Chapter 210
The next day.
The weekend was suddenly only a day away. Students love a day off—any day off—so on an ordinary weekend the whispering would have swelled, little murmurs about where to go and what to do. Today was different.
Rain was falling out of the sky.
The weather had turned sharper than the day before, and a good many students were saying they were cold. The mood in the room had slumped right along with the sullen sky. When a student who had lived a long time in the capital lamented that it would turn sharply colder the moment this rain let up, the classroom only sank deeper into gloom.
If I looked through the Harvesters' memories, it was true enough. Now and then a season lurched strangely out of place; sometimes winter never came at all, and sometimes it dragged on and on. Those were closer to accidents than to climate. Why, you ask? Because monsters live here that can change the seasons.
Even so, this place does not, as a rule, fall below zero. Go west and the ocean opens at once; go to the eastern edge and there is sea there too. There is even a round sea in the middle of the country that, no matter how you look at it, can only be a crater.
Draw a tall rectangle from the equator up through the northern hemisphere, narrow from side to side and long from top to bottom. A little below its middle, flush against the left edge, carve a circle whose diameter is half the rectangle's width. That is a simple map of this continent.
For the record, this world has more land in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. It may not know every detail, but it does know the outline of the whole of this land. There are so many places one cannot enter that unknown regions remain plentiful—but the coastlines, at least, can be drawn.
Anyway.
Even when winter comes, this country never grows cold enough for snow. Which is probably why, these days, the moment anything at all comes up, the related searches blaze with words like lack of diversity, or market, or supply chain. It feels as if it has been worse since I came to this world.
No. That isn't it.
In the first world I took in so much warmth, and the memories came with it. In the second I lived a life hardly different from the primitive age, so even if I reached into those memories for something, there was nothing to draw out. And the memories of Daegon, who once ruled an entire world, are overwhelming in their number. I obtained his quite late. When I think how long it took just to digest them, it makes sense that memories have been lighting up so often since I arrived in the third world.
In other words, the more Harvesters I add, the more memories will shine. We'll call a good thing good. It is only a simple search, so now and then it spits out something wrong. It doesn't get a vote in my decisions.
"But why is this kid so vivid?"
Since that day, Polaris—who had taken to talking with us two or three times a week—asked it while pinching the cheek of a Victoria whose face shone bright as anything.
"Victoria turns vivid when it rains."
"Stronger when it rains? What are you, a water spirit out of a fairy tale?"
Polaris gave Victoria's cheek a good hard pinch, then brought her fingers up before her eyes with a look of genuine astonishment.
"What is this texture?"
"Heheh. You can do all sorts of things with water, Pola. For instance—shoving off that fierce little touch of yours!"
Victoria's skin rippled, ever so slightly. There was a very thin veil of water over it. So this child could do that now. No—hadn't she been getting better and better? Until not long ago she could only use it to wash in a hurry and wring the wet out of herself to dry. And now this?
"Did something happen? You've got this painted all over your body, haven't you?"
At that, Victoria gave a wry smile and shook her head.
"It's nothing like what you're worried about, Pola. Do it this way and my skin stays perfect—and yesterday I realized I can raise the temperature!"
"That's more magic than magic."
Well. I was startled too. So Victoria went about with a thin protective film of water spread over her body, and she could heat that water so she wouldn't be cold?
"How do you make it warm?"
I asked because I was curious, and Victoria lifted her index finger. At the fingertip, a droplet rose into the empty air. When it had grown to about the size of a fingernail, she spoke again.
"Make the water hard, and the temperature goes down."
The water turned hard where it hung. Frozen, in other words.
"Make it shiver, and the temperature goes up."
And it began, slowly, to tremble.
"Yesterday I wondered if I could do something about my stiff shoulder, so I tried, and this is what happened."
Pop. In an instant the fingernail-sized drop became white smoke and vanished into the air. Water vapor, in other words. If a thing was made of water, she could do anything with it. No. Now that I thought of it, she already could.
At the very end in Berne City, Victoria had dropped the sea onto the ground, compressed it, and hardened it until it was as solid as a mirror's face. When she let the power go, white hoarfrost furred the glass all around. The temperature had fallen as she solidified the water. The signs had been there.
Anything, so long as it was water—wasn't that far too vague a gift? Even in the first world, no Harvester had used an ability this far. Astonishing.
"Tori. Can I have some too?"
"Wrapping you the way I wrap myself is hard. This, though—this works."
With that, Victoria took Polaris's hand. The hand shimmered faintly, and Polaris's expression melted all at once.
"It's warm."
"Isn't it?"
Watching that face, Victoria giggled, wicked and pleased. In my memory the words steam engine flared, and on the scale of a small reactor, and then they guttered out. She really could boil water and turn a turbine. Given the volume Victoria had taken in, wasn't this close to making something out of nothing? I had no intention of saying so, of course.
To begin with, this world understood electricity as that thing that comes out when lightning strikes. Even the learned didn't really grasp that static and current were the same electricity. No—if the learned don't know, who would? Soldiers, and people whose living is hunting monsters, know it in more detail. Some monsters discharge using mana. What they know are the things tied to danger: that it is perilous if you are touching water, that metal takes a charge. So buildings are properly fitted with lightning rods and the like.
But that is as far as it goes. The underlying knowledge isn't there, and more than that, they lack the craft to build a turbine. It is strange to have mainsprings and no turbines, but that is simply how the technology developed, so there is nothing else to say. The memories agree. Fluid dynamics and steelmaking come up in the related searches, which suggests it isn't merely one or two pieces that are missing.
"What—should I warm Belle up too?"
"Yes! I mean—no. I mean, yeah. No, that's not— If it's the temperature, I'm fine."
I had answered Victoria without thinking, and only then realized that the warmth she meant was not that warmth. Of course. It wasn't simple heat. Warming the flesh called Belle would accomplish nothing for—
Warmth.
A little had been coming in lately. More of the Harvesters had gone into transport work, and bandits had been on the rise. A Harvester's body is strong to begin with, so they put such people down without much trouble. Originally, kill someone that way and you would at least be hauled before the police, or whoever kept the peace in that district, and made to write a statement. No society kills people quite so openly. Not because they hold morality so dear. The reason isn't that.
A ruler may wither the people they exploit, or kill them for sport. That is fine. If I reach into faded memory for an easy comparison, it is this: in a certain real-time strategy game, throwing your workers away to light the enemy's map is perfectly acceptable. But if your own workers fight one another and their numbers drop, that game is already lost, isn't it? It is the same. A ruler can accept their own belongings wearing out in their hands. What they cannot stand to watch is their property diminishing all by itself, squabbling itself away.
Divide and rule.
The phrase exists. But if the division leaves no one standing—if they stab one another into mutual ruin—then there is no one left to rule. Laws exist to prevent that sort of loss of property. Those laws, though, are loosening little by little. Prices have risen, and bandits with them. And so, in the name of protecting one's own life, killing the other party brings no charge. People are growing numb to people killing people. Or rather, the world has become a place where you cannot live unless you do.
I suspect it is a problem born of rejecting the clockwork machines. But the royal house is developing an independent technology, incompatible with the three companies, whose inner workings can be known cleanly. It may be chaotic for a while. It will improve soon enough. Until then, I ought to enjoy the warmth seeping in.
"It isn't that cold just now."
Mm. But if I left it there, they would press me on what cold I had been talking about. Better to turn the conversation. People speak most vividly about their own troubles. I would prick that.
"So, Victoria—are you getting along in the dormitory? I hear the hot water runs well."
Asking how someone is getting on is a question you may ask even when you already know the answer, and I did know the hot water ran well. They would take it for something I had associated from the talk of cold. I also knew that Victoria, just now, had grievances about the dormitory. A light prick, so she would let it spill. And Victoria bit the bait at once.
"The water comes out wonderfully. But if you're asking whether I'm getting along in the dorm... well..."
"Why? Did something happen at the dorm?"
Polaris looked at her, puzzled. Polaris is the eldest daughter of the marquisate of Bearington. She is not so poor that she would have to enter a dormitory because hiring guards was difficult. The nobles who had gone into the dorms were all of them from houses stuck in the middle.
"You know a lot of noble students have been coming into the dorm lately, right?"
"Yeah. I know—someone was lamenting that a child from our own household had to go in there too. Is there some death-wish idiot bullying you?"
Victoria looked at Polaris with a reluctant face. Because she brought up her inferiors so naturally, it seemed. But Victoria didn't remark on it. She let her own story spill instead.
"Do that and I won't leave them alive. And it's worse than that. So many people block the corridors having their little battles of presence that it's exhausting. Kids like me have to go the long way around, or climb out a window."
"Ha! Blocking Tori's path? Those children are just brimming with reckless nerve."
"Pola."
"Ehehe. But I'm right, aren't I?"
When Victoria glared, Polaris flinched and turned her eyes elsewhere. Her mouth was still smiling, but the mutter reached Victoria's ears all the same. Victoria pretended not to notice and went on.
"Still, there's plenty that's fun."
"Fun?"
Victoria stepped in close to the puzzled Polaris and lowered her voice. A boy who came calling at night from the boys' dormitory, a little way off. A fight over a single boy—break up with him, no, he loves me more. On that, the two of them talked until the break was over.
And me?
I listened in perfect seriousness, turning over whether I might go to the girl who had lost, offer her the Harvester's path, and make her one.