Together, these four men were Queen Ranavolana's senior command structure, her seagoing Praetorian Guard. They had, among them, more than a century of experience in piracy in the "dark alleys" of the seas east of Africa and south of Asia. They had little regard for human life—their victims', their men's, even their own— and in this weird new post-Event world, they were pledged to serve their pirate queen with all the skill and ferocity they could muster. They had absolutely nothing to lose, and thus were incredibly dangerous to everyone else.
The queen's dilemma, then, was what to do with the resources at her disposal.
"We will send out a reconnaissance patrol to determine the enemy's strength and ability to defend himself." She announced this to her commanders matter-of-factly, and they received the information without visible reaction.
"Yer Highness," said Waddell, the big Aussie, "I think that is exactly what we ought to do, but—er ... well, I think we also should patrol to the east to see if there's anyone, or anything, out that way."
"Our forces are limited," Ranavolana rejoined. "There's only so much we can do. We need to keep an adequate defense on hand here."
"Lady, we can do both," Patel put in. "And we might find some more ships that have foundered or are lost at sea. We can always make use of more." " He smiled, showing his small brown teeth.
Queen Ranavolana did not smile. She steeled herself not to show any softness or humor—potential signs of weakness in the company of these men of action. She sought the opinions of others of her council. Some of them were more concerned with "internal security," that is, unrest among the Malagasy survivors than defenses—against whom? they asked. There had been no other sign of human survivors since the fishing boat encounter. She listened, absorbed what the men said, then suspended the meeting so that she could consider her decision.
The queen of the pirates retreated to her private quarters, sparsely furnished with a pallet, a makeshift desk, and a chair. On a small table in one corner of the room, there was a large candle that flickered with golden light. Here she could read and meditate and relax, dream her grandiose dreams of power. Here, in her sanctum sanctorum, anything was possible, and she could be anyone she chose: she could even be Anne Marie Appleton, the lost soul who had wondered across the world to find ... what? Herself? The meaning of life? The ultimate high? To find... to be the woman her now-dead family always hoped she would be?
Now there were many people—hundreds, if not thousands— who looked to her for life and death decisions on their survival and well-being. She gazed at the candle. It had been a gift from a young woman who came to her to ask for the queen's favor upon her children who needed food and shelter.
It was still afternoon in this strange new world, but the sky was gravid with clouds that obscured the giant red orb of the sun. Night and day often melded together in a dull iron sky that gave sadly inadequate light or heat. On some rare occasions, it rained; but it was not the same rain she had known before the great disaster. It was a hard, almost steely rain—cold and piercing, blessedly brief. It was enough to dampen the earth and keep the inland plants and trees in flower, enough to provide potable water for the survivor community, enough to sustain life—barely. But, to what end? she wondered. Were these people, her people, better off for having survived?
She kept herself semidetached from them—the citizens of her isolated empire. She attempted to maintain an image of godlike dispassion, the calm of a remote ruler. Her commanders and henchmen did whatever dirty police work was necessary. The people themselves kept busy with the grim business of everyday life. There was another reason for her self-imposed aloofness. She could not bear to see so much misery close up. As much as she had, during her vagabonding years, seen suffering and death, she no longer had the stomach for it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by sounds of shouting and scuffling near her private quarters. A burly guard burst into the room and informed Queen Ranavolana that she was needed urgently by the council. She rushed out to see what the commotion was all about, heading directly for the pavilion on the beach where a large crowd was gathered. She pushed her way into the middle of the meeting area.
The council rose to greet their leader. "What is happening?" the pirate queen asked.
The tall Taiwanese captain, Louie, said, "The motorboat is missing—along with some fuel. There are two men unaccounted for, as well as some weapons and ammunition."
An ominous silence fell over the assembly, and all eyes turned to Queen Ranavolana. Her eyes burned angrily as she demanded, and received, the details. The men must have slipped away the previous night, loading the fifteen-foot motorboat with as much extra fuel and other supplies as possible. They probably rowed it out to sea before starting the motor. That was many hours ago. There was no hope of catching them now.
"Who is responsible for this outrage? Who was guarding my boats?" she asked in a low voice, her head swiveling slowly as she looked into their frozen faces. No one answered her.
The Australian spoke up: "The men who were on guard at the time have been arrested. They—"
"Bring them to me."
"But, Queen—"
"Bring them to me. Now!"
It took several agonizing minutes for the word to be circulated and the men brought forward. Their hands and feet were bound, and they were dragged before the queen and her lieutenants. The two men, who seemed pitiful and small, fell to their knees. They had been beaten severely, their eyes swollen closed, their faces broken and bloody. They trembled, speechless.
To the assembled crowd, Queen Ranavolana announced: "These men are criminals of the worst order. They have endangered all of our lives." Glaring furiously at the wretches before her, she said: "I sentence you to death, at dawn."
—————
The evening after the artists' parade, the Focus Group held a special meeting of their own to celebrate the success of Sarah's extravaganza. It was now January 30, thirty-six days after the Event. Herb suggested that the date be observed in perpetuity as Parade Day. His motion, seconded by Roxy, passed without opposition.
"Quite a parliamentary coup," Tom said drily. "Don't get me wrong, I think it's a terrific idea. I just wonder what the greater community will think of it."
As the night sky darkened, the group lit one of their precious candles and toasted the muses, drinking the sorghum beer that a Zulu dancer had given to Roxy, his fellow artist, as a gesture of friendship. The six were in high spirits, although well aware that this party atmosphere could not last.
"It's back to the grindstone tomorrow," Wil said. "For me it's back to the good old Joint Planning Subcommittee."
"What's on the agenda?" Sarah asked.
"Ichiro Nagasaka will hold forth on the topic of iron and steel. This is the moment he's been waiting for. Frankly, it's a moment I've been waiting for, too. It's exciting to be in the center of such a momentous enterprise. Rebuilding an industrial society from scratch."
"Progress," Roxy said. "Soon there will be factories, probably standing right about here, spoiling our view of the water. I can't wait!"
"Soot-filled skies and black-lunged workers," Herb put in.
"But you have to admit that it's exciting," Wil said. "Making our way out of the Stone Age into the Iron Age."
"Iron schmiron," Roxy said with a shrug. "Everyone carries on about the Iron Age, the iron horse, and all that stuff. I say it's just bad poetry for a heartless world. Really, what's the big deal about something that's just a metal?"
"It is a big deal, Roxy," Tom replied. "A very big deal. Instead of complaining, you people should be singing hymns of praise. The universe has given us ninety-two elements with which to work, and out of those ninety-two, iron has a special place, a very special place. Without this unique element—and without the people who were able to discover its secrets—human civilization as we know it would never have evolved."
"Ninety-two elements," Herb said. "Isn't that a peculiar number?"
"It's a fabulous nu
mber," Tom said excitedly. "As you learned in your high school chemistry class."
"You're assuming a lot for this crowd," Sarah put in.
"Anyway," Tom went on, controlling his exasperation, "the elements are the basic building blocks of the material world. We list them according to the number of electrons they have spinning around in orbit, which is the same as the number of protons they have in their nucleus. You've seen those pictures of electrons in orbit around the atomic nucleus. Well, a drawing can't really show what an atom is, but speaking as an engineer—not a nuclear physicist, mind you—I would say that the image serves us pretty well."
Warming to his topic, Tom continued: "Uranium, which has ninety-two electrons, is the largest atom we find in nature. Any atom with more than ninety-two electrons is too large to hang together. The nucleus is unstable and the outer electrons tend to go flying off into space. Physicists, by using fancy, high-powered equipment—cyclotrons and linear accelerators—have managed to paste together another twenty-two or so elements; but such artificially made atoms break apart very quickly. So, to repeat, there are ninety-two elements which the universe gives us to use."
"Or to leave as we find them," Roxy muttered.
"Yes, of course," Tom said. "But since we humans seem to be curious, comfort-seeking, and innately creative, the universe couldn't have expected us to keep our hands to ourselves. Just think of it. All the world is made of this wonderfully organized stuff! For us engineers, it's the most fabulous erector set one could wish for. Maybe erector set is the wrong image, since the same atoms we incorporate into manufactured objects are the basic material of burning stars and living beings. Also, they're not material or substantial in any familiar sense. They are will-o'-the-wisp electrical 'wavicles'—sort of waves, sort of particles—if I understand the physicists correctly. But for engineers, their orderly behavior is what counts.
"And, you know—this is what's so incredible as we sit here on a beach with the world in ruins—it really doesn't matter how many comets collide or how many planets are destroyed. The elements remain, and with them the capacity to reconstitute anything that has ever been, and wonders still undreamed of. Add to this the knowledge we have of what the elements are, and how they behave, and we haven't been defeated at all. We have the makings—physical and intellectual—of a new world."
"I thought we were talking about iron," Herb said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.
"Yes, we were," Tom said. "And we are. Among the ninety-two elements, iron with its twenty-six electrons is very, very special. When you get a reasonably pure collection of iron atoms, they arrange themselves into a nice crystalline pattern—ideal for strength—with just the right amount of internal slip—perfect for flexibility. Then, if you take iron and combine it chemically with a little bit of carbon—that is, let a few carbon atoms arrange themselves in the interstitial spaces between the iron atoms—you get the material we call steel. It's the most useful material a tool-using, machine-making, invention-loving species could possibly want. Which means that we engineers, in discovering the secrets of iron and steel, are the makers of marvels."
Tom Swift—calm, stoical Tom—was suddenly more animated than his friends had ever seen him. "If we're concerned about rebuilding the world," he said, "we should be thinking long and hard about iron. I mean, really long and really hard. What do you think that civilization is? Poems and paintings? Pretty flags and patriotic songs? No, my friends, at the heart of civilization you will find iron and steel."
"There are other metals," Herb said. "Why is iron so special?"
"All metals share some characteristics," Tom responded, "but each one is unique. Believe me when I tell you that for tools, structures, and machines, iron has proved to be uniquely serviceable. Particularly when it's mixed with a bit of carbon to make steel. And wonder of wonders, iron is plentiful. In fact, it constitutes four percent of the material in the earth's crust. Considering its attributes and its availability—well, the whole thing is nothing short of magical."
"Not magical," said Mary, who had been quiet up to this point. "It's a miracle. God's miracle."
"You've got a pretty materialistic idea about what a miracle is," Roxy said. Her tone was critical but not unfriendly.
"That's what happens when you mix an engineer with a believer," Sarah said.
"Okay," Herb pressed, allowing his curiosity to show through in spite of himself, "but how and why is this stuff so amazing?"
"First of all," Tom said, "steel is a very hard material, by which I mean it resists penetration, it resists deformation, it resists abrasion and wear. Steel is also tough, which is different from hard: a material that is tough can absorb energy during deformation, resisting the extension of cracks. For example, in a collision, it will dent instead of shattering. In addition to being hard and tough, steel is strong, which means it can sustain heavy loads, in tension and shear, as well as in compression.
"When stressed, it will deform only slightly, elastically, returning to its original shape after the stress is removed. Yet if we stress it heavily enough—and we can calculate the forces with precision—it will deform plastically, maintaining its new shape. We can cast it, mold it, stamp it, cut it, extrude it, machine it—in so many ways fashion it to serve our needs. Hard, tough, strong, ductile; we're talking about a uniquely utilitarian substance. And all because of the ways in which iron atoms arrange themselves when they're together in a group."
Flushed with excitement, raising his voice, Tom continued: "I tell you, the stuff is precious. At the same time, there's plenty of iron in many parts of the world and limitless amounts of carbon, which means that steel is comparatively inexpensive. Which makes it all the more precious, if you get my meaning. This wonderful material is responsive to our every whim. Add more carbon and the steel becomes harder. A little less, and the steel will bend more readily while retaining its toughness. If we want a tool that is very hard on the outside, to resist abrasion, yet tough on the inside—to be able to absorb shock, for example—we simply add carbon to the outer surfaces; we call it case hardening. For other special features, we can add different materials, such as chromium to make it stainless, that is, resistant to corrosion. By using changes of temperature, we can work more miracles. Heat steel and cool it slowly—the process of annealing—the material becomes softer and more malleable, just right for molding into car body panels or cooking pots. Cool it suddenly, by quenching in liquid, and it becomes harder. And if this sudden cooling creates unwanted internal stresses, they can be relieved by reheating—that's called tempering."
Wil Hardy could not resist putting on his graduate student's hat. "Of course," he ventured, "none of the chemical reasons for this behavior were known until late in human history."
"And you're about to tell us exactly when that was," Herb quipped. "Now that Tom has lectured us on chemistry, I suppose that you're going to hold forth on the history of technology."
"I can see that you're tired and impatient at the moment. But, believe me, the story is worth telling. Just think of it. We've been thrown back into the Stone Age, six thousand years in the past, yet we intend to leap across those millennia in a flash."
"Leapin' lizards, History Man! Why don't you tell the kids all about it?" Everyone laughed, but it was clear they were fascinated in spite of themselves.
"Sure. There are really two stories, one, the saga of experimentation, the centuries of trial and error during which technologists learned to smelt iron—separate it from the stone in which it is found—and combine it with carbon to make steel. The other wonderful tale is the latter-day exploits of scientists who explained the magical processes that the artisans had developed. We tend to forget that the science that we call chemistry didn't come into being until the 1770s—three thousand years after the beginning of the so-called Iron Age. Yes, the 1770s. That's when Antoine Lavoisier suggested, and went a long way toward showing, that all things are composed of a number of simple substances, namely, the elements, as To
m has pointed out.
"Then, in the first decade of the 1800s, John Dalton put forward the idea that elements consist of atoms, and that each element consists of its own distinctive variety of atom. I may be telling you more than you want to know, but just think of what a giant imaginative leap this was. A simple concept; yet how sublime. Dalton didn't know the exact ways in which the atoms differed. But he perceived that there was a regular steplike progression from one to another.
"For awhile, it looked as if this sequence was correlated with atomic weight, each atom being one unit heavier than another. This was almost right, since as each different atom has one more electron than the one preceding it on the spectrum, it also has one more proton in the nucleus, which determines the weight. It turned out to be somewhat more complicated, since there are also neutrons in the nucleus, and they also contribute to the weight—but without changing the number of electrons. And it's the electrons that mainly determine each atom's behavior. In any event, Mendeleyev's periodic table, which demonstrated the existence of 'families' of elements, appeared in 1869. The modern model of the atom, with electrons orbiting the nucleus in a series of 'shells,' was advanced by Niels Bohr in 1913. That's practically yesterday in the history of technology. So you can see that if technologists had waited upon chemical theory, the making of iron would have been a long time in coming."
"Are you saying that science doesn't matter?" Herb prodded.
"No, of course that's not what I'm saying," Wil replied. "The history of chemistry is a super story of discovery. And there are lots of things that we can now do with metals that we couldn't do before we knew their chemical composition. But there are lots of things that technologists have done—and continue to do—far in advance of scientific explanation. In fact, I believe one could say that technology has done at least as much for science as science has done for technology. Maybe more.
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