The Year of Rice and Salt

Nadir nodded his acknowledgement of this truth. 'And yet you did not invite him to your demonstration with this pump that creates a void in the air.'

'I did not think he would be interested in such a small matter.'

'The Khan is interested in everything.'

None of them could tell by Nadir's face whether he was joking or not.

'We would be happy to display the void pump to him.'

'Good. That would be appreciated. But remember also that he wishes specific help with cannonry, and with defence against cannonry.'

Khalid nodded. 'We will honour his wish, effendi.'

After Nadir was gone, Khalid grumbled unhappily. 'Interested in everything! How can he say that and not laugh!' Nevertheless he sent a servant with a formal invitation to the Khan, to witness the new apparatus. And before the visit occurred he had the whole compound at work, developing a new demonstration of the pump which he hoped would impress the Khan.

When Sayyed Abdul Aziz and his retinue made their visit, the globe that was to hold the void this time was made of two half globes, one edge mortised to fit the other precisely, with a thin oiled leather gasket placed between the two before the air was pumped out of the space between them, and thick steel braces for each globe, to which ropes could be tied.

Sayyed Abdul sat on his cushions and inspected the two halves of the globe closely. Khalid explained to him: 'When the air is removed, the two halves of the globe will adhere together with great strength.' He placed the halves together, pulled them apart; placed them together again, screwed the pump into the one that had the hole for it, and gestured for Paxtakor to wind the pump out and in and out again, ten times. Then he brought the device over to the Khan, and invited him to try to pull the two halves of the globe apart.

It could not be done. The Khan looked bored. Khalid took the device out to the central yard of the compound, where two teams of three horses each were held waiting. Their draft harnesses were hooked to the two sides of the globe, and the horses led apart until the globe hung in the air between them. When the horses were steadied, still facing away from each other, the horseboys cracked their whips, and the two teams of horses snorted and shoved and skipped as they attempted to pull away; they skittered sideways, shifted, struggled, and all the while the globe hung from the quivering horizontal ropes. The globe could not be pulled apart; even little charges made by the horse teams only brought them up short, staggering.

The Khan watched the horses with interest, but the globe he seemed to disregard. After a few minutes of straining, Khalid had the horses stopped, and he unhooked the apparatus and brought it over to the Khan and Nadir and their group. When he unscrewed the stopcock, the air hissed back into the globe, and the two halves came apart as easily as slices of an orange. Khalid stripped out the smashed leather gasket.

'You see,' he said, 'it was the force of the air, or rather the pull of the void, that kept the halves together so strongly.'

The Khan got up to leave, and his retainers rose with him. It seemed he was almost falling asleep. 'So?' he said. 'I want to blow my enemies apart, not hold them together.' With a wave of his hand he left.

Inside the Night, Inside the Light

This unenthusiastic response on the part of the Khan worried Bahram. No interest in an apparatus that had fascinated the scholars of the madressa; instead, a command to discover some new weapon or fortification that had eluded the hard search of all the armourers of all the ages. And if they failed, the possible punishments were only too easy to imagine. Khalid's absent hand mocked them from its own kind of void. Khalid would stare at the end of his wrist and say, 'Someday all of me will look like you.'

Now he merely looked around the compound. 'Tell Paxtakor to obtain new cannon from Nadir for testing. Three at each weight, and all manner of powder and shot.'

'We have powder here.'

'Of course.' A withering glare: 'I want to see what they have that is not ours.'