Cradle of Life

"Mr. Vick." Sinclair drew a deep breath. "...This is..."

"A special Spiritual Reaction Vessel," Gordon said.

"It looks..." Sinclair forced himself to continue, finally finding another word. "Wait, this is an... artificial womb."

The moment he thought of a womb, everything clicked for Sinclair.

"Ah, an excellent craftsman always grasps a client's needs quickly and gets straight to their essence." Gordon's eyes lit up.

"Haha, so it's a womb... I thought it was... wait!" Sinclair abruptly grew serious and gave Gordon a startled, suspicious look. "Why? Could you explain?"

"This is part of the Blackwater River project," Gordon said. "You graduated from the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences University too. You know how the university sometimes has us conduct crazy experiments. This is an essential piece of equipment for my project."

That was the beauty of having the Blackwater River project.

No matter how outrageous the request, he could say it was preparation for the presentation.

"Are you making a themed exhibition about the 'Mother of the Blackwater River'?" Sinclair asked helplessly.

"It's mainly to maintain a stable environment for a certain spiritual reaction involving the Blackwater River. As you know, the river has been getting stranger lately. Do be careful," Gordon said.

Talk was one thing.

Sinclair still maintained his professional attitude and examined Gordon's requirements on the plans.

After all, ninety-nine percent of the Spiritual Workshop's clients were unwilling to explain what they actually intended to use their commissions for.

In short...

This "womb" needed to operate continuously for ten days while maintaining a stable internal temperature.

It needed to simulate gentle, continuous contractions. All its materials had to be suitable for subsequent spiritual conditioning.

It had to have a separate injection port. It also needed to open and close so materials could easily be added.

There had to be a backup means of releasing pressure in an emergency if the equipment malfunctioned.

"A glass observation window won't work." Sinclair made marks on the plans. "If there are any complex reactions inside, ordinary glass won't withstand them. We can use mica sheets, which will let you make out silhouettes. A Rubber Sealing Ring won't work either. Rubber absorbs supernatural activity. After ten days, it might grow a pair of legs."

"That's fine. Let's follow the professional's advice." Gordon agreed completely.

"You mentioned that it needs to simulate 'contractions.'" Sinclair studied the plans. "Do you need different settings?"

"Yes, preferably adjustable from two to ten per minute." Gordon considered it carefully. "Oh, add a setting of less than once per minute, to simulate dormancy."

Looks like it really isn't for getting himself off. Sinclair privately breathed a sigh of relief. The frequency didn't fit.

Sinclair and Gordon went over the details several times, and every time they brought their ideas into alignment, the device's safety improved.

Gordon knew the goal and the principles, and how it all needed to work with the Tidal Birth-Rite, but he didn't know exactly what kind of equipment to build.

Sinclair didn't know what Gordon was really up to, but he knew exactly how to make a machine balance insulation, sealing, and spiritual reactions.

He took another sheet of paper and began designing a Steam-Driven Eccentric Wheel Mechanism to transmit pressure alternately, something Gordon had never considered.

That was the purpose of a craftsman: to lend a hand to every recklessly ambitious dream.

"...Done." Sinclair stood and flexed his aching wrist.

By now, the plans were vastly more refined than Gordon's original conception.

"..." Gordon looked at the densely packed annotations and nodded in satisfaction.

If he wanted to give a brand-new source substance a suitable place to be born, a carefully designed womb was clearly far better than a casually commissioned model-and more in keeping with modern civilization than a giant clam shell suspended from iron chains.

"I only have one question." Sinclair looked at Gordon seriously. "If it succeeds, it... I see it has an actual 'birth canal.' What exactly is going to come out of it?"

"Valuable experience in humanity's understanding of the world." Gordon smiled.

Sinclair looked at Gordon for two seconds.

"Twenty gold pounds, with a five-gold-pound deposit," Sinclair estimated. "It'll take about forty-five days."

"Eighteen gold pounds." Gordon's haggling spirit flared to life.

Sinclair froze for a moment.

He had nearly been blinded by Gordon's insights and those perfect plans.

Only now did he realize that, when all was said and done, he was still dealing with a university student.

"Hmm... nineteen gold pounds?"

"Seventeen gold pounds and ten silver pounds, with a six-gold-pound deposit," Gordon said.

"The deposit's actually gone up."

"To demonstrate my sincerity."

"But the total price has gone down."

"To demonstrate yours."

"...Deal." Remembering the help Gordon had given him, Sinclair held out his hand, and they shook. This was already cost price.

Sinclair wrote out a receipt, then stopped at the commission name field.

"What exactly should we call this thing?" he asked. "We can't write 'Mr. Vick's Womb.' That could cause misunderstandings."

"Of course not... we can call it the 'Cradle of Life,'" Gordon said.

"You have to guarantee that no living thing will be put inside it, that no living thing will come out of it, and that it won't be put inside anything alive," Sinclair said finally.

"I guarantee it." Gordon thought for a moment. "None of those three things will happen."

Gordon handed over the deposit and took another look at the plans, now covered in revisions.

The Ancient Logrisians had used a Sacred Artifact and river water to create new life. Now Gordon had entrusted the same requirements to spiritual industry.

He wasn't sure whether the finished product would be better.

But he felt that if the original design had been based on some kind of supernatural science, he ought to approach it with scientific rigor now as well.

Looking at the plans, Sinclair also felt a stir of emotion.

He was always assembling ammunition for hunters or crafting source substance jewelry for jewelers. Those were highly profitable products, serving violence, power, and vanity...

But now, he seemed to be genuinely working toward some unknown science.

"Although you don't want to spell it out, Mr. Vick, I imagine you won't tell me where the experiment will take place, and don't want me there either. I understand," Sinclair said.

"Very professional."

"...But if this equipment works successfully, please be sure to treat me to a meal."

"Of course."

Gordon was very satisfied as he left the Spiritual Workshop with Vera.

The Cradle of Life he was preparing for his second source substance was gradually taking shape, no longer merely an idea in his head.

"Seventeen gold pounds for a..." Vera thought for a long time, but still couldn't bring herself to say the embarrassing word. "...Pressure cooker."

"This is an investment," Gordon said. "I'm going to have to defend science."

"I hope whatever it cooks up is worth far more than seventeen gold pounds and ten silver pounds."

"It certainly will be," Gordon said.

A source substance imbued with power would definitely be worth more than seventeen gold pounds.

And now, he had completed an extremely important step toward his second source substance.

It was evening by the time they returned to 9 Knights Road.

The cooker had been ordered, but Gordon still needed to reply to the woman who had inspired him.

"Dear Miss Grant," Gordon wrote in his reply to Eve across the sea. "Thank you for your letter... your assessment is very valuable, particularly the part concerning the spirals surrounding the embryo design. We will continue investigating... all right, Vera, you handle the rest."

Gordon put down his pen.

"Ah, finally." Vera had long since grown tired of the formalities of academic correspondence. "I'll dictate. You write."

"All right."

"'You are a very clever person,'" Vera said. "'You helped me make a pressure cooker, which will be extremely useful to me. We will continue investigating the Blackwater River, and if we discover anything new, we will write again. Wishing you good health. Gordon Vick.'"

Gordon polished it to make sure it wasn't too impolite, then read it from beginning to end. It seemed concise enough and sufficiently appropriate.

Most importantly, it really did make him sound like a harmless university student.

"Very good, very good." Gordon was pleased. "If academic correspondence were always like this, we'd unravel the secrets of source substance decades earlier."

"Of course."

Gordon placed the letter in a white envelope and had Vera send it.

He glanced at the darkness outside and decided to go to bed, feeling utterly relaxed and at ease.

It felt as though the "If only I could go back to before the Rescue Festival holiday" service he had purchased had now taken effect.

Let the Rescue Festival holiday begin!

Gordon slept for a very long time.

It was a truly deep sleep.

His severely overtaxed body finally received a complete reset.

By the time he woke, the sky was pitch-black.

Yet he clearly remembered that it had also been pitch-black outside when he fell asleep.

The entire world therefore felt unfamiliar.

Whatever the case, he felt as if the dust had been cleaned out of his brain, leaving it running more powerfully overall.

The Blackwater River, the Tidal Birth-Rite, Olivia, the Cradle of Life, his student loan... they were all still there, but now they were neatly arranged on a web, each in its proper place.

So sleeping could be this wonderful...

And he was still enjoying the blissful Rescue Festival holiday. It felt so unreal.

In any case, he needed to find something that could serve as an anchor to reality.

Gordon entered the living room just as he heard a blade slice through the air.

The table and chairs had all been moved against the walls, and Vera stood in the center of the room.

She held the Black Piercer, wearing nothing but stockings and bandages, her figure toned and well-proportioned.

Vera stepped forward and thrust her sword straight out, taking the shortest possible path.

Had there been an enemy before her, that thrust would have pierced their heart.

Then she drew back her sword and retreated, thrusting it out with a reverse grip, straight for her enemy's head.

Every movement was precise and perfect, as though calculated in advance.

Gordon noticed that Vera's left shoulder moved freely. The wound from the battle at the pumping station had completely disappeared.

The Regeneration Mixture, stitches, and Gordon's health management had finally seen that wound off.

Left to her own devices, Vera would probably still have been under some bridge, baring her teeth whenever the slightest movement tugged at it.

"You slept for twenty-six hours." Vera didn't turn her head.

"I never woke up?"

"You did. You woke up and asked where you were. I said 9 Knights Road. Then you rolled over and went back to sleep."

"I have absolutely no memory of that," Gordon said with wonder.

He really had slept deeply. It was as though he had sunk into the deep sea, briefly surfaced for a breath midway through, then gone back to sleep.

Vera had prepared a pot of beef and carrots for Gordon. His stomach was utterly empty.

There was also an invitation on the table.

"What's this?" Gordon picked it up to read.

"It's from Charlotte," Vera said. "Go to St. Duncan Square tomorrow morning for the Rescue Festival charity sale."

"Sounds like a respectable event." Gordon understood. "She came by?"

"She did. Asked whether you were dead. I said no. She said not to die."

"I'm pretty sure she said a lot more than that."

"Ah, but that's all I remember." Vera looked perfectly innocent.