Chapter 443 — A Trade in Technology
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
After a brief pause for thought, Gao Yang broke the silence. "The Rainbow Light Cannon could 'ignite' your reactor?"
"Perhaps not yet. It is not powerful enough. Compared with our core fusion tower, it is still only a tiny spark..." Tyr turned her head and gazed absently at the cannon on the deck. "But you have made that spark appear..."
Most technologies capable of changing the world are crude in their first prototypes—so crude that the ignorant may well exclaim, "What is the point of this gaudy thing?" In the eyes of a higher civilization, that crudeness is all the more glaring.
Only very few can recognize, at such a stage, the value behind these "small sparks"—and how far they might grow.
Gao Yang had not expected Tyr, forever half-asleep, to possess such vision. But he was glad she did.
A fish with good eyesight tends to take the hook firmly.
"I will get you one," Gao Yang said, nodding to Tyr. "Of course, you will have to give something in return."
"Just name it," Tyr said with great confidence, slapping the deck with her tail, plap-plap. "I am a war priest, after all. I would be of great use to you here. Or do you want wealth and treasures? I can manage that too. Down in the deep..."
"I have no interest in your personal fighting strength or your personal savings," Gao Yang cut her off. "Technology must be traded for technology."
"Traded for technology?" Tyr blinked. "What do you mean?"
"How much do you know about... shipbuilding?"
The moment Gao Yang asked, Byron wore the look of a man thinking, "So we have come to this part at last." Clearly the knight had long known what his lord intended in bringing this siren along. Rebecca, however, had just finished inspecting the Rainbow Light Cannon's condition and was strolling over; hearing Gao Yang's words, she froze, blinked, and stared at him. "Lord Gao Yang, are you planning to have Miss Tyr help us build ships?"
After Gao Yang confirmed it, Rebecca could not help scratching her hair, her gaze toward Tyr full of doubt. "But is she up to it?"
Tyr had not yet answered Gao Yang when she caught Rebecca's skepticism. She looked puzzled. "Why do you assume I cannot?"
Rebecca was probably still lost in the cannon's rune arrays and mechanical structure, her head too muddled to catch up, for she blurted, "Do you sirens even need ships? It is not as if you cannot swim..."
Tyr could not help sizing Rebecca up and down. "You humans can walk, can you not? Why do you build carts?"
Rebecca's expression went blank. It was a long moment before she managed to squeeze out, "Oh. Right..."
Setting aside this girl whose mind was always on some other channel, Tyr turned back to Gao Yang. "You want me to help you build ships, then—fine, I have no problem with that. But first, let me make a few things clear.
"First, what I understand by building a 'ship' is absolutely not the same as your human shipbuilding techniques. For the most part we have no need of a waterborne conveyance that must forever float on the surface and remain sealed and dry. That much is no great problem, though—with our techniques for building waterborne craft, even in a field where we are not proficient, surpassing you would not be difficult. That is not an insult; it is a fact.
"Second, I can teach your craftsmen a great deal—fluid dynamics, materials science, specialized coating techniques, even propulsion technology. But it is quite possible these techniques will prove too far ahead of their time to realize, because they require a whole mountain of prerequisite science and industrial foundation, and I do not know how to build that up step by step either. So it may well be that I serve as your consultant for several years, draw up a great pile of excellent blueprints, and your craftsmen still produce nothing. Do not blame anyone for that.