Devices and Desires (76 page)

In response to his urgent request for technical advice, they brought him a man called Falier, who was apparently the chief
engineer of the state arms factory. It seemed logical enough. This Falier was in charge of building the machines, so presumably
he’d know how they worked and what they were capable of doing.

Falier turned out to be younger than he’d expected; a nervous, good-looking, weak sort of man who’d probably agree with everything
he said. General Melancton sighed, told him to sit down and offered him a drink.

“The heavy engines,” he said. “The — what are they, the Mark Sixes. How far will they shoot?”

The man called Falier looked at him as if he didn’t understand the question. “Well,” he said slowly, “it all depends. I mean,
for a start, how heavy a ball are you using?”

Expect the worst of people and you won’t be disappointed. “I don’t know,” Melancton said with studied patience. “You tell
me. What weight of ball will give me maximum range?”

Falier was doing sums in his head. “A two-hundredweight ball will carry six hundred yards,” he said, “at optimum elevation,
assuming the wind’s not against you. But,” he went on, “I can’t guarantee it’d be effective against that sort of masonry;
not at extreme range.”

“I see.” Melancton sighed. “So what weight of ball do I need to use?”

“Well,” Falier said, “a five hundredweight’ll go through pretty much anything.”

“Excellent. And what’s the extreme range of a five hundred-weight?”

Falier shrugged. “Two hundred yards,” he said. “More if you’ve got a following wind, of course.”

“That would be well inside scorpion range, from the city wall.”

“Oh yes.” Falier nodded enthusiastically. “Especially shot from the top of the wall there. Actually, it’s quite a sophisticated
calculation, where the point of release is higher up than the point of impact. It’s all to do with the rate of decay of the
bolt’s trajectory, and the acceleration it builds up on its way down. The variables can make a hell of a difference, mind.”

Falier, in other words, didn’t know the answer to his question; so he thanked him and got rid of him, and resolved to build
his siege platform at four hundred and fifty yards. If the balls dropped short at that range, they’d just have to move up
a bit closer and build another platform. Embarrassing; but with any luck, all the witnesses to his embarrassment — the hostile
ones at least — would be dead quite soon, and so it wouldn’t really matter terribly much. He gave the order, then left his
tent and walked a little way up the road so he could watch the building detail at work.

The mercenary infantry were, of course, too well trained and high-class to dig earth and carry it back and forth in baskets;
so he’d sent to Mezentia for brute labor, and they’d sent him five hundred assorted Cure Doce, Paulisper, Cranace and Lonazep
dockside miscellaneous, at three groschen a day. Twenty groschen to the Mezentine foreign thaler, and it’s a sad fact of life
that you get what you pay for. The Cure Doce dug and spitted with a kind of steadfast indifference; the Paulisper didn’t mind
heavy lifting, but were generally drunk by mid-afternoon; the Cranace picked fights with the Paulisper over matters of religion
and spectator sport; the Lonazeppians worked hard but complained about everything (the food, the tents, the Cranace’s singing).
In the event, it took them four days and nights on a three-shift rotation to build the platform. Melancton’s most optimistic
forecast had been six. The Eremians made no effort to interfere in any way, which he found strange and faintly disturbing.
In their position he’d have launched sorties; even if capturing or wrecking the engines proved too difficult, scaring the
labor force into mass desertion would’ve been no trouble at all. An enemy who neglected such an obvious opportunity was either
supremely confident or utterly resigned to defeat.

On the fifth morning, he went up to the platform with Syracoelus, his captain of artillery, the engineer Falier and a couple
of pain-in-the-bum liaison officers from the Mezentine Guilds, who’d been sent up to find out why the war hadn’t been won
yet. The early mists had burned away in bright, harsh sunlight; the heavy engines had been hauled up overnight and were already
dug in, aligned and crewed for action. Four hundred and fifty yards away, the enemy looked like roosting rooks behind their
turrets and battlements, the noses of scorpions poking out from behind each crenellation.

Melancton and his party stood in silence for a while, looking up at the walls. Nobody seemed in any hurry to say anything,
not even the usually unsilenceable Mezentines. Finally, Melancton said, “Well, I suppose we’d better get on with it.” The
engine crews hesitated, trying to figure out if that constituted a valid order to open fire. Melancton frowned, then nodded
to Captain Syracoelus, who looked at the nearest engine-master and said, “Loose.”

He was being somewhat premature, of course; first they had to span the huge windlass that dragged down the engine’s throwing-arm
against the tension of the nested, inch-thick leaf springs that powered it. In the silence the smooth snicks of the ratchet
sounded horribly loud (it was as though the city was asleep, and Melancton was worried they’d wake it up). A louder, meatier
snick told him the sear was engaged and the engine was ready to be loaded; a wheeled dolly was rolled under a derrick which
lifted a three-hundredweight stone ball off a pile; the dolly ran on tracks that stopped under a short crane, which lifted
the ball into the spoon on the end of the throwing-arm. Men with levers rolled it into place and jumped clear. Syracoelus
repeated his order; someone pulled back a lever, and the arm reared up, sudden and violent as a punch. Melancton could hear
the throbbing whistle the ball made as it spun; at first it climbed, almost straight, so far that he was sure they’d overshoot
the city completely. At the top of its trajectory it hung for a split second, the sunlight choosing that moment to flare off
it, like an unofficial moon. Then it began to fall, the decay of the cast seeming to draw it in as if there were chains attached
to it. He lost sight of it against the backdrop of the walls; heard the dull thump as it bashed into the masonry, saw a puff
of dust and steam lift into the air and drift for a moment before dispersing. “Elevation good,” he heard someone say, “windage
two minutes left”; another lever clicked and a sear rang like a bell, and that oscillating whistle again, followed by the
thump and the round white ball of dust. The clicking of ratchets all round him was as busy as crickets in meadow-grass; men
were straining at their windlasses, every last scrap of strength brought to bear on the long handles; voices were calling
out numbers, six up, five left, two right; the distant thumps came so close together they melted into each other, and the
whistles merged into a constant hum.

Compassion wasn’t one of Melancton’s weaknesses, but he couldn’t help wondering what it must be like on the wall, as the shots
landed; if the thumps were so heavy he could feel them through the soles of his feet four and a half hundred yards away, what
did they feel like close to, as they butted into the stones of the wall? Melancton had never been on the wrong end of a bombardment
like this; an earthquake, maybe, he thought, or the eruption of a volcano. “Keep it going for half an hour,” he heard himself
shouting over the extraordinary blend of noises, “and then we can see if we’re doing any good.” (Half an hour, he thought
as he said it; how long would half an hour seem under the onslaught of the whistling stone predators, swooping in like a falcon
on a partridge? He knew the fluffy white balls of cloud were steam because someone had explained it to him long ago; when
the ball lands, the energy behind it is so great that for a split second it’s burning hot, and any traces of moisture in the
target are instantly boiled away into vapor. How could you be on the receiving end of something like that and not drop dead
at once from sheer terror?)

The barrage didn’t last half an hour; ten minutes at the very most, because by then all the shot had been used up, and it’d
take at least an hour to replenish the stocks from the reserve supply. Syracoelus was quick to apologize; Melancton shrugged,
having to make an effort not to admit that he was overjoyed that it was over; the clicking and ringing and the air full of
that terrible humming noise, and the thuds of impacting shot a quarter-mile away as constant as the drumming of rain on a
roof. He realized he’d been looking away, deliberately averting his eyes from the target. He looked up; and, to his considerable
surprise, Civitas Eremiae was still there.

“Shit,” someone said.

Syracoelus gave orders to his crews to stand by. “What’s happening?” bleated one of the Mezentine liaisons. “I can’t see from
here.” Someone else said, “Maybe we’re just dropping them in the wrong place; how about if we concentrated the whole lot on
the left-hand gatehouse tower?” Three people contradicted him simultaneously, drowning out each other’s arguments as they
competed for attention. “Hardly bloody scratched it,” someone else said. “Fuck me, those walls must be solid.”

Failure, then. Melancton felt like laughing out loud at the absurdity of it. The Mezentine heavy engines had been beaten,
they weren’t up to the job. Melancton caught himself on the verge of a grin; could it possibly be, he wondered, that he was
beginning to
want
the Eremians to win?

“Wonderful,” Syracoelus was saying. “Well, we can’t possibly go in any closer, we’d be right under the noses of those scorpions
on the wall. I suppose we could up the elevation to full and try the four-hundredweight balls, but I really don’t think they’ll
get there, even.”

“If we had a load of really strong pavises,” someone else began to say; nobody contradicted him or shouted him down, but he
didn’t finish the suggestion.

It hadn’t worked, then; or at least, not yet. There was still plenty of ammunition back at the supply train. He caught sight
of Falier, the man from the ordnance factory, who hadn’t contributed to the post-bombardment debate. He looked like he might
throw up at any moment. “Is there any way to beef up the springs?” Melancton asked. He had to repeat the question a couple
of times before he could get an answer, which was no, there wasn’t. They were already on their highest setting, Falier explained,
all the tensioners were done up tight.

“Any suggestions?” Melancton asked. “Come on, you produce the bloody things. Is there any kind of modification we could make?”
Falier shuddered and shook his head. “Not allowed,” he said.

Melancton looked at him. “Not allowed?”

“That’s right,” Falier replied. “Not without a dispensation from the Specifications directorate at the factory. Otherwise
it’d be… I’d get into trouble.”

Melancton smiled at him. “I’m giving you a direct order as commander in chief of the army,” he said. “Now —”

“Sorry.” Falier looked away. “I’m a civilian. You can’t order me. If you threaten me, I’ll have to report it. Anyhow,” he
went on, “it’s all beside the point. We’d need to make new springs, and beef up the frames as well. Even if we got all the
calculations right first time, it’d take weeks to have the springs made at the factory and sent up here. Have you got that
much time?”

He’s lying, Melancton realized. Of course he knew about Specifications, how they were sacrosanct and couldn’t be altered on
pain of death; he also knew that the arms factory was the one exception. As to the other argument (so neatly offered in the
alternative), he had to take Falier’s word for it, since he knew nothing about engineering or production times. He was fairly
certain that Falier was exaggerating the timescale, but of course he couldn’t prove it.

“Weeks,” he repeated.

“And that’s supposing we don’t have setbacks,” Falier said quickly. “We can calculate the size and shape the spring’d have
to be, up to a point, but in the end it’d be simple trial and error. Could be months, if we’re unlucky.”

Not so much a warning as a promise, Melancton suspected. For some reason, Falier didn’t want to make any modifications to
the engines. If forced to, he’d probably sabotage them, in some subtle, undetectable way. Melancton couldn’t begin to understand
why anybody would want to do that, but he’d been dealing with the Mezentines long enough to know that inscrutability was practically
their defining characteristic. He might not be able to figure out what the reason was, but he had no trouble believing that
there
was
a reason. He gave up; simple as that.

“Fine,” he said. “So the long-range engines are useless, is that it?”

Falier shrugged. “If you could get them in closer,” he said, “that’d be different. At this range, though…” He looked down
at his hands.
For crying out loud,
Melancton thought.

“They’re useless,” he said. “Understood. Right, we’ll have to find another way. Thank you so much for your help.”

Melancton was a realist. He knew that he had no more chance of winning against the Perpetual Republic than the Eremians did.
Just for the hell of it, however, he decided to persevere with the long-range engines for a little while. He had, after all,
taken a great deal of pains to haul a large supply of ammunition for those engines; might as well use it up as let it go to
waste, he thought. Even if it won’t bring the walls tumbling down, it’ll make life inside the city distinctly uncomfortable
for a while. In war, every little helps.

So the bombardment resumed, as soon as the rest of the three-hundredweight balls had been lugged up from the valley. Melancton
didn’t hang around to watch, or listen; he left Syracoelus in charge and retired to his command center in the main camp. In
his absence, the engines resumed their patient, unbearable rhythm.

Syracoelus was a straightforward man, not afflicted with gratuitous imagination. He ordered the engine crews to target four
areas on the main gate towers, places where, in his experienced opinion, the structures would be most vulnerable to prolonged
violent hammering. At the very least, he reckoned, he ought to be able to crack or weaken something. All it takes is a crack,
sometimes.