CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
The market of Jehed buzzed with human voices: hagglers, hawkers, protests of poverty, promises of delight. To François, this was what he loved most about the Middle East, what was missing in much of Western society: lively banter and haggling.
He stopped at a wagon. It was piled high with what looked like dried and crumbling soil, but emitted the faint smell of ammonia.
He looked up at the sour-faced, big-eared merchant in a ragged gray burnoose and asked, “Is this bat guano?”
The merchant looked at François from head to toe and frowned. “It’s fertilizer. You don’t need it unless you’re farming.”
“Yes, fertilizer. But from bats, or from some other animal?”
A scowl sprouted on the merchant’s face. “I won’t tell you where the cave is.”
“I don’t want to know where the cave is.” François held up a gold link from his watch’s wristband; it had taken him hours to pry the band apart, link by link, using his pocket knife. He softened his voice, trying to project warmth and friendliness. “Friend, I just want the guano. Tell me how much.”
The man’s demeanor softened at the sight of the gold. He pointed at the link. “I will have to weigh that to see what it is worth.”
The merchant pulled out a two-armed lever scale and set it on the table in front of him. François dropped the small link on one of the trays and the tray immediately lowered. The merchant dropped a clay bead on the other tray, then another, and another until the scale showed even. He looked up at François and said, “For this amount, I will give you one hundred fifty pounds of the fertilizer.”
It was François’s turn to frown. He hated the idea of getting anything and not being sure it would work. “Actually, before I buy, can I get a small amount to test? I want to make sure it will work.”
“Work? What do you mean, it’s bat dung! What are you going to do with it?” The merchant stared. “Will you fertilize a gourd and come back in six months?”
“It’s hard to explain. All I would need is about this much.” François cupped his hands together.
The man rolled his eyes and handed him back the gold links. “Go ahead and take what you need for this test. But come back to me when you are ready to purchase, understand?”
François nodded as he scooped several handfuls of the guano into a tightly woven basket. “Thank you for being reasonable.”
The merchant sniffed and scanned the marketplace for another possible customer.
Walking on, François tucked the basket in his pack and slung it on his shoulder with some of the other samples he’d already cadged from traders. The scent of cinnamon and cumin were floating in the air as he walked alongside spice and food shops.
Spotting a merchant’s wagon filled with pottery, François hurried past the people yelling for his attention and the occasional child running underfoot. As he approached the pottery stall, the woman and man standing next to the wagon motioned for his attention. They were darker-skinned than most of the Jehedi, and they were plump. François took the latter as a sign of success.
The woman held up a brown earthenware jug. “Good man, a wine holder for your home?”
Her partner held up a large earthenware bowl with a matching top. “We have the best clay wares that you will ever find. The king himself purchases our goods. You cannot make a bad choice from among our vessels, good man.”
François smiled. They had an impressive variety of ceramics. “Do you make all of these yourself?”
“Of course,” the woman answered.
“And do you do custom work?”
The man nodded proudly.
François noticed a basket filled with chunks of red clay. Probably what they shaped their wares from. François pointed. “Can I show you what I want with the unbaked clay?”
The man motioned for the Frenchman to come behind the table. “Please, show me what you think you want.”
François grabbed a fist-sized chunk of the clay and began to work it. He was surprised how well it molded and kept its shape. It had been a long time since he’d made a finger pot, but the motions came back to him easily.
After flattening the piece of clay in his hand, he molded it into a hollow sphere with a thick opening on the top. As he deftly rotated the ball in his hand, he pinched a simple screwlike groove into the neck of the opening.
Once done, he placed it on the table, grabbed a smaller chunk of clay, and made a matching screw-top for the base. They were crude and the grooves wouldn’t actually fit, but they would illustrate his intent.
Both merchants watched his every move with increasingly strong expressions of astonishment. “Sir, you have a talent for this,” the man said. “But what is it that you’ve made?”
François picked up both pieces and focused the merchant’s attention on the screwlike grooves in both pieces. “Do you see these lines on the neck and the lid? I have done it poorly, but you will do it well, so that the two pieces will attach together by their grooves. When hardened, the lid will rotate onto the neck.” He demonstrated what he was talking about without letting the two soft pieces of clay touch. “And when the lid has been turned all the way, it will stay there even if you knock the vessel over or turn it upside down.”
The woman put her hands to her mouth.
“I think that would work just as you described,” the man said. He turned to the woman. “Lalla, you have smaller hands than I. Do you think you can do this thing?”
She nodded. “The difficult part will be to make sure the grooves match and are the right size. A good seal can be ensured with beeswax.”
“Exactly,” François agreed. “Now, I want the lid to be heavier than the bottom—that means the clay walls for the bottom would be thin.”
“Won’t that make it easier to break?” The man asked.
“It will. I also want a little hole in the middle of the lid. The hole should be about the thickness of . . . this.” François snatched a hollow reed that was about half the thickness of a pencil from the wagon.
The man stroked his chin with thick fingers. “Sir, we can do this. How big do you want the vessels, and how many do you want?”
“Ten,” François said. “The size of my fist.”
The merchant looked at his partner, then nodded and turned back to François. “We will make these for you, and we will charge you the same as we would charge for our ordinary wares.”
They quickly sorted out a deal; two gold links for the jars. “How long do you think it would take to make these?” François asked.
“I’ll start right away,” the woman said. “I’ll have at least the first set of completed vases cooled and ready for you to use by tomorrow at sunset.”
“That’s perfect.” François clasped forearms with the merchants, sealing the deal.
He headed for the nearest exit from the market and made a beeline for their borrowed mud-brick home. He had experiments to run.
Wagguten had arranged for the crew and their warriors to have access to a large mud-brick building a few steps from Jehed’s market square. It must have been something like a stable, once, but it held sleeping pallets now, along with a couple of rude benches and a table.
A dozen of the king’s spearmen in white sashes stood not far off, watching the shelter at all times.
Marty, Gunther, and Kareem had been relaxing in the shelter as François set up a makeshift workbench. Lowanna had been there earlier, but after a minute or two of her glowering in François’s direction, she’d left. François felt guilt over her attitude toward him. He’d obviously done something to earn her animosity, but wasn’t exactly sure what.
Kareem blew on the fire he’d just made and François set an earthenware mug full of liquid on the glowing embers. After a few minutes, the liquid began to steam and he poured bat guano into the makeshift mixing bowl.
Surjan walked into the shelter, and as François stirred the contents of the mug with a green twig, the head of security sniffed and his lip curled up in a sign of revulsion. “Whatever that is, it smells foul.”
François chuckled. “Way to go, Super Nose. You have detected bat feces mingled with urine.”
“You’re not making dinner . . . right?” Marty asked.
“Mouth watering, eh?” François chuckled. “You know, it would be a very good deed to introduce the humans of the fourth millennium to French cooking.”
“Yeah, but . . . that’s not what you’re doing, right?” Marty pressed.
François peered into the mug and stirred. “Potassium nitrate is soluble in water, so I’m trying to extract it from the guano.” He set an earthenware tray with a turned-up rim on the embers.
“And you’re doing this because . . . ?” Marty looked perplexed.
François unfolded a piece of cloth and set it on his lap. “You’ll see.”
Surjan pointed at the mounds of black and yellow powder on the bench. “Charcoal, sulfur, bat guano. Where’s the party?”
François looked up at Surjan and grinned. Of course, the ex-soldier knew what he was making. He laid a thin cloth over the mug and grabbed the handle through a slab of rawhide to protect his hand from the heat. He slowly tilted the mug onto the hot tray.
The cloth helped filter out the solids and a clear liquid slowly dribbled from the mug. The guano broth sizzled as it poured across the tray. François watched and, after a few minutes, the water evaporated, leaving behind white crystalline residue.
François emptied the mug of the solids, filled it half full with water, added dung, and began to repeat the procedure.
Marty asked Gunther, “How’s the king doing with that moldy bread?”
“He’s hating it, even with honeyed tea. But he’s taking it.”
“Candidly,” Marty said, “I worry we might poison him.”
Gunther raised his eyebrows in a facial shrug. “The mold is pretty pungent.”
“But is he getting better?” François asked.
“He is,” Gunther said, “but . . .”
“You saw the light,” Marty said. “Gunther healed him.”
“Ah,” François said. “Gunther’s faith healing worked. But my science is misguided.”
“I think your science, in this case,” Marty said, “is more of a child’s cartoon version of science.”
“And yet the king recovers.” François shrugged.
“Slowly.” Marty lay on a pallet and sighed. “I hope so. We need to get going, but the prairie’s getting more arid the farther we go. I’d really like to take that camel with us.”
Surjan growled. “The king’s men watch our every move. If he dies, we’re going to be in for a rough go of it.”
François nodded. “Fortunately, we have Gunther’s healing power to back up my science.”
That ended the debate. Marty and the rest of the crew lay on the reed mats splayed across the shelter’s floor and rested while François spent the next hour producing mugfuls of his bat-dung soup, filtering it, and creating more of the white crystals.
When he’d finally exhausted his supply of dung and crushed the white crystals with a mortar and pestle, François poured from the mortar a pile of what looked almost like flour. He hoped that it hadn’t been a giant waste of his time.
He hoped the same for his experiment with antibiotics, though he himself was beginning to doubt.
He looked over at Marty, who was awake and staring up at the ceiling. “Want to see if my design works?”
“Did you invent a smallpox cure this time?” Marty asked.
“More of a weapon,” François said. “Hopefully.”
Marty sat up and gazed at François’s handiwork. “Did you make a gun?”
“Give me a second.” Using a flattened stick, François measured out two parts of the powdered sulfur, three parts of the pulverized charcoal, and fifteen parts of what he hoped was potassium nitrate. He mixed the white, yellow, and black powders together until he had a large mound of dark powder.
After a full minute of mixing it as well as he could on the flat surface of the earthenware tray, he scooped up a small amount of the black powder with the stick and set it away from the rest of the powders on the tray. Taking another small stick, he put its tip into the still-glowing embers of the fire until it began smoking and caught on fire. He looked up at Marty and grinned. “You ready?”
Marty stared at the workbench and nodded.
François carefully took the flaming stick and brought it to the fingernail-sized mound of powder. The moment the flame touched the powder, it flashed brightly, sending up a plume of smoke.
Marty leaned closer and whispered, “Did you just reinvent gunpowder?”
François nodded.
Marty laughed. “I don’t know if this is going to cause some paradox, because I don’t think the Chinese invented gunpowder for another couple thousand years. I’m assuming you have specific plans for that?”
“Not troubled by the paradoxes caused by the early invention of penicillin?” Surjan grunted.
“Not as much,” Marty said, “no.”
François imagined a box full of the fist-sized earthenware vessels the pottery merchants were making for him. “With the Sethians and who knows what else is out there . . . I say we risk the paradox.”