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“The potential drop in this circuit is very great,” said Gottfried, the servant of the essence, “as is the current. We have secured the remainder of the ingot left with the Freiburg smith. It will not encompass all repairs, but will suffice to build this device.”
“What?” said Dietrich. “That was to be the man’s payment!”
Hans tossed his arm. “Our need is greater. The ‘bug’ that traveled with you told us where his shop stood. We flew down at night and retrieved it.”
“But that is theft!”
“That is survival. Are goods not distributed according to need, as you read from your book?”
“Distributed, not taken. Hans, the natural arrogance of your people has led you from the Way. You see a thing and, if you want it and you have the power, you take it.”
“If we remain here, we die. Since life is the greatest good, it requires the greatest effort; so to work toward our escape ca
Dietrich started. “But life is only the greatest of corruptible goods, so it is not the greatest good of all, which we call God. To desire what another possesses is to love yourself more than you love the other, and that is contrary to charitas.”
But Hans only tossed his arm. “Joachim has sketched you accurately.” Then he turned to the smith. “Lorenz, can you draw copper finely enough?”
“Copper wants a colder fire than iron,” Lorenz said, “and then it is only a matter of piercing dies of the proper size.” He gri
“Venus…” Hans cocked his arm in a gesture indicating uncertainty.
“That planet is favorable for copper-working,” the smith answered to the Krenken’s evident puzzlement. “Since copper came first from Cyprus,” he added helpfully.
Manfred gave his grace to the enterprise with marked reluctance, not because he expected little success but because he feared too much. “If this cog of theirs is restored,” he confided to Dietrich afterward, “the Krenken will steal away, for I doubt Grosswald understands an oath of fealty. When it suits his convenience, he will discard it without a qualm.”
“Being in this very different from mankind,” Dietrich said.
And so Lorenz drew the ingot into wire, and Gottfried arranged it on a board that mimicked the pattern on the “circuit” drawing using a magic wand. When he touched a spool of dull gray metal with the wand, the metal flowed and dripped upon wire and pin alike, turning instantly solid once more and binding the one to the other. Metal-workers used such “plumbing-metal,” but needed fire to make it flow, and Dietrich saw no sign of a fire. The wand, when Gottfried allowed him to touch it, was not even warm.
The work required a jeweler’s touch and, when something had not been done precisely right, Gottfried would cuff his apprentices or engage in a scuffle with Hans. Even among Krenken, Gottfried was noted for his choler.
The Krenk worried over the ‘unclothed’ nature of the wire, but his meaning remained occult, as no German word signified the clothing. When the “circuit” was ready at last, Gottfried tested it with a device he wore on his belt and — after much discussion with Hans, the Kratzer, and Baron Grosswald — pronounced himself satisfied.
The next day, an indifferent snowfall littered the still air. The party gathered in the Burg courtyard. Gottfried, bundled in furs, strapped a flying harness on, from which hung in a protective sack the device he had built. His much-abused apprentice, Wittich, would carry Lorenz to the ship in a sling. The smith had begged the boon of watching; and Baron Grosswald, at Herr Manfred’s urging, had consented.
Dietrich prayed a blessing on their efforts, and Lorenz knelt upon the icy flagstones and drew the sign of the cross over his body. Before climbing the tower from which the fliers would depart, the smith embraced Dietrich and gave him the kiss of peace. “Pray for me,” he said.
“Close your eyes until you are again on solid land.”
“I don’t fear height, but failure. I’m no copper-smith. The draw is not so fine and regular as Gottfried had asked.”
Dietrich remained at the base of the tower while the others climbed the narrow, spiral stairs to the top. Just around the bend of the spiral, the two Krenken tripped on the stumbling blocks. Hans, who had stayed behind with Dietrich, commented on the mason’s evident lack of skill.
“But no,” Dietrich said. “The stumble-steps are so attackers climbing the tower ‘trip up.’ The stairs spiral right-handwise for similar reason. Invaders ca
Hans shook his head, a gesture he had acquired from his hosts. “Your ineptness proves always cu
Dietrich watched the fliers until they had become dark specks. The sentries on the walls pointed, too, but they had seen such flights now many times and the novelty of the feat had begun to fade. They had seen even Max Schweitzer fly, though with indifferent success.
“Blitzl has no little optimism,” Hans said.
“Who is Blitzl?”
Hans pointed toward the fliers as they vanished into the woodland. “Gottfried. We call those who follow his craft ‘Little Lightnings.’ During thunder-weather great bolts of the fiery fluid cross our sky, and Gottfried works with smaller versions of the same spirit.”
“The elektronikos!”
A Krenk’s face could not show astonishment. “You know of it? But you said nothing!”
“I deduced its likelihood from philosophic principles. When your cog failed, a great wave of elektronikos washed across the village, creating no small havoc.”
“Give thanks then that it was but a ripple,” Hans told him.
It was difficult to reconstruct afterward what had happened. Gottfried was in another apartment of the vessel and did not see. Perhaps Wittich had spied a loose wire and sought to adjust it. But while he handled the unclothed wire, Gottfried opened the sluice gate, allowing the elektronikos to pour through the cha
“Lorenz siezed Wittich’s arm to pull him away,” Gottfried told Manfred’s inquest afterward, “and the fluid coursed through him as well.”
Like old Pfrozheim, Dietrich thought. And Holzbre
“The man Lorenz did not know what would befall when he touched Wittich,” Grosswald asked. He sat by Manfred and Thierry on the judge’s bench since the affair involved his folk.
Gottfried said, “He saw that Wittich was in pain.”
“But you knew,” Grosswald insisted.
The servant of the essence made the tossing motion and all could see the burns on his hands. “I moved too late.”
Baron Grosswald ground his forearms slowly together. “That was not why I asked.”
After Lorenz’s poor burned body had been laid to rest, and Dietrich had given Wanda what comfort he could, Gregor came to the parsonage to offer his own condolences, “since the two of you were so close.”
“He was a pleasant and gentle man,” Dietrich said, “good to talk to and always with the air of more left unsaid. A friendship is shallow, I think, if everything between two men can be said. I’m sure there were things he wished to tell me, but there was always time for them later. Now, there is no ‘later.’ But Wanda’s grief must be the harder.”