Scale by Greg Egan

Author:Greg Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 2022-12-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Loretta wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from the Great Lepton Engineering Exhibit, but the hall had the feeling of a mid-level trade show, organized a bit too hastily for its own good.

The first booth she encountered made her smile, despite herself; a device was displaying an image of Orphan Jane from the newspaper comic strip, somehow come to life and skipping with a rope, while she chanted her cringe-inducing signature rhyme over and over: I might be small, but I can do it all; I won’t grow tall, but I will never fall.

“We might finally get the movies,” she suggested to Dahlia. “But I hope they can come up with some better scripts. And I can’t see where the projector is.”

“There is no projector,” the woman overseeing the booth explained. “The electronics is steering a beam of cathode rays across the screen, drawing and redrawing the picture so rapidly that it seems to be in motion.”

“Why does that need Scale Seven materials?” Loretta wondered. Even the simplest valves had managed to manipulate cathode rays.

“They’re used in the tape that holds the picture information,” the woman explained, gesturing to a large cabinet under the display. “It’s still a bit bulky at present, but once the device has been refined a little further, we could have a theater in every home!”

Dahlia drew Loretta away before declaring, “I’ll pass on Orphan Jane, just take me to the knives.”

They scanned the signs, and were not disappointed. At the utensils display, a man was busy carving up various items of food using knives and forks made of gleaming metal, and offering the results to onlookers. Dahlia took a morsel of steak from the samples plate and popped it into her mouth.

“The edges are very well defined,” she declared approvingly. “No stringy fibers hanging off the cut.” She asked the carver, “How much would these knives cost?”

“That’s not really settled yet,” he admitted.

“Are any of them for sale now?”

“No, these are demonstration models.”

Dahlia nodded understandingly, and turned to Loretta. “I suppose they’ll need proper smelters or whatever, before they can go into mass production.”

“So do you really think Wendale would try to stop us making these things?” Loretta replied. “Every Scale Seven farmer’s kid can make a bone shiv that’s just as threatening.”

Dahlia sighed. “It’s not about any one product. They’re just afraid of us living up to our potential, when our tiny little hands should be busy making things for them.”

Loretta was no longer sure when she was joking. “Where do you get this nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense. You think they could make their own watches in D1, with gears a tenth the size of their fingers?”

“We make watches for ourselves,” Loretta countered. “There are tweezers, and magnifying lenses. It’s not that hard.”

“But we’ll always do it better and faster for them than they can do it for themselves,” Dahlia replied.

“Okay. But we get paid for those watches, don’t we? Having skills that other people value is not a burden; all that proves is that they’ll always want to trade with us.

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