S. Stirling - The Reformer

Gray crystals like granulated sugar carpeted the ground. "That's what we want, those crystals-the saltpeter. Scrape it up and put it in the barrels."

* * *

"Here, now, sir, you're a gentleman-you can't do that!"

The carpenter's voice was shocked and reproving.

Adrian smiled. "I'm afraid I have to," he said sympathetically.

The tub was an old wine vat, big enough to hold several hundred gallons. They'd set it up at a shed half a mile from the house, in case of accidents. Slaves were rigging a simple machine over it: a pivot on the beam above, with a hanging pole inside the barrel turning paddles. The power was furnished by ten more slaves, each pushing on a long sweep set into the pole at its top, near where it turned on the iron bolt set into the roof beam.

Adrian pulled his head back and dusted his hands; there were blisters on them, and a few splinters. He was surprised by how little that bothered him, as he pulled one free with his teeth. Not the pain; any Scholar of the Grove was expected to master the body's needs. It was the disgrace , the manual labor.

"My father captained his own ship, when he got started," he said by way of explanation.

Although he did it so that his sons wouldn't have to do it, he thought. Only leisure could give a man the freedom to cultivate his mind, or shape his body as an athlete. . and there was no slavemaster like an empty belly. That was why all the best philosophers were agreed that manual labor and its necessities were essentially degrading. Bestmun had held that labor should be delegated to those whose natures fitted them for slavery. . of course, in his day Emeralds had rarely been enslaved.

"Now here's how you do it," he went on. "You take three of those barrels-" he pointed to the ones that held the saltpeter, boiled and dried and reground "-and two of those-" the finely powdered sulfur; there was a hot spring on this estate "-and one of those with the charcoal dust, and you put them in. Three and two and one, three and two and one, until the big tun is two-thirds full. And all the time you're doing that, the paddles have to be kept going."

He turned and put his face close to the carpenter's. "And I'll be coming back now and then to check that you're doing it right, and the master will be very, very angry if I tell him that you're not. Understand?"

The carpenter nodded; he was as jumpy as a cat around a diretooth. Most of the estate slaves were, these days, with all the soldiers on hand. None of the troopers cared much about preserving Wilder Redvers' propery.

"And they still don't do things properly unless you stand over them," Adrian said in frustration.

Why should they? Raj replied.

A vision flashed into Adrian's head; a steam engine, that's what it's called. . on Raj's native Bellevue. A mass of metal tubes and wheels and parts, wrecked and fused. A man with a whip was beating another man, nearly naked and with an iron collar around his neck.

A slave has a positive incentive to damage things, unless he's a coward or unusually well-managed. And simple carelessness is bad enough.

* * *

The velipad was an estate animal, and knew the laneways better than his rider. Any landholding of this size had its artisans; Redvers had his in a series of workshops not far from the cottages that housed the home-farm segment of the plantation's workforce. Adrian pulled up and tapped his toes on the elbows of his velipad; the animal crouched to the ground, and the young man stepped off. The smell of hot metal came from within the bronzesmith's forge. Experiment had shown that bombs launched from a catapult tended to disintegrate if they were housed in clay pots of practicable thickness. Redvers had grumbled at the expense of sheet bronze, until they showed him a few survivors of the effects of a finely-divided mist of gunpowder meeting open flame.

The problem was, the bronzesmith had trouble grasping the concept of turning out large numbers of uniform containers without ornamentation or excess effort.

Why not? Raj said again. This man turns out fine work because it gives him pleasure. He's not particularly concerned with Redvers' political ambitions, or with anyone else's convenience. Why should he churn out things that don't give him satisfaction? He won't be paid any more if he does.

Adrian sighed again. Raj and Center were putting him through a course of study a good deal less agreeable than the Grove's lectures on the Good and the Beautiful. . but their concept of the Just Order was a good deal more empirically grounded.

He checked half a step. "I'll give him a bonus!" he said. "Under the table, of course." Redvers' funds would stretch to that.

You're learning, son. You're learning.

* * *

" Ufff! "

The other man grunted as his back struck the hard-packed dirt of the corral. Esmond stepped back panting; he had a graze under his right eye that was seeping blood, and his left thumb had been painfully wrenched. The six men who'd offered to take their new employer on were in considerably worse shape, though some of them had shown a thoroughgoing mastery of informal all-in style.

"Any more fools among those looking for a job?" he asked.

There were thirty men grouped around the entrance to the corral. All Emeralds; none too young-most of them had a few years on him-and all fairly hard-bitten. Many of them wore sailors' knitted caps with tassels, and the Goddess only knew how they'd ended up so far from the sea. Sailing on merchantmen going foreign was the main way an Emerald could learn the use of arms these days, that and signing on with one or another of the Lords of the Isles as a mercenary. . or as a pirate, not that there was much difference in that part of the world. A few did a hitch with the auxiliary light-armed slingers of the Confed forces.

"Good," he said, when no more volunteers stepped forward. He reached out his right hand, and his servant tossed a spear into it; the old Emerald pattern, six feet long with a narrow sharp-bladed stabbing head. "Now let's see who can use a sticker. Then we'll go on to javelin, sling, sword and knife."

The testing process lasted all afternoon, while the hot summer sun baked strong-smelling sap out of the eucalyptus trees that shaded the pasture beyond the corral. When he was finished Esmond's eyes looked twice as brilliant, staring blue out of the mask of reddish dust streaked with runnels of sweat. He gasped as he shoved his head into the bucket of water resting on the coping of the well, then poured the rest down his neck and tossed the bucket in for another load.

"Rejoice," he said dryly as his brother came up, a look of intense concentration on his face and a staff-sling in his hands. "Managed to bonk yourself on the back of the head again?"

"No, I think I'm getting the hang of it," he said seriously, his thin, intelligent face warming. "It's not that complicated once you grasp the basic theory."

Esmond snorted. "Weapons are something you have to learn with your skin and muscle and bone, not with your head," he said.

"Oh, I don't know," Adrian said mildly. "Knowing the basic principles always makes things easier to learn. Here, I'll show you."

The sling the younger Emerald held was a weapon popular because of its simplicity and compactness, but it needed as much skill to handle as a bow. There was a wooden handle four feet long, two silk cords of about a yard each-leather would have done, but not as well in damp weather-and a chamois pouch for the ammunition. Esmond blinked in slight alarm as his brother dropped an almond-shaped lead bullet into the pouch and let gravity draw the cords taut. Adrian's arms were well enough muscled, in a lean whipcord fashion; he'd be able to sling the bullet hard. Where it went was another question, and Esmond's fingers tightened on the single handgrip of the small round buckler he was carrying in his left hand.