Neal Barrett Jr. - The Prophecy Machine

“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.