Coordinated Arm 01: Henry Martyn Page 4

  The useless weapons hanging everywhere above had come from here. Rather, they were among the few articles not relegated to subterranean darkness. Yet Arran, today, was intent upon another quarry. The book with which Old Henry had gifted him—in which he was beginning to make gradual progress, sounding out each painful syllable with frequent reference to the phonetic key the old man had barquoded for him upon a flyleaf—was of the same vintage as most of this refuse. Perhaps he could ferret out another of Its kind which had survived the vicissitudes of abandonment. Would not Old Henry be surprised?

  Thus this was no occasion for mere idle poking about, Arran reminded himself. He was here to a purpose. Robret was to be married in a few more days, and to Mistress Lia, whom the boy loved full as well as his brother. In his illness, he had missed his father's wedding, missed gifting that union with something from his own heart, his own mind, perhaps even his own hands. He would not be cheated of the honor and the pleasure now. His energies, those of a recovering boy, and thus his time, were limited. To say nothing, he thought, of the capacities of his sun-charged lampwand. He shuddered with imaginary chills at the idea of being stranded down here in the darkness.

  To business. But where to start? Everywhere he looked, everything he saw was covered with dust, draped in cobwebbery, coated with mildew. Some of the things down

  30 HENRYMARTYN

  here, he knew, had been mouldering away for centuries. Attempting to be of assistance, Waenzi gave each item they encountered a cautious sniff, making curious noises, often backing up in sudden, disgusted retreat, straightaway into Arran's legs.

  The odd pair's random footsteps carried them at last into a low-arched vault not larger than Arran's bedroom. Here a few things had been stacked against a wall and covered with a sheet of plastic, now dark and brittle with age. Watchful for he knew not what slithery horror to jump out at him, he pulled the disintegrating plastic away. Dust and musty odors welled up in his face as he spied a dozen large plastic boxes in a somewhat better state of preservation than most of what he had seen thus far. One of these, a solid-looking chest, mottled green and brown, was perhaps half an arm's length upon a side. Rounded comers it had, and was guarded against intrusion by a pair of heavy black clasps, also of plastic. An efficient sealing ridge thick as Arran's index finger wrapped about its circumference.

  At sight of such a chest, many another child of Arran's time would have seized upon thoughts of brigands of the Deep. Of treasure. What caught the boy's eye was a detail of the lid. At no small effort it had been incised in careful, artful strokes, with the selfsame riding-animal design he knew from those several objects in his bedroom which also bore it. Countless years had filled the deep-scribed lines with grime, enhancing, with a certain irony, the contrast of the well-executed carving. This chest, if Old Henry's surmise was correct, had belonged to the same unknown individual who had once occupied, and perhaps loved, the tower room centuries before Arran had made it his own.

  Hesitating, wondering whether he ought to open the chest here or upon an upper floor where cleaner air and better light were to be had, Arran lifted an edge of the thing where it rested upon the half-collapsed crate which brought it to the level of his waist and let it down again, not wishing to crush the supporting container further. It was too heavy for a small, recuperating boy to carry up hundreds of steps into the inhabited area of the Holdings. Nor did he rehsh asking for adult help and getting a lecture about being down here in the unhealthy dust and dampness.

  Arriving at a decision, he turned a knurled ferrule in the middle of his lampwand, doubling the amount of warm yellow light it caused to be spilled into the small room. This made him feel a deal more comfortable. Waenzi, too, made noises of appreciation. However, at this level of output, the light would not last many more minutes. The wand would have to rest a good long while, soaking up sunlight upon his windowsill.

  As curious as the boy, the triskel tensed its short trio of legs and hopped up onto the crate, threatening to topple everything. Absorbed with his find, Arran gave it scant notice. He nestled the wand in a fold of crumpled plastic sheet and pried up the first of the clasps upon the carven chest. It gritted with the sound of dust, made a loud clacking noise, and snapped open. The second clasp yielded, and with this the chest gave a sigh, releasing or taking up air—Arran was uncertain which —to equalize pressure between its interior and the exterior world.

  The lid, deep as the bottom, hinged back. Arran was disappointed. Inside lay a litter of mouldering scraps. Something which had once been a book was now a foul-smelling stack of flaking debris. Most of the contents were beyond identification. He thought some of this mess might be the remains of various articles of clothing and was about to give up when he remembered the weight. Its sides and top were thick, but something in the chest besides the ashes of slow-motion oxidation must account for its mass.

  Sifting with careful fingers, he discovered something soft and yielding at the bottom, withdrew his startled hand—it had felt much like a lump of flesh—then realized it had been a cushion of plastic he had touched. He placed his lampwand in the chest-lid, which began to shed a better light than the walls, gulped, and searched again until he retrieved a rectangular pouch no larger than both his flattened hands. Along one side it had an odd kind of sealing edge and was heavy for its size.

  The seal parted. Contrived, it had been, with cleverness. A ridge in one sheet comprising the pouch fit into a matching groove moulded into the other. From its appearance, the pouch might once have been transparent, the dark strip along the sealing edge a brilliant blue. Now the plastic was

  32 HENRY MARTYN

  cloudy, yellowed to near opacity. The invisible influence of his lampwand brought no glow from it, as if whatever it had to give in the way of light had long ago been used up. The strip had faded to a nondescript blue-gray.

  Inside, to his surprise, Arran encountered yet another pouch, thick and yielding black plastic this time, almost triangular, with yet another sort of sealing edge, one fashioned from alternating teeth set along most of the circumference. This was old. Recognizing the fastener from history texts and period dramas, he pulled its tab with elaborate care past metal tooth after interlocking metal tooth until the pouch split apart.

  What he found within, coated with dusty traces of what was once a colorful plush liner, was older still. It was, he knew, a weapon, much smaller, and in far better condition, than the trophies upstairs. Fine markings, visible through a reddish-brown patina thinnest along the wear-polished grip surfaces and sharper edges, were not altogether incomprehensible thanks to those others within the pages of the book Old Henry had given him:

  —WALTHER—

  Carl Walther Waffenfabrik Ulm/Do. ModellPPCal. 22 l.r.

  He sounded out the first word, startling Waenzi. The creature flailed about, almost falling off its precarious crate perch. It was the first the boy had spoken for a while. The word had been engraved within the stylized outline of a sort of banner. Beyond being easy to pronounce, it was quite without meaning. The remainder of the ancient writing lay nearby in two neat lines upon the metallic upper portion of the weapon. The banner word was repeated upon each of the black plastic handle surfaces, with their subtle curves, which were otherwise filled with decorative knurling. Upon the frame, just ahead of one of these plastic panels, were stamped the additional words: "Made in West-Germany". This was a great deal more satisfactory to the boy. Arran wondered where the planet Germany might be. He had never heard of it. In the corresponding location upon the other side of the

  weapon was a five-digit number, followed by the marking "LR".

  Pleased with himself that he could read this much, he noticed several minute markings which appeared to be birds or bats, spreading their wings over the letter "N". In another place, upon what would be called the "axis" of a kinergic thrustible, beside another miniature bird, something like the leaf of a lawn-shrub appeared, along with the number "67".

  Having exhausted the newfound
object's literary merits, Arran turned to its mechanics. Upon one side was a round, check-patterned button and a small striated lever. Who knew for what? In the midline were two more levery things. One, forward of the handle, was a simple curve within a large, protective ring, an obvious fit for the index finger. The other, a small ring in itself, serrate about most of its circumference, sat high at the back.

  Additional irregularities and projections which he could not begin to fathom interrupted the artifact's eye-pleasing contours. Moreover, several smaller objects, arcane supplies and accessories, odd-shaped and mysterious in themselves, occupied space within the cushioned pouch. He would have liked to examine the weapon further, but realized it must wait. These things could be dangerous, he understood, obsolete as they mi^t be. They were rumored to be capable of retaining their power charge for a long time.

  He would wait until Old Henry could help. But perhaps, after all, he had found a fitting wedding gift for—the light excited by his lampwand flickered in warning. Waenzi emitted a low, miserable moan.

  And by these presents, did Arran know it was time to climb back up into the weary, unfree world of the grownups.

  Chapter IV: The Spreighformery

  "Waffenfabrik, be it?" Squint-eyed and straining every muscle in his wrinkled forehead to achieve focus, Old Henry Martyn peered at the shallow-graven lettering on the weapon Arran had discovered. "Now there be word I've no knowin' of. Historical ancient lingo. We'll just find ourselves dicthille, after we finish here, an' look it up."

  Outside, summer lightning flared, blue-white and blinding, followed by a grumble of thunder from the nearby forested hills. The air was perfumed with ozone, thick with anticipation of the rain to come. Inside—the two were in the spreighformery, a low, modem outbuilding not far from the Holdings proper—li^t emanated warm and steady from the walls. This illumination required no lampwand to excite it, although one such could have been used, had power failed, which, in Arran's memory, had never happened.

  The obscuring film of orange rust which had covered the object of their present attention had yielded to a cursory swipe with an offcast rag saturated in aromatic spirits. (Otherwise Arran's constant companion, Waenzi had departed in olfactory disgust, preferring to brave the fury of the natural elements.) Old Henry had observed, for Arran's benefit, that half a dozen ventilated capsules, filled with moisture-absorbing crystals and placed in the pouch with the weapon, had done their work well, even over what must have been a period of seven hundred years.

  In the end, merely wiping down the weapon had not satisfied the meticulous old man. He had taken it apart, piece by minute piece, guided by Arran knew not what arcane knowledge, examining the condition of each component, cleaning it with a small brush, reassembling everything as if he had always known how it should be done. The number and variety of pins and springs and levers had been bewilder-

  ing. The process had consumed an hour, impressing Arran once again with how complicated the ancient people's artifacts had been, and how clever Old Henry was to fit dozens of odd-shaped puzzle pieces back together in anything resembling the original arrangement.

  For his own part, although he did not say so (opinions might have varied as to the wisdom of this course). Old Henry was impressed with Arran's display, during the prolonged process, of an observant patience many an adult he knew, Skyan or Hanoverian, could never have demonstrated. He had been more impressed that the otherwise independent-minded boy had waited for his help instead of initiating any dangerous experiments himself.

  "That'd be m'guess, anyways. I take this *67' t'be date, likeliest in nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century. Canna guess closer."

  "But I thought—"

  The ceiling was low overhead. Along two outer, intersecting walls, the windows were grime-filmed, dusty-silled, always the case in a utility building not occupied for continuous periods, where the infrequent occupant's attention is upon tasks other than housecleaning. Workbenches lined the windowed walls.

  Arran's face contorted as if in agony. Old Henry could see he was in the throes of a painful strug^e against preconceived notions. It was clear he did not enjoy the sensation, although the old man entertained hopes the boy would someday come to relish this most bitter of conflicts.

  "Another language?" Arran demanded at last. "What else could there be but the language?"

  Old Henry suppressed a chuckle. "Tell Old Henry now, were ye p'raps bom aspeakin' the language, young master?"

  Arran was uncertain that this constituted a logical answer, although proving it was, for the present, somewhat beyond his abilities. Staring sightless across the room, he strained his faculties to recall what seemed to him the remotest past, a time even he realized must feel like no more than yesterday to his elderly companion. What he was looking at, without seeing, was an inner wall, holding bins of raw materials: soil, wastage from septic tanks and a dozen of the Holdings' crops, ores from various locations upon Skye, valves for an

  36 HENRY MARTYN

  underground reservoir of petroleum. Spreighformers could be made to fabricate any object their memories held plans for, but cost and complications varied. Nor could they fabricate from nothing. In practice it was easier to begin with complex compounds, readily available, than to build these one tedious transmutated atom at a time.

  "Indeed, I do not think so, Henry," he answered after a time, "I seem to remember having to learn, to ask the words for things. I recall once asking someone . . . perhaps my mother . . . about the decorative scroll-work carven upon the edges of a secretary. She—whoever it was—mistaking my meaning, told me 'desk.' I remember the frustration of not being able to ask properly. The answer caused me much confusion for a time."

  "Aye," Old Henry was pleased by Arran's reasoning and his open, healthy memory. "An' suppose, lad, if y'can, some other place, some other time, other people usin' different words for things like 'secretary' or even 'mother'?"

  "But why," Arran protested, "would they bother, when perfectly good words already exist for . . . oh. I believe I see what you are getting at. They would feel the same about our choice of words, would they not?"

  Old Henry laughed, knowing it was time to express pleasure with the boy's achievement. "Amounta life-blood's been emptied over such trifles'd fill every loch an' spillet 'pon Skye, boy. Pity most folks be not as quick as ye."

  The final wall consisted of the spreighformers themselves, a pair, each the size of the fireplace in the great hall, indeed somewhat resembling giant ovens. The ultimate accomplishment of the ancient ulsic craft, everything young Arran had ever possessed, every item save perhaps the book Old Henry had given him and some of the precolonial artifacts he had salvaged—including, it was to be presumed, this walther-weapon they were examining—had come from these or other spreighformers. Between them lay the §-field annihilator in whose unreal heart naked atoms danced to different laws, reversing their identities to immolate themselves in the presence of normal matter. This process generated light and heat for the Holdings proper, for dwellings in the countryside

  roundabout, as well as providing occasional rare but necessary elements the spreighformers required.

  For the most part, the annihilator was a simple machine, as were the spreighformers. Unattended, it performed its several tasks without the dubious benefit of moving parts. As with all products of the ulsic, any sophistication in the machinery's character no longer lay in mechanical complication, but in a thousand years of careful thought directed toward its gradual simplification. To Arran's knowledge, indeed to Old Henry's as well, none knew how to build such devices any longer. They had themselves been created in even larger spreighformers which in turn had come from spreighformers even larger. The regression must have had an ending somewhere, but neither of them had ever thought about it.

  The two were quiet for a time. Despite Old Henry's commendation, Arran had missed the happy pride in the old man's voice. But no matter. The ancient Skyan knew the boy would give him reason again to prai
se him soon enough. Another flash was even more dazzling than the one which had come before. Another muffled roar, and rain began to fall in fat drops upon the courtyard flagging outside.

  "So this . . ." Arran stumbled over the unfamiliar word. ". . . this 'vahf-fen-fahb-reek' means something sensible in the— our language?"

  "Aye," Old Henry nodded, "likeliest *pistol-makin' place,' I be thinkin'. *Carl Walther' might be famous maker. We'll find out. Meantimes, I'll teach ye t'make sure this toy be safe afore ye begin t'playin' with it."

  His gnarled thumb pressed the checkered button upon the left side, behind what he had told Arran was the trigger-lever. A black plastic projection at the bottom of the handle, constituting the end of a section within the grip itself, slid out, falling into Old Henry's ready palm.

  "Charge cassette," Old Henry offered, "what they usta be calling ^magazine.' Holds makin's for more thrusts after first be gone. This one be empty though, it seems." He winked at the boy, who realized full well this had already been established, indeed had been the first priority, when Old Henry had cleaned the weapon.

  38 HENRY MARTYN

  "And the first thrust?" Arran's eyes were bright with piqued curiosity. Never had it occurred to him that the ancient weapon might be made to function, that, unlike all other precolonial artifacts he was familiar with, this might serve a purpose other than to hang upon a wall and be wondered about.

  Old Henry tapped the section of the axis—"barrel" he insisted—showing through a sort of window in the upper portion of the weapon. "Never take for granted nothin* about weaponry. We han't looked for a while now. Charge could still be here an' dangerous. Shall we be after takin' a look?"