Light on shattered water, p.28
Light on Shattered Water, page 28
“Shave me, you are cold,” Rasa sounded astonished when she touched my violently shivering arm. “Why didn’t you say something.”
“I tried to,” I said. It was true, I had. It’d dragged out into a debate about what kind of climate I could’ve come from. “I don’t think anyone was listening.”
“Shave everything. I should have thought of. . . “ She hissed in annoyance and scratched at a cheek tuft. “Get your clothes.”
The Rris who was sketching me complained. The trio who were trying to find a precedent for my ankle joints complained, but Rasa had a few words with them. They looked at the guards and I didn’t hear anything more out of them. The next couple of hours passed more quietly. They wanted to hear my version of how humans evolved so I sat on one of their cushions and recounted as best I could: arboreal primates forced from the trees when the veldts of Africa began to open out, working in groups, scavenging and hunting food, learning to stand erect which freed the forearms to carry rocks, then shape tools. . .
A Rris wanted to know what we’d been before we were apes.
Another asked, “If your kind grew from the apes, then did we also grow from something?”
There were a few low growls and tails lashed, then the officer returned to announce I was through for the day. Time to return to the palace. Rasa saw me down to the front door where she patted my shoulder, “We’ll see you later in the week.”
It was night outside. A cold wind stirred the trees and I saw distant lights through the branches. The carriage was cold and dark. My guards sat in the gloom and watched me as I stared at the glass and listened to wheels clattering on stone and ice. Occasional lights passing by outside scrolling across metal on their armor, flitting across their inscrutable features.
At the palace they shepherded me through a side door and along corridors with their feeble oil and gas lamps. I saw Rris servants and a couple of times we passed by better-dressed nobility who stared openly at me. Once a high ranking pair blocked the corridor, demanding to know what I was. The officer smoothly diverted them to the side while the other guards spirited me past.
Back in the sanctuary of my dimly-lit rooms I ran the bath, stripped of and sank into the water. When the water got cold I kicked the faucet and let it run until water gurgled into the overflow. Just soaked, trying to unwind. I guess it worked: I never heard Shyia come in.
“How did it go?”
I flinched; water sloshed. The Mediator was standing in the door, hands tucked in the waistband of loose-fitting black breeches. “Oh, you,” I rubbed my face and looked at my watch: 22:23. “It’s been a long day.”
“Not so well.” His ears flickered. “I heard they were quite pleased. You feel otherwise?”
“I just don’t enjoy being goddamn exhibit A,” I muttered.
“What was that noise?”
I slapped water. “It’s different from the other side.”
His tail lashed, then he gestured at the bedroom and said, “I brought your food. I’ll leave it for you.”
“Thanks,” I said and he left me alone then, something for which I was grateful.
------v------
It snowed heavily the next day. The heavy fall muffled everything and made the world a silent, gray place glimpsed through the ethereal clouds of drifting whiteness as I was driven back to the university.
My eyes were sore. I had the beginnings of a headache even though it was barely 7:00. I hadn’t slept well that night, spending most of it lying and watching the gas lamps in that pox-ridden chandelier flickering. Still hadn’t figured out how to turn the damn thing off. Maybe I couldn’t. It seemed to have a life of its own.
More of the Rris had brought sketchpads and this time there was a fire in the grate. At least this time no matter how physically uncomfortable their examination was, I wasn’t freezing. Just as embarrassing though. They were thorough, impartial and merciless: I felt like a cadaver at a medical school. Their furry hands felt so weird and worst of all they tickled.
There was hour after hour of that while they questioned and probed and sketched: close-ups of my fingers, and hands, feet and ankles, musculature, bones and ribs, my genitals, ears and nose, the patterns of my teeth. Of course it’s a slow process, I should know. I saw how much detail they wanted to get and I saw how long it took one of them just to draw a finger, and I resigned myself to the fact that I’d be doing this for some time to come.
I did learn a few things from my time there. A few snippets of information about Rris history and evolution. They had evolved from cats, some kind of proto -felid that may have looked something like a distorted bobcat or lynx. They’d uncovered fossilized remains of creatures that bore a superficial resemblance to Rris but they’d summarily decided the remains belonged to a completely different species. My few remarks about evolution were causing stirs in academic circles.
As did my correction of their belief that muscles were powered by blood pressure.
“Of course it is,” a rather thin male laughed when I queried this. “What else could it be?”
I gestured with my hands as I fumbled for words. “There are. . . very many small parts of the body making each muscle. They are like many tiny muscles, very many, all making one. When a muscle has to move the brain tells all the tiny parts to grow small. They all grow small, therefore so does the muscle.” I frowned. “Make sense?”
There were murmured consultations between some of them, a derisive bark from the skinny Rris, “It’s been proven that loss of blood weakens a body. It [something] that blood fills the muscles, [something/ expanding?] them and [something] motion. Tiny muscles making muscle. . . Hah! Any fools here to believe that?”
I shrugged. “The heart moves the blood. What powers that?” He opened his mouth and closed it again, doing a credible impersonation of a goldfish. I pressed on, “It is possible to make a dead body’s muscles move without any blood at all.” The old ‘frog-legs’ routine. I’d done that one in biology way back in high school, I could explain it when they asked how.
The thin Rris who’d laughed at me just glared at me and didn’t say anything more. I later found out he’d been pushing a thesis on the subject; my correction would blow holes in his credibility around the university. I hadn’t made a friend that day. It would happen again in the future, but I tried to make sure that any time I did try to correct any misconceptions or interpretations Rris held I’d do it as diplomatically as possible.
This examination lasted longer than the other one had. On top of the physical they wanted to try and find out what medicines I might have a reaction to. They questioned me at length about a number of concoctions but I couldn’t tell them much: I didn’t know what they were showing me so I really had no idea what kind of effect they’d have on me. It was near midnight when they let me go and I climbed back into the coach to return to the palace. I couldn’t tell if the guards were the same ones from the first night, but like that night they sat and stared at me the whole way back.
------v------
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 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 escorts 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. The 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 wooden 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 description 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 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. Miss a single little fault in a weld or seam on a boiler and the thing could go off like a bomb.
I translated the animation’s narrative as best 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.”
