Sichuan Carriage (1)
With the greatest obstacle in multi-passenger carriage development—the wheels—finally solved, all that remained was to build the body.
To lighten the chassis, they tested a frame of refined iron (mass-producible) and thin planks in place of heavy solid logs. The weight dropped to a quarter of what it had been.
On the axles they mounted coil springs to absorb vibration in place of proper suspension, and more springs under the seats themselves so the ride would cushion every jolt.
The seating was not arranged like a modern bus with rows of chairs facing forward. Instead, two long benches ran along either side, with iron posts set at intervals that doubled as handholds and structural supports.
That layout let the benches rest on the frame and take a heavy load while still giving the whole structure enough strength to carry a great many passengers.
"The real question now… is how many horses it will take to haul how many people…"
Lee Jinmyeong waited in tense silence for the Mongol horses to arrive.
On the outskirts of Sichuan, in Aba County—where the Noksan garrison had once been the first to turn back Oirat cavalry before the Chagatai Khanate's invasion—the staff had lately been carrying out a bizarre order from Second Secretary Lee Jinmyeong.
"Build a granary outside the first outpost? And station no guards?"
The outpost commander scratched his head with a look that said, Did I read that right? He re-read the order. The characters did not change. Lee Jinmyeong's seal sat boldly at the bottom.
"This isn't even a 'come and get me' invitation. First come, first served?"
It reeked of something fishy, but orders were orders. A man who had long since learned to live inside an organization, he decided not to dig any deeper and simply obeyed.
He put his men to work, raised a warehouse in a remote, secluded spot beyond the outpost, and filled it with enough grain to feed the people of Aba County through an entire winter.
Honestly, it made him nervous—but the order had been clear.
His instincts proved right.
"C-Commander! The storehouse has been cleaned out!"
The moment he heard the youngest patrolman's scream, three words flashed through the commander's mind: We're fucked.
"Ah, shit! I told you I had a bad feeling…"
Looking ready to cry, he leapt up and sprinted for the warehouse. A subordinate chased after him, babbling something, but the commander was too frantic to catch a word.
When he reached the place where the granary had stood, he stared, ghost-struck, at the Noksan men milling and muttering outside.
"Ah, Boss—"
"Out of the way, out of the way!!"
One startled subordinate still used the old bandit title; the commander neither noticed nor cared. He shoved his men aside and flung the doors wide. He had to see it with his own eyes before he could believe it.
And then—
"…?"
He stood there blankly for a moment, taking in the sight, then cracked the back of the head of the nearest former-bandit subordinate.
"Ow!!"
"Mm. Palm's stinging, so this isn't a dream."
The subordinate glared at him with a look that clearly said, Are you actually insane? The commander merely flicked a glance his way; the man sheepishly rubbed his scalp and lowered his eyes.
After that effortless little display of rank-pulling, the commander rubbed his own eyes and spoke.
"So this is real life… What the hell is going on?"
—Pruurrr! Hee-hee-hee-hee!!
The grain was gone. A storehouse large enough to hold an entire county's winter rice supply had been turned into a stable.
When the doors opened, more than a hundred Mongol horses stood tethered inside, whinnying where the rice had been.
Everyone's brains had frozen solid. All they could manage were half-formed noises—"Wait, that, uh… what?"—when the deputy commander arrived with a fresh order and found his superior.
"Commander, you're here… What the hell is this now?"
The vacant look vanished almost at once; the deputy nodded in sudden understanding.
"Ah. So that's what it meant."
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"Commander, an order just came in. When I first read it I thought it was pure bullshit, but looking at this, everything had a reason."
"What bullshit?"
The commander snatched the paper from him. It read:
Approximately one hundred fifty Mongol horses captured in the wild are to be transferred to Sichuan.
The commander's jaw dropped. Against that backdrop the deputy continued.
"First time I saw it I thought it was complete nonsense. Were a hundred fifty Mongol horses just going to fall out of the sky? Or were they telling us to cross the outpost into Chagatai territory and seize them ourselves? I was coming to report it to you first… but of course it's Headquarters. They had a plan all along."
The situation was now crystal clear. The commander finally felt the meaning of every earlier order snap into focus.
This was neither plunder nor horses raining from heaven. It was a transaction.
And if the result of that transaction was Mongol horses, he could also guess why the deal had been dressed up in this kind of sleight-of-hand—and exactly what he had to do next.
He might have been a former bandit chief, but he was no fool.
"…Pick a few of the boys and let's take a little 'patrol' outside the outpost for about ten days."
"Sir?"
"We'll say we caught the horses."
He wrote up a report claiming that the Noksan men had "coincidentally" discovered and captured Mongol horses that had wandered across the Chagatai border past the outpost.
It was pure theater, of course—but in the world of politics the difference between having a pretext and having none was the difference between a wall you could climb and a wall that simply did not exist.
"Anyway, the people in this house are no ordinary characters."
"But what do they need so many horses for this time?"
"Hell if I know. Raising a bandit cavalry?"
That was as far as the commander and his deputy could see.
Meanwhile, once the Mongol horses arrived from Aba County, Lee Jinmyeong finally allowed himself a breath of relief.
He had signed a contract with Adiya Khan, yet there had been no guarantee the man would keep his word, and that uncertainty had gnawed at him. Confirmation that the deal was being honored meant he had already climbed past the eighth ridge of the plan.
He entrusted Ahbayar with resting and conditioning the horses.
"I intend to hitch them to the multi-passenger carriage. Test how many it takes."
"Yes, sir."
Ahbayar followed the order without complaint. A man quick with political arithmetic, he had already calculated that a solid position under Lee Jinmyeong was well within reach. If Jinmyeong ever sat in the president's chair, there was no one better suited for vice-president or director than Ahbayar himself.
No one knows Mongol horses better than I do.
He rested the exhausted animals, fed them well until their strength returned, then hitched them to the prototype multi-passenger carriage Jinmyeong had built and put them to the test.
Empty, two horses pulled it with ease. Fully loaded with passengers, five were more than enough.
Even for Ahbayar, who had driven Mongol horses his entire life, the result was a shock.
"It's incredibly light."
A cart built from cut logs was heavy. Five Mongol horses pulling one could manage little more than a traveling ger, household goods, and a single family. Yet simply changing the materials made it this easy to draw?
"It isn't only the weight," Lee Jinmyeong answered. "Whether the road is paved, and the difference in the wheels themselves, play huge roles."
"The wheels?"
The multi-passenger carriage's wheels were the world's first pressurized pneumatic rubber tires—technology Hwiyeom had simply handed him. Inside, soft natural rubber held an animal-gut tube inflated to absorb shock. Over that, like a set of snow chains, a vulcanized rubber sheath reinforced with a mesh of iron wire was fitted and secured.
The high-traction, treaded reinforced rubber rolled without hesitation on Sichuan's paved city streets, on rough dirt tracks, and even over sharp gravel. The old problem of natural-rubber wheels—how easily they tore—was no longer a problem at all.
"Now it's a matter of how to deploy these carriages and how to run them."
Lee Jinmyeong stayed up all night drawing the routes.
What circulation pattern is most rational and will generate the greatest profit…
Just as he had first imagined, the primary use would be commuter carriages for workers at the State-run Ironworks. Next would come carriages for employees of Hwiyeom's various affiliated companies. He laid out lines centered on the cities and counties where those workers were concentrated.
Once the rush-hour routes were set, a new problem appeared: the carriages would sit idle through the middle of the day.
To solve it, he planned to redeploy them into the city after peak hours. Most would run between bustling shopping districts and neighborhoods full of wealthy and middle-class homes. Every major regional hub and important facility would also have a line.
To stabilize the routes and make life easier for riders who would wait at fixed points, he thought:
If we put roofed shelters with benches right next to the spots the Baekga-jaengsik reception and settlement clerks already use all over the city, that would work nicely.
A shelter was nothing more than a few planks knocked together; half a ke could finish one. The reception clerks were already in place, so management of the stops could simply be folded into their duties.
There isn't really anything to manage, so they won't complain.
All they would have to do was keep passing messages between the order-takers and the delivery runners exactly as they did now, and glance up now and then to confirm the carriage came through on time.
Bit by bit, as his thoughts branched outward like a tree, Lee Jinmyeong realized he was smiling.
I'm enjoying this?
Until now his work had always been whatever Hwiyeom ordered, or the background research and data collection that made Hwiyeom's plans possible. There had been a sense of accomplishment, but never any real fun.
Yet once he took the lead and built something that was his own, it felt completely different from doing someone else's job.
He was discovering the pleasure of running a business.
In murim terms, enlightenment was descending upon him.
He poured Caffa into his stomach and, through the night, dashed off a complete project proposal in a single continuous stroke of the brush.
At first light he sent word to the Poseongsa and secured an appointment. Ordinarily a commoner meeting the provincial governor was nearly impossible, yet Lee Jinmyeong—Hwiyeom's secretary in Sichuan—had already become a figure even the Poseongsa would not refuse to see.
The Poseongsa scratched his head after reading the proposal.
"It sounds good… but is this actually possible?"
"Yes!"
"Hmmm…"
He tilted his head for a moment, then shrugged.
"Well, with that boy Yeom's skill, it's bound to work."
…
Lee Jinmyeong felt a fierce urge to say, This is my business. I built it from start to finish myself. Yet when he thought about it carefully, there was not a single step that had not relied on Hwiyeom's help. The infrastructure Hwiyeom had already laid down, the reputation, the negotiating power, the capital—all of it had carried him to success.
Still… I have a long way to go.
He smiled bitterly. Tucking the stamped proposal into his robe, he made a silent vow.
I will become a man worthy of Su-jeong. No matter what.
With that private sharpening of the blade, he threw himself into full-scale production of the multi-passenger carriages, training the horses, and building the stations for actual operation.
Winter passed. Spring arrived.
And then—
The world's first circulating-route bus carriages began to roll.