Cato's new office was huge. There was even a desk for Polankal, a peasant turned secretary. Elegant wood paneling decorated the walls and floor, products of the steel tipped wood planer that could cut planks to exact dimensions. The elegant and minimalist layout of the desks, chairs and filing cabinets was part of the new fashion wave. Their steel legs and polished surfaces made for ideal office furniture, with little adornments to steal the eye's attention when it should be focused on paperwork.
The Minmay University had grown from the consultancy and research work it did for the companies in the city. The result was three new office buildings to house additional staff and less destructive experimental facilities.
Cato looked up from his stack of the latest experimental reports from the Ironworkers. Aluminum was coming along, still fraught with problems but the Minmay Ironworker company was stamping out the last few issues. It was a pleasant day of reading that was interrupted by a perfunctory knock on his door before the Chancellor himself stepped into the office.
"Chancellor Minmay, what can I do for you?" Cato said, rising from his seat.
"Hey Cato, congratulations on your recent engagement," the chancellor grinned at him. "I hear you are heading to the Iris Clan to formally announce it to her father?"
"Yes? It shouldn't affect my consultancy work, but I won't be working on new magic research during that time. I do need a break from that though. "
Minmay just nodded. "Yes, you do deserve a holiday. I was going to ask you to coordinate our schedules. I am also heading to the Iris at Barin town in a month. Given the success of our last talk, King Ektal and I are going to discuss the future of Minmay there and I would like you to be present as you did before. "
What he really meant was that Cato should be there as a reminder that Minmay currently held important scientific assets.
"We are also going to discuss logistics of the expedition north and your input to that would be welcome. "
Meaning Cato would be allowed to talk in that meeting.
Oh well, at least Cato and Landar would just have to leave and arrive first so they could get their engagement party out of the way before the political talks started.
"I understand. " Cato paused and asked the chancellor, "did you come here just to tell me that?"
They had a Minmay Post Office now, and such notices really should be in writing.
"You'll get an official notice later through the mail," Minmay replied. "Muller wants to meet regarding the sewer project and your office is just on the way. Come with me, there's some troubles about infrastructure I'd like your input on. "
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Muller's report on the infrastructure project was both enlightening to the issues as well as troubling.
The large map of the city sprawled over the table in the businessman's office detailed the network of underground sewers, water and magical power pipes. In the more expensive districts, all three were present densely and marked to show they were of the third generation of such design.
"And so we have to do more work on the main Market Street, the water pipe there needs upgrading to the new design due to all the demand from the shops. They're already experiencing low pressure downstream of that road and I can't increase the water tower's pressure without bursting the pipes on Market Street. And over down by Ailecourt too, they share a tower. "
The Chancellor frowned as he considered the plans. Any waterworks would be slow and costly as it held up traffic on Minmay's busiest and biggest road. "Muller, this is the third time you've had to dig on that street. You can't go around digging holes in my city three times a year, and laying a whole new pipe? You're asking me to close that street for two weeks. At least!"
Muller almost pouted, "I'll probably need three weeks. The higher pressure pipes are bigger and need a deeper hole. Plus the magic power line is also there and will need to be worked around. "
"And why not use their access holes? They had the sense to leave their pipes accessible if covered. You shared a tunnel with them on Lakeshore road. "
The construction man shook his head, "no. The Minmay Power magic lines have too small holes, and even the old first generation water pipe is too small. I need to lay a water main, not a small branch line. "
Cato shuffled the pages detailing the plans of Muller's water lines under Market Street, trying to recall what the Sewerage company spinoff had done there. While not in direct competition, Muller's construction company, Sewerage and Minmay Power were sending their infrastructure across Minmay in their own schedule and in their own way. Magic power lines could be smaller and closer to the surface, did not require the sloping drainage of the sewerage nor the concrete base for sealed pressurized water pipes. Each of the three companies created tunnels according to their needs and their customers' needs and they did not necessarily know what the other companies were doing. With the rising prosperity and the associated demand for utilities, the public works was getting unmanageable.
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"I think this needs a different paradigm," Cato interrupted them. "Public utilities need to lay their infrastructure and their services across Minmay but having three companies doing digging is a problem. Together with the roads themselves, this sort of work comes under the heading of utilities. If we're to eventually extend this service across the whole city, we're going to need a different sort of company.
Muller and I should bring this up to the Lesser Council about creating a different type of company charter. Public utilities are going to be very important for future development. This problem of upgrading each of the three lines and the road at different times is just one symptom. We not only need a company which is responsible public infrastructure as a whole, we also need to prevent using that access to the infrastructure for commercial manipulation. If a shop here depends on Muller's water pipes, then Muller's company can easily refuse to connect water to deny a competitor.
Plus we don't want to contaminate the fresh water supply with sewerage leaks. Just having a general policy of 'keep the sewers downstream' is not good enough. Requiring any infrastructure and service designated a 'public work' to file public plans with the Minmay council will help with both scheduling and planning around each other's requirements.
I recall there was a type of company on Earth called a public utility which was given responsibility of a type of infrastructure and had to provide a 'fair' cost regardless of who the customer was. In practice, the Lesser Circle should debate the rules and designate regions of the city to receive infrastructure services for this prospective company or companies. This sort of structure should also apply to the mana wells rather than leaving it to the current free for all drilling. "
Which might work for Muller too. His spin off company to handle sewerage was fine since nearly everyone did not want the city to stink. Running water was a luxury that was quickly becoming a fact of life but not quite cheap enough to be providing it to whole city, and his construction company was stuck managing a few water lines. Magic power rarely overlapped either of them as its main demand was the industrial district rather than commercial or residential areas.
A public works company that was some mix of government and private that handled sewerage and water while contracting construction companies to lay lines was a more sane way to organize things. And would help prevent wastefully digging holes one month for sewers, the next for water and again for magic.
Not that Muller or his higher level partners would lose much since they would have fingers in both pies.
From the Chancellor's perspective, having public plans for utilities would help commercial and district planning while further strengthening central control. Always a good thing for him. Despite Minmay's purge of criminal elements, the occasional corruption problem still cropped up as there was no mechanism to track or control who was doing what and where.
So it was not a surprise to Cato when the two men agreed to create a proposal for the Lesser Council to debate on.
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"So the Magical Materials department managed to take some time out of the Ironworker's Water project to take a look at the Aura. The best they could tell was that Aura is definitely a magical material, as creating it requires the same concentration of magic into a small volume as with the others like Liquid Light. Furthermore, flexible materials like string and cloth definitely show that the phasing effect is a physical movement like acceleration magic and the way that enclosed candles stay lit when shifted shows wherever the Aura is moving things into contains air. The weird part is that the shadow effect doesn't seem to shift materials out of reality if Aura is created in too small quantity. "
Landar finished her summary of the findings of the Aura Light investigation that Cato had thrown to the university alchemists. The name was promptly shortened to Aura even though no one had managed to replicated the glowing version reported by Elkas in the mountains. Cato was far too busy with the Lesser Council, arranging University funding from research consultations and the development of the second generation magic circle.
"So we still have no idea what Aura actually does. " Cato sighed. Despite his initial intuition that Aura shunted objects sideways into an unseen fourth dimension, the mechanics of such a thing was turning to be rather more complicated than just a fourth axis of motion.
For one thing, the drop experiments seemed to indicate gravity worked differently in there. More like, there appeared to be none at all. But then the rotation or motion of the planet around ought to cause the phased objects to go shooting off into the distance once they were unlinked from the gravity of Firma. Something was holding them in place.
Plus if the fourth dimension contained air as evidenced by candles staying lit and piyos staying breathing, presumably from the planet around them, then Kalny's tin food shouldn't have worked at all. A three dimensional container would not keep out air in a four dimensional space. And now news of a low, but definitely there, minimum required power to phase any physical object except light.
The fourth dimension was turning out to be rather mysterious place.
"You two, enough being lovebirds in the corner, lunch is ready. " The interruption to Landar's report came from Kupo, who was on cooking duty today. The merchant convoy they were attached two had stopped for a midday break since they had reached the Tine river crossing. Muller's half-completed bridge soaring over them as they camped on the riverside.
Cato looked at Landar, seeing his own amusement dancing in her eyes. They shared a quiet giggle at Kupo's words before turning to the baked sandwiches. To think talking about Landar's projects was considered being romantic to other people!
"We could discuss the arrangements for our engagement announcement," Landar laughed.
Wait, there were arrangements? Wasn't it just Cato getting her parents' permission?
"Oh, did you forget to Cato about the Iris traditions?" Kupo shot back. Cato schooled his expression quickly but it was clearly too late.
Landar looked at him with wide eyes. "It's nothing that bad," she reassured him, "just a formal dinner and a..."
A what? Landar's sudden pale face did not bode well.
Luckily, just as Cato was about to get seriously worried, she put on a determined expression, "-and if Father tries to test your power for 'suitability', I have a shield piercing spellforming wand that will show him the error of that decision. "
Cato sighed in relief, so it was just an Iris family tradition. Power obsessed as they were, this sort of test was not unexpected. Well, surely they wouldn't insist on it for out of family marriages right?