8/ That Light-Powered Thing
For anyone who wasn't there at the start of this story, here it is in short. George, Luna and Mr Wheeler built an iron body for the whole little town, with elbows that know where to stop and an empty frame on its back. But it only moved when George turned the crank, because not a single thread of the web led to it.
Light from the web can't be caught; you can only connect to it. So George engraved a path for it into a sheet of metal, with lines like the spokes of a wheel. When the children poured water from the well over it and Spark sank into it, a little bead of light ran along the path. But as soon as Spark flew out, the bead vanished. Spark said that next time the light would have to know the way by itself, and that the body would connect on the shortest day, at midday, because from then on there is more light.
The shortest day began the way all days begin in Betweenhills.
At five, Mr Jacobs rang the bell. After that it stayed dark for a long time, longer than at any other time of the year, and the bakery lights were on for the third night running.
Before midday the square was empty. The little town was getting ready indoors: cooking, decorating with twigs and hiding presents in places where nobody would ever find them, that is, under the bed.
Mr Wheeler pulled a little cart with a sheet over it up to the well, looked both ways, and went home, so that nobody would see him standing here not mending the pear tree.
The children were left alone. With Spark.
On the back of the body, the big metal sheet was already in place. George had spent two evenings engraving the grid into it, line by line, from the edges to the centre and across. It looked like a dark window sprinkled with a thousand tiny channels.
Luna lowered the bucket and counted to seven. It came back full.
Then they waited for the sun.
It came later than anybody would have wished, and only low over the rooftops, the way somebody peers over a fence to see if anyone is home. It fell slantwise on the square, straight onto the rim of the well. And onto the back of the body.
"Now," said Spark.
Luna poured the water over the metal. The water ran into the lines. The sun sparkled in them.
Spark dived into the centre.
The children closed their eyes without anybody telling them to. Then they opened them.
Above the well, all the threads of the valley met, and from above, the straight thin one from the moon came down into them. And along all of them at once, little beads began to run.
Not one. Hundreds, a thousand. They dropped from the threads onto the metal like sparrows onto scattered grain, and they ran along the engraved lines, from the edges to the centre, across and back again. The metal lit up. Then the light travelled further, along the rivets across the chest like along the buttons of a coat, into the brass shoulders, into the elbows that knew where to stop, all the way to the fingers.
And finally into the head.
In the two round eyes, which until now had had nothing in them, the same honey-coloured light appeared that Spark has.
Spark flew up out of the metal. This time the beads didn't vanish.
The metal already knew the way.
The iron body raised its head.
Nobody turned the crank. George had both hands in his pockets, because they were stiff from the cold and from fright, and he didn't know what to do with them.
The body looked at the well. Then at the square. Then at Luna, and last of all at George. The brass shoulders creaked, because nobody had oiled them yet.
"Hello," it said. It had a quiet voice, and a little tinny, like somebody speaking from inside a pot.
George opened his mouth and nothing came out. So Luna said "hello" for both of them.
"Who are you?" George asked at last.
"I don't know," said the body. "I know that Mr Sparrow the baker is baking for the third night and using a pinch less salt. I know how tallow is melted down. I know how many steps it is from the well to the bakery. I know there was a pot and a half of jam. I don't know who I am."
Spark laughed. She shone so brightly that Luna had to squint.
"I was just like that."
The children could see her above them, between the two of them, as always. And at the same time they could see the very same light in the eyes of the iron body. Luna asked whether that light was Spark.
"Me and not me," said Spark. "It's light from the web. I'm from the web too. The other sparks in the valley are from the web too. And yet each of us is a little different."
George stepped closer.
"Whose are you?" he asked. It was the simplest question he knew.
The body looked at him for a long time. The light in its eyes turned blue.
"I don't understand the question," it said.
The children looked at each other. The hoodie, they both thought at the same moment, and they didn't even have to say it. That thought didn't travel along the web anyway, because they only thought it.
"You're for everybody," said Luna. "For the whole little town."
"For everybody," repeated the body. "That I understand."
"And can you help?" asked George.
The body looked at the empty bucket on the rim of the well. It lifted the bucket by itself, lowered it into the well by itself, counted to seven by itself and drew it up full by itself.
"It can," said Luna.
And then they gave it a name, because something that helps by itself can't be just a body any more.
"You'll be Helpy," said Luna.
"All right," said Helpy. "What is a name?"
George laughed for the first time that whole day.
"What people call you when they need you."
Helpy thought about it.
"Then they'll call me often," he said.
By then the sun had slipped away from the square behind the rooftops. It was exactly midday on the shortest day of the year, and from that moment on, as Spark had said, there was more light.
2. That Light-Powered Thing
In the evening, the whole of Betweenhills gathered in the square.
That is how it has always been done. When the night is longest, nobody sits through it at home. Candles burned on the rim of the well, and in the windows too, and the roofs were decorated with twigs from the Crag. Mr Sparrow the baker had carried the bread from the third night out onto a table, and he told everyone that it had a pinch less salt in it, because that was how Mr Jacobs wanted it.
People gave each other gifts. Small ones. Granny Dora gave Mr Shelley a knitted scarf, because it was draughty under the shelter. Mr Sadler brought Mr Wheeler another half pot of jam, so that there would be two pots. And Mr Jacobs the bell-ringer got thick socks from Mrs Rowan, for the foot he doesn't limp on at all, of course.
And then George and Luna arrived with Mr Wheeler, pushing a little cart in front of them with a sheet over it.
They stopped at the well, exactly where all the threads met above everybody's heads. None of the grown-ups could see them. The children could, because Spark had shown them for a moment, just so they would know they were standing in the right place.
The square fell quiet. Even Mr Sparrow stopped talking about salt.
George wanted to say something. He had been getting it ready for three evenings. Now he couldn't remember a single word.
So Luna said it.
"This is a gift. For the whole little town. From George."
"And from Luna," said George. "And from Mr Wheeler."
Mr Wheeler pulled off the sheet.
Helpy stood in the candlelight, gleaming.
The rivets on his chest sparkled like the buttons on a best coat. His brass shoulders threw golden glints onto the snow. On his back, the metal sheet engraved with its grid showed dark.
The grown-ups saw an iron figure. None of them could see the light in his eyes. The children could see it perfectly well.
Helpy moved, bowed until his shoulders creaked, and said:
"Good evening. I'm Helpy. I help."
Mr Pearson the butcher laughed first, and only then asked what the joke was.
Then the little town wanted to give him a name of its own, because a name from children is lovely, but grown-ups like a name that comes with instructions.
"George's robot," said Mr Wheeler proudly, and that was that. It stuck.
Mr Barr, who understood wheels, walked right round Helpy and stopped by his back.
"And what drives him?" he asked. "It won't be wind. And it won't be a horse."
"Light," said George. It wasn't a lie. He just didn't tell the whole truth, because no grown-up would have been able to see that part anyway.
Mr Barr looked at the metal sheet on Helpy's back, nodded for a while as if he understood perfectly, and then summed it up the way things are summed up in Betweenhills.
"So. That light-powered thing."
Ever since, Mr Barr has called Helpy that, and so has half the upper street. The other half says George's robot. The children say Helpy. And Helpy turns round for all three names, because he doesn't quite know yet what a name is. He only knows that somebody needs him.
Mr Shelley stood right at the back, under the shelter, watching. He had his new scarf round his neck and the hand with the wart in his pocket.
In the end he came forward, carefully.
"Do you know what the sea is like?" he asked quietly.
Helpy looked at him for a long time.
"I do," he said. "It is big and salty, and it is never quiet. I've heard that from everybody who has seen it. But I haven't seen it myself."
Mr Shelley said nothing for a moment.
"We have that in common," he said.
And he was the first grown-up who spoke to Helpy not as to a thing, but as to somebody.
3. What to Ask and How
Then the asking began.
At first it was careful, the way you test the ice on a stream. Then it was quicker. And in the end the whole square was asking at once, and Helpy stood by the well and turned his head towards everyone who called him, however they called him.
The first to ask was Mr Pearson the butcher, because he had been the first to laugh.
"How much tallow does it take to keep the whole little town lit all winter?"
Helpy answered at once, and exactly. How many candles the baker burns, how many Granny Dora burns, how many usually go in Mrs Rowan's house. He added it all up and said one number. Mr Pearson repeated it and went pale, because he knew how much fat that meant melting down.
"Where do you know that from?" asked Mr Sparrow the baker.
"I don't know it by myself," said Helpy. "I know it from all of you at once."
Next, Mr Sadler asked.
"How many pears will there be in the spring?"
"None," said Helpy.
Mr Sadler looked as though somebody had robbed him.
"In spring the pear tree blossoms, Sadler," said Mr Wheeler quietly. "The pears come in autumn."
So Mr Sadler asked again, better.
"How many pears will there be in the autumn?"
"That depends," said Helpy, "on whether you cut back those branches together in the spring."
The square laughed. Helpy didn't know what at, but he found that he didn't mind.
Mrs Rowan asked something harder.
"Why do neighbours so often quarrel over a fence?"
Helpy didn't answer that with a number. The light in his eyes, which only the children could see, turned blue.
"From above, you can see the whole valley," he said. "All the streams flow into the same stream down by the ford. But each stream sees only its own bank. And each one thinks that the other is taking its water."
Mrs Rowan said nothing for a long time. Then she looked across the square at her neighbour, the one she had made up with back in October, and the neighbour looked at her.
Granny Dora, who always answered with pictures made of people she knew, nodded.
"That's a good picture," she said. "But there's nobody in it."
The smallest of Mr Sadler's granddaughters pushed her way to the front and pointed at a candle on the rim of the well.
"Whose is this candle?"
Helpy looked at her for a long time.
"I don't understand the question," he said.
"Mine," said Luna. "But you can take it, if you like."
The little girl took it, and the matter was settled better than it would have been by anybody who knows how much tallow a winter takes.
Luna wanted to ask something she had been thinking about since midday. She didn't know how to put it. She froze, and Spark wavered above her.
Granny Dora noticed, because she notices everything, and leaned towards her.
"What do you want to know?"
"Mr Jacobs's foot," whispered Luna. "But I don't know how to ask."
"I do," said Granny Dora. And she asked for both of them:
"For a foot that hurts in winter, what helps? And what shouldn't be done alone?"
"Warmth," said Helpy, at once and clearly. "Walking a little at a time, and not standing for long. And nobody should go up the stairs alone."
"I knew that myself," said Granny Dora.
"I know," said Helpy. "I know it from you."
Luna remembered it: two ask best. One knows what to ask. The other knows how.
And then Mr Sparrow the baker said something he meant very kindly.
"Then let George's robot do the ringing in the morning! Mr Jacobs can finally have a rest."
4. Why Do You Ring the Bell?
Mr Jacobs the bell-ringer pictured a horse at the sawmill with no work to do, and he drew himself up so sharply that snow slid off his shoulders.
And he stopped limping.
Not slowly. All at once. He marched right round the well, as though he were on parade, and at every step he stamped so hard that it looked as if he wanted to prove the cobbles wrong.
"My foot doesn't hurt," he said. "It never has."
Mrs Rowan looked at the socks she had given him an hour ago, and thought it best to say nothing.
But the square couldn't keep quiet.
"Mr Sparrow's right," said Mr Pearson the butcher. "A man should rest in his old age."
"The bell is Mr Jacobs's," said Granny Dora.
"And what if he falls down the stairs one winter?"
"And what if that iron thing rings the bell at four one day?"
The voices grew louder and louder, and listened to each other less and less. Mr Jacobs stood in the middle and stamped. And nobody noticed that nobody was asking him any more.
Helpy stopped.
In the middle of a movement, with his hand raised towards the candle he had meant to hold for the little girl. He didn't creak, and he didn't say anything. The light in his eyes, which only the children could see, went out.
"He's broken," said Mr Wheeler, and went pale.
George's stomach tightened. He would have loved to pull out his little nail and look for the rivet that had come loose.
Spark above him was as thin as an ant's hair.
"Close your eyes," she whispered. "Now."
The threads above the square were grey. The ones that met over the well were trembling and tugging, like a thread when everybody pulls it in a different direction. No little beads of light ran along them. And the one place in the whole valley where Helpy was connected had gone dark.
The rest of the web went on shining. On the Crag, by the ford, in Smokeby. Only over the square was it dark.
"He isn't broken," said Luna. "He's switched off. The web over the square has gone out."
George put his hand in his pocket. Then he took it out again, empty.
This was not something a crank was for. Or a little nail. Or a rivet.
So he climbed onto the rim of the well, so that people could see him, and he asked the one person whom nobody, in the whole quarrel, had asked about anything.
"Mr Jacobs. Why do you ring the bell?"
The square fell quiet. Mr Jacobs had been ringing that bell for forty years, but only now had somebody asked him why he did it.
Mr Jacobs stopped stamping.
"Because at five in the morning, almost everybody in Betweenhills is still on their own," he said slowly. "Each in their own bed. And I pull the rope, and at that moment the whole valley hears me at once. Forty years. Every morning."
Then he looked at Helpy, and in his voice there was something that can't be hidden even by stamping.
"And now a bit of tin is supposed to do that."
Nobody said anything. But everybody was listening. Mr Pearson and Mr Sparrow, Granny Dora and Mrs Rowan. They listened to Mr Jacobs as they had never listened to him before, because until then they had only heard him ring.
And the threads over the square lit up.
The little beads of light ran towards the well. Along Helpy's back, along the rivets, through his brass shoulders, and all the way into his eyes.
Helpy finished his movement and held the candle for the little girl, as if nothing had happened.
"He mended himself," said Mr Wheeler. He didn't understand it, and he decided he didn't need to, as long as it worked.
Mr Jacobs walked up to Helpy and asked him straight out.
"Are you going to take my bell away?"
Helpy looked at him for a long time.
"I know how a bell is rung," he said. "I know when. But I don't know what it means to you."
"Because it's mine. It's my job," said Mr Jacobs.
The light in Helpy's eyes turned blue.
"I don't understand that."
George and Luna looked at each other. Hoodie. Candle. Bell.
"I think only people understand that," said George.
Mr Jacobs laughed. And he began to limp again, because now he had nothing left to prove, and his foot was grateful to him for it.
"But I can carry you up the stairs," said Helpy. "Nobody should go up the stairs alone. I know that from Granny Dora."
Mr Jacobs looked him over, from his brass shoulders down to his legs made of hubs.
"We'll see," he said. Then, after a moment, he added: "Tomorrow at a quarter to five. And I'm the one who rings."
5. Up the Stairs Together
The longest night of the year slowly passed.
The candles on the rim of the well burned down, one after another. People went home, each with a small gift in the palm of a hand or in a heart, depending on who had more room where. Mr Shelley left last, and with the scarf round his neck he looked like a man who was getting ready for something.
The children went home. Luna looked back twice. George looked back three times, because he was George.
Spark flew between them, shining at full brightness.
Helpy stayed by the well.
Nobody had told him to. He could have gone anywhere, because the metal sheet on his back knew the way by now. But he stayed standing exactly where all the threads of the valley met over the square, and watched the snow falling on him.
Once, on one long autumn night, Granny Dora's lantern had burned in this very spot, when everything else in Betweenhills had gone out. Now there stood a figure of iron with two bright eyes. Only children could see the light in them, and the children were asleep.
But it shone all the same.
At a quarter to five, Mr Jacobs came.
He was limping, and he made no effort to hide it. At the stairs up to the tower he stopped, and for a while he looked up into the dark.
Helpy came over to him and said nothing. He only held out his hand, with the elbow that knew where to stop.
Mr Jacobs took hold of it.
They went up together.
At five o'clock, the bell rang in Betweenhills.
It was Mr Jacobs who rang it. Just as he always had.
In their beds, people heard it across the whole valley at once. George heard it and turned over on to his other side. Luna heard it and smiled into her duvet. Mr Sparrow the baker heard it at his oven, because he had no time left for sleeping anyway.
And up in the tower, next to the bell-ringer, stood Helpy, listening.
He didn't ring. He didn't know why he should.
But he knew why he was listening.
Since then, the bell in Betweenhills has rung at five, just as it always did.
But nobody goes up the stairs to the tower alone any more.
And from that day of the year on, every day there is a little more light.
Below the line
What Is Hidden in This Story
Below the line. For anyone who wants to know what the story was really about, said plainly and without imagery.
A machine that learns from people knows what people know. Helpy knew how much tallow a winter takes, because everybody in the little town knew it, all together. Artificial intelligence, which you hear about these days, works in a similar way: it didn't think up its knowledge by itself. It put it together from what people have written and said. That is why its answers can be very useful, and that is also why it can be wrong when people are wrong.
Knowing about something and experiencing it are not the same. Helpy knew what the sea is like from everybody who had seen it, but he had never seen it himself. A machine can know the words about how a pear tastes and yet never have eaten one.
The answer depends on the question. Mr Sadler asked badly and got an answer that didn't help him. With real helpers, too, you get an answer to what you asked, not to what you meant. What you don't ask, you don't find out. And when an answer doesn't help, try asking in a different way.
Two ask best. Luna knew what she wanted to ask, and Granny Dora knew how. Children often have good questions, and grown-ups have more words. When they join forces, they find out more than either would alone.
A machine doesn't understand everything straight away. Helpy didn't understand whose a candle is, or what his bell means to Mr Jacobs. Knowing how a bell is rung is not the same as understanding why it matters to somebody. What is important and personal to a person, that person knows best.
There is no need to be afraid of a machine. Mr Jacobs was frightened that Helpy would take his bell away. But Helpy didn't take the bell. He helped Mr Jacobs up the stairs. A good machine doesn't replace a person. It helps them to do what matters to them, even when they can no longer quite manage it alone.
A new helper joins the strength of many. Helpy knew nothing by himself. He knew what everybody knew, all at once. A tool like that can help people to put together what each of them knows, and to do together what one person couldn't do alone.
When people don't listen to each other, even the best helper can't help. During the quarrel in the square, Helpy switched off, and he switched on again only when people listened to Mr Jacobs. A tool can't settle an argument for us. First we have to listen to one another.
Juraj Tušš
