Gi-Had, the overseer of this manufactory, had complete power over the lives of the workers. If she let him down he could send her to labour in the pitch mine until the black dust rotted out her lungs. 'Is he… angry?'

'I've never seen him so furious!' said Gryste coldly. 'He said if the problem isn't fixed this week, you're finished! Which brings me to another matter…'

Tiaan knew what the foreman was going to say. Stolid-faced, she endured the lecture, the appeal to duty, the veiled threat.

'It is the duty of every one of us to mate, artisan. There can be no exceptions. Our country desperately needs more children. The whole world does.'

'So they can be killed in the war,' she said with a flash of bitterness.

'We did not start it, artisan. But without men to fight, without people to work and support them, without women having more children, we will certainly lose. You are clever, Tiaan, despite this failure. You must pass your talents on.'

'I know my duty, foreman,' Tiaan said, though she did not like to be reminded of it. There was a serious shortage of men at the manufactory. None of those available appealed to her and she was not inclined to share. 'I will take a partner, soon…'

How? Tiaan thought despairingly after he had gone. And who? Why had her controllers failed? Tian went through the problem from the beginning. Controllers drew power from the field, a nebulous aura of force about naturally occurring nodes. The field dominated her life. Artisans made controllers and, more importantly, tuned them so they did not resist the field but drew power smoothly from it to power clankers. If a controller went out of tune, or had to be tuned to a different kind of field artisans did that too. Their work was vital to the war.