The Prophecy Machine

20

The stairs led down from the rear hallway behind a thick, padlocked wooden door, down, down, down a dizzy spiral of ancient stone, down a dark and twisted way, down a passage so narrow, so cramped and so tight only one person could squeeze through at a time.

Calabus led the way, his torch casting ghostly shadows on the low confining walls. Finn crouched behind him, Julia on his shoulder, Letitia after that, with Sabatino bringing up the rear.

Finn could hardly guess how long they'd been descending into the earth. Deeper by far than he'd expected, for the cellar to an ordinary house. And Calabus had surely been right. There was no need for warmer clothing here. Every cellar Finn had ever seen was damp and cool. This one, though, was unnaturally hot.

“Stop that, sir!” Letitia cried out. “You stop that at once!”

“Your pardon, lady. These are very tight quarters. I certainly meant no harm.”

“Finn …”

“I can't kill him now, Letitia. Not unless we all lie down.”

“Don't be amusing, I'm in no mood for that-Oh, that sound!”

Letitia swallowed hard, choked, strangled and gagged.

“What is that, it's awful!”

“I don't hear a thing,” Finn said, “maybe it's the heat, there's very little air.”

“It's not, either. You don't hear it? If you can't hear that …?”

“Quiet back there, the lot of you.”

Calabus stopped, the smoke from his torch bringing tears to Finn's eyes. Past the old man, Finn saw another heavy wooden door strengthened with enormous straps of iron.

“This is a place of science, a chamber of creation, I'll brook no childish play here. Don't make me tell you twice, or I-Bruuuup! — dreadfully sorry, Sea Pudding does it to me every time. The gods only know what Squeen puts in it. You could flog the scoundrel to death, he wouldn't tell.”

“Finn … I can't breathe … I think I'm going to- faint …!”

“No you're not, there's no room here.”

“Finn, please!”

Letitia swayed, sagged in Finn's arms.

“Move away,” he told Sabatino, “she's not feeling well. I've got to get her upstairs.”

“I can't move away, sir. Your very words. There's no room here.”

“Well, make room, she's got to lie down. I need a cup of water, I need a wet cloth …”

Calabus turned to Finn, clearly annoyed. “Didn't I say don't bring her down here? What did I say? Stand back if you will.”

Calabus grabbed a key from a hook on the wall. The key rattled in the lock and the door swung free into a chamber dark as a demon's heart.

At once, Finn's ears were assaulted with a tumult of sound, a shriek, a rattle, a terrible whine, a head-splitting, gut-shaking clatter, a rumble, and a clamor and a roar.

“Hah, well. That's it,” Calabus shouted, “We're here. You're in the presence of the greatest invention of our time-the Calabus Nucci Prophecy Machine!”

“The what? I can't hear a thing but some damnable machine.”

“Don't anyone move. I'll get some light in here.”

“What?”

The torch moved off to the right, and Calabus was gone. Letitia moaned, coming to life again, clapping her hands against her ears.

“I'm terribly frightened, Finn. This is an awful place. I cannot stand it here.”

“Hang on, dear. I'll get some light, then I'll get you upstairs. Why, you're trembling, Letitia. Surely you can't be cold, it's terribly stuffy to me.”

“I am not cold,” Letitia shouted in his ear, “I'm scared. Didn't you hear me? I have never been so scared in my life!”

“In that case, I'd best get you out as quickly as I can.”

Finn lifted Letitia in his arms. She wrapped her hands tightly about his neck. He was greatly concerned, yet pleased somehow, for she was anything but distant now. Maybe they'd settle their quarrel without the need to discuss it anymore. Finn always hated that.

He moved, backing toward the stairs away from the deafening roar, and ran into Sabatino at once.

“Did you not understand me?” he said. “Move aside, you're in the way.”

Sabatino didn't move. “This is Father's foolishness, not mine. You were advised, missy, to stay upstairs.”

“Don't you call me that. I'm not a missy, you lout.”

“Just move aside,” Finn said, losing his patience now. Letitia was slim and very light, but even 90-weight of lint grows heavy in a while.

“I'd rather not,” Sabatino said.

“You'd rather not? I don't care if you'd rather not.”

Sabatino looked away. “I, ah-don't come down here. I do not fear the place, of course, that would be absurd. It's simply quite annoying to me. If I do come down, to see the old fool doesn't fall, I stay here. Just inside the door where I am now. I do not wish to go further than that …”

“Move. Move or I'll have to force you, sir.”

“I don't think you can manage that. Not unless you put the lady down.”

“Damn you, Sabatino. I'm going to take her upstairs if I have to walk over you!”

“Doubt if you could, Finn!”

A laugh, too highly pitched, stifled at once, and in scarcely any light at all, Finn caught a look of apprehension in Sabatino's eyes, slight, but clearly there, a touch of agitation, not enough for fear, not enough for dread, but all out of place in Sabatino's masks against the world. For a moment, the face behind the bluster, the swagger and the sneer, revealed a man cursed, damned, lonely and lost, and worse still, by what, he didn't know …

All this in the blink of a second, and the man was Sabatino, and illusion once again.

“What-whatever you may think you want to do,” Finn said, releasing a breath, coming at the fellow with pluck, spunk and will in his voice, “you will get out of my way and do it now. I will brook no more of your-your-damn it, whatever it is. You're lucky I can't see you very well or I'd-”

Darkness suddenly turned to light. Not light as he'd ever perceived it to be, but a brilliance, a radiance past anything he'd dreamed. From the ceiling hung a great chandelier, three enormous circles of iron, one within the next, each ring alight with a hundred crystal spheres, spheres ablaze with the light of captive suns, fiery orbs of energy that spread their harsh glory to every corner of the room.

A wonder, an awesome sight to see, but the light was not the marvel that held Finn breathless in its sway. The light was the catalyst that offered its brilliance to the astonishing sight below …

“Great Tarts and Farts,” Finn exclaimed, nearly dropping Letitia to the floor, rapt, trapped by the bizarre monstrosity that groaned and shuddered before his eyes-a thing that defied all description, betrayed no sign of what it could possibly be.

Monstrous in complexity and size, bigger than a pig sty, bigger than a poor man's house, it seemed to expand one moment then shrink back the next. It boiled, roiled, chattered in a fury, a thing of twisted iron, copper and brass, metals that had seethed, breathed, run together in a dross of some odd, uncommon design, each fiery element no longer itself.

And, coiled within this ruinous mass, wound in ugly convolutions like a nest of angry snakes, like the foul and tortured bowels of some great imagined beast, a beast that had surely taken ill, was an endless maze of grime-encrusted tunnels; tunnels made of crude, translucent matter, something old, something fused, something cracked and used, something once akin to glass.

Within those tunnels was a sight that raised the hair on Finn's head, for even through the filth, through the dark obscuration, he could see that something moved in there, something of a dimness shifting in those kinked and twisted whorls …

“Well then, what do you think, boy?”

Calabus was suddenly beside him. Finn nearly jumped out of his skin.

“It's, ah-most impressive,” he said, fighting the clamor, the shudder and the quake. “It's different than anything I've seen before.”

“Yes it is, isn't it? Oh dear, I see you carry the poor girl about. Just as I advised, I believe. A Newlie doesn't fare well here. Something in the ah-primitive makeup, I assume.”

Letitia found the strength to glare. “Let me down, Finn. I'm much better now.” Her voice was so weak below the clamor and the roar, Finn could scarcely hear her at all.

“Nevertheless, I'm taking you back upstairs.”

“Oh, sorry, I'm afraid you can't do that.”

“And why not?”

“Because I can't allow just anyone the key. No offense, you understand. Miss Letitia, if you'll wait near the top of the stairs, you'll scarcely feel the, ah-disturbing emanations there. A little queasy perhaps, but I doubt you'll regurgitate at all.”

“I can't allow that-” Finn began.

“Damn it all, Finn, I am going to throw up on you if you don't put me down!”

Letitia squirmed out of his grasp, nearly fell, and caught herself in time.

“This won't do,” Finn said, “I'll have to insist on that key.”

“I told you, sir-”

“Wuuuuuuuuurp!”

Letitia clasped her hand across her mouth. Her eyes went wide and all the color drained from her face. Before Finn could stop her, she staggered toward the door, pushed Sabatino aside, and vanished up the stairs.

“I'll attend to her,” Sabatino called out. “I'm going up myself …”

“Don't even think about it,” Calabus said. “You stay right where you are.” He turned to Finn then. “I do regret this. But you're here, sir, and I insist you take at least a hurried look before you tend to the girl.”

“I'm afraid that wouldn't be right.”

“Nonsense, come along, now,” Calabus said, taking Finn's arm with a quite insistent, quite surprising grip.

Finn looked back, hoping against all reason, that Letitia might still be in sight. No one but Sabatino was there, perched on the steps with a surly petulant air.

“I knew,” Calabus said, urging him along, “that a fellow with a passion for the mechanical device, would see at once the beauty, the perfection, of what I've done.”

That wasn't what Finn had in mind, but he let it go at that. The more he looked at the thing, the more he was certain it had started much smaller than it was, then grown, through some odd replication, like a clutter of weeds gone wild.

“The damn thing's so big, though,” Calabus said with a sigh of regret. “I've tried to hold it down to no avail. This is where I feel you could help. Your contraption is so neat and compact. I don't expect to carry the thing on my shoulder, you understand, but it would be nice if it fit on a table somewhere.”

“I think you're well past that.”

Calabus showed his displeasure at once. “I don't allow humor down here, it's simply not the place. I'm not surprised at anything a young man would say. It's the practice of youth to chatter over matters they scarcely understand. The science of Prophecy is rife with problems I doubt you'd comprehend. It's not like making a device that simply snaps and wags its tail.

“I assure you, I can do a great deal more than that. Things I doubt you'd comprehend.”

Julia's screech was easy to hear, even over the din.

“Keep your opinions to yourself,” Finn said. “Nobody's talking to you.”

Calabus gave the lizard a thoughtful glance. “Most intriguing, Master Finn. I believe I mentioned before that I would dearly like to see inside the thing.”

“That wouldn't work at all. I do not have the proper instruments here to take a lizard apart. Without them, it's simply impossible. The device would be quite undone.”

Calabus smiled, a smile that embraced a little mayhem, a vision of mechanical fun.

“I've got all the tools you need. I'm not a damn fool, you know.”

“Of course not. I never imagined you were. But your machine bears no resemblance to mine. One doesn't split a melon to see what's in a grape. I'm sure you get my point.”

“I don't give a damn about your point, craftsman. You understand that? Duck now, you're going to see the rest whether you like it or not.”

Just in time, Finn followed the old man's advice, barely missing a clot of glassy tunnels, a dark and awkward knot that bulged obscenely from the rest. Close as he was, he could see nothing more than the quick blur of movement within the filthy pipes.

“What did you say it was, now? The, ah-forces in motion in there?”

Calabus showed him a sly and cunning grin. “Why, I don't believe I did. And, as you're aware, I'm sure you didn't ask.”

“Whatever it is,” Finn said, “it's awfully hard to see.”

With that, he took a step closer and reached up to touch a portion of the tunnel itself …

At once he felt himself seized by a flush, by a fever, by a nauseating chill. He felt a disassociation of the head, a numbing of the joints, and the promise of a diarrhetic fit.

“Stop it, get away from there!” Calabus shouted, grabbing his shoulder and jerking him roughly away.

Startled by this frightening event, Finn staggered against a wall waiting for the room to stand still.

Calabus offered a reassuring smile.

“I'm terribly sorry, it's not to be touched. For your own good, you see. There are certain-energies emitted by the device. As the girl learned, it can tend to make one ill.”

“A bit more than that,” Finn said, still very much aware of the tingle of every single hair on his head.

“Prophecy is somewhat abhorrent to the passage of time. Time is content to slug along at its own languid pace, looking neither forward nor back. It does not like intrusions of any sort. I can testify to that. My machine moves through the stream of time, nips off little bites of future, even snippets of the past.

“Time expresses its displeasure by inducing the desire to throw up, to barf, to emit, to toss one's biscuits, as it were.”

“And does it very well,” Finn said.

“I'm quite used to it. Doesn't bother me at all.”

“And the dark pulsations one sees in the pipes, the things we were talking about? That would be what-your, ah, bites of some tomorrow flitting past?”

“You were talking about it, not I.” Calabus looked annoyed. “I had hoped you'd be of some use to me, Finn. I can see that I was wrong. I have patiently explained the whole thing, and you have no grasp of it at all. My son was apparently right, you're a craftsman to the core. Come along, quickly now, you've wasted my morning, you might as well see the rest.”

“I'm afraid not,” Finn said. “I must see to Letitia. I fear we'll have to cut it short.”

“Nonsense. Newlies have to complain about something, it's in their nature, you know. Ah, take a look at this and you'll be back to the lady in a blink.”

Before Finn could protest, the old man took a step forward and opened a pair of heavy panels just below the stairs that Finn hadn't noticed at all.

At once, an alarming clatter filled the large chamber, drowning out the rumbles and rattles of the great machine itself. Finn stifled a desire to step back. The noise was overwhelming, an assault on the senses, a clear violation of every nerve and cell.

Revealed behind the doors were a clutter of golden tubes, a hundred or maybe more, arched up in closely packed rows, tubes like the graceful necks of swans, or serpents poised to strike. And from the mouth of each polished device spewed narrow, seemingly endless strips of paper that flowed into a hundred straw buckets, buckets that had long overflowed, spilling their flaccid ribbons across the floor.

“Crocks and Socks,” Finn said, astonished at the sight. “Pardon my ignorance, but what on earth is that?”

Calabus was no longer surprised, scarcely irritated by Finn's lack of knowledge in the higher, loftier realms.

“What it is, is the end product of that,” he said, nodding toward the twisted tangle of tunnels, wires, and pulsing muddy light.

“That, is merely the engine for this. The machine collects the prophecies-robs them from Time itself, I'm pleased to say-then transmits them over here. Go ahead, try one if you like.”

“I don't think so,” Finn said. “I have enough difficulty with the present and the past.”

Calabus made a face. “Don't be ridiculous. You think everything has to do with you?”

“There's that. The odds are rather slim there's much about me in there.”

Finn reached down and cautiously drew out a handful of tangles and loops. Holding a string to the light he read:

Finn scowled. “This is all gibberish. It makes no sense at all.”

“Of course it doesn't.” Calabus gave him a sour look. “It took me a great deal of time to learn to read the stuff myself. You think you can walk in here and snatch up a lifetime of scientific toil? Damn your arrogance, sir!”

“I forgot myself again,” Finn said. “If you don't mind, I'd like to get upstairs.”

“I'm damned if I know why I brought you here at all. Waste of time for me …”

“One thing I must ask,” Finn said. “Those chandeliers above us here-they give out an astonishing light. May I ask what you've captured inside the glass bulbs? It seems like tiny bits of the sun.”

Calabus looked annoyed. “That's got nothing to do with anything, boy. It's excess energy-waste. The device makes so much power, I've got to drain it off somewhere.”

“I think, sir, you've hit upon a very practical application here. It seems to me-”

“Sabatino!” Calabus shouted. “You will not forget to tell Squeen William I want sparrow pie tonight. And no feet this time. I find a single foot, I'll thrash the bastard to death …!”