Sichuan Carriage (2)
Worker Han's mornings at the State-run Ironworks started early.
The works lay more than three hours' walk upstream along the Min River from Seongdo, and the only way to make the start of shift was to catch the single commuter train that left before dawn. Missing it was not an option.
The night before, though, he had gone too hard celebrating with his colleagues—his son had just been taken on as a full-time employee at the Sichuan Agricultural Cooperative—and he had slept right through.
"Huff—huff—damn it, I'm finished!"
Having missed the train, he was already late no matter how hard he ran from this point on; not that a man could run that distance to the ironworks anyway. Deductions from his pay would be the least of it—he was going to get an earful—and he was still bolting along when he saw fellow workers ambling, unhurried, in a completely different direction. He skidded to a stop.
"Aigoo, Jang! You overslept too? Why the hell are you so relaxed?!"
Jang gave him a sly grin.
"Ah, Han. You didn't hear at the end-of-day assembly yesterday, did you?"
"I left early—my boy's acceptance notice was coming out. What, they giving us the day off at the works?"
"Not that. Starting today they're putting on a commuter carriage for us."
"A carriage? Where's it even going?"
"Some kind of wagon that runs a fixed route and takes people for cheap. They're going to use it to cover our commute from now on."
"What? They're giving us rides in carriages?"
Han tried to picture it. Himself, in work clothes, riding in the back of a carriage the way the rich local gentry did, rolling all the way to the ironworks? He couldn't. Sitting up front as the coachman, maybe—anything else was pure fantasy.
"Hang on—how many staff do we even have? They're going to put all of us on? What about the cost…?"
"How should I know, man? If the Young Clan Head up in the heavens says so, then that's how it is."
The people of Sichuan had already watched Hwiyeom work miracles more than once. It had begun when he foresaw the locust plague—more the power of record-keeping than pure prophecy, if one were honest—and put measures in place to keep the province from starving. After that he had created jobs through the State-run Ironworks and a dozen other ventures, and built a Sichuan where ordinary people could eat well and live well. Faith in Hwiyeom and the Tang family had long since risen to the level of religious conviction. By now, if Hwiyeom had pointed at a pile of cow dung and called it red-bean paste, the people of Sichuan would at least have pretended to eat it.
"So everyone's headed over to ride this carriage thing?"
"Yeah. They announced the spot at assembly yesterday. Come on."
Still half-convinced he was only late, Han followed Jang toward the carriage stop in a daze.
More than a hundred people were already lined up there—a sight neither of them had ever imagined.
"You're telling me all these people are going by carriage? Does that even make sense?"
"Did a steelworks that stamps out iron while a waterwheel goes clunk-clunk make sense either…? Hey—look, a carriage's coming in. Wait, that thing is huge!"
Han's eyes snapped around at Jang's shout.
The carriage was bigger than two ordinary six-horse coaches hitched end to end; with a little exaggeration, it looked like a small barn on the move.
"I've heard Mongol mobile tents roll along like that, but those are cloth. This one's wood…"
"Hold on—aren't those Mongol horses?"
While the crowd murmured in confusion, the carriage rolled into the stop and halted. The passenger door slid open sideways.
"Welcome! Please show your employee badges and board in order~."
The person holding the door was none other than a conductress.
There was no way to install modern bus-style destination chimes, and mechanical door mechanisms were obviously out of the question, so someone had to supervise safe boarding and alighting at every stop and collect the fares. Hwiyeom had never once mentioned the concept from his previous life—Lee Jinmyeong had simply invented the conductress system on his own.
For the record, when Hwiyeom reviewed the proposal, he left exactly one comment:
Workers filed aboard, peering around in wonder.
"Whoa. It's roomy."
"How many does this even take?"
"Twenty passengers~. Badge, please~."
From the day he founded the State-run Ironworks, Hwiyeom had issued wooden employee badges and required them for identification at the canteens, so everyone already carried one. They were nothing more than a name, a serial number, and a short written description of the bearer's appearance—but then, no one was going to bother forging them.
Han and Jang presented their badges, climbed aboard, and sat on the long bench like a pair of country bumpkins, gawking at everything.
"All right—from here, please take the next carriage~."
"There's still room, though?"
"Safe capacity is twenty~. Step back, please—closing the door~."
After the conductress's merciless cut-off, the door shut and she bolted it.
"For safety reasons, please do not open the door while we are underway~."
She stepped toward the coachman's box, slid open the little side window, and called through.
"Driver, ready when you are~."
"Yes, ma'am."
The coachman rang a departure bell and lifted his whip. The carriage lurched into motion.
Five horses pulled it, and contrary to every expectation that something so massive would crawl, it left Seongdo at a surprisingly brisk pace.
"What the—? How is this possible? Climb onto any ordinary cart going even a fraction of this speed and your backside and spine are pulp in minutes… This is as steady as my own bedroom!"
In fairness, a modern man like Hwiyeom would have given a wry smile. Measured against a contemporary car on asphalt, the ride still jounced a fair bit no matter how carefully the era's paving and contrivances had been applied. But comparison is relative, is it not? To laborers who had known only oxcarts, the sensation was unimaginably smooth and comfortable.
The roads under Noksan's care were not limited to the railways; they ran straight and clean. Add the Mongol horses' distinctive crossed gait—stable even at speed—and the combination of road, chassis, wheels, and the horses themselves produced a ride no one else in the world could match. In that moment, a true mass-transit system was born.
"Heh. From tomorrow on, I'm skipping the train and riding this every day."
The pre-dawn commuter train only carried workers as a side benefit while hauling coal from the mines; it had never been built for passengers. The ride was miserable, and the air was filthy with coal dust. Even in freshly washed work clothes, a man arrived looking as if he had just crawled out of a mine. The carriage was cleaner, quieter, far more comfortable—and, best of all, you could catch it later.
Starting tomorrow I can sleep a whole extra hour.
Job satisfaction and the corners of every worker's mouth rose in perfect unison.
Once the morning rush had been handled and the first runs completed with success, the carriages received their mid-morning city schedules and were thrown straight into urban service.
"City runs are different from the commute—keep to safe speeds. Hit someone and you're hauled before the magistrate~."
Drivers who had finished safety training lined up and boarded.
"Meals on rotation. Mark the route board every time you finish a loop."
"What if I need the privy mid-shift?"
"Ask the passengers' pardon and use a public toilet. The company covers the fee."
"And if they don't pardon me?"
"Drop your trousers in front of them and they'll apologize for making you wait, don't you think?"
"Hahaha! Guess I'd better hit the latrine every single loop, then!"
In high spirits they cracked their whips and rolled into the city streets.
Every one of them was a Sichuan Carriage coachman who had endured brutal training under Ahbayar and the Chagatai men beneath him. They had started out resentful of the Chagatai, but the sheer mastery those men showed with horses had converted them somewhere along the way.
Citizens of Seongdo stared at the rolling carriages, then began grabbing one another to ask what on earth they were. A woman whose husband worked at the ironworks announced that ordinary people could ride too, and courage slowly spread.
"Um… can I ride this as well?"
A coachman who had paused at a stop grinned at the curious man and jerked a thumb at the carriage behind him.
"Pay the fare to the conductress and climb on. Adult men, five nyang. Women, three. Children who haven't come of age yet, one nyang regardless of sex. Babies who can't walk yet ride free."
People hurried toward the door with expressions of pure wonder. A pretty conductress in a green uniform smiled brightly.
"Boarding?"
A young man, enchanted by the smile, handed over five nyang. She dropped the coins into a basket hung from the ceiling.
"The route map is on the wall—check it, please~. Head that way and fill the seats from the inside~."
Once everyone was seated, the carriage set off again.
Inside the city the pace was leisurely—little more than a brisk walk for the horses. On well-paved blue-stone roads, with already-stable Mongol mounts and a chassis and wheels engineered with every trick imaginable, the urban ride rivaled a modern automobile.
"Whoa—what is this? Why is it so comfortable?"
"I could sit here all day."
"Hey, conductress noona—how much do you make?"
They laughed and chattered and showed no interest in getting off. The conductress fixed them with a look.
"If you keep sitting there, the people who actually need to go somewhere can't use the service~. Ride a full loop and I charge you again~."
With her eyes that sharp, all-day gossip sessions were out of the question. Passengers drifted off in twos and threes toward work or home; those with time to spare headed for Caffe the One or a Baekga-jaengsik franchise and spent the rest of the morning talking about how miraculous the carriage had been.
Five nyang bought a bowl of thin noodles or a serving of soup rice at a tavern—expensive by modern bus standards—but people encountering a wonder of this sort did not think the price excessive, and the response was better than expected.
It hit especially hard among the headquarters staff of Hwiyeom's various conglomerates in Seongdo.
"We can sleep a whole extra hour?"
"We can leave an hour earlier?"
Aside from the handful who owned horses or could use light-foot techniques, every one of them had been walking to work. That meant early departures and late arrivals home. For people who already worked overtime as a matter of course—even with decent hazard pay—the carriage that shrank their commute was rain after a long drought.
"We will now begin the litany of praise for the Young Clan Head!"
"I heard this one was Secretary Lee's idea, not the Young Clan Head's."
"Is Secretary Lee your buddy, you bastard?"
"Honestly, a man like Secretary Lee is already an honorary Tang. Am I wrong?"
After a month of explosive public response, the report card finally arrived.
"Hmm?"
Hwiyeom accepted the report, frowned at it, and cocked his head at Lee Jinmyeong.
"Secretary Lee, this bar chart looks a little… off?"
"Those are the accurate figures."
"…For real?"
They were, in fact, rather terrifying.