Page 16 of Engines of Reason

“That he did, and I saw it myself, Sprat,” Esha agreed. “Must be good, to know what whatever comes into the world, your own magic’s stronger.”

Lyn thought of the witch, though, and how she’d spoken to Nyr in his own words, and wondered.

Nyr

SHE SITS DOWN ACROSS from me. Ilmoth Elder, the witch, the … what? There is no sign of the very distinctive mark of the demon as we saw it in the Ordwood. Impossible, surely, to manifest the demon’s powers—which are themselves impossible—without showing its touch. If I was actually a wizard I would be outraged at the breach of some kind of law of sympathy or similar nonsense. Being a scientist, I reserve my judgment …

Her look, to me, is challenging, superior, triumphant. The witch has triumphed over her rival. Or else: “How is it,” she says, in my language, “that you are so very far from your brief, old man?”

I stare at her, determined not to rise to the barb.

“You had one rule,” she says. “Don’t get involved. So you’re some sort of court wizard now. How does that work?”

I rise to the barb almost immediately. “You are lecturing me? You, who are playing, what, kingmaker with your thug there?” Unfair to Sendroth, based on my conversation with him, but I am all about the point scoring right now.

“Some of us have other briefs,” she says casually. “Did you really think our interest in this world was merely academic?” Trivialising my centuries of study here. Fair enough, honestly. But …

“Us?” I ask her.

“Earth,” she says. “We people of Earth. Who would voyage all this way merely to make scholar scribbles about these primitive people? Don’t you think they would have sent spies, an advance force?”

I stare at her. “Advance of what?”

“Our army,” she tells me. “Our conquest of this world.”

“Um,” I say, because this conversation is going places at a run, and I’m an old man and can’t keep up.

“Now, Nyr Illim Tevitch, you are going to open a link to your satellite so I can talk to Earth.”

The name almost covers all the other weirdness. Nobody has called me that in a long time. There is a moment when she is plainly some superior branch of Earth interest in Sophos IV, and I am just an anthropologist. We’re obviously supposed to be working together and I, despite my years, am the junior partner. Except, of course, I can’t do what she asks.

“The satellite?” I ask dumbly.

“Let me speak to it, so that it can take my words to Earth,” she says.

“It thinks I’m dead,” I tell her. It was a side effect of how Lyn and I dealt with the demon. That part of me the satellite registered, that told it where I was at all times, was removed from me. Heartless, as Ilmoth herself described me. Removed, so it would register my death and retaliate with its orbital weaponry to obliterate my body and prevent it falling into primitive hands. Obliterating both the demon’s access to this world and my existence as a relevant concern in its systems.

“Then correct it. Shout loud enough that it knows you’re alive,” she says. “I will tell Earth to commence the invasion, and we can go outside and watch the ships arrive in glory.” And she smiles, and it’s quite an unhinged smile, though not as unhinged as what she’s just said.

“The ships,” I say.

“The ships,” she assures me, “that will come from Earth.”

“And we’ll … go out and…”

“Watch them arrive,” she says. That smile is wider now, and part of me is waiting for it to just split her right open and reveal the demon inside.

If she had access to the satellite, she could indeed send a message to Earth. Earth could potentially send some ships back. Relativity being what it is, we’d be out on the mountainside for rather a long time.

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. She’s talking nonsense, but in my language, and nobody from this world knows my language. “An invasion fleet, from Earth to…” I get out, before a wrenching bray of a laugh escapes me. She looks furious. Honestly, my expression is probably so patronisingly Well, actually that she’d be justified in killing me on the spot. I am, for a wild moment, the disappointed teacher sneering down his long nose at a poor student. And she has access to the written records of the tower, and encrypted transmissions, my reports and logs. It has taught her my name and my language, but she has not processed the wealth of rather dreary data. Hence her slight misconception about, say, travel times between stars, which means …

“You are not of my people,” I tell her.

She flares up, eyes wide, furious. “Just because I have no horns—”

“You are not of my people,” I say. In the resulting silence between us, I hear something. A resonance; a depth in her that is not physical. A voice, perhaps, that is not her voice. I scrabble for it, but there is only a fractured moment of failed communication, nothing I can understand. A demon? I don’t know. It comes to me without obvious origin, as though there is a third with us, muttering to itself so I catch only fragmentary words.

She grins. “Well, I reckon that’s fair,” she says, and she’s speaking a different language. Neither mine nor the local argot. Honestly, it’s one I’m rusty in. I take a moment to echo what she’s said, translating it. An old language, dead. It should be dead. I studied it a long time ago, because it was relevant to my work here. The language of another venture into space.