Martha nodded, her mouth still drawn thin. "Well, that settles Angelica's notion, I think."
"What-oh."
Angelica Brand had been wondering aloud at Council meetings if they couldn't recruit some temporary harvest labor on the mainland. It would be extremely convenient; with enough seed and to spare, they were clearing more land and planting a lot more this year, and every other project was crying out for hands as well. Putting everything on hold while they got in the harvest was an absolute pain in the fundament-and the various crops meant that harvest stretched through most of the summer and on into fall.
On the other hand, the locals didn't look like being the best imaginable braceros, and anyway, it was a bad precedent to start relying on foreign labor, he supposed.
"I see what you mean."
Martha nodded again, a gesture sharp enough to cut hide. "Well, there's always the Sir Charles Napier method of cultural reconciliation," she said. At his raised eyebrow, she went on: "He was a British governor in India, back- you know what I mean-in the 1830s. A delegation of Brahmins came to him and complained that he was oppressing them by forbidding suttee, widow-burning, that it was part of their religion."
"What did he tell them?" Cofflin asked, curious.
"Roughly…" She assumed a British accent; it wasn't too different from her native academic New England:
"It is your custom to burn widows. We also have a custom. When men burn a woman alive, we take those men, tie a rope around their necks, and hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your national custom. And then we will follow ours."
A few people looked up as Cofflin guffawed. "There's British understatement for you," he said. "We're not really in a position to do much crusading, though."
"No, but we'll do what we can where we can." She swallowed. "That's one thing I became quite determined about during the… episode… down south."
He touched her shoulder, squeezing in reassurance.
"I didn't think Indians were so hard on women," he said, changing the subject. "The Iroquois and all that."
"Depends," Martha said, relaxing. "Lots of variation from time to time and place to place, tribe to tribe-well, Sicily and Sweden weren't exactly alike up in the twentieth, were they? Or New England and south Texas, come to that. Offhand, I'd say it was agriculture that made the difference here. When these woodland Indians took-would have taken-up maize and bean farming, women raised the crops and it probably increased their general say in things."
The inside of the machine shop was noisy, also steamy and hot despite the big doors leading to the water being left open. There were four large steam engines going now. Dozens of lathes, grinders, drill presses, and machines more complex whined and growled and screamed. As the Cofflins entered a yell of triumph went up from a crowd at the far end of the building. They walked over, peering at the new machine. It was vaguely shaped like an elongated upright C on a heavy flat base, about twelve feet tall; a cylinder was fixed by wrist-thick bolts to the top, and from it depended a heavy rod with a hammerlike weight at the end. A steel-slab anvil rested below it; Ron Leaton was just placing an egg on that. He stepped back, gripped a lever with a theatrical flourish, and pulled it toward him. The hammer on the end of the piston rod came down on the egg… and stopped, barely touching it. The control lever sent it back upward with a hiss and chunk sound.
Leaton stepped forward, grinning, and picked up the egg. He peeled it-hard-boiled, evidently-and ate it with ostentatious relish. The crowd dispersed back to their tasks, laughing and back-slapping.
"Another masterpiece of invention?" Cofflin asked dryly.
"Naysmith's steam hammer-pneumatic, actually; we're using compressed air," Leaton said cheerfully, wiping his hands on his inevitable oily rag and stuffing it back into a pocket of his overalls. "He did that bit with the egg to show it had precision as well as a heavy wallop, and I thought, what the hell, it worked for him-" He shrugged. "It'll be really useful, now that we're making progress with that cupola furnace. With that and the hammer, we can start doing some real forging work-crankshafts, propeller shafts even."
"Good work," Cofflin said, sincerely impressed. Leaton was a godsend; without the seed of his little basement shop, the island as a whole would be a lot farther behind than it was. "What was it you wanted to discuss with us, Ron?" He had a couple of things to say himself, but it was easier if Leaton started the conversation.
"Well, a couple of things, Jared, Martha," the proto-industrialist said.
The three of them walked over to his office, a plank box built in a corner. They ducked in and lifted tools, samples, plans, and parts off the board chairs before they sat.
"First thing is, I need more lubricants and more leather for drive belts," he said.
"Talk to the whaling skippers and Delms," Cofflin said immediately. Delms had taken over the contract on the whale rendery down by the Easy Street basin, with a tannery as a sideline. Cofflin approved. Let Delms take the continuous flack for the way it smelled. There was a motion afoot to have the whole thing moved farther from town, anyway, and the bonemeal plant and salting works along with it.
His mouth quirked up at one corner. "Government's out of that business, Ron. Thank God."
"And we're getting too much ash built up here," Leaton said. The engines were all wood-fired, and the valuable waste was supposed to go onto the soil immediately.
"Take that up with Angelica and the farmers," Cofflin replied promptly. This time he grinned outright. "It's their fertilizer. Government's out of that, too. Christ, but it's good to be able to say that!"
Leaton laughed ruefully. "All right, what good are you these days?" He shook his head. "The Town still is in charge of unused buildings, isn't it? We could use double the space."
Jared and Martha looked at each other. She cleared her throat. "Ronald, the Council has been considering that. We were thinking that it might be advisable to have some of your people start their own engineering shops, for the simpler work. Town would help them get started, the way it did you."
"Oh." Leaton blinked, surprised. "Not satisfied with the job I'm doing?" he asked, sounding slightly hurt.
"Hell no," Jared said. "You're doing a wonderful job. It's policy. Better to have competition, ayup? And we want to encourage people to set up on their own, not have too many on wages."
"Oh." Leaton frowned thoughtfully. "You know, that's not a bad idea, now that I come to think of it. Must be a bit annoying, only having me to come to when you need something done."
Glad you see the point, Cofflin thought with an inaudible sigh of relief. These days it seemed that everyone on the island had a wonderful idea that needed a machine built to do it, everything from flax-crushing and ropemaking to pressing hazelnut oil, and only Seahaven to do any of it. It was better to have a lot of little firms, where more people had a chance to become their own boss. Speaking of which… He glanced over at Martha.
"We were talking with Starbuck about organizing the financial setup here, too," she said. "Now that things are getting less informal. Organizing Seahaven as a company, that is. You put up your experience and the original machine tools, the Town provides the building and all the raw materials we've furnished, and the staff gets a share too that they hold as a block trust, and anyone can cash their share out if they leave. We thought that forty-thirty-thirty would be a proper ratio, organized as a joint-stock company. It won't make all that much practical difference right away, but for the long term…"