A larhaus is in the keeping of a gesith, not any group of citizens; it is meant to replace a thorpe’s productive agricultural land with necessary economic activity otherwise unavailable. The Food-gesith has had a few thorpes time out of mind, called thorpes, and used to test agricultural innovation. Those present no regulatory challenge, being how thorpes were imagined in the first days of the Commonweal. Any surplus food is distributed by lottery to interested geans when the Commonweal has no specific need of it.
The Galdor-gesith’s larhaus exists because the Second Commonweal has a team of sorcerers who can create new fortified landscape in eight days. The law had to change. Individuals cannot have so much more than their fellows as would be required to pay them, lest this create rule, or the rule of sorcerers, in some order, and they must be paid; the Commonweal will have no slaves. So they participate in a larhaus, the equivalent of what in a thorpe is productive land, under the auspices of the Commonweal through the Galdor-gesith’s authority. If this is a solution, it is new and awkward with lack of custom.
It comes close to making ‘independent’ a profession, where you work as the Commonweal directs and the Peace requires outside the constraints of trade. It would not be very different from judges, who try law cases when a law case arises, but mostly provide the opportunity to attest contracts in the general economy. Still, independents do not, strictly, work for the Galdor-gesith; their duty is to the whole Commonweal and when they work, they work as artisans, individuals who undertake specific work by contract. The Galdor-gesith provides them with a means to accept and store funds in place of the gean membership they do not have. The work itself is different, the specific mechanisms for handling money are different, but the pattern is not; persons engaged in entirely material trade follow the same pattern.
There are no customs and only just sufficient laws for teams of independents, external-working dynamic focuses, or the increasing scale of focus-work arising from greater focus production. It is awkward and uneasy, but there’s a framework of law against which precedent may accumulate.
The Line-gesith’s larhaus presents problems.
The Hale-gesith commissions specific production; peace-abiding, various medicines, the construction of burn-beds and body-vats, scalpels, protective equipment, and the necessary buildings to house medical services. If it does not come from a regular collective — builders build houses and hospitals without much distinction — it comes from teams of medics or specific independents on long-term contracts, just as there are specific independents on long-term weeding contracts or agricultural development contracts for the Food-gesith. There isn’t a new kind of production involved, and no one involved’s productivity goes solely to the Hale-gesith.
The Food-gesith’s thorpes are thorpes where more than half the thorpe-shares are held by the gesith, and thus the Commonweal. In operation they make decisions for reasons of inquiry, but the inquiry is meant to discover if something can be grown for sale. The distinction from a regular thorpe is solely in the definition of risk applied. The Lug-gesith maintains a staff of engineers who hire local collectives to maintain locks and dams and bridges, but the locks and dams and bridges belong to the Commonweal. No difficult question of establishing prices arises from performing maintenance; one first maintains that which is most expensive to fix later.
The Line-gesith now needs things that the regular activity of trade produces, and things that the regular activity of trade must not produce, all jumbled up, and needs them as fast as possible. There will never be a peaceful use for hot red shot; the Line’s supply waggons work just as well as other waggons for hauling bricks or barrels. None of the existing sets of law or custom can be made to apply.
“We’re doing this wrong.”
The rest of the room is looking at Clerk Merovich.
“We have addressed timescale, and got nowhere. An armoury spans all plausible timeframes of investment, from the enduring through the expendable. The enduring will produce the expendable.”
There are nods. Not very full ones; everyone is thoroughly tired of this problem.
“We are much agreed that an armoury is not efficient; if the effort to produce artillery caissons produces in consequence better waggon wheels, were better waggon wheels needed it would have been far better to spend the money to have the better waggon-wheels and not hope for happy accidents.”
Nods, and one ‘do please get to the point’ motion with a chalk brush.
Merovich, Clerk of the Geld-gesith, accredited actuary, and the individual most responsible for the notion of larhaus, makes a ‘stick with me’ motion back. “We are as much agreed that the distinction is not of expendability. All manner of supplies are meant to be used once or used up, from agricultural sacking to peace-abiding to socks.”
“So?”
“The point is that the Line-gesith procures supplies which depart the Peace. Some return; some do not. Some never leave, or we may hope they do not.”
“Such as the armoury itself, and all its fixed capability.” A Line-gesith clerk. They have a habit of metaphorical and allusive references in correspondence, and Merovich tries to dislike that, and not them.
Merovich nods. “Consider what may happen should we meet with the First Commonweal again.”
“Happen?” The speaker’s voice suggests that a great many things would need to happen, starting with some specific fatal event happening to each individual hell-thing.
“We would wish there to be trade,” Merovich says, “but we could not maintain the chain of attestation across two Shapes of Peace. The units of accounting would not have the same valuations. We would need some mechanism whereby value was removed from this Commonweal, and another by which value entered.”
The whole room pauses.
“The Line is an expense.”
“The Line is an expense.” Merovich does not disagree. “An armoury produces goods. Even if all such goods go immediately to the Line’s use, skill increases. Specifically, the armoury is intended to test ideas about division of labour in wreaking teams, active focus use, and direct production of material goods by sorcery.”
“Which may not work.”
“Which will work to an unknown degree.”
The voices are from different corners of the room, and Merovich nods.
“We cannot know the price. As would be the case for a good traded to the First Commonweal, the price cannot be known until the good is bought. That might be done before or after the good itself is moved or even made. Someone will have to make an estimate.
“We want to pay as little as possible for stable borders.” This comes in a drawl from the back of the room. There’s a pause, quite sudden, and a change of tone. “Do you think that’s changed?”
“The fifty-seventh resolution of this parliament changes that policy.” Merovitch’s clerkly impassivity presents itself as entirely untroubled. “We would like always to have several sources of any necessary good, that we might not suffer shortages by mischance.”
There’s nods, various glum faces, and an irritated rustle of notepaper. There are not now even single sources of some important things. Nothing immediately critical but nowhere in the Second Commonweal provides tea, coffee, the tropical tree-gums formerly used in printer’s ink, or silk. Equivalent replacements are not swiftly obtained.
“We are attempting to increase manufacturing capacity through a greater use of sorcery, in the hope we may thereby afford stable borders.” Merovich’s primary hand flips the dry pen they are holding around, and back. “We have been seeking some means of determining accurate prices under such circumstances, and we cannot.”
“We certainly have not.” A senior clerk of the Lug-gesith.
“If we cannot determine accurate prices, we cannot view the Line in the domain of exchange.” Someone says this flatly as an impossibility. The Line has been in the domain of exchange since the founding of the Commonweal. The Line is purely expense, in that goods go to it for no material return. T
hat export to the void has bought secure borders, and the Line-gesith’s servants are seen as the void’s purchasing agents.
Merovich shakes their head. “We cannot directly determine accurate prices.”
Everyone in the room shifts forward. Various people set their notes down; others pick their notes up. Someone toward the chalk boards hefts a chalk brush speculatively, and Merovich looks fleetingly stern.
“Let us consider a domain of necessity; things we must do, if we can do them, irrespective of cost.” Merovich pauses. “Reproduction and food and medicine all interact with necessity; the purpose of the Peace can be imagined as moving necessity into economic relations. In the Peace, you may bid on food to the encouragement of more efficient production. You are not faced with the prospect of starvation.”
Parts of the Folded Hills have been faced with starvation; not this year, and not last year, but the memory is sharp. It was narrowly avoided. In the Lower Third, it was retroactively avoided.
“We cannot move the Line itself into the domain of exchange; the Line cannot be fit into the Peace, and we may set no price on not being conquered.” A few nods. “We can measure the change in the distance from necessity. We can say, well, the armoury has taken to producing boots, or cookware to the Line’s patterns, or a quantity of heavy fabric suitable for tents, and these are the changes we have seen inside the Peace.”
“That’s stocks. How do we measure diet?” A Food-gesith clerk, referring to the necessary measurement of both gean food-stocks and what the gean’s membership actually ate this season. People will go hungry for their pride.
“Collective memberships.” A different, junior Geld-gesith clerk. “How big, how the membership changes, returns, volume of business, how many new, how many undone and for what causes.” There’s a deep breath and a disposal of caution. “If the direct wreaking approach works, we’re going to see a trend for larger and a trend for smaller.”
“East Bank Refinery sort of larger?” The East Bank Refinery focus team is four thousand people. It was enacted by Parliament, its own specific thing. You don’t leave your gean to go work there, but there’s increasing argument that you should, that it ought to be its own thing, or the Lug-gesith’s larhaus.
“Have to wait and see,” the junior clerk says. “We don’t know what it’s going to take to make artillery.”
There are nods. There was a general shortage of iron — iron, and steel made from iron, and the several metals you want for tool steels, and zinc, and nearly one of copper; the traditional Creek mines are mined out. Now you get barges going by loaded full with ten ingots because twenty-tonne ingots are quicker to load and unload if a focus team is going to do it anyway. There are focus teams specialized in slicing up ingots now; they sometimes travel on the same barge as the metal. All those present at this meeting recognize this as the beginning of a trend, and that it might be nothing more than a trend to larger containers now that hoist-focuses are in greater supply.
“That the larger mass of money finds fewer wise investments need not concern us now.” Merovich is not displeased. Everyone nods. That’s not the hard problem that needs solving today.
“Let us consider those boot-cinches.” There’s rustling; most remember that there’s a would-be collective interested in locating into the armoury to produce their novel fastening device for the Line, but few recall specifics. “These involve small cables, small ratcheting reels, and attachment plates for the drawn part and the reel.” Merovich pauses; everyone’s found the diagram. “Line tests for the prototypes were strongly positive.”
The boot-cinch adjusts by increments sized by the teeth on the ratchet; it does so consistently, and it holds whether cold, wet, or muddy. And whether cold, wet, or muddy, it’s easy to unfasten. The Line could not get one to release accidentally. They’re quicker to use than laces or buckles and the cables don’t stretch.
There’s scattered sounds of scribbling, and a few pawl-ticking sounds from spice-mill calculators. The application includes expected production costs.
“They’re going to put everyone else out of work.” The senior Clerk of the Geld-gesith. “They’re not going to have continuous work for themselves.”
The boot-cinches are made from cobalt-nickel alloys. The stated twenty-year working lifespan assumes transfer to subsequent pairs of boots. If the East Bank Refinery has not stacked up as many ingots of nickel and cobalt as other things, the individual devices aren’t large. The easily replaced handled part can be anything; aluminium, in the prototypes, but you could use wood. The tiny wire-rope cables and the ratchets and the reels and the draw-plates, all the nickel-cobalt parts, are made with specific focus-tools with infinitesimal waste. A million pairs of four-cinch boots might need a hundred tonnes of the alloy.
“Boot-lace makers can make garment laces and cord and trim and selvedge tape,” some clerk says. “None of those are in excessive supply.”
Someone finds the report of the First’s sergeant-major, after three files of the First’s Colour Party wore boots with such fasteners as testing. “Next boot issue will use these fasteners,” is the whole report. There’s a small rattle of this copy of the report. “The Line is confident of improvement.”
“Persistence of skill becomes a concern.” Merovich has done the calculations carefully before this meeting; they meant to come to this example. “Pessimistic expectations do not require more than this one small collective operating more than half the time to supply the entire Second Commonweal.”
Unexercised skill rots. Writing things down isn’t worthless, but any reconstruction from written records amounts to re-invention.
“I am comfortable,” the senior Geld-gesith clerk says, “supposing this collective will devise some other thing to make.” ‘They’ll get bored’ doesn’t need to be said.
There’s a general set of nods. If it is a risk, it is not an immediate risk. It ought to be a diminishing risk; the population should be growing.
It will still be a long time before the Second Commonweal needs two collectives to make boot-cinches. If the rate of change isn’t high, the necessary productivity from about a million people won’t be present. One or another of the Second Commonweal’s enemies will destroy it. No one sees any need to mention that again before the discussion moves into statistical measures of change in collectives and which might best be applied.
D-Day Minus 1436
Year of Peace 543, Thermidor, Seventh Day (Summer)
Duckling
There’s never anything to say. You put them in the ground, if there’s ashes left to put. You explain to yourself or the children or whoever cannot forgive themselves for survival. No point but to do it.
People go into the Wapentake because it might as well be them dying. It was less for a century and rare for another; no one had come to disturb the Commonweal’s Peace. Dying happened by bad luck or weeding or plain age, those common things. So the Wapentake got scant and folk panicked when we needed it again.
We don’t tell children how often bad luck is incompetence or haste or disdaining chance. You have to tell them something about why their mother is dead, and I don’t know what happened. Busy at the time and I can’t make myself read the report. There were demons. The demons and all those who came behind the demons are dead.
The kid was expecting ashes; those are all gone in the memorial garden. The agreement of the living maintained by the dead. Nothing a shade can say suffices grief. Line memorials prove the proverb. Even ashes on a shelf ain’t enough, and now there’s nothing but last words they won’t remember and a letter. The shades march back into the memorial and are gone.
No one canny remembers words from a shade.
No one canny.
The scrolls aren’t canny. Those come out of the Standard bearing the words of the dead, solid and cold and if you hold it for long cold becomes pain. Grief isn’t sensible about pain. Don’t think the kid’s going to let go.
Shadow says something to the kid, too quiet
to hear, and hands them an urn. The urn wasn’t there; it comes out of air or darkness or the otherworld the way you’d pick a plate off a table. The scroll fits. No one makes woven-ware today, don’t know as anyone knows how. Urn looks just like it. A memorial urn in the ancient style. Doesn’t look heavy enough, the kid’s holding it lightly.
“What is that?” I hope it’s inside the limits of responsibility.
“Grief,” Shadow says. “An idea of grief, not anyone’s particular sorrow.”
Which I don’t know what to say. It looks solid. It’s not hurting the kid.
Shadow makes more; the kid wasn’t the only person here with their hands cold and cramping into shapes of pain. They don’t look like they’re making sure they make one for everybody, but everybody gets an urn. When no one else is paying any attention, Shadow catches Slow’s eyes and there’s half a nod and something that could have been a shrug and Shadow isn’t there anymore. Shadow’s assigned down below the Edge with the First, when they’re not bringing letters from the dead.
Figure Slow wants to be anywhere but here.
D-Day Minus 1332
Year of Peace 543, Brumaire, Twenty-first Day (Fall)
Chert
The phrase from time immemorial is “May we speak privately?”
I get one of Crinoline’s friendlier smiles. “Certainly.”
Crinoline vanishes. Four/Twelve’s sergeant-major gives me a salute laden with irony as I’m vanishing. Four/Twelve’s standard-bearer braces for the weight. There won’t be any. Every standard-bearer I’ve ever asked says they can’t help it; knowledge and experience don’t always rule expectation.
A Mist of Grit and Splinters Page 4