The Magic Engineer

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  He walks to the stern, where only the housing for the shaft and the screw need to be completed. On the blocks beside the hull rests the black iron screw, the largest single piece of work Dorrin and Yarrl have ever done. The polishing alone took almost three days and a special hoist.

  “Friggin’ big chunk of metal, master Dorrin,” offers Styl, pausing to set down a set of shorter beams that are braces for the main deckhouse or the pilot house above. “Lot bigger than the screw on the Diamond.”

  “More power at a lower shaft speed, I hope,” Dorrin answers.

  “You know…master Dorrin…” Styl coughs.

  “Yes?” Dorrin says cheerfully.

  “I was wondering…I mean about the black iron. Folks know that iron binds magic…Guess it’s always been that way…I was wondering if you could tell me why. It must do something, the way you plated this here Hammer.”

  Dorrin’s eyes slide along the ship, visualizing her as complete, with the angled and black-plated sides to the deckhouse and the pilot house and the big funnel aft of both, tall enough to add significantly to the draft and power of the engine. The Hammer has no masts, only two covered wells where low temporary masts can be set in the event of engine failure, for Dorrin has designed her only for use in defending Recluce or in the Gulf of Candar. He has neither time nor coins to build a more ambitious vessel, and to carry and steep even a single large mast will add too much weight.

  “Iron and magic,” Dorrin begins, belatedly realizing that his thoughts have wandered from Styl’s question. “Have you ever watched the iron when a smith works? What does it look like?”

  “It gets hot, sort of reddish.”

  “Cherry red. That’s because the iron absorbs all that heat—call it the power of the coals. Well, magic is like heat. It’s a power, and just like iron can hold the heat of the forge, it can hold and bind the heat of magic. Black iron does it even better. That’s why the some of the magisters carry black iron shields. The troopers on the Black Hammer will, too.”

  “Hmmmm…” ponders Styl. “Sounds right, leastwise to me. That a secret among the wizards?”

  Dorrin frowns. The conclusion is his, but outside of his own writing in his book, he has never seen it in ink anywhere else. “It might be. I had to figure it out. No one told me, if that’s what you mean.”

  Styl nods, almost ponderously. “Thank ye, master Dorrin. Best I be getting these up to Tyrel afore he starts bellowing.”

  “Don’t let me stop you. Tell him I’ll be up there in a bit.” Dorrin continues to check the hull before walking up the ramp onto the main deck.

  A new assistant Dorrin does not know passes by with another set of braces, and Styl grunts as he lifts his load. The two move toward the deckhouse structure.

  Dorrin has to climb down a temporary ladder into the engine compartment because the walls and the permanent ladder cannot be installed until the shaft and main thrust bearings are in place. Right now, the power train stops at the big flywheel, but the engine is complete, and Yarrl has fired up the boiler at low temperatures several times to help temper the firebrick.

  The low temperature runs also disclosed tubing leaks and, unfortunately, the need to rework both cylinders’ steam inlet valves.

  Wondering what will happen on this higher-pressure test, Dorrin checks the water level in the tank and inspects the firebox. Then he whittles shavings into a pile, which he lights with the striker from his pouch. As the wood fragments catch, he runs his fingers across the boiler and then the engine. It feels solid.

  A shovelful of fragmented coal goes into the firebox.

  “You starting already?” asks Yarrl from the deck above.

  “I just began lighting her off. I didn’t think you’d mind, since it will be a while before we have enough pressure.”

  “Why would I mind? It’s your engine.” Yarrl climbs down beside Dorrin. “At times…it’s hard to believe…”

  Dorrin feels the same way; and yet, the engine feels right—so black and so solid. How could his father ever believe it was a creation of chaos? He smiles crookedly. Then again, that has been the problem with Recluce itself. Its very order requires a greater amount of chaos in opposition.

  Does that mean each engine will create more chaos in the world? Dorrin’s smile fades. The ship is necessary—but can the world stand many of them?

  “What are you thinking about?” asks Yarrl.

  “Order and chaos,” Dorrin says absently, looking up to see Tyrel’s crew gathering on the deck to watch. He reaches for the shovel, and Yarrl opens the firebox door. Another shovel of coal goes through the open iron door.

  Shortly, Dorrin adds another, and yet another. The boiler creaks as the heat increases, and the plume of smoke from the funnel thickens.

  Dorrin checks the bypasses, waiting for the pressure to build more. Finally, he looks at Yarrl. “Let’s hope.” He twists one valve and then another, and steam hisses within the carefully crafted tubes toward the cylinders.

  As the operating steam pressure builds, even above the chunking/sliding sound of the rods and the wisps of steam escaping from the packing of the cylinder rods, a fainter hiss begins to build.

  Dorrin cocks his head, trying to listen, trying to sense the source of the new hiss.

  “Looks good!” Yarrl bellows above the combination of muted boiler roar, moving pistons, and steam.

  Dorrin walks back to the heavy flywheel—the extra weight was Yarrl’s idea for smoothing the power delivery to the shaft gears. The gears stand separated from the flywheel because the last conversion gear has to be completed. Then, if Dorrin and Yarrl can get the new bearing system to work, the shaft can be installed and the propeller attached. Then the Black Hammer can be floated.

  For a long time, the younger engineer studies the flywheel, thinking about a better design for the next engine. He shakes his head. He needs to finish one engine at a time.

  The faint hissing is not so faint when Dorrin steps back toward the steam section of the engine.

  “Do you know what it is? The hissing?” asks Yarrl, bending close to Dorrin’s ear and not quite bellowing.

  Dorrin shakes his head, then begins to trace the steam flow from the boiler tubes to the steam drum and to the cylinders, and from the cylinders to the main condenser. He stops. Air is entering the condenser, dropping the vacuum pressure and the engine’s efficiency, and causing the hissing.

  Getting down on the deck on his knees he studies the cover plate, finally straightening up and looking at Yarrl. “There’s a little gap in the plate, almost too small to see. Maybe it got chipped somehow when we installed it. We’ll need to do something about it. It’s costing us power.”

  “Always something.”

  Dorrin shakes his head. There is always something going wrong. This is the fourth test, and each has revealed another problem. He throttles up the steam pressure another notch, but the power rods still run smoothly.

  Dorrin and Yarrl watch and study, until midmorning, when Dorrin begins cooling the engine, slowing it back down, and finally venting off enough pressure to stop the cylinders.

  Taking the heavy cloth and tongs, he can finally remove the condenser cover plate and store it in a canvas bag to carry back to the smithy/engineering shop.

  “It can cool down from here on its own,” Dorrin tells Tyrel. “I need to replace the condenser cover, maybe rebuild it. Then we’ll finish the last gear and the bearings.”

  “How long?” asks Tyrel.

  “Another eight-day,” Dorrin guesses.

  “We should have the deckhouse framing finished before that, and we’ll need the plates for it.”

  “I know.” The plates from the iron works are too soft and too thick, and even with the rough trip-hammer Yarrl has rigged off Dorrin’s small millrace, reforging each is time-consuming.

  Dorrin walks uphill slowly. The condenser cover is heavy.

  “Let me carry it for a while.”

  The younger man hands over the canvas case. “Wha
t about the bearings?”

  “They bind too much, even when there’s almost no weight on them. You install them like that and the whole shaft will vibrate.”

  The two walk into the smithy, where Rek is using the small anvil to forge nails. Vaos is using the large anvil for spikes. There are never enough nails or spikes, it seems.

  “Let’s see the bearings.” Dorrin takes the canvas sack and puts it on the corner of his bench. The bearing problem comes first.

  Yarrl hands one of the cylindrical bearings to Dorrin. “They bind here on the edges. You can see where the metal’s scratched.”

  Dorrin runs his fingers across the cylinder. The center section is smooth, but he can feel the abrasion, even on the hard steel, at the edges. Setting the bearing, its diameter not much smaller than the large rod stock from which it was forged, on the smooth iron plate Dorrin uses to check the parts for evenness, he places another plate on top of the bearing, and gradually exerts as much force as he can, gently rolling the bearing back and forth, trying to sense where the pressures fall.

  From beside the slack tanks, Vaos and Rek watch. Vaos scratches his head, but the younger brother suddenly grins.

  Finally, Dorrin straightens and wipes the dampness from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Let’s trying grinding bevels on the ends.”

  “I thought of that. Won’t that make them wobble in the track?”

  “Maybe…but what if we slanted the holding flange just a bit? The tangs on the ends will help.”

  “Might be worth it.”

  Dorrin takes a deep breath and pulls off his tunic. “Let’s get the big stone moving, Vaos.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Dorrin takes down the bearing tongs he built, with the attached screw clamps to hold the tang ends against the grinding pressure.

  “I can’t help with that. You’ve got a finer touch,” Yarrl says. “I’m going back to that last blank on the gears.”

  “Good.” Dorrin takes the first of the bearings. It will be another long day, and after that he must still redesign and reforge the pressure cover for the condenser. Then, once the gear and bearings are finished, they will have to test the system for vibration again. And probably again after that. Sometimes, he wonders if the ship will ever be completed.

  At least, he can take a short break for lunch, and at least Liedral will be there, before she goes back to Land’s End again.

  He sighs, remembering the three uncompleted cheese-cutters, real cheese cutters, for which he must still draw the wire before she goes.

  CLXXI

  Dorrin ties Basla to the iron ring on the stone post, half turning to glance at the Black Holding, where the Council usually meets. Then he turns toward the well-kept stone walk, still damp from the morning rain. The yellow flowers in the plantings beside the walk still bloom, but they will fade within the eight-day, for fall is indeed upon Recluce.

  He steps toward the house, carrying the folder with him. While he does not look forward to the meeting, it is something he must do.

  Rebekah opens the door even before Dorrin reaches the stoop. “I hoped you would come before long.” She smiles and gives him a quick hug before stepping back. “How is Liedral?”

  “We’re doing better.” Dorrin knows what she really means by the question. “I’m following her suggestions, and I’m glad you spent the time. Sometimes, it’s hard. The touching exercises…” He almost winces, “But they seem to work. It’s so hard to think of what we had and lost…and it wasn’t even our doing.”

  Rebekah nods sympathetically. “Would you like some redberry?”

  “Please.” He has not had redberry since early summer at the inn.

  “What’s in the folder?” His mother inclines her head quizzically.

  “Something for father.”

  “He’s in the library. The porch is a little chilly. I’ll join you before long.”

  Dorrin understands this as well. He wanders down the hall and into the library. “Hello.”

  The thin wizard sets down the book on the reading table. “Dorrin. Sit down.” He gestures to the other chair, clearly moved from the kitchen into the study in anticipation of Dorrin’s arrival.

  “Thank you.” Dorrin takes the chair, setting the heavy folder in his lap, then meets his father’s eyes. For only the second time since Dorrin can remember, Oran looks away from his son.

  “What do you want?” asks the older man.

  “I’d like you to stop trying to persuade everyone that what I’m doing is wrong and tied to chaos. I’m not a little boy anymore, and you’re not always right. Neither am I,” he adds, thinking about Diev, and Kleth, and Liedral and Kadara, and even Meriwhen.

  “I love you, Dorrin, and you’re my son. But this business with black iron and machines is wrong. Do you want me to say it’s right when I don’t think it is?”

  “I’d like you to think about the reasons why you feel it’s wrong.” Dorrin pauses. “Creslin did things which were not exactly perfectly in line with pure order, but had he done otherwise, neither you nor I would be here.”

  “You’ve done much, Dorrin, but you’re not a Creslin.”

  “No. I know that, but the lessons are the same. I intend to preserve Recluce. Intentionally or not, you intend to commit suicide, because you’ve never really understood order.”

  “Understood order? You’ve never stood on the storms, or held the sky, and you know about order?”

  Dorrin lifts the bound sheets beside him. “I had these copied for you. One of the things I found out in Candar is that nothing in your library explained the basis of order, just the constraints. So I did my best.”

  “Oh…it must be interesting, applying your engineering logic to order. Tell me, do you prove that your steam engine is a creation of the Angels of Heaven and founded on order?” Oran smiles crookedly.

  “Hardly. This is much more basic.” Dorrin tries not to sigh. “If that’s the way you want it, keep trying to persuade the Council to send me off to some darkness-forsaken corner of the globe.”

  “I don’t want to send you off, son. I just want you to return to the way of order.”

  “I have returned to the way of order.”

  The tall wizard’s mouth opens, then closes, but he listens as Dorrin continues.

  “I’ve had some time to think, and I’ve had to work things out for myself, and I had some help. You seem to have forgotten two things. First, I did stop Jeslek. And second, I’m still Black. There’s not one flicker of chaos around me, and you know it. And that doesn’t lie.”

  “Being honestly mistaken is not the same as being right.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’ve watched Southpoint, and the people there. We’re building something that is solid and order-based. You ought to give it a chance.”

  “For what? To corrupt generations of order?”

  “Perhaps there is a third way,” offers Rebekah. She has a tray with two glasses on it and offers it to Dorrin.

  Dorrin takes the redberry and inclines his head to the healer. “Yes, mother?”

  “Perhaps the Council could leave Southpoint and the defense of Recluce to you, and to any who would join you. That would give us each time to consider how to work out what you have discovered. That would also allow use of Dorrin’s work without the dangers of the corruption you fear, Oran.”

  “How do you know this would work?” mutters the air wizard.

  “I don’t,” Dorrin says, “but isn’t it better than handing Recluce over to the Whites, or leaving you isolated and stagnating while Fairhaven grows and dominates the world.”

  “He has a point, Oran. The Council has raised the same questions.”

  “But machines?”

  Dorrin nods and lifts the manuscript. “If you would read this…”

  Oran makes a gesture to push them both away. “All right…I’ll read the fool thing and think about it. That’s all you can expect.”

  Dorrin takes a sip of the redberry, enjoying the taste despi
te the circumstances.

  “I’d like to read it also,” says Rebekah.

  Oran takes the second glass of redberry, and swallows. After a moment, he says, “Tell me about this trader lady.”

  Dorrin finishes his glass, looking at it as if he cannot believe he drank it all.

  “I can send a large jug back with you.” Rebekah laughs.

  “Her name is Liedral. She’s a trader, originally from Jellico…helped us away from Fairhaven…factored some of my toys…”

  “Was she a White trader?”

  “…free trader…the Whites tried to put her family out of business…”

  Late afternoon comes before Dorrin finishes his narrative. He looks out at the darkening clouds. “I really need to go.”

  Rebekah stands from the padded stool she has brought into the study. “I’ll get that redberry, and there’s also a whole cold fowl you can take, and even a leg of mutton—not that it’s that much for that establishment of yours. And you keep some of that redberry for yourself.”

  Dorrin grins. Even Oran grins.

  After watering and feeding Basla, he makes three trips from the kitchen out to load his mount before he finally rides southward once more. He whistles as he rides along the High Road, back toward the Black Hammer, back toward Liedral.

  CLXXII

  The healer looks back away from the damp gray stones that lead to the High Road, and her eyes dwell briefly on the Black Holding while a faint smile plays across her lips. She turns to the tall man. “Have you looked at your son, Oran? Really looked?”

  “He’s the same old Dorrin. He’s obsessed with those demon-damned contraptions of his.”

  “He’s not the same Dorrin.”

  “He is still obsessed with those machines.”

  “No.” Rebekah’s voice is hard, almost as cold as black iron as she turns to her husband. “He is so steeped in order, so Black, that where he stands is like a pillar anchored deep into the earth. Oran, he makes you look shallow. Don’t let yourself act shallow. Why can’t you take pride in your son?”