A Mighty Fortress (48 page)

“Baron Seamount, Doctor,” young Bowave said, ushering a rather short, pudgy officer in the sky- blue tunic and loose black trousers of the Imperial Charisian Navy into the large, sunlit room.

“Ahlfryd!” Mahklyn stood behind his desk, holding out his right hand, and the two men clasped forearms.

They’d known one another only slightly before Merlin Athrawes arrived in Charis, but over the last three years they’d become critical members of the small, slowly growing cadre of advisers and innovators Emperor Cayleb had gathered together. Unlike Mahklyn, Seamount still didn’t know the full truth about Merlin. Or, for that matter, the
full
truth about the ultimate nature of Charis’ life- and- death fight against the Group of Four. None of which had kept him from making enormous contributions to Charis’ survival.

And if Byrkyt can finally bring the rest of the Brethren around, we’ll get him
admitted
to the inner circle. And past damned time we did, too,
Mahklyn thought grumpily.

“Rahzhyr,” Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk returned the greeting with a smile of his own. “I’m glad you could fit me in.”

“I imagine His Majesty would’ve had a little something to say if I
hadn’t
found it possible to ‘fit you in,’ despite my massively crowded schedule,” Mahklyn said dryly, waving for the baron to seat himself in the armchair facing his desk. “And even if His Majesty hadn’t, I know damned well
Her
Majesty would have.”

Mahklyn added the final sentence just a bit feelingly, and Seamount chuckled. Empress Sharleyan had shown a deep interest in the baron’s many projects. Not only did she have a keen appreciation for the advantages and tactical implications of his efforts, but her agile, ever- active brain had produced quite a few eminently worthwhile suggestions of her own. And, in the process, a genuine friendship had sprung up between her and the baron.

“On the other hand,” Mahklyn continued, “it really didn’t take the threat of potential imperial dis plea sure to get you in to see me.” He shrugged. “I never have time to keep completely abreast of your memos, Ahlfryd, but I keep up well enough to know you and those Helen Island minions of yours are making all kinds of waves again. Thank God.”

“We try,” Seamount acknowledged. “Although I have to admit the tempo seems to slow down just a bit with Captain Athrawes out of the Kingdom.” The look he gave Mahklyn was more than a little speculative, but the civilian had become accustomed to the pudgy commodore’s occasional probes where Merlin was concerned.

“He does seem to have that . . .
fertilizing
effect, doesn’t he?” he said in reply.

“I hadn’t realized you had such a command of understatement,” Seamount observed with a thin smile.

“We academics inevitably become masters of the language,” Mahklyn said with a matching smile, then tipped back in his swivel chair. “So, what’s managed to pry you loose from King’s Harbor?”

“Actually, the main thing I want to do, as I believe I mentioned in my note, is to spend a little time with Dr. Lywys. I’ve got a couple of questions I need her to answer for me, if she can. But I also wanted to get
you
broadly informed about where we are at the moment.”

Mahklyn nodded. Given the fact that the Royal College’s pursuit of knowledge had always skirted a little too close to the edge of the Proscriptions of Jwo- jeng for some of the clergy’s comfort, it had seemed like a good idea to keep it well separated from the Crown when old King Cayleb I originally endowed it. By the time Mahklyn became the College’s head, that separation had become a firm tradition, and despite his own involvement in the original innovations Merlin Athrawes had midwifed, he’d seen no reason to change it.

Until, that was, arsonists had destroyed the original College and very nearly murdered Mahklyn himself in the process. At which point Emperor Cayleb—only he’d still been
King
Cayleb at the time—had decided the time for such nonsense was past. He’d moved the College onto the grounds of Tellesberg Palace, assigned responsibility for its security to the Royal Guard, and brought one Rahzhyr Mahklyn fully inside his own inner circle. One of the outward signs of that change was the fact that Mahklyn had also been formally named to head the “Imperial Council of Inquiry” when Empress Sharleyan created it.

“So inform me,” he invited now, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning still farther back in his chair.

“Well,” Seamount began, “first, I finally got my Experimental Board—you know, the one I’ve been kicking around as a concept for so long?— set up. Took me a while, I admit, but a lot of that was because of how long it took to find the right man to head it. I finally have, though, I think. I can’t remember—have you ever actually met Commander Mahndrayn?”

“ ‘Mahndrayn’?” Mahklyn repeated slowly, frowning thoughtfully. Then his eyes narrowed. “Tall, skinny, young fellow, with black hair? Always looks like his trousers are about to catch on fire?”

“I don’t know that I’d describe him exactly like that.” Seamount’s lips quivered, although he managed not to laugh out loud. “Still, he
is
a bit fidgety, so I’d say you’ve got the right man.”

Mahklyn nodded, although “a bit fidgety” fell well short of the young man
he
remembered. His own impression of Mahndrayn had been of a man possessed of an abundance—one might almost have called it a
super
abundance—of nervous energy. Physically, the commander could have been deliberately designed as Seamount’s antithesis, but Mahklyn could see far greater and more important similarities under the skin.

“At any rate,” the commodore continued, “I’ve assigned Urvyn—that’s his first name—to ride herd on my other clever young officers. In fact, I told him I wanted him to start out by examining everything we think we already know.”

“What we think we already know?” Mahklyn raised one eyebrow, and it was Seamount’s turn to nod.

“Exactly. The thing is, Rahzhyr, we’ve changed so much so quickly over the last few years that I’m not comfortable in my mind about how systematically we’ve approached the situation. Oh,” he waved his left hand, the one missing its first two fingers, courtesy of a long-ago gunpowder accident, “I’m satisfied that we’re enormously far out in front of anyone else. But we’ve moved so fast, covered so much ground, that I’m almost certain at least some of the things we’ve done are . . . less than optimal. So I asked Urvyn to start with a clean set of assumptions. To look at what we’ve done and see if he can spot any profitable avenues we passed up on our way by. Or, for that matter, choices we made which, with the benefit of hindsight, may not have been the best ones. Places where we might have chosen differently if we’d had more time to think about it.”

“I see.” Mahklyn swung his chair gently from side to side while he considered what Seamount had just said. And as he considered, he realized just how much sense the commodore was making.

In fact,
I
should have suggested something like this months ago,
he admitted.
I wonder why it never even occurred to me?
He snorted mentally.
No, you don’t,
he told himself.
You know
exactly
why it didn’t. It’s because you know the truth about Merlin. You know about all the “computer records” Owl has tucked away, so you
know
Merlin has all the answers at his fingertips. Which is why you’ve been assuming he must have given you the “right answers” to our various problems
.

But what Merlin’s been after from the beginning almost certainly means he
hasn’t
always gone out of his way to just hand us the “best answer” to a problem, now doesn’t it? He wants us to have to
work
for it . . . and to recognize the potentials to find better solutions on our own, without his leading us to them by the hand
. Mahklyn gave a mental headshake.
He’s right—we do have to develop and cultivate that kind of thinking of our own, but I wonder how hard it must be to not just
tell
us how to do something? Especially something which could turn out to be critical in the end, what ever it seems like at the moment?

His already vast respect for the man who had been Nimue Alban clicked up another notch at the thought, and he returned his mental focus to Seamount.

“That sounds to me like an excellent idea,” he said firmly. “Has anything startling come to light yet?”

“Actually, I think there are going to be several things. Some of them I’m going to have to discuss with Admiral Lock Island and Dustyn Olyvyr, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we wind up making some design changes in the next class of galleons.” He shook his head, his expression ruefully bemused. “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, given how radically we’ve stood traditional naval architecture on its head, but it turns out—if Urvyn and the rest of the Experimental Board are right—that we’ve been guilty of trying for too much of a good thing, in at least a couple of ways.

“They’re also carrying out those detailed artillery experiments I’ve been trying to find time to supervise for the last year and a half.” He shook his head again, and this time there was more than a trace of exhaustion in his eyes. “That’s one reason—the main one, really—I wanted the Board, Rahzhyr. There just aren’t enough hours in a day for me to personally see to everything that needs seeing to. I realized several months ago that I’ve actually turned myself into a bottleneck by trying to do that. I think Urvyn’s going to help a lot in that respect.”

“Personally, I’m in favor of reducing your workload any way we can,” Mahklyn said a bit gently. “In fact, if I’d thought about it—and if I’d thought I could talk you into it—I probably would have suggested something like this to you myself. I’m ashamed to admit that I
didn’t
think about it, though.”

“Well, it’s not as if we haven’t all had a few other things on our minds,” Seamount observed dryly.

“No, it’s not,” Mahklyn agreed. And, he reflected, it must be extraordinarily difficult to voluntarily step back in a situation like this. Especially for someone who was so damned good at what he did. It
had
to be hard for a competent man, doing something he loved as much as Seamount obviously loved his own work, to let anyone else come between him and any of the “hands- on” aspects of it.

“At any rate, I think we’re going to have the Board’s first formal report for you and the Inquiry Council in the next five- day or so. That’s the first thing I wanted to mention to you. The second thing I wanted to talk to you about, though, and the real reason I want to sit down with Dr. Lywys this afternoon, is that while Urvyn’s been getting started on that, I’ve found myself with some extra time to think about the new artillery.”

“And?” Mahklyn let his chair come most of the way back upright, propping his elbows on the arms and interlacing his fingers across his stomach.

“Well, the first thing is that Dr. Lywys’ new compound seems to perform as promised.”

Seamount beamed, and Mahklyn felt himself smiling back. Sahndrah Lywys was the College’s senior chemist, although now that Mahklyn had access to Owl’s computer library, he supposed the proper term would probably be “alchemist” at this point. The College had been groping its way towards what Merlin called the “scientific method of inquiry” even before his own arrival, but the conditions Eric Langhorne and Adorée Bédard had established in the
Holy Writ
had made the process . . . difficult, to say the least. And dangerous.

When they’d created the Church of God Awaiting, Langhorne and Bédard had realized that simply telling people what God
forbade
them to do would never be sufficient to stifle human curiosity forever, which was why they’d provided “miraculous” explanations for an incredible breadth of phenomena which might otherwise have provoked eternally inquisitive human beings into wondering
why
things happened. By offering up those explanations under the infallible imprimatur of the Archangels—and, for that matter, God Himself—they’d done a remarkably good job of short- circuiting those “why” questions. Not too surprisingly, perhaps, when doubting or challenging those explanations equated to doubting God, which was unthinkable for anyone raised under the aegis of Holy Mother Church and her Inquisition.

At the same time, though, the potential seeds for those very sorts of questions had been buried in the
Writ
itself, in the directions which had been required for the successful colonization of a planet humanity hadn’t originally been designed to live upon. Merlin called the process “terraforming,” and it was a stupendous task for any world without advanced technology.

It was also one which had left the “Archangels” with something of a dilemma. The original colonists (and their descendants) had absolutely required at least some technological tools if they were to spread out from their initial enclaves, claim the entire surface of the planet, and—above all—survive. Which, after all, had been the point of establishing the colony in the first place. Even lunatics like Langhorne and Bédard had been forced to admit that much! And if those tools weren’t provided from the beginning, the need for them would very soon force their indigenous development . . . thus sparking the very innovation the two of them were determined to prevent. So the “Archangels” had found themselves with no choice but to give “divine instructions” for things like animal husbandry, fertilizing techniques, hygiene, basic preventive medicine, certain “cottage- level” manufacturing processes, and a whole host of other necessary skills and techniques.

The fact that those instructions always worked, if they were followed properly, had served to buttress and powerfully reinforce the “miraculous,” fundamentally unscientific worldview which had gripped Safehold for so many centuries. Yet people were still people. There were always those who wanted to delve a little deeper, understand things even more thoroughly, and despite the ea gle eye the Inquisition kept on those inquisitive souls, sometimes the questions got asked anyway.