Cast Under an Alien Sun (Destiny's Crucible)

by Olan Thorensen

  “I admit I haven’t fully adjusted to everything that’s happened, but I appreciate all of the kindness and consideration you and the abbey have given me, and I’ve wished I could repay you all in some way. That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.”

  They moved into a grove of trees sporting lavender blossoms, some of the petals dropping as the earliest bloomers began to fall. He gathered his thoughts and then came to the point.

  “About the poor man with the badly injured leg. I could hear him when they started the amputation.” Yozef’s expression and voice relived the night before.

  Petros sighed. “Yes, a terrible injury. The leg hopelessly injured. There was no option except taking it. Otherwise, he surely would have died after suffering for days or sixdays. There’s always danger for such procedures. Unfortunately, his age and weak constitution worked against him. However, I assure you the medicants here are as good as any in the province. If they couldn’t save him, it’s unlikely anyone could have.”

  “I don’t doubt their skill, Petros. What I’m wondering is whether the pain and shock of the surgery killed him and not the injury itself.”

  “Well . . . yes,” said a puzzled brother. “The stress on him was simply too much.”

  “What if he hadn’t felt the surgery? What if he had been unconscious at the time?”

  “Then he might have lived. But we only have two ways to produce unconsciousness. One is with drugs, but these are in terribly short supply with the Narthani embargo and are severely rationed. In fact, at the moment we have no supply at all here at the abbey. The medicants are delaying every surgery they can until a new supply comes, but the man last night couldn’t wait.

  “The second method is a careful blow to the head. It’s a well-tested method, using a small sack of wet sand and a skilled blow to the back of the head to induce unconsciousness. Here again, the man was unfortunate. He’d had a serious head injury when younger, and they feared the blow would kill him. It was a hard decision to try the surgery while he was conscious and hope he could come through with God’s grace.”

  “Petros, you know I was a student. I’ve spoken with the abbot briefly about this. Our school, er . . . scholasticum, believed in education in many subjects, so the student has basic knowledge in many fields before specializing. My main study was what we called ‘chemistry,’ the mixing of materials to produce other and different materials.”

  “Something like our apothecaries?” said Petros.

  “Not exactly. Some students specialized to be apothecaries, but chemistry studies how to produce substances that could be used in other skills and trades.”

  “This sounds like some of what many of our craftsmen do. Their procedures are usually specific to the trade, but am I understanding you were being trained in such procedures for use in many different trades?”

  “Something like that, Petros. But more in learning basic skills to create entirely new products not previously known.”

  “If you don’t know what the product is, why would you make it?”

  “Perhaps I’m not explaining well, but we believe that by knowing many skills, you could combine them in new ways not previously conceived.”

  Petros rubbed his trim gray beard. “Well, I suppose I can see some reasoning in that. So, you trained in this ‘chemistry’?”

  “Yes. And that’s what I want to talk with you about. One of the new substances that can be made by mixing two different known substances is called ‘ether.’”

  “Ether?” said Petros, carefully pronouncing it. “And what is this ether good for?”

  “It has many uses, most of which I don’t understand or couldn’t explain—remember my education wasn’t complete. But the one use is that if a person inhales just a few breaths of it, he goes into a deep sleep and will not waken for perhaps an hour or more.”

  Petros didn’t know where Yozef was headed. “I can see it useful if someone cannot get to sleep . . . so I guess it would have its uses.”

  “No, Petros. Not just a deep sleep. They will be unconscious and not react to anything for that time. It’s used in surgical procedures the same way as the drugs or blows are used by your medicants. After an hour or more, the person comes awake with no harm, which the blow to the head might cause.”

  Petros had stopped on the path and turned facing Yozef, his face blank as he considered what he’d just heard. A look of wonder developed. “My God,” he whispered, his eyes refocused on Yozef, “and since you’re telling me this, does this mean you know how to make this ‘ether?’”

  “I believe so. I’ve never made it myself, but I think I remember enough of the steps that it can be done.”

  “My God,” Petros repeated. “We need to talk to Diera, Sistian, and the other medicants of this! They will think it a gift and a sign from God!”

  Petros grasped Yozef’s left arm in a vise-like grip for someone his age, and, linked together, they hustled to the main courtyard, through the main gate, and along the pebble path to the Beynom’s residence outside the complex.

  Diera Beynom answered Petros’s loud knocking, surprised to see the excited, bent brother pulling on Yozef and by Petros’s insistence on seeing her and the abbot “immediately.” She led them to a sitting room, while she went to pull Sistian from his reading. It took Petros only a few minutes to lay out to the abbot and the abbess what Yozef told him. As proficient as Yozef had become in the language, he had trouble following the rapid-fire speech of the excited Petros and questions by the abbot and the leading medicant.

  Diera turned to Yozef. “You say you know how to make this ether, but have you ever made it yourself and used it?”

  “No,” said Yozef. “As I told Brother Fitham, ether use wasn’t part of my education, but I know how to make it.”

  “Tell us more about this ether,” prompted Diera.

  “It’s a liquid. If I recall, it smells sweet. It’s easy to make in principle, but the exact details would have to be tested. The person to undergo surgery is allowed to breathe it. I think a bag holding some of the ether and held over the nose and mouth would work. For exactly how long, I don’t know, but only until the person is unconscious. The doses and how exactly it’s used I also don’t know, so we’ll have to carefully test this. There may be side effects—I don’t remember for sure. I do know it can be addictive and harmful if inhaled too much and too often, so it should be carefully controlled. Too much can kill, and that could happen without warning. Maybe it just puts the person into such a deep sleep, he stops breathing. It wasn’t my field of study. I remember that it’s extremely dangerous to work with. I mean, like, extremely flammable, so care has to be taken in making and using it. Oh, and I already said it’s highly flammable. Extreme precautions are needed to keep it away from any flame or embers. It can also break down into other compounds that are dangerous, that can explode. I think you need to keep it out of the sun also and probably in a cool place. And very volatile, so it has to be kept in a tightly sealed container, probably glass. It cannot be stored too long, so you would need to make new runs occasionally, even when there is some left from older batches.”

  Yozef stopped talking, aware he was rattling on. Three different expressions faced him: Petros smiling, Diera hopeful, and Sistian skeptical.

  “Yozef, excuse me for asking,” Sistian said, “but this is something we’ve never heard of. You’ve been recovering from whatever happened to you. It’s not unreasonable for us to wonder about what you’re saying.”

  Yozef nodded. “I understand, Abbot. I hope you’ll not be offended if I say that your people aren’t always aware of what may be common knowledge elsewhere in the world. You and I have discussed this before. Different peoples have not just different customs but can also have different knowledge. I’ve got the impression that there are things here in Caedellium unknown to my people at home, and the reverse is also true, such as the ether.”

  “Yozef is right,” Diera said to her husband. “When I studied medicine in Iraqui
nik those years ago, I learned many things that I brought back to Caedellium. Others had the same experience. It’s a problem that our peoples don’t share enough knowledge, because of either the distances or willingness. That this ether may be in common usage elsewhere in the world isn’t strange.”

  While the abbot was obviously not convinced, he looked mollified. “What would you need to make some of this ether, Yozef?”

  With that simple question, Yozef’s isolation from the world outside the abbey ended.

  Making Ether

  Whatever reservations the abbot had about Yozef’s claims of a miracle compound, he had no hesitation in providing Yozef with whatever was needed. By noon the next day, Yozef met with men called to the abbey by the abbot—an apothecary, a metal worker, a glass blower, and a brewer. Each of the four tradesmen owned a shop with workers, and none of the four knew exactly what Yozef expected of them, even after a summary by the abbot and a longer explanation by Yozef. They were there and willing to listen simply because the abbot asked them. Accompanying the brewer was a Preddi refugee who knew of crude batch distillation for a drink favored by the Narthani. He had worked in a shop in Preddi City before he and his family fled from Preddi Province to Eywell and then across the Eywellese border into Keelan.

  They needed only two ingredients to produce diethyl ether: pure ethanol and a high enough concentration of sulfuric acid. The ethanol was easy. Though they could have started with wine, the brewer already had gallons of distillate with a higher ethanol content. It was simply a matter of making the brewer and Preddi refugee understand Yozef needed to further distill out alcohol with none of the flavorings or other components of the harsh whiskey they produced.

  The acid was harder. Yozef didn’t know how concentrated the acid had to be, so they settled for what was available and hoped it would work. It took some time before the apothecary understood that Yozef’s sulfuric acid was their “vitriol,” a corrosive liquid with various uses and to which the metal worker had access.

  In two days they gathered the ingredients, but the distillation equipment took longer. In principle, the apparatus was simple. A glass retort, or reaction vessel, would hold whatever liquid needed to be separated into one or more of its components. A narrow opening at the top of the vessel connected to a vertical glass column. The first try at the equipment they settled on was a column about 18 inches long. Just before the top of the column, a glass sidearm was fused to the column and ran diagonally down to a waiting collection flask.

  The sidearm proved a difficult part for the glassblower, because not only did it have to be connected to the vertical column so vapors could enter the sidearm, the sidearm itself needed to be encased in a second tube through which water could be run to cool the vapors. On heating the reaction vessel and the enclosed liquid, the vapors rose in the vertical column to the level of the sidearm. When the vapors entered the sidearm, they were cooled by the water jacket, were condensed back into a liquid, and ran down the sidearm into a waiting receptacle.

  They also needed thermometers placed at the top of the vertical column and inside the reaction vessel. To Yozef’s chagrin and initial dismay, there were no thermometers. It was a problem he would encounter again and again: each piece of knowledge or technology needing other pieces. It took Yozef several hours to explain to the glass blower that they needed a small reservoir of mercury leading to a fine capillary about a foot long, all sealed in glass. Fortunately, mercury was known and supplied by the metal worker.

  How the glass blower managed to make the thermometers, Yozef never asked, but a sixday later the blower showed up with several versions. They were far thicker than thermometers Yozef had used on Earth, and the capillary wider than any he had ever seen. To his relief, when they warmed the bulbous end, the mercury rose in the capillary.

  The next problem was the uniqueness of each crude thermometer—different in length and capillary diameter—and none had calibrations. Boiling water and ice—sourced from deep caves in the mountains of northeast Keelan—let them mark 0cC and 100oC on each thermometer. Since the target temperature was 140oC, but not above 160oC, where spontaneous ignition could occur, they needed calibrations higher than 100oC. The only way was to boil liquids that had higher vaporization temperatures. The only available candidate Yozef could dredge out of his memory was olive oil at 300oC. He knew that number only because his ex-girlfriend read somewhere that olive oil began smoking at about 240oC, which was a sign of breakdown products that were supposed to be bad for your health. They had been cooking with olive oil then, and Julie wanted to stop. It took some library and Internet research and talking to convince her it was okay. The olive oil would give approximate thermometer calibrations at 240o and 300o, leaving a considerable gap from 100o, but at least they’d have the target temperatures bracketed.

  By the vagaries of chance, one of the trees transplanted from Earth was the olive, and a large black version was occasionally served or appeared in dishes. A check with the abbey dining hall confirmed the use of olive oil in cooking.

  Yozef and several workers provided by the tradesmen assembled the final distillation test apparatus and were ready to calibrate. Yozef explained they’d assume the mercury rise in a capillary to be linear, and equal increases in temperature would lead to equal rises in the mercury. That no two thermometers were identical meant that every thermometer had to be calibrated separately. They used olive oil to estimate where 140oC should be on a given thermometer and ran the ether-producing reaction to that point—from a distance and checking the readings behind a shield with a pinhole. If the apparatus didn’t explode, they assumed the temperature was no more than 160o.

  By this time, only the brewer and the glass blower of the four initial tradesmen remained active in the project. Each supplied materials and labor as requested by the abbot. In the end, it was Filtin Fuller, the glass blower’s assistant and occasional drinking companion at the Snarling Graeko, who most quickly grasped Yozef’s directions and became de facto leader of the workers. Not that any of the workers fully understood why or what they were doing, but for some reason, Filtin had faith that Yozef probably knew what he was doing. Probably.

  A morning finally came for the first runs of ether. Yozef looked at the final apparatus and shook his head. He couldn’t believe they were really trying to make ether with this cluster-fuck of a setup. Back home, every safety agency and official on Earth would be screaming at them. He hoped this worked and they didn’t kill themselves or anyone else.

  Although the reaction called for a continuous addition of ethanol, Yozef settled on self-contained runs of equal starting volumes and stopping the reactions after different reductions in volume. They allowed the products collected from the sidearm to cool, and Yozef smelled the products. Three of five products smelled right for ether.

  Chapter 16: Guinea Pigs

  Patient Number 1

  By midday meal, word spread through the complex, and the afternoon found Yozef, the workers, Petros, Sistian, Diera, and more than a dozen medicants and other abbey staff gathered in an operating room. A coney lay on its back, tied by straps to a board. The rabbit-sized animal filled a similar ecological niche and was the source of some of the unidentified meat in abbey stews. Diera followed what few suggestions Yozef had for the ether application and poured the liquid onto a folded cloth and held it over the coney’s nostrils. It squealed, took several gasping breaths, and was unconscious within seconds. The palpable astonishment lasted two minutes, while everyone waited to see whether the coney lived and still breathed.

  “It seems the ether puts the coney to sleep,” said Diera.

  An audible sigh surfaced from the gathering, accompanied by smiles and a few exclamations.

  “But does the coney feel pain and would it awaken?” She took a needle and pricked one of the paws between digits, watching for the normal withdrawal reflexes and vocal complaints. The coney never twitched.

  “So much for the minor discomfort, but what about serious pain
such as a surgical operation might entail?”

  “Amputate a leg,” said Fitham.

  The others looked at him, a little surprised at the cold-blooded suggestion from the elderly brother.

  “It’s going into the pot anyway one of these nights. Let it help us see if the ether works.”

  “Yes, Diera,” Sistian agreed, “go ahead and take off a leg and sew him up as if it were a person. We’ll see how the coney responds.”

  Diera nodded and left the room for a few minutes, returning with a rolling cart of surgical tools, needles, the local version of catgut for sutures, and cloths for staunching blood. Another medicant assisted. She made a first cut through fur and underlying skin layers at a forepaw joint. The coney didn’t respond. She proceeded to cut quickly through the muscles and ligaments, sawed through the thin bone, and sewed a flap of skin over the exposed end of the limb. The coney never twitched, and its chest rose and fell in normal rhythm.

  “Blessed by the Almighty God if I don’t think it worked like Yozef said it would,” she said in awe.

  They unstrapped the coney and placed it in a cage with an old blanket on the floor as a cushion, and all retired for the evening. The next morning the coney was awake and moving about the cage, albeit slowly and obviously in discomfort.

  Human Patient Number 1

  Several of the medicants were eager to use the ether on human patients waiting for surgery. Yozef discouraged the rush, and Diera agreed and enforced that they’d run additional trials on larger animals to test dosages and effects. Subsequent results with goats and yearling cattle showed that a few drops in a leather bag with the end held over the nostrils sufficed to put the animals into a sleep, the depth of which was dependent on how long they applied the ether. Longer and larger doses confirmed it was possible to stop the animal’s breathing. After another sixday, Diera agreed they were ready.