opened in midair, giving brief glimpses of faraway places,
and a test animal imploded. A desperate young intern chased through the labs,
flailing away with a butterfly net, trying to catch an oversized eyeball with
its own fluttering bat wings. I’m sure it had looked perfectly reasonable at the
drafting stage. No one paid any attention to these little disruptions, except to
jump just a little, absentmindedly, at the latest bang. Just another day, in the
armoury. When you’re working at the cutting edges of devious thinking, you have
to expect and allow for the occasional setback, along with regular stinks,
spatial inversions, and the odd unexpected transformation. Everyone who worked
in the armoury was a volunteer drawn from a long list of applications, carefully
selected from those in the family who had clearly demonstrated they had far more
brains than was good for them. (Often accompanied by an unhealthy curiosity and
a complete lack of self-preservation instincts.)
(The really dangerous thinkers were either rapidly promoted to
purely theoretical projects or sent to alternate dimensions and told not to come
back till they’d calmed down.)
The current crop of interns looked like science nerds
everywhere, all heavy spectacles and plastic pocket protectors, except that some
of them wore pointy wizard’s hats as well. A lot of them were wearing T-shirts
under their lab coats, bearing the legend I Blow Things Up, Therefore I Am, Even
If Someone Else Suddenly Isn’t. Science nerd humour. They all looked very
earnest and very committed, and if they survived long enough would eventually be
promoted to the somewhat safer environs of the research and development labs. It
did seem to me though, as I wandered through the chaos in search of the
Armourer, that the old place held a lot more people and projects, along with a
greater general sense of urgency, than I remembered from my last visit, ten
years ago.
Two of the more brawny types were sparring with electrified
brass knuckles, sparks crackling and spitting fiercely on the air as they swung
and parried. One girl had her head stuck deep in a fish tank, proving she could
now breathe underwater. Impressive, but I couldn’t help thinking the gaping rows
of gills on her neck would be a bit of a giveaway in polite society. Not far
away, an unfortunate young man had stopped proving he could now breathe fire,
because it had given him hiccoughs. Unpredictable and highly inflammable
hiccoughs. Someone led him away to put an asbestos bag over his head. I didn’t
see why they couldn’t just stick his head in the fish tank, next to the girl.
And someone had blown up the firing range again. There’s always
someone trying to break the record for biggest and most powerful handgun.
I finally spotted the Armourer up ahead, striding back and forth
through the caverns, keeping a stern eye on everyone and everything. He paused
here and there to dispense advice, encouragement, and the occasional clip on the
ear, where necessary. The Armourer was strict but fair. I waited until he came
back and settled at his usual testing bench, and then I slipped in beside him.
He glanced briefly at me, sniffed loudly, and went back to what he was working
on. It takes a lot to surprise the Armourer.
A tall, middle-aged man with far too much nervous energy, he
wore a permanently stained white lab coat over a T-shirt saying Guns Don’t Kill
People; I Kill People. Two shocks of tufty white hair jutted out over his ears
below a bulging bald pate, and under bushy white eyebrows his eyes were a steely
gray. His expression rarely changed from an habitual scowl, and while he had
once been tall and imposing, he was now bent over by a pronounced stoop, legacy
of so many years spent leaning over workbenches and lab projects that always
needed fixing in a hurry. Or maybe just from ducking a lot. I sat beside him for
a while, waiting for him to say something, but as
and a test animal imploded. A desperate young intern chased through the labs,
flailing away with a butterfly net, trying to catch an oversized eyeball with
its own fluttering bat wings. I’m sure it had looked perfectly reasonable at the
drafting stage. No one paid any attention to these little disruptions, except to
jump just a little, absentmindedly, at the latest bang. Just another day, in the
armoury. When you’re working at the cutting edges of devious thinking, you have
to expect and allow for the occasional setback, along with regular stinks,
spatial inversions, and the odd unexpected transformation. Everyone who worked
in the armoury was a volunteer drawn from a long list of applications, carefully
selected from those in the family who had clearly demonstrated they had far more
brains than was good for them. (Often accompanied by an unhealthy curiosity and
a complete lack of self-preservation instincts.)
(The really dangerous thinkers were either rapidly promoted to
purely theoretical projects or sent to alternate dimensions and told not to come
back till they’d calmed down.)
The current crop of interns looked like science nerds
everywhere, all heavy spectacles and plastic pocket protectors, except that some
of them wore pointy wizard’s hats as well. A lot of them were wearing T-shirts
under their lab coats, bearing the legend I Blow Things Up, Therefore I Am, Even
If Someone Else Suddenly Isn’t. Science nerd humour. They all looked very
earnest and very committed, and if they survived long enough would eventually be
promoted to the somewhat safer environs of the research and development labs. It
did seem to me though, as I wandered through the chaos in search of the
Armourer, that the old place held a lot more people and projects, along with a
greater general sense of urgency, than I remembered from my last visit, ten
years ago.
Two of the more brawny types were sparring with electrified
brass knuckles, sparks crackling and spitting fiercely on the air as they swung
and parried. One girl had her head stuck deep in a fish tank, proving she could
now breathe underwater. Impressive, but I couldn’t help thinking the gaping rows
of gills on her neck would be a bit of a giveaway in polite society. Not far
away, an unfortunate young man had stopped proving he could now breathe fire,
because it had given him hiccoughs. Unpredictable and highly inflammable
hiccoughs. Someone led him away to put an asbestos bag over his head. I didn’t
see why they couldn’t just stick his head in the fish tank, next to the girl.
And someone had blown up the firing range again. There’s always
someone trying to break the record for biggest and most powerful handgun.
I finally spotted the Armourer up ahead, striding back and forth
through the caverns, keeping a stern eye on everyone and everything. He paused
here and there to dispense advice, encouragement, and the occasional clip on the
ear, where necessary. The Armourer was strict but fair. I waited until he came
back and settled at his usual testing bench, and then I slipped in beside him.
He glanced briefly at me, sniffed loudly, and went back to what he was working
on. It takes a lot to surprise the Armourer.
A tall, middle-aged man with far too much nervous energy, he
wore a permanently stained white lab coat over a T-shirt saying Guns Don’t Kill
People; I Kill People. Two shocks of tufty white hair jutted out over his ears
below a bulging bald pate, and under bushy white eyebrows his eyes were a steely
gray. His expression rarely changed from an habitual scowl, and while he had
once been tall and imposing, he was now bent over by a pronounced stoop, legacy
of so many years spent leaning over workbenches and lab projects that always
needed fixing in a hurry. Or maybe just from ducking a lot. I sat beside him for
a while, waiting for him to say something, but as
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