The Power Tiller (1)
There were things that had to be made first—absolute top priority.
First: caustic soda.
Second: sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid.
Third: hydrogen.
Only with those three prepared could tungsten be made.
"Caustic soda is also known as sodium hydroxide. Memorize this manufacturing method thoroughly. Caustic soda has an enormous range of uses."
"Understood."
In the modern world you could simply reach for ready-made solutions and be finished in no time, but in this world even producing caustic soda was cumbersome and woefully inefficient.
How long had he agonized and scoured for methods just to make tungsten? At last it was time to put theory into practice.
"Heat this limestone and you get quicklime and carbon dioxide. This is CaO. Pour water—H₂O—onto it a little at a time, and the two react to form calcium hydroxide."
Scratch, scratch, scratch—
Andersen was taking notes with furious diligence, eyes alight with the fire of study. With a researcher this passionate, teaching was actually a pleasure.
"Next we need sodium carbonate. I prepared some ahead of time."
That step had required a high-temperature furnace, so he had enlisted Uncle Amos’s help. The raw materials were salt, limestone, and charcoal. Mix the three and heat them in a furnace at roughly nine hundred to a thousand degrees Celsius, and a chemical reaction yields a sodium-carbonate mixture. Dissolve the mixture in water, extract and filter it, then evaporate the solution, and sodium-carbonate crystals appear. The process took so long he had not been able to bring Andersen along to watch.
"You said caustic soda is NaOH, so if I react these two… it should come out like this."
Andersen worked through the formula on his own and held it out. Robon could not help the soft "Oh…" that escaped him.
Anyone who had taken a chemistry course could have written that equation without thinking, yet Andersen had only ever picked up scraps of knowledge over Robon’s shoulder a handful of times. Truly the sort of man who, taught one thing, understood four.
"Exactly right! You never studied chemistry, yet you grasped it immediately?"
"The research director has already taught me several times, has he not? Anyone looking at those symbols can see that the letters break apart and recombine into new arrangements."
"Anyone can see it. Grasping the principle is not nearly so easy."
Robon made the caustic soda himself and showed the result.
"Oh……"
White, semi-translucent grains lay scattered across the wooden board like salt.
"May I touch it?"
"No. Careless contact will melt your skin. Handle it carefully. And if it sits exposed to air too long it absorbs moisture and liquefies, so storage requires caution as well."
"Understood."
The applications for caustic soda were endless—textiles, detergents, metals, foodstuffs. The most familiar of them all was soap. This world had soap of a sort, but the quality was poor and production difficult. With caustic soda on hand, that would change.
Mass production with this method is impractical, so maybe I should just make a little soap for myself?
That could wait. Using the soda to react with and break down the wolframite concentrate would complete the first stage of obtaining tungsten.
Next, react iron sulfide with oxygen to produce sulfuric acid along with the sulfur…
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud…
An intensely irritating sound drifted in from outside—a sound he had already heard far too many times. He was busy enough without uninvited guests.
"Oppa!!"
Wendy’s voice called through the window.
"Take a short rest while you’re at it. Haven’t you been surviving on almost no sleep, doing nothing but research?"
Andersen said it with a fond smile, the look of a man watching adorable children at play.
"Yaaaaaah—! I know you’re in there!"
That was adorable? That bothersome brat?
Tsk. He clicked his tongue and opened the window. Wendy sat astride the Black Terahole R1 that Burgess had wrecked last time, waving energetically.
"Why’d you come?"
"I’m bored. Play with me."
"……I’m busy."
"Just for a little while."
A sigh escaped on its own. She wasn’t even ten years old. She was about to come of age…
"…Ah. Come to think of it."
He glanced at the calendar. Nearly half a year had already passed since he arrived in this world. Had time really flown that fast?
"I’ll take a short break, then."
"Yes. Please rest comfortably."
Leaving the laboratory, he found Alvar in the lobby.
"Alvar. When was Wendy’s birthday?"
"I believe roughly three months remain, as I recall."
"Three months? Not long at all."
"Yes. The family has already been quite busy preparing for the coming-of-age ceremony."
"Coming-of-age ceremony? What’s that?"
"…Pardon? Young Master, you held one yourself, did you not?"
Well, of course. He was older than Wendy.
"Ah! Ah, haha. My memory of that time was so bad I scrubbed it from my head."
Alvar startled and bowed deeply.
"I apologize. That was shortsighted of me."
"No, no. It’s just me. Don’t worry about it."
"No, sir. At the time Young Master seemed so unbothered I assumed you were fine, but I was mistaken."
Something must have happened then. He had only tossed out a casual lie, yet it seemed real trouble had occurred.
"Anyway. What exactly is the coming-of-age ceremony?"
"It is a grand event held when the noble children of the family reach adulthood. All the nobles of the duchy gather for a magnificent party to celebrate those who have come of age. In our house the new adult receives a knighthood investiture and is bestowed the family sword."
"The family sword? What about mine?"
"Pardon? Do you truly not remember?"
"What is it? Tell me. I fell and lost my memory that day."
"Good heavens! Are you all right? Then we must get you to a hospital at once—"
"No, no, I’m joking. Joking. You’re so intense I can’t even tease you."
Alvar pressed a hand to his chest and exhaled heavily.
"Young Master did not take a sword. You accepted a book brought as a gift from the Helek family instead, saying you had no need for a blade."
Just hearing the words, Robon could already picture the frigid atmosphere that must have filled the hall. Now he understood why Robon Blædwin had been branded a good-for-nothing. To refuse the family sword and demand something else in that setting… it was no different from dragging the family name through the mud.
"Ha, hahaha. Forget it. That’s why I forgot, right?"
"Yes. I shall forget it as well."
"Good."
He sighed and stepped outside. Wendy was spinning the wheel this way and that, lost in an imaginary race.
"Wendy."
"Look at this! Don’t I look like I’d be great at driving?"
For one unwelcome second he pictured Wendy behind a real wheel. The moment that dopamine addict got her hands on a steering wheel, she would film Fast & Furious Season Eleven without a second thought.
"You know what happens if you take Father’s car and wreck it, right?"
"Remember what you said last time?"
She scrambled up onto the crumpled hood and fixed him with sparkling eyes.
"…What?"
"You said you’d make me a Black Terahole."
"Take that one."
"Do you think I’m an idiot?! This is broken—it barely moves!"
"I’ll make you one. Later."
"You fraud!"
There was no helping it. He was far too busy, and if he handed this brat a car, who knew what catastrophe she would cause?
"Make it my coming-of-age gift."
"……I’ll give you something else."
"No! Not something big like Dad’s—something small and pretty!"
She really was a girl after all. Well, the Brutal Force was not exactly pretty. It simply held the romance and dreams of men.
"Something pretty and small…"
An idea flashed through his mind—a vehicle that would suit that dopamine addict perfectly. Very small, very pretty, and even if an accident happened the damage would be nothing compared to a car. The driver might be in danger, true, but in that sense it was ideal for Wendy. She might look like a delicate beauty on the outside, yet her physical ability was outstanding.
"All right. I’ll make you one as a coming-of-age gift."
"Really? Really really?!"
"Yeah. But there’s a condition."
"What is it?"
"Except when I call for you, you’re not allowed to set foot near the lab for a while. Got it?"
"Why!!"
"And that ‘I’m so bored I could die’ face is banned in front of me too."
"What kind of birthday present is that?"
"It’s all for the surprise. It’ll be fun to see it go ‘ta-da!’ at the ceremony. If you peek early, the fun’s gone, right?"
As if the words had granted her sudden enlightenment, she nodded vigorously and let out a string of impressed noises.
"Oh… You’re right. Seeing it early would ruin it."
"If you understand, then go."
"Okay!"
"Leave that behind."
"Okay okay!"
A lump of scrap metal sat alone in the laboratory courtyard—the wrecked Black Terahole R1. Restoring it completely would take considerable time, but that did not mean it could not be fixed. It was still far better than building a new one from scratch. Well, it might never quite regain its original performance.
"Haa. The workload just keeps growing."
It looked as though he would have to shave another hour off his sleep. He still had to build the power tiller for Erdin, refine the tungsten, repair the measuring instruments…
"This is slave… I mean, I really need to recruit more researchers for the lab."
The real problem was where to find such talent. After working with Andersen, mages seemed ideal if at all possible.
Erdin stayed at the Blædwin estate for roughly a day before returning to his own family—because Robon had chased him out, claiming he was interfering with research.
"Damn it. This isn’t how it was supposed to go…"
On the road home Erdin scratched his head hard enough to leave marks. The original plan had been to stride in with the light bulb Robon had made, spring a dramatic “ta-da!” on the household, and watch their faces. He had especially wanted to see Arnold staring, speechless, at a bulb that shone brightly even at night…
But Robon had thundered that the light bulb was absolutely off-limits, and the scheme had collapsed.
Still, he promised to make something even more incredible instead.
He had gone to Blædwin and returned almost at once, yet the visit had not been wasted. Until now the alliance had been little more than a name on paper; after the long conversation with Robon the previous night, each of them had learned a great deal about the other.
Well, most of the talking had been on Erdin’s side. But what did that matter? Thanks to it, the tangled mess inside his head had sorted itself out quite cleanly.
How can a guy younger than me think so deeply?
That was the impression Robon Blædwin left. Conversing with him felt like speaking with the elders of Erdin’s own house. A few words from the boy and Erdin would find himself persuaded, suddenly nodding along without quite knowing when it had happened.
—When you return to your territory this time, meet the farmers and listen carefully to their stories. That is your mission.
Talk with farmers, out of nowhere…
—And if possible, try plowing a bit yourself.
Even though the Lobel family specialized in agriculture, nobles never actually farmed with their own hands—especially not the direct line. Plowing was work for the lower classes. Erdin had always thought the same and never paid it any mind.
But now… curiosity stirred. Was it simply because Robon had said those things?
Passing a field, Erdin spoke to a farmer seated beside a stack of sacks.
"Are you the owner of this field?"
"Yes, that’s right, my lord."
Erdin approached while concealing his identity, posing as a wandering knight.
"What were you doing just now?"
"Sorting seeds for the fields. From the grain harvested in autumn I pick only the full, sturdy ones and prepare them for sowing next spring."
"Already?"
"This sack holds a mix of wheat and barley. But winter is so harsh that rats often invade and nibble away at the grain, so I’m always on edge. That’s why I tie the sacks tight and hang them carefully in the barn."
It was the first Erdin had heard of such things. He had assumed farmers simply rested through the winter—had they always carried burdens like this?
"You don’t seem like a farmer like me."
"I’m a wandering knight."
"I thought as much. Knight-sir, you travel far and can eat your fill, but for farmers like us every single seed is as precious as life itself. Only if these take root well next spring will my family and the village people live without going hungry."
He had meant to listen for a moment out of curiosity and then move on. Instead the curiosity only grew.
"I happen to need a place to sleep. Do you have somewhere I could stay? If so, I’ll help with the work myself."
If he returned home now he would only be fretting and watching for cues until Robon delivered the invention. He might as well heed Robon’s advice and spend a little time here.
"A power tiller would be better than a tractor after all."
In pure utility a tractor crushed a power tiller. On wide lands like the Lobel family’s the difference would be even greater. But a tractor would cost more money and take longer to build. He was already drowning from shortages of both funds and time.
More than anything, if you hand them something excellent right from the start, their senses dull later on.
This was not for Blædwin use. For the current Lobel family, a single power tiller would be enough to send them leaping about, screaming revolution.
Once they were thoroughly accustomed to the power tiller, if he then let them taste a tractor… would they even be able to hold out?
"I can already hear the research funds pouring in."