Devices and Desires Page 24

  Ziani allowed himself to smile. “You want to invest in me?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Doing what?”

  Calaphates shrugged. “That’s not for me to say,” he said. “All I know is that the Armorer Royal has given you the most extraordinary endorsement. According to him — and I know the man well, of course — there’s practically nothing you can’t do, in the way of making things. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to make, because I don’t know the first thing about such matters. What I’ve got in mind is a partnership. Quite straightforward.”

  Ziani nodded. “Equal shares.”

  Calaphates looked at him, and Ziani realized he’d have settled for rather less. Not that it mattered. “Quite,” he said. “All profits split straight down the middle, and that way we both know exactly where we stand.”

  “Fine,” Ziani said. “I’ll be quite happy with that.”

  “Excellent.” He could feel a distinct release of tension; for some reason, Calaphates hadn’t been expecting things to go so smoothly. No doubt he assumed all Mezentines were ruthless chiselers, cunning and subtle in matters of business. “Now, it’s entirely up to you, of course, but as it happens I own a site here in the city that might suit you; it used to be a tanner’s yard, but the man who used to rent it from me died — actually, he was killed in the war — and since he was relatively young, he had no children or apprentices to carry on the business, so the place is standing empty, apart from his vats and some stock in hand, which of course belongs to his family. Naturally, it’ll be up to you entirely, how you want the place done up. You must do it properly, of course: forges and furnaces and sheds and anything else in the way of permanent fixtures.”

  “It’ll be expensive,” Ziani said.

  He caught a faint flicker in Calaphates’ eyes. “Well, I’m sure it’ll be worth it. The main thing is to get started as soon as possible. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be ready.”

  “It’ll take some time, I’m afraid,” Ziani replied. “Mostly I’m thinking about housing for the heavy machinery.”

  “I…” Now the poor man was looking worried. “That’s your side of things,” he said.

  “Yes,” Ziani went on, “but the point is, there are some pieces of equipment that I’ll have to build first before we can raise the sheds to house them. A proper cupola foundry, for instance, for casting in iron; a machine shop, for the lathe and the mill.”

  Calaphates was being terribly brave. “Whatever it takes,” he said. “If you think the premises will be suitable — we’ll go there right now so you can see for yourself — I’ll tell my overseer to take his orders direct from you, and you can get on with it exactly as you wish. Don’t worry,” he added with a very slight effort, “about the money side. I’ll handle that.”

  Ziani shrugged. “Good,” he said. “It’d be difficult for me to cost the whole thing out from scratch, because I don’t know how much things cost here, or what’ll need to be brought in from outside and what I’ll have to build for myself. Also,” he added, “I’ll need men. Otherwise, if I’ve got to do everything myself, it’ll take a lot longer.”

  Calaphates looked at him. “Certainly,” he said. “Of course, there may be difficulty finding enough sufficiently skilled labor —”

  “I was thinking of your friend Cantacusene,” Ziani said. “I expect he could be persuaded. Really, what I need is people who’ll do as they’re told and don’t need to be supervised all the time. And teaching apprentices the basics wouldn’t leave me much time to do the more complicated work.”

  (He’s wondering what the hell he’s got himself into, Ziani thought; but it’ll be all right. He’s strong enough to take the load. I think I’ve got my second component.)

  The tannery was in the lower city, out on the east side, where the prevailing wind could be relied on to carry the stench away from the houses. “Handy for the gate,” Calaphates pointed out. “You won’t have so much trouble getting carts in and out through the streets.”

  Ziani had been wondering about that. In Mezentia, all the streets were the same width, everywhere; wide enough for two standard wagons to pass axle to axle without touching. Civitas Eremiae wasn’t like that at all. A wide boulevard would pass under an arch and suddenly dwindle into a narrow snicket, where the eaves of the houses on either side almost touched. A hundred yards further down, there’d be a flight of narrow stairs, leading to a street as broad as a ropewalk; two hundred yards further on, a wall and a sharp right-hand turn, and a maze of little winding alleys culminating in a dead end. Because of the gradient, the buildings were often five stories high on one side and two on the other, and most of them sported a turret or a tower; it was like being in an old, neglected forest where the trees are too close together and have grown up tall and spindly, fighting to get at the light. In places, the thoroughfares jumped over the tangle of buildings on narrow, high-arched bridges, like a deer leaping in dense cover. Every hundred yards or so there was an arch, a gateway, a covered portico, a cloister. The people he saw in the streets had a knack of scuttling sideways like crabs, so as not to crash into each other with their shoulders in the bottlenecks. It took a long time to get anywhere, what with steps up and steps down, waiting to let other people pass (good manners would be essential in a place like this, if you didn’t want to spend your whole life fighting impromptu duels); even when the way was relatively straight and flat, it wound backward and forward up the steep incline, so that a hundred yards up the slope cost you a mile in actual distance covered. It would be a nightmare to get a steel-cart from the gate to the castle square. You’d probably have to have a system of portages, like carrying barges round waterfalls — stop, unload the cart, carry the stuff through the obstruction, load it on to another cart on the other side. No wonder these people had rejected his offer. It amazed him that humans could live under such conditions.

  “Something that’s been puzzling me,” he said to Calaphates, as they passed through a tunnel. “I’m sure you can tell me the answer. What on earth do you do for water here?”

  Calaphates smiled. “We manage,” he said. “In fact, we manage quite well. We’re rather proud of our arrangement, actually. We have a network of underground cisterns, a long way down inside the mountain. Originally, I believe, they were natural caves. Every roof and gutter and downpipe feeds into them, so basically not a single drop of rain that falls here is wasted. We get quite ferocious storms in the late winter and early spring; it rains for days at a time, sometimes weeks. The cisterns fill up, and we have our year’s supply. To draw it up again we have a large number of public wells — there’s one, look.” He pointed at a door on the opposite side of the street. As far as Ziani could tell, it was just a small door in a long, blank wall; you had to know where they were, presumably. “Anyone can go in, let down the bucket, take as much as he can carry home. We don’t waste the stuff, obviously; it costs too much effort to carry it about. But there’s more than enough for everyone. In fact, once every ten years or so the cisterns get so full we have to drain off the surplus.”

  “Impressive,” Ziani said. “Has anyone ever done a proper survey of these cisterns?”

  “How do you mean?” Calaphates asked.

  “A survey,” Ziani repeated. “Like a map.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Ziani nodded. “Well,” he said, “thank you. I was wondering how you coped.”

  “The project was begun by the fourth Duke, about two hundred years ago,” Calaphates said; and he talked about history for a quarter of an hour, while Ziani pretended to listen. A survey would’ve been too much to hope for, he realized, but it shouldn’t present too much of a problem to make one of his own. Simply plotting the well-houses on a map would be a good start.

  “Here we are.” Calaphates sounded relieved. They’d stopped outside another plain door in another blank wall. “Now, so you can get your bearings; the city gate is about three hundred yards over there, behind that tower. The castle is n
orthwest, straight up the slope. The yard has its own well, of course.”

  The door opened into a wide, bare, sloping yard with five rows of big, low-sided stone tanks. Beyond them was a long two-story stone shed. The yard walls were high, with a catwalk running round the top, and two watchtowers. It felt more like a military camp than a factory.

  “What are those for?” Ziani asked.

  “The towers?” Calaphates smiled. “It’s an eccentricity of Eremian architecture. We like towers. Most of the buildings have them. I suppose it comes from being on top of the mountain; we like a good view. I think the tanner used one as his office and countinghouse, and the men liked to go up into the other for their meals, to get away from the smell.”

  Ziani frowned. “I’d have thought they’d be used to it after a few months.”

  “Possibly. Now, through this arch here, we’ve got another yard.”

  The same as the first one, but a bit smaller. No shed. “These tanks,” Ziani said. “Is there any reason we can’t use them as footings for buildings?”

  Calaphates shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’m not a builder. My overseer would be able to tell you about how they were built. He’s been with me a long time.”

  “Show me the well-house,” Ziani said.

  As he’d hoped, it was on the higher side of the slope; not much of a gradient to work with, but anything would be better than nothing. “You said you’re allowed to draw as much water as you want from these wells,” he said. “Is that right, or are there limits?”

  The question seemed to puzzle Calaphates. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said. “It’s not a problem that’s ever arisen, if you see what I mean.”

  “Fine.” Ziani looked round; shapes were starting to form in his mind. “Is that it?”

  Calaphates nodded. “There are cellars, of course, under the main shed. Another feature of Civitas Eremiae. Because we’re short on space for building sideways, we’ve become very inventive about going up and down. Hence, towers and cellars.”

  The toolmarks on the cellar walls showed that it had been excavated the hard way, chip by chip with straight drills and hammers. “There’d be no objection to extending this?” Ziani asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Calaphates said. “If necessary.”

  “And we can use the spoil for building above ground,” Ziani went on, “instead of having to lug blocks of stone through the streets.”

  For the first time, Calaphates allowed his anxiety to show in his face. “You’ve got something quite extensive in mind, then.”

  Ziani turned and looked at him. “There’s an old saying in the Guild,” he said. “The quickest, easiest and cheapest way to do a thing properly is the first time. If you’re having second thoughts about this…”

  Calaphates assured him that he wasn’t. He was almost convincing.

  “I’ll have to spend a few days here,” Ziani said, as they climbed the cellar steps into the light, “drawing up plans, taking measurements. I’ll need a few things for that, but I’m sure your overseer can deal with it. I might as well camp out in the shed for the time being.”

  Calaphates looked at him. “It’ll do, then?”

  “It’ll do fine,” Ziani replied. “I feel at home here already.”

  When Calaphates had gone and he had the place to himself, Ziani made a proper inspection, pacing out distances, getting a feel for the space and how it worked. The biggest problem, water, might not be such an insurmountable obstacle after all (but if he sidestepped the water issue, it would make the fuel problem worse; if only you could burn stone…). Time would be difficult, because this Calaphates would have to be managed carefully; he was flexible and fairly resilient, like a good spring, but if bent too far he’d probably prove brittle. He would need to be allowed for, but such allowance wouldn’t necessarily compromise the tolerances Ziani was hoping to achieve.

  He was concentrating so intensely on the shape of the mechanism slowly consolidating in his mind that he didn’t notice the passing of the day, until the sun set and it was too dark to see. He lay down on a pile of half-tanned hides in the long shed, but he couldn’t settle; so, after one final tour of the site (he found his way in the dark mostly by memory, like a blind man; already he knew most of it by heart, not by what was there already but by what would be there, when the work was done) he climbed up one of the towers and looked down over the city. There were few lights to be seen, because of the angle, but lamps burned in some of the towers that perked up over the rooftops like the heads of fledgling birds in a nest, enough of them that he could make out a pattern, a first rough working sketch for a city. He felt — he paused to analyze what he felt, since the properties of materials change according to the stresses imposed on them by each operation. There was guilt, inevitably, and generic sorrow, the unavoidable compassion of one human for others. There was a place for such feelings. In an ideal world, a machine running smoothly, they were the coolants and lubricants that stopped the components from jamming and seizing under load; it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for a functional society to work without them. At this stage, however, they were swarf and waste, and he needed to control them. The top of a tower was a good place for perspectives, particularly at night, when you’re spared the sight of the greater context. He didn’t need to see it, since its outline was drawn out clearly in his mind. The detail, yet to be resolved, could wait until the time was right.

  10

  A satisfactory meeting, in many respects; no significant disagreements between factions, for once, no disruptive intrusion of party agendas. How pleasant, to be able to get useful work done without anything getting in the way.

  Commissioner Psellus’ report was well received, and the debate on his recommendations was perfunctory, since nobody really disagreed. Commissioner Crisestem, whose nose might have been put out of joint now that his own role had been largely superseded, was one of the first to welcome the initiative, while Psellus made a point of stressing that Crisestem’s contribution was still entirely relevant, and should be carried through as a matter of priority. Crisestem in turn advised the committee that he’d made substantial progress in recruiting and briefing agents, and was confident that he’d be in a position to report a successful outcome at the next meeting.

  The motion was put to a formal vote and carried unanimously. In view of the possible leakage of restricted Guild secrets, it stated, the Eremians posed an unacceptable threat to the security of the Perpetual Republic, and should be wiped out. A memorandum was composed by the appropriate subcommittee and dispatched to the Commissioners of War, with copies to the General Council, the Guild Assemblies, the Finance Department, the foreign and manpower directorates and the managing councils of the individual Guilds. No further business arising, the meeting was adjourned.

  Psellus went back to his office. The chair was still there, and the desk, and the empty cup and plate. It made no sense, but he didn’t want to sit in that chair again just yet; he perched in the window-seat instead, and looked out at his view (the back end of the glass factory; a blank brick wall with three doors in it). About an hour later, a clerk came to tell him that he was wanted at the War Commission.

  I should have prepared better for this meeting, he rebuked himself, as he followed the clerk across the quadrangle to the west cloister, where the commission’s offices were. They’ll want all the specifics about Vaatzes, and I haven’t brought the file. He considered going back for it, but decided not to bother. Most of it he had by heart, and they’d all be getting copies of the relevant documents in due course.

  The War Commission liked to refer to themselves as the Department of Necessary Evil (there were other names for them around the Guildhall, none of which were used to their faces). As befitted an anomaly in an otherwise standardized world, they cultivated a slightly eccentric manner; accordingly, it was their custom when the weather permitted to meet in the open air, in the cloister garden. It was an undeniably pleasant spot: a square garden
enclosed by the cloister walls, with a fountain in the center of the lawn, and raised flowerbeds at the edges. Grapevines and wisteria were trained on the walls, and a quincunx of elderly fig trees provided shade in the middle. According to people who knew about such things, the garden was one of the oldest parts of the Guildhall complex, dating back to before the Reformation. That made sense; it had a distinctly effete feel about it. You could picture the nobles and scribes of the old Republic strutting on the lawn, waited on by obsequious footmen in extravagant livery.

  Necessary Evil didn’t indulge itself to quite that extent; there were no brocade coats or powdered wigs, no string quartet scratching out incidental music in the background. Instead, the fourteen commissioners sat in a semicircle of ornately carved chairs facing the fountain. Secretaries and clerks hovered around them, setting up folding desks, topping up inkwells, sharpening pens. Two flustered-looking men were trying to stand up an easel for a large framed map; two more were struggling with a huge brass lectern that must have weighed four hundredweight. There was a pleasant hum of chatter, like distant bees.

  The only member of Necessary Evil that Psellus knew by sight was the assistant secretary, who was also vice-chairman of the Foundrymen’s standing committee on doctrine and specifications. He was easy to spot from a distance by his perfectly bald, slightly pointed head. In the event, he saw Psellus first and beckoned him over. His name was Zanipulo Staurachus, and Psellus had disliked him for thirty years.

  “Well,” Staurachus said, in a loud whisper, “a fine state of affairs you’ve landed us in.”

  Ever since they were apprentices together, Psellus had been trying to figure out a way of coping with Staurachus. Being an optimist at heart, he still hadn’t given up hope.

  “Presumably I’ve got to brief you about Vaatzes,” he said.

  “Formality, really. We need to be able to minute having interviewed you. But tell me, why did the bloody fool do it? I’ve read his assessments, and I’m pretty sure I met him once. Wouldn’t have thought he was the type.”