“I can’t say as I see how that puts you ahead of the Mnankrei,” Benjie continued to tease. “It depends upon what you Cull for. How come they let an oaf like you get through? A silo with forty wheels!”
“They couldn’t resist my smile.”
“See what I mean?”
Gaet’s mind was permuting the conversation. “All right, Benjie, what about sailboats on wheels? Why not?”
Benjie looked him in the eyes.
“I said, ‘Sailboats on wheels.’”
“Silence of God, I do believe you’re serious!”
“Of course I’m serious!”
“No, no, Gaet old friend. You run the world.” Benjie pointed with exaggerated emphasis at the priest. “Let me build the machines.” And he pounded himself on the chest. The drunken dance had begun.
Gaet backtracked along his mental maze knowing he was onto something important. He sensed it. His mind had that wild flavor. “Why not a silo-sized steam engine driving wheels? I’ve seen your little models with wheels. I’ve seen your power engines in the Cloister!”
“Sure, sure, I can build you a big one. We just built a monster for the Palace to run one of those electric pumps.” He was saying yes, but the tone of his voice was saying no.
“How long will it take?”
“Gaet, that’s not the point. Cris, come here.” He nodded to a wise old o’Tghalie who was drinking quietly by himself. “Gaet, I know what you want. Let’s postulate a land-based haulage fleet that can move as much freight at the same speed and over the same distance as the Mnankrei wind fleet. Tell him, Cris. We’ve gone over this backwards and forwards for a couple of thousand sunrises now.”
Cris generated the relevant numbers from his strange o’Tghalie brain. He showed how fast the desert vegetation would be stripped to fuel the engines and to reduce the iron oxide for the iron roads — and how fast it would grow back and how much labor it would take to collect the fuel.
Benjie summed up the argument: “You want to preside over a nation gone to sand, go ahead. God’s Streak, we could do anything if we had the wood!”
Gaet paused. A Kaiel who made decisions had to register at the Palace what he thought would be the consequences of those decisions both in the short term and the long term. To be proved wrong by time meant that his genes would be purged from the liquid nitrogen sperm banks of the Kaiel creches.
“But there must be ways to move as fast across the land as a Mnankrei ship flies across the sea!”
“There are — and they all gobble fire.”
“I’m not so sure. Think about it. It is said that God moves without effort and He circles the whole of Geta seven times for every sunrise.”
“Have your creches breed Ivieth for gods, then,” said Benjie drunkenly.
Gaet went to bed earlier than he had intended so that he might begin immediately the work Hoemei had thrust upon him. It was chilling to think of losing the coast to the Mnankrei. Failure on the family’s first assignment from Aesoe would be fatal. There were too many other families in line. The five of them would find themselves administering the Kalamani desert. Better to end up as soup and ceremonial vests. He needed to talk to Joesai. But Joesai was not a rayvoice man. Curse the distance. He dreamed about the mythical wings of God.
Artists had visualized the wings of God as if they were the great laced lifting fans of the hoiela, the one insect that could soar halfway around the globe before it died. How the hoiela sparkled on the breezes! The fine tough fabric of the wings was so iridescently beautiful that it was prized by women to sew into their sexual finery. God’s wings, myth said, were even more beautiful but so fragile that they did not float on air but took lift only from the purest blackness, a black so black that even light was eaten without a trace.
In the morning, wild and elated screams were interlaced with Gael’s dreams. They were happy screams but bloodcurdling enough to send all the beetles within a day’s walk scuttling for their burrows. Ah, the revel is still alive, he thought, waking up. The boisterous merrymaking continued while he washed his face and shaved — until his curiosity was tickled enough for him to peek down over the courtyard.
Five grown men and eight children were chasing a contraption about the flagstones that was circling this way and that in mad escape manned by a frantic og’Sieth youth whose feet were pumping up and down but never touching the ground. The “wagon” he was propelling was hardly a wagon. It had only three wheels, two large ones in front and a small “rudder” wheel in the rear. The wheels were so insubstantial that there seemed to be no supporting structure between axle and rim. Even the wagon framework was missing, being replaced by what appeared to be light steel tubing.
Later Gaet examined the machine after it had broken down and been removed to a thatch-roofed shed for extensive rethinking and redesign. The argument of the evening, evidently, had continued to evolve after he went to bed and since it was a party of craftsmen, not all of them articulate, they had settled the matter by building what their drunken imaginations had conceived. Only drunks would start by postulating an unfueled, massless wagon that could keep up with the wind. And only a tribe of sloshed og’Sieth would try to build one during a festival. They were still sleeping under the shed’s tables.
Gaet smiled like a child who has just seen the insides of his first clock. He took a morning walk beneath the mountains to breathe in some of the possibilities. His trained Kaiel mind blocked out new futures. Which to make real? He saw, for one, the breaking of a stalemate.
No priest clan of the sea had ever been able to dominate Geta because the eleven seas were isolated from each other by the land; neither had any landlocked priest clan been able to dominate because land passage was so slow. Now he saw fleets of these three-wheeled ships, pumped by strong Ivieth, racing over mountain and across prairie with the speed of a flung stone. It was a heady image for a politician. Imagine what it might do for tax collection!
Gaet sought out his Ivieth friend to discuss his vision over rolls and tea. The powerful giant only smiled as if the wire-wagon was a mere toy. “Running with the ease of walking is a thrill, but the roads are too rough for such flimsy spider work. It will break every thousand man-lengths! Men are stronger than steel.” And he grinned. He had been bred to outlast steel.
A sober Gaet returned to the shops for still another viewpoint. Benjie lay in stupor but a fresh crew of og’Sieth were at work. They laughed at the idea of men being stronger than steel, and though they did not back up their laughter with convincing words, one rash youth whacked Gaet across the chest with a hammer to illustrate their feeling.
They had little time for Gaet, chattering as they were about the drive rods and gears which jammed repeatedly, brainstorming alternate mass-conserving designs. They could not talk long without hammering or boring or chiseling metal on the lathe, and the talk remained cryptic — phrases about tempered wire and torque and crushing strength. None of the failures seemed to upset these people. They were already calling the massless wagon a skrei-wheel after the twelve tenuous long legs of the rock-skittering skrei, as if their device was worthy of a permanent name.
12
A human who is consistently fair to his friends will find unexpected allies among his adversaries who wil plant his kalothi beyond the bounds of its formal territory. A human who degrades his enemies in word and deed will also be seen to scorn and beat the wife he loves, insult his comrades, cheat his parents, commit treason against his clan, and listen to flattery with a warm feeling in his heart. Do not trust the man who is ruthless with your enemies for he will make a poor friend.