Gaet made no further mention of his wild schemes. He bought a keg of mead for the party and helped his friends set up the tables and bring in the food to the village’s small common yard. He forgot his troubles. He wasn’t a man who stayed worried when the whisky was out.
He spent his time listening to those he thought might make useful additions to his constituency, but lost interest in all political matters when he cornered an old og’Sieth woman who had worked metal as far away as the distant Sea of Tears. Like almost every Getan, he was curious about faraway places. The conversation was interrupted by a faint call.
“Gaet maran-Kaiel! Gaet maran-Kaiel…” The voice was resonant enough to echo off the hills and carry along the vales up to the mines and down into the worksheds of the og’Sieth buildings that surrounded the tunnelings. It was an Ivieth runner paging Gaet, probably with a message which had been relayed through the local rayvoice atop Redstone Hill.
He left his conversation to intercept the runner. More work, he thought in resignation. It would be from Hoemei. Hoemei always had work for the family and Gaet knew why they all responded instantly to his call no matter how harassing or trivial the assignment. Long ago they had learned to trust his intuition. The brothers’ bond of unshakable loyalty went back to the creches where quick teamwork was the only road to survival. Their women had absorbed the same loyalty by an osmosis of experience that passes between people who love each other.
The message handed to Gaet by the only slightly winded runner was sparse but detailed enough to make Hoemei’s conclusions convincing. It ended on the usual personal note. A kiss from Noe through the fabric of space for his nose. And a worried sentence to mention that there was no news from Joesai or Teenae.
“Bad message? May I carry a reply?”
“God’s Streak, no need for such a hurry. I’ll be spending time on my answer.”
“I will wait here.” An Ivieth would wait in one spot forever if it was asked of him.
“No, no. Come,” Gaet said to the man who towered over him. “I’m inviting you to a revel. When you are drunk enough you can sing for us. What songs do you know?”
The runner grinned. His clan were travellers and they all knew songs of far mysteries. Their tales bound the culture of the planet together. The man’s grin said that he could sing anything, and would do so for a drink.
Gaet escorted him down into the central yard where the party was buzzing like a hive that had located new flowers. They approached the young woman who was in charge of the buckets and bottles. She was slightly woozy from fumes and from sampling her different concoctions. “Give my friend a drink,” said Gaet with the camaraderie of a politician who is always willing to add someone new to his constituency. “Whisky with a mead chaser. He has a lot of waiting to do while I collect my thoughts.”
She pushed a drink into the tall Ivieth’s hand and held on for a moment to keep from toppling. She looked up. “You have a good view of the party. Do you see my number three around? He’s the one with the lines radiating away from his mouth.”
In the meantime, Gaet had walked off across the flagstones with his arms around two wives of Benjie who, his women were boasting, could build steam engines so tiny they crawled through the eye of a needle towing a thread. The triplet found their dobu at the food tables, his mouth full of a red potato salad that had been delicately bittered with profane fruit.
“Benjie, suddenly I have a job for you.”
“Don’t give them both to me at once,” he said admiring his wives.
“Make me a steam engine as big as a silo, say with forty wheels to roll on.”
“Forty wheels! This morning you wanted from me a mechanical man! How will we fire this giant silo, with your ego?”
“I just got a rayvoice briefing from my brother.” The drink was making it difficult for him to think. “A famine is moving up the coast. There will be refugees. He wants me to begin setting up relief stations so they won’t all die in the mountain passes. I thought we might carry food to them instead.”
Benjie had some spice cake and spoke through stuffed mouth. “They won’t starve. The Mnankrei have wheat to sell. The days of the big famines are over.”
Gaet was weighing all the political consequences, running a rapid simulation of alternate futures through his mind. “That’s what I’m afraid of. They’ll sell their wheat and you know the price. The Mnankrei are expanding too fast. Craftwise they can’t begin to match our resources, and yet they are making boots out of us. It is the ships. We can’t keep up with their ships!”
A loud voice, somehow attached to perceptive ears, guffawed from across the courtyard. “Ever seen a Mnankrei sailing in our desert?” His laugh was drunkenly slurred. “They’re going to put wheels on their boats. Sail ’em right up on the beaches.” His laugh went out of control. “Soon they’ll be chasing our asses right across the Itraiel Plain.” The tears were rolling down his cheeks helplessly and all those around him were laughing in resonance. “Ever been chased by a boat across the Itraiel?”
Benjie joined in the game of chewing on Gaet’s leg. “I think it is just that the Mnankrei are more intelligent than the Kaiel.”
“You think it takes brains to stick a wet finger in the breeze?”
“Ya, but Gaet, they have to be smarter. They are the fastest Cullers on Geta. They mow their wheat before it is blade high.”
“Only one out of five go to their temples,” answered Gaet aggressively. “That’s no record. I come from the creche. Don’t talk to me about Culling.”
“I can’t say as I see how that puts you ahead of the Mnankrei,” Benjie continued to tease. “It depends upon what you Cull for. How come they let an oaf like you get through? A silo with forty wheels!”
“They couldn’t resist my smile.”
“See what I mean?”
Gaet’s mind was permuting the conversation. “All right, Benjie, what about sailboats on wheels? Why not?”
Benjie looked him in the eyes.
“I said, ‘Sailboats on wheels.’”
“Silence of God, I do believe you’re serious!”
“Of course I’m serious!”
“No, no, Gaet old friend. You run the world.” Benjie pointed with exaggerated emphasis at the priest. “Let me build the machines.” And he pounded himself on the chest. The drunken dance had begun.
Gaet backtracked along his mental maze knowing he was onto something important. He sensed it. His mind had that wild flavor. “Why not a silo-sized steam engine driving wheels? I’ve seen your little models with wheels. I’ve seen your power engines in the Cloister!”
“Sure, sure, I can build you a big one. We just built a monster for the Palace to run one of those electric pumps.” He was saying yes, but the tone of his voice was saying no.
“How long will it take?”
“Gaet, that’s not the point. Cris, come here.” He nodded to a wise old o’Tghalie who was drinking quietly by himself. “Gaet, I know what you want. Let’s postulate a land-based haulage fleet that can move as much freight at the same speed and over the same distance as the Mnankrei wind fleet. Tell him, Cris. We’ve gone over this backwards and forwards for a couple of thousand sunrises now.”
Cris generated the relevant numbers from his strange o’Tghalie brain. He showed how fast the desert vegetation would be stripped to fuel the engines and to reduce the iron oxide for the iron roads — and how fast it would grow back and how much labor it would take to collect the fuel.
Benjie summed up the argument: “You want to preside over a nation gone to sand, go ahead. God’s Streak, we could do anything if we had the wood!”
Gaet paused. A Kaiel who made decisions had to register at the Palace what he thought would be the consequences of those decisions both in the short term and the long term. To be proved wrong by time meant that his genes would be purged from the liquid nitrogen sperm banks of the Kaiel creches.