The Highway East

[Tier-Group 3, 10th-Floor Reception Room]

Scarlet withdrew, and in came Anne, who handled eastern affairs, and Dr. Hamada, the civil-engineering specialist.

"On the eastern front, the highway has been completed as far as Ōta Bridge, just short of Oda Castle. We believe, moreover, that the expansion of the dungeon's sphere of influence is now near its limit in terms of distance."

"Beyond the dungeon's sphere of influence, we cannot yet prepare concrete, so from here on we will build the road up to the outskirts of the Oda castle town with 'macadam paving.' To that end, we have already dispatched the Satō crew. Macadam paving, by the way, is a method of laying down crushed stone and compacting it, and it has the advantage of requiring no special materials. However, while it suits carriages, on account of its limited durability and its slipperiness, it does not suit large numbers of automobiles."

So Dr. Hamada explained.

"In the first place, there aren't all that many cars to begin with, so it should be no problem. Eight and a half days on foot is quite far, though."

"Master, it is 350 km. By rights that is an airplane's distance. Unfortunately, the library has no airplane among its furnishings, and manufacturing one would likely be difficult as well."

It would be another matter if the Tokyo City Aerodrome on the seaward side of Jōtō Ward and Fukagawa Ward, or the Haneda Aerodrome in Kamata Ward that private aircraft used, or one of the army's military airfields out around Tama Prefecture, had been turned into a dungeon, but there was no such convenient thing.

"Personal Secretary-dono, an airplane is utterly out of the question under present conditions. As a basic matter, I think an airplane would be difficult for migrants who have household goods to bring. For mass transport an American-made large trailer would do, but that, too, we cannot obtain. Still, unlike an airplane, manufacturing one should eventually become possible."

Dr. Hamada recommended a large trailer. The biggest articulated trailers exceed 30 m in overall length and easily top 100 t in total weight; naturally, a thing like that can run on only a limited number of roads in Japan.

"You mean a so-called 'big rig'? It really is too large; there's no example in Japan of one being used as a bookmobile, and 'building' it ourselves, like the Beton-class battleship, seems difficult too."

"With a ship we could divert a dungeon structure made of compacted sand, but with a truck, if we were to make, say, the large tires that can't be summoned out of dungeon structure, they would lack flexibility, the ride would be wretched, and the cargo would be damaged. What's more, if it strayed out of the sphere of influence by mistake, it would crumble. That said, manufacturing one would be easier than a railway or an airplane."

"Dr. Hamada, conversely, with a train the rails and wheels are iron, so hardness is no problem. Couldn't we summon a steel-frame building, dismantle it, and repurpose the material?"

"The composition of the iron differs between structural steel and railway rails or wheels, but even if we forced that through by turning it into dungeon structure, dungeon structure cannot make things of complex shape, so problems would arise with the motors and so on. Converting a bus or truck into a train is also difficult. Oda Ukyō-no-suke did say that if a railway were built he would run a line straight through the middle of his castle, but for now it is best to set the railway down as flatly 'impossible.'"

"The Oda house does love anything new. Even so, a train through the middle of the castle?"

Would the day ever come when Marie realized it was Oda (小田), not Oda (織田)?

"And can the paving materials be procured?"

"East of Oda Castle we can procure high-quality crushed stone that isn't dungeon-derived, so it should also prove useful in future when we come to make concrete."

"Anne, it's eight and a half days on foot from Oda Castle, but would it be possible to carry the migrants from the eastern land by bus or truck?"

"With the numbers we have now, I don't think we could possibly keep up. Even if we summoned many bookmobiles, there would be too few drivers, and we would need to modify the autonomous driving to this dungeon's specifications, so they couldn't be put to use right away."

"Then do we lay down a transfer circle, inefficient though we know it to be, or think of some other method?"

The transfer circle was in truth an elevator, and its transport capacity was no more than about 500 persons per hour, an efficiency that fell still further once household goods were included; even so, run at full capacity day and night, even a hundred thousand migrants could be moved in thirty days or thereabouts. Of course, the moment something like a railway appeared, it would at once be reduced to junk.