“Hope, you’re aware of the professional ethics that bind a healer.”
“Of course. It’s just that… Well, I’d really like to know. I’ve got a sense, somehow, that it’s tied in.”
Sincerity sighed. “Your sense is… accurate,” she said carefully. “But that is Verity’s story to tell, and I can’t tell it to you. I might be able to get your father to tell you his side, though I warn you, it… well, it doesn’t reflect well on him, and he’s likely to soften it.”
“Father? But Father is…”
“You don’t know what your father is,” said Sincerity, then pursed her lips. “And that’s not mine to tell either,” she said. “I’ll talk to him. He’ll do anything for you, perhaps even that.”
“Thank you. I just want to understand.”
“This I can tell you,” said the mage. “It’s nothing you’re to blame for. Don’t let yourself think that. Oh, come on, old woman,” she said aloud to herself, “you know better than that. Of course the girl blames herself, though she oughtn’t. Try not to, all right?” she said, meeting Hope’s eyes.
“I… I will,” said Hope, confused.
“All right,” said Sincerity, “I’m sure we’ve kept you from your work long enough.”
“Truthfully,” said Hope, “I’m not thinking well enough to do much work. But I am very tired. I don’t think I can talk any more.”
“You go home and take care of yourself,” said Sincerity. “Do you have anyone living with you?”
“My friend Briar.”
“Go home and sleep. Get her to make you something for dinner that has fish in it. Good for the brain.”
“All right,” said Hope.
As she rose to go, the old lady said, “It’s good to see you again, Hope.”
“It’s good to see you too, Mage. You know what I always appreciated about you?”
“No, what?”
“You never treated me as a child, even when I was one.”
Sincerity laughed. “There’s a simple reason for that.”
“What?”
“I’m not really comfortable with children.”
“So you pretended I wasn’t one?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, it worked. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” said the mage.
Chapter Six: Adding Machine
Rosie spent the next day with some of her own books of mathematics and engineering, which she had one of the footmen pack up and carry to a cab for her. Bucket helped her carry them into the lab and set up temporary shelves for them. These he constructed out of empty lubricant cans weighted with a little sand, supporting thick planks. The books spent very little time on the shelves, though, as Rosie sketched and erased, trying to find a way to perform multiplication calculations with a feasible number of mechanical linkages.
Late in the day, Mister Wheel entered the circle of boards she had laid claim to and cleared his throat. She gave a start, and tore her frustrated gaze from the latest unsatisfactory solution.
“Yes, Mister Wheel?” she said.
“Ah, Mistress, do you have a moment to come with me? We’ve built your first prototype.”
“That was quick. Yes, please, do lead on.”
He led her silently into the office part of the manufactory, and to Mister Gizmo’s desk, where the senior gnome was manipulating a machine that Rosie instantly recognised as a realisation of her design. He alternated between cranking the wheels of the device and scribbling down numbers with a pencil, but when they entered he cast the pencil down and rose to greet her.
“Mistress Industry,” he said, “this device is a marvel.”
“Thank you,” she said, at a loss for what else she could say.
“I have to do the figures every shift-cycle, see, and give them to the factor,” he went on. “Wages, how much we spend on spares, how much on raw materials, how many of each item produced, it never ends. Fortunately, we’re not expected to make a profit simply as such, because we don’t sell directly, or that would be another clamp on my head. Takes me days to do all the adding up, it does.”
“And my device can help, you think?”
“Help! It’s a wonder, and no mistake. I’m fast with a pencil, mind, but I have to add everything up twice to check, and I do make errors and then I have to do it a third time, and half the time that gives a different number again. This is a machine. It doesn’t get things wrong. We’ve only made it with four columns, just to start with, and I do want to talk to you about a way to reset it automatically back to zero, because that’s just a touch annoying, but I can see already that this will save me all manner of time and effort. And is it really true that you came up with it all yourself?”
“It’s really true,” she said, thinking, he had to go and spoil it. “You see, among human women being interested in machines is quite… permitted.” She had been going to say “usual”, but that wouldn’t have been accurate.
“Marvellous,” said Mister Gizmo, and she wasn’t sure if she meant the machine again or her remark. “Do you want to have a try?” He gestured at the device, which was smaller than she had expected. She remarked on this.
“Is it?” said Mister Wheel. “You didn’t say how big you wanted it, so I made it with some gears we had in stores. I suppose they are rather fine-toothed ones. I assumed you wanted it made with the best parts.”
“Yes, yes, it’s wonderful,” she said hastily. “I just didn’t realise quite what good artificers you are.” The box in which the works were encased was hard-to-break dwarf glass, fitted with precision into a finely-finished wooden frame. Many people would have made a prototype roughly, but apparently the Clever Man’s Works did not operate in such a manner. “You made it so one can see the clockwork?”
“Easier to see if something’s slipping,” said Mister Gizmo. “Not that it has, yet. The boys did a fine job. Go on, add a couple of numbers together.”
“What shall I add?” she said, suddenly nervous.
“Here,” he said, “this is where I’ve got to on the accounts.” He turned a piece of paper towards her and tapped with his pencil.
At first hesitantly, and then with growing assurance, Rosie set the well-milled brass wheels, the same ones used to set the codes on the farspeakers. Clearly incised Dwarvish numerals indicated the setting. There were two sets, each of four wheels, which could represent numbers up to 65,535 in the sixteen-based dwarvish numerals that humans also used. The top set was the initial number (the sum of what Mister Gizmo had added up so far), and the bottom set was the next number to add to it. She set the lower number up carefully with a series of crisp clicks, and pulled the lever which engaged the calculating mechanism. The brass gears whirred inside the transparent box, and the top wheels spun into a new position representing the sum of the two numbers. She worked the calculation quickly on paper, and reached the same total, at which she beamed. The two gnomes beamed back.
“You have tested it extensively?” she asked Mister Gizmo.
“Yes, and it performs beautifully,” he said. “Every office and shop in the realm is going to want one of these. You should prepare to become a very wealthy woman, Mistress.”
She coloured. “Ah, well,” she said, “in point of fact, I’m rather a wealthy woman already.”
“Then you should prepare to become a wealthier one. Can I show this to the factor yet? Or are there changes you want to make?”
“Well, your suggestion of a reset to zero… I think I should work on that first. It shouldn’t be difficult. A little spur, some gearing which drives it round until the spur engages…”
“Well enough,” he said. “Also, I did think, because the top number gets changed when you add to it, sometimes you’re not sure what it was before. Could you talk to Dignified, perhaps, about making it so that it prints a list of all the figures you’ve put in so far? He knows printing very well, you see,” he added hastily when she frowned. “I mean, I’m sure you probably could work it out, but he may s
ee an easy way.”
“Thank you, Mister Gizmo,” she said. “I will do that. Can I take it in and show it to Dignified and Hope?”
“Only if you bring it back,” he said, grinning. “I want it to finish my accounts with.”
The version they made to show to the Realmgold’s factor had the zero handle and the printer. The gnomes also boxed it in wood, hiding the gearing, so as not to distract.
Mister Wheel explained the role of the factor to her before the meeting. “We’re part of the Realmgold’s creatives, see,” he said. “She supports a whole lot of artists and thinkers and tinkerers of one kind and another, people like the Master who come up with wonderful ideas but aren’t always very practical. She puts practical people like us around them so they don’t, you know, starve or blow themselves up, and so that the things they think of can be made properly. We can sell to anyone we want, but the Realmgold gets first refusal, through her factor, and if she wants everything we can make we have to sell it to her. If she doesn’t, anything we sell to anyone else we give her part of the money. Anything you invent, it’s licensed to you and you get a portion of whatever it makes, as well as your basic wages.”
Rosie looked aside in thought, pursing her lips. “Do you know,” she said, “I don’t know what my wages are. Or even if I’m getting any. I never asked.”
“Oh, that’s not right,” said Mister Wheel, sitting up. “Being paid wages is very important.” The Realmgold had only just established in law that gnomes must be paid fair wages, so she understood that it was something he felt strongly about.
“Oh, well,” she said, “I really just want the chance to invent things.”
“Still,” he said, “we can’t have that. I suppose with the mage being sick, she didn’t think of it.” It went without saying that Dignified wouldn’t have considered anything so mundane. “I’ll talk to Uncle Gizmo.”
The factor arrived at this point, and they rose to greet him. He was a cheerfully sloppy middle-aged man with a Gryphon Clerk’s silver seal around his neck.
“Right,” he said, when he had introduced himself as Hardy Fuller, pressed palms with Rosie and exchanged a familiar nod with Mister Wheel. “What do you have to show me this time?”
“Did you bring the list of figures?” asked Rosie.
“Yes,” he said, “just as you asked.” He produced a sheet of paper from a pocket.
“Perhaps you’d like to operate the machine yourself,” said Mister Wheel, who had conducted demonstrations before. He placed the device in front of the factor and Rosie explained its operation.
“That seems simple enough,” said Hardy, and commenced to enter numbers from his list. He was slow at first, and had to be reminded to pull the lever the first couple of times, but was soon clicking in the numbers rapidly. When he entered the last figure, they showed him how to extract the printed paper with the items and total, and he compared it with the total he’d calculated before arriving.
“It’s wrong,” he said.
“Are you sure?” said Rosie. “Let’s look.” They compared the figures line by line.
“Ah,” said Mister Wheel, who had started at the bottom. “Look there. You made an error entering the third one from the bottom, see?”
“Yes, but that’s only out by one,” said the factor. “The total’s out by three.”
They fell silent again, checking up and down, but found no other data entry errors.
“Let’s add up your list manually again,” said Rosie.
Wheel, again, was the one to spot it. Hardy’s total was incorrect. The machine’s total, given what he had put in, was right.
Rosie had a moment of worry. Not everyone took well to their errors being pointed out, as she had discovered at a young age, though she still found it hard to restrain herself from doing so. The factor, however, smiled.
“That’s well spotted,” he said. “There you are. I’m going to claim I did that deliberately as a test, and you can’t prove any differently.” He winked.
“So,” said Mister Wheel, “do you think the Realmgold will want these?”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any question,” said Hardy. “How fast can you make them?”
“They are reasonably complex,” said Mister Wheel, “but they’re purely mechanical, which keeps the price down and makes them fast to produce. I’ll put together the usual report on production times, manufactory specs and quantity price breaks and send it through.”
“Good,” said Hardy. “All production to go for the realm, to start with, I think, though given that people will use these to work out their taxes I think we should encourage putting them into general circulation as soon as may be.”
He stood to leave, and paused at the door.
“Oh, incidentally,” he said, “I think you should make them so that they can subtract as well. That’s not difficult, is it?”
Rosie, startled, locked up and could neither think nor speak for a few critical moments.
“We’ll work on it,” said Mister Wheel smoothly, and the factor left.
“‘Work on it’?” said Rosie. “I’ll have to do a major redesign.”
“You weren’t expecting that?”
“Of course I wasn’t,” she said, miffed.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “As soon as the customer sees the product, they want one just like it, only completely different.”
Hope was in tears of frustration when Briar came home.
Her lawyer friend was humming, as usual lately, but she stopped when she saw Hope.
“Darling, what’s wrong?” she asked, dropping her lawyer’s bag and running over to crouch beside her. Hope sat in the corner of the room on the low cushions that Briar had furnished the flat with, surrounded by papers and books. Briar had to move a book to sit beside her and put a concerned hand on her shoulder.
“I can’t concentrate,” said Hope. “And I don’t want to do this anyway.” She gestured helplessly at the papers, which were meant to be the beginnings of her first article for Magical Research.
“Is your head hurting again?”
“Yes. And I’m so tired.” She heard herself whining, which she hated, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
Her friend gave her a look; not a lawyer look, nor yet a friend look. Hope cast around for a way to interpret it and remembered the Countygold’s oathmate looking at their daughter like that. A motherly look, then.
“Have you talked to Patient lately?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why don’t you call him? He calms you down.”
“He does, doesn’t he. Thanks, Briar,” said Hope, sniffing. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, heaved herself up, with Briar’s support, and headed for her bedroom, where she kept her farspeaker.
Very few people had private farspeakers yet, and she felt guilty about lending one of the lab ones to Patient for her own convenience, but… well, it was very convenient. She mostly wrote to him still. He wrote a lovely strong hand, on paper that was at the same time unassuming and of decent quality, and he would say things in writing that he found hard to put into words aloud. So would she.
“Hope,” said his voice after a moment, and her heart lifted, only to drop again as he said, “I’m with a customer. Ten minutes?”
“Of course,” she said, and broke the sympathy between their devices. He took his business very seriously, and she couldn’t fault him for it. It was just… she was feeling like a little girl right now, and not a rational adult.
She put the device down and wandered off to make a cup of willow tea for her head. She sat at the table nursing the drink, bitter even with a generous dollop of honey, and staring into space as Briar rooted round in her room. Briar’s room was the feminine equivalent of Dignified’s lab, covered in clothes and shoes, and she practically had to move everything to get at anything. She emerged, changed into more casual, going-out clothes from the dark blue Victory suit she wore to the office.
“Will you be all right by
yourself?” she asked Hope.
“Yes, fine. Are you going somewhere?”
“Concert, with a friend from work. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“Yes, go. Don’t worry about me.” She took another sip of the tea and grimaced at the taste.
“Did you call Patient? What did he say?”
“Oh!” said Hope. Her memory, which had, if she was honest, been patchy for months, had got much worse since her head injury. “I’m meant to call him back. He had a customer.”
“He’s working late.”
“He’s a hard worker. One of his many fine qualities,” said Hope over her shoulder, as she headed for her device.
Patient said calm, soothing things, apologised for having put her off, and promised to come up and visit next Fourday. “Is there a decent hotel?” he asked.
“You can stay here. Briar’s got a regular meeting down in Gulfport for the Gnome Advancement League, so you can have her bed, if you don’t mind a girly room you can hardly move in for shoes. Or you can always sleep on the floor cushions.”
“Are you sure?”
“People keep asking me that. Yes, I’m sure. I’m not in the habit of making statements that I don’t mean,” she snapped. “Sorry,” she added, after a moment. “I’m… my emotions are all everywhere.”
“All part of the head injury,” he said. “You’ll be back to normal before you know it.”
She was a lot calmer when they finished their conversation, though when she looked back on it, it seemed less coherent and more weepy than she preferred her conversations to be. He had managed not to ask her if she was sure when she said she’d be fine overnight, though he had stumbled over it.
Patient had given her a big carved wooden eagle, one which he’d made, and she had set it up at the foot of her bed. Before her accident, she had put some mindspells on it, reinforcing the associations it had for her of safety and security and Patient taking care of her. She had named it after him, and created what mindmages called a “helpful fiction” of how it enabled him to watch over her while she slept, and she had only to look into its carved wooden eyes for a few heartbeats and turn the light out to fall into a restful, magic-assisted sleep.
Hope and the Patient Man Page 6
