Scaevola's Triumph (Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy Book 3)

by Ian Miller

  "Payment?" Gaius frowned.

  "Exactly!" the Ulsian nodded. He seemed almost relieved to be understood.

  "We've got none of your money," Gaius said slowly, "and really we've got nothing to sell. We've got very little from home, so . . ."

  "No, we don't expect you to give up your possessions," the Ulsian said, "but we might ask you to do something."

  "What?" Gaius asked in surprise.

  "You'll find out," the Ulsian said, then added with a laugh, "when the meeting gets to a conclusion."

  "I might have guessed," Gaius muttered.

  * * *

  Two days later, by which time the Romans were beginning to wonder whether they would ever leave this room, the Tin Man suddenly activated himself, and informed Gaius that the Ulsian committee had reached a decision, and had a proposition for him.

  "Yes?" Gaius asked. The group had discussed this issue almost to death. They suspected that they would be asked to do something that effectively made them exhibits, objects for the Ulsians to look over. Something not very much different from being zoo exhibits. The question was, for how long? Perhaps they should go to almost any reasonable length to get out of this room. Which, of course, left open the question of what was reasonable. Nobody had a good answer to that.

  "You will be asked to complete your engine," the Tin Man said.

  "What?" Gaius asked in surprise. Of all the things he had thought of, this was the last, although later, when he came to remember the prophecy, a chilling thought came over him that this had been pre-ordained.

  "You heard," the Tin Man replied calmly.

  "Yes, I did," Gaius conceded. "It was just that I didn't believe it."

  "You should know by now that I do not lie or make frivolous statements."

  "Of course," Gaius agreed. "I just don't see why?"

  "Ulse wants you to make it." The Tin man said this without emotion, as if it were self-evident, and this annoyed Gaius, although as Vipsania pointed out later, since the Tin man had never yet shown emotion, now was hardly the time to expect to see it. "They will make a program on what you do."

  Gaius stared at the Tin Man for a moment, then realized that what he was asking, bizarre though it was, was another version of what they had discussed. And it was by no means the most unpleasant option they had suspected might be requested. "A strange form of entertainment," Gaius shrugged, then reflected that it might be no worse than the rather dreary stuff he had already been watching.

  "What the programme will be about will have nothing to do with how an engine works," the Tin Man continued, "but rather how inventions are made. You will have to make all your trials, and have all your failures."

  "Suppose I can't?" Gaius asked with a frown.

  "Can't or won't?" the Tin Man responded immediately, and although there was no emotion in the question, the rate at which it had been delivered seemed to be laden with irritation.

  "Can't!" Gaius replied. "You see, I have never made a bolt. I have no real skill at working with metals, and I always got someone else to do it for me. I . . ."

  "You are entitled to any skill you could have obtained in your civilization. As a reward, if you succeed, you may learn whatever technology you can."

  "Or anything else?" Gaius asked.

  "Anything you are capable of, except possibly the latest military plans which are secret. Also, you may all go anywhere you like on Ulse, as long as you do not make a nuisance of yourselves."

  "And how can I get something made? I'm not allowed to return and −"

  "I shall order it."

  "You can go back?" Vipsania asked angrily.

  "I can specify what you would do down to the last femtometer," the Tin Man said in an unperturbed tone. "It will be made on Ulse, but indistinguishable to anything made on Earth." He paused, and added, "I have all the knowledge Timothy had of Terran manufacturing. Also," he paused again, then added, "you will get the benefit of any doubt. If you ask for something that could conceivably be made by your technology, or you can state how to go about making it, then you will get it."

  "Effectively, you want to be entertained by my efforts, my failures, my −"

  "Yes," the Tin Man said, "but you will be getting an excellent bargain. Look at it this way. Somehow you have to pay for your upkeep while here. No! Don't protest until you hear me out. Ulse is obliged to keep you alive, and if you really want to sit down and just take, giving nothing back for it, you'll probably get away with it, but nobody's going to be that impressed. Do this, and you'll earn enough to be able to afford all sorts of privileges for the rest of your life. Also . . ."

  "Also?" Gaius asked curiously.

  "The outcome for your abductor depends on what happens."

  "How come?" Vipsania asked.

  "The greatest crime is to seriously alter the course of a civilization. He will argue you would have failed anyway. If you don't go through with this, that argument must prevail."

  "I see," Gaius muttered.

  "You'll have to try," Lucilla said to Gaius. She put her arm on his shoulder, and added, "Otherwise I suspect we'll seldom even get out of this room."

  "I suspect trying won't be enough," Gaius muttered. "I think I have to succeed."

  "I know you will," Vipsania said, giving him a hug.

  "Touching faith," Gaius smiled, "but −"

  "I believe the Ulsians expect you to succeed," Vipsania snorted, "and I know you're persistent."

  "And why do you believe the Ulsians expect me to succeed?"

  "They want you to do it. You heard. They want to be able to see what invention involves. They're hardly likely to find out much unless you can succeed, and remember, they've seen your diagrams, your bits and pieces. If there's something missing beyond your ability, why would they be bothered?"

  "Interesting logic, as Timothy would say," Gaius said, as he began to pace up and down the room.

  "I shall return to the door," the Tin Man said, "while you decide."

  "There's no need," Gaius said. He turned towards the Tin Man and shrugged as he said, "I'll do it." He turned towards the others, and added, "I don't really have a choice, but you never know, it might even be fun."

  "I shall convey to the committee your acceptance, and the last phrase," the Tin Man offered.

  "Then I guess I had better start thinking about steam again," Gaius shrugged.

  Chapter 8

  "At last! We can go!" Lucilla said in a slightly muffled tone.

  "Yes, yellow!" Gaius said with mock seriousness. "Yellow can lead the way!"

  "At once, red!" came the reply, loaded with mock obsequiousness.

  They were to be permitted to go outside, on the surface, provided they wore these strangely coloured cover-all overalls that also covered the head and had a visor through which to see. The sight of them had drawn much amusement, with comments such as it was obviously believed that the colours would help each other remember who they were.

  "It will help the viewers of the programmes," the Tin Man confirmed.

  "Then why not let them see our faces?" Vipsania said. "Are we that ugly to them?"

  "I'll explain later," the Tin Man said enigmatically.

  They entered the capsule, with spirits bubbling as they took their seats. Now they would see something of the planet. The capsule, of course, was exactly as they had remembered it, as were the vibrations, the strange changes of direction . . .

  "I would have thought," Gaius said slowly to the Tin Man, "that such an advanced civilization could have made these things travel more smoothly."

  "They can," the Tin Man replied in his standard bland tone, "if they spent more effort on maintenance."

  "I thought you would have had, well . . . metal . . . " Vipsania stumbled.

  "What you call 'Tin Men' to do the maintenance?"

  "Yes," Vipsania said tactfully, "but I was trying to find another way of putting it."

  "For want of something better, call them droids," the Tin Man said. "Yes, the tubes are mai
ntained that way, but there still has to be an allocation of materials and other supplies, which are not made available in sufficient quantity."

  "The war is taking precedence?" Gaius asked.

  "I would like to say yes," the Tin Man replied, "and up to a point that is true, but this problem has been with us long before the war."

  They spent quite some time, with intermittent halts that involved a little shuddering, and which were explained as interchanges, whatever they were, then there was an extended period during which the vibration smoothed, which was explained as being in a better maintained tube in which they could travel at high speed, then the vibrations returned, decreasing in frequency if not in amplitude, until finally the capsule came to a halt. The Tin man opened the door and they stepped out into another small room. They exited through another door, climbed some stairs to a further door.

  "Welcome to the Ulsian countryside!" the Tin man announced rather grandiosely, and with a very strangely awkward flourish, he opened this door. Lucilla stepped out and almost winced at the brightness.

  "Now I can explain why you are wearing those clothes," the Tin Man advised, "If you did not, you would get badly sun burnt if you remained outside all day."

  "Is this summer?" Gaius asked, "or is it always like this?"

  "It's what you would call early autumn," the Tin man said. "It can get brighter, but up here it rains frequently. This is a particularly good day, so you might like to look around."

  The first surprise was that they could see so far. They were on a moderately high hill, and in all directions, green seemed to go on and on, to merge with a very distant horizon, the whole view uninterrupted by any sign of civilization, other than the archway through which they had come, and a small building to one side. There were no buildings, no roads, no houses, no huts, no small columns of smoke to indicate a forest dwelling. The planet seemed deserted, except there were huge areas of quilt-like changes of colour where enormous paddocks of presumably different crops were growing. There were also patches of open grassland that gave way to patches of brown, or patches of forest. To the east there were small rounded hills, well-forested, which gave way, on the south-eastern side, to rather deep gullies where out of sight streams carved their way through the short heavy trees.

  Before them was an area covered with what seemed to be something like extremely coarse grass, and which sloped down gently to one of the lightly forested areas. To the right of the trees, a small stream ambled slowly towards a gully in the distance. It was also a countryside that seemed strangely tidy, for there were large areas in which everything seemed planned; this was the grass area, in which no weeds or shrubs should grow, over there was the forest area that was also free of shrubbery or briars, while over towards a gully there was a forest of these strangely short squat trees with massive trunks and downward-sloping branches, under which briars and vines grew prolifically in the steeper places. As Gaius was to remark later, it was as if an army clerk had been instructed to make sure a bit of everything was present.

  It was then they saw one of the grazers. A grey animal about a meter high with a body and legs shaped like those of a small elephant, but with a head with massive jaws and, as they were to be told later, massive molars, tore its way through the tangled shrubbery and lumbered off. A raucous noise made them look up; there were three massive bat-like animals with huge wings gliding through the air.

  "This place has been reserved for you," the Tin Man announced. "This is where you will try to build your steam engine."

  "I thought you wished to make a program on this," Gaius frowned, as he looked around.

  "Yes. I should warn you, everything you do here, all of you, will be recorded, although only useful material will be kept. However, you are free to wander around, and examine the Ulsian wild-life."

  "Do you have wolves?" Lucilla asked, then added, "or anything like them?"

  "You will be quite safe," the Tin Man responded. "There are no carnivores in this area."

  "And the help I need?"

  "I shall provide that," the Tin Man replied. "All your items and drawings are in that small hut over there."

  "I still need more," Gaius warned. "I only really carried around small items, such as for joining things. The main tanks were still going to be made, and −"

  "I took the trouble of making some items you had drawn," the Tin Man said. "The drawings were specific enough and while there could be some doubt whether you Romans could really build the tank for boiling water, which I'll call a boiler, I built it anyway."

  Gaius walked towards the hut and entered. The first thing he saw was his boiler. The pipes leading out even had threads on them.

  "This is impressive," Gaius said, "but how did you put the ends on?"

  "Sweated them on, as per your instructions."

  "They weren't instructions," Gaius cautioned. "They were preliminary ideas."

  "You don't want that?"

  "What I'm concerned about," Gaius said, "is that under pressure they'll simply fly off."

  "So what do you wish to do to stop that?"

  "If I were back on Earth . . ."

  "Assume you can have anything you could there."

  "Then I need a mount for the boiler. I intended to mount the first one in stone, and to make sure it didn't fly apart, wedge it in as an exact fit . . ."

  "Then do it," the Tin Man smiled.

  "I'm not a stone mason, and −"

  "Your civilization is acknowledged to have total skill at working with stone. Define what you want, and it shall be made."

  "Then I've got to lift the boiler into it," Gaius frowned, "and I'm not strong enough."

  "I am," the Tin Man said simply, "and even if I weren't, I would get help. I promise you that you will not fail simply for lack of something that could reasonably be provided back on Earth. Draw what you want made."

  So Gaius sat down and drew a mount, with a fireplace, and a mount for his other items, and indicated where they should be in relation to each other. Eventually, he handed this to the Tin Man, who glanced at it and indicated it could all be made.

  "There's one more thing," the Tin Man said. "I need to know how big an area you will occupy, how high you wish to go, and what working facilities you need."

  Gaius showed him, then inquired as to why he needed that information, for there seemed to be plenty of room.

  "This is a fine day," the Tin man said, "but it will rain frequently, and your machine should have shelter." He then suggested that Gaius might like to spend the rest of the day walking in the woods with the women.

  The first thing that struck Gaius about the woods was the silence. In the forests on Earth there were always noisy birds, but whatever these flying creatures were, apart from the odd quite horrendous grating noise, they seemed strangely quiet. They sat and talked beside a stream, and ate some quite strange fruit. The taste, Lucilla noted, was very unusual, but it was becoming addictive. Probably because it was a change from the usual rather bland formulated food.

  Then, in the water, they saw a fish. While it was not a fish they had seen before, it was shaped like a fish, it had fins and a tail like a fish, and it swam like a fish. When they returned to their apartment, Gaius mentioned this to the Tin Man, and requested fishing equipment. When asked why he wanted it, he replied that they would all like variety in their diet.

  "If you ate that, you would die," the Tin Man said. While his tone was its usual expressionless one, the effect was terribly chilling.

  They did not belong on this world, and there was nothing they could do about it.

  * * *

  Gaius returned to the site the following morning, not because he wanted to, but because he was told he had to. This was irritating, a waste of time. He did not need to see more poisonous fish. Accordingly, his mood was one of frustration as he stepped towards the small doorway that opened onto the surface. The first things he noticed as he stepped out of the archway were the intensely black and ominously looking clouds. The
n, to his surprise, he saw that the boiler was in place, mounted very well in the stone supports, and under a shelter.

  "This would have taken me, well, months," he shook his head to the Tin Man.

  "You need income," the Tin Man replied simply. "Why wait months for something we can do in minutes?"

  There was no answer to that. The next problem was to see whether it would boil enough steam to do anything useful. A fire was lit, and after some time, steam emerged. Soon there was a large plume of steam emerging, so water was poured onto the fire. The first part seemed to work.

  Gaius was then asked to explain what was supposed to happen next. He showed the inlet and exit holes on his cylinder, showed how the piston could go up and down, just, because it was a tight fit. The piston would drive a hinged beam that would turn a large and fairly massive wheel. Attached to that axle would be a small wheel on one side, and a drum on the other. The small wheel would have a belt to drive another small wheel, which in turn could drive a rocker arm. The idea was, when the piston was at the top of the stroke, top being defined as leaving the smallest space in the cylinder and not implying any vertical standing, steam came in the entrance hole, and pushed the piston to the other end. When it got to the end of the stroke, steam stopped coming in, and what was in was then pushed out through a newly opened exit hole, the valve being operated by the small rocker beam. The problem was to construct it so that the valves opened at the right time, and so far he had two ideas on this. One was to do it through the small wheel and belt, but he was concerned the timing would be difficult. The other way would be to fix a connection through the piston rod to the rocker arm. The advantage of the latter method was that the timing had to be in phase, by definition, but the problem was getting the connections rigid enough. He would try that way first. The idea was that the rocker beam had to open the valve when the piston was near the top of its stroke, leave it open until it was near the bottom, then rapidly switch the valve position. This required beams to sometimes catch another, sometimes to slip over. A sequence of knobs and slots seemed to work.