Chapter 13: Discoveries

The next seven months were very busy for the people living in Tah’s house.

Prue worked on the business side as required. For the most part, she left it up to the team she had put together to get things up and running. It was their town and their people, so they knew who was who, where the best places to build were and where to get the resources that they need.

Lyle had turned out a godsend, and he ran the office. Tah and Raghu looked after everything that needed to happen out of the office. They knew whom to woo, and their status opened a lot of doors, Prue felt she would have had trouble getting them to open for her.

She spent a lot of time at the Academe working with the Masters. Tah’s uncle was one of her main contacts, and he even got the people from the other Academe to come to Prue, so she didn’t have to travel. If she wasn’t at the academe, she was in her lab investigating materials that best suited for the inventions she was designing.

She had come across a new metal called chromium and felt this was the discovery she had been looking for. It would change the compositions of the steels she needed for her generators and motors and mitigate some of the side effects of currents circulating in the iron cores. She was very excited by this finding.

She had even found if mixed with nickel and iron she was able to produce a wire capable of handling higher currents. It gave off light and heat, and she had a lot of uses for both effects. She knew it made many other applications she had been trying to develop now possible.

She also investigated a paper written by a Druid Kale who mentioned strange effects, when he put a wire carrying current near particular lead crystals. If they were sitting on a plate, that was also connected to the power source. Sometimes it let the current through and sometimes they didn’t.

He had worked out it depended on which face of the crystal he tried to put the charge through. Prue also felt this was something that was going to become very important for her future developments. As she was investigating the pros and cons of alternating current generation, compared to direct current generation.

She had her generators built, and perfected features she worked out could be improved. She sent six of them off to John in Sunland for his Communication network. He wrote back that her timing was impeccable. They had run the wiring for several systems, but they needed the generators to get them into service.

He had also set her a team to start building a system in Nordland. He told her they were also starting to get one built for communication to Bavindor. It said it might take a couple of years to get the major cities connected, but he was working on it.

Prue knew her time was running out and she would have to head back to Bavindor soon. She had stayed longer than she intended but felt it had been worth it. She needed to get her other plants built. She believed she had the information she had come to Haldor for.

With Master Dahl’s help, she had finished her book and had sent copies to each of the major Academies. This caused a lot of interesting mail. But as no one could come up with experiments to disprove her theories, they started taking root. She was now getting mail from interested parties to review their designs, and if she thought, they would work.

She often felt she didn’t have enough hours in a day and could do with a break.

Brian finally got Mary to agree to marry him.

They had a weekend off to hold the wedding, as he wasn’t going to let Mary wiggle out of it. They even elected to use the simpler wedding ceremony. They had one of the Druid’s marry them at the house.

The topic of conversation was when Tah and Prue would marry. Tah simply said whenever Prue set the date. Prue avoided the topic as much as possible. They ended up having an argument about getting married that night.

Prue reminded him she had commitments and she would be leaving in a couple of weeks. Tah said fine, he would be going with her. Prue argued it wouldn’t work and she didn’t want him to come with her. Tah ended up storming out, and the air was definitely chilly in the house for the next couple of weeks.

Tah didn’t come back to her bed either. Tina and Raghu also ended up not on speaking or sleeping terms. Prue told Tina that if she wanted to stay, to not to let her decisions determine her love life. Tina said if Prue went, then she went too.

Raghu was getting too damn demanding anyway. She didn’t want to get married, as she believed she was too young. Nianna also became a pain. At nearly eleven months, she was teething again, and the only one she would quieten for was Tah. Prue had also decided to start to wean her as she bit hard.

Nianna had already started on cereals and purees. She was thriving on bottled milk. Prue was down to two feeds a day, by the time they left. Nerves in the house were decidedly frazzled by the week before Prue had organised to leave.

Most of Prue and Tah’s contact centred on Nianna. Prue was really worried about him when they left. He wasn’t taking the break in their relationship well, and she hadn’t left yet. She didn’t like the cold shoulder treatment either.

Tah only spoke to her if he had to and rarely stayed in the same room as her, longer than he had to. It really pissed Prue off. She missed him more than she wanted to admit to herself and decided it was probably a good thing.

She had decided to travel by coach and had already sent a lot of her working materials on ahead. It was faster than going by ship, as she would be crossing to Bavindor by going overland. The ship had to go a long way round and skirt Sunland. The trip would take about ten days by coach.