Текст книги "The Ethical Engineer"

Автор книги: Harry Harrison

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Jason’s words were without meaning to the slaves as well as the overseer who was raising his whip for another blow, but their impact on Edipon was as dramatic as if he had stepped on a hot coal. He shuddered to a halt and wheeled about, and even at this distance Jason could see that a sickly gray tone had replaced his normal browned color of his skin.

“Stop the wheel!” he shouted.

***

This unexpected command drew the startled attention of everyone. The gape-mouthed overseer lowered his whip while the slaves stumbled and halted and the wheel groaned to a stop. In the sudden silence Edipon’s steps echoed loudly as he ran to Jason, halting a hand’s breadth away, his lips drawn back from his teeth with tension as if he were prepared to bite.

“What was that you said?” He hurled the words at Jason while his fingers half-plucked a knife from his belt.

Jason smiled, looking and acting calmer than he felt. His barb had gone home, but unless he proceeded carefully so would Edipon’s knife – into his stomach. This was obviously a very sensitive topic.

“You heard what I said – and I don’t think you want me to repeat it in front of all these strangers. I know what happens here because I come from a place far away where we do this kind of thing all the time. I can help you. I can show you how to get more of the best, and how to make your caroj work better. Just try me. Only unchain me from this bar first and let’s get to some place private where we can have a nice chat.”

Edipon’s thoughts were obvious. He chewed his lip and looked hotly at Jason, fingering the edge of his knife. Jason only returned a smile of pure innocence and tapped his fingers happily on the bar, just marking time while he waited to be released. Yet in spite of the cold there was a rivulet of sweat trickling down his spine. He was gambling everything on Edipon’s intelligence, that the man’s curiosity would overcome the immediate desire to silence the slave who knew so much about things so secret, hoping that he would remember that slaves could always be killed, and that it wouldn’t hurt to ask a few questions first. Curiosity won and the knife dropped back into the sheath while Jason let his breath out in a relieved sigh. It had been entirely too close, even for a professional gambler; his own life on the board was a little higher stakes than he enjoyed playing for.

“Release him from the bar and bring him to me,” Edipon ordered, then strode agitatedly away. The other slaves watched wide-eyed as the blacksmith was rushed out, and with much confusion and shouted orders Jason’s chain was cut from the bar where it joined the heavy staple.

“What are you doing?” Mikah asked, and one of the guards backhanded him to the ground. Jason just smiled and touched his finger to his lips as his chain was released and they led him away. He was free from bondage and he would stay that way if he could convince Edipon that he would be better off in some capacity other than dumb labor.

***

The room they led him to contained the first touches of decoration or self-indulgence that he had seen on this planet. The furniture was carefully constructed, with an occasional bit of carving to brighten it, and there was a woven cover on the bed. Edipon stood by a table, tapping his fingers nervously on the dark polished surface. “Lock him up,” he ordered the guards, and Jason was secured to a sturdy ringbolt that projected from the wall. As soon as the guards were gone he stood before Jason and drew his knife. “Tell me what you know or I will kill you at once.”

“My past is an open book to you, Edipon. I come from a land where we know all the secrets of nature – ”

“What is the name of this land? Are you a spy from Appsala?”

“I couldn’t very well be one since I have never heard of the place.” Jason pulled at his lower lip, wondering just how intelligent Edipon was, and just how frank he could be with him. This was no time to get tangled up in lies about planetary geography: it might be best to try him on a small dose of the truth. “If I told you I came from another planet, another world in the sky up among the stars, would you believe me?”

“Perhaps. There are many old legends that our forefathers came from a world beyond the sky, but I have always dismissed this as religious drivel, fit only for women.”

“In this case the girls happen to be right. Your planet was settled by men whose ships crossed the emptiness of space as your caroj pass over the desert. Your people have forgotten about that and lost the science and knowledge you once had, but in other worlds the knowledge is still held.”

“Madness!”

“Not at all, it is science, though many times confused as being the same thing. I’ll prove my point. You know that I could never have been inside your mysterious building out there, and I imagine you can be sure no one has told me its secrets. Yet I’ll bet you that I can describe fairly accurately what is in there – not from seeing the machinery, but from knowing what must be done to oil in order to get the products you need. Do you want to hear?”

“Proceed,” Edipon said, sitting on a corner of the table and balancing the knife loosely in his palm.

“I don’t know what you call it, the device, but in the trade it is a pot still used for fractional distillation. Your crude oil runs into a tank of some kind, and you pipe it from there to a retort, some big vessel that you can seal airtight. Once it is closed you light a fire under the thing and try to get all the oil to an even temperature. A gas rises from the oil and you take it off through a pipe and run it through a condenser, probably more pipe with water running over it. Then you put a bucket under the open end of the pipe and out of it drips the juice that you burn in your caroj to make them move.”

Edipon’s eyes opened wider and wider while Jason talked until they stuck out of his head like boiled eggs. “Demon!” he screeched and tottered towards Jason with the knife extended. “You couldn’t have seen, not through stone walls, yet only my family have seen, no others – I’ll swear to that!”

“Keep cool, Edipon, I told you that we have been doing this stuff for years in my country.” He balanced on one foot, ready for a kick at the knife in case the old man’s nerves did not settle down. “I’m not out to steal your secrets, in fact they are pretty small potatoes where I come from since every farmer has a still for cooking up his own mash and saving on taxes. I’ll bet I can even put in some improvements for you, sight unseen. How do you monitor the temperature on your cooking brew? Do you have thermometers?”

“What are thermometers?” Edipon asked, forgetting the knife for the moment, drawn on by the joys of a technical discussion.

“That’s what I thought. I can see where your bootleg joyjuice is going to take a big jump in quality, if you have anyone here who can do some simple glassblowing. Though it might be easier to rig up a coiled bi-metallic strip. You’re trying to boil off your various fractions, and unless you keep an even and controlled temperature you are going to have a mixed brew. The thing you want for your engines are the most volatile fractions, the liquids that boil off first like gasoline and benzene. After that you raise the temperature and collect kerosene for your lamps and so forth right on down the line until you have a nice mass of tar left to pave your roads with. How does that sound to you?”

***

Edipon had forced himself into calmness, though a jumping muscle in his cheek betrayed his inner tension. “What you have described is the truth, though you were wrong on some small things. But I am not interested in your thermometer nor in improving our water-of-power, it has been good enough for my family for generations and it is good enough for me….”

“I bet you think that line is original?”

“… There is something that you might be able to do that would bring you rich rewards. We can be generous when needs be. You have seen our caroj and ridden on one, and seen me go into the shrine to intercede with the sacred powers to make us move. Can you tell me what power moves the caroj?”

“I hope this is the final exam, Edipon, because you are stretching my powers of extrapolation. Stripping away all the shrines and sacred powers I would say that you go into the engine room to do a piece of work with very little praying involved. There could be a number of ways of moving those barns, but let’s think of the simplest. This is top of the head now, so no penalties if I miss any of the fine points.

“Internal combustion is out, I doubt if you have the technology to handle it, plus the fact there was a lot to do about the water tank and it took you almost an hour to get under way. That sounds like you were getting up a head of steam – the safety valve! I forgot about that. So it is steam. You go in, lock the door of course, then open a couple of valves until the fuel drips into the firebox, then you light it. Maybe you have a pressure gauge, or maybe you just wait until the safety valve pops to tell you if you have a head of steam. Which can be dangerous since a sticking valve could blow the whole works right over the mountain.

“Once you have the steam you crack a valve to let it into the cylinders and get the thing moving. After that you just enjoy the trip, of course making sure the water is feeding to your boiler all right, that your pressure stays up, your fire is hot enough, all your bearings are lubricated and the rest….”

Jason looked on astounded as Edipon did a little jig around the room, holding his robe up above his bony knees. Bouncing with excitement he jabbed his knife into the table top and rushed over to Jason and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him until his chain rattled.

“Do you know what you have done?” he asked. “Do you know what you have said?”

“I know well enough. Does this mean that I have passed the exam? Was I right?”

“I don’t know if you are right or not. I have never seen the inside of one of the Appsalan devil-boxes.” He danced around the room again. “You know more about their… what do you call it, engine… than I do. I have only spent my life tending them and cursing the people of Appsala who keep the secret from us. But you will reveal it to us! We will build our own engines and if they want water-of-power they will have to pay dearly for it.”

“Would you mind being a little bit clearer,” Jason pleaded. “I have never heard anything so confused in my entire life.”

“I will show you, man from a far world, and you will reveal the Appsalan secrets to us. I see the dawn of a new day for Putl’ko arriving.” He opened the door and shouted for the guards, and for his son, Narsisi, who arrived as they were unlocking Jason who recognized him as the same droop-eyed and sleepy looking D’zertano who had been helping Edipon to drive their ungainly vehicle.

“Seize this chain my son and keep your club ready to kill this slave if he makes any attempt to escape. Otherwise do not harm him, for he is very valuable. Come.”

He tugged on the chain, but Jason only dug his heels in and did not move. They looked at him, astonished.

“Just a few things before we go. The man who is to bring the new day to Putl’ko is not a slave, let us get that straight before this operation goes any further. We’ll work out something with chains or guards so I can’t escape, but the slavery thing is out.”

“But – you are not one of us, therefore you must be a slave.”

“I’ve just added a third category to your social order. Employee. Though reluctant, I am still an employee, skilled labor, and I intend to be treated that way. Figure it out for yourself. Kill a slave and what do you lose? Very little if there is another slave in the pens that can push in the same place. But kill me and what do you get? Brains on your club – and they do you no good at all there.”

“Say, Dad, does he mean I can’t kill him?” Narsisi looked puzzled as well as sleepy.

“No, he doesn’t mean that. He means if we kill him there is no one else that can do the work he is to do for us. I can understand him and I do not like it. There are only slaves and slavers, anything else is against the natural order. But he has us trapped between satano and the sand-storm so we must allow him some freedoms. Bring the slave now… I mean the employee… and we will see if he can do the things he has promised. If he does not, I will have the pleasure of killing him because I do not like his revolutionary ideas.”

***

They marched single file to a locked and guarded building with immense doors, which were pulled open to reveal the massive forms of seven caroj.

“Look at them,” Edipon hissed and tugged at his nose. “The finest and most beautiful of constructions, striking fear into our enemies’ hearts, carrying us fleetly across the sands, bearing on their backs immense loads and only three of the things are able to move.”

“Engine trouble?” Jason asked lightly.

Edipon grumbled, cursed and fumed under his breath and led the way to an inner courtyard where stood four immense black boxes painted with death-heads, splintered bones, fountains of blood and cabalistic symbols all of a sinister appearance.

“Those swine in Appsala take our water-of-power and give nothing in return. Oh yes, they let us use their engines, but after running for a few months the cursed things stop and will not go again, then we must bring them back to the city to exchange for a new one, and pay again and again.”

“A nice racket,” Jason said, looking at the sealed covering on the engines. “Why don’t you just crack into them and fix them yourself, they can’t be very complex.”

“That is death!” Edipon gasped, and both D’zertanoj recoiled from the boxes at the thought. “We have tried that, in my father’s father’s day, since we are not superstitious like the slaves and know that these are man-made not god-made. However the tricky serpents of Appsala hide their secrets with immense cunning. If any attempt is made to break the covering horrible death leaks out and fills the air. Men who breathe the air die, and even those who are solely touched by it develop immense blisters and die in pain. The man of Appsala laughed when this happened to our people and after that raised the price even higher.”

Jason circled one of the boxes, examining it with interest, trailing Narsisi behind him at the end of the chain. The thing was higher than his head and almost twice as long. A heavy shaft emerged through openings on opposite sides, probably the power takeoff for the wheels. Through an opening in the side he could see inset handles and two small colored disks, and above this were three funnel-shaped openings shaped and painted like mouths. By standing on tiptoe Jason looked on top but there was only a flanged, sooty opening that must be for attachment of a smokestack. There was only one more opening, a smallish one in the rear, and no other controls on the garish container.

“I’m beginning to get the picture, but you will have to tell me how you work the controls.”

“Death before that,” Narsisi shouted. “Only my family – ”

“Will you shut up!” Jason shouted right back. “Remember? You’re not allowed to browbeat the help anymore. There are no secrets here. Not only that, but I probably know more about this thing than you do just by looking at it. Oil, water and fuel go in these three openings, you poke a light in somewhere, probably in that smoky hole under the controls, open one of those valves for fuel supply, another one is to make the engine go slower and faster, and the third is for your water feed. The disks are indicators of some kind.” Narsisi paled and stepped back. “So keep the trap shut while I talk to your dad.”

“It is as you say,” Edipon pointed. “The mouths must always be filled and woebetide if they shall go empty for the powers will halt or worse. Fire goes in here as you guessed, and when the green finger comes forward this lever may be turned for motion. The next is for great speed or going slow. The very last is under the sign of the red finger, which when it points indicates need, and the handle must be turned and held until the finger retires. White breath comes from the opening in back. That is all there is.”

“About what I expected,” Jason muttered and examined the container wall, rapping it with his knuckles until it boomed. “They give you the minimum of controls to run the thing, so you won’t learn anything about the basic principles involved. Without the theory you would never know what the handles control, or that the green indicator comes out when you have operating pressure or the red one when the water level is low in the boiler. Very neat. And the whole thing sealed up in a can and booby-trapped in case you have any ideas of going into business for yourself.

“The cover sounds like it is double walled, and from your description I would say that it has one of the vesicant war gases, like mustard gas, sealed inside there in liquid form. Anyone who tries to cut their way in will quickly forget their ambitions after a dose of that. Yet there must be a way to get inside the case and service the engine, they aren’t just going to throw them away after a few months’ use. And considering the level of technology displayed by this monstrosity I should be able to find the tricks and get around any other built-in traps. I think I’ll take the job.”

“Very well, begin.”

“Wait a minute, boss, you still have a few things to learn about hired labor. There are always certain working conditions and agreements involved, all of which I’ll be happy to list for you.”

VIII

“What I do not understand is why you must have the other slave?” Narsisi whined. “To have the woman of course is natural, as well as to have quarters of your own, my father has given his permission. But he also said that I and my brothers are to help you, that the secrets of the engine are to be revealed to no one else.”

“Then trot right over to him and get permission for the slave Mikah to join me in the work. You can explain that he comes from the same land that I do, and that your secrets are mere children’s toys to him. And if dad wants any other reasons tell him that I need skilled aid, someone who knows how to handle tools and who can be trusted to follow directions exactly as given. You and your brothers have entirely too many ideas of your own about how things should be done, and a tendency to leave details up to the gods and have a good bash with the hammer if things don’t work the way they should.”

Narsisi retired, seething and mumbling to himself while Jason huddled over the oil stove planning the next step. It had taken most of the day to lay down logs for rollers and to push the sealed engine out into the sandy valley, far from the well site; open space was needed for any experiments where a mistake could release a cloud of war gas. Even Edipon had finally seen the sense of this, though all of his tendencies were to conduct the experiments with great secretiveness behind locked doors. He had granted permission only after skin walls had been erected to form an enclosure that could be guarded; it was only incidental that they acted as a much-appreciated windbreak.

And after much argument the dangling chains and shackles had been removed from Jason’s arms and light-weight leg-irons substituted. He had to shuffle when he walked but his arms were completely free, a great improvement over the chains, even though one of the brothers kept watch with a cocked crossbow as long as Jason wasn’t fastened down. Now he had to get some tools and some idea of the technical knowledge of these people before he could proceed, which would necessarily entail one more battle over their precious secrets.

“Come on,” he called to his guard, “let’s find Edipon and give his ulcers another twinge.”

After his first enthusiasm the leader of the D’zertanoj was getting very little pleasure out of his new project.

“You have quarters of your own,” he grumbled, “and the slave woman to cook for you, and I have just given permission for the other slave to help you. Now more requests – do you want to drain all the blood from my body?”

“Let’s not dramatize too much. I simply want some tools to get on with my work, and a peek at your machine shop or wherever it is you do your mechanical work. I have to have some idea of the way you people solve mechanical problems before I can go to work on that box of tricks out there in the desert.”

“Entrance is forbidden – ”

“Regulations are snapping like straws today, so we might as well go on and finish off a few more. Will you lead the way?”

The guards were reluctant to open the refinery building gates to Jason, and there was much rattling of keys and worried looks. A brace of elderly D’zertanoj, stinking of oil fumes, emerged from the interior and joined in a shouted argument with Edipon whose will finally prevailed. Chained again, and guarded like a murderer, Jason was begrudgingly led into the dark interior, the contents of which was depressingly anticlimactic.

“Really from rubeville,” Jason sneered and kicked at the boxful of hand-forged and clumsy tools. The work was of the crudest, the product of a sort of neolithic machine age. The distilling retort had been laboriously formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It leaked mightily as did the soldered seams on the hand-formed pipe. Most of the tools were blacksmith’s tongs and hammers for heating and beating out shapes on the anvil. The only things that gladdened Jason’s heart were the massive drill press and lathe that worked off the slave-power drive belts. In the tool holder of the lathe was clamped a chip of some hard mineral that did a good enough job of cutting the forged iron and low-carbon steel. Even more cheering was the screw-thread advance on the cutting head that was used to produce the massive nuts and bolts that secured the caroj wheels to their shafts. It could have been worse. Jason sorted out the smallest and handiest tools and put them aside for his own use in the morning. The light was almost gone and there would be no more work this day.

***

They left, in armed procession, as they came, and a brace of brothers showed him to the kennellike room that was to be his private quarters. The heavy bolt thudded shut in the door behind him and he winced at the thick fumes of half-burnt kerosene through which the light of the single-wick lamp barely penetrated. Ijale crouched over the small oil stove cooking something in a pottery bowl. She looked up and smiled hesitatingly at Jason, then turned back to the stove. Jason walked over, sniffed and shuddered.

“What a feast! Krenoj soup, and I suppose followed by fresh krenoj and krenoj salad. Tomorrow I see about getting a little variety into the diet.”

“Ch’aka is great,” she whispered without looking up. “Ch’aka is powerful….”

“Jason is the name, I lost the Ch’aka job when they took the uniform away.”

“… Jason is powerful to work charms on the D’zertanoj and makes them do what he will. His slave thanks you.”

He lifted her chin and the dumb obedience in her eyes made him wince. “Can’t we forget about the slavery bit? We are in this thing together and we’ll get out of it together.”

“We will escape, I knew it. You will kill all the D’zertanoj and release your slaves and lead us home again where we can march and find krenoj far from this terrible place.”

“Some girls are sure easy to please. That is roughly what I had in mind, except when we get out of here we are going in the other direction, as far away from your krenoj crowd as I can get.”

Ijale listened attentively, stirring the soup with one hand and scratching inside her leather wrappings with the other. Jason found himself scratching as well, and realized from sore spots on his hide that he had been doing an awful lot of this since he had been dragged out of the ocean of this inhospitable planet.

“Enough is enough!” he exploded and went over and hammered on the door. “This place is a far cry from civilization as I know it, but that is no reason why we can’t be as comfortable as possible.” Chains and bolts rattled outside the door and Narsisi pushed his gloom-ridden face in.

“Why do you cry out? What is wrong?”

“I need some water, lots of it.”

“But you have water,” Narsisi said, puzzled, and pointed to a stone crock in the corner. “There is water there enough for days.”

“By your standards, Nars old boy, not mine. I want at least ten times as much as that and I want it now. And some soap, if there is such stuff in this barbaric place.”

There was a good deal of argument involved, but Jason finally got his way with the water by explaining it was needed for religious rites to make sure that he would not fail in the work tomorrow. It came in a varied collection of containers along with a shallow bowl full of powerful soft soap.

“We’re in business,” he chortled. “Take your clothes off, I have a surprise for you.”

“Yes, Jason,” Ijale said, smiling happily.

“You’re going to get a bath. Do you know what a bath is?”

“No,” she said, and shuddered. “It sounds evil.”

“Over here and off with the clothes,” he ordered, poking at a hole in the floor. “This should serve as a drain, at least the water went away when I poured some into it.”

The water was warm from the stove, yet Ijale still crouched against the wall and shuddered when he poured it over her. She screamed when he rubbed the slippery soap into her hair, and he continued with his hand over her mouth so that she wouldn’t bring in the guards. He rubbed the soap into his own head, too, and it tingled delightfully as it soaked through to his scalp. Some of it was in his ears, muffling them, so the first intimation he had that the door was opened was the sound of Mikah’s hoarse shout. He was standing in the doorway, finger pointed and shaking with wrath. Narsisi was standing behind him, peering over his shoulder with fascination at this weird religious rite.

“Degradation!” Mikah thundered. “You force this poor creature to bend to your will, humiliate her, strip her clothes from her and gaze upon her though you are not united in lawful wedlock.” He shielded his eyes from sight with a raised arm. “You are evil, Jason, a demon of evil and must be brought to justice – ”

“Out!” Jason roared, and spun Mikah about and started him through the door with one of his practiced Ch’aka kicks. “The only evil here is in your mind, you snooping scut. I’m giving the girl the first scrubbing of her life and you should be giving me a medal for bringing sanitation to the natives instead of howling like that.” He pushed them both out the door and shouted at Narsisi. “I wanted this slave, but not now! Lock him up until morning then bring him back.” He slammed the door and made a mental note to get hold of a bolt to be placed on this side as well.

***

There were more krenoj for breakfast but Jason was feeling too good physically to mind. He was scrubbed raw and clean and the itching was gone even from his sprouting beard. The metalcloth of his Pyrran coverall had dried almost as soon as it had been washed so he was wearing clean clothes as well. Ijale was still recovering from the traumatic effects of her bath, but she looked positively attractive with her skin cleaned and her hair washed and combed a bit. He would have to find some of the local cloth for her since it would be a shame to ruin the good work by letting her get back into the badly cured skins she was used to wearing. It was with a sensation of positive good feeling that he bellowed for the door to be opened and stamped through the cool morning to his place of labor. Mikah was already there, looking scruffy and angry as he rattled his chains; Jason gave him the friendliest of smiles that only rubbed salt into the other’s moral wounds.

“Leg-irons for him, too,” Jason ordered, “And do it fast. We have a big job to do today.” He turned back to the sealed engine, rubbing his hands together with anticipation.

The concealing hood was made of thin metal that could not hide many secrets. He carefully scratched away some of the paint and discovered a crimped and soldered joint where the sides met, but no other revealing marks. After an hour spent tapping all over with his ear pressed to the metal he was sure that the hood was just what he had thought it was when he first examined the thing – a double-walled metal container filled with liquid. Puncture it and you were dead. It was there merely to hide the secrets of the engine, and served no other function. Yet it had to be passed to service the steam engine – or did it? The construction was roughly cubical, and the hood covered only five sides. What about the sixth, the base?

“Now you’re thinking, Jason,” he chortled to himself, and knelt down to examine it. A wide flange, apparently of cast iron, projected all around, and was penetrated by four large bolt holes. The protective casing seemed to be soldered to the base, but there must be stronger concealed attachments because it would not move even after he carefully scratched away some of the solder at the base. Therefore the answer simply had to be on the sixth side.

“Over here, Mikah,” he called, and the man detached himself reluctantly from the warmth of the stove and shuffled up. “Come close and look at this medieval motive-power while we talk, as if we are discussing business. Are you going to co-operate with me?”

“I do not want to, Jason. I am afraid that you will soil me with your touch, as you have others.”

“Well you’re not so clean now – ”

“I do not mean physically.”

“Well I do. You could certainly do with a bath and a deep shampoo. I’m not worried about the state of your soul, you can battle that out on your own time. But if you work with me I’ll find a way to get us out of this place and to the city that made this engine, because if there is a way off this planet we’ll find it only in the city.”

“I know that, yet I still hesitate – ”

“Small sacrifices now for the greater good later. Isn’t the entire purpose of this trip to get me back to justice? You’re not going to accomplish that by rotting out the rest of your life as a slave.”