Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work by Guy Haley

Author:Guy Haley
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi
Published: 2019-08-01T11:55:51+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

In the service of mankind

Circa 10,000 years ago

There was a problem. There always was a problem.

Cawl lay back in his chair. Its mechanisms cradled him more effectively than his own dear mother had centuries ago. Plush upholstery soothed his bare skin where he brushed it. Firm springs supported him. The air purification unit purred soothingly. But it was situated directly over his desk, it was always set too cold, and that spoiled everything.

He couldn’t think in his office. He couldn’t think out on the experimental line. It was too noisy, or too cold, or annoying in any one of a hundred different ways. He needed a little time to puzzle out the latest problem, but no one would give it to him.

A notification clarion played softly. Before he could respond the door opened, letting the soft noises of the experimental centre into his haven. Even that was too much to bear, and he groaned.

‘Not feeling it today, Director Sedayne?’

A long, thin-fingered hand fell away from Cawl’s eyes. A headache pulsed behind them. Jespin Creuz smiled at him winningly.

‘No. Do you have to gurn like that?’

Cawl sat forwards. A small, pre-Dark Age device sat on the glass of his desk. He picked it up and began to fiddle with it.

‘I am sorry my good humour offends you,’ Creuz said good-humouredly. He was holding an active data-slate against his chest. Cawl could only see the back of it, but the lights from the screen shone colours from Creuz’s white smock coat, and caught on the metal of the pens arrayed neatly in his pocket.

‘What do you want? Are those targets you have there?’ said Cawl.

‘They are.’

Creuz slid the slate across the desk.

Cawl glanced at the screen and grunted.

‘You are behind,’ said Creuz. ‘Significantly behind.’

‘I am old, that is what I am, Creuz. Three centuries weigh a man down. I need a rest.’

‘There can be no rest.’ Creuz gave Cawl a look of mock sympathy. His eyes were too small for his big bald skull, and they were lost in his sockets, which were smudged around with purple and black. ‘I wouldn’t bring up questions of age with Him, if I were you. He’s older than all of us, so they say.’

‘Well, He doesn’t look it, and He doesn’t look like He feels it,’ Cawl said. He put the ancient device down on the desktop, and gestured at it with an open hand. ‘This device was made by men with a far greater grasp of science than we have. Not one person I have met can decide exactly what it was created for. Yet if you look at it, it is simple. A spring loaded arm, no spring now, but that’s what it was. A proto-plastek disc to take something, perhaps a larger disc. This groove here,’ he ran his finger around it, ‘I think it took a protective material. Some kind of felt, maybe. And this.’ He picked it up and flipped it over. ‘This took a motor, I am sure. Perhaps this hole here took a lens of some kind.

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