Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 7 — The Brown Mechanics

Silk looked around curiously, finding it hard to believe that this enclosure, this collection of sheds surrounded by a fence, produced taluses. On his shoulder, Oreb croaked in dismay.

“It’s starting to rain,” Chenille announced; she pushed back raspberry curls to squint at the sky.

“I’ve been trying to remember where I came from,” Maytera Marble ventured. “I don’t think it was like this at all.” She edged Mucor toward the shelter of the sentry box as she spoke.

If Fliers were a rain sign, what might Fliers who landed presage? The final days of the whorl? Silk decided to keep the speculation to himself. “I should have asked you about that long ago, Maytera. Tell me about it.”

“I couldn’t remember a thing then, I’m sure. Not till poor Maytera Rose bequeathed me my new parts. I’m sure I must have told you about them.”

Silk nodded.

“A week last Tarsday, that was. They’re much better than my old ones, but after I’d put them in, it was hard for me to keep straight which memories were Marble’s and which were mine.”

Chenille corrected her. “The other way, Maytera.”

“You’re quite right, dear. Anyway, I recollect a big room with green walls. There were pallets, or perhaps metal tables, little ones about as high as a bed.”

“Here comes one of the guards.” Chenille pointed.

“I was lying on one, and I didn’t have any clothes on. Perhaps I shouldn’t talk about this, Patera.”

“Go ahead. It’s not immoral, and it could be important.”

“I was trying to boot, and I remember that the girl next to me sat up and said she was naked, which she certainly was. When she did, somebody brought her a dress.”

The guard halted with a clash of armored heels, one hand leveled across his slug gun. “Follow me, Calde.”

“No wet,” Oreb muttered.

“He has a point,” Silk remarked as they set out. “Could we borrow umbrellas? If we’re going to have to walk between these buildings, as I expect we will.”

“I’ll get some while you’re talking to the director,” the guard promised; he trotted ahead to open the door of a brick structure not much different from a modest house.

“We can wait outside,” Chenille told Silk. “I mean, in the hall or whatever, just as long as it’s out of the rain.”

He shook his head, entering a reception room presided over by a woman rather too large for it. She smiled. “Go right on in, please, Calde.”

“Will there be enough chairs? There are four of us.”

From the room beyond, a short man beginning to go bald told him, “Three chairs and a settle. Come in!” He offered his hand. “Swallow’s my name, Calde.” Silk shook it and introduced Maytera Marble, Mucor, and Chenille.

Swallow nodded, still smiling. “Sit down, please, ladies, Calde. You’re lame, I hear, and I see you’re limping.” He shut the door. “Everybody’s got some tidbit about you. You’re lame, you’ve got that tame bird, and you predicted the downfall of the Ayuntarniento. I’m sure you’ve heard it all.”

Silk took a leather armchair near Swallow’s table. “And now you’re surprised to see how young I am, and would like to ask my age.”

“Why, that’s none of my affair, Calde.”

“I’m twenty-three. You must be,” he glanced at Swallow’s hands, “in your forties. Forty-five or forty-six. Am I right?”

“I’m glad you’re not, Calde. I’m forty-three.”

“Twenty years older than I am, precisely. You must think I’m very young and inexperienced to head the city government. I am, and I realize it. I have to depend on the judgement of more experienced men and women. That’s one reason Maytera Marble’s with me today; it’s also the reason I’m here talking to you, an older man with experience I haven’t got but need to draw upon.”

“I’ll be happy to help you any way I can, Cald — . Would you like something before we get started? Coffee, wine, tea? Would the young ladies? Chamomile can fetch us some.”

Chenille shook her head; Silk said, “No thank you. You build taluses here?”

“We do. That’s our business and our only business.”

Oreb offered his judgement on taluses. “Bad things!”

“Be quiet, silly bird.” Silk leaned back, the tips of his fingers together. “I know nothing about business, and this must be a remarkable one.”

“Not to me.” Swallow smiled. “I grew up in it, working in our shops. But you’re right, it’s unique. That’s the word we like to use. Call it self-promotion if you want, but it fits.”

“Because a talus is a person,” Silk continued, “both in law and in fact. There are boatyards along the shore of the lake, where I was a few days ago. The boatwrights build a boat there; and when they’re through, the fishermen paint eyes on it and call it ‘she’. They give it a name, as well.”

Swallow nodded.

“A boat has a certain character, just as this chair does. This is comfortable and solid, brown, and so forth. A boat may be a willing or a reluctant sailer, it may be stable or prone to rock. But a boat isn’t a person.”

Maytera Marble cleared her throat, a rasp like the scraping of a crusted pan. “Are you going to ask how they can build a talus with a certain character, Patera? I don’t think they can, really. I’ve never…”

“Go on, Maytera.”

“Never built a child. With a man, you know. But — but from what I understand, we can’t either. We do our best, give the child all the advantages we can. But after that, it’s up to the gods. To Molding Molpe and Lord Pas, principally.”

Swallow nodded again. “It’s no different here, Maytera. The layman thinks taluses are all alike. That’s because they all sound the same to him. When you’ve spent a while talking to them, you find out they don’t really talk alike even if they all sound like taluses. When it comes to ingenuity or honesty, that kind of thing, they can differ pretty widely. As you say, it depends on the spirit they get from the gods.

“They’re all boring,” Mucor told him; he seemed about to reply, but meeting her corpse-like gaze quickly looked away.

“There is another difference I wanted to inquire about,” Silk interposed. “I mean between taluses and boats, or any other man-made object. If I were to go to Limna with a case full of cards, I could buy a boat; and once I had paid for it, it would be mine. I could sail it or leave it tied to a pier. I could burn or sink it if I wanted to, or give it to Maytera here, or to Chenille or anyone I chose. A talus is a person, and I would assume that in cities in which slavery is legal, anyone with sufficient funds could go to a facility such as yours and order a talus built—”

“You can do that here, Calde,” Swallow put in.

“Ah. That’s interesting.”

“Good thing?” Oreb inquired.

Maytera Marble said, “It seems to me that all this applied to me once as well, Patera. No one owned me. I’ve always been free, I’m sure, and yet I did what I was told. I still do, for the most part. I respect authority, and when I was younger, I don’t think it even occurred to me to question it.” She looked thoughtful, her head down and inclined to the left.

To encourage her Oreb croaked, “Talk now.”

“Most bio — do you really want to hear this, Patera? I could tell you later, if you like.”

“Of course I do. Tell us.”

“I was just going to say that most bio children are like that, too. I don’t mean that there are no bad children, though foolish people say that because it makes them feel virtuous. But there are really very few. I’ve taught children for a long time, and most can be controlled quite easily with a few little scoldings and a few words of praise.” She paused, lifting her head and squaring her shoulders. “So can most grownups. Not quite so easily, but it isn’t a lot more difficult.”

Swallow chuckled. “She’s right, Calde. I boss almost two hundred employees here, and as a general thing a good chewing out now and then and a pat on the back for good work are all it takes. Once in a rare while we take on somebody that doesn’t work out, stealing tools or whatever, and we’ve got to get rid of him. But it doesn’t happen often.”

“I’ve been thinking about Marl, Patera.”

Silk nodded, noting as he did the first large drops of the rain that had been threatening; they were tapping on the window panes tentatively, but with growing urgency.

“Marl doesn’t receive any wages at all. I told you.”

Swallow raised an eyebrow. “Black mechanics, Maytera? It sounds like it.”

“I don’t know. I really hadn’t considered it. I was just going to say that Marl seems like an extreme instance of — of pliability. I suppose you could call it that…”

Maytera Marble’s remaining hand tightened its grip on the handle of the small basket in her lap. “And if you can make use of that pliability to control others as you do, Director, with a little money and scoldings and praise, then it seems to me people like you don’t really need slaves, except as sops to their egos. I’m expressing this offensively, I know, but I think you see what I mean. As for black mechanics, aren’t they legendary? Largely legendary, I should have said. I know that some people practiced the black art in the past.”

“There’s still a bit around in my opinion, Maytera. In my business we hear things, and that’s one of the things we hear.” Swallow turned to Silk. “I’m a blunt man, Calde, and I’m going to ask you straight out. Are you interested in getting a new talus for the Guard? Is that why you’re here?”

“I’ve been considering it,” Silk admitted. “Several, perhaps.”

Swallow smiled. “Good. Very good! I’m delighted to hear it. I’ve been telling our people that this unrest was sure to bring in some fresh business, and I’m glad to see I was right. You’re wondering why you should have to pay for something that the city can’t own, aren’t you?”

“I am. Also how I can be assured that the taluses Viron pays for will be loyal and obedient.”

“It’s a good question.” Swallow hitched his chair nearer his office table, resting his elbows on it. “First of all, if you want absolute assurance, I can’t give it to you. Nobody can. I’m told there’s an outfit in Wick now that tells people that, but they’re lying. Suppose you went to that boatyard in Limna. Could the people building boats there give you an iron-clad guarantee that any boat they sold you would never sink or turn over? Under any circumstances?”

“I doubt it.

“So do I. If they did, they’d be lying exactly like those fellows in Wick. Here’s the guarantee we offer. If one of our taluses betrays your interests or won’t carry out a legitimate order, within the first two years you employ it, we will refund the entire amount you paid. When I say ‘you’ now, I mean the city. For the third year, the amount is cut by a quarter. You get three quarters of what you paid us back. During the fourth you get half, then a quarter.”

“Nothing after the fifth year?” Maytera Marble asked.

“That’s right. But you will have had five years service from your talus by that time, don’t forget.”

Silk nodded thoughtfully.

“I’d like to have your business,” Swallow continued. “I don’t deny that. We rarely receive an order for more than a single talus. And it would be a feather in our cap to be able to say we already had a large order from the new government. So here’s what I’ll do. I said a full refund if there’s any serious trouble during the first two years. All right, for each talus you get over one, I’ll increase the guarantee by one year. Say you were to order three. Is that about what you’re thinking of, Calde?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then let’s say three. That’s two over one, so you’d get a full cash refund — we’re talking here about the price of the individual talus, not the price of all three.”

“I understand,” Silk said.

“A full refund on that talus for serious trouble during the first four years. After that, three quarters, then half and a quarter, as I’ve already outlined it to you. You’ll be entirely covered or partly covered for… How long, Maytera?”

“Twenty-five percent in the seventh year, Patera,” she told Silk. “Nothing after that.

“Good deal?” Oreb tugged a lock of Silk’s hair.

“A safe one, at least, I believe. You don’t have to pay often, do you, Director Swallow?”

Swallow smiled and relaxed. “No, we don’t. If we did, we’d be bankrupt. We paid a quarter-price refund fifteen years ago — no, make that sixteen. I was foundry supervisor then, and I felt it was a pretty dubious case. All of us knew it was, really, and if we’d fought it in court, we’d probably have won. But it was only a quarter, the customer was making a lot of noise, and the director we had then wanted to establish that we keep our promises. I’m not saying he was wrong, just that the talus in question had been abused. The customer’d had it piling bricks, which isn’t natural.”

“What is?” Silk inquired.

“Fighting and protection, the same things you’d expect from a watchdog.” Swallow cleared his throat. “Can I get a little bit personal, Maytera? No disrespect intended, but you brought up an important principle, obedience to authority. What you said made a lot of sense, and I’d like to use you for an example.”

Chenille said, “I don’t think you ought to. Tell him no, Maytera. I don’t think this is a good idea at all.”

“Because it wlll make me more aware of my nature, dear? I don’t believe it will, since I’m very much aware of it already. I’ve spent many, many hours thinking about who I am and what the gods require of me. But if it does, even a little, I’ll thank the director very sincerely for the insight.”

“No talk,” Oreb advised Swallow.

He chuckled. “I won’t say what I was going to, I promise. But I will say this. What I was going to say, I could have said about myself or anybody else in this room. I just thought the clothes might make it clearer.”

“The clothes that were given to me when I woke? I didn’t get to them, but you’re right. After a while I sat up too, and another girl gave me my first clothes. Were you going to ask me what kind of clothes they were?”

Swallow nodded. “That’s right, I was.”

“A little black dress, very simple, with rather a short skirt. Underclothes.” Maytera Marble paused to smile. “I was about to say I’d prefer not to describe them, but they were so plain that there’s hardly anything to describe. Black shoes with low heels, but I don’t think there were any stockings. A pretty little lace apron and a matching cap. It’s easy for me to describe those clothes, because people from Ermine’s came to Patera’s palace just before we left, and there were young women dressed exactly as I was then, except that they had stockings.”

“Did they come to clean?” Swallow asked. “Sweep and dust?”

“Dear Chenille and I have done that already. To wash the dishes they’ll need tonight and set the table, and wash walls we haven’t gotten to. At least I hope they’ll wash those walls and the downstairs windows. I asked them to.”

Swallow hodded again. “You see, Calde, each of us is born to do certain things. Maytera was born to sweep and dust, and wash walls and floors, and she’s still doing it. Did you have to urge her to?”

Silk shook his head.

“I would have been surprised if you’d said you did, and it shows the important principle I want to explain. When you’re born to do a thing, and somebody gives you a chance to do it, that’s all it takes. Everybody else is afraid I’ll embarrass her, so let’s talk about your bird.”

“Oreb,” Oreb elucidated.

“Nobody’s got to make him fly. He flies because it’s his nature. Nobody has to make him talk either. He was born to.”

“Talk good!”

“There you have it. All right, it’s a talus’s nature to fight and protect property. Give your talus a chance to do those things, and it will do them. You’re afraid the ones we build for you will give you a hard time, but you’re calde, and if they did, you’d give them a hard time too, wouldn’t you? Have them arrested and disarmed? And tried, too, eventually?”

“I suppose. so.

“Naturally you would. So why should they make trouble, when what you want them to do is what they want to do? The things they were born to do?”

“I was at a country house guarded by a talus not long ago, and Mucor told me it could be bribed, though it took a great deal of money.” Silk looked at her for confirmation.

“Musk said so.”

Chenille asked, “What would a talus do with money?” and Maytera Marble ventured, “The same things that you or I would, I suppose, dear.”

“You were asking how you could buy something you couldn’t own, Calde.” Swallow picked up a pencil, apparently to rap the tablet before him. “Let me tell you about that now, about the financial arrangements. When a talus is finished, it owes us, by law, the cost of its manufacture plus fifteen percent.”

“Even though the city has paid for it?”

“Exactly. What the city’s doing, you see, is advancing us the money we’d eventually get from the talus. We make no more than we would if we’d built without an order. Which we seldom do, by the way, since by building to order we get our money a lot sooner. What’s even more important, we don’t have to worry about the talus getting killed before it can pay us.”

Silk nodded while his right forefinger drew small circles on his cheek. “I see.”

“We require payment in full before the talus is finished. When it’s finished, we explain that it has been built because there’s an employer anxious to hire it. That’s you, Calde. We also explain the nature of wages, what wages it can reasonably expect, and what bonuses.”

“But I don’t actually pay it. Isn’t that correct?”

“I can see you grasp the idea already. That’s right, you don’t. Let’s say that you and your talus agree on five cards a month, a fair wage. From that, you deduct your expenses for fuel, maintenance, and repairs, if any. Most employers furnish ammo free of charge. It’s customary.”

Silk nodded again.

“You report the net to us, or you can have the talus do it. We deduct it from the talus’s debt. Eventually its indebtedness will be wiped out and it can keep the wages it earns.”

“Provided it survives that long.”

“You’ve got it.” Swallow glanced over his shoulder at the windows behind him, where the tapping of raindrops had mounted to a steady, insistent pounding. “If you’d rather have a look at our shops another time…?”

“Patera,” Maytera Marble began, “I don’t—”

She was interrupted by Silk, who stood as he spoke. “I’m eager to see them, and I’m sure a little rain won’t hurt me. I was caught in that downpour a week from yesterday, but here I am. I don’t want you to feel that you have to take us around in person, however, Director. Someone else can do it.”

“Not take the calde around?” Grinning broadly, Swallow rose too. “I wouldn’t miss it for any money. The ladies can wait in here if they like.”

“I’m coming,” Maytera Marble declared. “My granddaughter can stay here with Chenille.”

“Me too,” Chenille announced. “I want to see this.”

“In that case Mucor will have to come with us, Patera.”

“I can fly,” she informed Swallow gravely. “Even in the rain. But they can’t.”

The promised umbrellas had been left on a chair in the outer room. Chenille picked one up. “Here’s a black one for you, Patera, if you want it.”

Silk shook his head. “Let Maytera have it.”

Hanging her basket on her right forearm, she accepted the black umbrella and shook it out. “It’s bad luck to open them indoors, they say, but I’ve already had mine. I can’t thank that nice young man for getting these for us.”

“One of your guards,” Silk explained. “Now that I come to think of it, it seems strange that you’ve hired bios to protect this place instead of a talus.”

“We do have a talus.” Swallow accepted a yellow umbrella from Chenille. “As a matter of fact we have two now, because of the unrest. They’re in the guard shack.”

He went to the door, opening his umbrella. “You went by it on your way here. They have windows so they can keep an eye on the gate, but mostly they listen for shooting or shouting. A lot of the little matters that our guards handle, a good bio can take care of better than any talus. Suppose you had taluses patrolling the streets instead of troopers, Calde. You’d have a dozen people shot every night, instead of one or two a week.”

Opening the green umbrella that Chenille handed him, Silk followed Swallow out into the rain. “I’ve dealt with taluses once or twice, and I’m sure you’re right.”

“They protect the plant at night, and we have them there ready to roll in case of serious fighting. So far it’s been around the Palatine and the Alambrera. I’m sure you know.”

Silk nodded.

“Would you like to look at them? There’s the guard shack.” Swallow pointed at a weathered wooden shed.

“Not now, thank you.” Silk had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the rattle of rain on his umbrella. “Later, perhaps. Right now I’d like to see how they’re made.”

“Good. That’s where I’m taking you. Excuse me a minute, and I’ll get the door.”

Swallow strode off through the rain; Silk limped after him as rapidly as he could, splashing through deepening puddles in shoes that were already sodden.

The wide wooden door Swallow had opened let them into a cavernous structure whose floor was covered with coarse sand; three men were working in a pit a few steps from the doorway, illuminated by a single bleary light high overhead. “This is the foundry,” Swallow announced as Maytera Marble and Mucor entered under a single black umbrella. “I always start visitors here, because it’s where I started myself. I sifted, shoveled, ran errands, and the rest of it. It’s hard, dirty work, but I was bringing home a little money to help my folks, and I’ve never felt so good about anything I’ve done in my life.”

Chenille exclairned, “You make those great big things out of sand? I don’t believe it!” Oreb flew off into the darkness at the other end of the building to explore.

“There are some glass parts, and they really are made out of sand, but not by us.” Swallow shut his umbrella and thumped its tip on the sand-strewn floor. “This is foundry sand and wouldn’t make good glass. But we cast some big parts in sand, which is what these men are getting ready to do.”

He pointed with his umbrella. “You see the hollow left by the form when it was lifted out? Those round pieces are called cores. They’re made of compressed sand with a starch binder, and if they aren’t positioned exactly right, and firmly enough that they stay in place when the iron’s poured, the whole piece will be ruined. What they’re doing here is preparing to cast an engine block, Calde.” At the last word, the workers looked up.

Silk had been trying to locate Oreb in the darkness. “This seems a very large place for three men.”

“When we’re going full tilt, which we will be tomorrow if we get your order today, there will be eighteen men and six boys working in here, Calde. I’ve had to lay off everybody except my best men, which I don’t like to do.”

Taking Silk unobtrusively by the elbow, Swallow led him deeper into the building, his voice kindling a second light. “They’re all good men to tell the truth, and the boys are smart lads who’ll be good men too before long. We can’t use anything else. I hate layoffs because I know the people I let go won’t be able to find another job, generally. But if they could, I’d hate them worse because I’d lose them, and you can’t just bring in an untrained man and have him go to work. It takes years.”

Maytera Marble inquired, “How old are the boys?”

“We start them at fourteen nowadays. I was twelve when I started.” Silk heard the soft exhalation of Swallow’s breath. “We had layoffs then, too, though it wasn’t as hard as now. Not usually. I never got to go to palaestra, but there was a woman on our street who had, and she taught me to read and write and figure during layoffs. I’m pretty good with figures, if I do say it. She was a friend of Mother’s and wouldn’t take anything for it, but I always thought that someday I’d get to where I could pay her. I was just about there, just made leadman here, when she died.”

Silk asked, “May I speak as an augur instead of calde?”

“Go ahead. I’m not religious, but maybe I should be.”

“Then I’ll explain to you that the woman who helped you out of friendship for your mother had been helped herself, when she was younger, by some earlier person you never met.”

Swallow nodded. “I suppose it’s likely enough.”

“She couldn’t repay that person any more than you could repay her, but when she helped you she wiped out her debt. When you help someone, you’ll wipe out yours. Possibly you already have — I have no way of knowing.

“I’ve tried once or twice, Calde.”

“You say you’re not religious. Nor am I, though I was very religious not long ago. Because I’m not, I’m not going to say that this passing forward from one generation to the next is the method the gods have ordained for the settlement of such debts, though perhaps it is. In any event, it’s a good one, one that lets people die, as everyone must, feeling that they’ve squared accounts with the whorl.”

Maytera Marble said, “Perhaps he already has, Patera, by employing those boys.”

Swallow shrugged. “They don’t pay, and that’s the truth. We pay a card a month, and they’re not worth it to us. But we’re not doing it from charity. We have to have them so they can learn the work. If we didn’t, someday we’d need foundrymen and there wouldn’t be any, no matter how much we offered.”

“Then it was good of you to… Lay them off? Is that what you call it? So they could attend a palaestra. Because I’d think that if you were teaching them, they’d be the last ones you’d want to send home.”

“They were,” Swallow told her shortly.

Chenille had been looking at the largest ladle Silk had ever seen, a great cup of scaly pottery large enough to hold a man. “Is this what you melt the iron in?”

“That’s right.” Swallow was himself again at once, brisk and all business. “It’s heated in this brick furnace here.” He went to it. “It burns charcoal with a forced draft, and it takes a lot. Those bunkers you saw against the wall where we came in were for sand. Every casting we make uses up a little, and they’re our reserve. These bunkers hold charcoal and steel scrap. We fill up that crucible with scrap, lower it into the furnace, and put the lid on. When it’s been in long enough, depending on how much scrap was in it, we lift it out the same way and pour.”

A slightly smaller crucible stood on the other side of the brick furnace; reaching into it, Chenille displayed an irregular scab of shining yellow metal. “This looks almost like gold.”

Oreb flew over for a closer inspection.

“It’s brass,” Swallow told her. “A talus’s head requires some pretty complicated castings, and brass is easier to cast than iron, so we use that for the head.”

Silk said, “Some taluses wear helmets, I’ve noticed, while others don’t.”

“The helmet’s actually a part of the head,” Swallow told him. “Or you could say it takes the place of the skullplate. Would you like helmets on the taluses we’re going to build for the city? I can specify them in the contract.”

“I don’t know. I was wondering whether a helmet furnished better protection for the head.” In his mind’s eye, Silk saw the talus he had killed; the shimmering discontinuity that was the blade of the azoth he had thought Hyacinth’s had struck it below the eye, vaporizing metal and inflicting a mortal wound.

“Not really.” Swallow clapped his hands to brighten the lights. “Over here we have the forms for various head designs. They’re made so the parts can be switched. Say you like the nose on one head, but you’d rather have the mouth on another. We can give you both without any additional charge. We cast the nose you want and the mouth you want, and after the castings have been cleaned up, they’ll fit together.”

“How thick is the metal?” Silk inquired.

“Two to four fingers, depending on where you measure. It has to be at least two, to get enough melt through the space.” Proudly, Swallow gestured toward a row of somewhat worn-looking wooden heads, each nearly as tall as he was. “There they are, Calde, twenty-nine of them. Since all of them trade parts, there’s almost no limit to the number of faces we can provide.”

“I see. Is two fingers of brass enough to stop a slug?”

“No shoot,” Oreb advised from Chenille’s shoulder.

“It depends, Calde. How far away was the trooper when he fired? That can make a big difference. So can the angle it strikes at. If it hits square on, it might go through if the trooper was standing close. I’ve known that to happen. The talus has its own guns, though, and unless it’s out of ammo, an enemy trooper that close isn’t likely to be alive.”

Chenille grinned. “I’ll say!”

“What we’ve found,” Swallow continued, “is it’s pretty rare for a trooper to shoot at the head at all. The thorax plate and the front of the abdomen are bigger targets, but they’re steel. I’ll show you some in the welding shop.”

“Will a slug penetrate them?”

Swallow shook his head. “I’ve never known it to happen. I won’t say it can’t, I’d want to run some tests. But it’s very unusual, if it happens at all.”

Silk turned to Chenille. “You and Auk were riding on the back of a talus when it encountered some of the Ayuntamiento’s soldiers in the tunnel. You told me about that.”

She nodded. “Patera Incus was with us, too, Patera. So was Oreb here.”

“Later on, one of the wounded soldiers?”

Chenille nodded again. “The talus stopped to shoot, I guess that’s why it stopped anyhow, and Auk got on Patera about not bringing the dead ones Pas’s Pardon. We could see a bunch of dead ones in back of us. There were lights in that tunnel, and some of the dead ones were on fire.”

“I understand.”

“So Patera did. He got off the talus. Auk was just — he couldn’t believe it. Then the talus saw what had happened and said for Patera to get back on, and he said only if you’ll take this soldier too. That was Stony, we found out his name later.”

Maytera Marble asked, “Wasn’t this nice talus that let you ride on it killed, dear? I think you told me about its death, and how the holy augur who was with you brought it the Pardon.”

Silk nodded. “That’s the point I particularly want to hear about, Chenille. How was that talus killed? Where did the slug strike it?”

“I don’t think it was a slug at all, Patera. Stony said it was a missile. Some of the soldiers had launchers — I got one myself, after — and they were shooting them.”

“You’ll have to excuse my ignorance,” to relieve the pain in his ankle, Silk backed to the crucible and sat down on its rim, “but I’m not familiar with those. What’s the difference between a missile and a launcher?”

“The launcher fires the missile, Calde.”

“That’s right. Just almost exactly like a slug gun shoots a slug. Maybe they ought to call a launcher a missile gun, but they don’t.”

“You had one of these weapons, Chenille? Where is it now?”

“I don’t know. Stony took it to shoot at the Trivigaunti pterotroopers. That was while me and Auk were in the pit with Trivigauntis flying all around and you talking at us from that floater up in the air. Somebody yelled for us to get back in the tunnel, and it sounded like a real good idea to me.”

Swallow said, “A missile’s a very different proposition from a slug, Calde. A slug’s just a heavy metal cylinder. It hits the target a lot harder than a needle or a stone from a sling, but that’s only because it’s heavier than a needle and going faster than a stone. Missiles carry an explosive charge, and that lets them do a lot more damage.”

“Missiles are heavier, I think, too,” Chenille told Silk. “I’ve seen troopers carrying forty or fifty slugs—”

“Cartridges,” Swallow corrected her.

“Whatever. They had them on a special canvas strap, and they were walking around fine. I think if you loaded a trooper down with forty or fifty missiles, he couldn’t hardly stand up. My launcher was nice and light when I found it, but Stony helped me load it, and it was really heavy after that.”

“Director Swallow.”

“Yes, Calde?”

“You mentioned a part called the thorax plate. I take it that’s the part covering what I would call the talus’s chest.”

“Exactly right, Calde.

“Chenille says the soldier Patera Incus befriended felt that their talus had been killed by one of those things — by a missile fired from a launcher. Are those the terms?”

Swallow nodded; Chenille said, “That’s it, Patera.”

“But if I understood her, he was on the talus’s back at the time that it was shot. How could he have known?”

Swallow fingered his chin. “He lived through this, didn’t he? He must of, since the young lady said he took her launcher later. If he had a chance to see the talus afterward—”

“Man see,” Oreb announced confidently. “Iron man.”

“In that case, Calde, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to tell the difference between a wound from a slug gun and one from a missile.”

Silk nodded again, largely to himself. “Was this a facial wound, Chenille? Do you recall?”

She shook her head. “He talked to us after. I’m not sure where he was hit, but lower down.”

Silk stood up. “You mentioned your welding shop, Director. I want to see it — and ask a favor. May we go now?”

As they left, Silk lagged to question Mucor. “You told us you could fly in the rain,” belatedly he opened his umbrella, “but they couldn’t. By ‘they’ did you intend the Fliers?”

She only stared.

“Is that why it rains after they’ve flown over? Because they somehow prevent it when they’re present?”

“Answer him, dear,” Maytera Marble prompted, but Mucor did not speak.

As they splashed along a rutted path between sodden wooden structures that could easily have been barns, Swallow remarked, “I wish you had better weather for this, Calde, but I hear the farmers need rain pretty badly.”

Silk could not help smiling. “They need it so badly that the sight and sound of it fill my heart with joy. All the time we were in your foundry I was listening to it, and the finest music in the whorl couldn’t have moved me half so much. I don’t suppose Chenille or Maytera like it — I know Oreb here doesn’t, and I’m a bit worried about Mucor, whose health is frail; but I’d rather walk through this than the clearest sunshine.”

Swallow opened the door of another ramshackle building, releasing a puff of acrid smoke and revealing a large and dirty canvas screen. “Foundry work’s pretty crude, Calde. In the old times they knew a lot we don’t, though I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to learn their secrets. What I’m going to show you now’s closer to what you might have seen on the Short Sun Whorl. But before I do, I’ve got to warn you. You mustn’t look at the process. At the blue welding fire, in other words. The light’s too bright. It can make you blind.”

Silk shook his umbrella. “Smiths join iron by heating and pounding it. I used to watch them as a boy. I wasn’t blinded, so what you’re doing here must be a different process.”

Chenille tossed back wet raspberry curls. “Better make sure Oreb doesn’t watch either, Patera.”

“I certainly will.” For Swallow’s benefit, Silk added significantly, “At times we all look at things we shouldn’t. Even birds do it.”

Swallow blinked and abandoned his study of Chenille’s damp gown. “Sometimes people think we do it different because we’re working with steel instead of iron, but that’s not true. We use this method because it works on pieces your smith couldn’t have welded, because they’re too big to be hammered.” Light showed above the canvas screen, brilliant enough to make the rafters cast sharp shadows on the underside of the roof.

“One of our men’s making a weld now. We’ll wait here till he’s through, if it’s all right with you, Calde. Then we can go in, and I’ll show you what he’s doing and how he does it. He’ll be welding up a thorax plate, I think.”

While her remaining hand closed the black umbrella she had shared with Mucor, Maytera Marble gave Silk a significant look.

He nodded. “I want to see it. In fact, I’m very eager to, Director. You spoke of thick pieces in connection with these thorax plates and so on? How thick are they?”

“Three fingers.” Swallow held them up.

“I want mine thicker. Six at least. Can you do that?”

Swallow looked startled. “Why…? Could we weld them, do you mean? We could, but it would take longer. It would be a lot more work.”

“Then do it,” Silk told him.

Oreb whistled.

“Put it in our contract, six-finger thorax plates. What was the other piece? Below the thorax plate?”

“The abdomen front plate?” Swallow suggested.

“That’s it. How thick is it?”

“Three fingers, too, Calde.” Swallow hesitated, his eyes thoughtful. “Do you want them thicker? I suppose it could be done, but it may take us a while to find steel that thick and work out a way to bend it.”

Oreb exclaimed, “No, no!”

“We cannot afford delay, Director. Viron requires these taluses immediately. I realize you can’t supply them today, but if you could, I’d accept them and pay you for them, and thank you. You join steel here — that’s what the workrnan on the other side of this screen is doing?”

Swallow nodded.

“Then make my thorax plates and abdomen front plates out of two pieces of the steel you have, each three fingers thick. Maytera here could make me a robe from doubled cloth, if I had need of such a thing. Why couldn’t you do this?”

“We can, I think.” Swallow cleared his throat. “There’ll be problems. With all respect, Calde, welding steel isn’t as simple as sewing, but think it could be done. Can I ask…?”

“Why they need it? So they can fight the Ayuntannento’s soldiers in the tunnels, of course. I’ve been down in those tunnels, Director — I even fought a talus there. There was only a step of clearance between the sides of that talus and the sides of the tunnel. A soldier who got that close would be very close indeed; and the taluses I want you to build will have troopers protecting their backs. The danger will be in front, where it will come from soldiers armed with weapons like the one Chenille had.”

“Launchers,” she supplied.

“Exactly. Launchers shooting missiles.” Silk collected his thoughts. “The heads still trouble me. You say you can’t cast them from iron?”

“No, Calde. We usually paint them black. Nearly always, because it makes the eyes and teeth show up better If we could cast them from iron we wouldn’t have to paint them or touch up scratches, so we’ve tried it. Iron won’t make castings that detailed, not till we learn more about casting it, at any rate.”

“Too bad!” The light above the screen had vanished; Oreb flew up to peer over.

“Yes, it is,” Silk confirmed.

“But you’re worried about strength, Calde. Resistance to slugs and that sort of thing. And to tell you the truth, iron wouldn’t be a lot better. It might even be worse. Cast iron’s a wonderful material in a lot of ways, but it’s pretty brittle. That’s why we use steel plate for the abdomen and so forth.”

“Patera? Director?” Maytera Marble looked from Silk to Swallow and back. “Couldn’t the talus hold something in front of its face? A piece of steel with a handle like an umbrella?”

Silk nodded. “And look over the top. Yes, that could be done, I’m sure, Maytera.”

“There’s one other possibility, Calde,” Swallow offered hesitantly. “This is from the old days too. But it was done right here, I understand, though it was before my time. We might try bronze.”

Silk looked around at him sharply. “Isn’t that what they are now?”

Chenille shook her head. “It’s brass, Patera. Remember when I held that piece up? He said brass.”

“Bronze would be a lot stronger, Calde.” Swallow cleared his throat again. “Tougher, too. I mean real bronze. This is kind of hard to explain.”

“Go ahead,” Silk told him. “I’ll make every effort to understand you, and it’s important.”

“Let me start with iron, maybe that will make it clearer. You and I talked about iron. Casting it and so forth.”

Silk nodded.

“What people call iron’s really three different materials, Calde. The commonest is just soft steel, any steel that doesn’t have a lot of carbon in it. People call that tin when it’s rolled out as sheet metal, and sometimes it’s plated with tin. Most people have never seen a real chunk of solid tin.”

“Go on.”

“When you watched that blacksmith making horseshoes, that was what he was using. He probably called it iron, but it was really soft steel, iron with just a little touch of carbon. If there’s gobs of carbon in it, it’s cast iron, the melt we pour in the foundry. You can’t pound cast iron the way a smith does. It’ll break.”

“I remember that you said it was brittle.”

“That’s right, it is. It has lots of uses, but you can’t use it for armor or a hammer head, or anything like that.”

Swallow took a deep breath. “Number three’s wrought iron, and that really is iron, though there’s generally some slag in it, too. We start with cast iron and burn all the carbon out, when we want some. It’s pretty soft, and it’ll take almost any amount of bending. Mostly it’s used for fancy window grills and that kind of a thing.”

“You still haven’t told me anything about bronze.”

“I thought this might help make it clearer, Calde. You see, there’s a couple dozen alloys people call bronze, because they look like bronze. Most have quite a bit of pot metal in them and no tin at all. Tin costs too much. Real tin.”

Silk stirred impatiently.

“That makes real bronze cost a lot, too. Real bronze, not the stuff you’d get if you bought a bronze figure of some god, is half tin and half copper.”

“Is that all?”

Swallow nodded. “It’s a pretty simple alloy, but it’s got marvelous properties. It’s tougher than steel and almost as strong, and you can hammer and weld it, and machine it easier than anything except cast iron. I know that because we still make some little parts out of it, sleeve bearings mostly, and the worms for the big worm gears. But when I was a boy, the older men said they used to cast heads out of it, and there were still some old taluses around with those bronze heads.”

Silk leaned against the doorframe; he was already tired, had been tired before the parade had ended, and there was still the dinner tonight; he resolved to get an hour’s sleep before eight, no matter what happened. Aloud he asked, “Can you cast bronze — this real bronze — as well as brass?”

“Better, Calde. We cast those worms I mentioned, and then machine the bearing surfaces, so I know. It would speed things up too, because the parts wouldn’t need so much cleanup. But it would be expensive, because of the cost of the tin.”

“Have you got the tin? Here right now?”

Swallow nodded. “Because we still use bronze for the worms and so forth.”

“Then do it. Use it.”

“I’ll have to up the price, Calde. I’m sorry, but I will. Even if you order two or three.”

“Then up it.” Longing for the brown leather chair he had occupied earlier, Silk added, “We’ll talk about how much when we get back to your office. And don’t forget the double-thick thorax and front plates. Obviously you’ll need a little more for those, and the steel umbrellas — shields, I suppose you’d call them that Maytera suggested.”

Mucor said, “The storm will pass over soon,” surprising everyone; then, “I’m tired.”

“She ought to sit down,” Silk told Swallow, “and so should I, but first I must ask you about Maytera’s hand. She’s got it in her basket. Maytera, will you show it to him, please?”

“Man cut,” Oreb remarked from his perch on the top of the screen. Silk was not certain whether he meant that Blood had severed it or that Blood himself had been killed — by him — as animals were as sacrifice.

Maytera Marble had passed her basket to Swallow; he took off the white towel that had covered her now-lifeless right hand and held it up, in appearance the hand of an elderly woman. A short cylinder of silvery metal extended from its wrist. “I lost some fluid,” she told him, “but not very much. There are valves and things to control that. I’m sure you know.”

He nodded absently.

“But the tubes would have to be mended some way. The one that brings the fluid to move my fingers, and the one that takes it back.”

Silk said, “We’d appreciate it very much, Director, if you would do everything you can for Maytera. She can’t pay you; but I may be able to, if it isn’t too much. If it is, I feel sure I can arrange for you to be paid.

“Don’t worry about that, Calde.” Swallow returned the severed hand to its basket. “We’d be happy to do what we can for Maytera here as a counesy to you. We could rejoin those pressure and return tubes, though it’ll take delicate work.”

Maytera Marble smiled, her face shining.

“The load-bearing part’s no problem at all. Or I don’t think it should be. It won’t look quite as pretty as it did, though. Repairs never do.”

“I won’t mind a bit,” Maytera Marble assured him.

“The difficulty — pardon me, Calde.” Swallow closed the door, the only source of daylight on their side of the canvas screen. “Maytera, will you hold up your arm a minute? I need to show the calde something.”

She did, and Swallow pointed. “Look down in here, Calde. Maytera, I want you to try to move your fingers. Pretend that you’re going to grab hold of my nose.”

Minute glimmerings appeared in the shadowy interior of the stump of arm, pin-point gleams that reminded Silk oddly of the scattered diamonds he had seen beneath the belly of the whorl.

“There! See that, Calde? Those are glass threads, like very fine wires, with light running through them. It’s fluid that powers her fingers, like she said, but it’s those twinkles that steer them. The twinkles are messages. They’re supposed to tell every joint in her hand how to move.”

Hesitantly, Silk nodded.

“Suppose you were to put a man on a hilltop twenty miles away, and tell him to ride as soon as he saw a lantern run up the flagpole of the Juzgado. It’s the same principle.”

“I believe I understand.”

“When ordinary wire like we use gets cut, you can fix it by wrapping the ends together. With glass threads like you find in chems, that won’t work. You’ve got to have a special tool they call on opticsynapter. We don’t have one here because we don’t use glass thread. We haven’t any way to make it.”

Silk endeavored to ignore Maytera Marble’s disappointment. “Then we must locate one of these tools — and someone who knows how to use it, I assume — and tie the glass threads? Is that correct? Then you can complete the repair?”

Swallow shook his head. “If she went around with her hand hanging from the glass string, it would probably break. We can do the welding right now, and we’d better. When you find an opticsynapter she can take off her hand in the usual way. The operator shouldn’t have any trouble fishing out the other end of the string.”

“Where would we find one?”

“There you have me, Calde. A doctor who specializes in chems should have one, but I don’t know of one here in Viron.”

Chenille snapped her fingers. “I know somebody!”

“Do you, dear? Do you really?” Maytera Marble’s voice, usually so calm, trembled noticeably.

“You bet. Stony had one of those strings cut where our talus had shot him, and Patera Incus fixed it for him so he could move again. He had a gadget to do it with, and that’s what he said it was, an opticsynapter. I was watching him.”

Silk turned to Blood’s emaciated daughter. “You were gone a few minutes ago, Mucor. Are you back with us? Please answer, if you can.”

She nodded. “With the Flier, Silk. Women have him. They want to know about the thing that lets him fly.”

“I see. Perhaps it would be wiser for us not to speak of that at present. I want you to search for Patera Incus for me, as well as Hyacinth and Auk. Do you know him?”

After a silence that seemed long, Mucor said, “No, Silk.”

“He was a prisoner in your father’s house for a while, at the same time I was. He’s an augur too, short, with a round face and prominent teeth. A few years older than I. I realize you don’t see things as we do, but that is how we see him.”

Mucor did not reply, and Maytera Marble passed her working hand before Mucor’s eyes without result. “She’s gone, Patera. She’s looking for him, I think.”

“Let’s hope she finds all three soon.” Silk glanced up at Oreb. “Has the man finished working over there? Joining the iron, or whatever you’d call it?”

“No fire! No more!”

“Thank you. Come along, Director. As interesting as all this is, and potentially valuable, I can’t spare more time for it. Your workman must begin Maytera’s repair. You and I can discuss our contract while he works. How many taluses could you build at the same time if you called back all of the employees you’ve sent home? Don’t exaggerate.”

“I won’t. I just wish I had my charts here. The movement of parts, you know, Calde, and the time required to make them.”

“How many?” Silk stepped around the screen into a clutter of metal tables, remembering at the final moment to smile at the leather-aproned craftsman at work there. “Good afternoon, my son. Thelxiepeia bless you.”

“Four, Calde.” Behind him, Silk heard Swallow’s relieved exhalation. “I want to say five, but I can’t guarantee it. We could start a fifth, once the first four are moving along.”

“Then the city will order four,” Silk decided, “with the double front plates I described, heads of real bronze, and the shields. We must consider armament, too, I suppose, and price. How long will four require?”

Swallow gnawed his lip. “I’m going to say two months. That’s the best I can promise, Calde.”

“Six weeks. Hire new people and train them — there are thousands of unemployed men and women in this city. Work day and night.” Silk paused, considering. “The city agrees to pay a premium of six cards for each day less than forty-five. You have my word on that.”

Swallow licked his lips.

From his perch on the screen, Oreb crowed, “Silk win!”