The Thunder of Engines

by Laurence Dahners

“What then?”

  “Physics.”

  Marks looked thoughtful but not fully accepting. “Are you thinking he made some kind of fundamental discovery?”

  Lee nodded, feeling a little tingle in her scalp when she realized how true it was.

  “Like what?” Marks asked.

  She shrugged, “I have no idea. I asked but he deflected all questions like that. He did say…” She stopped, suddenly struck by how important what she was about to say actually was.

  “What?”

  “He said it wasn’t a material,” she said slowly. “We got interrupted and I lost track of that in the ensuing conversation, but…” she looked Marks in the eye, “I don’t know why he’d lie about that. And, I think it’s really important. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he did say what it wasn’t. And you remember it comes in different densities. Or at least in two different densities. The density of water and the density of air.”

  Marks chuckled. “You think it also comes in the densities of earth and fire?”

  She snorted, glad she remembered a little bit about Aristotle and ancient Greek history. “I don’t think it’s limited to the densities of the ancient Greek elements either. I think it can be just about any density he wants. He said it could be lighter than air. Lighter than hydrogen. He also implied they could make it with a higher density than water, though he didn’t say how dense.”

  Marks' eyes had widened, “Neutron star dense?!”

  Lee drew back in surprise, “I don’t think so, but I didn’t ask that one.”

  Marks leaned back, looking thoughtful. “So, not a material. Density’s adjustable. Material properties are unbelievable.” He shook his head, “Well, I may not know what it is.” He smiled at Lee. “But I know we’ve gotta have it.” He looked at the time, “Tell me about the other people I’m going to meet there.”

  “Arya Vaii. She looks as if her ancestors came from India. Short hair, slender…” Lee suddenly didn’t want to describe Arya. The woman’s looks weren’t important to this deal after all. Then why did I describe what Kaem looks like? She shook her head to clear these random thoughts. “My understanding is that she’s their business person. A search for her didn’t confirm her major but she’s a senior and she’s in several University clubs aimed at business majors. She’s even got a small business that guides tours of haunted houses.”

  Marks looked thoughtful. “What did you think of her intelligence?”

  “I don’t have much to judge her by but I thought she was smart… I just remembered, Seba and Vaii are both Curtis Scholars.”

  “What’s a Curtis Scholar?”

  “Richard Curtis is an immensely wealthy hedge-fund guy. Came from poor beginnings, so started a scholarship that looks for poor kids, not just from the US but from all over the world. Something she said made me think that Vaii’s family wasn’t as poor as most of them. They definitely weren’t as poor as Seba’s family. A lot of the scholarships go to kids who’ve done well in various non-traditional learning systems. Quite a few of them got online educations from a thing called the Khan Academy. They don’t apply to Curtis. Somehow, he finds them. Curtis pays for them to take SATs and, if they do well, he pays for them to have full-ride scholarships at UVA, which is where he went to school.” She shrugged, “I get the impression they have to do very well on the SAT.”

  Marks nodded thoughtfully. “Poor and book-smart. Okay. What about the third one?”

  “Gunnar Schmidt. An older guy. I’d say late sixties to early seventies. Crotchety. Kaem introduced him as their fabricator. Called him an expert.”

  “You think he owns part of the intellectual property? Or is he just the guy that built their stazer and the molds they cast the stade in?”

  “I don’t know,” Lee said thoughtfully. “I think he’s just the builder, but he may have made important contributions.” Out the window, she saw they were pulling up to Staze’s utilitarian metal building. “We’re here,” she said to Marks.

  When he turned his head to look out the window, Lee felt both relieved and disappointed that she was no longer the focus of Marks’ intense gaze. As everyone started getting out, Lee told her phone to send Kaem a quick text that they’d arrived. Then wondered why. I want Kaem to succeed, she realized. I don’t want him getting blindsided by our arrival.

  Arya opened the door and let them into the building’s anteroom. Lee wasn’t surprised when Marks graciously took Arya’s hand and said, “You must be Arya Vaii? Lee’s told me about you. A Curtis Scholar, eh?”

  Arya looked flustered. Lee thought the young woman probably felt much like Lee had when she’d met the great man and become the focus of his regard. “Um, yes, I am. It’s very nice to meet you. I’ve, ah, been a great admirer of your career.”

  Still holding her hand, Marks arched an eyebrow, “Well I’m a great admirer of your product. I hear you’ve been getting offers from Orbital Systems and Martin Aerospace? Have they been good?”

  Vaii swallowed. “Um, their bids were… low. We feel they simply don’t understand the value of stade to rocketry.”

  She shouldn’t have told Marks that! Lee thought, stunned that Marks had drawn such an admission from the young woman.

  “That’s sad,” Marks said, without showing an inkling of the triumph Lee thought he probably felt. He shook his head. “Some people just don’t have the imagination.” He released Arya’s hand—which Lee thought he’d held far too long—and asked, “How much did they offer?”

  “Uh,” Arya looked like she was trying to resist the question but had been overwhelmed by his personality, “only ten million.”

  No! Arya! What’re you doing? Lee thought. Then, I’m supposed to be on Marks’ side. I should be excited she’s giving up information.

  Marks waved at his entourage, “I’d introduce you to all my people but perhaps it’d be better if we did the introductions where your other folks could hear them at the same time?”

  “Oh… sure,” Arya said, stepping to the door into the main area and opening it.

  In the big room, Arya indicated Kaem and Gunnar, introducing them. To them, she said, “I’m sure you recognize Aaron Marks, CEO of Space-Gen.”

  Kaem and Gunnar shook Marks’ hand, then Marks introduced his entire team, getting every name right as if he’d known them forever—rather than just having met the young engineers from Lee’s team that morning. He’s just as impressive with people as they say he is, Lee thought.

  Marks turned to Kaem then, saying, “I hear you’re the one the world has to thank for this amazing technology?”

  Kaem smiled gently, “Each of us played a part.”

  “Lee tells me you might be willing to demonstrate how you make stade?”

  Kaem nodded, “We can do that. We’ve developed a new method for forming complex shapes in stade that we think you’ll be interested in as well.” He turned to Gunnar, “How about if we make a cube of low-density stade for them?”

  Gunnar said, “I’ve already got the mold set up and filled. I’ll hook up the cables while you’re setting up the electronics.”

  It only took a few moments for Gunnar to connect the cables, but—as before—took a while for Kaem to adjust the settings on the rack of electronics. Lee wasn’t surprised when Marks started around the table to look at the equipment in the rack. She smiled a smile that never reached her face when Kaem closed the rack’s door and grinned up at Marks. “Sorry, but our patent attorney says we can’t let anyone see this stuff yet.”

  He doesn’t want Marks to see it either, but blaming it on their attorney’s a smart move, Lee thought.

  Marks smiled, showed his palms, and stepped back around to the other side of the table. “Sorry. I should’ve known,” he said magnanimously. “Don’t blame you a bit.”

  After some more fiddling, Kaem looked over at the mold, “Ready Gunnar?”

  Gunnar nodded solemnly.

  Kaem flipped a switch, then set a timer on his phone.

  When the timer
went off, he made more adjustments and flipped the switch that snapped. “Check it Gunnar?”

  Gunnar opened the door a tiny bit, then said, “It’s stizzled.”

  “All right. Here we go.” Kaem said, making another series of adjustments.

  Lee heard the capacitor charge and discharge, then Gunnar opened the door and nodded. He got out his knife and started working the stade out of the chamber. Once it came out, he gave it a little push in Marks’ direction.

  Marks caught the cube-shaped stade in a basket of fingers, oohed and ahhed over it a bit, then passed it on to the other members of his team. As they began looking at it, he turned back to Kaem. “Sorry, but I’m sure you understand my compulsion to be thorough. It’s occurred to me that you could’ve had that stade in the mold when we came in here. All the fooling around with the cables and electronics could’ve been a smokescreen for a magic sleight-of-hand event. I hope you don’t mind if we ask you to do it again before we start negotiating over millions of dollars?”

  Kaem smiled, “Not a problem. We’ll make you a water density one this time.”

  Marks said, “Lee tells me you can make them with densities even lower than air. If you don’t mind, I’d like to see that. Very low-density stade would, of course, be of great interest to the space industry.”

  Kaem and Gunnar glanced at one another. Kaem turned back to Marks. “We could do that, but Gunnar’d have to go back to his shop and get some equipment.” He glanced at Arya, “I think Arya’s arranged for us to have dinner somewhere. Perhaps later, while your team’s checking into the hotel and getting a brief rest before dinner, Gunnar and I could make a low-density stade and bring it to you at the restaurant. Right now, we could make you a water density stade while you’re watching for sleight-of-hand. That way you’d have three different densities to take home with you.”

  Marks hesitated a moment, then nodded, “Sounds like a good compromise.”

  Everyone watched while Gunnar turned the cube mold back on its back and filled it with the clear fluid from their bottles. Meanwhile, Kaem made a bunch of adjustments to the electronics. They went through the three stages of stazing they’d gone through before. When they were done, Gunnar pried another staze out of the mold. It looked exactly like the one before, but this one was heavy. Because Lee’d been worried she might’ve missed some sleight of hand last time, this time she’d kept a careful eye on Gunnar and the mold throughout the procedure. At no time was there an opportunity for him to slip a premade stade into the mold. They had to have made it on the spot.

  Marks nodded and said, “Amazing! Does it require a lot more power to create a dense stade than a light one?”

  Kaem smiled as if thinking, Nice try. Aloud he only said, “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question. Would you like to see some samples of how we think we could make combustion chambers without your having to break the mold to get it out after we’ve stazed the chamber? And, of course, without having to make another mold for the next engine.”

  “Of course,” Marks said enthusiastically. He didn’t even seem frustrated to have been denied again. Getting stonewalled couldn’t happen to him too often.

  Kaem showed them a group of several small stades. They were shaped a little bit like small baggies someone had blown up as if they were balloons. He said, “We’ve just tested a prediction of the theory that says if you form a stade around an existing stade, they remain separate to some degree.” He looked up at the people watching him, “One of the most important ways they remain separate is that we can dissolve one of the stades and leave the other one behind.”

  Kaem reached over and took a cube-shaped stade from Gunnar. “So, we did that. You can see that after we dissolved stades like those,” he nodded at the baggie-balloon shapes, “we were left with this cube-shaped stade that had a couple of cavities in the bottom of it.” He stuck a couple of fingers into openings in the cube, then carefully handed the slippery cube to Lee so she could pass it to Marks.

  Marks took the cube and digitally explored the cavities, but he was frowning. “Stades can be dissolved? With what?”

  Kaem gave a little shrug, “Just another of the many things we can’t tell you until we’ve got a contract.”

  Marks shook his head, “There’s no way we’re going to sign a contract to buy motors that might dissolve in the rain or something almost as ubiquitous.” He managed to sound somewhat angry, concerned, and implacable all at the same time.

  Kaem produced a reassuring smile. “You needn’t worry. We can guarantee your motors won’t dissolve without a purposeful intervention by our company.”

  “No,” Marks said, forcefully. “We’re not bidding without a better understanding.”

  Kaem shrugged. “Okay,” he said, calmly.

  After a moment of silence had passed, Marks impatiently asked, “Well then, what dissolves it?”

  “Oh,” Kaem said calmly, “Sorry. I meant, ‘It’s okay if you don’t bid.’ We’re sure someone will. If you’d like you could maintain your ‘right of first offer,’ to be sure we’d have to let you know when someone else bids. Or if no one else bids and we decide we are going to have to explain how they’re dissolved?”

  At first, Lee felt Kaem had made an impressively ballsy move with what’d he’d said. Then she realized that, in fact, Marks had painted himself into a corner by claiming he wouldn’t bid when he’d be a fool not to.

  Marks—as if he’d just realized what Kaem had said, not as if he’d ignored it so he could try to back Kaem into a corner—said, “Oh, wait. You said you’d ‘guarantee’ they wouldn’t dissolve?”

  “That’s correct,” Kaem said with a faint smile. Lee, having seen him smile quite a bit by now, would’ve characterized it as a “knowing smile.” She didn’t think anyone else would’ve picked up on that though.

  “So, if we bought them, then it turned out they did dissolve, you’d return our money?”

  Kaem smiled. “Absolutely. Though the language of the contract would have to exclude someone purposely dissolving them once they understood the tech. It’d have to be non-purposeful dissolution that threatened the function of the engines during normal use.”

  Marks’ eyes narrowed slightly. “How long do you think the engines are going to last under ‘normal use’?”

  Kaem smiled, “Believe it or not, we can sell you different types of stade. Some products we’d guarantee for a lifetime… some for shorter time periods. Right down to products that’d only last a few weeks, or even—”

  Kaem was interrupted when Marks exclaimed, “What the hell?!” which echoed what was going through Lee’s head.

  Still smiling, Kaem spoke as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “Though we’ve been assuming that you’d want stade that would last essentially until you wanted it disposed of. We’ve been pricing the engines at two million dollars each per that model.”

  Marks looked like he was about to explode. However, he took a deep breath, seemed to calm himself, and quietly asked, “And why would you think we’d want to dispose of engines?”

  Kaem shrugged, “To be honest, I sincerely hope that several hundred years from now we’ll have far better motors than the ones you design in the next few months. Ergo, you’ll want to dispose of these so they don’t accumulate as permanent landfill.”

  “You really think these motors will last hundreds of years, even under heavy use?” Marks said incredulously.

  Kaem nodded, “Without a doubt. Well, unless you buy the ones with shorter guarantees.”

  Arya interrupted, speaking to Kaem, “If you and Gunnar are going to make that low-density stade and we’re still going to be on time for our reservation at Argent, we’ll have to break up pretty soon. Is there anything else you were planning to demonstrate for the Space-Gen people?”

  “No,” Kaem said. He looked around at the people from Space-Gen. “Anything else any of you wanted to see?”

  Marks grinned, “A stade dissolving?’

  Kaem laughed, “Maybe you g
uys had better check into your hotel while Gunnar and I make you a lighter-than-air stade. We’ll meet you at Argent and you can have a go at browbeating us some more.”

  “Browbeat?” Marks said as if surprised. He smiled, “You haven’t seen a browbeating yet. You just wait till after this dinner you’re buying us.”

  “Wait!” Kaem said, “Arya, I thought you said Argent, but I’m pretty sure you meant the Cavalier Buffalo, right?”

  Arya looked confused for a moment. When she didn’t respond right away, Marks said with a suspicious tone, “What’s the Cavalier Buffalo?”

  Lee answered, “It’s a college dive bar sir.”

  “Awesome,” Marks said. “See you guys there at seven.” He turned and walked out the door.

  Arya fixed Lee with a pleading look. “Do you think he’s serious?”

  She turned to Prakant. “Would Marks really want to go to a dive bar instead of a nice restaurant?”

  Prakant snorted, “Oh, hell yes. He loves low-class bars.”

  Lee turned to Arya and shrugged. “I guess he probably would.”

  Arya rolled her eyes, “Oh, well. It’ll be better for our budget.”

  Lee frowned, “You haven’t already spent the million dollars Space-Gen deposited in your account, have you?”

  Arya had lifted her phone and said something to it. She gave a little shrug. “Not exactly.”

  “What’s that mean?” Lee asked.

  Arya shook her head and spoke through her phone. “Hello. Is this Argent?”

  ***

  Tipping liberally, Arya managed to arrange a back room for their dinner at the Buffalo. She cringed at the thought of holding a critical dinner in such a low-class place. This was not in alignment with what she thought she’d been learning in business school. Nor with her mother and father’s business sensibilities. Her parents had started out very poor and were diligently working their way up, but they’d always held any meetings at places that strained their budgets.

  However, she’d decided it’d be foolish to try to move this pack of—what she thought of as juvenile—men and boys to a better-quality establishment.