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Fifteenth century stuff; Henry V had taken Harfieur with just as good, and
John of Bedford had probably bombarded Orleans with better. He decided to
speak to Chartiphon about this.
He took the broadsword he had captured on the night of his advent here and-now
to the castle blacksmith, to have it ground down into a rapier.. The
blacksmith thought he was crazy. He found a pair of wooden practice swords and
went outside with a cavalry lieutenant to demonstrate. Immediately, the
lieutenant wanted a rapier, too. The blacksmith promised to make real ones, to
his specifications, for both of them. His was finished the next evening, and
by that time the blacksmith was swamped with orders for rapiers.
Almost everything these people used could be made in the workshops inside the
walls of Tarr-Hostigos, or in Hostigos Town, and he seemed to have an
unlimited expense-account with them. He began to wonder what, besides being
the guest from the Land of the Gods, he was supposed to do to earn it. Nobody
mentioned that; maybe they were waiting for him to mention it.
He brought the subject up, one evening, in Prince Ptosphes's study, where he
and the Prince and Rylla and Xentos and Chartiphon were smoking over a flagon
of after-dinner wine.
"You have enemies on both sides-Gormoth of Nostor and Sarrask of Sask-and
that's not good. You have taken me in and made me one of you. What can I do to
help against them?"
"Well, Kalvan," Ptosphes said, "perhaps you could better tell us that. We
don't want to talk of what distresses you, but you must come of a very wise
people. You've already taught us new things, like the thrusting-sword"-he
looked admiringly at the new rapier he had laid aside and what you've told
Chartiphon about mounting cannon. What else can you teach us?"
Quite a lot, he thought. There had been one professor at Princeton whose
favorite pupil he had been, and who had been his favorite teacher. A history
prof, and an unusual one. Most academic people at the middle of the twentieth
century took the same attitude toward war that their Victorian opposite
numbers had toward sex one of those deplorable facts nice people don't talk
about, and maybe if you don't look at the horrid thing it'll go away. This man
had been different. What happened in the cloisters and the guild-halls and the
parliaments and council-chambers was important, but none of them went into
effect until ratified on the battlefield. So he had emphasized the military
aspect of history in a freshman from Pennsylvania named Morrison, a divinity
student, of all unlikely things. So, while he should have been studying
homiletics and scriptural exegesis and youth-organization methods, that
freshman, and a year later that sophomore, had been reading Sir Charles Oman's
4rt of War.
"Well, I can't tell you how to make weapons like that six-shooter of mine, or
ammunition for it," he began, and then tried, as simply as possible, to ex
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
plain about mass production and machine industry. They only stared in
incomprehension and wonder. "I can show you a few things you can do with the
things you have. For instance, we cut spiral grooves inside the bores of our
guns, to make the bullet spin. Such guns shoot harder, straighter and farther
than smoothbores. I can show you how to build cannon that can be moved rapidly
and loaded and fired much more rapidly than what you have. And another thing '
He mentioned never having seen any practice filing. "You have very little
powder-fireseed, you call it. Is that it?"
"There isn't enough fireseed in all Hostigos to load all the cannon of this
castle for one shot," Chartiphon told him. "And we can get no more. The
priests of Styphon have put us under the ban and will let us have none, and
they send cartload after cartload to Nostor."
"You mean you get your fireseed from the priests of Styphon? Can't you make
your own?"
They all looked at him as though he was a cretin. "Nobody can make fireseed
but the priests of Styphon," Xentos told him. "That was what I meant when I
told you that Styphon's House has great power. With Styphon's aid, they alone
can make it, and so they have great power, even over the Great Kings."
"Well IJI be Dralm-damned!" He gave Styphon's House that grudging respect any
good cop gives a really smart crook. Brother, what a racket! No wonder this
country, here-and-now, was divided into five Great Kingdoms, and each split
into a snakepit of warring Princes and petty barons. Styphon's House wanted it
that way; it was good for business. A lot of things became clear. For
instance, if Styphon's House did the weaponeering as well as the powder-
making, it would explain why small-arms were so good; they'd see to it that
nobody without fireseed stood an outside chance against anybody with it. But
they'd keep the brakes on artillery development. Styphon House wouldn't want
bloody or destructive wars-they'd be bad for business. Just wars that burned
lots of fireseed; that would be why there were all these great powder-hogs of
bombards around.
And no wonder everybody in Hostigos had monkeys on their backs. They knew they
were facing the short end of a war of extermination. He set down his goblet
and laughed.
"You think nobody but those priests of Styphon can make fireseed?" There was
nobody here that wasn't security-cleared for the inside version of his cover-
story. "Why, in my time, everybody, even the children, could d that." (Well,
children who'd gotten as far as high school chemistry; he'd almost been
expelled, once) "I can make fireseed right here on this table." He refilled
his goblet.
"But it is a miracle; only by the power of Styphon. . . " Xentos began.
"Styphon's a big fake!" he declared. "A false god; his priests are lying
swindlers." That shocked Xentos; good or bad, a god was a god and shouldn't be
talked about like that. "You want to see me do it? Mytron has everything in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]