A Dubious Peace

by Olan Thorensen

  They saw the first direct evidence of progress. The first line where the original iron caps had been replaced by longer and better-quality caps was the line connecting the iron ore range in Bultecki to the coalfields and ironworks of Pewitt and Swavebroke Provinces.

  They stood watching the first stages of iron ore from Bultecki being processed at Wungford in Pewitt while Mark pointed out the steps. Yozef listened attentively, straining to hear over the noise from nearby operations.

  “Then there’s the issue of pig iron,” said Mark. “The iron ore has to be smelted into a crude iron before the Bessemers can efficiently do their thing. We’re still ramping up production of pig iron here in Wungford. That’s the name we’re using for this whole facility. It’s the village nearby. Wungford fits your aim to spread development out. Actually, it also turns out to be more efficient than making the pig iron at Elmor in Swavebroke Province. The original ore stops at Wungford, then the pig iron bars continue on to Elmor for conversion to steel.”

  Yozef nodded. “And we have the future option of where to add additional steel production—either expand at Elmor or start up in Wungford.”

  “Right, but it may be best to expand steel production at Elmor. Wungford is also where we’ve projects using wrought and cast iron. That may well also expand, depending on where you want to distribute efforts to other provinces.”

  “Yes, but that’s for the future, Mark. Only Stent, Keelan, and Moreland provinces have both iron and coal deposits large enough to consider starting ironworks there. What’s certain is that if we’re going to eventually have other provinces industrializing, we may have to wait for the steam railway to be fully operational to efficiently transport materials from the ironwork centers to other sites on Caedellium where they would be used.”

  “That’s where the machine tools come in,” said Mark. “They need the raw materials like bars and plates of the various irons . . . you know, cast iron, wrought iron, steel. But these need to be brought in from elsewhere.”

  “You’ve said coke production is keeping pace with ore processing,” said Yozef, “but what about the new coal tar processing facility? I read the reports, and we’ve gotten shipments of chemicals back to Orosz City for research purposes, but it’s frustrating I can’t be here more often.”

  “You’ll have to talk with the supervisor, Langstyn. I’ve had to leave it up to him to work with Halshmer who oversees the coke production. Oh . . . I’ve gotten involved a couple of times in designing and trouble-shooting the fractionation equipment, but they seem to have the latest equipment under control. Last I heard, they had the separation of the lighter aromatic compounds solved to their satisfaction. We’ll have time for you to meet with them and tour the coal tar processing facility before we leave.”

  Yozef nodded. “So far, the batches of purified material we received in Orosz City are still limited, but we’ve already used benzene and toluene to produce the dye mauvine. That was the first synthetic dye—somewhere around 1850. It takes as starting material aniline and two of the three toluidine isomers. Making aniline from benzene was straightforward. We nitrated benzene with concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids, then converted the nitrobenzene product to aniline. The toluidines were a little more difficult, but we worked it out, starting with toluene. The real problem was the required oxidizing agent. Originally, dichromate was used. Well . . . it wasn’t available, and I wasn’t inclined to use it even if we made it—it’s dangerous stuff. That meant we had to try other oxidizers. What ended up working was bleach. We’d already worked out making it for other purposes. That’s a whole other story. We made bleach two different ways. That was a hassle for several months, but now we’re getting good throughput.

  “Anyway, mauvine is a success. It dyes cloth a beautiful purple color. Another recent success is using anthracene from coal tar. So far, the anthracene amounts have been small, but we’ve used it to make the dye alizarin. It’s a brilliant red—arguably better than other known red dyes on Anyar. On Earth, alizarin was originally from natural sources and was the first natural dye to be made synthetically. Besides mauvin and alizarin, things look good for several more dyes in shades of yellow, red, and greens.”

  Mark smiled. “Well, let’s finish up here with the iron facility so you can meet with Langston and Halshmer. If necessary, we can always delay a day before moving on.”

  Mark’s suggestion was fulfilled. They separated, and Yozef spent an entire day with the coal tar fractionation project, while Mark worked with the iron staff. When they left Wungford, they didn’t stop at the Pewitt capital of Penmawr but continued on to Elmor, where the pig iron was converted to steel. From the train station, a carriage crossed a swift stream thirty feet wide as they approached multiple buildings, several with smoke billowing from funnels. The waterway split and split again into four smaller streams feeding large waterwheels.

  “It’s the only power source we have yet,” said Mark, “and this stream with its volume and force is why the site is here. Adjacent are coke production facilities, only the first of which is in full production. Spurs from the main line lead to a rail yard.”

  They left the train carriage and walked a quarter-mile to three twenty-foot-tall, egg-shaped metal vessels, each suspended between supports with a rack-and-pinion system for rotating the vessel.

  “As I’ve told you,” said Mark, “I considered various options to make steel. But after getting a better assessment of current technology and seeing how far you’d gotten with Bessemers, I decided jumping straight to Bessemers as we’d discussed was optimal. You might have halted the project before I came, but I didn’t need to change much of what you had done. The Bessemers also mean we’ve jumped over starting off with solid cast and wrought iron rails like it happened on Earth. We’re going straight to steel, though it’s not the best-grade steel. That will come with time.”

  Yozef chuckled. “I only thought of Bessemer because I knew something about it, though not much. I’d never heard of puddling. All I knew was the existing technology on Caedellium and what I remembered about the Bessemer process and open-hearth furnaces. That’s it. I probably wouldn’t have gotten far if it had depended on me alone.”

  “Well . . . don’t think everything is smooth just because I’m here. We had serious problems until it all just seemed to come together. Oh . . . eventually we’ll go to open hearths, but Bessemer will work for a long time. I think it was the 1960s or something when the last Bessemer facility was closed in the United States. Of course, it was far upgraded from the ones you see here, which are like the first Bessemers in wide use around about a century before that.”

  “And you’re satisfied these are production-level capable?”

  “Yes, after some failures and redesign. I knew the basic features and protocols, but knowing in theory and actually putting them into practice are not the same.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Yozef.

  Mark held up a hand. “That’s not to say we’re ready to mass-produce. I’ve gotten us a little ahead with these converters. You see two ready for full-time steel production. The one on the right is within a sixday of being operational. The sections of a fourth converter are being finished before assembly. That will give us two sets of two converters. When working at full capacity, a single crew can work with two converters staggered in where they are in the process. I can envision six crews, each working a third of a day. In other words, nonstop production.”

  A nearby worker yelled something unintelligible, and two other workers yelled back in broken Caedelli. Mark smiled.

  “That’s a foreman telling two Munjor immigrants to stay alert. We’ve got half a dozen of them here. They were ironworkers in Munjor and are working out well. I’ll give Gaya credit. So far, the craftsmen he’s arranged to bring to Caedellium are capable. At least, those I’ve worked with. Naturally, there’ve been the initial language problems, but as you just heard, supervisors usually learn enough in the immigrants’ language to give orders, and the immigr
ants are picking up Caedelli by necessity and immersion.”

  “Are they getting along with the Caedelli workers? And what about integrating?”

  “A few minor tiffs when they first started, but one thing about working with molten iron. Once a man’s competency is proved, there’s no place or inclination to worry about any other detail. As for integration, I don’t follow it closely, but I haven’t heard of major problems. Of course, there aren’t that many immigrants, so the workers and their families are forced to interact with the Caedelli daily.”

  “Hmmmm,” mumbled Yozef. “I should ask Maera to check with her women’s network about how the immigrant wives and children are doing. Okay . . . back to what we’re seeing today. You were saying?”

  “Uh . . . I had also thought we’d give you a live demonstration of one pair of converters,” said Mark, “but the manager of the site tells me they had problems with the system for forcing air into converters, so they took the system down to make modifications. It should be up again in a couple of days. Such things are not unexpected. We’ll have to keep tweaking until the system is more stable.”

  “Did I hear a ‘but’ coming up?” asked Yozef.

  “Right. The BIG ‘but’ is that right now we can’t feed four converters working night and day. The delivery of that much iron ore and coal is not possible yet. The good news . . . I think . . . is that those problems should get better in the next couple of months. However, the ‘real’ advance will come when we have steam engines. Right now, the horse-drawn trains don’t have the capacity to feed the infrastructure here at Elmor.

  “Once again, I’m proposing we jump over possible intermediary steps and make major assumptions about successful parallel developments. For one thing, the rail beds we have now should only need minor upgrades for when we move to steam trains and solid steel rails. However, it means relaying track over the entire system. The existing rails are as wide apart as they are to give the horses room. All that will have to be ripped up and replaced with ties and the solid iron rails. One good thing is that the existing new caps can be melted down and used to make more steel rails.”

  Yozef shrugged. “Just details, though not always easy to accomplish. Nothing happens until you’ve got real steam engines working. Then it’ll be replacing the existing system piecemeal. I’m assuming we’d start with the Cherona to Shullick stretches.”

  Mark nodded. “Right. Everywhere else will have to wait. But as I was saying, we’re a bit ahead of ourselves. We’ll be producing rails well before having functional steam engines tells us it’s time to change the tracks. How much time, I’m optimistic about . . . but who really knows? I imagine stacks of rails waiting.”

  “Well, I suppose the good news is that rail production won’t delay the track laying,” said Yozef, smiling and clapping Mark on the back.

  “I think you’ve contaminated me,” said Mark. “I didn’t say it, but when you first told me how you were envisioning rail lines, a steel industry, and steam engines all in parallel, I thought you were incredibly naïve. Yet here I am. I can hardly believe I’m doing pretty much the same thing. Even before we had the first Bessemer tested, we worked on the first rolling mill for the rails. Come with me.”

  Mark led him a hundred yards to a large warehouse with several wide double doors. A crane setup and elevated rails led into the building. Inside, stacked thirty feet high, were eighteen-foot-long steel rails.

  Mark stood by the stack and put his hand on a rail. “What you see is mainly from one day’s output of a two-Bessemer set. Once we thought the rolling mill was working, we had sporadic success but got only a few rails before problems arose. Then it all fell into place, and we got all this in one day.” Mark smiled. “Of course, then another problem popped up—one of the rollers cracked, so we stopped production while a new roller is being built. We should be back in business in about two sixdays. Again, such things are going to happen. When we have more converters, rollers, and hammers, then production will continue, only slowed by what needs fixing or replacing.

  “Everything is human and animal intensive, supplemented by the waterwheels. That will change once we have serious steam power. If everything falls into place, we’ll have a slow but exponential increase in production. I’m confident of the curve’s shape. I just can’t tell you the timeline.”

  “What about the mines? Are they going to be able to feed the mills when everything is up and running?”

  “If they were tunnels, then no, but both the coal and the iron ore come from open pits. Here again, once we have steam power, everything will change at the pits. I agree with the plan to run the pits with an eye to eventual restoration, but they look as ugly as I imagined they would. Environmental issues are not something that widely concerns people here. They haven’t seen the worst of what can happen. An exception is the Swavebroke hetman. When he visits the sites, that problem always comes up.”

  “Well . . . it’s certainly impressive progress,” said Yozef. “Now, let’s hope it does fall into place. Our reputations are on the line. I’ve invested a lot into this. I’m getting more flack about the resources you’re using. I tell people to trust me that it’ll all pay off.”

  Yozef turned to look at Mark. “I suppose that sounds like I’m pressuring you. I guess I am. Oh . . . I’ll survive as Paramount if all this flops, but it would put serious limits on what we can do in the future.”

  “Don’t think I don’t appreciate that,” said Mark. “What I’ve done here in just over a year in Caedellium is about where I thought I might be in five to ten years in Frangel. And this is going to work. Eventually. The downsides are when and how much?”

  “All right. I think we’ve been pessimistic enough for now,” said Yozef. “How about showing me this first rolling mill, even if it’s not operating today? And then the trip and power hammers from your reports.”

  Mark waved the direction for them to go. They had walked only twenty feet when Yozef said, “Oh . . . and I think once we get back to Orosz City, it’s time to show me where you’re at with a few of your side projects. I haven’t bugged you about them as long as everything else was progressing. You’ve more than exceeded my expectations, so I’m open to a little expansion of those, but let me see them first.”

  Mark grinned. “I was planning on it. There’s been quite a bit of news since the last time I gave you a verbal summary. The first breech-loading rifle is functional, though there’re still problems to solve before we think about producing significant numbers of them. The brass cartridges still take too much effort, but I can see that changing if we decide on final rifle models and ramping up production. Those decisions would be a few months off.”

  A Kaldwel Decision

  For most of Mark’s first year on Caedellium, living in Orosz City allowed him to be with Maghen and Alys most nights because shops and other facilities were nearby. This enabled him to solve telegraph problems, build and test the first machine tools, and get the steam engine project going. The change in his lifestyle came slowly as he needed to make trips to plan and develop the Pewitt and Swavebroke provinces for the iron industry, inspect and advise on iron-ore mining in Bultecki and Vandinke, and visit Adris City to pretend he was fully engaged with the joint Caedelli/Fuomi steam engine group. He gave just enough advice to help but not reveal the hidden project in the building near Orosz City.

  However, his absences from Orosz City came more often and were of longer duration as the iron industry developed, as the building and use of machine tools spread to more provinces, and as a site was selected to test future steam engine applications to watercraft. Maghen was, by nature, not a complainer, but Mark didn’t need to hear her words to know her displeasure. His conviction that the issue required a solution solidified during his latest trip.

  The first prototype steam engine for watercraft was still off into the future, but the tentative plan was for a paddlewheel vessel approximately thirty feet long and suitable for harbor, river, and coastal use but not the open s
ea. Yozef and Mark jointly decided the eventual vessel might as well be assembled at a test site with ocean access. The plan fit their previous optimistic views, as applied to other projects. Still to be decided was what the Caedelli should share with Fuomon.

  They selected as a site the narrow-mouthed Hilstrom Inlet, which came off a bay at the border between the Selfcell and Stent provinces. Viewing the inlet’s interior was impossible without entering, something no Fuomi ship had any reason to attempt. Yozef considered it one of his best achievements in fostering inter-clan cooperation when he convinced Welman Stent, more easily than he’d anticipated, that the main shops, the piers, and the rail terminal should be built on the Selfcell side. The rationale was that Stent already had several developments underway. In contrast, Selfcell had lagged.

  After selecting the steam watercraft test site, Mark had made several trips to advise on specific structure positions and a spur rail line branching to Hilstrom from the Clitwyth/Penmawr line. His latest two-day visit to the inlet stretched to a full sixday, such that by the time Mark returned to Orosz City, he and Maghen had missed her regular fertile period. They had avoided her getting pregnant during the trek from Frangel to Caedellium and then in their first months on Caedellium. After they started trying, the first few months were disappointing but not worrisome until the attempts stretched to eight months. Mark’s missing the current month made it two months in a row, due to his travel. In his mind, it was the final straw.

  As much as Mark missed Maghen and Alys, he had a tangible positive feeling by not being around Yozef too often. He fully appreciated how Yozef’s position facilitated projects in ways that had been unavailable to Mark in Frangel. Still, Mark found it annoying how the Caedelli readily deferred to Yozef’s opinion when it was different from Mark’s. Not that he blamed Yozef. He’d interacted enough with his fellow American over the last months to understand that the power of the Paramount position had not gone to Yozef’s head—especially when compared to how it could have with many people. In his more honest moments, Mark included himself in the latter category.