The Ethical Engineer (11 page)

"It is as you say," Edipon pointed. "The mouths must always be filled
and woebetide if they shall go empty for the powers will halt or
worse. Fire goes in here as you guessed, and when the green finger
comes forward this lever may be turned for motion. The next is for
great speed or going slow. The very last is under the sign of the red
finger, which when it points indicates need, and the handle must be
turned and held until the finger retires. White breath comes from the
opening in back. That is all there is."

"About what I expected," Jason muttered and examined the container
wall, rapping it with his knuckles until it boomed. "They give you the
minimum of controls to run the thing, so you won't learn anything
about the basic principles involved. Without the theory you would
never know what the handles control, or that the green indicator comes
out when you have operating pressure or the red one when the water
level is low in the boiler. Very neat. And the whole thing sealed up
in a can and booby-trapped in case you have any ideas of going into
business for yourself.

"The cover sounds like it is double walled, and from your description
I would say that it has one of the vesicant war gases, like mustard
gas, sealed inside there in liquid form. Anyone who tries to cut their
way in will quickly forget their ambitions after a dose of that. Yet
there must be a way to get inside the case and service the engine,
they aren't just going to throw them away after a few months' use. And
considering the level of technology displayed by this monstrosity I
should be able to find the tricks and get around any other built-in
traps. I think I'll take the job."

"Very well, begin."

"Wait a minute, boss, you still have a few things to learn about hired
labor. There are always certain working conditions and agreements
involved, all of which I'll be happy to list for you."

"What I do not understand is why you must have the other slave?"
Narsisi whined. "To have the woman of course is natural, as well as to
have quarters of your own, my father has given his permission. But he
also said that I and my brothers are to help you, that the secrets of
the engine are to be revealed to no one else."

"Then trot right over to him and get permission for the slave Mikah to
join me in the work. You can explain that he comes from the same land
that I do, and that your secrets are mere children's toys to him. And
if dad wants any other reasons tell him that I need skilled aid,
someone who knows how to handle tools and who can be trusted to follow
directions exactly as given. You and your brothers have entirely too
many ideas of your own about how things should be done, and a tendency
to leave details up to the gods and have a good bash with the hammer
if things don't work the way they should."

Narsisi retired, seething and mumbling to himself while Jason huddled
over the oil stove planning the next step. It had taken most of the
day to lay down logs for rollers and to push the sealed engine out
into the sandy valley, far from the well site; open space was needed
for any experiments where a mistake could release a cloud of war gas.
Even Edipon had finally seen the sense of this, though all of his
tendencies were to conduct the experiments with great secretiveness
behind locked doors. He had granted permission only after skin walls
had been erected to form an enclosure that could be guarded; it was
only incidental that they acted as a much-appreciated windbreak.

And after much argument the dangling chains and shackles had been
removed from Jason's arms and light-weight leg-irons substituted. He
had to shuffle when he walked but his arms were completely free, a
great improvement over the chains, even though one of the brothers
kept watch with a cocked crossbow as long as Jason wasn't fastened
down. Now he had to get some tools and some idea of the technical
knowledge of these people before he could proceed, which would
necessarily entail one more battle over their precious secrets.

"Come on," he called to his guard, "let's find Edipon and give his
ulcers another twinge."

After his first enthusiasm the leader of the D'zertanoj was getting
very little pleasure out of his new project.

"You have quarters of your own," he grumbled, "and the slave woman to
cook for you, and I have just given permission for the other slave to
help you. Now more requests—do you want to drain all the blood from
my body?"

"Let's not dramatize too much. I simply want some tools to get on with
my work, and a peek at your machine shop or wherever it is you do your
mechanical work. I have to have some idea of the way you people solve
mechanical problems before I can go to work on that box of tricks out
there in the desert."

"Entrance is forbidden—"

"Regulations are snapping like straws today, so we might as well go on
and finish off a few more. Will you lead the way?"

The guards were reluctant to open the refinery building gates to
Jason, and there was much rattling of keys and worried looks. A brace
of elderly D'zertanoj, stinking of oil fumes, emerged from the
interior and joined in a shouted argument with Edipon whose will
finally prevailed. Chained again, and guarded like a murderer, Jason
was begrudgingly led into the dark interior, the contents of which was
depressingly anticlimactic.

"Really from rubeville," Jason sneered and kicked at the boxful of
hand-forged and clumsy tools. The work was of the crudest, the product
of a sort of neolithic machine age. The distilling retort had been
laboriously formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It
leaked mightily as did the soldered seams on the hand-formed pipe.
Most of the tools were blacksmith's tongs and hammers for heating and
beating out shapes on the anvil. The only things that gladdened
Jason's heart were the massive drill press and lathe that worked off
the slave-power drive belts. In the tool holder of the lathe was
clamped a chip of some hard mineral that did a good enough job of
cutting the forged iron and low-carbon steel. Even more cheering was
the screw-thread advance on the cutting head that was used to produce
the massive nuts and bolts that secured the
caroj
wheels to their
shafts. It could have been worse. Jason sorted out the smallest and
handiest tools and put them aside for his own use in the morning. The
light was almost gone and there would be no more work this day.

They left, in armed procession, as they came, and a brace of brothers
showed him to the kennellike room that was to be his private quarters.
The heavy bolt thudded shut in the door behind him and he winced at
the thick fumes of half-burnt kerosene through which the light of the
single-wick lamp barely penetrated. Ijale crouched over the small oil
stove cooking something in a pottery bowl. She looked up and smiled
hesitatingly at Jason, then turned back to the stove. Jason walked
over, sniffed and shuddered.

"What a feast!
Krenoj
soup, and I suppose followed by fresh
krenoj
and
krenoj
salad. Tomorrow I see about getting a little variety into
the diet."

"Ch'aka is great," she whispered without looking up. "Ch'aka is
powerful...."

"Jason is the name, I lost the Ch'aka job when they took the uniform
away."

"... Jason is powerful to work charms on the D'zertanoj and makes them
do what he will. His slave thanks you."

He lifted her chin and the dumb obedience in her eyes made him wince.
"Can't we forget about the slavery bit? We are in this thing together
and we'll get out of it together."

"We will escape, I knew it. You will kill all the D'zertanoj and
release your slaves and lead us home again where we can march and find
krenoj
far from this terrible place."

"Some girls are sure easy to please. That is roughly what I had in
mind, except when we get out of here we are going in the other
direction, as far away from your
krenoj
crowd as I can get."

Ijale listened attentively, stirring the soup with one hand and
scratching inside her leather wrappings with the other. Jason found
himself scratching as well, and realized from sore spots on his hide
that he had been doing an awful lot of this since he had been dragged
out of the ocean of this inhospitable planet.

"Enough is enough!" he exploded and went over and hammered on the
door. "This place is a far cry from civilization as I know it, but
that is no reason why we can't be as comfortable as possible." Chains
and bolts rattled outside the door and Narsisi pushed his gloom-ridden
face in.

"Why do you cry out? What is wrong?"

"I need some water, lots of it."

"But you have water," Narsisi said, puzzled, and pointed to a stone
crock in the corner. "There is water there enough for days."

"By your standards, Nars old boy, not mine. I want at least ten times
as much as that and I want it now. And some soap, if there is such
stuff in this barbaric place."

There was a good deal of argument involved, but Jason finally got his
way with the water by explaining it was needed for religious rites to
make sure that he would not fail in the work tomorrow. It came in a
varied collection of containers along with a shallow bowl full of
powerful soft soap.

"We're in business," he chortled. "Take your clothes off, I have a
surprise for you."

"Yes, Jason," Ijale said, smiling happily.

"You're going to get a bath. Do you know what a bath is?"

"No," she said, and shuddered. "It sounds evil."

"Over here and off with the clothes," he ordered, poking at a hole in
the floor. "This should serve as a drain, at least the water went away
when I poured some into it."

The water was warm from the stove, yet Ijale still crouched against
the wall and shuddered when he poured it over her. She screamed when
he rubbed the slippery soap into her hair, and he continued with his
hand over her mouth so that she wouldn't bring in the guards. He
rubbed the soap into his own head, too, and it tingled delightfully as
it soaked through to his scalp. Some of it was in his ears, muffling
them, so the first intimation he had that the door was opened was the
sound of Mikah's hoarse shout. He was standing in the doorway, finger
pointed and shaking with wrath. Narsisi was standing behind him,
peering over his shoulder with fascination at this weird religious
rite.

"Degradation!" Mikah thundered. "You force this poor creature to bend
to your will, humiliate her, strip her clothes from her and gaze upon
her though you are not united in lawful wedlock." He shielded his eyes
from sight with a raised arm. "You are evil, Jason, a demon of evil
and must be brought to justice—"

"
Out!
" Jason roared, and spun Mikah about and started him through
the door with one of his practiced Ch'aka kicks. "The only evil here
is in your mind, you snooping scut. I'm giving the girl the first
scrubbing of her life and you should be giving me a medal for bringing
sanitation to the natives instead of howling like that." He pushed
them both out the door and shouted at Narsisi. "I wanted this slave,
but not
now
! Lock him up until morning then bring him back." He
slammed the door and made a mental note to get hold of a bolt to be
placed on this side as well.

There were more
krenoj
for breakfast but Jason was feeling too good
physically to mind. He was scrubbed raw and clean and the itching was
gone even from his sprouting beard. The metalcloth of his Pyrran
coverall had dried almost as soon as it had been washed so he was
wearing clean clothes as well. Ijale was still recovering from the
traumatic effects of her bath, but she looked positively attractive
with her skin cleaned and her hair washed and combed a bit. He would
have to find some of the local cloth for her since it would be a shame
to ruin the good work by letting her get back into the badly cured
skins she was used to wearing. It was with a sensation of positive
good feeling that he bellowed for the door to be opened and stamped
through the cool morning to his place of labor. Mikah was already
there, looking scruffy and angry as he rattled his chains; Jason gave
him the friendliest of smiles that only rubbed salt into the other's
moral wounds.

"Leg-irons for him, too," Jason ordered, "And do it fast. We have a
big job to do today." He turned back to the sealed engine, rubbing his
hands together with anticipation.

The concealing hood was made of thin metal that could not hide many
secrets. He carefully scratched away some of the paint and discovered
a crimped and soldered joint where the sides met, but no other
revealing marks. After an hour spent tapping all over with his ear
pressed to the metal he was sure that the hood was just what he had
thought it was when he first examined the thing—a double-walled metal
container filled with liquid. Puncture it and you were dead. It was
there merely to hide the secrets of the engine, and served no other
function. Yet it had to be passed to service the steam engine—or did
it? The construction was roughly cubical, and the hood covered only
five sides. What about the sixth, the base?

"Now you're thinking, Jason," he chortled to himself, and knelt down
to examine it. A wide flange, apparently of cast iron, projected all
around, and was penetrated by four large bolt holes. The protective
casing seemed to be soldered to the base, but there must be stronger
concealed attachments because it would not move even after he
carefully scratched away some of the solder at the base. Therefore the
answer simply had to be on the sixth side.

"Over here, Mikah," he called, and the man detached himself
reluctantly from the warmth of the stove and shuffled up. "Come close
and look at this medieval motive-power while we talk, as if we are
discussing business. Are you going to co-operate with me?"