Globe-on-a-stick rotated slightly, precisely, then back, a dozen times. Like an escapement, each rotation very crisp.
'Acceptable,' it replied.
'Right. Acceptable.' I stood up, shivering as a handful of Fehn-slugs clattered to the floor, falling from hidden folds of my person. 'Sorry about those pipes. Hope I didn't cause you any discomfort.'
'The fetters. The user was disconcerted about their removal. His displeasure was measured corporeally.' Rotate, spin, slither closer. 'Remunerations are due.'
'Uh, so.' I backed away, stepping carefully out of the suit. 'You're upset by this?'
'Remunerations are due, and the balance will be paid.' The whole pillar undulated as the Mother approached, its base a carpet of slugs. As it approached, the carpet overran my suit. Halfway through consuming it the Mother paused and lowered her eye-globe to the ground. 'New schematic. Processing.'
The slugs in the room shifted, then dived for the suit. I pranced out of the way as they swarmed over the iron carapace. I wasn't going to be able to get back in there, no matter what. The memory of wriggling slugs in my throat was too much, and watching them treat the suit like a lunch buffet was disconcerting. That could be me, if I hadn't woken up.
'Archived,' the Mother declared, then returned her attention to me. 'Remuneration.'
I held out my hands. I didn't want to be remunerated, whether that meant the Mother intended to pay me, or if it felt I owed it something. Didn't want to know what sort of currency the Mother of the Fehn dealt in.
'The man who fettered you — wait a second.' She was still approaching me. 'The man who installed those pipes and killed all of your children, his name is Ezekiel Crane. Or Maker, if you know that name.'
That stopped her. If a giant globe of light on top of a pillar of squirming slugs could ever be called curious, then the Mother Fehn was curious.
'The Family Maker was exiled in the eightieth year of the Reclamation, as declared by the Founders of the city. Their kin was purged. Their tree was burned to the root.'
Strange to hear such an alien creature speaking in metaphor. I shrugged, then explained what I knew of Crane. What he had done, and what he was trying to do. She waited attentively until I was done. I ended with my theory that Crane had allowed himself to be captured by the angel Camilla, although I could only speculate as to what end. The Mother didn't move for several seconds, then turned to face me with its broad, glowing eye.
'These are relevant historical notes. Thank you for entering them into the archive. Will user be available to supplement the archive following the events at the Church of the Algorithm?'
'Supplement?' I asked.
'This line of history is not complete. We would like our records to be accurate.'
'I'm not recording this for history. I want to know if there's anything you can do about it.'
'Record. Archive. Report,' the Mother said. 'What we have always done.'
'Is there anything you can tell me about how to stop it?'
'Disambiguate. Stop recording. Stop archiving. Stop ambient lighting function. Stop communications…'
'Stop it,' I snapped, then realized that would just require further disambiguation. 'I need to know how to stop Crane from destroying the city. I need to know what he's done to Camilla, or what he plans to do.'
'Conjecture. Outside of parameters. Restate.'
'Gods in hell, this was a valuable outing.' I rubbed my face, then started when I opened my eyes. The slugs had formed a circle around me, leaving only a few feet in all directions. 'Get these damned things away from me!'
'Clarify range requirements.'
'Away!'
'Estimating,' the Mother said, then rotated slightly. The slugs backed off. Four inches.
'Much, much farther away,' I snapped. The slugs fled to the far corners of the room. I sighed. 'Good enough. Now. What was it that Valentine said about you. That you were something like a library, only a mad little bit of one? That seems pretty accurate. Mother, what do you know about Crane's plans for Camilla?'
'Cross-referencing previous user with queries regarding the servitor colloquially known as Camilla. Result. Transcript begins…'
'Summarize,' I said.
'Summary. There are three hundred fifty three direct instances of nodal activity on this subject. Fifty-two additional instances can be related to similar…'
'Never mind. Give me the transcript.'
'Verbal or printed?'
'Printed?'
Paper appeared. For all the world, it looked like a pile of slugs in the corner vomited a neat stack of papers, and there were fewer slugs in that area afterward. It was as creepy a bit of administrative work as I've ever seen.
But the transcript was fascinating. Crane spent a lot of time struggling with the Mother's peculiar way of communicating. He kept interrupting her and restating his questions in continually more complicated ways. I lost the train of their conversation frequently. But so did Crane, if the number of times he had to start his line of questioning over from the beginning was any indication.
A pattern emerged. There were two lines of inquiry. First, Crane asked a lot of questions about the connection between how cogwork and the Artificers' magic worked. Apparently they were the same discipline, differently practiced. I didn't know enough about that to really understand it, other than to say that Wilson's theory was correct. Ezekiel's crows served the same purpose as the maker beetles, providing material and schematics to whatever the user was trying to create. Where he lost me was the connection between the maker beetles and foetal metal.
Cogwork was created through the use of foetal metal, a silvery liquid similar to mercury, only more pewter in color. Some sort of pattern was imposed on the metal, usually through the use of memorized calculations and other near-mystic mental techniques. Understanding how those patterns were formed was the Wright's talent, supposedly gifted to him by his years of study in the revelation of the Algorithm. The metal was then injected into the subject, and cogwork formed like crystals in suspension. This was why cogwork only functioned in living creatures, why the zepliners required the living machine of the pilot to function. Something about the blood, or the flesh.
And apparently the Artificers worked in similar ways, except they seemed to believe that the foetal metal was already in all living things, and only needed to be tapped. I would call it crazy, but I had lost track of the meaning of that word in the last couple days. After all, I was having a conversation with a ball of light and a pillar of slugs. Crazy was relative.
Crane's second line of questioning involved the workings of something called a servitor. The Mother Fehn had referred to Camilla as a servitor, I recalled. There was nothing about her that seemed very servant-like to me. Then again, when we had spoken two years ago she referred to herself as a messenger, and the one pursuing me as a destroyer. As though she had been built for one purpose, and he had been built for another. And the key to those roles had been their cog-hearts. The pattern of their design depended on those hearts. Without them, they could not hold together for long. With them, they could rewrite themselves into different tasks, depending on the heart. Camilla had wanted the destroyer's heart, so she could free herself and wreak a little vengeance on the city.
The connection hit me like a bolt out of the sky. Camilla and her angel-kind used the most complicated patterns the city of Veridon had ever seen. Every technology, every bit of cogwork, was simply a derivation on those patterns. A cutting from the mother tree. We had never been able to access the true pattern at the center of the heart. Never would, since it was far too complicated for the memorization tricks that the Wrights employed. The pattern had to been held in your mind, while the foetal metal was applied.
But if the foetal metal could be applied directly to the pattern, what then? What would come of that? And if the Artificers were right, and that metal was really just a distillation of something that existed in all living creatures, who's to say that you couldn't apply someone directly to the pattern? That must be how the Artificer's magic was done. It explained how Crane was able to possess my father, even though dad didn't have any cogwork. Usually Artificers had to perform their tricks on carefully cogged and manipulated volunteers. To forcefully take over a creature without the assistance of cogwork implied that the pattern was being applied
