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electricity. Now you have to first build a generators
to make the electricity.”
    He stopped and faced Peter. “Technology
comes in layers, and you have to have the lower layers to build the
higher ones. You have to make the machines that make the machines
that make the machines. And you can't skip the steps. That's what
I'm saying. It would be like trying to climb a flight of steps
without using the bottom steps first. When the Fall happened, well,
we lost the whole staircase.”
    Peter scowled. “What you're telling me is we
have the weapons of war. But it'll take a generation or two to have
fuel for them, unless unless we use the Gifts for shortcuts.”
    “ Correct, Excellency. If
you want to conquer Rado, you're going to have to make the Church
unhappy in the short term. Eventually we'll have electric pumps to
get oil and factories to make whatever we want. But in the short
term, we have some well-preserved tanks and guns and armored
personnel carriers and things like that, but no fuel. We just have
to make the fuel.”
    “ What about
ammunition?”
    Brutus pursed his lips. “Some of it has to
have gone bad by now. But we have formulas for some of the old
propellants. We can fix the ammo.”
    He thought about it. No way he would be able
to hide the use of “demonic” shortcuts from the Church for long.
They had their spies just as he did. But the leader of the Church
was a man of the world. He would see the need for bending the rules
in private, as long as they continued to pay lip service in public
to the official Church ban on using alien technology.
    “ I'll talk to the
Pontiff,” he said. You get people started on identifying which
wells can still be tapped, and laying your hands on the swizzles
and everflames you need. Get me that fuel!”
     
     

Chapter 8
     
Aria: “and crawled head downward”

    This was a stupid idea. She knew it. Yet
news of his return had fired her interest, and she'd risk it one
last time. The risk of discovery and her mother's displeasure had
always been more than balanced in the past by the thrill of
observing unobserved, and now there was an extra reason for her
trespass. Her pale beauty was not without its uses. The watcher on
the roof that saw the mirror signals was young; he told her the
message before passing it downstairs.
    Still, this was stupid, and she knew it. The
ventilation duct that had afforded such opportunities in the past
was not so roomy now that she had grown. Part of her wanted to
shriek at the closeness of the passage, as she wormed her way
toward the vent that looked down on the audience chamber. There was
no room to turn around! She'd have to back out the way that she had
come, all the way to where the big fan had been before part of the
ducting had been made into a swizzle. Even now, the air whispered
past her toward the vent. A thorough bath had washed away the
flowery essences she normally used for perfume.
    Still, this was stupid. All it would take
was a particle of dust, and one incautious sneeze to betray her
presence to those she wished to spy upon. Against this possibility,
she'd plugged her nostrils with bits of cloth. But nothing was ever
certain.
    At last she reached the vent and breathed a
mental sigh of relief. The part of her that hated the closeness of
the duct about her grown body could finally be distracted by the
sights and sounds from the other side of the slotted panel..
    As always, the view was excellent; the vent
was behind and above the Governor's desk. Although the room was not
small, she always brought with her a pocket telescope her mother
had given her when she was just a girl. Naturally, she'd never
disclosed the uses to which this instrument was put in the
ventilation ducts of the old 'scraper.
    There was, she remembered, another duct
opposite this one on the far side of the chamber, from which she
could, if she wished, observe her mother's face during meetings.
But that was far less interesting. Who would want to watch