Small Gods

soil heaps.

    It was another barn. Urn was seeing a lot of barns.
    They’d started with a cart, and invested a lot of time in reducing its weight as much as possible. Gearing had been a problem. He’d been doing a lot of thinking about gears. The ball wanted to spin much faster than the wheels wanted to turn. That was probably a metaphor for something or other.
    “And I can’t get it to go backward,” he said.
    “Don’t worry,” said Simony. “It won’t have to go backward. What about armor?”
    Urn waved a distracted hand around his workshop.
    “This is a village forge!” he said. “This thing is twenty feet long! Zacharos can’t make plates bigger than a few feet across. I’ve tried nailing them on a framework, but it just collapses under the weight.”
    Simony looked at the skeleton of the steam car and the pile of plates stacked beside it.
    “Ever been in a battle, Urn?” he said.
    “No. I’ve got flat feet. And I’m not very strong.”
    “Do you know what a tortoise is?”
    Urn scratched his head. “Okay. The answer isn’t a little reptile in a shell, is it? Because you know I know that.”
    “I mean a shield tortoise. When you’re attacking a fortress or a wall, and the enemy is dropping everything he’s got on you, every man holds his shield overhead so that it…kind of…slots into all the shields around it. Can take a lot of weight.”
    “Overlapping,” murmured Urn.
    “Like scales,” said Simony.
    Urn looked reflectively at the cart.
    “A tortoise,” he said.
    “And the battering-ram?” said Simony.
    “Oh, that’s no problem,” said Urn, not paying much attention. “Tree-trunk bolted to the frame. Big iron rammer. They’re only bronze doors, you say?”
    “Yes. But very big.”
    “Then they’re probably hollow. Or cast bronze plates on wood. That’s what I’d do.”
    “Not solid bronze? Everyone says they’re solid bronze.”
    “That’s what I’d say, too.”
    “Excuse me, sirs.”
    A burly man stepped forward. He wore the uniform of the palace guards.
    “This is Sergeant Fergmen,” said Simony. “Yes, sergeant?”
    “The doors is reinforced with Klatchian steel. Because of all the fighting in the time of the False Prophet Zog. And they opens outwards only. Like lock gates on a canal, you understand? If you push on ’em, they only locks more firmly together.”
    “How are they opened, then?” said Urn.
    “The Cenobiarch raises his hand and the breath of God blows them open,” said the sergeant.
    “In a logical sense, I meant.”
    “Oh. Well, one of the deacons goes behind a curtain and pulls a lever. But…when I was on guard down in the crypts, sometimes, there was a room…there was gratings and things…well, you could hear water gushing…”
    “Hydraulics,” said Urn. “Thought it would be hydraulics.”
    “Can you get in?” said Simony.
    “To the room? Why not? No one bothers with it.”
    “Could he make the doors open?” said Simony.
    “Hmm?” said Urn.
    Urn was rubbing his chin reflectively with a hammer. He seemed to be lost in a world of his own.
    “I said, could Fergmen make these hydra haulics work?”
    “Hmm? Oh. Shouldn’t think so,” said Urn, vaguely.
    “Could you?”
    “What?”
    “Could you make them work?”
    “Oh. Probably. It’s just pipes and pressures, after all. Um.”
    Urn was still staring thoughtfully at the steam cart. Simony nodded meaningfully at the sergeant, indicating that he should go away, and then tried the mental inter-planetary journey necessary to get to whatever world Urn was in.
    He tried looking at the cart, too.
    “How soon can you have it all finished?”
    “Hmm?”
    “I said—”
    “Late tomorrow night. If we work through tonight.”
    “But we’ll need it for the next dawn! We won’t have time to see if it works!”
    “It’ll work first time,” said Urn.
    “Really?”
    “I built it. I know about it. You know about swords and spears and things. I know about things that go round and round. It will work first time.”
    “Good. Well, there are other things I’ve got to do—”
    “Right.”
    Urn was left alone in the barn. He looked reflectively at his hammer, and then at the iron cart.
    They didn’t know how to cast bronze properly here. Their iron was pathetic, just pathetic. Their copper? It was terrible. They seemed to be able to make steel that shattered at a blow. Over the years the Quisition had weeded out all the good smiths.
    He’d done the best he could,