Moon Flower (27 page)

“So what is it supposed to do?” Chev hissed again at Shearer as Zek moved over to the switchboard. Shearer raised a hand saying he would see in a moment.

Zek stood facing his audience for a moment, rubbing his hands together and showing his teeth like a conjuror about to deliver his finale. Then he turned, closed a circuit, and began moving a sliding knob, at the same time watching a pointer moving in a slot on a vertical graduation like a thermometer scale. Astonished gasps erupted from the onlookers. Some of the more trusting who had begun edging forward withdrew hastily again.

A glass tube clamped in a stand on the bench had begun to glow with a reddish light at one end. As Zek continued moving the slider, the glow extended along the tube, at the same time intensifying until it had become pale, shimmering orange. A reverent silence fell for what seemed a long time as the company took in the sight. Then, gradually, they came back to life again one by one, and questions began coming from all sides. Leaving one of his acolytes to deal with them and another to watch the switchboard, Zek came over to where the visitors were standing.

“So,” Zek pronounced. “What do you think? Will we be traveling to the stars a hundred years from now? Coming to visit you at Earth, maybe?”

“It could be a lot sooner, from some of the things I’ve heard,” Uberg said.

“Would your Faraday have approved of our efforts?” Zek had obviously straightened the name out with his NIDA unit.

“You’d need to ask Marc,” Uberg said, indicating Shearer. “My business is flowers and trees.”

“Apart from making light in a bottle, what use is it?” Chev asked.

“Faraday was asked that question too,” Shearer said. “His answer was, What use is a newborn baby?”

“Oh, excellent!” Zek exclaimed. “I must remember that. I intend, shamelessly, to steal it.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Shearer said.

“Marc!” Jerri gave him a reproachful nudge.

The acolyte at the switchboard, having satisfied himself that all was well there for the time being, moved across to the dynamo, picked up an oil can that looked like an Aladdin lamp with a long spout, and proceeded to administer doses of the contents to holes above the rotor and clutch bearings. Zek ushered the others to the end of the bench and indicated a coil surrounding a metal core, held vertically in a frame. Several inches below it on the bench was a slab of metal the size of a typical book. When Zek closed a switch, it leaped up to attach itself to the end of the core with a loud
clack
.

“It can move things,” Zek said, looking at Chev and answering the question he had asked Shearer. “You look like a pretty strong fellow, Chev. All the same, I’ll bet you anything you care to name that we can rig up a lifter that you couldn’t beat.” Chev replied with a dip of his head and made an exaggerated gesture of conceding. Zek turned to Shearer. “We’re not sure yet exactly what the law is that describes the process. But the inspiration for the way to find out will doubtless come in its own time.” He looked at Uberg and grinned. “Do you know which flowers Faraday listened to?”

Shearer was still puzzling over this odd remark, when Blanborel remarked. “The magnet doesn’t have to be in the same place as the generator.” Shearer’s NIDA was pulling the terms from his own vocabulary. “We’re stringing a wire across to my room on the other side. Zek can get it to make a click at one end when a switch is pressed at the other end. We’re working out a code that will enable us to talk to each other.” He gave Zek a doubtful look, as if worried about him, and then confided in a stage whisper, “He thinks we’ll be able to talk to people in Revo one day, too. But I think that might be a bit far-fetched. Don’t you?”

“Well, don’t go too crazy with the bets,” Shearer advised. “We talk to people back on Earth.”

That seemed to be all there was to see. But then Zek, beckoning, led the way over to a door in the rear wall and turned an iron ring to open it. Beyond was large open space with windows high in the wall on the far side and a rectangular pit several feet deep excavated in the floor, apparently in the process of being prepared for something.

“The water mill is all right up to a point,” Zek said, standing aside as they came through to look. “But it can be erratic. When there hasn’t been much rain up in the mountains, we know that things are going to get slow here — maybe even come to a standstill. But there is another land north of Yocala, called Ibennis...”

“We know of it,” Jerri confirmed.

“And a man there called Wolaxal has made engines that turn by steam. They use them there to pump water for the fields. He’s going to come to stay in Doriden for a while, and build one for us here.” As Zek spoke, he watched the faces of the Terrans carefully, as if looking for a reaction. He waited a few seconds and then asked, “Do you think that would be a good idea?”

“Splendid!” Shearer said without hesitation. This was the equivalent of two hundred years after Aristotle? At this rate they’d be flying while Zek was still alive.

“Why? Do you not think so?” Uberg asked Zek.

“We’re not sure,” Zek replied. He paused and seemed to think for a moment. “The Terrans who were here before seemed to think there were better ways.”

So Shearer’s suspicion had been correct. They weren’t the first Terrans to have come to Doriden. “Better ways?” he repeated.

Zek looked at Blanborel, who explained, “They had been to faraway parts of Cyrene that even we have never seen. They told us that there exist in such places vast underground lakes of substances like plant and animal oils, but more powerful. And we could build better engines that use these.”

“Without the furnaces and boilers that Wolaxal’s engines need,” Zek said.

Shearer thought about it and looked dubious. The two Cyreneans eyed each other meaningfully, as if it confirmed something they had suspected. “You don’t seem so happy at the idea,” Blanborel remarked.

Shearer wasn’t quite sure where to begin. “I know what they’re talking about,” he said. “And it’s not that the idea it isn’t a good one. But the technology to use such fuels isn’t something that can just stand on its own. It’s part of a bigger picture that all has to go together. It needs...” he gestured back in the direction of the door they had come through, “a developed science of electricity; machining and measurement precision much finer than what you can get away with using steam; a whole supporting industry of extraction and refining methods that you don’t have yet.... It would be like trying to build a carriage before you have mastered carpentry. Surely whoever proposed the idea would have known this.”

“They weren’t suggesting that we do it ourselves,” Blanborel said. “They said they would provide all the support. It would make Yocala all-powerful among the nations of Cyrene, and Vattorix would become an invincible conqueror, able to impose his will everywhere.” Jerri threw Shearer a look that said
now
it was starting to make sense. Blanborel concluded, “Why they thought that we or Vattorix would wish such things, I do not know.”

“So what was in it for them?” Shearer asked resignedly. The Cyreneans looked uncertainly at each other.

“What did they want?” Jerri said.

“Oh, I see....” Blanborel nodded. “They would be entitled to appoint an advisor to sit on Vattorix’s forum of counselors. Also, they would retain the ownership rights for supply elsewhere on Cyrene once the means to produce the fuel were set up in the regions where the underground lakes exist.”

The Terrans received the information with ominous looks. “And what happened?” Uberg asked. “Did Vattorix make any such agreement?”

Blanborel shook his head. “No. As I said, he could not understand their reasons. And then after a while, we stopped hearing any more about it. I think the Terrans started having other problems.”

“That’s nice to know, anyway,” Shearer said, sounding relieved.

“You wouldn’t have approved?”

“It’s a long story,” Shearer answered. “But let’s just say that things our leaders do are not always things we agree with. That’s why a lot of Terrans have been leaving.” He hoped he wasn’t going to be called upon to give a long explanation. Again, there was an exchange of questioning looks between Blanborel and Zek. Finally, Blanborel gave Zek a quiet nod.

Zek turned toward the Terrans. “We must confess to you that this is not the first time we have heard the things you have just told us. But there seem to be two kinds of Terrans. Some want to go their own way and live among us. But they have to hide their movements from others who would try to prevent them. We needed to be sure which kind you were.”

Uberg looked surprised. “I thought Chev would already have told you. We are on our way to join another Terran who left earlier. His name is Wade. Chev is escorting us — I believe, acting on Vattorix’s behalf.”

“Oh, yes, we know about that,” Blanborel agreed, smiling faintly. “But we couldn’t know what happened to Wade’s communications inside the Terran camp. You could have been someone pretending to be Uberg, sent to find out where he went.”

“He’s got a point,” Shearer murmured, nodding at Uberg and Jerri.

“And what Marc said about energy technologies convinced you?” Jerri said, looking puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“It was not what the Terrans who tried to tempt Vattorix said,” Zek explained. “They wanted to supply and control everything for us, so that we would be forced to follow their policies. But it was exactly what we were told by another Terran, whom we do trust completely.”

“Who?” Shearer asked.

“Your Professor Wade!” Zek answered. Blanborel grinned as if it were a huge joke.

“He was here?”

“Oh yes. We learned much from him.” Zek inclined his head toward the doorway, just as a burst of crackling — unmistakably a spark discharge — came from the other side, along with alarmed shouts. “He gave us a lot of advice on building the dynamo. I won’t pretend it was all our own doing.”

“The clicking telegraph was his suggestion too,” Blanborel put in.

So everything was going fine, and they were already en route to wherever Wade was. Chev had presumably not said so back at Soliki’s to avoid giving clues as to their destination that could find their way back to the wrong place.

Jerri, however, seemed unsure about something. “But is holding back from a more effective technology really in your better interests?” she asked Blanborel. “Especially if you’ve got Terran interference to think about too. I don’t know...” She looked questioningly at Shearer.

“No, that wasn’t what I meant,” Blanborel said. “Professor Wade told us that trying to go straight to oil would be impractical for all the reasons that Marc just said. He saw steam as a necessary intermediate step — to be got through quickly. The main thing he cautioned against was surrendering any rights and ownership. He urged us to be patient and wait a little to develop technologies we understood and that would be our own, rather than be rushed into something the Terrans would control. And I’m pretty sure he persuaded Vattorix.”

Shearer stared at him thoughtfully. Now he thought he was beginning to see why Interworld were so anxious to track Wade down and rein him in. If this was the kind of thing he had been spreading, it could put the corporation’s plans back years — maybe put paid to them permanently. Back in Berkeley, Shearer had heard him remonstrate on how the system of exploitation was too firmly in place and universal for its hold to be broken now. It seemed as if he might have embarked on a personal mission to make sure the same thing didn’t happen on Cyrene. That sounded like Wade, all right.

“It wouldn’t have happened anyway,” Zek said. “Now I know why I went ahead and sent the invitation to Wolaxal to have him build us one of his engines.”

Shearer stared at him perplexedly. It was the crazy Cyrenean inversion of logic — or lack of it — again. How could Zek have made such a decision with seeming confidence, and only now know why? He was determined to get to the bottom of this.

“Why didn’t you think the Terran deal would go through?” he asked Zek. “Did you talk with some of Vattorix’s people who had debated it?”

Zek shook his head. “I’m not sure if anyone debated it,” he said. “It just didn’t feel good.”

“I’d have thought you would understand,” Blanborel said to Uberg. “Didn’t you say you know about flowers?” Uberg could only return a baffled look. The two Cyreneans nodded to each other in a way that said they had seen this before.

“Don’t tell me. On Cyrene, you just get to know these things,” Shearer said for them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Orban, the thin man whom the innkeeper had introduced the day previously, took Lang along a cobbled alley and into a narrow street that led past a feed merchant’s yard and a shop displaying saddlery and horse harnessware. The day was into the later part of the cooler period that came after the first sun’s setting. The draper had been able tell them only that the fugitives had left with somebody called Chev to spend a day or two with people who wanted to meet the Terran “scientists.” He didn’t know how far away or in which direction. One of the several stable owners that Orban and Lang talked to had told them he might have some news later today.

Orban had also taken Lang to meet some of the departed Terrans who had chosen to remain close to the base and gone to ground in various parts of the town. One was teaching algebra and geometry; a couple who had moved into rooms near the docks were running a bar, into which they had introduced darts, checkers, and a pool table that they had commissioned a local carpenter to build, and were doing quite a trade; an ex-Milicorp trooper had moved in with a Cyrenean girl and become foreman for a construction crew. But none of them had heard anything about a recently arrived party matching the description of Shearer and his companions.

“I thought about it this morning after I woke up, but if you don’t mind, sir, I’ll give it a pass,” Orban said. “Collecting and delivering things around the town is what I do, and there’s reason enough to be content in that. But thanking you kindly, all the same.”

“We’d pay you a lot more than you’ll ever make collecting and delivering,” Lang answered. “It would be a highly valued service to us. One day the Terrans will be strong allies of Vattorix and an important influence in Yocalan affairs. Your help would not be forgotten. As an officer on our payroll you could do very well.” An informer in the town would be an invaluable asset, and somebody like Orban, who moved around and talked to everybody, would make an ideal recruit. But Lang had been unable to come up with a line that he would buy.