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bedroom in
the house at Number One, Avenue Dragon, he was now sitting in the
middle of a great field of purple flowers that stretched ahead and
to the left and right as far as the eye could see. Each flower was
a foot tall, with a blossom as big around as his hand, with five
purple petals, dark purple along the edge merging with the same
indigo as the little blue bottle in the middle. And in the middle
of each flower, where normally one would find the pistil, was a
very human looking eyeball. Terrence stood up and turned around.
Twenty yards away was a small yellow cottage, with a green roof and
door and two windows with green shutters. And to the left and the
right of the house, and beyond the house, the field of purple
flowers stretched away to the horizon.

Chapter Three: Life in the City of
Brech
    Iolanthe Dechantagne sat in her parlor and
sipped her tea. Across the table her guest mirrored her activity.
He was a tall sandy haired man with deep-set, intelligent blue
eyes. His pin-striped suit was carefully tailored and his paper
collar was tight around his neck. As he sipped his tea, he nodded
appreciatively.
    “ Very nice. An Enclepian blend, if
I’m not mistaken.”
    “ You are quite right, Professor
Calliere,” said Iolanthe, her aquamarine eyes sparkling. “Not many
people can pick it out so easily.”
    “ Well, I’ve made more than a few
trips to Nutooka. Collecting specimens for the university, you
know.”
    “ How is your work going?” Iolanthe
didn’t need to feign interest. She found all knowledge interesting
and it usually proved valuable as well.
    “ Oh, zoology is nothing but a hobby
of mine.” Professor Calliere set down his teacup and leaned
forward. “Not that I haven’t made a few interesting discoveries.
But no, my real work is in the mechanical engineering lab. I just
filed a patent on a very important invention and I expect to be
able to live quite comfortably off the proceeds for the rest of my
life.”
    “ You won’t stop your work?” asked
Iolanthe with one arched brow.
    “ Of course not, but this will allow
me to concentrate on my next project without having to worry about
day to day finances. Money is so… bourgeois.”
    “ Careful now Mr. Calliere. People
will think you are a socialist.”
    He chuckled. “Of course not. I just prefer to
have somebody else deal with the tiresomeness of money.”
    “ So what was this very important
invention?”
    “ Brakes. Brakes for
trains.”
    “ Don’t trains already have brakes?”
wondered Iolanthe. “It seems that all the trains I’ve ridden on did
eventually stop.”
    “ Yes, but the old brakes must be
worked manually. My brakes are pneumatic, which is to say they work
on air power. They will be much safer and will allow trains to
operate with a single brakeman instead of several. Best of all,
engineers won’t have to start stopping so soon, so travel speeds
will actually increase.”
    “ Professor Calliere, you amaze me.
Brakes that actually make a train travel faster?” Iolanthe set down
her own teacup and reached for a tiny cress sandwich. “Try one of
these.”
    “ My next project is far more
advanced,” Calliere paused to bite into the sandwich. “Mechanically
speaking, I mean. I already have my assistant Mr. Murty doing the
groundwork.”
    “ Oh? And just what is
it?”
    “ It’s a calculating machine. It’s
actually an expansion of a device I built several years ago, though
this one will be far more complex.”
    “ What exactly do you mean, ‘a
calculating machine’?” asked Iolanthe.
    “ Just that. It will be a machine,
steam powered of course, which adds and subtracts, multiplies and
divides large numbers, both large in the sense of being very big
numbers and large in the sense of there being a great many of them.
It will calculate and it will do it hundreds of times faster than a
human being. It will be a marvelous test of mechanics.”
    “ It will be more than a mechanical
test,” said Iolanthe. “I