The Princelings of the East Read online

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  It took Saku maybe an hour to give George a full tour of the installation, explaining what everything did in full detail. They started with the grain input hopper, which was filled from the silo at the back, and followed its journey through numerous processes of cooking, fermentation, straining and separation, before arriving at a point where it was mixed with the special ingredients. They then backtracked to the start of that process and went right up to the highest walkway to follow that through.

  “This is where are special ingredients are fed in,” Saku said. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you what they are, I would, of course, but it’s a secret formula. I’m sure you understand.”

  “It’s not important, as far as I’m concerned, unless it affects the processes involved,” George replied.

  After the two streams were mixed together there were some complicated processes involving modulisers and capacitors and distillators and compressors. George had a bit of trouble keeping up with all of the concepts as they were far in advance of anything he’d done himself, but he could see what they were supposed to do. He could also see that in a few places they were doing opposing things within a few yards of each other. He came to the end of the line, where it went into a bottling plant on the other side of a doorway.

  “This is the secret section,” Saku said. “Bottling is important technology of course, and we have revolutionised the way it’s carried out. Our set-up is one that we franchise all over the world for anything that needs bottling. We earn a lot of money from it, apparently,” and he shook his head in disbelief that something as mundane as bottling could be a moneymaking angle when what he was making was the real product.

  Back in Saku’s little study they relaxed in nice comfortable chairs, just like a sitting room at home. George couldn’t rest though. He went over to the large desk and started mapping out the process, checking with Saku that he had understood it correctly. He had spotted a number of redundancies in the system as they went round, or thought he had. He started checking whether they still a purpose now, even though they once did before various ‘improvements’ had been made. Apart from everything else, he had learned two very important facts: the source of the power supply, and that Saku was extremely pleasant and not a bit upset that a stranger had arrived to help him solve the problem. What he hadn’t learned was precisely what the problem was. He wanted to understand the system, and what it was supposed to do, before he asked about that.

  He completed his map and sat down, licking his lips.

  “Would you like a drink?” asked Saku, seeing his movement.

  “Well, yes, please, but something a little more thirst quenching than Wozna, if you don’t mind.” He hoped that didn’t sound rude, but he thought it best to be plain with Saku.

  “Oh I know what you mean,” he said, “I think we could afford to draw off a little of the strawberry juice.”

  “But I thought Mariusz said you don’t drink strawberry juice here?”

  “Well, we don’t, but the power vat has to be regulated, doesn’t it?” he said with a smug grin. He took out two glasses, one just a bit bigger than an eggcup, and the other about half as big again, and nipped outside to the largest silo. He turned a small tap near the base to fill the two glasses to the brim. He brought them back carefully.

  “Your good health,” he said.

  “And that of your family,” responded George, and he sipped the juice, which, instead of its usual pink colour, had taken on a beautiful golden glow, and was rather thicker than usual. It was amazing, even better than usual, and very thirst quenching in spite of the apparent lack of fluid in it. He pondered everything Saku had told him.

  On first pointing out the silo of strawberry juice and explaining that it provided the power, Saku had laughed at George’s bewilderment. He reminded him of the test everyone did at school when they first started understanding the nature of energy. They put a wire of one metal on one side of their tongue, and a wire of another metal on the other side, and felt the tingle as the power coursed across their tongue from one wire to the other, conducted by their saliva.

  “It’s the same with strawberry juice” he said, “only the power surge is astronomical and we have used it to power most of our needs ever since it was discovered.”

  That was why strawberries grew from so many balconies, as everyone had a small power plant for home use as well as the central grid powered by the community. It had revolutionised Hattan society, since it was no longer necessary to use small people to work the wheels that had generated power for centuries, and which had become more and more expensive since the abolition of slavery.

  “Who actually discovered it?” George asked.

  Saku had explained it had been discovered in the east world, but the technique had swiftly spread worldwide.

  The burning question that George had at present was something he had been thinking of in the background of his mind ever since Mariusz had said it. He was sure Mariusz had said something about a new processing mechanism in the 2010s. He must have misheard, because it was only 2009 now, but he was wondering how to establish the truth without sounding too foolish. Now he thought he knew how.

  “So we’ve mapped out the process,” he said, looking at his drawing once more. “What was the big change that Mariusz mentioned and when did that occur?”

  “Oh well, that was the development of Diet Wozna in 2011,” Saku replied, and George was sure he’d heard him right this time. “We’d been wondering how to pander to the new fad for slimming foods, and once strawberry power was available we could have all the extra energy that is needed to reduce the Wozna from forty calories to one calorie per bottle (or can, really, because we only ever produce Diet in cans.)”

  George’s mind whirled. Apart from the stupidity of using all that extra energy to make a low energy drink (and where did all the energy go?), he was fairly sure that in Mariusz’s tale he had said he had been exporting Diet Wozna for about ten years now. “So that makes it at least 2021,” he muttered to himself.

  “Sorry?” Saku said.

  “I was just working out the time line,” he said, keeping his voice steady and trying to stay relaxed. “You’ve been using strawberry power for over ten years, and it went in right at the start of the process,” he covered himself, pointing at the process map. “What was there before?”

  “Oh, an ordinary grid inlet feed supporting a Carnot engine.”

  “And that went to the same pump?”

  “Yes that’s right.”

  George worked through the process again with Saku and sat back as he came to a conclusion.

  “I think the pump is sized for the wrong power capacity,” he said. “It’s overworking. If it was sized to the higher energy input it could push a larger volume through more efficiently than these small volumes operating many more times in the same period.”

  It was fundamental to the entire operation. Fix that and the whole operation would be transformed, George thought, and then they could lose this step, and that machine, then straighten out that pipe run which would again enhance the efficiency... Was he really in 2021?

  Saku was staring at the process map George had drawn. He stroked the hair behind his ear thoughtfully, then went out and looked at the pump, even though it was housed in a nice metal covering, so you couldn’t actually see it. It was pumping away, with an occasional squeak and occasionally also a hiss.

  He came back in, took up a blue pencil, made some changes to the pump, crossed out another machine, re-routed three pipe runs, and crossed out another process. “What do you think?” he asked George.

  “I agree,” he said, with a smile. “Although you might find it useful to replace the thermal capacitor with a thermal moduliser as well, which would improve the overall efficiency of the heat co-generation.”

  “Brilliant!” said Saku. “I thought I was good, but you are exceptional, young George. All we need now is to work o
ut how the time tunnel is draining our energy and stop it!”