Scaevola's Triumph (Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy Book 3) (13 page)

There was also the problem of metal grinding over itself. He had originally intended to apply a lubricant he had seen in Egypt made from animal fat and burnt lime, with a little olive oil added, to bearings and joints, but he did not have any.

"That was a very good explanation," the Tin Man said later. "We can quite reasonably see what you are trying to do. Since you have identified a problem you could easily solve on Earth, we shall provide a lubricant."

This time Vipsania had brought a hamper of food, and the Tin man provided more fuel for a fire. As she remarked to Gaius, she had never really had the picnic she had wanted on the day they first met, and today seemed as good a day as any, and it had the advantage that it was almost certainly going to be free of barbarians.

"If our shelter can withstand the storm," Gaius muttered.

"Of course it will withstand a bit of rain," the Tin Man shook his head. "Enjoy yourselves."

The fire was started beside the boiler and a spit built. "And what are you going to cook on that?" Gaius asked curiously.

"Venison," the Tin Man announced proudly.

"How'd you get that?" Lucilla asked. "I thought you said . . ."

"It's not exactly real venison," the Tin Man said, and they almost sensed deflation in his tone. "On Ulse, many foods are synthesized. We have been trying to make foods to correspond with what you are used to, partly using Timothy's memories, and here is our first try."

"You mean, you can create food that tastes just like the real thing?" Vipsania asked, almost in awe."

"Eventually," the Tin Man admitted.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Lucilla asked.

"We know what's supposed to be present, at least in general terms," the Tin Man said, "because we've taken samples from your planet. So, all we have to do is work out how to assemble them with the correct taste and texture. Unfortunately . . ." He paused, seemingly not knowing how to continue."

"It didn't work?" Lucilla asked.

"No, not that," the Tin Man said. "No, the problem is, just as Ulsian food is poisonous to you, yours is poisonous to Ulsians so they can't taste it. That leaves droids like me."

"You think you'll fail?" Lucilla asked.

"I know I will," the Tin Man replied. "Since I don't eat at all, I have no sense of taste."

"Oh!" Lucilla said. Somehow, her first chance to crow over a failure of an Ulsian had been lost.

"So," the Tin Man continued, "this won't be right yet, but it's the best I can do. If you can tell me where it is wrong, and by how much, we'll soon get it right. If not, we'll guess again, and you can tell us whether we're getting closer. If you can describe things well enough, you will eventually have many of your foods from home."

Suddenly, cooking became an extremely interesting activity. Various encouraging comments were made about the smells reminding them of whatever, to which the Tin Man reminded them that none of them were exactly accomplished cooks, and they had always left cooking to others back on Earth.

Then the moment of truth. Carving and tasting! Plates were produced, and they sat down on stools provided and began to eat while they stared at the water pouring into the stream, which by now was a raging torrent. Then a bottle of red wine was produced. The food was devoured, although as Gaius tried to put it politely later, the flavour of the meat was not quite right, but the texture was. And the wine was not right either, but please, don't mess around with it. It was like the best Pannonian wines they had tasted, only better! How could that be?

First, it was not quite true that nothing from one planet could be consumed on the other. Alcohol was quite common to many planets, and it was the more complicated molecules that gave rise to poisons. The problem was, you could never be sure when some would turn out to be poisonous, and it was well known that many would be. However, samples of some Earth goods had been brought to Ulse, where they were analysed, and when it was known how they were made and what the target was, Ulsian science could be applied to the problem, which hopefully would permit them to provide what was needed.

As they returned to their apartment that night, they felt much better. They might not be able to go home, but they might still have access to some of the better things of life. They also began to realize why the Ulsian city was underground. The force of the rain as they made the dash between shelter and capsule, the ferocity of the lightning, the burning of the sun when it was not raining . . . Yes, Ulse was hardly a paradise, and living underground, provided the rain could be kept out, made a lot of sense.

* * *

The next day they returned, and when they had made their dash to their enclosure and were shaking off surplus rain, there before them the machine was assembled. Gaius was stunned, but as the Tin Man said, merely following instructions was quite straightforward. Gaius gave it a look over, and saw the odd thing he had not really thought about, but he said nothing. This would have taken him months.

The rope was attached to a weight on a nearby small tower, outside, where water was washing a yellow-brown mud away from the foundations.

The fire was started, the steam began escaping out the safety valve, and one or two other places as well, and the weight was dropped. The trio watched in anticipation as the wheel went around, appeared to speed up, but then began to slow, it began to turn in a slightly jerky fashion, then it stopped.

Gaius stared at the machine. Small amounts of steam were coming out of joints everywhere, and a huge jet was escaping from the safety valve. The Tin Man climbed the outside tower, pulled the weight back up, and began winding it on the wheel.

"It was a good try," Lucilla said in a sympathetic tone.

"Why didn't it work?" Gaius muttered. "I can't see what's wrong."

"It nearly worked," Vipsania said. "Maybe you need a bigger boiler?"

"There's plenty of steam," Gaius muttered. "It's going everywhere except . . ." He looked up at the Tin Man, and yelled, "You might as well leave it."

"You're going to give up?"

"No," Gaius said, "but I think I know what's wrong."

"What's that?"

"The weight on the safety valve is too light. It's so safe it hasn't got enough pressure."

"How much more do you need?"

"I'd say, at least twice as much."

"Fine," the Tin Man said, and kept winding. He then stepped down, went to the hut, and came back with a different weighted valve. "I thought you might say that," he said. "I'll put it on right now."

"But the steam . . ?"

"Would scald you horribly, but me, it just makes seeing a bit difficult for a few seconds."

He climbed the stonework and reached over the top of the small boiler, and there was a huge jet of steam, then it stopped as the next weight was put in place.

"You knew I'd need a bigger weight?" Gaius asked curiously.

"It seemed possible," the Tin Man said. "There seemed to be no point in wasting large amounts of time." He paused, then said in a much quieter tone, so as not to be picked up by the recording device, "Remember your own safety instructions? You should stand further back over there, where I've constructed an observation site."

Gaius looked around to see a small glass-encased room overlooking his site that had not been there the day before, and a small covered path leading to it. He nodded, then told the other two they should move well back. The Tin Man threw more wood on the fire, then moved towards the tower. Soon more steam came out the vent, then suddenly there was a bang, a pipe junction came apart, and a jet of steam went everywhere.

"It looks like we don't join pipes by sweating," Gaius muttered.

"Now what?" the Tin Man said.

"Better put the fire out again," Gaius shrugged.

The fire was put out, and the Tin Man challenged, "Going to give up?"

"No," Gaius said angrily. "This should work."

"Except it doesn't," the Tin Man retorted. "It's simply dangerous."

"The answer's reasonably obvious," Gaius said, "although how to do it is another matter."

"And what's that?"

"I remake the pipes," Gaius said, "but I make them with flanges near the ends. Then I sweat one pipe over the other until the flanges meet. I then lock it in place, by putting some metal with a groove that gets narrower slowly. It's wide enough to encompass flange and collar, and I hit it with a hammer until it stays in place. The joints can't fly apart then, because they're held by the locking piece of metal."

"Draw what you want," the Tin Man said.

"I'd like to put holes in the flanges and locks as well," Gaius said, "then I could put some wire through to stop the lock falling off. Also, it might be better to put more than one on. Maybe four, at quarter way around from the last."

"Draw it," the Tin Man said.

So Gaius drew what he wished, but just when he had finished, he said, "There's a better way, if I had more of my bolts. I would just bolt the flange together, provided I remembered to cast it in the first place with holes for the bolts."

"Then why not do it?" the Tin Man asked.

"I've run out of bolts," Gaius shrugged.

"Yes, but you've made them before, so we shall get you more."

"In that case, I want you to fill in the space with leather," Gaius said, "and tighten them up. That should keep the steam in better."

"That shall be done," the Tin man said. "We haven't got any leather, but we shall provide something that should be at least equivalent, and probably better."

* * *

When they returned next morning he was surprised to find the device was rebuilt, and the rain had stopped, although the clouds remained an ominous grey-black. They started the fire, and when the steam began exiting, again the weight was dropped, and this time the wheel definitely began to turn faster, then there was a further bang, and the beams governing the lever controlling his valve flew apart. Gaius cursed, then muttered something about having to devise better guides. He sat down and designed a rail over which the piston rod should run, and a small 'ski' to run up and down in the groove of the rail so as to reduce wobble in the joint to the beam to the wheel.

The next day the rain returned, the new design was incorporated, and this time it ran for a minute before something else flew apart. He returned to his apartment that evening somewhat depressed. "It doesn't seem to matter what I do," he muttered, "but something goes wrong!"

"It'll work," Vipsania said with an encouraging tone.

"What makes you think so?" he asked with a wan smile.

"It worked for a little while," she pointed out. "At least you know that it's possible. All you've got to do is make all the bits last longer."

"Easier said than done," Gaius muttered.

"You've just got to keep at it," she encouraged.

In fact he did not have much choice. For several weeks he returned each day, and as each day something else went wrong, his mood gradually became as black as the weather. Each thing that went wrong was fixed and the cycle repeated until one day, when the design for fixing the latest disaster was completed and Gaius was thinking that just about everything had been replaced more than once, the Tin Man said, "You realize it would be better if your machine did something."

"Like?" By now Gaius was becoming desperate. It was not as if he had not enough troubles that he had to think of something else. To have so many disasters recorded was hurtful. These Ulsians were so clever, they knew exactly what was wrong, and they were undoubtedly taking a considerable amount of amusement from the way he was floundering around.

But if the Tin Man had any conception of how Gaius felt, he did not show it. Not that he ever showed any emotion. "You have a wheel going around, taking an axle with it. To be useful it has to do something more than just go around."

"Could you fix a small wheel on the axle beside the big wheel, and a belt to a larger wheel?" Gaius asked. One thing his stay in Egypt had taught him was how to lift large objects.

"Of course."

"Then run a belt from this wheel to a much larger wheel," Gaius said, "then on the axle of the larger wheel, fix a drum that can wind up rope. We can try to lift something."

"Excellent idea," the Tin Man nodded.

"You realize," Vipsania said later, as she tried to cheer up a rather dispirited Gaius, "that tomorrow this is going to work."

"You're so sure?" Gaius asked with an amused smile.

"The Tin man seemed so keen to make it do something useful," Vipsania said. "That must mean he thinks it's time to demonstrate it."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Gaius said in a glum tone. "There seems to be an unending number of things to go wrong."

"No, I wouldn't usually bet on it, but this time I will. What do you want to bet?"

"Bet? What makes you so sure?"

"Bet or no bet?" Vipsania challenged.

"You're convinced I'll be cleaning out pigsties?" Gaius looked at her curiously. "What do you know I don't know?"

"The Tin Man knows what's going to happen," Vipsania said. "Remember how he made us move away when the device was going to blow apart? He didn't do that before because he knew it wouldn't."

"You may be correct," Gaius said, and gave Vipsania a hug.

"From which I gather the pigsties remain unclean," Vipsania laughed, as she kissed him back.

"Since your pigsties are back on Earth," Gaius remarked, "they will be, unless someone else has taken over."

They stared at each other. The reminder that home was so far away, and they would never again see their treasured possessions, their land, their friends, even their pigsties, always had a chilling effect.

* * *

On the following day, Vipsania was to feel very pleased with herself. The party was once again taken to their little park, and as expected, everything was set up. Even better, there was a break in the clouds, and a brilliant ray of sunshine lit up their hilltop, as if signalling to the world that this time Athene herself was blessing the venture. The Tin Man was his usual expressionless self, Vipsania was almost bubbling, Lucilla was slightly bemused, and Gaius was simply nervous. He walked around the machine, but could find nothing that was obviously wrong. A very small pulley was on the side of his flywheel, and a belt went to a rather large wheel, and on the axle holding this wheel was a drum enclosing about a meter of axle, and inside this drum there was a groove. Nearby was a rope with a knot in one end, and the size of this knot made it a fairly simple matter to thread the rope through the groove, with the knot preventing it slipping back through the groove. This rope snaked across the grass to a rather large amount of slack, then it disappeared over the side of a bank where, on inspection, it ended up tied to a small tree trunk that had been chopped down. It was reasonably clear what had to be done. Gaius pulled enough rope through underneath the drum, wound a loop, then threaded the rope into the groove and pulled it tightly.