Chapter 16
Despite the attraction of the books still to be read, Margaret’s attention kept wandering. What would these calculating machines look like? Her tutor had explained calculus, and that it had originated with a genius mathematician using small stones, or calculi, to explain his theories. Her imagination even stretched into her dreams, creating fascinating engines like the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, who had died a hundred years before she was born.
When she and Hettie met Rita in an echoing hallway the next morning, she had designed and rejected a thousand magical machines in her mind.
Somberly dressed employees made their way up and back with stacks of paper or leather folders. The area felt rather damp, as though they were approaching a marshland. In fact, Margaret smelled water ahead.
“This is the accounting department of the Treasury,” Rita explained. “No real money is kept here, just the ledgers and records.”
A couple of guards armed with long, narrow-barreled muskets stood to attention when they saw Rita approaching.
“Friedrich, Oskar, how are you?” she asked. They murmured shy replies, and unlocked the door for her. Margaret heard water running somewhere ahead of them, as if a stream flowed through the building.
The office was larger than she thought it would be. The walls were plain red brick, with no ornamentation, paintings, or sculptures on display, as there were in myriad other chambers in the palace. The sole exception was a wooden clock with black chains hanging down from its body to wind it. Small wonder, as the moisture in the air would have deteriorated any delicate works of art. She felt as though she had just wandered into a light rainstorm. Moisture settled on her face.
Several men and women in shirtsleeves were hard at work over large ledgers, but some also minded devices attached to stacks upon stacks of gray ceramic trays about a foot across but half as tall. These were the aqualators? They looked nothing at all like the fantastic images in her mind. Not even close!
Margaret went close to look at the gray trays. Water dripped rhythmically through them and down into a catch basin. An outflow pipe went out again from the basin through the wall. It reminded her of a clepsydra that was in a museum of curiosities in Stoke, which tolled out the passing hours a drop at a time. This was a much larger and more complex system than that simple water clock, sending streams and dribbles at different rates. The water seemed to drive myriad small bronze wheels, causing numbers to appear on a flat tray set upright before the seated clerks. Once in a while, a clerk turned a knob, and a rectangular box near the door squawked and produced a sheet of paper with numbers printed on it. She couldn’t make sense of what information the clerks gained from the trays.
“Looks like some kind of water-witching,” Hettie said. “It’s not right.”
Margaret didn’t agree. She didn’t know how to read the droplets as the clerks did, but she watched them interact with them, trying to gather clues to the system.
“There just aren’t enough computers to go around, and electricity isn’t that reliable yet, so they set up this array here in the Treasury,” Rita explained, her voice echoing weirdly in the damp air. “They do the books for the whole US of Europe.”
“But what exactly do they do?” Margaret asked.
“They calculate,” Rita said, sounding uncertain, an unusual admission for her.
“How can these trickly things calculate?”
“I don’t really know how they work. We’ll ask the bookkeepers.”
“They calculate for us,” one of the workers said, when Rita asked him. He seemed to be of Lady Pierce’s age, with damp white hair slicked back over his head. “We use them for the bookkeeping. We take the numbers given to us by the various departments and put them into the correct array. The array sorts the numbers and gives us the credits and debits, and thus we are able to keep the finances of the Treasury accurate. To the penny,” the man added proudly.
Margaret gawked at the dripping trays. “They keep the ledgers for you?”
“That’s right,” Rita said. “Since we’re not capable of producing microcircuitry yet, these are a fairly steady substitute. For now.”
After thumbing through countless books from the Grantville libraries on the mechanized systems of the future and the streamlined devices that sat upon nice, dry desks, this one seemed to be primitive, harkening back centuries from her own time. Perhaps they were closer to the works of Leonardo than she had first anticipated, but it was still ages away from anything that she had ever seen.
“The concept amazes me. How do they work?” Margaret asked. The clerks shook their heads.
Rita shrugged. “They’re users, not programmers. We’d have to ask a programmer. Who set up these aqualators up for you?” she asked a woman filing papers in a chest.
The woman smiled. “It is Aaron Craig. He set up the array. He’s brilliant. He understands all of the ins and outs of the machine language. None of the construction makes sense to me.”
“Where is his office?” Margaret asked. “May we speak to him?”
“Aaron’s a teenager,” Rita said. “I think he’s about fifteen. He’s an honors student at Grantville High School.”
“He takes college courses alongside his regular studies,” the woman said. “Engineering and programming at the I.C. White Technical School. That is where we send a message when we need him.”
Rita nodded. “That’s pretty typical. All of the computer nerds I know are kids. Oh, yes, that would be perfect. He’d be able to explain everything, and figure out if a computer system would help you at home.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Just before three-thirty. Grantville High School should be just about ready to dismiss classes for the day. Let’s see if we can catch Aaron and have him come here to meet you. Come on, let’s go send a message. I don’t want to miss him.”
Rita turned and headed for the door, with Margaret and Hettie hurrying in her wake. She took the nearest staircase up to the top floor of the building. Margaret’s thighs burned by the time they reached the top. Rita headed straight for a room that proved to be a corner chamber overlooking the street at the front of the building.
When she opened the door, Margaret heard a strange metallic clicking noise. A man with shaggy blond hair sat at a table, a black stick with a puffy top on a stand just under his chin. He frowned at the pad of paper under his pencil point. He had two black circles affixed to the sides of his head over his ears, and was writing as fast as he could as a strange device with a shiny black button suspended over a metal plate tapped furiously all by itself. Hettie gasped and squeezed Margaret’s hand.
“It looks like magic, mistress,” she whispered.
Just as in the Treasury office, Margaret couldn’t discern any importance to the pattern. The man waited, and reached out to tap the button himself. Then, the button started moving again, and he resumed writing. When he was finished, he took off the black circles, which were connected by a flexible headband, and realized suddenly that he was not alone.
“Frau Simpson! What a pleasure!” he exclaimed, extending his hand to her. “How may I be of service?”
“Margaret, this is Fritz Pennemacher. Fritz, let me present Mistress Margaret de Beauchamp,” Rita said.
“Fräulein,” Fritz said, taking her fingers gently. His hand was smooth, except for calluses on the tips of his forefinger and thumb.
“Fritz is one of our communications staff. He’s an expert telegrapher and radio operator. That’s his microphone. He can send a message to Grantville to have someone find Aaron for us.”
Margaret put two and two together even before Rita could say anything. She pointed at the…the microphone.
“Is this how Master Lefferts knew the details of…?”
Rita laughed. “You are so quick, maybe you should learn to be a programmer yourself. Yes and no. We actually had a radio in the Tower, meaning that we could transmit voices through the air. We lived in absolute fear that the yeoman guards would go through our possessions and find it. The very least they would do would be to destroy it. I was afraid they might burn us at the stake as witches.” Fritz chuckled.
“What does the moving button do?” Margaret asked.
“The telegraph requires wires to connect it to the next station, but it’s small and can be installed anywhere. He listens to the code, which is a series of short and long pulses and transcribes it. It’s used to communicate with locations along the train lines.”
“Vould you like to try it?” Fritz asked. Margaret nodded.
He put the circles over her ears. Inside, she heard faint but rapid clicking sounds. She handed the circles back to him.
“And from this you distinguish words? How do you tell one sound from another?”
“Practice,” Fritz said simply. “I presume that you did not climb all the way up here just to show off the device, Frau Simpson. How may I serve?”
“Please get on the radio to Grantville High School. Ask Herr Trelli at the Technical School to ask Aaron if he would be willing to come on the next train to Magdeburg. Once Aaron checks with his parents, he can be here by tomorrow morning, and give you a rundown on computers. If Effie won’t let him come by himself, Martin is welcome to come along with him. I’ll cover the fares and make sure they have somewhere to stay if he has to be here overnight.”
“Ja. I vill haf to get their attention first.” Fritz placed the black circles over his ears and began to move the black button. He waited, then started again. After what seemed like a year, the device began to twitch by itself, clicking furiously. Fritz pulled the black stick closer to his mouth and spoke in a quiet voice. He listened for what seemed like a very long time, then turned to Rita.
“He vill be here tomorrow.”