Chapter Seven
A Day in the Life
Zoe sits at the table and ponders. In her world, all is going very well: she has aced her spelling test, come top in the most recent math test, and her teacher is very pleased with the essay that she wrote on Abraham Lincoln. As the subject was 'A Great Leader', the teacher's primary relief was probably that Zoe was one of very few youngsters in her class who didn't choose to profile Commander Taylor. Whatever her view, she was pleased not only with the topic, but also the construction. Zoe may not have a mind as scientific as her elder sister's, but this is merely because her talents lie elsewhere. If Terra Nova ever needs someone to keep a coherent, interesting record, Zoe is shaping up to be the one who could do it. Not bad for a seven-year-old.
Her current concern is not so much schoolwork as her next newspaper. While even she knows her success is largely owing to her father's position in the Colony's command structure, she has managed to obtain interviews with everyone on the senior team. Her biggest coup by far being the first school Editor to interview Commander Taylor himself. But then, his affection for her is very much like that of a favoured granddaughter, so perhaps that was inevitable. She has followed this up with an interview with her dad, her mom, and even Doctor Wallace has submitted to her scrutiny. Not being a parent, he proved to be utterly terrified of her, but managed to find some suitably gross specimens for her to write about; she pretends that she didn't notice him asking her dad for some help.
Until recently, she had run out of senior staff to interview - and was thinking of trying some of the folk in the marketplace; but then the Commander added a new person to his team, and she is now very keen to add this new person to her list. Like many in the main compound, she knows little about the activities that go on at the far end, where strange things are built, smoke rises and from whence people emerge rather covered in grime. Naturally, she is very keen to investigate, but the most immediate problem is persuading someone to take her there to do it.
Zoe can't pronounce 'Yseult', but as there isn't a single class that hasn't watched a flint being napped, or been shown how to make an arrowhead using the lost wax casting process, she is happy to call her latest target 'Max' like everyone else does. With her teacher's permission, she has issued a request, and received an enthusiastic response agreeing not only to an interview, but also to show her around the site where Max works - as long as a grownup comes with her. So far, however, everyone's been too busy to oblige.
"Josh," she calls across to her brother, who is helping himself to some leftovers for a late breakfast, "Can you take me over to see Max today?"
He looks up, mid chew.
"I need to interview her for the newspaper, but she says I can't come on my own."
Josh swallows his mouthful, "She's dead right, there."
"So, will you take me?" She can see his mouth shaping into the word 'no', "Pleeeeeeese?" she wheedles, "I promise not to tell Mom that you've just had the last piece of apple pudding that she was saving specially for Maddy."
He looks down at the one small morsel that remains, and sighs the sigh of a man condemned, "Whatever you want, Zoe."
Yseult is working at her forge when the pair arrive, the sound of the hammer ringing violently out across the small compound that serves as their project area. Such is the racket that she doesn't notice them at first, her vision narrowed considerably by the goggles that protect her eyes from rogue sparks or flecks of slag. It's only when one of the men nearby looks up from the bellows that he's monitoring that he notices the arrivals and prods her on the arm.
"Hey there, Zoe," she calls across as she lifts the goggles, "I just need to finish this, it can't wait - could you give me five minutes? You can film me on your plex if you want. Just keep away from the scrap steel pile - there are a lot of sharp bits sticking out of it."
Nodding enthusiastically, Zoe retrieves the device and starts up the camera. Rolling his eyes behind his sister, Josh concentrates on making sure she doesn't get too close, trip over something or get in the way. The steel pile that Yseult has indicated looks singularly nasty, with sharply pointed shafts of metal sticking up at all angles.
Once finished, Yseult quenches the block of metal in a bucket of water and sets it aside, "Sorry about that, Zoe - I couldn't leave it and go back to it. I'm done now, though. Where would you like to start?"
"Can we talk about the people here?" Zoe asks, setting her plex to start recording.
"Of course we can." Yseult points across to Mike, "That's Mike - he's my assistant. He knows about metal, like me, and we both make things out of it."
"Like the arrowhead?"
"That's right. We make all sorts of things - but we're still learning how to do a lot of it, so we do lots of experiments; because we don't know what's going to work and what isn't. It's a lot of fun finding out."
Having assumed that he was going to be bored rigid, even Josh finds himself fascinated as he follows Zoe around the workshops. So much of his home is mechanised and automated these days that he has no concept of a life when such amenities didn't exist. To find that there is a group of people working to make sure that they can hang on to at least some of that life when the amenities start to break and stop working is quite comforting, in a way. There may no longer be any supplies coming in from the future, but there are people here in the present for whom such an eventuality doesn't matter all that much.
"When did you come to Terra Nova?" Zoe asks, eagerly.
"On the Seventh Pilgrimage. The Commander realised that he would need people like us very early on, and he asked for people when the Fourth came through - but we're a bit of a rare breed, so it took quite a few years to get us all together. We want to get to a point where we can mend the things that mend other things, if you get what I mean. When plexes break at the moment, we have a stock of cores - but when that runs out, we don't have any way to make more - they need specific metals that we haven't got yet. If I can get things right here, then we might be able to make them."
"Make metal?" Zoe asks, intrigued.
"Most metal doesn't come ready to use, Zoe." Josh points out, "It comes from rocks and stuff."
She nods, "How do you get it out?"
"With a lot of work," Yseult smiles, "and a lot of heat." She waves at someone, "Zoe, this is Pete. He looks after the forest for us. We use a lot of wood in our work, so we want to make sure we don't use it all up."
Pete comes over, nods cheerfully at Josh, and submits to some questioning by Zoe, "The wood'll be ready for the burn in the next couple of days if you want to start organising."
"Burn?" Zoe asks, immediately.
"You can't use just ordinary wood to make metals, Zoe." Yseult explains, "We have to do a special kind of burning to turn it into something called charcoal. I'm not sure if you've encountered it - it depends on whether your dad ever did barbecues."
She shakes her head.
"Tell you what," Pete says, "Why don't you cover our next charcoal burn? It's interesting at the start and at the end, so you can meet everyone, then go home while the boring thing happens and - even better - at the end it gets incredibly dirty."
"Yes please!" Zoe is instantly enthusiastic at the prospect.
Josh, less so.
"It works like this," Yseult begins, picking up a chunk of primitive oak, "Wood by itself doesn't burn hot enough to smelt metals - it's full of impurities and other useless gunk that keeps the temperature down. You need to get rid of that, and the only way to do it is to burn it - but to burn it in a special way."
"Special?" Zoe asks.
"Exactly. What people used to do would be to stack the wood, and then cover it with earth. Then they'd light it and make sure it was completely covered so that the air couldn't get to it. That's where it gets boring - you have to watch it constantly. For five days."
"Five days?" Josh looks quite incredulous.
"Yep. The burn changes the density of wood inside the kiln as the impurities burn away, so the pile shrinks and the cover can crack. If that happens, air gets in, the whole lot goes up and it's goodbye eyebrows."
Zoe giggles at her joke, unaware that she is understating the danger of such a flashover quite considerably.
"It's not possible to stay awake that long, is it?" Josh asks.
"It isn't without doing serious damage to your health. That's why we all take part. What used to happen is that a collier would sit on a one-legged stool. If they fell asleep, then they'd fall over, which would wake them up again. We get round it by working shifts - we can't really afford to lose a charcoal burn." She smiles, "It tends to turn into a bit of a party, actually. Anything to stay awake."
"Is that how you'll do it?" Zoe asks, keenly.
"Not exactly - making charcoal is very wasteful, and it gives off poisonous fumes, so we're working on some other methods to get a better result and get the air a bit cleaner. We still use an earth covering because it's the easiest way to do it - but we're going to try building in a special pipe to keep the hot fumes in the pile. It's called a 'retort'. It's a bit difficult to explain here - but if you want to see us complete the build tomorrow, you can see us having a go at trying to fit it. We've never done it before, so you can report on whether it works or not."
Zoe nods, excitedly. Of all the interviews she's done, she hasn't had the chance to watch something entirely new being tried out. Something of a coup for a seven-year-old journalist.
"In that case, why don't you come by tomorrow afternoon after school, and then I'll let you know when to come back. I don't think your mum would be impressed with you staying here for the whole burn. And you wouldn't be either once you find out how boring it gets."
Another nod. Beside her, Josh sighs, "Okay, Zoe, I'll bring you."
Yseult laughs, "Come on, Zoe. Let me show you the blast furnace. That's really boring."
Now that she's been back and forth to the labs so often, Yseult has become comfortable using the analytical apparatus herself, and no longer needs Malcolm's supervision. Not that she minds when he's present - but he's busy with a pile of reports, and regardless of how much she'd like to see him, she isn't keen to disrupt his administrative work.
Rather than commence tomorrow's burn and see what happens, she is instead keen to check exactly what she's got as a raw material, in the hope that she can get at least a basic idea of what will come out the other end. It would be such a shame to complete the burn and have a fail - particularly with little Zoe so excited at the opportunity to record the outcome.
She is transmitting the results of her investigations to her plex when one of the biochemists comes into the room. Yseult has no idea who the woman is, nor does she care particularly; she's finished her work and the machinery is now free for use by the 'legitimate' scientists. The rather snooty expression on the woman's face does little to endear her to the archaeologist, either.
"Will you be much longer?" The question, while polite on the surface, is so loaded that it might as well have been, will you be hogging that machine and getting in the way of proper research for much longer?
"Nope. I'm done. It's all yours."
"I take it you asked Doctor Wallace for permission to use this equipment?"
"I've got his standing permission. He doesn't mind." Doctor Wallace? Seriously? Or is she trying to make out that I have no right to call him Malcolm?
"And what, exactly, are you…analysing?" The question is, again, horribly loaded. As most of the science team regard her, and her team, as a bunch of unqualified people messing about with things of no importance, she is entirely used to such comments; they all are. Rather than rise to it, she takes it at face value; maintaining the moral high ground. It's a shame that the insults are coming from one of the female chemists; though she knows that the men are just as bad.
"I'm evaluating the levels of pyroligneous acid in the wood samples to anticipate the likely degree of yield from a charcoal burn."
"As opposed to appropriate, scientifically valid analysis for the future good of the colony?"
Moral high ground. Moral high ground. Swallowing her annoyance, Yseult instead smiles sweetly, "I'll accept a lecture from you on the future good of the colony when you can make me a serviceable pair of shoes to replace the ones that are all but falling apart on your feet." There are only three cobblers in the Compound, and she was the one who recruited them. Take that.
The woman stares at her, as though mortally insulted.
"Game, set and match, I think, Hannah." An amused voice comes from the doorway. The pair turn to see Malcolm leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe, "It's a valid point, when you think about it."
Looking deeply embarrassed, the defeated biochemist hastens away.
"Sorry, Max. I'm afraid most of them think that - she's the only one that's got the nerve to say it - and probably only because she thought I was up to my neck in paperwork so I wouldn't overhear."
"Do you think that?" She regrets the words the moment they're out of her mouth, but she can't stop them.
"God, no. I might've done when I first arrived and was so obnoxious it would've been a positive mercy to shoot me on the spot, but not now. They don't see the bigger picture; they're just fixed on their own fields. Our technology isn't going to last forever, and we need to be ready for when it gives out on us. I suppose it sounds unforgivably crass to say it, but you lot might well be the saving of this colony when that happens." He comes over to join her, "Are these your results?"
Yseult nods, "It's looking promising. I think we can try getting away with just using this wood and see what comes out the other side if we use the retort. It won't be completely pure, but the closest we can get without having to steam the wood, the happier I'll be. I can't be using one batch of charcoal to create the next one. Unless I try running off the excess heat from the blast furnace to run a boiler…" She starts musing, and reaches for her plex to make some notes.
He stares at her, the sudden trail of her thoughts from the matter in hand to solving another problem so utterly endearing that for a moment he has to clutch tightly at the hard edge of the table to stop himself impulsively grabbing hold of her and kissing her. God, how would that embarrass her if she doesn't feel the way he does?
"Er…would you be at all bothered if I came along to watch the charcoal burn?" he asks, hoping he hasn't gone red.
"Not at all, Malcolm. We make it a bit of a party, so the more the merrier. It'll get horribly boring, though - it's a long process, and you have to watch it constantly so we take it in shifts over the five day period. But then, if you really want to spend an entire night staring at a pile of smoking earth, then no one's going to object." She pauses, "If that's going to eat up too much of your time, you could always help analyse the results on the spot when we dig it out. Zoe's going to be recording it for her class newspaper."
"Another Shannon exclusive?"
"Oh yes." She smiles at him, "We'll start building from about eighteen hundred tomorrow. You're welcome to come along any time after that; just be prepared for some tragically awful singing, and some of the worst moonshine in the history of the Cretaceous."
"I'll see you tomorrow evening, then." He says, retreating partly to go back to his reports, partly to berate himself for, yet again, bailing out. He will have her company, yes - but he's going to have to share it with a gang of muscle-men who know her a hell of a lot better, and most of whom think he's an idiot. It is, however, a start.
She watches him go, and it takes all she has in her not to squeal and dance a jig. Maybe not a full-on date - but it's close.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For those of you who are quietly demanding of Malcolm: 'Get On With It!' - like the enormous crowd at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - not much longer now...
