Chapter 20

I went back to having casual sex with those ladies that came to me. There were a lot but I picked the best and not the ones that were just pretty or wrapped up in Wodenism. The best did not mean beautiful all the time.

Wodenism apparently was flourishing. Converts were taking my books and reading them to the uneducated masses of Germania Inferior. I knew it was happening in Gaul and Germania too. I was not acting like the Gideons where I gave away the books but they were sold at cost. This was a bit mercenary on my part but it kept some of the abuse down. Men and women going out to spread the word were offered my assistance but most refused this. They were usually very well treated by those they talked to.

A large temple had been erected here on the Rhine. There were stained glass windows of scenes from the future. One was of an astronaut on the moon planting a flag with the lander and the earth in the background. Another had a picture from space of earth with Europe in the centre.

I could copy the art of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello. The names were also easy to remember because of the Ninja Turtles. Nobody could complain about me stealing this art because the artists would not be born for a thousand years. I wanted the Renaissance now not then. Of course it would not be a re-birth but a continuation.

This art in the form of paintings and statuary would help focus peoples' thoughts better. All religions had shrines in one form or another and a lot of holy relics. To compete I had to get the same things made.

The temple made me think of the majestic organs and church bells. In my conversations to date, I found that the organ had already been invented and used in Rome. Whether a Christian church used it or not was unknown. I wanted this now too as well as a choir. There were no shortage of artists of one ilk or another but I had not set out to find them yet or they had not come to see me.

Tertius was already loaded down with work but Manlius and Iulius were due back in a few days. The old physician liked music and he liked mathematics. He may be a good one to carry on this work with the organ.

I knew that A above middle C was four hundred and forty Hertz and that multiplying by the twelfth root of two would get the note above or dividing to get the note below. Getting the right initial frequency would be difficult but I could guess. In the times to come, we could do some calculations with some sensitive instruments but I would probably be dead by that time.

I needed a machine shop now because I wanted to make tuning forks. Again it was a matter of ear but I had never pursued music very much. I sang and I had played the piano but was never good. Maybe even competent was too strong of a word for my abilities.

There were always jobs all over to do but I wanted to get the organ started. I got the horse ready and brought extra clothes and my armour when a carriage pulled up. I switched over to the 'hand of the gods' mode. The visitors looked to be quite influential. Licinia was introduced to them and I found that she already knew the people.

I said, "I wanted to be off to improve on our temple. Music is pleasing to both the gods and man."

This got into a discussion about what was pleasing to any particular god. This same type of argument had to have gone on since man invented gods. I limited this to ten minutes and they tried to make my departure again. There was no point in being nasty but I had to be adamant on occasion and this was such a time. The group wanted to accompany me but Licinia got them to stay so I would get a head start.

I hurried to the mill. Most of the machinery had been moved to other sites because we now had a steam engine in other buildings turning some steel shafts in the ceiling with large wood pulleys on them. These had been very common at the start of the twentieth century. The same arrangement was here but they were driven by water.

I made ten forks in the pattern I remembered but they were in five lengths. Two forks could be compared and if there was a difference then the beat could be distinguished. Almost all of this was from my grade twelve and thirteen physics and a bit more I had at university.

I got some young men to help me clean them up with files and grindstones and they were good with their hands. The pieces of metal were wrapped in clay to keep the oxidation down and put into a small forge to heat. I then talked about what a tuning fork was and how the wavelength was a function of the length above the 'U' at the bottom. I knew that the material used and the hardness had a distinct factor in the natural frequency.

They came out of the forge and were immediately quenched in water. I also got my wagon load of guests arriving at the same time. While they were shown in we cleaned up the metal. No sparks were flying but everybody wore a pair of safety glasses. The safety part was just that they were worn where something could enter the eye. They were the same as regular glasses otherwise. Some were ground to read or for distance while most were simply flat.

The newcomers were happy to wear the glasses but were still warned that if they took them off they would be expelled even if I could possibly heal them.

I tapped the different forks but was disappointed. One leg did not vibrate the same as the other. They were roughly the same length but the metal was not homogeneous as it would be in later years. I experimented with weights on one side then on the other until one worked the way I wanted. The young men had heard the difference and they took the other nine to get them to work.

When I put the fork on a thin piece of wood supported about fifty centimetres apart, they heard an amplified sound and this made them smile.

I was asked by one of my uninvited guest, "What is all this for besides music?"

"An instrument can be played and most people will enjoy the music. A person familiar with some sounds will cringe at the sounds of others if they are not the same as he usually hears. The answer is to have a standard. There are twelve basic notes in the chromatic scale. More notes are added but always in the same pattern. One note is called middle C because of its location on an instrument. One of the notes above it is A. That note I want to standardise at the frequency of forty hundred and forty Hertz."

They all looked stunned. I had to explain Hertz but now he had to be a god. The relationship between the speed of sound at room temperature, the frequency and the wavelength was mentioned. They were still stunned.

I knew we had wine goblets around for guests and I sent some of the boys for them and for some water. When they came I cleared off the bench in front of me and had the goblets put here. I ran my finger tips around all of them to make sure they were no chips or imperfections. When I was satisfied I wet a finger and ran it around one of the glass containers. Soon a sound came out and everybody looked very surprised.

Everybody had a chance now to do the same thing until they got a pure sound. Not all the glasses were the same so not all the sounds were exactly the same. I put different levels of water in the glasses and then made the same motion but now the sound was different.

I had a class of children with wonder in their eyes at seeing something so new to the world.

"A woman has a higher pitched voice than a man. If she can sing loud enough and at the right pitch she can break the goblets that matches the note she sings." I got the stunned looks again but I knew that they believed me but my word was taken on faith alone.

I directed the group to where they could buy similar glassware. I guess I would have to make singing goblets now as a way of performing music like the buskers in old Québec City.

With the guests now out of the way I said, "I thought of something while I was talking to those people. I want you to trim one or both legs of the forks so we do not need the weights to get them to sound pure."

The boys understood this. "Make some wood boxes," I used my hands to give the dimensions. "I want some pairs of forks with the same sound. It doesn't matter with the pitch is but they have to be the same."

The all nodded at me but I like questions not just blind obedience.

"You are all free to ask questions. You may be intelligent but the best minds are very curious too. When you get a matching pair of forks I want you to put a pen nib on one leg of one fork. The pitch will change. You have to trim this leg and put the nib back on until it matches again."

There was blind obedience or understanding but still no spontaneity. "The tuning fork with the pen is put very close to a sheet of paper until the nib just touches the paper. With ink and the paper being pulled we will see a wave drawn on the paper. Do you understand me?"

They didn't.

I took a wood rod and moved it back and forth a little as one end. I then touched the floor with the end. "This is like the vibrating pen." I backed up slowly and the young men could see the lines in the dirt. The lights came on and I said, "Do you understand?" Now I got some verbal responses.

"One second is hard to calculate with any accuracy yet. When we do we can pull the paper for one second and we can count how many waves are on the paper. When we get four hundred and forty we have A over middle C."

One boy got up the nerve to say, "Why do you need this sound?"

"When we sing we have to match the instruments that are playing. We change our voices a bit to match. There may be many instruments and all of them have to match each other. The musicians will tune their instruments to the note A then tune the rest of their notes to match that."

I did not and could not calculate the twelfth root of two in my head but I told them how this number could be used to get all of the other notes if they had one true one to start with. This could mean making more tuning forks for different notes.

"There is a large musical instrument. It is made of a lot of flutes. Each flute only plays one sound. A smaller version of this has two pedals that pump air into the device. Large ones that I want for our temples will have a boy or two pumping a billows in the back.

"A man or woman sits in front of the device and pushes down some wood blocks called keys. The keys are connected to small valves. The valves let in air from the billows and this goes to one of the flutes. With all your fingers and thumbs along with your feet, you can play a lot of sounds at the same time."

The boy asked, "Why not just play the flute?"

"Some of the flutes are taller than two of you together. You need a lot of air to make them work. The billows makes the sound loud and it can fill a temple even if the temple is very large. Both the gods and men like music and I want to make this instrument so we can show the gods that we are worth their time and effort."

It was the last sentence that did the trick and they all smiled and nodded their heads.

I remembered seeing brass pipe organs so I knew that they were made of brass. Wood was used too but it changed with the temperature and the humidity and this changed the sound that a wood tube would generate. This could open up a new sideline by making instruments or even wind chimes. The wind chimes sounded calming too and I should get them installed in the gardens around a temple.

The boys were sent out to find people that made wood flutes. A dozen came back with the boys and I gave each of them the job of making a flute that made only one note. I had to go through a lot to explain but I didn't want to use the order that I wanted it this way.

It was less than an hour before we had working models though some men were not as good with their hands as others. When the billows was worked, I put the tube over the end then took it away and put it back.

"I can make some valves to allow the air to go to one pipe or a group of pipes. I will get different sounds with each pipe played. Now does anybody here know the best musician we have?"

The boys were sent out to find three men and two women. In the mean time I drew the picture of the key layout I wanted. The first would be simple but I would get many rows of keys to operate other pipes. Peddles had to be made too and knobs that stopped the air going to multiple pipes and restricted to just one.

One woman came here first and I briefly told her what was going on. In a few moments the rest started to show up.

"I want to make a musical instrument to please the gods and please ourselves. Air can be pushed from a bellows and go to metal pipes that make the sounds. A finger pressing a small wood block controls the air and to which pipe it will go. I want you to help me make this device. In a few days Iulius will come here and he will help too."

Nobody knew what was expected of them so we talked about our experiences in music. The boys showed the tuning forks then one told them about the nib and chart. The men talked about their pipes and they used them with the bellows. We had to go to another room and I used a blackboard to show the cavity where the air came in. It had a name like all the other things but I didn't know them.

They were not comfortable with technical drawings so I had to draw some common objects by hand to show them until they were able to understand an orthographic representation. With men holding a hastily constructed box I was able to give the first four notes to Beethoven's fifth symphony. I would know the rest if I heard it but there was no chance of that happening.

I had the meal here at the mill and again we had a very short service before starting. I told the rest of the people what we were doing and why. Dancing had been done in Hildestun but it was very crude. When I asked for an example later some smiled. Almost everybody liked music. I eventually learned that the stomping around was very similar to what was done further east.

The length of a second bothered me. We needed a clock for many reasons other than getting up in the morning. The clock was complicated but the very heart of it was the escapement. This device held and then released a gear driven by a spring. All we had to do was make a clock and wait for one of the two equinoxes. If we got twenty four hours we would have everything perfect. The days before the equinox would almost the same and we could use a sundial to start and end the day.

Getting a clock made was harder than making a cannon and powder for me. Perhaps all I had to do was find some mechanically minded people and get them to work on it. We could start with some spring steel and I think it and transformer steel had a lot of silicon in it but I could be wrong. I had to just try it and see how it worked.

I hated to do it but we made wood pipes and I kept telling the people that they were fine but they went out of tune easily. I showed everybody working on the project how a closed end tube had a quarter of a wavelength while and open ended tube had a half. They suggested that we use the closed end but I knew that the open ended ones were used because there were more harmonics produced.

We went by sound and made two lengths of pipe that had the note we wanted but at a hirer octave. They all agreed that the notes were similar but not the same. We didn't even know what notes they were. I did know that the next higher A was double the frequency of the lower A and the one lower half of the original.

The next day we could play ten notes one was the higher one and was not fitting into the rest yet. I tried playing some music I knew but it didn't sound anything like it had ever played on a piano.

Manlius and Iulius came much later in the day and both listened to my serenade. They thought it good. Then again the quality of music was abysmal at this time.

I professed my need for people that were mechanical but most were just smiths with large hammers. Both men agreed to take over for me while I went off and tried to develop some spring steel. I could use this in many areas and also could be used for holding the valves of the organ down. Gravity could work but I was familiar with what springs would do and not how to do this with heavy valves.

At the forge I began the spring project but combined it with my other projects. I handed out some drawings of a large gear that was used to turn a pair of heavy steel rollers. The framework would be cast iron, the shafts and gears would be steel. I could put in a hot bar of steel and get out a much longer rod of steel. Putting this rod through a furnace and another set of rollers would get it small enough to put through dies. I would get my wire then.

We talked a lot about this and had to make sure we had a powered roller to pull the drawn wire through the dies and wind it up again. The dies would have to be very hard but I just knew that they would not last long.

I did not have that many competent people that I could load projects like this on. For two weeks I made steel in small batches for the springs. Some were better than others but usually metal fatigue got all of them. There were other elements in spring steel to give it the correct properties. I had made a listing of all alloys for any steel. Very few were available.

I then remembered the magnetite and I knew that it usually had vanadium in it. This may help make a better spring but I knew it would help me with making nitric acid. Natural gas or ammonia would provide the raw materials for ammonium nitrate.

There was just too much to do and not enough help to get it done.

I left the spring making to the budding metallurgists. They recorded everything they did so far even if it ate a mountain of paper. If something turned out good or bad we would have a record of what may have caused it.

The wire making equipment was only partially done. I gave a few pointers and left the men to their work. Iulius though was further along. They had made a larger organ of wood pipes with a larger chamber to contain the air.

The difficulty of starting out right still bothered me until I thought of the equation for the wavelength. It was just the speed of sound divided by the frequency. I knew the speed and I knew the frequency. I also knew that a tube of a quarter of the wavelength I wanted would work as I had mentioned before. We even had a glass tube long enough. I measured the sides with my standard metre measuring bar and filled the tube with enough water to bring it up to the height I wanted.

I could not get the glass to resonate and hands had to hold the base for me. It took a while but I got a clear note. As my finger continued to go around I said, "This is A above middle C. Make a column twice as tall and you will get the A that is lower. Make this half the size and you have the upper A. Do the same but don't put a bottom on the tubes. A pair of holes near the top will be used to support the glass column. Tap this with a piece of wood and you will still get the notes we want."

Iulius said, "What about the rest?"

I had worked out the value I wanted to 1.05946 which was as accurate as they needed. I gave them the number and showed them how to multiply by this number to get the next note and then take that figure and multiply again to get the next note. The end result after twelve notes did not get to exactly eight hundred and eighty because of rounding off errors.

I got Iulius to do some long division. He liked showing off that he could do it while pretending not to notice the others consternation. We got the length of a quarter wavelength and thus the notes. This was done again to get the half wavelength.

I now taught them about line graphs and adjusted what 'A' would be. We tinkered with the numbers just a bit and we could see the way the line progressed. With the A notes of other octaves or rather the other chromatic, we could plot out the size of the column of air needed for the note. This would be of use in making the tubes, whether they were brass or wood.

The Greeks were called in with their love of mathematics and we were nearly pushed out in their eagerness to see how mathematics and the real world interacted. They loved the ideas of graphs. They had not been mentioned except where I had touched on integral calculus but they saw their value here. More people were called in and long glass tubes of both kinds were made. Some were rubbed at the top but others were tapped with a soft hammer to get the sound.

We worked for two more days on this until a rider came to tell me that Lucius had arrived. I was not needed here anyways and Iulius liked doing things his way. So did the Greeks.

When I came to the house I knew that something was wrong because everybody was pussyfooting around. They had smiles but they looked false.

Lucius wanted to see me in his study and I went in and closed the door behind me. It would not muffle much of the sound.

There was no preliminary. "What were you planning when you gave your father all those cannon? Is he going to kill more Romans? Do you know how many Romans already died because of your devices? I am surprised the Augustus had not sent for you to crucify you. He has not done it yet but he may now."

He started to go into more of his rant when I said, "I gave the cannon to protect Rome and the Frisians. If Rome got them then they would go after the Frisians and kill them. The Frisians are too few to fight Rome but they can fight beside Rome if they are asked to do so."

"Why would they do that? Your father is not stupid. He would let Rome bleed a lot first."

"He would do it to show the Roman people that he sides with them and he would fight because it is still in the Frisian nature. Finally he would do it for the gold and the glory."

"What gold and glory?"

"Frisians take cannons and a few lancers to Persia. Rome supplies the protection of the cannon crews and the cannon crews kill the Persians. It would be only an hour later that the legions sweep in and take the field."

"Rome could take the cannons then."

"Yes but not much powder. I think that all the crews would know how to use the cannons but not make the powder. Torture would not get Rome much but a very angry enemy."

"Clovis could not do that much then."

"I was talking about me."

After both of us cooled down we talked about the other aspects of the trip to Germania.

I talked about the tall trees and the size I could make the school. Lucius learned of the small sawmill and loved the idea. I talked of its strengths and weaknesses and how I wanted to change the design.

"Rufus and I went fishing. Did you like our catch?"

"Fish is always appreciated. Rufus said you had a lot of difficulty." This was said with a grin. "You had to stop fishing to clean the fish and salt them. Can't you make a machine for that?"

"Perhaps a long time from now a machine could do this for us but now we can only have a table that goes by slowly carrying the fish to the men and women cleaning them."

"He said you saved the portions everybody would throw away."

"It went into the soil. It stinks but it's good."

"Rufus wants to build a mighty ship to harvest the sea. He says one trip would make him rich."

"Rufus does not think how much. He has to pay for the ship and how much he has to pay to keep it working. There is very good money in this though. Don't you remember me talking about a ship that would go up and down the Rhine?"

"I did not think it would be good for fishing too."

"It may not but you can make another one that is. Did you notice any work on the river?"

"People are driving poles into the water. It must be you but why?"

"You are familiar with locks." Lucius nodded. "I take all the land I can from the river and then build a very high wall. Stone and clay are used to hold the water out when I remove the water that trapped inside. I dig into the river bottom and into the shore and make a large area that is flat and deep. I build what you would call large ships there. When they are done I let the water in and float the ships out. With the gates closed I can pump the water out again and start another ship."

"How big is the ship you are going to build?"

"I have not decided yet. I was thinking of four times the length of our newest ship and the same sort of width. This one has no sails and only has steam. The props are protected inside the hull and the stern is very low so nets that are miles long can be hauled in. This ship will have a machine that will freeze the fish in ice. Food does not go bad very fast when it is in ice. We can sail around Gaul, Hispania, and into the Mare Internum. You fish and sell as you go. You can even sell to Rome then do the same thing in reverse."

"Why would I want to sell to Rome?"

"You get an idea of how long it takes to sail there. My estimate with a good steel ship that it would take three weeks."

"Three weeks! I would be flying not sailing."

"You can fish. A good ship, only much larger, could be used to take your wine directly to Rome. At the same time you could take passengers, mail and lots of cargo for you and others."

"You are talking about ships that are so large that I cannot see them in my mind. How could I afford them?"

"You and I are making cognac and whiskey. My father likes it and so does an old friend of yours."

"Who is that? You always make me ask."

"That way it is you, that has asked for the information. The friend is Gnaeus Scipio Magnus."

"He was not my friend. He was our commander." This was said stiffly.

"He asked my father to be transferred to my care since he gave his word to me. He is now in charge of security at the school. He and the Franks along with a few Gauls hunt and fish. They pitch in with building the school too."

"That is hard to see. He was always very Roman in his outlook. He was strict. All commanders are that way but he was more so."

"He has accepted Woden into his life. Rome still has a tight hold of him but his word is stronger. You may visit but I do not want any pressure put on his word."

"Will you tell..." he looked around and whispered in my ear, "the Augustus?"

I whispered back, "When I see him next."

"Does he know that Magnus is your prisoner?"

"I told him. There was a war going on at the time and I had no chance to find out what happened. The camp was a shambles and we went in there to save those we could. It would take a long time before they could travel and it was only the Frisians that could find enough food to feed them."

"You told me this before but it is still hard to imagine."

"What are your plans now?"

"The school needs a boiler a hollow iron frames called radiators that take the heat from the fire and send it to the rooms. I need a lot more steel bolts to hold the large beams together. Then I have twenty books to write and then have thousands of copies of each. There is a ship to complete and a new one to build. I need the refrigeration and most of all I have to begin on making the fertiliser. I am building a large musical instrument that the Greeks had but mine will be much grander. It will go into the temple here and others will go into more temples including those in Rome."

"The Christians hold power and may not like it."

"I will treat them with respect as I treat all other faiths. They have a saying about turning the other cheek. I do not do that."

"Men show respect to power. Men respect Rome."

"Wise men do, but fanatics are not sane. There are fanatics to Woden too and I do my best to control them but once they leave I do not know what they are doing. The Frisians are a good example. They do not care too much for life and know that if they die in battle they will go to Valhalla. A man without this belief would not do the same actions so in a way this too is insanity."

Lucius said, "That is why men want to control religion."

"That is true and this gives a politician much more power. This is also why I have to separate religion from the state. It is going to be a hard fight."

Lucius whispered, "This would reduce the power of the Augustus."

I just nodded my head. This was my intention all along and I had to also find a way of keeping the head of the Wodenist movement from being an emperor.

Lucius came out without any bleeding and the family was happy that we were still friends. I stayed for a meal and went over the finances. Lucius and his family were rich. I made a graph of the projected prices of distilled spirits in the years to come. "At some time the governments are going to step in try to take some of the enormous profits away from you."

"We already pay taxes."

"They see the gold and want more of it."

"What about your steel?"

"That could happen but steel prices will fall. We need millions of tonnes of it made each year and both Gaul and Germania will be making it too. Rome will get into this activity and so will Hispania, Britannia, and most other countries. The price will come down for the raw material but the products made with it will not fall as far. Basically what I am trying to get at is that steel is necessary for a country or province to grow. It cannot be taxed too much. Alcohol is not necessary and can carry a very heavy tax. The same will happen to wine and ale."