by John F. Carr
"Of course, he never brought the girls back—alive. He made such an impression on the primitives that they actually changed their migration route and created a whole new Subsector—Aryan-Transpacific, if I remember. To this day, they even remember him as some sort of an underworld demon. Now, that story would get good old Kalvan off the home screens, but I doubt it would enhance the old family name."
"Now, that's enough, Tharn. That story is not the least bit amusing!"
"It's not a story! I forgot what a prig you turned into when you are around me. Does Supercop get to see this side of you, too?"
"Shut up about him!"
"I see the family temper has bred true."
For the first time since the Big Fight, he saw tears in her eyes. He wondered what nerve ending he'd struck. Maybe Verkan wanted to breed—now there was a frightening thought—little Verkans running around with toy needlers.
"Why do you strike out at the people who love you?"
Oh no, he thought, Big Mama's coming. Time to change the conversation again. "So you still haven't told Supercop the family secret. I bet he already knows."
"What do you mean? That file was purged from the records thousands of years ago."
"And you believe that! Oh no, I guarantee you that in some secret data base in the Paratime Police supercomputer there's a flagged file with our shameful family secret. Probably only accessible by the Chief. Maybe the reason Supercop hasn't brought it up is: he's waiting for you to tell him. Maybe he does love you, after all!"
"Of course he does. You don't mean that really? There can't be any such file."
"Oh, yes I do, Dalla. True, it cost the family a few million credits to keep the story away from the newsies, but I didn't think you were gullible enough to think the Parafanatics buried it as well."
There were worry lines creasing Dalla's forehead and he wondered if anyone cared that much about what he thought. Probably not. Big Sis included.
"Enough of your verbal sparring, Tharn. I came hear to warn you that the Paratime Police know all about your little spy."
For a second he was worried, but little was not a description that would describe his real agent in any manner. "She of the big mammaries. Yes, I admit she's working for me. One of my co-workers daughters who needed a job; I sponsored her for the Kalvan Study Team. I still have friends at the University, even if they couldn't stop my expulsion. After my Axis studies; though I did receive a lot of moral support for what the Paracops did to my fledgling academic career."
"You still don't see the danger in what you did?"
"I wasn't telling the natives about the Paratime Secret, if that's what you mean, just soaking up some local flavor and finishing my studies on Great Men in history. A little firsthand research never hurt anyone; not that most of the University professors would agree—it's too much like work. What I want to know is, why do they always proscribe the 'interesting' subsectors and time-lines? And, how, in Zirppa's Foodtube, was I to do original research on Great Men without any subjects!"
"There are great men all over Fourth Level; the one you picked may have been a catalyst, but by no other definition could he be called great—especially in regards to height, or any other adjective."
"You're wrong there, Dalla, but we could argue over these minor philosophical differences for days. What brought you here this time?"
"I wanted to warn you to be careful. Your tame little spy could get you in serious trouble if she's caught tampering on Kalvan Prime. Verkan and I both like Kalvan and Rylla and I wouldn't be able to stop him again if he caught you involved in some outtime contamination."
"I'll keep that in mind, Dalla. Now I know the end point of sisterly devotion. I have no intention of contaminating Verkan's toy soldier's field of play. And, as much as I do admire, the priestly scoundrels in charge of Styphon's House, I really have no interest in the outcome of their little war. I do like to keep an eye out for any slip in the old family secret. After all, the Zarthani do have written records and who knows what oral history some priestly scribe might have heard around the campfire and saved for posterity."
"You don't think?"
"I really don't. But anything is possible and it's best to have a 'friend' on hand to help contain the damage, so to speak."
Dalla blanched.
"Sorry to upset your placid existence, but someone has to protect the family name." It was hard to keep from laughing at that lie. His sister was too preoccupied to notice his change of expression; it was amazing how love could screw up your life.
"Oh, at the risk of upsetting you further, I just thought I'd let you know that word of the Kalvan's contamination of Aryan Transpacific has some University scholars quite upset. They propose the novel hypothesis that every time Kalvan introduces another piece of military technology the risk of exposing the Paratime Secret grows more real. Some are even asking why Kalvan's not been dispatched for the good of Home Time-Line and all that other patriotic self-serving nonsense. Of all people, they're asking why the Paratime Police aren't doing their job. Your husband might want to consider the ramifications."
Dalla's face, if possible, grew even whiter. He enjoyed that, even if he didn't give a fig over the Paratime Secret being exposed. How could some barbarian from Europo-American teach a bunch of savages enough to uncover a technological marvel that had taken three geniuses in three different fields to concoct and had been the life's blood of First Level for ten thousand years. The probabilities were so low they weren't worth thinking about.
"I'm sorry, Tharn, I don't feel well. I've got to go."
"Sorry to hear that. Be sure and give my best to Supercop." For a moment he was bothered by the thought that almost all their meetings ended this way, with Dalla either in tears or feeling sick—sometimes both. Maybe there was something to the family curse. After all, even father had succumbed in his third century and was now a permanent resident of some Psych-Hygiene house of horrors. No, madness was the escape route of lesser men—not an overman such as himself. Not with all that he had left to accomplish.
SEVEN
I
Kalvan followed Rector Mytron, who was wearing the university robes of green and maroon, instead of the blue robes of Father Dralm, to the massive plank door. The large room had formerly been the lesser hall of a baronial mansion belonging to his former aide, Baron Nicomoth, until he took a bullet in the eye at the Battle of Phyrax. Dying without wife or issue, Prince Ptosphes had claimed it for the Throne and presented it to Kalvan as the permanent site for his new University of Hos-Hostigos. It was an ideal place, situated just outside of Hostigos Town, close to the Royal Foundry (near State College in otherwhen), with a mansion as solid as a castle keep, a city-block of grounds and a dozen or more outbuildings. Mytron led Kalvan through the hall, out another door to the outside, where the former stable barn turned Artificer Workshop stood. Both doors were wide open and half a dozen forges, with varlets working the bellows, burned cherry red. On anvils the size of tree butts husky smiths pounded out splints of steel, turning them into three and four foot bayonets. Along the far side of the Workshop, apprentices sorted bayonets into groups, while others honed their blades. These were nasty Napoleonic spear-like bayonets, not the stubby knives of Kalvan's Korean War days.
Phylo, the Chief Artificer, took a musket and one of the newly made bayonets, which were hafted with tapered plugs instead of handles, and put the bayonet into the end of the firearm. Then a student approached him with a cloth and wood dummy and he proceeded to charge it with the musket and bayonet. When the student had proved that the bayonet could strike with reasonable impact, without becoming dislodged, Phylo dismissed the apprentice and took apart the musket and bayonet.
"Very nice, very nice," Kalvan said, "but what about the sockets we talked about?"
The gray-haired Chief Artificer shook his head. "Your Majesty, we did a complete inventory of every firearm in the Royal Armory and found that of the twelve thousand or more firearms, including muskets, arquebuses and
calivers, no more than a few hundred shared the same bore or outside muzzle diameter. Our master gunsmiths believe that it would take more than a year to provide half the Armory's firearms with both socket and outside bushing for the bayonets. And that is only if we halved production of bayonets and produced only sockets and bushings."
That figure, of course, didn't include firearms already issued to the Royal Army. Winning five out of six major battles had over-stocked the Royal Armory on firearms. This wealth of firearms had had an unforeseen consequence; it had made a shambles of Kalvan's attempts to standardize musket barrels and bores. On the other hand, it did make possible Kalvan's plan to replace the Royal Army's pikes with muskets. Most here-and-now infantry were a combined arms army of pikemen and firearms, usually in equal proportion. It didn't take a genius to figure out the advantages of turning all those pikemen into musketeers; for one, it would double the rate of firepower in one fell swoop.
In actuality, Kalvan was finding it wasn't easy to get those proud pikemen to drop their sixteen-foot shafts in favor of a little five-foot musket with a four-foot blade. Nor had it been easy to convince them that what they saw as a drop in status was in reality a jump in military effectiveness, since the pikemen were convinced that any fool could point a stick and pull a trigger. Pike drills took real coordination and strength. Nor had they wanted to give up their breastplates and taces, armor which he knew would only be in the way and weigh them down as musketeers. The pikemen thought it would make them more vulnerable to enemy shot. They were both right, but as Great King, he won the argument. Morale, though, had suffered.
"Chief Phylo will you be able to outfit the entire Royal Army with your plug bayonets by spring?"
"Your Majesty, we can provide enough of the new bayonets for about half the Royal Army; the other half will have to make do with converted knives and short swords."
"Here's what we'll do then. Give all the new bayonets to the pikemen, which will help their morale. Make plugs for the musketeers; who'll be happy to have anything at all to help protect them from rampaging cavalry."
"A good plan, Your Majesty. That should halt some of the grumbling."
There was no easy way to reverse a lifetime of thinking and conditioning, but they were going to have to try if the Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos was going to survive and flourish. If only he had more time—even just two or three years, but time was one advantage Styphon's House wasn't about to relinquish.
The next stop was the former barn turned University auditorium or Great Hall. Kalvan noticed that since his last visit, over a month ago, the walls had been plastered, whitewashed and wainscoted with dark wood. At the head of the hall, above a large desk, were the Hos-Hostigos national flag and the University coat-of-arms, a retort crossed with a quill pen.
According to Rector Mytron the University enrollment was up to sixty-two students, not counting the part-time students in the Department of Military Science, which was primarily an adjunct to help quickly train the new Royal Army officers in what they called Kalvan-style, military tactics. Captain-General Harmakros of the Royal Army was the Department head of Military Science in all his copious spare time.
Rector Mytron sat at one of the tables and indicated that Kalvan was to sit at the other. His broad cherubic face beaming, he said, "Now Master Thalmoth will give his report on progress in the Department of Sappers and Engineers."
Master Thalmoth, weathered by age and hard work, but unbent, remained standing. Thalmoth was a former Hostigi artillery officer brought out of retirement by the war. He had a natural talent for engineering and had done a little bit of everything during his two decades as a mercenary artillery captain. He was a colonel in the Royal Army as well as head of the engineering department; his eighteen students were soon to be the nucleus of the first Sapper and Engineers Company.
Thalmoth had been experimenting with gun carriage design and had come up with improved trunnions for some of the big twenty-four pounders There was also, at Kalvan's suggestion, some work being done on pontoon bridges. Thalmoth was highly animated and already talking about the spring campaign against the Great Kingdom of Hos-Harphax. He planned to have another fourteen of the four-pound sakers, or light cannon, cast during the winter and with his new carriages. Thalmoth claimed he could take them into the Trygath backwoods if necessary.
This was far better than Kalvan had expected and he praised the old engineer for his good work. With the new four-pounders, plus the twelve he already had, and the six and eight-pounders already in service, Kalvan would be approaching the kind of mobile artillery force that Gustavus Adolphus had used so successfully in Germany during the Thirty Years War. He was going to have to talk to General Alkides of the Royal Artillery about training some additional gun crews. Maybe he couldn't outnumber his opponents but, By Galzar, he could out-shoot them.
Master Ermut, a big man with a fair beard, was the last to speak. Ermut, a former Styphon's House temple-farm slave, was living evidence of Kalvan's positive effect in his new world; Ermut was hale and hearty and even well dressed. Independently of Kalvan, Ermut had re-discovered the experimental method, while working in Kalvan's proto-paper mill and was the first real here-and-now scientist. Mytron had wisely made him Master of Alchemy.
"Your Majesty, I was hoping today to present you with some of our new paper, but we have still not determined the best clay for sizing and it is still too porous. I should have some of the new paper for your inspection in about a moon half."
Kalvan sure hoped so. He was running out of parchment, some of which had been scraped so often it could pass for lampshades, and he'd collected enough pine boards to create a fire hazard. If it got any worse, he was going to have to re-invent the Sumerian clay tablet
"I give you Tranth's Blessing, Master Ermut," said Kalvan, referring to the god of guilds and craftsmen, "because there's not a lambskin left in the Kingdom and the shepherds are threatening to mutiny if we butcher anymore of their sheep!"
Everyone laughed.
Ermut answered, "Yes, the Great Queen tells me you use parchments up as fast as you use up Styphon's troops, Your Majesty." Mouths gaped at Ermut's effrontery, but Kalvan laughed. A good leader wouldn't remain one for long once his confidants feared to speak their minds, and Master Ermut had come a long way from his days as a temple-farm slave to be able to make an open jest before his Great King, even one as feeble as that.
As Kalvan laughed the tension level dropped. "Speaking of Queen Rylla, she wanted me to ask you for more soap. Her ladies-in-waiting are losing' it faster than you can make it!"
"I'll see that you have a basket full of soap before you leave. Production is way up, now that we have a good source of lye."
Ermut's perfumed soap, another of Kalvan's ideas, was catching on quickly among the nobility and upper middle class, especially now that Queen Rylla was now bathing daily. Soon it would be an export commodity; Kalvan was gifting every ambassador and head of state with a basket of soap before they left Hostigos Town. He was making little progress among the lesser townsfolk, but they had little disposable income.
Ermut began to speak again. "While our paper project lags behind, one of our other projects has born surprising fruit." Ermut motioned to an apprentice by the door holding a large jug. The apprentice approached the table and at Ermut's direction filled a flask with a deep burgundy colored liquid.
Ermut carefully held up the glass flask so all could see the liquid's rich color. Glass was in short supply and made only in far-off Hos-Ktemnos. Kalvan thought, Note: Work out a rough formula for glass and give it to Ermut to work on.
Ermut brought the flask over to Kalvan and indicated he should drink up. Kalvan hesitated for a moment, then thought, when the time came he needed a food-taster to take a drink among friends, then he was long overdue for another trip on a cross-time flying saucer. The first sip tasted like strong winter wine until it reached his throat and then he knew full well he'd just tasted the first here-and-now brandy.
Kalvan took an
other longer sip and that clinched it. "Master Ermut, you're a genius! How did you do it?"
The big man blushed to the roots of his blonde beard, while wiping his hands on his green robe. "Your Majesty, it was your idea and his," pointing to his apprentice, "device. I was listening to Apprentice Antros talk about the distillation of petroleum spirits for heating oil—he's only arrived several months ago from the Princedom of Kyblos to join the University—when I recalled something you had said about the strong spirits of wine, berries and corn mash you called liquor. Since you sounded quite fond of these spirits, I thought I would keep my experiments to myself and see if I could come up with this liquor. I suggested some ingredients and turned Antros loose; these are the results."
"Well, in truth," Antros broke in, momentarily forgetting that he was in the presence of his Great King, University Rector, and several masters, "these liquor spirits are much easier to conjure, because they don't require the high temperature of the oils we make in Kyblos. Oh, excuse me, Your Majesty!"
"You're excused, Antros. It's not everyday someone brings me a miracle such as this!" Kalvan took another long drink. "It even tastes good!"
Antros blushed so deeply he had to hide his face. He quickly began to pour goblets of brandy for all the assembled masters and in moments their words echoed Kalvn's.
"I think we might want to change the University coat-of-arms to include the noble grape vine," said Master Phylo.
"That may be going too far," said Kalvan, "but I would like to make a toast with the first fruit off the University vine. To the University of Hos-Hostigos, long may it prosper!"
"To Great King Kalvan, without whom there would be no University—or Hostigos!" toasted Rector Mytron, his fair skin turning red as he quaffed another goblet of brandy.