Beauty and the Beast - 9
"So... do you want to go back now?"
Victoria gave no answer to the question, which left Polaris's mouth almost like a plea.
Whether they went back or not, the age had already begun to roll forward. The Purple Twilight Society of Berne City had started east, hauling devices that used power engines to rapidly denature the mana in the air. With not a shred of evidence, they had taken the sea's earlier fall onto the land for the outcome of a battle between the army and Victoria. They read the results to suit themselves, and they judged them to suit themselves.
Worse, the ones sent to confirm exactly what was happening came back having seen that the army encamped in the east was gone. Never once working through cause and effect, they decided everything had turned out fine and simply started moving east—a faction set on founding a new nation, a faction set on starting a religion, and a faction that wanted Berne City put back the way it had been. Every last one of them moving without a single sound judgment.
Of course, some Harvesters chose to stay where they were. Not one of them had actually reached the truth. They had only run because they were afraid to fight. They went looking for a reason so that they could run. Yes. The order was backwards. They didn't want to go, so they found an excuse to shut themselves away.
The interesting part was that this was how they found the person doing the agitating. Once that Harvester had, she spread the word for all she was worth. But after nothing but being on the receiving end, how glad is anyone to finally get the chance to hit back? There was no stopping the ones drunk on that pleasure. The agitator attacked her instead.
The agitator, presumably a special operative, was strong. Not an opponent for someone who had never really fought and had meant, from the start, to run rather than fight. In the end that Harvester was beaten to death—dragged off into the dark and killed with fists. Only after making certain the life was well and truly gone did the operative throw the body into a garbage dump, the way one discards a person who has merely lost and passed out.
But here's the thing. How do I know any of this? There were Harvesters watching that agitator. Several of them. I couldn't say why, but they were people who had been watching the Harvester from different directions, and when the agitator left, one of them went to where the body lay, pulled it out, and confirmed that it was dead.
A Harvester with no role at all. Not the sort of person who keeps watch for anyone. Nothing more than one among the countless people who had struggled, until now, just to stay alive in Berne City. A Harvester who had never moved for anyone else's sake, who moved only in order to live. An ordinary citizen.
I could see only the Harvesters. But listening to what a few of them said when they met the people they usually moved with, I realized it wasn't only the Harvesters who had understood. Among ordinary people, too, someone had reasoned that the agitator had shut a person's mouth, and had grasped that the reasoning was very likely true. They could not stand against the vast current running through Berne City. That did not mean every soul in it was drunk on the current.
People with that kind of reason irritate me most of all. What I like are the ones who, when something happens, do as they're led without a thought in their heads, and afterward shove off everything wicked as something somebody else told them to do. They always give me warmth. They exploit people, drive them, and in the end kill them, sucking down the profit all the while. Excellent Harvesters.
The problem is that becoming a Harvester increases one's intelligence. It's mostly the low-intelligence ones—the ones who can't think from another person's point of view—who behave like this.
Haah. I don't know why this ability is so full of defects. If becoming a Harvester only granted muscle or some supernatural power, so they could get drunk on strength and do nothing but act selfishly, that would be ideal. Why must their intelligence go and increase as well, for no good reason? Or if their intelligence must grow, it would be nice if they turned out innately short on empathy. They never develop in a way that's convenient for me.
Oh, and there's one more surprising thing. Some time ago I parceled out Yuanshi Tianzun's techniques and Daegon's, a little at a time, and sent them along. Those techniques have surfaced. They're still quite early-stage, but because Daegon and Yuanshi Tianzun each hold the whole of their own art, the fragments work.
What surprised me most wasn't Daegon's technique. It was Yuanshi Tianzun's—a method that converts mana not into kinetic energy, but into light and heat. It can burn through far more mana, and far more sharply, than conversion into motion. The pity is that it can't produce light fierce enough to kill. The efficiency is so poor that all it amounts to is switching on an absurdly bright lamp. But that is enough. The stress on the machine itself is far lighter than when the conversion is kinetic, and still the thing gulps down a staggering quantity of mana. Which means a space where magic cannot be used can be made more easily, and faster.
Berne City is a cutting-edge city, a knot of research institutes of every kind. The institute where Morris worked sat at its center, too. There is the fierce environmental pressure called war, and there are tools enough for progress. And there was the knowledge I let slip to them. In a world that burns mana for fuel, they invented a lethal weapon.
Not that the Purple Twilight Society shares it through the whole of its ranks. Some groups wield special inventions. Others make do with power engines that have nothing on them but wheels. Each nursing a different thought, each carrying a different weapon, they came out of the central streets of Berne City where they had been hiding and turned their steps toward the east.
If they meant to flee, as Polaris said, they would have to cross the bone-dry river this very moment and head north, or else circle the mountains and make for the next city over to the east. This country is shaped like a C turned backwards, so keep going east and you can board a train there and ride it all the way to the capital. It takes far longer than going by ship, let alone by airship, but it is, at least, safe.
Victoria moved.
"Let's go get Belle."
"Huh? No, but Belle is..."
Victoria pointed at Polaris's hair. A faint purple, the pigment washed thin.
"You've ended up like me, so you must have been alive after all. The last time I saw you, you were dying. If there's anyone who could do something about that, it would have to be Belle."
Ah. Right. That was how it had been. The last Victoria saw of us was me, with nothing left but a hand, and Polaris, cooked halfway through. Surprisingly, it seemed Polaris's wounds hadn't actually been the kind to threaten her life—but hair doesn't grow back like this unless something out of the ordinary has happened.
"We'll take Belle with us and head for the capital first. I don't know what to do anymore either."
Polaris was worn to the bone, and there was no light in Victoria's eyes. Both of them must have been as tired as tired can be. Even so, they moved.
Or rather, they were about to.
Her stomach growled.
"I'm hungry."
"Hungry? Wait. Don't tell me you haven't eaten a thing all this time?"
"Yeah... Ah. A mistake."
Far off, the sea gave a sudden heave and dropped toward the ground.
KRA-KOWA-KOWA-KOWA!
A sound like a landslide thundered on every side.
"What are you doing?!"
Polaris screamed it, frantic. Her face had gone genuinely white, and the shout tore out of her at the top of her lungs.
"The more I use this, the hungrier I get, so... a calorie deficit?"
Victoria said it clutching her stomach. If it were an ordinary mass of water, perhaps it wouldn't matter. But the instant this touched a surface, what hung overhead was water dense enough to crumple metal. What would happen if that fell all the way to the ground?
"Search the houses! Find something to eat!"
"No, stealing is a little..."
"Is this the time to quibble about that?! If you drop that thing, this city vanishes off the map!"
Polaris sprang up as if she had never been in despair at all and ran for a house that still more or less held its shape. The door was locked, of course. She tore it off whole, went inside, and ransacked the kitchen.
Victoria looked around. Her eyes lingered on the long line cutting the eastern district away from the rest. Until a little while ago the army would have been right here, clubbing with their weapons anyone who tried to come out. North was the river. West was the sea. South meant climbing down a cliff. Someone with a particular gift could go any way but west, yet north and south alike would be hard for any great number of people to cross.
Victoria reached an arm up into the sky. What was she trying to do?
Pitch-black, without a single point of light, though it was still day. Far off, reflected light faintly picked out the bulk of it. A colossal column of water was slowly coming down. Then, like a beam scraping the earth, the column scoured along the barricade line where not a single building stood.
SHWAAAAAA!
No. Let me correct that. The pressure was so ferocious it gouged a deep trench.
But why? Victoria approached the place she had carved open, and her eyes traveled the sheared face of the ground. Several thick pipes, likely water and sewage mains. And beside them, a machine had jutted out.
Anyone who knows clockwork would know what it was. A clockwork machine that comes and goes underground, tasked with maintaining the waterworks, or with rushing letters and parcels on their way. Originally it was a device that ran a rail along the pipes and mended minor breaks. That memory lit up, and others came dragging after it. This is not the world of those faded memories, where you bury a pipe and have nothing to worry about but corrosion. Damage from monsters, or from the shock of magic worked overhead, ruins the interior often enough that people are ordinarily hired to do the repairs. Berne City is what replaced those people with machines. And it did not leave the tracks—tangled like a spider's web along the pipes—for repair alone. It added the delivery of letters and goods. In other words, things can come and go.
Water moved like a snake and brought Victoria the machine that had been driven down into the ground. When she tore open the inside, a small mechanism showed itself, mounted in what seemed to have once been a compartment for carrying something, and mounted not very long ago.
Click. Click.
Victoria took it apart and let out a long sigh.
"So Marquis Gaston's army truly isn't the only enemy."
A device for inputting programs had been fitted onto another device. Memory told her that. Victoria understood what I had understood.
She picked it up and went to Polaris, who had come stumbling out of the house, shaking all over at the noise.
"Did you find anything to eat?"
"Huh? Yeah. But the only thing we can actually eat is some hard biscuits. What have you got in your hand?"
"You said a clockwork machine attacked out of nowhere on the airship, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"This is what makes them do that."
For an instant Polaris's eyes went very sharp. She said nothing more, and led Victoria into the house.
And the two of them ate a late lunch.