Not One Thing Is Going Smoothly - 1
I had assumed I would be transferred straight into the Royal Academy. That isn't how it went.
The first reason is simple. It is vacation. The schools in the capital all break around the same time, and right now it is summer break. For the record, the Royal Academy is in the capital, and so is the Clockwork Knight school Victoria used to attend.
The second reason is that the crown invited the people who had helped others in Berne City—Victoria among them, and quite a few besides—in order to commend them. Apparently the mere act of handing out official awards improves the public spirit, which makes it a profitable affair from the standpoint of keeping order.
What bothers me is that every paper covers only the sudden disaster and the heartwarming tales of those who helped people through it. Any account of why it happened is neatly left out. All the attention goes to individual stories. In other words, the incident in Berne City was either manufactured, or it is a fatal problem they have no hope of solving anytime soon.
Thinking that a second disaster would be something to look forward to, I was delivered to the royal castle.
Yes. Delivered.
The afternoon the letter arrived, an aerial battleship quite literally came to a stop over the house. A great many people in exoskeletons climbed down, hauled me off, and took me aboard. They said they were escorting me, but I had no right to offer any other opinion, and in that respect it was no different from a kidnapping.
Led along by them, I reached the capital in a single day.
From the aerial battleship I looked down on the royal palace: walls painted to look like timber, ornaments and frameworks of brass, and between them the occasional broad pane of glass set in a skeleton of cast iron. Against all that stood tall spires of stacked stone, pointed roofs, arches reaching out in every direction. Two kinds of buildings from different ages harmonized in the middle of a vast garden, and a military base ringed the palace all the way around.
The ship docked at a mooring a little removed from the castle. Coming down, I glanced back at it. It had propellers, but they were far too small to be what held it in the air. It must use some light gas. I had no time to look closely, so I amused myself with the thought that hydrogen would be fun, and followed the people in their heavy armor.
For the record, they resemble the space marines in my faded memories. Human aesthetic sense doesn't differ as much as you might think.
Anyway.
I arrived at a certain place within the palace, a place that looked considerably sturdier than the rest—a building that had pared beauty back and raised practicality in its place. For a moment I wondered whether I was about to be dragged off and made to drink spicy broth through my nose, but nothing of the sort occurred.
We passed through several doors, and with every door the number of people following me shrank, until at last only one remained. That was when I met a man whose face was full of exhaustion.
I have seen him on television a few times, so I know him. This man is the king of this country.
"Hello."
When I greeted him, the corners of his eyes tightened just a little. Distaste clung to his face. Looking at the expression, though, it was less that he loathed a person than the fleeting disgust that passes when etiquette, or manners, are missing.
Etiquette is, at bottom, a means by which those above control those below, and by which the ranks between people are divided. That pattern of behavior is what they call habitus. There is nothing special about why someone who has suddenly grown rich is scorned as nouveau riche. They simply don't know the patterns real wealth carries, and so they become nothing more than a thug with money. In the same way, a frown is only natural when you see someone acting beneath their station.
I must look like that sort, too.
"Are you Bell? The outsider who granted people the miracle they call a blessing."
His way of speaking is odd. He must have received a report on me, and yet he talks like that? Or is it some kind of test? Beyond reading emotion, I don't really know.
Then I should keep doing what I have been doing. No lies. The same course from the first step to the last. Only one kind of action.
"For now, I use the name Bell."
Meaning it is not my real name.
"What was your original name?"
"I don't have one. When you are alone, you don't need a name."
There are words that describe me, but there is no Other who would call out to that sea. Ah—of course, if I leave what lies below alone for too long, things that might be presumed my own kind do appear. They steal my warmth, though, so I killed every one of them, and I will keep killing them the moment I see them.
Steal my warmth?
That, at least, I cannot stand by and watch.
Meanwhile he studies me intently, looking me over from the top down while I stare blankly back. There is no reason to be tense. Of course, with a prospective harvester—a person of power—standing in front of me, I would have to coax and soothe them into a contract somehow if I wanted to build an automatic harvesting system.
But I don't.
However poorly my thoughts may turn, what I know, I know: the moment I show desire, that desire will close around my throat. I do not flatter myself that I could win a fight against a specialist who carries social skill as a weapon. A single mistake is fatal. So I hold my breath and endure, and endure, and endure, until I can set my teeth in the throat for certain.
Humans grow old and weak someday. When that time comes, will they be able to resist a single opportunity?
It is extremely difficult. Most humans will yield. A living thing can resist pain, and being worn down, but enduring the chance to become better is close to impossible. It isn't even someone else. It is yourself, becoming better. You cannot even be jealous, because it is you.
If he had been thick with flesh and plagued by the illnesses of middle age, that span would have been a little shorter. For a man of power, this body is trained to excess.
A shame.
"Yes. I have heard a number of things about you. That blessing. Do you mean to use it for our royal house?"
I forced down the smile that tried to form.
Volunteering to become a harvester? I want to say, as much as you like. But here I have to hold back. Not yet.
A little longer.
"If you wish it, I'll do it. Do you wish it?"
The choice is theirs to make, and all I am saying is that I am nothing more than a simple vending machine that does as it is asked. I move objectively. This is a question that shoves every bit of the subjectivity onto them.
The king answered me like this.
"I wish it."
"Yes. I understand."
I nodded. Ordinarily I ought to add, at this point, that it is three people a day, but in this world I have already made thousands in a single day. Saying three is partly a way of controlling the production of harvesters; from the perspective of the person who has me in hand, though, once three have been made there is no need to pay me any mind until the next day comes. In other words, their guard comes down.
I understand it now that I have gained so many memories, but the reason Yasle left me so free was that three harvesters, once made, were enough to put a mind at ease. An outer god who granted whatever was said was no particular problem. The problem was other people approaching an outer god who obeyed so very well. The object of vigilance had shifted from me to the people who came near me. In that sense it was a good choice. It is already too late, so I will let the regret pass.
Anyway, the king calmly explained what I would be doing here. When he gave an order, I was to do as I was told. I was to attend the Royal Academy. I was to learn this and that from now on. Nowhere in any of it was there an explanation of why. It is the way one speaks to a slave.
And then he says this.
"From now on, you will live in the royal palace. If you follow what we say, we will see to it that what you wish to do is accomplished as well."
What you wish of me is exactly what I want. I swallowed the words. Things are flowing so smoothly that I almost wonder whether this is all right.
Then the king called the man standing by the door. Surprisingly, the man is a general. Isn't a general supposed to be planted somewhere in a headquarters, done up in a dress uniform? What is he doing in heavy armor like that? Or is this a world that spends even its generals?
While I turned that minor question over, the two spoke briefly, and then the king left the room along with him.
Oh? We aren't parting ways here so I can be shoved into a pen?
They tell me to follow, so I go with them. We left the building and, together with more than several dozen soldiers, headed for the outskirts of the palace, toward what I took for a military base. There we entered a building that stood out for being pure white.
The people inside started to salute the man at the front, then saw the king behind him and dropped to their knees. Weariness on his face, the king told them to carry on and brought me farther in, and at a certain place he stopped.
It was only a room with chairs, but through the window I could see long hoses and strange apparatus hanging all over the people on the other side.
Aha.
So this is a hospital.
I had thought even a lost limb could be put right with magic, and yet there are quite a few people here with fatal wounds. Some are covered in blisters. On others, the sites of amputations are stained green. There are people who look like soldiers, and there are children you could never call soldiers, lying among them.
Just then an old man opened the glass door and came out.
"Your Majesty. You may go no farther than this."
"Still as stiff as ever, even after stepping down as royal physician."
It was a rude thing to say, but neither the king nor the doctor paid it much mind. The soldiers behind glared at the doctor, yet when the man at the front—the general—glanced back and gave them a look, every one of them dropped their eyes.
"I am merely doing what I must, as a physician."
The old doctor didn't spare them a thought.
At that, the king pointed inside.
"The patients in there. Let me see them from here, together with this one. It may be that all of them can be treated."
At the king's words the doctor stares straight at me. His face is full of wrinkles, but his eyes are clearer than a young person's. He dressed the king and me in special clothes, and once we were wrapped up tight I went in with him.
From what I am told, every patient who cannot be treated by magic alone has been gathered here.
I recited the words of the contract. It does not matter if they are unconscious. This is something conveyed directly, through light.
The hair of everyone inside dyed purple. And for nearly nine in ten, the skin turned blue. Even so, not a single one of them failed to regain their health.
While the old doctor looked at me with searching eyes, the king spoke.
"Thank you."
So I said this.
"You wished it."
The responsibility is entirely yours. I have no intention of bearing any of it.
Some are aghast at having come back to life. Some marvel that their skin has turned blue. Some look at me, weep, and pray. I look at the king, because I read a strange desperation in his expression.
The attempt to verify my ability has come far too quickly.
There is someone, isn't there? Someone who needs me.
Hehe.
Getting inside will be easy.