|
Mil-tech bard
Captain (Junior Grade)
Posts: 256
Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 2:25 pm
|
Catching up after a lay off here... Regards this: brnicholas wrote:Yet my quotes from HHNF say explicitly that the sidings were put in to support the digging of the Traisum cut and Fort Salby's status as the end of the line. There are a number of ways to read these quotes together including Howard's suggesting that the rail head being referred to here bypasses a rail ferry the Sharonans had been using to move trains across the Red Sea. It seems far more probable to me Janaki is either in error (for Janaki's reliability note that the line was well past Fort Salby by the time Darcel arrived) or referring to something other then the first arrival of trains at Fort Salby. So there was a railroad available to bring supplies in for digging the Traisum cut.
Nicholas
Please see the following passage regards the several hundred mile rail gap to Ft Salby and the distance gaps in the Sharonan Voice Network.: 1st Multiverse book, Chapter 9 pg 151 - 154 * * *
Haliyar Narmayla struggled to hold back tears as the carriage clattered through the cobbled streets of New Ramath. The cavalry escort riding in front of her cleared the way, giving her carriage absolute priority, and the port master had already been alerted to expect her arrival. The dispatch boat was undoubtedly raising steam even as the well-sprung, rubber-tired carriage swayed and vibrated over the cobbles.
It was impossible to see much, or would have been, if she'd had the heart to look out the window in the first place. New Ramath was a respectable small city—or very large town, depending on one's standards—but it was no huge metropolis. It was also out towards the end of the explored multiverse. In fact, its only reason for existence was to serve Fort Tharkoma, perched in its mountainous aerie almost four hundred miles inland, where it covered both the exit portal from the universe of Salym and also the railhead from Sharona itself. Additional track was being laid beyond Tharkoma, of course. In fact, the actual railhead was currently no more than a few hundred miles short of Fort Salby in the universe of Traisum.
But New Ramath was a critical link in the chain which bound the ever expanding frontier to the home universe. The entry portal for Salym was guarded by Fort Losaltha, almost fourteen hundred miles from Fort Tharkoma. The rail line could have been extended from Losaltha directly to Tharkoma, but Losaltha was located at the Salym equivalent of Barkesh in Teramandor, where the fist of the Narhathan Peninsula and the Fist of Bolakin closed off the eastern end of the Mbisi Sea. A rail line would have had to skirt the northern coast of the Mbisi and penetrate some of the most rugged mountains to be found in any universe. With its long experience, the Portal Authority and the shareholders of the Trans-Temporal Express had opted to avoid the huge construction costs and delay that would have entailed and utilize the water route, instead.
The city of Losaltha, built on the splendid harbor which had served Barkesh for so many thousands of years back in Sharona, was in the process of becoming a major industrial city. For now, however, the Express and Portal Authority were still shipping steamships through to Salym by rail. They arrived as premanufactured modules, which were assembled at Losaltha and then put into service, closing the water gap between Losaltha and New Ramath. In fact, it had amazed Haliyar when she realized just how big the modules the Trans-Temporal Express's specialized freight cars could transport really were. Of course, most of the shipping here in Salym was still of local manufacture—small, wooden-hulled, and mostly powered by sail. That was the norm in the out-universes, after all.
But given the fact that New Ramath's sole reason for being was to handle the bigger, faster TTE freighters and passenger vessels plying back and forth between Losaltha and the Tharkoma Portal, its dockyards and wharves were several times the size one might have expected, with not a few luxury hotels under construction. But it remained a provincial city, for the most part, with few of the amenities those closer to the heart of civilization took for granted. Which had struck Haliyar as particularly amusing when she was first assigned here, since Tharkoma was little more than two hundred miles from Larakesh, the Ylani Sea seaport serving the very first portal ever discovered, and little more than three hundred miles from Tajvana itself. Or, rather, from the locations Larakesh and Tajvana occupied in Sharona.
And why are you letting your mind run on like a crazed tour guide at a moment like this?
Her mouth tightened as the question drove through her brain, but she knew the answer. It was to keep from thinking about the message locked in the agonized depths of that self-same mind.
If only Josam hadn't taken ill, she thought bitterly.
But he had. Josam chan Rakail was the Voice assigned to Fort Tharkoma, and he had the range to reach Chenrys Hordan, in the small town of Hurkaym. Hurkaym was actually little more than a village, built on the island which would have been Jerekhas off the toe of the boot of the Osmarian Peninsula to serve as a link in the Voice chain between Fort Tharkoma and Fort Losaltha. Josam could reach Hurkaym easily, but Haliyar's range was far more limited. That was why she'd been assigned to serve as the New Ramath Voice and link the city to the portal fortress. But Josam had come down with what sounded like pneumonia, and his assistant Voice at Tharkoma had even less maximum range than Haliyar did. Which meant all he'd been able to do was to relay the message to her for her to pass on to Chenrys.
And since I don't have the range to do it from here, either, I'm going to have to get into range in the first place, she thought.
She finally glanced out the window. It was the middle of the night in New Ramath, and without gas streetlamps, the city was wrapped in slumbering darkness, sleeping peacefully. She wondered how that would change when its inhabitants discovered the news she was about to pass on.
Her fingertips traced the hard, round outline of the pocket watch in the breast pocket of her warm jacket. It was hard to believe, even for a Voice, that less than half an hour had passed since the vicious attack on the Chalgyn Consortium's survey crew, five universes, two continents, and an ocean away from New Ramath. Haliyar bit her lip, fighting back a fresh burst of tears.
She'd met Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband on their way through Salym. As a Voice herself, although never one in Shaylar's league, she'd been unable to avoid feeling the echoes of their mutual devotion. Their marriage bond was so strong that no telepath—whether of Voice caliber, or not—could spend five minutes in their company without feeling it, whether she wanted to or not. And that made the agony of Seeing Jathmar's horrible death before Shaylar's very eyes, and then Seeing—and feeling—the even more terrible moment when Shaylar's Voice went abruptly silent, even worse. The experience had been like an ax blow, and now it was her job to pass that dreadful, soul-searing experience on to Chenrys in all its horrifying detail.
She wouldn't have had to do this if Josam hadn't fallen ill. She might have managed to avoid the unbearable immediacy of knowing exactly what had happened to two people she had both liked and admired deeply . . . and envied more deeply still.
The carriage slowed, and she drew a deep breath, preparing to climb down when the door opened. The dispatch boat—an incredibly fast little vessel, powered by the new steam turbines and capable of sustained speeds of thirty knots or more—lay waiting for her, smoke pluming from its two strongly raked funnels. It wouldn't have to take her all the way to Hurkaym. Haliyar's range was almost three hundred miles; getting her as far as the west coast of Osmaria would allow her to reach Chenrys, and that would take the dispatch boat less than four hours. Then the message—and all its grim, horrible imagery—would go flashing further along the transit chain literally at the speed of thought.
There were still water gaps which couldn't be closed by convenient relay stations like Hurkaym, Haliyar thought as the carriage came fully to a halt. Those were going to impose delays much greater than just four hours. Still, the message would reach Tajvana and the Portal Authority's headquarters there in less than a week.
And what happens then, she thought as the coachman's assistant opened the door for her, scarcely bears thinking on.
She stood for a moment, gazing at the dispatch boat under the bright, gas-powered lights of the TTE wharf, and tried not to shiver.
NB: The several hundred mile but under construction long distance rail gap to Ft Salby was no mistake... ...And Howard's speculative point about a sea port and short service railway for Ft. Salby Logistics is a lot stronger. |
