“But?”
“But, Biswal has…little patience for any issue that isn’t actively posing a threat.”
“When your predecessor got shot in combat, I can see why a clandestine mining operation might not top your list of priorities.”
“General Raajhaa…Yes, he was a great leader, General. He was much admired. His loss changed many minds about what we’re doing here.” She shakes herself and begins taking a long staircase down. “How much do you know about Arc Lightning, General?”
“I know it’s a metal. I know it’s in the ground. That’s about the run of it. I didn’t even realize it’d gotten a fancy code name yet.”
“I see. And how much do you know about electrical engineering?”
“Nothing. Maybe less than nothing.”
“Well, that’ll make this easier,” says Nadar. “It’ll mean fewer questions.”
They walk down the hallway to the lab doors. The ceilings here are covered with pipes and tubes, all sighing or squeaking or softly bubbling.
“You are probably aware that electrification promises to be the next great step for our nation,” says Nadar.
“I read about it in the papers from time to time. I thought Vallaicha Thinadeshi had tried it before and failed.”
“True, but she only made small inroads. Yet now, as you might’ve seen in Ghaladesh, entire homes and buildings run off of it.”
“Yes,” says Mulaghesh, who’s honestly never really cared for electrical light. It somehow seems to bring out the flaws in the human face.
“The main issue right now is transmission,” says Nadar. “We have coal, we have dams. But scaling up transmission to match Saypur’s industries…that’s proving difficult.” She throws open a wooden door on the other side of the hallway. Inside is a pristine white laboratory featuring all kinds of complicated equipment: pumps and processors and something that has an inordinate amount of tubing. Four attendants are perched over glass dishes containing various amounts of gray, unimpressive powder. They look up, startled.
“Lieutenant Prathda,” says Nadar. One of the attendants stands up straight and salutes. “This is General Mulaghesh. I’m giving her a tour of the facilities. Why don’t you give her the technical rundown of what we’re doing here?”
Prathda—a gangly, odd peacock of a man—paces over and salutes Mulaghesh directly. “Certainly, General. An honor to have you with us. How technical would you like me to be?”
“Just give her the general rundown,” says Nadar. “And no charts this time, Lieutenant.”
“I see,” says Prathda. He bites his lip. “But, Captain, I did some additional production work on one, and I think this chart really clarifies how—”
“No charts, Lieutenant,” says Nadar forcefully. “Just the five-minute tour.”
“Certainly, Captain.” Then he thinks for a moment and says, “A demonstration would probably be simplest.” He turns to his attendants. “Please get me the components for the Aamdi test, if you could.” One of the attendants leaps up and digs underneath the counter until she produces a very large lightbulb that’s more than two feet long, a bulky battery, and two sets of thick cables. “Thank you,” says Prathda, and he picks them up and carries them to a dense door with a sign reading TESTING ROOM FOUR. “This way, General,” he calls over his shoulder.
Mulaghesh follows, but Nadar hangs back. “I’ve seen this show, General,” she explains. “I’ll, ah, hang out here in the hallway, if that’s all right.”
Concerned, Mulaghesh walks into the testing room. “Please shut that door securely,” Prathda says. “Thank you, General.”
She notices the door has a layer of steel on the interior, like a blast door. “Uh…Is there anything we need to be, uh, shielded from?”
“I assure you, it’s all quite safe. Now, we have here two very ordinary components—a bulb, and a battery. The battery is large and has a very large charge, and the bulb is from a high-powered street lamp in Ghaladesh—so its capacity for taking in electricity and putting out light is very, very high. Am I clear?”
Mulaghesh grunts.
“Excellent. Now, these cables are of common copper—the sort of copper that is currently being used in most electrical practices. If I apply them to the battery’s connectors like so…And then, of course, to the lightbulb’s base…” The bulb, lying on its side on the counter, flickers with a faint yellow light, which grows as Prathda adjusts the cables until it’s a flat, somewhat decent source of light in this rather dark room.
“Right,” says Prathda. He removes the cables, killing the light. “It functions, carrying the charge to and from the bulb. However, there is considerable loss—hence why the bulb does not glow particularly brightly. But these cables”—he holds the two other cables up so that Mulaghesh can see that they’re flagged red—“are an alloy, mixing copper with a very recently discovered element.”
“And what is this new element?”
“It’s something that was found nearby in Voortyashtan, totally by accident,” says Prathda, fixing the cables to the battery. “We were originally helping SDC source the materials for the harbor. The harbor project, it was thought, would likely need a large amount of stone, so we considered siting a quarry near the fortress. Our engineers went digging, and found…this. A seam of ore the likes of which has never been discovered before.” Prathda looks up, smiling beatifically. “Are you ready, General?”
Mulaghesh nods.
He touches the cables to the bulb’s base.
And then…
Mulaghesh’s eyes interpret what is happening as an explosion, but one that is silent and pristine. She fights the impulse to dive to the floor—she imagines the cough and shriek of shells, the rumble of nearby blasts—and keeps watching.
The bulb fills up with a white, white hot light, a bursting, blinding eruption of pure incandescence that’s so intense Mulaghesh can almost feel it on her skin. It’s so bright it’s like the light is shooting back into her head and out the other side, and she cries out and looks away as the walls themselves begin to glow, reflecting this terrible light.
There’s a pow! as the filament in the bulb gives out. Mulaghesh shouts, “Fucking hells!” and holds up her portfolio to shield herself from the shattered glass—but it doesn’t come. She slowly lowers it. The bulb is whole but dark, the interior of its glass scarred and smoky. Prathda has his face turned away as well, but when he looks back at her he has a dazed smile, as if having just swallowed some wonderful drug.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” he says. “We call it thinadeskite. After the engineer, you see.”
***