by Jean Rabe
Gavin tried to do the math in his head, but he was still shivering from the cool damp of his wet clothing. “Given the basic laws of energy conservation and thermodynamics, that . . . that means that the cooling effect utilizes . . . well, a tremendous amount of energy . . . a truly massive amount of energy.”
Merganser bristled. “So what?”
Gavin gulped. He hadn’t come all this way to insult his interviewee and blow the story. “It’s just that . . . it’s an impressive amount, I mean. S-s-superlatives sell newspapers.” He wanted to ask where all the energy would come from, but he softened the question. “Where do you get your energy from?”
“Bah,” said the old man. “There’s nothing interesting in that. There’s always more energy out there. I started with coal, but there are plenty of alternatives. There’s a natural mineral hereabouts that when gathered together produces heat spontaneously—not a lot, although that can be augmented if you grind it up and concentrate it. And, of course, as you can see, there is plenty of wood hereabouts. Just scythe down the trees—it’s even easier to feed them into the boilers before they’re full grown and require chopping and sawing.”
“What about waste . . . er . . . by-products?”
“By-products?”
“At the efficiency rating you describe, you’re putting ten, twelve times as much energy—in the form of heat—into the outside air as you’re taking from the inside air.”
“But outside is much more than ten or twelve times as big. Besides, the hotter it is outside, the more people want air modulation—that’s what I call what the ICE TMD does, ‘air modulation.’ That’s a self-enforcing marketing scheme, like selling addictive drugs to addicts.”
“You’re also producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide . . .”
Merganser guffawed. “The plants love it. Have you seen the outside hereabouts? The plants will soak up as much carbon dioxide as you can pump out.”
“Although it may be a bit off our main topic, I’ve been meaning to ask about that. My colleagues and all of the scholarly and historical texts I consulted before commencing my journey told me to expect a barren, arid desert, yet all I see about me is tropical, jungle growth. Can you explain why?”
“Plants do love carbon dioxide.”
“Yes, I understand,” replied Gavin, “but they need more than that to survive. They need water, lots and lots of water.”
Merganser gave him another one of those looks reserved for idiots and in-laws. “Didn’t I mention it was steam-powered? Let me say it slowly: S-t-e-a-m-p-o-we-r-e-d. You do know that steam is made out of water, don’t you, son? Sure, it’s contained in the boiler for work purposes, mostly, but still lot’s of steam is released into the surrounding atmosphere. That means lots of moisture in the air.”
Gavin wasn’t an idiot and, if he had his way, he would never be or have an in-law, but despite Doctor Merganser’s withering looks, he could not let the question go. “Your workshop here can hardly affect the geographic scope that I witnessed from the sky-carriage, Doctor Merganser.”
“What makes you think I’m the only one who has one? Of course, mine is more efficient than the others, given that I’m constantly tinkering with improvements.”
“You mean this is in commercial production?”
“Of course. Who in hell would live in Arizona or Nevada without air modulation? You’d have to be stupid crazy! Even with air modulation, you’ve got to be kind of peculiar. Las Vegas here is the air modulation capital of the world.”
“B-but, sir, no one back east has ever h-h-heard of air modulation.”
The doctor wrinkled his nose and smiled. “Confidentiality agreements. There’s a whole lot of things people back east don’t know about me or my inventions.”
Gavin was aghast. The State Department didn’t have this kind of secrecy. “And no one has ever talked?”
“If anyone talked before I was ready to go public and market nationally, I would have turned off their air modulation and pocketed a key part or six. They can’t fix it on their own.”
“But it’s a desert, or at least it used to be. Where does all the water come from to fill the steam engines?”
“Colorado River. Goes through a big ol’ canyon north and east of here a bit. Dammed it up, diverted what I needed. Young surveyor fellow from California, straight out of school—Stanford educated—located the best spot to do it and engineered the dam. Local labor. Took a few years out of his life, so I named it after him: Hoover Dam.”
The epic scale on which the illustrious Doctor Merganser was impacting the environment boggled Gavin’s young mind. It was awe-inspiring, yet part of him instinctively rebelled against the thought of so much manipulation. He decided to continue to push. “But as this expands, the water can’t last forever, can it?”
“Don’t you understand, son, it’s a feedback loop. I take dammed river water, I heat it up, release it as steam and it travels east and north. It condenses and falls and nourishes the plants and flows into rivers like the Colorado, where it gets picked up and re-used. I didn’t invent air modulation just so folks stupid enough to live in the desert don’t die of heat prostration. Mind you, I’m glad they don’t and I’m glad for folks to be comfortable, but I’m terra-forming—just like the Martians did with their canals—and I aim to make the southwest a nicer, wetter, more habitable place, not just for people in their houses, but for people, plants, and animals to live and thrive in a jungle, instead of in an arid, God-forsaken wasteland.”
That’s when Gavin realized that the only thing bigger than Doctor Pendleton Ambrose Merganser’s inventions—from the airborne gasbag to air modulation—was the impact that his inventions were having on the world. And the only thing bigger than that was the great Doctor’s ego.
“B-b-but, Doctor, who gave you the right to change the world?”
The Doctor laughed out loud at Gavin’s challenge. “Son, everyone changes the world with everything they do. I just have a specific outcome in mind and work my changes on a larger scale than most and toward a considered goal. You can see the future, if you look ahead.”
“Not if you have foggy goggles.”
“Even then, if you have enough sense to take them off and look real close.”
“But what happens if you’re wrong? What if you bollix things up? What if there are unintended consequences? What if what you do can never be undone?”
“You’re young, son. Earth, she’s more resilient than you think.”
Gavin started to interrupt, but the Doctor cut him off with an abrupt wave of his right hand. “But if I ever do mess up the entire planet with my energy consumption and my carbon dioxide and my ‘unintended consequences, ’ well then, son, I reckon The New York Times will have one helluva story and they’ll never let it go.”
The Battle of Cumberland Gap
William C. Dietz
William C. Dietz is the best-selling author of more than thirty novels, some of which have been translated into German, Russian, and Japanese. He grew up in the Seattle area, served as a medic with the Navy and Marine Corps, graduated from the University of Washington, and has been employed as a surgical technician, college instructor, and television news writer, director, and producer. Before becoming a full-time writer Dietz was director of public relations and marketing for an international telephone company. He and his wife live near Gig Harbor, Washington.
Cincinnati, Ohio June 16, 1830
British artillery shells rumbled ominously as they passed over the Ohio River, exploded along the length of Cincinnati’s chaotic waterfront, and sent columns of soil and splintered wood high into the air. Tiny stick figures could be seen, their arms and legs wind milling, before they were dropped into conflagration below.
From his position on the north side of the river, and just out of range of the British siege guns, French Admiral Philippe Gaudet lifted his brass telescope a fraction of an inch to look at the British forces arrayed on the far side of the river. He shook his head s
adly. They were brave. Very brave. But for nothing.
Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grande Armee had already conquered most of Europe and pushed the British back onto their island. Now the ailing sixty-one-year-old ruler planned to bring all of the coal producing regions of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee under his control. And for good reason since coal was the substance that fueled his steam-powered war machine.
The voice came from the right and slightly to the rear. “The Indomptable is ready for battle, sir. As are our escorts.” The voice belonged to Captain Bernard Dubois, who was the land ship’s commanding officer.
The admiral could feel the power of the Indomptable’s engines through the soles of his highly polished boots as another salvo of shells exploded along the waterfront. He savored the heady mix of cordite and coal smoke, the weight of the brass telescope in his hands, and the power resident in the weapons ranked below him. The three-inch guns occupied the forward portion of deck two. But it was the battery of two breech-loading five-inch cannons on the Indomptable’s main deck that were the ship’s pride and joy.
Gaudet turned to Dubois. The other officer had the grave demeanor of a Jesuit priest. He was dressed in a bicorn hat and a long blue coat that was decorated with gold epaulettes, matching trim, and two rows of gleaming buttons. A pair of white breeches and knee high black boots completed the uniform. “Thank you, Captain Dubois. Please send the following signal to our escorts: ‘Attack.’ ”
The south bank of the river had been built up, the gun emplacements were only fifty feet apart, and thousands of brightly clad troops were packed into the trenches behind them.
As rounds fired by the heavy guns located well back of the river whistled over his head, Battalion Commander Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Fitzhugh stood on top of the fortified embankment and eyed the French to the north. The Royal Marine officer’s tall black shako and blood red uniform were immaculate. Just as the shamefully indolent George IV would expect them to be.
Amphibious vessels were already waddling into the water, and Fitzhugh watched a forty-ton gunboat take a direct hit, as the French battle cruiser Indomptable belched black smoke and jerked into motion. The men in the trenches cheered as the gunboat exploded, but Fitzhugh took scant comfort from the momentary victory.
He had seen action throughout Europe and in the colonies. That meant he had been frightened on many occasions. But never more so than on that fateful morning as the French land cruiser approached the river.
And for good reason.
Reading about the Indomptable in a two-month-old copy of the London Times was one thing. But seeing the monstrosity coming straight at him was another. The hull rose seventy-five feet above a pair of thick axles to which enormous drive wheels were attached.
The Indomptable’s three-tiered superstructure boasted an equal number of smoke stacks, plus a multitude of secondary weapons platforms. And that was to say nothing of the cruiser’s main armament, which was pointed at him.
But British officers led from the front.
That was what Fitzhugh had been taught, and that was what he expected of his subordinates. That meant he felt an obligation to remain where his marines could see him until the last possible moment.
At that point it would be permissible to stroll over to one of the wooden ladders where Fitzhugh planned to turn and give the French the finger before retiring to the walkway below. A gesture calculated to evoke a cheer from the lads and give them heart.
Fitzhugh watched as the Indomptable crushed a riverside warehouse and splashed into the Ohio River. It was only thirty feet deep at that time of year. So the water barely came up to the top of the churning wheels, as hot steam shot out of the warship’s relief valves, and her whistle shrieked like a banshee. But the French ship was within range by that time, and a reedy cheer went up as shells struck the Indomptable’s superstructure. A flash of yellow-orange light marked each hit.
But the French ship had been designed to take such punishment. So when the puffs of black smoke blew away, and the cruiser fired her guns, it was as if the gates of hell had opened to take the British in. Fitzhugh disappeared in a gout of flame as a five-inch shell landed on his position. Whatever remained of his body was buried by the half ton of dirt that fell out of the sky.
Admiral Gaudet stood with his feet planted wide apart and took pride in his ability to remain upright without taking hold of the rail in front of him as the British soldiers fortunate enough to survive the Indomptable’s initial salvos poured up out of their hiding places with flags waving. Bugles sounded, and their Scottish pipers played Bonnie Dundee as they marched forward to meet the French.
And it was then, as the Indomptable lurched up out of the river and her guns were pointed at the sky, that Gaudet felt an emptiness at the pit of his stomach. Because mighty though the land cruiser was in every other regard, only a thin layer of steel protected the bottom of her hull. A compromise necessitated by the need to armor the rest of the ship, carry more than a hundred tons of coal, and still make good time over often difficult terrain.
But the moment of uncertainty was soon over as the bow dipped, a British destroyer appeared up ahead, and the Indomptable’s main battery fired. There was a bright flash of light as the enemy land ship exploded and jagged pieces of metal were hurled in all directions.
The recoil produced by the Indomptable’s five-inch gun turret sent it back along its rails to a pair of stops. At that point a steam-powered thruster pushed the battery forward again. Seconds later, having ejected the hot casings from the breech loaders, the battery was ready to fire again.
Except that there weren’t very many targets worthy of the cruiser’s mighty guns, since with the exception of a few elderly ships like the one that had just been destroyed, most of the British land navy was hundreds of miles to the west responding to an attack on the city of Louisville—a feint conceived by Napoleon himself as a way to draw the British fleet away from the real objective. And that was the coal-rich colonies to the south.
Enemy sharpshooters had spotted the admiral’s uniform by then. Bullets pinged the metal all around Gaudet as an aide suggested that he leave the bridge. But, with the exception of his daughter’s birth, this was the finest day of the officer’s life. And he wasn’t about to miss the horrible beauty of the moment as thousands of British soldiers swarmed up out of their trenches and rushed forward. The swivels mounted to port and starboard cut them down, as did the multi-barreled Picard guns, which were generally credited for Napoleon’s victory at Waterloo.
But the battle wasn’t entirely one-sided. The land cruiser continued to take hit after hit from enemy artillery pieces and the three-inch guns eventually fell silent. But there was no stopping the cruiser as its wheels turned red clad troops into mush, the Indomptable’s steam whistle shrieked defiance, and Gaudet savored the taste of victory. He could see the future from the bridge on which he stood, and it was undeniably French.
Fort Cumberland, Kentucky
The so-called “gap” in the Cumberland Mountains was twelve miles wide. But the only way vehicles could pass through it was via the narrow dirt road that led into the colonies of Tennessee and Virginia. Fort Cumberland had been constructed to prevent rebellious colonists from making use of the pass during the uprising of 1776.
Later, after General Washington and his coconspirators had been caught and hanged, the fort was used as a base for two companies of his majesty’s Frontier Guards. Their mission, when not taking part in endless drills, was to chase Shawnee Indians and collect taxes on the freight that passed through the gap.
As Lieutenant Nathan Landry left the bachelor officer’s quarters and made his way toward the more substantial headquarters building, there was a tremendous amount of activity and noise all around him. Steam-powered tractors puffed furiously as drivers maneuvered the machines into position, chains rattled as trailers were hooked on, and orders flew as the process of loading began. It was all part of the last minute preparations for a journey that would
take the 17th Light Dragoons and most of their battalion north and west to Louisville where a great battle was about to be fought.
Landry, who had already been detailed to remain behind, would have gladly traded places with any of the Dragoons. Unfortunately, it was his lot to stay and work on the fortifications along both sides of the road that wound through the Cumberland Gap. The problem being that he was supposed to remove twelve functional, if somewhat elderly nine-pound guns, and replace them with sixteen of the new Lawson steam cannons.
And Landry suspected that it was his objections to the newly arrived weapons that explained why a lowly Engineering Lieutenant had been ordered to report to Lieutenant Colonel Weyth Wilson. A prospect sufficient to cause even the most experienced junior officer a certain amount of concern . . . never mind one fresh from England.
There was one bright spot along the way, however. And that came as Landry passed the neat two-story structure in which Lieutenant Colonel Wilson and his family lived. Because there, hanging a quilt out to dry, was Sarah Wilson, the battalion commander’s daughter.
She had long brown hair, a heart-shaped face, and green eyes that seemed to dance with merriment every time the two of them came into contact, as if she could see to the very heart of him, and found his boyish infatuation to be vastly amusing.
So when Sarah saw Landry, and waved to him as he passed by, the resulting flush of pleasure was so intense he was still in the grips of it as he entered the lowceilinged headquarters building. Once inside, Landry removed his bicorn hat and presented himself to the fortress-like desk where a Staff Sergeant named Hopkins represented the last line of defense between the Colonel and any fool who sought to see him without an appointment.