Deljon Gint hated it when his boss started in on “mentorin’“. Deljon wasn’t sure what the word meant, but he thought it must at least partly mean “more work”. “OK, Del,“ Rikherd Gormal would say, “today maybe I’ll mentor you on the proper way to join up two lengths of iron pipe.” Next thing Deljon knew he was up to his neck in pipes to join up, along with all his other jobs. And, once he got good and fast at pipe joining, so he had some time to sit and rest himself when Rik wasn’t looking, Rik would mentor him on something else, and he’d be too busy all over again.

The only thing that kept him from giving Rik a piece of his mind was that as he was mentored on new things, Rik would usually perk up his pay packet a bit. Also, Del noticed, Rik had hired a third person, a young woman, to help with the cleaning, straightening, fetching tools, and so on. In truth, Del was earning a bit more pay for doing no more work; it was different work, and if he’d had a good grasp of what Rik was really up to when he did his mentoring, he’d have realized he was learning tasks that required more skill and experience.

By the end of his first year working for Rik, Del was earning enough to rent a room that was dry and not too drafty, get enough to eat as long as it was mostly beans and rice, and even buy a couple new shirts. He could also have an ale or two at the tavern each night, but he thought of that as more of a necessity than a luxury.

During these early days, Del actually understood what the work was for, and he saw how it could turn out well. The idea was straightforward: windmills would draw water from a handful of hand-dug wells in and around the village; it would be stored in holding tanks. The tanks in turn fed into a system of pipes (some of ’em is MY pipes, Del would sometimes think with pride); the pipes fed homes and businesses that didn’t happen to have their own well.

As Del saw it, things began to go haywire when a visitor came to the village. He was an old friend of Rik’s, and Rik invited Del to have dinner with them. “You could learn a lot from Linder,“ Rik said. “He’s practically been ’round the world, and he’s seen things you couldn’t imagine.” Del’s imagination was not particularly versatile; when Rik said this, he recalled someone once saying flying pigs were impossible–that’s how he remembered it, anyway. Del thought maybe he’d ask Rik’s friend about it.

Dinner was a shock to Del. He had a whole beefsteak to himself, along with taters cooked in butter, green beans, and fresh-baked rolls (they were still HOT!). Ale was plentiful, and there was wine also. Del had never had wine. He didn’t much like it; too sour-like, he thought, sorta bites the tip o’ my tongue.

Rik’s friend Linder Lohk had just returned from somewhere very, very far away; he told Del it was twenty-one days of good sailing to get back home. Del wondered if he should put a stop to such bald-faced lying; he had a cousin in Bluff-on-Sea who told him he’d sailed all the way to Spotland, and that only took 7 or 8 days. Del was quite sure there couldn’t be anywhere that was much further away than Spotland.

Then the conversation took a very odd and, to Del, somewhat ominous turn. “In Zhang (another lie, whoever heard of somewhere called Zhang?), they drill wells that bring up salty water; they let the water evaporate, (‘nother made-up word) and that’s how they get salt. Been doin’ it for hundreds o’ years.” Rik leaned forward eagerly. Del leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.

“But get this,” Linder continued. “Sometimes when they’re drillin’, they hit somethin’ that spews out gas. Mostly, it doesn’t smell but sometimes it’s stinky.” He paused for effect. “It burns, see, the gas burns!” He slapped his palm on the table for emphasis.

“Good Gluff,” said Rik.

Del had actually seen bubbles on the surface of a nearby creek. In one or two places, they formed frequently and vigorously enough so he could hear them pop from the bank. In one spot, he remembered, they did smell stinky.

“Gets better,” said Linder. “They store it in these big tanks, and the tanks can feed pipes, and pipes take the gas to wherever they want to put a gas lamp.”

This was clearly malarky, Del saw; the jump from bubbles (which, he was sure, did not actually burn) to a flame in everyone’s house was like saying you could get gold from lead, like saying pigs could fly. He also saw Rik’s eyes were glittering, which made him nervous in the same way the word “mentorin'” did.

After that there was a lot more malarky, though nothing like magic burning gas. Linder was explaining how they drilled; it involved a long iron rod, and a way to lift it a bit then drop it, over and over. The rod was called a “bit” (sounds too big, wouldn’t go in no horse’s mouth). There was something about flushing out the debris. His head’s full o’ debris, thought Del. Maybe full o’ gas, too.

Del was sure the wine was doing something to Rik’s mind. It had to be; he wasn’t prone to wild thoughts, though there was that time he tried to fill a big bag with hot air to see if it’d float. There’s easier ways to burn down yer shop, Del thought, though the resulting fire was actually pretty small.

The next morning, first thing, Rik dragged him to the creek. “We need to test this out,” he said, wading into one of the deeper pools, one with frequent, large bubbles. Del wished he’d tied a rope to him; swimming was not one of Del’s skills (ain’t been mentored on that’n yet), and he worried about his meal ticket–rather, his boss–drowning. Rik had his flint and steel with him, held carefully above the water. “Here goes,” he said, striking a spark near one of the bubbles.

Nothing. Might as well try ‘n’ light the water, Del thought.

Rik tried again. And again, and again, and…on about the tenth try, there was a tiny whooof sound, and Del thought he imagined a small, bluish flame for a split second. Rik hooted and whooped. More tries, and eventually, another small fireball; now Del was sure he’d seen it. So now all we hafta do is collect up them bubbles, cart ’em somewhere, stick ’em in a pipe, and we’re home free, Del thought. What on Gluff’s earth could go wrong?

That was the real beginning, Del recalled, of the folly. It was one thing after another after that. ‘Least, he thought, Rik’s stopped his mentorin’. Sometimes it seemed to Del like Rik couldn’t mentor because, well, even Rik didn’t know what in Gluff’s name he was doing.

First, Rik wanted to make two iron rods, one about six inches in diameter and fairly short, the other only 2 inches in diameter and longer. They had to somehow be screwed together. That meant special tools; no one in the village had cut threads on a rod this large. At the other end of the thinner rod, Del wanted a ring, to attach it to rope. Never be able to move it, Del thought, and told Rik so.

Rik did some cypherin’ (as Del called it) and said it would take a few sturdy men to move it.

Rik did no mentorin’ on how to fashion such a monstrosity; but, with Del’s help (Del threw in the word indispensable when he thought about the help he gave), they got it done.

It got weirder. Rik wanted a tower built near one of the pools with lots of bubbles. It had to be sturdy, he said, and maybe twenty feet high.

Next was making some pulleys; Del had actually been mentored on this, as part of his earlier work, so that went well. One was attached to the crossbeams at the top of the tower. Other pulleys were needed, and some stout planks, and though Del told Rik every step of the way why it wouldn’t–couldn’t–work, Rik bulled on, like a hungry dog with a juicy bone.

Finally, the great iron rod hung down the center of the tower, held by sturdy rope, one end resting on the ground. The rope ran through the pulley at the top of the tower and then through a series of other pulleys. There were pieces added to the tower, wood struts pointing inward, to keep the rod centered. There was slack in the rope, and Del could see that if the rope were pulled a bit, the slack would pull out, and the rope would lift the bit up off the ground.

Del tugged at the end of the rope; between the friction of the pulleys and the weight of the rods, nothing budged. He’s built somethin’ to keep that little patch o’ dirt under the bit in its place, alright, Del thought.

The end of the rope was secured to the underside of a long, very thick plank. Del remembered Rik had done a lot of cypherin’ before deciding how long the plank should be, and where it needed to rest on a nice round log; the log was fixed in place.

Del was having trouble keeping up with all of Rik’s made-up words. He’d called the log a full-something-or-other…fulldumb? No…fulcrum, that was it. Del decided to call it a “follycrum”.

Rik was speaking. “OK, Del, let’s take a little walk–we’ll start at that end of the plank–” he pointed to the end nearest the tower–“and walk to that end.”

“What happens when we get there?” asked Del.

“Rod should lift up a bit.”

“Then what?”

“We jump off.”

“Uh huh.” Del wondered why they would go to the trouble of walking all the way along the plank if they were just going to jump off anyway. Couldn’t they just skip the plank and walk to the spot where they’d land after they jumped?

They lined up on the plank, Rik in front of Del, and began to walk slowly to the other end. The plank creaked; Del was surprised it didn’t bend. He noticed another thing not happening: the rope did not lift the rod. The plank tilted down at first, but only until the slack was taken out of the rope; after that, the rod remained stubbornly in place.

“Oh, piddle,” said Rik. “OK, let’s go back to the other end, and I’ll figure this out.”

There was more cypherin’, with Rik finally exclaiming, “Oh Gluff, what a dumb mistake.”

Glad he finally sees it, thought Del.

For the next couple of hours, Rik and Del rearranged some things; the biggest task was to move the follycrum a bit, so it was considerably closer to the end where the rope was tied.

They were ready to try again about the time dusk was setting in. Del’s stomach had been growling for some time, and he hoped this was the last folly activity of the day.

They set out along the plank; the slack came out like before, but nothing else moved…until they got within a few feet of the end. Then–if Del hadn’t been there he’d’ve said it was impossible–the rod began to lift. By the time they were at the end of the plank, it was a good foot off the ground.

“When I say ‘jump’, we jump.” A short pause. “JUMP!” The end of the plank where they’d been standing leapt upward, the end near the tower dropped, the rope running through the pulleys sang, and the bar dropped to the earth with a solid thud.

Del wondered whether he’d missed something, the way Rik jumped and whooped. Maybe the rod turned into gold or silver? He decided it was just another chapter in the book o’ folly.

“Dinner’s on me, Del!”

Over the next weeks, Del noticed the setbacks more than he noticed the steps forward. He thought it was all follyness (he loved that word, and didn’t seem to know he’d invented it); the work seemed dreary, other than the pay in his pocket and the entertainment of watching Fin celebrate small victories.

A system was rigged involving a horse turning a large horizontal wheel; there was a great deal of sketching and cypherin’ ahead of that, but in the end, as the wheel turned, some odd-looking parts on the underside of it worked to move the plank and raise and drop the rod.

The horse-driven contraption was a welcome advance. Fin had hired three teenage boys—not as stout as he or Del—to do the walk-and-jump trick on the plank, but one of them got distracted fishing something out of his nose and didn’t jump in time. The other two did; when the plank flew up, the nose-prodder was launched a good five or six feet up, tumbled a bit, and landed more-or-less on his face. There was no permanent damage (“yer nose looks better like that,” Del told him), but it halted operations until the horse could go to work.

Then there was the to-do about clearing the debris. Del didn’t notice much cyphering, but there was a lot of sketching. In the end, he didn’t follow how it worked, but it involved flooding the ever-deeper bore hole with water and using tubes with something Fin called “valves” to draw the water, and the muck, back out.

The hole got deeper and deeper, but very slowly. Del wondered when Fin would catch on. He hoped it would be a good long while; he now took home enough pay to buy himself ham for breakfast, and even a steak for dinner once in a while.

The hole eventually got deep enough that the bit was nearly entirely below the surface—about 10 feet, Del figured. Then Fin invented a new word. “We have to put in the first section of casing,” he said. Del and a group of sturdy lads pulled the bit back out of the hole, and forced in a section of pipe, about 10 feet long, and the same diameter as the hole.

Partway through the process, Del began to actually chuckle to himself. Mr. Smarty don’t see this comin’, he thought. His fancy bit won’t fit inside this pipe, inside o’ the pipe’s too small.

Once the casing was in place, Fin had his crew remove the 6-inch bit from the 1-inch shaft, and replaced it with a 5-inch bit. Del’s grin faded.

Time went by, as time seems to do. Once the next section of bit was deep in the hole–now almost 20 feet total, Del reckoned–they again pulled the bit out, and slid in a 5-inch casing, and replaced the 5-inch bit with a 4-inch. Folly upon folly, thought Del.

And so it went. Day after day, slowly deeper and deeper, until…

Until the day there was a loud hiss, a shriek really; the rope holding the bit waggled violently, and water and sand spewed out of the hole.

Del had never seen Fin so excited, nor energetic. He was shouting rapid-fire orders: “Pull out the bit! Get in the last section of casing! Grab that plug and get the 6-inch casing plugged up! HOOOOOOOO-WHEEEEEEE!”

It was another month of hard work before everything was ready to spark up the first gaslight. It was ceremonial; the light wasn’t anywhere it would do any good by itself, but it showed that the well worked, the storage tank worked, the pipe system worked… Good Gluff, Del thought, it really, really works.

Fin had invented yet another word as they worked through the parts of the system. “You’re my foreman,” he told Del. “You’re in charge of making sure things happen when they need to happen, and nothing gets missed.” Del’s pay packet got bigger than he thought a pay packet could be.

After the ceremonial lamp lighting, Del turned to his boss and shook his hand. “Dinner’s on me, boss,” he said. “‘N’ mebbe we should talk about the next steps in that mentorin’ thing.”