Architect Neron's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

The crew worked faster than Neron drew. By mid-morning they set the last leg on his map and stopped. Marcus Callahan wiped his hands and looked at the architect. "That's your drawing done," he said. "Where do we go next?" Neron had no answer. His plan ended at that leg. He had spent six chapters solving problems by hand, alone. Now his hand could not keep up. The laborer, Marcus Rivera, set a frame down and folded his arms. "Steel's staged. Window's open," he said. "We don't have a mark to drive it." Maya knelt by the crate and checked the supply she had left. "You've got materials sitting here," she said. "No design to put them in. That's waste." Her voice stayed flat. It cut worse for staying flat. Neron looked at the drafting board. Extending the design by hand meant days. The crew would stand idle. Idle crews cost money and drifted away. He needed the next section fast, and correct. Dax stepped out from the shadow of the crate. His cracked chest glowed blue. The crack had widened since dawn. "I count things," Dax said. "Cracks. Windows. The herd. F-fourteen animals, always." He pointed at the shelf. "I counted your legs. The spacing repeats. Every leg is the same distance from the last one." Neron stared at him. The child was right. The four legs sat on a fixed grid. He had drawn each one slow, by hand, when the pattern could simply repeat. "Say the spacing," Neron said. Dax gave the number without pause. Neron took the number and marked the shelf where the next leg belonged. Then the next. He did not draw a full plan. He laid down the grid, point by point, with Dax counting each interval aloud. "Mark them ahead of us," Marcus said. He saw it work. "You feed us points. We drive legs. Nobody stops." They moved. Neron set marks. Rivera hauled steel to each one. Maya tensioned the cables as the legs went in. Dax called the spacing and the herd window both. The crew no longer waited on the drafting board. They waited on a number, and the number came fast. By dusk eleven legs stood locked and true. The idle time was gone. Neron had traded his slow hand for a grid the crew could outrun no more. Marcus Callahan stamped one boot on the fresh shelf. It held. "Now we can build all month," he said. Then he looked at the crate. "If we had the steel." Maya lifted the last frame from it and set it on Rivera's mark. The crate stood empty. Eleven legs stood. Neron needed twenty-nine more, and he had nothing left to build them with.