‘It’s been hard work getting used to the new controller,’ he continued. ‘I’ve got a shocking headache. Despatch for you, surr!’ He handed the satchel to Gi-Had.

‘Thank you.’ The overseer turned away to open it. He began to read a document, frowning as he did.

‘What happened when it failed?’ Tiaan asked Ky-Ara.

The operator’s top lip quivered but he mastered himself. ‘We were heading up the coast from Tiksi. Everything had gone perfectly. We were passing out of the aura of the Lippi node towards the Xanpt node. That’s a really strong one …’

‘So I believe,’ said Tiaan. She liked the shape of Ky-Ara’s mouth. A wonder she hadn’t noticed him before.

‘I had the controller helm on, sensing out the Xanpt field in advance. Sometimes it can be tricky shifting from one to another, and I didn’t want to get stuck between fields. The flywheels won’t drive her weight for that long.’

He looked sideways at Tiaan. She nodded.

‘The Lippi field began shifting wildly: sometimes strong, at other times hardly there at all. The fields grew harder and harder to visualise; I couldn’t tune either of them in.’ His voice cracked as he relived the awful scene. ‘I began to think that the Lippi field was going, though the two clankers ahead of me seemed to be having no trouble.’ Ky-Ara went pale and had to sit down.

‘What happened then?’ Gi-Had prompted after a long silence.

‘I lost it. Both fields were gone! The hedron was dead and there was nothing I could do about it. If it had happened in battle …’ He shivered. ‘I took the controller out, got a lift back to Tiksi on a cart and sent the controller up the mountain.’

‘I have it in my workshop,’ said Tiaan. ‘I can’t work out what’s happened. The crystal is completely dead.’

Ky-Ara looked distressed, like a lost boy. ‘If that’s all,’ he said, cradling the controller in his arms, ‘I’ll go to my quarters. I haven’t slept for two nights.’

‘Yes, thank you, Ky-Ara,’ said Gi-Had. ‘I know you’ve done your best. It must have been difficult for you.’

The young man went out. Tiaan’s dark eyes followed him thoughtfully.

‘You’re wondering if he might be the one?’ Gi-Had’s rumble broke into her thoughts, startling her.

Tiaan flushed. She had been thinking exactly that. Also thinking that, if she must mate, why not with a clanker operator? There were many similarities in their lives and work, and if they did not get on, he would be away most of the time. If nothing came of it, no one could say that she had not done her duty.

‘Yes,’ she said softly.

‘Strange folk, clanker operators. Their machines always come first – you know that.’

It didn’t require an answer. He shook out the rolled despatch, scowling ferociously. ‘Bad news?’ she asked.

‘Another problem. A worse one.’

‘Oh?’ said Tiaan warily.

‘More clankers wiped out, on the coast well north of Xanpt. Each time, the enemy knew just where to find them.’

‘Clankers are pretty noisy,’ said Tiaan.

‘Not these ones.’ Gi-Had looked over his shoulder. The attendant was a long way away but the overseer lowered his voice anyway. ‘They were using a new development, a Sound Cloaker! You can’t hear them move. And no one knew where they were going.’

‘But that means,’ said Tiaan, ‘the enemy has a way of finding them. Using the Secret Art –’

Gi-Had spun around. ‘Oy, you, clear out, now!’

A large bald man touched his brow then slouched off. It was Eiryn Muss, a halfwit who had a lowly place at the manufactory. He was always shambling about, peering over people’s shoulders.

Gi-Had turned back to Tiaan. ‘And if they can do that, they will destroy them all. And us! Find out how they do it, Tiaan.’

‘Is this more important than finding out why the hedrons failed? Or making replacement controllers?’

‘They’re all important,’ he growled.

‘I can’t do everything. I’m always exhausted as it is.’

‘Leave controller-making to the others for the time being. The best artisans from every manufactory have been ordered to work on these two problems.’

Her head jerked up. ‘So it’s not just my controllers that have failed?’

‘Not according to this. But that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear.’

‘Are you happy with my work, overseer?’

‘Let’s just say that I’m keeping an eye on you. Better get on with it.’ Nodding distractedly, Gi-Had hurried off.

THREE

Cryl-Nish Hlar looked up from his bench as Tiaan went by. He desired her, and had ever since arriving at the manufactory three years ago. Unfortunately, Tiaan was oblivious to him. That hurt Nish, as he was mockingly known. In the local dialect the word meant pipsqueak.

Nish was short and it was the bane of his life. He came from a long line of short people and despised every one of them for it. He was not unhandsome, in a brooding sort of way, with his cap of dark hair that showed the contours of his skull, and bright eyes that could be as green as the ocean, or as grey. Unfortunately his sallow skin was spotty, which was a torment, and his downy chin incited sneers of ‘bum fluff’.

He had a strong body though – broad, square shoulders, a stomach as hard and flat as a paving stone, jutting buttocks which excited ribald comments from the women he worked with, and heavy thighs. He was also, he liked to think, sturdily equipped for breeding.

Not that, Nish thought gloomily, he got any chance for that. Despite the severe shortage of males the women of the manufactory, like those of the mining village nearby, were not enamoured of him. He felt sure it was because he was short and spotty, and had no beard. How he hated his body.

That had nothing to do with it, of course. In these times even hideous men had their choice of partners. Moreover, he had other appealing characteristics – he was clever and of good family. Unfortunately he had one handicap fatal to intimacy. With women younger than his mother, Nish was so anxious that he became mortifyingly inarticulate.

Though not particularly skilled with his hands, Nish had a lively, restless intelligence and learned quickly. He also had a brilliant memory – for names, faces, things seen and conversations overheard. That was of great benefit to him in his other, unmentioned occupation.

Both his father, Jal-Nish Hlar, and his mother, Ranii Mhel, had been examiners. All the more incomprehensible that they could have made such a mistake with him. Every child in the east, and possibly the entire world, was taken before the examiners at age six, where every talent, creative or intellectual, manual, mechanical or psychic, was identified. On that basis children were assigned their occupations for life – labourer, miner, scribe, artisan, merchant, soldier, breeder! There was no room for childhood; the war with the lyrinx was a hundred and fifty years old. The soldiers, and the other dead, had to be made up. Children must work. The entire world was regimented for one thing – survival.

The examiners came again at the age of eleven, and for the third and final time at sixteen, to make sure. Some promising talents withered early, while others blossomed late.

Nish had been happy in his prenticeship as a scribe for one of the great merchants of Fassafarn, a trading city on the south coast of Einunar. Fassafarn was an ice-free port through which much of the wealth of the south was shipped to markets as far away as Crandor, and even Thurkad before its fall. He had been learning the principal languages and scripts of the known world, and was ideally suited for such work. Nish liked meeting powerful people and being trusted to translate their documents. He’d planned to become a merchant himself, one day, and make so much money that he could buy anything he wanted.