Daurenja looked back at him solemnly. "I know, he told me," he said. "I owe you my life. I promise you I won't ever forget-"
"Shut up, you bloody lunatic." Shouting at Daurenja was like trying to swat flies in the dark. "I've heard some stupid things in my time, but someone going absent without leave to join a battle is just perverse. What were you trying to achieve, for God's sake?"
He wanted to build up and maintain a good head of anger, to gain the advantage. But all the time Daurenja was watching him; bright, sharp eyes, missing nothing. "I've learned my lesson," was all he said, "and no harm done. But I'm sorry if I disappointed you. You know I have the deepest admiration-"
Ziani winced, as though he'd lashed out at Daurenja, missed and barked his knuckles on the wall. "Be quiet," he said. "And tell me what's been happening here while I've been away."
Immediately Daurenja changed, from humble penitent to invaluable assistant. "Steady progress," he said. "Shop seven have finished the torsion capstan bearings, I've got the night shift fettling and assembling the completed mechanisms. The lumber for the crossbars came in early, so shop five are shaping, planing and cutting tenons. Shop three, we found out what the glitch was with the rope-winding loom, so it ought to be up and running in time for the swing shift." He gulped down more air, like a frog swallowing a fly, then continued, "Shop two's standing by waiting for material for the stone-turning mill, so I took the liberty of putting them on preparing for a test of that theory of mine I mentioned a while back, coating the balls. You remember?"
Ziani frowned. "No."
"Ah." Daurenja's eyebrows flickered. "Well, the idea is, a smooth, uniformly round ball will fly faster and straighter than an irregular one, because it slips through the air easier. Turning the balls perfectly spherical takes too long with the men and machines we've got, so I thought, if we rough-cut the balls and then coat them with clay or, better still, lead, we can get much closer to a perfect sphere and save time in the process. I've arranged a test-firing from the prototype five-inch engine, noon tomorrow, if you can spare the time. I hope that's all right."
Good idea, Ziani thought; a very good idea, which I should've thought of myself. "Fine," he grunted. "If it works, we'll need to add another process line. Use the spare corner of shop eight, you can borrow time on the forge for melting the lead. There should be enough-"
"Eight hundredweight, in number nine shed," Daurenja interrupted promptly. "We got it in for making slingbolts for the staff-slings, but they got cancelled and we're stuck with it. Actually, I was wondering about casting round shot out of solid lead for the modified Type Three scorpions. It'd mean sparing a couple of the best masons to carve soapstone moulds, but it'd be one less calibre to turn, which'd save time in shop two. With your permission…"
"Yes, fine. Let me know how you get on." Ziani sat down in the chair. "Now, listen. I promised the duke we'd have sixty Type Two scorpions for him in six days. He wants to set up fixed artillery positions on the Lonazep road, in case they try and get it open again. Can we do that?"
Daurenja thought for a moment, a perfect study in concentration. "I believe we can," he said. "If you can let me have an extra two dozen unskilled for packing and loading. I'd rather not take skilled men off the lines."
"Use soldiers," Ziani said with a faint grin. "There's enough of them hanging about, and they must be good for something. Right. Anything else?"
Suddenly Daurenja smiled. "One other thing," he said. "You're not going to like it."
"Then what are you grinning for?"
The smile widened into a grin. "The prototype of the Class Six heavy bombard," he said. "They got it finished."
"About time."
Daurenja nodded. "The thing is," he said, "the project captain was so pleased at getting it done at last, he couldn't wait till you or I got back to test it, so he did it himself. Only," he went on, "he doesn't seem to have understood how the recoil dampers are supposed to work, because he didn't bother to tighten them right up before setting the thing off. As a result, when he pulled the lever…"
"Oh for crying out loud."
Daurenja nodded. "Exactly," he said. "The damper threads stripped, the cradle went right back against the stop, and so, of course, instead of shooting out at an optimum forty-five degrees, the ball flew straight up in the air." He paused. "According to the captain, it went up a good four hundred yards, which is very encouraging. But then, of course, it came straight down again. Nobody hurt, I'm delighted to say, but the machine's firewood."
Ziani was silent for a moment. "You know," he said, "I'm sorry I missed seeing that."
"Me too," Daurenja said. "I imagine it was quite a sight. Anyway, we'll have another prototype assembled by the morning. And at least we know the torsion spring's up to scratch. Four hundred yards straight up; that's better than I was expecting."
"Quite," Ziani said. "You'd better put the captain on report, though. Teach him not to play with things."
"Actually, I've already dealt with it," Daurenja said. "He was no good anyway."
Ziani froze. Daurenja was tidying up the papers on the desk, putting the stopper back in the ink bottle. "You dealt with it?"
Daurenja nodded. "I had him flogged and branded and discharged," he said. "There's a report in the personnel file. As a replacement, I was thinking, there's that Eremian in shop eight, he's showing a lot of promise. I'll send him up to see you when his shift ends, or I can see to it if you're busy."
Ziani let him go. It was easier; and, after all, the captain had been responsible for the destruction of a valuable piece of equipment…
(I'm afraid of him, Ziani thought. Every time I'm in the same room with him, I can't help watching him, following everything he does. I could've been rid of him so easily; Valens was furious, he didn't care about the volcano dust, but I said no, we need him. And we do. I do.)
It was dark, and the lamp was burning down; the flame struggled as it starved and died, flicking yellow light around the walls. Ziani let it go out. There was more oil in a bottle somewhere, but he couldn't be bothered. Besides, in the dark he could see more clearly.
He traced out the lines, as though drawing a sketch. For each function, a mechanism. For each process, an assembly of components working together within the constraints of a frame. He labelled them in his mind: Eremians, Vadani, Cure Hardy; Valens, Orsea, Ducas, Veatriz; an unwieldy, unsatisfactory but functional sub-array designated Psellus; a system of belts, gears and shafts to drive them all from the power source. A group of functions economically combined in the ingenious component Daurenja, which he hadn't designed himself but rather cannibalised from an existing, damaged machine. He considered issues of tolerance and stress, with particular reference to bearings and strength of materials. He thought briefly about the disgraced project captain, tied to a door, flogged bloody and burned with a white-hot iron; about the shot fired straight up in the air, because a part of the mechanism hadn't been properly understood.
I have no right to do this, he thought.
He got up, groped around in the dark, found the bottle of oil and refilled the lamp. He had a genuine Mezentine flint-and-wheel tinderbox, a Type Sixteen. The light burned away the shape of the machine, like a sheet of paper turning to ash.
They had no right. They were going to kill me; and all I want is what was mine anyway. The stories about heroes who came back;
Ducas understood. You can't run away, go somewhere else, settle down and get a job like nothing has happened. It's like tensing a spring and just leaving it cocked. The steel has a memory. It has no choice.
But he didn't really believe it; because of course they had the right. Abomination can't go unpunished, or the stone flies straight up and smashes the machine. Daurenja understood that (but in that case, why did he run off and play at being a hero, when he knew that offences must be punished? Simple; because he's the crime and the punishment all rolled into one, a complex assembly performing many functions simultaneously. Leave him out of it).