Ascent of the Aliomenti (18 page)

Adam looked thoughtful, and then left the room, returning to the melee of the tournament.

Will glanced down at the fruit, thinking. The challenge with this fruit was that Will knew what consumption conferred upon the consumer. And it was true: there would be widely different opinions on whether that which was conferred was a gift or a curse. But the critical item was to ensure that the outcomes were known, and then enable everyone to make their own decisions.

He was also troubled by a comment Adam had made, about making Arthur the one to test the “mystery” fruit., and suffer whatever consequences came from it, consequences most in the village believed would be harmful. The ambrosia tree had been planted by Will, and had not come with the promise of miracles like those passed along via the Travelers. Yet Arthur and Adam, at least, had learned the lesson of the previous village, to proceed with great caution in the face of the unknown, regardless of the source. And so, they’d advised everyone to avoid consuming the fragrant fruit on the decorative trees.

Will had taken the time to show the fruit to each resident, asking if any had seen or eaten it before. None recognized the fruit, and Will became concerned. They had no alternative experiences to fall back on, no one who could identify the fruit as safe or dangerous, and nothing which would give any indication of the immortality and sterility it would actually provide.

Will, of course, could not prove or disprove those claims either. He had only the word of Ambrose and Aina and the others who lived in that forest. Their claims were impossible to prove without the passage of time, for none of the trio had lived long enough to prove the claims of immortality. And, he thought grimly, none of them had had the opportunity to prove the claims of sterility either.

His breath caught in his throat, understanding dawning on him.

He and Hope had, after their marriage, tried to bring a child into the world. When they’d struggled, they’d visited specialists. The specialists could find nothing wrong with either of them, but had concluded that Will was the source of their issues, and he’d been devastated at his inability to give Hope the child she so passionately desired.

And yet it wasn’t true. The ambrosia fruit Hope had eaten a thousand years before that time... the fruit had made
Hope
infertile, in a manner suggesting that Will was at fault. And it meant they’d figured out, quietly, how to cure
Hope
after their marriage, and thus they’d been able to have two children.

He knew, then, that the fruit was at least capable of rendering the consumer infertile. He’d seen none of the morange or zirple plants in the forest, and as such knew that the two plants could not be the cause of the immortality the Ambrosians claimed. But he could not disprove their claims.

He rose from the table, knowing that someone would need to eat the plant, running the risk that the plant was poisonous. Every person in the village would test that plant without any knowledge of the side effects, and while they’d do so of their own free will, such a volunteer would still be serving a role much as Elizabeth had served. Yet there was one person in the village who knew the effects of the plant, who, unlike Elizabeth, could eat the plant knowing the changes it would bring about.

Him.

He sighed, rose from the table, seized the full piece of fruit, and walked out into the common room.

Adam was standing, walking through the rules with the next two contestants in the tournament. He stopped in mid-sentence as Will approached, and glanced up as Will neared him.

“Did you figure it out yet, Will? Is the plant harmful?”

“I don’t know, Adam, but I do think I’m uniquely qualified to find out. If something happens to me... well, let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.”

And Will bit into the fruit, even as Adam shouted for him to stop, even as Arthur’s greedy eyes found life again at the thought that Will might meet his own mortality before Arthur did.

Those in the common room grew silent, recognizing the sacrifice Will had made, not realizing that the sacrifice had been made years earlier.

After a few moments, Will cracked a smile. “Well, if this fruit contains a poison, it’s certainly not one that acts quickly. I don’t think it will be useful in warding off any invasions.”

Nervous laughter greeted his words, emitted from expectant faces, waiting for some macabre ending to his consumption of the mystery fruit. After several moments of silence, during which their faces showed disappointed at the lack of change in him, Will teleported out of the bunker. He did not want to be watched, did not want to see the eager thrill on their faces, did not want to think those looks meant they were eager to see him collapse and die.

He knew it wouldn’t happen. Or at least, he knew it
hadn’t
happened in the last cycle of time. He felt jealousy toward
that
Will now, too, for having completed the long journey, much as he felt jealous at the younger Will. But there was nothing to be done with such jealousy. It would not help make his journey easier, or shorter. The only way to finish this journey was to move forward, and that he would do.

Will put his mind to work on other tasks, to distract himself from the long journey and painful decisions he knew he’d need to make, and from those decisions he suspected he didn’t even know about yet. He watched the great Wheel turning, powered by the eternal flow of the rushing waters of the Ealdor River.

What else might the river move? What else might need continual turning?

His mind clicked:
gears
.

He’d had a thought of this type when he’d recommended the location of the bunker, wanting it near the Wheel for its potential use as the engine to drive a series of gears that they could use to produce some of their products more efficiently. He noted with a smile the fact that such a capability would have been useful in stirring up the endless batches of concrete they’d needed to rebuild the walls and the rest of the village, but they had no use for such a machine at the moment. The general idea was there, yet he needed a specific use to gather the attention of the villagers, a means to motivate them as he had done a decade earlier through the construction of the Wheel.

Will wanted them to build the rudimentary equivalent of a factory, powered by water wheels turning a system of gears, operating below the ground.

The challenge, though, was that he wasn’t sure what they needed a factory
for
. They made everything by hand, from beginning to end, and mass production was not a concept they’d come to embrace. Could they use it for weaving? They wove thread by hand as well, and he doubted they’d be able to make the mental leap from hand weaving to water-powered loom immediately. He recalled the analogy his daughter, Angel, had used in explaining the Alliance’s view on revealing their advances to the world. Machines of that type were so beyond their concept of thinking that he’d frighten them. He preferred to give people the truth and let them determine how they’d react, but this seemed to be pushing those boundaries too far, even for him.

Perhaps, then, he needed to start at the beginning.

He walked back to the village. This project would not begin with one wagon wheel.

He’d need
two
this time.

XIV

Gears

1029 A.D.

“What do you need
two
wheels for?” Wayne asked, puzzled by Will’s request.

“I have an idea I want to try out, and for that test I need two wheels to start with.”

Arthur walked by at that moment, his face looking ever more haggard and worn, but his eyes seemed sharper than Will had seen them in quite some time. “Let me give you some advice, Wayne. Years ago, Will asked for one wheel, and we ended up with
that
.” Arthur gestured at the overhead water delivery system, and Wayne’s eyes widened. “If he wants
two
wheels? We may end up with... with... with a flying machine or something.”

Will laughed, amused at the idea and surprised that Arthur had spoken on his behalf. “Nothing quite so grandiose, Arthur. At least, not yet. But given enough time? Anything is possible.”

The fire left Arthur’s eyes. “Time. Right.” He turned and walked away.

Will leaned in and whispered to Wayne. “Just for reference, when I’m ready to build Arthur’s... flying machine? I’ll ask for at least
four
wheels.” He grinned.

Wayne chuckled, then shook his head. “I don’t think the old man has much time left.” He rummaged through the Store and found two wagon wheels, which he handed to Will, refusing any payment. “Sorry, Will. If you’ve got something interesting in mind, it’s worth it to me to find out what it is.”

Will thanked the wagon-maker, testing various ways of carrying or rolling the wheels. “Do you really think Arthur’s time is running out?”

Wayne glanced after Arthur, who was moving at a tentative pace. “I don’t know, Will. But he’s not getting any younger. Maybe you can use those wheels to find something to make him live a little longer.”

Will nodded briefly and wandered off.

Was that the common perception around the camp, that Arthur was on death’s door? Will still intended to work on the gears, but he realized he was going to have to watch Arthur carefully. He was no longer the official doctor in the village; they’d brought someone else in two years earlier. Yet no doctor would consider old age a disease to be treated or an illness to be cured. Dying, and death, were simply a part of life, an experience they’d all have at some point.

One day, all too soon, they’d find out that was no longer the case.

Will walked through the Stores, a structure they’d expanded over the past few years, including the addition of a second story to the rebuilt concrete structure. The upward expansion had reduced the footprint of the Stores and opened more space within the village for Shops. Seventy people required a great deal of space to prepare their crafts and perform the services the village needed. They’d moved the cooking stations nearer to the residence hall, though they’d not implemented Will’s suggestion to move them inside. The changes had provided a much more expansive space for the Shops.

Current conversation in the village focused on construction plans for the next warm season. There was significant interest in creating additional underground facilities they could use to store finished goods. Will had privately smiled at that. In the long run, he had visions of creating a Store more like that in his day. They’d invite their customers to come to
them
to purchase goods, and they’d have an inventory of finished products they could tap into to ensure they could meet demand. That was a long way off, most likely, and he’d reminded himself more than once that he could only focus on one project at a time. Each successive project might never come to pass, due to intervening events.

In theory, he had a way to know what those intervening events would be, knowledge that would let him plan with greater certainty. His “diary” was a gift from the future, where all of those future events had occurred, where they’d be able to provide him information and guidance. That guidance was so rarely forthcoming, however, that he’d stopped checking for it over the past several years. It bothered him that he so rarely got information from the future, and yet, if he was honest with himself, that was as it should be. He couldn’t review the diary in secret every time he needed to make a decision, and if he was given that guidance on a regular basis, it would be as though his life was being lived for him. The scant information he’d gotten had been undeniably useful, as with the information on making concrete, or the key phrases for surviving his layover during his first flight home from Healf. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t know what he’d eventually do with Arthur and the ambrosia. Would it truly matter if they gave him a date, time, and location to do the deed?

He sat down in an open patch of ground near the well, pulled out a sharp chisel and mallet, and began whittling the wood away, create teeth in the outer edge of the first wheel. When he finished an hour later, he carved teeth into the side of the second wheel. He pictured a rope or band attached to the water wheel, with the motion turning one wheel mounted vertically on an axle. The second wheel would be mounted on an axle and mounted horizontally. The teeth would interlock so that the first wheel, powered indirectly by water, would turn the second wheel.

As he chiseled the teeth into the second wheel, Adam wandered by, watching him.

“What are you up to, Will?”

Will didn’t look up. “I had an idea, and I want to see if it will work.”

“Tell me.” Adam sat down next to Will, watching the dark-haired man work. Will shivered; he hadn’t forgotten that this man had murdered fifty people only a few years earlier, and the proximity unnerved Will, regardless of Adam’s stated motivation for his actions.

“Well...” Will paused, for he wasn’t sure how to explain how he’d come up with the idea. “I was watching the big Wheel turning, using those paddles that get pushed by the water.”

“Okay.”

“And I wondered, what if there was no water to turn this Wheel? What else could turn the Wheel? The answer was
another
Wheel with paddles. Turn one wheel, and those paddles connect with and push the paddles of the second wheel, and that means
both
wheels turn just by turning one of them.”