kept still. Consider that I am slightly smaller than your arm: every slightest twitch throws me about as though
I’m in a hurricane.’
She exaggerated slightly, but he was an enormously tall, long-limbed man, a Woodlouse-kinden, perpetually hunched like an old man, but a young and sprightly student where the few others of his
kinden that anyone had ever seen seemed to have been ancient forever, old as the stones of Collegium. He had come from the east with an esoteric but impressive understanding of machines that had
won him a place at the Great College, and he had stayed on for the war.
Te Mosca herself was a Fly-kinden, and someone who had also turned up begging at the College gates, though in her case she had come from the Moth-kinden at Dorax, and had been looking for work.
The old chair for Inapt studies – meaning those parts of the world that the Apt neither understood nor cared about – had been gathering dust, but even then they had not made her a full
master, just had her marking out her time as though a replacement was expected at any moment. There had been votes in Assembly, she knew, to abolish the position entirely, but respect for tradition
had thus far allowed her field of study to cling on by its fingernails.
She was small even for a Fly, delicate of frame and with a faint ashen tint to her skin, for her kinden often looked a little like those they grew up amongst. She taught the histories of the
Inapt as they themselves would tell it, and she taught a little of the principles of magic, but her few students were mostly Apt and, however diligently they took notes, they could never grasp even
the most basic tenets. It was a curiously futile existence, but she enlivened it by offering her skills as a doctor. Inapt kinden often fared far better under the care of an Inapt healer and, when
it came to it, she could stitch a wound almost as well as any Collegiate surgeon.
She took Gerethwy’s long hand in both of hers and inspected the stumps where an exploding weapon had torn off two fingers. ‘Healing nicely,’ she said, ‘but it would heal
far quicker if you’d not use the hand. It must hurt you, surely?’
He shrugged, something his bony hunchbacked frame was made for. ‘But there’s too much work. I’m due to drill with the Companies, and I need every moment I can get at the
workshops. Nobody else will.’ He thrust the paper at her again, then dragged it back, recognizing the pointlessness of it. Gerethwy himself was a man who seemed to understand everything. He
sat through her lectures as attentively as any Inapt scholar, seeming to take it all in, but then went off to the workshops to work on his devices. Her own masters had always muttered that the
Woodlouse-kinden were a law unto themselves.
‘Rational machinery,’ Gerethwy insisted, and she recognized that doomed passion to explain from her own classes, in trying to hammer home some patently obvious point into skulls
simply not designed for it. Now she was on the receiving end, and could only blink politely as his words gushed out – for he who had been so quiet and self-contained now had something he
needed to speak of.
‘It’s the future,’ he insisted. ‘It’s very simple.’ His eyes were begging her to agree with him. ‘It’s all down to putting information in, and
getting information out. It’s all in the gear trains that convert one to the other. You can do
anything
with it, if you just work out the gearing. Machines that can do things for
themselves in response to what you tell them.’
‘As far as I’m aware, that works only indifferently with human beings,’ she remarked, yanking on his arm to stop him gesturing with it, then immediately feeling guilty as he
winced. She began to apply fresh bandages, not that the healing wound really needed them any longer, but more as a mnemonic so that Gerethwy would remember he was hurt, and therefore take more
care.
‘But, look . . . as a doctor, surely
I’m in a hurricane.’
She exaggerated slightly, but he was an enormously tall, long-limbed man, a Woodlouse-kinden, perpetually hunched like an old man, but a young and sprightly student where the few others of his
kinden that anyone had ever seen seemed to have been ancient forever, old as the stones of Collegium. He had come from the east with an esoteric but impressive understanding of machines that had
won him a place at the Great College, and he had stayed on for the war.
Te Mosca herself was a Fly-kinden, and someone who had also turned up begging at the College gates, though in her case she had come from the Moth-kinden at Dorax, and had been looking for work.
The old chair for Inapt studies – meaning those parts of the world that the Apt neither understood nor cared about – had been gathering dust, but even then they had not made her a full
master, just had her marking out her time as though a replacement was expected at any moment. There had been votes in Assembly, she knew, to abolish the position entirely, but respect for tradition
had thus far allowed her field of study to cling on by its fingernails.
She was small even for a Fly, delicate of frame and with a faint ashen tint to her skin, for her kinden often looked a little like those they grew up amongst. She taught the histories of the
Inapt as they themselves would tell it, and she taught a little of the principles of magic, but her few students were mostly Apt and, however diligently they took notes, they could never grasp even
the most basic tenets. It was a curiously futile existence, but she enlivened it by offering her skills as a doctor. Inapt kinden often fared far better under the care of an Inapt healer and, when
it came to it, she could stitch a wound almost as well as any Collegiate surgeon.
She took Gerethwy’s long hand in both of hers and inspected the stumps where an exploding weapon had torn off two fingers. ‘Healing nicely,’ she said, ‘but it would heal
far quicker if you’d not use the hand. It must hurt you, surely?’
He shrugged, something his bony hunchbacked frame was made for. ‘But there’s too much work. I’m due to drill with the Companies, and I need every moment I can get at the
workshops. Nobody else will.’ He thrust the paper at her again, then dragged it back, recognizing the pointlessness of it. Gerethwy himself was a man who seemed to understand everything. He
sat through her lectures as attentively as any Inapt scholar, seeming to take it all in, but then went off to the workshops to work on his devices. Her own masters had always muttered that the
Woodlouse-kinden were a law unto themselves.
‘Rational machinery,’ Gerethwy insisted, and she recognized that doomed passion to explain from her own classes, in trying to hammer home some patently obvious point into skulls
simply not designed for it. Now she was on the receiving end, and could only blink politely as his words gushed out – for he who had been so quiet and self-contained now had something he
needed to speak of.
‘It’s the future,’ he insisted. ‘It’s very simple.’ His eyes were begging her to agree with him. ‘It’s all down to putting information in, and
getting information out. It’s all in the gear trains that convert one to the other. You can do
anything
with it, if you just work out the gearing. Machines that can do things for
themselves in response to what you tell them.’
‘As far as I’m aware, that works only indifferently with human beings,’ she remarked, yanking on his arm to stop him gesturing with it, then immediately feeling guilty as he
winced. She began to apply fresh bandages, not that the healing wound really needed them any longer, but more as a mnemonic so that Gerethwy would remember he was hurt, and therefore take more
care.
‘But, look . . . as a doctor, surely
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