Light on Shattered Water

13

          Shyia brought my breakfast again in the morning, just as the first sunlight was filtering across the horizon.  I hadn't eaten the previous night: I'd crashed as soon as I'd got back to my room.  I guess whoever prepared my meals took that into account because my breakfast was large with things like hot cheese scones with melted butter, a drumstick of what tasted like turkey, blueberries, and a glass of water.
          "Hungry," Shyia commented as he watched me eat.  "They didn't know whether to wake you for food or let you sleep.  Huhn.  How is it going?"
          I chewed and swallowed my mouthful of turkey.  "How much longer is this going on?"
          "I don't know." He settled himself in the window niche and watched the dawn outside.  For a while I ate in silence, then he asked, "What are they doing to you?"
          "They want... they want to see how I work." I gave him a few details and his ears went down.  "Are they hurting you?  I'm sure his lordship would order them to..."
          "No, not hurting.  I will survive.  It could be worse." Hell, if our positions were reversed: if a Rris had ended up on my world the medical examinations would be a hell of a lot more uncomfortable.  "You were the one who told me it would be bad."
          "Huhn," he grunted and there was another moment's silence.  "They've got something else for you today.  I heard you're meeting with someone called Chaeitch ah Ties.  You know him?"
          "I've met him." The young Rris who'd been present that day Hirht introduced me to some of the Rris I'd be working with, the one who was working on the steam engine.  "Do you know what he wants me for?"
          He snorted.  "You know about something he's probably spent a good part of his life developing and you ask what he wants to talk to you about."
          "Good point."
          He looked out the window again and scratched at his right cheek.  "I've been wondering how long before something catches fire."
          "What do you mean?"
          "Huhn.  Talk about you... it's spreading everywhere.  Other kingdoms are going to hear about you, if they haven't already.  They're going to start asking questions, then making demands.  Depending on how his lordship handles things, there could be trouble."
          "Bad?"
          His tongue flicked across his nose and he looked away.  "Hard to tell.  But, an insect falls into a fish pond, it doesn't last long."
          Great.  I lost my appetite.
          It was about forty-five minutes later when the guards came for me.  The laptop had charged and Belfast Child sounded through the room.  When he came through the door the officer stared at the laptop for a few seconds.  One of his ears flickered a couple of times then he turned to me, "Sir?  Could you come with us.  You might want warm clothes.  Also, bring that." He gestured at the laptop.
          Same procedure as the last two days: carriages waiting at the postern gate.  Two guards rode with me in my carriage as morning sunlight filtered in through the warped glass and I held the laptop to stop it bouncing around too much.  This time the ride took longer and we didn't make the same turns.  Outside I could hear shouting Rris, animals, wheels on the streets and also the sounds of construction: hammers and saws.  I climbed out when the door was opened and squinted into crisp winter sunlight.  We were in a large courtyard surrounded on three sides by high brick walls and buildings, the other side was dockside, crowded with snow-dusted stacks of crates, barrels, timber and milled lumber.  There were ships docked there: four fat-hulled things with two masts lay at anchor.  Another two ships were dry-docked at the end of slipways while a few cold-looking Rris workers labored at scraping down the hulls.  The harbor was a deep bite out of the city, probably a river mouth, protected by stone breakwaters at the mouth to the west.  Sheets of ice crusted the water, especially closer to the shore.  I could see more boats and ships at anchor on the docks across on the southern side.  Further along the docks were buildings: a series of big wooden sheds that had the Spartan look of warehouses built right out on the edge of the docks.  The chill blowing in off the lake brought tears to my eyes and went right through my coat; I pulled my gloves out of my pockets and pulled them on.
          "Sir?" The officer and his guards were waiting for me.  "This way."
          I followed them across the docks toward the buildings while workers took time out to stare at me.  A foreman howled in outrage and paraded around, waving his/her arms to get them back to work.  My guards shifted a bit closer and kept their weapons ready.
          The building wasn't a warehouse, it was a covered dry dock.  Inside was a large workspace with another ship in there, or parts of a ship.  It was still under construction, just a keel and ribs surrounded by scaffold, ropes and tackle, stacks of lumber and racks of tools.  Light found its way in through small windows high in the walls, water lapped under the big doors at the foot of the slipway leading down to the waterline.  Apart from that, the building was deserted.
          My escort led me on through to another door on the far side of the shed.  Beyond that was a small hallway with a rickety staircase and another door with a couple of soldiers on guard.  They ducked their heads to the officer and stepped aside to let us through.
          It was another construction shed, even larger than the other one and as cold inside as it was outside.  The ribs of a half-completed hull were nestled in a web of scaffold like the ones outside except for the paddle wheels mounted on each side and the stubby funnel rising from the wood-bound boiler.  Tools of all descriptions and a few that defied it littered workbenches, along with sections and pieces of wood and metal.  Hoists, ropes and chains hung from the ceiling joists, hammered panels of metal stood propped against walls.  There was a Rris sitting on a pile of lumber with his back to us, tail twitching as the person regarded the carcass of the ship.  Didn't even notice us until the officer spoke up, "Sir?"
          "Uh?" The Rris turned, taking a smoking corncob pipe out of his mouth and his ears flicking up, "Ah!  About time." I recognized him now: Chaeitch ah Ties.  In a flowing move he was on his feet and hurried over, ignoring the guards and grabbing my arm without any hesitation.  "Come on, come on.  Here." He pulled me over to the boat.  The port-side paddle wheel was taller than I was.  "What do you think?"
          "Very nice," I said.  "What is it?"
          He gaped at me.
          "Sorry," I said.  "Joke."
          "Joke?" He stared at me and took a puff on his pipe while his fur settled down again.  "I didn't think you were the type." He hesitated again, taking the opportunity to tap his pipe down.  "You do know something about these?"
          "I know a bit.  Not too much.  I was an artist, not a... a... someone who makes these."
          "[Shipwright]," he offered.
          "Shipwright.  Thanks."
          "But you know a bit.  What do you think of this?"
          I had another look.  When I was a kid I'd built a model steam engine, a small brass one based on James Watt's original design.  I'd lathed the shafts and screws down myself.  It worked.  It leaked and jammed and whistled, but it worked.  The Rris steam engine worked on the same principle: a single-expansion engine with boiler, piston chamber, a weighted wheel that I realised replaced the unwieldy walking beam and piston shaft driving a gear train which in turn powered the paddles.  Steering was by a rudder.  A hell of a lot bigger, but I could make something of what they were doing.
          "Be better steering by changing the speed of these," I said, patting a wheel.  "Also, you are using a... one-time system for the steam.  You get more power from a... a more-than-one-stroke, also use less... wood."
          "Multiple-stroke?" he looked thoughtful.
          I put the laptop down on a handy bench and climbed inside the scaffold to get closer to the guts of the engine.  "Here," I pointed to the valve assembly on the piston.  It was all in brass.  "Steam is heated, it pushes this out, then in again, then the steam comes out here, right?"
          "Yes."
          "You can use the steam again.  Steam pushes when it heats, but when it cools it pulls." I moved my hands, trying to demonstrate.  "Get rid of this," I patted the metal wheel intended to power the piston on its return stroke.  "Now, steam looses power, expands.  Use more than one cylinder.  Use small cylinder, then used steam goes on to larger cylinder, then larger one.  Understand?"
          His tail lashed slowly as he squinted at the engine, took a long drag on his pipe.  "I think I see... Multiple cylinders.  I'd been considering... it works?  Better?"
          "Much.  More power, less fuel.  Look." I took him back to the laptop and fumbled with gloved hands to load an animation showing a triple-expansion engine with its steam tubes running through the fire cylinder.  Looks easy enough to build, but I wasn't sure Rris industry was up to it.  The pipes and cylinders had to be cast properly and sealed by advanced welding techniques.  A fault in a boiler and the thing could go off like a bomb.
          I translated the animation's narrative as best as I could, again stumbling through that uneasy territory where concepts and words that just didn't translate made a linguistic fog.  He listened attentively and often asked me to stop the animation to have a closer look at something.  When it was done he touched the plastic casing and tapped it with a claw, "Shave me, to be able to carry a library around with you... I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a quill the same way again." He snorted: a cloud of white condensation.  "Ah well.  I think we'd be more comfortable talking in the office."
          The office was upstairs.  It was a little room with racks of scrolls covering a wall, a low desk with a pair of capacious beanbag-style cushions, a single grubby little glazed window rimed with frost and - most welcome - a fire in the potbelly stove.  I made a beeline for it, my hands just about touching the hot iron as I tried to work some warmth back into my chilled extremities while Chaeitch bustled about collecting scrolls and papers.  He looked surprised when he saw what I was doing.  "Ah?  You're cold?"
          "It's not the warmest around here."
          He glanced at the window and the snow falling out there and his ears went flat.  "Rot it!  I forgot!  They said you were [something] to cold.  I forgot.  I shouldn't have kept you down there... oh rot it.  I'm sorry..."
          "Don't worry," I interrupted.  "I'll thaw out."
          "Oh." His eyes flickered sideways, toward the door and the guards who were waiting outside.  "Would you like some wine?  That can help warm you up."
          Rris wine.  I hadn't had alcohol for... how long was it now?  Months.  It was the first time anyone had offered me any.  "Please.  I'd like to try some."
          He ducked his head and fumbled out a pair of Rris mugs and poured from a wide-bodied glass bottle wrapped in a wicker framework.  I took the proffered mug and sniffed: smelled like wine, with an unfamiliar undertone.  Chaeitch took a swallow and busied himself spreading scrolls out on the desk and weighting the ends down to stop them rolling up again.  I took a sip of my own and coughed.  If it was wine it was about fifteen percent alcohol, and on top of that it was spiced.  Chaeitch's ears went flat against his head.  "Fine," I assured him.  "Fine.  Just a different taste."
          Not too bad once you got used to it, and he was right; it did seem to warm you up.  Or at least numb you to the cold.
          The papers and scrolls he'd produced were plans.  I recognized the details of his steam engine.  None of the plans were real blueprints or technical drawings.  They were just hand drawings.  Detailed, that they were, but they reminded me more of sketches from Leonardo da Vinci's notebook than a diagram from a technical engineer's drawing board.  Measurements and notes in cramped Rris crosshatched cuneiform scrawled in red and black ink everywhere, so cramped I could only make out the odd word.  Tough to follow but it gave me an idea of what they'd done to the inside of his engine.
          We spent the entire day poking through those papers.  Jesus, when he got going he was unstoppable.  He knew every inch of that steam engine, he didn't have to even glance at the plans to tell me about something: why something was done in a particular way, what an individual piece was made out of.  It was something he'd designed himself and practically built himself.  His baby.
          I guess I was expecting him to be somewhat pissed at me, at least a bit disillusioned.  I mean, he'd built something he'd believed was unique, something that would change the world, and he was right in that.  Then someone - not even someone he might consider a person - appears out of nowhere and tells him it's an old hat.  I think I'd at least be annoyed, but he didn't seem to give a damn.  I was a source of information, and he used it as best as he could.
          Engines of all types: steam, rotary, internal combustion, wind power, solar, electric motors.  Those last were a bit beyond him, but he was quite taken with the concept of the steam turbine.
          "An [something] idea," he enthused, then scratched at his chin.  "Difficult to build.  To move at the speeds you are saying... I doubt we could work to such fine [tolerances?].  How can you lathe out a chamber from solid metal?  What material are the bits made from?  Something that can cut iron..."
          Talk went to methods and materials.  Easy to see how something works, but how the hell do you make tungsten-carbide steel?  Carbon-fiber?  Synthetic Spidersilk?  Heat-resistant ceramics?  The answers were in the laptop, but from those answers more questions propagated.
          The guards brought more wood for the fire and later, lunch.  Slightly stale bread, the baked fish was a lot better.  They also brought water, which went largely untouched while there was still wine in the flask.
          Much later that afternoon Chaeitch spread his notes out across the desk and raked his claws through his cheek tufts.  "Rot me... I never dreamed there could be so much.  You need tools I've never heard of just to build the tools to make these things.  Metals, chemicals, tools... Everything is linked to everything else.  Where the rot do you start?"
          "The beginning is always a good place," I said.
          He snorted.  "Seriously."
          "Seriously." I sank back in my cushion and contemplated the piles of notes and scribbles on the desk.  Where did you start?  "I'm not too sure.  Keep it simple.  Start at the bottom, maybe better furnaces?  Then better metals and tools... build up from there."
          Chaeitch flicked his lips back and hissed through his teeth then reached over to run a single digit over the laptop's keyboard.  His claw sounded click, click, click across the plastic.  "His lordship had wanted to try and keep this within the workshops here.  I don't think that's going to be possible.  I think I can [something] the [something] engine.  I've got a few ideas to work from, but the rest... I think it's going to take a long time."
          I nodded and sighed, "I'm not going anywhere."
          He blinked, then asked, "How long are you staying?"
          "What?" I stared, not quite sure I'd heard him right.
          "How long are you staying?  I mean before you go back to your home?"
          "Didn't they tell you..." I swallowed, and told him, "I can't go home."
          His irises flicked to black pools with a lambent corona.  "I... they said you came here by accident; you are a guest.  I didn't know you couldn't go back."
          "It's no great secret." I said and reached for my mug, polishing off the last dregs in one mouthful.
          Chaeitch stared at me a while longer, then asked, "Another?"
          "Please."
          The guards came for me later that evening.  They were polite but firm when Chaeitch wanted more time.  "Ah well," he hissed, his tail lashing, "Until next time then.  I'll have another bottle waiting."
          "Sounds good," I smiled and he only flinched a little.
          Dark again outside, cold enough to freeze sound, but the sky had cleared and a blue moon hung over the skyline.  My guards' breath were puffs of crystal in the moonlight as they escorted me across the shipyard compound to where the wagon waited.  Rris voices called out questions from the darkness and a couple of my guards replied, telling them to go home.
          22:46 by my watch.  I did my best to doze during the ride back to the palace, gave up after I'd almost been jolted out of my seat for the third time.  My guards were watching me.  I stared back, then on impulse asked, "Is this what you joined for?"
          They both looked surprised, then confused.  "Sir?" one asked.
          "This," I gestured at the cab, "This is what you were expecting when you joined the guard?  This is why you joined?  Did you want excitement?  See new places?  Money?  Maybe you liked the uniform?"
          The younger one on the left snorted a burst of laughter, the older one took a closer look at me and sniffed, then reared back.  "You've been drinking?"
          "Only to excess." In the darkness I saw them both stiffen, as though I might launch myself at them.  "That is a joke," I hastened to add.
          "Huhn," the older one rumbled.  "He gave you wine?  I'm not sure..."
          "Lighten up," I said.  "I only had a few."
          "I think it might have been a few too many," he said.
          I didn't feel drunk.  Effervescent, maybe, more mellow than I had for a long time, but not drunk.  Was that forbidden to me also?  That realization came like a splash of cold water in the face.  Conversation lapsed for the rest of the trip.  My guards were more tangible shapes in the darkness opposite.  Dim patches of moonlight periodically washed through the windows as the carriage rattled through the cobbled streets, the dim, blue-tinged illumination painting the pair in eerie half-light.
          Back in my quarters there was a fire roaring away in the grate.  It took the edge off the chill, but couldn't do much more than that.  I dragged the cushion across and dumped myself into it, wrung out after a long day.  Minutes later a mute servant ducked in to deliver a covered tray and retreat again with tail lashing.  Dinner: Chunks of liver cooked to some degree with side order of salad, berries, bread and water.  I was hungry enough to eat it.  Maybe I was drunk I reflected as I pushed the remains of the meal away.  Liver... unggh.
          A scratching at the door heralded the arrival of Shyia.  He closed the door and hesitated, eyes flashing like oil on water as they caught the firelight.  "The guards said you've been drinking."
          "Did they," I said.
          He coughed, "Chaeitch wasn't supposed to do that.  They really don't want you... doing things like that."
          That rankled.  "Goddamn it!  Why?  It was just a couple of cups.  I'm not going to go crazy."
          He didn't say anything but his tail lashed.
          "That's it, isn't it," I sighed.  "They don't want me getting drunk.  'Monster goes crazy.  Kills eight.'... Shit, Shyia, I can handle my drink."
          "The guards said you were acting a bit... strange."
          "There's a difference between strange and drunk, isn't there?"
          "In your case?" He bobbed his head from side to side.  "Who would know?"
          "I do.  And I know I wasn't drunk.  I've had stronger than that."
          He raised a hand to scratch at his ears, maybe to also try and hide the fact they were laying back.  "Mikah, I really don't have the authority... If his lordship doesn't want to risk you drinking something you shouldn't, there isn't a lot I can do."
          "They'd listen to you," I said.  "They think you're an expert on me." The Mediator's eyes flickered but he didn't say anything.  "Chaeitch treated me like I was a person.  He talked normally, he joked, he offered me a drink... Not many Rris do that."
          "No, they don't, do they," he said and scratched at his ear again.  "I will do what I can.  No promises."
          "No expectations," I said and this time he didn't try to hide his ears when they laid flat, he just turned and left, the sound of the latch closing quite loud in the stillness.  I sat for a while longer, not really intending to doze off.