Chapter 280: The Tables of Rules

The municipal committee room smelled of wet wool coats, pipe smoke, and old coffee.

The meeting had been going for less than ten minutes, and the men around the long oak table were already shouting at each other.

"There are barely eighty of these machines in the entire city!" one councilman barked, slapping his open palm on the table. "You want to pass new laws for eighty carriages?"

"One of them nearly ran down an apple stall on Highgate Bridge yesterday," a carriage operator shot back from the opposite side. "The horse jumped clear onto the footway!"

"Did it hit the stall?"

"It nearly did!"

"Then perhaps we should pass a law against nervous horses!"

Wallace sat in a wooden chair near the back wall, holding his peaked cap in his lap. He had no idea why he was there. When he looked across the room at Aldren, the transportation superintendent simply stared straight ahead, pretending not to see him.

At the center of the table sat Ernest and Arthur.

The contrast between the two men was obvious to everyone in the room. Ernest had spent the last ten minutes reading through the five-page agenda, turning the leaves with slow, methodical precision, completely ignoring the noise. Arthur, on the other hand, was watching the room like a hawk, watching which councilmen whispered to each other and which carriage owners were looking red in the face.

Ernest looked for the mechanical flaw. Arthur looked for the man who was about to make trouble.

The committee chairman, a gray-haired alderman with thick gold-rimmed spectacles, rapped his wooden gavel twice on the blotter.

"Gentlemen," the chairman said, his voice flat with exhaustion. "We are not here to debate whether we like the machines. We are here because complaints are arriving every morning, and the city magistrates want to know what the rules are before somebody gets hurt."

He looked directly across the table at Ernest. "Baron Teucher. Your works built most of the motorcars currently rolling through our gates. Does your company agree that some order is needed?"

Arthur leaned an inch to his left, whispering out of the side of his mouth: "Do not say anything that sounds like an admission of liability, Ernest."

Ernest set the papers down on the green cloth. "A vehicle that weighs six hundred kilograms and travels faster than a trotting horse cannot operate without rules, Mr. Chairman. That is a simple physical fact."

Arthur closed his eyes and let out a tiny, suffering sigh.

The police superintendent, a heavy man in a dark blue tunic with polished silver buttons, opened a leather docket. "We have twelve formal complaints from the past month regarding excessive speed. On the open avenues, these carriages are traveling far too fast."

Arthur raised his chin. "How was that speed measured, Superintendent? Did your watchmen use stopwatches over a measured furlong?"

The policeman frowned. "They used their eyes, Mr. Pendelton. They were traveling fast."

"A very scientific assessment," Arthur said, smiling with polite poison.

"Arthur," Ernest said quietly.

Arthur sat back, folding his arms.

"The Superintendent is correct," Ernest said, looking around the table. "A Model One can easily reach thirty-five kilometers per hour on a smooth road. In a crowded lane, that is dangerous."

The carriage operator smiled in triumph. "Then we set a single speed limit for the entire city. Six miles an hour. Exactly the pace of an ordinary town cab."

"Six miles an hour defeats the entire purpose of the vehicle," Ernest replied calmly. "You do not build a railway line and force the locomotive to match the walking pace of a pack mule."

"Then what do you propose, Baron?" the chairman asked.

Ernest stood up. He walked over to the large wall map of Helmarte that hung behind the chairman’s chair.

"Not all streets are the same," Ernest said, pointing his finger at the oldest district near the river. "Here, the lanes are narrow, paved with rounded river stone, and crowded with market stalls and children. Ten kilometers per hour—roughly six miles an hour—is the only safe pace."

He moved his finger across the map to the broad avenues surrounding Crown Square. "Here, the street is forty feet wide, surfaced with flat granite setts, with clear visibility for two hundred paces. Twenty-five kilometers per hour is perfectly safe here."

The carriage operator blinked. "What is a kilometer?"

Arthur pressed two fingers to his forehead. "Here we go."

"A kilometer is a thousand meters," Ernest said, his voice shifting into the tone he used when instructing foundry apprentices. "It is a decimal measurement based upon—"

"Ernest," Arthur interrupted, his voice strained. "The council uses miles."

Ernest paused, looking faintly annoyed that the world had not yet adopted sensible metric divisions. "Fifteen miles an hour on the broad avenues. Ten in the commercial streets. Six in the crowded markets."

The police superintendent rubbed his chin. "Three different limits?"

"Different conditions require different speeds," Ernest said. "An experienced driver knows this instinctively. Ask Wallace."

Every head at the table turned toward the back wall.

Wallace froze. His fingers tightened on his cap. "Me, sir?"

"You drive Sixty-Four through this city every day," Ernest said. "What speed do you maintain?"

Wallace cleared his throat, suddenly conscious of the mud still clinging to the heels of his boots. "Depends on the street, sir. Behind an omnibus on King’s Avenue, you’re lucky to walk. When the road clears out near the north park, I run her up to twelve or fifteen. You can feel through the steering wheel when the car wants to slide on wet stone."

The chairman nodded slowly, writing a line in his ledger. "A tiered rule. It makes sense, provided drivers can tell where the boundaries lie."

"We will need road boards," the road commissioner noted. "Painted timber signs at the district lines."

Ernest’s eyes lit up instantly. "The lettering should be white upon a dark blue field. If we use four-inch block characters, a driver traveling at twenty miles an hour can read the notice from thirty paces away, even in twilight."

Wallace couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward from his chair. "Don’t let him design the signs, Mr. Chairman."

The room went completely quiet.