Free Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs Page B

under pressure. One of the Malfena college of engineers is a mountaineer as well.’
    I was puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Well,’ she said, slowly, in a slightly school-marmish voice. ‘On any mountaineering expedition, everything – every bit of gear – must be multifunctional.’ She indicated the stove with her hand. ‘This is a stove, but it is also a heater in cold weather. The alcohol inside it is fuel for the device, but also a cleansing agent and, while horrible to the taste, quite intoxicating.’ She smiled, showing teeth nearly as white and gleaming as Wasler’s. ‘ Daemons are cheap, yes, but in many ways they are cumbersome and not very versatile.’
    ‘Cheap? I’ve only had a few dealings with engineers and the word “cheap” never entered my mind.’
    She nodded. ‘Well, they are cheap if you consider the time a summoned daemon can last. Barring any unforeseen consequences, a daemon in, say, a steamship or mechanized baggage train can remain bound for hundreds of years. Daemon light fixtures will last millennia – we think, at least. So, if you amortized the initial cost of the engineer’s work over the life of the infernal object …’
    I could see what she was getting at. ‘Ammunition is another matter.’
    ‘This is true. Hellfire pistols, with their Imp rounds, are a different proposition all together.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t believe on a reliance on any single technology. So, little things – like this stove – are important.’
    ‘I wouldn’t mind having one of those stoves myself. How pricey are they?’
    ‘I can send a letter at the next post we encounter. It might be a few months before Persa receives it and then months more before he can answer. Where shall I have him send his response?’
    ‘To the Postmaster General in New Damnation. He will hold it for me there.’
    From one of the pockets in her jacket, she withdrew a charcoal pencil and small bound notebook and took that down. When she was finished, she smiled again.
    Wasler, who had remained silent all this time, clapped his hands lightly, and said, ‘Are you ready for your portrait, Mr Ilys?’
    ‘I reckon so,’ I said.

    Wasler made a great fuss about how he wanted me to sit and the comportment of my body for the portrait while Winfried busied herself setting up the infernographical device that would record my image. It wasn’t very large, the image-making machine – only slightly larger than the Quotidian – but the wooden contraption they had to mount it on was quite big. Like most of the Lomaxes’ gear it was a collapsible folding wooden artifice, which when fully deployed came to about eye level on a man and had a horizontally-aligned board suspended behind it.
    It took Winfried quite a long time to set up the damned thing and, finally, she withdrew a portfolio and removed a thick piece of smooth, bleached-white parchment, very expensive if my rough eye were any judge, and fastened it to the board.
    ‘Mr Ilys,’ Wasler said, looking at me thoughtfully and rubbing his chin. ‘Do you have a saddle?’
    ‘Sure,’ I answered. ‘In my tent, since Bess is stabled below.’
    ‘I think it would be good to have it here, in frame.’
    ‘Why? We ain’t got no mount for it.’
    ‘For sociological detail,’ Wasler said.
    ‘I don’t even know what that means,’ I said.
    ‘Can you get it?’
    ‘Sure.’ I rose, went to our tent. When I entered and grabbed the saddle, Fisk looked at me with raised eyebrows.
    ‘For the portrait,’ I said.
    The barest hint of a smile touched his mouth. ‘You’ll need to take up the girth quite a bit to get that saddle to stay on your back.’
    ‘You’re a cruel man, Fisk. I’ve always known that about you,’ I said, and left the tent.
    After he had artfully placed my saddle at my feet, I had to endure more of Wasler’s fussy positioning and posing before he was satisfied.
    ‘Ah!’ He said, as if realizing something. ‘I know what’s missing.’
    ‘What’s