The Crosstime Engineer aocs-1

by Leo Frankowski

  "Oh, that," said a well-endowed blonde, managing to drop her blanket below her belly button. "We were just doing what Mrs. Wrolawski told us to do."

  "Cover your breasts. Now, what exactly did the innkeeper's wife tell you to do?"

  "She said that if we didn't act as pure as nuns in a convent, the Church would shut down the inn and we'd each be lacking our twelve silver pence per week."

  "She also threatened to send us to a nunnery if we weren't convincing," the redhead added.

  So Mrs. Wrolawski had eavesdropped on my conversation with the priest and had set things up. Well-a-day. All's well that ends well.

  "Okay. But put some clothes on, damn it!"

  Most of the waitresses found suitable husbands within six months. The inn paid the wedding expenses, and there was always a "new hiring" the day after. This happened at least once a month and often once a week. For most of our customers, it was their first experience with voting. In my own mind, I could never sort out the morality of it a.

  I had no difficulty with the morality of a situation that occurred much later that evening. The inn had closed for the night, but I was up in my room, drinking and doodling with some ideas about a gear-cutting machine. I do much of my best thinking late at night over a bottle. Oh, in the sober light of dawn I throw out three-quarters of it, but the quarter that is left is often very creative.

  My room was directly above that used by Tadeusz and his wife. The cooks lived out, the waitresses were fourteen-year-old girls, and it happened that at the time there were no overnight guests. The only men in the inn were Tadeusz, the guard, and myself when the innkeeper's wife screamed. I was shocked sober in an instant.

  "Guard!" Tadeusz shouted.

  "Shout all you want. Your aging guard has been detained," a sinister, gravelly voice said.

  There were more shouts, accusations, and then screams as I flew for the doorway, down the hall, and down the steps. I was wearing the embroidered outfit given me by Count Lambert, and my glove-leather boots made my approach fairly quiet, at least compared with the commotion coming from the innkeeper's room.

  A beefy stranger was guarding the doorway. He had a long misericord, and I belatedly realized that I had left my sword belt in my room.

  I am not a master of the martial arts, but I had taken the standard military courses in unarmed combat. The important thing is to hit hard and fast. Hesitation can get you killed.

  The thug came at me with a clumsy overhand swing. I blocked his dagger with my left forearm and kneed him hard in the groin. He bent over, presenting the back of his head to my clenched fists and his face to my knee.

  I took advantage of this opportunity; his nose and teeth gave way with a crunching sound. He fell heavily to the floor, still gripping his knife. I don't like people who pull knives on me in dark hallways, so I stamped hard on his knife hand. Too hard. The bones smashed, and splinters of knuckle bones were driven through the thin soles of my boot, lacerating my foot. Pain shot up my leg.

  I picked up the misericord and limped into the room, ducking my head to get through the doorway. "What the hell goes on here?" I inquired.

  Two Mafia types were in the room beside the Wrolawskis. The leader of the pair grinned evilly and said, "Just a bit of guild business, stranger. Get out and you'll live longer."

  Tadeusz was bleeding from the nose and mouth. His wife's dress was torn, exposing bruised, aging breasts.

  "They're from the whoremasters guild!" Tadeusz said, contempt and fear in his voice.

  "If your business was honest, you'd come in the daytime," I said. "Now I'm telling you! Get out fast and you'll live."

  The leader signaled to his subordinate, and the man came at me with a wide-bladed dagger. He used the same stupid overhand attack as his associate in the hallway.

  The misericord is a long, narrow, thrusting weapon designed to pierce chain mail. I blocked the thug's attack as before, but this time at the expense of a slash in the embroidery on my cuff. Gripping him by the shoulder with my left hand, I aimed a gutting thrust at the man's stomach. He pulled his body back, and my knife continued upward, catching him between the chin and neck. The thin blade went entirely through his brain, and a few centimeters of it stuck out from the top of his head.

  Over the man's shoulder, I saw the leader hauling back to throw a knife at me. With my hands still on the shoulder and the grip of the knife, I yanked the body upward as a shield. The dead man was much lighter than I had expected, or perhaps the fury of combat increased my strength, but in all events I bashed the thug's head into a low roof beam. The misericord stuck in the wood, and the corpse hung there, the leader's knife in its back.

  The leader came at me with his fists, but his sort of hoodlum lives more by fear than by fighting ability. Equally weaponless, I hit him twice, hard, in the stomach.

  "Sir Conrad!" Tadeusz shouted.

  Suddenly the Mafia type froze, rigid. I was too furious to stop; grabbing him by the shoulder, I chopped viciously with the edge of my right hand, once on each side of the neck, breaking both collar bones.

  "Sir Conrad?" the man gasped, his arms hanging unnaturally low.

  "Yeah." I was breathing hard.

  "The noble knight that killed Sir Rheinburg with a single blow?"

  "Among others." I was returning to normal.

  "I knew him, sir."

  "You look the type."

  "We had heard rumors that you were associated with this inn, but the whoremasters guild felt-"

  "Well, you felt wrong." The noise had awakened the waitresses, and they were clustered wide-eyed around the doorway. One had a blanket wrapped around her, but the rest were naked.

  "Those girls are servants, not whores," I said. "We have nothing to do with the whoremasters guild."

  "Yes, sir. That is obviously true, sir."

  "So?" I said.

  "I may live, sir? I may leave?"

  I had to think for a minute. "Yeah. You can live. But you damn well owe us for damages."

  "Of course, sir. We always pay our just debts."

  "Tadeusz," I said. "What do they owe you for what they've done to your property, for the injury caused to you and your wife?"

  "Who can say, Sir Conrad?" the innkeeper said. "But is this wise?"

  "Name a number!"

  "Perhaps five hundred pence?"

  "Good," I said. "Okay, whoremaster. You owe us five hundred pence, not to mention the mess you've made on the floor and the fact that your thugs cut up and bled all over my best outfit. Get out!"

  "As you command, Sir Conrad Stargard." He left with as much dignity as he could muster.

  "Are you insane, Sir Conrad?" the innkeeper said. "Now they will come back!"

  "I doubt it. That kind knows when it's licked."

  "But they will! Girls! Quickly! Run to Sir Conrad's room. Bring back his weapons and armor!"

  Six naked teenagers scurried off, the one with the blanket having dropped it in the blood pooling under the body that was still stuck to the beam.

  "At least bring my wine!" I shouted. I dropped heavily into a chair. The action was over, and I was starting to get the shakes.

  I got my wine, but shortly six pretty, nude girls, at Tadeusz's insistence, were stripping off my outer clothes and lacing me into padded leather and chain mail.

  "This is stupid. They won't be back," I said, but I was wrong.

  Once I was fully armed, we searched out and found the inn's guard. He had a huge knot on the side of his head and was bound, gagged, and furious. He smiled at the corpse stuck to the ceiling, and when the other thug started moaning, he took particular pleasure in tying the man up.

  "Yes," the guard said, gripping his sword. "Let them come back."

  "Hey," I said. "If you people are that worried, why not send for the count's guardsmen?"

  "Certainly, Sir Conrad," the innkeeper said. "But who would dare go out into the night?"

  "Oh, hell. I'll do it myself," I said. "And have these girls get some clothe
s on. They act like this really is a brothel!"

  "And leave us defenseless?" one of the girls squealed.

  "Shit." I sat down and took a long pull of wine. There was nothing for it but to wait until they all calmed down and went back to bed. Anyway, my injured foot was throbbing.

  The girls were passing out knives from the kitchen, which was absolutely stupid. If you don't know how to use a weapon, you are much better off without it.

  In their excitement, they had forgotten my instructions to get dressed. Or perhaps running around naked with knives seemed more adventurous to them. Mrs. Wrolawski, who usually kept them in check, was sitting, stunned, on her bed.

  She hadn't even made an effort to cover her bruised breasts. Her husband was sitting in the other chair in a blue funk, blood still dripping from his nose. The guard was looking for an excuse to kill somebody, the girls were working out a set of heroic passwords, the body was still stuck to the ceiling, and my foot hurt.

  Damn, what a lunatic night! My mother told me I should have gone to the beach.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Everyone in the room froze. Even the previously murderous guard was suddenly sweating.

  "Never mind," I said. "I'll get it."

  I limped down the hall to the main door. One more piece of insanity and I was going to scream. I did take the precaution of drawing my sword before opening the door.

  "Ali. Sir Conrad Stargard, I believe," said the welldressed gentleman before me. "Please note that we come unarmed and with goodwill. We wish to make amends for certain unpleasantries that occurred earlier this evening."

  There were six of them, two men and four women. They presented Tadeusz with a purse containing five hundred pence, removed the dead and wounded men, and, with buckets of warm, soapy water that they had brought with them, cleaned up the blood on the floor.

  "These, of course, are yours by right of combat," the gentleman said, presenting me with the newly cleaned misericord, the wide-bladed knife, and the leader's throwing knife. All three were sheathed. He must have brought the leader's sheath with him.

  "Certain other amends will be made at the earliest opportunity. In the interim, I wish you a pleasant sleep and our assurances of our continued goodwill."

  And they left.

  "That's it, gang. Back to bed," I said, and took a long pull of wine.

  A week later, a messenger delivered to me four complete outfits, all beautifully embroidered and one almost an exact duplicate of the one that had been damaged. He also brought a red velvet barding for Anna and a matching surcoat for me, both embroidered with gold thread.

  All of it fit perfectly. I never found out how they got the sizes, but I was never again troubled by the underworld.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I needed quite a few brass castings for the wet mills.

  There was the gearing between the small, compensating windmill and the turret. I had originally envisioned a collection of wooden cog wheels, but a brass worm gear was a lot simpler and more efficient.

  A worm gear is simply a screw-the worm-with threads that fit into the teeth of a gear. The problem is that for them to mate properly, the shapes of both the worm and the gear get very complicated. They were well beyond our ability to machine; they were probably beyond my ability to describe mathematically.

  I spent an evening drinking and pondering the problem in my room. The taproom below was always too crowded and noisy to think, and even in my room enough noise seeped up from below to be disturbing. I finally hired a krummhorn player to sit in the comer and play softly. Muzak.

  The next morning, I had Mikhail Krakowski make up an oversized worm and gear out of clay. This was done crudely, by hand and by eye. The teeth were very deep, and the clay was built up around turned brass mandrels to assure concentric bearings. When dry, we fitted these together in an adjustable wooden frame. The fit was poor at first, but it was possible to turn the gear by turning the worm. We then put a man to cranking the worm gently and adjusting the teeth together as the unbaked clay wore away. In three days, they were much smaller and a perfect fit. We then fired the clay worm and gear, and these became our master patterns for brass castings. This gearing gave us a 48 to I reduction between the small windmill and a shaft that connected to the turret. The shaft turned a lantern gear that worked on pegs set into the fixed tower. As a result, the small windmill turned 1,152 times in the course of rotating the turret once. I hoped it would be enough.

  One by one, problems were solved. The bushings had been cast, one with sockets to hold the windmill blades. These bushings were being turned laboriously on the big lathe. Two more smaller lathes were under construction. We were confident that all the parts necessary for the wet mill would be ready for delivery to Okoitz in a month.

  I was getting ready to return to Count Lambert when I heard an awful squealing from the foundry. I rushed over and was stopped by Wladyslaw Krakowski.

  "My brother! My own brother called me a lazy pig!"

  "I called you a lazy pig because you are a lazy pig!" Mikhail explained. The squealing was still going on.

  "All right! But I'm a tired lazy pig, and walking in that barrel on the lathe is no fit job for a man!"

  They were still arguing when I pushed past them and went to the lathe. Thom was operating it. Inside the barrel an unhappy pig was trotting madly, trying to climb the rotating wall. A brass ring in the animal's nose was tied to a wooden stick such that if it stopped running, its nose was pulled.

  I stared at this for a while. Using a pig as motive power was strange, but a pig is a strong animal, and its short legs let it work where no horse could possibly fit. Would our future machines be rated in pigpower the way Americans use horsepower?

  I suppose it was hard on the pig, but I can think of nothing worse to do to an animal than killing and eating it, and I am not about to become a vegetarian like Adolf Hitler.

  Thom moved the stick back so that the pig could stop. "The speed control," he said. "I think we'll have to switch pigs about three times an hour. It's cheaper than men, though."

  I could see that it was time to go back to Okoitz.

  I was in the saddle when the innkeeper brought me a stirrup cup and a pouch of gold. "Seven thousand pence, my lord. Your profits for the first month of the Pink Dragon," he said.

  I thanked him and rode off. Seven thousand pence in a single month! That was twice what I paid for the place, back salaries and all! Well, it would keep the foundry going no matter what else happened. If I couldn't get land of my own, that foundry might be all that stood between us and the Mongols.

  Anna seemed inordinately proud of her new red velvet barding. She held her head high with her neck arched and walked with a gait she'd never used before. It was a sort of hopping thing, with her left front and right rear hooves hitting the cobblestones at the same time. I guess it was impressive because a lot of people came out to watch.

  But it was rough on my lower back, and as soon as we left the city gates, I urged her into a more comfortable gallop.

  She ran the entire way to Sir Miesko's manor, again without working up a sweat.

  Krystyana greeted me, but at first I almost didn't recognize her. Her actual appearance hadn't changed, except that she wore her hair differently. But something about her bearing, the way she held her shoulders back, the way she glided instead of clumping along like a gawky adolescent… But there was more, much more. Something that I couldn't quite define. Somehow, a pretty duckling had turned into a swan.

  "Welcome, Sir Conrad. I've missed you." She had the same calm smile that made Lady Richeza so radiant.

  I was home.

  I hated to leave, but I was worried about my projects at Okoitz so we set out the next morning. Halfway to Okoitz, we met Sir Miesko on the road.

  "Sir Miesko! It's delightful to see you again. We have just come from your manor, and all is well."

  "That relieves my mind, Sir Conrad. In truth, I worried about Richeza all winter. For m
y own part, I have sent Boris Novacek on his way to Cracow with half a dozen mule skinners, seventyfive mules, and a gross of barrels of wine."

  "And how are things going at Okoitz?"

  "Amazing! Your loom and wheels are turning out cloth by the mile, and that huge mill of yours is half up!"

  "Half up! I've stayed too long at Cieszyn."

  "All seemed to be going well. But aren't you being rude, Sir Conrad? You haven't introduced me to your lady."

  "But you already know her. Surely you haven't forgotten Krystyana."

  "What? Damn, but you're right! But her bearing, her poise-"

  "It's entirely your wife's doing, Sir Miesko. Krystyana visited her for a month, and you see the results. I didn't think to buy a present for Richeza, but if you want a loom and some spinning wheels, or even the fittings for a mill, you have only to ask."

  "I might just take you up on that, for you have gained a prize of great value. But now I am anxious to see my wife again, so I bid you good-bye, Sir Conrad, and you, my Lady Krystyana."

  As Sir Miesko rode away, Krystyana looked at me. "He called me a lady!"

  "You'd rather be a gentleman?"

  "Of course not! But surely I'm only a peasant girl."

  "Well, you'll always be a pretty wench to me, Krystyana."

  "He acted as though I was of the nobility!"

  "So, noble is as noble acts. Come on, let's get going."

  "But I'm not noble, am I?"

  "Do you expect to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a sword? I don't know if there is a ceremony for elevating a common woman, but as far as I'm concerned, you can be whatever you want to be. Let's ride."

  The mill was nothing like half done, but good progress was being made under Vitold's supervision. The "basement" for the lower tank had been dug, and the new well was in. Most of the upright logs had had their sides flattened, and some of them were already in place. All according to plan. The main shaft was finished, ready for the brass collars, but here there was a discrepancy. I had assumed that the cam would be a separate piece, but Vitold had cut the cam and shaft out of a single log more than two yards across! I had allowed an extra yard in diameter to provide room for clamping the cam to the shaft, but single-piece construction let him reduce the cam diameter from three to two yards while still giving a meter's travel on the follower wheel at the end of the A-frame.