The Fire Opal Mechanism Read online

  At home, in the Riverward Kingdom, Xachar hadn’t been considered useful either. Sure, he’d been good with the farm equipment, but his aunt and uncle had been better. He’d passed his first engineering tests, but others had scored higher. He’d disliked both farming and engineering—had wanted to try something beyond his family farm. But that took learning, and books, and there weren’t any at home that weren’t practical or relevant to farming and tools.

  Universities had such books, Xachar knew. But there was no money for university.

  During the spring rains, his work boots had squelched in the thick mud of the farm, echoing his thoughts: Stuck here, stuck here. In the summer, his rough cotton shirt clung damply to his neck as he helped with the weeding among the vegetables. Stuck, stuck, stuck, said the weeds. In the fall, as they harvested and then sold their food for not enough money beyond a season’s supplies and equipment repairs, Xachar’s skin itched with the sameness of it all.

  Still, his frustration didn’t make him angry. It made him slow and sad. Even when he slept, his dreams were about walking the same fields his parents had walked. Repeatedly. Slow, stuck, stuck.

  Now he knew he was too stuck in reality too. Too slow to even chase a librarian out of hiding. Xachar shook his head. No one else knew that yet, though. He still had a chance.

  When the Pressmen had come to his village, they’d held a small parade. Few had paid attention, but Xachar had gone. He’d taken a pamphlet from one of the blue-uniformed marchers. “We’re sharing knowledge, for everyone,” she’d explained. “It’s important.”

  Xachar’s mouth hung open. “I feel the same way.” She’d been beautiful, that marcher. But her words had been even prettier.

  He’d read their pamphlets. He’d listened when another speaker described the Pressmen’s dream. “Everyone,” they said, “should be able to learn whatever they want. Whenever they want.”

  This, Xachar realized, was his calling. To make such a thing possible. If not for himself, for others. So no one would be stuck.

  At the end of the parade, when the Pressmen asked him to help, Xachar decided to be useful. A pen was placed in his hand. A piece of paper, with Knowledge for Everyone at the top, was set before him, and the ink had run green on the page, his signature a ribbon, tying him to them. Indelible. Flowing. He’d sighed happily.

  The Pressmen gave him a book-shaped pin in exchange for his name. To his surprise, a year later, they’d asked him to go to the Far Reaches, to school. They’d help pay if Xachar agreed to bring them the deeds to his family’s farm equipment as a sign he was serious.

  Once at Far Reaches University, Xachar hadn’t made a great student, either, in those long months before the Pressmen appeared. But that was according to plan. He’d been ready, with enough others who understood the Pressmen’s philosophy to help the university’s transition. The Pressmen had been glad for the information he’d sent back, the books he’d given them with promises of more. He became what he’d dreamed, but this time for the greater good.

  * * *

  Still, Xachar had to admit to himself now that he was a terrible judge of academics. He’d thought once the Pressmen used their technology to start sinking the buildings, everyone would run away. Instead, the academics who remained stubbornly ran toward the buildings. Which had made catching them difficult.

  His failures had compounded, overrunning his successes, each feeling worse than the last. No Pressmen wanted any part of failure. He’d already noticed others in the dorm leaving him alone more.

  But while he’d been a student, Xachar had read several adventure novels in the library. He knew now that he only needed one good chance, and everything could turn right around.

  When he’d spotted the thief skulking among the fallen buildings, he followed her. He staged an accident—well, he tried, then he actually did get trapped.

  His panic had been real enough that it got the thief to rescue him, and to his surprise, she gave him her books and went back for more.

  Tricking the thief was a perfect opportunity. Xachar found his squad leader. This was his chance. He convinced her to send in more Pressmen and dogs.

  “Too many good people have disappeared in that library,” she said. “We were going to wait. You’d best be right.”

  They’d given chase. They’d been so close. And then—both the librarian, wanted for questioning in the disappearance of those Pressmen, and the thief disappeared.

  At least they’d left the books behind.

  But it wasn’t enough. The look on the captain’s face was obvious.

  “We’ll find you,” she said, “something suitable.”

  Xachar swallowed. His chances for a future with the Pressmen were narrowing. The ribbon of his name on the paper beneath Knowledge for Everyone, fading. The university was closing, the farm not an option anymore. And now he was being assigned “something suitable” by the Pressmen. Xachar’s breath ran ragged with worry.

  He knew what “suitable” meant. He’d had letters from home in the months since the parades in the Riverward.

  Since then both his uncle and aunt, the best machinery engineers the farm had, had gone with the Pressmen to Quadril. “The Pressmen made a fuss about your uncle,” his mother wrote. “Your aunt hissed at him. Pulled him back. Told him to fetch the cows. But finally they were persuaded to go.”

  And then the Pressmen came back for his parents too. A neighbor wrote to tell Xachar, the letter arriving the day of the Last Meeting. “They were found suitable jobs.”

  It is a long struggle, Xachar thought. If this is the price for everyone being able to learn whatever they want, whenever they want it, this sacrifice is worth it.

  As long as he could help. As long as he could be useful, not just suitable.

  Being useful was his chance to control his future, Xachar knew this in his heart. Applying for a position in Quadril, rather than being taken away somewhere and given a “suitable” job, seemed an easier fate. Better reputation—like his uncle. Perhaps he could find his family.

  It dawned on him: They had a drain on people with machine skills.

  “Wait.” Xachar followed the captain. “I’m good with tools. I’m quick. I can help you.”

  “What kind of tools?” the captain said.

  “Farm machinery, mostly,” Xachar muttered. “Engineering.” The life he’d tried to get away from. Was it enough?

  The captain nodded. “You can escort the shipment of books back to Quadril and see if someone there will find you more training. I hear they have some trouble with the press now and then.” By the sound of her voice, she seemed to think this was a perfect solution for Xachar. “But don’t fail this time, young man. It’s your last chance.”

  Within hours, he was on a boat to Quadril. He wouldn’t fail. Xachar promised himself he wouldn’t become stuck this time.

  * * *

  The Pressmen’s boats had motors, not sails. Coal-fed ironclads. Their shadows clipped the waves while dark clouds curled out of their smokestacks and tinted the sky.

  Xachar threw up the entire journey, but learned to stay to the leeward side, finally.

  When he stumbled off the boat, they took him to a small room and read the letter the captain had sent along with him.

  He’d known he was a terrible guard—and the captain’s letter made it clear she thought he was terrible at everything. But he hadn’t lied. He was good with tools. Old tools especially. And the Pressmen, once they realized he hated closed spaces, chuckled. “We have the perfect job for you. Not that you’ll remember. None of you remember.”

  What a strange thing to say. But the Pressmen took him through rows of tents and long barracks to a central brick building and a man called the Presskeeper. The Presskeeper clapped Xachar on the shoulder and led him down a long hall. “Glad to have a volunteer again. Welcome to the Great Press. Until you receive further training, all you need to do is feed it books, understand?”

  Xachar nodded. He wouldn’t fail.
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br />   The press’s outer room had been terrifying.

  A group of four Pressmen with close-cropped hair sat doing simple tasks. Feeding newly blank books into a slim, high-tech press. Dumping sacks of strange ink—dust, really—across the pages within a glass and iron box. The dust swirled like a storm. Then books emerged, filled Universal Compendiums of Knowledge. The Presskeeper lifted a still-warm book for him to see: Far Reaches University, the entry read. Two hundred years and counting, raising leaders in a region known for shipping and fishing.

  As Xachar watched, the letters tangled and blurred, a ribbon of ink curling in on itself and releasing. When it stopped, the page read Two hundred years of knowledge hoarding in a region known for shipping and fishing.

  The Presskeeper gently closed the book and passed it back to a worker at the press. She smiled blankly at him.

  With a jolt, Xachar recognized the woman. He whispered, “Aunt Nessa?” She looked pale and distracted. Not the feisty woman he remembered.

  The Presskeeper walked toward the inner room as Xachar tried to speak to his aunt. To ask where the rest of his family were. But she stared at him as if she didn’t know him.

  Xachar stuffed the fear in his throat down so he wouldn’t cry out. The Presskeeper opened the door to the inner room, and Xachar bit his lip. He would not think of his parents, or of the others he’d left behind at the university. Of the professors on the square.

  No. He had to keep moving forward.

  The Pressman standing next to his aunt wiped his face with a damp sleeve, careful not to sweat on the Compendiums that slid off the press, ready to be bound.

  “What happened to them?” Xachar finally whispered. He didn’t indicate he knew any of them. Safer that way. He felt his heart rewriting itself, like the words in the book.

  “Their minds got wiped clean. All that knowledge, and they’re stacking books. Five of them so far,” the head of the press said without smiling. “You’ll be the sixth. Lucky number, right? Like the number of old kingdoms, before the Jeweled Valley fell. Maybe you’ll last.”

  Xachar stopped in his tracks. The Presskeeper’s hand was on the door to the inner room. “Last?”

  “You’ll be fine,” the man said, holding the thick, dark oak door half open for him. His blue and white uniform stood out cleanly in the drab greenish light. He didn’t enter the room.

  Xachar watched him for a moment.

  “Just keep it fed, and it won’t hurt you,” the Presskeeper said, laughing a little before letting the door go. It swung shut with a long squeak.

  Xachar put his hand up to stop the door and looked out the gap, into the bigger room. The Presskeeper’s broad frame didn’t disappear between one moment and the next like the two academics in the library had. He retreated with normal footfalls, then turned a corner, even as his words echoed in Xachar’s ears.

  * * *

  Hours later, in the close, noisy room lit with dark green light the color of late-night shadows, Xachar battled claustrophobia again. His eyes throbbed; he could taste the dark ink on the back of his teeth. The walls drew close around him. The press breathed hot, inky gusts as it thunked and thudded its way through the Far Reaches library.

  Just keep it fed.

  He had six hours left on his first lonely press-feeding shift. He wouldn’t fail. He took a deep breath and kept working, ignoring the panic that tugged at him.

  His hands ached from splitting the spines of books brought back from the Far Reaches and feeding them facedown through the press wheels. Each time the lathes turned over and the latest book came through, eviscerated and emptied of ink, Xachar felt the room grow smaller, his shirt grow damp with sweat.

  But he didn’t leave.

  He focused on the press.

  It seemed very old, but modifications had been made. A thick metal frame held the intake rollers—once a cylinder that guided paper over a typesetting roller—that worked in tandem to suck whole books in and crush them. A drip hose kept the pages from getting too hot as the press moved faster, and rusting trays on each side gathered ink that was pressed out. The resulting machine looked a lot like farm equipment, but a little less sharp.

  Farm equipment required power, usually steam or coal. Xachar could find no scuttle, no fire. Instead, the press seemed to run on its own. He shivered.

  Keep it fed, and it won’t hurt you.

  Xachar ran a hand across the gears and press levers. The warm metal thickened the smell of ink and pulp in the air. He breathed through his mouth, fighting nausea.

  The press thunked and swung; it sang a little as the gears whined. Xachar looked closer. On the farm, they’d worried about gears snapping teeth, especially on large jobs. He’d fed the press a Hundred-Year History of something. Then a Guidelines for Knowledge Sharing right after. Those had been thick books.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered. He wished he had a manual for the machine. The press made a strange sound, like a whisper or a song.

  Then, with a loud clunk and a terrible grinding sound, the press stopped entirely. Stuck! Xachar’s breakfast weighed heavy in his stomach. The room went dead silent. The walls drew ever closer.

  How could he keep the press fed if it was broken? Xachar began to sweat in earnest. Salt stung his brow and cracked lips as he gritted his teeth through the final hours of his service, trying to get the press started again.

  He picked up the heavy metal toolbox resting by the door and carried it to the main cylinder.

  “How can I fix you?” He wasn’t supposed to fix anything. Just keep feeding the machine. Xachar knew he should call a Pressman, but that would be a failure too. A difficult machine indeed.

  Then he saw it, a broken lever grinding against the lower cylinder, a chunk of book jammed far within the mechanism. Xachar was gangly for his age, and fish-belly pale. In the strange pressroom light, he looked forest-green. But as he crawled beneath the pressworks, the heavy metal frame close overhead, he felt strong. Useful.

  Gingerly, he worked the pages from the machine, tearing a few, retrieving a half-erased portrait of an unknown man from the gears. A few more pages. He nudged the broken part out of the cylinder’s path. A coil of metal.

  Xachar looked for a replacement piece, without finding one. He would have to call for help. He didn’t want to yet. Beneath the press, he spread the crumpled pages he’d rescued before him, half erased.

  Guidelines for single-source sharing of resources across the Western Mountains, the pages still said, though the following pages were mostly blank. The text was from early in the knowledge struggles, when a small group from the Western Mountains demanded that the Six Kingdoms synchronize their records. That hadn’t gone well, Xachar remembered from his library class with the Master Archivist.

  The libraries had protested by tearing Western Mountains manuals up and distributing them evenly across their regions. The crinkled evidence of that rebellion—a document from the Western Mountains that had come to rest in the Far Reaches—lay in his hands.

  That was about the time of the parade that had come to the Riverward.

  When Pressmen’s groups had grown and prospered in various cities. Held parades and large, raucous meetings in libraries. The Pressmen’s ideals, merged with the strength of the Western Mountains, seemed to become something entirely more powerful than either one apart.

  Xachar freed the last of the guidelines from the press and patted the cylinders.

  The press stopped making horrible clunking noises, but the cylinders didn’t roll again. Still, Xachar felt his spirits lift. He’d fixed something!

  Perhaps he would be more than useful here. If he could get the press running again.

  Xachar looked closely at the broken lever, avoiding the sharper gears. It was a long one, with one end buried deep in the press’s heart, bound by the lathes. No. Xachar shook his head as his eyes adjusted further to the shadows beneath the press. He’d been mistaken: the piece was a piston, not a lever. Without a source of steam, a piston made no s
ense, but there it was. Plain as day. This kept the press rolling.

  He looked deeper, trying to find a power source.

  Above the piston, Xachar saw a complex shape, unlike any of the press’s other braces or gears. A green sphere, thick with facets. Hissing slightly.

  Each facet caught the room’s greenish dazzle.

  Xachar whistled. At the center of the press was a good-sized gem, the same color as the stones the Pressmen had in the Far Reaches. But this was much larger. And secret. Invisible to the outside. Glowing darkly green in the room’s light.

  No. That was wrong too. The pressroom was glowing green because of the gem.

  As Xachar continued to look over the stilled machinery and throughout the room, hoping to find a replacement coil for the piston, the gem’s dark tones faded.

  He finally found the part deep in the toolbox. But when he turned back to the press, color had drained from the gem until it was a pale shadow of itself. By the time he replaced the compression coil, the emerald seemed smaller too, the room dark.

  Xachar’s shift was almost over.

  The door slammed out of its frame and hit the wall. “Your output is low, Xachar. The outer room needs more blank books!”

  The Presskeeper seemed more worried than angry. When he saw Xachar beneath the press, he blinked, then growled, “Get out of there.”

  “I’m almost finished fixing it,” Xachar said. “There was a jam.”

  The Presskeeper grabbed Xachar’s foot and pulled. Xachar slid across the ink-slick floor as the man muttered, “You . . . fixed the press? You should have alerted me.”

  “But I thought I could fix it,” Xachar said. “And I did.” He waited for praise. He’d been very useful.

  The Presskeeper seemed to grow as he returned to lean against the door. “You need to learn about the proper way to do things, including how not to damage expensive machinery. Or yourself.” He huffed and swore. Then, finally, he leaned against the door frame. “Tell me what you did to my press.”

  From the floor, Xachar described the fix.