Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  “People are going to get this tattooed,” Chloris says, entirely approving, looking at the mirror and the utterly unsuitable colours of the black and red version, turned to the second, considering-inquiries, position.

  “Truly modular bindings,” Chloris says. “Ought to be original enough.”

  Doucelin says that’s previously unknown, “undemonstrated.” Benefits of a developed mathematics, Halt had said, approving both the thing and the use.

  “Asked for no lads on the examining committee.” Since any lad’s emotional approval will stop at the economic utility.

  Chloris grins at me, sighs, hands the binding back. “Got the accounting worked out for the laundry savings?”

  “Laundry, and tricky sewing with fitting, and illusions don’t wear out. I’ve had to swear the whole shot-shop to secrecy and make them promise not to wear theirs until after.”

  Examining committees hate it when you show up with an already ongoing economic disruption, it makes them feel coerced and they get tetchy about it.

  Chapter 47

  Chloris

  It looks like a canning funnel, only too large. Sized for a fifty-litre keg, so it will work for a ten-litre bucket or a hundred-litre cask. A barrel you’re going to need some supports.

  The lid needs to be suspended to work. Sitting over another keg, hung from something overhead, it doesn’t matter except for being where what isn’t water goes.

  It’s heavy, because the funnel and the lid are nickel-bronze a centimetre thick, with full-thickness rolled edges. The markings for the binding, etched and filled with white and black enamel, are under the rolled edges; no risk of abrasion or other material wear. More than enough strength to handle the mechanical strain, and something the wreaking-shops can make, they haven’t got a way to use titanium.

  Titanium would be better, lighter and as hard to corrode, but better still would be to get the mechanical force out of the binding.

  I couldn’t manage to do that.

  It’s still useful.

  I’ve got five clerks here, not examiners, they’re from the Hale-gesith and the Lug-gesith and the Food-gesith and Parliament, the one from Parliament’s Hyacinth. There’s three doctors, the Independent Clear, and five members of Parliament.

  Someone heard about my project, probably after I asked about water-quality testing. I got asked for a demonstration, my guess that water quality’s a stubborn issue for the Displaced was right.

  “No mesh?” one of the doctors says, asks, they’re a little surprised.

  “Mesh would conduct. When the binding’s not active,” I pick the funnel up and drop a pebble through it, it falls the way you’d expect, “there isn’t anything there. When the binding is active and without command,” I turn it on, drop another pebble, there’s a sort of skittering sound and the pebble falls out of the lid, “anything dead gets sorted, anything alive and smaller than a gramme goes through the lid, anything larger than a gramme,” and I put the funnel on like a hat. There’s more of a skittering sound, this isn’t good for my hair, and I pick the funnel up while saying “Doesn’t pass through.”

  All three doctors, well, everybody except Clear, look appalled.

  “Basic gate-safety in the binding, I didn’t devise it, that’s been known art for thousands of years.” It’s not there when you reach through the wrong way, either.

  The bucket, well, that’s full of whatever you get taking a scoop out of the swamp back of the sand pit.

  Put the ward up in the sand pit, and kept it up the whole walk, the bucket was never out of it, Clear’s here because of skill in water testing, but they can attest to that if they need to, it’s all the binding.

  Activate the binding, take the lid off the bucket, dump the bucket through the funnel, thinking filter at the binding. Stop thinking filter and the default rules apply. Listen to the squeak from the metal as the spell in the binding exerts force. Did the calculations five different ways, got Blossom to check them, got Dove to break a funnel for me and measured the force. It’s completely safe, hundreds of thousands of cycles if the spell was ten times stronger.

  I still hate that squeak.

  Get about four-fifths of a bucket of water in the keg, get about a fifth of a bucket of dead mud in the big bucket under the lid, all at regular pouring speed.

  “How big?” one of the members of Parliament says.

  “Anything that fits in a sphere with a diameter a third the diameter of the binding or smaller.” Which isn’t very big for this, it’s only about a decimetre and a half across. Seventeen centimetres, exactly. Drop a big rock into the funnel and it will jam.

  Clear’s muttering charms over the bucket, they let the doctors get little sample vials first, the doctors are giving it the full careful treatment, the vials are on sticks. The mud samples get taken from behind wards.

  Ten minutes later, no one, thankfully, says anything, everyone’s staring at the doctors and Clear instead of me, the doctors don’t seem to notice and I don’t think Clear could notice from inside their working trance.

  “Pure water,” Clear says, ceasing to mutter. “Nothing arcane until I touched it.”

  The doctors are looking at me. “Nothing. The mud’s completely dead.”

  Two of the members of Parliament are having trouble not saying anything, despite formally just being here to observe, they’re not part of the technical evaluation. Completely different from the evaluation of an own-work project to meet the requirements of being an Independent.

  Hyacinth’s got the perfect still clerk face, and voice. “This particular device was made by a wreaking shop?”

  I nod, carefully. “One of four, as prototypes.” The shot-shop wasn’t completely certain they knew how to roll the rim without distorting the markings, or if that was easier than some other protective coating. The first try had the enamels not stay distinct, nothing messy, just failed to work.

  “I can’t give you a value. It’s an accomplished wreaking team, these are prototypes, the markings could be improved for speed in production.”

  The Food-gesith clerk says “May I?” and waits for my nod before picking up the funnel, hefting it, setting it back down.

  “Forecast durability?”

  “Until the enamel breaks, probably not more than a hundred years.” Lots of force, it’s not conduction, precisely. Not as durable as something made from nickel-bronze feels.

  “Technically indefinite,” the clerk says, nodding.

  “How’s it work?” The senior doctor is sorcerous enough to expect to be able to tell.

  Have to think of it as practice for the examining committee.

  “The gate’s a traditional pattern; it passes everything that isn’t water to the lid. The lid and the funnel each have a novel binding activated by an operator which renders everything falling through it inert.”

  “Inert,” Clear says. Not a question, but the request for a definition’s unmistakable. Grue and Blossom use that exact tone, Halt just looks at you.

  “Dead, no metaphysic structures, biochemical simplification, no membranes or other cellular structures, nothing reproductive, nothing that replicates.”

  “Which is the substance of your own-work project?” Clear asks, and I nod.

  So it’s not polite to ask for more detail until it’s passed and published.

  “Can we have two of the prototypes?” The clerk from the Lug-gesith.

  I say “The shot-shop can make more,” at the same time Hyacinth says “You cannot evaluate an unpassed prototype.”

  Hyacinth wins the clerkly contest of wills that follows, there’s a sharp huff exhale and “Then get another three Independents and a null here,” from the Lug-gesith clerk.

  All three doctors are nodding. The clerk from the Hale-gesith and the clerk from the Food-gesith aren’t nodding, but they obviously agree, best careful clerkly face or no.

  Hyacinth looks at me.

  “My examination is scheduled for next month.” Well into next month, not
quite four décades from now. I’m sure Hyacinth knows that, Hyacinth got copies of the forms.

  “Written part’s done?” Clear says, knowing the answer. Anything critical had to be written up before the shot-shop could make the prototypes, the point is to have lots of these, for it to be something any wreaking shop can make.

  The critical things, yes, but not the notation or the better diagrams or the improvements for production efficiency. I could give the shot shop an example to work from, they’re used to Blossom.

  “Perhaps we should not endeavor to compel a student’s haste?” Wake doesn’t sound benevolent.

  Everybody recoils, even Hyacinth. Compel is very strong language, but it’s more that Wake wasn’t there, and now Wake is, and leaning on that long staff.

  Not in any way threatening in posture.

  I’m going to have to learn how to do that.

  The product of long practice, Wake says.

  Clear’s looking outright nervous. Everybody else is starting to pick that up.

  “People are dying,” the Lug-gesith clerk says. “All the usual problems with water, and then not knowing where the clean water is to start with.”

  Wake nods. “The Law provides for declaring a work fit by administrative fiat.”

  There’s a pause. “Despite certain lamentable past occasions.”

  Wake’s furious. It’s the way “lamentable” comes out. I don’t think anyone else can tell, not enough experience of Wake’s speech. Hyacinth might have some notion.

  “The Law does not provide for altering the date of an own-work examination to prevent the necessity of such a risky judgement on the part of duly appointed clerks.” Ed thinks this tone of voice sounds like erosion, mountains being ground down. I think it sounds like a complete absence of choice, of the possibility of any choice. You will.

  “Chloris is not your leornere,” the Lug-gesith clerk says.

  Well, not formally, formally we aren’t anybody’s.

  Family isn’t about formal, people forget that can apply, buttons from Halt isn’t paperwork.

  Wake says nothing for a couple seconds, and then says, very quietly, “Would it suit you better to have this conversation with Halt?”

  “I do hope so,” Halt says, standing behind everybody watching my demonstration.

  Heads turn.

  I’m so glad I’m not still in the food ecology.

  “Chloris has done something properly novel,” Halt says. “I think it is clever. But we do not suppose that any such thing is correctly done unless some dispassionate and appropriately skilled persons have evaluated it, then the workings are published and seen and several others replicate the work without benefit of the original worker’s presence.”

  Halt isn’t moving, Wake isn’t moving, I think Clear wants to vanish into the earth, no one is quite sure where to look or how to stand.

  “We do this because it saves mistakes and lives. The Power will have its little jokes, we cannot be sure that Chloris’ work is presently replicable, we could as easily have something that merely looks like a water purifier.”

  The Hale-gesith clerk nods. “As presented, were I to pour a jar of used sharps through the device, I would have a collection of sterile sharps in sterile dehydrated alcohol.” Brief, tight, smile. “A minute quantity of water would fall out of the device itself.”

  Never thought of that. Could get more selective with the gate, worked metal’s not a difficult category of things. Make sure all the sharps are point down.

  “The utility is much less if it works sporadically.” There’s a gesture at the bucket with the inert mud. “However convincing the present demonstration might be.”

  Hyacinth’s face is set very still and formal. “Is it the consensus that Chloris’ project represents sufficiently critical innovation to evaluate with the greatest immediacy?”

  “When do we have the next forty-person event from bad water?”, the Food-gesith clerk says, not precisely wry. “Soon gives a different answer than late.”

  “There will be another, and another,” the Hale-gesith clerk says, bitter or angry or both.

  Everyone nods.

  Don’t think that’s the question.

  “When yet matters,” Hyacinth says. “Those who would make the wreakings will neglect other work, as would also those set to testing.”

  “These” — the Hale-gesith clerk waves, it’s not quite points, it still seems very rude — “made bindings by the million last décade.”

  “They did not,” Wake says, voice still speaking of the one fixed fate. “That working’s simpler part is enchantment.”

  Nobody on a wreaking team, not anyone who tried, can do that enchantment. We asked, and people tried, and did their very best not to swear in front of Halt. The declarative part, well, Ed figured out that there was a way to do something declarative that would say the sentence into an enchantment, you have to be either Ed or Halt and willing to turn a rock into an intensely creepy rock, but if the wreaking-teams could do the enchantment it would have handled the declarative part.

  “So they could certainly do this,” the Hale-gesith clerk says, meaning us, the wizard-team, and flicks a finger into the side of the funnel.

  Breathe.

  “No more than anyone else, until it is properly examined.” Halt’s voice is cheerful, patient, the kind of patient you use talking to an infant.

  “Like that bug-charm was examined?” One of the doctors. “It’s wonderful, but it didn’t get tested.”

  “Three years by the Line,” Wake says. “Every banner and standard and signa.”

  People are looking at Wake.

  “You put something experimental in a battle-standard?” Hyacinth didn’t know that. Hyacinth would rather not know that. Hyacinth only just manages not to say “All the battle-standards?!” out loud.

  “The standard-captains felt the risk acceptable,” Wake says. “Some matter of awkwardnesses with hornets,” and now all the doctors are nodding. Hornets are just a problem, I don’t think there are any hornet species anywhere that have had time to evolve very far away from the weapons in their ancestry.

  “The Line has now standards.” Wake’s still just entirely implacable. “Has upon the bug-charm, and some others, filed formal use reports, advisories to the battalions.”

  Very positive ones, Blossom made a point of telling us last year, only that inerting isn’t this one. That one isn’t as simple, or as small, it didn’t need to be, even a company banner doesn’t need to worry about being any kind of subtle. It’s the same idea, I even know how it works now, instead of just being able to do it, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same spell.

  The Line report doesn’t count for my project, I checked that it doesn’t count, I’d be replicating my own work if it did count, would have to find a different project. My project’s about something wreaking-shops can make much faster than full-up water gates, that people can use when the rest stop isn’t there yet and they need water anyway, really, it’s not the specific spell.

  All those rest-stop water gates for the Folded Hills will take time.

  Blossom keeps sitting us down and making us all do the math, really do it, no borrowing Ed’s head and getting an answer. We can do any of these things, not all of them, and there’s all the things we’re the only people to do, the surprises, responses to war and disaster and overcome regular mechanisms.

  Still took me months, and an amazingly firm lecture from Clerk Francis about how much rest we should get and don’t get, to stop feeling like I ought to be making water-gates in my spare moments.

  Two of the three doctors are looking for something to put their pads of paper on, so I produce a work table, another work table, and sixteen chairs. Dove teases me about making a necklace out of so many furniture bindings, but, well, it is useful and the teasing’s almost entirely a way to get my shirt off.

  I don’t know why I’m fond of this sand pit, it’s blasted, it’s gritty, but we kept coming here to lear
n things. Would really rather it not fill up with angry.

  Wise child Halt says, it’s the attempt at benevolent.

  Thank you, to Halt and Wake, not particularly for the compliment.

  Clerks push, Wake says. Pushing back without and I get the idea of the rotation gesture, the switch from earthly to unearthly, requires practice.

  These clerks are arguing probability. It gets very cranky, spice-mill calculators coming out. The members of Parliament sort of drift away, into a clump, and start talking quietly. Cost and times, I think.

  Hyacinth looks up, after a quarter hour, maybe a little longer. “Chloris?”

  I nod yes, then say it.

  “Can you attest that this is all your own work?”

  “The work to make it was the Shot-shop. The design is mine, but it’s not my wreaking.” My wreaking got done in titanium, there are two of them. They’re hanging up in the garden shed.

  Hyacinth nods. “Could you attest to that, please?”

  So I do.

  Hyacinth hands Halt a sheet of paper, Halt pulls off a copy, and another copy, hands one back to Hyacinth, hands me the original.

  I’ve been excused my own-work examination.

  “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “We’ll ask you to help fix it,” Hyacinth says, quite firmly. “We can’t take your evaluation away and then make you suffer only the bad consequences of no evaluation.”

  “You do still need to publish,” Halt says.

  Just in case there was any possibility of doubt.

  Chapter 48

  Slow

  “Hey, Slow.”

  “Dove.”

  Dove’s in armour. Got a bucket of what look like throwing sticks. Says “Up for a variation on the drill?”

  It’s the good amused.

  Nobody’s turning to look, they all know Dove’s here, have since Dove presented to the sentry and latched in to get through the bubble politely.

  Company bubble, just the banner. Having Dove in it feels full.

  “How many files?” Not a company-sized bucket.

  The bucket lifts a bit, inquisitive, and I take it. “Four,” Dove says.