The Heretic

hundreds of a percentage point, said Center.

Observe what? Abel thought. What did you want me to learn, to see? Her state of mind? Why did you show me this, Center?

I think he’s pointing out the fact that you are falling in love with her, lad, Raj said.

And how this may become a problem, Center added.

Shut up, both of you. Let’s see to the breechloaders.

“So you understand, muzzle loading is the issue,” Abel said to the priest.

Raf Golitsin sat back in the chair in his small office. They were in the rear of the armory, which itself was one of the four primary structures in the temple compound of Hestinga. It was where the muskets came from.

Abel had passed through what had seemed an erupting hot spring of heat and activity on his way back to the office. He’d been blindfolded by Golitsin, as was required of all nonclerical entrants to the area, but Golitsin had used muslin gauze, which was the understood blindfold of choice for officials who were in small danger of misusing priestly secrets. Abel had seen all.

The firing mechanisms of the muskets in for repair were dismantled to a degree Abel had not imagined possible. Flaws were annealed in glowing forges. Other parts were filed, planed, oiled. Barrel bands were pulled from rifle stock, and barrels themselves were dismantled, reamed. Rifling was done with an enormous handcranked screw, itself made of a metal of a hardness Abel had never seen before. Golitsin called it a drillpress and die.

The stocks were lovingly reconditioned. Some were willow-wood, but most were made from the hardwood maple of the Delta.

A local cambium-producing flora, not related to Earth’s maples genetically, but similar in dendrological characteristics, Center said.

And in the rear was the rebuild shop, where all came back together to produce the reconditioned rifle. Here the most skilled priest-smiths worked, checking each component and, in a final step, test firing and calibrating sights using complicated instruments that, anywhere else, would have been considered utterly nishterlaub, and probably poisonous to the touch, as well.

They closed the door to Golitsin’s office-a wooden interior door, rather than beads, was a necessity here to keep out the noise of the shop-and Abel, still excited from what he’d just witnessed-From the possibilities, most of all, he thought-proceeded to lay out his plans for a new kind of gun that would help them stem another Blaskoye invasion.

“It comes down to this: reloading is slow and you die,” Abel continued. “You have to put in the powder, put in the ball, ram them down the barrel. Put your primer cap over the nipple so that its fire will ignite the gunpowder within the barrel. And only then can you aim and fire. And hope you’ve done it all right. And then start all over again as fast your love of life demands of you, because they are coming right for you, the ones who want to kill you, while you are doing this.”

“So you need to make the steps quicker,” said Golitsin. “Or combine them.”

“Yes,” Abel said. “And here is my idea.”

Or the idea that was delivered to me from the stars, Abel thought. The stars that are suns, and the planets that circle them filled with other men who have discovered and lost this knowledge a hundred, a thousand times. I can barely conceive of this after a lifetime’s instruction, so I won’t tell you that, my friend Golitsin. You’ll think I’m crazy, as I may well be.

“First of all, the cartridge. It needs to combine the percussion cap. And we have to get rid of this biting off and pouring. I’ll show you my idea-”

Abel took out the scroll. On it was the cartridge design he had copied from memory, from the picture that Center had placed in his mind.

“I see, I see,” Golitsin said. “A cylinder. One end the cap, the other the minie ball.”

“Yes,” Abel said. “The paper cartridge should be the diameter of the rifle bore. It should fit snugly, but not so tightly it can’t slide into place. They must be extremely uniform.”

“We can wrap them around a dowel,” Golitsin said, scratching his head. “We can hold them together with glue, I suppose. I’ll have to work up a prototype for you to take a look at.”

He grunted in consternation. “But this will be pointless without a way to load it. You can’t ram it down the barrel from the muzzle.”

Abel smiled. Golitsin was getting it. He was understanding the problem, and so approaching the solution. Raf Golitsin was a very intelligent man, but if he could get it, many others might, as well.

“We are going to load it from the rear of the barrel,” Abel said. He broke out the second scroll with his drawings on it. “It will require a new mechanism.”

“A new…mechanism?”

“Yes,” said Abel.

“Use of nishterlaub remains is sanctioned only for piecemeal work. Combinations are forbidden,” Golitsin said from rote memory. “A mechanism is a combination of simple machines. You know this, of course. It’s a basic Thursday school lesson.”

“What I know,” Abel said. “What I know: we are faced with an enemy concentrated in overwhelming numbers. No one is going to send help. Cascade is corrupt. Ingres barely has a force of Regulars, and no Militia to speak of. Lindron feels secure and will do nothing until it is too late.”

“This is heresy, Abel,” said Golitsin. “You are asking me to commit heresy.”

“This is survival.”

He waited. He could see the eagerness on Golitsin’s face, the desire to know how. The need to try something new. He could also see that this longing was at war with a thousand Thursday school lectures.

Golitsin blinked twice as if to clear his eyes, shook his head. The inner war was over. All that remained was to discover the outcome.

“All right, show me,” said Golitsin. “I’d rather burn for the knowing of it than live as a fool.”

Abel put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”

“We can always hope,” the priest said with a forlorn sigh. “Show me.”

After a moment, Abel rolled out the scroll.

“The breech lock,” he said, “is a very simple concept. It’s the execution that may be the problem. But seeing what you have in place here in your shop, I think you may be able to handle it.”

“The point of using the women is not to prove anything,” said Abel, “but to increase our firepower.”

Joab shook his head. Abel had reported to him in his office to detail the assignment of Scout tasks, but had decided that now was the time to bring up this innovation with his father.

It was not an innovation that Center had insisted upon, although he had not rejected the idea. He’d merely said it would “alter certain equations that might lead to interesting variables to consider.”

It was something Abel felt he had to push for, after he’d seen the women fight at Lilleheim. They were throwing away a resource in a war where the forces of the Land were being purposely undermined and thinned.

I agree with your reasoning, Raj had said with a laugh. But maybe your motivations are not so pure as you purport them to be.

“No,” Joab said. “Absolutely not. Look at what happened at Lilleheim. That woman brought out her little coterie of-I don’t know what to call them. Women who aren’t content with one cock to lead a man around with, but who have got to have their own, to yank themselves here and there with, I suppose. And she got thirteen wives and daughters of some very prominent men killed in the bargain.“

“They fought like carnadons,” Abel said. “We need their numbers. Plus, they have almost all been around military men in some way or another. They are our sisters and our wives. They’ve absorbed many skills, and they know how we do things.”

“It could have been worse,” Joab mused. “Rape. Torture. The Blaskoye using the women against us the way they used the children.”