Fall of Angels

CXVI

NYLAN STUDIED THE timber that would be the shaft linking the unbuilt wheel with the unforged collar. The shaft, a smoothed and peeled log, lay on the clay next to the wall that would hold it.

With the charcoal stick Nylan made a template on the wooden disc he had brought for the purpose, noting the dimensions with one of the pocket rules from the landers. Then he wrapped the disk in a rag and carried it to the brown mare, where he eased it into a saddlebag.

Then he walked back up on the mill foundation and surveyed the layout again. He frowned. Bearings-he really needed bearings-but a grease collar would have to do.

“You don’t like it, after all this work?” asked Ayrlyn.

“It’s fine. I was thinking about bearings. And about the wheel itself. And the gears we need to get the blade moving fast enough to cut.” His eyes darted to the millpond walls, and the water sluicing out of the open gate, and then to the nearly completed millrace where Weindre and Quilyn were laying the last stones.

Next would come the actual walls, built up from the mill’s foundation, and eventually the mill itself, assuming thatNylan could forge or otherwise make the reducing and transforming gears, assuming that Ayrlyn and Saryn could build the mill wheel. Assuming, assuming …

He wanted to shake his head and scream. Nothing was ever enough. From brickworks to smithy to sawmill to who knew what next. From blades to arrows to throwing blades to strange magic. And with each new building, each new idea, he could sense ever-growing resistance. Why couldn’t they see?

“Are you all right?” asked the healer.

Nylan forced himself to take a long slow breath, then another. “As right as anyone else here, in this crazy world where nothing is ever enough.”

Ayrlyn looked at him. “That was true on Heaven, and I imagine it’s true everywhere, in every universe that has some form of human being. The general condition of being human is that nothing satisfies most people for long. Those with no power want power. Those with power want more power. Those with food want more food or luxuries. Those with a roof over their heads want a castle. But everyone wants someone else to do the work.” She shrugged. “So what else is new?”

“Thanks for cheering me up.” He walked down off the mill foundation and toward the brown mare.

“Nylan, please don’t get short with me. I’m not a demon or a local. I don’t take glory in killing, and I don’t like weapons, and I’ve more than tried to be helpful.”

The smith paused. He took another deep breath. “I’m sorry. What you said upset me. I know human beings are human beings, but I guess that I felt that the ‘nothing is ever enough’ feelings were the result of our modern technology, and you’re telling me-rightly, it appears-that. even when people can barely survive, they’d still rather kill and plunder because someone else has more. Or build arsenals of crudely effective weapons because other people feel that way.” He untied the mare, then climbed into the saddle.

Ayrlyn mounted the gelding. “Generally, there’s more charity and less violent self-interest in more technologicalsocieties than in low-tech ones. You can’t get to high-tech levels without a greater degree of cooperation-not usually, anyway.”

“Great. You’re telling me that technology enables ethics.” He flicked the reins, and the mare began to walk toward the trail that circled the cliffs and would eventually lead them to the ridge road.

“Not exactly. Stop playing bitter and dumb. You know it’s not that way. Technology allows, in most cases, comparative abundance. Comparative abundance means that the powerful and greedy can amass power and goods without starving substantial chunks of society to death-in some societies, anyway. Sometimes, it just leads to the technological society being more merciful to its own underclass while exploiting the light out of another society. Technology doesn’t make people better. Sometimes, though, it mitigates their cruelties.”

“You’re even more cynical than I am.”

“You’re not cynical, Nylan,” Ayrlyn said gently as she rode up beside him. “You’re angry. You want to know why, because you thought it would be different here, and it’s not. Power still rules, and if you want to control your own life, you have to be powerful. Especially in a low-tech world. Ryba understood that from the first.”

“She certainly did.” Nylan looked at the road ahead, uphill all the way to Westwind. “She certainly did.”

“What do you want to do about it?” asked the healer.

“I don’t know. Everyone else has answers.” He flicked the reins. “Relyn’s turning what I believe into a frigging religion; Ryba’s turned power into a belief system; Fierral accepts Ryba as marshal and goddess. Me-I just want to build a safe place, and I keep finding out that it takes more and more building, more and more weapons, and more and more killing. We’re in the most remote place on the continent, and it’s still that way.”

“You’re angry.” Ayrlyn’s voice was soft. “You’re angry because what you see seems so obvious, and no one else seems to understand. People want what you build, but they ever soreluctantly and quietly want to help less and less.”

“So I look more and more unreasonable, more and more obsessed, more and more like a joke, because people don’t understand what it really takes to build an infrastructure.” Nylan snorted. “Ryba says that’s the way it is, and that I have to accept it. I’m angry because … frig! I don’t know. There ought to be some way to change it, and I can’t find it.”

“You’re a builder, Nylan, a maker, and you want to make the world better. Everyone else wants control, not real change.” Ayrlyn paused. “Except Relyn, and he’s not just founding a new religion; he’s making you its prophet.”

“Me?”

“Who else? Prophets have to be men.” She shrugged. “This place could use a new religion, but new religions don’t always follow their prophet’s words.”

Nylan shook his head. Relyn couldn’t be that crazy, could he? The engineer’s free hand brushed the front rim of the saddle. Then he swallowed.