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Silencing the Sirens' Song

Written by Kerryn Offord

 

Meløy, Nordland, Norway, April 1634

Nikulas Anderson woke with the sun streaming through the open window. The air was still and he could hear the roar of the waterfalls at the head of Glomfjord—the noisy fjord. He hated those waterfalls. Three years ago they had claimed his parents, his younger brother, and his baby sister. Birgitte, his baby sister, was the person he missed the most.

For as long as he could remember the waterfalls had held his father in their thrall. His brother Peter had shown an interest in the waterfalls in an attempt to be noticed by their father, but Birgitte had been happy to stay at home with Mama and Nikulas. Until that day three years ago. Then Father had dragged all of his family except Nikulas, who couldn't be spared from the estate, out on that last fatal expedition. How Nikulas hated those waterfalls, and how he hated his father for being seduced by their siren song and taking his family with him.

Nikulas got dressed and collected the rucksack he'd prepared the previous day, then left the house. He didn't need to tell anybody where he was going. The household would know. Today was the third anniversary of that fateful day.

He set off in his small sailing boat for the waterfalls of Glomfjord.

****

Nikulas sailed deep into the fjord, heading for the top, where water from Fykanvatn cascaded.

He beached his boat, then pulled it up onto the stony beach. The steps the rescue party had cut into the rock when they recovered the bodies of his family weren't far away.

After a steep climb of nearly six hundred steps Nikulas was able to look across the body of water that was Fykanvatn. Somewhere in the lake's depths lay the remains of his father, may he rot. He followed the track his father had formed over the years, keeping the lake on his right, until he came to the Fykanaaga, the river that flowed into Fykanvatn, and followed it further up the mountain. A few minutes later he came across the cairn of rocks he was looking for. This was where they'd found his sister's bloody and broken body. Other cairns marked where Nikulas' mother and brother had been found.

Just beyond was a meeting of two streams. To the left was the waterfall Father had been most interested in. The other stream was barely a trickle in comparison, and of no interest to his father. Nikulas started climbing, following the path his family would have followed. Eventually he made his way to the top of the waterfall and looked down. Was this where his family had fallen to be swept down the river to their final resting places? Behind him the river continued up mountain. He turned and followed the river upward.

The waterfall was fed by another lake, called Nedre Navervatn by his father, but this wasn't Nikulas' objective. He turned to the north and followed the ridge line to the top of the mountain known locally as Reben. From this vantage point he looked around. In every direction except to the west, where the fjord lay, there were lakes large and small feeding the waterfalls that flowed into the fjord. The noise was oppressive. You couldn't hear a man scream.

Nikulas sank to his knees and buried his head in his hands. They'd found signs that his sister had been a long time dying. How long had she lain on the bank of the river screaming for help that never came? He would often wake in the night, sure that he could hear his sister pleading for him to come and rescue her.

Nikulas spat on the ground, rose to his feet and looked down at the waterfalls his father had thought so beautiful. Their siren song had killed all that he held dear. He prayed to the Old Norse gods to care for his mother, his brother, and most especially, his baby sister. And he cursed his father, and the waterfalls whose song had seduced him.

 

Arendal, Aust-Agder, Norway, July 1634

 

Magnus Kristjanson waited impatiently for his sister-in-law to call him and the others into her office. In a properly run family he should have been in charge, the one giving the orders. But Inger was a law unto herself. Magnus' brother had spoiled her, pandering to her belief that a woman had the right to speak out. Everybody knew women had no head for business, except for Eilif. And now Inger occupied the place he should have had when Eilif died.

"What's keeping the old witch?" Magnus muttered.

"Her nephew from Meløy is here," Mikkel Agmundson answered.

"Her favorite sister's only surviving child." Agmund Torgeirson placed a hand on his son's shoulder. "Mikkel here thinks she might be planning on sending him with us to Grantville."

"What can a farm boy want from the up-timers?" Magnus demanded.

"Who cares? Just as long as she can get permission from the king for us to go to Grantville and buy the up-timer technology we need," Olav Ravaldson, the fourth man, said.

Magnus gritted his teeth. Inger might not have the ear of the king, but she did have the ears of the wives of many of Christian's top advisors. "I'm sure the witch has everything in hand. She wouldn't have called all of us to meet her unless the trip was approved."

The door opened and Nikulas Anderson appeared. "Gentlemen, if you'd please follow me. Tante Inger will see you now."

USE Steel, just outside the Ring of Fire, Late July, 1634

 

Nikulas waited patiently while the other men in his party questioned their guide. Personally he had no interest in making steel. Unlike Arendal, where the others were based, there was no iron near Meløy. All they had was cattle and sheep. Even the fishing was little more than subsistence, at least compared with the fishing around Lofoten to the north.

Pete Pierce, the guide, explained what they were looking at to Mikkel, who translated for everyone else. Olav, the master metal smith, seemed to be soaking up every word he heard, while Agmund and his son seemed interested in the generalities. Magnus, well, he was just being his normal waste of space.

Pete looked over at Nikulas, and through Mikkel asked if there was anything he wanted to look at.

"I'd like to see the farm implements, but take your time."

Pete looked like he was going to say something, then he glanced over at Mikkel and nodded. Nikulas guessed that whatever he'd been about to suggest had been stymied by the language barrier. Mikkel was the only one of them who was familiar with the dialect of German the up-timer was using.

****

"Did you get what you wanted from the steel mill today?" Nikulas asked his companions.

"Oh, yes, definitely," Olav Ravaldson said. "I have employed two qualified men from USE Steel to help introduce the new processes and I will be talking to Heinrich Roentgen of Ziegelhuette Schwarza Refrakteknik und Feuerfest about buying a supply of their special bricks for my new blast furnace."

"What are you going to use as fuel? Charcoal or this new 'coke'?" Nikulas asked.

Olav waved his hands. "That's already well in hand. Agmund here has already sent his new ship to England for a load of coal."

"What about you two?" Nikulas directed the question to Agmund and his son.

Agmund swallowed the food in his mouth. "We have decided to build a roller mill, so much more efficient than hammering out sheets of iron, and a new drop forge, and . . ." He smiled. "Many more interesting things. And yourself, have you seen anything of interest?"

Nikulas noticed that Agmund had ignored Magnus. So even he had little opinion of his uncle by marriage. "I ordered metal components and plans for several farm machines. They should make the estate more productive."

"Components and plans?" Magnus scoffed. "Why not buy complete machines. It'd be so much easier."

Nikulas bit back his first response. He counted to ten, slowly. "Uncle, why should I waste the estate's money buying expensive wood components from Grantville when there is plenty of cheap wood back home and any number of skilled woodworkers who would be glad to have the work? It is only the steel fittings that I can't get locally."

There was a definite snigger from Mikkel, who hid the smirk on his face behind their itinerary. "After lunch," he read, "we are scheduled to visit the 'power plant.' It is said that no visit to Grantville is complete without seeing it."

"What is so special about this 'power plant'?" Magnus sneered.

Nikulas was stunned. Even he knew how important the power plant was to Grantville. It was the source of much of their wealth. It produced something called electricity which powered many of their machines, and it meant that the machines weren't tied to sources of water power or animal power. Grantville's power plant was surely one of the great wonders of the modern world. His uncle's inability to understand this was another sign that the family was right to continue to place its trust in Tante Inger.

****

The power plant was an immense structure, surely one of the biggest in the world, but it was just a building, and inherently boring. There really wasn't much to see. Even the generator room was a non-event. It was just a massive room with a few men walking about tending to the machines. There was nothing to show that electricity was being made there. Nikulas was most disappointed.

Gannon Emerson, the man assigned to guide the group around, pointed toward a small, solid looking, brick building near the main power plant structure, but separated by a wire fence. "That's Brennerei und Chemiefabrik Schwarza's electric arc nitric acid experimental facility. It uses electricity to extract nitrogen out of the air. It's been a good source of pure nitric acid for some of the chemical industries, but its dead end technology. When the scientists manage to reproduce the Haber process we'll be able to produce more nitrogen than we can ever need at a fraction of the cost." He waited while Mikkel translated.

"So it's a waste of time," Magnus said.

"Not a waste of time, but they started work on the process back when we still had the original turbine running. Back then we had a surplus of electricity and were glad of any load we could get. But since the turbine was decommissioned we're down to a fraction of our old production capacity, and well, the process just isn't economic when we have to burn coal to produce the electricity. What you need is something self-replacing, like a hydro development." Gannon waited for Mikkel to finish translating. "If you'll follow me, I can show you a hydro development."

Nikulas heard a familiar sound when they walked out of the power station. A waterfall. He could see that when the ...