The Worm King (23 page)

 ‘John?’

‘Yes, Lord?’

‘Our friend Āmiria asked about the
Blacksmith, not Keith. I think you’re getting mixed up with that other splinter
sect of Masons, who keep the pigeons, you remember?’ The Hat appeared to accept
this although she couldn’t tell whether Brownie was simply humoring him, or
there really had been someone way back in the dark ages named Keith “Beaky” Goldberg
who caused an absolute scandal at the early Olympics.

The murmur of conversation in the gym had eased,
and others sitting nearby were listening too. ‘The Blacksmith who invented
Satan was born in the midst of the Iron Age, six hundred years before the time
of Christ.’ Lord Brown sat bolt upright and his voice dropped an octave.

‘The Iron Age was the most special of times,
because it was an overlap of
two
great ages.’ He paused, gazing at the
roof. ‘Today, many believe the internet and television and the telephone and airplanes
have delivered a new era, but they’re nothing—nothing!—compared with the
innovation of the Iron Age. They’re toys: simply different ways of arranging
metal and plastic to make our lives a fraction easier. Look, they’re all gone
now, and we’re still alive!’ He lifted his hands as though holding an invisible
loaf of long French bread by its ends. ‘Today, more than ever, we need to
remember what happened two and a half thousand years ago, in the Iron Age,
because the comet we’ve just had has zapped us right back to that point. In the
years ahead, there’ll be no more internet, or airplanes or TV’s.’ He lowered
his hands, staring at the assembled faces. ‘Why do you think we’ve been
spared?’

No one dared answer. Eventually her father
said, ‘So far. It’s not over yet.’

‘Yes, we
have
been spared. We’ve been
spared the initial apocalypse; now we must survive the demon who rides in its
wake.’ Several glanced uncomfortably at the roof.

‘Tell us Lord!’ called the Hat.

‘The great ages of man are—’

Āmiria raised a hand. ‘What about
ladies?’

‘You go girl!’ Zelda clapped.

‘The great ages of man,
and
women, are
stone, copper, bronze and iron in that order. We must know what happened in
these times, and how they developed, so we can now move forwards. Those who
move the fastest, they will be the ones spared the demon.’ Āmiria wondered
if his demons were in any way related to the amount of Windowleen he drank. ‘The
Stone Age, well of course that speaks for itself. When things are so basic
you’ve only got hunks of rock to bang together, you haven’t really got a lot.’

‘Hang on,’ interrupted Geoff. ‘The
Flintstones had stone cars and stuff? I mean, maybe not the cars, but the other
things and some a that’s gotta be true, surely.’ Tamati and Rangi sniggered. Even
Āmiria knew the Flintstones almost certainly weren’t real.

‘What the fuck you talking about Fred?’
someone shouted from further back, and general laughter erupted.

‘Indeed. Of course, like the dinosaurs, the
ancient tribe that the Flintstones belonged to has long since perished.’ The laughter
became a confused murmur. ‘The Stone Age went right up to 4500BC. After that
people began to use copper, and a whole new world opened.’

‘I had to replace some copper pipe in my
kitchen and bathroom two years back. All that opened for me was my wallet,’
complained Zelda. ‘Big time. You’d think they’d only just invented it, given
what they were charging.’

‘No, it’s been around a fair while.’ Lord
Brown shook his grizzled head. ‘They’ve been using copper longer than . . . well,
anything, apart from hunks of rock, I suppose.’ He paused, reflecting. ‘You’re
on the right track though; copper probably started out being used in kitchens. So
when you think about it, we haven’t come very far.’ Other faces gazed around the
grim, fetid gym nodding in agreement.

‘The first smelterers of copper began in
4500BC, in the mountainous areas where you find a lot of the ore. Maybe the
Hindu Kush, or the Elburz Mountains in Persia. The oldest copper furnace found thus
far was built in southern Israel, in 4200BC. The ore has this delightful blueish
color, and you can find it lying near the surface. The biggest trick is to get
the temperature up to 1100 degrees Celsius to melt the copper, so it would’ve needed
a reasonably sophisticated cooking oven. He smiled at Zelda, and it dawned on Āmiria
this must be where her kitchen bit came in. ‘Someone would’ve painted the blue
ore on a cooking pot for decoration, then noticed when the furnace got verily
hot, the ore changed to a thick, runny liquid which ended up extremely hard
when cooled. Once you worked out how to make a rough cast, you could create metal
spear points, and these were a lot more effective than pointy rocks.

‘So they trundled forwards, content with
this technology for more than a thousand years, until 3000BC. Then some bright
spark discovered that if you add a wee dram of tin to the copper, you make
bronze, and this was a tremendous breakthrough. Bronze is stronger and more fluid
when melted than copper, so it’s much more suitable for casting. They could make
sword edges, whereas copper is only really good for pointies. The Bronze Age
was the age of the sword. It became easier to construct helmets, and all the
other whatnots for war too. And because there was hugely more tin in Europe and
the Middle East, than in Asia or Africa, this is why the Middle East and Europe
leapt from this date.

‘Then in 1500BC came the Age of the Pirate,
when a chronic shortage of tin occurred. Unfortunately you never find tin on
the surface, like copper. You always have to dig, dig, dig down for it. They
even went to the massive effort of carting it in from Afghanistan, across the horrifically
dangerous Khyber Pass.

‘Pirates scourged the shores of the
Mediterranean, raiding towns specifically to steal bronze along with all the
rape and the plunder. From 1500BC, tin supplies couldn’t keep pace with demand,
and we find evidence many bronze bowls and ornaments and bric and brac were being
re-melted into weapons. From this emerged the Iron Age: the shortage of bronze
forced men, and women, to try something different. The smelting of iron may’ve
been smallish leap in terms of technology, but the implications were infinitely
greater. Than with copper or bronze, that is.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked her father. Āmiria
wasn’t surprised at his interest: he often reminisced about his old job at the iron
mine in the Pilbara.

‘Well, smelting iron only needed a hotter
and bigger furnace. You had to get it up to 1500 degrees, which is 400 degrees
hotter than you need for copper. But the beauty of iron is there’s an awful lot
more of it around than copper or tin, so once they worked out how to do it,
they were away laughing. It enabled mass production. The cast iron they made
was actually a touch
softer
than the bronze, but you could add a teaspoon
of carbon to it, and make steel. Making steel was borderline tricky with the
tools available at the time, but it
was
achievable, and you didn’t need
much because you could take a little strip of steel, and forge weld it selectively
into spots like sword edges. Then they were able to make fearsomely sharp
weapons, and plenty of them.

‘The Iron Age in the Middle East went from
1200BC to 300BC. They generally say it ended when the Romans came on the scene,
and the Romans were the first true masters of mass production. You only have to
look at the way they organized their Legions. They could’ve only done that with
a more-or-less endless supply of decent military hardware, and this wasn’t
achievable with bronze because there just wasn’t enough tin.’

‘So where does Satan fit it? Āmiria
asked, thinking the old man might be drifting off track.

‘Of course. Well, remember the Axial Age we mentioned
during the
Happy Stories
game? That’s the period from 750BC to 350BC, when
Satan and all the Gods and Demons were born. It’s no mere coincidence that the
Axial Age overlaps so neatly with the second half of the Iron Age. You could
say the Axial Age refers to what people
thought
at the time, whereas the
Iron Age describes how they
lived.
The link between the two is as clear
as the nose on your face: the development of iron led to official religion. Mass
production enabled people to sit around a lot more, and theorize about ghosts,
and religion. They developed all the ideas we have today on Gods and Devils.’

‘Devils?’ said Tim. Āmiria thought he
might be thinking about the faces on the classroom wall.

‘What would’ve happened, is that if you’ve
got plenty of time on your hands, and plenty of weapons, what you inevitably end
up saying, especially after a few drinks, is: “Those blokes over there across the
border are Devils. Let us takeith all their stuff.” And to justify this, all you
need to do is legislate in one special, unprovable decree: “Our God is the only
true God. Their god is just makeith-up.” This in effect defines monotheism,
which early Jewish politicians and entertainers were the first to use in any meaningful
way.’

‘Right!’ exclaimed the Hat. ‘So that’s how
they know a Jew in Babylon invented Satan.’

‘Indeed.’ Lord Brown smiled at Zelda. ‘That’s
no disrespecting the good people of Israel, of course. If you’re a small
country surrounded by extremely powerful enemies—Babylon on one side and the
Egyptians on the other—it’s a natural political tool you’d come up with to
maintain independence. Just smart politics, really.’

‘Right,’ repeated the Hat. ‘
Ipso dipto,
and so was born Keith.’

‘Exactly. Although I doubt Keith was his actual
name. And I’m fairly certain he wasn’t a pigeon fancier in the way you
specified earlier, either.

‘But to go back to my first point, about why
we’ve been spared. Think about this: Australia has metals in abundance; the
sophistication of the world’s technology has in a flash gone back to the Iron Age;
and Australia has always had more iron per capita than anywhere else on the
globe by a country mile.’ Her father nodded in agreement.
‘That’s
why
we’ve been spared. We are the seed.’

‘Did you cover all this in lectures?’ asked
the Hat.

Zelda shook her head in amazement. ‘I gather
you would’ve been fired from the University?’

‘Not exactly. I’m Professor of Anthropology
and Statistics. On semi-permanent fieldwork these days, of course.’

Āmiria watched the line of sullen faces
file away from the wooden table. Breakfast time in the zoo: one piece of canned
fruit and a dollop of porridge in one mug, and a slop of water in the second
mug. A man with two small kids held up the queue because he’d lost one of his
mugs and the Mason’s helper, who was dishing it out, wanted to dump his porridge
and drink in the same mug. Āmiria tipped the last of her water into the well-scraped
porridge mug and gave it a swirl before tilting it up and draining the dregs. What
was he whinging about? They tasted fine together. The Mason spoke to the man
for several minutes, then the queue inched forward. Obviously the whinger had
seen the error of his ways because it didn’t look like he was carting any extra
mugs. He was a mug! She laughed to herself, then stopped abruptly, wishing
there’d been someone to share her near-brilliant joke with. Tim had left with
his father an hour ago, and no one else was in much of a jokey mood.

‘Hey kiddo. S’happnin?’ The Hat slid down beside
her. She considered sharing the mug story with him but already it didn’t seem
that funny anymore.

‘Naff all.’

He pointed his spoon at the Mason. ‘You
reckon I can get him with this from here?’

He would too! ‘No chance,’ she egged.

A moment later the spoon curved up in a high
graceful arc, hitting the wall behind the wooden table and missing the Mason by
a country mile. Āmiria looked down immediately, stifling a snigger, and the
Hat wisely did the same. After a healthy four-second pause, they raised their
heads: the Mason glared around angrily, no idea where the missile sprang from. He
only had a few left to serve and they were taking an interest too, obviously concerned,
and hoping this wasn’t the start of something, while those filing away from the
table (who must’ve heard the spoon clatter against the wall too) didn’t give a
toss because they already had their breakfast.

‘How you going to get it back?’

‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ he admitted.
She couldn’t help laughing.

‘Chin up tiger. We’ll be okay.’ Then he scuttled
off on hands and knees, weaving his way like a lanky cat towards his next
assignment, whatever that may be.

After breakfast was the designated cleaning
hour, which in actual fact only went for ten minutes, if that. The Mason stood on
his swimming tower, shouting instructions on what to clean, but hardly anyone
participated which he looked grumpy about, although there didn’t appear much he
could do.

Another sluggish hour dragged by. The Mason made
a circuit, calling out for the Andersons from Gunnedah. ‘The Andersons? The
Andersons? From Gunnedah. Are the Andersons here?’

People coming, people going. Everyone gripped
by a lethargy which gave the impression of a lot less movement in the gym than there
actually was. Āmiria felt listless, and kept drifting into a funk. Only
her father and the Hat remained full of beans: moving around, giving instructions
here, and there. Āmiria wasn’t surprised, she knew Wiremu Ruarangi was
used to giving orders and being obeyed. Without warning, Murawai beach materialized
like an evil wind, cutting her to the bone. ‘Close the back,’ he’d yelled. She saw
again the spray shooting over the edge of the rock, drenching her father, and almost
reaching the Subaru where she stood. ‘And get back in the car!’ The thunder of
wave on rock was deafening.