“I said, could Fergmen make these hydra haulics work?”
“Hmm? Oh. Shouldn't think so,” said Urn, vaguely.
“Could you?”
“What?”
“Could you make them work?”
“Oh. Probably. It's just pipes and pressures, after all. Um.”
Urn was still staring thoughtfully at the steam cart. Simony nodded meaningfully at the sergeant, indicating that he should go away, and then tried the mental interplanetary journey necessary to get to whatever world Urn was in.
He tried looking at the cart, too.
“How soon can you have it all finished?”
“Hmm?”
"I said-
“Late tomorrow night. If we work through tonight.”
“But we'll need it for the next dawn! We won't have time to see if it works!”
“It'll work first time,” said Urn.
“Really?”
“I built it. I know about it. You know about swords and spears and things. I know about things that go round and round. It will work first time.”
"Good. Well, there are other things I've got to do-
“Right.”
Urn was left alone in the barn. He looked reflectively at his hammer, and then at the iron cart.
They didn't know how to cast bronze properly here. Their iron was pathetic, just pathetic. Their copper? It was terrible. They seemed to be able to make steel that shattered at a blow. Over the years the Quisition had weeded out all the good smiths.
He'd done the best he could, but . . .
“Just don't ask me about the second or third time,” he said quietly to himself.
Vorbis sat in the stone chair in his garden, papers strewn around him.
“Well?”
The kneeling figure did not look up. Two guards stood over it, with drawn swords.
“The Turtle people . . . the people are plotting something,” it said, the voice shrill with terror.
“Of course they are. Of course they are,” said Vorbis. “And what is this plot?”
“There is some kind of . . . when you are confirmed as Cenobiarch . . . some kind of device, some machine that goes by itself . . . it will smash down the doors of the Temple . . .”
The voice faded away.
“And where is this device now?” said Vorbis.