Chương 57: Chapter 56: New Blood

Ella had the old laptop I'd given her open in front of her, while Andrej and Julien had theirs. They'd arranged themselves around the desk like they'd been working together for years instead of an evening. Julien looked up when I came in. Andrej didn't.

"Well?" I said. Ella looked at Andrej.

"It runs," he said.

"I ran it. Forty-one minutes, end to end."

"For one calculation."

"For one calculation." He turned the laptop toward me. Rows of numbers filled the screen, arranged into equations that meant something to them and very little to me.

"The math is fine," he said.

"I'm not questioning the math. The problem is that the gate moves in real time, and this doesn't."

"It was never meant to run on that," Ella said.

"And the other thing?"

"The other thing is the problem." He closed the laptop halfway, like it had offended him personally.

"It has no output. The numbers end. There's nowhere for them to go." I looked at Ella.

"The gate can't read the result."

"Not yet," she said. Andrej nodded.

"The computer can calculate an endpoint. But right now, that's all it can do. We need the gate to accept that result."

"So all you need is a faster computer and a way to feed the result back into the gate."

"Exactly. Everything else is furniture."

"A machine powerful enough to run the calculation quickly. And an interface between the computer and the gate."

"That's what we're building."

"Yes." Julien had spent most of the evening listening, head tilted slightly as he followed things I couldn't hear. He said something quietly now — I caught maybe half of it, something about the channels and the way they carried the signal. Ella answered without turning her head. Julien replied. They went back and forth for a while in the shorthand of people who had stopped translating themselves. I stood in the doorway and listened. She'd been waiting for this. I'd known it for months.

I just hadn't understood how much until I watched her disappear into the conversation with them. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"What do you need?" I said, when there was a gap.

"From Earth. Put it on a list."

"Compute," Andrej said.

"Server-class. I'll spec it."

"Power first," Julien said.

"Nothing runs without power."

"The shipment already has the power side," I said.

"Solar, batteries, cable. Whatever's missing goes on the list."

"Then compute," Andrej said.

"We'll focus on finding a way to connect it to the gate for now."

"Tomorrow we go look at the channels," Ella said.

"The real ones. The gate feeds through the facility — you need to see where it would listen." Andrej nodded. Julien nodded. The meeting ended. But work continued. Bill was asleep on the couch when I got home. The village had gone dark except for the windows. Nine new houses, nine new lights, and ours. Ella didn't come home with me. She stayed in the study, already pulling up another calculation before I'd even left the room.

She'd found something to chase, and apparently that was enough to keep her there for the night. For the first time in months, the bed belonged to just me and Yato. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or offended. The next morning, I woke to voices outside. The village was already busy. Doors opening. Footsteps on the paths. Someone dragging a box across the stone. A cleaning golem moving between the houses. It was strange hearing all of that here.

For months, the only sounds in the village had been mine, Ella's, and the occasional mechanical movement of a golem doing a job nobody was around to notice. Now there were people calling to each other across the paths, opening shutters, carrying things into houses and trying to figure out what everything was supposed to do. I got dressed and went looking for the others. Mara and Lukas hadn't waited for me. I found them at the pond, both of them on the far bank.

Mara was standing with her hands on her hips, looking over the vegetable plot — my plot, Ella's plot, the tomatoes and peppers and courgettes that had slowly become a farm over the long months. Lukas was crouched by the water, one hand trailing in it. He wasn't looking at the pond. He was studying the ground where the channel fed in. Ella stood with them, arms crossed, watching Mara like she was reading her right back.

"It's good soil," Mara said before I got close.

"Turned by hand, carefully. Someone's been at this." She looked at Ella.

"You?"

"I started it," Ella said.

"A foundation, then. Not bad. But it's not a farm." Mara gestured toward the treeline, the unused ground beyond the plot, the way the land fell toward the pond.

"It's a garden that got ideas above its station. I respect that."

"I kept thinking of it as a garden too," I said.

"Don't." She said it so flatly that I almost laughed.

"It's got good soil, water, space and enough sunlight. That's a farm waiting to happen." She crouched and ran her fingers through the soil.

"Ash layer underneath." She looked toward Lukas.

"You felt it too?" Lukas nodded. He stood, brushing the soil from his knees.

"About three inches down." He rubbed some of the soil between his fingers.

"Ash and lime. Someone treated this field deliberately, probably when they cleared it." He looked toward the pond, then beyond it to the river.

"The pond's too small." Mara followed his gaze.

"Much too small if we're serious about irrigation."

"It's fed by the river, though."

"Which is good. We can enlarge it." I looked at them.

"How much?" Mara shrugged.

"We'll know when we've measured the land properly." She looked back toward the field.

"We'll need machinery."

"You'll get anything you need." She glanced at me.

"Tractors?"

"If you want one." That earned the first real smile I'd seen from her.

"I might."

"Then get a list together." She nodded.

"All right." I looked over the field again.

"So what's the plan?" Mara looked at Lukas.

"First, we measure everything. Soil, water, elevation. Then we decide what this place can actually support." Lukas nodded.

"And the pond."

"The pond," Mara agreed. Mara was already nodding.

"Lukas, run the numbers on the water table. I want a list before dark. I need to see the cold room, the silo, and what's in the barn. I need seed stock. And I need—" She looked at Ella.

"—whoever planted this to stay close, because they know the ground better than I do, even if I'm not proud to admit it." Lukas nodded, already crouching back down, one hand going into the soil as if it could tell him something no one had asked yet. Ella stepped in beside them, and I left them to it. Mara and Lukas had found each other in about four minutes. And somehow, the garden had just become somebody else's project.