Reaper Man

There was a series of thumps and twanging noises as the top half of the human extricated itself from the machinery, and turned out to belong to a young man with black curly hair, a black face, black shirt, and black apron. He wiped a cloth across his face, leaving a pink smear, and blinked the sweat out of his eyes.

‘Who’re you?’

GOOD OLD BILL DOOR? WORKING FOR MISS FLITWORTH?

‘Oh, yes. The man in the fire? Hero of the hour, I heard. Put it there.’

He extended a black hand. Bill Door looked at it blankly.

I AM SORRY. I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT A THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY IS.

‘I mean your hand, Mr Door.’

Bill Door hesitated, and then put his hand in the young man’s palm. The oil-rimmed eyes glazed for a moment, as the brain overruled the sense of touch, and then the smith smiled.

‘The name’s Simnel. What do you think, eh?’

IT’S A GOOD NAME.

‘No. I mean the machine. Pretty ingenious, eh?’

Bill Door regarded it with polite incomprehension. It looked, at first sight, like a portable windmill that had been attacked by an enormous insect, and at second sight like a touring torture chamber for an Inquisition that wanted to get out and about a bit and enjoy the fresh air. Mysterious jointed arms stuck out at various angles. There were belts, and long springs. The whole thing was mounted on spiked metal wheels.

‘Of course, you’re not seeing it at its best when it’s standing still,’ said Simnel. ‘It needs a horse to pull it. At the moment, anyway. I’ve got one or two rather radical ideas in that direction,’ he added dreamily.

IT IS A DEVICE OF SOME SORT?

Simnel looked mildly affronted.

‘I prefer the term machine,’ he said. ‘It will revolutionise farming methods, and drag them kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat. My folk have had this forge for three hundred years, but Ned Simnel doesn’t intend to spend the rest of his life nailing bits of bent metal on to horses, I can tell you.’

Bill looked at him blankly. Then he bent down and glanced under the machine. A dozen sickles were bolted to a big horizontal wheel. Ingenious linkages took power from the wheels, via a selection of pulleys, to a whirligig arrangement of metal arms.

He began to experience a horrible feeling about the thing in front of him, but he asked anyway.

‘Well, the heart of it all is this cam shaft,’ said Simnel, gratified at the interest. ‘The power comes up via the pulley here, and the cams move the swaging arms — that’s these things — and the combing gate, which is operated by the reciprocating mechanism, comes down just as the gripping shutter drops in this slot here, and of course at the same time the two brass balls go round and round and the fletching sheets carry off the straw while the grain drops with the aid of gravity down the riffling screw and into the hopper. Simple.’

AND THE THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY?

‘Good job you reminded me.’ Simnel fished around among the debris on the floor, picked up a small knurled object, and screwed it on to a protruding piece of the mechanism. ‘Very important job. It stops the elliptical cam gradually sliding up the beam shaft and catching on the flange rebate, with disastrous results as you can no doubt imagine.’

Simnel stood back and wiped his hands on a cloth, making them slightly more oily.

‘I’m calling it the Combination Harvester,’ he said.

Bill Door felt very old. In fact he was very old. But he’d never felt it as much as this. Somewhere in the shadow of his soul he felt he knew, without the blacksmith explaining, what it was that the Combination Harvester was supposed to do.

OH.

‘We’re going to give it a trial run this afternoon up in old Peedbury’s big field. It looks very promising, I must say. What you’re looking at now, Mr Door, is the future.’

YES.

Bill Door ran his hand over the framework.

AND THE HARVEST ITSELF?

‘Hmm? What about it?’

WHAT WILL IT THINK OF IT? WILL IT KNOW?

Simnel wrinkled his nose. ‘Know? Know? It won’t know anything. Corn’s corn.’

AND SIXPENCE IS SIXPENCE.

‘Exactly.’ Simnel hesitated. ‘What was it you were wanting?’

The tall figure ran a disconsolate finger over the oily mechanism.

‘Mr Door?’

PARDON? OH. YES. I HAD SOMETHING FOR YOU TO DO— He strode out of the forge and returned almost immediately with something wrapped in silk. He unwrapped it carefully.

He’d made a new handle for the blade — not a straight one, such as they used in the mountains, but the heavy double-curved handle of the plains.

‘You want it beaten out? A new grass nail? Metalwork replacing?’

Bill Door shook his head.

I WANT IT KILLED.

‘Killed?’

YES. TOTALLY. EVERY BIT DESTROYED. SO THAT IT IS ABSOLUTELY DEAD.

‘Nice scythe,’ said Simnel. ‘Seems a shame. You’ve kept a good edge on it—’

DON’T TOUCH IT!

Simnel sucked his finger.

‘Funny,’ he said, ‘I could have sworn I didn’t touch it. My hand was inches away. Well, it’s sharp, anyway.’

He swished it through the air.

‘Yes. Pre/tty sha/rp, I’d s/ay.’

He paused, stuck his little finger in his ear and swivelled it around a bit.

‘You sure you know what you want?’ he said.