Lifting a recessed hatch in the floor, she found what she assumed to be the driving mechanism. Some of its components resembled those she had used to build the port-alclass="underline" crystals of various kinds, thick and robust glass tubes in the form of doughnuts and twisticons (as little Haani had called them), and other structures of ceramic and metal. The familiar shapes and components were comforting. The port-all had worked, therefore she might be able to make this construct operate.
Going back to the operator’s compartment, she checked it more thoroughly. Everything was as dead as before. Climbing out, she walked around the machine. It did not seem badly damaged, though a vital part might have been broken in the collision or the subsequent fall from the gate. But surely the Aachim would not build a war machine that could be disabled so easily?
She checked the one on its roof. The top of the machine was crushed; she could not get in. It was hard to imagine its vital parts surviving such an impact. The third construct, lying on its side, proved similar to the first but was badly damaged inside.
Returning to the first construct, she began to remove the damaged front section. The work required the utmost concentration, for she had to deduce how every part worked, and the right tool to use with it. Tiaan became so engrossed that she lost all track of time. She had part of the damaged section in pieces when she realised, with a start, that Malien was standing right behind her.
‘Where did you spring from?’ Tiaan exclaimed.
‘Whistling while you work,’ said Malien. ‘This is a change from yesterday.’
‘I’ve missed my craft. Is it dinnertime already?’
‘It went cold ten hours ago. I came to call you to breakfast.’
Tiaan was astounded. Yes, dawn was outlining the hole in the wall of the mountain. ‘I had no idea. I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Why are you taking the whole front to pieces?’
‘I was planning to replace it with parts from one of the others.’
Malien squatted beside her, reached underneath and did something with her long fingers. There was a soft click. She did the same at the top and on the other side. ‘Pull this.’ She indicated a strut.
Tiaan did so, Malien tugged on the other, and the front section slid onto the floor.
‘How did you do that?’ Tiaan cried.
‘I understand Aachim design,’ Malien said.
Half an hour later, the undamaged front section of the other construct had been installed. Tiaan wiped her hands and stood back. The repaired construct, apart from the dust, looked as if it had just been built.
‘There’s still the bigger problem to solve,’ said Tiaan. ‘How to make it go.’
‘Best leave that for later. Aachim machines can be booby-trapped and even an expert would not work on one after a sleepless night. I’ll come down later and teach you a few words of our tongue. To understand what you’re doing, you’ll need to know the names of things.’
While Tiaan was sleeping, Malien returned to the Well. Even before she entered the conical chamber, she noticed that things were different. The entry passage was less frigid, the barrier cubes more brittle. The blue-illuminated mist around the Well was as thick as cream and now extended higher than her head. Malien felt resistance as she pushed though it to the Well.
She peered down anxiously. What if it had begun to unfreeze? She listened for the telltale tinkle of cracking ice – the first sign. Nothing. The tendrils still coiled lazily inside. The Well was silent, the depths still. She relaxed. Not yet. Malien was not sure she could restrain it by herself. Not sure that any one person could.
On the way back, she debated whether to tell Tiaan about her worries. Malien decided to keep them to herself for as long as possible. It would not benefit Tiaan to know.
That afternoon, Malien began to teach Tiaan the rudiments of the Aachim tongue, focussing on the words needed for this kind of work. Though Tiaan spoke three languages – the common tongues of the south-east, the west and the north – as most people did, Aachim speech proved difficult. It was always a relief to get back to the real world of her work.
She spent days studying the construct but could understand neither how it was powered nor what mechanism it used to hover and move. Maybe it was beyond her understanding. Vithis, and the other Aachim, had emphasised their mastery of geomancy and the limited scope of her own abilities. Eventually, more exhausted by this failure than by all her previous labours, she went to sleep inside the construct.
Malien woke her, bearing a mug in each hand. While they sipped their zhur, as the thick red spicy beverage was called, Tiaan explained why she was so downcast.
‘With your clankers,’ said Malien, ‘can anyone operate them?’
‘Of course not! The operator has to be tuned to its controller, and when he leaves he always takes it with him. Without it, nothing can make a clanker go.’
‘Except another operator with his own controller, presumably?’
‘Well, yes, but not always. Do constructs operate the same way?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Malien.
‘That isn’t much help,’ Tiaan snapped.
‘After Rulke built the very first construct,’ Malien said carefully, ‘at the time of the Tale of the Mirror, our finest thinkers devoted much time and thought to such devices. How they could be built, powered and controlled. They failed. The problem was too difficult.’
‘But later, humanity discovered how to use the field,’ said Tiaan. ‘Nunar’s Theory showed us how, and then we learned to build clankers.’
‘A primitive machine,’ said Malien. ‘I mean no insult,’ she added when Tiaan bridled, ‘but the one can hardly be compared to the other.’
You just can’t help yourself, Tiaan thought. Your Aachim superiority is bred into you. She spoke aloud, ‘Your people in Aachan succeeded.’
‘They were more desperate. And they had Rulke’s original to use as a model, wrecked though it was.’ She regarded Tiaan expectantly. ‘So there must be a key for the machine.’
‘I imagine they took it with them to prevent anyone else using it.’
‘There may be a way around that. Leave it to me.’
Tiaan climbed inside, took off the lower hatch to reveal its workings, and sat with her legs dangling into the cavity. She created a mental image of the mechanism and turned it this way and that, trying to know it. Not just the way an operator knew his clanker, but the way a master controller-maker knew the vagaries of the ever-fluctuating field that was the source of all power. Her talent for thinking in pictures allowed her to do that, and it had often helped her to solve problems.
How could a construct float above the ground? What held it up? She could not work it out. The controller mechanisms seemed wrong for the field as she knew it. But of course constructs did not use the weak field, so presumably they must employ one of the strong nodal forces Nunar had speculated about. Deadly forces, even to experienced mancers.
A thought occurred to her. One problem an artisan had to solve, each time she made a controller, was how to tune it so that it did not react against the field but drew power smoothly from it. But what if a controller was tuned to resist the field? It, and whatever it was in, might be repelled by the field. Could that be done?
In her mental image she worked the mechanism trying to see what made it go, and noticed something curious. Behind the glass binnacle a small, cup-shaped receptacle rotated on a shaft, and as it reached the vertical its cap flipped open. It was about the right shape and size to take a small hedron. Looking beneath the binnacle, Tiaan found the receptacle. It was empty but she picked up faint traces of a crystal’s aura. What if she put the amplimet in it?