The Hand of Chaos

9

The great Kicksey-winsey had stopped.

Nobody on Drevlin knew what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened before in all the history of the Gegs.

As long as the Gegs could remember—and because they were dwarves, that was a long time indeed—the wondrous machine had been at work. It worked and it worked. Feverishly, serenely, frantically, obtusely—it worked. Even when parts of the Kicksey-winsey broke down, it worked; other parts worked to repair those that didn’t. No one was ever quite certain what work the Kicksey-winsey did, but all knew, or at least suspected, that it worked well-But now it had stopped.

The ’lectriczingers no longer zinged, they hummed—ominously, some thought. The whirly-wheels neither whirled nor wheeled. They held perfectly still, except for a slight quivering. The flashrafts halted, disrupting transportation throughout the Low Realm. The metal hands of the flashraft that grabbed the overhead cable and—with the help of the ’lectriczingers—pulled the flashraft along were stilled. Palms open, the metal hands reached futilely out to heaven.

The whistle-toots were silent, except for a sigh that escaped them now and then. The black arrows inside the glass boxes—arrows that must never be allowed to point to red—had sagged clear down to the bottom half of the boxes and now pointed at nothing. When it first quit, there had been immediate consternation. Every Geg man, woman, and child—even those off duty, even those involved in the guerrilla action against the Welves—had left his or her post and run to stare at the great—now inactive—machine. There were some who thought that it would start again. The assembled Gegs had waited hopefully... and waited and waited. Scrift-change had come and gone. The marvelous machine had continued to do nothing.

And it was still doing it.

Which meant that the Gegs did nothing. Worse still, it appeared as if they were going to be forced to do nothing without heat and without light. Due to the constant, ferocious storms of the Maelstrom that sweep continually across their isles, the Gegs lived underground. The Kicksey-winsey had always provided heat from the bubble-boils and light from the glimmerglamps. The bubble-boils had stopped bubbling almost at once. The glamps had continued to burn for some time following the shutdown of the machine, but now their flames were fading. Lights all over Drevlin were flickering, going out. And all around, a terrible silence.

The Gegs lived in a world of noise. The first sound a baby heard was the comforting whump, bang, slam of the Kicksey-winsey at work. Now it was no longer working and it was silent. The Gegs were terrified of the silence.

“It’s died!” was the wail that went up simultaneously from a thousand Geg throats, across the isle of Drevlin.

“No, it hasn’t died,” stated Limbeck Bolttightner, peering grimly at one portion of the Kicksey-winsey through his new spectacles. “It’s been murdered.”

“Murdered?” Jarre repeated in an awed whisper. “Who would do such a thing?” But she knew, before she asked.

Limbeck Bolttightner took off his spectacles and wiped them carefully on a clean white handkerchief, a habit he’d formed recently. Then he put his spectacles back on, stared at the machine by the light of a torch (made from a rolled-up sheaf of paper containing one of his speeches). He’d lit it by holding it to the sputtering flame of the fast-fading glimmerglamp.

“The elves.”

“Oh, Limbeck, no,” cried Jarre. “You can’t be right. Why, if the Kicksey-winsey’s stopped working, then it’s stopped producing water, and the Welves—elves—need that water for their people. They’ll die without it. They need the machine just as much as we do. Why would they shut it down?”

“Perhaps they’ve stockpiled water,” said Limbeck coldly. “They’re in control up there, you know. They have armies ringed round the Liftalofts. I see their plan. They’re going to shut the machine down, starve us, freeze us out.” Limbeck shifted his gaze to Jarre, who immediately looked away.

“Jarre!” he snapped. “You’re doing it again.” Jarre flushed, tried very hard to look at Limbeck, but she didn’t like looking at him when he wore his spectacles. They were new, of an original design, and—so he claimed—improved his sight immeasurably. But, due to some peculiarity in the glass, the spectacles had the effect of making his eyes appear small and hard.

Just like his heart, Jarre thought to herself sadly, trying her best to look Limbeck in the face and failing miserably. Giving up, she fixed her gaze on the handkerchief that was a glaring patch of white poking out through the dark mass of long, tangled beard.

The torch burned low. Limbeck gestured to one of his bodyguards, who immediately grabbed another speech, rolled it up, and lit it before the last one could go out.

“I always said your speeches were inflammatory.” Jarre attempted a small joke. Limbeck frowned. “This is no time for levity. I don’t like your attitude, Jarre. I begin to think that you are weakening, my dear. Losing your nerve—”

“You’re right!” Jarre said suddenly, talking to the handkerchief, finding it easier to talk to the handkerchief than to its owner. “I am losing my nerve. I’m afraid—”

“I can’t abide cowards,” remarked Limbeck. “If you’re so scared of the elves that you can no longer function in your position of WUPP Party Sectrary—”

“It’s not the elves, Limbeck!” Jarre clasped her hands tightly together to keep them from yanking off his spectacles and stomping all over them. “It’s us! I’m afraid of us! I’m afraid of you and... and you”—she pointed at one of the Geg bodyguards, who appeared highly flattered and proud of himself—“and you and you! And me. I’m afraid of myself! What have we become, Limbeck? What have we become?”

“I don’t know what you mean, my dear.” Limbeck’s voice was hard and sharp as his new spectacles, which he took off once again and started to clean.

“We used to be peace-loving. Never in the history of the Gegs did we ever kill anyone—”

“Not ‘Gegs’!” said Limbeck sternly.

Jarre ignored him. “Now we live for killing! Some of the young people, that’s all they think about now. Killing Welves—”

“Elves, my dear,” Limbeck corrected her. “I’ve told you. The term ‘welves’ is a slave word, taught to us by our ‘masters.’ And we’re not Gegs, we’re dwarves. The word ‘Gegs’ is derogatory, used to keep us in our place.” He put the spectacles back on, glared at her. The torchlight shining from beneath him (the dwarf holding the torch was unusually short) sent the shadows cast by the spectacles swooping upward, giving Limbeck a remarkably sinister appearance. Jarre couldn’t help looking at him now, stared at him with a terrible fascination.

“Do you want to go back to being a slave, Jarre?” Limbeck asked her. “Should we give in and crawl to the elves and grovel at their feet and kiss their little skinny behinds and tell them we’re sorry, we’ll be good little Gegs from now on? Is that what you want?”

“No, of course not.” Jarre sighed, wiped away a tear that was creeping down her cheek. “But we could talk to them. Negotiate. I think the Wel—elves—are as sick of this fighting as we are.”

“You’re damn right, they’re sick of it,” said Limbeck, with satisfaction.

“They know they can’t win.”

“And neither can we! We can’t overthrow the whole Tribus empire! We can’t take to the skies and fly up to Aristagon and do battle.”

“And they can’t overthrow us either! We can live for generations down here in our tunnels and they’ll never find us—”

“Generations!” Jarre shouted. “Is that what you want, Limbeck? War that will last generations! Children who will grow up never knowing anything but hiding and running and fear?”

“At least they’ll be free,” Limbeck said, hooking his spectacles back over his ears.

“No, they won’t. So long as you’re afraid, you’re never free,” Jarre answered softly.

Limbeck didn’t respond. He was silent.

The silence was terrible. Jarre hated the silence. It was sad and mournful and heavy and reminded her of something, someplace, someone. Alfred. Alfred and the mausoleum. The secret tunnels beneath the statue of the Manger, the rows of crystal coffins with the bodies of the beautiful young dead people. It had been silent down there, too, and Jarre had been afraid of the silence. Don’t stop! she’d told Alfred.

Stop what? Alfred had been rather obtuse.

Talking! It’s the quiet! I can’t stand listening to it!

And Alfred had comforted her. These are my friends.... Nobody here can harm you. Not anymore. Not that they would have anyway—at least, not intentionally. And then Alfred had said something that Jarre had remembered, had been saying to herself a lot lately.

But how much wrong have we done unintentionally, meaning the best.

“Meaning the best,” she repeated, talking to fill the dreadful silence.

“You’ve changed, Jarre,” Limbeck told her sternly.

“So have you,” she countered.

And after that, there wasn’t much to say, and they stood there, in Limbeck’s house, listening to the silence. The bodyguard shuffled his feet and tried to look as if he’d gone deaf and hadn’t heard a word.

The argument was taking place in Limbeck’s living quarters—his current dwelling in Wombe, not his old house in Het. It was a very fine apartment by Geg standards, suited to be the dwelling place of the High Froman,[17] which is what Limbeck now was. Admittedly, the apartment was not as fine as the holding tank where the previous High Froman, Darral Longshoreman, used to live. But the holding tank had been too near the surface—and consequently too near the elves, who had taken over the surface of Drevlin.

Limbeck, along with the rest of his people, had been forced to delve far beneath the surface, seek shelter down below. This had been no hardship for the dwarves.[18] The great Kicksey-winsey was constantly delving and drilling and boring. Hardly a cycle passed without a new tunnel being discovered somewhere in Wombe or Het or Lek or Herat or any of the other Geg towns on Drevlin. Which was fortunate, because the Kicksey-winsey, for no apparent reason that anyone could see, would often bury, crush, fill up, or otherwise destroy previously existing tunnels. The dwarves took this philosophically, burrowing out of collapsed tunnels and trudging oft to seek new ones.

Of course, now that the Kicksey-winsey had stopped working, there would be no more collapses, no more new tunnels either. No more light, sound, heat. Jarre shivered, wished she hadn’t thought about heat. The torch was starting to fizzle and die. Swiftly, Limbeck rolled up another speech.

Limbeck’s living quarters were located far below the surface, one of the lowest points on Drevlin, directly beneath the large building known as the Factree. A series of steep, narrow stairs led down from a hallway to another hallway, which led to the hallway in front of Limbeck’s apartment. The steps, the hall, the apartment were not carved out of the coralite, as were most of the other tunnels made by the Kicksey-winsey. The steps were made of smooth stone, the hall had smooth walls, the floor was smooth, as was the ceiling. Limbeck’s apartment even had a door, a real door, with writing on it. None of the dwarves could read the writing and accepted Limbeck’s pronouncement—that BOILER ROOM meant HIGH FROMAN—without question. Inside the apartment, things were a bit cramped, due to the presence of a large and extremely imposing-looking part of the Kicksey-winsey. The gigantic contraption, with its innumerable pipes and tanks, no longer worked and had not worked for a long, long time, just as the Factree itself had not worked for as long as the dwarves could remember. The Kicksey-winsey had moved on, leaving this part of itself behind.

Jarre, not wanting to look at Limbeck in the spectacles, fixed her gaze on the contraption, and she sighed.

“The old Limbeck would have taken the thing apart by now,” she said to herself, whispering, to fill up the silence. “He would have spent all his time hammering this and unscrewing that and all the time asking why, why, why. Why is it here? Why did it work? Why did it stop?

“You never ask ‘why’ anymore, do you, Limbeck?” Jarre said aloud.

“Why what?” Limbeck muttered, preoccupied.

Jarre sighed again. Limbeck either didn’t hear her, or ignored her.

“We’ve got to go to the surface,” he said. “We’ve got to find out how the elves managed to shut down the Kicksey-winsey—”

The sound of footsteps, shuffling and slow—those made by a group trying to descend a steep staircase in pitch darkness, punctuated by an occasional crash and muffled curse—interrupted him.

“What’s that?” asked Jarre, alarmed.

“Elves!” said Limbeck, looking fierce.

He scowled at the bodyguard, who was also looking alarmed, but—at the sight of his leader’s frown—altered his expression to look fierce, as well. Shouts of “Froman! High Froman!” filtered through the closed door.

“Our people,” said Limbeck, annoyed. “They want me to tell them what to do, I suppose.”

“You are the High Froman,” Jarre reminded him with some asperity.

“Yes, well, I’ll tell them what to do,” Limbeck snapped. “Fight. Fight and keep on fighting. The elves have made a mistake, shutting down the Kicksey-winsey. Some of our people weren’t too keen on bloodshed before, but now they will be! The elves will rue the day—”

“Froman!” Several voices howled at once. “Where are you?”

“They can’t see,” said Jarre.

Taking the torch from Limbeck, she flung open the door, trotted out into the hallway.

“Lof?” she called, recognizing one of the dwarves. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Limbeck came to stand next to her. “Greetings, Fellow Warrior in the Battle to End Tyranny.”

The dwarves, shaken from their perilous trip down the stairs in the darkness, looked startled. Lof glanced around nervously, searching for such a fearsome-sounding personage.

“He means you,” said Jarre curtly.

“He does?” Lof was impressed, so impressed that he forgot momentarily why he’d come.

“You were calling me,” said Limbeck. “What do you want? If it’s about the Kicksey-winsey stopping work, I’m preparing a statement—”

“No, no! A ship, Yonor,” answered several at once. “A ship!”

“A ship has landed Outside.” Lof waved a hand vaguely upward. “Yonor,” he added belatedly and somewhat sullenly. He had never liked Limbeck.

“An elf ship?” Limbeck asked eagerly. “Crashed? Is it still there? Can you see any elves moving about? Prisoners,” he said in an aside to Jarre. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for. We can interrogate them and then use them for hostages—”

“No,” said Lof, after some thought.

“No what?” demanded Limbeck, irritated.

“No, Yonor.”

“I mean, what do you mean, by saying no.”

Lof considered. “No the ship hasn’t crashed and no it’s not a Welf ship and no I didn’t see anyone.”

“How do you know it’s not a Wel—elf ship? Of course, it has to be an elf ship. What other kind of ship could it be?”

“ ’Tisn’t,” stated Lof. “I should know a Welf ship when I see one. I was on one once.” He glanced at Jarre, hoping she’d be impressed. Jarre was the main reason Lof didn’t like Limbeck. “Leastwise, I was close to one, the time we attacked the ship at the Liftalofts. This ship doesn’t have wings, for one thing. And it didn’t fall out of the skies, like the Welf ships do. This one sort of floated down gently, like it meant it. And,” he added, eyes still on Jarre, having saved the best for last, “it’s all covered with pictures.”

“Pictures...” Jarre glanced at Limbeck uneasily. His eyes, behind his glasses, had a hard, bright gleam. “Are you sure, Lof? It’s dark Outside and there must have been a storm—”

“’Course I’m sure.” Lof wasn’t to be denied his moment of glory. “I was standing in the Whuzel-wump, on watch, and the next thing I know this ship that looks like a ... like a... well, like him.” Lof pointed at his exalted leader. “Kind of round in the middle and sawed off at both ends.” Fortunately, Limbeck had removed his spectacles and was thoughtfully polishing them again, and so missed the comparison.

“Anyway,” Lof continued, swelling with importance, noting that everyone, including the High Froman, was hanging on every word, “the ship sailed right smack out of the clouds and plunked itself down and sat there. And it’s all covered with pictures, I could see ’em in the lightning.”

“And the ship wasn’t damaged?” Limbeck asked, replacing his spectacles.

“Not a bit of it. Not even when the hailstones the size of you, Yonor, came smash down onto it. Not even when the wind was tossing pieces of the Kicksey-winsey up into the air. The ship just sat there, snug as could be.”

“Maybe it’s dead,” said Jarre, trying hard not to sound hopeful.

“I saw a light inside and someone moving around. It’s not dead.”

“It isn’t dead,” said Limbeck. “It’s Haplo. It has to be. A ship with pictures, just like the ship I found on the Terrel Fen. He’s come back!” Jarre walked over to Lof, grabbed hold of his beard, sniffed at him and wrinkled her nose. “Like I thought. He’s had his head in the ale barrel. Don’t pay any attention to him, Limbeck.”

Giving the astounded Lof a shove that sent him rolling backward into his fellows, Jarre took hold of Limbeck’s arm and attempted to turn him around, drag him back inside his quarters.

Once his feet were planted, Limbeck, like all dwarves, was not easily moved. (Jarre had caught Lof off guard.) Limbeck shook Jarre loose, brushing her off his arm as if she were a bit of lint.

“Did any of the elves sight the ship, Lof?” Limbeck asked. “Make any attempt to contact it or see who was inside?”

Limbeck was forced to repeat his questions several times. The puzzled Lof, reestablished on his feet by his comrades, was staring in hurt bewilderment at Jarre.

“What’d I do?” he demanded.

“Limbeck, please—” Jarre begged, tugging again on Limbeck’s arm.

“My dear, leave me be,” said Limbeck, staring at her through the glittering spectacles. His tone was stern, even harsh.

Jarre slowly dropped her hands. “Haplo did this to you,” she said softly.

“Haplo did this to all of us.”

“Yes, we owe him a great deal.” Limbeck turned away from her. “Now, Lof. Were there any elves around? If so, Haplo might be in danger—”

“No Welves, Yonor.” Lof shook his head. “I haven’t seen a Welf since the machine stopped running. I—Ouch!”

Jarre had kicked him hard in the shins.

“What’d you go and do that for?” Lof roared.

Jarre made no response, marched on past him and the rest of the dwarves without a glance at any of them.

Returning to the BOILER ROOM, she whipped around, pointed a quivering finger at Limbeck. “He’ll be the ruin of us! You’ll see!” She slammed the door shut.

The dwarves stood perfectly still, afraid to move. Jarre had taken the torch with her.

Limbeck frowned, shook his head, shrugged, and continued the sentence that had been so violently interrupted. “Haplo might be in danger. We don’t want the elves to capture him.”

“Anyone got a light?” ventured one of Lof’s companions. Limbeck ignored this question as unimportant. “We’ll have to go rescue him.”

“Go Outside?” The dwarves were aghast.

“I’ve been Outside,” Limbeck reminded them tersely.

“Good. You go Outside and get him. We’ll watch,” said Lof.

“Not without light we won’t,” muttered another.

Limbeck glared angrily at his compatriots, but the glare was rather ineffective since no one could see it.

Lof, who had apparently been giving the matter thought, piped up. “Isn’t this the Haplo who’s a god—”

“There are no gods,” Limbeck snapped.

“Well, then, Yonor”—Lof was not to be deterred—“the Haplo who battled that wizard you’re always talking about?”

“Sinistrad. Yes, that’s Haplo. Now you see—”

“Then he won’t need rescuing!” Lof concluded in triumph. “He can rescue himself!”

“Anyone who can fight a wizard can fight elves,” said another, speaking with the firm conviction of one who had never seen an elf up close. “They’re not so tough.”

Limbeck checked an impulse to strangle his Fellow Warriors in the Battle to End Tyranny. He took off his spectacles, polished them on the large white cloth. He was quite fond of his new spectacles. He could see through them with remarkable clarity. Unfortunately, the lenses were so thick that they slid down his nose, unless held on by strong wire bows wrapped tightly about his ears. The bows pinched him painfully, the strong lenses made his eyeballs ache, the nosepiece dug into his flesh, but he could see quite well. At times like this, however, he wondered why he bothered. Somehow or other, the revolution, like a runaway flashraft, had veered off the track and been derailed. Limbeck had tried backing it up, had tried turning it around, but nothing had worked. Now, at last, he saw a glimmer of hope. He wasn’t derailed, after all. Merely sitting on a siding. And what he’d first considered a terrible disaster—the demise of the Kicksey-winsey—might well work to get the revolution going again. He put his spectacles back on.

“The reason we don’t have any light is because—”

“Jarre took the torch?” inserted Lof helpfully.

“No!” Limbeck sucked in a deep breath, clenched his hands to fists to keep his fingers from Lof’s throat. “The elves shut down the Kicksey-winsey.” Silence. Then, “Are you sure?” Lof sounded dubious.

“What other explanation could there be? The elves have shut it down. They plan to starve us, freeze us out. Maybe use their magic to come on us in the dark and kill us all. Are we going to just sit here and take it or are we going to fight?”

“Fight!” shouted the dwarves, anger rumbling through the darkness like the storms that swept the land above.

“That’s why we need Haplo. Are you with me?”

“Yes, Yonor!” cried the Fellow Warriors.

Their enthusiasm was considerably dampened when two of them started to march off and ended up nose-first against a wall.

“How can we fight what we can’t see?” Lof grumbled.

“We can see,” said Limbeck, undaunted. “Haplo told me that once long ago dwarves like us lived all their lives underground, in dark places. And so they learned to see in the dark. We’ve been dependent on light. Now that the light is gone, we’ll have to do like our ancestors and learn to see and fight and live in darkness. Gegs couldn’t manage. Gegs couldn’t do it. But dwarves can. Now”—Limbeck drew a deep breath—“everyone forward. Follow me.” He advanced a step and another and another. He didn’t run into anything. And he realized that he could see! Not very clearly; he couldn’t have read one of his speeches, for example. But it seemed as if the walls had absorbed some of the light that had been shining on the dwarves for as long as they could remember and that light, out of gratitude, was giving some of itself back. Limbeck could see the walls and the floor and the ceiling shining faintly. He could see the silhouettes of his Fellow Warriors stand out black against the light. Moving on, he could see the break in the walls made by the staircase, could see the stairs running upward, a pattern of darkness and faint, eerie light.

Behind him, he heard the other dwarves gasp in awe, knew that he wasn’t alone. They could see, too. His heart swelled with pride for his people.

“Things will change now,” he said to himself, marching up the stairs, hearing the bold footsteps marching right behind. The revolution was back on track, and, if not exactly rushing along, at least it was rolling.

He could almost have thanked the elves.

Jarre wiped away a few tears, stood with her back planted against the door, waiting for Limbeck to knock, meekly request the torch. She’d give it to him, she decided, and give him a piece of her mind as well-Listening to the voices, she heard what sounded like Limbeck, launching into a speech. She sighed gustily, tapped her foot on the floor.

The torch had nearly burned out. Jarre grabbed another sheaf of speeches, set them ablaze. She heard “Fight!” in a loud roar, then a thud against the wall. Jarre laughed, but her laugh was bitter. She put her hand on the doorknob. Then, inexplicably, she heard the sound of marching feet, felt the heavy vibrations of many pairs of thick dwarven boots clumping down the hall.

“Let them bang their fool heads on the wall a couple of times,” she muttered.

“They’ll be back.”

But there was only silence.

Jarre opened the door a crack, peeped out.

The hallway was empty.

“Limbeck?” Jarre cried, flinging the door wide. “Lof? Anyone?” No response. Far away, she heard the sound of boots thumping determinedly up the stairs. Bits of Limbeck’s speech, turned to glowing ash, drifted down from the torch, fell on the floor at her feet.