Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  “How hard is it to drive?” asked Patient out of the corner of his mouth as they approached.

  “Not that hard,” she said. “I mastered it almost immediately. You squeeze the right lever to go faster, the left lever to brake, and steer with the handles. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he muttered.

  They politely, all things considered, encouraged the crowd to stand back while Patient helped Hope onto the machine, a gleaming thing of red paint and polished brass. Extending from the hubs of each of the four wheels, pistons took the place of wheel spokes, each piston supporting one segment of the ground-contacting surface. A metal mesh held the segments together on the inside. This meant that the wheels could be adjusted to different road conditions, and gave a smoother ride than rigid cart-style wheels. A long red-leather seat accommodated two people astride the machine, with a running board on each side for their feet to rest on. Spreading brass handlebars held the control levers Hope had mentioned.

  They strapped on helmets, repurposed safety helmets from the manufactory where Hope worked, with noise-suppressing gauze hanging beneath them and gathered at the neck, and built-in eye protection.

  “Can you activate the gate?” Hope asked.

  “What?”

  “The gate. Brings heat through from another space, which heats the water to make steam for the compressor.”

  “I assume so,” he said. “How much mageforce does it take?”

  “Doesn’t take much,” she said. “About the same as a modern oven.”

  “I’ve never started one of those,” he said.

  “Just touch the sigil and say the Dwarvish word.” She pointed to the word for “start” marked on a brass plate just behind the handlebars, with a sigil inscribed below it. He touched it and spoke. Nothing happened.

  “Try again,” she said, “only try not to put vowels in it.”

  “Tshk,” he said. There was a small thunk, and a boiling noise began deep inside the machine.

  “Good,” said Hope. “Now, you don’t have to wait for the boiler to come to pressure, there’s a compressed-air tank already fully charged. Just pull on the throttle when you’re ready. Clear out of the way, please!” she added, raising her still-croaky voice. The crowd pulled back onto the pavement.

  Patient, muttering quietly under his breath, pulled in the throttle lever and the airhorse jerked forward, propelled by twin compressed-air motors that drove the back wheels.

  “Smooth pull,” she said.

  The muttering stopped as he concentrated, and they began to move off more smoothly, accelerating rapidly to a fast walking pace. They turned the first corner, veering back and forth in erratic arcs until he got the hang of the steering and startling a nearby horse. The rider shouted an epithet at them.

  “Keep it fairly slow until we get out into the country,” she said. “Even then, we need to watch for horses.”

  He didn’t reply, but navigated them out of the city to the north.

  2

  Rosie

  “Can I help you, Mistress?” said Bucket the gnome with his usual cheerful smile. He spoke in Pektal, the human language used throughout the realm. He’d been told that his gnomish accent was heavy, though humans seemed to understand him most of the time.

  The tall, thin human woman standing at the lab door adjusted what Bucket assumed was a fashionable hat, given that it looked completely impractical. From under its rolled edge, strands of hair protruded in random directions.

  “Industry of Rosewall,” she introduced herself, turning her large eyeglasses downwards to focus on his face. “I’m here to see Mage Hope?”

  “I’m sorry, the mage isn’t well,” he said.

  “Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that. Nothing serious, I hope?” She herself looked very serious, peering through those big spectacles.

  “A small accident,” said Bucket. “She’s expected to be gone for several days. Can I take a message?”

  “Oh, if you would. Could I come in and write something?”

  “Certainly,” said Bucket, standing aside to let her through the door. “Take a seat anywhere you can find a clear space. Cup of tea?” He had given up apologising for the mess. It was more or less beyond apologising for.

  She looked around with a fascinated stare. “This is wonderful!” she said. “I never dreamed… is that some kind of gyrus linkage?”

  “No good asking me,” said Bucket. “I just work here. Fetching tea, and such,” he hinted.

  “Oh, sourbark, please,” she said absently, still staring around, and Bucket bustled off. At least she had good taste in tea.

  In a nest of the big erasable writing boards that stood throughout the lab, dividing it into little junk-filled rooms, he encountered the Master, Dignified Printer, fiddling with some gadget. “Is the mage back?” he asked, not looking up.

  “No, Master, it’s some woman to see her. She’s going to leave a note.”

  “Oh. I heard the voice, and thought… Oh.”

  The Master didn’t show much emotion, as a usual thing, but Bucket had concluded that he was fond of Mage Hope, in his own way. He certainly was calmer when she was around. His clever fingers fumbled the gadget and dropped it, spilling cogs, and he leapt up and pursued one of them which rolled past the boards and into a pile of junk.

  Standing up again, he met the startled gaze of Industry of Rosewall.

  “You’re him,” said the young woman, attempting once again to adjust her hat. “The clever man.”

  “That’s what they call me,” he admitted. “Who are you?”

  Bucket blinked in surprise. The Master didn’t usually make conversation. He mostly spoke mathematics.

  “Rosie,” she said. “Um, that’s what everyone calls me. Industry of Rosewall, officially. I’m an investor in your works, for the airhorses, you know. And, um, a great enthusiast for your work.” She found a smile somewhere and tried it on her face, where it looked ill at ease.

  The Master gave the blinking nod that was his usual response when he didn’t have anything specific to say. Bucket’s sense of duty nagged at him to get the tea, but he stayed where he was. He wanted to see how this played out.

  “Your, um, assistant,” she indicated Bucket with a vague wave, “said I should ask you about this. Is it a gyrus linkage?”

  Bucket hadn’t said anything of the kind, but smiled to himself. This ought to be interesting.

  As usual when asked a technical question, the Master came to life like a marionette at the start of the show, and began to speak rapid Dwarvish. To Bucket’s surprise, the woman didn’t seem fazed, but listened with interest, and asked a follow-up question in what, for a human, wasn’t a bad accent, if not as good as the Master’s.

  Bucket slipped away to get the tea. It looked like Industry of Rosewall would be staying for a while.

  Hope closed the book and sighed.

  Under strict medical instructions to stay home and rest, she had hoped to catch up with her back issues of Magical Research, particularly since she had promised them a paper on Dignified’s magical-mathematical symbology. He and she were the only two people who understood it, and there were days when she thought it was actually only him. She had found, though, that she couldn’t concentrate on the dry academic articles. In desperate boredom, she had snuck into her flatmate Briar’s room and raided her shelf of trashy country-house novels.

  She shouldn’t have enjoyed them nearly as much as she did. That Localgold Active. “Active” was certainly a good name for him. Her lips curved into an embarrassed smile just thinking about it.

  She sighed again, pulled out her farspeaker — the invention for which she and Dignified were best known — and checked the eight code wheels. They were already set for one of the matching devices in the lab, so she activated the sympathetic link and turned on the attention-getting clicker.

  Bucket answered, as usual. “Mage Hope!” he said. “There’s a visitor here for you.”

  �
��Oh!” said Hope. “I’d completely forgotten. The investor woman.”

  “Industry of Rosewall. Yes, she’s talking to the Master.”

  “Is he talking back?”

  “Rapidly. In technical Dwarvish. Which she seems to be following, though since I can’t follow it myself I can’t be certain.”

  “We live in an age of wonders,” said Hope. “I have to say, if she’s the one I remember from the investors’ meeting, she did seem sharp. Asked a very intelligent question about steam engines.”

  “Tall woman, all angles, flyaway hair, big spectacles?”

  “That’s her. Did she say what she wanted? She just wrote to me and asked for a meeting. I assumed it was some financial thing.”

  “She’s hardly said a word I’ve understood since she got here,” said the gnome. “And most of those were in Pektal.”

  “Should I come down?”

  “If you want to see the spectacle, I suppose. But aren’t you supposed to be resting?”

  “Bucket, I’ve been lying here reading badly-written fiction. I’m bored out of my mind. I’ll catch a cab down and see you soon.” She broke the sympathy between the devices before he could object, and went to find her shoes and a coat.

  When she entered the lab, Dignified was sketching on one of the ubiquitous boards, explaining a mechanical principle in his own mathematical system. It had taken her — second in her year at the university, and with a strong mathematical background — well over sixteen days to understand his notation well enough to follow an explanation like that, and she wasn’t surprised to see a croggled expression spreading across the visitor’s face. She made a mercy swoop.

  “Mistress, ah, sorry, Gold Industry?” The “of Rosewall” indicated that the woman was a member of the Gold class, though she hadn’t used the title in her letter.

  “Mistress, actually. Blood’s too thin for a title,” she said cheerfully, putting out her hand for Hope to press palms in the greeting used between people who weren’t of the ruling class. “Multiple-greats-granddaughter of a localgold, and we never got round to changing the family name. You must be Mage Hope.” She looked at Hope carefully. “Your assistant fellow said you were ill. I must say, you look ill.”

  Hope assumed that whatever Industry’s family did, it wasn’t in the diplomatic corps. “I’m well enough to meet with you,” she said. “Do you want to come through to the manufactory? Mister Gizmo, the manufactory manager…”

  “Oh, I would love to see the manufactory,” she said. “Excuse me, Mister Dignified.” Dignified blinked and nodded as the two women picked their way through the clutter of tools, materials and half-completed projects to the door of the lab.

  They passed through a couple of doors separated by a short corridor, and entered the manufactory, a world of polished brass, tidy workbenches and safety notices in neat Dwarvish letters. Mister Gizmo knew better than to attempt to impose order on Dignified, but he did make sure that the chaos stopped at the door of the lab. Hope conducted the visitor to the glass-fronted office, which was the abode of well-filed papers, and introduced them.

  “Do we want Mister Wheel as well?” asked Hope. “He’s the senior planner, and controls the inventory. I assume you’re here about some financial matter?”

  “Well, actually,” said Industry, adjusting her hat, “I’m not.”

  “No?”

  “No, I, um, wondered if I could come and work here.”

  Gizmo and Hope stared at her.

  “You see, I’m awfully keen on technology,” she said. “I’ve learned, really, as much as a human can about it. Taken the classes at the university, such as they are. Read all the journals and the classic texts. All my great-grandmother’s notebooks. She was an inventor. And there’s nowhere that’s doing more exciting things than the Clever Man’s Works.”

  “Well, Mistress Industry…” began Gizmo.

  “Oh, please do call me Rosie,” she said earnestly.

  “Well,” said Gizmo, not taking up the invitation, “what… that is to say, had you thought about what it is you propose to do for us?”

  “Well,” she said, doubt in her eyes, “I could… assist? With things?”

  A silence ensued.

  “Let me explain the setup here,” said Hope. “Over on this side, in the manufactory, we have Mister Gizmo, who’s in charge. Mister Wheel is the senior planner, as I said, and his department figures out how to make the things we come up with. Mister Lathe is the production foreman, and his people put those plans into action to produce prototypes and report on any problems, and we solve those, and eventually we know just how to set up a manufactory to make whatever it is, so we send out our setup team, and they do that. Mister Grease is the maintenance foreman and keeps everything running, and Mister Wheel doubles up running the stores where we bring in parts and raw materials and ship out prototypes for testing. Over the other side, it’s me and Dignified, and Bucket to look after the practicalities, because frankly when we’re working we tend not to notice that it’s dark outside and we’re hungry.

  “There’s fierce competition among the gnomes to get in to work in the manufactory. It’s very prestigious. We never have to look for anyone to fill a vacancy; not many people leave, and we have a waiting list of highly qualified gnomes who want to work here. How’s your Dwarvish, by the way?”

  “I believe it’s adequate for most purposes,” said Industry, in that language. Hope glanced at Gizmo, who nodded, confirming her sense that the tall woman’s accent was passable. Hope’s own grasp of Dwarvish as spoken by gnomes had deepened considerably in the several seasons that she’d been working at the manufactory, and she doubted that many other humans spoke it nearly as well.

  “And how much do you know about gnome culture?”

  “Oh, ah, only what everyone knows, I suppose. Or everyone who’s interested in technology, anyway.”

  “Then you know that only male gnomes work with ‘hard’ materials?”

  “Well, I had heard that, but I thought…”

  “I get a pass because I’m an energy mage, and that’s, apparently, women’s work, but if you want to work with machinery there’s no cultural precedent for it. Now, I know that to us, brought up in the elven tradition in which gender isn’t a factor for who can do what job, that seems strange, but we’re talking about an equally long-standing and equally powerful tradition that can’t just be set aside overnight. Even if there was an open position here, and even if it wasn’t already promised to a gnome, who has more background for it.”

  “But couldn’t I work with you? Over in the lab?”

  Hope sighed, and fiddled with her headache amulets, which seemed to have stopped working.

  “You’ve met Dignified.”

  “Yes. He seemed nice.”

  Hope blinked for a second at this description, but pressed on. “How much of his explanation did you follow?”

  “Well, quite a bit. At first. I mean… some.”

  “The work is very demanding,” said Hope. “It’s not a normal workday. Dignified doesn’t sleep much, and I fit in with him as best I can.”

  “I’m not afraid of hard work,” said Industry, squaring her shoulders. “My family have all worked hard to get where we are. We didn’t just inherit our money, you know. Well, I did,” she admitted, “or not inherit exactly, since my parents are still very much alive, but I did get it from them. Initially. But I can work hard too! I’ve built up my capital, and I’ve educated myself…”

  “What do your parents work at?” asked Gizmo.

  “They own manufactories,” said Industry. “They won’t let me work in them,” she added, before Hope could open her mouth. “They want me to stay on the financial side, which I’m good at, but I want to invent things.” She almost wailed the last part of the sentence.

  “I’ll talk to Dignified about it,” said Hope. “That’s all I can promise. All right?” She believed she knew what the outcome of that would be. Dignified didn’t take well to change, as a g
eneral thing.

  Hope ushered the young woman out, accepting her card and promising to send a message as soon as a decision was made. She debated not even asking Dignified at all, just writing a “no, thank you” letter, but her basic honesty overcame her.

  She re-entered the lab and went in search of her boss.

  Bucket directed her to the imaging corner, where he was fiddling with a plate.

  “Dignified,” she said, “do you remember that woman who was here earlier?” With Dignified, it was as well to check.

  “Rosie,” he said, startling her so much she caught herself against a nearby workbench to keep herself from falling. Not only had he remembered a person, but he’d remembered her name. Her byname. She eased onto a stool.

  “That’s right. She says she wants to work with us.”

  “Good,” he said. “I liked her.” He turned back to his work, and after a moment or two in which she stared at the back of his neck (he needed a haircut, and she made a note to herself to tell Bucket), she stood up and left the lab.

  Apparently they had a colleague. How vexing.

  3

  Amiable's Offer

  Hope was still in the cab on the way home when her farspeaker began to click. She took it out of her bag and spoke her name into it.

  “Ah, Hope,” said the kindly voice of Master-Mage Amiable, head of the magic school at the University of Illene. “Am I interrupting work?”

  “No, just in a cab on the way home.”

  “Nothing wrong, I hope?” It was the middle of the afternoon, not the usual time for homegoing.