Read Online The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight by Jonathan Strahan [Editor] - Free Book Online
Authors: Jonathan Strahan [Editor]
Tags: Fiction
Ads: Link
calculations. "That won't work either. Fashard is paying too much for it; we'd be making a loss on every spool." After sinking money into the factory's lease and other inputs to the doubling process, any attempt to get by without the benefits of that doubling would leave them owing Ezatullah more cash than the remaining sales would bring in.
"Then what choice is left to us?"
"We could keep making the superconductor here," Latifa suggested.
"And get it to Kandahar how?" her grandfather protested. "Do you think we can do business with anyone working that route and expect Ezatullah not to hear about it? Once or twice, maybe, but not if we set up a regular shipment."
Latifa had no answer to that. "We should talk about this in the morning," she said. "You've been working all day; you should get some sleep now."
At her insistence he retired to the factory's office, where they'd put in a mattress and blankets. Latifa stood by the hopper; the last batch of superconductor should have cooled by now, but she was too dejected to attend to it. If they moved the whole operation to Kandahar, the best they could hope for was scraping through without ending up in debt. She didn't doubt that Fashard and her other cousins would do whatever needed to be done – working unpaid, purely for the sake of keeping her grandfather out of trouble – but the prospect of forcing that burden onto them filled her with shame.
Her own dawdling wasn't helping anyone. She put on the heatproof gloves, took the moulds from the kiln and began filling the hopper. She'd once calculated that if Iran's entire grid were to be replaced with a superconducting version, the power no longer being lost in transmission would be enough to light up all of Afghanistan. But if that was just a fantasy, all her other plans were heading for the same fate.
Latifa switched on the winders and watched the strands of wire shuttling from spool to spool, wrapping the stream of pellets from the hopper. Of all the wondrous things the superconductor made possible, this had seemed the simplest – and the safest way to exploit it without attracting too much attention.
But these dull grey beads were all she had. If she wanted to rescue the whole misbegotten venture, she needed to find another way to turn them to her advantage.
* * *
L atifa's grandfather ran from the office, barefoot, eyes wide with fear. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
Latifa could see dents in the ceiling where the pellets had struck. "I'm all right," she assured him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." She looked around; the kilns and the winders were untouched, and there was no damage to the building that a plasterer couldn't fix.
" What did you do? I thought something exploded – or those machines went crazy." He glared at the winders, as if they might have rebelled and started pelting their owners with shrapnel.
Latifa switched off the power from the outlet and approached what remained of her test rig. She'd surrounded it with workbenches turned on their sides, as safety shields. "I'm going to need better reinforcement," she said. "I didn't realise the field would get so strong, so quickly."
Her grandfather stared at the shattered assembly that she'd improvised from a helix of copper pipe. The previous tenants had left all kinds of junk behind, and Latifa had been loath to discard anything that might have turned out to be useful.
"It's a storage device," she explained. "For electricity. The current just sits there going round and round; when you want some of it back you can draw it out. It's not all that different from a battery."
"I'd say it's not all that different from a bomb."
Latifa was chastened. "I was careless; I'm sorry. I was impatient to see if I could make it work at all. The current generates a strong magnetic field, and that puts the whole thing under pressure – but when it's built properly, it will be a solid coil of superconductor, not a lot of pellets stuffed inside a pipe. And we
"Then what choice is left to us?"
"We could keep making the superconductor here," Latifa suggested.
"And get it to Kandahar how?" her grandfather protested. "Do you think we can do business with anyone working that route and expect Ezatullah not to hear about it? Once or twice, maybe, but not if we set up a regular shipment."
Latifa had no answer to that. "We should talk about this in the morning," she said. "You've been working all day; you should get some sleep now."
At her insistence he retired to the factory's office, where they'd put in a mattress and blankets. Latifa stood by the hopper; the last batch of superconductor should have cooled by now, but she was too dejected to attend to it. If they moved the whole operation to Kandahar, the best they could hope for was scraping through without ending up in debt. She didn't doubt that Fashard and her other cousins would do whatever needed to be done – working unpaid, purely for the sake of keeping her grandfather out of trouble – but the prospect of forcing that burden onto them filled her with shame.
Her own dawdling wasn't helping anyone. She put on the heatproof gloves, took the moulds from the kiln and began filling the hopper. She'd once calculated that if Iran's entire grid were to be replaced with a superconducting version, the power no longer being lost in transmission would be enough to light up all of Afghanistan. But if that was just a fantasy, all her other plans were heading for the same fate.
Latifa switched on the winders and watched the strands of wire shuttling from spool to spool, wrapping the stream of pellets from the hopper. Of all the wondrous things the superconductor made possible, this had seemed the simplest – and the safest way to exploit it without attracting too much attention.
But these dull grey beads were all she had. If she wanted to rescue the whole misbegotten venture, she needed to find another way to turn them to her advantage.
* * *
L atifa's grandfather ran from the office, barefoot, eyes wide with fear. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
Latifa could see dents in the ceiling where the pellets had struck. "I'm all right," she assured him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." She looked around; the kilns and the winders were untouched, and there was no damage to the building that a plasterer couldn't fix.
" What did you do? I thought something exploded – or those machines went crazy." He glared at the winders, as if they might have rebelled and started pelting their owners with shrapnel.
Latifa switched off the power from the outlet and approached what remained of her test rig. She'd surrounded it with workbenches turned on their sides, as safety shields. "I'm going to need better reinforcement," she said. "I didn't realise the field would get so strong, so quickly."
Her grandfather stared at the shattered assembly that she'd improvised from a helix of copper pipe. The previous tenants had left all kinds of junk behind, and Latifa had been loath to discard anything that might have turned out to be useful.
"It's a storage device," she explained. "For electricity. The current just sits there going round and round; when you want some of it back you can draw it out. It's not all that different from a battery."
"I'd say it's not all that different from a bomb."
Latifa was chastened. "I was careless; I'm sorry. I was impatient to see if I could make it work at all. The current generates a strong magnetic field, and that puts the whole thing under pressure – but when it's built properly, it will be a solid coil of superconductor, not a lot of pellets stuffed inside a pipe. And we
Similar Books
![Blake, Abby - Keen Inclination [A Bride for Eight Brothers 4] (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme Forever)](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/546081/thumbs/152x264/blake-abby-keen-inclination-a-bride-for-eight-brothers-4-siren-publishing-lovextreme-forever.jpg)
