"R. A. MacAvoy - L3 - The Belly of the Wolf" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

labor and compassion she exerts in her medical work. She herself says it is only the future catching up
with us, and I try to catch up with Nav-vie as she studies with one gunmaker after another. Four
countries’ worth, so far.
The state of the craft in Canton was formidable. From J. Sninden of the Parade Wharf came the first
pistols of standardized bore caliber, and the first presses that created leads that would fit them.
It was to Sninden’s we went now, but what Nav-vie had in mind was , a few steps in advance of the
common pistol.
She had seen a weapon in Bologhini that could be loaded, like a fine cannon, from the rear of the
bar—rel. This would add rapidity to the firing and make it possible for the user to see his packing
directly, we were told. It did not work; in fact, the barrel-slide flew farther than the bullet and in a very
dif-ferent direction. Nonetheless, the idea stole my daughter’s fancy, and she had been thinking about it
for two years. In an attempt to prolong her life, so had I.
The workshop smelled so of burned powder that it reminded me of a battlefield, and the tragedy of
the day made that association more vivid. Navvie had never seen a battlefield, though, and she had the
resilience of youth, so she strode across the room with anticipation, kicking her long skirts with every
step.
“Jonshen, did you do it? Is it ready?”
Jonshen Sninden is half-deaf, for obvious reasons, but like many another he could hear what he
wanted to hear. He came out of the back room, his hands blackened and his leather apron brightened
with shavings of steel.
“I didn’t know if you’d be here, little girl,” he said, and then he saw me and bowed, touching his
forehead as though I were somebody. “Yes, I have a barrel to try, and it fits your daddy’s slug-casket.
No more than that can I say.”
My “slug-casket” was simply a barrel within the barrel to direct the explosion forward and away
from the opening on the top and back, so near to the shooter’s (my daughter’s) face. It held the powder
and the wad and was topped with the pellet. It was to be made of steel, but I had no tools that would
bore steel and no fire to melt steel, so the experi-mental type was of brass. Despite the fact that the
presence of the casing meant the volume of powder and weight of shot had to be small, my own
hand-iwork terrified me, and I was glad to see that Snin-den had set up a vise to hold the butt of the
pistol, and a target backed by a sandbox to receive the pel-let. At my encouragement, he added bags of
sand around the barrel and a string, the latter to pull the trigger at a distance. I think both Sninden and
Nav-vie thought me a spoilsport.
We stood in the doorway to the room behind, and had I my way, we would have closed the door
and run the string through the keyhole.
Sninden offered the pull to Navvie, as she was instigator of this experiment, but she told him she was
not attached to the moment, and I heard foot-steps coming up the stairs behind us as he pulled the string.
The reverberation was sharper than I expected, and accompanied by the thunk of the lead into the
target and a short screech from the tall, well-dressed man behind us. He recovered himself. “Doctor
Na-zhuret?”
The gunsmith and my daughter deserted me. “Mr. Kavenen,” I said, to be difficult. “The doc-torate is
honorary.”
He had recovered himself. He sniffed around ap-preciatively as he crossed the room to me.
“Powder. What a masculine smell. Well, need we be strangers to honor, Mister Doctor Nazhuret
Kavenen?” He was very tall, and enjoyed standing close.
Feeling even more difficult now, I wanted to tell him that only the name Timet went with the name
Kavenen, whereas “Nazhuret” was fitted with the suffix “aid’Nahvah: aminsanaur.” I escaped making
myself such a fool, for I recognized the gentleman. He was Lord Damish: aristocrat functionary of the
burgher-driven Cantoner Council. I had hung over that council in the visitor’s gallery, where every
hu-man being had the right to watch proceedings, and heard the seventy-six councilors in their flat,
Can-toner voices debate their infinite question of tariffs. The house of Damish is like the skin of the