The High-Tech Knight

by Leo Frankowski

  Enough concrete will stop anybody.

  The valley was filled with huge trees. Oh, nothing like what you would find on the west cost of America, but hundreds of them were well over two yards thick at the base. Poland had many such trees at the time and for a very good reason.

  It was extremely difficult to fell a really big tree with only axes. Once you did have it down, without machinery it was very hard to move. For the small groups of woodcutters common at the time, it was impossible.

  And then, what could you do with it? Medieval Poles made boards by splitting logs and then planing the wood smooth. That doesn’t work on a log that is as big around as you are tall.

  For many centuries, they left the big trees alone and took only the small ones.

  I’d had a dozen steel crosscut saws and ripsaws made, some of them four yards long. We had big timber, and fasteners were very expensive. The price of nails was absurd. But the bigger the parts, the fewer the fasteners. My plans called for the floors, doors, and shutters to be made with wood slabs a yard wide and the outer walls of boards a yard wide and a half-yard thick with the bark left on. It would be good insulation and indestructible except by fire.

  Eventually I was to regret this plan. With no civil engineering experience, I had no idea how much a big piece of green wood can shrink. Every winter, a crew had to caulk the walls; I don’t think that a single door ever fit right. It would have helped if I had laid the outside slabs sideways, in the manner of a traditional log cabin. But, no, I had to put them all vertically because it looked better structurally.

  Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how well your walls are insulated if you have to open a window to the wind when you want to see. In the winter, without artificial lights or window glass either you are cold or you are blind. I began to see why architects are such a conservative bunch. But I get ahead of myself.

  The carpenters objected and were vocal about it. But not one of them mentioned the shrinkage problem and I chalked up their complaints to stick-in-the-mud conservatism. I paid the bills and got my way. As the old capitalist saw goes, “Him what pays, says.”

  It’s remarkable, some of the things you have to do to build socialism.

  They objected even more to the climbing spikes. These are the things that strap to a man’s legs and feet and let him, with a sturdy leather belt, quickly climb a tree to cut the top off. A big tree has to be topped, otherwise it will shatter when it falls.

  But my people were lumberjacks who had never left the ground. They thought being fifty yards off the ground was scary.

  Of course, they were right. Hanging fifteen stories up while trying to saw through the tree you’re hanging from is scary. But I couldn't let them think that, or we'd never get the place built.

  When the first of the teams flatly refused to climb more than ten yards up a tree, I called them down.

  “Come on down, you cowards!” I shouted, tossing my sword to a bystander. “Yashoo, let’s show these little boys how to do their job.”

  The foreman came to me and whispered, “My lord, I’ve never, I mean I can't! I've never done anything like this before!”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret,” I whispered back. “I haven't either.”

  “Then how-”

  “If these people can’t do the job, I'll have to send the lot of you back to Cieszyn and find another batch. But if you do it and I do it then they'll have to do it. Now, what say we both go up there and pretend like we have more courage than brains?”

  He thought a few seconds. “If I die, you’ll take care of my wife?”

  With the rig we were using, if one of us came down, the other would come with him. But Yashoo needed assurance, not logic.

  “On my honor.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  It was a huge tree and even fifty yards up it would take two men to pull a saw through it.

  With a two-man rig, each has spikes strapped to his legs and feet. Each has a hefty belt around his waist, and a long, thick belt goes across each back, around both men and the tree. The long belt fastens to each personal belt twice, with sturdy loops. It’s really two shorter belts end-to-end, with a buckle by each right hand. The big belt has to be shortened periodically as the tree is climbed.

  Technology is not a single thing. It’s a lot of little things that add up. Things as simple as a new way to climb a tree, something we've been doing since before we were human.

  I’d watched men topping trees at a lumberjacks' festival and I'd thought out how it had to go. The men had to work as a close team, taking two steps in unison and hitching the big belt up together.

  To make matters worse, they had to be on opposite sides of the tree, where they couldn’t see one another. If either moved without the other, they'd come down. Maybe not the whole way, since you shorten the belt as you go up. if the belt is too short to let you slide all way down the tapering trunk to the ground, you just might get to live.

  But the least you got was a faceful of bark and a bellyful of slivers.

  Seeing something and thinking about it is a far cry from actually having done it. Having to do something dangerous the first time in front of an audience doesn’t help much either.

  As we strapped on our gear, with the thick new leather squeaking about us, we rehearsed our moves and discussed each step. Yashoo’s hand was shaking, but I figured he'd steady down once he was actually up the tree.

  “I’m frightened, Sir Conrad,” he said desperately, as we passed the belt around the tree.

  “Of course you’re frightened. Only a fool wouldn't be. But a man does his job for all of that.” I took a few steps up. It wasn't bad. Sort of like climbing a ladder.

  Yashoo made an elaborate sign of the cross, which ruined the effect I was trying to create, started up, and then seemed to slow down.

  “Come on, Yashoo! Just like a dance! Stomp your spikes right into the tree. Left foot, right foot, raise the belt! Left foot, right foot, raise the belt!”

  “But I can’t dance either, my lord!”,

  “What ’either'? You're climbing! And I bet Krystyana could teach you how to dance.” We were maybe ten yards up. “Maybe I could ask her. What do you think about throwing a dance Saturday night? Do we have any musicians?”

  “Please don’t talk about dancing. I fell down on a dance floor, too.” He talked like a coward, but he was keeping right up with me.

  “Cut that out! We’re almost there.”

  The saw was tied to my belt by a measured length of rope. When it started lifting, we were high enough. I leaned around to where I could see my partner. He was white, bone white.

  “Yashoo, I think there’s enough of a breeze blowing so we won't have to take a wedge out. We'll do a back cut on my left first.”

  Yashoo didn’t answer, but I could hear him praying. He took his end of the saw and did his part. We worked in silence, getting the feel of each other's rhythm. After the blade started binding, we cut from the other side.

  When we were most of the way through, the tree parted with an explosive crack! It leaned way over as the top came crashing past us, then snapped back like a released bow.

  It was like being on the end of a whip half the length of a football field that was snapping back and forth fifteen stories in the air. The trunk now came only to our waist and I could see Yashoo digging his white fingertips into the bark. Mine were pretty white, too.

  My mother told me I should have gone to the beach.

  “Well, Yashoo, what do you think? Should we walk down, or shall we have the men saw down the tree so we can ride?”

  He stared at me but didn’t answer.

  After we got down he said, “Do I have to do that again?”

  “Not today. Go back to supervising. I’m going to see how the masons are doing.” I swaggered away, stopped at a latrine and vomited my guts out.

  Eventually, we had four good topmen. They considered themselves to be something of an elite, strutting around and wearing their spikes cons
tantly, even to church.

  Chapter Seven

  After the first few days, I put myself on a schedule which I have tried to stick to ever since. Mornings, I played manager and was available to anyone with a problem. Afternoons, I was a designer and your troubles had to be serious before I was bothered. Natalia did a good job keeping me from interruptions.

  I had my drawing board set up in my hut and went through parchment by the bundle, drawing the buildings and making detail drawings of every sort of board in them, a job made easier because I used a lot of standard parts. That is to say, many parts were identical and the same design could be used over and over.

  I had a few dozen sticks cut to exactly the same length and as long as I remembered Lambert’s yard to be. These became our standard of measurement. A lot of the men had difficulty with the concept of standards. They were used to cutting each piece to fit as they went along and all this measuring and looking at plans struck them as a stupid waste of time.

  As the weeks went on, there was a growing pile of finished parts, but that was not as satisfying as watching the buildings going up.

  I delayed assembly of the buildings for a good reason. Wood set directly on the ground rots and I wanted our buildings to have masonry foundations and basements.

  We couldn’t do masonry construction without mortar and we couldn't make mortar without coal.

  There was coal in the mine, but the mine was still full of water. Parts for the steam pump were arriving regularly from the Krakowski brothers, and the pump functioned well enough after some reworking, or TLC as the Americans call it, but it all took time.

  Oh, we could have used charcoal to make mortar, but that would have been time-consuming, too, and the coal would be there soon.

  Getting my way was rarely an easy task. I had to talk and persuade and cajole. I shouted and screamed and pretended to throw temper tantrums. But what helped most was when I dug out my bible and read them the description of the building of Solomon’s Temple. It put God on my side, which generally helps.

  Piotr Kulczynski, my accountant, was commuting regularly between Cieszyn and Three Walls, keeping the books on our operations here as well as on the Pink Dragon Inn and the Krakowski Bros. Brass Works. He was a very efficient young fellow except when he was looking wistfully at Krystyana, which, it seemed, was most of the time.

  The poor kid was obviously smitten, and just as obviously, she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. It wasn't any of my business. I just don't like to see anybody in that much pain. They were both about fifteen, and that can be a very rough time of life.

  I supposed that a certain amount of opposition to my plans from the workers was inevitable, but I never expected Vladimir and Piotr to be against my building plans. I had my drawings unrolled before us.

  “I tell you that these indoor garderobes are a bad idea,” Vladimir said. “I’ve seen them in some of the big stone castles. They make sense if you have to stand a siege. But that's the only time they use them, during a siege when you can't do anything else. The rest of the time, they use an outdoor privy just like everybody else.”

  “Shit stinks and you don’t want it in your house! In the second place, wood buildings can't stand a siege. They're too easy to burn down. So there's no sense in putting in a garderobe in the first place.”

  “I agree with everything you’ve said, but you've never seen indoor plumbing. It's completely clean and sanitary. No smells at all. And this will be more than a garderobe. Besides the flush toilets, there's a washroom and a shower room. We'll be able to clean ourselves and our clothes even in the wintertime. We'll have hot water, too. There's a big hot-water heater built above the kitchen stove. I tell you that a hot shower on a cold winter morning is a glorious thing.”

  “What happens to the shit?”

  “It’s flushed down these brass pipes until it leaves the building. Then it goes by clay pipes to these septic tanks and finally to this tile field.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Vladimir said.

  “Sir Conrad, what troubles me is the expense of all this,” Piotr said. “I have calculated that for what you are spending on cast brass pipes and all these pottery toilets and washbowls and the valves and all, you could hire twenty chambermaids for fifty years!”

  “That’s a pretty ugly job, isn't it? Hauling away someone else's chamber pots?”

  “There are many who would take it, sir, and be thankful.”

  “I’ll allow that it'll be pretty impressive, if it works,” Vladimir said. “But if you must have these gimcracks, why share them with the peasants? Put in a smaller bunch of fixtures for yourself and your high-born guests.”

  “Someday, everybody is going to have indoor plumbing. We might as well start here. I’m not going to deprive my people of something that basic.”

  “Your people would be far happier if you took what this cost and divided the money among them.”

  “Probably. But I’m still going to put in the indoor plumbing.”

  “It’s your castle,” Vladimir sighed. “These firewalls take a vast amount of stone and mortar. If you used that amount of material on the outside wall, it could be entirely of masonry, adding greatly to your defenses.”

  “I’m more worried about a fire than a war, at least in the next few years. We have over six hundred people here and the next settlement is eight miles away. If this building burns down entirely next winter, we might not survive it. With the firewalls where they are, it's likely that we wouldn't lose more than a fifth of our housing and we could live through that.”

  “You are lord here,” Vladimir said. “Another problem with this plan is the gate. It’s too big. Six knights could ride abreast through that thing. Reduce it by half, at least. It'll be a lot easier to defend.”

  “At this point, I’m not worried about defending against anything but thieves and wild animals. As you said, a wooden building can't stand a siege anyway. In later years, we'll build other walls, farther out, of bricks or stone. But even they'll need big gates. Remind me to tell you about railroads.”

  “Now what in hell is a railroad?”

  The days rolled by. We set up a saw pit, an arrangement whereby a log was rolled over a deep pit; then one man stood in the hole and another on top of the log, working a saw between them. It was a miserable job, with the man below eating sawdust and the man above breaking his back. They often traded jobs, but never decided which was worse.

  And it was slow. I did some time studies and calculated that, even with all of our ripsaws going constantly, the snow would be flying before the place was half done.

  Something Vladimir once said gave me an idea and we built a walkingbeam sawmill. We made a huge teetertotter out of a halved log that was fifty yards long. At each end, ropes and pulleys connected it to a long ripsaw, each two of our longest welded together. Wooden troughs, running downhill, guided a huge log into each blade.

  A railing ran around the teeter-totter’s edges, and sixty men walked back and forth, working the thing. You walked uphill until the high end came down, then you turned around and walked uphill again until the high end came down, then…

  Not exactly intellectually stimulating, but then very few of these people were intellectuals. It cut wood.

  What’s more, the strange, Rube Goldberg monster worked right the first time we tried it, and it was fast' enough. The only problem was that sixty men was half our workforce.

  But why did they have to be men? A man’s arms are stronger than a woman's, but this machine was worked by the legs, walking. A woman's legs are as strong as a man's. Why not?

  I put it to the women one night, during supper and got a lot of cold stares. Finally, I asked why. One woman got up and talked on and on about her hardships for the longest time until it dawned on me that she was assuming that I was not going to pay for this extra work.

  When I shut her up and said that I planned to pay for what I got, she turned right around and gushed so enthusiastically that I had to
shut her up again.

  It was the men who were against it. They’d been starving when I'd hired them and now they didn't want their wives earning extra money. Ridiculous' Finally, I got together with the foremen and we worked out a deal.

  The women would each work a half day, some before noon and some after. (A half day at this time of year was almost eight hours.) They would receive half pay and their money would be paid to their husbands. Stupid, but that’s the way they wanted it. And some of the bigger children could work if they wanted to, being paid by the pound.

  Loading the logs into the sawmill was a job for all our men and horses, despite all the ropes and pulleys we had going. But this could usually be done in a few minutes first thing in the morning and again just after dinner. After that the ladies could work without assistance for half a day.

  It had been an exhausting day, and I hoped whoever I found in my hut wasn’t expecting much. Except for Annastashia, who was regarded as Vladimir's property (or vice-versa), the ladies-in-waiting had apparently decided to share me equally, with Krystyana somehow being more equal than the other three. I never had anything to do with it and I never knew who I'd be sleeping with that night. But I never asked questions because when you're in pig heaven, you don't want to make waves in the mud.

  A few mornings later, there was a lot of shouting by the trail, so I went down to see.

  Vladimir, in full armor, was on his horse and leading two others that I recognized as being my own pack animals. Loaded on them were a lot of my steel tools and two dead bodies, former workers of mine.

  I ran over to his left side. “Vladimir! What happened?”

  “They stole your horses and property. I went to them,” he said in a quiet, strained way.

  I was suddenly furious. “God damn you for a murderous bastard! You killed two men over a couple of lousy tools?”

  He stared at me, his face white and strained. “No. I killed them for putting an axe into my side. Now help me down.”