by Bob Blink
While this discussion was taking place, Chancellor Vaen made a small coughing sound, and the King looked over at her and nodded. She stood, walked to his side and whispered in his ear for several minutes. He nodded as she stood, and then spoke.
“Mojol, the weapon belongs to Mage Jolan. That is final. Consider the matter closed and let us proceed unless you have decided to withdraw your request to see the rest of this presentation.”
Mojol stiffened, then bowed formally to his father. He spun sharply on his heels and returned to his seat. Jolan knew he might have submitted to his father, but he also realized his victory in the matter had cost him some of the goodwill he’d had with the man. Jolan knew that if the King were to die and Mojol to ascend to the throne, the matter would resurface, and the outcome would be very different. He’s made his first enemy here at court.
For the next hour, Jolan and Buris showed one of the test firearms to the group, explaining the function and what development had been done. To illustrate the concept better, the massive test stock had been replaced with a hastily carved wooden stock of the type they envisioned the final product to come with. Buris explained how he and Shyar had run some preliminary tests with power strengthened steel, and felt that a sufficiently strong barrel could be made, most likely with less mass than the test article being displayed. He also hoped to experiment a bit more with the powder composition, in hopes a better match could be found. He suspected a less violent mixture could be developed that would further reduce the demands on the steel. It would be a development effort, and while results could not be promised, he was confident a way could be found. After all, such weapons had been built before. They were simply trying to duplicate something that had been done elsewhere.
There were dozens of questions, especially as the test firearm was passed around. Major Wylan had several specific issues, and when his questions were answered to his satisfaction Jolan knew he had a supporter in him. The man smiled and nodded in his direction.
“It seems we have completed the discussion. I was told there was another matter to be discussed.”
“It will take just a moment to prepare, your Majesty,” Buris said.
Shyar went to the door and motioned the student mages waiting in the hallway to bring the equipment inside. Ten minutes later they were ready to proceed. Two enclosed booths were set up at opposite ends of the room, with a pair of wires strung between them. Shyar waited outside of one booth, and Jolan the other.
Buris approached the King with a piece of paper and a marker. “If your Majesty could write a few words for a test?” he asked. “Please do not speak the words. Only you and I will know them for the moment.”
The King looked at Buris oddly, but did as asked, scribbling briefly then handing the paper to Buris. Buris read it, then stepped across the room to Jolan and handed it to him. Jolan slipped quickly inside his booth, while Shyar did the same across the room. A short time later Shyar emerged from her booth, and handed a different piece of paper to Dibon, who had risen from his seat to stand beside her booth. Jolan had told him about the test earlier and asked for his help. He took it and walked over to the King, bowing, and handing him the result. The King looked at it and read it.
“I do not see the point,” he said confused. “I give you some words, you do some magic down there, and bring them back to me. This could have been done faster if Buris had simply circled the room.”
“No magic was employed, your Majesty. Just a little engineering from our friend Jolan here. What would you say if I were to tell you that had the booth Jolan entered been here in this room just as you see, but the booth Shyar entered had been in the palace in Carta, for example, the King there would have received this message just as quickly as you just did in the test?”
“You are implying you could send a message from Cobalo to Carta in a matter of a few minutes. It takes more than a week normally.”
“And far longer to contact the government in Kimlelm,” Buris agreed. “The message could be sent there just as fast. Of course, they could send messages to you just as quickly. Imagine how helpful it would be to know in times of war events almost as fast as they are happening. Troops could be repositioned far faster, since the time for knowledge of an enemies attack could be cut to almost nothing if such devices were available to battlefield commands. The applications are almost endless.”
Our little test had caused far more of an uproar than the firearms had earlier.
“This can really be done?” the King asked. “What is required?”
“Jolan tells me it is called a telegraph. It requires some relatively simple equipment, but a number of energy bottles, something we have used only in my lab up to now, plus wires that would have to be stretched between here and wherever we want to communicate. It will be an investment of coin and effort, and should start immediately so it can be in place in time. The more experience we have with it before a real need arises, the more prepared we will be. Oh, it will also take some classes to train the operators who will have to send and receive the messages. There is a code that makes it operate so quickly. You will also need people who can service the system against wires coming down, or being taken down by people who don’t know any better. Equipment can fail as well, so spares will have to be stored in key locations.
Jolan hadn’t been able to remember morse code, but it mostly wouldn’t have applied anyway. The language here used eighteen rather than twenty-six symbols, and their hexadecimal numbering system required as many characters. Jolan considered shifting the unused alphabetical strings to numbers, but in the end, he developed a new system. Each number used a five digit combination of dots and dashes, and each letter used four, except for two of the more common letters which used three digits, necessary because there weren’t enough combinations using the four digit codes.
“You would string wires all the way between here and Carta. Impossible!” objected one of the council.
“It would require significant effort, but it can be done,” countered Buris. Once he had seen the system work in the lab he’d become an instant advocate. Buris wanted to see the system in place, whether a war was coming or not. He could see the future implications, besides Jolan had explained where things had gone on Earth when he showed him the iPhone.
“Has this really been done back on Earth?” the King asked of Jolan.
“Many times over,” Jolan replied. “If you were to string a wire between the western most point of Angon to the eastern most point of Kimlelm, on Earth that has been done a million times over.”
“A million?” someone questioned.
“That is probably a conservative estimate,” Jolan said. He wanted to add that the wires were all of copper, but he’d used that shock approach too often already.
“You’re sure this can work?”
Jolan nodded. “I would go a bit further than Mage Buris has suggested. I would see the first lines in place, and then I would string a second set along a different route. That will yield protection against local disturbances or attack. It will be necessary to find a way to greatly increase the production of wire, which currently is a low volume item used only by specialists. I can promise you will soon see a whole new industry starting up once people realize they can communicate so quickly. It will change the way your whole society works faster than you can imagine. For now, however, I’d keep secret what the system is and how it works. That will give you the most advantage in the coming wars. The word will get out soon enough.”
The meeting ran much longer than anyone had expected, and they were asked to demonstrate the workings several times. Eventually they were dismissed while the King and his council debated how to proceed. Before the day was out they learned that both the telegraph and the firearms developments were approved. Another issue, raised some time earlier, was nixed. There would be no group sent to the Nexus. Not only couldn’t the mages use it, but in an altercation against the wizards, they would most likely lose. The most likely outcome of sending a team t
here would be to alert Ale’ald of the advance knowledge Angon now had of their intentions and start a war that much sooner, before Angon and its allies could get prepared. If Ale’ald was continuing to use the Nexus, for now there was nothing that could be done. The Council of Mages was forbidden from sending anyone there on their own.
Chapter 58
Several weeks had passed in relative quiet for Jolan, although Buris had suddenly become extremely busy. He had assembled a staff to follow his directions since he had two major research projects for which he was now personally responsible. He loved every minute of it. Every day, Jolan and Shyar met with the energetic mage and went over progress and Jolan answered questions where he could. There were many details that simply were beyond his recall, or more often, that he had never bothered to learn and where some experimenting was going to be needed to find the necessary answers.
Jolan spent every morning with one of the independent student instructor-mages, and was slowly, but steadily, improving in strength. Proof of this was that he had discovered he was a level four earlier in the week. Ward ran a test after discovering him to be a level four and Jolan was able to learn a small spell from a written scroll. That opened a whole new method of learning, and while he wanted to charge ahead, he was instructed to follow the standard program rather than go freestyle as he’d prefer.
What really surprised Jolan was the number of variations and nuances associated with some of the spells. There didn’t seem to be all that many abilities, but to really understand a particular skill took a lot of learning and practice. Small variations in application required a slightly different variation of the basic skill. There were even different ways of doing exactly the same thing. There had to be a reason, but no one was able to give him a satisfactory answer. It explained to some degree why the mages spent years becoming fully certified.
Today, however, was the second day of the two-day break for this week, and four of them, Jolan, Shyar, Rifod, and Nerila were walking through the large public area northeast of the Inner Court. Jolan hadn’t spent much time investigating the city, spending most of his time in studying, or working with Buris getting the King’s projects underway. Even when Asari had still been here, they hadn’t explored all that much. Asari hadn’t been particularly interested, and it had been winter.
Today, however, was a fabulous spring day, and Jolan was overjoyed to be out in the open after the days cooped up inside. He was even more happy to have Shyar walking beside him, and hoped this was a sign she might be seeing him as more than just a friend, although he’d detected more than a little skittishness from her before. They were going to spend a few hours wandering around in the afternoon sun, then they had plans to meet Ronoran and Luzoke at the Barbecued Beast for a bit of a celebration of his advancement to level four. He had been moving up more quickly than anyone expected, and the group of friends were always looking for a reason to party.
Along the cliffs the breeze was just a little brisk, and they could see the whitecaps on the water a few hundred feet below. It was spring, and the truly wild waves from the wintertime had subsided, but the waters around the city were never what he’d call calm. They said that once you got a bit beyond the sight of land the trip would still be rough, and that was without the presence of one of the storms which could come up almost anytime.
Up where the group walked a hint of the salt in the air could still be detected, and the smell was fresh and clean. Not too far out Jolan could see a large passenger ship, possibly the same one he had arrived here on some weeks back. Further out, other ships of various sizes dotted the ocean, some almost lost against the horizon as the cargo ships made their never ending circuit between the various ports in Angon and the ports of Seret and Kimlelm.
Off to their left and a bit inland as they continued walking, Jolan was surprised to see a small lake of black oil that slowly bubbled to the surface. It reminded him a bit of the tar pits he’d seen in Los Angeles one time, but he wouldn’t have expected it up on the cliffs nor so close to the ocean. Apparently there were numerous such leakages in the area, suggesting Angon potentially had large pools of oil not too far below the surface; wealth just waiting for the invention of gasoline powered engines. The cycle hadn’t yet started here on Gaea.
They made the large circle, working their way inland and away from the cliff, coming eventually toward the rocks that marked the southern entrance to the public area. The smooth, rounded rocks stood as high as a couple hundred feet in places, and covered several hundred square meters of the grasslands near the entrance. Many families had set up picnics around the perimeter, and dozens of kids were excitedly chasing each other through the many crisscrossing pathways that were all but invisible from a short distance away, but which allowed one to sneak from one side of the quarry to the other.
Eventually they met their remaining friends and spent a leisurely evening drinking a bit too much and listening to music very different from home, but which had a strange attractiveness that Jolan found refreshing. All too soon it had gotten late, and the musicians finished their last set and started packing up.
* * * *
Shyar stretched, her arms extending over her head and her back slightly arched. Her smooth naked body was a delight to watch. Jolan reached out and slowly, lightly, traced his fingers over the warm skin, sliding along the length of her left arm, down her side, and then across her flat stomach, finally tracing a pattern up and around the smooth mounds of her breasts. He leaned over and lowered his lips to the small nipples, feeling them become erect under his tongue. He raised his head and then slid over on top of her, lowering his head until their mouths came together in a passionate kiss. He raised himself slightly and. . .
Suddenly Jolan was awake, his breath a bit ragged and his body feeling cheated by the interruption to his visions. He hadn’t had a dream like that since he was an adolescent. Damn, that was the third time in the last two weeks. He knew it was a reaction to the time he had spent with her the previous day. He groaned, realizing his desire was real, but sadly he was here alone. If Shyar ever guessed his thoughts he feared she would be gone in an instant. As close as they had become, she’d never given the slightest hint she might be open to any real intimacy.
Chapter 59
Jolan hadn’t purchased clothes since he’d first arrived in Cobalo, and then winter had been approaching so he’d focused on some warm items to cover him through the winter months. Now spring was here and he needed a different selection. Besides, what he had was mostly what might be labeled traveler’s casual or palace ornate. Furthermore, most had been purchased in Carta, so the styles were somewhat different than were current here, as Cobalo was somewhat less inclined toward the wild colors that were the norm in Seret.
The real driver for his desire to go shopping for apparel, never one of the top pastimes on his list, was the lack of anything suitable to take a lady out on the town for an evening of dining and fine entertainment. He had the lady in mind, and the entertainment was to be the new play that had been taking the city by storm. He knew that Shyar wanted to see it from something Nerila had told him. He wasn’t certain Nerila’s passing of the information was planned with the hope Jolan might act as he was, or whether it just happened without preplanning on her part. It didn’t matter. This might be the opening Jolan had hoped for, and he wanted to make sure he did things right.
Money wasn’t an issue. He still had almost ten golds from the money he and Asari had retrieved in Seret. Jolan didn’t know what the status of the money he and Asari had put in the bank was. He hoped that Asari hadn’t tried to carry that much with him. Whatever the case, he saw the money as belonging to his friend, and wouldn’t have touched it even if it hadn’t been in Asari’s name. Eventually his friend would come to his senses and want it. It turned out that in addition to free room and meals at the college, full time student-mages were given a stipend of five golds per year to cover incidentals such as entertainment, clothing, supplies, and the like. He had recently been
given his first year payment when the record keeping caught up with his change in status. With what he already had, he was pretty flush.
He’d spent the morning going from store to store, finding the selection of items even more difficult than at home, since there he’d settled on a style, and generally didn’t drift too far from it. Here he had to not only find something he liked, but he had to do so while staying within the bounds of the local tastes. Slowly he accumulated a collection of wrapped parcels and a couple of boxes, so that his hands were becoming quite full. By the time he left the most recent store he had more than he could comfortably carry, and realized he probably should go back and take the proprietor of the store up on his offer to have all his parcels delivered for him to his rooms at the College. He had made several substantial purchases at the store, and the delivery service was part of the service here. When the man had asked, he’d done the usual man thing and said he could handle it.
As a result of his stubbornness, he had walked only a short distance from the store when he caught someone’s arm as they passed just enough to dislodge a critically placed package and the whole stack of purchases broke free of his grip and scattered across the walkway around him.
“Damn it all!” Jolan cursed. He looked at the mess, then walked a few feet over to a small outdoor table and placed his staff against one of the chairs and turned around to go pick up the scattered items. Jolan didn’t worry so much about having the staff out of his immediate possession or even out of his eyesight like he had at first. Now that the two had bonded, the staff did as he wished, and when he placed it somewhere the staff knew it was to stay there. Anyone else trying to move it would be met with first resistance, and if that didn’t work, with fireworks. No one short of a level five mage would have a chance of moving it without his permission, and all the level five mages in Cobalo knew whom it belonged to.
