velora, if you like."
"Any place you'd recommend?"
"There's a place you might like called Obadiah's. The food's good and it's quiet enough to talk. There's music, of course--I don't believe there's a single restaurant in Velora that doesn't offer some kind of music--but it's mostly background noise. Does that sound all right?"
He smiled warmly. Really, he had the most attractive smile. "In an hour and a half?."
"I'll be there."
Over dinner, the talk almost instantly reverted to religion. "What I would most like to know," said Caleb, "is how Jovah brought us here. How he chose Samaria, yes, but more than that, how he carried out the actual mechanics."
Alleya laughed. Tonight she had relaxed her usual rules of personal conduct and agreed to a glass of wine. She had rarely indulged in alcohol before she became Archangel, and never since then, because she felt her abilities were already insufficient to her task; being rendered tipsy would in no way improve her chances of succeeding at her job. But. Tonight. One glass of wine.
"A miracle wrought by Jovah," she agreed. "I know. The Librera is very unspecific. Even the old history books are not clear on how the miracle was accomplished."
"So how do you think it was done?"
"I think he wrapped his fingers around us and carried us here."
"Through space? From another world? How far? How far away do you think the nearest star is? I think the distance is unimaginable. How long did it take? A minute? A year? A century?"
"What does it matter how long it took? It happened. We are here. That is all the evidence you need."
"No, it is not all the evidence I need," he retorted, smiling. "I want diagrams and distances and facts."
"They don't seem to be available. I have found some old texts--translations of histories written shortly after Samaria was settled--and even there very little is explained. Maybe they were translated so long after the event that the translators didn't have words for what the colonists experienced. Or maybe no one understood how Jovah transported us."
She smiled. "I have found an old reference to two contentious brothers named Victor and Amos Edor," she continued. "They left the original group of settlers and refused to join the new communities, and took their wives and children with them. So it seems that from the very beginning, the Edori did not behave like the rest of us."
"And they still don't believe like the rest of you."
"They worship Jovah, as we do. Though they name him differently."
"They believe that Jovah watches over all of Samaria, and listens to anyone's prayer, not just the angels'," Caleb said.
"The angels believe Jovah hears everyone but that he hears the angels more clearly."
"And the Edori think that Jovah is only one god of many-the only god who watches over Samaria, perhaps, but not the only god in the universe. They say that for every other world, a god has been chosen--that if you were to travel to some other planet, for instance, it would not be Jovah you prayed to but--who knows?--Novah or Shovah or Carovah." He had started seriously enough, but ended on a laugh as he made his little rhymes.
Alleya was half shocked and half fascinated. "Do they truly? But then do they feel there is no coherent force in the whole universe, just all these independent god lings Who ensures harmony? Who keeps the gods from feuding?"
"They say there is a god greater than all these lesser ones. They call him the nameless one, and they say he protects the universe."
"So this nameless one, I suppose, instructed Jovah to carry us from the old world to the new one. Does that mean Jovah once watched over that old world--and then abandoned it?"
"I never asked the Edori that. A good question! Of course, if everything we have learned is true, it is a world that deserved to be abandoned by its god."
But she felt a stricken look tighten the skin on her face. "And how did those who were left behind learn that their god had abandoned them?" she asked in a low voice. "Did he cease answering their prayers? Turn his face from them? Allow them to be slowly destroyed by storm and flood?"
"More good questions," Caleb said gently. "But you say that Jovah still hears you."
"So far," she said. "So far."
She took another sip of her wine, but it fell to a hollow place in her stomach. She could see that her distress was having its effect on Caleb, for he visibly searched for another topic of conversation.
"After you left us in Luminaux," he said, "I asked Delilah to tell me what she knew of you."
Alleya made an effort and smiled. "I would be interested to know what she said."
"Oh, mostly what you had told me yourself--that you were quiet and kept to yourself and did not like to perform for others. But she also mentioned that you were not born at the Eyrie, that you came here when you were ten or twelve. And I found myself wondering where you had been before then. And why your parents did not bring you to the hold sooner."
A little laugh escaped her; no one had asked her this story for fifteen or more years. "Well. You've heard about angel-seekers, of course."
"Yes."
"Well, my mother was not that sort. My mother--she is difficult to describe. A very focused, dedicated, unsentimental woman who has devoted her life to others. She was not chasing down handsome angels in Velora or Cedar Hills. She was overseeing a community for the blind and the deaf in a small town on Bethel's western coast. That's what she still does. Anyway, about thirty years ago, violent illness spread through the community. My mother ran up the plague flag, and an angel responded. He prayed for medicines, which Jovah delivered, and he stayed a day or two to make sure everyone began to recover. By the time he left, apparently, my mother was already pregnant with me."
"That's a fairly dry tale," he commented. "Did she fall in love with him? Was she heartbroken? Did she ever see him again?"
"You have to understand, my mother is a fairly dry woman. I have asked her those questions many times myself. She never gave any satisfactory answers. As far as I know, he's the only man she ever made love to, for while I lived with her, she had no lovers. Why him? Why then? Did he seduce her? Did she seduce him? Did their Kisses light when they first saw each other, as is said to be the case when true lovers meet? She never told me."
