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'Do you believe in the Machine-God?' asked Dalia, feeling like a child as the words left her mouth. 'I mean, if you don't mind me asking.'

Zeth drew herself up to her full height and lifted a piece of machinery from the workbench in front of her. Dalia saw that she held a piece of switching gear.

'You know what this is?'

'Of course, it's a switch.'

'Describe it to me,' ordered Zeth.

Dalia looked at Zeth as though this was a joke, but even allowing for her mistress's neutral body language, she could tell she was deadly serious.

'It's a simple switch,' said Dalia. 'Two metal contacts that touch to make a circuit and separate to break it. There's a moving part that applies an operation force to the contacts called an actuator, in this case a toggle.'

'And how does it work?'

'Well, the contacts are closed when they touch and there's no space between them, which means electricity can flow from one to the other. When they're separated by a space, they're open, so no electricity flows.'

'Exactly right, a simple switch based on simple principles of basic engineering and physics.'

Dalia nodded as Zeth continued, holding the switch between them. 'This switch is about the simplest piece of technology imaginable, yet the dogmatic fools who perpetuate this myth of the Machine-God would have us believe that a portion of divine mechanical will exists within it. They tell us that only by appeasing some invisible entity - whose existence cannot be proven, but must be taken on faith - will this switch work.'

'But the Emperor… isn't he the Machine-God? The Omnissiah?'

Zeth laughed. 'Ah, Dalia, you cut right to the heart of a debate that has raged on Mars for two centuries or more.'

Dalia felt her skin redden, as though she had said something foolish, but Zeth appeared not to notice.

'There are almost as many facets to the beliefs of the Mechanicum as there are stars in the sky,' said Zeth. 'Some believe the Emperor to be the physical manifestation of the Machine-God, the Omnissiah, while their detractors claim that the Emperor presented himself as their god in order to win their support. They believe that the Machine-God lies buried somewhere beneath the sands of Mars. Some even believe that by augmenting their bodies with technology they will eventually transcend all flesh and become one with the Machine-God.'

Dalia hesitated before asking her next question, though she knew it was a logical step in their discourse. 'And what do you believe?'

Zeth regarded her from behind the blank facets of her goggles, as though debating whether to answer her, and Dalia wondered if she'd made a terrible mistake with her question.

'I believe the Emperor is a great man, a visionary man, a man of science and reason who has knowledge greater than the sum total of the Mechanicum,' answered Zeth. 'But I believe that he is, despite all that, just a man. His mastery of technology and his refutation of superstition and religion should be a shining beacon guiding the union of Imperium and Mechanicum towards the future, but many on Mars are willfully blind to this, determined to ignore the evidence before them. Instead, they embrace their blind faith in an ancient, non-existent god closer to their chest than ever before.'

As Zeth spoke, Dalia watched her become more and more animated, the neutrality of her body language giving way to passionate animation. The miniature servo-skulls attached to her shoulder plugs stood erect and the biometrics on her manipulator arms flashed urgently.

'What is now proved was once only ever imagined, but only a fool relies on faith,' said Zeth. 'Trust in facts and empirical evidence. Do not be swayed by passion or rhetoric without proof and substance. As long as we are free to ask what we must, free to say what we think and free to think what we will, science can never regress. It is my great regret that we live in an age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of people who try to. Trust what you know and that which can be proven. Do you understand?'

'I think so,' said Dalia. 'It's like experiments… until you have proof, they're just theories? Until you prove something, it's meaningless.'

'Exactly so, Dalia,' said Zeth, obviously pleased. 'Now, enough theological debate, we have work to complete.'

The prototype of the enhancer was brought down from the workspace above and intensively tested within the confines of Zeth's inner forge. With Dalia's intuitive grasp of the machine's structure and Zeth's centuries of accumulated wisdom, the device began to take on a new and more elaborate structure as the results of those tests revealed hitherto unforeseen complications.

Severine spent her days virtually chained to her graphics station, turning Dalia and Zeth's new ideas into workable patterns for Zouche to machine and Caxton to assemble. Mellicin organised their labours with her customary zeal and even her normally stern features were alight with the joy of creation.

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