The Princelings of the East

by Jemima Pett

  Chapter 7: A Close Shave

  In which George finds that engineers need people skills more than people need engineering skills

  George’s tummy rumbled very loudly.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” exclaimed Saku. “We’ve been here for hours! When did you last eat?”

  That was a very good question, thought George. Apart from a Wozna and a refined strawberry juice, he hadn’t had anything since he left the castle on 2nd May 2009! He was feeling a little light-headed, but he was certainly ready for food. “I think it must have been yesterday,” he responded vaguely.

  “Let’s go and get some good food then,” said Saku, “not some of that fast food rubbish.”

  They went out of the laboratory and over to an archway in the corner of the corridor. Saku put a hand on a pole in the middle of it and jumped onto it to hold on with his other feet, then slid out of sight. George peered down and realised it was a slidey pole. A bit tentatively, he followed suit. He enjoyed a very strange feeling as he whizzed down several storeys, of light-headedness combined with light-weightedness. He came to the bottom and stepped out, a bit wobbly, with Saku kindly helping him by the elbow.

  “I’ve never done that before,” he gasped. “How do we get back up later?”

  “I'll show you when the time comes,” said Saku with a grin, looking like he had a real treat in store for George. “Come on, we’ll go to my favourite diner.”

  They set off into the dark world of Hattan, although with twinkly lights and shimmering glows from the buildings, it was no darker than most castles at night. It was night, thought George, peering upwards through the maze of towers. He caught a glimpse of deep blue sky, lit by the very last shafts of the setting sun. Past sundown, at any rate, he thought. The roadways were busy with people scurrying about, and the occasional carriage that moved without the need of draught animals. There were also strange carriages that moved on tracks. People got on and off them whenever they pleased, so it seemed, as there were platforms front and back. The carriages moved quite slowly as the people just wouldn’t get out of the way of them fast enough. Saku called them ‘trams’. He said they ran on cables powered by enormous wheels that used the wave and tidal power out in the bay.

  They found a suitable dining place and sat at tables in the window so George could look out at the Hattanites as they went about their normal evening tasks. Most of them scurried about, but here and there he saw people lounging in doorways. He wondered what they were doing. If he looked directly at them, they looked away from him or seemed to busy themselves with something on the ground. It all fascinated him, so different from Castle Marsh. The menu came and apart from some dishes that Saku had to explain to him, he found it very understandable. There was a ‘healthy eating’ section which seemed to consist mainly of salads, and plenty of more international dishes. He selected an arugula salad to start with, followed by sweet potato and corn stuffed bell peppers with a side of zucchini, although he didn’t recognise any of the vegetables’ names other than corn. Saku went for the melon starter and the bell peppers too. The choice of drinks was interesting, and he decided to try a ‘root ale’ while Saku took a ‘Superior’, which he said was a brand of ale brewed up in northern parts.

  They chatted about life and their experiences. Saku wanted to hear minute detail about life at Castle Marsh, whereas his own tale of emigration to Hattan more than thirty years ago was equally fascinating to George.

  “I left behind my beloved wife, and my lovely son,” he sighed. “It was a heart-wrenching thing to do, but there were no opportunities for me, unless I went into one of the big industrial castles, and I didn’t want to do that. With this post,” Saku explained, “the opportunity was only available to single people, and my wife said I should go for it.”

  He paused for a bit, and George noticed a little tear at his eye, which he wiped away under the pretence of tossing his hair out of his face.

  “I bitterly regretted it, of course. I made sure she would be ok; I introduced her to a nice village and set her up with a little money for a market stall. I heard she settled again with a nice person that ran a prosperous business, and my son inherited it. But of course, that’s a long time ago now. How do you like your dinner?”

  George was enjoying the food mostly - he found that arugula was extremely like rocket, if not the same plant. Unfortunately, zucchini was rather like courgettes, which he didn’t like, but no one seemed to mind him pushing it to one side, as there was far too much to eat even after his enforced fast.

  “Shall we take the rest of this with us for later?” Saku asked. Much to George’s surprise, the waiter carefully wrapped the food in shiny containers and put in a bag for them to bring back. “I’ll put it in the cold store in the study area,” Saku said. “Don’t forget to have it for breakfast or any other time you fancy.”

  They took a detour on the way back to have a bit of a walk around the city. They sat on a park bench behind the library as the talk turned back to the problem of the time tunnel and the use of energy.

  “When did the time tunnel arrive?” George asked. “How did you know what it was?”

  “It was about six months after we went into full production on Diet Wozna,” said Saku. “I was always a little worried that the two were related, but I couldn’t see how that could possibly be.”

  George thought about it. If Diet Wozna really did produce an energy sink, using all this extra energy to reduce its own energy value from forty calories to one per can, then surely the stores of energy could be enough to power a time tunnel.

  “Do you have any idea how the time tunnel works, or what triggered it into existence?”

  Saku shook his head. “Afraid not,” was all he said and looked glum.

  “Let us hypothesise that the time tunnel is produced by the Diet Wozna production process,” said George, thinking that phrasing it formally might help avoid any sense of criticism or feelings of sensitivity. “How could we test that?”

  “Well, only by halting production, I suppose,” said Saku, “And seeing what happened to the tunnel.”

  “Could we do that, do you think?” he asked, privately thinking that the chances of persuading Lord Mariusz to do that were rather small.

  “Well, of course,” said Saku. “Anything’s possible.”

  They started back to the castle, keeping mostly to well-lit streets. Every now and then Saku said they would just nip down this alley or that to work their way across town. George thought he kept looking over his shoulder at something and wondered what was wrong.

  Suddenly two guys appeared out of the shadows of a big box thing stuffed with rubbish. They rushed at George and Saku, bundling them into a very narrow dead-end alley that smelled as if something nasty had met its end there nastily. George fell on top of Saku as he sprawled on the ground. The two guys stood at the entrance to the alley facing them. One of them held a small tube with a sort of handle on it.

  “Don’t shoot!” cried Saku as George got to his feet and the person holding the tube pointed it straight at him. “Here, take this, it’s all we’ve got.” And he threw the bag of food at their feet.

  The guy not holding the tube laughed.

  “We don’t want your dinner, Prof,” he said in a funny sort of accent, even compared with some of the people they had met in the dining hall. “Our boss wants you, alive! Who’s the spare?” he added, nodding at George.

  “He’s a very important guest of Lord Mariusz’s,” said Saku quickly, thinking he’d better protect his friend’s reputation. George was completely bewildered.

  “Oh, yeah?” said the guy with the tube nastily. “Well, we’ve only room for one.”

  There was a loud bang and George dropped to the ground. Saku fell to one side and the guy with the tube fell backwards. At the same moment someone rushed through the gap between Saku and George and started hitting the first guy very hard, with sickening thuds and cries of
‘oof’ from him as the blows hit home. But then he rallied and turned his assailant upside down and went to jump on him. The new guy rolled clear and caught the first guy’s legs with his own as he turned, bringing him down, and they rolled over and over, each struggling to finish the other one off. They rolled into trash cans that were stacked nearby and more sickening smells filled the alley as the cans emptied their contents over the already dirty ground. The newcomer caught hold of the first guy’s shoulders and started bashing his head against the wall of the building at the side. The first guy went limp and the newcomer stood up, brushing the dirt off his coat, then walked to the entrance of the alley and looked up and down the street outside.

  Saku got up and went over to George, who was just watching, dumbfounded. He had never seen anything like this before, not even when the kids were playing in the castle square and squabbling over a ball.

  “Are you okay?” Saku asked, worry creasing his already creased face.

  “Yes, fine,” said George getting to his feet.

  Saku helped brush him off, although in truth there was little to worry about.

  “I thought you’d stopped a bullet then, when you went down so suddenly,” he said.

  “What’s a bullet?” asked George, which got a strange look from Saku. He muttered something about ‘tell you later’ under his breath.

  The newcomer came back to them, eying George with a sort of professional once over, and handing him the bag of food retrieved from the ground.

  “You might as well keep this,” she said in a clear, sweet voice, “you might feel a mite peckish after your adventure.”

  “Thank you, Aurora,” said Saku to the newcomer, who George now saw was a female person, neatly dressed in a dark suit, lithe and well balanced on her feet, like a dancer. “I’m always glad to know you’re my security, and I always protest I don’t need it, but I’m glad you were with us tonight.”

  “Nice speech, Prof. Just don’t get into the habit of needing me. OK?” and she turned and walked away into the night.

  “She’s gone!” said George, beginning to get some sort of idea of what was going on. “Who were those people that attacked us? What did they want?”

  “Oh, they were just thugs from a rival castle,” Saku replied lightly. “Lord M often says I shouldn’t go out in case someone tries to steal me away from him, and so there’s always someone, security they call it, keeping an eye on me. Just in case, you know.”

  “Good thing,” George mused.

  “Good thing indeed,” said Saku, who looked a little more shaken by the incident than he was trying to show. “Let’s get home now though, it’s not far and it’ll be main streets from now on.”

  They chatted lightly about topics they had gone over earlier, trying to restore their balance and get over the shock of the assault. Saku explained about the tube shooting bullets out very fast and if they went into you they could do lots of damage to your body, as demonstrated by the way Aurora had shot the second guy just as he was about to shoot George. He wasn’t going to shoot anyone else in future, that was for sure. Saku was amazed that George knew nothing about guns, as he termed them, but said it was a good thing really that people didn’t use them in George’s world as they caused a lot of problems, really. “More than they solve,” he added sadly.

  They reached the entrance to Castle Hattan safely. The guards at the entrance waved them through then locked and bolted some stout-looking doors after them. They were made of wood laced with metal of some sort and looked much stronger than the thick wooden doors of Castle in the Marsh, thought George. He wondered whether these other castles try to attack each other or whether it was just a show of superiority. Then he saw some stairs and remembered how high up the sky courtyard must be and his heart sank. He started towards them.

  “No, it’s ok, George,” said Saku. “We don’t have to walk. Come and try this.”

  He led George over towards the poles they had come down and demonstrated the use of some ropes that were hanging in an adjacent bay.

  “It’s all done by counterweights,” he explained. “We can also restore some of the energy in the system by getting them to charge our dynamo too.”

  George had great fun with the counterweight system that lifted people up from floor to floor. Saku didn’t mind letting off steam either, after their shock, so they went up a few floors, then came back down again laughing and chatting about their energy theories again. The guards at the entrance door watched them in partial disbelief and partial disapproval. They went right to the top, where Saku said they should have a look at the city by night, as well as the lovely stars.

  As they walked to the arches to look down on the twinkling lights below, Lord Mariusz came out of the door leading to his quarters.

  “Greetings, my lord,” said Saku, and George echoed him and added a formal bow for good measure. “We’ve fixed the power supply and had some ideas we’d like to discuss with you.”

  “I’m kinda in a hurry. Give it to me in a nutshell,” Mariusz responded.

  “We could test our theory on the time tunnel if we can put production off-line for a day or two,” said Saku.

  “Not exactly off-line,” put in George hurriedly, “we can keep production quotas well in line with target.”

  “WHAAT” said Mariusz, “What the h--- do you think you guys are playing at?”

  “Well it’s only...” started Saku, but Mariusz interrupted him.

  “I have to go - now” he said, as the clock on the tower as it started to strike midnight. He dashed into the time tunnel.

  “Oh well,” said Saku, with a sort of sag to his shoulders.

  “I don’t think you should have put it in a nutshell,” said George sadly. “I generally find you have to be very cautious about explaining these sorts of things to people. They usually get the wrong end of the stick.”

  Saku looked crestfallen. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “It’s why I try not to talk to people really.”

  They turned back to the view, both wrapped in thought. George was divided between wondering about the source of the time tunnel and wishing he could ask Fred to Think about it. Saku pondered the impossibility of persuading people to his point of view.

  Suddenly Mariusz rushed back out of the time tunnel, his hair dishevelled and with dirt on his legs and feet.

  “YOU!” he yelled at George, who sidled off to the right in order to avoid a direct confrontation. “AND YOU!” he yelled at Saku, who edged off in the opposite direction. He strode over to Saku and cuffed him round the ear: “I’ve a good mind to throw you in chains!”

  George, who didn’t like the sound of this at all, continued to edge round so he was well away from the action. He wished he were in his own castle where he knew where the secret passages were to provide easy exits.

  “And as for you, you meddling, interfering, jumped-up little nothing....” George continued to edge sideways as Mariusz started towards him. “YOU will be locked in chains and thrown into my deepest dungeon. GUARDS!”

  At the sound of that, George ducked under all the outstretched arms that suddenly appeared to try to grab him, and jumped down the only secret passage he knew... the time tunnel.