Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth! Page 7

  “And probably be shot,” he responded sourly.

  As they turned onto the jetty to which was moored the last of the large riverboats, they came upon a commotion at the gangplank. A tall, well-built young man in fine clothes and a rounded, mustachioed boatman were engaged in a strenuous discussion. Nearby on the quay, a large flatbed wagon and mule team waited. Several quiet men in matching light gray trousers and buttoned-collar jackets leaned against it as they watched the exchange. Though unarmed, Everett thought they had the look of esnes, an aristocrat’s household soldiery recruited from his personal lands.

  “Purser Stewell, I will of course not accept delivery of ten barrels of apple vinegar when I ordered olive oil,” the young man, quite composed, insisted in a strong and determined voice.

  “Now, see here, Baronet Rorche, if you have a problem with the shipment, then you need to contact the shipper.”

  “I have not the time. But in any case, as it seems that there is some difficulty in communication occurring, I will state again that I will not pay for this cargo nor acknowledge delivery.”

  “This load is Cash on Delivery, Freight Included,” Stewell blustered, turning his clipboard to show a form to the Baronet. “If you don’t pay, we’re out the freight and have to haul it all the way back to New Zin to try to get our money!”

  “I am sorry that you will be discomfited, Purser Stewell, but the error is not mine. Good day to you sir!”

  With that, Rorche spun on a heel smartly and marched back toward the wagon, agitated but not angry. Stewell threw up his hands but did not try to detain the nobleman, instead scuttling up the gangplank of the riverboat as he called for his captain. When the Baronet passed Everett and Sarah, he nodded politely and somewhat distractedly wished them a Good Morning.

  Everett, to his mild disgust, noticed Sarah’s appraising glance flick over Rorche. He had seen identical looks from horse breeders at livestock auctions when a champion stud came up for bid. The man was classically handsome, obviously moneyed and well educated, and exuded confidence like someone who had never suffered anything less than complete success at any task that he had attempted. It was natural that a beautiful woman would find him attractive.

  “Just my luck,” Everett mumbled.

  “What’s that?” Sarah asked.

  Not willing to explain what he actually had been thinking, he improvised, “That man needs olive oil and I have spells to transubstantiate from water to olive oil. If the quality weren’t so poor, I could probably snare a fat commission from him.”

  Sarah came to a stop. “Why don’t we ask? We do need the money. Maybe he doesn’t need the best oil.” Before he could protest, she took his arm and steered him around.

  “Baronet Rorche!” she called. “Excuse me, do you have a moment?

  Without the slightest sign of pique, the young aristocrat halted and turned about. “My pleasure, Mademoiselle, but I must confess that I am pressed for time.”

  Sarah smiled and when she spoke, her speech was not the common plebian jargon with which she conversed with Everett, but the same stilted aristocratic mannerisms that Rorche employed. “Please forgive the intrusion, but I happened to overhear your discussion and may be able to provide some assistance. Am I correct in understanding that you have need of a large quantity of olive oil?”

  As he focused on her, the young Baronet looked at Sarah in a manner that immediately caused Everett to take a disliking to him. In demeanor, Rorche was the very epitome of a gentleman and clearly would never have done anything so crude as to ogle the young woman, but the signs of his appreciation – the slight dilation of the eyes, the straightening of the spine to emphasize height, the quick inhalation to swell the chest – gave proof enough of his passive interest.

  Rorche nodded once, a precise, almost mechanism-like bob of his head. “Indeed. Five hundred gallons of it, to be exact. Have you some idea where I might acquire such a large quantity? I was under the impression that I had already bought up all the not significant free stock available here in Eriis.”

  “We can perhaps assist you. Needing so much, dare I say that you have no intention of using it for cooking?”

  “That is correct. I require it for technological purposes.”

  “Then the culinary quality of the oil is a secondary concern?”

  “This is also correct.”

  “Excellent!” Sarah beamed. “Then I believe we can help you.”

  “How so?”

  She indicated Everett. “Everett is a Journeyman Magicker and has spells capable of producing olive oil from water.”

  At this, Rorche focused on Everett with the single-minded intensity of a house cat tracking a bird beyond a closed window. Everett was pleased to note that the Baronet seemed to dismiss Sarah from his awareness entirely. Around the man’s eyes, a slight tension gave the faint suggestion of the fanatical as he examined the Magicker. Then the young Baronet did something that Everett had only seen theatre actors do previously -- he clicked his heels in salute. However, Rorche did so with such sincerity and flair that, rather than farcical, the gesture impressed Everett as serenely dignified.

  “As you already have mine, might I inquire as to your surname, Monsieur?’

  Reluctantly, Everett gave it.

  “I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Monsieur de Schael. Might I trouble you further for a demonstration of your magic?”

  “I’ll need a small quantity of water.”

  “Should it be pure?”

  “It makes no difference.”

  “Then let us adjourn then to my wagon, where I believe there is a bucket for the mules.”

  There was perhaps a half a gallon left in the stiff leather bucket. Rorche set it atop the wagon and then he and Sarah, with his men in a circle behind, watched expectantly. Everett, purely for appearances sake, waved his hand slowly over the tepid liquid and cast his first spell. “I bid cool water become sweet wine!”

  After a long twenty seconds, the water clouded from within and darkened to a leprous purple. Before Everett could stop him, Rorche leaned over the bucket and took a tentative whiff. Straightening swiftly, the man made a muffled retching sound and turned his head away politely for a moment to clear his throat.

  “Somewhat disagreeable odor, I must say,” he judged, though not with rancor, when he had recovered.

  Without comment, Everett cast his second spell. “Wine, make ye oil anon!”

  It took more than a minute, but finally the texture and color of the liquid transformed again. This time, obviously having learned his lesson, Rorche dipped only the tip of his finger in the viscous, slightly greenish, translucent fluid and carefully brought the dampened digit to his nose.

  “It does indeed appear to be olive oil, Magicker, though I think I shall exercise due caution and defer a taste test. What are your limits on quantity per cast?”

  “The range of the spell is short, only about three feet, but I could, I think, handle a couple of barrels at a time.”’

  “Excellent. Now, are you committed to a commission basis or would you consider a long-term position? My requirements for the olive oil go beyond a set quantity.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll need a flat fee. We’re about to make a journey west.”

  Rorche smiled the broad, exceeding pleased smile of a man who has discovered steak on his plate when he expected turnips. “Coincidentally, I and my compatriots are also about to set out in that direction. Perhaps we could come to some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Have you a riverboat?” Sarah asked.

  “Oh, no, not at all. We intend to fly.”

  EIGHT

  “I’ve seen a hot air balloon,” Everett admitted. “There was one at a fair when I was twelve.”

  “Then you understand the principle of lighter than air flight? This is similar, but instead of heated air to propel our craft upward we will use – well, for the moment, I should just say that we intend to use certain derived vapors. Our mechanisms and
procedures are proprietary, you understand.”

  “Is that why you need the olive oil? To make the vapors?”

  “Not specifically, no.”

  Baronet Rorche’s rented warehouse was a tall building with brick columns and steel trusses, but the walls were splintered, weather-beaten wood. At both ends, by appearances recently, the entrances had been remodeled with sets of twenty-foot tall sliding doors to permit the passage of large loads. Guarded by two of the gray uniformed esnes, who, Everett took careful note, also had no visible weapons, the doors at the street entrance were cracked just wide enough to admit them single file and then immediately closed. Unfamiliar gargantuan mechanisms with numerous intricate protruding parts, large reinforced steel tanks, and a web of interconnected copper piping covered about half the building’s scarred and uneven black brick floor. Nearest the door, several long tables crowded with odd glass tubing, small and large vats, and steaming pots were camped in a rough octagon, tended by a number of men and women. All were quietly and intently engaged in complicated activities, decanting, mixing, measuring, and stirring, but Everett had no clue as to what, exactly, they were concocting.

  “Then you are a technologist?” Sarah inquired in a casual tone.

  This was the second tier of technician ranks, the equivalent of a wizard, and it was clear, at least to Everett, that she intended the presumption as flattery.

  Rorche smiled without pride. “Yes, though I see myself as more of a synthesist. Our group includes some magicians as well as technicians, but we also have a few representatives of non-mystical trades and have hired the services of many others: smiths, carpenters, ironmongers, and so forth. When I began this project to manufacture the world’s first flying mechanism, I realized that I would need the talents of many different fields to realize the full potential of my schematic. The great success that we have had in this melding has challenged me to a new goal -- to systematically blend the efforts of all of the professions in order to produce greater advancements for mankind.”

  From a lesser man, this statement would have seemed no more than pretentious bombast, but from the striking Baronet, who cut as heroic a figure as any man that Everett had ever met, it struck the magicker’s ears as the unabashedly optimistic declaration of an altruistic idealist.

  But that did not mean that Everett believed it.

  An older man stepped out from the camp of tables and apparatus and scurried toward Baronet Rorche. Perhaps twenty stone, he had thick jowls and the waddle of a man who had been heavy since childhood. He had thick white hair, but only in an arc that circled at the latitude of his ears, and he walked as if both knees pained him.

  “Ah, excellent!” Rorche enthused. “Here is Monsieur Edwin Van Kelder, our chemist!”

  Everett found himself intrigued. Of the three mystical trades, Chemistry was the most rare. This would be the first time that he had met a chemist, though chemical concoctions were quite commonly manufactured from printed formula books and available in nearly every hamlet and town.

  Edwin Van Kelder was an emotionally demonstrative man. He embraced Rorche like a son, grasped Everett’s hand and shook it energetically while clapping him on the back as if they were old chums, and then, quite the gallant, bowed low to kiss Sarah’s hand. This last was also something that Everett had never seen outside the theatrical stage and he began to wonder what other eccentricities might be revealed by these new acquaintances.

  “Edwin,” Rorche introduced, “this is Magicker Everett de Schael and his, ah…”

  “I am Everett’s sister, Susan,” Sarah supplied.

  Everett covered his startled reaction to the lie with a cough into his hand, understanding her need to keep her identity secret, but wondering distrustfully why she chose to portray him as her blood relation.

  Edwin craned his neck to look beyond Rorche, a quizzical expression on his face. “Franz, where is the oil?”

  “The factor in New Zindersberg shipped apple cider instead of the oil, but I think that I have found a remedy in the person of Magicker de Schael. He can transubstantiate water with only one intermediate step into olive oil.”

  “Incredible!” Edwin cried, ecstatic, and, seemingly overcome with his joy, wrapped Everett in a lung-crushing bear hug. Everett suffered the contact stoically as Sarah watched with some amusement. Then the chemist released him and declared, “We must get started immediately!”

  Everett was not so enthused. Fly to Kleinsvench? Simple curiosity had convinced him to accompany Baronet Rorche to his warehouse, but the idea seemed fancifully unlikely at the very least. As he recalled, the balloon at the fair had risen only when safely tethered to the earth with a cable. On one particularly blustery day, rising gusts had forced the daredevil pilot to descend to avoid being dashed against nearby trees. How would one navigate such an undependable craft cross country when subject to the fickle wind? Instead of an intended destination, one might more likely end up in the middle of the ocean or on some frigid mountaintop.

  “We haven’t yet settled upon my fee,” he demurred.

  Edwin’s face fell. “Franz, we must have him in our group! He would be the key to the fuel processing chain!”

  “I heartily concur, Edwin, and was in the act of explaining our project when we arrived.”

  “You must show them the air carriage! That will convince them!”

  “Indeed,” Rorche agreed, smiling. “I trust that would be the very thing.”

  The air carriage proved to be in a spacious storage yard outside the rear doors. A high board fence and the blank-sided walls of adjacent warehouses fully enclosed the scuffed earth yard, effectively guarding it from outside view.

  “We just rolled it out this morning,” Edwin boasted proudly, as a father would of a child. “We are to begin inflating the vapor cells this very afternoon.”

  The term “carriage” led Everett to expect some type of wheeled conveyance, but only in the sense that it rested upon a linked line of wagon frames, did the air carriage indeed have wheels. The craft itself had only stubby, skeletal metal posts extending downward from its slightly rounded bottom to support it. All of seventy-five feet long from tapered nose to blunt tail and thirty wide, it resembled most closely the hull of a ship. A line of portholes and doors at middle and rear indicated that there was but a single enclosed deck, though a waist-height rail encircled the roof of the construction, indicating a second open deck above.

  Rorche pointed out key features, not without a certain amount of subdued enthusiasm. “My schematic specifies a design that emphasizes strength while keeping weight to a minimum. The panels of the outer skin are the thinnest laminated wood available and we have shaped them with the application of steam to be slightly convex for added rigidity. We have chosen the term ‘scales’ to identify these new panels. These scales form an interlocked shell with an inherent structural advantage similar to an arch and thus the need for additional ribbing or bracing is greatly reduced. The skin has also been treated with a bonding shellac created from one of Edwin’s formulas that makes it completely waterproof. As you will notice, the shell also has an oblong curvature that will greatly reduce air resistance. The view windows fore and aft and the portholes are manufactured from a layered resin material made by one of our Mechanics, Roger Binsyen, and have a third the weight of glass. Each and every component of the structure contributes to its strength. There is not one ounce of wasted weight. With no danger of boasting, I may safely say that this is the strongest manner of construction, measured by unit of weight, thus far achieved.”

  “Still,” Everett pointed out. “It must weigh, what, several tons?”

  “Dead empty, the net weight is five thousand, three hundred pounds, including the nets and rigging to restrain the vapor cells, which we have yet to attach, and the not inconsiderable empty weight of the rubberized fabric vapor cells. With a crew and passengers of thirty and baggage and supplies, and full tanks of fuel and ballast, we estimate that the gross weight will be some less than eightee
n thousand pounds.”

  Everett raised his eyebrows. “Why, it seems to me that you’d have to have a hot air bag the size of Eriis to raise that much.”

  “But,” Edwin injected gleefully, “we are not using hot air but a much stronger vapor derived from an aqueous solution! Millicent, our mathematician, has calculated that we will need only two hundred and forty-seven thousand cubic feet of lifting vapor to raise her!”

  Everett did rough calculations in his head. “What’s that, a bag one hundred by fifty by fifty?”

  “Exactly,” Rorche confirmed. “That is, the actual dimensions of our lifting area are slightly greater than that, taking into account the use of small, slightly pressurized cells rather than a single large volume, the physical bulk of the rigging, and additional vapor cells to permit a ten percent safety factor.”

  The numbers sounded astronomical to Everett. Despite the fact that it was something as ephemeral sounding as a “vapor,” he found it hard to believe that Rorche and the people with him could produce such a huge quantity. All of the magical and technological processes of which he had knowledge generated outputs of nowhere near that scale.

  His doubts must have been evident in his expression.

  “The mechanisms in the warehouse are capable of a production rate of ten thousand cubic feet of the lifting vapor per hour,” Rorche informed. This time, he did not make any effort to hide his pride. “Their design, as is that of all of the processes and mechanisms that we use here, is the result of our collaborative method of synthesis, the melding of Magic, Technology and Chemistry. We have discovered great efficiencies and refinements that each of the trades is incapable of alone. I do not believe that such a combination of disciplines has previously been accomplished to such a degree in all of history.”

  In spite of this selfless and grand but not grandiose manifesto, Everett remained unconvinced. For reasons he could not quite enunciate, he mistrusted Baronet Franz Rorche, about whom he actually knew practically nothing. Another favorite adage of his apple growing father had been, “If it sounds too good to be true, start looking for worms.”