Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  "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, Caldé, 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, Caldé. 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 just-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, Caldé."

  "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, Caldé. 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, Caldé?"

  "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, Caldé.

  "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, Caldé, 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, Caldé, 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, Caldé. 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 showe
d 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, Caldé. 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, Caldé." 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, Caldé, 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, Caldé. 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, Caldé. 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, Caldé," 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."

  "Bronze would be a lot stronger, Caldé." Swallow cleared his throat again. "Tougher, too. I mean real bronze. This is kind of hard to explain."

  "Go ahead," Silk told him. "I'll make every effort to understand you, and it's important."

  "Let me start with iron, maybe that will make it clearer. You and I talked about iron. Casting it and so forth."

  Silk nodded.

  "What people call iron's really three different materials, Caldé. The commonest is just soft steel, any steel that doesn't have a lot of carbon in it. People call that tin when it's rolled out as sheet metal, and sometimes it's plated with tin. Most people have never seen a real chunk of solid tin."

  "Go on."

  "When you watched that blacksmith making horseshoes, that was what he was using. He probably called it iron, but it was really soft steel, iron with just a little touch of carbon. If there's gobs of carbon in it, it's cast iron, the melt we pour in the foundry. You can't pound cast iron the way a smith does. It'll break."

  "I remember that you said it was brittle."

  "That's right, it is. It has lots of uses, but you can't use it for armor or a hammer head, or anything like that."

  Swallow took a deep breath. "Number three's wrought iron, and that really is iron, though there's generally some slag in it, too. We start with cast iron and burn all the carbon out, when we want some. It's pretty soft, and it'll take almost any amount of bending. Mostly it's used for fancy window grills and that kind of a thing."

  "You still haven't told me anything about bronze."

  "I thought this might help make it clearer, Caldé. You see, there's a couple dozen alloys people call bronze, because they look like bronze. Most have quite a bit of pot metal in them and no tin at all. Tin costs too much. Real tin."

  Silk stirred impatiently.

  "That makes real bronze cost a lot, too. Real bronze, not the stuff you'd get if you bought a bronze figure of some god, is half tin and half copper."

  "Is that all?"

  Swallow nodded. "It's a pretty simple alloy, but it's got marvelous properties. It's tougher than steel and almost as strong, and you can hammer and weld it, and machine it easier than anything except cast iron. I know that because we still make some little parts out of it, sleeve bearings mostly, and the worms for the big worm gears. But when I was a boy, the older men said they used to cast heads out of it, and there were still some old taluses around with those bronze heads."

  Silk leaned against the doorframe; he was already tired, had been tired before the parade had ended, and there was still the dinner tonight; he resolved to get an hour's sleep before eight, no matter what happened. Aloud he asked, "Can you cast bronze-this real bronze-as well as brass?"

  "Better, Caldé. We cast those worms I mentioned, and then machine the bearing surfaces, so I know. It would speed things up too, because the parts wouldn't need so much cleanup. But it would be expensive, because of the cost of the tin."

  "Have you got the tin? Here right now?"

  Swallow nodded. "Because we still use bronze for the worms and so forth."

  "Then do it. Use it."

  "I'll have to up the price, Caldé. I'm sorry, but I will. Even if you order two or three."

  "Then up it." Longing for the brown leather chair he had occupied earlier, Silk added, "We'll talk about how much when we get back to your office. And don't forget the double-thick thorax and front plates. Obviously you'll need a little more for those, and the steel umbrellas-shields, I suppose you'd call them that Maytera suggested."

  Mucor said, "The storm will pass over soon," surprising everyone; then, "I'm tired."

  "She ought to sit down," Silk told Swallow, "and so should I, but first I must ask you about Maytera's hand. She's got it in her basket. Maytera, will you show it to him, please?"

  "Man cut," Oreb remarked from his perch on the top of the screen. Silk was not certain whether he meant that Blood ha
d severed it or that Blood himself had been killed-by him-as animals were as sacrifice.

  Maytera Marble had passed her basket to Swallow; he took off the white towel that had covered her now-lifeless right hand and held it up, in appearance the hand of an elderly woman. A short cylinder of silvery metal extended from its wrist. "I lost some fluid," she told him, "but not very much. There are valves and things to control that. I'm sure you know."

  He nodded absently.

  "But the tubes would have to be mended some way. The one that brings the fluid to move my fingers, and the one that takes it back."

  Silk said, "We'd appreciate it very much, Director, if you would do everything you can for Maytera. She can't pay you; but I may be able to, if it isn't too much. If it is, I feel sure I can arrange for you to be paid.

  "Don't worry about that, Caldé." Swallow returned the severed hand to its basket. "We'd be happy to do what we can for Maytera here as a counesy to you. We could rejoin those pressure and return tubes, though it'll take delicate work."

  Maytera Marble smiled, her face shining.

  "The load-bearing part's no problem at all. Or I don't think it should be. It won't look quite as pretty as it did, though. Repairs never do."

  "I won't mind a bit," Maytera Marble assured him.

  "The difficulty-pardon me, Caldé." Swallow closed the door, the only source of daylight on their side of the canvas screen. "Maytera, will you hold up your arm a minute? I need to show the Caldé something."

  She did, and Swallow pointed. "Look down in here, Caldé. Maytera, I want you to try to move your fingers. Pretend that you're going to grab hold of my nose."

  Minute glimmerings appeared in the shadowy interior of the stump of arm, pin-point gleams that reminded Silk oddly of the scattered diamonds he had seen beneath the belly of the whorl.

  "There! See that, Caldé? Those are glass threads, like very fine wires, with light running through them. It's fluid that powers her fingers, like she said, but it's those twinkles that steer them. The twinkles are messages. They're supposed to tell every joint in her hand how to move."