Chapter 233: The Age of Steam (1)
“All right! All right! Let’s see, good! Lower it at that angle! Don’t slack off! Someone’ll get hurt.”
““Hup!””
Thud!
Le Havre, awakened by the heavy sound of large wooden crates arriving on shore one after another.
As befitted a massive trade port that split half the trade volume headed for Île-de-France in northern France with the Port of Calais, Le Havre was once again bustling from early morning today.
“Good, good. Very good. The goods are in excellent condition.”
The navigator, who had just lifted the lid of the wooden crate and checked the contents inside, nodded with a satisfied expression.
“Damn it, what the hell is inside this thing? It’s such a small box, but it’s so heavy my arms are shaking.”
“Ah, didn’t I tell you? Steel ingots. Ordered by Ears of the Nation.”
“No wonder, damn it, it was filthy heavy. Ah, Navigator, we’re not hauling this all the way to Paris too, right?”
“What are you worrying about that for? Don’t you see that over there?”
As if asking what on earth he was talking about, the navigator spun his pen in his hand and spoke to the sailor, who was exhausted from moving heavy cargo again and again.
—Hissss! Chik!
The distinctive sound of high-pressure steam shot upward into the sky, and thick smoke danced up along with it.
“We just have to ride that and unload it one more time.”
“Damn it, so we are moving it again after all.”
“Then don’t ride it. Carry it there yourself. Stop whining and get on already. I hear down south, in Toulon and Marseille, the railways still aren’t laid yet, so they still haul things the old-fashioned way. If you don’t like it, go work there.”
“Ah. No thanks.”
Back in the old days, they really would have carried it on their backs and walked, yet now he was whining like this. The navigator truly could not understand young people these days.
Late afternoon, after lunch.
“Then I’ll be off.”
“……Mm.”
“Uh, Master. Should I bring back something on the way? I heard the new cake shop just up front has good reviews…”
“No. I don’t want anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Good grief, there was stubbornness, and then there was this. He was practically a lump of iron.
He had wanted his teacher, who spent all day crouched in the laboratory doing nothing but sighing, to at least eat a bite of something sweet and lift his mood.
Well, what could he do? The man hated the idea that much. Too bad.
Éleuthère Irénée DuPont left the room, leaving behind his master, who had visibly aged in recent days.
The moment he stepped out into the street, the spring breeze tickled his nose. Had the calendar already turned to May?
DuPont climbed into the now-familiar L&C Automatic Steam Carriage No. 1 and scooped up a shovelful of coal, tossing it into the engine’s firebox.
—Pooshik! Pooshik!
As the coal thrown into the firebox met flame and began burning fiercely, the water in the engine compartment, which had long gone cold, began to boil furiously and release steam.
—Rattle, vroom!
When the distinctive sound of the engine’s operation rang loudly beyond the machinery, DuPont immediately turned the steering handle and drove out onto the road.
“At this rate, I’m going to forget your face altogether. Stop locking yourself in the lab every day and show up at headquarters once in a while, you punk.”
“I’d like to, but my employer is the kind of person who gives even the worst black-hearted bosses a run for their money, so I never have the time.”
You little bastard, DuPont. I gave you a hefty performance bonus and let you drink free coffee from the break room.
The sages of old were right after all. Never raise a beast with black hair. Oh, the tragedy.
“A hefty performance bonus, my ass. I work a hundred hours a week. If you didn’t pay me that much, you’d deserve to get Bastilled.”
“Boo hoo. Ten years ago, you were a pure and innocent boy who only cared about studying. How did you become such a materialist?”
“Who do you think did that? You did.”
Wearing the face of a modern worker ground down by labor, the sort you could easily spot in Pangyo or Dongtan, DuPont pointed at me like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You bastard. Do you even know how old you and I were when you first made me work?”
“No idea.”
“Sixteen, you crazy bastard. From then until now, when I’m twenty-nine, I’ve been worked to the bone for thirteen years, and this so-called boss of mine, instead of taking care of me as a founding member, keeps kicking my ass and yelling at me to make steam engines…”
Mm. Our DuPont is very upset. But if it weren’t for me, you would’ve ended up at the guillotine, so if you look at it that way, isn’t it fine for your body to get worn down a bit instead of your head?
“Do you know how many jobs you’ve dumped on us?”
“DuPont.”
“Suddenly you say you’re going to produce steel, so you pull away manpower we already didn’t have enough of. Sure, it worked out, like you said it would, but still! And now this time you say we’re making locomotives, so you’ve got us working overtime again!”
“DuPont.”
“What.”
“Are you really that short on people?”
“Then what, you think the chemistry research department wouldn’t be short on people after you keep drafting everyone away for this and that and whatever else you say you’re doing? To put it bluntly, other than me and Master, there’s no one who can devote themselves steadily to research, you idiot.”
Hmm. Logically, that was correct. I had no rebuttal.
“So you need more people?”
“Of course! So you finally understand?!”
“But up until now, things have been running fine with just that old man Lavoisier and you. Do we really… need them?”
For a capitalist and entrepreneur, words like cost reduction and labor savings were like the water of immortality.
Of course, that didn’t mean making three people do the work of ten, or forcing unpaid overtime and special shifts on people like some Hell Joseon, kimchi-scented hellscape.
It was more like attaching exactly three SCVs to one mineral patch. No more, no less.
Those two were already producing terrifying efficiency on their own. Even if I added more people, I didn’t think the efficiency would necessarily be maximized.
“So could you put down the ashtray in your hand first? I don’t know why someone who doesn’t even smoke keeps fiddling with that thing.”
“One thing I’ve realized from messing with machines lately is that sometimes a machine gets fixed if you hit it hard a few times. By the same logic, maybe I should smack you hard with this so no more nonsense comes out of your mouth.”
DuPont narrowed his eyes at me as he spoke.
Ugh, chills. He’s not even a soldier, he’s an engineering nerd, so how is he giving off killing intent like this?
And seeing as he’s a chemist too, if he’d been born not in France but in Sichuan during the Song dynasty, might he have conquered the martial world with poison arts?
“It’s about Master.”
DuPont gently set the ashtray back on the table and began.
“…Master? You mean Lavoisier?”
“Yeah. To put it bluntly, Master’s condition isn’t good at all right now.”
“How bad is it?”
This was a man who used to collect taxes at every gate leading into Paris while hearing every curse imaginable in accordance with the law of conservation of mass.
“You could say he’s half insane.”
“…Why?”
What, had I asked him to pull a rabbit out of thin air? Why would that man suddenly go insane?
“Pride, that’s why.”
“Pride?”
“Is Master some ordinary person? He’s the kind of man who once said, ‘Ah, will carbon burn in fire? Hehe! I want to see carbon burn!’ and then burned up a diamond worth tens of thousands of livres.”
“That’s true.”
“So how furious do you think he is after losing the title of the first transport vehicle in history to run on a steam engine? Thinking that his chance to become a second Leonardo da Vinci and live forever in history books was snatched away right in front of him must be tearing him apart.”
“He’d probably still… show up somewhere in the history books even now.”
“Let me put it differently.”
“Think of it as losing the chance to take up an entire page with pride, instead of being tucked into some corner of the history book.”
As he added that, DuPont swung his hand through the air.
“I seriously don’t understand you. Why did you hand over the incredible achievement of being the first in history to those Englishmen, Trevithick and Murdoch or whatever? You’re French!”
“Is that really so important?”
“Of course it’s important! Why give the credit not to fellow Frenchmen, but to foreigners? And of all people, those pirate bastards from that island nation!”
“Come on. Achievement, history books, all that crap—does any of it feed people? Or pay the employees’ wages for me?”
“…Are you really French? Aren’t you Jewish?”
DuPont continued,
“Anyway, that’s how it is. We don’t have enough people, and the few we do have keep getting pulled out by headquarters because they’re making something or other. He ran himself ragged chasing just one achievement that would remain in the history books. I think Master took it pretty hard.”
Ah. So he’d fully burned out. But why was he telling me this? Just to ask for more staff? No, that didn’t seem quite right.
“So. After laying all that groundwork so elaborately, what exactly does Monsieur Éleuthère DuPont want from me?”
At my words, DuPont cleared his throat and spoke carefully.
“…Invest in the steam automobile.”
“How much?”
“How much?”
“Be specific.”
“No! You’ve got plenty of money! You practically poured it into those Englishmen for years! Why are you so stingy with me and Master?!”
“What, bitter about it? If you’re that upset, go to the Royal Academy and build it with state funding.”
You don’t want to, right? What are you going to do with the Royal Academy’s piddling little subsidy?
“You… are you serious?”
“No, I said I’d support it, didn’t I? I’m asking exactly how much.”
“…Fifty thousand livres?”
“Wow. No wonder you weren’t saying it. That’s insanely expensive.”
“No, no! Hear me out a little more! If you give me just fifty thousand livres, not a coin more or less, I’ll bring you a finished product within three months!”
“Isn’t the thing you rode here in the finished product?”
“How is that a finished product? That’s just the frame, I’m telling you. The frame! It practically screams, ‘I am a prototype.’
Oh, Manager Guillaume, with just ten thousand livres I rolled around in all directions and made that. Imagine how insanely amazing it’ll be if you give me fifty thousand! Please, just give me the money!”
At this point, DuPont looked ready to grab hold of my pant leg.
No. I wanted to give it to him too, okay? But the more I looked at steam automobiles, the more they seemed less like something that could ever turn a profit and more like something increasingly distant from the image of a car I knew.
What kind of car weighed seven or eight tons to begin with, and was over four or five meters long…
You want me to sell that? Who the hell would buy it? Not as a personal vehicle, anyway. Maybe as public transportation.
…Public transportation?
Hiss, public transportation.
“Hey. DuPont.”
“Ah, are you finally thinking of bestowing your grace upon me?”
“This is just my thought, but… have you ever considered making a bus?”
“A b-what? What’s that?”
“I mean… how do I explain it? A multi-passenger transport vehicle? You know, like those public carriages. The kind several people ride together.”
“Ah, I get what you mean.”
If we built a few of those, charged fares, and ran them around Paris like city buses, wouldn’t that turn a pretty nice profit?
“Sir?”
Just as DuPont and I were chatting away like that, a messenger entered my office.
“What is it?”
“The young lady is here—”
“Oppa, are you very busy right now?”
A woman’s face peeked in through the doorway, cutting off the messenger.
“No, I’m almost done. Wait in the reception room for a little while.”
“Okaaay.”
The door closed with a click, and DuPont asked me with a dazed look on his face,
“Wow. Who is that beauty?”
“…My lover.”
“Wow! Your lover? You, Guillaume, the eunuch of all eunuchs? Damn. Is the world ending? …What’s her name? What’s her full name?”
“…Uh, um. Uh.”
“What’s with you, man? Will telling me her name wear it out or something?”
“Pauline.”
“Pretty name too. Surname?”
“…Bonaparte.”
“…What?”
What are you looking at, bastard? Don’t stare at me like that.