
Grantville Gazette, Volume 39
Edited by Paula Goodlett
Grantville Gazette, Volume 39
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this magazine are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Grantville Gazette
A 1632, Inc. Publication
Grantville Gazette
P. O. Box 7488
Moore, OK 73153-1488
Grantville Gazette, Volume 39 1 January 2012
Fiction:
The Cartesian Way by Mark H. Huston
The Porcelain Throne by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett
Saint George's Dogs by Kerryn Offord
Big Iron by John Zeek
Reaping and Sowing by Terry Howard
Ball Whats? by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett
Continuing Serials:
Letters Home, 3 and 4 by Tim Roesch
Second Chance Bird, Episode Eight by Garrett W. Vance
Nonfiction:
Sitting on Cloud Nine: Airship Lift and Altitude Control by Iver P. Cooper
Feeding the Up-timer Addiction: Soy Sauce by Karen C. Evans
Universe Annex:
A Season for Sisters by Amanda E. Forrest
Time Spike:
The Good Samaritan and the Hanged Man by Garrett W. Vance
The Dragon Slayer by David W. Dove
Columns:
Treasures by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
City Slickers, Country Bumpkins, Ants, Robots and Mutants, Part 2 by Bud Webster.
What is this? About the Grantville Gazette
Written by Grantville Gazette Staff
The Grantville Gazette originated as a by-product of the ongoing and very active discussions which take place concerning the 1632 universe Eric Flint created in the novels 1632, 1633 and 1634: The Galileo Affair (the latter two books co-authored by David Weber and Andrew Dennis, respectively). More books have been written and co-written in this series, including 1634: The Baltic War, 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, 1635: The Cannon Law, and 1635: The Dreeson Incident. 1635: The Eastern Front is forthcoming, and the book Time Spike is also set in the Assiti Shards universe. This discussion is centered in three of the conferences in Baen's Bar, the discussion area of Baen Books' web site. The conferences are entitled "1632 Slush," "1632 Slush Comments" and "1632 Tech Manual." They have been in operation for almost seven years now, during which time nearly two hundred thousand posts have been made by hundreds of participants.
Soon enough, the discussion began generating so-called "fanfic," stories written in the setting by fans of the series. A number of those were good enough to be published professionally. And, indeed, a number of them were---as part of the anthology Ring of Fire , which was published by Baen Books in January, 2004. ( Ring of Fire also includes stories written by established authors such as Eric Flint himself, as well as David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, Dave Freer, K.D. Wentworth and S.L. Viehl.)
The decision to publish the Ring of Fire anthology triggered the writing of still more fanfic, even after submissions to the anthology were closed. Ring of Fire has been selling quite well since it came out, and a second anthology similar to it was published late in 2007. Another, Ring of Fire III, is forthcoming. It will also contain stories written by new writers, as well as professionals. But, in the meantime . . . the fanfic kept getting written, and people kept nudging Eric---well, pestering Eric---to give them feedback on their stories.
Hence . . . the Grantville Gazette. Once he realized how many stories were being written---a number of them of publishable quality---he raised with Jim Baen the idea of producing an online magazine which would pay for fiction and nonfiction articles set in the 1632 universe and would be sold through Baen Books' Webscriptions service. Jim was willing to try it, to see what happened.
As it turned out, the first issue of the electronic magazine sold well enough to make continuing the magazine a financially self-sustaining operation. Since then, even more volumes have been electronically published through the Baen Webscriptions site. As well, Grantville Gazette, Volume One was published in paperback in November of 2004. That has since been followed by hardcover editions of Grantville Gazette, Volumes Two, Three, Four and Five.
Then, two big steps:
First: The magazine had been paying semi-pro rates for the electronic edition, increasing to pro rates upon transition to paper, but one of Eric's goals had long been to increase payments to the authors. Grantville Gazette, Volume Eleven is the first volume to pay the authors professional rates.
Second: There are several different versions of each issue of the Gazette. It is now available through Webscription, Amazon and B&N, plus other methods. The on-line version, depending on timing, might still be in ARC status. That's Advanced Reader Copy. Our publications dates are 1 Jan, 1 Mar, 1 May, 1 Jul, 1 Sep and 1 Nov. In between issues, here at http://www.grantvillegazette.com you'll often be reading the electronic version of an ARC, where you can read the issues as we assemble them. You'll see the art and the stories as they are prepared for publication.
How will it work out? Will we be able to continue at this rate? Well, we don't know. That's up to the readers. But we'll be here, continuing the saga, the soap opera, the drama and the comedy just as long as people are willing to read them.
--- The Grantville Gazette Staff
The Cartesian Way
Written by Mark H. Huston
Spanish Netherlands, Early October 1632
René;
Within is the singularly most important paper on mathematics ever written. It is called the Crucibellus Manuscript, and it is only the first volume of several.
Digest the enclosed manuscript. This one was hand delivered to me by a man who got it from the writer in Grantville; supposedly a man of our time who accessed the substantial library there.
Mathematics, the sciences, and philosophy have taken a 350-year leap forward overnight!
Your friend in knowledge
Fr. Marin Mersenne
René Descartes looked at the bundle that accompanied the letter. He had heard of the town from the future, who hadn't by now? But there were so many rumors, so many things that sounded too fantastic to be true. So, logically, they were not.
The church said the age of miracles was over. That was not true, because surely this was a miracle he held in his hands. Or at least the first evidence of a miracle. He cut the string with a small scissors and tore back the several layers of oiled paper from around the folio. Dropping the wrappings to the side he went to his desk, which overlooked the garden of the small house he was renting.
For the next two weeks, he studied the book. The little house was silent. His servant came in the morning, while he slept, and prepared his meals. Then she left him in solitude for the rest of the day. He studied, took notes, and studied more. He settled into a routine of reading a section of the work, taking notes, and then thinking solidly about it for a day or more. He scribbled questions in the margins of the book. And he thought.
And he thought some more.
The third week after receiving the manuscript, and having examined it from many perspectives, he flew into an uncontrollable rage. "It isn't fair!" He threw papers from his desk, tore up notes and letters, kicked furniture, and broke the door of a very sturdy Dutch armoire. He broke dishes, and raged at the great unfairness of it all. "This was mine! Mine! Mine to discover, mine to tell people how to find! My methods. My name. My legacy!" He broke the remaining plates and after exhausting himself, collapsed onto the floor in the small study, sobbing. "This was all to be mine, someday. It is what I've been working on for years. My Methods of Logic. How to think. This should be all mine."
After a while he drew himself up, and began to pick up the pieces of the manuscript. He stacked them carefully together, then set them on a table in front of him. He stood in front of the table, hands behind his back, peering at the neat but tattered stack. "These mathematics are understandable, reachable. And were reached with my methods. The book I am writing now. That I was writing now. That I am nolonger writing. That I have noneed to ever write."
He stared at the manuscript for an hour, standing in front of it. His mind quieted from the rage, and he began to think. It was what he did; think. To think. Thinking . . .
At the end of the hour, he began to chuckle, and after a moment he broke out into a peal of guffaws. He laughed so hard that he cried. He eventually found himself on the floor again, in front of the table, exhausted.
"Never let it be said that God doesn't have a sense of humor."
Paris February 1633
"Did you know I had a child, Mersenne?" René Descartes rested the copy of an up-time book on the table in front of him, incredulous. "A child? Th-that's preposterous. A child." He shook his head, and ran the alien concept through his brain once again. He tossed it on the table, which was heaped with copies of up-time texts, including several biographies of himself. "When I went to Holland, I vowed to give up women. They are a distraction. A constant and nagging distraction. They make a man unreasonable, and he cannot concentrate." He began to pace in the long room, with tall windows on one side so the sun could stream in. "One tends to think with the wrong brain, the little one, when women are around."
Marin Mersenne looked up from his manuscript, and smiled. "Do I need to remind you, you are talking to a Minim Friar, René? That little brain you speak of is why we take a vow of chastity, along with poverty, and obedience." He pulled up the sleeves of his coarse black wool habit, crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly.
René paused, and then awkwardly guffawed. "Ha! I would suppose so, my friend." He paced again to the table, and spread his arms wide to lean on it. "Look at this. Three hundred years worth of mans' thought. Piled on a table in our brand new Académie Française. Just like that. Plop! And this is just the surface. It will take us years to assimilate all of them. The math, that is straightforward. We can follow nearly all of that. But the philosophy, Marin, that is what excites me."
Marin nodded. "I can see that, René. I can see your influence all over these books. In many ways, your math, and your methods, were the start of nearly all of this. You are the foundation, my friend, of modern thought. It says so, somewhere in this book, I think . . ." He held up another up-time copy.
René tried to suppress a giddy grin, and failed miserably. "Rather remarkable when you think on it, isn't it?" He straightened up from the table and once again failed to suppress a strutting walk toward the windows. "Did you read what it said about me, Marin? About taking care of the woman, the one who bore my child? I provided for her even after my death."
Marin grew still for a moment, waiting for René's giddiness to pass. "It is too bad about the child, René."
René turned back from the window, toward Marin, and shrugged. "No need to mourn. I have left Holland. I will never meet this woman from Holland, never bed her, never have a child with her. And one needs to be born first, in order to die. Even Christ. There is no need to mourn for something that will never happen." He shrugged again. "Butterflies. The up-timers call it the butterfly effect. More poetic than their usual penchant for reducing everything to acronyms."
"It has been how long since they arrived? Eighteen months? Twenty?" Marin shuffled through the pile of papers in front of him.
René leaned against the windowsill. "Do you know what it means, Marin?"
Marin raised his eyebrows. He was a rather handsome man in his thirties. "I think it will take many years before we know what it all means, René. There are so many---"
"---No, that isn't what I am talking about." René waved his arms about as if shooing flies out of the air. "I am taking about me. What it means to me, and how I should interpret my once future actions that will now never be."
"I am not sure I understand . . ."
René came back to the table and picked up the copy of his biography, and waved it at Marin. "I'm talking about this. The man described in these books." He used the first manuscript to shove others about on the table. "Me. You see, up until the moment when this version of the future somehow collided with our reality, I was the same man as described in these books. Maybe even a little while after, at least until I first heard about Grantville. At that point, I became a different man, and the one who wrote these books is forever dead. At least will never exist."
Marin nodded. "It was the same for everyone. We all were changed from what we would have been. Different choices. Different mistakes, different thoughts."
"But you agree that we are the same men, only changed by our knowledge. You and I are not some new creation."
"Yes. We are the same men, just changed in our paths for the last twenty months or so."
René smiled. "So we are the same men as in these books."
"Of course."
"A child" René said. "And a woman. Do you know what this means?"
Marin grinned. "I know it isn't usually in that order. A woman usually comes first."
René made a face at Marin. "Don't mock me, I'm serious here. We have known each other for, what? Ten years? And you know how I always felt about distractions. Women, chiefly. Terrible distractions. I hate distractions" He held up the manuscript. "But look at what I accomplished. Even with a distraction. This nameless Dutch servant girl, and a child. Do you know what this means?"
Marin thought for a moment. He looked at René, and the pile of manuscripts, and then back to René. Finally, he smiled. "I think I see, René. You learned to love someone. In spite of your work, in spite of your hatred for distractions, you learned to love."
René sat at the table across from his friend, serious and muted. "I never thought I could love someone. That I, René Descartes, the man who was---and is to create the new ways of looking at things, could discover love such as that."
"But you have always loved God. I see that from all of your correspondence from your works from the future. You were always scrupulous about staying within doctrine of the church. You clearly have a love of the Church and God."
"Of course. But that's different. Loving God is like loving your mother and respecting your father. It is simply something you do. Quite frankly, staying within doctrine is something you do in order to create---what did I read in one of these down-time political books? Ah, yes. Plausible deniability. Yes, that was it. One must always have plausible deniability when dealing with the inquisition. That's why Galileo wrote his book on planetary motion as taking place in a 'hypothetical' universe. Doesn't look like that was enough, they are still going to put him on trial, aren't they?
"That will be a bit, well, awkward, I think." Mersenne frowned. "It's a great challenge for the church to determine what this all means."
René came back to the table and sat across from his friend. "Awkward, yes. Something we scientists must watch with great interest. Church Doctrine versus Galileo, and Galileo has the up-time science on his side." He pushed some books aside, and opened a copy of a third grade science textbook. This was one of the few original texts they had, and in it was a two-page color drawing of the solar system. The sun was solidly in the middle. Exactly where Galileo had placed it.
Paris, May 1633
"Do you believe it? A woman is Crucibellus. A woman! Damned bluestocking. It sends one to thinking, doesn't it, René?" Etienne Pascal looked down the row of seats toward Descartes and smiled slyly.
The lecture was completed, and the crowd in the small drawing room was beginning to stand and move toward the doors. All around Descartes stood a group of men, and all had been taking copious notes. René Descartes looked back to Pascal, who sat next to him. "Why that smile, Etienne? What is it that you know that we do not?"
Pascal rose with Descartes and leaned in to speak quietly. "My son and daughter have been in the town of the future for several weeks now. I have letters. They say that men and women are equals there. It excites my daughter to no end."
"I have not had the honor of meeting them yet, Monsieur Pascal. Perhaps that can be arranged when I return," Colette Modi said quietly. Descartes turned to look into the eyes of the world-renowned Crucibellus. Her eyes were quite striking in a way he hadn't seen when she was at the podium. While she lectured on number theory today, the intelligence in her voice was clear. But her intense gaze, coupled with her voice, now struck him and his group as someone very special. Pascal recovered first.
"Madame Modi, it is a true joy to meet you in person. We didn't think we would be able to have this time with you, after the lecture." Pascal's manner was smooth, as one who was a member of the petite noblesse should be, thought René a little jealously.
"The pleasure is mine, Monsieur Pascal." She curtsied as she returned the greeting.
Recovering, René bent into his own bow, and out of the corner of his eye he could see several other members of the Académie Française doing the same. "Madame Modi, it is truly a pleasure."
She focused on him directly once again. "René Descartes?"
He rose from his bow and nervously returned her gaze. "Yes, Madame. That is I."
"I imagine that you were well into writing Le Monde when my manuscript was sent to you? My apologies for the interruption. Cogito, ergo sum is a phrase that is known across the centuries. It is a pleasure to know one of France's most famous philosophers."
René felt his face flush, and he bowed again in thanks. "You do me an honor in saying so, Madame Modi. I must admit that the arrival of your manuscript was met by me with . . . uh . . . mixed emotions. So much of the work was based on the very things I was working on. I was, shall we say, cast adrift from my plans."
Madame Modi smiled and nodded to him, her eyes cast down in an apology. "You know we have something in common, Monsieur?"
"I-I am not sure I understand, Madame. Of course we both love the mathematics, and the pursuit of knowledge." René felt off balance as the woman looked directly at him.
"A dream. According to your biographers, you decided to become a philosopher when you were in Germany many years ago, on a winter campaign when you served with Duke Maximilian. In what was called a 'stove heated room.'"
René smiled. "Ah yes, my Day of Discoveries and Night of Dreams. I have read some of the future accounts of my past and my no longer possible future." He looked at her with gentle accusation. "There was much abbreviation I found. But on the whole, they seem to have gotten it right. There are a few items, but I won't quibble. But you are right, a dream is what sent me down the path. Or a series of dreams, rather. Did the same thing happen to you?"
"Somewhat the same thing. I had a dream where all of the great mathematicians faded into darkness after the Ring of Fire, unknown. I took as my task to make sure that wouldn't happen. Newton should not be overlooked."
René nodded quietly. "Nor should Sartre, or the Scotsman, Ferrier."
She looked him, with a questioning gaze. "You have read much, I see. More than I, certainly. I have focused on the math, and left the philosophy to others." She straightened slightly. "But you, it makes sense. Your math was brilliant, but your philosophy is what helped change the world."
A big man, whose patience had run out waiting for a break in the conversation, joined them, large and loud. Pierre Fermat. "Oh good heavens, don't tell him that! He's already hard enough to put up with."
René was slightly relieved when the intense questioning gaze of the woman left him. He had always been awkward in the face of beauty, and while sequestered away in the Dutch countryside, he didn't think of women. It was a tremendous advantage to his work. But in Paris, things were very different. He smiled. The big man, Fermat, was speaking.
"I'm Pierre de Fermat, Madame. Allow me to make some further introductions." He pulled her by the hand without waiting for her approval. "As you know, the cardinal has started the Académie Française a few years early, and he has gathered many of us together. He had to haul Descartes out of the Netherlands to bring him here. I believe you have met Father Mersenne?"
Mersenne, wearing sandals and his only clothing of a severe black monks robe tied with a cord of four knots, bowed to her. "I am honored to meet you, Madame. It was very kind of you to send me the original manuscript."
Fermat butted in. "Kindness had nothing to do with it. She knew you would send it to every mathematician in France the instant you read it. This is a shrewd young lady, indeed."
She turned and smiled at the Minimus priest. "I hoped that was you in the audience, Friar. When I saw your robes, I assumed it was you. Thank you for coming to this small lecture."
"You must meet the rest of them, Madame." Fermat tugged at her arm. " Over here we have the Académie Française Moon Crater Club. According to the research and some of the maps we have seen, these fellows here are charter members. This is Peter Gassendi, who your up-time people will like. He has always been on the pragmatic side. He is very much a smug empiricist now. This young man is Jacques de Billy, whom we dragged to Paris from Rheims, along with his friend and mine, Claude Grephard Bachet de Meziriac. Oh, and let's not forget our Turk, Katip Celebi, come to hear you from Istanbul. He has no moon crater named after him, at least that we know of.
The crowd began to ease away from René, flowing along with Madame Modi. As they eased away from him, he heard Madam Modi interrupt Fermat, asking about some theorem. René felt relieved. The highly social, and somewhat loud Fermat irritated him. As he began to step backwards, away from the intensity of the crowd, he felt himself stepping solidly on someone's foot.
"Ouch." It was a quiet cry of pain, and an exclamation of suppressed surprise. René turned around nearly in a panic, and opened his mouth to apologize. But he was instantly struck dumb by the beauty with which he was presented. In shock, all he could do is blink into the face of the girl, whose own face was forcing a smile over what appeared to be some level of real pain. At the same time, her eyebrows were questioning, expecting something as she shifted her weight to her other foot . . .
He blinked at her twice more, his brain a jumble. Finally, "Apologize, you dolt!"
"Umm. Uh. I'm sorry mademoiselle. I am a clumsy mule. I did not look behind me. Please forgive me." René shifted uneasily; he was still quite close to her. "I didn't realize you were there, I-I apologize again." He stepped back to bow to that beautiful face, and promptly stumbled backwards into a chair, tried to keep his balance, and ended up plopping down hard on the seat. He could feel his face flush, and he looked around to see if anyone noticed. It appeared all of the room's focus was on Madame Modi, and nobody had seen him. Except the woman on whom he had stomped. And she was now standing on one foot, and hiding her mouth with her hand as she giggled, pain under the giggle.
René wished he could melt into the floor. He made some mental calculations on how much heat that might take.
The woman, quite young by his measure, at least younger than him, hobbled to the seat next to him and took off her shoe. It was a flimsy affair, barely a slipper. He stared down at his own heavy boots. Still staring at his boots, he added lamely "that must have hurt quite a lot. I am very sorry."
"I was too close to you, as I was trying to listen. I should have realized. It's my fault. My mother says I am too nosy. This will give her more reason to tell me not to come to lectures. Not that I am a nosy person, but I was just trying to listen to Madame Modi when you stepped back. Perfectly innocent, not nosy---Oh dear. I am rambling." She took a deep breath, and extended her hand. "Isabeau. Isabeau Montclair."
Gently taking her hand, almost if he were afraid he would break that too, he gathered from somewhere deep inside enough courage to look her in the eyes. "René. René Descartes. I am truly sorry for your foot, mademoiselle." She had dark eyes, with flecks of green and grey scattered about, dark hair, a youthful and innocent round shape to her face, and skin very smooth. No pox scars, pristine. It made her look very youthful.
"Think nothing of it, Monsieur Descartes. I am sure it will heal. Sometime." She smiled slyly at him.
"You are making fun of me now." Inside he felt relieved. She can't be hurt too badly if she is joking with me, he thought. But what to say next? What should he do? The pause stretched on. What should he say? Dammit. Why was he acting like a schoolboy? He glanced at her, she was sitting demurely, and glanced at him. He broke eye contact and once again examined his boots. There was more awkward pause. The crowd started to thin. After an eternity, she finally put on her shoe and rose from the chair. He rose with her, and offered her his arm.
"Do you require assistance, Mademoiselle?"
She gazed at him a moment, as if considering. "No, I think I am good. Nothing broken." She wriggled her foot to test it. "Merci."
René could feel his face fall. "But of course, whatever you wish, Mademoiselle." He bowed and turned to go, this time avoiding the chair. Before he could take a step, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"I have changed my mind, René Descartes. I think my foot hurts more than it should. Perhaps you should assist me to my carriage." She locked her arm around his in a movement that surprised and delighted him. He could feel the warmth of her arm, and the weight of her body against his. He caught his breath for a moment, felt his face flush slightly, and they eased carefully to the door.
Paris, October, 1633
"Will he be here soon, Isabeau? I tire of waiting." Isabeau's mother, Angelique Montclair, was absently fluffing pillows in the ornate drawing room. Late afternoon light filtered in through the large multi-paned windows, while the fireplace at the other end of the room tried and failed to radiate its heat to where Isabeau sat.
Isabeau sighed. "Very soon, I am sure. He is terrible with time, you know Mama. Terrible. He forgets what hour it is. He forgets appointments because he doesn't keep a calendar. The cardinal actually gave him an up-time watch from Grantville so he would not be late. He forgets to put it on."
"An up-time watch? That's worth a fortune! Does it work? Or does it need those embattlements?"
"Embattlements?"
"Oh, I don't know what you call them? Fortifications?"
"Fortifications?" Isabeau furrowed her brow and struggled to understand her mother.
"They make the electricity-things."
"Oh! The batteries." Isabeau laughed "Yes. It has batteries."
"That makes it worth even more money."
"Mother, is that all you ever think about? Money? I know we have enough from before Father died. The farms in the country, his other interests. I have seen the letters, you know. We are secure."
Angelique stopped her fluffing, and looked at Isabeau with a single raised eyebrow. "A woman on her own in this world is never secure, Isabeau. We are petite noblesse, not some family whose fortune and lands have come down from the old days. The only thing we have is money, dear." She set the pillow down on the small couch and sat next to Isabeau. "The only reason we are accepted at all---that you are allowed to attend lectures and traipse across Paris like a princess and rub shoulders with real nobility---is because we have money. You may think they accept you because you know circles and rectangles and hypotenuse, but they wouldn't give you the time of day if it wasn't for the cash. I don't know a battery from a battlement, but I do know that."
"But, Mother . . ."
"No buts. That is why this match is so important. Personally, I think Descartes is crazy. But, fortunately you seem to truly like him, so that counts for something." She patted Isabeau's hand.
Isabeau turned and faced her mother. "But he isn't crazy, Mama. Not crazy at all. He is brilliant, more brilliant than this world can contain. There are times when observing his mind can be like staring into the sun. You cannot look directly at it. Remember when Gassendi demonstrated for us with paper and pinhole, how to observe the sun? You can't look at the sun directly or you will go blind. But if you look at it after it comes through a pin hole, and see it project itself onto a blank paper, then you can make out the details. That's what being around René is like. You cannot understand him if you look directly at him. He is too strong mentally, too overwhelming. But if you are patient, and do not stare, and wait for him to turn his thoughts into something the rest of us can understand, then you can really learn things. See things with a perception that comes from somewhere very special. He can help you to see things that you never, in your most amazing dreams, could possibly think of."
"The cardinal has said that he is a good catch too, you know. I corresponded with him just last week. He always asks about you and René. Do you know that he sends me a note nearly every week, inquiring about you and René?"
"And what do you tell him, mother?"
"That you are both good Catholics, and we are hopeful."
"We are hopeful?"
"I occasionally editorialize. The cardinal is always happy to hear of news about Monsieur Descartes and you."
"So you report to Cardinal Richelieu on our relationship?"
"No, my dear. It isn't anything like that. We just have a correspondence that's all. He sends gifts on occasion. It's quite gratifying to someone like me to have a famous correspondent. You're not the only one in the family who can have a famous friend, you know. I do it for our family."
"Mother, you're a spy for the cardinal."
"No dear. Not a spy. Simply a proud mother who desires the best for her daughter. And as suitors go, Descartes is the best one I can see. Except he is crazy. And has a large nose, even by French standards."
Isabeau smiled at her, and extended her hand. "You know I would be bored out of my mind with any other suitors. Most of them are not bright enough to know when I insult them. I know math and sciences better than any of them---"
"---I never understood that about you." Her mother interrupted. "Why you insisted on learning mathematics, learning about the sciences, attending lectures. 'Tis something you were born with, like your father. God rest his soul, he was the same way. Always scribbling, always thinking about triangles and odd circles. It wasn't natural, and it isn't natural for you either. Especially as a woman."
"Mother. We have discussed this before. What is and isn't natural for a woman is changing. Slowly here in France, faster elsewhere. But it is changing. Look at Madame Modi when she was here in the spring. She had hundreds of the most brilliant minds in France falling at her feet, hanging on her every word. To be part of that is---is indescribable. Beyond imagination."
Angelique looked at her with another raised eyebrow. "Sane men do not cut apart people and animals of all sorts and study them. What he does isn't normal." She extracted her hands from Isabeau's grip. "He spends half of his time cutting up hanged criminals, and half of his time figuring out how to blow people up, or shoot down airplanes or fly airplanes, or drill through a mountain---"
"---Did I tell you he showed me how you can drink the air?
"That's what I mean. People do not drink the air!"
"He showed it to me in the summer. There was a device they made, like two hollow cannonballs and pipe between them. He heated it, and then one end became very cold. He put a cup under the cold end, and in a few moments pure water was formed out of the air, and dripped into a cup. Enough to take a sip of cold water. That was in July, when it was so hot."
"You drank water! That will kill you, or make you sick enough that you wished you were dead. You should stick with wine. For someone so smart, you're very stupid sometimes."
"Mother . . ."
". . . And another thing, he has changed lately, don't think I haven't noticed. He seems even more brooding lately, darker. Have you noticed?"
"Mother, please," Isabeau said firmly. "He has many things on his mind. The Académie Française, his experiments, and all of the up-time reading he is doing. It is very tiring for him. Is that something you put into your letter to the cardinal?"
"I'm not that stupid, dear. The cardinal only gets sunshine and roses from me."
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Both of them turned to it, and then back to each other.
Isabeau smoothed her dress in front of her and made a face at her mother. "You can go now, Mother. Please?"
"Very well. But I will be right next door."
"Listening," Isabeau admonished.
"Of course, dear. You don't think I would leave you alone with that madman, do you?" With that, she turned and left the room through a door near the fireplace. There was another polite knock.
"Come." The door opened and the footman ushered in René Descartes. His square frame stumped into the room, and he flung his cloak off his shoulders, handing it off to the footman in one motion.
"How late am I, Isabeau?"
"No more than usual, René." She sighed.
"My misery continues. I argued with Fermat at the Académie Française again today. Long and loud. I don't know if I can keep this up much longer." He continued to stump across the room, agitated, at the same pace as when he entered. "I cannot think like this. I cannot fit into their laboratories or factories and their meetings of---of nothing!. Deadlines. They want deadlines for things that have never been invented before, things that are little more than rumors or shadows or outlines on the papers they bring from Grantville."
"René, calm down. It isn't necessary for you to shout. Please." She crossed her arms and looked at him. He ignored her.
"These things must be thought about, they must be explored. One cannot snap ones fingers and create a flying machine. . . ." He continued to pace, almost frantically now. Isabeau stood and intercepted him as he crossed by, snatching his arm.
"René! Please. This is as bad as I have ever seen you about Fermat and the Académie Française." He paused and looked at her for a moment, and then continued to pace without registering that he heard her. "You know this is for the good of France."
"---Do not tell me of the good of France, the glory of France, the future of France, the greatness of France, the everlasting peace of France, the greater glory of God and France, or of France showing God's way to the lesser nations!" He was now waving his hands about as he started pacing again. "I am sick to death of France, sick to death of Paris. I cannot concentrate here. I simply cannot. There are too many meetings, too many people, too many demands . . ." he trailed off, seeming to realize where he was. He immediately looked sheepish, and his ears turned pink. "Damn."
Isabeau flashed him her patient smile.
"Sorry." He gracefully went to her, and kissed her hand. "I am sorry, Isabeau. You are the only thing that keeps me sane, in what has become an insane world. More insane by the day. Your presence is enough to soothe me."
"Thank you, René." She paused a moment and looked into his eyes. They were dark, intense and overwhelming. He seemed to catch her gaze as well, and his full intensity focused on her. She felt her diaphragm tighten, like it did the day she met him, when she latched onto his arm. She pulled him close. He bent to her compliantly, still smelling of the coolness from the street, and the chemicals of the Académie Française. "My mother is a spy for the cardinal. We must be discreet."
His hand went around her waist. "Does this mean I cannot complain about that idiot Fermat in front of her?" He whispered back to her.
Her hands went to his shoulders, and she tilted her head back to continue gazing into his eyes. "That might be foolish, she would notice the difference if suddenly you stopped. So would the cardinal for that matter."
He bent to her a little further, and touched his nose to her forehead, and then down her nose. Their lips brushed. "I thought we were quite good at keeping quiet, so no one could hear us."
She leaned slightly forward with her body, and pulled her head back. "You are incorrigible," she whispered.
"You made me that way, Isabeau." He kissed her, gently at first, then as her passion rose, she responded. They kissed. After a long moment, René broke the kiss. "She spies for the cardinal?"
"Not in so many words, but yes." She smiled coyly and played with his jacket button. "Not out of malice, but out of her love." Isabeau didn't add more to the statement, to do so would be unfair to her mother. They pressed their foreheads together gently. "Did you tell Fermat about the paper? What you want to write?"
He sighed deeply, paused, and broke the embrace. He looked at her a moment, then turned away and stepped to one of the windows. The brilliant spring day was fading, but the traffic in the city below looked as if it were trying to hold on to the sunshine, bustling toward the light as it drained out the long city boulevards, wanting to hold onto this day a bit longer, before the chill of a spring night returned. René understood their hope. Understood the cool night would be returning. He turned back to her. "Not yet, Isabeau. I'm not ready. It's inevitable. The thought of these philosophers must come out into the open. Spinoza, Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Russell, the list goes on. Just the acceptance of the concept of natural rights of man destroys the last thousand years of thought. And that is only one thing. It is so much, so fast. It means so much, asks so many bold questions. Questions I dare not have asked in this age. Grantville has unleashed a force that is too great to stop."
"You used to say that God unleashed Grantville on us."
"I'm not too sure any more. About God---"
"---René!"
"I have read things, Isabeau! As much as I possibly could. And then I thought. I thought long and hard on things by the greatest minds from the future. Men who took my work and built on it. My work, Isabeau. Great philosophers who grew up with the sun in the center of their solar system, and their solar system one of billions in a galaxy, and that galaxy one of an infinite number of other galaxies in the universe. That changes the way a man looks at the world. I was taught as a child, with absolute certainty that the heavens were a fixed dome, and the sun revolved around the earth. The Jesuits taught me this as a truth. But they were wrong. There is where I started." He began to pace again. "Do you understand, Isabeau? A philosopher that knows about the construction of the universe as a truth from since he was a child, what kind of a difference that makes on his mind? How he views God? How he views man in relation to God? How he views the existence of God? Just that single lesson is enough to change your view of this planet, and where it sits in the greater scheme. Just that single lesson."
"René. The cardinal must not know of these things. How you feel about this. He has stated what he thinks of Vatican II reforms that have been passed around---"
"---which I have read," he interrupted firmly. "And studied. They are fascinating and speak to the changes that are coming. That must come, and inevitably will come to France. Whether Richelieu wants them to or not."
"I see." Isabeau sighed and pulled René to the couch, and they sat. She turned to him, worried. "René, do you speak of this to anyone? Anyone besides me?"
He snorted a suppressed laugh at her. "Somewhat with Mersenne, but I can trust him. I am not a fool, my dear. That sort of thing can get one in the deepest sort of trouble. And yet . . ." His voice trailed off in thought, and his eyes glazed over as he stared at the fireplace along the far wall.
Isabeau had seen this sort of thing from him before, and she waited patiently for a minute while he thought. There were times he could do this for hours.
"What should we do, René?"
He stood up and away from her, and then looked at her strangely, seriously, but in a way that she had not seen before. He took a step toward her, and she involuntarily shrank away. "Do you mean that, Isabeau?" His intensity could be mercurial.
"Mean what?" She was confused. This was one of those times when his mind was elsewhere, working on a level she didn't fully comprehend.
"Did you mean that?"
"I-I don't understand. Mean what?"
"What should we do? You asked, what we should do?"
She shook her head trying to gain focus, and smiled. "Yes. I asked what should we do." She began to feel uncomfortable as he took another step closer. "Simple enough question."
He stopped and looked at her with a curious gaze. "Do you know you are the smartest woman I have ever met?"
She felt her face flush. "René---"
"You see, Isabeau, you didn't ask what I should do. You asked what we should do. We. So there is only one thing we can do."
"What is it?"
"One question first. Are you with me in this? The philosophers of the future? The advancement of human thought?"
She answered without hesitation. "Of course. How could I not be?"
He reached out and held her hand, smiled warmly, and then knelt in front of her. "We must marry."
The Library at the Académie Française, after Galileo's trial, July 1634
Marin Mersenne slammed his palm onto the library table with a great deal of frustration. "It is a matter of doctrine, René! You are more aware than anyone I have ever worked with---and I have worked with every scientist in France who is worth his salt---that church doctrine determines how we study the sciences. The natural philosophy of the future is diametrically opposed to present church doctrine. It's heresy, pure and simple."
René had his back to Mersenne, and was gazing out the massive windows of the library. René wasn't looking at anything particular. And at the moment he was quite irritated with Mersenne. "I will write my summary. And publish it."
Mersenne's voice softened, trying a new argument. "You have read your future works. You were always scrupulous to maintain adherence to the teachings of the church. Your letters are full of conversations addressing the very issue. That history must mean something to you, René."
René continued to stare out the window. "My desire was to have my book on philosophical method, my Le Monde, be the accepted text of the Jesuits, the only education worth a damn in this world. I wanted my book accepted as a canonical text, and have my methods taught at the highest levels by the best teachers." He turned from the windows and faced the Friar. "Don't forget plausible deniability. That's why Galileo wrote his book on planetary motion as taking place in a 'hypothetical' universe. Fat lot of good that did him with the inquisition."
"René, do you mean you do not have faith in God and the Church as you professed? That all of your entreaties to me about staying faithful to doctrine were false? I don't believe it, René. You were practical, cautious, but I have never doubted your faith in the Church. Ever."
René tossed the book on the table and again turned to the window. "In the other time line, I completed Le Monde, but abandoned it after four years of work. Do you know why?"
Mersenne sighed. "Galileo."
René spun around, glaring at Mersenne. "Yes. Because of Galileo, that idiot, and the Inquisition, who are even bigger idiots. They attacked him, they attacked the Copernican system, and they attacked everything that was scientific progress!"
"They were only following church doctrine." Mersenne returned the glare with a challenge.
René met his gaze. "Then I spent my years kowtowing to a false doctrine, Friar.
René watched Mersenne's face turn from frustration to a look of pain. "You do not know that, René. We do not know that. The church does not know if the Ring of Fire is an act of God, or a temptation of Satan. Up-timers barely believe in Satan, while in our world we battle him every day. Satan is as real to us as the ground beneath our feet." He paused, thinking. "Let me ask you a question, René. And I want you to answer it as honestly as possible. Can you state the truth of the Ring of Fire with all certainty? Satan or God? The church is struggling to determine what this all means. And to handle it poorly could lead to schisms and further fractioning of the true church. I urge you to please reconsider publishing the paper, René. Please."
"I will publish this paper. It will not be controversial. It will be a summation of up-time thought and philosophy. It has taken me months to write, and I have much more to do. I am doing nothing different than Crucibellus did with mathematics. She took the up-time concept and made it accessible to the down-time mind. I am doing the same with philosophy. And I am not the only one who feels this way. There are others here, but they push me to take the reins. I am taking the thoughts that started with me, the Father of Modern Thought, and tracing it all the way through modern up-time philosophers. It is a direct lineage. No one is better equipped to write it than I."
"Listen to yourself, René. You are talking like a demigod of some kind."
"Perhaps I am, Marin. Some of the books on this table speak of me in those terms."
Mersenne threw up his hands in disgust, shaking his head. After a moment, he shuffled through the pile of books on the table, finally unearthing what he was looking for, a copy of the Catholic Bible. He held it up. "René, as of this moment in time, the church's official position is the earth is in the center of the universe as Ptolemy, Aristotle, and God through his scriptures have placed it. Despite the outcome of Galileo's trial and the despite the attempt on the life of the pope. It is still official church doctrine. It has not yet changed."
It was René's turn to look disgusted. "You have a mind, Marin, use it. You reviewed Copernicus' calculations yourself. He adhered to doctrine by telling everyone his calculations were merely 'aberrations that one must compensate for.' He knew we were not the center of the universe. The math proves it. Galileo's observations prove it."
"Don't you think that I know that, René? I am not a fool. Galileo is right! We are not the center of the universe. But the church still says so. Doctrine says so. And church doctrine is what determines your soul's relationship with God. That has been an accepted truth for a thousand years! We must take this one-step at a time. A gradual change. This Ring of Fire is a damned thing. It's trying to force change on an institution that can trace its lineage all the way back to Christ himself. You wonder why people think The Ring of Fire might be the work of Satan? You are the fool who isn't facing reality."
"You are a magnificent defender of orthodoxy, Marin." There was no sarcasm in René's voice, merely a statement of fact and respect.
"I am a man of faith, René. Who understands the thing with which you gamble."
"And what is that?" René was puzzled.
"Your soul."
"My soul is my business," he snapped back.
"Then I will fear for it, even if you will not. You are destroying the Aristotelian model. Calling it moribund. Not worth our time. So be it. But in the reality-that-might-have-been, it took over one hundred years for this new system to fully take root. And you expect acceptance to happen the day you publish, because you said so? Without schism? Without violence? Without a fight? Understand this. I must defend doctrine. If you publish, I will attack your ideas."
"As you did with Flood and the Rosicrucians?"
"Yes. My arguments were impeccable and you know it."
"Yes. They were. While so many chose ad hominem attacks, you clearly demonstrated the new age Rosicrucian nonsense of expecting scientific solutions from the invocation of supernatural agencies. Observation and fact was your argument. I will have no such weaknesses when I complete the writing."
"Is there anything I can do to talk you out of this, René?"
"It's not your choice to allow, or not. It's mine. We cannot call ourselves men of science unless we divorce doctrine from discovery."
"The two are inseparable!"
"The two are choking each other! And neither will grow until they are separate! As long as doctrine holds over science, we do not honor our God-given intelligence. When doctrine is wrong, as proven by science, the doctrine must change. If it does not, then the doctrine is the fool, and destined for the fools path. Prayer doesn't hold up an airplane wing. It's air pressure."
Mersenne sighed. "You always were stubborn, René. And from our future readings, you grew more so as confidence in your thinking grew." He paused and once again focused on René. "You are certain about this path, my friend?"
"More than I have ever been about anything." René tried not to let belligerence creep into his voice. He wasn't sure if he succeeded.
Mersenne leaned forward in his chair and once again challenged René, this time gently. "And your wife? How is she with this choice of yours?"
He could feel his voice weaken slightly. "She supports me, and our joint desire to bring these discussions out into the open. She supports me absolutely."
Mersenne rose from his seat at the table, and embraced his friend. At first, René stood still, arms limp at his sides. After a moment he returned the embrace. Mersenne then stepped back and looked René in the eyes. "We part as friends, René. But we must part. It is my duty to destroy your arguments. But you know I will never attack the man."
René nodded in the affirmative.
Mersenne's voice grew even more serious. "Are you ready for what is to come?"
René nodded again, slower this time.
Mersenne smiled at him. "Will you tell Director Fermat that you intend to publish, or should I?
René perked up, all signs of pain gone from his face, and he smiled back, broadly. "I will. I enjoy pissing him off."
October, 1634
Isabeau watched René as he stepped through the open doorway to their home. He handed his cloak, blade, and broad-brimmed hat to his servant. Another servant closed the door behind him. Isabeau was standing in the doorway of a small room, off the main hallway that served as his office. It had thick doors and walls so that his solitude could be complete. She watched him carefully, trying to gage his mood. He seemed neutral, not happy, not sad, not elated, just flat. Drained. Guarded. As he glanced down the hall toward his office, he caught her eye. She smiled at him, and he merely nodded. No change in expression. He mumbled acknowledgement to the servants, an up-time habit they adapted, and walked slowly to her. The servants melted away. She embraced him, and he returned the embrace. Lightly at first, and then gradually over a minute, his embrace became so tight that she could barely breathe. It was a desperate embrace, an embrace of a man who needed a rock of strength in a turbulent sea. He hung on to her for a while longer, and then stepped away.
She questioned him with her eyes.
He sighed slowly and deeply, just shaking his head. He abruptly stepped into his office, and she followed, closing the door behind them. He settled into his usual chair, she onto a couch. She waited patiently for him to speak. Isabeau knew it would take some time for her husband to gather his thoughts. The more agitated and emotional he was, the longer it took him.
She took a moment to glance around the small room. It was a high and ornate ceiling, decorated with a fresco of Odysseus sailing for home on the dome, with ornate cherubs and plaster floral decorations around it. His writing desk was in the corner, and around it were stacks and stacks of manuscripts. Some were handwritten by him, others had copious notes in the margins. Except for the fireplace, the rest of the room was bookshelves with only a high window for natural light. A clock on the mantel tocked loudly, drawing attention to itself in the silence. Isabeau tucked her feet under her dress and waited.
René was staring at the bookshelves next to the door, forefinger and thumb framing his jaw at one side of his face. With his other hand, he slowly drummed his fingers on the arm of the upholstered chair.
Finally he spoke. "Ridicule." He looked at her for the first time since they had entered his office. "I suffered ridicule." He grew quiet again.
Isabeau decided it was time for him to talk. Her feet came from under her dress, and she straightened her posture on the couch. "Tell me what happened at the lecture."
He just looked off into the bookcase again.
"René, tell me what happened. You presented the paper, didn't you? René?"
He turned to her slowly, and nodded in the affirmative.
"To the members of the Académie Française?"
He again nodded.
"This was a private presentation?"
He shrugged. "There were some others there I didn't recognize, only a few."
"And how was it received? René, answer me. I know the difference between sulking and thinking. You are sulking."
"I am also thinking."
"How was it received?"
"I think 'poorly' would be a good descriptor." He nodded. "Yes, poorly would just about do it."
"You knew there would be resistance. We spoke of it often."
"Spectacularly poorly. That might be better."
"René, tell me."
He took a deep breath, and sighed.
"René! Did you begin with the Aristotelian review, and how it didn't properly fit with the world, and then how the Platonic view tried and failed to make sense of the Christian world?" She motioned to him expectantly, trying to get him to pick up the conversation. "How did that go?"
He nodded and smiled ever so slightly at her encouragement. "That part went quite well. I was speaking their language, they understood the two models, and how philosophy had followed those two paths." He nodded again. "Quite well."
"Then I reviewed my work, not only what I was working on before the Ring of Fire, but also the impact that Galileo's trial had on my work. Went over several other examples of my writings very briefly, and then began to touch on the work of others who came after me. Just outlines. My book will be over a thousand pages when I am done, and there is no way I could possibly touch on everything in this first lecture. But I wanted to move forward. I've been reading and thinking for so long, it was time to do something."
"So what did you do?"
"I went over my Rationalist movement. They understood it. I've been talking about it for two years now, and it wasn't anything totally new to most of them." He turned to her, his excitement building. "Did you know that Baruch Spinoza is being raised by the Stearns family?"
"I know that, yes." She impatiently waived her arm. "But you went over the Rationalists to the Empiricists?"
"Yes." He grew quiet again. "That's when some of them began to walk out. Not all at once, but in steady stream from that point forward."
"They walked out of your lecture?"
"Yes!" He hit the arm of the chair with his fist. "The audacity of these men to walk out on René Descartes! I am the world's greatest living philosopher, one of the greatest the world has ever known, and they simply began to walk away from my lecture. One by one, they walked out."
"René, you didn't speak of yourself in those terms, did you? You know what that does to Fermat when you say such things."
"No, I didn't. But that doesn't mean it isn't true."
She sighed, exasperated. That argument could happen on another day. Again. "What happened next?"
"I began to talk about the Existentialists."
"And then?"
"Nietzsche."
"I see."
"I only told them what he said, and why he said it. Gott ist tot. God is dead."
"Did they understand?"
René snorted. "Did they understand that what Nietzsche meant was that the Christian God as a moral compass was no longer the only source of morality? Was part of his argument that moral people can exist without the Christian God? No, Isabeau. And if they did, they didn't acknowledge it."
"And then?"
"And then, I was in an almost empty lecture hall, with only one person still sitting in their seat. Just one."
"Who? Fermat? Someone from the Inquisition?"
He shook his head. "Mersenne. He sat in the front row, in the center, and had tears streaming down his face."
Isabeau grew concerned, but she stayed silent, letting him gather his thoughts again.
"Mersenne stood up, and told me he would always pray for me, no matter what. In the middle of an empty lecture hall, his quiet and strong voice told me he would always pray for me." René's eyes began to tear up, and his jaw took a hard set. "I didn't realize this would be so hard, Isabeau. I thought . . . Well, I knew it would be challenging, and that we would have difficulty, and that many would not understand. But . . ." His voice trailed off.
"Come here," she said, after a moment. She patted the couch next to her.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and swallowed hard. "Why?"
"Just---come here. Sit."
He rose out of his chair and sat next to her. She gently took him by the shoulders and turned him, and then laid him so that his head was resting on her lap. She began to stroke his forehead. "Better?"
"Always."
She watched his eyes slowly close as she gently drew her fingers across his forehead. "I have something to tell you, René."
"Mmmm?" One of his eyebrows arched quizzically, eyes still closed.
"I am pregnant."
"Mmmm---what?" His eyes bulged open, and his face burst into instant illumination like an up-time light bulb. He sat up next to her, and stared at her like a schoolboy. She couldn't help but giggle. "You---You're sure?"
She nodded.
"When will he-she-it be born?"
She laughed, feeling happier than she had in weeks. While he was working on his lecture the house was quiet, even glum at times. When she finally was certain of the pregnancy, she was bursting to tell him. Her mother had cautioned her against getting his---and her---hopes up too soon. "These things are uncertain", her mother said, "and dangerous. But the women in our family are strong, and have borne many children without a great deal of fuss, I'm hopeful you will be just fine."
"Isabeau, this is wonderful news, on what's been a less than wonderful day! It makes the pain go away like nothing else." He leaned away from her suspiciously. "Did you plan this? Telling me today?"
"Yes. I did plan to tell you today. I wasn't surprised you received the reception at the Académie Française you did. And the child should come in the spring, according to Mother, if all goes well."
He grew pensive for a moment, and then put his hand on her stomach. She reclined, and he gently put his head on her lap. "Can I hear anything yet?"
"Soon, I am told." She stroked his ear gently, knowing that pleased him. Smiling mischievously, she used his ear to pull his face to hers. They kissed, deeply. She eased closer to him, pressing her body to his in a way she knew would get his attention.
He unexpectedly pulled away. "This won't hurt the baby, will it? Or you?"
She laughed and pulled him toward her.
The next week
Henri De Champs was a very pious man. He was also intelligent, thoughtful, loved his family, his king, and owned a successful cloth business. A few years ago his wife passed away after a short illness, and he now lived with his daughter and her husband and children. He could afford a place of his own quite easily, but it was far better to be near the children and eating homemade food, than eating a lonely meal indifferently prepared for him by servants. He was a quiet man who never made a fuss about anything.
There was a new parish priest, a young man who told Henri about the philosopher Descartes. In a sermon, he was described as the man who wanted to kill God himself. Descartes taught that morality was not the province of the church, or even of God, but with man himself. Henri had heard of Descartes, of course. Who in Paris had not? Two years ago, he was hailed as one of France's greatest minds, along with Fermat and others who started the Académie Française, with the support of the king and Cardinal Richelieu.
But now, the man Descartes had overstepped his bounds. Descartes was clearly not pious, he was an elitist, and arrogant to boot. The inquisition had done nothing, it seemed to Henri. The authorities, nothing. The cardinal did nothing. Someone had to do something. This sort of talk, these teachings of heresy were not to be tolerated.
Henri went to the young priest to see what the church was going to do about this man, this heretic who was worse than a Huguenot, worse than a murderer, and surely a mouthpiece of the devil himself. The priest too, was a very pious man, who preached against the Huguenot, against Descartes, and against all heresy, including the Ring of Fire. "That very name," he thundered from the pulpit, "That very name tells us that these people from the future are agents of the devil. Is not Hell a place of fire? Is not Hell a place of rings of suffering, ever increasing suffering? Surely something called the Ring of Fire is born of Hell, a spawn of the Devil."
The priest told Henri that Descartes was likely possessed, and that his intelligence and his mind overcame his heart. His ego made him weak, and his elitist thinking made him stupid, ignorant, and a blasphemer. The priest told Henri confidently that this man would be struck from the face of the earth by God.
Henri agreed, and thanked the priest profusely.
That night, as Henri slept, after a wonderful meal made by his daughter from the same recipe his wife used years ago, he had a dream. God came to him, and told him that he must be the one to kill René Descartes.
Two weeks later
Armand D'Abo, the head of security of the Académie Française, handed Pierre Fermat, the Director of the Académie Française, a tattered pamphlet. The pamphlet was taken from one of the protestors that were now in the street outside the Académie. D'Abo watched as Fermat read the pamphlet for the second time. D'Abo had seen Fermat angry before, but never like this. Clearly he was trying to contain his fury.
"Dammit. Dammit to Hell! I never should've given permission to Descartes to lecture on up-time philosophy. Never!" He held the proof in his hand up for D'Abo to see. "Obviously, someone attended the lecture, took notes, and published them. This was supposed to be only an academic discussion on something that stupid bastard Descartes insisted on pushing on the Académie, and now it's circulating on the streets of Paris. Likely in the hands of the inquisition." His face paled. "In the hands of the king!" His face paled more. "And in the hands of Richelieu." He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. "Merde!" He angrily balled the paper into a wad and tossed it to his desk. "There is so much at stake, the fate of France, of the Catholic church, of our very civilization! And Descartes wants to lecture on philosophy, the idiot. Why couldn't he just take an interest in designing airplane wings, or material sciences, or something practical?"
D'Abo wisely assumed it was a rhetorical question, and remained silent. Fermat continued. "His mathematics are superb, his work on optics was revolutionary, but that was before. Now, all he wants to do is read philosophy from the future, and write. And lecture on the convoluted points of logic and religion that are simply not important. I don't understand why Descartes can't see the needs in front of him. The terribly important needs of the country. He is one of the most stubborn men I have ever met! Mon Dieu!"
D'Abo felt he could comment on this aspect of Fermat's dialog. "Oui, Director Fermat. He is very stubborn."
Fermat shook his head. "It was supposed to be a closed session, D'Abo, but somehow, details of his lecture leaked out. I want to know the source of the leak, D'Abo. Track them down, and make sure that they never set foot in the Académie again."
"Oui, Director Fermat." D'Abo felt a little bolder. "But it seems the damage is already done. People are gathering in the street in front of the Académie."
Fermat turned on him. "Funding. Funding could be a problem if this becomes too big of an issue. The support of the king and Cardinal Richelieu are key to keeping the Académie operating. If Descartes keeps stirring up shit like this lecture, I figure I will have to take action and have Descartes tossed out on his ear. There is just too much at stake."
D'Abo watched as Fermat tried to calm himself. Pacing, he went to the window. The second floor office overlooked the street below, and he leaned on the windowsill and absentmindedly peered down into the street, trying to gauge the crowd. Fermat barely had time to flinch out of the way as a rock was hurled at him, crashing through the window and landing on his office floor.
"Director Fermat, are you all right?"
Fermat stepped back from the window and brushed glass from his jacket. "Yes. What the hell is going on down there?"
D'Abo pulled Fermat back from the windows. "Extinguish the candles, Director. So they cannot see us inside."
As Fermat went to his desk to snuff out the candles, D'Abo went carefully to the windows. The shorter days of fall meant dusk came early. Keeping a practical distance from the windows so those below couldn't see him, he peered up and down the street. He could see torches approaching from both directions. Another rock hit the window, and bounced off. Someone else managed to hurl a cobblestone through another. There was a knock on the door.
"Come!"
Sergeant Maurice, D'Abo's assistant chief of security entered the room hastily. "Director Fermat, are you all right? Officer D'Abo?"
"We're uninjured," Fermat answered for both of them "Have you sent a runner to the guard?"
"Oui, Director. But I think it wise the members leave the building while we can. The crowd is increasing, and it seems they are looking to riot. I don't want to take any chances." Maurice gave a quick glance to D'Abo for approval, and D'Abo nodded back.
"There are more on the way, Sergeant Maurice. You can see from here."
Fermat continued, "Then I don't want to take any chances with the building. There are too many experiments, too much work here to allow a mob to ruin any of it. What we do here is too important. Send another runner, and tell the Guard to break this up immediately. The Académie Française must be protected. Send cavalry immediately."
\*\*\*\*
Captain of the Guard Louis Gerard de Montpassant laughed at the message. It was now completely dark, and there was no way he was risking mounted troops and horses through the narrow and uneven medieval streets. He would kill three or four of his men and probably a dozen horses before he reached the Académie Française. This was not the Paris of the future, with broad boulevards and open squares. This was still the Paris of the 1400s. Streets were crooked paths and haphazard mazes that took knowledge to navigate. De Montpassant had seen the layouts of the future Paris, and he very much liked it. The broad boulevards provided excellent fields of fire for dealing with unruly crowds. Cannon stationed at public squares could cover multiple directions at once. It was an excellent design. Ah well, pikes would do just as well. They will get there a little slower, but at least they would get there.
Dinner was about to be served, and the men would not have time to eat before they mustered out. De Montpassant felt a little badly for the rioters. His men were going to be very unhappy after double-time marching on an empty stomach for two miles. They were going to take it out on someone.
\*\*\*\*
"How many were killed, Mersenne?" René asked dejectedly. Isabeau and Mersenne were sitting with René in his office.
"I was told eighteen bodies were found in the street. We don't know how many people crawled away, or were taken away by other survivors. Surely several more. It was very dark during the riot. It wasn't until daylight that you could see the bodies. Captain D'Abo and his men were able to prevent any of the rioters from getting into the Académie itself. But it was a near thing. Many of them were injured, including Captain D'Abo."
"This is terrible," said Isabeau. "Mersenne, How bad is Captain D'Abo?
"Little is certain, Isabeau. But he is at his family home recovering. If there is no infection, he should recover. It's in God's hands now." Mersenne gave a sidelong glance at René, who steadfastly ignored his subtle dig.
Isabeau turned to her husband. "I think we should do something, René. It is obvious that people blame you for what happened---"
"Me! What did I do? Did I create that pamphlet? Did I rage from the pulpits? Did I prey on the ignorance of others and drive them into a deadly frenzy?"
"No, of course not, dear. But the blamed person, you shall be. It was your lecture---"
"---I only lectured on what others had said, not what I believe."
Mersenne jumped in. "That distinction of logic is doing you about as much good as it did Galileo when he set his book in a 'fictional universe.' Don't try to play that game with me, René. I have known you and your mind for too long. Once you started reading the philosophy from the future, you were lost to us. Your mind couldn't reconcile the ideas of the future and still accept the past and our present. Your stubbornness is only surpassed by your brilliance. I have fought you at every turn. But with logic and respect. Not respect for the ideas, you know my feelings on those, but respect for the man. Whoever published this pamphlet for the public like this clearly had no respect for the man or the science." Mersenne stopped for air, and looked at René. "No matter what, this riot is on your hands René."
"I refuse to accept the responsibility for the deeds of others. I had no direct control---"
"Bullshit!"
Both men stared at Isabeau with slack jaws.
"An up-time phrase I learned a few weeks ago. Very fitting for this occasion." She turned to her husband. "We talked about this many times. You knew there would be consequences. Certainly not this soon, certainly not this severe, but we knew there would be a toll to pay. Denying that toll now is the worst you can do. You must accept responsibility for what happened, apologize to everyone starting with the king and ending with the families of those injured. 'Damage control' is another up-time phrase that comes to mind. And while we may speak of the elegance of the French language as the highest ideal for political communication, we need to 'manage the spin' of this debacle, if I may be so inelegant. That is, if you want to remain in France, and out of the clutches of the cardinal, and the Inquisition, and the king. Because they are three distinct and independent enemies. And you have made enemies this month, to be sure."
René rose from his seat, and shouted. "This is not my fault! I did not do this thing."
Isabeau looked imploringly to Mersenne. Do something, please, she thought at him, hoping he would understand.
He caught her look, and nodded. He stood in front of René. "René. Listen to me. We are not saying you did it." He looked sideways at Isabeau. But this is the perception people will have." He nodded to Isabeau, who nodded back. "I have an idea. I think we should go and visit Captain D'Abo. That will at least show support for those at the Académie Française who were wounded." He glanced at Isabeau, non-verbally urging her to take up the argument.
"He's right, René. That's a start. At least a public start. His home is less than a half mile from here, we can walk there in a few moments." Isabeau joined Mersenne standing in front of René, who reluctantly met their gaze. He stared at them for a moment.
"Very well. But this is to support the captain. That is all. I still don't believe I hold responsibility for the actions of ignorant priests."
"Let's go now," urged Isabeau. "We can make it there and back before dinner."
Within moments, they were out the door and making their way through the streets of Paris toward the home of Captain D'Abo. It was a blustery and raw late November day and Isabeau and René were bundled into their heaviest cloaks, Isabeau with hers hooding her head, René with his bundled around his body, his large brimmed hat pulled low on his face. Mersenne, as always, was wearing open sandals, and clad only in his coarse woolen friar's robes. It always amazed Isabeau how the man managed not to freeze to death in the winter.
They had gone only a short distance when they were approached by a well-dressed man. Isabeau looked at him and smiled. Middle-aged, graying hair neat and clean, fine gloves of lambskin. He came directly to her husband, who was to her right. Mersenne walked to her left. With her hood on, and a gust of wind, she couldn't hear the man's voice clearly. But it sounded like he was asking René if he was Descartes, the philosopher.
"Yes, that is I. But I don't have time to speak to anyone right now . . ."
As René answered, the man casually pulled open his cloak, and gently, almost delicately, pulled a dagger from his belt. His relaxed motion had put René and Isabeau off their guard, and Isabeau could see that her husband had already dismissed the man. He was looking down the street and past the man. He didn't see the knife.
Isabeau screamed. Her husband started to turn toward her, and finally saw the blade. With his hands inside his cloak, and his cloak drawn tight around him, the only thing he could do was try and protect himself from the inevitable blow. He raised his arms inside the cloak, and Isabeau lost track of the blade in the whirl of heavy cloth, his hat, and her arms instinctively reaching for where she thought the knife would be. She succeeded in finding the assailant's wrist, and she held it as the dagger plunged into her husband. Still trying to hold it, she felt the man twist his wrist and pull the knife back for another blow. She could feel the scrape of bone as it slid out of her husband.
The assailant took a step back and they locked eyes, she hanging onto his wrist. He had no expression, Isabeau could see, and a part of her mind felt even more afraid as she saw the deadness of his eyes. With his other hand, he deliberately and firmly pushed her back, while twisting his wrist in her grip to free his weapon. She stumbled away toward Mersenne. The man turned away from her, and back to René.
René had stumbled backwards, clutching his left shoulder, Isabeau saw. He must have deflected the first blow with his cloak and forearm. He then started an attempt to strip his cloak away, so that he could get to his blade. The cloak became tangled and caught on the hilt of the sword, and his broad hat fell into his face. The assailant moved in again. Isabeau found herself rooted to the spot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mersenne move, and then place himself between René and the assailant. The assailant stopped at the sight of the friar's robes, and took a step to one side to go around him. Mersenne moved to block him. Mersenne simply stood there. He didn't take a defensive posture, his arms were at their sides. It was almost like he had bumped into the man on the street, and they were trying to find a way past each other. The man moved to the left, and Mersenne countered, then to the right with the same result. Mersenne started to say something to the man, in his clear and strong voice, and the man made a waving motion with his hand, and sliced Mersenne's throat. Isabeau felt a warm spray hit her face. Mersenne stood there for only a second, tried to reach for his throat, then collapsed to the dirty street in a heap. Isabeau watched as the assailant calmly stepped over the body.
By now, René had dropped his cloak and hat. As the cloak dropped it was still caught on the hilt of his sword. He grabbed the hilt and the cloak in one motion, and pulled them together. He now had his blade in front of him, but he was tripping over the cloak as he held both. The man continued to advance. René lunged. Isabeau saw her husband's blade strike the man in the chest. It stayed there, only stuck into him by the tip, the cloak restricting the range of motion.
The assailant screamed in pain and surprise, and stumbled back. With his motion, the cloak finally fell away, pulling the tip of the sword out of the assailant. The sword landed at René's' feet. He picked it up by the blade and retreated as he fumbled for the grip. The assailant continued to advance. Isabeau could see her husband slip to one knee on the blood covered cobblestones. The man was now between her and her husband, she couldn't see . . .
The assailant suddenly stopped. She watched him from the back as he staggered, bent at the middle. He then began to swipe back and forth with his blade, like a child playing with toy swords. She heard her husband scream. His cry broke her paralysis, and she found herself able to move again.
The two men were locked together. René had plunged his blade deep into the assailant's chest. Kneeling, he held the man at bay, impaled on his sword. The blade was very deep, and the man close enough, that the wild swinging of his blade connected with René's face and forearms. The assailant weakened, and René was covered with blood and slashes. The man collapsed and fell on top of her husband. As he rolled to the side, Isabeau could see that his expression had not changed. Her husband lay motionless in the street.
She started screaming. She remembered screaming for a long, long time.
April, 1635
Pierre Fermat stood in front of the Paris town home of René Descartes. Over his shoulder was a portfolio of contracts and paperwork, and under his arm was tucked a small gift for Marie Descartes, the infant daughter born two weeks ago. Much was made of the fact that the mother had taken the infant for her baptism shortly after the birth, and that the father was not present.
Wishing he were elsewhere, he rapped on the thick door. It was immediately opened by a burly servant, and he was carefully and quite impolitely scrutinized. "Pierre Fermat for Monsieur and Madame Descartes, please."
The servant grunted an acknowledgement and motioned him into the hallway. He was flanked by two other servants. He recognized one of them as a former student at the Académie. Fermat knew that Descartes still had many friends in the academic world, and his followers were all students of up-time philosophy, the study of which Fermat had banned at the Académie. He was ushered upstairs into a small vestibule where he was allowed to stand by himself for a few moments.
Finally, a door opened, and he stepped into the room to meet René Descartes, who was sitting upright in a chair, with his wife at his side. It was the first time that Fermat had seen Descartes since the assassination attempt, and considering what he had gone through, he really didn't look that bad. His face was lightly scarred, his nose was missing a chunk on the left side, and his right eye looked like it drooped slightly. He was recovering, from what Fermat could tell, which agreed with the reports.
"Pierre," began Descartes.
"Isabeau, René." After a formal bow to each of them, he produced the gift. "Something for the baby. I understand she is doing well, as is her mother?"
Isabeau stood and accepted the gift from him. "Yes, Thank you, Director Fermat. Marie is sleeping now."
"Ah. Just as well, I've never been good with babies. Babies or puppies." He laughed, internally fighting the tension within him. He glanced around the room, and saw another chair. "Do you mind if I sit?"
Isabeau nodded, and he sat, drawing the chair closer to them.
"Well," Fermat said nervously.
"Indeed," replied Descartes.
Fermat cleared his throat. "This is something I've been putting off for a while, René. As I am sure you know."
"Indeed," said Descartes again.
Fermat was a brilliant man. He knew that about himself, he had accepted it a long time ago. He knew the people he was lucky enough to work with were all savants in some field or another. But none could be as frustrating as the man who sat across from him. A remarkable man. A pain in his ass. He took a breath and started to speak. "René, I---"
"Do you have the papers?"
Fermat stopped. He knows what all this is for. He then smiled, and pulled a stack of paper from his satchel. "Indeed."
"Where do I sign?"
"It's all marked out on the contracts, René. I can leave them with you and you can have your lawyers look it over---"
"I will sign them now, and you can take them back with you. I wish this to be our last meeting."
"Indeed," replied Fermat. While Descartes read and signed the various documents, Fermat felt his usual need to fill the silence. "Do you know where you will go? What you will do? We all assume you will go to the Netherlands again. After all that is where you did most of your writing."
Descartes replied with only a raised eyebrow. He continued reading and signing.
Fermat plowed onward. "I see that your hands have healed. I heard that you had several tendons severed in your left hand. Can you still use it?" In response, Descartes lifted his left arm and flexed his fingers. Clearly only the thumb and the middle finger still functioned properly. The rest were frozen in place. He dropped his left hand, and continued shuffling the papers with his right hand.
Fermat nodded. "At least you can still write." Fermat leaned forward toward the pile of paper in front of Descartes. "There are a couple of release forms there, and some contractual documents that forbid you discussing with anyone what we have worked on, or what you may have seen while at the Académie."
"I was stabbed in the shoulder, face and arms, Pierre. None of those affected my ability to read."
"Indeed." Fermat could feel himself nodding in agreement. "I suppose that time you spent in the Army with Maximilian and the Prince of Orange came in handy. Never thought of you as one who was handy with a blade. And the killer was someone who was never any trouble, a good man by all accounts." Once again, Fermat received an eyebrow for his trouble. He waited for the last document to be signed and handed back to him.
Fermat stood and stuffed the papers into his folio. "Thank you." He then looked at the couple. "I know others have said this, but I wanted to add my official condolences for our mutual loss of Marin Mersenne. He had a strong mind, and was responsible for so many advances. He was taken from us too soon."
Descartes stood quickly, and Isabeau went to his side, steadying him. He seemed to fight off dizziness. "Marin Mersenne was far more than a strong mind, Fermat. He was a man of deep faith. And his faith . . ." Descartes' voice trailed off, and he looked distant.
A puzzled Fermat prompted Descartes. "His faith . . . ?"
"Indeed," replied Descartes.
\*\*\*\*
The Porcelain Throne
Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett
Kurt Vest didn't know what he was doing at the party except that he had been informed by his mother, his father, his elder sister Elizabeth and his brother-in-law that he would attend. He was just back from university, having completed his studies in natural philosophy. The party was being held in the courtyard in spite of the rain earlier that day. Gertrude Krüger was talking about the latest Italian fashion, a subject that interested Kurt not quite so much as how the local cattle were chewing their cud. Kurt wondered what had happened to Trudi while he looked for an escape. Trudi had been such a sensible child before he went off to university. He had always liked her, back then. They'd done all sorts of things together when they were children, but now at twenty she seemed to have lost all practical sense. He was only twenty-five years old himself, but his brain still worked.
How had such a smart, sensible girl turned into such a social butterfly with nothing on her mind except fashion? Kurt didn't know how to talk to her anymore. He wasn't sure she had any intelligence left, what with all that giggling and eyelash batting.
\*\*\*\*
Between his ruminating on the dead past and searching for escape, he honestly never saw the fine lace handkerchief that Gertrude dropped. "Excuse me, Trudi. I want to talk to your cousin about the new load of clay."
Kurt stepped on the kerchief. His booted foot picked it up and deposited it neatly in a mud puddle. He hadn't meant to kick it into the puddle. At the time, he didn't even realize he'd done it. He went off to talk to Carl Krüger, Gertrude's second cousin, about clay.
He thought his note of apology was wholly appropriate and his recommendation that she show more caution in how she handled such finery was simply good advice. His sister and mother, for some incomprehensible reason, didn't seem to agree.
\*\*\*\*
"Don't you pay any attention to anything other than your experiments? You're going to Grantville. Probably tomorrow. So go pack."
Kurt tried not to sigh. The conversation had reached familiar ground, but that didn't make it any more pleasant. The patterns of his interaction with his sister Elizabeth had been set at the infamous party seven years before. At thirty-two, Kurt was something of a disappointment to his family. A useful disappointment, but a disappointment nonetheless. He didn't understand---or even want to understand---politics or social niceties. Kurt liked his work and his experiments. He was something of an alchemist, although he wasn't trying to produce gold from lead. He just wanted to produce pottery in the Chinese style. The experiments were interesting, if frustrating. And if he hadn't found the key to China stoneware, he had found a number of useful bits of information. He very much did not like social flibbertygibberty, when you could start a scandal by failing to pick up a dropped hanky. Kurt was unmarried, and by all estimations---including his own---certain to remain in that state until his dying day. It wasn't that he was uninterested in the fair sex. Well, not entirely. It was just that the whole business was really quite confusing, and he had better things to do. "Very well, Elizabeth. Who did I offend this time, and why does it entail me going to Grantville? Wouldn't a nice note of apology do?"
"Because Grantville has information we need!"
Kurt turned back to his records. Elizabeth took Kurt by his ear, something she hadn't done since he was twelve. It hurt rather more than he remembered. Dragging him by his ear, Elizabeth brought him out of his workshop and to a table on which were stacked wonders. Chinese porcelain was something he had been working on for the last several years with little success. But it turned out that the Chinese porcelain was the least of it. One of the family's factors had gone to Grantville and returned with examples of stoneware, something called bone china which was much like Chinese porcelain, but subtly different, along with several examples of something called plastic and several new types of glass.
\*\*\*\*
That was how Kurt ended up in Grantville, researching the making of china. And that's how he met Melba Sue Davis and her husband, Garth Freeman.
Kurt was grateful that the sign outside of the dwelling said that translation was available. Trying to understand English was a lot of effort.
The man who greeted him was apparently a former soldier. He had a gunpowder tattoo on the right side of his face and considerable scarring. But he spoke German with a Swedish accent and at least some English.
"Ian McCormick," the man introduced himself. "How can I help you?"
"I am looking for information on the Chinese method of making ceramics."
"Then you've come to the right place," Ian said with a gap-toothed grin. "No one this side of China knows more about ceramics than Frau Davis and Herr Freeman. You wouldn't believe the stuff they make."
Somehow Kurt thought this wasn't the first time that Ian had said that. There was something a bit rehearsed about it. Which didn't mean it was untrue. Just on the shelves in the front room were some of finest examples of the potter's art that Kurt had ever seen. Still, Kurt wondered just how many people Ian had told about their skill and how many people had learned the secrets of Chinese-style pottery from them.
A tall, skinny woman with graying hair and spectacles entered the room and said something in English. Worse, it wasn't even an English that sounded like the English that Kurt had heard before.
Ian said something back to her in English much more like the English that Kurt was used to, then said to Kurt, "I was telling Frau Davis that you were here to learn the up-timer secrets about pottery and working in clay. And I realized that I don't know your name?"
"I am Kurt Vest, from Creussen."
"Kurt Vest babble babble Creussen. Creussen babble babble babble."
Gradually, over the next few minutes, Kurt got used to the translation and it was almost as though he was talking to Melba Sue; she insisted he call her that, directly. Ian was still very much there, occasionally inserting his own opinion.
"We offer training in the mixing and making of ceramics in both the true Chinese style and in other forms of ceramics that have been developed over the last four hundred years or so. Unfortunately, we can't provide the really advanced stuff that was being done up-time . . ."
"They made ceramic knives up-time," Ian put in. "Sharp as broken glass but strong as steel." He pointed to a wide-bladed knife hanging on the wall. The knife was white, not the gray or silver of steel, then went back to translating.
"A lot of the exciting new advances were still proprietary information and unavailable to hobbyists like us."
"You were hobbyists?"
"Yes. Given six months and some training, you'll be better than we are, I imagine."
"I don't think so, myself," Ian interjected. "Frau Davis and Herr Freeman are artists. They are real artists."
"So, would you like a tour?" Melba Sue asked.
"Oh, yes."
And during the tour, Kurt met several acquaintances from towns and villages in central Germany where clay was worked. They made everything from the beer steins made in Creussen to roof tiles. And all of them were here learning the up-timer techniques. Kurt realized that they wouldn't be able to keep this a secret to Creussen, much less the Vest family, but he didn't realize what that would mean in terms of the price of Chinese-style porcelain. It simply never crossed his mind.
Over the next few weeks, Melba Sue and Garth, with Ian interpreting, showed Kurt how they did things in the latter part of the twentieth century. And they were things of amazing value in terms of saving fuel and work while at the same time increasing production.
He also learned the formula for hard paste and soft paste china and bone china, which was actually developed in England from a misinterpretation of a Jesuit text on the Chinese method of making porcelain.
Kurt didn't care where it had been developed. He cared about the fact that he could see the shadow of his hand though the bone china, it was so fine.
He spent three weeks there on his first visit and returned with two pamphlets copied from some of the up-time books on pottery and a new-found faith in God. Kurt's faith faded, but the pamphlets he would keep for the rest of his life.
\*\*\*\*
Back in his lab, Kurt worked with kaolin, feldspar, quartz and pottery shards, grinding and mixing to produce a soft paste porcelain that vitrified at around 1300ºC. After he got it working and figured he had the formula down, he showed his family. They were quite impressed.
"This is marvelous," Elizabeth said. "We must keep it secret."
Kurt chose to assume that she meant the particular mix he had come up with and his particular procedures, because he knew that there was no way that they could keep the basic formula secret.
\*\*\*\*
"It's beautiful, Kurt," Elizabeth said. And this time her voice lacked its normal edge. As a member of the Vest family, Elizabeth, like the rest of them---and virtually everyone in town---had grown up with stoneware pottery and an appreciation of what it was and what you could and could not do with it. This almost translucent tea cup with the delicate handle had, until now, very much been in the category of "could not."
"Thank you, sister. With what I learned in Grantville it only took me a few months to get the formula right. Not just something that would work but something truly beautiful. I think this is as good as what Melba Sue Davis makes. And frankly, it's better than anything I have seen that comes from China. At least outside of the things I saw in Melba Sue's books." Honestly, Kurt thought it was better than what Melba Sue and Garth made. Just as she had predicted.
"You have talked about this Melba Sue quite a bit, brother." Elizabeth's voice had taken on a teasing tone.
"Yes. She is an expert on the chemistry of clays and glazing, though Garth, her husband, is better with the kiln and the potter's wheel."
\*\*\*\*
It took more time to get into production. Porcelain can be worked using basically the same techniques that are used in stoneware. Basically. Bone china is a soft paste porcelain, but at the same time stronger than most after firing and can use a thinner cross-section. But that takes a very delicate hand when throwing a pot or bowl. Some of that Kurt had been able to explain but a bigger part required practice to get right. They spent quite a lot of time and more than a little money gaining that skill. It was more than a year after Kurt's first trip to Grantville that they thought they had products good enough to sell.
\*\*\*\*
"They aren't selling," Friedrich said. "Everyone is impressed, but no one wants to buy at the prices we can offer."
"Why not?" Elizabeth asked. "Our new line of dinnerware is lovely."
"Yes. I got more compliments than I have had on any sales trip I have ever taken. It's the price that is causing the problem. They, the people I tried to sell to, say that with the up-timers and the knowledge they bring, everyone will be making bone china in a year or so. All they have to do is wait and the price will come down."
"Not from us it won't. It takes extra processing of the clay and the addition of bone ash. That doesn't come cheap."
Elizabeth was overstating the case and Friedrich knew it. In fact, while the price wasn't going to go down as much as most of the people he had talked to thought it should, it was going to have to go down. They had expected the bone china to be a high profit item---had counted on it, in fact---but they were going to have to drop the price and take less profit if they expected to make any sales. Still, this definitely wasn't the time to argue the point, not with Elizabeth. "I know that and you know that but the customers all think that everything made with the new knowledge is cheaper to make than the old way. So they figure that we can make bone china for less than stoneware."
He held up his hand before his wife could interrupt again. It had been a cold and disappointing two months on the road and when Lizzie got on a tear it could take a while for her to cool off. "I told them, but they don't believe me. They don't want to believe me. And they aren't entirely wrong. The bone china is lighter than the stoneware and uses less clay. Which, they pointed out to me in several towns, means we can use less clay. And that there were other savings that we were no doubt making from up-timer knowledge. And there are. You know how much we are saving in fuel by preheating the air with the reverse-flow heaters.
"It doesn't matter that they are wrong. What matters is that they believe the price will fall and are waiting for it to do so. Also, Peter Krump from Annaberg showed up with bone china that was pretty good. Not as good as ours, I don't think, which is why I am convinced that they didn't steal our formula. Even so, it was still bone china."
"Other people can make bone china?"
"Yes. Kurt isn't the only one to consult the up-timers. Apparently Melba Sue and Garth have a nice little business telling people how to make porcelain."
\*\*\*\*
"How could you?" Elizabeth shrieked.
Kurt jumped. He hadn't even heard her come in. "How could I what, Elizabeth? I have no idea what you're talking about. Have I yet again offended some flighty girl you want me to marry?"
"No. How could you? You haven't been out of your workshop for weeks, I think. But other people are making bone china. If this keeps up, we'll be out of business in a few months. No one is buying!"
"It was hopeless to think we could keep it a secret, sister," Kurt said. "We can keep some of it to ourselves, but anyone with any desire to make better products can find out the same things I did. And even if they didn't consult with Melba Sue and Garth, there's still the library. It has information on ceramics. For that matter, there was a ceramics factory in Grantville, or at least near it, before the Ring of Fire. Garth was telling me about it. You know, that's an idea . . ."
"What's an idea?" Elizabeth shouted.
"Well, they made toilets."
"They made what?"
"Toilets. Indoor plumbing."
"What's plumbing?"
"This is going to take some explaining. Up-time and in Grantville, they have indoor outhouses. That don't stink," he added quickly, before Elizabeth could interrupt to tell him how bad an idea that was.
"Chamber pots? You want us to make chamber pots?"
"Not exactly. They use water to flush away the waste to . . ." Kurt stopped. "Well, I don't actually know where it goes, but the toilet flushes it away. The thing that interested me in them was that they are porcelain and they have complex shapes that can't be thrown on a potter's wheel. I read a little about how they do it and we do some things that are similar but not quite the same." The truth was that most of what was written about slip-casting was still in English and he hadn't trusted the translations of the little there was in German so far.
"I still don't understand. What is the idea?"
"We could make toilets and perhaps other plumbing supplies. Like the sinks. Melba Sue had a toilet and sink, as well as a bathtub, that were all pale blue. Quite lovely in its way."
"And they were all porcelain?" Elizabeth asked.
"Well, the bathtub was fiberglass, I think they said. But I think it could have been porcelain. Oh, and the pipes were mostly copper or perhaps stainless steel. I'm not really sure." Kurt was trying to remember. His interest, aside from the fact that it was convenient not to have to go out in the cold, was mostly that the bathing room, they called it, had several ceramic components, unlike the kitchen, which had a steel sink. He had wondered casually why. "In the bathing room the tiles were ceramic. So were the sink and the toilet, which was, I guess, a self-emptying chamber pot. It just struck me that that room had more ceramics in it than the rest of the house. Or at least that's how it seemed.
"So when you reminded me of it, it occurred to me that we might be able to branch out into making the toilets and tiles and sinks. Perhaps the bathing tubs, which are not round like you're thinking, but are long enough to lay down in so that the water will cover your whole body. A bit like having a bath house in your home. That's it!" Kurt hit himself on the forehead. "I knew I was misremembering something. It was a bathroom, not a bathing room. A bathhouse room in your home, but with a self-emptying chamber pot and wash basin that can be filled and emptied with the twisting of a lever."
"It sounds like an amazingly expensive addition." Elizabeth sniffed.
"Why? A basin isn't that expensive, nor is a chamber pot."
"Because where does the water go? The water from the basin and the bathing tub and . . . is there water in the toilet thing? I think you said something about flushing and that implied water to me."
"Yes, there is. In fact, there is a water tank behind the pot part of the toilet that refills on its own."
"Refills from where? Where does the water to fill the tank come from?"
"I don't know," Kurt admitted, suddenly realizing that his obsession with clay and pottery had done a fair job of blinding him to the other miracles that the up-timers had brought with them.
For a few minutes Elizabeth was quiet and Kurt let her be as he tried to remember what little he had noticed about the bathroom in the Freeman home. And, for that matter, the other bathrooms he had seen in the various homes and public buildings.
"I think," Elizabeth said finally, "that you are going to have to make another trip to Grantville. We don't know enough. This may be the answer to our problems or it may be another bone china fiasco. Only worse, because who will be able to afford bathrooms?
"Listen, Kurt. We thought that the bone china was going to be a high profit product. We calculated based on that belief. And in order to get the greatest profit, we went ahead and spent money on things like rebuilding the kilns and promised the council that we would spend even more hiring more people to work in the shop. Now it turns out that we aren't going to make nearly as much as we thought on bone china. But we still have all those obligations. People we promised jobs, artists and refugees who came to us and who we accepted. We have agreements with those people, Kurt. I don't know how things worked in that future world that Grantville comes from, though I've heard some things. It doesn't matter, anyway. In this century you don't just throw people out when things aren't working. We need something for those people to do, Kurt, something that will make a profit."
\*\*\*\*
Back in Grantville, Kurt quickly discovered that Melba Sue and Garth weren't really the people that he needed to talk to about plumbing. Well, not the only people. Water pipes, he was told, should not be made of lead.
"Every one is telling me I can't make the pipes out of lead," Kurt complained to Garth. "I wasn't thinking of making water pipes out of lead. I was thinking of making them out of ceramics."
"Not a good idea," Garth told him, "because the pipes have to have some flex to them and can't be too stiff. Ceramic pipes would break as the house walls expand and contract on warm days and cold nights."
"Buildings expand?"
"Yes. So do pipes, both metal and ceramic. The issue is how much, and the fact that the metal pipes can flex but the ceramic pipes, not so much. They get stressed and they fracture rather than bend."
"So while we can make the sinks and the tubs and the toilets, we can't make the pipes that make the system work." Kurt shook his head. "It seemed like such a good idea."
"It might still be," Melba Sue interrupted. "You're not really used to the level of interconnectedness of a modern society. Mostly we didn't pay any attention to it up-time, either. You could get pipes because there were thousands of people making pipes. You could get toilets because there were thousands of people making toilets. There wasn't an issue because there were multiple suppliers for all the parts needed to make a bathroom. Or just about anything else, for that matter."
"But that's not the case here," Kurt complained. "We can't afford to start making toilets and just hope someone will make the pipes. That could easily ruin my family."
"Which means that you need some sort of guarantee." Then Melba Sue stopped and Kurt knew why. There was no such guarantee.
"Look, Kurt," Garth said. "I know you can't afford to go into full production, but you could do some of the set up, some of the experimentation, that would let you get into production."
"I don't know. It's the expense. With the disaster that bone china turned out to be, I don't think the family will be willing to invest another fortune into this on speculation." Which was a truly disheartening thought, because Kurt had gotten really fond of bathrooms going back and forth between the up-time world of Grantville and down-time world of . . . well, the rest of the world.
"We might be able to help some with the bone china thing," Garth said in badly accented German. "We've gotten a lot more on slip-casting translated."
\*\*\*\*
"Kurt's back," Trudi's younger sister, Margretha, said with clear malice.
"I really don't care," Trudi tried, but she knew that she hadn't quite carried it off. Since Kurt had kicked her handkerchief into the mud all those years ago, Trudi had had a couple of suitors. Had even considered a betrothal. But the truth was, she wasn't that much better in the romance department than Kurt was, it being beyond the merely human capability to be worse at romantic things than Kurt Vest. Most of the young men in the town bored her to tears and, unfortunately, she didn't flutter well. Dropping her handkerchief was not a bad example of that, but it was hardly the only one. What people like Margretha did with apparent naturalness and consummate ease, Trudi couldn't do to save her life. Somehow it always felt like she was a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's clothes.
So Trudi turned back to her accounts. She would end up an old maid, just as Kurt would, no doubt, turn out a crusty old bachelor. If there was one slight touch of light shining through the whole gloomy mess, it was that she wasn't the only woman Kurt ignored. Kurt was, financially at least, something of a catch, but showed even less interest in other women than he did in Trudi.
"Well, you should care. Even if you're not interested in Kurt himself," Margretha continued, halfway letting her off the hook. "He's back from his second trip to Grantville and he went there to learn about toilets and stuff because with the up-timers stopping the war---at least around here---and opening up trade again and building roads and railroads and---"
"You've never seen a railroad in your life. They are all going north from Grantville."
"Just because there aren't any around here yet, doesn't mean we can't learn about them on the radio. Besides they'll send a railroad this way to reach the Danube. They have to."
"Maybe. But so far they seem to be focusing on the Elbe and Magdeburg. That's where the capital of the CPE is. We are a backwater and likely to remain one," Trudi said severely, hiding a grin. Margretha was Grantville mad and had been even before the townspeople had made a bunch of crystal radios. She was utterly gone on the fictional Robin of the CoC, and was actively disappointed in the prosaic nature of the local males. Margretha also spent every pfennig she could get her hands on buying romance novels.
"We should send someone to Grantville," Margretha said. "Our family is as important as the Vest family."
Which wasn't entirely true, though with the reverses that the Vest family had taken over the bone china, they were closer. Still, Margretha had a point. There was knowledge in Grantville. As the Vest family had shown, it was knowledge that was not without risks. But they had produced bone china and it was beautiful, truly beautiful. The knowledge was there and useful. It just had to be used with caution and common sense. "I'll talk to Father about it. But I wouldn't expect to go if I were you."
\*\*\*\*
Kurt was ambushed that night. It was supposed to be a family dinner, but turned out to be a family meeting. With Kurt's many failings as the subject.
"Well, son," Papa started with faint praise, "I agree that the slip-casting does indeed provide a standard product. It's simpler than our old techniques and saves on labor. But all those molds do cost. Quite a lot, in fact. And with the extra people we have taken on, the labor savings is not translating into much money savings. We have master craftsmen whitewashing the stables for something to do."
Kurt tried to offer them work in his experimental shop, but Mama was speaking. "And you haven't paid any attention to any of the girls I've introduced you to, because you've been buried in your workshop."
Elizabeth hit him with, "You could go out on the sales trips with Friedrich. Get you out of that shop and into the fresh air."
Friedrich rolled his eyes, in sympathy Kurt thought. "Elizabeth, there's no point in Kurt coming along. The sales have picked up a bit."
"That still doesn't get him married." Mama sniffed. "Trudi Krüger is still single. A good girl, Trudi. With excellent prospects."
Kurt sighed. "Papa, the molds are reusable, probably just about forever, so long as they aren't dropped and broken. And we have to have more than one, else we can't increase production enough. They do have to dry between castings. As to the craftsmen send them to me I can put them to work on new designs. Mama, I'm not sure I will ever marry, but even if I do I am in no rush. Something strange happens to girls when they turn into women. Perfectly reasonable little people turn into utter flibbertigibbets. It happened to Trudi. She was a perfectly clever child, interested in how things worked, when I left for university. Now she's turned into such a, a, well, something. She's not like she used to be, that's certain.
"Elizabeth, no. I'm not going out on sales trips. I'm busy with my research, which, I will remind you, did give us the way of making the bone china. And thank you, Friedrich, for trying. And, so you all know, I'm hungry. If I can't eat in peace here, I'll go to the tavern."
"No need to be rude," Mama said. "I'm thinking of your welfare."
At last they quieted and Kurt was able to fill his stomach. As a parting shot before going back to his workshop, he said, "I could, you know, go back to Grantville and just stay . . ." Then he left the room before the fuss started, hiding a grin.
\*\*\*\*
Friedrich followed Kurt out to his workshop. "Hey, wait up, Kurt. I want to talk to you."
Kurt slowed his walk, allowing Friedrich to catch up. "You're not going to try and marry me off, are you?"
Friedrich laughed. "Please! One Elizabeth is enough, I think. Another woman in the house would drive us all mad. No, I wanted to talk to you about the plumbing fixtures. On my last trip, a few people were installing septic tanks and water tanks to catch rainfall. I believe that you're right. Plumbing, real bathrooms, will be much in demand, someday. So I wanted to know how you're progressing on your research."
"Some of it is very simple," Kurt said. "After all, a basin is just a basin, only the up-time ones have a hole in the center to attach the pipes. And a hole and channel in the side so that it won't overflow. It's the same for the bathtubs. They're just a large basin. The problem is that they are a very large basin and that introduces stress, especially when you're firing them. And the toilet is a bit tricky. The water tank is simple, yet another basin, only taller. What I'm not sure of is the toilet bowl and how they get the water to empty it and refill it the way they do. I have seen the designs in Grantville, but making them work for us is harder than I thought it would be. I haven't been able to come up with a design modification to do all that with our way of doing things. But then, I haven't really had much time to research it, either. Mama, Papa and Elizabeth constantly interrupt me."
\*\*\*\*
Six months later Kurt was sitting at his work table with a clay-carving tool in his hand, carefully modifying the shape of a toilet bowl. It turned out that the shape of the bowl was important in terms of directing the water. The model was one-eighth scale, and he was trying to figure out how to make the joint between the rim and the bowl in such a way as to be easy for the workers in his family's shop to assemble. He knew that there was no market, yet, but he, like his brother-in-law, was sure there would be someday.
He wanted a good design just so he would have it when the time came. And the family let him get away with it because the up-timer slip-casting was proving to be a very useful innovation, whatever Papa's complaints. And a toilet was a complex device that took considerable time and dozens of individual parts. First, to make each plaster mold there were several parts that had to be assembled. Then several plaster molds had to be assembled for the slip to be cast into. Then there were different clay parts that had to be welded together with thick slip while they were still semi-soft, and finally the whole assembly had to be sanded smooth and painted with glaze. Even with every up-time advantage he could come up with, the process was time consuming and labor intensive.
By now Kurt was convinced that it had been labor intensive even in the twentieth century.
\*\*\*\*
"Kurt, you have a letter from Grantville."
Kurt looked up from the piece he was carving. Once carved, it would be the inner surface of a plaster of paris mold to make a sink. He saw his sister holding up a letter and held out his hand. The hand that was holding the carving tool. Then, realizing that, he put the tool on the counter while Elizabeth shook her head. She handed him the letter and he opened it. There were two sheets in the envelope.
Dear Kurt,
We saw this and thought of you. We knew you were disappointed about not being able to get into the bathroom fixtures business, so we thought you might be interested in the opportunity this represents.
Melba Sue and Garth.
The next sheet was a sheet of newsprint with a half page ad on it.
Plumbing Supplies and Equipment Needed
We will guarantee to purchase pipes, toilets, sinks, valves, bathtubs and other plumbing equipment that comes up to our standards of quality. Contact Universal Plumbing Supply, 1500 Route 250.
"Do you think it's for real?" Elizabeth asked.
"I don't know. Melba Sue and Garth wouldn't send me anything they didn't think was legitimate, but I don't see how they could know one way or the other."
"Well, we're sending Friedrich this time. We need someone who knows business."
"We also need someone who knows plumbing supplies. And that's me, at least more than anyone else in the family."
\*\*\*\*
Trudi Krüger had had just about enough of waiting around for Kurt Vest to open his eyes and realize that she existed. It was time to take steps.
"So, what do I do now, Elizabeth?" Trudi asked. "Nothing has worked. Kurt just keeps his head down and keeps ignoring me."
"You go to Grantville," Elizabeth said. "Kurt and Friedrich are going there in a few days, to look into this company that is buying toilet fixtures, and will be there for a while. You talk to your parents and I will talk to mine. You can go with them to represent your family. And if you have to, you have my permission to whack Kurt on his head."
"I would if I thought it would help," Trudi said. "He has to be the most blind man in Creussen."
\*\*\*\*
"There's a lot of information in Grantville," Elizabeth pointed out to Trudi's parents. "It was there that Kurt discovered that we could make the bone china."
After some discussion, the Krüger family decided to send Trudi and her younger sister Margretha along on the trip to Grantville. After all, everyone should have that opportunity. And if they sent Trudi and not Margretha, they would never hear the end of it.
\*\*\*\*
"I have good news," Elizabeth said in a voice that terrified Kurt.
"Ah, what news?" Kurt asked cautiously.
"Trudi will be going along, representing her family. You know that they are making tiles now?"
"Yes, I heard. But Trudi? What does she know about bathroom fixtures?"
"Trudi knows about the business, Kurt. She needs to see what Grantville has to teach about that."
Kurt wasn't at all sure about that. Ever since he'd come back from university, Trudi Krüger had presented herself as an empty-headed fashion plate, not at all like the sensible girl she used to be.
\*\*\*\*
"What do you know about this Universal Plumbing Supply Company?" Friedrich asked, once Kurt had made the introductions.
"You get right down to it, don't you?" Garth grinned. "I know they are being set up by OPM Investments. That's the mutual fund that got set up a while back."
"I heard of it. Something about some up-timer children."
"I guess you could say that, though the board is a bunch of down-timer burghers. It's well thought of around here."
"That's, ah, interesting." Friedrich didn't sound convinced and Garth laughed out loud.
"Check around. There are several mutual funds that have opened up in the last year, but the sewing circle kids are the one most people notice because they are kids. It's not till you look closer that you realize they have adult supervision."
Friedrich nodded, still unconvinced but willing enough to check around. He had connections in Badenburg, Kurt knew.
\*\*\*\*
"It's incredible." Friedrich was shaking his head in wonderment mixed with more than a touch of concern, or perhaps even disgust. "Why anyone would put that kind of money in any hands, much less the hands of children, is beyond me. But they have. OPM is a publicly-traded mutual fund. It has to make its books available to its shareholders and it does. I didn't know there was that much money in the world."
"So they have the money to buy our town's toilets and sinks and things?" Trudi asked.
"They have the money to buy Creussen itself! Though they aren't offering to do that. Apparently, Universal Plumbing Supply isn't the only new venture they are setting up. There is some sort of electrical supply place, as well, and machine parts, whatever that means, other things. I talked to Bernhard Kunze and he isn't just familiar with it. He is involved and considerably richer than he was a year ago. He explained the function of Universal Plumbing Supply. It's the whole interconnectedness problem. No one can afford to make any of the various parts of a plumbing system till someone is making the other bits."
Kurt nodded impatiently. He was the one who had explained the problem to Friedrich seven months earlier.
"But, thanks to OPM, Universal Plumbing Supply has the money to fix the problem and make a profit on the deal. Apparently they plan to sell to people like Clarence's Heating, Plumbing and Air Conditioning, and what ever else he's doing---I couldn't keep track. Universal will also ship complete systems abroad for installation in other places. And will be buying from several different manufacturers. We can get in . . ." Then Friedrich sighed. "But we will lose some of our profit because they have their own markup."
"That's not much of a problem, is it? I mean, we often sell to retailers even on things like beer steins?" Kurt knew they did.
"True, but we also sell to individuals and inns and . . ."
"You mean we won't be able to sell to anyone else?"
"Well, not exactly. There is nothing in the contract that would keep us from making extra, but who would we sell the extra to?"
"To Clarence's Heating and whatever," Garth suggested. "For that matter, I don't think that Universal will be the only plumbing supply house for very long."
"From what Bernhard said, it isn't even now. The difference is that most of the others don't have the money on hand to make the kind of promises that would get people to take the risk on a new product line."
Garth looked over at Friedrich. "What do they get out of it then?" Then he smiled. "We have a bit of OPM, so while I'm all for getting the plumbing industry up and running, I have to wonder where the profit is."
"Well, according to Sarah Wendell, by way of my friend Bernhard, you have nothing to worry about. What they are doing is buying market share. I didn't know what it meant, either, but Bernhard does and seems to think it's worth it."
"It is," Trudi said. "If there is one place where you can go to get anything you need to install a restroom or a bathroom or both, why would you go around to all the individual suppliers? Besides, if you know they have quality goods at a fair price, it's just easier to go there. You know, I think those kids are liable to get rich off this plumbing supply company."
"Those kids," Garth said, "are already rich. Even by Grantville standards."
Kurt knew what that meant. Grantville was an expensive place to live, or even to visit, but it also had by far the highest salaries in central Germany. A person could become well off as a maid here. And while not all the up-timers had gotten rich, a lot of them, including Garth and Melba Sue, had at least become well off. Rich, anywhere outside Grantville.
\*\*\*\*
"So what's with you and Kurt?" Melba Sue asked Trudi once they were alone.
"He is an idiot and a boor and I hate him."
"You do realize you sound like you're about fourteen and in the middle of your first crush, don't you?"
Trudi didn't know all of the words, but she got the gist of what Melba Sue was saying and it was true. "I know. He was my hero when I was a little girl, then he went off to university. Their family needed someone to learn about nature and clays and things like that. They were hoping that he would . . . I don't know . . . solve the question of how the china pottery was different. Which was a pretty crazy idea, if you ask me."
"Why?"
"Because what do a bunch of priests and lawyers know about clay?"
"I thought he studied natural philosophy?"
"Yes, but what do philosophers know about clay, other than that the ancient gods had feet made out of it?"
"That's a point, I'll grant you," Melba Sue conceded. "But back to Kurt. . . . When he came back he had changed?"
Trudi considered that. "I guess so. Or maybe it was me. He was always talking about clay and the history of the world and stuff before he went away. Perhaps it was me that changed. He was gone for six years, studying all over Europe. And when he came back he buried himself in his work room, trying to find the recipe for china pottery. Finally, Elizabeth . . ." The whole story of the party and the lace handkerchief and the insulting note and him running away whenever he saw her came out while Melba Sue listened and nodded.
"Kurt's a geek, girl. They take different handling."
"A geek?"
"A nerd. A natural philosopher," Melba Sue explained. "I'm sure you have them in this century. Heck, I've met several. But in the twentieth century they were the movers and shakers of the world. People like Einstein, Oppenheimer and Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and what's his name . . . the guy who did the dwarf wheat . . . Norman Borlaug, I think. Oh, and Salk . . . there were hundreds of them and they changed the world without half trying and they were in the movies and on TV and there was a weird kind of glamour to them. I never saw the attraction myself, you understand, but the thing about geeks is that they don't know how to be charming. They are constantly doing things like stepping on your handkerchief and it's not that they're trying to be mean. They just don't know any better. They are too busy figuring out how the universe works. I'll bet that the reason that Kurt runs away is that he is afraid that if he doesn't he'll kick your handkerchief again or something like it. He also probably figures you hate him, so there's no use trying."
"You think so?" Trudi said doubtfully. "I mean, it's hard to imagine anyone being as rude as he has been by accident."
"Not for me," Melba Sue said. "I've seen it a million times. And, you know, there are women like that too, who don't realize that a guy likes them. Though that mostly has a different effect. But my point is, dropping the hanky is not the approved method of attracting a nerd. For a nerd, you need to be, ah, explicit. Tell them what you want because they won't see the signals."
Trudi realized that she was one of the women like that, even if she had been trying to be the sort of social creature that Margretha was by nature.
"What happens to girls like that? The geek girls?" Trudi asked.
Melba Sue gave her a look. "I'm not sure down-time, but up-time they usually ended up in bad relationships because they didn't choose who to get involved with. They ended up with the pushy jerk that the more knowing girls avoided."
\*\*\*\*
"I don't know what we can do about it, anyway." The "it" was transportation; the speaker was Friedrich, and the point was valid. The distance from Creussen to Grantville was fifty-two miles as the crow flies and nearly twice that as the mule trod. A stoneware beer stein is a heavy piece of cargo and they had been shipping them all over Germany for the last fifty years. On the other hand, a toilet is a lot bigger and a lot heavier. A mule can carry one or even two---if it is a particularly large mule. But for all practical purposes, you need a wagon road to transport toilets.
As it happened, the road between Creussen and Bayreuth was a good road, thanks to the efforts of Margrave Christian of Bayreuth, but that happy state of affairs didn't extend all the way to Grantville. There were various other counties between Bayreuth and Grantville. And not all of their rulers were as bright or as conscientious as the margrave.
"What about getting some sort of agreement?" Kurt asked. He really didn't know what would be involved.
"It's not that easy, Kurt." Friedrich was much more familiar with the political ins and outs of who was and wasn't building roads. "First, there are people that don't want the new road."
"What? That's crazy!"
"No. Just a little short-sighted in my view," Friedrich said. "But the worse problem is all the places where they figure that they can get the roads for free because someone will want them enough to pay for the whole thing." He shook his head. "Never mind, Kurt. It's not your problem, or even the Vest family's problem. It's the whole town's problem and I expect that Margrave Christian will have some things to say about it.
"We have time. It's going to take months to get into production. And now that I think about it, I think we need to sit down with the margrave as soon as we can to start working on solving the transport issues."
\*\*\*\*
"So what we are going to need from you is estimates of what it will cost you to produce the various components on the list here," David Bartley said.
Trudi was really surprised by how young he was. And also by how confident. She was absolutely sure that he wouldn't kick her handkerchief into the mud. As it happened, she was wrong. Outside of business, David was about as nerdy as her Kurt, but she didn't see that. And it made her resent Kurt's failings as a Lothario even more. But David was going on. It wasn't a private meeting. There were a dozen faces that Trudi recognized, most from the towns of central Germany that dealt with clay, wood and metal. And there were twice as many that she didn't recognize. They were offering everyone the same deal: if you could deliver the goods and meet the quality requirements, OPM, through Universal Plumbing Supply, would buy those goods.
The price was yet to be determined. That was what this meeting was about.
Ernst Eiffel stood up. "We will need an exclusive contract. What are all these other people doing here?"
David Bartley looked at the man for a moment, then pointed. "There is the door, sir. We are not offering, and will not offer, exclusive contracts."
"Then you will not be allowed to sell your devices in Nürnberg. We have influence with the council."
"Perhaps not," David acknowledged. "That just leaves Magdeburg, Hamburg and, oh yes, the rest of the world. Good day, sir."
Well, that answered that, Trudi thought. She had been wondering about how they would sell their goods when they conflicted with what the local towns and guilds thought of as their own private domains. And as she thought about it, she really doubted that they would be able to keep people from buying, even in Nürnberg.
\*\*\*\*
Trudi, Margretha, Kurt, and Friedrich were all sitting in the kitchen of the Freeman home talking about the meeting. Margretha was grinning and flushed. "Did you see the way David Bartley stepped on Ernst Eiffel? I thought that oaf was going to melt right on the spot."
"Well, that explains how they are going to work it and, for that matter, it makes it clear that we will have a market for our products," Trudi said. That the products of Creussen would be of acceptable quality she didn't doubt at all. She looked at her sister. "Even in Nürnberg, I don't doubt."
"Yes. A standard sink and a standard toilet, standard tiles and a standard tub," Kurt agreed.
"Not that standard," Friedrich demurred. "They are specifying the size of the . . . what was it they called it . . . the footprint of the toilet and the size of the holes in the tank and the sink, so that the fittings will fit. Also that the sink hold at least so much water and the toilet actually flush, but shape and color, as well as any decoration, are up to the maker, within reason."
"And that gives us an opportunity," Trudi said. "Several design styles and even individualized patterns for the discerning buyer."
"Is that all you have in your head anymore, Trudi?" Kurt said in disgust. "Nothing of substance, just patterns of doilies and the color of gowns?"
Trudi gaped at him, amazed at his attack. "What do you mean, Kurt? Have you never opened your eyes to see the world around you? Or the people? Not everyone wants, or has to live with, plain surroundings. Oh, sure, a lot of people will buy the plain, white, utilitarian fixtures because they will be more affordable. But if you think that every customer is going to want that, then you haven't been paying attention. Think about the various bathrooms we've seen here in Grantville. I grant that they're hopelessly plain, but at least there are colors!"
"And how much time are you going to devote to these hand-painted toilets? Extra expense is right. Extra fortunes. It takes hours to hand-paint a beer stein, much less a toilet or a sink, and the whole point of the slip-casting is to save time and cost," Kurt said.
"Then come up with a way of painting them faster," Trudi almost yelled. "Because, whatever the up-timers think, most people want and expect beauty in their lives."
"She's right, you know, Kurt," Friedrich said. "The up-timers will probably affect fashion and styles over time, but not yet."
"Fine, she's right. But why is it that all that's left in a woman's brain after she grows breasts is fashion and style? Where does the substance go?"
"Substance?" Trudi said. "Who do you think scrubs the floors and washes the dishes, mends the clothing and cooks the meals? You men would have no substance without us." She stood up, preparing to walk away. "I was wrong about you, Kurt. I've loved you almost all my life, but I was wrong. You don't care about me and I've wasted years on you. I could walk naked down the street and you'd only tell me to put on a cloak against the wind. Well, no more!"
As she started around the table, Friedrich leaned over to Kurt. "Get up and kiss her, you idiot."
Kurt, whose brain had stopped on a picture of Trudi naked anywhere, much less the street, followed instructions.
"It's about time," Margretha whispered to Friedrich. "Do you supposed he'll propose today?"
Friedrich winked at her. "Oh, probably. He's always loved her too, you know. Maybe now he can get the words out without sticking his foot in his mouth."
"Again," Margretha said.
\*\*\*\*
When they reached home, without orders for their products, but with plans to rework both families' businesses to get into the plumbing supply business in a big way, not everyone was thrilled.
"First it was that silly china, as though good, solid stoneware wasn't good enough and how did that work out?" Kurt's father complained.
"Better now than last year, with the slip-casting. And the price is coming back up," Elizabeth pointed out.
"So just when we get that working, after considerable expense, mind, you children want to go into a whole new line of products?"
"Yes, Father. And Trudi's family, too. They are going into tiles in a big way, using printed designs and tile patterns that can be painted on using stamps and stencils. Their tiles will match our glazes." Kurt still thought that was a bit silly, but had learned enough about his fiancée to keep that opinion to himself.
Kurt's mama and future mother-in-law, both quite happy with the results of the trip to Grantville, started planning the wedding celebration almost immediately.
\*\*\*\*
Saint George's Dogs
Written by Kerryn Offord
October 1635, Zielona Góra
Sergeant John "Puss" Trelli was so intent on the men he was observing that he didn't hear the man sneak up behind him, and he was totally unaware of the cudgel being swung at his head. He was also totally unaware of the dog in the shadows until it growled. Instinct, born of a childhood terror of large dogs, especially when they produced that particular spine-chilling growl, caused him to stop and search for the threat. Suddenly the distance was shorter than the assailant had expected, and instead of the sweet spot of his cudgel smashing into Puss' skull, the shaft struck a glancing blow behind Puss' ear before hitting his shoulder.
Not that Puss was aware of anything after the glancing blow to the mastoid, as that had rendered him almost immediately unconscious.
\*\*\*\*
"Just what the hell did you think you were doing, Trelli?" Captain Georg-Friedrich von Frankenberg demanded.
Puss tensed in reaction to the words being uttered so close to his ear and winced with pain when his body protested
"Something hurt? That does surprise me. They say where there's no sense there's no feeling, and you certainly haven't been displaying any sense lately, have you, Sergeant?"
Sarcasm dripped from every word Puss' commanding officer uttered, so he knew Captain von Frankenberg was in no mood for excuses. "I'm sorry, sir."
"Sorry? I tell you not to go near members of the Grey Adder on your own, and what happens? You get jumped while observing a group of them."
"It was an accident, sir," Puss protested. "I was just passing when I noticed some of them together, and I stopped to watch them for a moment."
"My information is that you were watching them for a lot longer than a moment." Captain von Frankenberg shook his head. "You were just lucky Private Amsinck wanted to thank you for saving his and Captain Havemann's lives. If it hadn't been for him it'd be you lying on a slab instead of Detlef Nebiger."
"Yes, sir." So Nebiger had been the man who attacked him. Well, that was one of the ringleaders down.
Lieutenant Heinrich Diefenthaler edged into Puss' line of sight. "I know you think we've been dragging our heels over investigating the survivors of the Grey Adder for war crimes, Trelli, but we haven't been idle. In fact, we've worked out a way to photograph the suspects without scaring them off."
"You have?" Puss had brainstormed that problem with his patrol, but they'd failed to come up with anything practical. "How?"
"It's quite simple," Heinrich said. "From tomorrow the Quartermaster Corp will be adding photographs to the files of every soldier in the army as a means of confirming their identity at pay parades."
Puss was quietly in awe of the thinking behind the plan. There had been a bit of a problem with some soldiers double-dipping by attending more than one pay parade using the identity of dead soldiers. Photo-ID would kill two birds with one stone. "I never would have thought of that."
Heinrich exhaled onto his finger nails and buffed them on his jacket while looking smugly at Puss. "That is why I am a lieutenant, and you are but a lowly sergeant."
"Forget the false modesty, Heinrich. It was your cousin's idea," Captain von Frankenberg said. "Johann Diefenthaler has his own camera-obscura equipage," he explained to Puss.
"Nothing like drumming up a little business for one's family," Puss muttered.
"That's what family is for," Heinrich said, quite unapologetically. "Now you just get better, and don't worry yourself about the Grey Adder. It'll take a couple of weeks to get all the photographs we need."
Puss lay in his bed and watched Captain von Frankenberg and Lieutenant Diefenthaler leave the infirmary. He was glad to know something was being done, but they could have told him before he nearly got his head caved in. For a while he lay there, thinking about how close he'd come to dying. Well, that was definitely not something he was going to include in his letters home.
\*\*\*\*
"That could have been nasty," Captain Georg-Friedrich von Frankenberg told his companion. "Can you imagine the fuss if we'd lost Trelli?"
Lieutenant Heinrich Diefenthaler nodded. "The newspapers would demand to know why we weren't taking more care of the hero of Zielona Góra."
"And it would have been the silly fool's fault," Georg muttered.
"At least the concussion and broken collar bone are likely to keep him out of the fighting for a while."
"Yes, but that just means he'll be staying in Zielona Góra for the foreseeable future, and you know who else is staying behind."
"The Grey Adder. Still, having his right arm in a sling should stop him getting into trouble."
"This is Trelli we're talking about, Heinrich. Trouble has a way of finding him."
"Actually, I've noticed it's more the men in his patrol finding trouble, and Trelli trying to rescue them from their foolishness." Heinrich paused for a moment. "Why is it that an up-timer with a high school diploma isn't an officer?"
"Trelli?" Georg asked. "His training record says he lacked motivation, was immature, and failed to display leadership skills in training."
"Failed to display leadership skills? The fool successfully led Captain Havemann's company in a fighting withdrawal, with minimal casualties."
"I know. To be fair, I think it was mostly the lack of maturity and motivation that drove that analysis. He only volunteered for the army because he couldn't think of a career he wanted to do, and sort of drifted through training."
"Well, he's certainly matured and developed some motivation since then," Heinrich said. "First Wietze, then Zielona Góra."
Georg shook his head. "Wietze was an accident, and you're forgetting that before Zielona Góra there was Swiebodzin. I think he grew up there."
Just thinking about Swiebodzin left a foul taste in Georg's mouth. Soldiers of the Grey Adder had gone berserk, raping and murdering innocent civilians in the town, even though the town had surrendered without fighting. Their actions had gone against the code of war as Georg knew it, and he agreed with Sergeant Trelli that the men responsible should be brought to justice.
A few days later
Puss stood over the spot he'd fallen when Detlef Nebiger attacked him and contemplated the bloodstain in the dirt. "Nebiger took a while to die."
Beside him, Corporal Thomas Klein stared at the bloodstain. "What makes you say that, Sarge?"
"Once the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing pretty quickly."
"You reckon he bled to death?" When Puss nodded, Thomas muttered sarcastically, "Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy."
Puss ignored his companion, because he'd detected movement out of the corner of his eye, and he was remembering something from that fateful day. There had been a dog. "Klein, to your right, can you see a dog?"
"Jeez, he's a big one."
Puss wasn't sure they were looking at the same animal. Almost hidden in the rubble, the dog he was looking at was a scraggly, unkempt animal a little smaller than a German Shepherd. The animal had been tearing at something in the ruins, but now it was staring at Puss. It emitted a growl that the hairs on the back of his neck recognized. This was the dog that had inadvertently saved his life, and it looked hungry.
Puss felt amongst the pouches in his webbing for something to offer the animal. His fingers found a couple of sticks of homemade pemmican---perfect. He held a stick of pemmican in the fingers of his left hand and slowly walked toward the dog, the pemmican held well in front of him.
"What heck are you doing, Sarge? That animal could be dangerous."
Puss ignored Thomas. At the very least he was sure the dog wasn't rabid. He'd run into one of those before, and he wasn't likely to miss the signs of the disease. This dog just looked hungry, which was why he was barely holding the pemmican. If the dog snatched at it, he didn't want to be bitten.
The dog's growl intensified. It was a warning, so Puss stopped advancing. Instead, he crouched down and stretched out his hand. Then he waited.
"Just throw it at him, Sarge," Thomas called from the safety of twenty feet away.
"Stop worrying, Klein. The poor thing's starving."
"Yeah, and you're a couple of hundred pounds of meat on the hoof."
"He's not going to eat me," Puss assured Thomas. Certainly the dog's center of interest had moved from Puss to the food in his hand. "Come on boy, you know you want it," he whispered at the dog.
Slowly, the dog edged closer to Puss' outstretched hand, then, quick as lightning, it shot forward, snatched the food, and ran off a dozen feet before turning to look at Puss. Their eyes met, and Puss waved. The dog's tail twitched, almost as if it was trying to remember how to wag, then the dog turned and ran off.
Puss was quite proud of himself. He'd actually managed to keep a hold on the stick of pemmican until the dog pulled it from his fingers, rather than dropping it and jumping back when the dog shot forward. He'd certainly come a long way in controlling his fear of dogs.
"That was a damned fool stunt, Sarge," Thomas said when Puss walked back to join him. "I thought you were supposed to be scared of dogs?"
"Not scared. Effing terrified, but maybe I'm getting over it."
Thomas stared at Puss for a while then shook his head. "Now is not a good time to be getting over a fear of dogs, Sarge. You were lucky that animal didn't savage you."
Puss glanced in the direction the dog had taken. It hadn't appeared savage. Certainly it hadn't had the demented attitude of some of the dogs he'd met up-time. Mind, that was often the influence of the owners, which suggested that the dog had been well trained at some stage.
A few days later
"How's Sergeant Trelli coping with the wait for the photographs?" Lieutenant Heinrich Diefenthaler asked Corporal Klein.
"I don't think he's noticed any delay, sir. He's found himself a new hobby," Thomas said.
"Hobby? Doing what?"
"He's trying to tame a dog."
Heinrich raised his brows. "I thought he wasn't supposed to like dogs?"
"It wasn't a matter of like, sir. He assured us when he first took command that Wietze was an accident. He's actually absolutely terrified of dogs."
"So why is he feeding one?"
"He says he doesn't like to see an animal suffer. Heck, sir, you should see the way he spoils that mangy nag of his. He even gives it sugar lumps."
"Up-timers have no idea of how to treat animals," Heinrich agreed.
\*\*\*\*
Corporal Michael Cleesattel considered babysitting Sergeant Trelli a complete waste of time that could be better spent in some tavern---with or without an accompanying wench. However, orders were orders. So he sat, bored out of his mind, watching Sergeant Trelli sit in the dirt down the same alley he'd been coming to for days. At his feet was a wood bowl of a stew he'd cooked up. Even from where he was standing---a safe distance away---Michael was salivating at the smell. And to think it was going to be wasted on a stray dog. Michael shook his head in disgust.
There was movement in the shadows, and by concentrating, Michael could make out the dog slowly making its way toward Puss. And what did the fool do? He held out his hand for the animal to sniff at. Well, you wouldn't catch Michael Cleesattel doing a damn fool thing like that, not with a strange dog.
Then the dog buried its head in the bowl and started eating, and Puss started to run his hand along its back. The dog tensed, and Michael laid a hand on his service revolver. The only thing stopping him from drawing it was the sure knowledge that Sarge would be angry if he scared off the dog. It was a tense few seconds for both him and the dog, until the dog relaxed and got on with eating.
Then Puss did something that dumbfounded Michael. He pulled a brush out of his sling and started to brush the animal's filthy coat.
Eventually Puss stopped grooming the dog, picked up the empty bowl, and rose to his feet. The dog bounded away a short distance when Puss moved, but it stopped and just watched him walk away.
"That's enough for today," Puss said as he approached Michael. "Let's drop over at the lieutenant's cousin's tent and see how he and his fellow photographers are doing."
Michael glanced toward the dog, which was still standing there, watching. "Sure, Sarge."
"Do you think they'll finish photographing the Grey Adder by the end of this week?"
"Even if they do your shoulder won't be healed enough for you to ride over to Swiebodzin to question survivors that soon," Michael said.
"No problem, I have a patrol of four enthusiastic men only too willing to interview the survivors and see if they recognize any of the men in the photographs."
Michael snorted. "These four men, would I know any of them?"
Sarge stopped and looked down at Michael. "You don't recognize the description?"
Michael was happy to see a familiar grin lighting up Sergeant Trelli's face. "Nope. I can't think of anybody in the company that fits that description. Swiebodzin's a good day's ride, so they'd be away for a week at least."
"You afraid of missing all the comforts of Zielona Góra?"
"What comforts? No, the problem is the lieutenant has ordered me and the others to make sure you don't have another run in with members of the Grey Adder." Movement caught Michael's eye. "Don't look now, but we're being followed."
"Yorick?"
"Who?"
"The dog. I can't keep calling him 'Dog', so I've decided to call him Yorick."
Michael just stared at Sarge. "Why?"
"Because when I first met him he was barely more than skin and bones."
That explanation certainly didn't help Michael. "What's that got to do with calling a dog Yorick?"
Puss struck a pose, with his left hand held out as if it was holding a skull. "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it."
"Sounds pretty," Michael said. "But what's it got to do with the dog?"
"Heathen! Shakespeare's Hamlet. Act five, scene one. Hamlet is holding Yorick's skull when he makes that speech."
Yorick had been closing the distance while they talked. Slowly, in discrete moves, he'd closed the distance until he could almost put his head under Puss' hand. Michael knew what was going to happen even before Puss reached out his left hand and rubbed a thumb around the base of one of the dog's ears. "The lieutenant isn't going to be happy about your new pet."
Puss knelt down and gently ran his hand over Yorick's head. Yorick meanwhile tried to lick Puss' face. "I'll pay for the food," Puss said as he struggled to keep his face safe from Yorick's tongue.
"Don't say I didn't warn you."
\*\*\*\*
"What is that?" Lieutenant Diefenthaler demanded the moment Puss and Corporal Klein appeared in the platoon encampment.
Puss held out a hand for Yorick to rub up against. "He followed me home, sir. Can I keep him?" It was a paraphrase of a line Puss had never dreamed he'd ever use.
Heinrich folded his arms. "I am not amused, Trelli. Why do you want to keep a dog anyway? I thought you were scared of dogs."
"I used to be terrified of them, sir," Puss said as he knelt and petted Yorick. "But I don't think I am any more."
"And do you intend keeping this dog?"
"Yes, sir."
Heinrich unfolded his arms and reached out a hand for Yorick to sniff. "Does it have a name?"
"Yorick, sir."
"You can keep Yorick, but his food comes out of your rations. You'll not be issued anything extra."
Mid October, Swiebodzin
There was one book of photographs on each of the ten trestle tables arrayed outside the tavern. Each book held photographs of the surviving members of one or other of the companies forming the Grey Adder regiment, and each book was being carefully examined by a crowd of people.
Puss edged up to Corporal Michael Cleesattel. "I'm surprised so many people want to look at the photos," he whispered.
"It's the photos they're interested in, Sarge. Most of these people have never seen anything like them," he whispered back.
That didn't sound like good news to Puss. He'd been hopeful when he'd seen the crowd gathering to look at the photographs, but he wanted identifications, not idle curiosity.
"Table four," Corporal Thomas Klein muttered into Puss' ear. "Looks like someone's come across a familiar face."
Puss glanced at table four, and immediately saw what Thomas had seen. A woman was staring at the book on the table in shocked horror. Or at least that's what Puss assumed the look on her face represented. He grabbed the interpreter and hurried over to the table.
Puss hated not knowing what was being said, but Anna Krohne was doing the best she could to calm the woman down, without much success. Then Yorick stuck his head under the woman's hand. The woman began to stroke him, and slowly she started to calm down.
Puss cleared a space so that Anna could bring the woman, and Yorick, back up to the table. Words were exchanged, and the woman pointed to one of the photographs and accused the man of violating and robbing her. The crowd around the table fell silent.
"Can she give me anything I can use as evidence? Identifying marks, descriptions of anything that was stolen?" Puss asked Anna.
She looked Puss up and down. "You, go away. Take your men and find a quiet corner while I talk to these people. You are a soldier, and you scare them."
Puss stood. "Just remember to take plenty of notes. I want to know who their leaders were."
"Yes, yes, I will take notes. Now go. But leave the dog," Anna said.
Puss could see why Anna wanted him to leave Yorick behind. He was busy licking the tears from the Polish woman's face, and she wasn't fighting him off. Puss felt in his webbing for a couple of pemmican sticks and passed them to Anna. "I don't know if Yorick will want to stray too far away from me. But these might help. If the worst comes to the worst, I'll be just over there." Puss pointed toward the tavern which he hoped had a fire going.
Zielona Góra, a week later
With his arm secure in its sling and the severe talking to from the unit medic still ringing in his ear, Puss was just a passive observer as the men of his patrol, with Anna sticking her pretty nose into everything, turned over the possessions of a suspect. They were looking for stolen property that could be connected to Swiebodzin. Yorick was leaning against his new best friend, Anna, while she idly caressed the base of his ears.
"What do we have here?" Corporal Thomas Klein asked the tent in general as he pulled a leather pouch out from under Joachim Fasch's bed.
Joachim made to grab the bundle, but Corporals Poppler and Cleesattel restrained him.
"Empty it onto the bed," Puss ordered.
Thomas loosened the drawstrings and tipped the pouch's contents onto the bed. There were some silver coins and some jewelry. Most of the jewelry was the type of cheap trinkets Puss had learned to expect soldiers would accumulate, but there were a couple of pieces that deserved closer investigation. He slid them closer to Anna. "Do they match any of our lost property?"
Anna picked up the first piece and hefted it. "It's got good weight. Not something I'd expect a common soldier to come by honestly."
Puss reciprocated Anna's wry smile. Everybody knew soldiers looted. And no doubt these pieces were loot. The real question was where did Joachim acquire them? Puss left Anna to closely examine the pieces and compare them with the list of stolen property from Swiebodzin and turned his attention to their suspect.
"Would you care to tell us where you obtained the pieces Frau Krohne is examining?"
"I found them," Joachim said.
"In someone's home in Swiebodzin, no doubt," Michael Cleesattel suggested.
"Which would be looting," Puss said.
"The general takes a dim view of looting," Lenhard Poppler said. "You can be put in front of a firing squad for that."
"You can't do that! All I did was take a few bits and pieces. That's a soldier's right," Joachim protested.
"There is no right to loot in the USE military," Puss said. "You are paid regularly precisely to stop looting. Take him away."
Michael and Lenhard took a firm grip of the respective arms they were holding and marched Joachim Fasch out of the tent, leaving Puss with Corporals Hermann Behrns and Thomas Klein, and Anna.
Anna held up an earring. "This matches the description of some of the jewelry taken from the Kowalski household."
That was the house from which Puss had carried a badly traumatized eight-year-old girl, who'd been brutally raped. "Then we put pressure on Fasch to find out who was there with him."
"No need to ask him," Herman said as he checked a company roll from the set he carried. "Joachim Fasch is in the same section as Gerhard Nebiger and his late brother, Detlef."
Detlef had been the man who attacked Puss and broke his collar bone. "Did anybody check Detlef's possessions?"
Thomas shook his head. "We were more worried about you, Sarge. Besides, his brother would have claimed everything."
"Then we still lack evidence to connect Gerhard to the Kowalski household," Puss said. "Nobody picked him out of the photographs."
"Only because Elzbieta Kowalski is still too traumatized to go through them," Anna said. "Maybe if you'd included Detlef's photograph you might have had some success."
"He was dead, and nobody thought to take a photograph before he was buried."
"So Gerhard Nebiger gets away with it?" Anna asked.
"For now," Puss agreed. "But maybe Lieutenant Diefenthaler can get something useful out of Joachim Fasch."
A few days later
Puss stripped to the waist before looping a belt over his neck to act as a simple sling for his right arm. He then used a wash cloth to wash as best he could using just his left hand. He'd barely managed to soap up when there was a cacophony of screaming, shouting, and the excited barking of a dog.
Puss rinsed off his face before hurrying toward the source of the noise. He wasn't the first to arrive. Herman and Thomas were there, with their cap and ball revolvers drawn. They, and an excited Yorick, were confronting Gerhard Nebiger, who was holding Anna Krohne.
"What's going on here?" Puss demanded.
"I found this female going through my stuff," Gerhard said.
"Do you have anything to say?" Puss asked Anna.
Anna threw something toward Herman, who barely managed to catch it. "Elzbieta Kowalski was wearing that cross that day."
Gerhard might not have known who Elzbieta Kowalski was, or what day was so important, but he was smart enough to know he was suddenly in deep trouble. He drew Anna closer as he adjusted his hold, and he drew his dagger, which he held against her throat. "Nobody move, or the woman gets it."
It was a Mexican standoff, with two military policemen pointing revolvers at Gerhard, while he held the knife against Anna's throat. Thomas was in a lousy position to get off a shot without hitting Anna, and Herman wasn't a good enough shot to risk firing. That left Puss. He dropped his hand, reaching for his revolver, but failed to find it. He knew where it was. He'd placed it on his shirt when he stripped to wash. However, his search for a weapon wasn't totally wasted. He found an apple in his pocket.
"Drop the guns, or I swear, I'll kill her," Gerhard yelled.
"Keep your weapons trained on him," Puss said as he walked closer to Gerhard and Anna. As he walked he gripped the apple in both hands and twisted it until it broke into two almost equal halves. He put one half into his pocket and whistled.
"I suggest you drop your knife and let the woman go, Gerhard Nebiger. If you use that knife, you'll die where you stand," Puss said.
Gerhard backed away, keeping Anna as a shield between him and Thomas and Herman. He was starting to look worried, which was both good and bad. Bad because a cornered rat like Gerhard was unpredictable. Good because it meant he wasn't thinking straight. Certainly the man wasn't treating Puss as a threat.
Puss heard the Seventh Cavalry arriving and held out his right hand clear of the left side of his body so the mangy nag everyone accused him of spoiling rotten could delicately snuffle up the half apple he was presenting.
Anna was looking at him accusingly, and Puss tried to reassure her with a smile. Meanwhile, his left hand found the spare Ruger Vaquero he kept in the saddle holster. Like many young men involved in Cowboy Action shooting, Puss had trained himself to shoot with the off-hand. He wasn't the greatest off-hand shooter, but he could usually place his first shot into the nine-ring at twenty-five yards. The range to Gerhard was no more than twenty yards.
Puss drew the revolver from its holster, and thumbing back the action, brought it to bear on Gerhard's arm. Before anybody could react, Puss fired. The bullet hit Gerhard in the lower arm, just above the elbow, and suddenly there was blood everywhere as Gerhard squealed in agony and dropped the knife.
Anna broke free and threw herself into Herman's arms while Thomas tried to stem the flow by tying a handkerchief around Gerhard's arm and used the barrel of his revolver as a lever to tighten it.
Puss looked around. An area that just moments before had been denuded of people was suddenly crowed with them. A medic was assisting Thomas, while Herman didn't look like he needed, or would appreciate any help with comforting Anna. He shoved the revolver inside his waist band and pulled the other half apple out of his pocket. Thunder, who was nobody's fool, had moved away as soon as he saw Puss draw the revolver. Puss held the apple out on his right hand and whistled.
Like the well-trained animal he almost was, Thunder walked over to inspect the apple half and snaffle it up. Puss put his left arm around his horse and hugged him.
"And they say I don't know how to treat an animal," Puss murmured.
\*\*\*\*
Big Iron
Written by John Zeek
Johan Frey was enjoying the day. It had been a cold, wet week, but now the clouds had broken and it was a lovely fall day. He and Watchman Thomas Weiss were sitting outside the watch headquarters. Their main activity was waving greetings to the passing crowd. "Public relations" up-timers called it.
Johan called it "knowing the city and its people." He had even carried a table outside so he could catch up on the report he was doing for the council, but he wasn't accomplishing much work. Well he was making the watch noticeable and to use Anse Hatfield's phrase for resting, "charging his battery."
He thought back to last week's harvest fair. Like a lamb to the slaughter, that's what I was. But what a lovely slaughter it was. He was thinking about his dances with Marie Ziegler. He had avoided any romantic entanglement his whole life. Now he was rushing headlong into one.
His pleasant memories were brought to a halt by the sight of Watchman Gering running across the square. "Come quick, Captain! There's been a shooting in a tavern!" Gering called out. "Andreas Guenther is down. We need help."
"Which tavern?" Johan asked as he sprang to his feet. Andreas Guenther was his youngest watchman and just a part-timer.
"The Rutting Bear, Captain," Gering gasped between deep breaths.
"Stay here, Weiss, and send any watchmen who come in to the tavern," Johan ordered as he started to trot. "Gering, catch your breath and follow as soon as you can."
\*\*\*\*
When he got to the Rutting Bear, Johan found three watchmen gathered outside the door. None of them were Guenther. Luckily, one was Wachtmeister Jost Braun.
"Report, Jost. What happened?"
"We, that is, Andreas and I, were walking a normal patrol when the tavern pot boy stopped us and said they had a mean drunk who was breaking up the place and beating the tavern owner. The pot boy said the man had two friends with him. We moved in and Andreas went to the drunk at the bar and I went for the two friends. When Andreas said he was the watch, the man just shot him. He had two pistols and was waving the other at me, so I backed out the door. Andreas is still inside. The man's friends came out and surrendered. Hans has them over there."
Johan looked around. Obviously the other watchmen had been drawn by the commotion. Hans Weiss was guarding two men with his short sword drawn. "Does this place have a back door?"
"Ja. I have two men covering it."
Hell and Damnation. With just cudgels and short swords, his men were overmatched. If they tried to rush the door---a narrow door at that---the man inside could wound or kill at least two of them.
Then he scanned the gathering crowd. Ah, just the men he wanted to see. He walked over to where Anse Hatfield and Gary Reardon were standing. "Herr Hatfield, Herr Reardon, the watch needs your assistance."
Anse's hand dropped to the butt of his .45 auto. "Say the word, Johan. Andreas is a friend."
"Nein, this is watch business. I just want to borrow your pistols. My men will take any action required."
Hatfield drew his pistol and offered it butt-first. "It's cocked and locked with one up the spout. Click off the safety and it's ready to go. Seven shots. You know how to shoot an auto."
Indeed, Johan did know how to shoot an automatic pistol. Better yet, he had shot this automatic pistol. He turned to take Reardon's offered pistol.
"It's a revolver," Reardon explained. "Double action, just point and pull the trigger. Only five shots though."
Five shots and he says only, Johan mused. "Danke."
Johan walked back over to Jost Braun, a pistol in each hand. "Jost, I'm going into that tavern. Want to come with me?" He held out the revolver.
Jost held out his hand. "Ja, Captain. I need to get my partner."
You need to get revenge, but so be it, Johan thought as he handed over the revolver.
"Wait until I ask him to surrender and then follow me in. Remember, that is just a pistol, not a shield, so be careful."
"If I was careful I would still be a tanner and not in the watch. But, as you order, sir."
Johan had a plan. He would call for surrender. Then have the watchmen guarding the door try to pry open the shuttered window. That noise should distract the gunman enough for he and Jost to rush the door. It might even work.
"You, inside the tavern. I am Johan Frey, Commander of the city watch. Come out and surrender."
Johan had not finished the word surrender when Jost ran toward the door. Shit. Johan ran behind him. Jost hit the closed door with a crash and went through. Johan heard a shot and a grunt from Jost. Then he saw the gunman raising his other pistol. Wheellock, he thought as he raised the automatic. Beside him he sensed that Jost was also raising his pistol.
The tavern rang with the thunder of gunfire. Johan lost track of the number of times he squeezed the trigger.
Finally, the man went down. Johan realized that the slide on the auto was locked back. He had fired all seven rounds. He looked to his left. Jost still had the revolver pointed at the fallen gunman. "Gently, Jost, hand me the pistol. Then go and check on Andreas."
When he got the revolver, Johan kept it pointed at the gunman's head while he checked for signs of life. No pulse, the man was dead. Johan would have gladly hanged him . . . hanged him, hell. He would have gladly had him flayed before drawing and quartering him, but now the man was just dead.
Jost got his attention. "Andreas is dead, Captain. So is the tavern owner." Jost's left side was wet with blood. He had taken a hit.
"Watchmen, to me! Bring a stretcher! Bring three stretchers! Hans, bring your prisoners in here," Johan yelled. Then in a quieter voice, "Jost, sit down. You were shot."
"It's a scratch, Captain." But Jost collapsed into a chair.
Two hours later
"You and your men did good work this morning, but while personal bravery is desirable in a watch commander, it can be overdone."
For the last hour Johan had been listening to Councilman Cornelius Klett critique the morning action at the Rutting Bear. Now the man was repeating himself.
The two prisoners had identified the dead man as Hans Fischer, a mercenary on his way to Italy. They claimed innocence in the death of the tavern owner, but their skinned knuckles said otherwise. They were lodged in the watch cells awaiting trial.
Jost was wounded worse than he'd thought and was probably not going to return to street duty for a long time. Andreas was still dead. And this wind bag was making speeches to an audience of one.
Johan had heard enough, more than enough. "Herr Klett." He interrupted the councilman's monologue. "I came to see you with a simple request. I want my men armed with pistols. Today I want permission to allow them to carry any pistol they can find. Within the week I want permission to buy, at city expense, enough pistols to arm the whole watch."
"Now, I don't . . ."
"I have one watchman dead, another who will not return to duty for months, and then only as a desk man. And the rest of the watchmen are angry. You don't want to see what happens when the watch is angry. Herr Klett, I am going to arm the watch with pistols. You are the head of the committee that oversees the watch. Will you take it to the city council? Or will I have to make my request in front of the whole council, in an open meeting?"
It was the open meeting comment that swayed Klett. He was always posing as a modernizer for the people. And there was an election coming up.
"Your men may carry privately-owned pistols, Captain. The city laws require they be armed. Swords are traditional, but 'armed' is all the law says. I will present your request for the city to buy pistols. Bring me a list of the pistols you want and prices. Oh, Suhl-made pistols only."
"Thank you Councilman. And I am sure the men will thank you. I will tell them it was your idea."
\*\*\*\*
The next morning was as bad as Johan had expected. The men coming on duty were angry, as angry as he had ever seen them. God have mercy on any thief caught today. The watch won't.
And they were armed; armed with a mixture of weapons, like Johan hadn't seen since his early days as a mercenary officer. Three of the watchmen were even carrying the rifles they carried as militiamen. The Weiss brothers had matching wheellock double-barreled carbines. The rest of the day men had restricted themselves to pistols, but what a range of pistols.
The largest was a two-foot-long double-barrel carried by Wachtmeister Meusser. The smallest was a tiny pistol designed for a lady's pocket carried by Watchman Jorg Klett. In between those extremes was every size of pistol known to man, most large smooth-bores.
One man even carried a short pistol whose barrel looked like keg. Johan recognized it as a volley pistol that fired seven balls from one shot. That was what spurred him to action.
He blocked the door. "No rifles or carbines. Last night I told you pistols and pistols only. Stack them in the back office. You can take them home after your shift. Meusser, that's a cannon not a pistol, so it goes in the back office too. Rocke, that volley pistol would take out a whole crowd, so back office. Klett that toy is cute, but I don't want any thieves to die laughing, back office."
After his inspection he had only seven watchmen without pistols. First in line was Thomas Weiss. "Weiss, you're on desk duty, so you don't need a pistol. Go to work." Next was Weiss's brother. "Hans, get the five pistols in the evidence cabinet and pass them out." Johan reached under the back of his jacket, drew his own flintlock and passed it to Meusser. "I want that back, so find a suitable pistol before tomorrow."
Johan knew he couldn't let the men go on the streets in the mood they were in. "All right, all of you. Listen to me. You're angry about Andreas getting killed. I'm angry about it too. But the man who shot him is dead. We are the city watch, not an occupying army. You know how the city feels about, and will react to, occupiers."
That drew a growl from the men; six of them had helped remove the former garrison. "So, remember you are the watch. We work for the city. Remember that. Treat the people of the city as our employers and any visitors as guests. Be as courteous as they will let you be. If you want to make a statement, tie a black ribbon over your arm band in memory of Andreas. Now go to work."
The men filed out, calmer, if no less angry. But hopefully it was a controlled anger.
The last outgoing watchman hadn't cleared the door when Jost Braun came in. Jost looked terrible, pale and obviously in pain. "Reporting for duty, Captain."
"Go home, Jost. You're on leave, paid leave. You've done enough this week."
"Nein, Captain, I can man the desk. You're going to be short one man, I won't make it two." Jost waved Weiss out of the chair behind the front desk and sat down. He looked like a rock . . . a very stubborn rock.
Johan realized that the man's pride was at stake. "Very well, but you stay in the office, understood?" Jost nodded.
"Weiss, get your carbine out of the back office and loan it to Jost. Then you and I will take a walk."
Out in the street, Weiss looked questioningly at Johan. "Where are we going, Captain?"
"To my father's home to get you a pistol." Johan saw Weiss glance at his own waist. "Oh, all right. I'll get one for myself also. Afterward I want you to patrol the square by the watch office. And I want you to check in often and keep Jost from doing too much. I'm going to see Pat Johnson."
\*\*\*\*
"What kind of pistols do you want, Johan?"
Pat Johnson had just asked the big question. Johan had been surprised to find Johnson wearing a black ribbon on his arm and the whole shop staff was wearing ribbons. Then he remembered that Andreas worked here part-time.
Johan thought a moment. Jost Braun had used the borrowed revolver with no problems, fired four shots in fact, all hits. He, on the other hand, had not been able to totally control the big automatic. Five hits out of seven shots weren't good enough. If the gunman had gotten the small wheellock pistol, they had found in his sleeve into action, Johan would be sitting in a surgeon's parlor, or lying in the morgue.
Johan answered the question. "Up-time revolvers, cartridge revolvers. I want thirty cartridge revolvers that weigh no more than a watchman's short sword."
Johnson was shaking his head. "It's not possible, Johan. I can't make up-time revolvers and there aren't thirty pistols to be had in Grantville that match. I assume you want matching revolvers. And I don't make cartridge cases . . . the ammunition. What I can do is find you some cap and ball revolvers."
Johan was shocked. He had been sure Pat could fill his request. "Cap and ball?"
"Yes. Caplocks. They use percussion caps like the French rifle, only six caps, one for each shot." Pat walked over and opened a cabinet. "Here, I'll show you a couple. I watch the competition." Pat was smiling, the first smile Johan had seen on his face today.
Pat laid two revolvers on the desk one large and one tiny. "These are H&K---Hokenjoss and Klott---revolvers, improved copies of a Remington design. The big one is their Army model and the smaller is a pocket pistol. They are made in Zella-Mehlis, but my boys can copy them. I'll pay them a license fee, but that's just business."
Johan studied the pistols. The small one was a joke; it was smaller than Klett's toy from this morning. The larger showed promise though. He picked up the pistol . . . no, the revolver. He had noticed that Anse and now Pat always made a distinction. It was close to the weight of a heavy horse pistol, maybe a bit lighter.
"This will fire every time I pull the trigger, for six shots?" Johan asked.
"No. That's a single action. It has to be cocked for each shot. The pocket model only has five shots."
"Herr Reardon's revolver fired with just the pull of the trigger. It was easy for Jost to use."
Pat nodded. "Yep. It's what we call a double action; one pull of the trigger cocks the hammer and fires the pistol. I can't match it with anything I make now. But there is this." Pat went back to the cabinet.
When he sat back down he had a large revolver in his hand, a very large revolver. "This is an experimental design. It's a copy of a Smith and Wesson Model 29. It's a caplock . . . notice the nipples are almost fully enclosed for safety. I designed it so the spare cylinders could be carried loaded and capped. Fire your six shots; swing out the empty cylinder, pull the empty off the crane pin and replace it with a loaded cylinder. Close it and you're ready to go with another six shots." Pat demonstrated the action as he talked. Then he held the big revolver out to Johan to try.
Johan hefted the revolver. "It's heavy, heavier than a short sword."
"Yes. I can't match up-time steel alloys for strength. So I added a little bulk. Too much, that's why we didn't market it. I had fun with the design though."
Johan recognized a real love of firearms in Pat's voice. A love he didn't understand or share. They were just tools. Useful tools, deadly tools, but just tools.
He laid the big revolver next to the toy from H&K. Looking at the two side by side he had an idea. "Herr Johnson, could you make this one smaller?" He touched the big revolver. "Make it five shots like the little one; but a bigger caliber?"
Pat studied the two guns. "Yes. Say a .40 caliber . . . make the cylinder a bit longer for more powder . . . it's do-able." Pat was reaching for paper. "Hum, make it a six inch barrel . . . no four inches; weight, remember the weight. Give me a week and I'll have a design, two weeks to a prototype. Then I'll be able to give you a price. Thanks, Johan. This looks like a saleable design."
Johan took that as a yes and left Pat Johnson bent over his desk drawing revolvers.
\*\*\*\*
The funeral was bad. Andreas had been the favorite of the watch. Most of the men thought of him like a little brother. And most of the watchmen were there. Only five of the night men were missing. They were covering the city, filling all the posts of the day men. They had drawn the short straws this morning when Johan had insisted that someone had to patrol. There were a good portion of the city craftsmen and their wives present. All were wearing black ribbons. The gun-makers led the procession; Andreas was a journeyman gun-maker after all. But all the crafts were represented. It seemed the boy had relatives in every craft, or maybe just friends. Boy . . . no. He had been a man, a good man; a man who was liked by everyone who knew him.
Johan noticed that even the less reputable city dwellers had come out for the funeral. Near the end of the procession there were a number of street thieves and cut-purses. At first Johan thought they were working the crowd, then he noticed they were mourning. Even they had liked Andreas. One young roof creeper even came over and offered his condolences. He said that Andreas had been the only watchman that was his equal on a roof, and that he would miss him. Andreas had once arrested him.
Johan almost broke into tears at the end when Oswald Guenther, Andreas' father, handed him the short sword Andreas had carried on his last day. "Take this, Captain. Give it to a new watchman. I made it for my son, but he would want it to be used. There is no use for a sword in heaven."
Six days later
Pat Johnson looked over the crowd. He had called this gathering and was pleased by the attendance. Most of the big name Suhl gun-makers were here. Both Ambergers, three Kletts, and Eckolt from Ziegler's were in the front row.
Pat was nervous. This was the first time he had addressed a crowd. And many in the crowd, most in fact, were his competitors. None, except for Ruben, were close friends and some were enemies.
"Gentlemen, fellow craftsmen, gun-makers of Suhl . . . I know that as the newest gun-maker in Suhl and the newest citizen in our ranks, it is presumptuous of me to call this meeting. But I have an idea, an idea that will make you money." That should get their attention.
"Many of you have complained about not having new products to sell. Some have complained about flintlocks driving wheellocks off the market, and complained about me making flintlocks." That caused a few mutters. "Well, I'm going to give you a new product. That's right. I said give."
Rudolph Amberger rose from his seat. "And what is the inspiration for this generosity, Herr Johnson?"
Pat smiled, perfect opening. "Why, you are, Councilman Amberger, or the needs of the council. A week ago Captain Frey of the watch came to me for help. He wants Suhl-made revolvers to arm his watchmen. But no revolvers are made in Suhl. I studied the problem and designed a revolver that perfectly meets his needs. But when I figured the production cost it was fifty guilders of silver to produce."
He walked over to stand by Amberger. "Tell me, Rudolph . . . tell us all . . . how you would price a product that cost fifty guilders to produce."
Amberger didn't look happy. He knew most of the gun-makers would check his figures. "I would add the shop profits and a profit for myself. Pay for my journeyman and suppliers. One hundred and twenty-five guilders would be a fair price . . . maybe one hundred if I thought I would sell a large number."
"Exactly. Now, can the council afford to buy thirty revolvers at that price? Not want to buy; we know the council wants to support the watch. But can the city afford that price?"
"Nein. The city can afford to spend no more than sixty guilders for each revolver. Fifty would be better."
Pat worked hard to keep the grin off his face. It helped that everyone knew Amberger was his biggest competitor. It helped more that he had taken him into his confidence before the meeting. He walked back to the front of the room. "There you have it, gentlemen. I have a design for a revolver, a better revolver than any made today, but there is no profit to be made."
Claus Will, one of the small gun-makers, rose from his seat. "Herr Johnson, was the cost figured on contracting out parts? And did you think of a larger market than just the watch?"
"No is the answer to both questions. I had Ruben Blumroder check my figures; and I used one man making one gun for the base." Pat waved to the crowd. "But Herr Will has seen the point of my calling this meeting. How many of you have started contracting out small parts and stocks? How many are dividing up production between teams of gun-makers? How many of you are buying bolts and screws from Gary Reardon over at Reardon Bolts? And how many need a product to sell outside of Suhl?"
The gun-makers stirred and murmured among themselves. Pat continued, "I will give any gun-maker who is willing to make revolvers for the watch at fifty guilders each a copy of my drawings and plans. I plan to have a model and ten sets of gauges ready in the next two days. You are free to study the model and I will give you a set of gauges when you commit to making three revolvers---at cost---for the watch. Note, I said ten sets. That's enough to make the thirty revolvers requested. US Waffen Fabrik will make five revolvers to bring the total to thirty-five, to cover breakage."
Pat started to sit down, then bobbed back to his feet. "Oh, I also have production drawings of two caplock rifles. One is an improved version of the French Cardinal and the other is lighter and cheaper to make. I'm giving those to any gun-maker that makes watch revolvers, on delivery."
Pat was finally able to sit down, then Ruben Blumroder started a fiery speech about Suhl's place in the world of gun-making and how its products were second to none. It didn't spoil the speech that he was waving an up-time revolver and declaring that in ten years a Suhl product would be better.
Pat's attempt to follow the speech was ended when Cornelius Klett tapped his shoulder from behind. "Show me those drawings, Herr Johnson." Klett pored over the drawing for a minute then pointed to the side plate cut. "How do you plan to make this cut?"
Pat whispered back, "Gary Reardon has a foot-driven drill press that is perfect for it. I have three in my shop. Send one of your apprentices around tomorrow and I'll show him how to use one."
"You would help train my apprentice?"
"Only if you approve, Herr Klett. If you like, after the meeting you can stop by and I'll show you. Then you can train the apprentice."
Klett sat back with a huff.
At the center of the room Ruben was finishing up by declaring he was ordering his shop manager to be first in line to get a set of gauges, because there would be a great demand for revolvers in the luxury trade.
Perfect, Ruben. Lead them by the nose into the future. Pat knew a lot of votes to send Ruben Blumroder to the State of Thuringia-Franconia legislature had really been votes to get him out of the luxury gun business. The man was the best at engraving and inlaying firearms Suhl had ever seen. Still, the old-fashioned, reactionary gun-makers would have to make revolvers or be forced out of the luxury trade.
\*\*\*\*
After the meeting adjourned Pat found two men waiting for him, Klett and Johan Frey.
Frey was busy explaining to Klett that he knew nothing about Pat's plans. Pat noticed that Johan was political enough to be wearing a Klett-made wheellock pistol.
"Good evening, Johan. Did you hear my little speech? In a month you'll have your revolvers. That is if Councilman Klett can work the city council to get the votes."
Pat could tell the councilman hated to be put on the spot. But finally he answered, "Well, Commander, you have Amberger's vote. Blumroder will get you two more, maybe three. So you need only one or two votes for a majority. Of course, since I have agreed to present your request I will vote for it. So I would say, yes, you'll get your revolvers."
Klett turned to Pat. "Herr Johnson you were going to show me a machine at your shop?"
\*\*\*\*
As the two men walked toward Pat's factory, Klett continued to talk. "Herr Johnson, Patrick, if I may, we are not in competition. I make luxury items and you make guns for the common man. So why aren't we friends?"
Pat thought for a moment. "I don't know . My flintlocks killed your market for match locks. But that was just a sideline for you. And I know you are making flintlocks now. What do you think?"
Klett stopped walking. "Ruben Blumroder is my chief competitor, he is a partner in your business and he was your sponsor for citizenship. Your methods of gun-making are not the traditional methods I learned as an apprentice. You introduced the concept of contracting major assemblies such as locks from non-gun-makers. You have unskilled workers---I won't say craftsmen---assembling rifles. I learned to make a lump of metal into a fine pistol, a piece of art. Your 'factory' makes tools."
"Fair enough, Cornelius, and mostly true. Ruben is not my partner though he is a stockholder. He owns about four percent of the company. He was a great help in setting up the deal and his shop is the US Waffen Fabrik sales agent in Suhl. And he is my friend. As for the methods, all true. I make, all I want to make, are what we called up-time 'behind the door' guns. A gun a poor man can afford to buy, use and pass on to his son."
Pat smiled. "I like beautiful guns. Shoot, I like your guns. You are a true artist in metal. But I can make fifty plain 'tools' for the price of one of your pistols. With that said, are you going to make any of Johan's revolvers?"
"But of course. I will also make more revolvers, engraved and inlaid with silver, revolvers. I will make Ruben sorry he ever heard the word revolver. But from this moment on, Patrick, you are my friend if you want to be." He held out his hand.
Pat smiled and took the offered hand. "Cornelius, my friend, I have a big revolver to show you."
The Next Day
"Are you going to contract out any parts for this new revolver?" Pat stared across the table at Claus Will. "I ask because that is the only way some of the smaller shops can participate in this program."
Pat had been surprised when Will and Oswald Guenther had joined him at the tavern where he was eating lunch. Now he was hearing their reason.
Guenther nodded in agreement. "That's right, Herr Johnson, and we want to help the watch. Claus and I discussed this last night after your meeting. Our shops are both too small to make three revolvers at cost, but we can make barrels and parts. Besides, we have a personal reasons. Andreas was my son and he was engaged to Claus' daughter, so we want to help arm the watch in his memory."
"And there is the point that revolvers are the wave of the future," Will interjected. "We may be old, but we're not locked into the old ways."
"Ja, show us what you need and we'll make it." Guenther added with pride. "You know how I trained Andreas; he worked in your shop after all. I know a few tricks he never learned."
"We may have concentrated on weapons for the rich, and one-off fancy guns in the past, but we can make anything," Will added.
"Claus is the best barrel maker in Suhl, and that means the best barrel maker anywhere." Guenther commented. "We don't have your fancy machines, but you know our work."
Pat could only agree. "Okay, you've sold me. I'll need five barrels and various other parts in sets of five. Stop by the factory and I'll get you a list. Beyond that I can't make any promises, but I'll talk to the Kletts and the Ambergers so you might get a bigger order."
\*\*\*\*
Pat was surprised when Cornelius Klett agreed to his proposal immediately. Klett sensed his surprise and smiled. "Patrick, I would love to throw some business to Oswald and Claus. To be sure they are both in the luxury trade and my competitors, but I did my apprenticeship in Claus' shop and Oswald taught me to engrave. Besides some of the parts in your lock work are finicky little things. A flintlock is simple next to this. So I'll buy all they can make."
\*\*\*\*
Ruben Blumroder was packing to return to Bamberg when Pat caught up with him. "Contract out the barrels and small parts?" Ruben stood with a jacket in each hand, Pat thought he looked and acted more like a politician every day. "Ja, why not? Oswald is a cousin and my shop manager, Horst, is his nephew. Besides, didn't you tell me that a rising tide lifts all boats. You need to find a better turn of phrase to use with people who have never seen the ocean, but I understood. Anything that encourages trade will help all businesses."
\*\*\*\*
Pat caught Rudolph and Caspar Amberger at dinner. Caspar answered for both, "Ja, we will both buy barrels from the smaller shops. Patrick, this is going to be bigger than you know. Every gun-maker who makes pistols wants to start making revolvers. This arming the watch and your design are just the starting point."
His brother, Rudolph, held up his hand. "I predict that with in a year, no one will want a simple pistol, and all we will be able to sell are revolvers. And I want your model after everyone has studied it."
Pat gave him a questioning look.
Rudolph smiled. "Patrick, you may be better than me at making revolvers, but I am better at making money. I'll take your first revolver and give it to Guenther and Will and have them put the fancy touch to it. You'll like what happens to it."
Four weeks later
Johan watched the delivery of the "Suhl Watchman Revolvers." There might not be a gun-makers guild in Suhl but the craftsmen made it a formal occasion. Councilmen Klett and Amberger headed the procession across the square. Behind them walked every gun-maker in Suhl. All of the men were carrying cases that contained revolvers and all were dressed in their finest.
Rudolph Amberger and Klett walked together to face Johan. He thought they must have practiced, they did it so well.
Amberger, as senior councilman, stated, "Watch Commander, the gun-makers of Suhl are proud to present the city watch with their new arms." He held out an open case that contained two revolvers. They were rather plain, but deadly-looking in their simple browned finish. No maker's marks were visible, but Johan knew that under their grips, out of sight, each held the mark of a proud gun-maker. The only visible mark was the word Suhl inlaid with silver on the barrel. Oswald Guenther had had insisted that he be allowed to mark each one after it was inspected, at no charge.
Cornelius Klett held out a second, smaller case. "There are thirty-six revolvers, not the thirty-five agreed on. This is the number one Suhl Watchman. We, the gun-makers of Suhl, are giving it to the watch. It is to be awarded to the winner of a shooting contest at the winter fair. All entry fees to go to maintain the watch."
Johan studied the revolver, it was engraved and inlaid with silver. Every surface was covered with either decoration or the mark of a gun-maker. Every maker's mark was present since it was everyone's masterpiece. Where the duty revolvers had the word Suhl in silver this one had Watchman Andreas Guenther Commemorative inlaid in gold.
\*\*\*\*
Reaping and Sowing
Written by Terry Howard
Karl looked out of the greenhouse at the back of his home and ran the numbers. They did not add up. The greenhouse was breaking even, but it was not making much of a profit if any at all. If it were flat instead of running up a steep hill, and if the owner cut out the cost of labor, it could bring in more as storage. Building it where it was built was not the best use of the money. The two new bathrooms, one on top of the other, were recently added on and came with a rent increase but nothing like what the increase should have been.
Something was fishy. Something was going on. Things were just not right. Karl was sure he was missing something. For the life of him he just could not figure out what.
\*\*\*\*
Peter sounded wistful. "We need to build a helicopter."
Paulus shook his head. "Forget it. You need aluminum, titanium and gyros."
Peter countered, "Therese says her father heard they could make gyros where he works."
Paulus shook his head again. "You still need aluminum and titanium. Iron is too heavy and wood won't handle the stress."
"How do you know so much about it?" Peter demanded.
"I had the same science class you did. I paid attention. We could build an airplane, but the Monster is already running commercially and airports are starting to pop up all over the place. We've missed the tide. By the time we could get into the business, there's going to be too much competition."
Peter answered, "Which is why we need to build a helicopter. It doesn't need a runway. It can land anywhere."
Ludwig spoke up. "Peter, you just want to fly and they told you not to bother applying for pilot training until you had a G.E.D. or a diploma, which you don't want."
"I wouldn't mind having a diploma," Peter said.
"Not badly enough to buckle down and learn what you need to pass the tests. You'll get a certificate of attendance instead of a diploma, because you can't pass the exit exam."
"I don't need a diploma," Peter said.
"You need one when you go looking for a job," Ludwig said.
"Shoot, Ludwig, when it comes to job hunting if there's a high school diploma involved, I'm going to be the one asking for it, not offering it. I don't need a diploma."
"Peter," Ebert said in a sad voice, while shaking his head, "You're an idiot."
In a much repeated mantra, Paulus said to his younger brother, "Shut up, Ebert."
"Besides, math is boring," Peter said.
"Maybe to you, but you got to have it to fly. Ebert has volunteered to tutor you," Ludwig said.
Peter frowned in response. "A helicopter would be a good investment."
Ebert chirped, "No, it wouldn't. Basic research and development is expensive. Second wave development is much more profitable."
Ludwig weighed in. "Get your head out of the clouds and talk about railroads."
"Up-time the railroad companies were dying. The lecturer on railroads said so," Peter argued.
"And when he did he was talking about long range passenger service. Short range passenger service and long range hauling of bulk items like coal and iron ore were completely unaffected by air travel, but you weren't listening to that part of the lecture," Paulus said.
Ludwig pushed his idea. "You've had the class on old American history. You remember the teacher talking about the railroad barons and the oil barons. I know you do, because we've talked about it before. There are fortunes to be made in railroads. We need a railroad."
Ebert frowned. "Ludwig, you're right. There are fortunes to be made in railroads. But we don't need one of our own. We just need shares in a lot of different lines as they grow. We need to put in a buy order with Joshua for railroad offerings. But we need to keep it down to five or ten percent. We don't need controlling interest. We can't really afford it, anyway. If we could, we would be putting all of the eggs in one basket. Five percent is all we need. Like the merchants in Venice. Don't buy a boat. Buy five percent in twenty different boats. Look, that Dutch outfit has announced three more airships. We need to buy a piece of each of them."
"Yeah, but, a helicopter would be so neat," Peter said.
Ebert agreed. "Yes, it would. When someone has worked out the kinks, we should talk about it. Until then, table it. We can't do it ourselves and we sure can't hire it done."
"Look guys, as chairman of the McAdam's Mining Company, I called this meeting for one reason."
The four of them were sitting in the tree house behind the dwelling their three families shared, a house which the boys had purchased unbeknownst to their parents. As the landlord, they put in some major improvements. They added two more bathrooms so every family had one of there own. Then they bought a washing machine and clothes dryer. When they did, the parents were frantic. The rents were going up, maybe even double, they feared.
\*\*\*\*
Ludwig's mother, puzzled, proud, and a little bit shocked, pulled the gang of four aside. "Did you boys come up with enough money to buy the house?"
None of them said anything. They were all busy looking anywhere but at her. She was the only one of their six parents who had any idea that the boys had more money than they made doing odd jobs and raising mushrooms for Lyndon Johnson and she had no idea just how much more. They had to have an adult sign for them to open the bank account. She was the one mother who was arguing with her spouse against going back home since things had quieted down.
When no one answered, she actually swatted Ludwig on the rump, hard. "You young fools! You've scared the life out all of us. Peter, your father has another room lined up and he is going to move while it is still open, since the rent here is going to go up. Ludwig, if we have to move, your Papa says we might as well move back home and he's making plans to do it and he might not wait for the rent increase either.
"Get in touch with your renting agent and have him tell us the rent is going up ten dollars a month per family to pay for the improvements. We save that much not going to the Laundromat. And while we're talking about money, Paulus, if buying the house didn't completely wipe you out, give your mother enough to buy those new winter coats she's been wanting. Yes, the old ones are still warm, but she's right. Your whole family looks like beggars and it's embarrassing to have you coming and going out the front door.
"You should have set your father up in a shop with your half of the money instead of buying the house. Working in the mine is killing him. He's a cobbler, not a miner. He is not used to the heavy work of shoveling coal. Not that all three of them aren't coming home half dead from being buried under ground all day."
Late the next morning the rental agent came around.
"The rent's going up ten a month per room. Next, the owner is going to put a stove in the garage. Do you know anyone who might be interested in opening a shop?"
Ludwig's mother spoke up. "Arnulf is a cobbler."
"Yes," Arnulf's wife said, "but you need more than shop space. You need a work bench and tools and supplies. Making enough to pay the rent at what rent costs here in Grantville, I just don't know . . ."
"Well, talk to him about it. Figure out what all you need to get started. The landlord will buy it and then we can include it in the rent," the agent said.
"But, with people buying shoes from the Wish Book, do you think he can make the rent and make a living?" she asked.
"Hey, your boys are part of the mushroom company right? I heard about them. Tell them to start getting orders for shoes. If anyone can find enough business to keep a shop busy, it's them.
"The other thing I wanted to tell you---I think your landlord is just plain crazy. You know the cliff face behind the house?" The hill behind the house wasn't a cliff face. It was a sixty degree incline with a southern exposure. It was all second growth brush from being clear cut five or six years before. "Well, he wants it cleared, and terraced. Then he's spending a fortune to build a green house. Like I said, I think he's nuts. But you know up-timers. They want fresh vegetables year around. And even with what the grocery store is charging for winter tomatoes, I figure it will take him years to recoup his costs but . . .
"Anyway, with you living right here and all, he said to tell you he'd pay the going rate for miners if your three husbands want the job of clearing the land and running the green house. Of course, if they'd rather play it safe and stick with the mine, I sure wouldn't blame them. Talk it over and let me know."
When the boys got home from school, Ebert's mother raised an eyebrow at them and shook her head in wonder, but never said a word.
The boys barely looked the idea over when they ran the numbers. A greenhouse was as close as they could come to a farm without having to move. If it didn't work out, the glass would sell second hand for just about the same price it would new and if they had the frames made up right they could sell them as ready-made windows. They already owned the land. A deciding factor was the size of the green house. It would barely keep two men busy so there would not be any call for them to help out.
Both projects should at least break even. It should put a stop to any more talk of leaving Grantville, which was worth taking a capital loss on an investment.
The improvements wiped out the savings account. They even had to draw a bit of money out of a mutual fund. But the mutual funds were turning a consistent profit and the high-risk, high-gain ventures which now made up twenty percent of their portfolio were mostly doing very well.
\*\*\*\*
That was several months ago. Now, once again, Ebert was agitating about the evils of idle capital.
Paulus said, "I'm sitting on the door and I'm not getting up until we've settled the only item on the agenda. Ebert claims we have too large of a surplus in our savings account. I am sick and tired of my kid brother whining about it being too big. Do we tell him to shut up or do we put some if it to work?"
"I think he's right," Peter said. "I think we need to invest some if it in a helicopter company."
"No. Absolutely not." Ebert was adamant. "I'd let it set there at zero interest before I agreed to a helicopter company. Let's get the whirly-bird off the table. Do we need to put it to a vote?"
Peter looked sour.
Ebert shrugged, "It might be a good idea later, Peter. But not right now."
With three to one against, the item was dead. If the votes had been three to one in favor, they would have tried to argue or browbeat the fourth member into agreement. Without consensus they would not spend a dime. Twice now the only thing between the gang of four and a substantial loss had been Ebert's stubbornness.
"So," Paulus said, "do we let the savings account sit or do we invest some or all of it?"
"Guys," Ebert spoke up first, "the idea was to have some emergency cash on hand as a cushion. Ten percent of the profits from the mutual fund go into savings and the rest turns over. I have gotten used to having money and what seemed like a big enough emergency fund when we started doesn't seem so big any more. On the other hand, the cheese and mushroom mine have been cranking out a steady return.
"I'm getting sick and tired of getting up in the dark and making early morning deliveries of the cheeses and mushrooms we picked the night before. Let's quit living like paupers and hire some more help. Besides, we are going to have some competition for both the cheese and the mushrooms before much longer anyway.
"We've been putting the rents, cheese and mushroom money into the savings. This is the money I think we should do something with."
"What?" Peter sullenly demanded. It was clear he was ready to argue against anything at all since he couldn't get them to even consider a helicopter.
"If we can't agree on anything else put it the mutual fund," Ebert said.
"But Ebert," Ludwig said, "we need some spec capital for odd lots like the things the other kids at school come up with."
"That's small change and you know it," Ebert said.
"So are the mushrooms," Peter said in what amounted to an aside which was over looked by Ludwig and Ebert.
"True," Ludwig answered. "It's usually little stuff, but some of them are paying off and could pay off big. The money we fronted to that guy to build a push cart to deliver milk, eggs, bread and the newspaper is up to six carts and he has over two dozen kids working mornings before school. We own fifty-one percent of it.
"When most people figure the mine is Lyndon's and the school house investments are ours, we get some respect but no one is bugging us. Our big ticket items go through Joshua and no one is asking him where the money is coming from. It's good camouflage. We don't have to hire body guards and worry about being kidnapped like what almost happened to Judy. If we ever have to hire bodyguards, our fathers are going to ask why. You know they will want to run the business and none of us want that."
"So?" Ebert asked, "Are you against tapping the overage in the savings account or not?"
"The overage? No. Just make sure the base is large enough."
"Vote," said Peter.
With three ayes, Peter said, "I still think we should start a helicopter company. Okay. I vote aye. Now, how much do we take out and what do we do with it?"
Paulus got up off of the trap door. "That is a question for another day. We've settled whether or not to tap the savings account. We can decide what to do with it later. Right now, if we hurry, we can make it to the ball field before they pick sides for the afternoon."
\*\*\*\*
Two days later, Monday in school, a science teacher hailed Peter in the hall. "Peter?"
"Yes, Mister Beckworth?"
"Could you round up your three accomplices and meet me in the lab right after school? I want to talk to you."
"Sure. What about?"
"A business proposition."
"I know there are a lot of wild rumors going around, Mr. Beckworth, but we don't really have anywhere near the amount of money some people think we do. Mostly we deal with students."
Tyler Beckworth smiled a smile which Peter read as "save it for the tourists, I know better." "Oh, I think you will be interested in what we have to share. See you in the lab."
When the lads arrived, Tyler was waiting with a fellow too young to be a teacher, but not by much.
"Awstin, these are the boys I was telling you about. This is Peter, Ludwig, Paulus and Ebert. And don't think Ebert is here just because he's Paulus' little brother." With the identical hair line of their white blond hair there was no doubt they were related by blood. "Ebert is the one you have to sell since he is usually the holdout, and you have to get them all on board or the deal is off. Fellows, this is Awstin Jones. He's from Wales. His brother sent him here to study.
"About a month ago," Tyler continued, "a billet of copper he asked for in a letter home caught up with him, two actually." Tyler lifted one end of a cloth which was covering lumps on the table. "This is one of them." Then he uncovered the rest of the table and point at each item in turn. "Those five blooms looking like little Christmas trees are pure copper and they are most of what is left of the other billet after we electrically winnowed it. We took a sixth bloom out to the power plant to the wire pulling line and they tested it. They're ready to buy as much as we can deliver. Then there is the silver, zinc and nickel. There are some other traces in the anode slime which we are still working on."
Tyler flipped over an up-time green board on a roll away frame. He took a pointer, "This is the price of the billet at the mine. This is the current price on the dock in Amsterdam for the same billet. Here is the price of the same weight in pure copper here in Grantville. You can see the difference in the price of the copper will pay for the refining and shipping. This leaves the trace elements as a clear profit. These are the current value for nickel and zinc dockside in Amsterdam. So the value of what is on the table is . . ." Tyler paused for effect and pointed, ". . . here."
Tyler tapped the bottom line and his presentation ran down. He was waiting like he expected some sort of response. Finally he asked, "Well, what do you think?"
The older boys looked at each other.
Brilliant---and rude---little Ebert blurted out, "What do you want?"
"We thought you would be interested in a business opportunity," Tyler said, a bit taken back. It was clear he had really expected, at this stage, for them to be enthusiastically offering to throw money at the project.
"Of course, we're interested in a business opportunity," Ebert said. "But what you've showed us is a lab exercise. They're already doing something just like this at the power plant."
"But the point is this particular copper is rich in silver. There is a lot of money to be made refining it out."
"So," Ebert repeated, "what do you want?"
"Awstin needs a loan to go home and set up a refinery."
"If you need a business loan, why come to us? The Abrabanels make business loans. Other People's Money front venture capital. Why come to us?"
Tyler looked startled. Awstin look like he was on the verge of tears. Then, trying to answer the question, Tyler said, "Well, you're here, and I guess I thought we could get a better deal from you. The Abrabanels and OPM only want to loan a percentage of the project and we don't have any money to invest."
"If you want a loan, forget about getting a better deal from us. We are going to charge the same rate of interest you would get from anyone else. Actually, we are going to be higher because a good risk will go to the established lenders. If you want venture capital, we're going to want a slice of the company. For something like this, with the facility being somewhere where we can't keep an eye on it, we're going to be reluctant to put up more than five or ten percent of the capital. If we're putting up all of the capital, then we're going to want ninety percent of the stock. At fifty percent of the capital, we're going to want forty-five percent of the stock." Ebert pulled the numbers out of thin air, but none of his partners contradicted him.
"You gave Hans a much better deal than that. You put up all of the capital for fifty percent," Tyler said. It was clear from his demeanor that the conversation was not going anything like he expected.
"Actually," Ludwig answered, "we took fifty-one percent and the company is right here in town. It was small change and low risk. If it didn't work out, we could sell the cart and get most of our investment back. On this we could lose our shirts. It would be so far away we wouldn't even know it until it was too late. Five percent is about all the risk we would be interested in taking on for a project like this."
Peter got a gleam in his eye. "Look, Mr. Beckworth, Awstin, give us a few minutes to talk about it, okay?"
The boys moved to the far corner of the room and huddled.
There was a lot of head shaking at first but it slowed down and turned to nods.
Peter looked up and said, "Mr. Beckworth, Awstin, Ebert is right. What you have here is a lab exercise. Next you want a full-fledged production company. Let's set up a pilot program. We'll provide the site, pay for the equipment, and for having a ton of copper shipped in. You and Awstin will set it up and Awstin will work it. Then you will have something to show to prospective investors besides a lab project, and we can talk about investing when we've seen a pilot project up and running."
The boys watched as Awstin and Tyler consulted.
Peter whispered, "See, I told you, they didn't think of it; they really did think we would just throw money at them."
Tyler nodded and then looked up and asked, "How big of a pilot project."
"Two or three commercial sized tanks," Peter said.
Paulus elbowed him.
Peter put in a quick save with hardly a pause between the two sentences, "Sounds about right to me, but give us a minute to talk about it."
When the crew came up for air, Peter said, "We can talk about two or three tanks for the pilot project, but we need one for a prototype first."
Tyler glanced at Awstin, who nodded. "Sounds okay," he said.
"Fine," Peter replied. "You guys put together a list of what you need for the prototype and we'll get a contract drawn up. Why don't you plan on being at the Abrabanel's office at four on Wednesday?
On Wednesday, Tyler and Awstin showed up at the Abrabanel offices. The boys were not there. Joshua Abrabanel was authorized to sign contracts for the McAdam's Mining Co. After the school teacher looked the contract over, he objected. "You've got this set up where they own the pilot program lock, stock and output. Awstin and I don't get a thing out of it."
"Yes, you do," Joshua Abrabanel said. "Awstin gets to use their equipment and shop space to work out the process and acquire marketable experience. You get a resume as an experienced consultant. You also get the right to show the facility to prospective investors until Awstin has raised his capital. The boys are putting up the space and the equipment. They are covering the overhead and they are buying the copper. You are going to get what you want. It is just going to take a little longer. I will set it up for you if you like and I can probably see to it you are fully subscribed. But we are going to want to see the system in production."
Tyler frowned. "It sounds all right, I guess. But it feels like we are doing the work for free. Shouldn't we get paid for our time?"
"If you want to sign an employment contract with a non-competing clause, I'm sure I can get you reasonable wages. Is that what you want? Look, you've got to be putting something into this and that is your time. It's a damned cheap investment on your end."
Awstin spoke up. "Tyler, don't screw this up. Sign the contract and then give it here so I can sign it. This is a dream come true! We can work out the kinks without having investors looking over our shoulders making suggestions about something they don't know anything about. So it takes longer than we thought. We won't have anyone screaming about our not paying dividends while we work out the kinks."
After the papers were signed, Joshua said, "We've arranged for you to inspect the copper wire works out at the power plant and to talk to the staff. We also asked about their policy, and you are right. They will be happy to buy our purified copper at a reasonable rate. I've checked. They're offering to pay us what it cost them to buy the raw copper and winnow it. Of course, your copper is going to be shipped in from Wales so it will cost more. But the high rate of silver will make up for it.
"Gentlemen, if you decide to have me draw up the paper work and find you your start up money. Let me know."
\*\*\*\*
"Why rent space when we don't have to?" Peter asked.
"That is the point. We do have to. We're raising mushrooms in most of the mine," Ludwig countered.
" But you're missing the point. There are two other mines now starting to sell mushrooms. The price is going to go down. If we cut production, the price stays high. We'll make the same income off of the reduced production rather than being forced to sell at the new lower rate in an over-supplied market," Peter said. "Besides, Ebert has been yapping for months about putting shelves up in the mine so we can raise more and we've been voting him down because we've already met market saturation."
"Hey," Ebert said, "We could lower our prices and put the new mines out of business."
"Sure," Peter argued, "and when we raise the price after the new outfits shut down, everyone will know what we did. Then, when the price is back up, the new mines will go back into production because they will already be set up for it. And we'd get a lot of bad public relations. Right now everybody thinks we're teddy bears. I'd like to keep it that way. We are going to see a drop in income off of the mushrooms. I'd rather see us lose money because of lower production than lower sale price."
"Point," Ebert said. "Besides, the loss in mushroom production would still be cheaper than renting a building in Grantville. I like the idea."
When Tyler saw where they wanted to put the pilot project, he said, "It will work but you will need to put in a good vent fan. I don't know what the fumes will do to the mushrooms. Maybe you should put the electrolysis tank nearer the opening.
"You know, if you put shelves in here you could greatly increase your production," Tyler observed. "You could be raising four or five times what you are."
"We've talked about it," Peter commented. "But the fresh mushroom market is pretty well saturated and we pretty much had all we could look after. Besides the bottom is about to drop out of mushrooms with new sources of supply coming on line."
"Look, your blue cheese is mostly going out of town. Have you asked the cheese buyers if they would want a line of dried or canned mushrooms?"
"That might work," Peter said.
"I've been saying so all along," An exasperated Ebert complained like an oppressed and tortured heretic who was suddenly reveled as a glorified martyr.
"You never said anything about an export market," Peter corrected.
"I didn't realize I needed to. It was obvious. I didn't tell you to breathe either!" Ebert said.
"Shut up, Ebert!" Paulus said a little more harshly than usual. "If we put the electrolysis tank out at the cliff face, we will want to close off the opening to keep the weather out, which is going to stop the air flow through the mine." The mine opened onto the cliff face in two places, so the wind blew in one opening and out the other. "So there's another reason to put in a big vent fan. We need the air flow through the mine to scatter the spores. We can leave some windows for natural light and which will cut down on the cost of light bulbs."
"The way those things cost, I still think we need to open a light bulb factory somewhere," Peter said.
"We've talked about it already," Ludwig replied. "It's been done, the set up cost would be high, and the trained personnel would be hard to come by. The margin doesn't look so good.
"If we need the cliff face boxed in we can hire my father and your father. Both of them are complaining about the lack of overtime and the greenhouse is slack right now." Ludwig said. "Let's go look at the open end."
\*\*\*\*
Karl and Manfred, Peter and Ludwig's fathers respectively, walked home from a day of framing the enclosure at a cliff face opening of the mine where their sons worked for Lyndon Johnson.
"Manfred, let me ask you something? Have you noticed Ludwig acting strange since he started hanging out with Arnulf's boys?"
"What do you mean?" Manfred asked.
"Well, before Peter started hanging around with those Catholic kids, he'd tell me everything that was going on. Now he doesn't talk to me at all," Karl said.
"You mean like they're keeping secrets?" Manfred asked.
"I guess. But it's more than that," Karl said.
"They do spend a lot of time together. I wouldn't say Ludwig was acting strange. But, still, have you notice how many odd things have been happening to us lately?"
"Maybe. Like what?" Karl asked.
"Like our landlord putting in two more bathrooms not long after we had a big argument about someone taking too long in the shower and someone threatened to move out. Then the landlord sinks a lot of money into the house and he hardly raises the rent at all when he could be getting twice what he's charging us. Then he turns the garage into a shop for Arnulf and puts up a greenhouse for you to farm and pays us to work in it year round. Almost like he was afraid we'd move out or something if we had to keep working in the mine. But why should he care? He wouldn't have had any trouble finding new tenants."
Karl nodded. "That's exactly what I'm talking about! Well, part of it anyway. We all talked about going home to get out of the mine. But like you said, why would he care?" Then Karl looked thoughtful, "Have you been watching what the crops are selling for out of the greenhouse?"
"No," Manfred said with a rising inflexion which made it a question, or the next thing to it.
"I have," Karl said. "Some months, especially in the summer, he's not even breaking even. Over the course of the year, if he's turning a profit after paying us, it isn't much. He sure isn't paying himself back for building the greenhouse very fast. The taxes here in town have got to be eating him alive. And he's left what we grow strictly up to us, and there is no mention of what we carry into the house, like he really doesn't care."
Manfred grunted. It was a thought he hadn't considered. Not being a farmer, he didn't think about things like that.
"And when things get slack the boys always seem to find us some other work." As Karl continued his face wrinkled up just a bit. "You know, my wife told me, when the landlord's agent offered the garage shop to Arnulf, Arnulf's wife said she didn't think he could make a living at it and the agent said to ask the boys. She said he said if anyone could find enough business to keep a shop busy, they could. She was proud of them. But they aren't just keeping the cobbler busy. They're keeping us busy too. I guess that's part of what I'm talking about besides keeping secrets. Some people seem to think the boys can get about anything done. Boys their age don't have any business doing things like that. It feels like they know everything that is going on and can always find us a short-term job when the greenhouse is slow. Like they had their hand in somebody's purse, or they know a hochadel who is willing to hand out money like it was candy. Or like they're part of a secret society, like the Masonic Lodge or something, and it takes care of looking out for them.
"I mean," Karl continued, "It's almost like magic. It's as if whatever it takes to keep things going and keep the three families happy and in Grantville is what happens. You don't suppose those two Catholic kids have gotten our boys involved in something they shouldn't be doing, do you? I mean, just how far is it from being Catholic to making a pact with the devil?"
Manfred snorted. The thought of the boys being involved in witchcraft or, just as bad, the Masonic Lodge was completely ludicrous. He glanced at the man walking next to him. The glance said, "sometimes farmers can be so . . . rustic? Superstitious? Just plain dumb?" The roll of the eyes said, "You stupid clod, after all these months of living under the same roof with a Catholic family, you can still come up with something like that." "Karl, I wouldn't worry about it. I really can't see Peter or Ludwig doing something like that. Besides, this is Grantville and while they will let anybody go to any church they want, or no church at all for that matter, the police department keeps a pretty close eye on what is going on around town. I can't see somebody sneaking something like that past them.
"Shoot, Paulus and Ebert are good kids. Arnulf is all right for a Catholic. He struggled to pull his weight in the mine. He was always dragging worse than we were on the way home, but he didn't whine about it. We got along with him okay, didn't we?" Manfred asked.
Karl nodded.
"Besides," Manfred said, "our wives get along even better than we do and they have to share the kitchen and now the laundry. You know it can't be easy.
"But you are right about one thing. Everything seems to be going our way. We all talked about going back home. We don't anymore. It's enough to make you wonder what's going on. You don't really suppose the boys have something to do with it? Do you?"
"I don't see how," Karl replied. "It sure looks like it. But I don't see how, and that's what's got me worried. Just what have they gotten into?"
\*\*\*\*
"But, we've got electric lines for lights. Why do we need batteries to run the electrolysis tank?" Peter asked.
"Because. The power lines are one hundred and twenty volts and the tanks need to run somewhere round six or seven. It's cheaper to use batteries than it is to buy a transformer," Tyler answered.
"So when you've got the batteries, everything will be ready?"
"As soon as the copper gets here from Wales, we can get started. You ordered a ton, right?" Tyler asked.
"Sure. But if everything is ready, let's run some local copper through the process while we're waiting. There's no point in letting it sit idle and we can have any problems worked out when the copper from Wales gets here."
"Copper which you will sell to the power plant at a profit," Tyler said. "That's what this is really all about, isn't it?"
Peter did not say anything.
Tyler was forced to carry both ends of the conversation. "Yes, Awstin gets the experience of working a small production operation and a hand up on getting the capital. But when it's all over and he is on his way home, the four of you will still be here sitting on a refining plant with an established market. I heard you boys were pretty slick. Now I see what they were talking about.
"But . . . okay. I guess you're right, I don't see why we should wait.
"One thing, though. I really do think you should give some serious thought to paying us a cut of the sales."
Peter did not blink an eye or make a sound.
"Look," Tyler said, "at least pay Awstin a little something for running the local batch for you. He's staying longer than he planned on and he's trying to make his money stretch."
At last Peter said something. "I'll talk to the guys. If we can't see our way clear to pay him for doing the pilot project, maybe we can find him some part-time work of some sort. I mean, it's not like someone has to be here watching it all the time, is it?"
"No. Not really. Once you've got it set up and running, if you check on it once a day or so to make sure nothing has gone wrong, there really isn't any thing to do for a couple of weeks until you pull the anodes and diodes to put in new ones. Then in a week or so when the anodes quit growing you pull them and drain the slurry off the bottom and start over. So if you could find him some work you can pay him for, it would be a nice thing to do."
"I'll talk to the fellows about it. We can probably use him in the mushrooms. As soon as we get the shelves built in the mine, we're going to have to hire some help anyway."
Peter continued, "You certainly made Ebert happy. He's been bugging us to expand the mushroom crop almost from the start. He should have said it was for the export market."
"I guess you just overlooked it," Tyler said.
Peter chuckled. "Maybe. And maybe part of it was just a way to take the little pipsqueak down a notch. You can't let him get his way about everything. He'd get intolerable. He's always right, you know. If you don't believe me, then just ask him. He'll tell you all about it. He gets to be annoying and I guess we just kind of picked this topic to slap him down a bit to keep him from getting to big for his britches."
\*\*\*\*
"Karl," Manfred said on their way to the mushroom mine to work on building shelves, "remember what we were talking about last week, about what the boys were into? Well, I had a very interesting conversation with my wife the other night.
"When the boys went off after dinner, I followed them. They've been going somewhere every Thursday night since school let out. They told me they had someone who was getting them into the Thursday night movie for free. Well, I've been wondering about what was going on ever since we talked it over the other day and, like I said, I followed them.
"They went to the Higgins hotel all right, but they were a half hour early for the movie. When I asked about it last week they told me they needed to be there early to sneak in the back door. Well, instead of sneaking in, they went into a side room off of the lobby and one kid after another went in looking hopeful and came out looking disappointed. The desk clerk saw me looking, so I asked him what was going on. He told me it wasn't anything to be concerned about."
\*\*\*\*
"It's just the McAdam's Mining Co. holding Thursday night court before they go to the movie."
"What's the McAdams Mining Co?"
"It's the name of the company that owns the mushroom mine. They deliver fresh mushrooms every morning to the kitchen here."
"I thought the mine belonged to Lyndon Johnson?"
"He told me he's just a silent partner. The boys run it."
"Really? Well, what's going on in there?"
"School kids, mostly. Anybody with a money-making scheme can come in on Thursday evening just before the movie and pitch their idea. Occasionally the mining company will put up the capital."
"They've got that kind of money?"
"Shoot, I heard they could buy half of Grantville if they wanted to."
"You're kidding!"
"Hey, it's what I hear. I don't know if they do or not. I just told you what I've heard."
\*\*\*\*
"Well, just before the movie started, the boys paid the teller and went in and I went home.
"That's when I squeezed some answers out of my wife."
\*\*\*\*
"Madde, do you have any idea just what that son of ours and his friends are up to?"
"What do you mean?" Madde asked.
Manfred got suspicious real fast. "Okay, Madde! What is going on?"
Madde lied, or tried to anyway. "Nothing is going on."
"Madde, I've know you since you were in diapers and we both spent our summer days in the kitchen garden. You can't tell a lie if your life depended on it. So what is going on?"
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Yes, you do. Our son has a lot more money than he's letting on. Now what is going on?"
"Well, he's paying half the rent and half the groceries," Madde said.
"He is? Where's the other half of the money I've been giving you?"
"In a sock in the springs under the mattress."
"Is Ludwig putting any money in the sock?"
"Well, no."
"Why not? If he's got the money to go the movie every Thursday night he should be putting some money into savings."
"Oh, he is."
"But you said he wasn't."
"I said he wasn't putting any money in the sock. But I know they're putting money into a savings account."
"You know? How do you know? And did you say they?"
"Yesss." Madde hesitated. When she spoke it was in response to her husbands glaring eyes. "Ludwig went into business with the other boys in the house and they opened a savings account. I know they did, because they had to have an adult sign for them to open it and to let the Abrabanels invest some of it for them."
Manfred looked at his wife without saying a word. For once she kept her mouth shut. Finally he asked, "What kind of business did they go into and why are they letting Jews invest it for them?"
"Mining, I guess. You know about the mushrooms and the cheese."
"I thought it belonged to Lyndon Johnson and the boys were working for him."
"Oh, that nice Officer Johnson helped them get started and I guess he's part owner in the mushrooms, but the cheese is all Ludwig's . . . well Ludwig and the other boys."
"Is that it?"
"I guess they've got some other investments."
"Like what?"
"You know the delivery cart that brings the milk and the newspaper?"
Manfred nodded.
"They own it."
Manfred looked at her and waited. Finally he said, "And?"
"Well, I think maybe they own some property they're renting out."
"They've made enough to buy property! No way! What property? A dog house?"
Madde did not answer. Manfred stared at her again.
Finally she said, "Here?"
"What? You mean to tell me they own this house!"
Madde nodded.
Manfred started laughing with a chuckle which grew into a roaring belly laugh and ended with him gasping for breath with tears running down his face. "Well, if it's true, and I said 'if,' mind you, it explains a lot doesn't it? But Madde, why didn't you tell me?"
"Because when they opened the savings account and had that nice Joshua Abrabanel invest some of their money on shares in Abrabanel projects, if you had known your son had that much money, you would have moved back home."
"Would that have been so bad?" Manfred asked.
"Yes, it would have. Now they have a savings account, mutual funds, a mushroom and cheese mine, a milk delivery company, they own the house they live in, the cobbler shop and green house their fathers make a living in, and I have no idea what all else. If you had known about it, we'd have gone home and gone broke."
Manfred looked thoughtful. "And they're adding a copper refining plant and exporting mushrooms. Still, Ludwig is keeping secrets from me. I will have to do something about that."
"No, you will not!"
A very surprised traditional German husband and father spoke his complete mind in one word. "What?"
"I said no. You will not speak to him about it! You are making more money than you ever made before in your life. Your son is seeing to it you have a good job above ground. We are living in a warm house, nicer than anywhere we ever lived. We grew up where your father was a groom and my father a butler and momma was a cook. We ate table scraps and froze in the winter in the garrets.
"Here we have our own bathroom. The lord of the manor didn't have anything as nice. I share the cooking with Elsa and Erna and it's a lot easier. Elsa does most of the baking and we all work together on the vegetables, especially now since you and Karl are raising them.
"If you had known about the money, you would have messed it all up by moving us home. Swallow your pride, Manfred, and admit it. Your son and his friends are better at making a living than you are."
"But he's keeping secrets from his father!"
"And he is being very careful to see to it we are looked after without rubbing your nose in the facts of life!"
"Madde! You have never talked to me like this."
"Manfred! This is Grantville!"
"That's why I'd have gone home if we had the money."
"That's why Ludwig kept it a secret."
"Well, we will see about that!"
"And do what? Are you going to insist he turn the money over to you? This is Grantville. Remember the Dutch family who lived next door? The father wanted the son to turn over his paycheck and the boy filed for emancipation and moved out. Then the Dutchman beat his wife. Somebody in the house called the police and they threw him in jail. She took her husband's things to the police station and told him not to come home until he got some counseling and was willing to straighten up.
"Or do you want the both of you to have to deal with the embarrassment of admitting you are working for your son?"
"But he's just a child! He has no idea what he's doing!"
"You've been in Grantville just as long as he has. You know so much more than he does? Just how many businesses do you own one fourth of? How much money do you have in the bank? Do you own the house you live in?"
Manfred opened his mouth and nothing came out. After a few seconds, he shut it. A few seconds later, he said, "Damn it to hell, woman! If you know what you're talking about, and I do mean 'if,' then maybe you're right!"
\*\*\*\*
"And what my wife told me proved to be very interesting indeed," Manfred said. "I didn't believe. Who would? So yesterday I went down to the city government offices and checked. Did you know they have a lower tax rate on residences than on business, and the rate is even lower on owner-occupied property? Guess what our house is registered as?"
"Rental and income property, of course," Karl said.
"Nope. It's the residence and primary place of business of the owners of record."
"Well, that has got to be wrong. I heard some people talking about it. If you've got more than one full-time employee or two part-time employees, other than domestic help, then the building is taxed at the business rate. The only way you can get around it is if the people working there are family."
"You're right," Manfred said. "You and I and Arnulf are all related to the owners."
"What are you talking about?"
"Our sons own the house they live in. The landlord is willing to keep sinking money into the house because he lives there."
"You sure?"
"I've seen the tax rolls. Someone explained it to me. If they want the owner-occupied tax rate, the names need to appear on the tax roll. Since the owners are under-aged, the house can't be sold without going through probate court and if the boys fight it the probate court probably won't let it be sold out from under them. They seem to have attached themselves to an address in Grantville with a vengeance."
"So, how did they ever get a mortgage at their age?"
"They paid cash."
"You are kidding. You have to be. Where did they ever come up with that kind of money?"
"No, I'm not kidding," Manfred said. "While I was there, I checked. I figured if I could find out who co-signed for them, I could figure out what they were up to and just what kind of mess they were in."
"Maybe they're making a whole lot more off mushrooms and cheese than we thought?"
"I thought they were just working for Lyndon Johnson. I figured after my son helped out on the rent and the groceries and bought his own clothes, what little he had left was his to spend as he wished. When he wanted to take summer school classes instead of finding a summer job I almost said something. But he is paying his own way, so I let it go.
"But if they own the mine . . ."
"The lease from the government for the mine is in their names. Well, it's in the name of a mining company, but it turns out they are the company."
Karl continued talking right over his co-worker. ". . . and they have to if they came up with enough to buy the house and build the greenhouse, then it's a completely different case. I guess I am just going to have to have a word with Peter and ask him about it."
"And if you do, Karl?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you want to admit to your son that you know you are working for him?"
"But things will change after I settle up with him."
"Will they?"
"Of course, they will."
"This is Grantville, Karl. Remember the Dutchman? The boys have the house tied up where we can't touch it. I bet they've got the business set up the same way."
"Manfred, he is my son and he will do as I tell him!"
"Then, Karl, maybe you had better think good and hard about what you are going to tell him before you open your mouth. I'm making more money for doing less work than I ever have in my life. So are you. If it turns out they own the mine, can we do a better job of running it than they can?"
Karl opened his mouth and then shut it.
\*\*\*\*
On the way home in the afternoon, Karl said, "Manfred, I think we should go ahead and plant the radishes in the shade of tomatoes and the squash in the corn."
"But you said it wasn't worth the extra work."
"Then I was working in somebody else's greenhouse for wages. Now it's in the family, so not doing it is money out of pocket. I think it's about time the two of us quit coasting and saw to it the greenhouse turned a profit. Don't you?"
\*\*\*\*
As they pulled the second set of blooms out of the bath Tyler Beckworth said, "I still think Awstin and I deserve a cut of the sales price on the trace elements."
It was Ebert who spoke up first, of course, "No, you don't. We've talked to Joshua. You read the contract. You even brought this up then. We've read the proposed articles on the business you want us to invest in. You're getting five percent of Awstin's slice for consulting fees. That is way over what it should be, as far as I'm concerned. But that is his business. All he is getting out of this is hands-on experience and the right to show the process to prospective investors. You are just going to have to wait for awhile.
"Besides, you've already registered down at the library as a copper refining consultant with practical experience. You are going to want a letter from us confirming it. That is what you are getting."
"You are one greedy little . . ."
Ebert smiled. "That's me. Simon Legreedy. But if you want to talk about being greedy, take a look in the mirror Mister 'I want five percent.' We're paying Awstin to work in the mushrooms and he can check the baths before and after work, so I figure we're being fair with him.
"Awstin," Ebert asked, "if you think we aren't being fair say so."
"I don't have any complaints," Awstin said. "You're both being generous by my count. And if Tyler wants five percent of something which wouldn't have happened if he hadn't put his oar in the water, he's welcome to it because I am getting ninety-five percent of something I wouldn't have had without him."
"So there you are," Peter said to Tyler. "Everybody is happy except you. And we don't care. I'm sure you'd like five percent of the ongoing proceeds off the operation. But to get it you would have had to have come up with five percent of the startup cost, and you opted not to. You get what you pay for."
Tyler grimaced at Peter and Ebert grinned.
\*\*\*\*
Arnulf stormed into the greenhouse in the middle of the afternoon.
Karl looked up. "Hey, Arnulf, have you come to help out?"
"Karl, you and Peter talk a lot."
"Well, we used to."
"Did Peter ever mention . . . oh never mind."
"What happened, Arnulf?"
"I just had a customer in the shop, a teacher named Beckworth. He was complaining about me raising my prices. I said I hadn't and he said ever since my boys quit taking orders and making deliveries, I most certainly had. He told me what he claimed to have paid last time. It's almost as if they were they subsidizing me while I got started."
Karl smiled a broad smile. "So you've figured it out have you?"
"Figured what out?" Arnulf demanded.
"Hey, Manfred," Karl called to his partner, "grab three beers and take a break while we explain the facts of life to our good friend and fellow victim.
"You see Arnulf it's like this . . ."
With the beer bottles about half empty, Karl ran down. Arnulf looked at Manfred and Manfred nodded.
"So our sons, unbeknownst to us, while we thought they were working for Lyndon Johnson, somehow managed to open a business and made enough money to buy the house?" Manfred nodded at Arnulf.
"The two of you figured it out and kept your mouths shut because you decided it was easier that way, and you think I should do the same thing?"
Manfred nodded his agreement again.
"So are you letting them run your families?" Arnulf asked.
"Certainly not!" Karl said. "We run the greenhouse, we're making a living just like you are. The greenhouse is turning a profit, just like the cobbler shop is. We are still running our families. Our wives do what we tell them. Our sons do what we tell them. We are just being careful to not notice what the boys are doing for fun in their free time."
"Oh? Really? The snot nosed kid, Beckworth, who was just in my shop, has never done anything in his life but go to school as either a student or a teacher, told me Peter isn't applying himself in school. He said Peter is acting like he had all the money in the world and like he didn't need to learn his lessons, so he lets them slide.
"If you're the boss and your son is going to do what you tell him, what are you planning on doing about it? Seems to me you've got a conflict there. Don't you agree?" Arnulf asked Manfred.
"You might have a point," Manfred replied. "Are you going to confront your boys about the money?"
"I think I'll wait and see if Karl knows what he's talking about. If he really can be the head of the house while his son is making all the money with out telling him about it . . . well, if he can do it I suppose I can too. And if he can't? But if we're staying, we need to do some things a bit different don't we?"
"Like what?" Manfred asked while Karl stewed.
"Like joining the militia."
"Grantville doesn't have a militia," Manfred countered.
"Sure they do. They call it the reserves," Arnulf argued. "I never joined because Grantville wasn't my town. I wasn't staying. If we're staying, then we should join. I've been thinking about it. Those scamps of mine aren't going to be cobblers, not with the education they're getting and definitely not if they own a business like you say they do. So if we're staying, I think I'll send them to the scouting program so they can learn to be officers."
\*\*\*\*
"Peter," a very stern father looked solemnly, almost fiercely, at his son in the privacy of the family's room later in the evening. "It has come to my attention that your grades in school are barely getting by. I took the trolley out to the school this afternoon and talked to some of your teachers. I am told you are acting like school isn't important. I was told you often do not turn in your homework assignments. You will need a diploma when you go looking for a full time job.
"Starting tomorrow you will come straight home from school each day to work on your homework. You will do this until you are getting better grades. Your teachers think you could be getting As and Bs if you would only apply yourself."
"But, Papa, what about my job?"
Karl was proud of his poker face. He had practiced extensively for this conversation. The laughter in his soul was a steam boiler ready to blow, driving an engine at speeds beyond what was normal or safe. "You will tell Officer Johnson you may not work in the mushrooms until you bring your grades up."
"But . . ." Peter hesitated.
"Is there something you wish to tell me?"
"But, Papa, we need the money."
"We'll get by. An education is important."
"But, what will I do about . . ."
"About what?"
"Uh . . . about having fun?"
"Young man, you have been in Grantville too long. Do we have to move back home for you to think clearly? If you run out of things to study, you can come out to the greenhouse and give me a hand. Squeezing a profit out of such a tiny farm is taking a lot of work. But until you are bring home As and Bs, you are through running around with your friends doing whatever it is the four of you do. Is that clear?"
"But, Papa, you are only getting paid for forty hours a week. Spending the extra time to make a profit for the landlord isn't necessary."
"You really have been in Grantville too long. A man needs to take pride in his work. He needs to do whatever it takes. A farmer whose farm is not turning a profit is not a man to be proud of. A student who is not getting the best grades he can is not a son to be proud of. Do we understand each other?"
"Yes, Papa."
"I was talking to Arnulf today. He has decided he is staying in Grantville. He thinks we should join the militia and send our sons to the boy scouts. I think it is a good idea. When you get your grades up, you will join and start learning how to be an officer."
Karl had to hide his grin when he saw Peter's perplexed and annoyed look. He was still master of his home.
\*\*\*\*
Ball Whats?
Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett
"They want little steel balls?"
"That's what it says and these things . . ." Johan said, pointing at the pamphlet.
"What on earth for?" Wilhelm asked, without really looking at the pamphlet.
"I'm not sure. Pamphlet doesn't say. I would guess it's some sort of strange rolling bushing."
"I don't know, Johan. The whole thing sounds fishy to me. Besides, what's wrong with ordinary bushings?"
"It's from Grantville, Wilhelm."
"So? Granted, something weird happened over there a couple of years ago. I even grant that it was probably a miracle. But that doesn't mean everyone in Thuringia is suddenly a saint. It doesn't even mean that all the up-timers are saints. I've heard some pretty nasty stories about them. And did you hear about what they did up at that castle? Burned the Spaniards. That sounds more like devils than saints. Not that the Spaniards didn't probably deserve it. Bunch of Papist pigs."
"Well, no one is threatening to burn us. They are just offering to buy some steel parts from us . . . if we can make them."
"Right. They are offering to buy them, but that broadsheet doesn't guarantee a price. 'Price to be determined.' Steel balls aren't complicated, but they aren't easy to make. They will be expensive to produce and they want thousands of the sets. And they want steel! Why do they need steel? Good Swedish iron we can get up the Elbe at a reasonable price, but they want their silly little balls made out of this crucible steel. Do you realize how much we will spend making the steel? Besides steel being hard to work!"
"So you don't think we can do it? The town, I mean." The town was Zahna, which was a little nothing of a place a few miles northeast of Wittenberg.
Wilhelm sniffed. "Of course we can do it. The question is: should we do it?"
Johan just looked at him. Wilhelm had a tendency to overestimate the capability of Zahna that was almost as great as his automatic distrust of anyone who came from more than a stone's throw away. He hadn't been overly pleased at the miracle of the Ring of Fire happening so far away. To Wilhelm the best proof that Martin Luther had been right was that he had nailed up his points locally, not off in Rome. Johan was more worldly. He had actually been to Jena a few years back. Not to go to college, just to pick up the new pastor who had recently graduated. Of course, that was years before the Ring of Fire. The farthest that Johan had been in the last ten years was taking his wagon over to the Elbe to pick up a load of iron at Mühlanger. Where he had met Maria.
"Wilhelm, we need something. We're losing sales to the villages."
"We make good products."
"Yes, I know we do, and we are well thought of . . . but they can get nails for less than half of what we can make them for. I talked to Hans Gruber the other day and he showed me the price in the catalog. It's not that they resent us. The villagers around here mostly like us and would rather stay with us if they could. But they just can't afford to."
"I know it. But I don't trust this. It's too new, too different. What do they need it for, and why aren't they making the little steel balls themselves?"
"I don---"
"Dinner is ready, you two," Maria, Johan's wife, shouted.
\*\*\*\*
"I still don't trust it," Wilhelm said the next day. "And you trust it too much." He glared at Johan. "You always have been too trusting." He transferred his glare to Maria.
Johan repressed a sigh. Wilhelm had never really trusted Maria. He disapproved of Johan's meeting and marrying a woman who wasn't from Zahna. Maria had been in service to a wealthy family in Wittenberg, but she was from Riesigk, which was on the other side of the Elbe. "If I don't go to Grantville to investigate this, then you'll have to do it."
Wilhelm nearly choked.
"Well," Johan said, "you won't believe a thing I say if I go. Besides . . ." He smiled at his wife, heavily pregnant with their first child. ". . . I don't want to be away until the baby is born. So you go."
"Argh," Wilhelm muttered.
"It'll do you good to try something new," Maria said. "Maybe you'll figure out that not everything beyond Zahna is bad."
Wilhelm sniffed and, with a hint of humor, said, "Not necessarily bad. Just not entirely proper."
\*\*\*\*
Unlike his flighty younger brother Johan, Wilhelm didn't travel. He didn't approve of the world outside his home town. It brought things like the plague that had killed his parents and the war that was trying to destroy them all. He didn't like traveling down the Elbe and he didn't like traveling up the Saale and he didn't like staying at inns and he didn't like drinking different beer and he didn't like the way some people spiced the sausage. His litany of complaints went on and on, although after a few irritated looks from fellow travelers he decided to keep them to himself. And he didn't like having to keep his opinions of inferior beer and sausage to himself.
But because of his attitude, he was prepared to dislike Grantville most intensely.
And he did.
The asphalt stuff on the roads stank. The cars went too fast and left a stink behind them. The people dressed funny. And everyone he saw just looked too . . . happy. He couldn't avoid seeing the grandeur of the Ring Wall and the power and utility of the up-time devices, but he didn't have to like it. And he didn't.
\*\*\*\*
So this is the place they talk about on the radio, Wilhelm thought. The ThuringenGardens. He stepped through the door and found that the place was almost too crowded to move through. One of the waitresses waved toward the tables and said, "Just find a place to sit. Doesn't matter where. One of us will be over to take your order in a moment."
Easier said than done, Wilhelm thought. The place was packed with people moving and talking and laughing. He couldn't hear himself think, and almost turned around and left. But the ThuringenGardens was famous. Even in Zahna they had crystal radios and listened to the VOA. They heard about the Gardens on several of the programs. They had heard concerts that were broadcast from the Gardens. Going to Grantville and not visiting the Gardens would be . . . Well, he wouldn't dare face his sister-in-law if he were to come home and admit that he had gotten to the Gardens and then turned around and left.
So he persevered and finally found an open spot on a bench. Unfortunately, it was right next to a young woman. What made it worse was that she was a very pretty young woman and he didn't know how to talk with pretty young women. He never had, not even when he was a younger man.
"May I sit here?" he asked hesitantly after standing there long enough to almost seem creepy.
"Sure, go ahead. I rarely bite."
Once he was seated, the young woman continued. "I was wondering if you were going to get up the nerve to sit down or run away. Are you new to Grantville?"
"Yes, just got here today. I am staying at the big inn they built just outside the Ring Wall."
"Right, the tourist inn, we call it. It's cheap enough and it does have running water, but it's not like the Higgins is going to be or even like the Willard. So what brings you to Grantville? Want to see if you're in the encyclopedia?"
"What?"
"You know, coming to find out if you are remembered by history?"
"No." Wilhelm shook his head, still confused. "I am a blacksmith. Who would remember me?"
"Well, at least you're not one of the egotists," the young woman said. "My name is Barbara Fischerin, by the way. I'm an old Grantville hand, been here since early last year. I go to school nights at the high school and when I get my GED I'm going to get a job as a clerk or a bookkeeper, or even a secretary. I'm not going to be a housemaid forever. You can get ahead in Grantville."
All of which would have, no doubt, been highly informative if Wilhelm had understood half of it. What was a GED? He stopped. A GED was something they had heard about on the radio. It was a high school equivalency certificate. That might be of value. It would probably be more education than he had, come to that. He had eight years of school, the last four part-time as part of his apprenticeship. He found himself impressed by the young woman. Perhaps she would get such a job. "That sounds quite impressive."
She shrugged, which did interesting things to her blouse. "Not for here. You should meet my cousin. He is a licensed researcher at the State Library and ResearchCenter. Anyway, if you're not here to find out if you're famous, why are you here? Just to see the place?"
"No. I am coming about a business opportunity."
"What sort?"
Wilhelm pulled out the well-creased broadsheet. "This and several others arrived in our village a couple of months ago, brought by a merchant. Between them they listed many products that would be bought if they could be produced to the standard required. I am here to find out if it's a real offer."
She took the sheet and started reading. A few moments later, she pointed to a place on the sheet and said, "The offer is legitimate, I'd say. It's Universal Machine Supply Corporation, which is owned by OPM, and they are legitimate. I even have some OPM shares. Frau Wasserman says it's for my dowry, but I'm not sure I want to get married. Still, it's nice that she does it."
"Does what? I don't understand."
"Frau Wasserman is my employer. She provides room and board, plus a small salary and some mutual fund shares every month. OPM is one of the funds. It's all part of the benefits package."
By this time, Wilhelm's head was spinning. For one thing, Barbara, while apparently hard-working and certainly quite a pretty girl, was a chatterbox. She hadn't stopped talking since he'd sat down. For another thing, he was quite hungry and the waitress still hadn't made it to their spot so that he could order some food.
As he was thinking this, Barbara did get quiet. So did many of the others in their part of the Gardens, for a group of people were climbing onto the stage.
A voice boomed into the room. "And now, back by popular demand, we present Miss Els Engel, appearing with the Old Folks!"
"Good evening, friends," the warm, furry voice of Els Engel said, sounding much better than it had over the radio, richer and fuller. "Tonight we are going to do a medley of country and western music, with a bit of the big band music thrown in. Some of it will seem a little strange to many of you, but it has a beautiful soul once you get used to the new style."
By the end of the evening Wilhelm and Barbara had agreed to meet the next day when Barbara promised to introduce him to her cousin, the researcher.
\*\*\*
Cousin Franz the researcher spoke and read German and English, not all that unusual in war-torn Germany. He was moderately well-educated, having gotten a year at the university before the war had ruined his prospects. When he, with his family, had washed up in Grantville he had, with the family's help, gotten together the money to take the library course. Since then he had been working as an independent researcher and gradually paying them back.
Frankly, Wilhelm didn't find him all that impressive, though Wilhelm did manage to keep that thought to himself. After all, there wasn't that much to this bit of research. Barbara took Wilhelm to the Library and ResearchCenter and introduced them. Wilhelm showed him the leaflet. Franz took one look and went and fetched a couple of booklets.
"These are free." Franz pointed to one. "This one is provided by Universal Machine Supply Corporation, which is owned by OPM." He pointed at the other. "This is the quarterly report on OPM. Between them they should answer most of your questions. Since UMSC put out that pamphlet, we've had dozens of such requests. I could do the research independently, but it would be a waste of my time and your money." He pointed again at the leaflet provided by Universal Machine Supply Corporation. "That one is actually produced by the National, ah, State Library and ResearchCenter. It's just that UMSC asked the questions about how ball bearings were made and even they weren't the first. But when the staff had put together the booklet, UMSC paid to have it translated into German and have a thousand copies made up."
"Why?" Wilhelm asked as he looked at the first booklet.
"Because they want people to start making ball bearings and figure that you're more likely to do it if you know how it's done."
"And this one?"
"Oh, OPM gives those out to anyone. They're advertising. Whether you're thinking about buying shares or need money to start a business, this will tell you what OPM has to offer. There are dozens of others just like that from other mutual funds. Funds that invest in everything from ships to roses. There are even two from funds in France."
\*\*\*\*
In spite of the fact that Franz struck Wilhelm as a self-important jerk, the booklet on bearings was interesting. It turned out that there were several types of bearings. Wilhelm was familiar with bushings. He made them regularly for wagon wheels and a score of other uses. At the most basic level, a bushing was just two surfaces with a bit of grease between them. Not that the up-timers didn't have a number of tricks that they applied. There were also magnetic bearings and liquid bearings and other weird stuff. All this was mentioned in a couple of pages at the start of the booklet. Then it got into rolling bearings, and ball bearings in particular.
A ball bearing is any bearing that uses balls. Most of the fairly standard bearing sets that Universal Machine Supply Corporation wanted used a set of balls rolling in two races, little circular pieces that had tracks for the balls to race around in. They also had cages to keep the balls from rubbing against each other as they rolled around. It was all designed to let something spin with as little friction as possible.
Wilhelm actually went to visit the offices of Universal Machine Supply Corporation.
\*\*\*\*
"Can I help you, sir?" asked the young lady at the desk in the front room.
"I am Wilhelm Wagner. I was wondering about the ball bearings you want made?"
"Yes? What would you like to know?"
"Why do you want them?"
She reached in a desk and pulled out another booklet. Then she started showing him all the items that could be made better with ball bearings. Wheels and machine tools and engines and . . . on and on and on.
The opportunity was for real. By now Wilhelm was convinced that the only question was: could Zahna do it? Wilhelm was very much afraid that they couldn't. The reason was that making balls for the ball bearings was machine-intensive. There was a reason that blacksmiths in the seventeenth century used bushings rather than ball bearings. Bushings were easier to make. Incredibly easier to make if made by hand. Making the balls by hand could certainly be done but it would take a long time for each bearing. In practice, Wilhelm, his brother, and all their journeymen and apprentices working full-time making balls couldn't make enough ball bearings to feed themselves at the prices UMSC was willing to pay. But there was an answer for that and it was shown in the booklet: a set of machines that would let them make bearings by the thousands and let them make them cheaply and well. Trouble was, they couldn't afford the machines.
He packed up his kit, said goodbye to Barbara, and headed back to Zahna.
\*\*\*\*
"So, is it for real?" Johan asked him
"Yes, it's for real. I saw drawings, and even working machines. They have human-powered two-wheel vehicles called bicycles that can be made without ball bearings, but work much better with them. And a whole host of other devices, many of which can get by with bushings, but become much more efficient with ball bearings. So there is a demand for ball bearings. It would be a product that would sell."
"Then we are going to do it?"
"I wish we could, but I don't see how." Wilhelm brought out the booklets and the information he had collected and started going over it with his brother. Over the next week, he would go over the same information with every member of the town council.
"We would like to help you. Your family is one of the best in town and your shop is well run, but the expense!" The mayor shook his head, speaking for the town council. It was precisely what Wilhelm had expected to hear, since he was on the council himself. And everyone on the council realized what a town-owned company would mean for the town . . . if they could get it going.
Almost everyone wanted a factory for Zahna, but even with the resources of the entire town, they couldn't support a ball bearing factory. There were just too many production machines involved. Producing the balls would take three machines: the heading machine, basically a stamp press that stamped a roughly ball-shaped piece on the end of a wire, then those almost-balls would go through rill plates, which were a lot like a grinding wheel for flour. The hard steel rill plates had grooves cut in them so when the balls were rolled around under pressure they got really round and compressed. And then the balls were sent to a furnace for tempering, and finally were subjected to more rolling around in a ball mill.
That was all just for making the balls. If everyone---or even almost everyone---in town invested in the project, Zahna could do it, if there was a matching loan from OPM or one of the other mutual funds.
But that wasn't all that was needed for a ball bearing factory. It took a different stamp press to make the cages and other grinding machines to make the races, which had inner and outer surfaces, each of which needed their own grinding and shaping machines. Those machines wouldn't come cheap. As well, the machines would need something to power them.
It was just too much for one town, even with the matching loans.
\*\*\*\*
"The trip wasn't a total waste," Wilhelm said. "I bought some tools. A metal-working lathe that can be run with pedals. And a few other pieces that ought to let us work more efficiently."
Johan looked over Wilhelm's purchases, and they spent a few days getting back to work using the new tools. The tools were helpful and increased the shop's production. Johan and Wilhelm also started making a few of the up-time tools. Over that winter things went fairly well with the new machines.
When not involved in caring for her newborn, Maria noticed that Wilhelm seemed less satisfied with the town than before his visit to Grantville. It was like pulling teeth, but she finally got him to admit that he had met a girl in Grantville.
"What's her name?" Maria asked.
"Barbara." Wilhelm sighed. "Very nice girl, Barbara. But she's too young for me, I fear."
"Oh?"
"Only twenty-five. She wouldn't be interested in me. I'm fifteen years older, and a settled sort, and far away from Grantville."
"Oh?"
"Grantville is very exciting, you know," Wilhelm said. "It smells funny from the asphalt and the gasoline, but it's still very exciting."
"And you don't think Barbara might like a quieter, possibly more secure, life?"
"Oh, she's very modern. Going to school, getting her GED."
Honestly, Maria was in agreement that her husband's older brother was an old curmudgeon. But he had been one when he was twenty, according to Johan. Even so, Wilhelm was a decent man, if grumpy and not at all to her tastes. He needed a wife. Even if he didn't think so.
"You might write her," Maria suggested. "Perhaps she needs a friend."
\*\*\*\*
Over the winter things in the shop went well. The new tools and the new designs that Wilhelm had brought back made the shop both more efficient and more profitable.
By spring the writing was on the wall . . . but it was still faint and in very fine print.
Factory-made items were starting to become available. Not enough of them, and they were expensive because of their scarcity and the transport costs. But Wilhelm had been to Grantville and when he put what he had seen in Grantville together with what he was seeing now in the Wish Book and other advertisements that came to Zahna, he was becoming concerned.
"It's how fast they can make them, Johan. Barbara took me to see a factory just outside the Ring of Fire. They had these big stamp presses and they were stamping out parts in seconds. Parts that would take us hours to make."
"But it's just one factory!"
"For now. But they're making more. If we don't . . ." Wilhelm stopped, looking for a word. "Modernize. Copy the way the up-timers do things. If we don't do this, we are going to be left behind. And by the time we are forced to modernize, we won't have the resources to do it."
"It's not that I disagree, Wilhelm, and it's not that the council disagrees," Johan said. "Peter Krup is terrified of the shoes in the Wish Book." Peter Krup was the town's largest shoemaker. "And he's not the only one. But we just can't do ball bearings. For that matter, I'm not sure what we can do."
"We could make the balls if everyone got behind it!"
"Probably. But what good will that do if there isn't anyone making the races and cages?"
"I don't know." Wilhelm sighed. "Would you pass the beets, Maria?"
"What about arranging with another town to make the races and a third to make the cages? We can't be the only ones who see the problem."
"Why don't I write home about it?" Maria said. "My brother wrote me recently and he shares your concerns about finding ourselves left behind with all the new technology out of Grantville. Perhaps Riesigk could get involved with the ball bearings . . ."
"It's too far away," Wilhelm said. "We'd have to ship the balls across the river, then put them on mules or something to get them to Riesigk. Then we'd have to ship them back across the river to wherever they do final assembly. No, it's better if we go to the local towns and villages and find our partners closer to hand. It will save incredibly on transport costs."
Maria was sure that he was overstating things, but she had no answer ready. So she just nodded and waited for the men to go back to work. Then she sat down and wrote her brother a letter.
\*\*\*\*
"Do you two really think that this is a good idea?" The mayor of Zahna was a relative and a friend of Wilhelm's and, though not as distrusting of strangers as Wilhelm, he found the whole Ring of Fire situation intensely disturbing. He was a devout Lutheran and the idea of God sending a bunch of people from the future didn't fit with his notions of how the world was supposed to work or the things that God did.
"It's a better idea than letting the new world pass us by and leave us poor and unable to support ourselves."
The mayor nodded sadly. He didn't like it, but perhaps his favorite of all the Bible verses had to do with moving your mule out of the ditch on the Sabbath. You did what you had to do to get by in this world, and God understood that.
He sent letters to the surrounding towns and villages. Mostly wrote them himself and had them hand-carried.
\*\*\*\*
"What is wrong with those people?" Wilhelm complained. "You can't outlaw the Ring of Fire or the things it brings. You might as well outlaw clouds and the rains they bring. The rain is still going to come."
"It's not my fault," the mayor said. "I wrote them and they don't agree. They insist that they can prevent people in their towns from buying from the Wish Books. Mayor Kastner said that loyal citizens wouldn't betray their town by buying from the up-timers."
Wilhelm went home in a poor mood.
\*\*\*\*
"Don't gloat, dear," Johan told his wife, without meaning a word of it. "It's unbecoming."
"Yes, dear," Maria said, with a bowed head and a grin that utterly ruined the effect.
"Oh, shut up," Wilhelm groused. When he had told them about the other towns' reactions, Maria had pulled out a letter from her brother, Carsten. Riesigk was showing great interest in the project.
"All right. When can we get away to go visit Riesigk?"
\*\*\*\*
"Carsten!" Maria waved.
Carsten Bauer looked up. He was in the field, following a pair of oxen. It was what he was normally doing this time of year and he enjoyed it. It gave him time to think. "Maria? Is that you?"
"It's me, Carsten, and you know Johan and Wilhelm. This is little Johan, who you haven't met yet."
"Go on up to the house and say hello to Anna. I'll finish this row and come join you."
\*\*\*\*
"So you want to make ball bearings?" Konrad asked. Konrad was Maria's cousin and the mayor of Riesigk. Which didn't amount to all that much, he would freely admit, because there were only fourteen full farmers in the village and six half-farmers. Mayor of less than two hundred people didn't make you the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
"Yes." Wilhelm Wagner looked like he was eating especially sour sauerkraut.
"And the towns with actual charters don't want anything to do with it because they are too busy outlawing everything up-timer?" Konrad caught himself. He was enjoying this altogether too much. The town citizens of the Germanies looked down on the villagers of Germany with great disdain and they always had. Wilhelm was from a town, even though it wasn't much bigger than a village might be. It wasn't even an imperial city. Zahna got its charter from the Wittenberg government. Konrad had always resented that looking-down and the abuse that went with it. The towns controlled the trade. They said who could buy and who could sell and when within their borders. Now, with the up-timers who didn't care about such things, villages like Riesigk could get the things they needed from catalogs without having to buy from the towns. The towns hated that.
"They are being very short-sighted," Wilhelm complained.
"I couldn't agree more," Konrad told him, and meant it. From all he had heard about the Wagner brothers, they were pretty decent types for townies. But they were still townies. "What do you want from us?"
"We can make the balls, we think, if we can buy the ball mill from the up-timers or even some of the parts of it. We think we can make the heading machine ourselves. It's a new kind of forge, but we are fairly sure we can put together something that will work. The annealing, well, that's just a firing and tempering. We've been doing that all our lives. And we can use what I learned in Grantville to make the crucible steel out of the iron we buy."
"But we can't do it all," Johan interrupted his brother's bragging. "The ball bearings aren't just the balls. They also need something called races and cages." He pulled out a set of ball bearings that he had made by hand, first from the pamphlet that they had gotten, then from the added information that Wilhelm had brought back. He disassembled the parts so that how it worked could be seen. "Look here. The little curved channels that the balls are in keep everything lined up and the cages keep the balls from rubbing against each other."
"They still rub against the cages, don't they?" Konrad asked.
"Yes, but not very much, and not very hard. With a bit of grease, this thing will spin for a long time. We tried it on a wagon wheel and spun it by hand and it kept spinning for almost a full minute."
"That's impressive, I'll grant. And we are looking for anything we can find to bring in American dollars. But . . ."
The conversation went on for some time. And later some of the village children were sent to Gohrau and Rehsen, villages within a mile of Riesigk and each other, to fetch the village mayors. After they arrived, there was more talking and more showing of the ball bearings that Johan had made.
Johan and Wilhelm explained that while they could make ball bearings, they couldn't do it at a reasonable price. Not without lots of equipment. And their smithy, even the whole town of Zahna, couldn't afford all the equipment they would need.
"So what are you after? Investors?" Tobias Schubert, the mayor of Gohrau, asked. "We don't have all that much money, and we are more concerned with finding work than finding places to put money we don't have anyway."
"We will need to employ a lot of people to make the ball bearings in the numbers that are going to be needed," Wilhelm said.
"So you want us to invest our money then move to Zahna?"
"No!" Wilhelm said.
"We want to go into partnership with your villages to produce ball bearings," Johan jumped in before his big brother stuck his foot in his mouth. "We will make the balls in Zahna, and the races and cages will be made here. Then they will all be assembled in Zahna."
"So you want us to make the races and ship them to Zahna for assembly. Why not ship the balls here for assembly? The assembly doesn't look too hard." Tobias picked up the example ball bearing set that Johan had brought, took it apart and put it back together. "It doesn't seem to need a blacksmith to do it. Probably children could do it. It would keep them out of trouble, avoid idle hands and all that."
"After school," said Maria's mother with some heat. "Not instead of school."
Maria smiled. Her mama was very intent that all the children should learn as much as they could. She had wanted Carsten to go to the Latin school, but Carsten always had trouble reading and didn't receive a scholarship.
Wilhelm opened his mouth and Maria knew exactly what he was going to say. He was going to complain about moving the assembly jobs to the villages. Those jobs could be done by Zahna children as well as village children. She kicked him under the table, and when he looked at her she looked back just as hard as she could, willing him to keep his big mouth shut.
He did.
\*\*\*\*
Eventually---actually very quickly, it just seemed to take forever---they came to a basic agreement not just to manufacture ball bearings, but to try to manufacture ball bearings as a group. That the town of Zahna and the villages of Riesigk, Gohrau and Rehsen would form a company between them to manufacture ball bearings, or failing that to manufacture between them some other mutually agreed-on product. That last was because they, especially the villages, weren't entirely sure that they would be able to make ball bearings.
\*\*\*\*
"We need to go to Grantville," Maria told them. She, Johan, Wilhelm and the baby were having a picnic by the stream that ran next to Riesigk. "And we need to take Cousin Konrad with us." Cousin Konrad, at forty-five, was the most respected man in Riesigk, and mostly if he said it would be, it was. This worked because he never commanded anything that everyone wasn't basically agreed on already. "Tobias Schubert from Gohrau should go too."
"And why are we going to Grantville anyway?" Johan complained. "Why not Magdeburg? It's the new capital and it's closer, after all."
"Because if we are going to consult with anyone that even approaches an expert it's going to have to be done in Grantville anyway. And besides, the Grantville National Bank and the Grantville Branch of the Abrabanel banks are in Grantville. So Grantville will be the best place to get financing if we need it," Wilhelm said
"And it's where most of the machines and parts will have to be ordered from. Konrad and Tobias are involved, so they must come along," Maria added.
"They live on the wrong side of the river," Wilhelm muttered, with a hidden grin. "But why do you think you should go?"
"To apologize for Zahna after you have offended everyone."
Poor Johan just put his head between his hands and moaned. Not that he was all that bothered. Johan was an easy-going sort. If either his wife or his brother had ever had occasion to watch Bonanza and once saw Hoss Cartwright, they would recognize him on the instant as another Johan. Big, strong, incredibly gentle, and the only thing that angered him was seeing someone weak abused by someone strong.
"What about the baby?"
"The baby goes, too. I may have him looked at by the doctors there."
"Why?" Johan's head came up in sudden concern.
"He's fine, darling. But the up-timers have something . . . I heard it on the radio . . . inoculations. To keep children from getting sick. I want to look into that. Also I want to meet this foreigner that Wilhelm's so interested in. Barbara, isn't it?"
It was Wilhelm's turn to put his head between his hands and moan.
Johan laughed and Maria grinned.
\*\*\*\*
Konrad Bauer was looking at the Ring Wall and he crossed himself. Konrad was neither Catholic nor particularly observant as a Lutheran, but he---for that moment---reverted to the habits of his youth. "I didn't believe it," he said quietly. "Not really. I thought I did. I had accepted that the Ring of Fire was real, and even that it was an act of God that had brought the people from the future to our time. But that was . . . different. A thing of the mind, not of the gut. Looking now . . ." He shook his head. "How can we hope to deal with such people?"
"We probably won't," Wilhelm said, not unkindly. He had experienced the same thing the first time he had visited Grantville, though he hadn't crossed himself. "There were only three thousand of them and some have died since the Ring of Fire. By now there are more normal people in Grantville than there are up-timers. What we will probably end up doing is dealing with down-timers who deal with up-timers. And from what I learned the first time, they aren't all that different from us, even the up-timers. Barbara says that there is something about them, a nobility she calls it, but not like our nobles . . . mostly." On his first trip to Grantville, Wilhelm had met just three up-timers and hadn't spoken to any of them for more than a couple of minutes. They were mostly incredibly busy. Barbara knew several and called some friends. And many of her friends were servants in up-timer houses.
"I want to meet an up-timer. I want to introduce little Johan to an up-timer doctor," Maria said quite firmly, and Wilhelm winced. He was fairly sure that wasn't going to happen.
They continued walking. Wilhelm, Johan, Maria and the baby, Konrad, his wife Anna, Tobias Schubert and his wife, another Anna. All of them had lists of things that they were to acquire or find out. And Wilhelm wanted to see Barbara again.
He had a phone number but in his first visit to the Ring of Fire he had had no occasion to use a phone. Besides, the phone number wasn't for her; it was for the apartments that she lived in. The apartments were new-built since the Ring of Fire and outside the Ring Wall, where the rents were cheaper. Still, when he and the others had arranged rooms he asked if he could use the phone. There was a phone. One phone. It was at the manager's desk in the lobby of the hotel. and it cost a quarter of up-timer money to use it. He had a quarter. They only took up-time money at the hotel and that had required them to go to the bank and get their money changed. While they were there they had simply changed all their money into dollars.
He gave the man an American dollar and got back three quarters, then dialed the number on the slip of paper Barbara had given him.
"Valley Road Apartments."
"I would like to speak to Barbara Fischerin, please."
"What apartment?"
"Apartment two seventeen."
"Shoot, that's half way around the complex. Look, mister, it'd take her five minutes to get here even if she's home. Why don't you just give me a message and I'll send little Gerty over with it? Then she can call you."
"But I am at the manager's phone at the Friendly Dragon Hotel."
"Right. I got you; you don't want to play phone tag. So just leave her a message where you want to meet and hope she can make it." There was a short pause. "That's the best I can do for you, chum."
After thinking about it for a moment, Wilhelm left a message asking Barbara to meet him at the Gardens that evening about eight.
Barbara wasn't at the Gardens, but when they got back there was a message from her saying she had had to work late and hadn't gotten his message till she had gotten home. And could they meet the next night at Frau Jones' Golden Pagoda Restaurant?
He sent back word that he and his family would try to make it. So he had a date, but meanwhile they had work to do tomorrow.
\*\*\*\*
"Do you think we can get loans to cover the cost of the machines?" Johan asked Friedrich Eichmann, the manager of Universal Machine Supply Corporation.
"It depends on your credit, I expect," Friedrich said. "I doubt you'll get anything from the Bank of Grantville. You're not even in the state, but the Abrabanels are all over, so you might get something from them. Then there are the investment banks. They don't take deposits, but are run by businesses like OPM. In fact, OPM might give you matching funds. Here, let me call over there and set up an appointment for you."
He made a call and asked them for information about their villages and towns. Friedrich Eichmann talked to the other person for a couple of minutes then put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Folks, there is a lot of information that they have to gather before they will either offer a loan or make an investment in your business. The part about customers is pretty much covered, but that's only part of it. So if you can go in there tomorrow and fill out some forms, they will make an appointment with you and work out the details."
\*\*\*\*
"Wilhelm! It's so good to see you!" Barbara smiled widely at Wilhelm and his family. "Who are all these?"
"Barbara Fischerin, please meet my brother Johan and his wife Maria. And this is Maria's cousin, Konrad and his wife Anna. Also Tobias Schubert and his wife Anna."
"It's nice to meet you all. Are you still working on the ball bearing thing, or are you here for something else?"
"The ball bearings," Wilhelm said. "But tell me, please, what is a pagoda?"
Barbara pointed at the sign above the restaurant. "See that tower-type building? That's a pagoda."
"I wonder what they're for," Maria interjected. "It's pretty, though. But tell us about the food, please?"
"Come on in. You'll like it, I promise," Barbara said. She opened the door and ushered the party in, then entered herself. "Juanita, we're here," she called.
A large, dark-haired woman looked up from the cash box and then smiled. "Hola, Barbara. These are your friends?"
Barbara made introductions all around. "This is Juanita. She came here back in the beginning, then married her English husband. And then she opened this restaurant, because she read a Chinese cook book and got interested. She has been figuring out how to make Chinese food in Germany."
"The up-timers say that there should be more meat, but the up-timers always think there should be more meat. I think mine is more like real Chinese food than an up-time American Chinese restaurant would have," Frau Jones said, with considerable fierceness, in heavily Spanish-accented German.
The dinner, as it turned out, was quite delicious. Stir-fried chicken, with cabbage and onions, seasoned with a dark, salty sauce, and something called egg rolls, which were thin sheets of some kind of dough stuffed with more cabbage and fried. Then rice, something none of them had eaten quite this way, cooked, then fried with some of the salty sauce, bits of onion and carrot, sweet peas, and a beaten egg.
Wilhelm finally pushed his plate away, groaning and patting his stomach. "Oh, Barbara. What have you done to me? I'm ruined for Maria's cooking."
Maria kicked him under the table. "Then you cook from now on," she said, grinning. "And learn to make this, while you're at it."
"Juanita sells the sauce that she uses and there are other places where you can get it. But there are some special techniques used to make it, and it's pretty expensive once you get any distance from Grantville. For that matter, you can buy a wok here in Grantville and Juanita says they work better than frying pans for cooking over a fire."
Barbara gestured over behind the counter where some young women, apparently related to the older Juanita, were working with strange, round-bottomed pots over a fire pit, and a blond man was slicing raw chicken very, very quickly. "Juanita says it take less fuel than the kind of slow cooking that is more common here does."
"But the cooking also warms the house," Maria said. "Especially now that Johan has made me an iron cookstove."
Over the course of the evening the topics of conversation varied from cooking to iron work to ball bearings to politics and back again. But there was a thread that seemed to weave its way thorough the whole varied fabric of the conversation, and that was the up-timers, their knowledge and its effect on the world.
Barbara was an enthusiastic, but not blind, supporter of the up-time changes. Wilhelm was more open to change around Barbara than Maria had ever seen him and she exchanged looks with both her husband and cousin Konrad over the ease with which stuffy old Wilhelm accepted new ideas when they were presented by Barbara.
"We must get together and talk while the men are at the investment bank tomorrow," the Anna who was married to Konrad said.
"I'll see if I can get off for a few hours tomorrow afternoon," Barbara said. "But I must be at my night class at six tomorrow evening. I'm nearly done with my GED, so I'm not taking any chances on messing that up. It's the only way I'll ever get a job that doesn't stick me behind a typewriter or a mop."
That brought the discussion to typewriters and adding machines. In general, a good time was had by all. Although little Johan did get a bit cranky as the evening wore on.
\*\*\*\*
The menfolk spent most of the next morning in Badenburg filling out forms with the help of a young woman. Once she had all their information, she set up an appointment for them eight days later.
"Why so long?" Tobias asked.
"We have to look for restrictions on land use and things like that," the young woman said. "There may be some sort of contract or promise or law that says you can't produce products for sale without giving the lease holder a share of the products, without you ever having heard of it. Or there might some special fee or restriction that would have to be lifted. By now we have a pretty good data base, so we at least know who to ask. Believe me, eight days is moving like lightning and cutting corners like mad, compared to what it would have been before the Ring of Fire."
Eight days might have been a very short time in terms of how long such a search would have taken before the Ring of Fire, but it was a long time in terms of staying in Grantville. There wasn't much choice, though. It was wait to talk to OPM or go home empty-handed.
\*\*\*\*
The medical clinic was crowded and there were signs everywhere. Within a few minutes of arriving, Maria wished that she had left the baby at home for her first look at the place. There were lots of babies crying and little Johan lost no time in joining the chorus. Looking around and trying to comfort Johan who, not knowing why all those other people were crying but assumed it must be something really bad and was in no mood to be comforted, Maria saw a big sign.
Vaccination Information
She approached the banner and below it found a collection of mothers with crying babies and a table full of broadsheets and pre-folded pamphlets. There was one pamphlet with a baby on the front. She grabbed that one and another couple of pamphlets then retreated. Next time Johan was going to the clinic, gathering the information and making arrangements. Neither she nor little Johan was coming back here till it was time for his shot.
\*\*\*\*
Back at their rooms, she read the pamphlets and was disappointed. First, they mostly didn't have vaccinations yet and even if they had had them little Johan was too young to be vaccinated. There was also a note on all the pamphlets she had gathered suggesting that young children not be brought to the clinic unless they were actually sick, because taking them there was exposing them to the diseases of all the sick children. This was something that Maria really wished she had known before she had taken little Johan there in the first place.
\*\*\*\*
"I went the clinic this morning. It was a crazy house," Maria said.
Barbara nodded in understanding. There were public health clinics and they were usually mad houses. Millions of Germans by now knew that the up-timers had miracle cures and there was a constant flow of the sick looking to be healed in Grantville. Some who could afford it and many more who couldn't. People weren't so much turned away as turned aside to the information that was available or to free clinics where the students from Jena turned into doctors that, if not up-timer, were certainly a heck of a lot better than down-time. Still, everyone wanted to see a real up-time doctor. And Barbara couldn't blame them. She wished she had the money to see one of the up-time doctors or even Dr. Abrabanel. Not that she was sick, but she had read that annual checkups were important for good health and she was about twenty-five years behind.
"They are working on the vaccinations," Barbara said. "But it takes time. They say that they're starting from nothing---although that's not quite true. Still, they don't have the equipment, the labs, all the things they're used to."
Maria nodded, then asked, "So, you like Wilhelm?"
"He seems very nice," Barbara admitted. "You should have seen how shocked he looked that first time I saw him at the Gardens! I swear, I think he was frightened of all the people!"
"He is just a bit . . . well, shy, I think," Maria said. "He hides it under the grumping, you know. But he's a good man. Hard working, always busy. A good provider."
Barbara had a feeling that she was being sounded out for the position of sister-in-law and decided to put a stop to it. "He's very nice, as I said. But I have no intention of marrying soon, and you should know that. I like Grantville. It's exciting and busy and there's always something new to learn and do."
"But Zahna will grow," Maria pointed out. "And we're not far from Wittenberg, which is larger."
"It's still not Grantville."
"Not yet."
"It'll be years and years before anywhere is like Grantville."
Maria smiled. "And you could be a part of that growth, spreading your new education across Germany. You could probably be the teacher for the children of Zahna, with your GED. Better yet, the ball bearing factory, it will happen. And we'll need someone with up-time skills."
"I can't cook. And I don't want to. And I don't want to spend my life doing laundry, either. Frau Wasserman has an automatic washer."
"And you aren't talking about marrying a farmer," Maria said with some asperity. "You would be marrying into a smithy with two master smiths and a dozen journeymen smiths. A smithy that makes iron wares for the surrounding villages. It's a business and we all work in the business as much as in the house. I have two town girls to help out in the house and we may be getting another because Margreta Kappelin's little girl Anna is in need of a place. I did my time in service in Wittenberg, and I know what it's like. My mother was a farmer's wife and it was a change when I married Johan," Maria said. "Wilhelm and Johan were quite well off, you know, even before the Ring of Fire."
Barbara hadn't considered that. Her own mother had been a farm wife. That was all the life Barbara had known until the Ring of Fire and the war had intruded. When she thought about it, though, she recalled that the town women often worked in their husband's shops and almost all of them had maids. The wife of a blacksmith had more options than the wife of a farmer.
"He loves you, you know," Maria said. "And as hard as he can be to live with---which I won't hide from you, because he's always been grouchy---he's a good man. He'll make a wonderful father and your children will be able to attend university. The boys and the girls."
And that was the trouble. Barbara was very much afraid that she loved Wilhelm. She didn't understand why. It was just something about the grouchy man that let her see his good heart. And that heart called to her, in spite of all her plans and dreams.
Barbara, mostly in self-defense, changed the subject to the clinic and getting information about early childhood diseases and how to prevent and treat them. "There are several pretty good books on early childhood care. We can go see my cousin, Franz."
Maria and the Annas agreed, in part out of curiosity about Barbara's cousin. Was he, they wondered, the officious stuffed shirt that Wilhelm had described.
\*\*\*\*
Maria noticed that Franz winced when he saw his cousin being followed into the library and research center. But he was helpful enough. There were several books on child care and childhood diseases and the treatments that might be used for them in the seventeenth century. Books written, or at least translated, since the Ring of Fire. And Franz directed them to only those that had been read and approved by Dr. Abrabanel. "He's part of the up-time doctors' practice and he speaks German and up-timer English better than most down-timers. If he has read the book and approved its content, it's probably pretty solid."
A little later Maria got him aside. "I saw you wincing when your cousin bought us in. Are we causing you problems?"
"It's not that," Franz assured her a little to quickly. "Well, it's not exactly that. I love my cousin and my aunt and uncle. They took me in when the world landed on my family and they scraped up the money for my library science course once we got here. But I do have work to do. Not that I get to spend that much time in the stacks. Mostly, being a researcher isn't what I thought it would be. I spend more of my time as a bookstore clerk, selling answers others have already found, than I do finding answers."
"Like just now when you went to a shelf and pulled out four books."
"Yes, very much like that," Franz agreed a bit sheepishly. "'How can I keep my children safe and healthy' is one of the first questions asked after the Ring of Fire. And I know for a fact that there hasn't been a single day since I got here that Early Childhood Care, translated by Doctor Kaufman of the University of Jena Medical School and reviewed and approved by Dr. Abrabanel, hasn't sold at least one copy and most days it's more like ten or twenty."
"And Home Remedies Approved by the Up-Time Doctors?"
"That one sells even more," Franz agreed. "Don't get me wrong. Those are good books. We have had people come in and thank us for saving their child's life based on those books. That happens a lot too. I know it's valuable but what I trained for is research. I want to dig out the secrets of space flight. They had actual space ships up time, you know."
Maria patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, let me add my thanks to the others anyway. And reassure you once again that what you're doing is important, even if it's just selling books."
\*\*\*\*
Wilhelm and Johan weren't especially good at just killing time, so they took as many tours of Grantville as they could. Which turned out to be quite a few. There was the tour of the machine shops that was especially of interest to them. There was the Ring Wall Mine, where they mined merged stone, with seventeenth-century German stone on one side and twentieth-century American stone on the other.
"These stones are bonded at an atomic level," the tour guide said. "The up-timer scientists call it a strong-force bond. What we do is cut the stone out of the mine, then slice it very carefully, using a water-jet cutter, and shape it into various items of use. We offer, in the gift shop, rings of merged stone. And for the very wealthy, merged stone goblets."
"That's it, Wilhelm," said Johan. "You buy Barbara a merged stone ring."
"They are nice!" Wilhelm agreed "But what about the earrings?" he asked pointing to the teardrop shaped earrings. They were granite on one side and limestone on the other, with the invisible line separating them running from bottom to top. The granite side was gray and black and the limestone side was white with just the lightest golden tint after being cut from the earth. They had been polished to a glass smoothness, lacquered, and polished again. They shone, and the perfectly straight---as well as the eye could see---line down the center of the teardrop spoke eloquently of the hand of God.
"You buy the ring, you idiot, because you give girls an engagement ring with a stone in it. At least, that's how they did it up-time and Barbara is as much an up-timer as a down-timer girl can be."
"I will take care of my own---"
"No, you won't, brother. Not without a push. I have known you your whole life. Well, my whole life, you old fart. You have no guts at all when it comes to women. A coward is what you are. You love the girl, but are afraid to say it out loud lest you be embarrassed." Johan sighed. "I have good news for you. She loves you too, though I can't imagine why. Maria is sure of it. So get off the fence and ask her. Besides, where else will we find a business manager with a real GED?"
\*\*\*\*
"Uh . . ."
"What?"
"Uh . . ."
"Wilhelm, what are you trying to say?" Barbara asked. Then she smiled.
Her smile just undid all of Wilhelm's rehearsing.
"Uh . . . Barbara . . . uh . . ."
"Yes. I will."
\*\*\*\*
"Wilhelm, this is my father, Hans Fischer. My mother, Anna Brauerin. My brother, Hans. My sister, Anna. My youngest brother, Johan."
Wilhelm's eyes widened.
"Yes." Barbara giggled. "There are several of us."
There were several of them in a one-bedroom apartment, quite a small one by Grantville standards, as Wilhelm had learned.
Hans Fischer gave Wilhelm a look and the two of them went for a walk to discuss matters.
"My daughter is a good girl and I trust her judgment, but I am a bit surprised."
"For myself, I am shocked," Wilhelm admitted and Hans Fischer laughed.
"We have been living near the Ring of Fire for over a year and my nephew has done well in the library. But, truthfully, we aren't well-qualified for most of the jobs here. Barbara and her mother both work as housekeeping help and I am a night watchman. We have all learned English and the children go to school. We have managed to save some, not a lot by Grantville standards, but almost enough for a start somewhere else."
Wilhelm nodded. While this was more detail, it was in line with what Barbara had told him. They were a family struggling to get back on their feet after the war had knocked them out of their place. Grantville had given them that opportunity, but they were still fairly near the bottom rung of Grantville society. But every one of the children had a year of Grantville schooling. And poor in Grantville was middle class in Zahna, at least in terms of personal finances. Hans wasn't selling his daughter for a place for the family; he was instead offering to invest in the town of Zahna in exchange for that place.
"I understand, sir. You were a farmer?"
"Yes, before they burned our village. Then, a little of everything before we found Grantville."
"Well, with what you have you should be able to join a farming village and farm if that's what you want."
"I'm a bit old for that and the boys aren't interested in farming. More importantly, there are going to be a lot more farmers than there will be farm work in the years to come. It's going to be a hard thing for villages all over Germany. All over the world. I don't want to bring my family back into a trade that . . . well, I can't quite say it's dying. There will always be farmers, but . . . shrinking. Yes, a shrinking trade. We are looking for trades for the boys. Business opportunities, like this ball bearing factory you're setting up."
The upshot of their conversation was that Wilhelm would take Hans the younger as an apprentice, followed by Johan in a few years. As well, Hans the elder would, once they got the ball factory running, be given a job there.
They had dinner at a local restaurant, a working peoples' eatery that had lots of food for not a lot of money. And conversation during the meal was mostly about the opportunity that the ball bearing factory was going to offer, and the various guesses about what OPM would want.
\*\*\*\*
The time for their appointment with the OPM investment bank finally arrived and Wilhelm, Konrad and Tobias were in the offices of OPM in Badenburg. "It's an interesting proposition and the Lehens aren't too restrictive. You'll have to get clearance from some of the lien holders, but the important ones have representatives here. I think we can do it . . . if you are willing to compromise a bit."
"What sort of compromise?" Wilhelm asked.
"Ownership," said Herr Nussbaum, an account manager.
"Ownership?" Konrad asked, with a touch of a smile. All through this Wilhelm had been pushing for a kind of company that the up-timers called a limited partnership. First with Wilhelm and Johan as the partners. Then with Wilhelm, Johan and the village of Zahna as the partners, and then with Wilhelm, Johan, Zahna and the three different villages as the partners. Wilhelm had kicked and screamed at every slight diminishing of his and Johan's control. Konrad thought that he was going to enjoy what the account manager next said.
"Yes! For something this complex, a business that will span a town and three villages with investment, or at least sureties from literally hundreds of people, a partnership simply won't cover it. I know that it can be like giving up your baby to lose control over such a business, but other people have to have their say and have a right to their profits from the risks they are assuming."
Konrad was surprised---and almost disappointed---that Wilhelm wasn't objecting and he wondered again what had gone on at the family dinner night before last with Barbara Fischerin's family. but it must have been some dinner.
Herr Nussbaum continued. "You will need to put it into a stock company under the up-timer corporate law that is now the law of New US. I know that you're not located in the New US, but the contracts can specify that the these laws are the controlling laws. And you can register the papers of incorporation while you're here."
"Will MagdeburgProvince treat that as legal?"
"Yes, probably. Of course, everything is up in the air with how new the central provinces are as a government." He shrugged. "We muddle through. It's pretty certain that they will at least acknowledge that a New US corporation can own property in MagdeburgProvince. But I wouldn't be surprised if MagdeburgProvince copies its corporate law from the New US the way the New US copied it from West Virginia. So, legally, you should be pretty safe with a corporation formed here in Grantville.
"The important thing is that a corporation allows the ownership to be shared out in an equitable manner. Not just to the people who have the idea or who start the ball rolling, but also the people who invest their money, property or time."
"Fair enough. And I even agree with you that a corporation would be a better way to go, but that is an internal matter surely," Tobias said.
"Well, that brings up the other thing," Herr Nussbaum said. "You folks don't actually own that much. You have your Lehens and your rights under them, but you don't own the land you will be putting the factory on. That means you're seriously lacking in collateral . . . sureties against which to loan you money."
That was bad news. Shockingly bad news. They simply didn't have the money to start the business without loans.
"Don't panic, folks. The business itself will be collateral. But for that to happen, it must be a stock corporation. And for OPM to make you the loan, we are going to have to insist on some say in who gets how much stock."
It seemed at first like a horrible intrusion into the internal working of their lives and it almost killed the deal, but as Herr Nussbaum explained, it became more clear. They---OPM and UMSC---wanted the ball bearing factory to succeed. If the factory didn't succeed, OPM didn't get its money back and UMSC didn't get its ball bearings. But, for this sort of complex venture to succeed, it needed the support of everyone involved. At the very least, the factory had a much better chance of success with that support. The factory had to get the cooperation of the Lehen holders, of the villagers, of everyone . . . and the best way to do that was to give everyone a piece of the pie, win or lose. So after the corporation was formed and the initial ownership established, OPM was willing to make the corporation loans which would be secured by stock, but only if the initial distribution of stock was done in a way that OPM felt would work. OPM could get the Lehen holders to offer the factory permanent tenure in exchange for stock. Everyone would be gambling on the factory being able to make a go of it and turn a profit to pay dividends.
\*\*\*\*
"If you and your family hadn't warned me what to expect, I would have walked out half way through the meeting," Wilhelm admitted.
"Was it really all that bad?" Barbara asked him.
"No," Johan answered. "They do expect us to put the shop in Zahna into the company, but at the same time we will get more of the stock."
"We won't have control," Wilhelm said, then blushed.
"Not by yourselves, no. But we are talking about a lot of work for our people and a lot of that work is going to be paid for in stock," Konrad said. "Even with Fresno scrapers and all the other new tools, building a mile of canal is no easy task."
Maria knew that Konrad was talking about the little stream that ran between Riesigk, Gohrau and Rehsen. That little stream wound its way to the Elbe six and a half miles down stream from Riesigk. The problem was that for most of that distance the stream was not navigable even by a shallow draft boat. The village had been talking about installing a canal to the Elbe since Maria was a little girl. "So the canal is finally going to be built?"
"It looks like it," Konrad said.
"I wish you could just put the factory next to the Elbe," Wilhelm complained.
"I don't," Maria said. "The village has needed that canal for years and so have Gohrau and Rehsen." And that had been half the problem. All three villages would benefit from the canal and lock, but since it would be located downstream from Riesigk, the villages of Gohrau and Rehsen thought it was a great idea and something Riesigk should do and pay for. Riesigk, however, felt that since all three villages would benefit, all three should share in the cost. So, although it had been planned for the last half of a century or more, it still wasn't done.
"So it's going to be built by the company and owned by the company. Excuse me. The corporation," Johan said. "That reminds me, when it was a company it was the Wagner Ball Bearing Company. What is it going to be now?"
"It should be something modern sounding," said Barbara. "Like TriCity Ball Bearing."
"Except there are three villages and a town involved." Maria grinned at her.
"Something with the initials?" Johan said. "Like OPM? That would be the ZRRGBBC." He paused for a moment, and then tried to pronounce it. It may seem to the average up-timer that down-timer words are all consonants, but this defeated even Johan. "Zrrrugbubuc . . . no, that can't work."
"The Elbe Kugellager Korporation?" Wilhelm asked, which was German for Elbe Ball Bearing Corporation.
"But there are liable to be other people on the Elbe making ball bearings. In fact, from what we heard, there are already other companies, though I don't know if any of them are on the Elbe."
"Some probably are," Konrad said. "But it doesn't matter. It's the Elbe Kugellager Korporation unless someone else already has the name, and anyone else can figure out their own name."
"I like it," Barbara said. "EKK. Nice and snappy, an up-timer would say."
\*\*\*\*
"I'm so proud of you," Wilhelm said. "A GED!"
Barbara happily displayed her certificate. "I'm going to have it framed," she said, beaming. "And now that that is done, I want to see Zahna. Let's go tell Papa."
\*\*\*\*
The betrothal contracts had been signed just a few days before Barbara received her GED certificate, so Hans Fischer didn't have any major objections to Barbara traveling to Zahna with the party that included Wilhelm, Johan, Maria, Anna, Anna, Tobias and Konrad. "It's good you'll have people to travel with," he said. "I won't worry so much. It's a long way to Zahna."
"Be sure to take a good look around," Mama said. "And remember, your brothers and sister will someday need people to marry, so look really well."
"I will, Mama," Barbara agreed. "I'll look for some blind girls for Hans and Johan." Then she grinned when her mother tried to swat her.
\*\*\*\*
"I have been researching the engineering you are doing," Franz said to Wilhelm. "You will need to include the pachinko symbols to make the ball bearings work." It was Chinese food again, in celebration of their leaving tomorrow. Barbara would be going with them to look over the places and see what was needed.
"What symbols?"
"The pachinko symbols. I found them in an obscure engineering periodical. They are like the smoke in electronic devices, necessary for their function but not talked about," Franz explained with great seriousness. "After I found the article, I managed to get in to see Herr Doktor Hal Schmit, the aeronautical engineer who designed the Las Vegas Belle. I showed him the article and he confirmed everything in it. He even gave me a pachinko ball." With that Franz pulled from his pocket a small steel ball much like a ball bearing, except this one had strange runes engraved on its surface. "It is the runes that actually make the device work. It was discovered in far off Nippon and has been a secret of the engineering guild from the middle of the nineteenth century. The up-timers disapprove of any sort of magic and if the average up-timer knew that they were using arcane runes to make their devices work it would upset them. Anyway, the races and the cages and the balls are all important, but to actually stop the demon Murphy from destroying the device, you need the magical runes of the pachinko balls. But you don't need many. You just need at least one pachinko ball per machine."
Wilhelm was looking at Barbara's cousin in shock and Johan was just as confused. Had Franz gone insane? Was there really some secret magic of engineers that the young researcher had discovered? He didn't know.
"Don't worry about not having known about it. It is very obscure knowledge." And Franz's expression was so pompous and sincere that Wilhelm was on the verge of believing him.
Then the young man started to laugh. And Wilhelm and Johan realized that Barbara's cousin had been playing a joke on them. "I really did find it in an obscure engineering periodical. In the jokes pages." He dropped the pachinko ball in Wilhelm's hand. "It's really the magic smoke that's important. If the smoke gets out, the machines stop working."
\*\*\*\*
Letters Home, 3 and 4
Written by Tim Roesch
There, But For the Grace of God, Go Eyes
Leahy Medical Center, Nurse training program, April 1635
My dearest aunt,
I am well. I hope this letter finds you well. We are all fed very well here. There are many things I am learning that I am not sure how to tell you. I am looking to the time when I come home to speak to you but that is for later.
Today, I learned the importance of listening.
I find myself drawn to the ER, the Room of Emergency and that is where I was when a German woman brought her son and an up-timer boy who is a friend of her son.
They were, as young boys are wont to do, acting foolishly. It is comforting to see American boys acting in ways that compare well to young German boys for foolishness. The two boys were pretending to be accomplished swordsmen while using long pieces of wood. Luckily no one had given them real swords or this letter would not exist in its current form.
My pathology rotation is two months from now.
The German woman felt that her son should suffer as penance for his foolish swinging of wood sticks. Her boy should have no special treatment so that he will always remember his foolishness by the scar that would result, she demanded. The gash opened just under the boy's left eye and curved about until it cut the transverse facial vein. It would leave an obvious scar, I thought.
One of the wooden sticks had a small piece of wire attached to it. Neither boy noticed it until the damage was done. That was the true culprit, but done is done.
The physician would not listen to the angry mother but he did use a device that he says he saves for special cases. He stapled the edges of the cut together. Staples are metal clips and they pinch the skin closed. The German mother was suitably impressed. The staples appeared very painful and were hideous to look upon but the bleeding stopped and the skin was closed. The boy said the staples did not hurt very much and the mother of the boy seemed upset by this.
I was not as attentive to the crestfallen German boy as I was to the apparently uninjured but visibly upset American boy. I noted a smear of blood on the pants of the boy. When he noticed that I noticed, he turned away as if to hide the stain.
The American mother arrived and there were a great many apologies and much forgiveness on the part of both mothers. My attention was on the American boy and the blood on his pants.
I approached the boy who cowered from me as if I was about to use the staple device upon him.
"Whose blood is that?" I asked him in my best commanding English.
The blood looked like it was smeared. I could have thought he had wiped his hands on his pants but his actions suggested something else.
"It wasn't my fault!" the boy said.
Again, now with greater authority, I demanded whose blood that was. The boy said he had something called a merit badge in first aid and looked at the German boy who avoided the look and I knew there was a problem.
Having listened to the American boy I now decided to act.
"Where is your brother?" I demanded of the German boy in my best commanding German. I noted that my English did not attract the attention that my German did. The word "now" does not seem to have the same effect, shouted or spoken, as the word "achtung."
"He doesn't have a brother!" the American boy stated firmly.
"Quiet!" the German boy shouted in English.
"Where is Maria?" the German mother asked, intrigued by my questions and noting something she found familiar upon her the face of her son. As with all boys, this one was a very poor liar.
I walked to the American and pointed to the pants.
The rest was shouting, cursing, an ambulance ride, and a great deal more shouting. I was fortunate to witness the careful embroidery of the girl, Maria, as opposed to the hurried and mechanical stapling of the boy. American physicians are very concerned about how a girl looks and consider the face of a boy no more important than his arm or leg.
The American boy had used a mere compress to stop the bleeding from the wound on the face of the girl, Maria, who was four years old and very angry at the American boy and her brother. The attempt was to hide the wound from her mother until something could be done about it. How they expected the mother not to notice a gash across the forehead of her young daughter defies coherent explanation but they are boys and no one requires one.
By listening I was able to determine that Maria had attempted to come the defense of her brother and the American boy had accidentally hit her after he had accidentally cut his friend. The girl did not want her mother to know that she was playing with the boys and not doing her chores.
This wound crossed the top of her forehead along the line of her eyebrows and missed the eyes.
The physician used special sutures which are just fine threads with small, curved needles to pull the thread through the skin. The physician called it plastic surgery even though no plastic was used.
I mentioned that I could do as well and the physician told me to sew up a chicken and prove it.
If you can send me some funds to cover the expense of the chicken I would be grateful.
I spent a great deal of time finding a suitable chicken, cutting it then embroidering the wound.
The physician was very surprised when I showed him the chicken. The chicken was very upset about being shown to the physician.
It seems that physicians practice their embroidery with pieces of raw chicken, not on living chickens.
I will have to wait until the wound is healed so I can remove the sutures and cook the chicken properly. The chicken glares at me in much the same way the physician does but I am now allowed to suture wounds with supervision. Soon, I will be able to do so without supervision.
The chicken, the boy and the girl are all, as of this writing, doing well.
I am growing reluctant to cook the chicken. The wound is healing well but the chicken seems unappreciative and pecks at me when I try to inspect the wound. I am told I might make a good veterinarian but I have no desire to cure the ailments of chickens.
The physician showed me the technique of practicing suturing on raw pieces of chicken. He says very good surgeons use an orange. I informed him that I wanted neither to be something so low as a surgeon nor did I wish to waste expensive oranges by suturing them.
Personally, I think suturing a live, bleeding chicken which is trying to get away from you is much better training. If you make a mistake, having to look into the eyes of the dying bird can be very motivating despite how hungry you might be.
I am also told that referring to suturing as embroidery is unprofessional. I will reserve judgment on that. I am, after all, only student.
I will write again soon. Please send any small amount of money you can spare. Paper and postage is expensive. The beer is tolerable. I go to church every Sunday.
Your loving and grateful niece,
Adalheid
A Tale of Two Legs
Leahy Medical Center, Nurse training program, May 1635
My dearest aunt,
I am well. I hope this letter finds you well. It is warm and we are all fed very well here at this school of nursing. I tried coffee today. I was not taken by its taste.
I sutured my first patient today.
I am so proud of my technique. The wound was complex. There were sutures used internally and externally. There was tissue to be debrided. I am less concerned about the word now that I understand what it means. Its English form is upsetting.
 The young man I embroidered sutured had an accident. Based on his medical history and the comments made in my hearing this young man was commonly found in the Room of Emergency. He is an American, of course, and he is the reason I am writing. Like most Americans, up-timers as they are called, he has no fear of these places called hospitals.
The Room of Emergency is an open room divided by curtains to allow the medical persons to move about more freely. The young man, no more than sixteen, was placed in a bed and I was supervised while I took charge of the injury. He had fallen off his motorcycle which is a machine that is often compared to a horse. Horses have brains. Motorcycles do not so they often have more sense then their riders.
The Attending Physician was very upset because the young man was laughing and flirting with an adjacent patient, a German girl of no more than thirteen years who had contrived to fall from a horse.
Americans call it bedside manner. The girl was terrified. A broken leg is a dangerous thing. The family was wailing outside the room as if their daughter was already dead. The physician was glaring at my embroidery suturing and snapping at the young man who ignored him and continued joking with the terrified girl in the next bed.
The boy admitted that he had broken both his arms at the same time and he was okay. I might have said something about that, considering what I was doing, but I listened and learned as you instructed me.
I listened as the boy, unafraid of these Rooms of Emergency, made jokes and brought smiles to the girl's face. When the girl laughed the German parents, outside the room, would be quiet for awhile.
The girl and the boy both left at about the same time, she in a wheeled chair, he limping. I am thinking this is one of those signs from God that too many are likely to miss.
Laughter is good medicine. What is said at the bedside affects the one in the bed. I am going to work on my ability to tell jokes. It is a skill as important as suturing. I have taken to reading books I am told are comedic.
I am eager to see the cast come off the girl's leg and to have the boy back so I can remove the sutures. The internal ones dissolve by themselves after the wound is healed.
One day, maybe Germans will be able to laugh at serious injuries the way Americans do. I am wondering if that would be a good or a bad thing.
I will write again soon. Please send any small amount of money you can spare. Paper and postage is expensive. The beer is tolerable. I go to church every Sunday.
Your loving niece
Adalheid
Second Chance Bird, Episode Eight
Written by Garrett W. Vance
Chapter Forty-Four: A Kiss And Some Coffee
Captured French warship Effrayant, site of up-time Poste de Flacq, Mauritius
The kiss ended delicately, its initial passion consumed and resolved into a lingering sweetness as their lips reluctantly broke contact. Pam blinked at Torbjörn's smiling eyes. She was trembling, excited, happy, and half-frightened out of her wits. Did I do it right? It's been so long! Her mind raced, feeling an echo of youthful panic. He held her a moment longer to give her a reassuring squeeze, an unspoken "Yes, that was a good kiss. I wanted it, too." Pam started a garbled apology for being so forward, but Torbjörn gently shushed her.
"Don't fret, lovely Pam, don't question this moment. We have much to talk about, and there will be time. For now I know we all have a great deal of work to do, much of it sad. Go lead your people, they need you. I will be here with the bosun, at your service when you want me." He looked at her, checking to see if she was really going to be all right.
She laughed shyly and nodded, grateful for his tender encouragement.
"All right then, my captain! See you later." His smile was bright, stunning.
Pam squeezed him back before releasing him, and then laughed, a happy sound in the morning breeze.
"All right, then. I'll see you later. Count on it." She favored him with a very big smile, a stunner she saved only for special occasions, and the stopping power of it made him laugh, too.
"I shall be counting the minutes." The tall Swedish captain of lost Redbird, recently resurrected from the roll-call of the dead, bowed and strode over to the far side of the warship to join the bosun, who, once the kissing had started, had found some critical flaw in the warship's rigging that needed his utmost attention.
Pam grinned as she watched them for a moment, then walked back down the gangplank to the dock. She would have skipped if she hadn't been afraid it would lead to a nasty fall. There were still bloodstains on the rough planks and she was reminded of the mayhem they had created just the day before. It already seemed as if a century had passed, as if it had all happened to someone else a long time ago, or maybe she had just read it in a book. It wasn't the first time that Pam had felt this way, and she doubted it would be the last. Was that really Pamela Grace Miller, failed housewife, obsessive bird-watcher, and dorky scientist, now out sailing around the Indian Ocean, kissing Swedish sea captains, ordering cannons fired, and sending men (and women, alas!) to their deaths?
She closed her eyes tightly and opened them again. Apparently it was, as she stared at the convincing bulk of the formerly French warship, Effrayant looming beside her, a powerful enemy ship that she had, she felt quite cleverly, engineered the capture of. If not for her crazy plans there would have been a much greater loss of life, and that comforted her somewhat. Still, too many friends had died. Another part of it was just dumb luck, she had since learned that the Effrayant had not been carrying a full complement of soldiers, and she intended to find out why. She took a long look at the vessel, admiring its majestic size and shark-like beauty. It was a killing machine, one of the deadliest this century had. It was by no means the largest kind of warship extant in the day, but this light frigate was well-armed, fast and deadly, more than a match for merchants and able to give the average enemy warship a good drubbing.
Pam had since learned that the name Effrayant meant "Fearsome," and it fit the beast. It had downed pretty Redbird without breaking a sweat and had beat poor Muskijl nearly to a pulp. She thought the appellation "Fearsome" probably applied to her too. It fit her well, in fact. "All in a bloody day's work for Captain Pam, she-devil of the southern seas," she mumbled, shaking her head in wonder at what strange fortunes had brought her to be at the center of events such as these. "Time travel," she muttered darkly. "Not recommended for the faint of heart. Check your expectations at the portal, and hang on to your sanity." Pam stalked off down the dock toward the flag ship of her growing fleet, the gaily painted Chinese junk they had dubbed Second Chance Bird, in search of that sure-fire slice of sanity only a good breakfast could provide.
The decks of her ship were quiet, her men still sleeping off their hurts, both physical and mental. Still, there were signs of activity. As could be expected she found Dore in her galley. Her tireless friend was busy pulling out all the stops as she prepared a particularly mighty breakfast of the kind that could satisfy a hungry band of heroes who had more than earned that pleasure.
She smiled as Pam came in, and silently handed her a cup of coffee. Pam nodded her thanks, and sat down in an out of the way corner on an ornately carved Chinese kitchen stool, painted in crimson lacquer.
Pam took a few sips of the hot, bitter brew. She herself had harvested the purple and yellow beans from the slopes of a mountain in the island's south. They grew wild there, presumably a native species. It was good coffee, with a rich, bitter flavor that would give any Columbia grown variety a run for its money. While it cooled, she inhaled its dark aroma, oxygen to a Himalayan climber. As she finished the cup, Dore arrived with a refill, her timing impeccable as always. Reality began to come back into focus as Dore's familiar movements and the delicious cooking smoke of the galley worked with the caffeine to clear her head.
"That sure smells good!" she told Dore, now that she had paused from her fix long enough to have gotten a whiff of the delights breakfast was destined to hold.
"The French ship had bacon, eggs and bread! Real bread, baked only yesterday! Please ask your French doctor to identify their cook. I can make use of his talents if he will behave properly and work for me. I have more mouths to feed now; he would be useful."
"I'll make that happen." Pam marveled briefly that along her bizarre and convoluted way, she had become someone who could say that and mean it. Neither of them mentioned that Dore's last assistant cook had been killed in action. It would be a day of funerals, but for now the two friends both needed to simply exist in the comfort and warmth of a civilized kitchen, forgetting for a while that they were on the bottom side of the world, and that it was spinning faster than they might have preferred. If Pam closed her eyes she could picture her little red and white tiled kitchen in her little pink house in Grantville, back home in Germany. She laughed aloud at that last thought. Germany is home now? Dore looked over to see what was so funny, but Pam just waved her mug and asked for more coffee.
Pam finished her fourth cup of coffee and felt remarkably better despite the sleepless night. There was no doubt she would either need to go take a nap around noon or be found passed out in her tracks somewhere. The exhaustion of the day before would exact its toll one way or the other. For now she felt buzzed and bright-eyed and needed something to do. The door to Pers' sickroom was just down the hall and she heard voices coming from within, so she hurried over to see what was going on. She found the bosun and the doctor standing over the poor boy's bed, quietly discussing his condition in English, the language the two of them shared. They both nodded politely to Pam as she joined them.
"How's he doing today?" Pam asked Doctor Durand as she put her hand gently on Pers' forehead. His skin felt cool, and she thought she could see a bit more color on his cheeks than the day before, but his expression was still slack, the face of one deep in dream.
The doctor took Pers by the wrist to feel his pulse. He allowed a small smile to curl between his fancily mustachioed lip and pointy brown beard. Streaks of gray could be seen in both, as well as in his long sideburns. Pam found him handsome in a weird kind of way, but pushed that thought aside quickly.
"A little better, perhaps, Capitaine Pam. You can see his color is returning, and his pulse is a bit stronger. He moved his legs around some earlier, which is a good sign. We must simply wait and see."
The French doctor kept his expression positive, but Pam could still see the doubt in the man's gentle, perhaps perpetually dark-circled brown eyes.
"I've heard that it helps to talk to a patient in a coma, to tell them to wake up and come back to us," Pam said, tentatively. The doctor only raised his eyebrows but the bosun, whose face was amazingly long for one so round and ruddy as his, brightened a little.
"Here, let me try," the bosun said, his voice trembling a little. He plainly feared greatly for the boy who had been injured while following orders he himself had issued, a boy he quietly doted on even as he frogmarched him around the deck from one duty to the next. "Pers! Pers, it's the bosun. I'm sorry you're not feeling good, but you need to wake up now." There was no sign from Pers' slack face that he had heard. The bosun looked over to Pam pleadingly.
Pam had an idea. "You're doing it wrong. Talk to him like you would when he's awake. You know, order him around a bit! Give him a good shout!"
The bosun looked somewhat taken aback at the surprising suggestion, but then smiled at what he considered must be his captain's great wisdom. Shouting was one of his strong suits. Doctor Durand had an alarmed look on his face, he was just about to say something when the bosun charged ahead with the new plan.
"Right!" he said and flashed her a dark yellow, but still shiny grin. He bent down over the unconscious youth's dreaming face and let loose in a voice like thunder: "You! Boy! Get your lazy ass out of the sack Pers, and get to work! We haven't got all day, so move it! I want you on deck NOW!"
The resounding shout in the cabin's close quarters made everybody jump, and Pam was certain she had detected a jerk in Per's lanky frame, a sign that he had at least sensed the bosun's voice on some level.
"Good!" Pam clapped the bosun on the back, "I saw him twitch!"
"As he should, I run a clean deck and everyone does their share!" He looked down at Pers with hope in his eyes. "I hope he heard me. I really hope he did. Wake up, my boy, wake up!"
Doctor Durand stood staring at them as if they were both utterly mad.
"Excellent!" he proclaimed abruptly. "What a wonderful new therapy! We must write a treatise on its wondrous effects for all the physicians of Europe to share! Now, if you will both please leave, I will attend to my patient in restful silence!" The good doctor's deep voice rang with that special tone that only the best doctors, teachers and chefs seemed able to produce, a tone that made even the bosun jump quickly to his order. "Out!" he added, just to be sure he had been understood, but no further urging was necessary.
Pam couldn't help but laugh as she and the bosun tried to squeeze out of the narrow cabin door at the same time in their effort to remove themselves from the doctor's way. Once they got that sorted out, Pam closed the door quickly on what she was sure was a stream of muttered French curses emanating from the good doctor. They fled to the upper deck, still very worried about their young friend, but also feeling a bit more hopeful for his recovery than they had before.
Earlier that morning, the remains of the African slavers had been gathered up and burned without ceremony on the beach, as far down the shore from the settlement as they could get. Around nine in the morning when the tide was right, and with Pam's permission, the French fallen were taken out to the open waters beyond the bay aboard the Annalise, to be buried at sea in the style of their country. Those proceedings were overseen by Doctor Durand and his small group of French parolees, under the respectful, but careful, watch of Swedish sailors and marines. When he returned, Pam was waiting for him.
"Doctor Durand, I'd like to have a word with you, if you please."
"With pleasure, Capitaine Pam," he replied with a polite bow.
"In my quarters if you please. It's cooler there." She turned to the four Swedish marines from the Muskijl assigned to accompany the small contingent of French parolees. She would have to learn all their names at some point, for now she smiled and gestured to them for attention, which they gave with military snap. Choosing the fellow she was pretty sure ranked highest, she gave her orders. "Korpral, is it?"
"Yes, Kapten Pam." The man was still thin from his captivity but now well armed and eager to please. Pam was glad to see confidence returning to the freed captives already.
"Good man. Korpral, please take your men down to the galley and ask Frau Dore to provide them with lunch for yourselves and the Frenchmen in your charge. Once you have all eaten, give our French guests the liberty of the Second Chance Bird's main deck to stretch out in. I shall be up in my cabin conferring with Doctor Durand."
The korpral nodded, but looked concerned. "Would you like one of us to accompany you and stand guard?"
"Thank you, but that won't be necessary. Doctor Durand has proven himself a gentleman so far, and if he should prove otherwise I will shoot his brains out." She pointed her chin toward the now notorious Smith and Wesson .38 caliber holstered on her belt; everyone was well aware that she had killed eight men with it, and were suitably impressed. The doctor gulped and looked a bit pale, but maintained his composure. "So, don't worry," Pam assured him, "I'll be fine. Have a good lunch and get some rest."
"Yes, ma'am!" The korpral saluted her along with his men, and led his group toward the galley.
"Right this way, Doctor." She motioned toward the ladder to the castle decks. He seemed to hesitate at going before a lady, but must have recalled that his situation was still a bit tenuous, and thinking of Pam's pistol, he went first, not making any sudden moves.
The doctor was quite impressed by the eastern opulence of Pam's quarters. "I see the wealth of the Orient is not exaggerated. You say this ship likely belonged to a merchant, but this suite is appointed like that of a prince!"
"It's pretty swanky, yes." She wasn't sure he knew what "swanky" meant but the doctor nodded in polite agreement anyway. "Here, have a seat, you must be as tired as I am." They both settled into comfortably stuffed chairs at the broad, mahogany table she used as her desk. The doctor was visibly pleased as he settled into the satin cushions.
"Ahh, such luxury. Thank you for your kind hospitality."
"It is I who owe you thanks, Doctor Durand. Without your help, a lot more of my people would have died last night. You will be remembered as a hero by this colony, not as an enemy."
"That is good to hear. I hope they will not judge all the French by the gross injustices perpetrated by Leonce Toulon de Aquitane and his bandits. I was as much a slave as the Swedes were, although I didn't suffer nearly so awfully. Still, I am glad to have my freedom again, or at least what freedom you can grant until I completely earn your trust, Capitaine." He smiled at her then, a sincere smile full of understanding and patience.
Pam couldn't help but like the man, and really had to admit that he was kind of sexy. If hunky Torbjörn hadn't made his miraculous appearance when he did, this guy might have been in trouble. . . . The thought made her blush and she laughed softly to cover it. "I trust you, Durand, but I have to give the Swedes some more time before I let you and your trustees loose. You understand, I hope?"
"Absolutely. Please do as you must; we are quite happy with our treatment."
"Actually, one of the things I'd like to ask you today is if you would like to join my personal staff. We could use a doctor in the colony, as it appears that we neglected to bring one! If you want to leave us, you will be free to, but even if you decide to do that, would you take the position for the time being?"
"I would be delighted to! The truth is I am in no hurry to return to France. I find the weather here suits my taste and it would be good to be needed by so many people. How would it be if I promise you at least a year, and perhaps make more permanent arrangements if it should work out?"
"You got it, Doc! Welcome to our misfit band! Let's seal it with a toast---is it too early for a drink for you?" Pam reached for the bottle of what she thought was some kind of sake that she kept on her desk, along with a set of beautiful red-and-gray glazed porcelain cups.
"By no means too early for a Frenchman, but just a little, please. We still have this evenings proceedings ahead of us."
Pam poured them each a cup-full of the nearly clear liquid, and made a toast. "To new comrades!"
"May we enjoy peace and prosperity!" he answered. They drank their cups dry and the doctor made a face that said "not half bad!" Pam poured them each another cupful, which they savored slowly.
"It's a rice wine, I think. I tried some at a Japanese restaurant back in my former century. Presumably the Chinese make something similar. It grows on you." Pam told him, showing him the pale blue ceramic bottle and its gracefully brushed characters. She pointed at the painted label. "I'm pretty sure these two combine to mean 'alcohol,' but that's all I know about it."
"Truly, the Chinese are a civilized folk. Very smooth." Durand sipped his with pleasure.
Just then, their lunch arrived, Dore bringing it up herself.
"Thank you, Dore!" Pam greeted her in English out of politeness to the doctor, whom she had learned knew only a smattering of German. "Say, where is Gerbald? I haven't seen him all day! For that matter, I haven't seen any of our guys, have you?" It occurred to Pam that they might be in hiding, considering the fact they were all still a hilarious shade of orange.
"Oh, do you mean Jason and the Argonauts? The great heroes of the sea?" she asked, her questions drenched with sarcasm. Dore was referring to the title and characters of one of Gerbald's favorite movies, a Ray Harryhausen classic based loosely on Greek myth, and Pam laughed aloud at its pithiness. Dore was pissed off all right, and full of the unique brand of cutting edge sarcasm she reserved for the subject of her beloved husband. "Yes, of course I know where they are! The drunken oafs! Fearing what I might have to say about it, they have gone over to that French ship to toast their victory! It's what the men always do the day after a fight, get drunk and brag about what great warriors they are. Only tales of fishing can match the ridiculous fantasies they weave as they improve on the truth! Oh, to hear their endless boasts, it is tiresome! There's honest work to be done today, but not for them!" Dore shook her head in disgust.
Pam was most impressed at how much Dore's English was improving. Apparently she became more fluent the madder she got!
The doctor gazed at Dore with an expression of abject fear, while Pam laughed, enjoying the show. She managed to stop laughing long enough to say, "But Dore, I did give them all the day off. What about the bosun? He'll keep a lid on them." She looked over to see the doctor trying to shrink into the cushions of his chair, using whatever cover they might provide, and started chuckling again.
Dore favored the poor doctor with a smile to show that she was really more bark than bite, and then continued. "Ha! The bosun! That whiskery old codfish is the one who found the booze stash over there and broke it open for them! He's even more pickled than the rest!"
Pam laughed again, nearly choking. This really was the expert at work, it was a highly impressive barrage of insults, and despite Dore's increased mastery of English vocabulary the tirade was made all the more hilarious by her still thick-as-spaetzle German accent.
Dore's steely gray eyes narrowed and she clenched her powerful hands in dishwater-reddened fists. "I warned those orange-skinned buffoons that if they get too drunk and make fools of themselves at the funeral this evening, I will beat them all back to their senses with my iron skillet, and I mean to do it, heroes or not!" At this point Dore noticed that Pam had her bottle of rice wine out and that they each had a cup. This earned them a deep, threatening scowl that said, "Not you, too?"
Pam raised her hands palm out as if to ward off possible attack. "Okay, okay, Dore. I'll go check on them and make sure they aren't too far gone. You better have a couple pots of coffee ready around four-thirty. No doubt they'll need a good dose."
Dore seemed placated by that, and after her usual fussing to see that everything at the table she had set for them was perfect, she left them to it, stalking out with shoulders back, a dauntless Christian soldier ever on the march. Ears still ringing, Pam and the doctor shared the meal in companionable silence. Once they were finished eating, Pam put her elbows on the table and gave her companion a measuring look. The doctor met her gaze calmly.
"All right. Now that we are working together in an atmosphere of mutual trust, I'm afraid I do have some questions about your former employers."
"Captors. Yes, I will tell you anything you want to know, that is, if it is something I myself know. Please understand I was not in that bastard Leonce Toulon de Aquitane's privy counsel, but I heard and saw much."
"Good, that's good. First off, how did they find my expedition? Was it just an accident or did they know we were coming?"
"I believe it was the latter, but I know nothing for certain. It was said that the capitaine had been contacted by either Richelieu or Monsieur Gaston. Rumors, you understand. But I believe someone may have learned of Gustav's intention to put a colony on this island, thus beating we French to a territory that would have one day been ours, according to the books of Grantville. As you must surely know, and forgive me for speaking frankly, the arrival of you up-timers has given the ruling heads of Europe fits. They are all studying your future history for ways to get ahead of their rivals, for any advantages such foreknowledge might afford."
"Yeah, I know about that. It's gotten to the point where I take my bodyguard, Gerbald, to the library with me. It's full of creepy dudes who are obviously foreign spies, or worse. It's obvious that most of them are up to no good."
"Well, in France I can say that little good has come of it. I fear for the future of my country and find it best to stay away for now. And so, after the failure of the League of Ostend, France has been seeking ways to increase its power all across the globe. I'm afraid your native North America is by now dotted with French colonies and there will be no Louisiana Purchase in this history."
Pam was impressed with Durand's knowledge and insights. This guy had obviously done a lot of reading himself. Probably best to keep a close eye on my good doctor no matter how much I like him, she thought.
The doctor continued, "And it's not just going to be the Atlantic. Some of the leaders, they see far and will have their hearts set on controlling all of the world they can, including this Indian Ocean and no doubt the Pacific beyond it. And so, they send minions to do their filthy works. I'll wager that all of Leonce Toulon de Aquitane's violence here and elsewhere, has the secret blessing of someone. I saw myself that the capitaine was quite taken with stories about the bold pirates of the eighteenth century, and am sure he fancies himself to be one. Are you familiar with the subject?"
"Yes, I read up on maritime history in order to prepare myself for what I might face on this voyage. The violence and danger of life on the seven seas was not exaggerated! The whole pirate thing didn't really get into swing until the eighteenth century back up-time, but I can see that won't be the case in this world."
"Indeed, I'm afraid that Capitaine Toulon de Aquitane is just the first of many, and already he is not alone here. He was still flying the flag of France at his capture, but I believe he had personal plans beyond serving the crown's interests here in these southern latitudes. When we sailed past the Cape of Good Hope in your pursuit, we rendezvoused with another warship and loaned them around half of Effrayant's soldiers. I overheard much of what was said. Several captains are setting up a base on a small island off the coast of Madagascar called Isle St Marie, which in the up-time history would become a famed pirate haven. The soldiers were needed to subdue a rebellious native population. The island has a strategic location, which is probably how it came to be used for that purpose in the future you come from. From there, they intend to terrorize all foreign shipping in the Indian Ocean. You have made a great victory here, but more will come to avenge the capture of Effrayant and its capitaine, so you must be ready!"
"Indeed. The age of the pirate has come early. Another question: Who were those slave-masters working for Toulon?"
Before the doctor could answer, Dore came charging through the cabin door, not bothering to knock. "Pam! It is worse than I thought!" She was very upset. "I sent one of the sailors on guard here to see what was going on over there. He didn't like to say, but I can sense that things have gotten out of control. They are now drunk out of their minds! I fear if you do not act quickly they will spoil the proceedings tonight!" Funerals were a serious issue to any involved, but to devout Dore they were sacrosanct. "How can we live with the shame if our men are too shit-faced to go to the funeral?"
Pam gasped and muffled a chuckle at Dore's use of an expletive. She would have to tell her that she might not want to use that particular one in the future as it didn't match her high level of propriety. Dore certainly had no idea of the phrase's coarseness or she would never have uttered it. Ah, the joy of second languages. "Okay, don't worry, Dore! I'll go right now! She turned to the doctor, who was regarding Dore's fiery presence with wide, frightened eyes.
"I'm afraid we shall have to finish this conversation another time, Doctor Durand. My apologies."
"Yes, I completely agree, especially if you value their lives," he said with a smile that Pam was sure masked a healthy fear of the indomitable German. "I am at your disposal whenever you wish, Capitaine."
"Thank you for your counsel, Doctor, I value it highly. Now, it seems I have some wayward lambs to shepherd. Dore will see you out. Bye for now!"
The doctor smiled weakly again as he struggled to get up and out of the comfortable chair and out the door behind Pam as fast as he could, most certainly wishing to avoid being the subject of Dore's tender care.
Chapter Forty-Seven : The Victory Luncheon
Pam sauntered down to the Effrayant, forcing herself not to hurry despite Dore's frantic exhortations. As she boarded the vessel the man on watch, one of the Muskijl crew, looked a bit nervous as he greeted her. Pam cut right to the chase.
"So, where's the party?"
"Uhh, party, ma'am?"
"Come on, point the way." She allowed a bit of storm to come into her steel-gray eyes. I really am not someone you should be screwing with, mister being the unspoken message. It was enough to convince the young sailor he had indeed better not screw with the infamous Captain Pam.
"Oh, the 'victory luncheon'!" he said as if it had completely slipped his mind.
Pam laughed aloud at that polite contrivance, which made the man blush scarlet, but he continued on heroically, "Go in the main hatch and down the ladder to the first level, then take a right. . . . I'm sure you will be able to hear the festivities from there, ma'am."
"Right! Thank you!" she left the embarrassed sailor at his post. Following his directions, she soon heard the rumble of laughing men emanating from a closed door. It was locked! She knocked politely and stood there for a long a minute with no response. Then, she gave it a few good, solid raps. After another long minute, during which she was preparing to blow the lock off with her pistol, the door swung open and she was greeted by the bosun, who looked like he had fallen into a vat of liquor and drunk it all down to keep from drowning. His eyes goggled comically at the sight of his very sober captain. His round face still held its dye and he looked just like the fruit-headed spokesman for a soft drink she had liked when she was a kid, the thought of it made her quell a laugh. Jolly Olly Orange, yeah, that was it. Dead ringer.
"Captain Pam! Hello!" he said cheerfully in a rather garbled voice. It was obvious that he was worried. This victory luncheon hadn't been cleared by his captain, nor, come to think of it, as he was right now, had she been invited. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about that. Part of her was hurt, but part of her also accepted that the ways of men were something that she would never fully understand. In any case, Dore was right---they were shit-faced and on course to pass out if something wasn't done.
"Hello, Herr Bosun! How is the victory luncheon going? Are you all getting enough to eat?" She asked it loudly enough that her voice would carry across the raucous party within the wide hold. She noted that there was no food in sight but a plentiful supply of alcoholic beverages were on hand. As the men realized she was present, a hush made it's way through them. She saw Kapten Lagerhielm of the Muskijl trying to edge out of sight behind Gerbald. Her trusted friend and companion currently resembled the village idiot---he had (temporarily, no doubt) traded his usual ridiculous mustard-colored hat for one of French make, a red and white striped stocking cap that flopped down over his eyes so that he couldn't see properly. He kept trying to blow it out of the way, because his hands were each occupied with a large mug of booze.
The Second Chance Bird's men, whose faces were still orange from their disguise, had all turned a brighter shade thanks to the liquor's effects; they reminded her of band of tall, thin oompa-loompas. Except for the bosun. He was shorter and rotund enough to pass for the regular kind. Honestly, I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or get hopping mad. She kept her expression and tone light.
"Well." Pam said, once she had all their attention. "I am glad to see you are having some fun after the trials you went through yesterday. You have my blessings on that; you certainly earned it. However, you may have been better off choosing to throw your victory luncheon later tonight after the funeral . . ." She paused to let that sink in. The new captain of the Effrayant, the now tragically one-legged Lundkvist, was propped up with pillows like an injured king on an ornate divan that must have been brought down from the original captain's quarters. He put a hand to his tangerine-hued forehead as if thinking "Why didn't I think of that?"
Pam favored the mortally embarrassed fellow with a particularly cheerful grin, and went on. "Party on as much as you like this afternoon, my dear Argonauts, but there is one thing I expect of you. This evening you all need to be at that funeral in something resembling a sober state. And if you fail me in that, it will not be me who metes out your punishment. It will be Dore! She mentioned something about her iron skillet. . . . Think on that."
Frightened eyes went wide all around the room. Pam grabbed a nearly full mug from the bosun's hand, and downed its contents in one long gulp. She handed it back to him and wiped her mouth on her silk coat's sleeve. "French brandy! How lovely! Now, I'll leave you to it." Pushing her way back through the door past the considerable girth of a thoroughly befuddled bosun for a second time that day, she exited, shaking her head. I didn't want to be too hard on them, but sheesh! They could've invited me. It probably happened spontaneously, like those parties we had back in high school, best not to think on it too much.
Pam left the Effrayant and realized she hadn't seen Torbjörn there. That made her feel better for some reason. She started to walk over to the Muskijl but then saw him up on deck, working on repairs. She wanted to go say hello, but suddenly a great shyness came over her. A teasing voice came into her head, singing "Pammie's got a boyfriend, Pammie's got a boyfriend!" She told it to shut up, but continued on toward shore anyway, without stopping to say hello. So? Maybe I do. About time! the new, improved Pam thought, and she smiled to herself as she walked carefully across the dock's rough timbers toward shore. I'll see him tonight, no need to rush. It was time to go pick some flowers. She needed to do something feminine and healthy after breathing the man-drunk air of the victory luncheon. Stupid gits. Still, ya gotta love'em. Mostly.
Chapter Forty-Eight : Twilight and Evening Bell
At five o'clock Pam led the funeral procession from the docks, past the half-finished buildings of the town, and up through the gently sloping fields to a pretty knoll that overlooked the bay. This was the site the people had chosen for their Hero's Cemetery and Pam thought it a good one. The graves had been already been dug and had temporary wooden markers at their heads; these were to be replaced with stone at a later date. Bengta was given pride of place in the cemetery's center. Beside her would lay Asmund, the young man who had been her fiancé, also killed in the revolt. Pam deeply mourned the loss of such young souls, their lives snatched away just as they were beginning a new future together. She began to cry and made no effort to stop.
To heroic Bengta's left were the final resting places of her fellow colonists, some of whom had died during their enslavement, their remains having been moved here from temporary graves, others who had given their lives in the battle to free the colony. To her right were the graves of the sailors and marines who had guided them here and who had given their lives for the colony's freedom. With its high position, and sweeping view of the town and harbor, Pam felt the place was a fitting monument to people so brave as these.
Pam let her tears flow as they wished. She stood between Torbjörn and the bosun, grateful for the comfort of their protective male presences. Nearby Gerbald and Dore looked on solemnly. The two of them were holding hands and the sight made Pam feel better. Her men had indeed sobered up in time, and they looked touchingly sad and brave lined up in their best Chinese finery. She was very, very proud of them all and she favored them with a loving smile, to which they each bowed their head slightly with gratitude.
The eldest of the handful of Lutheran pastors who had come along to minister to the colony, began the ceremony. Pastor Petrus was a solemn, but kindly looking fellow, still young in his late thirties. His voice was clear and deep, and full of what Pam thought of as "Godly conviction." Pam's Swedish was good enough now that she could understand everything except for some obscure words in the older hymns.
As she expected, Pam would be called upon to say a few words, as would the bosun and the newly minted Captain Lundkvist. Although he had to be carried up to the grave site by his men, the new captain of their shining prize Effrayant, stood firmly against his crutch, bearing the pain of his lost leg with grim pride. Pam went last, after stirring speeches from her friends. Being, however unfortunately, an old hand at funerals, she ignored her usual butterflies and stepped forward.
She kept her own speech short, although it was filled with emotion, praising the courage and selflessness of the fallen and thanking the survivors of these trials for their stalwart support and continuing dedication to their cause. She ended her part by once again reciting Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, feeling that she had spoken those beautifully appropriate words from another time and place far too often of late. Pam returned to her place of safety between Torbjörn and the bosun and found herself taking Torbjörn's hand. He smiled warmly at her, and gave it a gentle squeeze. Her mind was awhirl with emotion this day but at least some of it was good.
Pam cried hard as each shrouded body was lowered into the ground, shedding as many tears for the young colonists claimed too early as for her beloved lost comrades from the Redbird crew. That afternoon she had found a healthy patch of flowers along the forest's edge that she thought were some kind of hibiscus, wide yellow petals with a blushing pink center and stamen. They weren't roses, but they would do, she solemnly placed one on each filed grave, whispering farewell to each soul as she went.
She was among the last to leave the cemetery, the evening shadows had grown long and dusk approached.
Torbjörn waited quietly as she went about her task, and she was thrilled that he wanted to be her escort. Other thoughts about the handsome captain clamored for attention, but she pushed them back. She was just too tired for that, maybe tomorrow! They walked back down the hill in amiable silence, glad for each other's company. As they walked through town at sunset various bells began to ring, those on the ships as well as a church bell the colonists had brought with them. Pam laughed as the long, low tones of Second Chance Bird's Chinese gong joined the music. They paused to listen until the last bell stopped, a final salute to lost friends.
When they reached the dock, Pam turned to him and gave him a tired, but appreciative smile. "Torbjörn, thank you for staying with me during the funeral. You were a great comfort to me."
"The pleasure was mine, Pam." His manly voice was full of sincerity. "Is there anything more I can do for you? I am at your service."
Pam thought there probably was quite a bit more he could do for her, and her body began to tingle in a very pleasant way, but she ignored it. Not now you ninny, she chided herself in her mind. You would fall asleep about the time things got interesting. There's time!
"That's very kind Torbjörn, and I will definitely be taking you up on your offer soon, but today I'm all done. I haven't had any sleep and I'm about ready to fall down in my tracks." She paused, beginning to feel shy, but made herself press on, "How about you join me for dinner tomorrow night? Dore has come up with some amazing recipes in her new Chinese galley. I'll wager it's the best food on this side of the world."
"Absolutely! I have missed Frau Dore's cooking greatly." He paused, and Pam thought he also looked shy for a moment before he said, "But not nearly as much as I have missed you, Captain Pam."
Pam felt her heart whiz around a few bumpy corners on its roller coaster ride. She took his hands and stretched up on her tippy-toes to plant a kiss on his lips which he accepted with obvious relish. They kept it brief, but it was as sweet as honey.
"I missed you, too, Captain Torbjörn. A lot." She started to tear up again, unable to stop it. "I thought you were gone, you know, but I didn't really believe it, not in my heart." Suddenly, she threw herself into his arms and they spent a few long minutes in a tight embrace, Torbjörn gently stroking her hair to comfort her.
"I'm here, I'm here with you now. Don't cry, it's all right now, my brave Pam," he said softly in her ear, which made her feel like melting butter.
When she stopped shaking, he gently let her go, and she ran her palm across his chest as if to make sure he was real. "See you tomorrow," she said, and quickly slipped away up the ramp to her ship's main deck. She turned once more and they each smiled softly at each other, eyes shining as they parted. Pam couldn't help but let a satisfied little smile come to her lips. Score! she thought and giggled to herself as she climbed the ladder to her cabin.
Pam fell down on her soft, pillow-strewn bed like a load of lead ingots. She felt so excited about dinner the next day that she was sure she wouldn't be able to sleep. Fifteen seconds later she was out cold.
Chapter Forty-Nine : A Mysterious Figure
Pam awoke early the next morning. She had slept soundly and felt completely rested. She lay in her bed for a few minutes while going over the chaotic events of the past few days, and felt very good about them. She had gotten a second chance and had taken it to victory. It wasn't often she got to indulge herself in some pride, but now was one of those times. Good job, Pammie! she thought, you really kicked ass! Not only that, but she had a date tonight with a man direct from the Kris Kristofferson school of hunkiness! The very thought of Torbjörn made her feel like she was falling, but in a very pleasant way.
She got out of bed and opened the window. The sun hadn't risen yet, but she had no doubt Dore would be in the galley already, and there would be coffee! She slipped on a canary-yellow silk robe, and slid her feet into a pair of slippers woven from some kind of sturdy grass; she had adapted quite well to her Asian wardrobe, the unusual garments were beginning to feel as natural as a pair of jeans.
Down on the main deck, she paused at the rail to gaze at the purple-lit sea beyond the harbor; it would be another glorious sunrise. As she turned to head for the ladder leading below-decks she saw something that made her jump: A ghost was standing at the rail near the prow, white satin sheets flapping in the morning breeze. Squinting her eyes for a better look she saw the apparition was busy polishing the deck rail with a corner of one of its sheets.
"Holy shit." Pam hurried to the prow and paused a few feet from the mysterious figure. She had an idea who it might be, and hoped she was right.
"Pers?" she asked cautiously. Her 'ghost' turned and she saw that indeed it was Pers, his torso wrapped in one bedsheet with another sheet pulled over his head and loosely tied at his chest. His face was very pale, but he looked alive enough.
"Hey, Pam," he answered nonchalantly, as if waking from a coma and polishing the rail while dressed up as a phantom were perfectly normal things. "It sure is cold this morning! Do you know where my clothes are?"
Pam realized he was still about half out of it, but that was still a huge improvement over out cold! She grinned at him, her heart bursting with relief and joy. "I'm not sure, Pers, but we will find them." Her voice shook a bit, but she stayed calm. "So, what are you doing?"
"Oh, the bosun was yelling at me to get to work so I thought I better get to it. Say, where did he go?" Pers started to look around the deck, his eyes still a bit glazed, but he seemed to be waking up. "What time is it anyway?" The young man's face grew perplexed as he began to realize that maybe his situation was just a bit odd.
Pam felt happy tears rolling down her cheeks, warm drops in the cool ocean breeze. "It's morning and you were having a dream. Now you are awake!" She hugged him tightly then, taking care not to dislodge the sheet he had somehow managed to wrap around his tall, thin frame.
"Oh! Good morning!" he said, beginning to sound embarrassed as he fumbled at the sheets to make sure certain private areas remained fully covered.
"Yes, it is indeed a good morning, Pers! Now come on, let's go get you into some proper clothes before you scare the wits out of someone else!"
\*\*\*\*
Doctor Durand looked pleased and relieved as he examined a now mostly dressed Pers while Pam, the bosun and Dore looked anxiously on.
"His pupils are still a bit dilated but they are returning to normal, his pulse strong and steady," he told the onlookers. "Pers, how do you feel?" he asked in English, having been informed that Pers could speak the language fairly well, thanks to Pam and Gerbald's tutelage.
The young patient still looked a bit perplexed but was definitely coming around. "I feel pretty good, still a little light-headed maybe. Umm, excuse me for my rudeness, but who are you?"
Everyone laughed. The doctor had spent much of the last few day's at Per's bedside.
"I am Doctor Durand and you are a very lucky young man. You have been unconscious for several days. Tell me, what's the last thing you remember?"
Pers' brows light-blond brows furrowed as he reached for memories damaged by the fall. "Well, I was climbing up in the mast and I slipped. I think I fell, and I was very frightened, but then the memory stops."
"You did fall, and you injured your head quite badly."
Pers began to reach up to feel his head but the doctor gently took him by the wrist and stopped him. "The injury is still bruised and needs more time to heal, so please don't touch it for now. Do you feel any pain there?"
"Just a little, like I would if I bumped my head on a beam below-decks."
"Well, that's good. Do you remember anything else after your fall, and before you woke up this morning?"
"Why, yes. I could hear the bosun was shouting at me to get to work. I wanted to, but I couldn't seem to get up!"
Pam let out a whoop and clapped the bosun on the back. The bosun laughed and they both chanted, "It worked, it worked!" while dancing a happy little jig together.
Doctor Durand rolled his eyes. "Yes, it seems that 'shout therapy' might have a place in the care of coma victims, after all. Your friends were trying to reach you to help you wake up, and it has apparently worked."
Pers nodded, as he watched Pam and the bosun celebrate with wide-eyed fascination.
Once they settled down, the doctor turned to them. "Now, the boy is better, but he is still on the mend. I believe some exercise, both physical and mental, would do him some good, but not too much and not in the heat of the day. Can you find him some light duties, Monsieur Bosun?"
"I can indeed, Herr Doctor. I'll take good care of him, don't you worry!"
Dore moved over to the bedside to take Pers' hand in hers. "It is good to have you back with us, young Pers. Now, are you hungry?"
Pers eyes lit up as brightly as they ever had at that question. "Yes! I could eat a whale!"
Dore patted his hand affectionately, visibly proud that she knew just what their patient needed. "I thought as much. Very good, come with me, then." She and the doctor helped him to his feet. Pam thought he seemed much steadier than he had during his pre-dawn haunting of the deck.
Durand turned to Dore. "Madame Dore, I know he must be starving, but please, you mustn't feed him too much, too quickly. I advise you start with a warm broth and barley, or some-such easy to digest food. Once we are sure he can keep that down, you can give him something more, but nothing too heavy, at least for a day or two."
"It shall be as you say, Herr Doctor, and thank you for your kind care of our young man." Dore favored Durand with one of her all too rare radiant smiles; its power actually made the cool and collected gentleman blush.
"Yes, good job, Doc, we really appreciate all your work!" Pam stuck out her hand to shake his, after a moment's confusion he extended his in return and let her pump it enthusiastically.
"Thank you for your kind words my friends, but really, I was just doing my duties as a physician as best I could. It is my honor to serve."
In a celebratory mood they all followed Dore to the galley. All that happiness had made everyone hungry.
That noon Pam had on her hiking clothes, and was carrying her grandmother's walking stick when she arrived at the galley for lunch. A slightly less orange-colored Gerbald was finishing a sandwich. It looked like the dye was finally wearing off.
"Hey! Where are you off to?" he asked.
"Sit down, I'm just going to walk along the forest's edge in those upper fields. I want to check out what kind of trees are growing in these hills and start thinking about some intelligent logging. I hate to cut trees but the reality is we need to finish the town the walls. At least this way I can control the damage."
"I'll come with you," Gerbald said, starting to get up.
"No need today, my friend, take the day off. I'll be fine." Pam smiled at him reassuringly. The truth was she wanted to be alone, and even Gerbald's quiet presence was more than she could bear at the moment. Dore handed her a sandwich and a piece of fruit wrapped up in a parcel made of a wide leaf. Pam shoved it into her rucksack and smiled her thanks.
"Be careful, please, Pam. You don't know this area yet," Dore cautioned her in her usual motherly fashion.
Gerbald peered at her belt. "Pam, you're not wearing your gun today." His voice was nonchalant, but she still caught a certain vibe there, as in "maybe you should be."
Pam thought, Well, I never used to carry one! My old pal here has seen some action lately, and now he's gotten all 'soldiery'! It will pass. She favored him with a patient smile.
"Oh, jeez, Gerbald! The damn thing's so heavy! Come on, I'm just going to walk that big field. I'll be back in time for dinner."
Gerbald and Dore both looked unhappy at Pam going off by herself but kept quiet, well aware of how stubborn their friend could be. The three of them had become very tight-knit over the years, and her older "brother and sister" couldn't help being a little over-protective of "their Pam." She flashed them a grin and laughed.
"Knock it off, you two. What a couple of worry warts! I'm outta here!"
Pam headed up the dock to shore at a jaunty pace, pausing only to say hello to various sailors and citizens along the way. Several of them asked her if she wanted company on her walk, but she politely declined all offers. "I'm just going to follow the edge of the upper field around. I won't go into the forest." The Swedes nodded politely. She had learned they were a people who valued solitude, and could certainly understand that Pam needed some time to herself.
Leaving the growing town behind, Pam was drawing near the cemetery on its knoll off to her left. Beyond it she could see the compound the French prisoners were being held in. I still need to have my interview with Captain Dick-head, but not today, let's not think about that stuff today. With a physical shake of her head that sent her unruly dishwater-blond locks flying, Pam cleared all thoughts of the death and destruction of the last few days out of her mind. I need to get ready for the next phase. I need to look to the future. Somehow managing to grimly hang onto positive thoughts, Pam hurried her step, veering off to the right to avoid the entire area.
Pam reached the bottom of the upper field and kept to the right. It was a broad rectangle of around twelve acres stretching longways uphill from the harbor. Stumps could be seen here and there, but parts of it had been natural meadow before the French decided to have it all clear cut. That made her scowl, but what was done, was done. A small herd of the cows the colonists had brought along watched her with mild brown eyes, complacently chewing the native grass. So far the cows, a flock of sheep, a yard-full of chickens and geese, and some horses were the only domestic animals allowed on the island. Pigs, goats, dogs and cats were banned due to their penchant for escaping, and becoming destructive feral pests, exactly what this fragile ecosystem did not need.
Maybe someday she would lift the ban on dogs. She knew the people would like to have them. Pam feared the day that some ship would bring rats, or weevils, or worse---it was inevitable. She stopped to look out at the harbor and decided that extending the dock would be a priority. In fact, she would order a customs house built right out over the water, creating a buffer between ship and shore. It would at least stem the tide of unwanted animal immigrants. That made her smile. She turned and whistled an aimless tune as she continued hiking.
When she reached the tree line, she paused to look back at the town and harbor, a picturesque scene. The houses and buildings that had been completed were now being painted a rich, brownish red. Pam had learned this was called falun red, and was a Swedish tradition. The trim was done in white, and Pam thought it all looked pretty great.
"A little bit of the old country," Pam said to herself, "Traditions are good, in moderation." She knew that there was going to be a difficult time ahead as the colony put the modern farming methods Pam had taught them into practice. "We'll make some new traditions here too."
Working her way along the field's edge Pam admired the lush, tropical vegetation. Behind the various flowering shrubs that had sprung up once more light had become available, tall trees loomed, some of them giants. Pam saw ebony, tambalacoque, and bois dentelle trees among many others. They could all get rich just on the lumber here, and Pam was going to make sensible logging, forest renewal, and habitat preservation another priority. There would be no more clear cutting. In her reading she had learned that too many places had foolishly used up all their timber within the first fifty years of colonization and had gone on to poverty, lacking that valuable resource. That would not happen here.
Pam had spent long hours finding every scrap of information she could on the island's flora and fauna, from both up-time and down-time sources. Still, there were many, many species that she couldn't identify. Eventually, they would all have to be documented and named. It would be a daunting task.
"I should have brought along some help for that," she grumbled to herself. Turning her eyes upward, she jokingly said "Dear Lord, please send me a boat-load of eager graduate students!" Maybe someday. Meanwhile she was on her own, the lone scientist. Pushing thoughts of the huge amount of work and enormous responsibilities that were to be hers, she tried to concentrate on enjoying the walk. She wanted to get a feel for the land here, figure out how to use it best, with the needs of the colony and the environment both in mind.
About halfway up the gently sloping expanse, Pam decided to cut across to the forest on the far side. There was a place there she wanted to visit. Walking through the grass and meadow flowers was fairly easy going. She surprised a flock of birds with bright orange heads and throats, on an olive green body. They were startlingly beautiful and Pam gasped in delight. A nice reminder of why I am here. It's not just the dodos. This entire island is a treasure trove of wildlife. The flock disappeared into the trees, a cloud of flaming color dissolving into the cool green.
Reaching the tree line on the other side, she began to cast about in the underbrush at the forest's edge, looking for one particular place. After a few minutes she found it. Pam was standing in the exact spot she had first met Bengta. She sat down in a patch of soft grass. A wave of emotion came over her, sadness and loss, but also pride. Pam began to speak softly to her lost ally.
"Oh, Bengta, you were too young to die saving the damn dodos. I know you came here for more than that, for a new life, but I still blame myself. I'm responsible. You are the real hero in all this; you are the one who sacrificed everything to free this colony, to make my dream possible. I will never forget you, and I promise you I will do everything I must to make this a success! You are my inspiration, please, lend me your strength, I need it now more than ever. God bless you, Bengta." Pam smiled at the lovely surroundings, thinking that maybe, just maybe she could feel the spirit of the heroic young woman around her, urging her on. Real or not, the feeling was a comfort. Sighing, and wiping a tear from her eye, Pam pulled herself to her feet with the aid of her grandmother's trusty oak walking stick.
She spent a few more minutes taking in the scene, marking its location carefully with a small cairn of stones to be sure. "I will make this place a park in your memory, Bengta." Suddenly, she laughed aloud, a bright sound amongst the hushed chirp and twitter of forest birds. It occurred to her that eventually there would be a historical marker here, the bulky, stone kind found in historical battlefields and around national monuments. Her name would be inscribed on a copper plate there, along with Bengta's, and the thought of it made her laugh even harder.
"A hillbilly ex-housewife like me, going down in history! I'm going to be part of a future tourist attraction! Holy moly, who'd-a-thunk it?" still chuckling at the absurdity of it all, she continued up the gently sloping tree line.
Reaching the top of the vast field, Pam looked back down its length. She was a good mile from the town now, and all the boats seemed like toys. She laughed at Second Chance Bird, the gaudiest of them all, looking for all the world like a curio picked up at a seaside gift shop. It was three o'clock according to her trusty watch, and the slowly moving air held a golden haze, making the world seem like an idyllic dream.
"Home. This is my home now." Pam decided it for certain, then and there.
She hadn't had much time to think about what would happen after the colonists were rescued, and things were put back in order. She knew damned well what the document the princess had written for her meant to her future. She had drafted it herself, even though she had been afraid of the weight of it back then. It was really an insurance policy, a card to play if she had no other choice. She didn't have to follow its letter it if she decided she didn't want to. Now it felt like her destiny. She was ready for the responsibility. She would call a town meeting in a day or two, and everybody would hear the princess' wishes. It wouldn't be much of surprise anyway, at least not to the Swedes.
Dore and Gerbald on the other hand . . . Well, they would probably do whatever they felt was best for "their Pam," and she felt a bit guilty for that crazy kind of loyalty, but they had followed her this far, and it had been their choice; now they would have to make another such choice. In any case, it was time to start the long process of making this colony a viable economic and self-sufficient entity without wrecking the island's ecology. She had signed up for this and she would see it through.
Her kin back in Grantville suddenly came to mind, her elderly folks and her son's new family. Damn, she wished she could be there for Crystal and the new baby, but there just wasn't any other way. She did have to go back to Grantville to personally deliver Princess Kristina's dodos as promised, but it wouldn't be until she was sure things were where she needed them to be here. Then, she would have to break it to her family that her return was just a visit, not forever. She intended this island to be her home, this was where her true calling was.
While she was lost in these thoughts she didn't see the men closing in on her until it was too late.
Each stepped out from behind a stand of brush, moving slowly and confidently. A quick glance around her showed her there were three of them, one just a few short yards to her left, the other to her right, and one behind, between herself and the forest. If she tried to run she wouldn't stand a chance. They were too close, and all of them looked plenty athletic, rugged woodsmen types for sure. They were all carrying hatchets and were dressed in sturdy leather and canvas. Lumberjacks! Now I know who clear cut the fields. To Pam's eye they looked French, but she couldn't say for sure. She was just certain they weren't Swedes. They were smiling in a way that made the tiny fuzz-like hairs on the back of her neck stand up and scream. She made herself smile back while firming up her grip on the walking stick. It's solid presence comforted her. She would use it as a weapon if she had to, she had done it before. But that time there was just one of them left, you nitwit! You have really gotten yourself into a mess this time, Pammie!
"Hello!" she said in English. There was no any point in trying any broken "Pepé Le Pew" French. She wouldn't be fooling anybody. "How are you today?" She kept her voice light and friendly.
The men grinned even wider, crocodile smiles to be sure. They didn't answer her greetings, and continued to walk slowly toward her. Pam knew where this was going, and quelled a rising tide of panic in her gut. The town a mile down the slope might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. Stupid, stupid! If I had Gerbald with me this would never have happened! Got to stay cool! Pam smiled, and slowly took a few steps to her right to put a large bush to her back, blocking easy access for the man coming at her from behind. The man to her right quickened his pace when she did this, and she smiled as he let his hatchet drop to the ground. They want me alive. The thought both comforted her and terrified her. A hostage, a Goddamned hostage! No!
They had silently decided the man who had dropped his hatchet would move first; he was closest. Still smiling menacingly, he made a lunge at her, both hands outstretched, aiming to grab her by the shoulders. Pam grinned back, and her would-be assailant received the iron-shod foot of her grandmother's walking stick in his ribs, just below his heart. She heard the crack of a rib breaking, and the fellow doubled over with a groan. Ow, that's gonna smart! crowed the reckless, wild part of her mind that had come to enjoy this sort of thing. She held on to her element of surprise, and ran at the man to her left. Arcing over into a fast down-swing, the sturdy oak walking stick cracked wickedly against his wrist, causing the hatchet to drop from nerveless fingers. The fellow cursed loudly, clutching at his injury with his free hand.
That's two! Part of her knew it was luck and surprise more than skill, but she was proud of herself anyway. Pam laughed like a maniac as she turned her fury to the third man. Before she had a chance to move another inch, the butt of his hatchet handle connected with the back of her head, and the world disappeared in a shower of blue sparks. Pam slumped to the ground, unconscious.
\*\*\*\*
To be continued
Sitting on Cloud Nine: Airship Lift and Altitude Control
Written by Iver P. Cooper
On the command, "Up Ship!", the Graf Zeppelin dropped enough water ballast to render the ship 900--1200 pounds light. It rose vertically into the air, and at about 150 feet, started its first engine, on idle. At 300 feet, all engines were idling, and it gradually increased power, and proceeded on its way. Normal cruising altitude was 650 feet. (Dick 48).
Airships are able to leave the ground because of aerostatic lift, the buoyancy imparted to them by the displacement of air by a lift gas that is less dense than air. They are capable of making a vertical ascent, at least if there's no wind.
In contrast, aircraft take off as a result of aerodynamic lift, a lift force created by the circulation of air around the wing. Unless equipped with pivoted thrust, like a Harrier jet, they need a runway on which to generate enough speed, and therefore enough lift force, to take off. Airships can benefit from aerodynamic lift, but only if specially shaped, or if propelled with nose up or down relative to the direction of travel.
In this article, we will examine how airships in the 1632 universe can generate lift and control their altitude. Warning: Very little of the information in this article is likely to be in "Grantville Literature"---unless the resident balloonist, Marlon Pridmore happens to have it in his head or in his personal library---and it will need to be rediscovered, possibly the hard way.
Milestones in Airship (and Balloon) Lift
Hot air. The first use of hot air for lift of a manned vehicle was on November 21, 1783, in a balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers. Unmanned hot air balloons were used in China many centuries earlier, and in Europe in 1709. The combination of hot air lift with an engine, resulting in a true airship, came much later, in the 1970s. (Escher).
Steam. In 1815, Cayley proposed use of steam instead of heated air. The first balloon using superheated steam is the HeiDAS UH, launched in 2006. (Festo, Stein).
Hydrogen. Hydrogen was discovered in 1766 (by Cavendish) and the first manned hydrogen balloon flight was made by Charles and Robert on December 1, 1783. The hydrogen was generated by the acid-iron process. For this and other methods of producing hydrogen, see Cooper, "Hydrogen: The Gas of Levity" (Grantville Gazette 38).
Coal gas. Coal gas, made by destructive distillation of coal, is a mixture (typically 45% hydrogen, 40% methane, 5% carbon monoxide---Roth 24), and was used by Charles Green on July 19, 1821. It was a popular lift gas until the introduction of helium.
Natural gas. Natural gas, obtained from gas wells, is also primarily methane (90%?), although the mix of hydrocarbon gases varies depending on the field. (It's perhaps worth noting here that most of the hydrocarbons, other than methane, are denser than air and therefore reduce lift.) Its first practical use for ballooning appears to have been by Carl Myers in 1886 Pennsylvania, who ran it through a heated pipe (to increase lift) and thence into the envelope. (Myers)
Helium. Helium was first used in the Navy C-7 on December 1, 1921.
Ammonia. While ammonia was proposed as a lift gas as early as 1883 ( Baden-Powell, 750), and an ammonia balloon was featured in an 1897 adventure story (George Wright, "Up the Matterhorn in a Boat") the first true-life manned flight of an ammonia-filled balloon was reportedly on January 7, 1991 (balloonlife.com).
Hybrid (combined aerostatic and aerodynamic lift) airships. The PA-97, a chimera of a Navy ZPG-2W blimp and four old H-34J helicopters, was test flown on April 26, 1986 but crashed in July. A one-sixth model of the Skycat, the "SkyKitten," was test flown on July 23, 2000. As the "cat" implies, this is a double-hulled craft.
Simple vs. Compound Aerostats
In a simple aerostat, such as the Goodyear blimps, the gas cell envelope is also the hull of the airship, and defines its aerodynamic properties. Unfortunately, if gas leaks, it's lost completely.
In a compound aerostat, such as the LZ130 Graf Zeppelin, an outer envelope encloses an array of internal gas cells (LZ130 had sixteen.). If the gas leaks from the gas cells of a compound aerostat, it's still retained by the outer envelope, and thus still provides lift. However, a compound aerostat is more expensive to construct, the leaked gas may reach dangerous concentrations, and maximum lift is limited because there will be air between the inflated gas cells.
Buoyancy
Buoyancy (aerostatic lift) is dependent on the density difference between the lift gas and the outside air; the gross lift is the total weight of air displaced minus the weight of the gas. If the lift gas is lighter than air at ambient temperature, then aerostatic lift can be generated without any expenditure of fuel. For a thermal airship (lift provided by hot air or other gas), fuel is needed to heat the air and thus provide lift. Fuel consumption can be reduced by insulating the envelope---so heat loss to the atmosphere is slower---but this adds weight and cost. (Konstantinov).
Dilute lift gases behave similarly to ideal gases, for which density in kg/m3 can be calculated as equaling
(molecular mass in amu/22.4)\*(273/temp oK)\*(pressure in atmospheres)(Equation 1).
The buoyancy provided by a lift gas is typically quoted in terms of mass lifted against normal gravity per 1000 cubic feet or per cubic meter of gas. The literature values vary, even for the same gas, and that's because the actual lift provided depends on the purity of the lift gas, the proportions and molecular weights of any contaminating gases, and the temperature and pressure at which the density of the lift gas was measured. The reference temperature is typically 0, 15, 20 or 25oC , and the reference pressure is 100 or 101.325 kilopascals. Table 1 presents some typical values:
http://www.flyingkettle.com/conpaper.htmhttp://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/lift.html
Lift varies with ambient conditions; it decreases when the ambient temperature is increases (making the outside air less dense, so less of a density difference) and of course the reverse is true. An increase in humidity decreases lifting power (Dick 65), and also increases weight through absorption of water by the envelope fabric (71), so flying in the tropics presents special difficulties.
Choice of Lift Gas
For the 1630s, the most practical lift gases are hydrogen and hot air. The concern with hydrogen is safety; hydrogen-air mixtures in the range of 4--75% are flammable (and 15--59%, explosive), at standard temperature. Such dangerous mixtures could be formed by the leakage of hydrogen when the gas cells are filled, or by inflow of air and outflow of hydrogen into the envelope during flight. Fortunately, hydrogen rises, so escaping hydrogen is likely to move away from the engine pods.
Helium provides about 93% of hydrogen's lift. But forget it; it's available only from certain yet-to-be-mapped, let alone drilled, gas fields in the Oklahoma-Texas area. In 1921, helium cost $55--60/1000 ft3 (versus 5--10 for hydrogen) to produce. (Tucker 271). Even in the Twenties, there wasn't enough helium available to keep two large airships (Shenandoah and Los Angeles) flying simultaneously (Vaeth 32).
Methane, ammonia and steam are also possibilities. Methane and ammonia both have narrower flammability limits than hydrogen; 5.3--14% for methane and 15--28% for ammonia. Unfortunately, they also provide less lift than hydrogen; 48% (methane) or 44% (ammonia). (Morris IV-5). Also, ammonia is both corrosive and, in high concentrations, toxic. Its principal advantage is easy liquefaction for buoyancy control.
Ammonia may be decomposed, by application of heat, to yield a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen that provides more lift (76% hydrogen). However, this mixture has a flammability limit almost as broad (7--73%) as that of hydrogen. (Id.)
As for hot air, unfortunately it only provides about 27% (for a typical temperature) the lift of hydrogen, and of course fuel must be burnt to keep it hot. Initially, the entire gas bag volume must be heated to the "lift" temperature; the fuel required is proportional to the volume. Once the gas bag contents are at the right temperature, keeping it there is a matter of supplying enough heat to compensate for heat losses. The rate at which heat is lost is, at first approximation, governed by Newton's Law of Cooling; it's proportional to the temperature difference, and to the surface area of the gas bag. The first factor implies that increasing the working temperature, to increase lift, requires a greater fuel consumption rate. And the second one implies that from a burner fuel efficiency standpoint, the more spherical the gas bag, the better. Of course, if the gas bag is also the aerodynamic envelope of the airship hull, this must be weighed against the effect of the shape on drag, and therefore on consumption of fuel for propulsion.
Saturated steam can provide perhaps 56% of the lift of hydrogen, more than twice as good as hot air. (flyingkettle.com) And superheated steam will provide even greater lift. But presumably the burner fuel consumption rate will also be higher. More importantly, steam, especially supersaturated steam, is highly corrosive. (Bormann).
Why Engineers Abhor a Vacuum. . . .
It's likely that some well-meaning inventor, or a con artist, will propose a "vacuum airship," i.e., one in which lift is provided by the absence of air rather than by a less-dense-than-air lift gas. In 1670, Francesco Lana-Terzi reasoned that since, according to Archimedes, a body will float in a fluid if the volume of fluid it displaces weighs more than the body itself, an airship could be buoyed up by copper spheres from which the air was evacuated, as a vacuum by definition is less dense than air.
A sphere containing a perfect vacuum would provide about 10% more lift than a hydrogen gas cell of the same volume. Unfortunately, the cell wall would need to be strong enough to withstand the pressure of the air---14.7 pounds per square inch (101,325 newtons/square meter) at sea level---and the weight of the vacuum cell wall would be far greater than the additional lift provided.
We can define a "figure of merit"; the ratio of the additional lift provided by replacing the lift gas with the vacuum, to the additional weight of the vacuum cell wall. That ratio has to be greater than 1:1 for the replacement to make sense.
The derivation is in Appendix 1, but the ratio is equal to
(2/3)\*compressive strength of wall material\*density of lift gas/(pressure difference\*density of wall\*safety factor).
With hydrogen as the lift gas, steel as the wall material, and a safety factor of two, (and ignoring the weight of the thin rubberized cloth envelope of the hydrogen airship since it will be a lot less than the steel), the ratio is about 0.008--0.009:1. In other words, you would need a wall material whose ratio of compressive strength to density is more than one hundred times better than that of steel for a vacuum airship to have a gross lift less wall weight equal to that of a hydrogen airship of the same dimensions!
Superheating and Supercooling
Depending on the nature of the airship skin, heat transfer through it may be slow or fast. Hence, the gas inside the airship may be hotter ("superheat") or colder ("supercool") than the outside air. Airships have reported as much as 66oF superheat and 9oF supercold. (Robinson 214). To measure superheating/cooling, the Graf Zeppelin had both an air thermometer in the control car and a remote electrical thermometer in the interior of a gas cell. (Dick 196).
The density of hydrogen and helium decrease from 0.075 and 0.151 at 50oC to 0.036 and 0.072 at 400oC. (Konstantinov/Thermal). Thus, superheat increases and supercool decreases lift; but of course these diminish with time as heat transfer progresses. Nonetheless, an airship may time its launch to take advantage of superheat.
Supercooling can be a significant problem; the L59 experienced 9oF of supercooling at night over the Egyptian desert, and its captain estimated that the ship dropped 4% (6600 pounds) of its lift in ballast each night to compensate for evening heaviness (i.e., to maintain cruising altitude). On the other hand, for helium airships trying to land, nighttime supercooling was a blessing as it permitted a descent without venting.
Altitude Effects
The airship can only climb to the altitude at which the buoyant force equals the total weight of the airship. To ascend, it must have excess buoyancy, and it will stop ascending when the reduced atmospheric pressure brings the buoyant and gravitational forces into equilibrium. Hence, buoyancy control (see below) is critical.
As the airship ascends, the outside air pressure and temperature decline, and the air density also declines. Even if the lift gas density remained constant, this would reduce the density difference between the two, and thus reduce buoyancy. However, the lift gas density will also decline.
First, if the lift gas is hotter than the atmosphere, heat will be transferred across the skin, at a rate proportional to the temperature difference, unless and until the difference disappears. This equilibration process will be slower if the envelope is of an insulating type, and faster if it isn't, but if the airship remains aloft, its lift gas temperature will converge on the ambient air temperature.
Secondly, the gas cells of the airship will be at a pressure that is either equal to that of the ambient air, or differs from it by no more than a fixed amount (overpressure). This means that as the airship ascends, the lift gas pressure will ultimately decline, too.
Airship gas cell management is inspired by ballooning practice. In a zero-pressure balloon, the pressure inside the balloon always equals the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. (With hot air balloons, this is accomplished with a simple vent hole, and with helium balloons, with ducts.) Hence, if the balloon rises, its volume expands. (The balloon when launched is only partly inflated.) The disadvantage of the zero-pressure design is that outside temperature and humidity changes result in frequent release of lift gas and dropping of ballast and therefore reduce the time aloft.
In a super-pressure balloon, the envelope is completely sealed, and volume is kept constant by maintaining a constant pressure. If so, when the balloon ascends, its internal pressure will be higher than that of the ambient air; the difference is called overpressure. The disadvantage of the super-pressure design is that overpressure places stress on the balloon skin. The tensile strength of the skin will determine the maximum acceptable overpressure; automatic valves release lift gas when needed so this value is not exceeded.
In nonrigid and semi-rigid airships, the shape of the envelope is determined by the lift gas pressure, and overpressure is necessary for the airship to have a constant and aerodynamically sound shape.
In hot air ballooning, overpressure is maintained by pumping air into the envelope with an on-board fan. On hydrogen and helium nonrigid and semi-rigid airships, prior to takeoff, air is pumped into an air bag (ballonet) that lies inside the lift gas envelope, thereby compressing the lift gas. As the airship ascends, air is expelled from the ballonet, allowing the lift gas to expand without changing the total volume of the gas bag and its internal air bag. A typical overpressure for a modern nonrigid or semi-rigid airship would be 0.0045--0.0065 bar; a car tire has an overpressure of about 2 bar. (globalsecurity.org).
The altitude at which the air ballonets are empty, and thus the lift gas volume is at its maximum (for the maximum allowed overpressure), as a result of the reduction in atmospheric pressure with height, is sometimes called the "pressure altitude."
If the airship descends, the air bags must be re-inflated, and this may be done with engine-driven blowers or, better, by scooping the air from the slipstream of the propeller.
In general, it was found that it was better to have two ballonets, rather than one, so that by differential inflation the trim of the airship could be adjusted. This had the disadvantage of requiring more material to contain the same amount of air. However, some material could be saved by use of an integral ballonet; one side of this ballonet was a part of the outer envelope. (Maintenance of integral ballonets is more complicated.)
It should be evident that the ballonet will have a maximum volume that is determined by the uninflated surface area , and the stretchiness and ultimate tensile strength of the material from which it's formed. This volume, in turn, will determine the pressure altitude. In the case of the Navy's B-class airships, it was decided that the ballonet volume should be 25% of the envelope volume, allowing compensation for the change of pressure equivalent to a 7500 foot change in altitude. (Hunsaker 1354). That's still a fairly common allotment for a nonrigid (26% for the Skyship 600), but I have found both higher and lower values. For example, a WW I French Scout was 37% (2400/6500 m3) (Hunsaker 780), and the Chalaise Meudon-5 was 41% (131,455/320,555 ft3). (CM5). The lowest I have found was 7% for the Wasp RPB drone. I would say that most nonrigids are in the 20--30% range.
Ballonet "slosh"---oscillation of the ballonets as a result of the longitudinal motion of the airship---has been reported, and it apparently had an effect on the handling of the K-class blimps. (Zitarosa).
In a rigid airship, since the outer envelope has a supporting structure, the lift gas could in theory be held in zero pressure gas cells; the envelope would maintain its shape. However one would still have the need to vent gas if the pressure altitude is exceeded, i.e., the gas cells are fully inflated. On the Graf Zeppelin, spring-loaded automatic valves opened if the overpressure exceeded 7-15 mm water---7 mm is 0.000686 bar or 1.43 psf. (Dick 189).
If the gas cells are of the zero pressure type, then to reach a height of 5,000 feet (where the air density is 86% that at the earth's surface), without venting, they would have to be inflated only to 86% capacity at takeoff. That means, of course, that you can only count 86% of the maximum gas volume in calculating the initial lift if you want that altitude capability (without wasting gas). On the other hand, if you were content with 1,000 feet, the air density is 97% that of sea level, so you can start at 97% inflation.
I should note that there are two basic methods of filling a gas cell or envelope: closed fill-up and displacement fill-up. In closed fill-up, the cell is emptied, then the gas is introduced. In displacement fill-up, the cell is initially inflated with air (or some other non-lift gas) and then the air is pushed out by the lift gas. Since the lift gas is (by definition) lighter than air, it will diffuse to the top of the cell and then push the air down and out. For hydrogen, closed fill-up is the norm. Displacement fill-up would result in dangerous hydrogen-air mixtures during the filling process.
Even if the goal is 86% average inflation, that doesn't mean that every gas cell is inflated to 86%. The gas cells are typically of different sizes, depending on their location within the hull, and you might achieve 86% by inflating say seventeen of twenty gas cells to 100% and leaving the other three empty.
The Graf Zeppelin usually took off 660--1320 pounds light; its pressure altitude increased roughly 33 feet for each 220 pounds of lightness. Its preferred cruising altitude was 575--820 feet. (Dick 67--8). At the latter altitude, air density averaged 97.65% sea level.
Because fuel is burned during flight, the airship gets progressively lighter, and her pressure altitude increases. At cruising speed, the Graf Zeppelin's pressure altitude increased at a rate of 72 feet/hour if lift gas wasn't being vented.
Aerostatic Gross Lift Calculations
The gross lift provided by the gas cells is the lifting power of the gas (in pounds per thousand cubic feet) multiplied by the actual gas volume (in thousands of cubic feet). (The useful lift is the gross lift less the deadweight, but the estimation of deadweight is outside the scope of this article.)
It's quite easy to overestimate the gross lift provided by an airship; you must remember to consider (1) the effect of shape on hull volume, (2) the relationship between gas capacity and hull volume, (3) deliberate under-inflation to account for altitude effects, and (4) gas purity and temperature.
Hull volume is dependent, not only on the length and diameter of the airship, but also its precise shape. Table 2 shows how shape affects hull volume for two hypothetical airships, the Royal Anne of canon and a smaller, less elongated airship.
These shapes all have a circular cross-section; the volume will be lower for a given length and maximum diameter if the cross-section (viewed from front) is elliptical. The R100 was "flattened" to expose less surface to side winds during landing and takeoff. (Post).
For a rigid airship, gas capacity is less than hull volume (air displacement). If the airship uses internal gas cells inside an outer envelope, as on the zeppelins, clearly the total volume of the gas cells is going to be less than the nominal envelope volume. If the airship were a cylinder with a length equal to four diameters, and was filled with four spherical gas cells with the same radius r, the volume of the airship hull would be 8\*pi\*r3, whereas the total volume of the gas cells would be 16/3 pir3, so the maximum gas volume of the compound aerostat would be only two-thirds that of the simple aerostat of the same outer dimensions. In fact, that's why the zeppelins have gas cells of different sizes; they can be packed more tightly.
Not only is it difficult to pack the gas cells together so that there's no interstitial space, you wouldn't want to do it even if you could; you need internal passageways in order for the crew to properly maintain the gas cells, the envelope, and the supporting structures. And if any of the crew, passenger, or machinery compartments are recessed into the hull to reduce drag, they will also reduce the volume available to hold lift gas. Table 3 compares maximum gas cell volume to hull volume for several rigid airships:
(Robinson App. E).
Moreover, the gas cells aren't necessarily full. To avoid venting gas on ascent to cruising altitude, rigid airships (which are complex aerostats) may takeoff with their gas cells only partially inflated, and nonrigid airships (which are simple aerostats) leave the ground with the internal air ballonets inflated. The catch, of course, is that this means that you can't calculate the airship's gross lift on the basis of the total volume of the envelope; you must multiply by the fullness of the gas cells for a rigid, or subtract off the volume of air that's in the ballonets on takeoff for a nonrigid.
Helium rigid airships generally had "flabby" gas cells, no doubt as a conservation measure. On one occasion, the USS Shenandoah took off 91% full (Robinson 105) and another just 85% (86); the latter appears to have been the norm (Hedin 163, Toland 94). The USS Los Angeles was variously recorded as starting flights 80% full (155) and 86% full (161).
For hydrogen rigid airships, I get conflicting answers. Robinson (213) says that "hydrogen ships usually took off 100% full . . ." and Dick (188) says that "the gas cells were always 100 percent full, or nearly so, at takeoff . . ." If so, they would vent until they reached cruising altitude. However, Whale asserts that in high altitude air raids on England, the German rigid airships "commenced the flight with gasbags only about 60 per cent full" so the bags could expand without venting, and on Graf Zeppelin flight 366, the gas cells averaged 80.7% inflated at takeoff (Dick 72).
With regard to purity, the gas is at its maximum purity just after its initial manufacture and purification. After that, hydrogen will leak, and air will filter in, progressively reducing lift. The gas was typically analyzed daily for purity as long as it was over 90% pure, otherwise more frequently. Once it fell below 85%, it was necessary to deflate and refill. (Tucker 315; Dick 193).
Keeping Trim
Imagine a child sitting on a seesaw. A force (weight) is applied to the seat. Since the point of action is at some distance from the fulcrum, the seesaw pivots, child going down, other end going up. In physics term, we created a pitching moment, the product of the force and its action point's distance from the fulcrum ("the moment arm").
An airship is subject to several different forces, all acting along different lines. Its weight acts downward through the center of gravity (CoG); buoyant force at upward through center of buoyancy (CoB); drag backward through the center of pressure; hull aerodynamic lift, if any, perpendicular to the airflow and through the hull's aerodynamic center; thrust forward along the propeller axis. And of course the craft's also subject to unsteady forces, like the wind.
Because of the weight of the engines, etc. in the cars slung below the envelope, the CoG is usually below the CoB; 10 feet on the NS nonrigid. (Bairstow 511). The CoB is also not at the geometric center of the hull; on Navy C-class blimps it was 46.37% of length from the nose. (Burgess 72). The hull's aerodynamic center (per thin airfoil theory) is at the 25% mark.
Just to complicate matters further, the forces may be distributed in a way that creates additional moments. For example, if the airship is inclined upward relative to its flightpath (positive angle of attack), there will be an upward aerodynamic force on the forebody and a downward one on the aftbody. Even if these added up to zero, they would still try to rotate the ship to a steeper angle. Gas cells and weights are also unequally distributed, and there's usually more than one propeller.
All forces acting ahead or behind the fulcrum (for airship analysis, the CoB or CoG is used) create pitching moments. While, in steady flight, lift equals weight, and thrust equals drag, if unaligned these create unbalanced pairs of moments ("couples") and cause rotation. The airship maintains its present pitch (trim)---the angle of its longitudinal axis with the horizon---only if the moments add up to zero.
If that's not true (inadvertently or deliberately), then the net pitching moment causes the inclination to change. This in turn change one or more of the component moments. If the effect of the change is to cause a net restoring moment, putting the inclination back as it was, the ship is longitudinally stable. And if it's to upset the inclination further . . . you've lost control! Obviously, you want to design the airship so that there will be restoring moment, assuring longitudinal stability. In analyzing stability, airship designers have to consider all the possibilities: nose up, down or level; airship statically heavy, light, or (this almost never is the case for long) in equilibrium.
Normal trim is considered to be that at which the center of buoyancy is directly over the center of gravity. The airship is "in trim" if this occurs with the airship horizontal. If the propellers are mounted in pods set lower than the CoB they force the nose up, so a counterbalancing aerodynamic force is needed.
Since aerodynamic forces are proportional to the square of the speed, and static forces (gravity and buoyancy) are independent of it, pitch instability occurs if the airship exceeds a critical speed. The critical speed is increased if the airship is equipped with a horizontal tail fin to serve as a stabilizer; if the ship is inclined, the aerodynamic lift force on the fin rotates the ship in the opposite direction to the one on the hull; it creates a restoring moment. Increasing fin area increases pitch stability, but also increases drag and weight. The horizontal fin area on Navy K-class blimps was 992 ft2, and generally speaking this area should be about 35% of the volume divided by the distance from the fin to the CoG (Boeing-Vertol).
La France(1884) was the first airship to use an elevator (D'Orcy 59). Elevators (essentially, tail surfaces that pivot up and down) create additional aerodynamic forces and thus pitching moments; in level flight they are angled to neutralize the other pitching moments. Since they work aerodynamically, elevators are effective only if the airship is in motion. On Navy blimps, the elevator area was about one-quarter of the horizontal fin area. (Burgess, DM386). Please note that up-elevator doesn't raise the nose, it drops the tail---worth remembering if you're in a 600-foot long airship and you're only 300 feet above the ground! (TM50).
Another curious point is that if the airship is below what's called the "reversing speed," up-elevator doesn't encourage ascent. Up-elevator still drops the tail, but only slightly because the moment created by the elevator is small compared to the restoring moment from the weight of the airship, and the inclination of the hull is small. As a result, the upward force on the nose is less than the downward force on the elevators and the airship is pushed downward despite the action of the propellers. The problem is greatest when the airship is trimmed nose heavy. (TM 51).
There's such a thing as having too much stability. If the restoring moments are too strong, the airship becomes difficult to maneuver; it doesn't want you to change pitch. Worse, they may cause you to keep overshooting the desired orientation. If you drop the CoG to increase stability (weight then fights a change in pitch), you increase the "reversing speed."
The pitch of an airship may be deliberately changed by shifting its center of gravity (shifting ballast, cargo, crew or passengers), shifting its center of buoyancy (pumping air between its forward and aft ballonets or transferring lift gas between its forward and aft gas cells), or creating an aerodynamic pitching moment with its elevators. The Zeppelin LZ1 (1900) used a moveable 300 pound lead weight, but unfortunately this jammed (Botting 37). Elevators (used on the LZ2) were more practical.
The Problem of Altitude Control
For a balloon to ascend, there must be positive net buoyancy, and to descend, negative. However, if an airship is in neutral buoyancy (buoyant force=gravitational force) it may ascend or descend by pitching itself relative to the ground, so the thrust from its propellers, exerted parallel to the axis of the airship, has a vertical component. It can ascend or descend in heavy or light condition, too, but the glide angle (between flightpath and ground) won't equal the pitch and the angle of attack won't be zero.
As long as its lift gas has not reached its maximum permissible volume, an airship may ascend without venting lift gas. However, if it climbs above its pressure altitude, and therefore vents lift gas, it will have to drop ballast, or otherwise adjust its net buoyancy, to compensate.
On the German commercial zeppelins, pitches greater than five degrees were avoided; "at eight degrees bottles and glasses fall over." (Dick 208). Hence, if you need to make a steeper ascent, say, to avoid a mountain that just loomed out of the fog, you will need to suddenly and substantially increase net buoyancy, say, by dropping ballast. Or for a fast descent, perhaps to land in a mountain valley, vent gas.
In the course of cruising, the airship may experience changes in buoyancy and weight, and need to neutralize the resulting change in net buoyancy in order to maintain altitude. We have already mentioned that weather conditions may cause the envelope to be superheated (making the ship light) or supercooled (making it heavy). Or the envelope may be made heavier by rain or snow. Or you might encounter a strong updraft or downdraft.
Fuel acts like ballast; as it's consumed, the airship gets lighter. On the other hand, gas gradually leaks out of the envelope, reducing lift. Chances are that these two opposed effects will not be in balance, which means that buoyancy will have to be adjusted if you want to maintain your altitude. When the German-built USS Los Angeles was delivered to the United States, 850,000 cf (one-third gas capacity) had to be vented to compensate for the 29 tons fuel consumed. (Dick Ch. 8 n.5).
The effect of fuel consumption may be muted by the use of gaseous fuel. Fuel is provided from a ballonet that instead of being filled with air, contains "blau gas," an artificial gaseous mixture of hydrocarbons (mostly propane) whose density is about the same as that of air. That means that as long as the airship is burning it as fuel, it can just replace the blau gas with ordinary air without a change in buoyancy. (The ballonet shrinks and the volume it formerly occupied is taken up by fresh air.) This technique was used on the Graf Zeppelin (De Syon 130); of its 3.3 mcf of lift gas, 0.75 was blau gas. (Dick 32). The US Navy K-1 blimp had a 51,700 cubic foot propane ballonet for the same purpose.
Still, there are going to be occasions in which the airship needs to adjust its net buoyancy.
Table 4 lists both standard and speculative methods of buoyancy control:
I analyze these options in more detail below.
Buoyancy Control: Manipulating the Supply of Lift Gas
All non-thermal airships are equipped to vent lift gas when the airship is too light or gas pressure has reached a dangerous level. Since the lift gas isn't free, venting increases operating costs. Venting helium is even more painful than venting hydrogen, because helium is so rare and expensive. At one time, the Hindenburg was intended to use a combination of hydrogen and helium cells; the idea was that the cheaper hydrogen ("anti-ballast") would be vented when lift had to be reduced. (Dick 93).
An alternative to venting hydrogen is to add it to the fuel feed. That doesn't solve the problem of permanent loss of lift capability but it at least reduces fuel consumption. However, burning hydrogen is tricky because hydrogen is so volatile. The concept of using hydrogen for both lift and propulsion dates back at least to 1872, when Lenoir tested it in a dirigible scale model (Syon 10). The Germans experimented with it further, but weren't able to perfect it. (Stocky). However, burning hydrogen did have the advantage that it produced plenty of water, recoverable for ballasting use, in the exhaust. (Dick 102).
Regardless of whether the lift gas is deliberately vented, it will leak out over the course of the flight.
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It may occur to the reader that the airship might manufacture new hydrogen at an impromptu stopover or even in the air. Unfortunately, this isn't practical. As I showed in "Hydrogen: The Gas of Levity" (GG38), Table 2, for most field production methods, the weight of the reagents exceeds the weight that would be lifted by the hydrogen they produce. And that's without even counting the weight of the apparatus, or fuel for generation of heat.
The only exceptions are the hydrolith (calcium hydride) and activated aluminum-water processes. But these use very expensive reactants, and the reactions are very vigorous (translation: you'd have to be crazy to try to carry them out on an airship).
It would be nice if you could electrolyze the water ballast on board to obtain hydrogen and oxygen; you'd simultaneously eliminate the weight of the water and gain the buoyant lift of the hydrogen (the oxygen would be discarded). But the weight cost of the electrolytic apparatus and of the batteries or fuel for generating the necessary power would outweigh the advantage of on-board production.
In 1925, the airship tender Patoka carried a portable hydrogen generator for emergency use. (Robinson 223 n. 54).
Buoyancy Control: Initial Ballast
To increase net buoyancy by dropping ballast, you must have ballast to drop. Buoyancy devoted to carrying ballast isn't used to carry payload.
In order to cross mountains in Arizona, the USS Macon had to ascend to 6,000 feet. However, its pressure height (the height at which its gas cells were fully expanded) was less than 3,000 feet. Hence it had to both vent helium, and dump 9,000 pounds of ballast and 7,000 pounds of fuel to compensate for the consequent loss of buoyancy.
Ballast may be solid (sand, lead shot, steel pellets) or liquid (water). Water has the advantage that it can be pumped from one end of the airship to the other to adjust trim, used if need be for washing, drinking, or cooling the engines, and replenished from the ocean or from a rainstorm. The ballast could be carried "in rubberized bags (Graf Zeppelin) or metal tanks (Hindenburg). " (Dick 189). Ballast is precious; on the Graf Zeppelin's round-the-world flight, wastewater from the toilets was recycled as ballast (Botting 16).
If the airship is flying under conditions under which water might freeze, denatured alcohol or glycerin may be added. (Although the L-55's ballast froze anyway when the zeppelin was forced by enemy fire to climb to 23,500 feet.) The Americans tried using calcium chloride as a cheap antifreeze on the Los Angelesand it corroded many of the keel girders. (Robinson 141).
Ballast has to be dropped quickly in an emergency. The moored USS Shenandoah (gas cell volume 2,115,174 cubic feet; total weight 129,000 pounds) was torn from its mast by a 78 mph gust. Its nose cap was wrenched off, and two of the twenty gas cells deflated. The crew dumped 4200 pounds of water ballast.
The Graf Zeppelin could drop 660 pounds of emergency ballast with a single pull (it had eight such bags), and each of the eight trim ballast bags could discharge 2.2 pounds/second. (Dick 67-8). On the Los Angeles, one 2,240 pound ballast bag could dump 400 pounds in ten seconds. (Robinson 208).
The more ballast the airship takes on board before takeoff, the greater its ability to drop ballast and perform an ascent without resort to dynamic lift, but the less its ability to carry payload.
So, how much is enough? That depends on how often and by how much the airship is expected to change altitude, which can vary from airship to airship and even flight to flight. A military airship that is dependent on high altitude flying to evade defenses will require more than a civilian airship that is going to be hugging the ground. A slow or large airship will need more, proportionately, than a fast or small one, as it will have less potential to benefit from dynamic lift. An airship with the ability to recover ballast from engine exhaust or to collect water from the environment can takeoff with less ballast than one lacking these capabilities. An airship flying under troubled meteorological conditions will want more ballast than one expecting clear sailing, and a long route or one with several stopovers until resupply warrants more than a short, nonstop one.
At a minimum, there should be enough ballast to compensate for the loss of lift in climbing to pressure altitude (for hydrogen, that would imply a ratio of ballast weight to ballonet volume of a nonrigid, or unused gas cell volume of a rigid, of 1.1). I would recommend that for a rigid airship, there be at least enough ballast, above and beyond that needed for this purpose, to compensate for rupture of a gas cell.
Based on historical data (Hunsaker 1355, Dick 67, 71, 112, Robinson 142, 156, 161), I think a reasonable ballast allotment is on the order of 5--10% of the total weight of the airship. Bear in mind that in an emergency, fuel, ammunition, wash water, provisions and even furniture can be dropped overboard.
Buoyancy Control: Re-Ballasting
You can acquire more ballast en route. This has been done in (at least) five different ways.
1. Collecting rainwater; there were rain gutters on the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg. That's obviously at the mercy of the elements (some flights produced no rain water, Dick 100), and the collectors create drag. On one flight, the Hindenburg collected eight tons rainwater (Dick 117), and on a second, ten tons (125), the latter saving 305,000 cf hydrogen that would otherwise have been vented.
You may also find that you acquire more weight than intended; the Shenandoah passed through heavy rainfall and had to drop ballast to compensate for the water absorbed by the outer cover of its envelope. (Robinson 89). In 1935, the Graf Zeppelin passed through a tropical rainstorm and the rain added seven tons to its weight. (Dick 56). The trick was to pick a light rain squall and just "brush it." (100).
2. Collecting surface water. During WW I, airships landed on the ocean or a lake, dropped a sea anchor, and collected water. (Lehmann). While the Hindenburg was in development, the Germans tested a water pickup system (pump and hose?) over LakeConstance.
When the US Navy's N-class airship needed ballast, it halted in mid-air (this was done by flying directly into the wind and balancing the wind force with the engines) and lowered a weighted bag on a winch cable through a trap door on the bottom of the blimp car. The bag could pick up 500 pounds of seawater at a time. (Rodrigues).
The ballast bag used on a WW II Navy blimp was twelve feet long, had "numerous one way openings along its sides," and could hold 1,800 pounds seawater. It could be used not only to collect ballast but as an anchor. (Stimson).
3. Absorbing moisture from the air. In a test setup, the Zeppelin company found that 8.8 pounds of silica gel, exposed to 141 cubic feet per second airflow, relative humidity 67%, would extract 3.43 gallons water/hour. In practice, the silica gel would need to be transported to a heat source (engine exhaust) to vaporize the absorbed moisture, and this would be condensed and pumped to the ballast tanks while the dried gel was placed back in position. The system weight was expected to total almost 7000 pounds, and to require 5--10 hp for operation, and to produce 330 pounds water/hour. (Dick 99) The idea faded away, in part because there were superior alternatives.
4. Condensing water from the engine exhaust. In theory, the complete combustion of 100 pounds gasoline produces 145 pounds water. (Robinson 82). Three of the five 300 hp engines on the (helium-filled) Shenandoah were equipped with condensers; these recovered 100 to 112 pounds of water ballast from every 100 pounds of gasoline consumed. However, the condensers add weight to the airship, which reduces useful lift. Each condenser weighed 450 pounds (Robinson 82)---1.5 pounds/hp, but bear in mind that there would be additional weight for piping from engine to condenser and condenser to ballast bags. However, the condensers generated back-pressure and consequently water recovery was switched off when the engines were brought up to full power.
The water recovery apparatus on the Akron reportedly weighed 12,528 pounds (2.8 pounds/hp). (Burgess/DM120). The LZ130 (Graf Zeppelin II) system recovered "sufficient water to equal the weight of fuel consumed" and it weighed 11,466 pounds (2.4 pounds/hp). (Dick 156--7).
It may seem as though the later systems were a step backward, but required weight per horsepower increased with engine power. When the Shenandoah-type condensers were placed on the Los Angelesengines (400 instead of 150 hp), they proved troublesome; more powerful engines generated more heat, which warped the condenser heads. (Robinson 141).
The apparatus of the Los Angelesreduced speed 5--10% (Robinson 155). The Akron had "flat panel" condensers intended to reduce drag, but I don't have particulars. The LZ130 didn't suffer a speed penalty at all.
Buoyancy Control: Drag Rope (Recoverable Ballast)
A trick that may be useful for small airships is the guide or drag rope (Roth 11), first used on free balloons. For example, Charles Green's Royal Vauxhall balloon (1836) carried a 300 meter drag rope. (Goebel). The airship pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont first used a drag rope on a free balloon (17) and later on an airship (No. 7, 45,000 cubic feet) at sea (81).
The drag rope is a long, heavy rope that is paid out when the airship is near the ground, and serves to stabilize the altitude. If the ship descends, say because a cloud passes overhead, more of the drag rope lies on the ground, and thus the weight of the ship is reduced just as if ballast had been thrown overboard---except that the drag rope is recoverable. Or if the ship ascends, because a passenger jumped off, some of the drag rope is lifted into the air and then must be supported by the buoyancy of the ship. An obvious danger with the use of a drag rope is that it can get snagged in a tree.
Buoyancy Control: Temperature Manipulation
Thermal (hot air) airships. These may increase or decrease lift simply by adjusting the burner. However, the greater the size of the airship, the longer it will take for the temperature of the lift gas to change. Moreover, the higher the burner setting, the faster the burner fuel will be consumed, and once that's gone, the thermal airship has the same aerostatic lift as Newton's apple. Also note that for a thermal airship to adjust altitude in this manner, the gas cell material must be sufficiently elastic to tolerate the full range of internal volumes.
Superthermal Airships. A lift gas that is lighter than air even at room temperature may be artificially superheated to decrease its density and gain altitude, and then allowed to cool to lose altitude. (See discussion of superheating, above.) In Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon (1869), the protagonist used both heated and cold hydrogen bags. Of course, heated hydrogen burns (or explodes) at higher state of purity than room temperature hydrogen (the upper flammability limit is about 75% purity at 80oF and 85% at 800oF).
Wikipedia/Buoyancy Compensator reports that the hydrogen cells on the Graf Zeppelinwere preheated before takeoff by blowing heated air on them. This isn't a very efficient heating method (low surface-volume ratio) but presumably running hot air ducts through the hydrogen cells would have added too much weight to the airship.
If you use artificial superheat, you have to worry about how quickly superheat would be lost. This is obviously dependent on both the heat transfer characteristics of the envelope and the size of the airship; large airships have a lower surface area: volume ratio and thus will lose heat to the outside more slowly.
When the Germans thought that the USA might let them buy some helium, they tested the practicality of artificially superheating helium (so they could use less helium to get the same amount of lift). Filling a gas cell with hot air, they found that supplying 100 kilowatts with an electrical heater gave it a superheat of 32oF after eighty minutes, and that with the heater off, it lost 0.9oF superheat in five minutes. (Dick 157). Of course, that didn't really tell them how much energy it would take to superheat helium to the same extent.
There are obvious risks associated with artificially superheating hydrogen, however, note that the autoignition temperature of hydrogen is 1085oF---so the heater, by itself, isn't likely to start a fire. But hydrogen's flammability range increases as the temperature increases (CotD Fig. 1--6). So any artificial superheating of hydrogen would have to be accompanied by very stringent monitoring of hydrogen concentration inside the airship.
Semi-Thermal Airships. It's possible to build an airship with separate hot air (for altitude control) and non-heated hydrogen or helium (for greater lift) cells. Such an airship wouldn't need to drop ballast or vent hydrogen unless it needed to make a greater altitude adjustment than a change in hot air temperature permitted. These bags could be completely separate, or you could have concentric envelopes with one gas (probably the heated one) in the inner envelope and the other in the outer one.
The hydrogen-hot air hybrid balloon was invented by Jean-Francoise Roziere; the first such balloon crashed (without catching fire) on June 15, 1785. (Wikipedia/Roziere balloon).
If this design were adapted to an airship, you would of course have to make sure that the hydrogen didn't mix with the combustion or exhaust gases of the engine (or the hot surfaces, etc. of the burner). You would want to position the hydrogen bag above the hot air bag (hydrogen is light, so it rises) and as far away as possible from it and the engines.
This concern is obviated if you employ a hybrid of hot air and helium for lift. While I don't believe that this has yet been done to lift an airship, hot air-helium hybrid balloons have circumnavigated the world and set endurance records (Piccard and Jones, 477 hours, 47 minutes in the Breitling Orbiter 3, March, 1999). Unfortunately, it will be a long time before we have useable quantities of helium in the 1632 universe.
It has also been suggested that instead of using a separate burner to heat the helium, one could use aircraft engine exhaust heat. Rapert suggests that even a simple setup provides more than a 30% increase in gross lift.
Buoyancy Control: Dynamic Lift
As a substitute for venting gas, dropping ballast, or collecting new ballast, the airship may deliberately fly inclined; nose up relative to the flightpath to create positive dynamic lift if it's "statically" heavy, or nose down to create negative dynamic lift if it's statically light. The USS Shenandoah (2.1 mcf helium) , with a useful lift of 24.4 tons, had maximum dynamic lift, 6000 pounds, at 12o up, and is known to have used negative dynamic lift (12o down when 3500--4000 pounds light).(Robinson 92ff). On Flight No. 366, the Graf Zeppelin didn't have to use any of its ballast (Dick 72), presumably because of artful use of negative dynamic lift and the burning of blau gas as fuel.
Lift is dependent on the angle of attack. The angle of attack is the angle with which the chord (leading edge to trailing edge) of an airfoil (hull, fin, wing) meets the airflow (in still air, this is the flightpath). If the airship initially in horizontal motion is suddenly pitched upward or downward, the apparent wind will at first still be horizontal and the angle of attack will be the angle of pitch. But the forces on the aircraft will change in direction and magnitude, causing it to move in more or less the same direction that the nose is pointed, thus reducing the angle of attack.
Still, if the ship is statically light or heavy, the angle will not become zero. An airship with fixed axis propulsion may move horizontally with nose depressed if it's statically light, or with nose elevated if statically heavy; the vertical components of the propulsive, gravitational and buoyant forces canceling out.
For a symmetric airfoil, lift should be zero at a zero angle of attack. Aerodynamic theory teaches that with simplifying assumptions (incompressible, inviscid flow; thin airfoil, small angle), the lift should be proportional to the angle of attack. Aircraft wind tunnel and flight data show that for a symmetric airfoil, the lift curve climbs linearly up to about 10--15o. Friction of air with the surface of the airfoil ("viscous flow") forms a "boundary layer". Increasing the angle of attack much above the linear range results in the separation of the boundary layer from the hull and thus a potentially catastrophic loss of lift: a stall.
Dynamic lift is proportional to the square of the air speed (Dick 70, Burgess 106) . Since it's generated by horizontal movement, it's not useful at take off or landing (Burgess 288). Consequently, airships had to "weight off"---come to neutral buoyancy---before landing. And of course dynamic lift doesn't help you make a purely vertical ascent or descent.
Reliance on dynamic lift has a quite literal downside; if an engine fails (causing loss of speed), you must rapidly drop ballast to avoid a crash. This happened to the L59 when its engines overheated over the Nile valley. (Dick 74). The Zeppelin LZ4 (1908) had the peculiarity that its engines had to be stopped.
While conventional airships don't have wings, they do have fins. A fin may generate lift even when the hull is at a zero angle of attack if (1) it has a cambered profile, or (2) it is set at an angle (incidence) to the long axis of the airship. From the very scanty data I have (wind tunnel data and some photographs/drawings) my impression is that symmetric, zero-incidence fins were the norm.
Wind tunnel data on airship models suggests that, the fins contribute a substantial part of the lift (with increasing angle of attack, 70--55% for the Akron, 71--60% for the SSZ, 33--42% for the R23)(Klemin; Freeman). Since the lift area of an airship hull is perhaps 20--50 times that of the fins, that implies that the fins are much more efficient lifting surfaces per unit area.
I have used "thin airfoil"/"slender body" theory (an aircraft preliminary design tool) to model the aerodynamics of the fins and hull of an airship---in essence, they are treated as thin, stubby wings. The catch is that airship hulls are typically 9-40% thick (Royal Anne is 10.7% thick), whereas a real wing with 10% thickness (relative to chord) is considered "thick" and 20% is "very thick." Still, the results were . . . interesting.
For a 1/40th scale model of the USS Akron, I calculated that the fins contributed only 40% of the total dynamic lift. The hull volumetric area-referenced lift coefficients for "hull only" were 364--144% those found in the wind tunnel, and for the fins (estimating, from a drawing, an aspect ratio of 1.26), 77--61%. For hull plus fins, it was 162--99% the experimental value, best fit at higher angles. Disappointing, at least for the lower angles we care about most.
But if you were to use my hull only formula to predict the wind tunnel hull+fins lift coefficients, the results were much better: my values were 108--65% of the experimental, with best performance at lower angles (I matched the experimental at 6o.)
Could this possibly be true for full-size airships? Burgess, Airship Design (1927), page 105, provides the dynamic lift curves for the USS Los Angeles, for different pitches and power levels, and I have compared four of the values (estimated from the figure) with my spreadsheet calculations.
And I found additional data in an obscure design memorandum (Burgess DM44):
(Burgess calc is similar to mine except it uses the diameter of the "equivalent ellipsoid"---one with same length and hull volume---and Lamb's "inertia coefficients"---which require hyperbolic functions to calculate. I don't think the additional computational complexity is warranted by the slight improvement in accuracy.)
Astonishingly, the formula for hull did a pretty good job of forecasting the lift for the full-size USS Los Angeles, fins, cars and all. And instead of overestimating the lift, it consistently underestimated it! I will save speculation about these results for the Appendix. Here, it suffices to say that it appears that it's worth quoting my "hull only" formula:
M=7.009 \* V2\*D2\*rad\*AoA/100,000 (Equation 2)
with
M, lifted mass (lbs)
V, air speed (mph)
D, diameter (feet)
rad, air density at altitude relative to that at surface,
AoA, angle of attack (degrees)
It's up to you whether to use the hull only formula "as is," or to multiply it by a fudge factor---0.75 would be a good choice for an airship similar to the Los Angeles.
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A lift-induced drag is the price we pay for dynamic lift, and it reduces speed or increases fuel consumption. Theoretically, the lift-induced drag should increase with the square of the angle of attack.
For the additional propulsive power needed to overcome lift induced dynamic drag, we have
P=2.327 M V \* AoA 100,000e (Equation 3)
with
P power (hp),
M, V and AoA, as above
e, Oswald efficiency factor for the hull.
The necessary additional engine power will be higher, because the propulsive efficiency is less than 100%. (The derivation of equations 2 and 3 is shown in the Appendix.)
The Oswald efficiency factor corrects for the difference between the real distribution of lift along a wing and the most efficient (elliptic) distribution. The lower the Oswald efficiency, the higher the drag. Aircraft designers have formulae for predicting its value, but they are based on statistical analysis of normal aircraft wings, and I doubt they are useful here. For such wings, it's in the range of 0.75--9. But an airship hull is like a very thick and stubby wing. I have found data for "lifting bodies" (like the Space Shuttle), and these had efficiency factors in the 0.35--0.67 range (Saltzman'99 Table 3). However, a NASA study (Ardema 5) assumed that an ellipsoidal hybrid airship would have an efficiency of 0.85.
Warning: My induced drag formula is based on thin airfoil theory. Burgess (DM201) reported that with a wind tunnel test of a model of the Akron, the induced drag increased with angle of attack more rapidly than the formula would predict on the basis of the observed lift, both for bare hull and with fins. So it's quite possible that I'm underestimating the induced drag.
Burgess (105) comments that the maximum dynamic lift is likely to be at about 8o because at higher angles the increased drag reduces air speed---put another way, the airship doesn't have the excess power to fully compensate for the increased drag that would be experienced if it also maintained speed. For the USS Los Angeles at full power, the maximum dynamic lift was at about 7o, with the air speed being about 95 feet/second.
He also observes that because dynamic lift is proportional to planform area, and buoyancy and weight to volume, for large airships dynamic lift is likely to make a smaller percentage contribution to total lift than for a small one and thus to compensate for the same percentage static lightness or heaviness---unless the power of the airship engines increases faster than the volume.
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Thus far, I have pretended that the only way a conventional airship (symmetric hull) can generate dynamic lift is by inclining the airship. Well, there's a second option: use the elevators. Up or down elevator refer to what happens to the trailing edge of the elevator; up-elevator creates negative lift; down, positive. And of course, lift creates drag.
So which is more efficient, generating lift by angling the hull, or by angling the elevator. It all comes down to efficiency, the ratio of aerodynamic lift to induced drag. Burgess (DM60) has collected some interesting model data, from which I have selected a few pairs:
It's clear that you can achieve about the same dynamic lift with less induced drag by generating the lift from the elevator not the hull. And there's a good reason; drag is inversely proportional to "aspect ratio," and the aspect ratio of a hull (average diameter/length) is likely to be less than that of the elevators. But it's not possible to calculate the dynamic lift or associated drag for the elevators without knowing their dimensions, and even then there will be interference from the hull and the stationary portions of the fins.
Still, it seems reasonable to expect that you might reduce drag by as much as a third by artful application of elevator.
Buoyancy Control: Differential Density Fuel System
The next step beyond the blau gas concept (burning a gaseous fuel with a density equal to air so that when replaced with air there is no change in buoyancy) is being able to switch between use of a fuel lighter-than-air and one heavier-than-air so that one can make the ship lighter or heavier at will.
If the Graf Zeppelin were forced to ascend above pressure height and vent gas, becoming too heavy, it burned the heavier-than-air gasoline until buoyancy was equilibrated. (Dick 68).
Unfortunately, there are very few lighter-than-air fuels to burn when too light: hydrogen, methane, ammonia, acetylene and (just barely) ethylene.
Buoyancy Control: Compression and Liquefaction
From time to time, it has been suggested that an airship could convert lift into ballast by compressing or liquefying the lift gas (or air). This has the obvious advantage that the conversion is reversible. So what's the catch?
Insofar as compression is concerned, the weight of the storage tanks is prohibitive. A high pressure tank must be stronger than a vacuum tank of the same dimensions, because the pressure difference it must resist is greater than atmospheric. So everything I said about the impracticality of vacuum lift must apply even more fiercely to compression. According to Honeywell engineer Donald Horkheimer, even with a high strength titanium alloy, generating 16,329 kg ballast would require (at a reasonable compression ratio and a safety factor of two), a 15,200 kg tank. (My own calculations suggest that this is a bit optimistic, see Appendix 1B.) And that's not counting the weight of the compressor.
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For liquefaction, you need power, which of course means increased fuel consumption. With modern (mature tech) liquefaction methods, you can produce one kilogram of liquid air in ten minutes by expending 1--20 kW (depending on the method); 163x methods would probably be less efficient. The power requirement increases rapidly if you want to liquefy more rapidly. (Horkheimer). Hydrogen is the hardest gas to liquefy. Liquefaction might work best on an airship using ammonia as the lift gas, as ammonia is relatively easy to liquefy (Morris IV-6): at atmospheric pressure, cool it to -33.4oC.
That said, water vapor is easy to liquefy. Airships that use steam for both propulsion and lift (thus far, just a design concept) may adjust the reboiling rate so "spent" steam is condensed and accumulated as ballast, or ballast water is vaporized and used as lift gas. (flyingkettle.com).
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A variation on this idea is to liquefy a gaseous fuel rather than a lift gas In 1937, Burgess (DM254) suggested that isobutane could be used; isobutane has a heating value slightly better than that of gasoline .
While it's a gas under ordinary circumstances (it boils at -11.5°C, 11oF, at atmospheric pressure), the liquid has a vapor pressure of 105 psi at 49oC, (120oF). As a gas, its density is 2.51 kg/m3 (about twice that of air), but as a liquid, it's 593.4.
Burgess figured that an airship the size of the Macon (400,000 pounds gross lift) would benefit from carrying 20,000 pounds of isobutane and 750 pounds of tank. Its own weight is considered useful lift since it counts as the reserve fuel, so Burgess credits it as having a lift in gaseous form equal to that of the gross weight of the air it displaces (0.076 lb/ft3) without subtracting the weight of the isobutane. And the tanks to hold the liquid isobutane apparently weigh only 750 pounds, which isn't significantly more than those to hold gasoline.
The fuel ballonet volume would be 132,000 ft3. Initially, the isobutane provides "lift," in Burgess' sense, at least as long as outside temperatures don't fall below 11oF. As gasoline is consumed, or if weather conditions make the airship lighter, the isobutane is condensed and compressed to maintain net buoyancy. (The compression is so it stays liquid even on a fairly hot day, and the vapor pressure is low enough so that the storage tanks aren't excessively heavy.) The required compression rate was 2200 ft3/min. While operating, the compressor consumes 150 pounds/hour fuel. If the liquid is released from the storage tanks, it will vaporize, but this can be helped along with a heating system using engine exhaust.
When the gasoline is gone, the airship burns the isobutane. That of course makes the ship lighter, but isobutane has a higher hydrogen content than gasoline which is favorable for water recovery. Burgess calculated that the additional weight (compressor, radiators, heaters, blowers, fuel ballonets) to handle the isobutane would be 6000 pounds.
Such a system is more difficult with blau gas; propane has a boiling point of -42oC and it would require compression to more than twice the isobutane pressure to keep it liquid at 49oC. (encyclopedia.airliquide.com).
Buoyancy Control: Directed Thrust
The USS Akron had swiveling, reversible propellers (Allen 37), and thus could generate vertical thrust without any forward motion, like a helicopter. But the swivel mounts add to the weight and complexity of the propulsion system. They are therefore feasible only if the engines are placed within the hull, on the hull axis, rather than in an outboard engine pod (Burgess/DM237), and this will reduce potential gas volume. The materials requirements for the pivoting system would be more exacting than for a normal transmission. The stern propulsion will make the airship tail heavy and this may impose a limit on how powerful an engine can be carried. (Unless perhaps the propeller and engine can be separated, perhaps employing an electrical rather than a mechanical transmission?) With the propeller pivoted, the vertical thrust will be exerted at one end of a long moment arm, resulting in a ferocious pitching moment that it will be difficult to compensate for. (Perhaps you could have both a pusher propeller at the stern and a tractor propeller at the bow, so their moments cancelled out?) Drag is reduced, relative to an outboard system, for normal horizontal propulsion, but pivoted propulsion means pushing through the air broadside and pressure drag will be much higher.
Gas Containment: Materials Selection
The ideal gas containment material for an airship has:
---low gas permeability
---sufficient flexibility
---low density
---high chemical resistance to the lift gas (particularly an issue for steam and ammonia)
---low flammability
---low cost
Bear in mind that if the airship is a simple aerostat, the envelope is in contact with the outside air, and additional factors are important:
---high UV (sunlight) resistance
---low moisture absorption (from rain or moist air)
---high tensile strength (especially if the airship isn't rigid)
---low drag
Gas tightness, of course, is the sina qua non, but the degree of permeability that can be tolerated depends on (1) the ratio of surface area (determining leakage) to volume (determining gross lift) of the gas cells, (2) how long the airship must remain aloft before the gas can be replenished (itself dependent on airship speed and the distribution of gas plants) , (3) the required useful lift at takeoff, and (4) how cheaply the lift gas may be produced.
Thus, the larger the airship, and the closer it is to a spherical shape, the leakier the "fabric" can be. The longer the required time aloft, the greater the total leakage will be and also the greater the amount of ballast that must be carried in order to compensate for the loss in lift. The useful lift is less because gross lift that otherwise could support payload must go to buoying the ballast instead.
To put this in perspective, an ellipsoid with the length (192 feet) and maximum diameter (59.5 feet) of the GZ-20 class of nonrigid Goodyear blimps would have a volume of 355,905 ft3 (10,078 m3) and a surface area of 29,261 ft2 (2,718 m2). Reportedly, about 10,000 ft3 helium is bought, to replenish leakage losses, each month. (goodyearblimp.com).
Calculation is more difficult for a compound aerostat, but the gas cells of some German 1917 zeppelins had a total gas cell surface area of 20--30,000 m2 (Chollet 7). A gas cell with a volume of 900,000 cubic feet might have a surface area of 54,000 square feet (Fulton 48). The total surface area of the USS Akron and USS Macon's twelve gas cells was 484,632 square feet and they held 6,856,000 cubic feet gas (Lancaster 1-IV-C; Smith 196). Note that a sphere of that volume would only have a surface area of 174,528 feet, so you can see that the division of the gas into multiple gas cells results in significant multiplication of the amount of "fabric" required.
With all lift gases, leakage is a problem. However, it's of greatest concern with helium, since its supply is so limited. The USS Shenandoah lost 150,000 cf helium (7.1%) each month, just sitting in the hangar, and later the USS Los Angeles lost 250,000 cf (9.6%) monthly. (Robinson 96). I would expect hydrogen to diffuse out perhaps twice as fast.
Gas Containment: Materials Choices
The potential envelope materials include animal skin, paper, cloth, natural rubber, synthetic rubbers and plastics (as sheets or cloths), and metals.
According to Goodyear engineer Dick, "Throughout most of the rigid airship era, the only acceptable gasproofing material was goldbeater's skin" (Dick 191), which was glued to lightweight cotton. However, this remark must be placed in context; the rigid airships were large, long distance vehicles, and they had to retain enough lift gas to have adequate buoyancy at the end of a flight of 80 or more hours.
In my opinion, varnished cloth is an adequate envelope material for short-range airships, and its manufacture is within the capabilities of any of the 163x countries that might be contemplating building airships. However, for long-range airships you would probably want to use a material that's less permeable.
There is some quantitative data (see Appendix) on "permeability" (really, permeation rate for particular thickness rather than permeability for unit thickness), but I must warn the reader that the sources aren't always as clear as one would like about the thickness and type of the materials used, and the numbers aren't necessarily consistent. In general, the permeation rate is inversely proportional to the thickness, and if you combine materials with different permeabilities P1 and P2, the combined permeability may be calculated by (1/Pcombo) = (1/P1)+(1/P2). (Barrer 411).
Permeability also depends on the identity of the lift gas. On average, the relative rates of penetration of natural rubber by various gases are as follows:
(1) Edwards and Pickering, 75 and Black 521 (methane); (2) Comyn 62
Obviously, natural rubber is not the material of choice for steam containment! However, other barrier materials may yield different relative permeabilities. (Barrer 402, Brydson 101ff, Comyn 62).
Nor can you ignore temperature. Rubber is 22 times as permeable to hydrogen at 100oC as at 0oC (Edwards 603). Hence, part of the price you pay for increased lift by artificial superheating is increased leakage.
Goldbeater's skin was used pre-RoF to hold gold while it was hammered into gold leaf. The German "Skin G" is the outer membrane of the caecum (blind gut) of the large intestine of the ox (other breeds of cattle may be used). The membrane may be visualized as a cylinder 0.5-1 meter long and 0.1 meter in diameter. The skins were graded as #1 if more than 30 inches long, and #2 if 20--30. Of six million cattle, one could expect to obtain 75%--80 useful skins (4.5--5 million). That would break down as 2.75--3 million #1 and 1.75--2 million #2 skins.
Prior to 1930, the German gas cells used a double layer, both glued to a cotton cloth "doublier." Goldbeater's skin is of high gas-tightness, but it's expensive, and it's of low tensile strength and high moisture-permeability (D'Orcy), and vulnerable to weathering (50 days exposure increased leakage over 16 fold---Judge 330) so it shouldn't be used, at least without a protective layer, on simple aerostats. (Chollet 8-9).
For the British semi-rigid Nulli Secundus (1907) , 110 feet long and 90 feet circumference, the cost of the skins themselves was 12/6 for 100 skins, each 8x30 inches. However, the skins had to be joined by hand and the total cost for the envelope (which reportedly used 200,000 skins) was 2000 pounds sterling. (Turner 276).
To make one large gas cell for a WW I zeppelin required 50,000 skins. In 1920, Goodyear paid $459,650 for 32 gas cells. Adding insult to injury, the useful life is only 2--3 years. (Robinson 60), and is reduced by high temperature or humidity (145).
For the gas cells of the ZR2 (1921), nearly 600,000 skins were needed, and although they cost three cents apiece, the labor brought the assembled cost (skin plus single ply cotton) to almost $200,000. (Risdon).
Do not allow the antiquity of goldbeater's skins to lead you to assume that it will be easy (if tedious) to assemble the skins into finished envelopes. Even though goldbeater's skin had been used to make toy balloons as early as 1783 (Chollet 2), when the first zeppelin (Z-1) was constructed (1900), there was "no means of making . . . goldbeaters' skin sufficiently pliant," and so it used "gummed cotton" for its gas cells. (Zeppelin).
The special properties of goldbeater's skin implies that the intestines of cattle are strategic war materials. During WW I, the skins were systematically collected from butchers in German-controlled areas, and it was "forbidden to make sausages" (Chollet 8).
Obviously, large countries are likely to have bigger herds than small ones, and national dietary preferences will also have an impact. (No cattle slaughtering in Mughal India, lest it offend the local Hindus, I expect.)
A logical question is, why can't we use leather (tanned skin)? It's true that leather was used in hosing before rubber became generally available. Indeed, in 1909, it was proposed to use chromium salt-tanned leather in balloon-making. The catch, I fear, is that while leather is somewhat waterproof, it's intended to "breathe." So it's likely that only intestinal membranes are suitable for hydrogen containment, although it does appear that the air permeability of leather varies by several orders of magnitude depending on type. (Barrer 410).
Can any other intestinal membranes be used? The inner membrane from the ox ("Skin L") and the outer membrane from the mature hog ("Skin P") were German wartime substitutes, used for the outer layer of the gas cells.
Cloth. Cloth is a flexible, strong weave of natural or synthetic fibers, and those fibers can give it considerable tensile strength. Unfortunately, voids between warp and weft defines pores through which gases may pass. Indeed, when used for clothing, it's considered advantageous for a cloth to be air-permeable.
The tighter the weave, the lower the permeability, but also the higher the weight. The fuzziness of the fibers and the degree of twist in the yarn also has an effect.
As far as I know, the only natural fibers used to weave balloon fabrics have been silk, flax (linen), and cotton, although some consideration has been given to ramie, jute and manila (Lougheed 94ff). Silk is the strongest and lightest, but also expensive, brittle, and able to pick up static electricity (which might spark off the hydrogen). Cotton is the cheapest, and linen is in-between.
Permeability may be reduced by sizing or various coatings. There is an almost certainly apocryphal legend that Conte developed a varnish, whose formula was subsequently lost, that permitted silk to retain hydrogen for weeks (Chollet 2) or even months (Fonvielle 96).
The typical balloon varnish was based on linseed oil. Oiled cotton is sometimes called "oilcloth" or "oilskin." Varnished cloth is not as tight as goldbeater's skin, although it can give respectable results---superior, in some tests, to rubberized cloth. A varnished double silk (192 g/m2) was said to have a permeability of 2.7--3.3 liters/m2-day, and an oilskin, if one can believe the results, of 0.5. (Judge 366; cp. Barrer 437).
However, the varnish is subject to cracking when the balloon is folded, and, when stored, it's subject to spontaneous combustion? (Roth; gasballooning.net).
Other reported coatings include rubber (unvulcanized, dissolved in turpentine), gutta-percha (a natural plastic) in benzene, other natural resins, gelatin, tar, and various synthetic plastics. The Graf Zeppelin's gas cells were goldbeater's skins, but its outer envelope was cotton waterproofed with aluminum-containing dope. (Dick 70).
Cloth is often used as a component of a "mixed balloon fabric," the textile fibers supplying most of the strength and another layer being responsible for most of the gas impermeability.
Paper. The Montgolfier brothers were paper manufacturers, and their first balloons used paper-cotton laminates. Paper proved to be more a liability, as it cracked easily, and was quite permeable too. I suppose it could have value for a short-term, emergency repair.
Natural Rubber. For the various sources of natural rubber, see Cooper, "Bouncing Back: Bringing Rubber to Grantville" (Grantville Gazette 6). In canon, as of 1635, the Portuguese (Hevea brasiliensis rubber from Brazil), Spanish (Castilla rubber from Nicaragua), and USE (Hevea guianensis rubber from Suriname) have the best access to natural rubber. The best bet for the Russians is probably milkweed, and the Ottomans might take a close look at fig latex.
Other European powers might consider the Funtumia latex of Central Africa.
According to canon, the gas cells of the Royal Anne are made of "cloth sealed with European latex." Kevin and Karen Evans, "No Ship for Tranquebar, Part Two" (Grantville Gazette 28). I hope that "European latex" means latex vulcanized in Europe, not latex from European plants such as milkweed. To understand my concern, see Cooper, "Bouncing Back: Bringing Rubber to Grantville" (Grantville Gazette 6). Milkweed latex isn't hopeless, but there are some serious problems that it would have been difficult to overcome quickly.
Rubber has the disadvantages that it requires protection against sunlight (ultraviolet)(Judge 365) and also may be attacked by impurities in the hydrogen. Fillers, such as pigments, or aluminum or mica flakes, can improve its properties.
The French, for their nonrigid airships, which were simple aerostats, favored a mixed fabric consisting of alternating layers of cotton or silk cloth and rubber. When two cloth layers were used, the threads were either parallel or at an angle of 45o to each other.
Rubberized cotton wasn't quite as good, leakage wise, as goldbeaters' skin. For example, at 20--22oC, the No. 1 balloon fabric (with 1.65 oz rubber/square yard between plies and 1 on inside face) let through 54.99 liters/square meter per day; the No. 2 (3.11 ounces between), 11.64; the No. 3 (5.51 between), 11.2. (Gibbons 169). "The lowest rate of leakage obtainable for a rubber-proofed fabric is about 5 liters per square meter per 24 hours, whilst for goldbeaters' skin it is about 0.25 liters (for four layers) and 0.12 (for eight layers)." (Judge 329).
The English chose to glue a rubberized cotton (90g/m2 cotton coated with 10g/m2 rubber film) to goldbeater's skin. (Chollet 12). This was a case of turning adversity to fortune; they weren't able to reconstruct the Germans' secret glue for attaching skin to cotton directly. Robinson (60) reports a total weight of 160 g/m2. I regret to state that mice (German saboteurs?) found the combination very tasty. (211).
In American rigids, the base was HH cotton cloth, weighting 2 oz/yd2. The combination of two cotton layers with one rubber came out to 8.5 oz/yd2 with a 12 liter/m2-day hydrogen leakage. That wasn't good enough, so we then glued one layer of goldbeater's skin to HH cloth with rubber cement, and varnished the cloth. This weighed 4.55 oz/yd2, with 2 liter leakage. (Robinson 210). Another report indicates that the choice of varnish made a difference; balloon cloth no. 3 with 4 coats of varnish 1877 limited leakage to 10.86, whereas with varnish 1876 it was 4.5. (Gibbons). A typical useful life for the rubberized cotton used in 1921 was 18-24 months. (Tucker 248).
In 1930, the U.S. developed a cheap, durable gelatin-latex-cotton combination, 5.30 oz/yd2, which was used for the gas cells on the Akron (half) and Macon (all); a similar one was used on the Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130). These did not include any goldbeater's skin. (Dick 191). I believe that this gelatin-latex coating is described in Carson, USP 1,779,839 (1930). Leakage was reportedly 0.5 liters/m2-day. (NLHC). Another source says balloon cloth no. 3, with "gelatin compound on rubber" is 0.8-1.4. (Gibbons).
Synthetic Polymers (Rubbers and Plastics). Cloth may be impregnated with a plastic in liquid form. The plastic "dopes" first used to waterproof airplane fabrics were based on cellulose nitrate or cellulose acetate, which I expect to be among the first plastics developed in the new timeline. Cooper, "Industrial Alchemy, Part 5: Polymers," Grantville Gazette 29. The "dope" must include a plasticizer, such as an alcohol. These dopes would probably improve the air-tightness of cloth.
Plastics may also be used in sheet form, and there it's logical to look at the "barrier plastics, " like Saran(R) wrap, used to keep food fresh. With sheets, you of course need to join their edges together in a gas-tight manner.
A third possibility is to spin the polymer into fibers and then weave them into cloth, which are used the same way as natural fiber cloth.
I have tabulated hydrogen and water vapor permeabilities for the elastomers (stretchable polymers) likeliest to be the first ones re-invented in the 1632 universe.
A plastic with high gas impermeability may have disadvantages, such as brittleness, or high moisture absorption. It can be combined with other materials to compensate. The Goodyear blimps are made of polyester coated with neoprene rubber.
Note that some synthetic plastics may be extruded into fibers and woven into cloth, as in the case of nylon, Dacron, etc. Gas-tightness is also important for parachutes, and it's possible that the aviators in Grantville know something about synthetic canopy fabrics. Silk was replaced with ripstop nylons, with permeability reduced by calendering (MIL-C-7020), or by coating with acrylic (unsuccessful, tear-prone), urethane, or silicone. MIL-C-7020 Type I had a weight of 1.1 oz/yd2, thickness of 0.003, and air permeability of 5 cubic feet/minute air/ft2 cloth. The coated canopies were 0--3 CFM with weights of 38--47 g/m2. Polyester (Dacron) is about equivalent to nylon in weight and permeability, but is more UV resistant and less elastic. (Poynter 74ff).
Metal. The American ZMC-2, 150 feet long and 42 feet in diameter, was a simple aerostat with an Alclad 17ST envelope containing 200,000 cubic feet helium. This was a a duralumin (aluminum 94%-copper 4%-manganese 0.5%-magnesium 0.5%) 17ST alloy bonded with a surface layer of pure (99.7%) aluminum for increased corrosion-resistance, with a specific gravity of 2.96. (NACA-TN-259; Seeley). The Alclad sheets, of 0.095 inch thickness, were riveted together. (Carr). The rate of helium diffusion was about one-half that of a ship with the more typical rubberized fabric envelope. (Fritsche). Over the period 1929-1941, it logged 752 flights and 2264 hours of flight time.
An obvious disadvantage of a metal envelope is that it isn't flexible and thus can't adjust lift gas volume to altitude. The helium volume was adjusted by the expansion or contraction of two internal airbags, made of rubberized fabric. These could expand to 25% of the hull volume. (Carr).
Production of aluminum requires lots of electricity, the flux cryolite (either the natural mineral from Greenland or synthetic material made using sodium hydroxide and the very nasty hydrogen fluoride, the latter made from fluorspar), and the aluminum ore bauxite. Cooper, "Aluminum: Will o' the Wisp?" (Grantville Gazette 8 ).
The other light metals that have been used for structural purposes are magnesium and titanium (specific gravity 4.51) and magnesium (1.74). But I don't think that light metal production will be on a scale such that a metalclad airship is economically viable until the 1640s at the earliest.
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Recap. I think the writer may safely assume that it will be reasonably easy to achieve a leakage rate that doesn't exceed 10 liters/square meter/day, for a reasonable weight. (To put this in perspective, 15 was considered tolerable for the ballonet on a 1921 airship---Tucker 261.) To get much below that will require either the use of goldbeater's skin, or some combination of experimentation and luck in the development of varnished or rubberized cloths.
Hybrid Airships (Combined Aerostatic and Aerodynamic Lift)
A conventional airship is one with enough aerostatic lift to take it up to cruising altitude. Typically, they have vertically symmetrical bodies, and hence if their angle of attack is zero (level flight), they don't experience significant aerodynamic lift (the fins might provide a little). However, they may be deliberately flown inclined to generate aerodynamic lift, as we will discuss under "Altitude Control."
Hybrid airships have been designed that would generate part of their lift (say, at least 20%) aerodynamically even in level flight. These may have a vertical propeller or jet, an asymmetric ("lifting") body, a pair of flanking "airfoil" wings, or a single "inboard wing" connecting two envelopes. (Liao). They are intended to takeoff "statically heavy," and hence require a runway to generate enough speed, and thus aerodynamic lift, to leave the ground.
But there are several problems with the concept. It must still be bulky, like an airship, to contain enough lift gas to provide a significant fraction of the lift, which means that it is not going to be easily maneuverable (Burgess 289). This will complicate takeoff and landing. It cannot cruise at low speed to economize on fuel or for more efficient recon because then it won't have the requisite aerodynamic lift. And it won't be as fast as a true aircraft because it's shape is a compromise between aircraft shape (to reduce drag) and airship shape (to increase buoyancy relative to structural weight).
It's been argued that hybrids will provide a lower cost per ton-mile for shipping than a conventional airplane (Boyd), but I would think that the shipping costs provided by conventional airships would be lower still. On the other hand, hybrids might be faster than the latter.
It won't be in Grantville literature, but there have been technical analyses of the relative merits of putting wings on a traditional ellipsoidal airship hull, versus use of a deltoid or multihulled lifting body. The former is considered to have superior endurance. ((Buerge; Ardema).
Someone in Grantville may have read McPhee's 1973 book about the travails of developing the triple-hulled Aereon (1966) and the "deltoid pumpkin seed" Aereon 26 (1970).
However, it should be noted that the "deltoid pumpkin seed" was designed to receive most of its lift from helium, whereas it was tested as a scaled-down model without any lift gas. (McPhee 46, 54).
Conclusion
In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio tells Romeo to "borrow Cupid's wings, and soar above the ground." Later, he speaks of dreams as being "as thin of substance as the air." (I, iv). The airship soars by virtue of gases that are even thinner than air, and it doesn't need wings at all.
In this article, I have explained the subtleties of how an airship achieves lift and controls its altitude. But what distinguishes an airship from a balloon is the ability to move forward without the aid of the wind. I will take up the issue of airship propulsion in a later article.
Author's Note
The Appendices and Bibliography are available from Gazette Extras, http://1632.org/gazetteextras/ .
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Feeding the Up-timer Addiction: Soy Sauce
Written by Karen C. Evans
Have you ever had that craving, sometimes late at night, for teriyaki chicken and fried rice? Or maybe you enjoy a little sushi or a good pad Thai once in a while.
All of these dishes are not reproducible without soy sauce. And what exactly is this dark and salty brew?
We all know that soy sauce has soy beans in it . . . somewhere. How possible would it be for our stranded Americans to fabricate something like soy sauce?
History
Soy sauce is considered the oldest condiment used in the world today. The Chinese have been using soy sauce for more than 2500 years. Cakes of soybean paste, sometimes mixed with wheat, are made and infected with a particular mold called Aspergillus and then left alone for three days as the mold breaks down the proteins of the beans.
When the cakes are ready, they are placed in barrels or tanks with salt. The process from this point is more a function of lactobacilli and yeast than anything else. These further break down the proteins and sugars.
After fermenting for several months, the brown liquid is siphoned off, leaving the soybean mash behind, and this salty liquid is used to flavor food.
Anciently, people wanted to preserve meat and fish. The proteins were kept in barrels with salt. But contrary to the process of drying as salt cod, or salt preserving as with lox, the fish in the barrels was completely broken down to a liquid state.
The Romans had much the same process, and the product they made from this preserved fish was called liquimen or murri. A fish with high fat content such as anchovies or mackerel would be placed, whole, in barrels layered with salt. As the lactobacilli worked within the fish, the flesh was actually broken down completely, except for a thick sludge in the bottom of the barrel. Liquimen was much prized by the Romans on a whole variety of products.
Since the dawn of time, the Chinese used this process, then draining off the liquid fish or meat sauce, and using it for a condiment. Then, in the fifth century, when the Buddhist religion became more popular, they searched for a way to continue to have this flavoring without using meat. That was when they developed the bean and wheat paste, first left to mold, and then fermented as one would have done with the meat or fish. So soy sauce is a vegetarian innovation that has stuck with us for more than one and a half millennia.
At the end of the Roman era, the market for liquimen dropped off, as it was an expensive process. One of the major producers in Spain continued for quite some time, as the people in the area developed a taste for murri, and so kept making it. It can even be found today in one tiny village on the Spanish Atlantic coast.
Other Possible Sauces
There are other sauces referenced in old cookbooks, or other writings. These would include murri and Worcestershire sauce, and some of the fish sauces used in the Far East.
Charles Perry, the long time food critic for the Los Angeles Times, has spent a lot of time translating Arabic cookbooks. Many recipes in these call for murri, a salty, fermented condiment. It has not been made in the Arab world since the 14th or 15th century, so it was unavailable to him. In order to faithfully reproduce some of these recipes, he set out to make murri.
According to his research, the Arabic world used barley paste. It was patted into little cakes, placed under fig leaves for four months, and then mixed with water and strained.
The office staff at the Times, where Perry conducted his experimentation, were highly interested in the process. Because it had been fermenting there for such a long time, and had developed its own coat of fluffy mold, the staff named one of the cakes "Whiskers."
And what did it taste like? According to Perry, it was exactly like cheap soy sauce. Not the kind that is mostly soy beans, and fermented in tanks for months, but that on the shelf that is chemically changed in a quicker process, and therefore can be sold to the American public much more affordably. It is much easier to just go and buy cheap soy sauce and substitute it for the murri instead of making your own.
There are similar sauces in use in America and England at the time of the Ring of Fire that bear examination. One of these is Worcestershire sauce. This is also a dark liquid, fermented and used as a condiment. But it's origins are kept secret by the patent holding company, Lee & Perrin. According to their website, a Lord of Worchester had been on some appointment from the crown in India in the 1830's. When the opportunity came to return to England, he did so, but he continued to have a taste for some of the food he encountered there. He went to the chemist, or pharmacy in the shire, and set them to reproducing this sauce, and the result is what we now know as Worcestershire sauce.
The ingredients listed for this concoction by the Heinz company include vinegar, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind, onions, garlic, spices, and flavoring. It isn't really much like soy sauce, and can't be used as a replacement for our intrepid time travelers, especially if it didn't show up in England until the 1830's.
Some Americans are aware of other fish sauces, especially those from Indonesia, known as nuoc mam. These are made in much the same way as some of the ancient fish sauces. Variations are introduced in the form of herbs or spices mixed with the salt in the first step of the process. They tend to have a very strong flavor, and need the consumer to become accustomed to the flavor. It is likely that the residents of Grantville, with few exceptions, know little of this kind of fish sauce.
Out of curiosity, I investigated flavors from Down Under to see if they are related to any of the sauces we have been discussing. These are Vegemite, Marmite, and so forth. As far as I can tell, these are yeast-based spreads, originally from the scrapings of old beer-barrels. They are considered health foods, being high in vitamin B from the yeast. There is a great debate as to the advantages and subtleties of flavors of these spreads, but as they are not soy based, or fish based, and are not well-known in America, they do not really fit into this discussion.
Grantville and the Ring of Fire
Other sauces have been of much concern so far. We have covered spaghetti sauce, Tabasco, mustard, ketchup, and even nuoc mam. But no one has looked into soy sauce. It is the basis for teriyaki and other barbeque sauces, even in West Virginia.
What does this mean in Grantville? I am not sure that we will have the possibility of putting together a manufacturing process for true soy sauce. Not only would the process be difficult and expensive, we have no surety that the residents of Europe will develop a taste for this strange little condiment.
But we have evidence that in places in the world in the 1630s people are eating fish sauces with great gusto. Some of these places are in Europe. It might be possible to sample various grain and fish sauces already available, and find the one or two that come closest in taste to our familiar soy sauce such as could have been found in any American grocery store before the Ring of Fire.
The other possibility would be to try the barley-based murri that Charles Perry wrote about in the Los Angeles Times. The Arabs, as far as we know, haven't produced it since the 1480's, but some experimentation may be very productive.
Europe at this time also has contact with many places on the globe, and it is possible that an innovative entrepreneur could sail to the far Spice Islands to the east, and come home with a ship full of soy sauce. But until then, some of these other substitutes will have to suffice.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syoyu
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Soy-Sauce.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/soy-sauce
http://www.florilegium.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcestershire\_sauce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish\_sauce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia\_romana/wine/garum.html
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Treasures
Written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
At the end of Worldcon last year, my friend Bill Trojan died. Most folks in the field had met him at one point or another. For years, he ran a large bookstore in the dealers' room at conventions---Escape While There's Still Time Books. He also chaired a number of conventions. If you lived on the West Coast, then you definitely met Bill because he was always at cons, attending parties, attending panels, and just generally having a good time.
I miss him more than I can say, but he did go out the way that he would have wanted---at the end of a very good convention, among his friends. No lingering illness, no horrible emergency room visits. He was here one moment and gone the next.
Leaving my husband Dean Wesley Smith, who is the executor of the estate, one gigantic mess. You see, Bill collected books and he was a book dealer. He was also a hoarder. So he had one three-bedroom house full of stuff, and one two-bedroom apartment full of stuff. (He rented the apartment when it became impossible to get from one room to another in the house.)
Hoarding and collecting are not compatible skills, even though they sound like it. The pile in the corner might be old grocery bags and receipts, but you can't just chuck it out, because in the middle you might find a $500 paperback.
It took from August 23 to December 8 to clear out most of the stuff and move it to a location that wasn't falling down, had heat, and had been cleaned in this century. (I'm not kidding.) Now Dean's going to have to figure out what to do with it all, how to disburse it according to Bill's will, and then figure out what to do with all the various things we inherited.
I helped a tiny bit in the packing and moving---not one-tenth what Dean did. But I found that the superhero name I had given myself in the last column---Distracto-Girl---really fits. Because when I had to deal with a wall of books (covered in cobwebs and years of dirt), I wanted to sit down and read that one. No, that one. No, that one. Right Now.
Everything that Bill had that had value was not only cool, it was mega-cool. And it was more than I could absorb in a lifetime, let alone an afternoon. The entire history of the science fiction field hid in that dilapidated house. Half the history of the mystery field existed there as well. From the magazine with Stephen King's first published short story to signed Agatha Christies (unfortunately not the first British editions, but still), from more Ian Fleming than I knew existed to every pulp magazine ever published, Bill's house was a treasure trove of lost lore---some of which I'll never get a chance to peruse because it goes to another beneficiary.
But what I have seen so far makes me realize that the house and apartment held another treasure. Bill. He knew the history of both fields inside-out, backwards, and upside down. I'd ask him questions when I was working on things about the history of the field, and I know he was Dean's go-to guy on collectibles, but I never realized how much Bill knew until he was gone.
Not only that, he preserved (in whatever imperfect way), things that were rare or unusual or precious, even if they weren't always valuable. These items were often little flagstones on the footpath to the future.
If you read Stephen King's first short story in its original publication, you can see glimpses of the King to come. But at the time, he was just like any new writer---a mixture of good storytelling skills, mistakes, and obvious problems. Compare that to 11/22/63 and you can see the trajectory---how one writer grew into the other.
I find such things fascinating.
Bill did too. But more than that, he preserved such things.
And he's not alone. Collectors all over the world do the same thing. Libraries can't carry everything. Neither can museums. So collectors step in. Sometimes they open their collections to others. Sometimes they keep the collection private, like Bill did.
In his wallet, we found a handwritten list of the things Bill needed to round out his various collections. When I met him, the list was pages long. By the end of his life, it had become one small pocket-sized notebook sheet of tiny scrawl listing exceedingly rare things.
Of course, he kept up with the new as well. He was dreading the future, though. He hated e-books. You couldn't bag them and put them on a shelf. He worried that fine books would disappear.
I wanted to show him an article I saw just recently in the New York Times, about the ways that publishers are continuing to make books relevant. One very important way? Making paper books beautiful again. Putting extra expense into the paper itself. Added deckle edges. Designing lovely end papers.
Bill would have loved that. He would have loved knowing that the things he valued about books would remain and maybe improve. If he'd only waited a few months.
If he'd only waited a few years.
Bill's treasures will go to their rightful new owners. But the true treasure in Bill's estate---Bill himself---is lost.
At least we're able to look through his life's work, and see its great value. He managed, all by himself, to preserve the history of two marvelous genres of literature.
And that is something I hope my old friend was very proud of.
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City Slickers, Country Bumpkins, Ants, Robots and Mutants, Part 2
Written by Bud Webster
City Slickers, Country Bumpkins, Ants, Robots and Mutants. I Think That's Everybody . . . Oh Yeah, There's Goblins, to Say Nothing of the Banshee.
Mr. Simak, I realize that you have done almost everything in newspaper work from printer's devil to publisher . . . but I know also that you have spent much of the past half century either on the beat, in the slot, or on the rim---then have gone home and written highly effective fiction that same day. How did you do it? ---Robert Heinlein, in a letter congratulating Simak on being named SFWA's 1977 Grand Master
Heinlein goes on to say that the question is rhetorical: ". . . I would be incapable of understanding the answer and would continue to be amazed."
Simak was the third recipient of SFWA's Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, following after Jack Williamson in 1976 and Heinlein himself in '75. He won his share of other awards as well: the 1953 International Fantasy Award for City; Hugos in 1959 (for his novelette "The Big Front Yard"), 1964 (for his novel Way Station), and 1981 (for "Grotto of the Dancing Deer," which incidentally also won the Nebula, Locus and AnLab Awards for Best Short Story); and three or four other ones including the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in '88 along with Fritz Leiber and Frank Belknap Long.
Think about that for a minute. The Horror Writers of America (HWA), who give out the Stokers, define the Lifetime award as "Presented periodically to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre." Note the other two recipients that year, Leiber and Long, both fine writers of fantasy, both dark and not. Simak, though?
It's not simple, as befits a deceptively intricate writer. Although Simak is known for his rural characters and settings, there's more there than meets the stfnal eye. Author, editor and critic Barry Malzberg (who penned the introduction for the Simak collection Physician to the Universe) says:
Simak had an odd, tormented streak; try "Second Childhood" . . . from early Galaxy. Why Call Them Back From Heaven? is a quasi-zombie novel. Simak is now mislabeled as a gentle pastoralist, the codgers' farmer in the dell, but take another look.
That's Simak's rep all right, and in the main it's accurate enough. Look, though, at just the titles of many of his novels and stories: They Walked Like Men, The Werewolf Principle, Cemetery World; "Hellhounds of the Cosmos," "Bathe Your Bearings in Blood!", "A Death in the House," "The Thing in the Stone." Any of those could have been titles written by one of the Lovecraft Circle.
As for the stories themselves, yeah, Simak had his dark side and no mistake. One of my favorites, an obscure little tale originally published in the March '41 Astounding as "Masquerade" and subsequently reprinted by Donald Wollheim as "Operation Mercury" in the Tales of Outer Space side of his only Ace Double double anthology[i] (if you'll excuse the necessary clumsiness), concerns two races alien to each other---humans and Mercurians---who would like to find a basis of cooperation, but can't. There's no great conflict, no hatred, but neither is there any foundation for friendship. The story, aside from a scene where the energy-based Mercurians dance wildly to the bluegrass fiddling of a human crewman called "Old Creepy," is melancholy, almost tragic. It might not seem so in the colder light of 2011, but seventy years ago this was pretty dark---especially for ASF[ii].
For that matter, read his 1951 story, "Good Night, Mr. James" (also published as "Night of the Puudly" in the UK and adapted---badly---as an episode of The Outer Limits titled "The Duplicate Man"). This is a profoundly human story, far darker and more layered than "Masquerade." It involves an illegal clone, a vicious and intelligent alien called a puudly, and a tragic case of mistaken identity. There's no Yankee trader ready to take advantage of vacationing out-of-towners here, no hillbillies, just the quiet devastation of a human life. Twice.
Even the darkness, though, is tinged with compassion. There is a scene in Goblin Reservation in which the viewpoint character, Peter Maxwell, makes an unpleasant choice based to a large degree on practicality, but also out of a sense of the right thing to do, the Human thing to do. One of the few banshees left in the world is dying, alone and despised. Out of duty, others are holding a wake, but no one but Maxwell will simply sit with it as it dies, company in its last moments:
He walked slowly across the intervening space and stopped a few feet from the tree. The black cloud moved restlessly, like a cloud of slowly roiling smoke.
"You are the Banshee?" Maxwell asked the tree.
"You've come too late," the Banshee said, "if you wish to talk with me."
"I did not come to talk," said Maxwell. "I came to sit with you."
"Sit then," the Banshee said. "It will not be for long. . . .The others did not come," the Banshee said. "I thought, at first, they might. For a moment I thought they might forget and come. There need be no distinction among us now. We stand as one, all beaten to the selfsame level. But the old conventions are not broken yet. The old-time customs hold."
"I talked with the goblins," Maxwell told him. "They hold a wake for you. The O'Toole is grieving and drinking to blunt the edge of grief."
"You are not of my people," the Banshee said. "You intrude upon me. Yet you say you come to sit with me. How does it happen that you do this?"
Maxwell lied. He could do nothing else. He could not, he told himself, tell this dying thing he had come for information.
It would have been perfectly easy for Maxwell to pretend to care for this dying entity, or to reflect its own abhorrence of the human race; it wouldn't have cared, and nobody else was around to see. But no, despite his primary reason for being there (read the book to find out, you will not regret it), he still could not bring himself to effectively slap the banshee across its face. That might be the human thing to do, but it wouldn't be Human.
Let me elaborate on that, with your kind indulgence. From a purely practical standpoint, Maxwell would be justified in asking the dying thing (it's an alien, not a Terran creature of the fantastic) what it knows about the novel's Mysteries, including how his Other Self had died. He goes there, in fact, with that intention in mind and is frustrated by the creature's unwillingness to give him the answers he needs. No one would have been angry; no one would have blamed him had he tried to somehow force the banshee to tell him.
He doesn't, though. Instead, he asks the entity if there's anything he can do to make its passing easier, and as it becomes more talkative, tells it "You should conserve your strength." There's no badgering, no harrying of the dying energy-being, not even anger until, with its last "breath," it becomes recalcitrant and refuses to tell him anything. Instead, he sits with it as any human might sit with a dying stranger; so that even the most inhuman, unlikeable life form, one with no emotional connection with (and nothing but a mild contempt for) Humanity would not have to die alone and ignored.
That simple gesture of compassion is a touchstone of Simak's perception of what Mankind means, and the scene one of his most eloquent expressions of how a good man responds to the Darkness surrounding him.
You know something? I'm almost 4000 words into a column that generally runs no more than 2200, and I am nowhere near being done talking about this writer. Not only that, but I have another seven pages of bibliography to present you.
You guys know me by now, and you know I can wax as loquacious as the next guy (assuming the next guy is as long-winded as I am), but Simak (not pronounced "SY-mak" as I said it as a kid, or even "Sih-mak" as I have since then, but "SIH-mik") was quite a significant influence on my own fiction, and I've read and enjoyed almost all of his books and stories. I hope I can pass along at least some of my enthusiasm to you, the readers, but in any case please bear with me; I'll take a look at a couple more of my favorites and then return you to your regular Grantvillian pursuits.
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A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river---but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself---a thing that went on caring. (From Way Station)
Not many writers are capable of summing up Humanity and its place in the cosmos. Many try throughout their careers to do so, devoting reams of paper to the task, always falling short. Poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists; all have done their level best to define the Human Condition, seeking and creating complexities, looking in the darkest corners of their souls to find the one identifying characteristic that separates Man from, say, Plant.
Clifford Simak did it in fewer than sixty words. That's what.
Way Station is Simak at his best, combining that pastoral gentility he's so well known for with a subtle, but deep-rooted melancholia that makes Ray Bradbury look a little like Ohio Express[iii] lyrics.
Enoch Wallace didn't die in the War Between the States. Instead, he was chosen by aliens to tend the Terran depot of an intergalactic transport system, which has remained hidden from prying Terran eyes until now, when the Gummint notices that he's still, y'know, alive, which makes them curious. This is made worse when the body of an alien is disinterred by a Gummint man. There were already plenty of questions being asked---you can't be 100+ years old and not attract some attention---and things get a little uncomfortable.
Wallace is something of a loner, as are many of Simak's people. Not entirely, but since he's more than a century old, that kinda precludes his palling around with the local bowling team. He does have some "human" companions, but are they ghosts? They may as well be, but actually they're projections of long-dead friends who eventually leave him. The locals are more protective of him than suspicious, but his loneliness is a necessary adjunct of his "job." His best friend, in fact, is Ulysses, the alien who recruited him to begin with. There is a girl though; mute, deaf, and possessed of certain . . . talents, she is the only one of her redneck family who wouldn't sell the other members for a jug o' moonshine.
The crisis (all good stories have some kind of crisis, or they ain't stories) comes when Wallace, an intelligent man with access to other-worldly science, determines irrefutably that Earth is headed for an unavoidable atomic conflagration. The ultimate outcome is . . . but no, that would be telling.
Artificial longevity, aliens, intergalactic teleportation, and there's even some virtual reality (a la Bradbury's "The Veldt") as well. Those are the science fictional elements, and most any of Simak's contemporaries could have woven a pretty good yarn from them. Hell, Asimov alone could have kicked it out of the park.
Trouble is that Asimov, however erudite and visionary, had a tendency to create thin, almost wooden characters. In a very real way, his people were there to handle the hardware, to hold it up in front of the reader and (in effect) say, "See? Isn't this cool?"?
Simak was never satisfied with just the technology. For him, that meant nothing without the human component. He was a rara avis in the world of Science Fiction, at least for his time---an author for whom Character was just as important as Idea. There are lots and lots of ideas out there to be marveled at, believe me: time dilation and relativity, artificial intelligence, alien-human compatibility, magic rings/swords/books, smart-alecky kids who do wizardry, and so on.
Good fiction, though, demands a story not just about hardware or weird beasties but how those concepts affect---and are affected by---humans. Just plain folks. That's what Simak excelled at. Don't get me wrong; you can't take the fantastical element out of his stories without losing the humanity, too. Way Station would fall apart without the artificial longevity, aliens, intergalactic teleportation and so on against which Simak cast his characters, no doubt about it, but at the same time without the people there would be little for the hardware to do.
This really is rarer than you might think. There are plenty of sf writers who are, as we say, idea driven, and more than a few who are character driven. Those who can do both at the same time, seamlessly, are exceptional. Simak leads that pack, in mine own (not-so-) humble opinion.
There's more to it, although for almost anyone else that would be plenty. Simak's stories, long-or short-form, are laced with wit. Not just humor, for all that there's plenty of it to be found (there's something really comical, if slightly surreal, about Mercurian energy beings frenetically square-dancing to Old Creepy's fiddlin'), but wit; i.e., skill at engaging the reader and giving his characters depth and breadth. He doesn't resort to giving them funny hats like so many others do, but instead creates richness and intensity that elevates him away from the level of mere pulp.
In Goblin Reservation (Putnam 1968), for example, he gives us a well-educated Neanderthal named Alley-Oop, alien bad guys who run around on wheels instead of feet, an android saber-tooth, William Shakespeare in the flesh, and a ghost (just called Ghost) with whom the late playwright pals around. Ghost knows he's a ghost, but doesn't remember just whom he is a ghost of. You get the idea. Well into the story, Ghost suddenly recalls that he is the spirit of . . . Willy the Shake, himself. Both of them are more than a little freaked out, understandably, and take off running and screaming.
It's not over yet, however. During the magnificent dénouement of this wonder-filled book, when superb chaos reigns and the truly magical egg is hatching, we see Shakespeare and his own ghost, reconciled and again friends, dancing together in a moment of pure enchantment. My god, what a book this is.
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[W]hat I recall is meeting Cliff Simak [at Chicon II, the 1952 world convention] . . . There, sitting with him in a Chicago hotel room, sipping a little good whiskey and talking about ourselves and our worlds, I really got to know and love him. The writers of good science fiction are nearly always bright and interesting and likable, but Cliff has a genuine humanity, something calmly wise and warm that is all his own.
No less a stfnal personage than Jack Williamson wrote that about our subject in his memoir, Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction (Blue Jay 1984), and I think it sums up Simak's gift elegantly. "Calmly wise and warm" isn't just a richly-deserved paean but a goal, a challenge.
From a personal perspective, I can cite Clifford D. Simak as a major influence on my own writing. Without "The Big Front Yard" and "Idiot's Crusade" (among others) there would be no Gentleman Mechanic from Central Garage, Virginia, no hobos in space, and precious little else of a fictional nature from Yours Truly. One of the great disappointments of my life is that I was never able to find a copy of the first edition of City (which is, after all, a history of the Webster family) for him to sign.
Still, the legacy he left for me and countless other reader/writers in the field is for all practical purposes incalculable. One of the greatest compliments I've ever been paid as a bookseller was when a young college-aged customer returned to my table this past year at a local convention and said, "Last year you suggested I buy Way Station. I'll buy anything else you suggest." I take only a small part of the credit for that, much as it made me beam for a couple of hours. The calmly wise and warm Clifford Simak deserves it all. I'll give the last word to a critic and commentator far more articulate than I, Barry Malzberg, himself a humanist of great warmth and skill:
Simak's work is already buried, but he knew that was inevitable and all of it is informed by wonder in the face of oblivion. What a great writer and more importantly: what a good man.
[i] D-73, to be exact; the other side was Adventures in the Far Future. I've written about this little gem in detail in my "D-73---A (Sp)Ace Oddity" column, which is reprinted in the collection of those columns, Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies, available from The Merry Blacksmith Press. Just so you'll know. Ahem.
[ii] Not all Astounding stories are upbeat adventures about human smart/tough-guys outsmarting hide-bound aliens, much as many people (including myself) tend to believe so. Campbell responded to darkness as well, as he proved only too well with Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" among others. A good story is a good story, regardless of tone.
[iii] They recorded "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" back in 1968, the same year Frank Zappa released his Sgt. Pepper parody, We're Only In It for the Money. Rock 'n' roll is funny.
(As usual, the bibliography below is as complete as I can make it, and I welcome additions and corrections. For Novels and Collections, "hc" designates hardcover and "pb", paperback UK editions are listed in a similar fashion. My thanks to Phil Stephensen-Payne and Scott Henderson for their expert help in compiling this monster.)
Short Stories
"The World of the Red Sun"---December 1931 Wonder Stories
"The Voice in the Void"---Spring 1932 Wonder Stories Quarterly
"Mutiny on Mercury"---March 1932 Wonder Stories
"Hellhounds of the Cosmos"---June 1932 Astounding Stories
"The Asteroid of Gold"---November 1932 Wonder Stories
"The Creator"---March/April 1935 Marvel Tales (Volume 1, #4)
"Rule 18"---July 1938 Astounding Science-Fiction
"Hunger Death"---October 1938 Astounding Science-Fiction
"Reunion on Ganymede"---November 1938 Astounding Science-Fiction
"The Loot of Time"---December 1938 Thrilling Wonder Stories (Plagiarized as "S.O.S in Time" by Australian "writer" Durham Keith Garton under the pseudonym "Durham Keys" in the October 1950 issue of the Australian magazine, Thrills Incorporated.)
"Cosmic Engineers"---serial, February-March-April 1939 Astounding Science-Fiction
"Madness from Mars"---April 1939 Thrilling Wonder Stories
"Hermit of Mars"---June 1939 Astounding Science-Fiction
"The Space-Beasts"---April 1940 Astonishing Science Fiction
"Rim of the Deep"---May 1940 Astounding Science-Fiction
"Clerical Error"---August 1940 Astounding Science-Fiction
"Sunspot Purge"---November 1940 Astounding Science-Fiction
"Masquerade"---March 1941 Astounding Science-Fiction (AKA "Operation Mercury")
"Earth for Inspiration"---April 1941 Thrilling Wonder Stories
"Spaceship in a Flask"---July 1941 Astounding Science-Fiction
"The Street That Wasn't There"---w/Carl Jacobi, July 1941 Comet (AKA "The Lost Street")
"Tools"---July 1942 Astounding Science-Fiction
"A Bomb for No. 10 Downing"---September 1942 Sky Fighters (non-sf)
"Shadow of Life"---March 1943 Astounding Science-Fiction
"A Hero Must Not Die"---June 1943 Sky Raiders (non-sf)
"Hunch"---July 1943 Astounding Science-Fiction
"Infiltration"---July 1943 Science Fiction Stories
"Green Flight, Out!"---Fall 1943 Army-Navy Flying Stories (non-sf)
"Guns on Guadalcanal"---Fall 1943 Air War (non-sf)
"Message from Mars"---Fall 1943 Planet Stories
"Ogre"---January 1944 Astounding Science Fiction
"Lobby"---April 1944 Astounding Science Fiction
"Smoke Killer"---May 1944 Lariat Story Magazine (non-sf)
"City"---May 1944 Astounding Science Fiction
"Mr. Meek---Musketeer"---Summer 1944 Planet Stories
"Cactus Colts"---July 1944 Lariat Story Magazine (non-sf)
"Huddling Place"---July 1944 Astounding Science Fiction (Chosen by SFWA for The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol. 1)
"Mr. Meek Plays Polo"---Fall 1944 Planet Stories
"Trail City's Hot-Lead Crusaders"---September 1944 New Western (non-sf)
"Census"---September 1944 Astounding Science Fiction
"The Gravestone Rebels Ride by Night!"---October 1944 Big Book Western Magazine (non-sf)
"War is Personal"---Winter 1945 Army-Navy Flying Stories (non-sf)
"Desertion"---November 1944 Astounding Science Fiction
"The Fighting Doc of Bushwack Basin"---November 1944 .44 Western Magazine (non-sf)
"The Reformation of Hangman's Gulch"---December 1944 Big Book Western Magazine (non-sf)
"Way for the Hangtown Rebel!"---May 1945 Ace High Western Stories (non-sf)
"Good Nesters are Dead Nesters"---July 1945 .44 Western Magazine (non-sf)
"The Hangnoose Army Rides to Town"---September 1945 Ace High (non-sf)
"Barb Wire Brings Bullets"---November 1945 Ace High Western Stories (non-sf)
"The Gunsmoke Drummer Sells a War"---January 1946 Ace High Western Stories (non-sf)
"No More Hides and Tallow"---March 1946 Lariat Stories (non-sf)
"When it's Hangnoose Time in Hell"---April 1946 .44 Western Magazine (non-sf)
"Paradise"---June 1946 Astounding Science Fiction
"Hobbies"---November 1946 Astounding Science Fiction
"Aesop"---December 1947 Astounding Science Fiction
"Eternity Lost"---July 1949 Astounding Science Fiction
"Limiting Factor" - November 1949 Startling Stories
"The Call from Beyond"---May 1950 Super Science Stories
"Seven Came Back"---October 1950 Amazing Stories (AKA "Mirage")
"Time Quarry"---serial, October-November-December 1950 Galaxy Science Fiction (Title was changed to Time and Again when published as a novel)
"Bathe Your Bearings in Blood!"---December 1950 Amazing Stories (AKA "Skirmish")
"The Trouble with Ants"---January 1951 Fantastic Adventures (AKA "The Simple Way")
"Second Childhood"---February 1951 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Good Night, Mr. James"---March 1951 Galaxy Science Fiction (AKA "The Duplicate Man" and "The Night of the Puudly"[UK only])
"You'll Never Go Home Again"---July 1951 Fantastic Adventures (AKA "Beachhead")
"Courtesy"---August 1951 Astounding Science Fiction
"The Fence"---September 1952 Space Science Fiction
"Gunsmoke Interlude"---October 1952 Ten Story Western (non-sf)
"Ring Around the Sun"---serial, December 1952-January-February 1953 Galaxy Science Fiction
" . . . And The Truth Shall Make You Free"---March 1953 Future Science Fiction (AKA "The Answers")
"Retrograde Evolution"---April 1953 Science Fiction Plus
"Junkyard"---May 1953 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Kindergarten"---July 1953 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Spacebred Generations"---August 1953 Science Fiction Plus (AKA "Target Generation")
"The Questing of Foster Adams"---August/September 1953 Fantastic Universe
"Worrywart"---September 1953 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Shadow Show"---November 1953 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Contraption"---in Star Science Fiction Stories, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine 16, 1953
"Immigrant"---March 1954 Astounding Science Fiction
"Neighbor"---June 1954 Astounding Science Fiction
"Green Thumb"---July 1954 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Dusty Zebra"---September 1954 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Idiot's Crusade"---October 1954 Galaxy Science Fiction
"How-2"---November 1954 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Project Mastodon"---March 1955 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Full Cycle"---November 1955 Science Fiction Stories
"The Spaceman's Van Gogh"---March 1956 Science Fiction Stories
"Drop Dead"---July 1956 Galaxy Science Fiction
"So Bright the Vision"---August 1956 Fantastic Universe
"Honorable Opponent"---August 1956 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Galactic Chest"---September 1956 Science Fiction Stories
"Jackpot"---October 1956 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Worlds Without End"---Winter 1956/57 Future (#31)
"Operation Stinky"---April 1957 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Founding Father"---May 1957 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Lulu"---June 1957 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Shadow World"---September 1957 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Death Scene"---October 1957 Infinity Science Fiction
"Carbon Copy"---December 1957 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Nine Lives"---December 1957 Short Stories
"The World That Couldn't Be"---January 1958 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Leg. Forst."---April 1958 Infinity Science Fiction
"The Sitters"---April 1958 Galaxy Science Fiction
"The Money Tree"---July 1958 Venture Science Fiction
"The Civilization Game"---November 1958 Galaxy Magazine
"The Big Front Yard"---October 1958 Astounding Science Fiction (Winner, 1959 Hugo award for best novelette, and chosen by SFWA for The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol. 2b)
"Installment Plan"---February 1959 Galaxy Magazine
"No Life of Their Own"---August 1959 Galaxy Magazine
"A Death in the House"---October 1959 Galaxy Magazine
"Final Gentleman"---January 1960 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Crying Jag"---February 1960 Galaxy Magazine
"All the Traps of Earth"---March 1960 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Gleaners"---March 1960 If
"Condition of Employment"---April 1960 Galaxy Magazine
"The Golden Bugs"---June 1960 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"The Trouble with Tycho"--- October 1960 Amazing
"Shotgun Cure"---January 1961 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Horrible Example"---March 1961 Analog Science Fact-Fiction
"The Fisherman"---serial, April-May-June-July 1961 Analog Science Fact-Fiction (Title was changed to Time is the Simplest Thing when published as a novel)
"The Shipshape Miracle"---January 1963 If
"Day of Truce"---February 1963 Galaxy Magazine
"Physician to the Universe"---March 1963 Fantastic Science Fiction
"A Pipeline to Destiny"---HKLPLOD #4, Summer 1963 (unfinished story in a fanzine published by Michael McInerney)
"Here Gather the Stars"---serial, June-August 1963 Galaxy Magazine (Title was changed to Way Station when published as a novel)
"New Folk's Home"---July 1963 Analog Science Fact-Fiction
"Over the River and Through the Woods"---May 1965 Amazing Stories
"Small Deer"---October 1965 Galaxy Magazine
"The Goblin Reservation"---serial, April-June 1968 Galaxy Science Fiction
"Buckets of Diamonds"---April 1969 Galaxy Science Fiction
"I Am Crying All Inside"---August 1969 Galaxy Science Fiction
"The Thing in the Stone"---March 1970 If
"Reality Doll"---Spring 1971 Worlds of Fantasy (was expanded to novel length as Destiny Doll)
"The Autumn Land"---October 1971 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"To Walk a City's Street"---in Infinity #3, ed. Robert Hoskins, Lancer 1972
"The Observer"---May 1972 Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact
"Cemetery World"---serial, November-December 1972-January 1973 Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact
"Construction Shack"---January/February 1973 Worlds of If
"Our Children's Children"---serial, May/June-July/August 1973 Worlds of If
"Epilog"---in Astounding, ed. Harry Harrison, Random House 1973
"UNIVAC: 2200"---in Frontiers 1: Tomorrow's Alternatives, ed. Roger Elwood, MacMillan 1973
"The Marathon Photograph"---in Threads of Time, ed. Robert Silverberg, Thomas Nelson 1974
"The Birch Clump Cylinder"---in Stellar #1, ed. Judy-Lynn del Rey, Ballantine/DelRey 1974
"The Ghost of a Model T"---in Epoch, ed. Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg, Berkley 1975
"Senior Citizen"---October 1975 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Unsilent Spring"---(w/Richard Simak) in Stellar #2, ed. Judy-Lynn del Rey, Ballantine 1976
"Auk House"---in Stellar #3, ed. Judy-Lynn del Rey, Ballantine/Del Rey 1977
"Brother"---October 1977 Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Party Line"---November/December 1978 Destinies
"The Visitors"---serial, October-November-December 1979 Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact
"Grotto of the Dancing Deer"---April 1980 Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact (Winner, 1981 Hugo, Nebula, Analytical Laboratory and Locus awards)
"The Whistling Well"---in Dark Forces, ed. Kirby McCauley, Viking1980
"Byte Your Tongue!"---in Stellar #6, ed. Judy-Lynn del Rey, Ballantine 1981.
Novels
The Creator---originally in March/April 1935 Marvel Tales; first separate publication was as a chapbook in 1946 by William Crawford, and reprinted again in September 1981 by Locus Press
Cosmic Engineers---Gnome Press, 1950 (hc); Paperback Library 52-506, 1964 (pb)
Empire---Galaxy Novel #7, 1951 (digest-sized); something of an oddity in that Simak wrote the book based on an unpublished novel by a teenaged John W. Campbell. In Clifford D. Simak: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (G. K. Hall, 1980), compiler Muriel Becker quotes Simak: "Empire was essentially a rewrite of John's plot. I may have taken a few of the ideas and action, but I didn't use any of his words. And I certainly tried to humanize his characters." It was ultimately rejected by Campbell for Astounding for unknown reasons.
Time and Again---Simon & Schuster, 1951 (hc); Dell 680, 1953 as First He Died (pb, originally serialized as "Time Quarry" with a variant ending)
City---Gnome Press, 1952 (hc); Perma Book 264 (pb) "Epilog" added to the 1981 Ace reprint (Winner, 1953 International Fantasy Award for best fiction book)
Ring Around the Sun---Simon & Schuster, 1953 (hc); Ace Double D-61, 1954 (pb, bound with L. Sprague de Camp's Cosmic Manhunt)
Time is the Simplest Thing---Doubleday, 1961 (hc); Fawcett Crest D-547 (pb, originally serialized as "The Fisherman")
The Trouble With Tycho---Ace Double D-517, 1961 (pb, bound with A. Bertram Chandler's Bring Back Yesterday)
They Walked Like Men---Doubleday, 1962 (hc); MacFadden 50-184, 1963 (pb)
Way Station---Doubleday, 1963 (hc); MacFadden 50-198 (pb, Winner, 1964 Hugo award for best novel)
All Flesh Is Grass---Doubleday, 1965 (hc); Berkley Medallion X1312, 1966 (pb)
Why Call them Back From Heaven?---Doubleday, 1967 (hc); Ace H-42, 1968 (pb, Ace Science Fiction Special #1.)
The Werewolf Principle---Putnam, 1967 (hc); Berkley Medallion S1463, 1968 (pb)
The Goblin Reservation---Putnam, 1968 (hc); Berkley Medallion S1671, 1969 (pb, Winner, 1968 Galaxy Award, the first and only Galaxy readers' choice award)
Out of Their Minds---Putnam, 1970 (hc); Berkley Medallion 1970 (pb)
Destiny Doll---Putnam, 1971 (hc); Berkley Medallion, 1972 (pb)
A Choice of Gods---Putnam, 1972 (hc); Berkley Medallion 1973 (pb)
Cemetery World---Putnam, 1973 (hc); Berkley Medallion 1974 (pb, The 1983 DAW edition restores Simak's preferred text)
Our Children's Children---Putnam, 1974 (hc); Berkley Medallion 1975 (pb)
Enchanted Pilgrimage---Berkley/Putnam, 1975 (hc); Berkley Medallion, 1975 (pb)
Shakespeare's Planet---Berkley/Putnam, 1976 (hc); Berkley Medallion, 1977 (pb)
A Heritage of Stars---Berkley/Putnam, 1977 (hc); Berkley 1978 (pb, Winner, 1978 Jupiter Award for best novel)
The Fellowship of the Talisman---Ballantine/Del Rey, 1978 (hc); Del Rey 1979 (pb)
Mastodonia---Ballantine/Del Rey, 1978 (hc, also published as Catface by Sidgwick & Jackson in the UK the same year. Significantly expanded and re-written version of the short story, "Project Mastodon," originally in the March, 1955 Galaxy)
The Visitors---Ballantine/Del Rey, 1980 (hc)
Project Pope---Ballantine/Del Rey, 1981 (hc)
Special Deliverance---Ballantine/Del Rey, 1982 (hc)
Where the Evil Dwells---Ballantine/Del Rey, 1982 (hc)
Highway of Eternity---Ballantine/Del Rey, 1986 (hc)
Spacebred Generations---Wildside, 2009 (Book publication of the 1953 short-story)
Collections
Strangers in the Universe---Simon & Schuster, 1956 (hc); Berkley G-71, 1957 (pb, first edition collects eleven stories; paperback collects seven)
The Worlds of Clifford Simak---Simon & Schuster, 1960 (hc); Avon G-1096, 1961 (pb); also published in the UK by Faber and Faber as Aliens for Neighbours that same year. First edition collects twelve stories; US paperback collects six; Faber and Faber edition collects nine. In 1962, Avon published G-1124, Other Worlds of Clifford Simak, which collects the other six stories from the first edition.)
All the Traps of Earth and Other Stories---Doubleday, 1962 (hc); Macfadden, 1963 (pb). Bibliographically, this book is complicated. The first edition collects nine stories, the 1963 paperback collects six; in the UK, the book was split into two separate books: the 1964 Four Square paperback with the same title as the US, which collected four of the original nine stories, and The Night of the Puudly from the same publisher the same year, which collects the remaining five. Geeks like me live for this kind of stuff.)
Worlds Without End---Belmont L92-584, 1964 (pb, collects three novelettes. First hardcover was the UK Herbert Jenkins edition of 1965)
Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak---UK, Faber and Faber, 1967 (hc); Doubleday, 1971 (hc); Paperback Library 1972 (pb, collects seven stories.)
So Bright the Vision---Ace Double H-95, 1968 (pb, collects four stories. Bound with Jeff Sutton's The Man Who Saw Tomorrow)
The Best of Clifford D. Simak---UK, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1975 (hc); Sphere, 1975 (pb, collects ten stories and a bibliography, with author's introduction.)
Skirmish: The Great Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak---Berkley/Putnam, 1977 (hc); Berkley, 1978 (pb, collects ten stories and author's introduction)
Des Souris et des Robots---French, J. C. Lattes, 1981 (collects nine stories. Title translates as Of Mice and Robots.)
La Croisade de L'Idiot---French, Denoel, 1983 (collects seven stories; can be considered as an abridgement of The World of Clifford Simak. Tile translates as Idiot's Crusade.)
The Marathon Photograph and Other Stories---Severn House, 1986 (hc); Methuen, 1987 (pb, UK, paperback as The Marathon Photograph only; contains four stories and compiler's introduction)
Brother And Other Stories---Severn House, 1987 (hc); Methuen, 1988 (pb, UK, collects four stories and compiler's introduction)
Off-Planet---Methuen, 1988 (hc); Mandarin, 1989 (pb, UK, collects seven stories and compiler's introduction)
The Autumn Land and Other Stories---Mandarin, 1990 (pb, UK, collects six stories and compiler's introduction)
Immigrant and Other Stories---Mandarin, 1991 (pb, UK, collects seven stories and compiler's introduction)
The Creator and Other Stories---Severn House, 1993 (hc) (UK, collects nine stories and compiler's introduction)
Over the River and Through the Woods: The Best Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak---Tachyon Publications, 1996 (hc, collects eight stories and introduction by Poul Anderson)
The Civilisation Game and Other Stories---Severn House, 1997 (hc, UK, collects seven stories and compiler's introduction)
Eternity Lost: The Collected Stories of Clifford D. Simak Volume 1---Darkside Press, 2005 (hc, dated internally as 2004; collects twelve stories and introduction by John Pelan)
Physician to the Universe: The Collected Stories of Clifford D. Simak Volume 2---Darkside Press, 2006 (hc, collects twelve stories and introduction by Barry Malzberg)
Impossible Things---Wildside, 2010 (pb, collects four stories)
Hellhounds of the Cosmos---Wildside, 2011 (pb, collects four stories)
In addition to the two listings just above, there have been multiple publications of those few Simak stories which have fallen into the public domain, too numerous to mention here. Regardless of the quality of the various bindings and cover designs, the material remains well above average and the reader should not reject those publications out of hand. After all, one eats the sandwich, not the wrapper.
NonFiction Books
The Solar System: Our New Front Yard---St. Martin's Press, 1962
Trilobite, Dinosaur, and Man: The Earth's Story---St. Martin's Press, 1966
Wonder and Glory: The Story of the Universe---St. Martin's Press, 1969
Prehistoric Man: The Story of Man's Rise to Civilization---St. Martin's Press, 1971
Fiction and NonFiction Anthologies
From Atoms to Infinity: Readings in Modern Science---Harper & Row, 1965
The March of Science---Harper & Row, 1971
Nebula Award Stories #6---Doubleday, 1971
Other Awards
Minnesota Academy of Science Award for distinguished service to science 1967
First Fandom Hall of Fame award 1973
Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award 1976
Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement award 1988
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford\_D.\_Simak
The Good Samaritan and The Hanged Man
Written by Garrett W. Vance
Gonzalo Xoan de Alcantara rode slowly through the peculiar landscape, unlike anything he had seen in the Old World or the New. He and his very unhappy horse were trying to work their way onto higher ground, low hills glimpsed beyond the tangled growth. They were surrounded by swampy forests of towering ferns, and what looked like fir trees, but weren't. The ground was sticky green mud, hard going for his tired palomino stallion. Even worse, the air itself was sticky; hot, humid, and thick with the stench of rotting vegetation along with other, stranger scents that made his horse snort nervously. Sometimes the long-suffering beast would find something edible enough to nibble at amongst the odd plants, but Gonzalo could feel the hide had grown taut against its ribs. There just wasn't any proper grass to be found in this dismal realm. Still, the proud stallion seemed like it wanted to live, and so it adapted. He knew he would have to adapt too, learn the ways of this inhospitable country if he wanted to survive.
He often wondered if he might have died without realizing it during the inexplicable event that had brought him here. Being a Christian man who had sinned most grievously, Gonzalo thought he must be in Purgatory, or perhaps even Hell itself: The terrifyingly enormous dragons, unnaturally large insects, and other seemingly demonic creatures that roamed these sultry jungles certainly lent credence to the theory. Just the weird cries and calls that echoed through the jungle were enough to make a grown man tremble in fear, the evil cacophony of the devil's minions. Surely, the Lord was punishing Hernando de Soto and his followers for their cruelty toward man and beast. Gonzalo had grown disgusted with de Soto's inhumanity, and had been making plans to desert his band as they murdered and raped their way deeper into the New World. He had hoped to make his way to Mexico, and join the priesthood there to atone for his part in de Soto's evils. Now he doubted he would ever have that chance.
The unexpected advent of the strange event that swept them away to this hellish place had provided the distraction he had needed to make his break. Perhaps de Soto would think him lost in the tumult, perhaps that son of a jackal was on his trail this very moment; it was hard to worry about it much when there were so many other dangers present. Gonzalo kept an open mind. Either he was alive and would continue living until some dragon claimed him, or he was already dead and suffering the Lord's wrath. Such an inexplicable force could only be an act of God. It didn't really matter now. He was here, wherever here was. He prayed daily for forgiveness for the innocent blood he had spilled, and promised to somehow atone for his grievous sins.
The stallion stepped into a deeper patch of muck and began to struggle. Gonzalo pitied the creature and dismounted, leading the exhausted horse carefully back onto more solid ground. Gonzalo trudged on, his boots squelching through the green mud, looking for an exit from the marshy jungle. After a while, he saw a sight that made his heart leap with joy: An opening in the dense wall of vegetation leading out to a sun-drenched sandy hillside. At last, he and his horse could escape from their fetid prison! Soon, they stood blinking under the light of the early afternoon sun, their eyes having grown accustomed to the jungle's green dimness. Much relieved, they walked comfortably across an open area, the ground a mix of coarse sand and pebbles. They were on an easy path which followed along the feet of a range of low hills bordering the swamplands.
An eerie cry emerged from the vegetation, not far from where they had just exited. Gonzalo quickly determined it would be best to put some distance between themselves and that jungle, lest the horrid creatures within decide to chase them down on open ground. They had been very lucky to survive their time in that foul smelling bog. They moved away in a gentle trot, which was as fast as either of them could manage after the day's long slog. Reaching the bottom of the nearest hill, Gonzalo led his horse upward at a shallow angle, climbing in a northeasterly direction that would eventually bring them to the top of the wall of hills.
It was fairly easy going, and they were quickly nearing the range's rolling summit. Gonzalo wondered what may lay beyond, praying that it would not be another swampy jungle! He and his horse both breathed deeply, enjoying a gentle breeze out of the north. The air up here was still filled with the heady scents of strange plants, but it was fresher and cooler. Perhaps they weren't actually in Hell after all, but Gonzalo kept a keen eye out for danger anyway. A new landscape meant new creatures, and if they were anything like the jungle's terrifying denizens they would be far larger, and more dangerous than anything he had ever beheld in his past travels, dwarfing even the bull elephant that had charged him in Africa. He recalled maps he had seen with chimerical beasts painted along the edges. Everyone knew they were just the artists enjoying a bit of fancy, since they really didn't know what lay beyond. "Here be monsters!" they always warned. Gonzalo wondered if he would ever have the chance to tell them they had been right.
Coming over a low hill, Gonzalo beheld an unexpected sight: A man hanging upside down from a tree limb. The fellow was English, perhaps, although his face was flushed a purplish-red from his uncomfortable position. A rough rope sling wrapped tightly around the left ankle held the man in the air, his head bobbing a good four feet above the ground. He had been caught in some kind of a snare. A curved sword lay on the ground nearby, gleaming in the bright afternoon light. It had apparently slipped free from its scabbard when it was turned upside-down, and had landed tantalizingly just out of reach of the hanged man.
Gonzalo's horse snorted, also surprised by the odd scene. The hanged man's eyes opened, blue-gray irises and bloated pupils floating in blood-saturated red.
"Please," the man croaked. "Help me down." He was speaking English.
It had been a number of years since Gonzalo had used that crude islander tongue, not since his time serving as a guard for the Spanish ambassador in the English court. Cold, rainy, stinking England was now the second worse place he had ever been, his current situation having taken first prize by some small margin. The English were by no means friends, but as a Christian, a true Christian, unlike those sons of goats he had parted ways with, he knew he couldn't leave the poor fellow to such a slow and painful death. Moreover, this might be a test from God to see if he would be merciful to a potential enemy. After a moment of concentration, the foreign words came back to him. Gonzalo cleared his throat, he had not had cause to use his voice for many long days.
"May I first ask, who are you, sir?" he called out politely. That seemed a reasonable question before freeing the fellow. The hanged man struggled to twist his body around to get a better look at Gonzalo.
"I'm Corporal Nate Tucker, US Army Cavalry, from Texas. This here deer trap got me last night. I don't think I can take it much longer. Please, I'm begging you, cut me down!"
Gonzalo didn't quite catch all of that, but he was pretty sure Corporal Nate Tucker claimed he was a soldier in an army. Hopefully he would prove to be a true soldier, a man of honor, not a roving butcher as de Soto had been.
Gonzalo tied his horse carefully to a low, thorny branch. Usually the stallion could be trusted not to run off, but even a seasoned and battle-trained mount such as this might lose courage at the approach of a lizard-demon! He carefully scanned the area to make sure there were no further traps. Assured of his own safety, Gonzalo took hold of the soldier's midriff, and lifted him a few inches to take the pressure off. This caused the man to gasp, and go limp. Just as well, Gonzalo preferred him to be unconscious for the time being. He used his antler-handled skinning knife to cut the hanging rope, then eased his burden to the ground as gently as he could. This was no easy task. The soldier outweighed him by a good forty pounds, a remarkably large and well-fed person!
"Holy Mother of God! You are a heavy one, Corporal Nate Tucker!" Gonzalo swore aloud, hoping the Lord would forgive him for his unfortunate exclamation. He feared that from his current, sinful state, he had a long way to go before he could be possibly accepted as a priest, even in the half-pagan churches of the Mexican wilds. Grunting some more, he did his best not to drop his charge on his head, thus adding further injury.
Once he had placed the unconscious man safely on the ground, Gonzalo went to work on the rope still twined tightly around his ankle, being careful not to cut too deep. Luckily, the soldier's skin was protected by sturdy leather boots, with dark blue trousers made of very heavy cloth tucked into them. A quick glance at the rest of him showed gold buttons on coat of the same color and firm weave as the trousers. The fine-looking, but functional riding wear of a very successful soldier! Gonzalo was most impressed. Apparently he was rescuing a high ranking officer; only a man such as that could afford this kind of quality. Gonzalo began to work the boot off, turning his face up toward the breeze to escape the unpleasant odor emanating from within.
He hoped he was in time. He didn't relish having to cut a gangrenous foot off. He had seen a surgeon perform that operation after a battle once, and knew it to be a grisly task. Gonzalo massaged the calf for a few minutes, then carefully worked his way down to the foot, helping blood to slowly flow back into it. The soldier moaned, and he whispered a quick prayer to the Lord that He be merciful, and keep the poor fellow from waking up just yet. The returning blood would feel like the piercing of a thousand thorns. Now, rubbing the foot gently, he could see a bit of color returning to the ghostly white flesh. The foot reeked due to a long separation from air and clean water, but it was a normal man-stink, not the rancid stench of spoiled flesh. Gonzalo moved the toes around to increase the blood flow to those extremities. He looked up at the too-blue sky and spoke aloud in his native Spanish.
"Am I doing right by this unfortunate placed in my path, dear Lord? If I had any oil I would anoint him with it, as Mary of Bethany did for Your only son. Please, Lord, help this man recover fully from his trial, I, Your willing servant, most humbly pray."
After a while, Gonzalo could see the foot had returned to a nearly normal color. It would likely be sore, and difficult to walk on for a few days, but it was intact. The soldier would not end up a cripple.
"Thank you, Lord, thank you for Your mercy," Gonzalo whispered, head bowed. When he raised it again he noticed that there was a large object hanging from the soldier's smooth, black belt. It was a leather pouch containing an odd looking item. At the top he could see a pearl handle. As softly as he could, so as not to alert the still groggy soldier, Gonzalo unclasped the holster. He pulled out a long, silvery barrel. His blood began to run a few degrees colder. It looked like some kind of a firearm. Gonzalo thought of the bulky harquebus hanging from his own silver-studded shoulder belt. This thing was smaller, smoother, and he suspected, deadlier.
Of course, a rich officer would have only the best of pistols, but Gonzalo had never seen one of such quality, even in the royal courts of England and Spain. He gave the soldier an apologetic shrug as he carefully placed the weapon in his own leather storage pouch, just for a while, until he could further gauge the fellow's mood and intentions. He picked up the fallen sword as well. How that must have been a torture, the means of escape just out of reach! Gonzalo was an excellent swordsman, but he didn't want to fight. There was no sense in taking any chances.
Gonzalo noticed the shadows growing longer, the light growing thicker. He reckoned it was getting late, evening would be coming before too long. All that exercise had left him hot and sticky under his breastplate. Over the past few days he had steadily shed different pieces of his armor, like the elbow and knee plates that constricted his movement more than he liked. He was storing them in his saddle bags until he decided whether or not to part ways with them. They were heavy, and took a toll on both himself and his horse. It was also possible they might be the only thing that could save him from the terrible bite or raking claws of the nightmarish creatures he had encountered; so far the thundering report of his harquebus had kept those at a distance, but the powder wouldn't last forever. It was a conundrum. In the end, he thought he would decide on traveling light as his best chance for survival. Once all the ammunition was gone, it would be better to flee the beasts as fast as he could without the armor slowing him down. It will be as the Lord wills!
Gonzalo shook his head in dismay. Now he had another neck to look after. For the moment Corporal Nate Tucker was lying in the shade of the thorny tree that had been his prison, sleeping soundly. Another mercy of God. He placed one of his water skins near the soldier so that he could find it easily upon awakening.
After scouting around a bit, Gonzalo decided that right where they were was as good as any place to make camp. The trees around here were sparse. They were gnarled, thorny things, with thick, stubby leaves. They looked like something you would find in the desert, but he had never seen their exact like in any desert he had visited. The "hanging tree" was near the hill's top, which afforded them a view all around. To the east Gonzalo could now see a wide region of open spaces, plains and distant mesas, a very different landscape from the swampy jungles behind them. The sight made him smile. This looked more like the world he knew. Perhaps he would find Mexico after all, or some other somewhat civilized region. He gathered fallen branches for a fire. The wood was oily; it would probably burn well. Soon Gonzalo had a sizable blaze going. He began to feel safer. Fire was one of the few things the nightmarish creatures in these lands seemed to fear.
Nate began to stir. He set up slowly and reached for a wide brimmed leather hat that that had fallen nearby. Once that was placed on his head his eyes seemed to come into sharper focus. He nodded to Gonzalo as he rubbed his foot.
"Thank you, sir. You've saved my life," he said in a strong, baritone voice.
Gonzalo bowed his head politely. "It was God's will that I came along in time. Drink some water," he told him, pointing to the canteen. The soldier graciously returned the nod, and took a long swig. He paused to get that one down properly, then took another.
"I was sure I was going to die. You sure saved my butt."
"God is merciful."
\*\*\*\*
Nate nodded politely, not wanting to offend this obviously religious person. Not yet, anyway. "I reckon He is, seeing as how he sent the good Samaritan my way." Nate saw that appellation make his rescuer smile and blush under his deep tan. Bingo, religious. "Still," he added, "He sure has a funny sense of humor sometimes. Must have to have created a place like this one! I've been on the run from horned-toads the size of hills for days now, never seen nuthin' like it in my life."
"The dragons. Or demons. Perhaps He is testing us."
"Mebbe so. Still, I'd like to find my way back to regular country. I don't s'pose you know the way, do you?"
Gonzalo shook his head sadly. "No sir, I am afraid I am as lost here as you are. I had hoped briefly that perhaps you would know the way."
"Well, that's a shame." Nate took another long swig of the water, his head was still swimming from its time upside-down, but he was beginning to feel better. Nate put the skin down and took a minute to drink in the sight of his rescuer.
Before him was a slender man, obviously in top physical condition, muscular, and graceful in his movements. Probably a well-trained fighting man. His face was long and rather sad, the look of a man who had felt many years of melancholy. The nose was prominent and hawkish. His beard and eyebrows were a bushy black over deeply-tanned olive skin. Bright golden-brown eyes reminded Nate of a falcon's. This was not a man who would miss much. The clothes were the thing that gave Nate pause, he had never seen anyone dress so outlandishly. The man wore a dented, but still remarkably shiny helmet, with a high fin above, and a metal brim around. It came to a sharp point in the front and back. He also wore a silvery breastplate, just like a knight in the old time stories. Beneath the armor was a quilted cotton coat of deep crimson. His forearms had buckled on bands of metal to protect them. A wide belt with an outlandishly large golden buckle held up a pair of green breeches tucked into brown leather boots that nearly reached his thighs.
Nate knew the man must be a conquisatador, but he didn't behave like one of de Soto's goons. He decided to play dumb on the subject and draw Gonzalo out.
Nate shook his head, pretending to be puzzled. "I guess you must be my knight in shining armor, mister. I heard you speakin' Spanish, but I'm fair sure you're no Mexican. Your English is pretty good, but some of the words sound funny, like something out of the Bible, or them Greek myths my pappy liked to read. Where the heck are you from, anyway? Argentina? Cuba? Spain?"
Gonzalo flushed a little. "Please pardon my rudeness. It is inexcusable of me to have asked your name, Corporal Nate Tucker, and not provided my own. Please consider that at the time I was only thinking of how to rescue you from your imprisonment."
Nate raised his eyebrows, a little surprised the guy had remembered his full name and rank at one hearing. This was a sharp stick, all right, and he could sure talk smooth.
Gonzalo rose up to his feet, where he stood proudly at five-foot, ten-inches, and gave a graceful bow. "I am from, as you say it in English, Spain. I am a Spaniard. My name is Gonzalo Xoan de Alcantara, originally from the province of Seville. I came to the New World in the service of my king and under the command of Hernado de Soto, but I am now . . . unattached." Better not to tell another soldier that I am a deserter, he thought.
So, Gonzalo had been with de Soto! Nate rose carefully to his feet, favoring his injured leg. He kept a close eye for any sudden moves from the Spaniard. Nate was five inches taller than Gonzalo, and had a heavier build. Maybe he wasn't in quite as top physical condition as his rescuer, but he was still a strong man, and indeed, a seasoned soldier. Nate had no doubt Gonzalo would make for a dangerous foe.
"Well, that's a mouthful, so how about I call you Gonzalo, since I can't even pronounce that one in the middle, I don't think. Just call me Nate, that's what the folks was always hollerin' after me. My full name, since you gave yours, is Nathaniel Theseus Tucker, born in the Texas territory, near what they call Austin these days. Corporal is my rank in the US Army, who is my current employer . . . I am currently detached." Nate didn't mention about being caught in the sack with a chief's teenage daughter, the little indiscretion that had caused him to light out on his own until things cooled down. Nate smiled, shrugging his broad shoulders.
"Thank you, Nate. Gonzalo is what I usually go by. Please call me that."
Nate nodded cordially, but still kept a wary eye on his rescuer.
"All right then, Gonzalo, we are fine and well introduced." Nate wanted to find out more about Gonzalo's relationship with that evil bastard de Soto. He decided to try to draw him out further.
"Say, Gonzalo, did I hear you say you was with Hernando de Soto? Do you mean the Spanish conquistador?"
"While I have not heard the term 'conquistador' before, it fits the actions of the man. Yes, I was with de Soto, we were following the great river when we were taken by some unknowable force into this evil country." Gonzalo paused as he saw an odd look come over Nate's face. "Do you know de Soto? Has he harmed your people? If so, please, accept my most profound apologies. I have broken with that devil and his band of murderers, and intend to become a man of the cloth to atone for my sins! I have no fight with any Englishman, so please, let us be at peace!" Gonzalo's rich voice rung with a plaintive tone.
Nate believed the man was perfectly sincere and was relieved not to be in the company of an unrepentant raider.
Nate let out a low breath. What to say? He didn't want to lie to the man"I know of him. I heard he's dead now." He rubbed the sandy-colored stubble on his chin and waited for Gonzalo's reaction.
Gonzalo's bushy eyebrows raised in surprise. "Then a scourge has been removed from the Earth. He will face God's justice now." A certain weight seemed to slip off Gonzalo's shoulders.
Nate figured it was time to lead the discussion away from that subject. "Well, that explains why you're dressed so funny. This thing that happened to us, that brought us to this crazy country, still has a few tricks up its sleeves. You're from the 1500's. Where I come from the year is 1838, and I'm not an Englishman, but a lot of my ancestors were. I speak English, but I'm an American. In the 'when' you came from there wasn't an American nation yet. Shoot, just when I think none of this could get any stranger, here you are, a living breathing man from almost three centuries ago."
They regarded each other for a moment, absorbing this revelation. Gonzalo shook his head in solemn disbelief.
"So. We are not just men of different lands, but different times? You came from my future . . . I only believe it because of all the other impossible things I have seen. Tell me, Nate, is Spain still a great nation in your century?"
Nate scratched the back of his neck and said "Well, it's still a nation, but it lost some territory along the way. I'm afraid you missed its heyday. My pappy was a learned man, and he made sure I knew my history. You and me coming from different times might explain a few other things, too. I'm starting to think that maybe we are still in America, but in another time, maybe a long, long time ago. I've heard tell of folks digging up monster bones that were so old they'd turned to stone. Maybe we are back in the days when critters like that were still running around, a couple hundred-thousand years ago, give or take. Anyway, let's just hold onto that question until we get some more answers."
Just as Nate finished speaking, a wailing howl rose up from the jungle beneath them. Gonzalo had heard it before and forced himself to stay calm. Long shadows had stretched across the landscape, it was almost sundown. Instinctively, Nate reached for his pistol and found it wasn't there.
"What the hell? Where's my gun, Spaniard?"
Gonzalo took a step back, arms held out in a gesture of supplication. "Please, Nate, I didn't know if you were a man of reason or not. I had to wait to see if I could trust you." Gonzalo very slowly reached into his leather pouch while Nate scowled at him, and brought out the pistol, holding it gingerly by the pearl handle, barrel down. He put it down on a small cairn of piled up flat stones, and then did the same with the man's sword.
"Here are your weapons back. Please, forgive me." Gonzalo stepped backward a few paces to give Nate room to retrieve his belongings. Once the pistol and sword were safely back at his belt he cocked his head and gave Gonzalo a grim smile.
"Does that mean you trust me now?" Nate asked him, head cocked a bit to the side as if not sure he would believe whatever he heard next.
"It means I trust in God. If you are the angel of Death sent to bring me to my final judgment, then it is His Will, and I accept my fate." Smiling beatifically, Gonzalo turned his back to Nate and began to gather more deadfall. "Now, it is growing late quickly. Let us build up the fire. It is our best hope of keeping the night's dragons at bay. Then we shall have something to eat. I have some dried meat, don't ask me from what creature, as I cannot say what it was. It seemed more bird than lizard, but had claws instead of wings. It's not really food fit for a man, but it's all I have, I will share it with you if you wish." The howl came back again, perhaps a bit closer. "The fire, we should hurry! Build it large!"
They spent the next few minutes warily scrambling about for more wood. Nate favored his sore ankle, but managed to get around fairly well despite his ordeal. Once they had a six-foot tall blaze going they relaxed a little. The howling jungle-thing must have smelled the smoke, and decided to move on, its call receding back into the inky depths of the jungle below.
Gonzalo now tended to his horse, making sure it was tightly tied to the thorn tree by a lead long enough for it to browse whatever odd shrubs it could find nearby. He brought out a handful of precious oats, carefully fed them to the animal, then poured some water into its open mouth. This was something they had practiced during their years together, man and beast in partnership.
"That's a good boy, sleep well, my friend," Gonzalo muttered to it in his native tongue.
"He's a beautiful horse. What's his name?" Nate asked. It took a moment for Gonzalo to realize that Nate had spoken to him in Spanish, albeit with an outrageous accent.
"You speak my language!"
"A little." Nate switched back to English, "I'm from the Texas territory. A lot of folks down there speak Spanish, and I just picked it up over the years. It's not as good as that funny old-time English of yours, but I can get by."
Gonzalo found himself smiling broadly. Suddenly, this stranger he had rescued, this man who said he was from a future time and a country that didn't exist yet, didn't seem that strange any more.
"His name is Flavio, for his fair color. A blondie, you might say. We have been together for five years, and he is more than just my mount, he is a good friend." Gonzalo rubbed the horse's cheek gently.
Nate looked down at his boots. "Yeah, I know how that is. I have a horse, too, but it ran off this morning while I was caught in the tree. Bad piece of luck all that, I had just got down to take a little siesta in the shade of this here tree when that snare done nabbed me! Didn't have time to tie her up. She would'a come when I called, but just then she got spooked by that whooping critter out there and tore off. Can't blame the darn animal none. I would've run for it, too. Thought for sure that thing was goin' to come eat me, although it would have found I still had some fight left." Nate rubbed the butt of his pistol with what Gonzalo thought was a kind of affection. A powerful weapon indeed. . . . Gonzalo felt keenly for Nate's loss. Flavio was perhaps part of what kept him going, someone else to care for and to keep going for, even when all the world had become a hopeless wasteland.
"Which way did it run?" Gonzalo asked, trying to sound encouraging. "Perhaps we can track your horse, find it for you!"
"Went that-a-way." Nate pointed northward along the low range that separated the jungle from the plains. "There, you can see the tracks. Poor little thing, I bet she'll be some big bad beasty's dinner. Cryin' shame."
Gonzalo thought for a moment that the tall, tough looking soldier might actually shed a tear, and couldn't help but pity him. "Nate . . . please, do not despair. In the morning, at first light, I will help you track your horse. I have hunted big game in terrain similar to this, I have some skills."
Nate stared at Gonzalo, a hard look coming over his ruddy, square-jawed face. "Why would you do that for me? You don't know me from Adam! I mean, I appreciate you saving my life and all, but I can't ask any more from you. I don't like to be in another man's debt."
"Do not think that way, please. It will be my pleasure. I have traveled alone in this wilderness for too long, and I am sure there is safety in numbers. By providing another set of eyes, another sword, you would be helping me as much as I would be helping you! Besides, I have nowhere else to go and at least by helping another I may yet find favor in the eyes of my Lord." He cast his eyes down. "I have much to atone for."
The look on Nate's face softened. "I s'pose I have a few things to atone for too." Nate thought about telling Gonzalo about the part he had played in the Trail of Tears. Maybe he wasn't as bad as a conquistador, but there were innocent deaths weighing on whatever passed for his soul these days. For now, he decided not to say too much about his own origins.
"Well, Gonzalo, I'll bet'ya I'm as big a sinner as you so don't be so hard on yourself. Tell you what, I'll take you up on your offer, it's a deal! And . . . thank you." Nate stuck his hand out. Gonzalo took it. The creature howled again in the distant darkness.
"I'll take first watch," Nate said. "I'm too full of thinkin' to sleep just now anyway."
\*\*\*\*
Nate tended the fire and stalked about their camp, watching the starlit horizon until well after midnight while Gonzalo snored softly, sleeping in a sitting position against the bole of the tree, completely hidden beneath a black wool hide. Eventually he stirred, then stood up, stretching with a groan.
"Get a good sleep?" Nate asked.
"Yes, the best in many days, thank you. I knew either you would watch over me, or I would have passed beyond such cares, a liberating feeling, yes? Now, if you like, I will take the watch and repay your kindness."
Nate nodded, thinking about the offer. "Right. Well I'm one 'tuckered out Tucker' as my pappy used'ta say, so I will accept."
Gonzalo smiled brightly. "Then, it must be that you trust me? I am pleased."
"I trust you more than I trust God, that's fer sure. He never seemed to cotton much to me. Anyway, G'night, Gonzalo Xoan de Alcantara, originally from the province of Seville."
Gonzalo laughed aloud, pleased that Nate had actually remembered all of that in one hearing. This is a sharp one, do not be fooled by the lazy demeanor. He is a crocodile sunning himself on the banks. When he does move it will be with unexpected speed and unstoppable force Gonzalo thought, regarding his new companion with the cautious respect of a fellow warrior.
Nate lay down on a length of cowhide with his head pointing toward the fire at a safe distance. He wadded a smooth wool blanket striped with many marvelous colors up under his head, and stretched out, his thick coat and breeches more than enough cover for the sultry night.
"Sleep well, Nate." Gonzalo looked up at the countless stars scattered across the inky black sky, and wondered at the Lord's mysterious ways.
\*\*\*\*
The dawn rays shone across the plains, bathing the world in a golden glow. The branches of the thorn trees filled with light, it was hard to look directly at them. They cast twisted bronze shadows over the tangled jungle beyond.
The sunrise revealed a new spectacle to Gonzalo and Nate. Far to the west, across the wet, shimmering lowlands, rose unbelievably huge coniferous trees. Even with their bases hidden below the horizon, it was plain the massive trunks stood much taller than the hills they stood on. The arboreal giants formed a great, green wall from North to South, a living mountain range of shining needles and radiating limbs. Both men silently marveled at the awesome beauty before them.
"I had thought we were in Hell." Gonzalo spoke in a low, reverent tone. "I must have been wrong. Only God could create such beauty. Surely, he would not do such fine work as this in Hell."
Nate was pretty sure about where they were, but kept that news to himself.
They tore themselves away from the paradisiacal vista. A few minutes later they were following the tracks of Nate's horse northwards along the lowlying, sandy hills.
There was something about the nature of that morning that caused both men to stay quiet. There was much they would have liked to ask each other. Fighting men separated from their armies come to miss the companionship of their brothers in arms. But, there was a pall on the land that made them keep their own counsel. As they followed Nate's horse's skittery tracks, they walked side by side in companionable silence. Gonzalo led his gear-laden horse, taking things a bit slowly, as he could see Nate still favored his injured ankle.
All three kept a wary eye and ear out for danger. When the unearthly howl came again, hidden by the mass of vegetation below and behind them. Now they knew the cause of their disquiet; they were being followed.
"Have you ever heard a sound like that back in Spain?" Nate whispered.
"No, never!" Gonzalo whispered back. "I have even been to such exotic lands as Africa, and India, but never have I heard a beast with such a voice. It is no jackal, nor wolf."
"Whatever it is, it's probably huge and full of sharp teeth. Shit-fire, I wish that fool nag of mine had the dang sense to turn east and get well clear of that jungle!" His whisper was a sincere lament.
Gonzalo nodded in silent agreement. He thought about allowing Nate to ride Flavio, but he was such a large fellow, and his horse badly needed a rest after their sojourn in the swamps.
\*\*\*\*
They pressed on, moving at as fast a pace as they could without losing the trail in the hard scrabble between sand drifts. Nate's face was grim, he kept his hand on the butt of his pistol at all times, but it gave him scant comfort. The only way he had escaped the big critters so far had been by outrunning them on his horse. Now things had gone from perty bad to plum awful.
It was still two hours before noon when Gonzalo's horse gave a snort and shook his head.
"What is it, what do you smell?" Gonzalo asked the animal, gently rubbing his broad, pale-gold colored cheek. Flavio snorted again, shaking his head up and down. Then he bent his neck low to the ground and sniffed with great interest. Gonzalo turned to Nate, who had an incredulous look on his face. Gonzalo laughed, quietly.
"Flavio is no hunting dog, but he does have a very large nose, yes? Tell me, what kind is your horse."
"It's an appaloosa, one of them Injun breeds."
"No, I mean what is the animal's gender? Is it a boy, or a girl horse?"
Nate started to grin. "Why, lil' ole' Poppy is a girl horse! She's just as tough as any stud or gelding, that's fer sure, and she's carried me through some hard fighting." Nate began to chuckle softly, too. "So, your Flavio is still a real boy with all his parts working."
"A stallion, indeed! And, he always has a nose for the girls. Your mare cannot be far!"
Both of them grinning like fools, they charged ahead, letting Flavio take the lead now. As they came around a slowly curving hillside the horse paused.
"He smells something else now. Let us hope it is not our noisy friend, yes?"
"I haven't heard that critter yelp for a while now, must have decided we were too much to make a meal of. I get the feeling most of these critters ain't never seen a proper man nor horse before. Still, they have a way of looking at you like you like they're wondering how you'd taste, so I never stick around to find out."
"I hope it is so, that howl was enough to make a man shiver even in this heat. Here, let us stay out of sight until we see what lies beyond."
Using the odd looking plants that passed for brush and trees in those parts for cover, they worked their way forward until they had a view. In a shallow draw ahead of them, they saw a camp. There were three men that were surely American Indians, gathered around a fire. They were wearing little but tanned hides and bead necklaces, their hair was long and raven black. Nearby, was Nate's mare, alive, but trussed up on her side like a deer ready for skinning. The men were busy sharpening some kind of knives . . . Nate's heart leaped into his throat.
"Damn it all! They're fixing to eat her! We gotta stop'em!" he started to rise, loosening the pistol at his side.
Gonzalo gently put his hand on Nate's shoulder. "Please, Nate, wait! These are the first men I have seen in this place. Do you not think it would not be better to befriend them? I have seen too many people such as these murdered at de Sotos' decree, I would not see it again. Let us try to reason with them."
Nate forced himself to take a deep breath. It made him angry to see poor Poppy suffering and in danger. "All right then, you have a point, but I'm not feeling too friendly right now. These are prob'ly the bastards who set that snare I got caught up in! They didn't even leave a warning for innocents passing by." Nate was simmering with resentment.
Gonzalo cocked his head, remembering something. "Actually, Nate, I think they did leave a warning. That cairn of stones near the tree, that must have been the work of a man, and something a beast wouldn't notice. That must have been their warning sign!"
Nate scowled deeply, but nodded his head in acquiescence. "Yeah, you're quite likely right about that Gonzalo. Still, it wasn't anything an honest, clothes wearing man would notice." Nate took a moment to study the group carefully. "I seen a lot of Injuns in my day but I ain't never seen this tribe. They kind'a look like they might be a branch of Sioux, but I can't be sure."
"I think I may know them! They resemble the Pacaha people, who we had dealings with. If so, I can speak some of their language!"
"Are you sure?" Before Gonzalo could answer, a too familiar piercing wail filled their ears. Their wide eyes followed it to its source, directly below them in the jungle at the bottom of the hill. There was something moving through the dense foliage, something big.
"Oh, shit," Nate whispered.
"A dragon," Gonzalo stated with an awed, almost reverent tone.
They watched the awesome creature come crashing out of the jungle. A dragon, yes sir, that about covers it.
Although Gonzalo and Nate had yet to learn this, the creature was a dinosaur, a close relative of one that scientists across the gulfs of time and parallel universes would call gorgosaurus. It was thirty feet tall and weighed around two tons. The deadly predator walked on two massive hind legs like a ground bird, but with a long, muscular tail held behind as a counterbalance for its enormous head. The thrashing front claws were relatively small compared to its size, but still big enough to tear a man in half. Its main weapons were the fang-walled, gaping jaws that could swallow a grown man in a single bite. These doors to death were currently wide open as it bellowed the unearthly, ear-splitting howl. Gonzalo thought it must make this sound to startle and immobilize its prey in abject fear, it was certainly having that affect on everyone present. The terrifying beast took in the scene with a sweep of its glowering, violet-lensed eyes. Having decided who to eat first it lunged into a charge at the group of natives to its left.
Before Nate could even begin to draw his gun, wiry and quick Gonzalo had jumped onto his horse's back. With a click of his tongue he sent the well-trained mount thundering forward, headed down the gentle slope on a collision course with the monster. Gonzalo freed his eight-foot-long steel-tipped lance from its clasps on the saddle's right side and brought it to bear, aiming at the dragon's side just below its upper claws.
Nate swore to himself, then shouted after him "Hey, Saint George! Come back here, you loco Spaniard!" He started to run after his rapidly accelerating companion. "Goin' ta get us both kilt! He's a regular goddamn Don Quixote!" Nate cursed to himself as he raised his trusty Colt revolver before him, ready to take any shot that might do some good, although the weapon felt like a kid's pea-shooter when pitted against that thing.
Gonzalo was yodeling at the top of his lungs, a sound that was able to cut through the creature's howling and get its attention. The massive beast tried to slow its charge, realizing that something was attacking it, a very rare occurrence indeed! This fine and deadly top predatorhad never seen anything like the bizarre animal that was coming at it, seemingly a four-legged, two-armed beast with a long horn. It was about to make a sudden turn and bite the intruder in half, when it skidded on a patch of hard scrabble between the sand drifts, and started to lose balance. Its bid to quickly change the direction of its mass was thrown off by the slide, and it began to keel over, away from Gonzalo and his horse. Those tiny pebbles scattered across the clay ground had probably saved Gonzalo's life, at least for the moment.
Flavio was fast and sure-footed, Gonzalo urged the stallion on with a squeeze of his knees. There! The dragon has lost its balance, there is our opening! May the Good Lord protect us! Just as the creature began to topple over as it skid, they arrived. Yodeling like a madman, Gonzalo drove his lance deep into the thick, azure-blue and light-gray striped hide that covered the creature's ribcage. Gonzalo could feel its flexible length shiver as the razor sharp tip glanced off a huge rib, then delved further beneath his weight. The liquid pops and splitting tears of ruptured organs could be heard as the lance drove deeper and deeper toward the heart of the dragon.
Gonzalo leaped free of Flavio, keeping all his weight on the lance, allowing the horse to vault safely over the bulk of the falling beast. Gallons of thick, scarlet blood fountained out of the wound as Gonzalo let go of the weapon. The remainder of his momentum sent him off in a brief, uncontrolled flight into the underbrush. He was basically uninjured, but it took him a minute to thrash himself free of the thick growth that had broken his fall. Flavio had very nimbly managed to leap clear of the jungle's edge, and was warily circling at a safe distance from the downed dragon. Gonzalo, muscles already throbbing and sore from his exercise and fall, walked cautiously over to examine the beast's head where it lay on the sand, heavily muscled jaws still thrashing slowly as if it were chewing its prey in a dream. The violet eyes were closed, and its breathing was a ragged wheeze. The dragon was slain, or nearly so. Gonzalo was quite sure he had driven his lance directly into the terrible thing's heart.
He looked over to the three tribesmen. They all stood frozen, their mouths agape and ebony eyes wide with astonishment. Gonzalo raised his arm in the way that he had seen the Pacaha people do, and shouted out a greeting in that tongue. As he took a step toward them he paused, feeling an uncomfortably hot wind at his back, a wind that smelled of rotten meat and fresh blood. Gonzalo turned around to see that the dragon was not quite dead yet, the huge jaws had opened wide and were headed toward him, the beast using the last of its strength to end the life of its slayer. He would not have time to run before they snapped shut, the dagger-like fangs slicing him into pieces. It was hopeless, but he began to draw his sword.
"Dear God, have mercy on this sinner," Gonzalo prayed with what was surely his last breath.
A loud report blasted through the sultry air. The creature's head dropped to the ground, snapping the jaws shut with a bone-chilling clack. Gonzalo had stood firm, his sword held firmly in both hands as if ready to cut himself free from a flesh and bone prison if he could have somehow dodged the fangs.
"And stay down, you cussed varmint!" Nate shouted at the now thoroughly deceased monster, giving it a firm kick in its pebble-scaled jowl just below its ruptured, bloody eye. He had placed a bullet directly through the pupil into its brain, finishing the job for certain. Nate looked at Gonzalo and flashed him a self-satisfied grin. "Lookie here, now we're even. You saved my skin, I saved yours."
Gonzalo shook off the terror of the moment before, and grinned back. "Of course, my friend, we are even. I have no words with which to thank you! If not for you I would have surely perished in the jaws of the beast. It meant to make me its final supper."
"More like an appetizer. There ain't enough of you to make a decent meal. Something small and spicy before he went for the corn-fed cuts." Nate clapped his stomach soundly. "Now, let's go see about my horse."
They walked slowly toward the camp together, arms outstretched in a gesture of peace, both splattered in the blood of the monster they had killed. The three men there watched them approach, there own hands held out in the same gesture. They stopped a few yards away from the simple camp, and Gonzalo began to speak. Before he could say a word the three tribesmen started talking quickly in exalted and excited tones, laughing and smiling at them. Then they were taking their bead necklaces off and placing them over Gonzalo and Nate's heads, their reverent movements conveying deep gratitude.
"What do you figure they're saying?" Nate asked Gonzalo, smiling back at the very friendly fellows while trying to politely dodge having more beads placed on him.
"It is a different dialect of the Pahaca language from the one I learned, but I can understand much of it. They are calling us great heroes. I am fairly sure they wish to praise us for our bravery, and thank us and for saving their lives." Gonzalo paused as the men continued to gesticulate and babble on in high-spirited tones. "Oh, now I am quite sure they have given us a title, something like 'Killers of the terrible lizard'! I am certain they consider this the highest of praise, they must surely live in great fear of these dragons."
"Well, we're just like old Saint George. At least you look the part with your shining armor." Nate managed to smile back at his new, and highly effusive admirers. The three tribesmen began to settle down, gesturing Nate and Gonzalo toward the fire. Nate didn't like the hungry way they kept looking at his bound-up horse. He drew his sword to cut her loose, and if there were to be a misunderstanding about that he would use the blade to make his point. There was no cause to waste precious bullets on these half-naked fellers and their stone knives. Poppy saw him, and gave him a plaintive whinny. I'm a-comin', lil' darlin', don't you fret now!
Gonzalo had forgotten all about the issue of Nate's horse, he was so taken up with the warm praise their hosts were showering upon them. This guy don't get out much, Nate thought darkly to himself. Gonzalo called out to him with almost child-like delight.
"Nate! We have been invited to dine with them! We are their honored guests!"
"That's wonderful, Gonzalo! Now please let them know that horse is not what's for dinner!"
\*\*\*\*
The Dragon Slayer
Written by David W. Dove
Jack Dauderman watched as Andy Blacklock slowly led the mixed group of prison guards, Cherokee, and nineteenth-century federal soldiers into position. They were preparing to assault the prison which had been taken over by that nutcase, Adrian Luff.
Jack remembered that night well. He had been one of the guards taken prisoner by Luff's goons, only to be rescued by Marie Keehn and Casey Fisher. After that he and the other guards had been forced to flee, many of them like him, barefoot and in their skivvies.
He wasn't joining the assault to retake the prison, though. That was the task for Andy and his group. No, he had been given another task, one that he was uniquely suited to do; a task that he was possibly the only person in this prehistoric world that had any real, practical experience in performing. He shook his head in wonder. Who would have thought that launching pumpkins across a field as a kid would have prepared him to assault a prison?
Glancing back over his shoulder, he could see his team had loaded the trebuchet they had built. On Andy's signal, they would start bombarding the gate area with smoke bombs, providing cover for Andy's assault.
He moved back to join his team. "Are we ready?"
Kevin Johnson, one of the Cherokee, looked over the catapult and then nodded. "Ready and waiting, Jack."
"Good; when Andy gives the signal, we'll start the bombardment."
Jack turned back to watch for Andy's signal. He could feel his heart beating quickly in anticipation. He wondered if this was how soldiers felt before a battle.
There; Andy was waving his hat in the air; that was the signal! "Fire!"
His team released the catapult and it flung the glass jar into the air. Jack watched as the projectile arched through its flight and saw it shatter against the ground, erupting in a cloud of chemically-induced smoke.
The bomb had landed about twenty feet short of the gate, good enough for an initial shot, but not really where they needed to hit. "Twenty feet forward and fire again!"
His team hustled to move the war machine up to the new location and reset the weapon. Soon a second bomb flew through the air, this time shattering just inside the gate.
Jack smiled. The few test rounds they had been able to fire before moving to the prison had been enough to get a general idea of the range of the catapult. It had only taken two shots to get their range today. He quickly moved back to assist his team in any way he could. "Right on target. Now let's get those bombs fired as quickly as we can!"
Soon they had fired more than a dozen of the bombs and smoke covered the area around the gate. Jack nodded in satisfaction. "Good job, guys. Now it's Andy's turn."
\*\*\*\*
A few months later, Jack hid himself as well as he could in the undergrowth around the trees. He and several other guards were to stand ready to help Rod Hulbert if things went wrong.
He had to give Rod credit. Rod had volunteered to act as the bait in their plan to rid themselves of the large dinosaur that had been stalking the community recently, forcing everyone to retreat behind the safety of the prison walls. They had not always been fast enough, though. One of the people of the pre-mounds villagers had been caught by surprise and became the creature's lunch.
Rod had already gone up the hill to get the dinosaur's attention and lead it into the trap. It wasn't long before Rod's voice could be heard calling out. "Hey, you overgrown gecko, over here!"
They could all hear the allosaurus let out a loud bellow and they knew that the bait had been taken. Rod would have to be careful. There was no way he could outrun the beast and he would have to outmaneuver it.
It wasn't long until Jack heard the sounds of several muskets being fired and he knew the dinosaur had been led into the first part of the trap, Kershner's squad.
Sergeant James Kershner and his squad of nineteenth-century federal soldiers had become the official animal control force for the local settlements. One volley from their .69 caliber muskets was enough to take down most of the smaller predators, but this had been their first trial against one of the big dinosaurs.
Jack forced himself to exhale when he realized he was holding his breath. Did it work?
He got his answer after a few moments when he again heard Rod's voice. "What's the matter, Barney; have you got a booboo?"
Within seconds, Rod came rushing down the hill, with an angry allosaur not far behind. Just as he neared the trap, Rod threw himself out of the path of the charging creature, narrowly avoiding its sharp teeth. He rolled back to his feet and looked in the creature's direction.
The dinosaur lay at the bottom of the pit, its bones broken from the fall. It thrashed in agony as its life slowly drained away.
But the creature's screams of agony were another problem. Rod looked up and called out. "Frank!"
Jack moved from his position along with the other guards as Frank Nickerson rushed over to Rod. "Yeah, I'm on it, Rod," he heard Frank say. "Those screams are going to draw in every predator and scavenger in the area, looking for an easy meal. I'll pass the word for everyone to be on guard."
As Frank ran to pass on the warning, Rod turned to the other man who was approaching. "You heard?"
Sergeant James Kershner nodded. "Yes, Rod. My squad will be ready."
When Kershner moved off to rejoin his squad, Rod turned to Jack. "What do you think, Jack?"
Jack shook his head and smiled. "It looks like we're going to be eating dinosaur steaks for a while."
\*\*\*\*
The next morning, Jack put his foot into the stirrup of the crossbow and pulled on the string to cock the weapon. He reached over, picked up a practice bolt, and loaded it into the weapon. The practice bolt was a simple wooden bolt he had fashioned so that he didn't have to practice with the metal tipped bolts they had acquired during the attack on the Spaniards.
Kevin Johnson, the young Cherokee practicing with him, gestured. "They're almost ready."
Jack looked down the length of the practice range he had set up to where the village children were setting up the large plant bulb. The bulb was about the size of a man's head and fairly soft, perfect for a target. Additionally, the few people who had tried to eat it had become sick and it was no longer a potential food item, so he was free to use as many as he wanted for targets.
The kids finished balancing the bulb on the large rock and Jack waved them away. When they were clear, he slowly raised the crossbow and took aim. Very little wind was blowing, so he didn't need to adjust much for that. He knew this weapon fired slightly to the right, so he adjusted a bit to the left. He exhaled to steady his aim and squeezed the lever on the bottom, firing the weapon.
The string flung the bolt through the air and the bolt struck the target, burying itself deep in the flesh of the bulb. The village children cheered noisily at his marksmanship and he smiled as he lowered the weapon.
The sound of several people clapping drew their attention and they turned to look at its source, a group of six young Cherokee women.
Kevin gave him a pat on the back. "I would be very jealous of your marksmanship if I thought you had any interest in their attention." His grinned widely. "But then, I know you are really only interested in the attention of one of them."
Jack blushed and couldn't help grinning. It was true; only the attention of one of the women meant much to him, and it was the one woman whose attention his companion didn't seek. That woman was Susanna Johnson, Kevin's sister.
Kevin laughed. "Hey Jack, I approve. In this new world we cannot be too choosy. Even a lousy hunter like you has a chance."
"I can outshoot you any day."
"Here on this practice range, yes, but most targets do not sit still like that plant bulb. It is much more difficult to shoot a living target, like a deer."
"I'll grant you that, but then I didn't have your background. My dad didn't have much time to take me hunting. He was too busy with his carpentry business. You want me to show you how to make a solid joint in a cabinet, that's not a problem. But I just don't have much experience in walking through the woods."
"I will take you the next time I go. But first, I need to impress the other five women with my skill."
"Yeah, fine, but we need to finish up here. I've got that meeting with the big shots in a little while."
The two men turned back to the range and Jack motioned for the children to set up another target while Kevin loaded his crossbow.
\*\*\*\*
Jack sat quietly as the governing cabinet gathered around the table. The cabinet had been assembled for an after-action analysis of the efforts taken to rid the community of a large carnivorous dinosaur.
"So Kershner's muskets didn't work?" Andy Blacklock asked from the head of the table.
Rod Hulbert shook his head. "I wouldn't say they didn't work at all. The bullets definitely penetrated and the dino certainly felt it. The volley almost knocked it off its feet. The volley did a real good job of getting the thing's attention. It knew it had been hit, and it wanted to get at whatever had hurt it. The main problem is that the muskets have too short a range and take too long to reload. If Kershner's squad had time to reload, I don't doubt that another volley or two would have brought it down. But one volley just isn't going to do it, short of a really lucky shot, and the men wouldn't have had time to reload before the dino attacked them. The only reason they didn't get attacked was because I was there to distract the beast."
"Okay, but the pit did the trick?"
"Oh, yeah, the pit worked fine, although next time we dig one, it won't take quite so much work. We don't need to waste all the man hours making the stakes; they didn't do a thing and we don't need them. Just the fall was enough to take down a creature that size."
Jack chuckled to himself. "Didn't need the stakes" was definitely understating the situation. After taking the time to dig the pit---no small project---they had then spent days getting those stakes ready, sharpening them and planting them in the bottom of the pit. They had then discovered that the stakes were pointless, a complete waste of time and effort. No land animal that weighed better than six tons could survive a plunge like that. Most of the stakes had just splintered, without ever piercing the dino's hide, definitely a waste of time.
"So, when it happens again, can we just keep using the pit?" Andy asked.
Rod shrugged. "For now it's our only option, but I'd rather not rely on the same trick too many times. We need to find another solution."
"Why? What's wrong?"
"Frankly, it's a big risk for anyone who acts as the bait. There were a couple of times when it was pure luck that I didn't end up as dinosaur chow. Next time I might not be so lucky."
"There's another issue," Jenny Radford interrupted. "It's not a good idea to have something like that in the area. No matter what we do to clean it, there are going to be residual blood and body parts remaining in the bottom. That will attract pests."
"Not to mention bigger animals," Rod agreed.
Jenny continued, nodding. "And just having a hole that deep in the area is a hazard. We've got a lot of kids living here now and eventually one of them is going to fall into it, no matter how closely we watch. A fifteen foot fall could seriously injure or even kill someone."
"What should we do then?" Andy asked.
"We need bigger guns," Rod commented jokingly.
Jeff Edelman shook his head. "That's not going to happen anytime soon. I thought about a cannon or something similar, but we can't even do that right now. The machinists aren't up to casting something like that and, even if they could, we don't have that much powder to spare. We're working to find the materials to make some, but that will mainly go to keeping the muskets and matchlocks going."
Andy was obviously becoming concerned. "Are there any suggestions?"
Jeff nodded. "There is one possibility that's been suggested."
"Go on," Andy prodded.
"Well, it wasn't my idea; Jack here suggested it to me. I'll let him explain."
Andy nodded in Jack's direction. "Jack, thanks for coming. What's your idea?"
Jack cleared his throat. "I think the solution for this situation may be a ballista, or rather, several of them placed around the community."
"Is that anything like the catapult we built to retake the prison?"
"Trebuchet, but no, the only similarity is that both were used to throw big objects at a target."
"Why can't we just use the catapult? It's still sitting out there."
"Again, it's because they're designed to do two different things. The trebuchet works really well for firing objects at a large stationary target, like a wall or a gate, but it can't be aimed quick enough to target a dinosaur."
Andy leaned back in his chair. "I'm listening, Jack. We all know it was really you who got the catapult to work right."
"Well, it was Jeff's design. I just tweaked it for him."
"Don't be modest, Jack," Jeff interrupted. "If you hadn't known to make those changes, the range would have only been about half of what you achieved. I could come up with a basic design easily enough, but you're the only one here who had any real world experience building something like that."
Rod laughed. "How in the world could you get experience like that in southern Illinois? I thought you were studying accounting."
Jack shrugged. He had been trying to get an accounting degree part time, while he worked at the prison to pay for it. "Everybody's got to have a hobby. Some guys my age like to work on cars; some like to go hunting. Me, I liked to build machines to launch pumpkins across a field. I studied old siege weapon designs so I could build my own."
Andy couldn't help but laugh. "Pumpkins, huh. How does this ballista work?"
"Well, think of it as a big crossbow. The firing mechanism I have in mind works differently, but the result is the same. Only instead of a crossbow bolt, the ballista will basically fire spear-sized arrows."
"I don't see how a spear can be any more effective than the rifles."
"In ancient times, it was reported that an arrow shot from one of these machines could go through both a shield and the armored warrior behind it, at a distance of four hundred yards. I think it ought to penetrate a dinosaur hide. More importantly, if we set these up in the towers and similar locations, we can shoot at any dinosaurs from behind the safety of our walls."
He could tell Andy was considering what had just been said before he spoke. "Does anyone have any reason we shouldn't try this?"
Rod shrugged his shoulders. "I don't see why we shouldn't."
"Jeff?"
Jeff quickly nodded. "If there's anyone here that can make it work, it's probably Jack."
"Okay, Jack, the project is yours. Let us know what you'll need. Since Geoffrey Watkins and James Cook aren't here right now, we'll see if any of their people can give us some useful input. Anything we can develop would help them too. Rod, you may be out of the Tyrannosaur chow business."
Rod laughed. "Marie will like that. She almost killed me when she heard how close that critter came to eating me."
\*\*\*\*
Jack leaned back and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Damn it!"
Kevin Johnson stopped smoothing the piece of wood he held. "What is it, Jack?"
"I'm doing all this from memory and I just don't remember all the details. If I had my books I could look up the specifications, check out the proportions that work best. All I can remember is that the diameter of the torsion-spring needs to equal one ninth of the length of the projectile. I remember that there is also a correlation between the diameter of the torsion-spring and its own length to achieve maximum effectiveness, but I have no idea what that is. I also know that all the proportions are based on the diameter of the spring, but I can only guess what those proportions are."
Kevin just looked at him and blinked. "I think I need someone to translate. If I understand you correctly, you are worried that you will not use the correct proportions and the machine will not work as well as you would like. Is that right?"
"That's it exactly."
"Jack, you know more about these machines than anyone else here. It does not have to work perfectly; it just needs to work. This is the first such machine we are making. We can make adjustments on other ones as we learn."
"I know, but if I only had my books I would already have that knowledge. Then, we wouldn't need to experiment."
"We have to learn many things again in this new world. One more is only one more." He held up the piece of wood. "I thought this weapon would work like a big crossbow. But we are not using a bow; we are using these pieces of wood with ropes twisted in them; why?"
"It's to get more power. Bows work great for hand-held weapons and even for larger machines that fire arrows, but to get the power, range, and size of projectile needed, the twisted ropes will work much better."
"I do not disbelieve you, Jack, but I will have to see it for myself."
Jack laughed and pointed to the group of children that had gathered around them to watch the latest project. "Don't worry; it will work. I can't disappoint our fans."
\*\*\*\*
Jack stepped back from the ballista and examined it from one end to the other. Was their work finally finished after three weeks?
Kevin looked at him expectantly. "Is it done?"
"I think it is."
"Can we fire it now?"
Jack felt the smile grow on his face. "Yes, I believe we can."
The two of them quickly rolled the machine out to the firing range and aimed it down range.
The village children had seen them and were quickly assembling at the edge of the cleared area.
Kevin chuckled. "Our audience is here."
Jack smiled. "Yeah, it's kind of nice having them around. They remind me of my younger brother and his friends who always liked to watch me fire the pumpkin catapults." He paused and could feel tears forming in his eyes.
Kevin's hand came to his shoulder. "Jack, it is not fair how all the people from your time lost your families. Although we did not have much else, at least we Cherokee have our families."
"I miss him, Kevin. He was a smart-mouthed, annoying teenager, but I miss him. He would have loved this." He wiped the tears away and exhaled deeply. "Come on, help me get the springs wound tight."
Over the next several minutes, they took turns pulling on the levers to wind the ropes tight. They had to be careful to crank each side to the same tension, which would allow the weapon to fire smoothly.
Jack gave one last pull on the lever. "Okay, set the pin!"
Kevin quickly pushed the dowel into its hole to secure the torsion spring. "Is that it?"
"The ballista is ready to use now; we just need to cock and load it. The springs should remain tight enough to use several times before we have to adjust them."
He moved to the bottom end of the machine and grasped the arming crank. "Attach the windlass cord."
Kevin picked up the cord and set the hook in the bolt at the back of the pusher. "Okay, wind it up."
James began to turn the crank at the bottom of the ballista, which in turn caused the cord to pull back on the pusher, setting the weapon. When he had pulled it back to the end of the channel, he set the dowel to lock the crank in place. "Okay, get the bolt."
Kevin quickly grabbed the wooden spear they had fashioned and fit it into the channel, resting the butt of the spear against the pusher. "Is that it?"
Jack stepped back and examined the weapon one last time. "I think so. I've got no idea just how far it will go, but, if the ropes are twisted enough, it should work fairly well. Are you ready?"
Kevin nodded, so Jack again looked at the target and made another slight adjustment to the ballista. He rose up and waved the children farther away. "Can't be too careful, you know. I suggest you step back too. There's a lot of stress on the different parts of this weapon and if anything breaks it could be nasty."
When Kevin had stepped away, Jack took his position. "Here we go!"
He picked up the small sledge hammer and swung it at the hook which held the pusher. When the hook was knocked loose, the energy stored in the coiled ropes pulled the pusher forward, which flung the spear through the air with great force. As they watched, the bolt flew several feet over the target and far into the trees beyond. The children all laughed with glee at the sight.
Jack chuckled nervously. "And that, my friend, is why you should always design firing ranges so that they point away from your settlement. With more practice, I can get the range and aim better."
Kevin was staring into the woods. "I am still impressed. How far do you think it went?"
"I don't know. It could have gone a few hundred yards. Let's go find out."
They walked down the range and into the woods, followed by the children. Everyone began to look for the spear, but Kevin was the one who found it. "Will you look at that?"
Jack joined him at the small mound where the spear was stuck in the clay and did a quick measure of the length of spear that was exposed. "It buried itself about halfway."
Kevin whistled softly as he tested the clay. "This is pretty stiff clay. I think that just might penetrate a dinosaur hide."
Jack grasped the spear and tugged, slowly pulling the spear free. He looked at the tip. "We probably need to see about getting some spearheads made, but this will certainly work for tests. Are you ready to try it again? We need to get our range figured out."
His friend's smile was all the answer he needed.
\*\*\*\*
Jack watched as the ballista bolt sailed through the air, only to land twenty yards short of his expectations. "Crap, we're still losing range!"
Kevin nodded. "About twenty yards, I would say. What's happening?"
"I don't know! We keep tightening the springs but they just don't seem to stay tight enough. I can't figure it out."
"It still fires the bolt, though. It still works."
"Yeah, but if we can't keep a consistent range it makes it real hard to target something. We're building this to shoot at moving dinosaurs, not stationary ones."
"Any ideas?"
"Not a one. I know I'm missing something, but I just don't know what it is. Come on. Send the kids down to recover the bolt and help me tighten the springs again."
As the kids ran down to recover the bolt, the two men set to work tightening the coil springs.
Their efforts were cut short by the bellow of a large animal, followed shortly by the screams of young children.
Kevin began to run toward the screams. "The children!"
As he rushed to follow Kevin, Jack saw the children come running from the trees. Not far behind, a large predator dinosaur came after them. Jack grabbed Kevin to stop him. "We have to get it away from the kids!"
Kevin nodded and ran off to flank the kids to the right; Jack hurried to do the same to the left. When he heard Kevin begin to call out, Jack did the same. "Hey, over here! Look over here lizard!"
The allosaurus stopped its pursuit of the children and moved its head back and forth between the two men. The basic tactic of most predators was to isolate an individual target, not chase a whole pack, so the two men had now become preferred targets. The creature turned towards Kevin with a bellow. The young Cherokee had now become his target.
Jack had to help and looked around frantically for a solution. His eyes stopped on the ballista. He called out to his friend. "Kevin, lead it toward me!"
He quickly ran back to the ballista as his friend weaved about to keep out of reach of the dinosaur. The weapon had not been fully drawn, but even partially drawn it could still fire a bolt. He looked around to find the second spear. They only had two and the other was still in the trees somewhere. Grabbing the second spear, he quickly placed it in the channel. He then struggled to move the ballista so it pointed toward the creature.
He reached over to grab the hammer and noticed the allosaur coming his way. Kevin had apparently evaded the creature and it was now barreling toward the last available target, Jack.
Jack raised the hammer and readied himself. He would have only one chance at this. It would take too long to rearm the weapon if he missed and he didn't have another spear handy. He had no way to know how far the spear would fly with the ballista only partially drawn and had to wait for the dinosaur to get closer.
When he thought the creature was close enough, he swung the hammer and knocked the latch loose. The stored energy of the weapon flung the spear out, but Jack couldn't watch to see if it hit. He dropped the hammer and started to run.
A bellow from the beast caused Jack to look back. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
The spear had buried itself in the creature's lower throat and caused it to stagger back. Blood gushed from the wound as the dinosaur weaved about. The spear had obviously struck something vital for that much blood. With a final bellow of pain the creature tipped and fell over.
"No!" Jack cried out as the dinosaur landed in its death throes, directly on top of the ballista. The weight of the creature splintered the wooden device, scattering its parts across the ground.
Jack could only stare at his broken weapon. "It's ruined."
Kevin had walked up to him quietly and put his hand on Jack's shoulder. "But, Jack, it worked. The beast is dead."
\*\*\*\*
Andy looked at him from across the table. "But it killed the dinosaur, Jack."
Jack shook his head. "It was a lucky shot. The ballista was only partially cocked. If the spear had hit anywhere else, I might have been the dino's appetizer."
Chief Watkins smiled. "Do not underestimate your actions, Jack. You saved the village children and proved your weapon will work."
"But it may not work for long. Even if we build another one, we were already noticing that the ropes weren't holding tension very long."
"I have thought of that, Jack. I examined what was left of your machine. The ropes were taking on moisture. That is why they stretched. If that problem can be solved, would the machines be reliable?"
Jack paused in realization. "Of course, moisture in the ropes! That would cause the problems we noticed. I'm an idiot; I should have remembered that. That's why ballistae were used mostly in the Middle East and the drier areas around the Mediterranean. In northern Europe, the rain and moist air made them impractical. The humidity is higher here and that got into the ropes."
Kevin spoke up from beside him. "Can we do something to protect the ropes; oil or fat or something?"
"Yes, we can. We can also experiment with other materials like animal sinew." He slapped his hand on the table. "I remember now. It was said that women's hair was the best material. Chief, do you think we could get the women to donate to the cause?"
Geoffrey laughed out loud. "I don't know, Jack; you know how women love their hair. But, if you can show it works, we may be able to find donors."
Andy took a moment to stop laughing. "Okay, Jack, it looks like you're our new weapons engineer. When can you have the next ballista ready?"
"It shouldn't take too long, even with the new ideas."
"Great, let us know what you need."
\*\*\*\*
Jack carefully wound the crank to set the new ballista, the Mark II as he liked to think of it. He and Kevin had built this weapon over the last few weeks, incorporating the improvements discussed after the testing of his first weapon.
When the weapon was set, he stood up to wave the crowd of observers back. After killing the allosaur, the crowd had doubled in size, including several more young Cherokee women.
He nodded to Kevin. "There sure are a lot of them."
Kevin smiled. "Didn't you hear, Jack? The villagers consider us heroes now. We saved their children."
"But what about the women from your village? We didn't save any Cherokee that day."
Kevin's smile grew even wider. "Jack, they are here for you. You are prime husband material now."
"Husband material?"
"Of course. You are like a knight from the old stories, facing down the great dragon and slaying it."
"But you helped!"
"Alas, I am but the sidekick. I am really quite jealous. You are the dragon slayer!"
Jack blushed from the compliment, but his eyes scanned the group of young women, settling on one face. Susanna Johnson smiled back at him.
Husband material, Jack thought. Hell, why not? Every knight needs a lady.
\*\*\*\*
A Season for Sisters
Written by Amanda E. Forrest
In the still hush of morning, Howard the allegorical alchemist sat before his work table with magnifying spectacles perched on his nose. He held tweezers and a funnel, and one by one he plucked tiny balls of sunshine from a jar and placed them on a scale. When the scale balanced---a properly measured dose---he poured the balls down the funnel and into a pill press. He sipped his tea and pulled the lever that compressed the lozenge. Simple work. Meditative. A good task for the hours between waking and alertness.
The door opened, a jingle of bells. A cool taste of fog swirled into the shop. Low purity, tainted with all sorts of city vapors. Entirely unsuitable to be collected as a curative---but it smelled nice.
Rows of shelving shielded his workspace from the door. He tapped the pill out onto the table, swept it into a jar. A quick scrawl of pencil on the label---sunshine, 10 mg, generic autumn---and he rose and rounded the closest stack of shelves. "May I help you?" he said.
"I'm not sure. I'm new in town and I saw your sign."
She was beautiful. Her eyes were sunrise on mountaintop. Droplets of fog glistened in her hair. Light from the windows and lamps seemed to bend toward her, to illuminate her inside and out. He was instantly, hopelessly in love with her radiance.
Howard caught a toe on a crooked floorboard and stumbled. He snagged a shelf to catch his balance. Phials and bottles wobbled, clinked against one another.
He coughed. "Pardon my oafishness."
A smile spilled across her face and vanished just as quickly. "Of course."
"If you've come seeking a cure for an ailment, it's likely I can provide it. What's troubling you?"
"It's not me. I have a sister. My twin. She's . . ."
Howard waited.
"She's . . ." She clamped her lips and balled her fists, a clear attempt to avoid tears.
"Come, have a seat."
Along one wall, a pair of armchairs crowded a low coffee table. The woman settled into the chair that granted a view out the store's front windows. Howard took the other. He crossed his ankles and stacked his hands on his knee. "What's your sister's name?"
"Norah."
"And yours?"
"Elena. We weren't meant to be two, you see. The midwife said to plan for a single child right until Norah crowned. Mother wanted to name us Eleanor."
"And instead, you're Elena because you were first, and she's Norah, the remainder. Your sister feels that she's the unwanted child?"
She shifted back in her seat, and Howard scolded himself. He'd attempted to impress her with his shameless display of deduction. Totally inappropriate for a clinical consultation.
"That's true," she said. "But there's more."
"I must be honest, Elena. I deal mostly in physical ailments---cold and flu, arthritis and gout. But some of my remedies have a psychoactive component, a side effect really. A breezy spring afternoon never fails to---"
Elena set both feet on the floor and leaned forward. "She's vanishing."
"Vanishing?"
She nodded. "We're opposites, Norah and I. She sleeps during the day and works at night. I keep normal hours. Neither of us can finish a meal. Half of it always tastes abominable to one, divine to the other."
"What does this have to do with her vanishing?"
Elena didn't answer immediately. Howard sat back to let her frame her words. Muffled sounds came from the street: the scrape of a box dragged over pavement, an alley cat's hungry lament.
She looked down at her hands. A tear spattered on the floor between her feet. "I've been staying up later and later. Eating more than my share. When I do see Norah, she seems . . . she's thinner. Not skinnier. Faded, like there's less of her there."
Howard shifted in his seat and took a deep breath. "Frankly, Elena, I've never heard of this sort of thing."
She whipped her head up. Anger clouded her brow, and her eyes were a summer thunderstorm. Beautiful. Electric.
Howard raised hands, placating. "I believe you. Truly. But I have no experience with this sort of case. I can't imagine what I could prescribe to help your sister."
"It's not for Norah." She stared at him. "It's my fault this is happening, I'm sure of it. I need you to cure my selfishness."
Howard stared back, entranced. It had truly been too long since he last looked for a romantic connection. He was acting like a besotted youth. He looked aside just before it became impolite, and dove into his professional knowledge to cool his mind. He considered his stock. Up front he kept the generic remedies. Bottles of everyday sunshine, sorted by season and origin. Some ailments called for a nice, dry heat, others for a good, tropical soak. Wind he kept in flasks, organized by strength. Nothing cured a headache like good, gusty gale taken by the teaspoon.
But selfishness? He glanced at the back row of shelving where he kept his rarest tonics. Stillness from the hurricane's eye? A bitter-cold draught from a polar winter? He doled those out when nothing else worked, but felt decidedly uncertain and unstudied regarding the effects, especially the side effects.
"I'll pay. I'll pay you well. Norah and I have saved quite a lot, only needing one house, one bed---"
"Stop. Money isn't my concern here." He would try to do her bidding just to see Elena smile. "It's just . . . I'll have to do some research. Your case is unusual."
"Tomorrow?"
He desperately wanted to see her tomorrow. But he'd only disappoint her. "The day after. The tradesmen's library here is a mess. And disregarding that, I may need to experiment. It's likely you'll need a bit of a cocktail, and not all of my medicines combine well."
She slipped a card onto the table. "My address, in case you have something sooner."
\*\*\*\*
Dusk yellowed the fog outside the window. It was rare for the damp to last the day. Soon the street lamps would be bright islands in the murk. Howard strode to the door, ready to flip the sign to "closed" and twist the deadbolt. He'd exit via the alley, shortening his trudge to the library archives by half a block. An all-day fog promised rain, especially in the summer months. He didn't want to be caught out.
A face loomed in the display window, hands cupped against eyes that squinted at the shop's interior. Her features were lost in dimness. When she saw him approaching, the woman waved to catch his attention. She was a wraith in the fog, tall and ragged in a knit coat that fell unevenly below her knees. He cracked the door open.
"We're closing. Do you have a quick request?"
She stepped closer. Her face seemed to capture the already-waning light, to suck it in and tuck it away. Dark filled the indentations around her collar bones, pooled in the hollow at the base of her throat. Her eyes promised secrets, wisdom, the stars. The scent of jasmine on a moonless night. He was instantly, hopelessly in love with her mystery.
"Norah?"
She nodded. "Elena came here, then."
"Today. She was looking . . ." Howard paused. "She wanted to know if I could help you."
"Do not listen to a thing she says," Norah said. "My sister has the mind of a hummingbird. Sweet, innocent. Capricious. My predicament has nothing to do with her."
Howard sighed. He opened the door and stepped aside. "Why don't you come in?"
Norah, naturally, chose the chair that faced the shop's backrooms and storage shelves. It was the seat opposite that which her sister had picked.
She spoke before Howard had time to settle into the other chair. "Elena told you that it's her selfishness causing me to wane, correct?"
Momentarily unbalanced by her quick words, Howard smoothed the wrinkles from his pant legs. "What leads you to think otherwise? She hinted that you resent the order and circumstance of your births. It seems strange to me that you wouldn't consider Elena's selfishness as the culprit."
"First of all . . ." Her lips were dark and full of blood. She paused to wet them with her tongue. ". . . I do not resent the circumstances of our births. I regret them. Elena and I were meant to be one. Instead, each of us lives half a life. We share only the gloaming time, the neverland between day and night."
"Perhaps if you stopped looking at it that way, you'd be content. Elena doesn't---"
She sliced the air with a long-fingered hand. "I know what my sister thinks. She's naïve. A child of the sun. We killed our mother, you know. She couldn't care for us both. Mother became too tired, frayed. She argued with the women she hired to watch us while she slept. They never stayed, and eventually Mother's exhaustion opened the door for the wasting disease that finished her."
Howard took a deep breath and regarded her. He could swim in her complex tides. High brows arched over dark eyes. But for all the knowledge that lurked there, Norah seemed blinded by preconception.
"Norah." He wouldn't dare touch her, but he leaned in to soften his words. "Bemoaning one's birth is the ultimate arrogance. You did not cause your mother's death."
A glimmer lit her face, moonlight glinting from ripples in a pond. Norah wanted to believe. But darkness fell like a curtain. "We're unnatural. You are convinced otherwise because Elena made you love her. Men tumble at her feet. You want to be the savior that wins her affection."
Enraptured by sisters, a hopeless plight. He didn't acknowledge her accusation. "You still haven't told me your idea. With only Elena's declaration of selfishness, how am I to proceed on any other course?"
"It's obvious." She looked at him as if he were dimwitted. "I am melting into her because the fates have finally seen their error. We were meant to be one from the beginning, and soon we will be. Lately, I dream of daylight."
"You would have me do nothing? Stand by and let you . . . melt?"
"Exactly."
Howard tapped his index fingers together. His gaze met hers, a challenge. And a chance to bathe in her attentions. "And if the fates really meant to erase you, you would do nothing to fight it?"
"Nothing."
"Norah, I deal in cures for everyday physical ailments. Blizzards to cool a fever. A capsule of fog to loosen a cough. But even I can see you suffer a terrible case of despondency."
She pursed those stunning, sensual lips and rose. "I'll be going now."
Her hair trailed behind, strands of night. She turned just before leaving. "You say you treat physical illness. Then what business do you have dosing my sister for selfishness? Think about the risks you subject her to with your . . . ardor."
The jingling of the bells seemed muffled, somehow, when the door closed behind her.
\*\*\*\*
A serum for selfishness. A drug for despondency. Howard scoured the library stacks. He would pursue both cures. The latter he would leave in Elena's hands; she could decide whether to slip it into Norah's food. He'd thought hard about the conflicting stories, and decided that to do nothing would be risking Norah's life for the sake of her regard. He'd need to discover the remedy for selfishness simply to cure his own failing.
If Elena were wrong---if Norah's theory proved correct---and the sisters were destined to reunite as one person, his efforts would be in vain. Yes, it would free him for the romantic pursuit that was impossible with two women. But they deserved their individuality more than he deserved their embraces.
The books smelled of dust. Pages were smudged, marked by the fingers of hundreds of tradesmen who had sought out their secrets over the decades. Tome after tome offered advice for poxes, baldness, jaundice. But none braved the murk of the psyche; at least, none dared to offer conclusions---the humors of the mind defied careful science. A few supplied anecdotal evidence of observed side effects. He pored over these tales.
When midnight came, and the library's archivists shuttled him out the door, he had yet to find promising remedies. And it was raining.
\*\*\*\*
Elena pushed open the door, traipsed in to the shop trailing sunshine and birdsong. It was the second morning after she'd first visited, and Howard still had no answers. He tucked away the rag he'd been using to dust a row of bottles, and held his palms up to her, empty.
"Nothing?"
"Not yet," he said. "The research is difficult. We may have to perform some trials of our own. Low-dosage experiments. But I much prefer to proceed armed with some clues."
Her eyes widened like those of a startled calf thrust into a spring morning. "We can't just dally along like this, Mr. . . ."
Had he never told her his name? "Howard. And I don't see another course to take."
Static crackled in her eyes. "Norah doesn't have time. I'm losing her. Just yesterday, she slept in too late and lost her job. She has no other references here, no hope of countering accusations of laziness without sending away for recommendations from our previous home."
"I---"
"Some days I can hardly see her, Howard."
Howard felt as if he were shrinking under her fervor. He needed to change the subject. "Where is this previous home?"
Elena opened her mouth, and then seemed to swallow the words she'd readied. Her face softened. "South. We were born along the southern sea and lived our whole lives in the same fishing village. We loved the warm waters but hated the small-town gossips. We made the journey overland this past spring."
Howard reached a hand toward her but stopped inches from her arm. "Did you leave family behind? I understand that your mother has passed on."
Her nostrils flared. "How did you . . . ? Norah! She's been here."
"The same day you came. In the evening."
Elena crossed her arms over her chest. "I understand now. You've delayed my cure because Norah convinced you I'm mistaken. You're in love with her, aren't you? I should have suspected. Men lie down before her like worshippers in a temple."
Howard stammered. She cut him off. "She disdains them all, you know. You doom her for silly romantic hopes that will come to nothing."
The urge to laugh---or cry---at his predicament crept up from the bottoms of his shoes. He shuffled his feet to banish it. If only he'd made time for courting sooner. A lovely, faithful bride would do wonders to distract him from these two.
"Elena," he said. "Romance has nothing to do with this. I spent the last two nights in the library, researching until they closed. You must believe me. At the end of my studies in curatives, I took an oath to do no harm. Implicit is that I will always help when I can."
She drew her brows together, considering.
He sighed. "Perhaps a sharp mind will help. Words blur when I read by lamplight. I'll close the shop at noon and spend the afternoon in the library."
"And if you continue to find nothing? What then?"
"Then we'll consider alternatives. Experimentation, if we must. Return here this evening and knock."
She straightened her purse strap. "I'll come just after dinner."
"Elena." He waited for her gaze to meet his. "Wait until Norah wakes and come together. She deserves a voice in the decisions."
Her face was a canvas, her feelings painted as clearly as seasons on the landscape. Fall's melancholy, the fear that Norah would doom the plan and herself. Winter's quiet acceptance. And then the hope of new-minted spring. Elena believed in him, believed at least that he might yet save her twin.
"We will see you tonight," she said.
She slipped out the door and left him wondering what the height of summer would look like on that beautiful face.
\*\*\*\*
Mid-afternoon, epiphany struck him like a hurricane. Summer. Of course. He shut the volume he'd been reading, producing a whump that earned him several stern looks from busy archivists. Calling an apology over his shoulder, he rushed out the door.
Bottles clinked. He shoved them this way and that looking for the proper tonics. A jar of sea breezes shattered on the scuffed floorboards. Pills scattered, vanishing into cracks and under shelves. He'd retrieve what he could later, but most likely there'd be a few mice with very clear sinuses.
His knees wobbled with relief when he finally found the phials tucked among the oddments he'd purchased from a gold-toothed gypsy half a decade ago. After double-checking the date of purchase jotted on the label---most curatives retained efficacy for a number of years---he sank to the floor and rested his head against the wall. He had his cure.
\*\*\*\*
The sisters rapped loudly, waking him from a doze. He rubbed a hand down his face to clear his muzzy head and, knees cracking, stood.
He opened the door. "Norah. Elena."
Norah looked unsurprised and Elena seemed offended at the order of his words. He regretted using their names.
The sisters strode to the chairs and sat. Howard set before them a tray that held an assortment of flasks and jars.
"This will fix your situation," he said.
"But I don't want---" Norah said.
Elena cut her off. "All these for selfishness?"
"Norah's vanishing and your . . . insomnia and appetite . . . have nothing to do with either of you specifically," Howard said.
He picked up a jar and read the label. "Tropical equinox. Take one a day with water." Howard looked up. "Weather conditions have been distilled out. The only active component is the time of year."
"The equinox?" Elena asked.
Norah's eyes narrowed. She grasped it. "I'm not really fading away. It's just that, this far north, the summer nights are shorter. Around the turn of the new year, Elena will be eating like a mouse and napping her hours away."
Howard nodded and looked at Elena. "You grew up in the tropics---"
"Oh, I get it," she snapped. "I am, as Norah would say, sickly-sweet and annoyingly effervescent. That doesn't make me stupid."
"Okay, okay." Howard shuffled the jars. "This will balance you. Keep you as you were before you left your home. But I have another idea."
Norah cocked her head, more engaged than Howard expected. Perhaps he'd been wrong about her despondency. Maybe gloom was a cloak she wore to protect herself from the fear of nonexistence.
"Winter and summer solstices. Collected in the arctic regions. I'm afraid, Norah, that the winter solstice falls a little short of perfect. Quite a difficult journey to the pole in the dead of winter."
She raised a shoulder, a half-shrug. Alluring. Howard swallowed.
"My theory is that these tonics will bring you both into ascendance. Norah said that you are each just half a person. I disagree. You're whole already, quite . . . stupendously . . . so. I believe the polar solstices could make you greater than the rest of us. Paragons of the traits you embody."
Norah wet her parted lips. Elena glowed, exuberant.
"There are risks. I don't know if you'll stop sleeping. You must watch each other, beware any deleterious effects."
"You haven't named your price," Norah said.
"Free."
"Free?" Elena's voice trembled.
"As long as you promise to look elsewhere when your supplies run out." He slid a list of his guild members onto the table, along with a parchment detailing the cures and the suppliers he'd used. "Someone here will gladly take on your care."
"But why?" Elena shoulders drooped like petals falling from a flower.
"I'm sorry, Elena. After this, I'm returning to simple, straightforward healing. I just ask that you respect that in exchange for these medicines."
Norah stood, settled the jars into her handbag, and urged her sister out of her chair. "It's near your bedtime, Elena. We must give this man his peace."
Both sisters glanced back at different times as they walked to the door. He nodded politely to each.
Howard stepped outside to watch them walk, arm in arm, up the street. He wanted to call out. If only there was a way to love them both. If only he could love just one without yearning for the other. A few minutes after they disappeared around the corner, he shuffled inside and pulled the blind down over the door's small window.
He climbed the stairs that led from his shop to the small apartment he kept above. Tonight, he might indulge in a few more hours imagining how he might have wooed Elena or begged Norah for her attentions. But tomorrow, he'd start the search for an ordinary, uncomplicated woman to share the life of a simple shopkeeper.
\*\*\*\*
Table of Contents
What is this? About the Grantville Gazette
Second Chance Bird, Episode Eight
Sitting on Cloud Nine: Airship Lift and Altitude Control
Feeding the Up-timer Addiction: Soy Sauce
City Slickers, Country Bumpkins, Ants, Robots and Mutants, Part 2
The Good Samaritan and The Hanged Man

