The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) by Aidan Harte Page B

Guild Halls. It’s more like politics: the art of the possible.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘And, as for bridge itself,’ she continued, ‘well, it’s very elegant, but the ballistics idea is pure fancy; no cannon’s that accurate, that consistent. So you’re left with a bridge that has the same limitation as all “self-supporting” structures – it can’t support itself until it’s complete. A marching army doesn’t have time to build elaborate formwork. Aside from practicalities, considerations of speed rule it out.’
    Torbidda disagreed, but he could tell Agrippina was getting frustrated so he turned back to her plan of a parabolic swing-bridge. It had two fulcrums – that was what made it original; once it swung to the other side of a river and the army had crossed, it could be detached from its first base and swung across, disassembled and packed up again. It required a rope-and-pulley system and it had a limited span, but it would obviously work and it could be quickly transported.
    ‘Well,’ Torbidda sighed, ‘it’s practical.’

    Those with families to visit took advantage of the brief end-of-year break. Torbidda spent the time in the Drawing Hall. Agrippina had remained intent on her swing-bridge and he had drawn it up handsomely, but his original idea kept going round in his head. It was foolish to devote more time to it, butAgrippina’s lack of imagination irked and he wanted to prove her wrong. An idea with merit had merit; it was an intellectual problem, nothing more. Her dismissal of the ballistics aspect stemmed from poor understanding; much error could be eliminated with more precise cannons.
    But her criticism of the foundations was sound. He decided they would work better if they grew up instead of down: the moment that the disc connected with the water surface, it would send a powerful signal down to the bedrock, which would form a seed crystal of super-cooled ice, which would prompt a phase-transition to a crystal lattice in the water around it. The problem was to prevent that nucleation from dissipating randomly. Agrippina’s words came back to him:
Nature always finds the quickest way
. The water through which the initial signalburst travelled would be affected by its passage, if only temporarily, so all that was required was to make this dissipate slowly. That done, the column of super-cooled water above the seed would be the path of least resistance. The whole process would happen quickly, making rows of ice-trees appear in the wake of the disc skipping over the water.
    He got up to stretch his legs and looked at the strange warped reflections in the great mirrors. The evening sun made the wrought-iron leaves of the windows look autumnal and fragile. He thought of the year, the struggles, violence and cruelty and the lessons learned, and he admitted to himself something that he could no longer deny: his mother had not betrayed him.
He
had betrayed
himself
– and that betrayal had begun before he could walk, from the time his hands could manipulate tools: fixing broken things, improving and making queer machines, the babble of numbers that grew louder every year; the comical patterns in the footsteps of a lame neighbour, the guilty rhythm of the midnight doorknocker, the sombre ratio of coloured leaves falling among the dead ones. He was as far beyond theother Cadets as they were beyond other children. Problems that stumped them, he solved effortlessly; his destruction of Four had merely been the first example.
    ‘Knew I’d find you here.’
    ‘Spinther! What news?’
    They embraced in the warm reflection of the mirrors. After Leto filled him in on city gossip, the Bocca della Verità’s latest slanders, and developments on the Europan front, they discussed their electives. Torbidda had decided on Architecture, believing the mother of all arts would bring him closest to Bernoulli. Leto chose Military Applications for the same reason. The dark star they revolved around had mastered all