by Gene Wolfe
“There are some glass parts, and they really are made out of sand, but not by us.” Swallow shut his umbrella and thumped its tip on the sand-strewn floor. “This is foundry sand and wouldn’t make good glass. But we cast some big parts in sand, which is what these men are getting ready to do.”
He pointed with his umbrella. “You see the hollow left by the form when it was lifted out? Those round pieces are called cores. They’re made of compressed sand with a starch binder, and if they aren’t positioned exactly right, and firmly enough that they stay in place when the iron’s poured, the whole piece will be ruined. What they’re doing here is preparing to cast an engine block, Calde.” At the last word, the workers looked up.
Silk had been trying to locate Oreb in the darkness. “This seems a very large place for three men.”
“When we’re going full tilt, which we will be tomorrow if we get your order today, there will be eighteen men and six boys working in here, Calde. I’ve had to lay off everybody except my best men, which I don’t like to do.”
Taking Silk unobtrusively by the elbow, Swallow led him deeper into the building, his voice kindling a second light. “They’re all good men to tell the truth, and the boys are smart lads who’ll be good men too before long. We can’t use anything else. I hate layoffs because I know the people I let go won’t be able to find another job, generally. But if they could, I’d hate them worse because I’d lose them, and you can’t just bring in an untrained man and have him go to work. It takes years.”
Maytera Marble inquired, “How old are the boys?”
“We start them at fourteen nowadays. I was twelve when I started.” Silk heard the soft exhalation of Swallow’s breath. “We had layoffs then, too, though it wasn’t as hard as now. Not usually. I never got to go to palaestra, but there was a woman on our street who had, and she taught me to read and write and figure during layoffs. I’m pretty good with figures, if I do say it. She was a friend of Mother’s and wouldn’t take anything for it, but I always thought that someday I’d get to where I could pay her. I was just about there, just made leadman here, when she died.”
Silk asked, “May I speak as an augur instead of calde?”
“Go ahead. I’m not religious, but maybe I should be.”
“Then I’ll explain to you that the woman who helped you out of friendship for your mother had been helped herself, when she was younger, by some earlier person you never met.”
Swallow nodded. “I suppose it’s likely enough.”
“She couldn’t repay that person any more than you could repay her, but when she helped you she wiped out her debt. When you help someone, you’ll wipe out yours. Possibly you already have — I have no way of knowing.
“I’ve tried once or twice, Calde.”
“You say you’re not religious. Nor am I, though I was very religious not long ago. Because I’m not, I’m not going to say that this passing forward from one generation to the next is the method the gods have ordained for the settlement of such debts, though perhaps it is. In any event, it’s a good one, one that lets people die, as everyone must, feeling that they’ve squared accounts with the whorl.”
Maytera Marble said, “Perhaps he already has, Patera, by employing those boys.”
Swallow shrugged. “They don’t pay, and that’s the truth. We pay a card a month, and they’re not worth it to us. But we’re not doing it from charity. We have to have them so they can learn the work. If we didn’t, someday we’d need foundrymen and there wouldn’t be any, no matter how much we offered.”
“Then it was good of you to… Lay them off? Is that what you call it? So they could attend a palaestra. Because I’d think that if you were teaching them, they’d be the last ones you’d want to send home.”
“They were,” Swallow told her shortly.
Chenille had been looking at the largest ladle Silk had ever seen, a great cup of scaly pottery large enough to hold a man. “Is this what you melt the iron in?”
“That’s right.” Swallow was himself again at once, brisk and all business. “It’s heated in this brick furnace here.” He went to it. “It burns charcoal with a forced draft, and it takes a lot. Those bunkers you saw against the wall where we came in were for sand. Every casting we make uses up a little, and they’re our reserve. These bunkers hold charcoal and steel scrap. We fill up that crucible with scrap, lower it into the furnace, and put the lid on. When it’s been in long enough, depending on how much scrap was in it, we lift it out the same way and pour.”
A slightly smaller crucible stood on the other side of the brick furnace; reaching into it, Chenille displayed an irregular scab of shining yellow metal. “This looks almost like gold.”
Oreb flew over for a closer inspection.
“It’s brass,” Swallow told her. “A talus’s head requires some pretty complicated castings, and brass is easier to cast than iron, so we use that for the head.”
Silk said, “Some taluses wear helmets, I’ve noticed, while others don’t.”
“The helmet’s actually a part of the head,” Swallow told him. “Or you could say it takes the place of the skullplate. Would you like helmets on the taluses we’re going to build for the city? I can specify them in the contract.”
“I don’t know. I was wondering whether a helmet furnished better protection for the head.” In his mind’s eye, Silk saw the talus he had killed; the shimmering discontinuity that was the blade of the azoth he had thought Hyacinth’s had struck it below the eye, vaporizing metal and inflicting a mortal wound.
“Not really.” Swallow clapped his hands to brighten the lights. “Over here we have the forms for various head designs. They’re made so the parts can be switched. Say you like the nose on one head, but you’d rather have the mouth on another. We can give you both without any additional charge. We cast the nose you want and the mouth you want, and after the castings have been cleaned up, they’ll fit together.”
“How thick is the metal?” Silk inquired.
“Two to four fingers, depending on where you measure. It has to be at least two, to get enough melt through the space.” Proudly, Swallow gestured toward a row of somewhat worn-looking wooden heads, each nearly as tall as he was. “There they are, Calde, twenty-nine of them. Since all of them trade parts, there’s almost no limit to the number of faces we can provide.”
“I see. Is two fingers of brass enough to stop a slug?”
“No shoot,” Oreb advised from Chenille’s shoulder.
“It depends, Calde. How far away was the trooper when he fired? That can make a big difference. So can the angle it strikes at. If it hits square on, it might go through if the trooper was standing close. I’ve known that to happen. The talus has its own guns, though, and unless it’s out of ammo, an enemy trooper that close isn’t likely to be alive.”
Chenille grinned. “I’ll say!”
“What we’ve found,” Swallow continued, “is it’s pretty rare for a trooper to shoot at the head at all. The thorax plate and the front of the abdomen are bigger targets, but they’re steel. I’ll show you some in the welding shop.”
“Will a slug penetrate them?”
Swallow shook his head. “I’ve never known it to happen. I won’t say it can’t, I’d want to run some tests. But it’s very unusual, if it happens at all.”
Silk turned to Chenille. “You and Auk were riding on the back of a talus when it encountered some of the Ayuntamiento’s soldiers in the tunnel. You told me about that.”
She nodded. “Patera Incus was with us, too, Patera. So was Oreb here.”
“Later on, one of the wounded soldiers?”
Chenille nodded again. “The talus stopped to shoot, I guess that’s why it stopped anyhow, and Auk got on Patera about not bringing the dead ones Pas’s Pardon. We could see a bunch of dead ones in back of us. There were lights in that tunnel, and some of the dead ones were on fire.”
“I understand.”
“So Patera did. He got off the talus. Auk was j
ust — he couldn’t believe it. Then the talus saw what had happened and said for Patera to get back on, and he said only if you’ll take this soldier too. That was Stony, we found out his name later.”
Maytera Marble asked, “Wasn’t this nice talus that let you ride on it killed, dear? I think you told me about its death, and how the holy augur who was with you brought it the Pardon.”
Silk nodded. “That’s the point I particularly want to hear about, Chenille. How was that talus killed? Where did the slug strike it?”
“I don’t think it was a slug at all, Patera. Stony said it was a missile. Some of the soldiers had launchers — I got one myself, after — and they were shooting them.”
“You’ll have to excuse my ignorance,” to relieve the pain in his ankle, Silk backed to the crucible and sat down on its rim, “but I’m not familiar with those. What’s the difference between a missile and a launcher?”
“The launcher fires the missile, Calde.”
“That’s right. Just almost exactly like a slug gun shoots a slug. Maybe they ought to call a launcher a missile gun, but they don’t.”
“You had one of these weapons, Chenille? Where is it now?”
“I don’t know. Stony took it to shoot at the Trivigaunti pterotroopers. That was while me and Auk were in the pit with Trivigauntis flying all around and you talking at us from that floater up in the air. Somebody yelled for us to get back in the tunnel, and it sounded like a real good idea to me.”
Swallow said, “A missile’s a very different proposition from a slug, Calde. A slug’s just a heavy metal cylinder. It hits the target a lot harder than a needle or a stone from a sling, but that’s only because it’s heavier than a needle and going faster than a stone. Missiles carry an explosive charge, and that lets them do a lot more damage.”
“Missiles are heavier, I think, too,” Chenille told Silk. “I’ve seen troopers carrying forty or fifty slugs—”
“Cartridges,” Swallow corrected her.
“Whatever. They had them on a special canvas strap, and they were walking around fine. I think if you loaded a trooper down with forty or fifty missiles, he couldn’t hardly stand up. My launcher was nice and light when I found it, but Stony helped me load it, and it was really heavy after that.”
“Director Swallow.”
“Yes, Calde?”
“You mentioned a part called the thorax plate. I take it that’s the part covering what I would call the talus’s chest.”
“Exactly right, Calde.
“Chenille says the soldier Patera Incus befriended felt that their talus had been killed by one of those things — by a missile fired from a launcher. Are those the terms?”
Swallow nodded; Chenille said, “That’s it, Patera.”
“But if I understood her, he was on the talus’s back at the time that it was shot. How could he have known?”
Swallow fingered his chin. “He lived through this, didn’t he? He must of, since the young lady said he took her launcher later. If he had a chance to see the talus afterward—”
“Man see,” Oreb announced confidently. “Iron man.”
“In that case, Calde, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to tell the difference between a wound from a slug gun and one from a missile.”
Silk nodded again, largely to himself. “Was this a facial wound, Chenille? Do you recall?”
She shook her head. “He talked to us after. I’m not sure where he was hit, but lower down.”
Silk stood up. “You mentioned your welding shop, Director. I want to see it — and ask a favor. May we go now?”
As they left, Silk lagged to question Mucor. “You told us you could fly in the rain,” belatedly he opened his umbrella, “but they couldn’t. By ‘they’ did you intend the Fliers?”
She only stared.
“Is that why it rains after they’ve flown over? Because they somehow prevent it when they’re present?”
“Answer him, dear,” Maytera Marble prompted, but Mucor did not speak.
As they splashed along a rutted path between sodden wooden structures that could easily have been barns, Swallow remarked, “I wish you had better weather for this, Calde, but I hear the farmers need rain pretty badly.”
Silk could not help smiling. “They need it so badly that the sight and sound of it fill my heart with joy. All the time we were in your foundry I was listening to it, and the finest music in the whorl couldn’t have moved me half so much. I don’t suppose Chenille or Maytera like it — I know Oreb here doesn’t, and I’m a bit worried about Mucor, whose health is frail; but I’d rather walk through this than the clearest sunshine.”
Swallow opened the door of another ramshackle building, releasing a puff of acrid smoke and revealing a large and dirty canvas screen. “Foundry work’s pretty crude, Calde. In the old times they knew a lot we don’t, though I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to learn their secrets. What I’m going to show you now’s closer to what you might have seen on the Short Sun Whorl. But before I do, I’ve got to warn you. You mustn’t look at the process. At the blue welding fire, in other words. The light’s too bright. It can make you blind.”
Silk shook his umbrella. “Smiths join iron by heating and pounding it. I used to watch them as a boy. I wasn’t blinded, so what you’re doing here must be a different process.”
Chenille tossed back wet raspberry curls. “Better make sure Oreb doesn’t watch either, Patera.”
“I certainly will.” For Swallow’s benefit, Silk added significantly, “At times we all look at things we shouldn’t. Even birds do it.”
Swallow blinked and abandoned his study of Chenille’s damp gown. “Sometimes people think we do it different because we’re working with steel instead of iron, but that’s not true. We use this method because it works on pieces your smith couldn’t have welded, because they’re too big to be hammered.” Light showed above the canvas screen, brilliant enough to make the rafters cast sharp shadows on the underside of the roof.
“One of our men’s making a weld now. We’ll wait here till he’s through, if it’s all right with you, Calde. Then we can go in, and I’ll show you what he’s doing and how he does it. He’ll be welding up a thorax plate, I think.”
While her remaining hand closed the black umbrella she had shared with Mucor, Maytera Marble gave Silk a significant look.
He nodded. “I want to see it. In fact, I’m very eager to, Director. You spoke of thick pieces in connection with these thorax plates and so on? How thick are they?”
“Three fingers.” Swallow held them up.
“I want mine thicker. Six at least. Can you do that?”
Swallow looked startled. “Why…? Could we weld them, do you mean? We could, but it would take longer. It would be a lot more work.”
“Then do it,” Silk told him.
Oreb whistled.
“Put it in our contract, six-finger thorax plates. What was the other piece? Below the thorax plate?”
“The abdomen front plate?” Swallow suggested.
“That’s it. How thick is it?”
“Three fingers, too, Calde.” Swallow hesitated, his eyes thoughtful. “Do you want them thicker? I suppose it could be done, but it may take us a while to find steel that thick and work out a way to bend it.”
Oreb exclaimed, “No, no!”
“We cannot afford delay, Director. Viron requires these taluses immediately. I realize you can’t supply them today, but if you could, I’d accept them and pay you for them, and thank you. You join steel here — that’s what the workrnan on the other side of this screen is doing?”
Swallow nodded.
“Then make my thorax plates and abdomen front plates out of two pieces of the steel you have, each three fingers thick. Maytera here could make me a robe from doubled cloth, if I had need of such a thing. Why couldn’t you do this?”
“We can, I think.” Swallow cleared his throat. “There’ll be problems. With all respect, Calde, welding steel isn’t as
simple as sewing, but think it could be done. Can I ask…?”
“Why they need it? So they can fight the Ayuntannento’s soldiers in the tunnels, of course. I’ve been down in those tunnels, Director — I even fought a talus there. There was only a step of clearance between the sides of that talus and the sides of the tunnel. A soldier who got that close would be very close indeed; and the taluses I want you to build will have troopers protecting their backs. The danger will be in front, where it will come from soldiers armed with weapons like the one Chenille had.”
“Launchers,” she supplied.
“Exactly. Launchers shooting missiles.” Silk collected his thoughts. “The heads still trouble me. You say you can’t cast them from iron?”
“No, Calde. We usually paint them black. Nearly always, because it makes the eyes and teeth show up better If we could cast them from iron we wouldn’t have to paint them or touch up scratches, so we’ve tried it. Iron won’t make castings that detailed, not till we learn more about casting it, at any rate.”
“Too bad!” The light above the screen had vanished; Oreb flew up to peer over.
“Yes, it is,” Silk confirmed.
“But you’re worried about strength, Calde. Resistance to slugs and that sort of thing. And to tell you the truth, iron wouldn’t be a lot better. It might even be worse. Cast iron’s a wonderful material in a lot of ways, but it’s pretty brittle. That’s why we use steel plate for the abdomen and so forth.”
“Patera? Director?” Maytera Marble looked from Silk to Swallow and back. “Couldn’t the talus hold something in front of its face? A piece of steel with a handle like an umbrella?”
Silk nodded. “And look over the top. Yes, that could be done, I’m sure, Maytera.”
“There’s one other possibility, Calde,” Swallow offered hesitantly. “This is from the old days too. But it was done right here, I understand, though it was before my time. We might try bronze.”
Silk looked around at him sharply. “Isn’t that what they are now?”
Chenille shook her head. “It’s brass, Patera. Remember when I held that piece up? He said brass.”