Learning the World

“Later, maybe,” he said. They all leaned back and looked at each other.

“So you recognise our intruder.”

“In principle,” said Orro. He reached for his tea and slurped. “You’ve shown us a plot of a path it could have taken. But it continues after it vanished from sight. How could the subsequent points be observations?”

“Never you mind,” said the Eye. “For now, let me assure you that they are. Or so I’ve been told, by people who don’t mess me about.”

The hitherto silent agent stifled a laugh.

“Not,” the Eye went on, “that many do.” He waved aside the sudden return to menace. “Anyhow. These very folks have also told me, most definite like, that this thing here is no natural object. No way, no how, no matter which way you turn it — and they have, gentlemen, they have.”

“This is wonderful,” said Orro.

“You could say that,” said the Eye. “What the Sight says, and the Might says, and the Flight says, and for all I know to the contrary, what her soaring majesty herself says, is that this thing is of — now, how did you put it? — defence significance.”

“Of more than that, surely,” said Darvin, appalled at this blinkered view. “It’s of world importance. It’s the most significant and exciting event in our history!”

The Eye gave him a look. “Examined it, have you?” he said. “Communed with it, perhaps? Confident, are you, that it means us no harm? Thought not.”

He leaned over the table again. “Next picture.”

The grey-and-black sheet he spread out might have been a photograph of a series of small photographs, arranged in three rows of six; Darvin had not seen its like, and was unsure how it had been done. The pictures showed a pointed cylindrical object with two rectangular attachments midway along it. A white line of smoke or steam began a little behind the blunt end. In the first pictures the object was foreshortened, then in the second row it appeared in full view, and in the final row it was foreshortened from the back, eventually dwindling to a dot. The trail was in all the photographs. The series gave the irresistible impression of something like a flechette hurtling past. Darvin imagined how they would look run as a series of kinematographic frames, and realised that that was what they were.

Orro looked so expressionless that Darvin suspected he recognised what he saw; but the Eye’s quizzical gaze was on Darvin, as though suspecting that he knew what it was.

Darvin shook his head. “I’m baffled,” he said. “What is this?”

The Eye turned a glare on Orro. “I’ll tell you one thing it isn’t,” he said. “It’s not one of your precious self-propelled flechettes.”

The Gevorkian started. “I know nothing of such.”

“As well you shouldn’t.” He twisted a smile at Orro, and jabbed a finger at the paper. “You know what altitude this was flying at? Five by eight by eight by eight wingspans.”

It was a figure you thought of as a distance, not a height.

“Travelling about that distance in about eight-and-two seconds,” the Eye went on. “Faster than a speeding crossbolt, you might say. Its length is reckoned to be about a wingspan and a half.”

“How were photographs of something so small taken at such a distance?” Darvin asked.

“None of your business.”

As soon as he said it Darvin formed a guess: a camera attached to a telescope, and tracking very fast — a new gunsight, no doubt. As secret on the Selohic side as the self-propelled flechettes — whatever they might be — were supposed to be on the Gevorkian. It saddened him that military technology was so much more advanced than he’d ever imagined.

“All right,” he said. “So… what is it?”

The Eye looked impatient. “We’re asking you.”

“You really don’t know?” Orro sounded disbelieving.

The Eye clasped his hands on the top of his head, in a gesture of frustration or surrender. “No,” he said. “We wrapping well don’t know, and that’s no ploy.”

It occurred to Darvin that the man, and whoever had sent him and his silent comrade, was afraid.

“I know what it is,” said Orro. “It’s a self-propelled aerial vehicle. A heavier-than-air flying machine, but one that flies without flapping.”

“We should have you in the service,” the Eye said.

The sarcasm was wasted on Orro.

“It must work on the same principle as the self-propelled flechette,” he said.

“And what might that be?” asked the Eye.

“It is not for me to say,” Orro said. “You no doubt know, in any case, but—” He passed his hand across his lips. Then scientific excitement seemed to overcome patriotic scruple. He snatched the paper and held it up to the light from the window, his head swaying as he sca

“See what?” asked Darvin.

“It’s undergoing a sort of… power-assisted gliding.”

“Artificial thermals?”

Orro shook his head. “Of course not.” He laughed harshly. “Not a bad idea in itelf, in terms of military applications. Burning towns provide thermals enough… but no, this is quite different. This line coming out of the back appears to be a jet of steam. Now, a jet of steam, under sufficient pressure, could propel the object forward — action and reaction, see?”

“Yes,” said Darvin, “I quite see that, but—”

“And what,” interrupted the Eye, “would be the heat source for this flying teakettle?”

“I don’t know,” said Orro. “Something beyond our present comprehension. It doesn’t matter. It could as well be… the mode of propulsion of the… ah… self-propelled flechette, but that has… um… certain practical limitations, which, um… Forget about that for the moment. The point is that one can separate the two functions of a wing — lift, and power.”

“That’s a difficult idea to wrap one’s mind around,” said Darvin.

“There’s a certain truth in the old saw,” said Orro, “that if the gods had meant us to build flying machines, they wouldn’t have given us wings.”

Darvin recalled flying in the wind tu

“You mean that chiroptery has all been a mistake?”

“Not entirely,” said Orro. “Now let us think. If this jet propulsion is impracticable for us, we need to devise, as well as the static wing, some other form of, of…”

“Propeller?” said the Eye.

Orro and Darvin rounded on him and shouted as one. “That’s it!”

The Eye backed away, taking all of the pieces of paper with him. His companion bristled and backed in the opposite direction, to the doorway.

“All right,” said the Eye. He picked up his cup again, sniffed at it, and put it down. “I’m sure you’ve both just made some remarkable leap of logic. Very gratifying, but not my immediate concern. Nor, right at this moment, should it be yours.”

“What do you mean?” Darvin tried to keep his excitement from leaking aggression into his voice. He wanted nothing more than to rush out this room to Orro’s laboratory.

“I mean, gentlemen, that you’re still in trouble. Not the trouble you thought you were, though that’s still hanging over you, so to speak. You’ve seen things, and had ideas, that we don’t want spread around.”

“I understand,” said Orro. “You have my word that none of this shall go to Gevork.”

The Eye shook his head. “Not good enough, I’m afraid. Which is sad. If I’d been sent to expel you as persona non grata, I’d have gladly taken your parole and not so much as bothered to escort you to the quay. But we’re in stormier skies here.” He sighed. “Stormier skies. This is where your troubles begin.”

Keeping his gaze on them, he stepped forward to the table and took from yet another pouch: a small folding knife, a thin iron rod with a curled end and a wooden handle, a box of matches, a dip pen, a candle stub, a stick of sealing wax, and two sheets of paper. He flicked the knife open and flourished it in their faces. The blade looked very sharp. Darvin wondered what he was about to do with it. He thought of Orro’s military training. Behind him, he heard the solid click of a handheld crossbow being cocked.