Book 10 - Angry Lead Skies by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

that
you’ll have to ask Kip. He’ll turn human after a while.
Come here.” He led me to the three-wheel.
    “Climb up here and sit down.”
    The wooden arc part of the mechanism boasted a sort of saddle
barely big enough for a mouse. When I sat on it my butt ached
immediately. “So what is it? Some kind of walker with
wheels?” If so, my legs were too long. “I’ve seen
lots better wheelchairs.” Chodo Contague has one that is so
luxurious it comes with a crew of four footmen and has its own
heating system.
    “Put your feet up on these things.” He used the toe
of a boot to indicate an L-shaped bar that protruded from the hub
of the big wheel up front. “The one on the other side, too.
Good. Now push. With your right foot. Your other right
foot.”
    The three-wheel moved. I zipped around in a tight circle.
“Hey! This’s neat.” My foot slipped off. The end
of the iron L clipped my anklebone. I iterated several words that
would have turned Mom red. I reiterated them with considerable
gusto.
    “We’re working on that. That can’t be much
fun. We’re going to drill a hole down the center of a flat
piece of hardwood . . . ”
    I got the hang of the three-wheel quickly. But there
wasn’t enough room to enjoy it properly in there. “How
about I take it out in the street?”
    “I’d really rather you didn’t. I’m sure
that’s why we’ve had the trouble we’ve had. Kip
took it out there, racing around, and before he got back he had
several people try to take it away from him. And right afterward
the strange people started coming around.”
    I scooted around the stable for a few minutes more, then gave up
because I couldn’t enjoy the machine’s full potential
under such constrained circumstances. “Are you planning to
make three-wheels, too? Because if you are, I want one. If I can
afford it.”
    Playmate’s eyes lighted up as he saw the possibility of
paying my fees without having to part with any actual money.
“I might. But honesty compels me to admit that we’re
having problems with it. Especially with getting the wheels and the
steering bar to move freely. Lard doesn’t seem to be the
ideal lubricant.”
    “And it draws flies.” Plenty of those were around.
But the place was a stable, after all.
    “That, too. And the kinds of hardwoods we need to make the
parts aren’t common. Not to mention that we’d have to
come up with whole teams of woodworking craftsmen if we were to
build even a fraction of the number of them we think we’d
need to satisfy the demand there’d be once people started
seeing them in the streets.”
    “Hire some of those out-of-work veterans to make
them.”
    “How many of them, you figure, are likely to be skilled
joiners and cabinetmakers?”
    “Uhn. Not to mention wheelwrights.” I walked around
the three-wheel. “That geekoid kid over there actually
thought this up?”
    “This thing and a whole lot more, Garrett. It’ll be
a mechanical revolution if we ever figure out how to build all of
the things he can imagine.”
    I slid down off the three-wheeler. “What do you call
this?”
    “Like I told you. Just three-wheel.”
    There had to be something that sounded more dramatic.
“Here’s a notion. You could train your veterans just to
do what it takes to manufacture three-wheels. That wouldn’t
be like them having to learn all about making cabinets and
furniture.”
    “And then I’d have guild trouble.”
    I stared at the three-wheel, sighed, told Playmate, “I
guarantee you, somebody’s going to get rich off this
thing.” My knack for prophecy is limited but that was a
prediction I made with complete conviction. I had no trouble
picturing the streets of the better neighborhoods overrun with
three-wheels.
    “Someone with fewer ethical disadvantages than I have, you
mean?”
    “That wasn’t what I was getting at, but it’s a
fact. As soon as you get some of those things out there
you’re going to have people trying to build knockoffs.”
I