Conrad Starguard - The High-Tech Knight Part 8

"Because I don't have time to, and I couldn't remember it all anyway."

"Why should anybody have to remember all that?"

"Pay records, for one thing. How can I remember how much I owe each man?"

"Pay them every night or every week and then you don't have to remember it."

"That would be very time-consuming. Everyone would have to stand in line for an hour every day. I am talking about permanent records. It is important that we know everything about our people."

"We can't know everything. Only G.o.d in heaven knows everything."

I tried two or three other lines of argument, and always ran up against the same unshakable logic. But there are more ways than logic to get your way.

"Natalia, would you please do this for me as a favor?"

"Why, of course, Sir Conrad! You know I'd do anything for you."

So Natalia became our records-keeper and eventually my secretary, but she still thought records were a silly waste of parchment. But these would be permanent records and records are important. Aren't they?

By nightfall, the camp had some semblance of order. I had a hut of my own, thatched with pine boughs. There was one for Vladimir and a third for our spare ladies. I'd told them to make two latrines and they'd a.s.sumed that I meant one for n.o.bility and one for commoners, rather than one for men and one for women.

But there was no point in arguing about it.

Everyone else had at least room under a roof. All told, I was pleased with our accomplishments, considering that we had started out with nothing but a mob of wretched, underfed people without enough sleep.

In the morning, I left with Yawalda and one of the men for Sir Miesko's manor to buy food. I bought grain, eggs, and veggies and made arrangements for my man to come by three times a week for more supplies. I also bought a milk cow, the only one available, which was a mistake.

It was dark before we got the silly animal back to camp and we had to stop and squirt the milk on the ground because we didn't have a bucket with us and I refused to lend my helmet for the purpose. At that, we were lucky, since Yawalda knew how to milk a cow and neither of us men did. I didn't even know why it was bawling and refusing to move. The joys of the pastoral By the end of the next day, they had built a complete, If rustic village. The blacksmith was set up and making barrel hoops for the brewery and the masons were cutting a huge millstone that would be turned by two mules. Carpenters were at work making a gross of beehives. There was a hut for every family and all the outbuildings we needed for storage, cooking, and eating. We even had tables and benches, made from split logs, under the dining pavilion and enough new bowls, trenchers (a sort of board you ate off of), and spoons to go around. It is amazing how much six hundred people can accomplish when they're motivated.

There were splinters in everything, of course, and enough wood chips to pave the place, which was exactly what we used them for.

The next day was Sunday, and that afternoon Sir Miesko's village priest showed up and said ma.s.s under the dining pavilion.

Anna watched the ma.s.s intently and came closer to listen to the sermon.

Thereafter, each week she became more interested and was soon kneeling, sitting, and standing with the faithful.

The priest was obviously disconcerted, but didn't know how to bring up the subject of a church-going horse.

Just as well, because I didn't have any answers.

Interlude One I hit the STOP b.u.t.ton.

"Tom, that horse is one of your critters, isn't it?"

"She's an intelligent bioengineered creation of my labs, if that's what you mean."

"Then what's an old atheist like you doing designing religious animals?"

"In the first place, Anna's not an animal in the sense you're using the word. She's intelligent. In the second, I didn't design her. That sort of thing takes a big staff a long time to do. And in the third place, it was as big a surprise to me as it was to you."

"It was?"

"Those horses are very literal-minded. They will always take every word that an authority figure says as the absolute truth. n.o.body ever thought that one of them would be told deliberate lies."

"Tom, you're an old heathen!"

"I'm also your boss and your father. Now shut up."

He hit the START b.u.t.ton.

Chapter Six.

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ.

I hadn't thought to pay anybody, so none of the people had any money. The collection basket came back empty. To cover the embarra.s.sment, I paid the priest. This set another precedent. Conrad pays the priest.

Now we could get down to real work, building permanent housing and getting the valley productive. I put the masons and the miners to enlarging the old mine shaft. Medieval miners cut shafts that were barely crawls.p.a.ces. I wanted the shaft big enough for a man to work in and there had to be room for a steam suction pump.

Thus far, I'd let the carpenters build whatever they liked, since it was all only temporary. But I had some definite ideas about what I wanted for the permanent buildings.

The valley had about a square kilometer of flat land and was surrounded by a sloping wall that eventually became quite steep. The only entrance was between two cliffs about two hundred yards apart. The obvious structure to build was a combination apartment house and defensive wall between them, about six stories tall. It would have to be of wood, of course, good enough against animals and thieves but worthless against Mongols. But the cliffs were more than two hundred meters long and the land sloped down considerably as the cliffs fanned out. We could build now at the narrowest point and later build another wall, or several walls, that were taller and made of masonry.

I knew we had coal and limestone and that meant that we could make mortar with existing technology. I was confident that with clay and sand and much higher temperatures, we could make cement and with that we had concrete!

Enough concrete will stop anybody.

The valley was filled with huge trees. Oh, nothing like what you would find on the west cost of America, but hundreds of them were well over two yards thick at the base. Poland had many such trees at the time and for a very good reason.

It was extremely difficult to fell a really big tree with only axes. Once you did have it down, without machinery it was very hard to move. For the small groups of woodcutters common at the time, it was impossible.

And then, what could you do with it? Medieval Poles made boards by splitting logs and then planing the wood smooth. That doesn't work on a log that is as big around as you are tall.

For many centuries, they left the big trees alone and took only the small ones.

I'd had a dozen steel crosscut saws and ripsaws made, some of them four yards long. We had big timber, and fasteners were very expensive. The price of nails was absurd. But the bigger the parts, the fewer the fasteners. My plans called for the floors, doors, and shutters to be made with wood slabs a yard wide and the outer walls of boards a yard wide and a half-yard thick with the bark left on. It would be good insulation and indestructible except by fire.

Eventually I was to regret this plan. With no civil engineering experience, I had no idea how much a big piece of green wood can shrink. Every winter, a crew had to caulk the walls; I don't think that a single door ever fit right. It would have helped if I had laid the outside slabs sideways, in the manner of a traditional log cabin. But, no, I had to put them all vertically because it looked better structurally.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter how well your walls are insulated if you have to open a window to the wind when you want to see. In the winter, without artificial lights or window gla.s.s either you are cold or you are blind. I began to see why architects are such a conservative bunch. But I get ahead of myself.

The carpenters objected and were vocal about it. But not one of them mentioned the shrinkage problem and I chalked up their complaints to stick-in-the-mud conservatism. I paid the bills and got my way. As the old capitalist saw goes, "Him what pays, says."

It's remarkable, some of the things you have to do to build socialism.

They objected even more to the climbing spikes. These are the things that strap to a man's legs and feet and let him, with a st.u.r.dy leather belt, quickly climb a tree to cut the top off. A big tree has to be topped, otherwise it will shatter when it falls.

But my people were lumberjacks who had never left the ground. They thought being fifty yards off the ground was scary.

Of course, they were right. Hanging fifteen stories up while trying to saw through the tree you're hanging from is scary. But I couldn't let them think that, or we'd never get the place built.

When the first of the teams flatly refused to climb more than ten yards up a tree, I called them down.

"Come on down, you cowards!" I shouted, tossing my sword to a bystander.

"Yashoo, let's show these little boys how to do their job."

The foreman came to me and whispered, "My lord, I've never, I mean I can't! I've never done anything like this before!"

"I'll let you in on a secret," I whispered back. "I haven't either."

"Then how-"

"If these people can't do the job, I'll have to send the lot of you back to Cieszyn and find another batch. But if you do it and I do it then they'll have to do it. Now, what say we both go up there and pretend like we have more courage than brains?"

He thought a few seconds. "If I die, you'll take care of my wife?"

With the rig we were using, if one of us came down, the other would come with him. But Yashoo needed a.s.surance, not logic.

"On my honor."

"Then let's go."

It was a huge tree and even fifty yards up it would take two men to pull a saw through it.

With a two-man rig, each has spikes strapped to his legs and feet. Each has a hefty belt around his waist, and a long, thick belt goes across each back, around both men and the tree. The long belt fastens to each personal belt twice, with st.u.r.dy loops. It's really two shorter belts end-to-end, with a buckle by each right hand. The big belt has to be shortened periodically as the tree is climbed.

Technology is not a single thing. It's a lot of little things that add up. Things as simple as a new way to climb a tree, something we've been doing since before we were human.

I'd watched men topping trees at a lumberjacks' festival and I'd thought out how it had to go. The men had to work as a close team, taking two steps in unison and hitching the big belt up together.

To make matters worse, they had to be on opposite sides of the tree, where they couldn't see one another. If either moved without the other, they'd come down.

Maybe not the whole way, since you shorten the belt as you go up. if the belt is too short to let you slide all way down the tapering trunk to the ground, you just might get to live.

But the least you got was a faceful of bark and a bellyful of slivers.

Seeing something and thinking about it is a far cry from actually having done it.

Having to do something dangerous the first time in front of an audience doesn't help much either.

As we strapped on our gear, with the thick new leather squeaking about us, we rehea.r.s.ed our moves and discussed each step. Yashoo's hand was shaking, but I figured he'd steady down once he was actually up the tree.

"I'm frightened, Sir Conrad," he said desperately, as we pa.s.sed the belt around the tree.

"Of course you're frightened. Only a fool wouldn't be. But a man does his job for all of that." I took a few steps up. It wasn't bad. Sort of like climbing a ladder.

Yashoo made an elaborate sign of the cross, which ruined the effect I was trying to create, started up, and then seemed to slow down.

"Come on, Yashoo! Just like a dance! Stomp your spikes right into the tree. Left foot, right foot, raise the belt! Left foot, right foot, raise the belt!"

"But I can't dance either, my lord!", "What 'either'? You're climbing! And I bet Krystyana could teach you how to dance." We were maybe ten yards up. "Maybe I could ask her. What do you think about throwing a dance Sat.u.r.day night? Do we have any musicians?"

"Please don't talk about dancing. I fell down on a dance floor, too." He talked like a coward, but he was keeping right up with me.

"Cut that out! We're almost there."

The saw was tied to my belt by a measured length of rope. When it started lifting, we were high enough. I leaned around to where I could see my partner. He was white, bone white.

"Yashoo, I think there's enough of a breeze blowing so we won't have to take a wedge out. We'll do a back cut on my left first."

Yashoo didn't answer, but I could hear him praying. He took his end of the saw and did his part. We worked in silence, getting the feel of each other's rhythm.

After the blade started binding, we cut from the other side.

When we were most of the way through, the tree parted with an explosive crack!

It leaned way over as the top came cras.h.i.+ng past us, then snapped back like a released bow.

It was like being on the end of a whip half the length of a football field that was snapping back and forth fifteen stories in the air. The trunk now came only to our waist and I could see Yashoo digging his white fingertips into the bark. Mine were pretty white, too.

My mother told me I should have gone to the beach.

"Well, Yashoo, what do you think? Should we walk down, or shall we have the men saw down the tree so we can ride?"

He stared at me but didn't answer.

After we got down he said, "Do I have to do that again?"

"Not today. Go back to supervising. I'm going to see how the masons are doing." I swaggered away, stopped at a latrine and vomited my guts out.

Eventually, we had four good topmen. They considered themselves to be something of an elite, strutting around and wearing their spikes constantly, even to church.

Chapter Seven.

After the first few days, I put myself on a schedule which I have tried to stick to ever since. Mornings, I played manager and was available to anyone with a problem. Afternoons, I was a designer and your troubles had to be serious before I was bothered. Natalia did a good job keeping me from interruptions.