Chapter 234: The Age of Steam (2)
—Jjiririrng. Jjiririrng.
“Mmm.”
As the alarm clock twisted its body, an untimely ringing filled the room in the middle of broad daylight, when people were already hard at work.
—Jjiririrng. Jjiririrng.
“Damn it, at this rate I’m going to lose my mind. DuPont! DuPont! Where are you? Hurry up and turn this thing off— Ah, right. He isn’t here right now.”
Lavoisier let out a long sigh, then kicked away the blanket that had been warmly wrapping the wounded old scientist just moments earlier.
—Jjiririrng. Jjiririrng.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Throwing on slippers instead of shoes, Lavoisier smacked the alarm clock silent with his hand, then wriggled back into bed like a pill bug being bullied by elementary school children.
It was warm.
Yes. The only thing embracing him warmly after the world had abandoned him and left his wings injured was this flower-patterned blanket.
“Hic, hngh.”
All of a sudden, tears welled up.
Just ten years ago, he, Antoine Lavoisier, had been able to spend the sponsorship money flooding in from every corner of society however he pleased, conducting whatever research he wanted.
And now he was reduced to a life of sulking in a corner room with only a flower-patterned blanket for company.
“Ah! So this is what has become of the life of the genius Antoine Lavoisier, who once ruled the whole world! O world, which has shut me away in this little room, you shall be cursed by posterity!”
“Were you saying that so I would hear it?”
“Hm?”
“I heard talking, so I came to check, and what a truly pathetic scene this is.”
Lavoisier hurriedly threw off the blanket that had been pulled all the way over his head and looked toward the source of the voice.
“What are you staring at like that for? Hurry up and bring a chair. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Ugh, sob, sob! I trusted you, I tell you! Even if Your Excellency and I differ in our values in some ways, I believed we were pursuing the same ideal!”
“Yes, yes. I see.”
“I thought our proud French people would race toward being the first and the best in the world and enjoy boundless glory!”
“Wow. Really. Oh dear. What a shame.”
Yeah, no. A single coin was worth more to me than some meaningless title like that.
To put it bluntly, whether a Frenchman made it or an Englishman made it, our company was backing the whole thing anyway, so what difference did it make?
Whoever did it, it was far better than dragging things out forever while devouring money.
But if I said that outright to Lavoisier, who was currently crying his eyes and nose out in a mentally fragile state, he might challenge me to a duel on the spot. Better to bury that thought in my heart.
Instead of raising a middle finger at Lavoisier, I patted his back with all the tenderness of a mother bird.
“There, there. You must have had a really hard time.”
“Hngh, sniff!”
He was fifty-six this year, wasn’t he? Had this old man hit male menopause or something? Why was he crying so much?
Was this really that vicious tax collector Lavoisier, who used to storm into my office and try to squeeze every last coin out of me? Truly, Lavoisier was a legend.
“Mr. Lavoisier.”
“Y-yes.”
“Now wipe your tears and let’s talk about the future. The future.”
“The f-future, you say?”
Lavoisier blew his nose loudly into the handkerchief I had given him.
Tsk, I’ll make sure to charge him the cleaning fee later.
“You know DuPont came by headquarters today, right?”
“DuPont, you say?”
“Yes. He told me the passionate side of Mr. Lavoisier had disappeared.”
“…I can’t really refute that. It’s true.”
He let out a long, shell-firing sigh and opened his mouth.
“What I worked toward for years, literally for years, vanished into thin air. How am I supposed to soothe this hollow feeling in my chest?”
“What are you talking about? Vanished into thin air?”
“Hm?”
Looking at Lavoisier, who seemed to be asking what on earth I meant, I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and said,
“Why would it have vanished into thin air? That steam carriage DuPont drives around is still right there, and the blueprints you made are still intact.”
“But the honor of being first in the world is gone.”
“Well, let’s say that’s true.”
After taking a deep drag from the tobacco in my mouth, I slowly opened my mouth to coax this menopausal old man with his distinctly French inflated pride.
“But isn’t the locomotive, in the end, a passive means of transportation that moves only by means of rails?”
“…Yes?”
“I’m no great expert in science or technology, but in my personal opinion, the locomotive still has the limitation of being a passive means of transportation.
To put it bluntly, without rails it cannot even move under its own power.”
Of course, after ten or twenty years, once a nationwide rail network had been laid down, it would overcome that limitation. But that time was not now.
“Even if you lost the title of being the first in the world to move by steam engine, doesn’t the title of being the first means of transportation in the world that a driver can actively control still remain?”
“Your Excellency, are you saying that…?”
“I’ll give you a full ten bundles. Hire people or buy whatever raw materials you want—use it however Adviser Lavoisier pleases.
Aside from giving a few cutoff conditions, I won’t care about anything else.”
The moment he heard that, color rushed back into Lavoisier’s face and it brightened at once.
A full ten bundles. How much would one bundle mean coming from someone like Guillaume?
At the very least, wouldn’t it be ten thousand livres per bundle?
…Then a hundred thousand livres?
Back when Lavoisier was still at the height of his glory, the fist-sized diamond he burned up for an experiment had been worth forty thousand livres, so a hundred thousand livres meant enough money to burn up two and a half diamonds.
Once his thoughts reached that point, the corners of his mouth twitched upward on their own.
Still, one thing bothered him.
What were the cutoff conditions Guillaume had mentioned?
Lavoisier slowly opened his mouth.
“Um… Your Excellency. When you say cutoff conditions?”
“Twenty, twenty, twenty.”
As Guillaume crushed out the spent cigarette in the ashtray, he added,
“Over 20 kilometers per hour, over 20 passengers, under 20 weeks of development time. As long as you keep to that, it’s fine.”
“Could you tell me specifically why?”
“It’s simple. We’re going to devour the transportation market currently dominated by horse-drawn carriages.”
“Yes?”
…What did he just say he was going to devour?
Whether Lavoisier tilted his head in confusion or not, Guillaume simply stuck another cigarette into his mouth with a calm face.
“Adviser, how many people in this world do you think use horse-drawn carriages?”
“…Well, wouldn’t everyone in the world use them?”
“Ah! Exactly! An excellent answer. Clean and concise.”
Guillaume nodded with satisfaction, then struck a match.
“Do you know what that means from a macroscopic point of view?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It means a market with millions—no, tens of millions—of consumers already drawn into it.”
With a hiss, the flame that sprang up began to burn the tip of the long cigarette.
“Tens of thousands of gold coins passing through coachmen’s hands every single day.”
“Let’s be modest and take only thirty percent.” Guillaume added.
“Hey, driver, let’s go.”
“Why the hell am I a driver? I’m a scientist, a scientist!”
“An employee… talking back?”
DuPont started the vehicle with a twisted expression.
It felt like some curse-like word got swallowed by the engine noise, but a kind-hearted man born in ’71 would never utter anything so vulgar.
“Fuck. I didn’t get my doctorate just to drive a carriage.”
“Hey, hey, stop muttering and let’s go to the carriage depot in northern Paris.”
“What for?”
“What do you mean, what for? We’re about to snatch their rice bowls away, so we should at least toss them a little grease first so they don’t come at us.”
DuPont tilted his head while staring straight ahead.
“…Grease? Explain it in a way that makes sense.”
“What do you think will happen once we start a public transportation business using automobiles?”
“Well, the citizens would probably like it.”
As he turned the steering handle, the automobile rattled as it went around a bend.
“It’s not slow, and it arrives on time.”
“And it’s cheap.”
“Right.”
“Then from the citizens’ point of view, there’d be no reason to go around riding horse-drawn carriages anymore.”
Resting his chin on one hand, Guillaume kept talking.
“Ah, a carriage depot with its customers suddenly cut off. I’m really curious how that’ll turn out.”
“…They’ll go under?”
“New inventions inevitably provoke rejection. They won’t collapse immediately. Maybe they’ll last ten years.”
“That sounds like you’re saying they’ll all go under in ten years.”
“If you can’t adapt to change, you get weeded out. Well, even so, they won’t all go under. This is public transportation, after all.
Wouldn’t people who have enough money that they dislike riding with others, or people who have somewhere urgent to get to and can’t afford to stop at other stations, still use carriage depots?”
“Wow. You’re definitely not going to heaven when you die.”
“What are you talking about? A seat next to Jesus is a free pass for someone like me! Why do you think I’m going to that horse-shit-smelling place right now?”
“…To finish them off?”
“…What exactly do you take me for?”
“Who knows?”
DuPont tilted his head, then tossed out the words.
“Can I be blunt?”
“As if you’ve ever watched my mood before saying anything.”
“That’s true. Hmm. What should I call you? Something similar to a human? The incarnation of capitalism? Ah, and also…”
“…That’s a shame.”
“What is?”
What else? If he weren’t driving right now, I’d smack him in the back of the head.
“…Well, anyway, what exactly is this grease you were talking about?”
“Why are you changing the subject all of a sudden? Go on. Keep talking. Let’s hear it.”
“There are thorns in your tone. Don’t tell me you’re sulking.”
“Ah, right. I guess I am. Suddenly I feel like slashing the research support budget someone’s using.”
“Wow… a petty little man like this being the head of a giant corporation feeding a thousand people.”
“Want me to really cut it?”
“Oh my, Manager, how could you say such a thing? Loyalty, loyalty!”
“Hey! Hey! Why are you looking over here while driving? Watch the road! The road!”
When DuPont, who had been leaning his face disgustingly close to me, turned back to the front, the tilting automobile steadied again.
“So what’s the grease, then?”
“Well, something like this. Hello, I’m Guillaume. We’ve developed something called an automobile. By any chance, would you like to tear down that horse-shit-smelling stable and turn it into a parking lot?”
“Grease my ass. That’s not grease, that’s a declaration of war!”
“War? I’m throwing them a lifeline so they can keep making a living. They’d just change the signboard and keep operating as they are. What kind of war is that?”
“Hmm.”
“I’m selling them something that’s bound to shoot past the ceiling and all the way to the moon at the absolute lowest bottom price. That’s called a win-win for both sides.”
“Ah, all right. All right. But where did you even pick up that weird proverb? Why is the brother-in-law happy just because the sister is happy?”
“There’s a saying like that, little brother.”
Yes. We’re helping each other out, that’s all.
They get to keep their jobs, and I get to swallow up the infrastructure along the way.
Mm-huhuhu.
Whether he knew what was in my heart or not, the director of the carriage depot slowly shook his head and said,
“I must decline, Your Excellency.”
“Huh? Why?”
Why? Why? Por qué? Doushite?