The Other Time

by Mack Reynolds

  Sandoval paused long enough to laugh at that one. The Beretta was smaller than a man’s hand. It couldn’t possibly be a gun. There were no guns that small in the Europe of the period.

  “By my soul, you are ever a cause for amusement, Don Fielding,” he said mockingly in his slight lisp, and came on again.

  He was still laughing when he died. Don shot him twice in the vicinity of the heart. The young soldier fell forward onto his knees and then flat on his face.

  Don turned the gun on de Leon and Olid. “This weapon fires many, many times. You would not live to count every shot. Release the girl and drop your swords or you are both dead men.”

  They gaped unbelievingly at their fallen comrade, thinking of the two rapid shots.

  “Drop the swords,” Don repeated.

  They dropped them. Don marched them back to the tecpan after they had unbound Malinche and taken the gag from her mouth. His face expressionless, he instructed the girl to take the reins of the four horses and lead them into the Eagle buildings. He could make arrangements to have them taken back to the mainland later.

  In the tecpan there were some of the few Aztecs in town who could bear arms at all. They were older men or cripples from past wars who had been unfit for the march. Don had them confine de Leon and Olid and Padre Juan Diaz as well. He didn’t even bother to have words with the priest. The hell with it.

  The battle with the forces of Cholula and Huexotzingo, as Cuauhtemoc described it later, was over almost before it had begun. The phalanx stood in the center, five thousand strong. The crossbowmen stood to one flank, musketeers to the other; in battle the flanks of a phalanx must not be turned. The longbowmen were to the rear of the long lines of spearmen, sending showers of arrows over their heads.

  The thousands of the enemy charged in an undisciplined mob—Indian-style. And failed completely to break the advancing lines. Around the right flank charged the cavalry and made for the rear where they cut through the enemy there like a sickle, rounded up Tlaquiach and Tlalciac, the two Cholulan war chiefs, and hauled them off. Cuauhtemoc ordered the drums to beat the charge and the phalanx pressed on the double.

  And all was soon over, save the agreement to join the republic and send their senators and clan representatives to Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs had lost exactly twenty-three men, their foe over two thousand. It was in utter disbelief that the remaining enemy learned that their cities were not to be looted, no prisoners were to be taken for sacrifice, and no future tribute was to be demanded. Their coming over to the new republic was heartfelt.

  Don Fielding immediately dispatched Diego Garcia and the other two miners to seek out their iron ore. When they reported the deposits ample, he turned over to them six of the new wagons and six horses to draw them. He would have to spare the horses, though he hated to take them out of the riding school.

  The loss was balanced by the fact that the horse-raiding expedition against the Spanish in Tlaxcala was successful beyond his wildest hopes. His young horse-thieves managed to get back with eight of the steeds. They had scattered, after the raid, and now straggled in one at a time. Then the balance of the raiders, those on foot, continued to dribble in for almost a week. They’d had twenty-nine casualties in all, which was not as bad as Don had feared, but bad enough. They also revealed that two more horses had been killed in the fighting, which at least deprived the enemy of them.

  While the smelter was still in the process of being built, hundreds of the Indians participating, Don Fielding looked up the Spaniards who had been on the arquebuses before their defeat. There were twelve of them in all.

  He said, “Do any of you know how to make gunpowder?”

  Gonzalo Sanchez, scowling puzzlement, said, “We all know how to make gunpowder, of course. We are trained musketeers.”

  That surprised Don. “You do, eh? Can you make it, here in Mexico?”

  “Of course. Given the materials.”

  Ah, that was the rub.

  Another said, “The Captain-General has already made powder here in New Spain.”

  “He has? But where did he find the saltpeter?”

  “You mean nitre? That is not the difficulty. There are plenty of deposits of that. Horse dung, bat dung—but nitre from dung is more likely to grow damp. Yet we can manage. Charcoal is, of course, no problem either. It is sulphur that is the hardest.”

  He knew there had to be some rub. Sulphur was mined, he knew. And Mexico was a big exporter in his own time. But where did it come from in this country?

  Gonzalo Sanchez said, “Not even that is too much of a problem, if you are willing to lose some of these Indian dogs. When we passed that steaming volcano, Popocatepetl, the Captain-General dispatched Diego Ordaz and nine men to ascend it and see if it was possible to find sulphur in the crater. The trip was difficult and dangerous; smoke, sparks, cinders belching up, but they found plenty of pure sulphur there, caked inside the lip of the volcano. Get your Indians to go down for it and the making of powder will be simple enough.”

  “Very well. It will be done, somehow. Six of you will participate in this endeavor. Prepare yourselves to go out prospecting for bat caves. Two more of you will go with a group of Aztecs to Popocatepetl. You’ll have to be there to show them initially just what it is you want.”

  He looked at them speculatively. “Do any of you know how to make arquebuses?”

  Two of them were gunsmiths—if one stretched a point.

  “Given the materials,” one said. “You need good steel or, on my faith, the damned things will blow up on you the first time you fire.”

  “We’ll see if we can’t achieve steel sufficiently good,” Don told him. “Meanwhile, I’ll sketch out the gun I want. And one more thing that may be just the thing to lob a Molotov cocktail, express, long-distance.” He was smiling.

  Manpower was one of their difficulties. He needed a large standing army and simply hadn’t enough men to do the necessary farming and other work basic to the economy and at the same time do the mining and manufacturing, the studying, the learning of new weapons and tools. He suggested to Cuauhtemoc that subchiefs already trained in the phalanx be sent to each of the new member tribes. The smaller tribes would provide divisions of one thousand men to be drilled, the larger towns, divisions of two thousand. How to make longbows and crossbows would be taught them and, as soon as steel was available, swords. Bronze arrowheads and spearheads would be rushed to them as soon as possible.

  He figured it out. If they had three hundred towns at their disposal and each contributed their share of warriors, he would have at his disposal the better part of half a million trained men. With a force like that, he wouldn’t need advanced weapons, even though he had one in mind. They could trample the Spanish to death on their landing beaches.

  He had all of the arquebuses brought to his room and studied them. There was precious little to study. It was the simplest of mechanisms—a wooden stock with what amounted to an iron pipe mounted on it. A simple trigger device, when pulled, lowered a smoldering piece of hemp to a touchhole.

  Don Fielding knew mighty little about early guns, but he didn’t like the looks of these and he wouldn’t be able to spare enough steel to make very many of them, anyway. He sat down at his desk and attempted to sketch something more adapted to the combat he anticipated. He came up finally with a double-barreled blunderbuss with a barrel about two feet long and a short stock. When he finished, it looked like nothing so much as a sawed-off shotgun of the Capone era in Chicago. He planned to put as many of them as he could in the front ranks of the phalanx. When the battle was joined, there would be time for only two volleys. No attempt would be made to reload. Two volleys, one from each barrel, then the guns would be dropped to the ground to be recovered later, after the battle. Loaded with the equivalent of buckshot, they would yield a firepower such as this continent had never seen or imagined. He could almost pity the Spanish troops…

  He had the two gunsmiths brought to him and asked their advice. They had never s
een any such thing, but, they conceded grudgingly, there was no particular reason why they could not be made.

  “Very well,” Don told them. “Get the blacksmiths to provide you with enough metal to make the barrels. Bronze should be adequate for the trigger; we must conserve iron. Make your prototype. By that time iron from Cholula should be coming in. What I want done is this: You must train one group of Indians to make the wooden stocks, another group to make the barrels, another group to make the ramrods you load with, a group of their metalworkers to make the triggers, and finally still another group to assemble each of these into the final gun. Each Indian does but one task; each part is made identically, so that they could actually be changed from one weapon to any other.”

  “A strange manner in which to make guns,” one of them muttered.

  “It’s known as an assembly line,” Don said. “Mass production is coming to Tenochtitlan. It has to. We haven’t much time. But there’s one thing even simpler in some ways,” he added, pulling another sketch atop the stack. “Do you recognize this?”

  After another long pause, the usually silent one snorted. “Ah, roqueta? It lacks accuracy and distance.”

  “Right, it’s a rocket—just a seamed tube with a cap, a guide stick of bamboo, with a pottery nozzle, and packed with slow-burning gunpowder. I think the powder should be rammed in damp, with a long, tapering hole up the middle. You may have to add charcoal. We’ll soon have plenty of gunpowder to try it with.”

  The other gunsmith was squinting. “But what is that fat, finned arrow on its front?”

  “Another rocket,” Don said grinning, “with a delay fuse.”

  “We will only entertain them,” said the talkative one.

  “We’ll entertain the hell out of them if we manage a range of several thousand meters,” Don rejoined. “Just try it and keep me posted. Two-stage rockets were an idea whose time came a lot later than it should have.”

  Plainly, they thought this last notion to be crazy. Just as plainly, they knew that orders were made to be followed.

  After they had gone, he sat there wearily. It had grown dark and he had dismissed his staff. He was always tired now. He couldn’t remember back to the time when he wasn’t tired.

  He stared down at his sketches illuminated only by flickering torchlight. He wished the iron would start coming through so that he could get into the manufacture of swords. He had about decided to introduce the Roman shortsword, rather than copying the more difficult Spanish saber. Less metal would be required and they should take fewer man-hours to produce. Besides, proper use of the Spanish sword required considerable time-consuming practice, while the Roman shortsword was fairly similar to the maquahuitl with which his Indians were familiar.

  He considered again the introduction of the heliograph for communications and wondered if his glassblower could make mirrors. If not, possibly bronze or copper could be utilized. Or fine gold leaf! Ghengis Khan’s Mongols had used a system of flashing signals from hilltop to hilltop. There was no reason why he couldn’t establish such a system, semaphore as well. When a Boy Scout he had learned both the Morse Code and semaphore, but he’d forgotten them both at this point in life. But it was no problem. He knew the theory in both cases and could devise an equivalent of Morse in a matter of hours. How did it go? ‘E’ was the most common letter in the alphabet, so you made that one dot. What was next, ‘A’? He didn’t know, but it was a vowel, so you could make that one dash. He imagined that it was the second most widely utilized letter.

  He pushed that aside for the moment and looked back at some of the other sketches. God, he was tired. He wondered vaguely if it would be possible for him to introduce the steam engine, if he could recall how the damned thing was valved. Or even the intemal-combustion engine, assuming they located oil and learned to refine it. Perhaps a diesel engine. Weren’t they supposed to be the simplest? He didn’t know. For all practical purposes, he knew little of mechanics. Well, if he ever found time for experimentation, he could give it a whirl. But not now!

  How about electricity? What was a wet cell? You had something like a rod of lead and a rod of copper suspended in some kind of acid. Was it sulphuric acid? He wondered if Botello knew how to make sulphuric acid. It seemed to come back to him that the old alchemists had known the acid by some other name—oil of vitriol, or something. But what if he did manage to generate a current of electricity? What would he do with it? Not in a million years would he be able to come up with something like the radio or even the electric light. Telegraph. Now that was remotely possible—remotely.

  He began sketching a Viking longship. For use here on the lake, it seemed to him a more efficient ship than the Spanish brigantines. If he could teach them how to use oars, why not? They’d have it made. He sketched in a sharp bronze ram on the prow. They would mount one cannon on the bow of each ship, but otherwise the firepower would consist of crossbows and the newly planned blunderbusses, if they had the time to get them into production and the powder with which to load them.

  As he sketched, he thought, how about the flintlock? These muskets the Spanish used were primitive in the extreme. Could he devise a trigger based on flint and steel causing a spark, rather than depending on a smoldering piece of heavy string?

  He didn’t hear her enter.

  She stood by the side of his table and looked down at his work.

  She said, “I have been talking to Cuauhtemoc, the First Speaker. You bring the things of the teteuhs to the Aztecs, do you not?”

  “Yes. And possibly other things as well. Things that the Spanish do not know about as yet.”

  “This is why you cannot be allowed to go into battle? You must bring these things to our people. No one else can do it and it must be done above all else.”

  He was weary beyond weariness. Tired. Tired. “Yes, that is the reason. And I have no time for your scorn, Malinche. Please go away now. I need time; I need…”

  “Cuauhtemoc says that you need me.” Very softly.

  “Oh, he does, eh?” Don cut it off short and thought about it. “Well, I suppose he is right, Malinche. I do need you. I’ve been too busy to let myself think about it, but I suppose I’ve known for a long time that I need you.”

  She said, her dark eyes down, “You may do to me that thing you do with your mouth, if you wish.” She pursed her lips for a kiss.

  He sighed. He did wish. It was simple as that. She moved into his room that night.

  In the morning the wagons of iron began to arrive from Cholula. Don sent orders to build more smelters and requested of the senators from Cholula that as many of that city’s people as could be spared be sent to work them, and in the iron and coal mines. He sent word to his Spanish foremen to begin looking for new deposits of both iron and coal.

  Several new and larger smithies had been erected in the tecpan. Indian apprentices, not just from Tenochtitlan now but from all over the republic, were swarming there. Their job was to learn and take the new techniques back to their home cities. The tecpan was rapidly beginning to look like a manufacturing complex rather than a set of government buildings. Don was going to have to requisition some more buildings. Possibly the temples would do it. How could the priests resist, when the cause was the saving of all Mexico?

  Swords, lance tips, guns, tools with which to make more tools—all began to pour out.

  To the extent he could, Don continued to apply his assembly-line technique. In the past, an arrow maker would go through the whole process by himself, from chipping the obsidian or flint, to making the shaft, to attaching the feathers with glue, to binding on the arrowhead with gut and glue. In a day’s time a good arrow-maker might turn out as many as three arrows.

  Now a score of metalworkers pounded out the bronze or iron arrowheads. Another score trimmed feathers; another score devoted full time to the shafts; another group assembled the finished parts. Women, it turned out, proved most deft at this last in particular. Don was leaning ever more to the use of women in his primitive f
actories. When he got time, he told himself, he was going to have to make a pitch for equal rights. Oh, Sweet Jesus, did he have a lot of postponed projects!

  He had Bernal Diaz summoned one morning. The sturdy Diaz proved as receptive as any of the Spanish prisoners and was one of those who had sensibly taken an Aztec wife. Don Fielding suspected that Diaz would choose to remain in Mexico after the war and had considered suggesting to Cuauhtemoc that the man be adopted into one of the calpulli. He was a likable sort, tough and straight as an arrow shaft.

  He said, “Bernal, how would you like to begin thinking in terms of making a voyage to Cuba or Hispanola? We’re not ready for it yet, but it wouldn’t hurt to start thinking about it a bit.”

  Bernal squinted at him. “Cuba? You mean now? I don’t understand.”

  “No, not quite yet. If Cortes defeats us, of course, all is off. But if we defeat him, we will immediately march on Vera Cruz and attempt to capture the men and ships there. I then wish to send an expedition to Cuba, well laden with gold and silver, to purchase a good many things we need here. Cows, for instance; pigs, burros, chickens, goats, sheep, seed of European grains and fruit trees. I want all the books we can buy… except religious ones. I want every kind of tool available. I want samples of every kind of weapon that you failed to bring on this expedition.”

  “They would seize your ship when it landed.”

  Don shook his head. “I don’t believe so. It would be pointed out to them that many, many more of our ships will soon arrive to trade—or to raid, if that’s the way the bastards want it. We plan to pay well for all the purchases and the market we provide is all but endless. We want thousands of cows, thousands of horses and pigs, sheep and goats. Why, the market is such that all Cuba would become wealthy by raising these things or importing them from Spain for resale.”

  Bernal was thoughtful. “So what is it that you wish me to do?”

  “Consider all your comrades and select ten of them to man the ship. We will also send some of my Aztecs. You will be captain.”