6. N #3
“Theft?” he asked, once it became apparent the king waited for a response.
King Alliard shrugged. “Possible. Likely. Not required. What gets checked gets done, and this post went unfilled for too long. But, that’s all irrelevant at this point. What we have is a third less food than we thought … so you have a third less time than you thought you did.”
Haldeen pressed his finger to the bridge of his nose. The throbbing has spread. “Anything we can do to raise food production?”
The king gave a humorless laugh. “That shoe will drop tonight. Proclamation that assigns all magic sensitives in all the mid-birth ranges to food production, unless they are required for defensive tasks. Adolescents included. Officially, it’s to build up our already ample stores,
and bring the cities together in common … you know the rest. Nobles assessment will go up by a fifth starting the next eight-day.”
Haldeen choked. “A fifth? We’re struggling now, Majesty.”
The king raised his eyebrows. “Three meals, Haldeen. If you—and by that, I mean all of you—don’t make them, and we don’t keep everyone fed, this all comes down.”
Haldeen made no effort to alter his glum expression. “Well, I can economize at my own table …” he offered.
“Don’t,” the king interrupted. “You can’t reduce enough to make a meaningful difference, and the moment the lords start stinting themselves, word will get out. As a class, we’re not known for voluntarily depriving ourselves of anything.”
“Yes, Majesty,” Haldeen said, hoping the interview had concluded.
“Where do we stand with the little bird that flew into your nest?” the king interjected.
Haldeen kept his face still. The king would know, of course, gossiping servants if nothing else. But, how much did he know?
“It was a freak accident, Sire. I had an issue with the Gate alignment, and while trying to fix it, we caught something. Someone. I’m not sure at this point.”
He realized he had come near to babbling, and slowed himself, working to calm his nerves.
“It’s a female. Possibly from the Colony World. Not sure. It’s not really comprehensible; we can make out one word of perhaps every ten she speaks. I’ve got a tutor trying to teach it to communicate, but it’s pretty sickly. Down with an illness today, and has been for the last three.”
The king considered this for a long moment. “Hrmph. Nothing catching, I hope.”
“No, Majesty, we had it in quarantine for an eight-day.”
He exhaled, relieved in telling at least one unvarnished truth.
“It probably caught something from us, rather than the other way around. We’ve not learned much, yet. It’s ignorant, uncouth, and can’t communicate in a civilized fashion. More than passing ugly as well. But I have the best possible person working with it, and even if I can’t understand it,
the tutor is making some substantial gains.”
The king had been looking to the side for part of Haldeen’s report, distracted by a speaker the Gatekeeper could neither see nor hear.
“Very well, Haldeen.” The king said. “Once it … she is on her, its? feet, hand it over to the provost to pass onto the Military Committee. I don’t want you getting distracted by this … your focus … all of it … on this Gate, and getting it working. We are eating our way out of options.”
He fixed Haldeen with the Alliard stare, and even through the Farspeaker Haldeen felt the presence, the force of will.
“I want a report on progress in”—he looked away, exchanged a few words Haldeen didn’t hear—“one eight-day. Get me options, Haldeen. Not excuses. Questions? None? Didn’t think so. Good. Alliard out.”
The Farspeaker went dark, with just a bit of the afterglow as the residual magic bled away. Haldeen sat down heavily on the couch, and leaned back, trying to calm the pain enough to think.
Well, now what? He had a total of one partial success using the small transit gate.
He had proven the World Gate still worked, and that he could transfer energy from one gate to another.
However, he had succeeded in sending exactly one living thing through the Gate.
Using the transit gate and clever calculations would not work at scale.
He had in no way solved any of the bigger problems.
The list remained daunting. Simply getting to the World Gate, in the middle of a fallen city long since swarmed by creatures straight out of nightmares.
That would be no small operation in itself.
Then, once it had been secured, bringing up a Source to power it.
Then powering it up, recalibrating it, and getting it to synchronize with the Gate at the other end.
And then, only then, massing the people to be sent through.
All of this needed to be done before discussion of an evacuation could even begin.
The city’s King had presented him with an unsolvable problem—if he followed orders.
If he just turned this wench over, he would never have the information he vitally needed to make the Gate work this time.
He had to know what her world was like! How difficult would it be to conquer?
What sort of opposition could they expect?
Was it even possible to send an army through?
He had no notion of where the Gate exited.
All the information he had was from the first attempt, which …
at least according to everything he remembered and had gathered from reports, dumped into a cavern of some sort.
How had she gotten in? Could an army even get out?
He leaned back on the couch, and tried to break down the problem, turning it and trying to find a different way to solve it …
as though he hadn’t attempted that a hundred times before.
Each time, it crashed onto the same rocks …
too many people, not enough power. Not enough time.
He shook his head. Time. He needed more time.
He sat up. Time. That was it.
He picked up Nora’s transcripts and scanned through them, looking for one particular passage. He found it.
… the Subject’s tonality and inflections track closely with Maingold’s vocalizations in his seminal study “Concerning the Street Patois of Lowest Caste Tourmaline Yard Workers.”
Although the speech patterns, glottal stops and …
.” Haldeen felt himself getting lost, and skipped ahead, “…
suggest a passage of time not accounted for by our calendar.
Her knowledge of her own history is hazy, and reflects a general illiteracy, as are her descriptions of her “ancient” history.
However, she can be quite focused when it touches her own interests, and she remains quite knowledgeable regarding her own bloodline, and can precisely trace her family ancestry back three generations …
by her account representing something approaching a millennium.
A millennium. A thousand years there, while barely a hundred had passed since the debacle here. He could do the math on his fingers. Ten days there for each one here, or thereabouts. There was his time.
But how to use it?
The small Gate worked well enough to send the Probe through, but he had no idea how much more it could carry.
The Probe had just enough working mind to keep the body upright and functioning, and a control box to pass it simple instructions.
He’d need to test its limits a bit at a time.
A cage or two of live animals, so see if they survived the passage.
Regular creatures, laboratory animals, the trapped inedible vermin usually converted into algae food, simple first, then more complicated.
Working up to the point where he could send a person through. Maybe a small team.
To do what?
A few people wouldn’t solve the problem here …
but they would have a lot of time to figure it out there.
He straightened his back, hearing it pop.
A small team of researchers, on the other side, would have more than an eight-day there for each day that passed here.
Not all the time in the world, but enough to make a difference.
One or two to repair Machinas, a couple for defense, comfort, and a few for aiding in the calculations, and for controlling the Gate from that side.
He had to know what the other side looked like, and what surrounded it.
Could it be made safe? Could they lodge a team in reasonable comfort to allow focused work?
Triana had been there, and knew. Knew what the other side looked like, and what they faced.
He had to fight for every day he could get, and fight to keep her under his control, where he could learn what she knew, and learn how to use her knowledge …
and her … to deliver the solution to the king.
Once they had the team in place on the other side, then each day here would yield an eight-day’s trove of data. Every gain would buy him more time. He didn’t need all the time in the world—he just needed enough to show some progress
King Alliard’s focus remained on the food problems.
The threat presented by the Creatures remained real and emergent, but food shortages needed to be solved now.
Perhaps if he could solve that problem, then that would put them on a better footing for dealing with the Creatures outside the wall.
More and more of the city’s resources went simply to ensure that there was enough lunch to go around.
Freeing those resources allowed a whole host of options to open up.
He felt a little seed of ambition stir. The same dissonance that gave him ten days research there for each one here would allow ten days farming …
for each one here. Someone on the other side could raise a cereal crop …
real field-grown food, ten times as fast as they could make rations from algae.
Even if that were passed through the Transit Gate one sack at a time, jolly-gang style from shoulder to shoulder through the Portal, the individual sacks would be smaller than people, and less power needed.
An elf who controlled that food supply could do very well for himself.
Very well indeed. Haldeen did some rough calculations, taking into consideration that he had no idea how many loaves of real bread one got from a sack of flour, but if he guessed a hundred, that might solve the food issue by itself.
His mouth started to water at that. Real soft bread hadn’t been routinely seen at a table in years …
the rolls at dinner had been a rare, and very expensive, treat.
Or—there were things that grew faster than grain.