Divination - John French Read online

  We passed many doors, some wide enough for large vehicles or machinery, some so small that only servo skulls or scuttle servitors could have passed through. None of the doors were open, and neither Magos Atropos or Princeps Zavius paused next to any of them.

  ‘What is to be our purpose here?’ I asked as we passed the latest locked opening. I had asked the same question in five different ways since our arrival, and received no reply. I experienced surprise when Atropos spoke.

  ‘You are here to wake a machine that has lain long asleep,’ he said.

  ‘What variety of machine?’ I asked.

  ‘I cannot tell you,’ said Atropos.

  ‘To withhold data is to inhibit the probability of success.’ I detected a sharpness in my reply. My emotional disturbance was bleeding out of its containment.

  Atropos halted in front of a circular door set into the passage wall. Slowly the magos extended one of its canes and tapped the surface of the door. Bolts withdrew around its edge. Leaves of metal folded into the rock surround.

  ‘I cannot tell you,’ said Atropos, as the last portion of the door slid aside. Distant lights glimmered in the vast space beyond. ‘I can only show you.’

  I confess that I did not want to pass through the door. I confess that I also wanted to see what lay at the heart of this underworld. We are made to seek knowledge, to revere it, and for all of the Martian priesthood’s traditions and reverence of the known, we crave the unknown far more.

  The space beyond the door was not a chamber – it was a cavern. A platform extended into space, secured to a cliff wall that I could only estimate as being as high as the mountain peaks above. Darkness ran off into every other direction. I walked across the platform to its edge, dimly aware of Ishta-1-Gamma at my side, and Atropos and Zavius following a step behind. The air was cold, so cold that warnings lit the bio-monitors linked to my remaining flesh. There were lights shining on the cavern floor far beneath us. I stepped closer to the edge, my eye lenses adjusting to focus.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Zavius, his breath powdering to crystal in the air. His flesh suddenly seemed stiff and pale, like a mask pulled over something that was not as pure as a machine, or as kind as flesh. ‘It can unsettle the mind at first sight.’

  I did not reply, but took the last step and looked down.

  For a fraction of a second I thought the words might have been mine. Then I noticed Ishta-1-Gamma standing on the edge beside me.

  Beneath us, half buried in the floor of the cavern, was a Titan. It lay like a fallen monarch found in its grave. Rubble had been cleared away around its sides. Ladders extended down to it from a web of gantries and platforms suspended above it. Stab lights lit its form, pouring brilliance into its crevasses and across its armour plates. If it had stood, its head would have been on a level with our platform, and the guns on its back would have loomed far above us. Figures moved on the gantries. I saw huge power lines and machines whose functions I knew in theory though I had never seen in practice: galvanic wave compressors, gain-output macro regulators, trans-uranic adjusters.

  ‘How did it get down here…?’ breathed Ishta-1-Gamma.

  ‘You are attempting to…’ I stated, and turned to look at Zavius and Atropos. ‘You mean to wake it.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Atropos.

  I looked back at the dead god-machine. There was something about it that made me not want to look away from it. As though it might have moved while unobserved.

  ‘But you mean to wake it in secret…’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. She was still looking down at the great machine. Her noospheric halo had faded, its loops of data patterns fraying. ‘This is a machine of majesty, a relic from times now long lost. That it remains here is a marvel – that it might walk again a miracle. Yet you hide it from sight.’

  Did I detect a flicker of movement in Zavius’ eyes and a microscopic shift in Atropos’ posture?

  ‘You are here to perform a function,’ said Atropos. ‘No further clarification is needed.’ He turned and began to move away. ‘Zavius will supply the data relevant to your task. Review it. You will be integrated into the endeavour in five hours.’

  ‘And that endeavour is to waken the spirit of this machine?’ I asked, inferences and uncertainties still spinning at the edge of my thoughts.

  Atropos did not stop, but called in a voice that echoed flatly in the vast space, ‘It shall wake. It shall walk.’

  They called the first Titan Artefact-ZA01. That was not its name, of course. The names of machines are impressed upon their form and spirit when they are made. They are not designators. They are specific. They are a form of truth. The Titan had a name; we just didn’t know what it was.

  We went down to see it after five hours of preliminary data in-load. A platform hoist lowered us down to the gantry web. I had assimilated all of the data supplied by Zavius. It was sizeable, and had required multiple overrides of fatigue to parse fully. I knew now that Artefact-ZA01 was a battle Titan, but that variations in its system configuration conformed to no recorded class or pattern. Preliminary investigations had been made into its interior systems, and its reactor and energy transmission systems conformed to those of other Titan engines. At least they did superficially.

  There was more, reams and reams of data and analysis, but, for all that, there was much that was screamed by its absence. There was no mention of any propitiatory rites being attempted, no identification codes for the adepts who had made the assessments. It was as though there was no history on this endeavour before this moment, as though the past did not exist.

  Again a sensation of unfamiliar emotion filled me as I stepped onto the gantry and looked down at Artefact-ZA01. Burnished metal gleamed beneath the layer of dust that clung to its armour plates. I identified amaranth colouration, what is designated as regal purple by some, gold edging and patches of bone-white lacquer. There was no damage though, no marks of battle that had laid this god low. This cavern was not a grave, it was something else.

  ‘You will need to get moving,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned to see a figure in the robes of an enginseer limp along the walkway behind us, red robes and augmentation in line with the biological human form. The figure stopped, then cocked its head and gave a stuttering bow that spoke of poorly meshing gears and malfunctioning servos. ‘My apologies, honoured magos, I have still not adjusted to the absence of noospheric connection. I have been here for six months, two days, seventeen hours, five minutes and two seconds and I am still sending data hails that no one receives. Personal introduction – I am enginseer designate Thamus-91.’

  ‘I am Magos Glavius-4-Rho,’ I replied. I was aware that an enginseer designated Thamus-91 was the overseer of primary operations at the excavation; it had been in the data supplied by Princeps Zavius. ‘I have requested a close inspection of Artefact-ZA01.’

  ‘I know,’ said Thamus-91. ‘I was made aware of your arrival and have already conversed with Magos Ishta-1-Gamma.’

  Thamus-91 straightened, juddering as she moved.

  ‘Are your movement systems not functioning as ordained?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. Patches of black frostbite mottled the skin of her face above her breath mask.

  ‘I have stayed close to it for too long,’ she replied. ‘I should have withdrawn, purged and charged, but I was informed that you were coming. I waited. We should move. It is worse if you stay in one place for a prolonged time.’

  ‘What are you referring to, enginseer?’

  ‘The drain – you must have noticed.’

  ‘The power drop-off?’ I queried.

  ‘Not only power, but energetic potential across multiple forms and spectra – all of it vanishes. It takes time but the closer you are to it–’

  ‘You are referring to Artefact-ZA01?’

  Thamus-91 twitched and I formed
an impression that she was suddenly exerting a great deal of control not to look down, not to look at the Titan lying beneath us.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and gestured at the unlit candles of appeasement and devotion set along the sides of the gantry. A pair of servitors were moving along them, lighting each with a stuttering blast of flame from nozzle-tipped fingers. The flames began to fade as soon as they flared. ‘You see? Even the sacred flames gutter.’

  ‘That cannot be an effect related to the artefact,’ I said. ‘I have reviewed the data, and it is clear that none of the Titan’s systems are active, and further it is clear that all attempts to waken them and kindle its energies have failed. Added to which there is no system within the bounds of the blessed incandescence and transference of energy that I am aware of that could produce such an effect.’

  Thamus-91 gave a creaking nod. ‘Just so…’ she said, and extended an iron finger to point at a candle flame. ‘And yet…’ The flame shrank as we observed it, and then guttered. I had detected no movement in the cavern’s air.

  ‘Why is there no record of this phenomenon in the data I was supplied?’ I asked. Thamus-91 was still pointing and looking at a wisp of smoke rising from the extinguished candle. She made no move to acknowledge my query. ‘Enginseer Thamus-91?’ I queried. She twitched and turned her head back to me.

  ‘You are Magos Glavius-4-Rho,’ she said. ‘Please accept my greetings. I was made aware of your arrival and have already conversed with Magos Ishta-1-Gamma. She has requested a close inspection of the… of Artefact-ZA01. If you wish to accompany her, we should join her now.’

  For a second I tried to process what had just occurred. The logic trees branched but offered no clear solution. I moved the unresolved calculations out of my immediate focus.

  ‘We will proceed with the inspection,’ I said.

  Thamus-91 bobbed her head. I noticed her fingers judder open and then closed. She gave no sign of being aware of the movement.

  ‘As you will it,’ she said. ‘We should get moving.’

  Darkness. Darkness that I have never known before or since. Our primary source of illumination failed as soon as we were inside the Titan. Lights simply blinked out, and power sources wound down to nothing. Red capacitor warnings lit my visual display as it began to fog with distortion. The thread of noospheric connection between me and Ishta-1-Gamma vanished. We were in a conduit space accessed by a panel that was normally riveted shut. Before the lights had cut out I had captured an image of a cable-lined wall, clean of dust and corrosion. A hatch into the main engineering compartment lay 2.63 metres below us.

  ‘I would advise linking with the reservoir power-umbilical,’ said Thamus-91. ‘You may wish to divert available power to tactile sensors – they appear to be more reliable than visual.’

  An insulated cable linked all of us to an external plasma generator. I had questioned the need for this contingency. At peak function the generator would have been able to power an entire facility and maintain the equivalent output of three Baneblade tanks, a surfeit of power for our augmetics. Now, standing in the total dark and watching my power reserves fall to zero, I had to acknowledge that I had been wrong.

  I opened the umbilical power connection. My systems activated, but the power was flowing in only slightly faster than it was vanishing. I flicked my sight to an augmented infra-vision and the grey snow became a multi-coloured image of heat and energy blooms. Thamus-91 and Ishta-1-Gamma became glowing outlines of orange and red. The power-umbilicals glowed white with radiation bleed. Everything else was a perfect, cold black.

  ‘We should proceed,’ said Thamus-91. ‘Based on previous explorations we have approximately fifteen minutes and twenty-one seconds before our power status becomes non-viable.’ She began to move towards the hatch at the end of the conduit space. She braced herself against the walls with all four limbs, moving with care, pausing at irregular intervals as a twitch ran through her frame.

  I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma. Without her noospheric halo she seemed diminished, a shadow with the same shape. She returned my look and then followed the enginseer.

  Thamus-91 reached the hatch and pulled it open. The void beyond was a black circle. For an instant I had the impression that the static in my eyes had begun to spin around it, like iron dust pulled by a magnetic field.

 

  I snapped my head around to Ishta-1-Gamma.

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  She tilted her head in puzzlement. ‘I am sorry, I do not follow.’

  ‘You made a noospheric transmission–’

  ‘I am afraid you are mistaken,’ she said, and I formed a non-logical impression of her displeasure at my assertion. ‘I have been trying to activate noospheric connection since we entered the artefact, and have not succeeded.’

  ‘I would not try to do that,’ said Thamus-91 from by the hatch. She glanced back at us, twitched. ‘I mean I would not attempt to access the noosphere in here.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘There was no standing prohibition against it in the site protocols.’

  Thamus-91 twitched her shoulders in a deeply biological gesture that I assessed as a shrug.

  ‘It is best not to,’ was her reply. ‘Follow,’ she said and dropped through the hatch. I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma, and then complied.

  The void beyond the hatch was black, unlit and without any form of radiation for my eyes to pick up. There were only the beams from stab lights attached to us, cutting into the blackness for the brief moment of our fall. I landed on the rear wall of the enginarium compartment. My legs mag-locked to the metal. I froze for a second. A cold, yes, a cold sensation slid through my machine limbs from the point of contact. The air temperature had dropped further, but this… feeling was something else. A chill, a… touch.

  ‘I estimate that we have twelve minutes twenty-one seconds until we lose umbilical power,’ said Thamus-91. ‘We will need to begin to withdraw in nine minutes. I tender humble advice that the exalted magi begin their assays of the relic’s systems.’

  ‘Let us begin, then,’ said Ishta-1-Gamma.

  I had never been in the sacred inner spaces of a god-machine before. I had been privileged to review schematics and system rituals, but this was the first time I had perceived the wonder of such sacred knowledge made real. I must confess that for sixty-seven seconds I did nothing other than take in our surroundings.

  Curved girders ran down the walls of the compartment, each one a single, metallic crystal. Bundles of cables and loops of insulated piping snaked beneath grates and curved out though openings in the metal skin of the walls and ceiling. Hatches marked with runes and yellow and black chevrons led off to either side, to the servitor niches that controlled the arms. A wider set of doors yawned open at the far end, the darkness beyond leading to the head of the god-machine and the throne of its command. I could see the marks where piston claws had pried the doors open – each scrape was marked by a taper of parchment held by a wax seal, the code lines printed on each a prayer to soothe the soul of the machine for the harm done to it.

  I found myself moving towards the black space between the open doors. There was something vibrating in the dark beyond…

  Blurred haze…

  Night beyond night…

  Ishta-1-Gamma brushed past me as she made for the open doors. I stopped. Power was still draining from my reserves and the umbilical.

  The reactor. I was here to examine the reactor.

  I turned my awareness to the reinforced hatch in the floor that should lead to the plasma reactor. The hatch’s seals had already been disengaged, and the plasma chamber was utterly inactive, but I still proceeded with caution as I climbed down into the space beneath. The rewards for recklessness are death and suffering, it is told, and I have never observed it to be otherwise.

  I began with augurs of the first order and cycled
through the Aclaan diagnostic sequence. I also began cataclysms of appeasement for any spirit of power or charge still lingering in the reactor systems. I soon halted this litany. There was nothing. No returns. No energetic signatures of any kind. It was dead and cold, as though plasma and electrostatic convergence had never sung in its heart.

  I was about to begin an integrity examination of the plasma ignition array when an alert in my visual analysis systems made me halt. There were conduits bonded and integrated into the system in addition to those that I would have expected – pipes and heavily insulated cables snaked and wormed beside those that the schematics had ordained to be there. I had not noticed them at first, in part because I was not expecting them to be there, and partly because they were not made of standard mat­erial. It had to be an error but the close augur returns read them as being made of rock or crystal.

 

  I hesitated and then stepped forwards, extending a blade from a finger to peel the black insulation from one of the conduits.

  ‘Magos Glavius-4-Rho!’ The call came from the enginarium. It was Ishta-1-Gamma, her voice loud and sharpened with indications of alarm.

  ‘Is there something awry?’ I called, blade finger hovering above the insulation. I had a strong inclination not to leave, to look at what strange devices had lived in this walking god’s core.

  ‘Attend immediately!’ she replied. I let my hand drop and climbed back up into the enginarium compartment and then into the bridge in the Titan’s head.

  Ishta-1-Gamma was there. As was what remained of Thamus-91. The enginseer had linked to a mind-interface unit set behind the princeps’ throne. Her remains hung from the interface cable, a slack tangle of metal and desiccated flesh. Frost covered her, the crystals growing even as we watched.

  ‘I went back into the enginarium for twenty seconds…’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘She must have been waiting for the chance to be alone…’