Hexwood. Diana Wynne Jones

Yam rattled. “Gone back. Time you first found me. Think everything. Told for first time. Hush. Mordion work.”

      Hume obediently sat himself on a smooth brown rock, with Ann on the ground beside him. They watched Mordion roll up the sleeves of his camel-coloured robe and unscrew a large panel in Yam’s back, where he dived in with some of the longer tools and did something to stop Yam lurching almost at once. Then he whipped round to the front of Yam and undid the voicebox at the top of Yam’s neck. “Say something,” Mordion said, after a moment.

      “THAT IS MUCH—” Yam’s normal flat voice boomed. Mordion hurriedly twiddled the power-driver. “Better than,” Yam said, and went on in a whisper, “it was before,” and was twiddled back to proper strength to add, “I am glad it was not broken.”

      “Me too,” said Mordion. “Now you can set me right if I get something wrong. You’re much older than anything I’m used to.”

      He went back to the hole in Yam’s rear. Yam turned and bent his head, far further than a human could, to watch what was going on. “Those fuel cells have slipped,” he told Mordion.

      “Yes, the clips are worn,” Mordion agreed. “How’s that? And if I take a turn on the neck pisistor, does it feel worse, or better?”

      “Better,” said Yam. “No, stop. That red wire goes to the torsor head. I think the lower sump is wrong.”

      “Punctured,” said Mordion. He bent down to the roll of tools. “More fluid. Where are the small patches? Ah, here. Do you know of any more leaks, while I’m at it?”

      “Lower left leg,” said Yam.

      Ann was fascinated. Mordion working on Yam was a different person, neither the mad-seeming enchanter who had created Hume, nor the harassed monk trying to build a house and watch Hume at the same time. He was cool and neutral and efficient, a cross between a doctor and a motor mechanic with, perhaps, a touch of dentist and sculptor thrown in. In a queer way, she thought, Mordion seemed far more at ease with Yam than he was with her or Hume.

      Hume sat seriously with a hand on each knee, leaning forward to watch each new thing Mordion did. He could not believe Mordion was not hurting Yam. He kept whispering, “It’s all right, Yam. All right.”

      Mordion turned round to pick up the magnifying goggles before starting on the tiny parts of Yam’s left leg, and noticed the way Hume was feeling. He wondered what to do about it. He could tell Hume Yam did not feel a thing; Hume would not believe him; and that would make Hume just as worried as before, but ashamed of his worry. Better get Yam himself to show Hume he was fine. Get Yam to talk about something else besides his own antique works.

      “Yam,” Mordion said, unscrewing the leg tegument, “from what you said to Hume earlier, I thought you implied you’d been inside this paratypical field for some time. Does it affect you too?”

      “Not as much as it affects human’s,” said Yam, “but I am certainly not immune.”

      “Surprising,” said Mordion. “I thought a machine would be immune.”

      “That is because of the nature of the field,” Yam explained.

      “Oh?” said Mordion, examining the hundreds of tiny silver leg mechanisms.

      “The field is induced by a machine,” said Yam. “The machine is a device known as a Bannus. It has been dormant but not inoperative for many years. I believe it is like me: it can never be fully turned off. Something has happened recently to set it working at full power and, unlike me, the Bannus can, when fully functional, draw power from any source available. There is much power available in this world at this time.”

      “That explains the strength of the field,” Mordion murmured.

      “But what is a Bannus?” asked Ann.

      “I can only tell you what I deduce from my own experience,” Yam said, turning himself round to face Ann, with Mordion patiently following him round. “The Bannus would appear to take any situation and persons given it, introduce them into a field of theta-space, and then enact, with almost total realism, a series of scenes based on these people and this situation. It does this over and over again, portraying what would happen if the people in the situation decided one way, and then another. I deduce it was designed to help people make decisions.”

      “Then it plays tricks with time,” Ann said.

      “Not exactly,” said Yam. “But I do not think it cares what order the scenes are shown in.”

      “You said that before too,” Hume said. He was interested. He had almost forgotten his worry about Yam. “And I didn’t understand then either.”

      “I have said it many times,” said Yam. “The Bannus cannot tamper with my memory. I know that we four have discussed the Bannus, here and in other places, twenty times now. It may well continue to make us do so until it arrives at the best possible conclusion.”

      “I don’t believe it!” said Ann. But the trouble was, she did.

      Mordion rolled away from Yam’s leg and pushed up his goggles. Like Ann, in spite of not wanting to believe Yam, he had a strong sense of having done this before. The feel of the tiny tool in his hand, the piercing scent of the pine tree overhead and the harsh whisper of its needles overlaying the sound of the river below, were uncomfortably and hauntingly familiar. “What conclusion do you think the machine is trying to make us arrive at?”

      “I have no idea,” said Yam. “It could be that the people deciding are not us. We are possibly only actors in someone else’s scenes.”

      “Not me,” said Ann. “I’m important. I’m me.”

      “I’m very important,” Hume announced.

      “Besides,” Ann went on, giving Hume a pat to show she knew he was important too, “I object to being pushed around by this machine. If you’re right, it’s made me do twenty things I don’t want to do.”

      “Not really,” said Yam. “Nothing can make either a person or a machine do things which it is not in their natures to do.”

      Mordion had gone back to work on Yam’s leg. He knew he was not in the least important It was a weight off his mind, somehow, that Yam thought they were only actors in someone else’s scene. But when Yam said this about one not being made to act against one’s nature, he found he was quivering so with guilt and uneasiness that he had to stop work again for fear of doing Yam damage.

      Ann was thinking about this too. She said, “But machines can be adapted. You’ve been adapted, Yam. And people have all sorts of queer bits in their natures that the Bannus could work on.”

      That was why he felt so guilty, Mordion realised with relief. He went back to making painstaking, microscopic adjustments on Yam’s leg. This machine, this Bannus, had taken advantage of some very queer and unsavoury corner of his nature when it caused him to create Hume. And the reason for his guilt was that, when the Bannus decided the correct conclusion had been reached, it would surely shut down its field. Hume would cease to exist then. Just like that What a thing to have done! Mordion went on working, but he was cold and appalled.

      Meanwhile, Ann was looking at her watch and saying firmly that she had to go now. She had had enough of this Bannus. As she got up and started down the steep rocks, Mordion left Yam with a driver sticking out of his leg and hastened after her. “Ann!”

      “Yes?” Ann stopped and looked up at him. She was still not feeling very friendly towards Mordion – particularly now that it seemed she had been shoved into scene after scene with him.

      “Keep coming here,” Mordion said. “Of your own free will, if possible. You do me good as well as Hume. You keep pointing out the truth.”

      “Yam can do that now,” Ann said coldly.

      “Not really.” Mordion tried to explain, before