Who needs wheelbarrows when you’ve got enough slaves? Raj said with ironic distaste. We got over that, eventually. Thanks to Center.
and to you, raj whitehall, Center replied.
John reached into the inner pocket of his light cotton jacket and took out his cigarette case. From what he’d described, the centralized god-king autocracy Raj Whitehall had been born into had been almost as nasty as the Chosen—more desirable only because Center and Raj could put their own man on the throne and use that as the fulcrum to move society off dead center. There seem to be more wrong paths than right, he thought.
correct. high-coercion societies locked in stasis alternating with barbarism are the maximum probability for postneolithic humanity, Center observed dispassionately. the original breakthrough to modernity on earth was the result of multiple low-probability historical accidents, observe—
Later we may have time for lectures, Raj observed. Meanwhile, John has a job of work to do.
Gerta looked up again, stacking the reports neatly on the hotel room’s table, and took a long drink of water.
“This . . . Whippet?”
“It’s a type of racing dog,” John said helpfully.
“This Whippet looks like a very useful panzer, if you . . . if the Santies can get it working,” she observed.
“True enough,” John said. “There’s a lot of controversy. The western provinces are pushing it, but the easterners want more effort to go into aircraft. And they have most of the internal-combustion manufacturing capacity.”
“Yes, I read the speech of this . . . Senator Damian? The representative from Ensburg, in any case—you thoughtfully supplied it with the latest reports. ‘I put my faith in our mountains’; a very colorful phrase.”
Her strong, calloused fingers turned the sheaf of papers over. “Now, this, this Land-Cruiser, it’s going to give the Army Council’s engineers hives.”
The blueprints on the table showed a massive boxy machine, mounting a six-inch gun on its centerline, a two-inch quick-firer in a turret above, and six machine-guns in sponsons on either side.
“What a monstrosity,” she went on. “If the Santies are having trouble making the Whippet go, how do they expect this . . . this thing to move?”
John leaned forward. A lot of work, mostly Center’s, had gone into the Land-Cruiser. It was no easy task to design something beyond Visager’s current technological level, but just beyond, close enough that competent engineers would be kept busy on the tantalizing quest for this particular Holy Grail. Disinformation was much more than simple lying.
“Each bogie has its own engine,” he pointed out.
The huge machine rested on four bogies on either side, each riding on a pivot with bell-crank springs. “See, there’s a drive train run through this flexible shaft coupling, and then through meshed gears to the toothed sprocket here between the load-bearing wheels.”
“Porschmidt will love this. Unfortunately.”
At John’s glance she went on: “The new head of Technical Development. He’s brilliant, but he keeps trying to make bad designs good instead of junking them—he’d rather design three force pumps and an auxiliary circulation system into an engine rather than just turn a part over to keep it from leaking. You should see what he did to the heavy field gun. It’s enough to make a Test of Life examiner cry. He’s the sort who gives engineering a bad name; convinced that just because its his, his shit doesn’t stink.”
“Well, if the Republic’s wasting its time, so much the better,” John said with a smile.
“Ya. Only, is the Republic wasting its time, or are you wasting ours?”
John kept the expression on his face genial, as his testicles tried to climb back into his abdomen. It was impossible to have a cold sweat in Oathtaking’s climate, but you could feel clammy-nauseated.
“Gerta, min soester, do you think so little of me?”
“Johan, min brueder, I think very highly of you. I think somehow you’re fucking Military Intelligence up the butt and making them like it.” She grinned, and this time the expression went all the way through. “But you’re giving us so much real information to sweeten the pot that I can’t convince anyone of it . . . yet.”