Engn II

XI

XIFinn sat in the nest of arching branches high up in his oak on Three Tree Hill. The oak he had climbed so often as a boy. It had always been the one place in the whole world purely his. No one else ever came here. For some reason he'd never even told Connor about it. He could still climb this wide, towering tree with his eyes shut, his limbs remembering the dance of movements required to reach each branch and fork. The words he had carved into the rugged flesh of the old bark were still there. His name. A series of dates, the earliest from when he was eight. No one else had ever added any.

He remembered the day, years ago, just after Shireen had been taken, he'd climbed up there to try and see over the mountain tops to Engn. He'd failed, of course, but he had seen Connor coming across the fields from the farm, killing crows with his catapult. Finn still recalled his alarm as Connor had started firing at him. His panicky escape across the branches of the three trees. Things were very different now. Finn longed to see Connor again, longed to see him wading through the high grass to stand underneath the tree and explain everything. Explain what Finn was supposed to do. Explain precisely the terrible secrets he'd unearthed in Engn.

They'd gone there to destroy it, and they had destroyed it, but clearly Connor had realized that wasn't enough. There was more to be done. This particle in the Hub was at the heart of it. Had that been destroyed? If not, it had to be. They had to make sure everything was annihilated, so completely it could never be rebuilt. That had to be Connor's message.

Finn sighed. Was that right? If only Connor was there to simply tell him. But his boyhood friend was dead. He survived only as a series of flickering, ghostly images in a glass orb. And now that, too, was broken. He had lost Connor forever. Everything had been left up to Finn. And Diane, if she could be persuaded.

It was still early in the morning. Light was beginning to fill the valley, colour washing over the sides of the mountains to bring the fields and houses back to life. Finn had crept from bed, leaving Diane still slumbering. He needed time to think. To make plans. He'd barely slept. He never did when they argued. He'd spent the night twisting and turning, knotting himself up in the bed sheets, anxiety a sharp lump of jagged metal in his stomach. There was only one thing they ever argued about. Engn. Connor. The memory spindle. It was all the same thing. They had done all they could already. She was weary of the whole thing. And, in truth, so was he. He had suffered enough in Engn to never want to go back. But he couldn't let it drop. Why couldn't she see?

They talked, sometimes, about having children. Not now, not any time soon. But one day. And because of that he understood why she wanted to stay in the valley, build their life there and not go chasing off across the plain again. But the thought of having children of his own just made him more determined to find out what was going on. To make sure the pattern didn't repeat.

His father had once apologized to Finn for not trying to do what Finn had done. And if Finn didn't act now, he might end up saying the same thing himself one day. Apologizing to his own child as the ironclads came for them. He didn't want to bring up a family in a world where anything like that was possible. He wished, he really wished, he could put it all out of his mind, live his life with Diane, here among the people he'd grown up with, the people he loved. But he couldn't. He'd tried many times since coming home. Tried to lose himself in the daily routine, the simple things, but it wasn't going to work. Recent events made it clear. The earthquakes, the timing signals, Connor's mother, the encrypted messages, the ancient images on the memory spindle. He could see no alternative. They had to go back to the shattered ruins of Engn with work still to be done. Connor, even from beyond the grave, still needed them to do something. To complete the destruction they'd started.

And, somehow, he had to persuade Diane to come with him. Again.

And Whelm? Would the ex-master travel with them? He'd been there recently; he would be useful. But that wasn't going to make it any easier with Diane. He didn't see how he could ever persuade them both to come with him.

He rose to his feet in the crook of the curving branches, hoping to shake these troubling thoughts from his mind with activity. He hadn't climbed up there to mope. He'd come up to work something out. See what he needed to see.

The idea had occurred to him some time in the night, as he drifted in and out of confused nightmares. The ancient line-of-sight scope in Connor's mother's room had to be another piece of the puzzle. If it was possible she was able to use it without the messages passing through the normal network; it might help explain Connor's ascent to his position as apprentice Director. Perhaps she'd been secretly conversing with Engn all along. With people in power there. She had family ties to the old guilds, perhaps there'd been people at Engn who still listened to her. And if that was the case, perhaps they were still there, and perhaps Finn could find answers of his own from them. Answers that might help persuade Diane.

He thought back, trying to place in his mind where her room had been in the farmhouse. He hadn't seen through her shuttered windows, so it was hard to be sure. He'd become so mazed in those endless, echoing rooms he'd lost track of which side of the house her room was in. But – he remembered now – the sunlight had been slanting through the blinds when he entered, barred shadows lining the floor. Which meant her room had faced east. The 'scope had been pointing upwards and to the left, so that would mean it was facing perhaps northeast.

The farm buildings sat in a little dell; he could just make out the very top of them from his vantage position. With his outstretched finger he tried to trace the line of where the 'scope might be pointing. Up out of the dell, between those two stands of trees, directly over the rolling fields, across the lane and up into the woods and … there.

He pointed at a patch of trees on the steep slopes of the valley sides. A part of the forest he knew well enough, a place where large mossy boulders littered the floor, as if strewn there by giants. The trees seemed to grow directly out of them, their roots writhing across the stone in search of soil. A strange place. Why would a 'scope point there?

He shinned down the tree, unravelling the movements of his ascent and dropping the last five feet to clump to the ground. He moved at a half jog up to the tree line. Beneath the boughs it was still night. He could see only a few yards. He moved inside, weaving between the trees, his feet following the lines of the woodland pathways his eyes couldn't see.

Fifteen minutes later, breathing heavily, his side hurting sharply, he sat upon one of the tallest rocks and gazed out over the world. There was a clear gap in the canopy there, where the scatter of too many rocks prevented the trees from growing. A wispy mist lifted off the canopy as if burning with a cold fire. He could see right across the valley, between the two distant stands of trees and directly to the upper story of the farmhouse. The windows in the rooms up there glinted as the rising sun caught them. There could be no doubt; this was where the 'scope had been pointing.

Skidding down the rock, he searched around in the undergrowth. But that made no sense. A mirror down there would get quickly overgrown. It had to be high up, on one of the tall boulders. He climbed each one, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Some were close enough for him to leap between, but with most he had to jump down to climb from ground level. He and Connor had done just that often enough, yet they'd never spotted anything. Perhaps there was nothing there, and the whole thing was another of Connor's mother's delusions.

Fifteen minutes later, just as he was about to give up and get back home, he found it. A mirror, concealed in a hollow carved out of the face of one of the tallest rocks. It was too high to reach from the ground, but by holding on to the top of the rock with one hand and feeling around with his other, stretching as far down the vertical face as he dared, he'd found it. The smooth surface could only be a mirror. It felt solid, like it had been cemented in. How long had it been there? And how often had he passed by it without knowing?

Holding onto the rock with just his fingers he leaned down to try and get a better look at the mirror. He needed to follow its angle, see where it pointed. He found a narrow foothold, little more than a diagonal c***k in the face of the rock and swung his foot around into it. If he kept his foot sideways to the rock, he could just about support himself. He crouched down, balancing precariously by his toehold in the fissure, and leaned towards the mirror. At that moment, dim lights flickered in it. He pulled his hand away sharply, not wanting anyone to know he was there, interrupting the message. Was this a line-of-sight being sent directly to Engn? He crouched there, his right leg cramping from the strain of supporting him while he tried to read the pattern of flashes.

He got nothing. Probably it was encrypted. The light was also, for some reason, red, while normal line-of-sight light was white. The lenses in the 'scope in her room had been red, too, hadn't they? The tiny detail came back to him now. That had to be something to do with how this worked. Perhaps, somewhere, messages for this secret network were kept isolated from normal one by filters and prisms splitting off the red light. That could work if there were enough repeater stations to keep the signal amplified. Or perhaps they'd simply used red light in the old days.

When the message stopped, he leaned forwards again, trying to get his face as close to the mirror as he could. His leg and arms were shaking with the effort as he held himself there, looking at the slant of the small sheet of silvered glass, trying to gauge with his eyes where it would bounce messages to. There. Not back down the valley as he'd supposed, but directly back across to the far slopes. And much higher up, too, at the snow line capping the high hills from early autumn to late spring.

He held himself for a moment, puzzled. Was that what they did? Bounced the messages to and fro, higher and higher and then over the mountains to cross the plain? He'd never heard of anyone even climbing the high peaks. Nothing lived up there unless it was an occasional swan, flying impossibly high in the thin air, a distant white X in the sky. Was this the original line-of-sight route perhaps, built before the one they now all used?

He crouched there pondering for too long. His shaking foot suddenly slipped from the thin crevice and he was sliding down the face of the boulder, scraping skin off his hands and knees and cheek. He crashed into the ground, landing heavily on his shoulder, rolling over into a clump of ferns and nettles.

Groaning, he worked his way back to his feet. Both his hands bled, flecks of grit under flaps of separated skin. He'd have to get to the river, wash out his wounds. He peered upwards at the rock for a moment, then across the valley to the distant slopes. He had only a rough idea where the next mirror would be.

It took him five hours to find it. High up in the woods across the valley, the carpets of pine needles gave way to little cliffs of stone that were the start of the sheer rock faces of the true peaks. His breathing was laboured, painful in his chest as he worked his way up the slope. But he found the second mirror wedged into place in a sconce in the rocks, angled to receive the messages from the first mirror and relay them back across the valley once again. Across the valley and up. It was aimed at a notch in the distant line of peaks. There had to be another mirror up there. A mirror or a lens or maybe even a repeater station, angling the message back down and across the great grass plain to Engn, catching the light of the sun and using it to transmit the faint message stronger and brighter. From there the signal would find stations marching across the plains, its red light marking it out, keeping it separate. As he sat there, another message flickered in the glass. Outbound or inbound? It was impossible to tell. Was it Connor's mother talking to Engn? And if so, was anyone listening? Or was this a reply? A message from the machine coming in for her?

He didn't need to attempt those unreachable slopes. He'd seen enough. If he couldn't get answers from Connor, he could at least get answers from his mother. She, clearly, knew much more than she'd said. If he confronted her with what he'd learned about the red line-of-sight network, she'd have to tell him. He would go back there now. Demand answers.

He weaved his way between the reaching boughs of the trees, sliding sometimes in a mini avalanche of pine needles. He jumped over a chortling brook, realizing as he did so that it was the same one that he and Connor had often tried, uselessly, to dam.

As the ground levelled out, he reached the edge of the trees. He crossed the narrow gap to cultivation and climbed over the hedgerow marking the start of the fields. Once he wouldn't have dared trespass like that, but there was no one to chase him away now. No one worked the farm and people grazed their own animals without anyone stopping them. A few wary cows were there, watching him mournfully while continuing to chew.

He was in sight of the farmhouse when his legs wobbled beneath him. At first, he thought he'd run too much, or he'd injured himself in the fall. But there was no pain. He stopped, puzzled. The wobbling became a lurching and then a shaking. It was only then he understood what was happening. An earthquake. Another earthquake. The ground bucked and threw him to the grassy ground. The impact caused him to bite his tongue with one of his remaining teeth, filling his mouth with the taste of blood.

Cracking booms echoed from the woods behind him, the trees splintering as the shaking ground snapped them into pieces. The ground beneath him tossed him again and again into the air. He could see the field heaving in waves like a slow sea. More trees fell, crashing to the ground with a roar and an explosion of splintered branches.

From somewhere distant, up the valley or down the valley, he heard high-pitched screams. Screams of raw terror. He scrambled to his feet and staggered forwards. Again and again he was thrown aside, hurled to the ground. He headed for the farmhouse, although he knew it would be madness to go inside the old building. The reassuring, solid bulk of the stone walls pulled him in. Again, he was thrown to the ground, and he felt the earth beneath him subsiding, slipping away as if the ground had been hollow all along. The field was being sucked into a cavern. A c***k was opening in the ground, wider and wider, tufts of grass and sods of earth tilting over and falling in. It was like the day Engn collapsed and they'd raced from the walls before it swallowed them. Finn tried run, lurching forwards as quickly as he could.

He was nearly at the farmhouse when the sound of thunder boomed around him. He stopped, confused, unable to work out where it had come from. The sky about him was cloudless, although a mist of dust filled the air.

Then, looking ahead, he saw what it was. The old farmhouse, Connor's farmhouse, was collapsing. The walls buckled and shattered, the upper floors crashing down to the ground with a rattling boom, throwing a great bloom of dust across the ground towards Finn. He threw himself down, covering his head with his arms and lay there, tasting grit, while debris rained down on him. He didn't know whether he'd be crushed by the falling walls or swallowed up by the ground. He lay where he was and waited for it all to stop.

Finally, after long, long minutes, a great stunned silence swept through the valley. The earth lay beneath him, solid again, as if exhausted from its exertions. Finn pushed himself to his feet, a thick layer of dust sloughing off him as he stood. He spat out dirt and tried to see through the blooms of dust filling the air what had happened to the farmhouse.

He soon saw. Where the old building had stood only minutes before there was now a miniature mountain range of rubble.

He ran to the ruined building and pulled on the nearest boulders, hoping to find some way in. It was no use. The jagged lumps of stone were far too large for him to budge. In any case, there was nothing to unearth but more rubble. If he wanted to find Connor's mother, he had to get to the top of the pile and burrow down from there. He climbed his way up the dusty, shifting pile of stone, again and again putting his foot through into some cavity within the pile. Here and there, blades of glass protruded from the wreckage, threatening to slice his feet open. Once the stones he was standing on collapsed inwards completely and he thought he was going to fall right down to ground level. Bare rafters, like the exposed ribs of some giant creature, caught him. He shouted into the dark interior, calling for Connor's mother, for anyone, but no one replied. Coughing with the dust, he called again and again.

Finally, he worked his way into the middle of the mountain, thinking perhaps some of the building might have survived. He pushed aside roof tiles and stones, sending them tumbling and crashing down to the ground. After half an hour, he'd worked his way down little more than a foot. Instead of the room he'd hoped to reach, he'd exposed only more stone. He stopped and stood there, panting heavily. The truth he'd been trying to ignore hit him. No one could have survived. Connor's mother wasn't down there waiting to be rescued. The collapsing building had crushed her as it had crushed everything.

From nowhere it occurred to him where he'd seen the face of Master Adage before. Not in Engn. The painting over Connor's mother's bed. The features were the same, and the gold chain with the clock. The meaning was clear. Adage was some ancient forebear of Connor's mother. And, therefore, of Connor.

“Finn.”

He looked down through the plumes of dust still drifting in the air to see Diane. Grime coated her. His heart leapt with alarm as he saw she'd been cut on her forehead, the red gash clear even at this distance.

“Diane.”

She ran forwards to the foot of the rubble. “Finn. We didn't know where you were. We've been looking for you everywhere. Finn, I'm … I'm sorry. You have to come.”

Something had happened. He could see from her manner. He waded his way back down the shifting mountain of stone.

“What is it?” he called. “Is it the machine? Did the earthquake crush it?”

“The machine?”

“The spindle reader.”

“No, no. Not that. But it was a bigger quake, Finn. More buildings have collapsed.”

He half fell back down to ground level and staggered up to her. He could see she'd been crying now, the grime on her cheeks smeared. He put his arms around her and held her for a moment. Her body shook in his arms. Then he held her at arms' length.

“Which houses, Diane?”

“Finn, I'm sorry. Your father's workshop. It collapsed. We're trying to get him out now. Finn, you have to come.”