Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XVII

The idea had been that while there were restrictions on who could make cloth for sale, there were no such restrictions on who made thread. So if they could use the machines to make fine high-quality thread quickly and cheaply, they could have the savings of the improved production and slip through a loophole in the laws by exporting not washed wool, but thread. Carded wool was wool under the law. They could export no more of it than washed wool. They got a slightly better price for it, true.

He wasn't sure whether he was more displeased by Don Alfredo or the disloyalty displayed his shepherds. Don Ramon felt he was a generous, if not extravagant, lord. He didn't approve of extravagance, especially in regards to dealing with the lower classes. It only lead to trouble.

In Don Ramon's world, there was a place for everyone and everyone belonged in their place. He was born a hidalgo and a Spanish noble, a defender of the church and of Spain. His shepherds had been born shepherds. He, like his father before him, generously allowed the shepherds to trap rabbits. But that was a matter of generosity, not of law.

Now, taking that generosity as license, his shepherds were stealing from him… stealing the expensive angora rabbits imported not just from Germany, but from the future. Apparently egged on by the over-educated craftsmen he'd had to import to build the spinning machine. Proving that education, especially of the lower classes, was a threat to the faith and to the social order. Where was the loyalty?

Machines, it turned out, were even stupider than Agustin or Luis had thought. To stretch a batt into a rope, what the papers called a sliver, they were using a series of rollers, like those they had built for the spinning machine. Each roller turning a bit faster than the one before. "I don't understand it, Lucia." Agustin complained.

"Never mind about that!" Lucia said. "Don't you pay any attention to what is going on in the world?"

"What?"

"One of the other families in the Mesta has started selling limited quantities of Angora wool. From what I hear, the de Aguilera family is convinced that they got the rabbits from us." She looked down at the table. "It might even be true. A lot of people in the village were upset when they took our rabbits. And they didn't get all of them.

"They've placed guards at the mouth of the valley and no one is allowed to leave."

"It'll be all right," Agustin insisted. "Once we get the spinning machine working, everything will calm down." He tried to carry conviction in his voice, but it was hard going. The truth was that the improvements already made should have satisfied the de Aguilera family, at least for now. Cleaning and carding took at least as much of the time in going from wool to wool thread as spinning did. The project was already a success.

Not all the notes from the German source were directly on spinning. There had been some on more general mechanics and their impact and how that lead to the industrial revolution. Based on those books, they had done a couple of studies. The time saved by the cleaning cages, the drying racks, and the carding machines meant that more man hours, woman hours, could be spent on spinning. From the books, they had also made some improvements in the spinning wheels. They were producing a lot more thread for a lot less labor than before the project had started. Why didn't the de Aguilera family see that?

Things like this had happened before. The contractors would complain about a project, generally in preparation for extorting the costs back from the craftsmen or running the craftsmen out of town without the final payment. But that wouldn't work here because of the major concern with secrecy. It was starting to feel like a story from ancient times, about the workers buried with the Pharaoh to keep the secret traps secret.

To avoid thinking about the unreasonableness of the de Aguilera family, Agustin turned his mind back to the unreasonableness of the rope stretcher. It was at least something he had a hope of solving.

The rope stretcher consisted of five sets of rollers each turning a bit faster than the last, and each a little closer to the next than to the last. Agustin had figured that the wider the rope, the more distance you needed to give it to stretch. Luis figured that it didn't matter, so he didn't argue the point, though-as a matter of aesthetics-he would have preferred that all the rollers be the same distance apart.

The first set of rollers was a foot from the second, the second was a half a foot from the third, which was a quarter foot from the fourth, which was only an inch and a half from the last set. But in spite of that, it took them a while to realize what was happening. Because you couldn't always tell that the batt of wool had lost cohesion between the first and second set of rollers, sometimes it looked like they were coming apart between the second and third sets. Or it looked like the third, fourth or fifth set was causing the problem by pulling too hard.

It was Luis that saw it. He was watching the stretcher shred rather than stretch another batt of carded wool and picked up a single strand of wool. He stretched it out as long as it would go and then pulled on it some more. Naturally, it broke. It really didn't have anything like the stretchiness of a piece of thread.

He looked back at the stretcher and began to visualize what was happening to the hairs as they went through the rollers. It wasn't that they were stretching; they were sliding against each other. At least he thought they were. He picked a fragment of the wool batt and pulled it apart. Slowly, carefully, watching the individual strands. Yes. It was the strands slipping past each other that allowed the wool to stretch. They were tangled together, but after being carded they weren't that tangled. Sort of half tangled.

He looked back at the rollers. Then he remembered something from the spinning machines. He was pretty sure that the rollers were all the same distance apart on the spinning machine. He picked up another bit of wool and slowly fed it into the stretcher. He wasn't really trying for a rope now, he was just carefully watching to see what would happen. He used very little wool because he wanted to be able to see what was happening to the threads. And see he did. Suddenly, he saw it all. A bit vaguely to be sure, but he saw it.

He started adjusting the distance between the sets of rollers. No easy job, because they weren't designed to be adjustable. That was what Agustin found him doing. He tried to explain what he was doing to the carpenter but the words came out jumbled. He wasn't used to being the one who wanted to try something different.

Even after the second run through Agustin didn't get it, but he just shrugged and said, "Tell me what you want me to do."

BLAM! The sound of a shot woke Lucia. Then there was shouting. "Somebody catch that rabbit!"

Still only half awake, Lucia looked around and noticed that her little brother Juan was missing. Suddenly she had a bad feeling. She quickly put on a shawl over her shift and ran out of the cottage. And almost ran over a rabbit glowing white in the moonlight. The rabbit dashed around the corner and was gone.

Lucia could see lights waving in the distance, and went to investigate. The de Aguilera guards were milling around with torches, scattering in all directions. Except for one, who was bending over a slight form that lay in the dust. "Juan!" Lucia shouted, and ran toward the guard.

The guard sprang to his feet and pointed his gun at Lucia. "Get back!"

"He's bleeding. Let me bind his wounds."

"He's dead," the guard said harshly. "He tried to slip out of the valley carrying the white rabbit. Got shot for his trouble and now the damned rabbit has run off again." Then he shook his head and relented a bit. "Go ahead, girl. Talk to him while you can."