Paula Goodlett (ed)

Grantville Gazette 35

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: This on-line version you're reading. The site here at http://www.grantvillegazette.com is the electronic version of an ARC, an advance readers copy where you can read the issues as we assemble them. There are stories posted here which won't be coming out in the magazine for more than a year.

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 Beckies

Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

"Sir, Lieutenant Bartley reporting as ordered."

Lieutenant David Bartley reported to the quartermaster of the Third Division in Magdeburg with an apprehension that, had he known it, was completely matched by the apprehension the quartermaster was feeling. Colonel Paul McAdam was a Scottish mercenary in Gustav Adolph's service. Or he had been before he was transferred to Third Division. By now he was used to dealing with up-timers but Bartley had a reputation and up-timers were not, for the most part, all that comfortable with the way things were done in the seventeenth century.

"Ah. Lieutenant Bartley. I've heard about you."

"Good things, I hope, sir."

"Well, then. I suppose that would depend . . ." Colonel McAdam began, then petered off ominously. As it happened both of them were somewhat overanxious. David had been working with down-timer men of affairs since he was fourteen and was quite familiar with the way things got done in the here and now. He was more than half down-timer by this time. Well, maybe only a third, but it was an important third. He realized that palms got greased to get things done and, unlike most of the older up-timers, didn't resent it. It just was a part of the world he lived in. He got things done and he had been making money getting things done since he was fourteen.

"Have a seat, Lieutenant Bartley." Colonel McAdam gestured to a chair and continued as David sat. "What do you know about the supply situation?"

"Not as much as I would like, sir."

"Well, it's not that bad here in Magdeburg. We have the river and we're in the center of the, well, everything."

David nodded. In Magdeburg you could get almost anything you could get in Grantville and more of it.

The colonel nodded back, a single, quick jerk of his head and continued. "But it's not going to be that easy once the campaign starts. Even the best army in the world can't carry enough food and fodder to keep it fed very long in the field. The canning and freeze-drying would help, but there is very little of it so far when you're talking about feeding an army instead of a few rich people. What will help some, I hope, is the Elbe as we move into Saxony. But if we end up more than a few miles from the Elbe, we're going to have to do what we've always done. Buy from the locals. And if the rumors are right about Poland, that's going to be even worse."

"Buy?" David asked.

The colonel gave David a careful look then another quick jerk of a nod. "That's the best we can hope for, Lieutenant. Before the Ring of Fire we would have gone through the land like locusts. But we're not supposed to do that anymore and your job is going to be arranging to have us meet with merchants willing to sell the army food."

They discussed Third Division's discretionary funds and the logistics of the coming campaign. David asked about what the army would be taking, where it would get it, and how it would be transported. How, in other words, he could help. "I, ah, do have some connections in the business community, sir. I can see what sort of bargains I can find?"

"I know up-time APCs are out of the question for transport, but can you get us steam wagons?"

"Not a chance!" David shook his head with more than a little regret. "Adolph Schmidt builds what I think are the best steam engines, for the price, in Magdeburg but he's at least six months behind on orders and the other two Magdeburg companies making steam engines are almost as far behind. The companies up in Grantville are even farther behind on orders. People are patriotic enough, but business is business and they have contracts with people who have already paid for their steam engines.

"Between you, me and every drover or muleskinner in Germany, a steam engine is worth at least three times the price of the equivalent number of horses-good horses, not nags half way to the glue factory. And that's mostly what they sell for. If I go to Adolph on bended knee, I may get him to bump us up on the order list to the tune of half a dozen steam engines or so. I'm a major stockholder, after all. But even if I do, using them to power wagons would mostly be a waste since they can power factories or river boats where you get more bang for your buck."

"Even half a dozen might help," Colonel McAdam pointed out. "As I said, we're likely to be using barges to ferry supplies up river to Saxony. At least at first."

"I'll see what I can do, sir."

The colonel nodded. "Good. But you're right, half a dozen steam wagons wouldn't be enough to make much difference. Do you know how much it takes to feed, clothe and house an army?"

"I know what the books say it takes, sir," David said. "I don't know how well the books agree with the reality."

They talked requirements then, in food and equipage. The answerer to how much supplies an army consumed came out to various values of "a hell of a lot" and "even more than that," now that they wouldn't be looting the country side as they marched.

That was something that Colonel McAdam agreed was very fine and noble but also something he wasn't convinced was practical. "I mean, if the other side is living in large part off the land and we're trailing along this monstrous logistic tail . . . it's a weak point the enemy can take advantage of." It was a problem that neither of them, nor anyone else in the Third Division's S4 section, had a solution for. Not then anyway.

****

David did beg steam engines off of Adolph Schmidt, but he only got four of the things. Then he spent his days till the Third Division headed for Saxony calculating tonnages, finding barges, working with drovers and merchants to arrange for food, powder and shot. And while he was making those arrangements, he noticed that many of the people who had goods for sale also had goods they wanted to buy. Value-added manufactured goods: plow blades, steel pots and pans, nuts, bolts, bearings, screws and screwdrivers, all sorts of stuff.

This wasn't all that surprising; the factories in Magdeburg and all along the lower Elbe where it continued navigable through most of the year, were producing at a phenomenal rate . . . but it wasn't enough. The full output of all the factories in all of the Germanies weren't enough to make a dent in demand. David was thought of as someone who could get stuff. Just as McAdam had asked him about steam engines, most of the people he dealt with were hoping he could use his influence to get something.

"You don't know what it’s like, Herr Bartley," Steffan Vogel complained bitterly. "I've got lands in pasture that could be producing wheat if I had the plows-new plows. I ask about the plows and I'm told there is a nine-month wait. Nine months, Herr Bartley. And meanwhile all the peasants are running off to Magdeburg to get manufacturing jobs."

And I don't blame them a bit, David thought, not greatly impressed with Vogel. Still, the man had grain for sale in Saxony. So David was polite.

After several such interviews where people like Vogel wanted stuff instead of money, David started to think. An army carried some of its supplies with it and it carried money to buy supplies as well. Before the Ring of Fire that money was silver coins. And even now it was partly silver. Oh, they would carry American dollars, the latest incarnation of them, USE Federal Reserve Bank Notes. They would carry American dollars to pay the troops, but not everyone was convinced that American dollars were good currency. So the army would also be carrying silver coins, minted by the USE Treasury Department, of a given weight and purity. The official name for such coins was silver slugs. Because they weren’t tied to the American dollar in any way, the exchange rate between them and American dollars was whatever the precious metals market in Magdeburg said it was. Third Division would receive them as part of their contingency funds.

All of which was perfectly standard and ordinary, except people like Vogel didn't want to be paid in silver slugs any more than in American dollars. They wanted plows and nuts and bolts and, well, stuff. What if, aside from American dollars and silver slugs, the Third Division were to take plows and nuts and bolts and . . . so on, to pay for the wheat and sausage and cheese . . . and so on, the division needed?

****

"The Third Division could make a profit on the deal, sir," David told Colonel McAdam. "We would be buying the stuff at golden corridor prices, then transporting it with the division, so no tolls or duties-no bandits for that matter-then selling at outland prices."

"Golden corridor?"

"Yes, sir. The Elbe up to the rail head and the rail line up to the Ring of Fire. The prices for most finished goods are lower in the corridor than just about anywhere else in the world. Still high by up-time standards, but . . ." David shrugged. For the most part, he didn't remember up-time that well any more, certainly not up-time prices. Prices for finished goods were low in the corridor and the price of labor was high, relative to the rest of the world. That wasn't constant, just an average. And people that didn't have the production machines tended to have real trouble competing. But that was another reason why the merchants and want-to-be manufactures in places like Saxony were so desperate for nuts and bolts. "If the Third Division can bring pots and pans, nails and screws and so forth with us, the local merchants will show up begging to sell us their grain so that they can buy our pots and pans."

But Colonel McAdam clearly wasn't impressed with David's notion. He gave one of those short sharp shakes of his head. "Pots and pans weigh a lot more than silver coins and paper money weighs even less than silver. If they will come for pots and pans, they'll come for silver."

The short sharp head shake had told David that the colonel had made up his mind. So he didn't point out that they would be "buying" the silver for precisely the same price they would be "selling" it for, but the pots and pans would sell for considerably more in Saxony than they would cost in the corridor.

Colonel McAdam wouldn't sign off on the division buying trade goods to cart with them on campaign. He did agree to let David do it on his own and let David's cargo travel with the army. David rented barges and hired troops who marched into Saxony, pulling hand carts and pushing wheelbarrows full of goods.

Summer Campaign Season, 1635, Saxony

"Damn and blast it!"

"Beg pardon, sir?" David said.

"He means it, doesn't he?" Colonel McAdam snorted. "How are we going to feed the troops if the local farmers won't take their own money? And your General Stearns is . . . most insistent that we be . . . polite . . . about it all."

The local money was worthless. The American dollars were acceptable, but only barely, just at the moment. Radio informs whether the news is good or bad. The American dollar, which had started out as the New US dollar, then become the SoTF dollar, was now transmuting into the USE dollar. They were all American dollars. At least, the government in Magdeburg said they were all "American dollars." However, the process of expansion had diluted the cachet of the original American dollar sent by God with the up-timers. Silver was preferred in Saxony at the moment and Third Division, the whole army in fact, hadn't brought enough.

"It's not helping that the USE dollar has been losing ground against the Dutch guilder for the last few months," David muttered. "Not all that badly, true, but it's got the Fed worried. Sarah said Coleman Walker is pitching a fit."

"Well, the locals aren't exactly snapping up our new American dollars with gay abandon," Colonel McAdam sneered. "They took the old well enough, but not the new. And don't even talk to them about the government chits, not without a sword in your hand. In the whole squad's hands, rather. I tried to talk to the general about this. Tried to tell him. But still!"

General Stearns had almost, but not quite completely, forbidden the use of sword point to persuade the locals to take the chits.

David went back to his office, frustrated. Colonel McAdam wasn't the world's best listener. David had actual material goods, real stuff that could be put to use. Sewing machines, the parts to make drop forges, batteries, rayon thread, all sorts of stuff. All in his own little supply train that Colonel McAdam didn't want to hear about, much less discuss. So the same merchants and farmers who were hiding their goods from the supply corps in general, were seeking David out and selling their grain and anything else they could think of before the rest of the army's supply division caught them with it and forced them to sell it for government chits which might or might not ever be worth anything.

All David really needed was . . . well, for his boss to get out of his way.

Meanwhile, the troops had to be fed. And there was only one way David could think of to get that done. Sell, sell, sell.

So he did.

****

Soon David had a reputation and almost didn't need the goods. Just catalogs.

"You're that Bartley fellow?"

"Yes, Herr . . ."

"Baum. Adolph Baum. I have some cattle to sell."

Indeed he did, David saw. Herr Baum must be representing an entire village, because he had quite a few cattle. "You know, Herr Baum, you can get more money if you take the cattle a bit up the road, to the main supply tent."

Herr Baum laughed. "I can get more of what they call money, young fellow. No offense to the Prince of Germany, but I'd just as soon not have those worthless chits."

"They're not worthless, sir."

Baum smirked. "You take them then."

It was hard to turn down an invitation like that, so David didn't.

David sent Johan Kipper out to look over the goods and come up with an offering price. And aside from smiling politely, stayed out of it. Sergeant Beckman did the negations. Both Johan and the sergeant were much better negotiators than David was. Besides, many of the people they were dealing with would have been really uncomfortable negotiating with an up-timer. Way too much like negotiating with a cardinal or a baron or something. So David sat back and smiled benevolently . . . some would say condescendingly. But, damn it, they expected condescension, the next best thing to demanded it. David could at least make it kindly condescension, rather than sneering condescension.

Then David would pull out his catalogs, they would go over what the farmers or the merchants needed and what was available at what price. Here David would talk. He would make suggestions about who had the best products for the best price, ask questions about what they were going to use it for, and make suggestions about possible alternatives. Once they had everything worked out, David's secretary would write out the agreement, and David and the customer would sign it.

And more often than not the customer would leave muttering about how "the up-timer was a proper noble, kind and understanding, not like the sort we have around here."

Next David would walk over to the main supply tent, transfer to the goods to the Third Division and receive the government chit that the merchant or farmer didn't want. That the customer was right not to want, because, as it turns out, there is a real difference between some farmer off in Saxony sending in a chit and an army officer with his own lawyer turning in the selfsame chit. The difference isn't so much of a question of will it get paid at all, though there is some of that. Mostly it's a question of when it gets paid.

David had access to the military radio, he had a lawyer in Magdeburg and knew several people in the Treasury. From the supply tent he went to the radio room and sent the codes on the chits to Magdeburg and the funds were transferred from the government account to David's account. Then David sent off another radio message to his agent in Magdeburg, specifying the purchases to be made and where they were to be sent. It would arrive in a few weeks or a couple of months, depending on the waiting list for that product. There was always a waiting list and the customers were told that as well. Still, they were happy with the deal for the most part.

Since David had set this up on his own hook and using his own credit, primarily as a way of helping to make sure that the army had the supplies it needed, he didn't feel the least bit guilty about the profit he made.

After all, it wasn't like they could buy such goods with Saxon thalers. John George's paper thalers were supposed to be exchangeable for one ounce of silver on demand in Dresden. Demanding that silver was a threat to the duke's realm and a palpable insult to the duke, both of which were criminal acts in Saxony. "Here's your silver, you're under arrest for treason against the duke" is not the sort of response that makes one want to run down to the treasury for some hard currency. To date, no one had actually received any silver in exchange for a Saxon thaler with a picture of John George on the front and now no one ever would. On the Grantville currency market the Saxon thaler was valued at about two cents American money. Well, it had been. When the first of Gustav Adolph's troops crossed the border, it dropped off the exchange all together. But they still circulated in Saxony because they were, mostly, all there was. Any silver currency in Saxony had obeyed Gresham's law and retreated to under someone's mattress.

****

"Don't you Americans have a term for this? Profiteering, isn't it?" Colonel McAdam's sneer wasn't quite as confident as he apparently thought it was.

About the time they hit Dresden, Colonel McAdam noticed the profit David was making and was pissed. Both because he hadn't gotten in on it and because it wasn't anything the Third Division couldn't have been doing right along. David's initial proposal had been close enough to what he had ended up doing on his own that the evolution was obvious in hindsight. All of which made the colonel look and feel more than a little foolish.

"Sir, you gave me permission, and, no, I'm not profiteering. I also resent the suggestion that I am." It might be taking a bit of a chance, David thought, but he wasn't letting this blowhard start any rumors that might damage his reputation. If Colonel McAdam resented David's success, that was fine. Even so, David himself was out of reach because McAdam had specifically given David permission to do what he was doing.

"Humph. Your Sergeant Beckman, however . . ."

David glanced over at Beckman, then glared a furious glare at him. The sergeant wilted. "Sergeant Beckman was not authorized for that transaction, sir, as he will admit."

Sergeant Beckman's unauthorized trading of army supplies would probably have brought him up on much more serious charges if it had happened back up-time. Here in Saxony in the year of our Lord 1635, he might reasonably expect it to be ignored. Except, of course, that the colonel was pissed at his CO. He got busted to corporal.

The army's departure from Saxony was met with more regret than relief by the Saxon merchant class. Not only were all those solders leaving, taking with them their monthly pay, but Third Division took with it the best access to the new goods they'd had since, well, ever.

Near Zielona Gora

David listened as General Stearns asked him to develop a way to magically supply the Third Division with even less of a logistics train than they had had in Saxony. He stared at the table, not seeing it at all. Instead he was seeing a spread sheet of consumables that they didn't have and what his business contacts had told him might be bought in the area around Zielona Gora

"Pretty tricky, sir," he said after he'd gone over the charts in his head. "There's no chance of using TacRail like we did in the Luebeck campaign?"

The general shook his head. "We're not fighting French and Danes here, Lieutenant Bartley. Leaving aside his own cavalry, Koniecpolski's got several thousand Cossacks under his command. They're probably the best mounted raiders in Eurasia, except for possibly the Tatars. TacRail units would get eaten alive before they'd laid more than a few miles of track, unless we detailed half our battalions to guard them. Which we can't afford to do."

David nodded. He'd been expecting the answer. And he knew darn well that the locals wouldn't be taking chits. Not here, not even at sword point. It would take guns, lots of them, and dead bodies for demonstrations. Not something the general would sanction, thank God. And not something that David would do even under direct orders. This would require thinking outside the box. "That leaves what you might call creative financing."

"That's what I figured-and it's why I called you in."

Yep, that was just going to thrill the shit out of Colonel McAdam. "The regular quartermasters are already kinda mad at me, sir. If I-"

"Don't worry about it. To begin with, I'm pulling you out of the quartermaster corps altogether. You'll be in charge of a new unit which I'm calling the Exchange Corps."

"Exchange? Exchange what, exactly?" David looked at the general carefully and got back a grin that was more than a little scary. Suddenly David remembered that the general used to be a prizefighter.

"That's for you to figure out," the general said, still with that "I'm going to enjoy ripping your arms off" grin. "Whatever you can come up with that'll enable us to obtain supplies from the locals without completely pissing them off. No way not to piss them off at all, of course. But the Poles have had as much experience with war over the last thirty years as the Germans. They'll take things philosophically enough as long we aren't killing and raping and burning and taking so much that people die over the winter."

David went back to starring at the charts in his head. Personally, he doubted that the locals were quite as sanguine about having their crops stolen for pieces of worthless paper as the Prince of Germany thought they were. He was going to have to come up with some way of getting goods, manufactured goods, through. Enough to create the belief that the pieces of paper weren't worthless. Maybe steam barges up the Oder. "Okay," he said eventually. "I've got some ideas. But I'll need a staff, General. Not too big. Just maybe three or four clerks and, ah, one sort of specialist. His name's Sergeant Beckmann. Well, Corporal Beckmann, now. I got him his stripe back but then he ran afoul of-well, never mind the details-and got busted back to corporal."

"Where is he now? And what sort of specialist is he?"

"He's right here in the Third Division, sir. One of the quartermasters in von Taupadel's brigade. As for his specialty . . . Well, basically he's a really talented swindler."

"Okay, you got him-and we'll give the man back his sergeant's stripe. May as well, since I'm promoting you to captain."

David felt himself smiling. It was silly and he knew it, but little nerd boy was going to be a captain in the army. Yes, he was a millionaire, but that wasn't the sort of status that had mattered before the Ring of Fire. Before the Ring of Fire, his world had been a world of tough kids and kids who got picked on. David had been among the kids that got picked on. His world hadn't had millionaires in it, but it had had army people and an army captain wasn't in the picked on category.

Zielona Gora

He was less happy a few days later after Zielona Gora had been taken. David Bartley hated sitting on his ass. It was a discovery he had made recently, not having had much opportunity to do so since he was fourteen and the Ring of Fire happened. But of the "hurry up and wait" of the army, it was the "wait" part that bothered him more than the "hurry up" part.

Luckily, there were things to do. David headed for the radio shack. He needed some help figuring out how to create a market out of nothing. And he needed to set up some kind of legal framework for the Exchange Corps.

There was suddenly a lot to do.

The sprinkling rain on the way to the radio shack didn't bother him at all.

Yet.

He sent messages off to Magdeburg, Grantville and Badenburg. He had cleared the structure of the Exchange Corps as a stock corporation with the general and rumors about it had started almost immediately. That was probably Johan's work. Troopers in the division wanted to buy in. So he had investors before he had a company or any but the most basic notion of what sort of company to build. He sought advice from older, wiser heads in the business community that had migrated to the Ring of Fire area in the last few years. He sent more messages to Magdeburg, instructing his agents to set up the Third Division Exchange Corps as a corporation.

****

"All right, Captain Bartley, tell me about the Third Division Exchange Corps Corporation," Colonel McAdam said.

"General Stearns ordered me to set up an Exchange Corps before we took Zielona Gora, sir," David said. The colonel just looked at him. David continued, "Forming it up as a corporation gives people confidence in it. It's listed on the Magdeburg and Grantville Exchanges. The price of its stock is reported with the stock reports on the radio and in the newspapers. It's not going to march through, steal your stuff, and be gone. So people will be willing to wait a bit for the goods to arrive. We can buy grain and wine . . . they make a decent white here, sir . . . or they will, once they get in some equipment. And pay them in contracts for the equipment they need to set up industries."

"Like you did in Saxony but with less equipment to start with? And you're doing this on your own like you did in Saxony, too?"

"No, sir. That's another reason for the corporation. The troops in Third Division will be able to buy in to the Third Division Exchange Corps by filling out a form and having a percentage of their monthly pay set aside for it, just like they can buy insurance. That's so that the men will have an interest, but also because we need the money. And a few bucks a month from four thousand men is a lot of money."

"Four thousand?"

"I was being a bit conservative. I figure we have a good chance of getting half the men to put up ten to twenty bucks a month, depending on their personal circumstances and attitudes. Call it four thousand men and ten bucks apiece, that’s forty thousand bucks a month to buy goods manufactured along the Elbe and ship them here. Zielona Gora is a mostly a trade town, a bit of wine, like I said, but mostly trade. So far the Thirty Years' War hasn't treated it very kindly. But now that it's back in the USE, heck, even if it was in Poland it would be near the border, so it makes a pretty good conduit for trade between the USE and Poland."

"We're unlikely to be here long enough to do that."

"Yes, sir, but we can set it in motion. And Third Division has wounded who need new employment. Especially in the Hangman. They took a beating."

Colonel McAdam and the Division's S4 bought several thousand shares and Brigadier Schuster and the 2nd Brigade bought even more.

****

"You told me three weeks ago that it would be here in ten days!"

David looked up from his work and wished he hadn't. "Come now, mein Herr. You know as well as I do that rain, this kind of rain anyway, causes delays,"

"Ten days! This is twenty-one! I want my parts or I want my money!"

"Fine. I will instruct the cashier to return your money, including the membership fee. When the goods arrive, they will be sold to someone else. Someone not quite so discomforted by the standard delays involved in shipping goods through a war zone in the middle of winter."

"I didn't say . . ." Herr Kopenskii ran out of steam as he realized that yes he had said. "I didn't mean . . ." Again the pause. David knew what he'd meant. Partly it was just the standard "let's see what I can get out of the delay" that David suspected would be going on in any time and place where people did business. But in this case, that was only part of it. Everyone knew by now that the king and been injured and that for now Wettin and Oxenstierna were running things. What would happen to his investment if the USE abandoned Zielona Gora and he was left with a receipt for goods that would never arrive. Herr Kopenskii had taken a considerable chance on Mike Stearns reputation and, for that matter, David's.

The Prince of Germany and David Bartley had said there would be a permanent Third Division Exchange Club Store in Zielona Gora, and that goods ordered would be delivered, but what if Third Division was ordered out of Zielona Gora? What if Zielona Gora was given back to Poland?

"The Exchange Club will remain even if Zielona Gora is yielded back to Poland," David said with confidence he wished he felt more strongly. The store was a golden-egg-laying goose for whoever owned Zielona Gora, because it provided a way to get industrial goods to the western edge of Poland or the eastern edge of Germany at something approaching a reasonable price. But David had seen too many golden-egg-laying geese turned into pate de foie gras by stupid nobles, and if Poland hadn't cornered the market on stupid nobles, it was certainly a major supplier. Still, the odds were that the USE would keep Zielona Gora, at least for a while. "Captain von Baruth will be staying on to manage the store, even if the division is transferred."

Captain Eric von Baruth was a member of the Hangman Regiment who was wounded in the taking of Zielona Gora. He also was a college-educated son of the lower nobility who spoke German, Polish, French, English, Latin and Amideutsch. Which made him acceptable to the local merchant community. He was a member of the CoC, which made him acceptable to the Third Division 's more radical elements. He was very good with figures and a competent organizer. Which made him acceptable to David. He was also missing one leg from the calf down, which was why he was quite pleased to be offered the job of managing the Exchange Corps Superstore in Zielona Gora.

It took some more cajoling but David sent Herr Kopenskii on his way, if not happy at least not hollering fraud.

****

Sergeant-at least for now-Beckmann snorted as he watched Herr Kopenskii leave. Beckmann would have taken his money back if he'd been in Kopenskii's shoes. The risk was too great for the gain. Then he looked at Captain Bartley. Well, maybe not. Bartley had what Beckmann thought of as an impractical streak. Still, the lad made it work for him and his man Johan Kipper was pragmatic enough to give you nightmares if it came down to it. Beckmann cleared his throat. "Radio messages, sir."

The captain gave Beckmann a half smile and started reading through them. Beckmann had already read them, of course. The Third Division Exchange Corps Corporation was now an officially registered corporation on the Magdeburg and Grantville exchanges. Ownership was two million shares, a half million of which were held as reserve by the Third Division. A million of which were available to sell to members of the Third Division. And half a million of which would be sold on the various stock exchanges to raise capital. The prospectus listed it as a wholesaler of manufactured goods with outlets to be established. The outlet in Zielona Gora had been established in advance of actual establishment of the corporation.

All of which was beside the point because the next radio message was a "for your information" that Third Division had been ordered to Prague to support "our ally, King Venceslas V Adalbertus of Bohemia."

Beckmann knew this news was not that bad. Not in and of itself. They would have to do some setting up but they could handle it. But moving meant more set-up expenses and the Division was broke. Captain Bartley called it a cash flow problem and insisted that nothing the size of a division was ever really broke. But to Beckmann the Division was broke. Oh, the men would still get their pay and ammunition, and other goods would still arrive.

Beckmann shook his head at the weirdness of up-timers. How the same hard-ass officer who had men shot for getting a bit rowdy could turn around and pay for the rebuilding of Zielona Gora, a town that had gotten itself shot up fighting his division, made no sense to Beckmann

Meanwhile, the Division's discretionary funds were pretty much tapped out and start-up funds for the Exchange Corps weren't there.

****

Adolph looked at the note that had been hand-delivered to him. It was from Herr Krupt, who was David Bartley's agent in Magdeburg. "Herr Bartley would be most grateful if you could see your way clear to providing him with six eight-horse power steam engines for the use of Third Division Exchange Corps."

"I won't do it. I don't care if he did back me." Adolph's face was a bit more florid than usual, he could feel it.

"Ah, the Bartley kid strikes again." Heidi Partow grinned. "He's a sneaky little shit, I grant you. I figured he was a waste of space up till the Ring of Fire. Even after it. I still can't figure out what he does. If he actually does anything. It was my little brothers who designed the sewing machine making machines, you know." Heidi crossed her eyes like she was looking at the sentence she'd just said and not liking what she saw.

Adolph couldn't help but grin at her expression. Then his smile faded. "He manages," Adolph said. "And he's darned good at it. And, yes, I do know that your brothers developed the machines to make the parts of the sewing machines. I know because David told me so every time the subject came up. And if you think he was irritating as your little brother's friend, how do you think you would have liked having him as your stepbrother?" Adolph sighed. "Still, I'd like to help him out because, well, when I needed the money to start this place, he's where I got it. And because it's the Prince's Division."

"Mike Stearns is not a prince," Heidi said in a firm, almost belligerent, voice. "He's just a politician. He works for us, not the other way around." Then she relented. "Still Third Division is our division in a way. It's got lots of CoC, even more than the others. And Jeff Higgins and . . . well, it's sort of ours. I'd like to help. But we're already running three shifts and we can't expand production till we get the new machines."

"And we have customers that paid in advance and expect their steam engines on time. I know."

"Look, we have a lot of the booklets on making steam engines out of wood and leather. Granted, they aren't as good as our real steam engines but they're something."

"Yes, they are. But it's as much the boilers as the engines and a pot boiler is orders of magnitude less efficient." Adolph held up his hand. "I know, and we will send him a crate of the booklets. And I'll talk to the staff and see if we can squeeze out a couple of extra boilers for the Third."

"And as much of a CoC shop as this is, they'll try. But we're already squeezing as hard as we can."

Which wasn't true. Adolph's shops ran three overlapping nine-hour shifts a day and his crews worked alternating three- and four-day weeks. Giving them plenty of time for goofing off or, more commonly, agitating for the CoC.

"It's not the people. It's the machines that are the holdup. We just don't have enough of them." And that was true.

Still, they tried and managed to squeeze out a few extra engines. They weren't the only ones.

****

State Senator Karl Schmidt of the State of Thuringia Franconia glanced over the radio message and made a quick note on it, telling his eldest daughter to handle the matter. The senator was a busy man. Busy with the people's business certainly, but, truthfully, more busy with his own. Being state senator was more a position of status than of work. His work was the running of the Higgins Sewing Machine Corporation and its various subsidiaries. Business was good. Like his son, of whom he was increasingly-if still secretly-proud, he was running three shifts. Of course, he'd been doing that almost since he'd bought out the company back in '31.

The radio message was from his stepson David. A request for goods to be sold to the Third Division Exchange Corps. Karl was better positioned and by now had a bit more slack. He could send more sewing machines and more electroplated flatware and, well, generally more. Not that he handled that himself. He turned it over to his eldest daughter, who had taken over for Adolph after the boy had run off to start his own business. Gertrude would handle the matter.

The second radio message was more serious. He wished Uriel Abrabanel still lived here. He would know what to do. Karl didn't. Karl was among the most conservative of the Fourth of July Party and had considerable sympathy for William Wettin's positions. To be honest, Mike Stearns scared him and he had almost followed Quentin Underwood to the Crown Loyalists; would have if it hadn't looked like he would lose his senate seat if he did. Not that any of that mattered. The important point to Karl Schmidt was that his stepson was in the Third Division and in charge of the Third Division Exchange Corps. Which meant that Third Division's financial problems would reflect badly on the family and there were blood ties involved. He didn't have any answers for David, but he sent back that he would help if he could.

****

There were other messages; to the Board of Directors of OPM, to the presidents and owners of companies financed by OPM. Generators, power tools, nuts, bolts, plow blades, knives, ax heads, and more got diverted to the Third Division Exchange Corps warehouses while they were still not sure where they would be shipped. All while David Bartley didn't know where he would get the money to pay for them.

Then there were the requests for help from the finance community. Because, though David didn't have any real idea what the answer might be, he did think it would be in the area of finance and economics.

"So, how do you finance an army when the government isn't going to pay it?" someone asked.

"Well, the obvious answer is to borrow the money. And the government may eventually pay the bills, though I would disallow some of the expenses General Stearns has claimed," said Fredric Brum.

The questioner just looked at him. "You think Mike Stearns is cooking the books?"

"No, of course not. I simply think he is being over-generous with the government's money in compensating the victims of war." Then he sniffed. "Not that it makes any difference. All the government will do is pay the bills with IOUs." Brum believed that gold and silver were money and nothing else was. He was a good mathematician and learning to be a good programmer and socially quite liberal. But he stayed up nights worrying about what was going to happen when people finally realized that the vaunted American dollar was just a piece of paper with I owe you another piece of paperwritten on it in fancier wording. Everyone in the statistics department of the treasury knew that.

"Shh, Herr Brum. Someone might hear you. The problem with borrowing money is that with the way things are right now, a lot of the big lenders would be afraid of how the government would react. They could issue preferred stock, I guess."

****

"Say, Fonzie," David said as he entered the tent.

Frenczil Becker gritted his teeth theatrically and David grinned. Frenczil (the Fonz) Becker sported a black leather jacket, used goop on his hair, and put on tough-guy airs. Not, David would freely admit, without some justification. The Fonz was a lawyer who had joined the Third and become the executive officer of a rifle company. He had distinguished himself in combat and was respected by your average CoC tough. With the formation of the Exchange Corps, he had been seconded to it part-time. That is, in addition to his other duties. He had, in fact, been the one who drew up the actual papers of incorporation that had been signed by General Stearns.

"What do you know," David continued, "about the laws and penalties involved in issuing money or money-like stuff."

"What laws and penalties?"

"Well, someone at the treasury suggested we issue preferred stock and sell it locally but I'm afraid that might be too close to issuing money, so I wanted to find out about the applicable laws."

"And again I ask 'what laws'? There was some talk of making it illegal to issue money, but it would have stepped on too many toes. Rights granted in perpetuity to towns and nobles. It was hard enough to get them to swallow that their taxes had to be paid in USE dollars."

"You mean the Exchange Corps could just issue money?"

"Sure, but who would take it?"

David turned around and left the tent shaking his head. This would require thinking about. He had known that towns and cities were still issuing their own money, that John George and Georg Wilhelm had both issued paper money that had never been worth much, but he had assumed that they had special permission, or been grandfathered in. Mostly he'd ignored the matter, insisting on doing business in American dollars. Which was getting to be a pretty standard clause in contracts in the USE these days.

****

"Run that by me again, Lieutenant." Jeff Higgins shook his head. "I'm having some trouble with the logic involved."

David managed to hide his irritation at Colonel Higgins' forgetting his new rank yet again. He knew Jeff didn't mean anything by it. What was more difficult was trying to explain money matters to someone as ignorant of them as most people were "Well . . ."

He sat up straighter on the stool in a corner of the Hangman Regiment's HQ tent. "Let's try it this way. The key to the whole thing is the new scrip. What I'm calling the divisional scrip."

Higgins shook his head again. "Yeah, I got that. But that's also right where my brain goes blank on account of my jaw hits the floor so hard. If I've got this right, you are seriously proposing to issue currency in the name of the Third Division?"

"Exactly!" David said, without adding that they had been doing essentially the same thing every time they had issued a chit. "We'll probably need to come up with some sort of clever name for it, though. 'Scrip' sounds, well, like scrip."

"Worthless paper, in other words," provided Thorsten Engler. He, like Bartley and Colonel Higgins himself, was also sitting on a stool in the tent. The flying artillery captain was smiling. Unlike Jeff, he found Bartley's unorthodox notions to be quite entertaining.

"Except it won't be-which is why we shouldn't call it 'scrip.'"

"Why won't it be worthless?" asked Major Reinhold Fruehauf.

That question caught David up short because it was so basic and because he didn't have a clue how to explain to the major how money, all money, not just the Division scrip, got its value. The major was leaning casually against a tent pole. He was a good man and reasonably intelligent, but what gave money its value was an imponderable. "Why won't it be worthless? Because . . . Well, because it'll officially be worth something." Which was ridiculous, but explaining that "it would have value because it was perceived to have value, and being perceived to have value, it would buy stuff, which in turn would give it real value" was a bit beyond David's ability to articulate just at the moment.

The regiment's other battalion commander cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "According to who, Captain? You? Or even the regiment itself?" Major Baldwin Eisenhauer had a truly magnificent sneer. "Ha! Try convincing a farmer of that!"

"He's right, I'm afraid," said Thorsten. His face had a sympathetic expression, though, instead of a sneer. Engler intended to become a psychologist after the war; Major Eisenhauer's ambition was to found a brewery. Their personalities reflected the difference.

"I was once one myself," Engler continued. "There is simply no way that a level-headed farmer is going to view your scrip-call it whatever you will-as anything other than the usual 'promissory notes' that foraging troops hand out when they aren't just plundering openly. That is to say, not good for anything except wiping your ass."

David looked at them, totally lost in trying to explain that those level-headed farmers who would never accept scrip had been happily trading their grain for scrip since before Caesar was a pup. Scrip made out of metal not paper, granted. But that only made it scrip that wasn't even good for wiping your ass with. "But-but- " but how to explain to these good men who knew the world was flat and the sun went around it on a crystal sphere that the world was round and went rolling around the sun. "Of course, it'll be worth something. We'll get it listed as one of the currencies traded on the Grantville and Magdeburg money exchanges. If Mike-uh, General Stearns-calls in some favors, he'll even avoid having it discounted too much." He squared his slender shoulders. "I remind all of you that they don't call him the 'Prince of Germany' for no reason. I can pretty much guarantee that even without any special effort, money printed and issued by Mike Stearns will trade at a better value than a lot of European currencies."

Now, it was the turn of the other officers in the tent to look befuddled. As well they should. They knew as well as David did that the Saxon thaler-which until this spring was supposedly backed by silver-was worth bupkis compared to the American dollar that was paper backed by nothing but "I said so."

"Can he even do that?" asked Captain Theobold Auerbach. He was the commander of the artillery battery that had been transferred to Jeff's unit from the Freiheit Regiment.

Bartley scratched his head. "Well . . . It's kind of complicated, Theo. First, there's no law on the books that prevents him from doing it."

Auerbach frowned. "I thought the dollar-"

But David was already shaking his head. "No, that's a common misconception. The dollar is issued by the USE and is recognized as its legal tender, sure enough. But no law has ever been passed that makes it the nation's exclusive currency." The people who had the traditional right to mint money would never have stood for it.

"Ah! I hadn't realized that," said Thorsten. The slight frown on his face vanished. "There's no problem then, from a legal standpoint, unless the prime minister or General Torstensson tells him he can't do it. But I don't see any reason to even mention it to anyone outside the division yet. Right now, we're just dealing with our own logistical needs."

The expressions on the faces of all the down-timers in the tent mirrored Engler's. But Jeff Higgins was still frowning.

"I don't get it. You mean to tell me the USE allows any currency to be used within its borders?"

He seemed quite aggrieved, David noted with a grin.

"You're like most up-timers," David said, "especially ones who don't know much history. The situation we have now is no different from what it was for the first seventy-five years or so of the United States-our old one, back in America. There was an official United States currency-the dollar, of course-but the main currency used by most Americans was the Spanish real. The name 'dollar' itself comes from the Spanish dollar, a coin that was worth eight reales. It wasn't until the Civil War that the U.S. dollar was made the only legal currency."

"I'll be damned," said Jeff. "I didn't know that."

He wasn't in the least bit discomfited. As was true for most Americans, being charged with historical ignorance was like sprinkling water on a duck.

Colonel Higgins stood and stretched. "What you're saying, in other words, is that there's technically no reason-legal reason, I mean-that the Third Division couldn't issue its own currency."

"That's right." Well it was right as far as it went, which wasn't very far.

A frown was back on Captain Auerbach's face. "I can't think of any army that's ever done so, though."

David didn't say what do you think the chits we've been passing out are? It wouldn't do any good. "So? We're doing lots of new things."

"Let's take it to the general," said Jeff, heading for the tent flap. "We haven't got much time, since he's planning to resume the march tomorrow."

****

General Stearns was charmed by the idea. "Sure, let's do it. D'you need me to leave one of the printing presses behind?"

"Probably a good idea, sir." David said. "I can afford to buy one easily enough. The problem is that I don't know what's available in the area, and we're familiar with the ones the division brought along."

"Done. Anything else you need?"

David and Jeff looked at each other. Then Jeff said: "Well, we need a name for the currency. We don't want to call it scrip, of course."

Mike scowled. "Company scrip" was pretty much a profane term among West Virginia coal miners.

"No, we sure as hell don't," he said forcefully. He scratched his chin for a few seconds, and then smiled.

"Let's call it a 'becky,'" he said. "Third Division beckies."

****

Sergeant Beckmann was seated at a little folding table in their room of the castle. "Not to get all philosophical or anything, sir, but what is money?"

Johan Kipper groaned and David grinned. "Be thankful you didn't ask that of one of the economists at the Fed or Treasury. Best I've been able to tell from their lectures on the subject is that it's just IOUs."

"Of course, if you say that to one of them," Johan said, "they'll spend hours telling you that it's not just IOUs, but takes on the demonic aspect of IOUs, not the angelic aspect or vice versa. And that in its true platonic form, money is a store of wealth . . ."

"Now, now, Johan. Sarah isn't that bad," David said with a lack of confidence that even he could hear in his own voice.

"IOUs?" Sergeant Beckmann asked. "I owe you whats?"

"That's the tricky part," David acknowledged. "Money has quantity but not form, not kind. It's an IOU for a given amount of wealth of no specific nature. The nature of the wealth gets determined when you buy something with it. And not just the nature, but the quantity, too. The IOU has a quantity on it but what that quantity is worth in terms of actual goods gets determined by what you can and what you can't buy with it. Which is determined by what the person you're trading it to thinks they can trade it for and on and on ad infinitum."

"See?" Johan said. "Angels dancing on the head of a pin."

David snorted but nodded.

"So we issue money IOUs and pass them around to trade stuff?"

"Yes."

"Sounds like a great way to make a living." Sergeant Beckmann grinned like the unrepentant conman he was. "What's the catch?"

"Normally, the catch is getting people to accept the money," David said. "In the up-time timeline the transition from gold and silver to paper took centuries and there were still people that had little caches of gold and silver coins when the Ring of Fire happened. In the new timeline, people right around the Ring of Fire accepted our money at first because we were a miracle. Even if people like General Stearns don't much like acknowledging it. But it was also because we had stuff to sell and our money bought it. How much of that first acceptance was God and how much was goods we may never know, but we had both.

"General Stearns has an international reputation and if the Prince of Germany decides to issue money, a lot of people will accept it. Why not? If the count of nowhere important can issue money, why can't the Prince of Germany?"

David looked around the room and saw that Sergeant Beckmann was nodding but Johan Kipper wasn't.

"Some of it was God right enough," Johan said, "but more of it was goods. Yes, the merchants and craftsmen we dealt with in those first days were willing to cut us some slack because you were up-timers and they didn't want to piss off whoever had sent you here. But mostly it was that they knew that the American dollars would spend in the Ring of Fire and having American dollars to spend made great excuse to go into the Ring of Fire and see the television video tapes and other wonders they'd heard about."

David nodded. "So they took them and found that they could spend them at home because their neighbors felt the same way. We have the reputation, the 'Prince of Germany.' More widespread now, if less holy. The problem is, we don't have the stuff to sell. There's sort of a critical mass that money has to reach before it works and I'm not sure the Prince of Germany gets there all by himself."

"We own that property in Zielona Gora," Sergeant Beckmann said.

"Yes, but it's in Zielona Gora," David said. "Sure, it will start providing us some income once the set costs are paid, but it's a long way away for the people around here to get to."

Sergeant Beckmann hesitated then shook his head and asked, "How long are we going to be here?"

"I don't know, but probably some months," David said. He was pretty sure that the sergeant had been about to ask about diverting the goods for Zielona Gora to here then stopped himself. He was learning. "I think we were sent here to get the Third Division out of the way now that the Crown Loyalists have control of the government. So it could be years. Until the next election." Then David realized the import behind the question. "Sergeant, we are probably going to be sitting right here when the people we have bought stuff from using the beckies come into town to buy stuff using the beckies and we had better have stuff to sell them. Even if we weren't going to be here, leaving the people in this region holding a bunch of worthless paper isn't something the general would sanction, nor something I'd do even under direct orders.

"Yes, sir!" Sergeant Beckmann said, sounding quite sincere. He was really good at that, David noted. "I never thought of doing anything like that, sir. My question was more along a different line. We were just getting started setting up shop in Poland when we got sent here. I was only wondering if we'd have time to set up here and get things running before we got ordered off to somewhere else."

"That's a point, Master David," Johan Kipper said. "The prince, he moves fast for a general, that he does. We probably need to move pretty fast ourselves, in case we need to move before we expect."

David nodded. "All right. Let's get in touch with the king's financial people, since he probably owns this place, and see if we can buy it. Johan, you do that. You're still on the boards of HSMC and half a dozen other Grantville firms. If we can't buy it, find out what we can buy in the area. We're going to need a store to go with the catalog sales. Meanwhile, if we're going to issue beckies, they ought to have a picture of Rebecca Stearns on them. See if you fellows can find a picture of her. I guess we'll have to send to Grantville and have one of the machine shops cut us some plates."

"I think . . . there may be another way," said Sergeant Beckmann. "There's a wood carver with the printing group who makes woodcuts on the side, prints them up for the men. He calls them centerfolds. I don't know why."

David knew why and so did Johan.

Johan muttered, "He'd better not have a centerfold of Becky Stearns or I don't want to be anywhere near him when the general finds out."

The sergeant mumbled something about, "Well, maybe the one of Rebecca Stearns is a pinup, not a centerfold. I'm not really sure what the difference is. Sometimes the guy calls them one, sometimes he calls them the other. Centerfolds and celebrity pinups. He has maybe ten of the celebrity pinups and twenty centerfolds. He runs a little business on the side."

Which was something that Sergeant Beckmann would naturally be familiar with. "Two things, Sergeant. There are laws . . ." David stopped. There were laws up-time and even up-time, if he was remembering right, pictures of celebrities were all over the place, Whether the celebrities wanted them there or not. And Rebecca Abrabanel had had her own TV show. For all David knew this artist of Sergeant Beckmann's acquaintance wasn't doing anything wrong. And if he was, probably the worst crime they could get him on was misuse of Third Division property. "Never mind. Find your artistic friend and bring him here with all his plates. Not just of Rebecca, all of them.

****

As it turned out David's fears were mostly groundless. The naked ladies sold better in the army, but the crew of that printing press sold what might be called celebrity portraits, including Mike and Rebecca, Princess Kristina and Gustav Adolph. Most of which were fairly modest. They also sold some nudes. Miss November of 1992 was quite popular. So were pictures from up-time, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and others. They carried the plates with the press and had a few prints to show around. When someone wanted one, they printed it up using the printing press and supplies. They also had a pantograph and other tools.

The picture of Becky was from her talk show in 1631. David remembered the show. He thought he might even remember the particular show. It was one where she was talking about how electric circuits worked and how dangerous they could be. But she was standing up and tracing a circuit so she had one arm up. And she was looking out of the picture with that serious, caring expression of hers. David told the guy to use the picture of Becky and maybe the Statue of Liberty.

David was figuring the picture of Becky on the front of the bill and the picture of the Statue of Liberty on the back, but he didn't specify that. The bills were to be four up-timer standard inches by eleven standard inches. Mainly because at the moment they didn't have the equipment to make the detailed plates they would have preferred. And because they were going to need to print assurances on the bills. At least David thought they would. Unlike the American money, they would all have the same images on them, no matter the denomination.

David got busy with other things, mostly having to do with getting the becky recognized as money on the currency exchanges in Grantville, Magdeburg, Venice, and Amsterdam. Well, Prague too. Nobody much outside Bohemia cared all that much about the Prague exchange, but Third Division was stationed in Bohemia just at the moment. David was pretty successful in the important places, but there were political complications in Prague.

By the time he got back to the actual currency, it was way past too late to change anything. The image went long-ways. Becky was ten inches tall from the top of the torch she was holding aloft to the bottom of her gown. The gown was green but the face and arms were flesh tone. The hair was black and the headdress was golden as though her head was surrounded with a halo of golden flames. It was a work of art, especially since it had been done in just a week, from disparate parts of other images.

And David Bartley had the sudden conviction that Rebecca Stearns was never going to forgive him for it. The general would probably like it, and if David knew Francisco Nasi-and he did-the financer/spy would be too busy laughing to take offence. But Rebecca herself? Well, David had only met her a few times but he had the impression of a basically private person. One who only ended up on the public stage when forced there. These, in their hundreds and thousands, would force her there in a way both more widespread and permanent than anything else he could think of.

If the beckies lasted as a currency-and David was really starting to think that they might-then a dark-haired Jewish girl was about to become the embodiment of the German spirit. As soon as possible, David was going to send to Grantville and have one of the machine shops make up some good steel engraving plates with all the little curlicues that make forging more difficult. But they would use these as the model. And start collecting them up as the new ones came online. In the meantime, they used a four-step process of offset printing to print the bills and each bill was numbered. The bills would be forgeable, but not easily.

****

"Captain Bartley. How did you get the contract for the winter uniforms for Third Division?"

"It's complicated, Lieutenant Kappel."

"It's an official request for information, Captain. I have to ask."

David held up his hand. "I know, Lieutenant. Basically I agreed to take payment partially in beckies."

"Beckies, sir!" Lieutenant Kappel's voice squeaked a bit.

"You know and I know that since the change of governments a number of the army contracts have been shifted to the politically-connected sweat shops down near Hamburg."

"I wouldn't call them sweat shops . . ."

David looked at him. They were sweat shops worse than anything David had ever even heard of before the Ring of Fire. Though, according to the historians, not as bad as some in the nineteenth century had been in the old time line. Kappel's face got a little red and David snorted. "Kids working twelve and fourteen hour days in close quarters with bad air constitutes sweat shops in my book, Lieutenant. Also in the general's and, I'd wager a lot, in the emperor's. I know that they are trying to compete with the up-time produced equipment, but frankly that excuse doesn't impress me at all." David shrugged and got back to the point. "Anyway, to overcome the political influence of the self-styled Crown Loyalists, I had to make a bid that would really show the bias if it was rejected. Selling under cost would do it, but I'm not the sole owner of the business. Besides, that would be cheating."

"There are legitimate suppliers out there, sir."

"Yes, there are quite a few of them and they are mostly booked solid, which is why the sweat shops are still in business. Also, most of them will insist on American dollars. Like I told you, I'm taking partial payment in beckies.

"Ten thousand winter uniforms in five sizes," David continued. "One pair of pants, two shirts, one set long underwear, one buff coat, one pair gloves, one pair mittens, one winter cap. One hundred dollars and one hundred fifty beckies per uniform set. Total order, one million dollars and one point five million beckies. Which, if this works, ought to be worth about one point four million American dollars, and if it doesn't will be worth bupkis. Some of my suppliers will take beckies on my say so, some won't. If this doesn't work, I'm going to be out about a million bucks. But that doesn't worry me. Do you want to know what does worry me, Lieutenant?"

There was a noticeable hesitation before the lieutenant nodded.

"What worries me, Lieutenant, is that the whole economic boom is based on faith in up-timer money and if that faith should be lost . . ." David shook his head. "Now, isn't that a thought to take to your dreams?

"Anyway, I offered to take more than half the price in beckies. The nobles and muckity-mucks that have been issuing their own money all along want 'their friends' to take their money as partial payment. Their friends, the sweatshop owners, say not no, but hell no! Now the muckity-mucks are pissed and we get the contract. Understand, Lieutenant, this was all happening very fast while most of the legislature was in Berlin and the clerks who actually run things were trying to figure out which way to jump. While they were getting conflicting instructions from various people within Wettin's coalition. Anyway, shortly after they gave our company the contract, someone in the procurement office notices that they don't actually have any beckies."

By now the lieutenant's eyes were wide. "What happened?"

"They sent General Stearns a message asking for, well, demanding, really, one point five million beckies." David grinned again. "The general, who is in Prague and kind of busy, forwarded it to me. Who sent back a message saying that the Third Division would trade them beckies for USE dollars at a one-to-one basis. And that, Lieutenant, is when you got ordered here to investigate my morals and upbringing."

"So the beckies were simply a scam to get the contract in place of bidders who offered lower bids?"

"Who offered a lower bid, Lieutenant?" David asked. "Even counting the beckies at par with the dollar, $250 a uniform set is a fair price. If there was a bid lower than mine I'll wager it was a cost plus bid, with an estimated cost that was smoke and mirrors. Mine was a set price offer. If production costs are higher than estimated we take the hit, not the government. Likewise, if the beckies don't work out, I take the hit not the government. I'm not getting one point five million dollars for beckies. Third Division is. I'm the one holding the beckies."

"So, what are you going to do with them?" Lieutenant Kappel asked. "The beckies, I mean?"

"I'm going to spend them, Lieutenant," David said. "More precisely, I am going to invest them in local businesses. Businesses which need goods that the Exchange Corps Stores can provide."

****

"With the Elbe frozen for the winter, it's actually cheaper to ship from Grantville," Johan said.

"Talk about roundabout," Sergeant Beckmann said. "Upriver to the railhead at Barby, then by train to the Ring of Fire, by road to Zwickau and by mule path the last eighty miles or so to here."

"And ninety percent of the cost and the risk is in the last eighty miles."

"It's not that bad, Master David," Johan said. "The Fresno scrapers can be made by any blacksmith with the help of a carpenter or wagon maker and they have been. Roads have been improving all over Europe, probably even in Spain."

David raised an eyebrow at the Spain bit, but he knew Johan was right in general. "All right, Johan, eighty percent . . . fifty percent. But only because we aren’t paying the duties and our supply trains are well-guarded."

"There's a fair chance we'll be able to find a road path that takes us all the way."

"I doubt it," David said. "Even a hundred yard gap between sections of good road and we have to switch to mule train. And that's what we'll end up using for the rest of the trip. We can't afford to have wagon trains sitting waiting for the mule trains. Or mule trains waiting for the wagon trains."

"That might be the best solution. I mean if the gap is short. They probably already have the mule trains," Beckman said. "Heck fire, the mule trains are probably the reason for the gaps."

"We'll know soon enough. I have people out scouting scraper routes," Johan said. Road improvements were spotty and trade shifted as this or that string of towns and villages improved, or didn't, their particular stretch of roads. "Scraper routes" were discussed in towns and taverns across Europe and wagons were starting to replace mule trains because they could go faster and carry more.

In the State of Thuringia-Franconia and in Magdeburg Province, roads were up around the quality of 1900 roads in the old timeline. Mostly dirt, but wide enough for two wagons to pass each other and lots of towns had actual paved streets. In Saxony, not so much. The scrapers were there, but their use wasn't, as a rule, encouraged. Right on the border where good roads meant they could get goods in from Thuringia-Franconia, roads were pretty good. The farther you got from the border, the worse they got. But that wasn't consistent. Some little village would pound out a Fresno Scraper and there would be two little farming villages that were suddenly close enough to each other to support one another. The second village would rent the scraper and extend the road to a third village that had two roads leading to a fourth and fifth village. And without noticing they would produce a roundabout route between two towns.

"Find us a route, Johan. For wagons the whole way if you can, for as much of the route as you can. And if you need some troops to encourage the locals to put their scrapers to work, that can be arranged."

The beckies were already in circulation but sluggishly. They were pushed by the Third Division, not pulled by the locals. Money is a bit like rope-it works a whole lot better if it's pulled than if it's pushed. They needed the people in the area to seek out beckies like they would seek out good silver coins.

****

"Radio message from Grantville, sir," Beckman said. "The wagons are on their way. Should be here in a few days."

"Good enough. We'll have the grand opening of the Exchange Corps Superstore at Tetschen next weekend," David said. "That should give us time to get the store stocked. Have the printers print up a bunch of leaflets announcing the grand opening." David stood and proclaimed, "Send out the luring parties."

****

"No, Goodman, we aren’t here to raid your village nor to buy your goods with IOUs on the USE government," the sergeant said in a bored tone. He was with the Hangman Regiment, TDY to the Exchange Corps and by now this was old hat to him. He and his squad had done it yesterday and the day before. They came riding into a village, handed out the advertising flyers and the pamphlets explaining what the Exchange Corps was in the market for. That the Superstore was opening in the castle at Tetschen. And that, no, he really didn't care if the villagers went to the opening or not. "Look here, my good man, I'm with the Hangman Regiment. We don't rape or pillage, we hang them that do. All I'm here for is to deliver the pamphlets. But it's going to be one heck of a party at the grand opening. They've a whole big store full of goods from Grantville. And we're letting all the villages in the area know that it's happening, so there ought to be a lot of folks who come just to see the place. Truth to tell, it's worth the seeing."

"But we have no money, Sergeant," the village elder whined.

The sergeant didn't whack the old man upside the head, though he was a bit tempted. This one had a particularly grating whine. "I'm not surprised," the sergeant said instead. "That’s what this little booklet here is for. The Exchange Corps buys grain and cheese and, well, all those goods listed there. It pays in good beckies that you can spend at the superstore."

"What happens if we don't go?" the old man asked.

"You miss a good party." The sergeant shrugged. "It's all the same to me, Gramps."

****

They came! Mostly out of curiosity but they came.

Jeff Higgins, who had seen real super stores up-time was not impressed. David, whose memory of such places was getting pretty vague by now, was not really impressed. Even the old Grantville hands were less than overwhelmed. But to the villagers around Tetschen who were looking at the first vise-grips and bearing sets, canned apples, and freeze-dried mushrooms they'd ever seen? Looking at wood lathes, stamp presses, plows and even a steam tractor? They were impressed.

Not for sale, that steam tractor. It was the showroom model and you could order one. Which would get there when it got there. On the other hand, there was a guy that gave rides on it, showing all and sundry how it would pull a plow better than a team of eight horses. And do the same for a Fresno scraper.

The not-subtle theme of the whole event, even of the superstore itself, was an advertisement for beckies. How much is a becky worth? Well, twenty of them will buy a pair of vise-grips; it's marked on the shelf where the vise-grips are. One becky will buy a package of twenty two-inch nails. A steam tractor will be your village's if you can come up with 20,000 beckies. Eventually. A first quality wood lathe, 300 beckies. A real angora sweater, 200 beckies. For 400 beckies, you can get a Partow washing machine and wash your clothes in comfort while toning your legs, rather than breaking your back. The prices were also marked in USE dollars and the price in beckies was generally a bit better than in USE dollars. That two hundred becky angora sweater, for instance, cost 215 USE dollars. The twenty-pack of nails was one becky or one dollar.

In spite of the fact that the superstore was poorly stocked by up-timer standards, with many of the shelves having only examples-like the steam tractor, not for sale themselves, just display models of things you could order-they didn't sell out in that first grand opening sale.

No one had any money. More precisely, most of the villages didn't have beckies or USE dollars. And didn't have much of the local currency either. But after the grand opening party, they wanted beckies. Wanted them badly.

Not that they didn't get orders. As it happened the old farmer who had whined his village's poverty in such an irritating voice took one look at the steam tractor and knew his village had to have it. While not nearly as poor as he had whined to the sergeant, his village wasn't rich.

"It's a five percent deposit and payment on delivery, Herr . . . ?"

"Krup." The voice would have shocked the sergeant had he happened to hear it. It wasn't whiny at all it was rather abrupt. "I am the Mayor of Markvartice." Which was perhaps a bit pretentious, but he was a pretentious fellow when he wasn't whining. He was, however, a bright fellow and dedicated to the welfare of his little village. "What about credit? I heard the up-timers give credit."

So they talked credit, interest on the loan and amount down. They talked about how long the waiting list for steam tractors was. And how if you didn't have the money or hadn't arranged credit when the tractor arrived they would sell it to the next person on the list and you would go to the back of the line. Herr Krup left looking for ways to raise beckies. He figured that the village had six months to raise 20,000 beckies and that was going to take work. But they would do it or he would know the reason why.

****

"So how much for a hundred weight of wheat?" the farmer asked.

"If it passes inspection . . ." The price was reasonable, even good after what he'd seen in the superstore. The farmer had paid his rent and tithes in kind just after the harvest and had some wheat left. This wasn't the lean time of year, but it would be coming on fairly soon. Still, if they could get the wood lathe for Karl now during the slack time, they'd have chairs and tables to sell come next harvest.

"We'll be bringing in a few hundred weights then." He went on his way.

****

The next guy wanted to know about the price for cabbage and the one after that for flax. Then hemp and . . .

It was winter, moving toward the lean time, but people had been hearing more and more about the wonders of the up-timers in the years since the Ring of Fire. Most of them had either never seen an up-timer product or had only seen one held as a talisman of better days at some nebulous time in the future. Now in Tetschen there was a store that had up-timerish stuff for sale. It used up-timerish money backed by the most famous up-timer of them all, the Prince of Germany, with a noble portrait of his wife, the famous and beautiful Jewess, Rebecca Stearns nee Abrabanel. A trip to Tetschen wasn't exactly a trip to Grantville, but Tetschen was closer. People came and they brought what they could scrape together and they had one great advantage over the looting parties that an army would send out to supply itself. They knew precisely where the stuff was hidden. After all, they were the ones who had hidden it to keep it safe from the looting parties.

It became much easier for the supply officers of the Third Division to buy stuff with beckies. It wasn't instant. At first it was a very short loop. The goods came in, got turned into beckies and the beckies got spent right there in the Exchange Club Superstore. But there were the people that let it be known that they would do work for beckies because the village was saving up for a tractor or plows or because the family or an individual wanted canning jars, a crystal radio set, a record player or whatever. The loop got a little bigger. Taverns and inns started taking them willingly. Finally the local nobility decided they would accept them as rent. They were money.

****

"He doesn't look a thing like Tony Curtis," Jeff Higgins muttered to himself, remembering a movie he'd seen about a pink submarine. And it was true. David Bartley didn't look a thing like Tony Curtis. Nor was it a casino, but David did have one thing in common with the supply officer played by Tony Curtis. They both sat like spiders in their webs while the supplies came to them.

"There's another difference, Colonel Higgins," a voice said from beside him.

"What? Oh, I didn't see you there, Herr Kipper," Jeff said to the older man.

"The other difference is that Master Bartley isn't cheating anyone," said Johan Kipper, the old Grantville hand who had seen the movie and had been David Bartley's man since the Battle of the Crapper. "The tables, if we had them, wouldn't be rigged and those people are going to get their money's worth and more."

"Beckies?" Jeff asked. "I know it's necessary but they are still company scrip whatever we call them."

"You're wrong, Colonel Higgins," Kipper said, not so much with heat but with a sort of cold certainty. "The beckies are as real as American dollars. Never doubt it."

The next morning the Third Division headed for Dresden. But the Exchange Corps store stayed and so did the beckies.

****

Fire and Ice

Iver P. Cooper

Grantville

Reardon Miller liked to joke that he had six jobs: his real job, and the five that certain clients of the Grantville Research Center thought he was doing. As the token male at the GRC, he was the researcher nominally assigned to those clients who were obviously very uncomfortable with the idea of working with a female researcher, but who were trying to be polite and not say so.

The would-be clients who weren't polite about it were just shown the door.

Reardon had a plan of action for, as he put it, "weaning the clients away from himself." (He said this with full recognition of the incongruity of applying the word "weaning" to the process of switching a client from male to female support. ) The first step was to introduce the female researcher as his assistant. The next was to let her deliver progress reports. Hopefully, the client would notice how knowledgeable and articulate she was. And finally, she would deliver the final presentation, with Reardon beaming benevolently in the background. Once the client expressed his thanks for the work, Reardon would lower the boom: "I'm just the pretty face here, this lady did all the research."

"Okay, Christine, we've got another client, name's Olafur Egilsson, a Lutheran minister from Iceland of all places. Something of a hardship case; he and his family-in fact, his whole congregation-got captured by the Barbary pirates.

"Wow. How did he escape?"

"He didn't. They released him to ask their friends and relatives, and the king of Denmark, for ransom."

Christine raised her eyebrows. "But-"

"But Denmark had just gotten its ass kicked by Count Tilly, so the royal cupboard was bare. And the Icelanders are rather like hillbillies with fishing boats. . . . They don't have much in the way of resources, other than fish.

"So your job is to find goods that they can trade to the pirates, or sell somewhere for lots of cash.

"He's pushing seventy, we think, so we are going to reduce the shock to his system of how we do things in Grantville. I will be introducing you as my assistant."

"Great, I have three strikes against me; I'm young, I'm Catholic, and I'm female."

"So don't talk religion. "

****

Hendrick Trip steepled his fingers. "Well, you certainly did your homework, Miss Onofrio."

Christine smiled at him. "Thank you. I am just an apprentice researcher, but I try to be thorough."

The two of them were sitting in one of the conference rooms at the Higgins Hotel. Trip had rented it, and had been conducting meetings there all day.

"As my agent told you, my uncle Elias is a former partner of Louis de Geer. Our families still cooperate, and since I was coming to Grantville on my own business, Count Louis asked me to meet with you.

"He was quite interested in what you had to say about the aluminum industry in late-twentieth century Iceland. That aluminum was more than ten percent of its exports, and that it made it from imported alumina very cheaply, thanks to its vast energy resources, both hydroelectric and geothermal.

"You are of course correct that Louis de Geer is interested in aluminum production. It is not a secret anymore that he has been acquiring bauxite and cryolite toward that end.

"And it's also true that the availability of electricity is one of the bottlenecks in producing aluminum anywhere outside Grantville. Magdeburg or Essen.

"Alas, Herr de Geer has asked me to inform you that it would be premature to invest in a hydroelectric plant in Iceland at this time. While the coal-fired plants we have access to now are certainly less efficient than hydro, they are adequate for our current production level and we can still charge a high price for aluminum. More than enough to cover the cost of the coal.

Perhaps in a decade, he will reconsider the issue."

Christine caught herself nervously chewing on a pencil. "What about the advantage of the proximity of Iceland to Greenland, where the cryolite is mined?"

"I am no technical expert, but I have been told that the cryolite is just a flux, it is not consumed in the reaction. So De Geer didn't need a lot of cryolite to start, and only needs enough in a future to replace that which is lost by evaporation, or when the dross is removed from the smelter. "

"The cryolite can also be used to make soda ash."

"Indeed it can, and I believe that was the back-up plan if aluminum smelting proved impractical. But Iceland doesn't have significant wood or coal, and so-barring those hydroelectric or geothermal power plants-it's hardly the place to base a chemical plant."

"Well, I'm sorry for wasting your time." Christine began collecting her papers and stuffing them into the portfolio case her mother had given her.

"It wasn't a waste of time. I wanted to meet you."

Christine's eyes widened. "Me?"

"My family is always on the lookout for bright young people. Your teachers wrote to me that you are in the advanced track. When you graduate high school-next year, is it?"

She nodded, looking slightly dazed .

"Think about coming to work for Trip Enterprises. We even have a branch office in Grantville now, although your star may rise faster if you're in Amsterdam."

****

"German Sugar, Not Made by Slaves," Reverend Egilsson read. "Each ton of New World Sugar costs two human lives."

He handed the can back to the storekeeper. "Is it true?"

"Which part? The German sugar is real enough. There's a kind of sugar-rich grass which was grown in Grantville, called 'sorghum corn.' They used it as a fodder before the Ring of Fire. When the Americans discovered how expensive sugar was in this day and age, they decided to extract sorghum sugar. The sorghum is fast-growing and produces lots of seeds, so more and more acres are planted every year."

"What about the cost in lives?" Egilsson asked.

The shopkeeper stepped off the ladder he had climbed to reshelve the can. "Well, that's what the Anti-Slavery League pamphlets say. I've never met a slaver myself."

Lucky you, Egilsson thought.

"The pamphlet said that in the African slave trade, there are many deaths at sea, of crew as well as of slaves," said the storekeeper. "And the life expectancy in the sugarcane fields is only ten years."

"You seem to have studied the pamphlet carefully," said Egilsson.

The storekeeper smiled sheepishly. "I see it often enough.. When I run out of sugar from sugarcane, I set the German sugar out front, and leave a stack of those pamphlets nearby."

"Does the pamphlet say anything of the Turkish slave trade?"

"The Barbary pirates, you mean?" The storekeeper frowned. "I don't think so. But then, they don't grow sugarcane on the Barbary coast, do they?"

"Not on the coast, but in Sous, in the Berber kingdom of Tazerwalt to the south, they do."

"You know, the Anti-Slavery Society has an office in town. It's over by the Golden Arches; you can take the senior citizens bus there."

"Unfortunately, I don't qualify as a citizen of the town."

"Oh, they don't mean 'citizen' in the German sense. They'll take anyone that's, um, rich in life experience."

****

Reverend Egilsson found the ride on the bus to be quite remarkable. The bus rode on a strange black material that Egilsson took to be some kind of smooth lava rock. The bench seats, each sitting two, were comfortable, and there was little vibration as the bus forged ahead. The hum of the motor was a bit disconcerting, however.

He introduced himself to his seat companion, who was Edgar McAndrew, an up-timer in his seventies. Eventually, Egilsson revealed his purpose in coming to Grantville.

"Well, lordy me," McAndrew said. "You have certainly survived a lot. But I'll tell you what you should do, Rev. I'm retired now, but I was once one of the best salesmen in the U S of A, in my lines; I have the achievement certificates and statues to prove it.

"You need to get one of the GRC youngsters to make a list for you of old, rich people. The young rich, they're just thinking of making money. The old rich, they get worried about what'll happen to them when they come before the pearly gates, on account of all the dirty tricks they played on the way up the ladder, and they start giving to charity. You tell them that ransoming some of the Icelandic captives, people they don't even know, will count for a lot in Heaven."

Reverend Egilsson pondered this nugget of wisdom. "The GRC is trying to find new products for Iceland, so that we are prosperous enough to pay the ransom ourselves."

McAndrew snapped his fingers. "Hey, I've got an angle on that, too! If the business plan's a good one, then sell stock to the old misers. You prod them with the carrot of maybe making more money and the stick of going to Hell if they don't help. There's nothing like the iron fist of greed in the velvet glove of charity. Or something like that."

The ex-salesman reached for the stop cord, and pulled. "Get off when the bus comes to a halt, Anti-Slavery office is to your right. God bless you, Reverend."

"May God have mercy upon you."

The ex-salesman chuckled. "At my age, mercy is infinitely preferable to justice."

As he disembarked, Reverend Egilsson mentally reproached himself for not lecturing the ex-salesman on the evils of Popery, with particular reference to indulgences, and the concept that someone can buy himself into Heaven. However, Kastenmayer had warned him against provoking religious arguments with up-timers, and Kastenmayer, as the resident Lutheran preacher, would have to live with the consequences of any disturbance caused by Egilsson.

Anyway, with Egilsson's stop approaching, there hadn't been time to properly educate the up-timer as to his doctrinal oversights.

****

The man behind the desk at the Anti-Slavery Society stood up when Egilsson entered his office. "Please come in, make yourself comfortable. I am the Reverend Samuel Rishworth. What brings you to the Society office?"

The Reverend Egilsson told him.

"A sad story, and all too common. The Society has a committee studying the Barbary slave trade; perhaps you should speak to them. But I must warn you, it is Society policy not to pay slave owners to free their slaves. I hope you understand why-it would just encourage more slave-taking, would it not?

"Instead, we educate the public as to the immorality of slavery, and we seek to make slavery uneconomical in a variety of ways. Making it possible for Europeans to work in the tropics, for example. Organizing boycotts of products made with slave labor. And commissioning privateers to harass slave traders. "

Rishworth started pacing, hands clasped behind his back. "Until the Ring of Fire, opponents to slavery were few. I was once the minister for the Puritan settlement of Providence Island, in the Caribbean. When we sailed across the Atlantic, we prayed that God would shield us from the Turk. Yet we were quick enough to buy slaves from the Dutch once we were ashore.

I saw the hypocrisy in this, and preached against it. And eventually I practiced what I preached; I hid fugitive slaves, and eventually fled with them aboard a USE ship that visited the island.

"If there is one thing you need to know about the Americans, it is that they are adamantly opposed to slavery. If you read their history books, you will find out that they fought a very bloody civil war to get rid of it. Since the State of Thuringia-Franconia adopted the American legal system, slavery is already illegal here. And I know that the Committees of Correspondence want to make that part of USE law, generally. Having the ability to grow sugar at home has strengthened their position."

Rishworth stopped short. "I'm sorry. Once a preacher, always a preacher."

"I understand. But is there nothing you can do to help me?"

"Perhaps not in the short term. But our committee would like to find a way to persuade the Barbary states to at least treat their captives as prisoners of war, not slaves. And we hope that we can find goods they want to buy and goods they can sell us, so we can engage in peaceful trade instead of preying on each other. "

"Reardon Miller of the Grantville Research Center, and his assistant, are trying to find goods which Iceland can trade to the pirates in exchange for its people. Or at least, which Iceland can sell to someone in order to raise the ransom money."

Rishworth nodded. "That's a step in the right direction. If they like the goods, perhaps in the future they will accept trade as an alternative to war. And if not, then perhaps with increased prosperity, you can afford better defenses."

****

Reardon Miller peered through the blinds.

Christine came up behind him. "What are you doing, Mr. Miller?"

"There's a busker out there. He's drawing quite a crowd. Never thought I'd hear someone playing 'Yesterday' while looking like an escapee from the Renaissance Faire. Give a whole new meaning to the word, don't you think?"

He turned to face her. "I am sorry the aluminum idea didn't work out. You're looking cheerful, so I assume that you've come up with something else."

Christine drew herself up, and announced, "Rhubarb."

"Sounds like a password to a speakeasy in a Groucho Marx movie. Why rhubarb?"

"The 1911 encyclopedia said that rhubarb was grown in Iceland. And I asked around and rhubarb is more expensive in the here-and-now than cinnamon, opium or saffron. You're looking at around sixteen shillings a pound." That worked out to more than three hundred USE dollars.

Reardon nodded. "What's the catch?"

"What do you mean?"

"If the price is high, it's for a reason. It's hard to grow, or it comes from far away, or they shoot you if you try to take it from where it grows naturally, or it's illegal. Find out what's the catch."

Christine sighed. "I will."

****

"By the King of the Night," said Cornelis Janszoon van Sallee. "I almost wish I hadn't thought to look up what the American books said about the future of al-Maghrib." In Arabic, the "al-Maghrib" meant the setting sun, and by extension, the western limit of Islamic expansion-the coast of North Africa. Which, Cornelis had learned, had become the twentieth century countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

Cornelis was the son of the Corsair Admiral Jan Janszoon-Murad Reis-and his father had sent him to Grantville to study their military technology. Garbled rumors of their mechanical marvels had come even to Sale in coastal Morocco, the capital of the Pirate Republic of Bou Regreg, and the home of what the English called the "Sallee Rovers."

"Forewarned is forearmed, sir," said Sergio Antonelli. Antonelli, who had visited Grantville before, was captured by Cornelis' father and commandeered to serve as Cornelis' servant, guide and protector during his stay in Christian Europe. Antonelli's son remained in Sale, as a hostage.

Cornelis took another bite from the American apple in his hand. "This is quite good, but I've had enough. Want the rest?"

Sergio accepted it gratefully.

Cornelis returned to his earlier train of thought. "Still, this Thomas Jefferson-may the fleas of a thousand camels infest his armpits-humiliated the Algerines. The Tripolitans, too. I fear that this Michael Stearns would be no kinder to those of the true faith than Jefferson, and that his ships will be more powerful."

"There would be no reason for the Americans to harm your people if you didn't take slaves," said Antonelli. It was something he wouldn't have dared to say a few months ago, when their trip began, but Janszoon even in the beginning had been strict but not cruel, and lately had shown him some small kindnesses. Like the offer of the apple.

"Yes, well, all unbelievers are fair game. Besides, if my father made peace with all countries today, he would lose his head on the morrow. We must have a nation to cruise against, the richer and weaker the better.

"But perhaps my father will make a peace treaty, or even an alliance, with the USE. Are they not at war with the English, the French and the Spanish? Are we not their friends, as the enemies of their enemies?"

Antonelli objected to this reasoning. "Temporarily, at least, there is peace. The members of the League of Ostend have been licking their wounds since June of last year."

"Pah," said Janszoon. "I would have liked to have seen the USE forces at war. Here in Grantville, all I have seen fired are a few small arms. They are excellent weapons, but I need more to impress my father."

Antonelli nodded. "We could visit the airfield and watch the planes take off and land. "

Janszoon clapped his hands. "Excellent idea."

"And we could go up to Magdeburg, see the Swedish troops at drill, and continue on to Hamburg where the ironclads were in action. Perhaps an ironclad will even be in port."

"Even better!"

Antonelli had finished the apple and was about to toss the core away.

"Wait, give it to me," Cornelis ordered.

Antonelli handed it over. Cornelis hefted it, and threw it at a squirrel that was sitting on a stump some yards away, licking its paws. It squawked indignantly when it was struck.

"A hit! A palpable hit!" Cornelis crowed. "I am quite the marksman, am I not? Too bad that military technology has advanced a bit beyond stone throwing."

****

Christine looked disapprovingly at Reardon Miller's desk. "It's a mess, Mr. Miller. I could organize it for you."

"No, please don't," he admonished. "I know where everything is; I have a system. Anyway, what can I do for you?"

"You were right, Mr. Miller."

"It's so nice to have a young lady tell me that. Or a lady of any age, now that I think about it. What was I right about?"

"The price of rhubarb is high because it comes all the way from China. By the time we could get the seeds from the Chinese and have the Icelanders raise a crop, the captives would have died of old age."

"I see. So, what's next?"

"Back to the library, I guess."

"Are you sure?"

Christine paused. Miller suddenly seemed fascinated by the papers on his desk.

"That . . . sounds like a trick question. . . ."

Miller started humming the "waiting for the contestants to answer the big question" music from Jeopardy.

"Please, Mr. Miller, I'm an apprentice researcher. Take pity on me." She batted her eyelashes at him in an exaggerated manner.

"It's a mistake to rely exclusively on books, Miss Onofrio. Never underestimate the value of intelligence collected by talking to human beings."

"Human beings. . . . Oh, like the garden club members?"

Miller nodded. "There are those in town who like rhubarb pie. So perhaps you can find some rhubarb seeds in Grantville. Bit less of a trip than China, don't you think?"

****

"Well, Hannah, for your sake, I hope you've produced an egg today," said Catherine Genucci.

"Come on, girl, let me have a peek." She tried to shoo Hannah out of her nest.

Hannah the Chicken from Hell declined to cooperate.

"Come on, now, be a nice lady, and . . . owww!" Hannah had pecked her.

Catherine licked the wound. "Oh, you nasty b . . . b . . . beast. I hope you're still barren, and I'll take the axe to your neck myself."

This charming pastoral scene was interrupted by a visitor. "Hi, Kathi!"

"Huh . . . Oh, hi, Christine. I thought you were working at the GRC." Christine and Kathi were born the same year, and knew each other from both school and church.

"I am, I'm here on business. So, are you the Queen of Hearts today?"

"The Queen . . . Oh, 'off with her head.' I hope so."

"I don't suppose you grow rhubarb here?"

"Rhubarb, no. But Mom might know who does. You want to talk to her?"

****

"Some more milk and cookies?" asked Fran Genucci.

"No thank you, Mrs. Genucci," said Christine. " But I hope you can answer some questions for me, being a Master Gardener and all."

"Well, I can try."

"Who around here has rhubarb seed? And how easy is it to grow?"

"Well, not me. I am more of a flower gardener, as perhaps you've noticed." She gestured vaguely in the direction of the front yard. "But there's rhubarb in Grantville, that's for sure. I think Mildred has it in her garden." Mildred was Fran's cousin, once removed, and another Garden Club member.

"But before you head over there, Christine, you ought to know, that people usually don't grow rhubarb from seed. It takes too long-two years, I think-and they don't grow true."

****

"Fran's right," said Mildred. "Wait until the plants are four or five years old, then divide the crown. You should be able to get eight or ten divisions from a single parent."

"But would they survive a trip to Iceland?"

"I'm sorry, dear, I am not sure. That's weeks? Months? I suppose they'd have to sit in pots on a ship. Perhaps Fran's nephew Philip, would know? He's the one that stowed away on a ship to Suriname, because he was gooey-eyed over that botanist Maria Vorst, from Leiden. He came back with plant specimens."

Mildred cocked her head. "Why Iceland, if I may ask?"

Christine told her.

"Oh, the poor man. Well, I can explain to you how to grow and propagate rhubarb, and give you some divisions, and a seed pod too, but I can't make any promises that they won't be D.O.A."

****

"I . . . I . . . I'm back," Christine announced. With a pseudo-Austrian accent.

Reardon Miller laughed. If anyone looked less like Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was Christine Onofrio. He motioned for her to sit down.

"It's strange," she said. "According to the 1911 encyclopedia, Prosper Alpinus was growing rhubarb in 1608, in Padua. And he gave seeds to Parkinson, who gave them to a 'Sir Matthew Lister,' supposedly physician to Charles I. I was puzzled, since I heard that William Harvey was Charles' physician, so I spoke to Thomas Hobbes." The philosopher had come to Grantville in 1633, escorting young William Cavendish on his "grand tour," and after learning how the powers-that-be reacted to his writings in the old time line, had decided it would be healthier not to return to England.

"Hobbes says that at least as of when he left London, Lister had not been knighted, but that he had indeed been one of King Charles' physicians, and had served James I and Queen Anne previously.

"So I don't understand. If the Italians and the English both have the plant, why is it still so rare and expensive? The price I told you was from 1656!"

Miller clucked his tongue. "Your generation remembers the internet, so you expect everything to be communicated instantaneously. In the old days-and we are now living in the 'really old days'-information moved slowly, and people were even slower to capitalize on that information. I imagine that both Alpinus and Lister were thinking small. They found a trophy plant for their own herbal gardens, and they used it in their own medical practices, and that was it. Did the encyclopedia say when serious commercial production began in Europe?"

"1777," she admitted, "and then based on seeds a pharmacist got from the Russians in 1762."

"Hah! You see what I mean? Over a century to go from academic curiosity to commercial crop. But I don't doubt it will happen faster in this new time line. Just not in weeks or even months."

Christine pondered this. "Still, it doesn't look likely that there'll be much of an export market for Icelandic rhubarb, even if I can get it there safely. The English are ahead of us. And if they don't move forward with commercial production now, they can do so soon so pretty quickly once they hear what the Icelanders are doing. And the herb will grow pretty much anywhere in northern Europe, even here in Germany."

Reardon reassured her. "It may not be the solution to the ransom problem, but I am sure that the Icelanders would appreciate some more variety in their diet. I wouldn't imagine that fruit trees grow among all that ice and snow, and rhubarb makes a good fruit substitute. So it's progress, of a sort."

Hamburg, Germany

The ex-militiaman gestured toward a large pile of rubble. "That's what used to be the Wallanlagen. The main river fortress of Hamburg."

Cornelis Janszoon studied the ruins. There were multiple overlapping craters. A dozen? Two dozen? Cornelis lost count after a while. And the craters were deep, perhaps one or two fathoms. Some kind of mortar bomb? he wondered.

"How did they get a fleet down the river?"

"Fleet?" The German spat. "Just four ships engaged us. What they call 'ironclads.'"

'What range did they fire at?"

"A bit over a hundred yards." He pointed with the hook he now had in place of a hand. "That's where the lead demon-ship anchored."

Cornelis thought about this. That was point blank range even for a swivel gun. It wouldn't even be necessary to elevate the gun. A twenty-four pounder could shoot straight up to 300 yards, and had a maximum range of perhaps 4,500 yards. The ironclads should have been under fire from the fort for a long time.

"How many did you sink?"

"Sink! We barely scuffed the paint off them." It was an exaggeration, but not much of one; the Constitution , the lead ironclad, had picked up just a few dents. "After shooting at them for half an hour or more."

"Antonelli, when we get into Hamburg proper, I want you to commission some starving artist or another to sketch this scene for me. And another of the ironclads in action. I'll need something to show my father."

"Yes, sir. Interesting that the Swede hasn't rebuilt the Wallanlagen for his own use, now that he controls Hamburg."

The militiaman shrugged. "Perhaps it isn't worth rebuilding. Not if it would have to fend off ironclads, at least."

"I can think of another reason," said Cornelis. "To remind everyone that passes up or down the Elbe of just what his ironclads can do."

Cornelis couldn't help but imagine what those same ironclads would do to his home, the pirate town of Sallee. Or even to the more heavily fortified Algiers or Tunis.

The Barbary pirates had seen punitive fleets come and go. In 1620, Mansel had taken an English fleet massing almost five hundred cannon to Algiers, but all it accomplished was the release of the crews of two recently captured English ships. The same year, six Spanish warships exchanged fire with the Algerian harbor batteries; there was no damage on either side. The French didn't have a Mediterranean fleet that could seriously threaten Algiers until 1636, and its attack of 1637 was completely ineffectual, according to the histories.

The Dutch had better luck. In 1624, a Dutch squadron commanded by Admiral Lambert had appeared before Algiers. Lambert didn't threaten to lay siege to the city; he had captured some corsair vessels en route and threatened to hang the Algerians if the Dutch slaves weren't released. The pasha, agha and divan of Algiers conferred, and declined; Lambert made good his threat and promptly went off to collect more hostages. On his second appearance, the Algerians capitulated to his demand.

The treaty of 1626 provided that the corsairs could stop a Dutch ship and seize "enemy"-typically, Spanish-goods and passengers, but could not molest the crew, or seize other goods and passengers. It also provided that the Dutch were free to come to Algiers to trade, save that they couldn't export certain "forbidden items" of military value. The Dutch brought in herring, cheese, butter, and even beer and gunpowder, and took away wheat, hides, wax, and horses.

Still, in his time studying history and military technology at the Grantville Public Library, Cornelis had seen the handwriting on the wall. The encyclopedias revealed that the Barbary states had been protected as much by rivalry among the European powers-which saw the corsairs as tools to be used against their foes-as by the cannon and scimitars of their corsairs and the walls and batteries of their strongholds.

While for two centuries, most punitive expeditions, even the most successful, had ended with the Europeans paying ransom or tribute, once there was a general European peace, an Anglo-Dutch squadron had mercilessly bombarded Algiers, causing (and experiencing) much damage, and cowed Algiers and Tunis into temporary submission. And eventually the French invaded.

It was clear to Cornelis that military technology was going to develop at an accelerated rate, thanks to the appearance of Grantville, and it was only a matter of time before a single power dominated Europe.

And it was also clear that if that power were the USE, it would then act aggressively to suppress the slave trade, that of the Barbary Coast as well as the New World.

But in al-Maghrib, to make peace with all of the European powers would be suicide. Literally, not just politically.

Grantville

"Watcha' up to?"

Christine Onofrio, sitting on the bench eating her bag lunch, looked up. Her boyfriend was smiling down at her.

She smiled in return. "GRC stuff. I may have promised more than I can deliver."

"That Iceland project?"

'That's right. I'm still trying to figure out a way they can pay that ransom money."

"You know what I think? They should use the money to build a fleet and blast the pirates to smithereens!"

"That's your solution for every problem. Blow it up or ignore it. Very male."

He shrugged. "Why make things complicated?"

Christine wiped her mouth with a napkin. "I thought that perhaps, in the last four centuries, the Icelanders found something valuable on their island. I mean, look at Alaska. It used to be called 'Seward's Folly,' but then they found gold and later oil."

She took a deep breath. "Unfortunately, I was wrong. They don't have any minerals. No coal, no iron, and certainly no gold. No exotic animals or plants, either.

"So that leaves, as Iceland's fabulous resources, fish and sheep. And, of course, lava and ice. That's it. This project is 'Christine's Folly', I'm afraid."

"Talking about ice, would you like to go out for ice cream? I think you need cheering up."

Christine rose. "Twist my arm."

****

In-between licks, Christine said, "We're lucky to be in Grantville, you know. Plenty of electricity to run freezers, plenty of freezers to make ice. If we were off in Amsterdam, or Rome, we'd be out of luck. No ice in the summer. Ergo, no ice cream."

"Ugh," her boyfriend commented. "What did they do in the States, before there were refrigerators?"

"Don't know. Why'd you stop eating?"

He gave her a slightly sheepish look. "I was slurping it up too quickly, got an ice cream headache."

Christine snickered. "You weren't slurping it, you were inhaling it. Like a human vacuum cleaner."

****

Egilsson froze. That man. He had seen that man before. Where?

At the library, yes. But that wasn't why his pulse was suddenly racing. By the time he forced the deeper memory to the surface, the man and his companion had left the cafe, and disappeared out of sight.

He called over the waitress. "The man that just left-the swarthy one with the odd hat. I think he dropped this." Egilsson held up the book that he had been reading. "Do you know his name? I should bring it to him."

The waitress stood in contemplation for a moment. "No . . . Oh, yes, I do know him. That is Cornelis Jansen of Amsterdam. Do you want to leave the book with me, to give him the next time he comes?"

"No, I am sure I have seen him at the library. I will give the book to him there, I'd like to talk to him about it."

Not from Amsterdam, he thought. From the vestibule of Hell . . . the Corsair Republic of Sale. Cornelis Janszoon van Sallee was the son of the Dutch renegade Jan Janszoon, Admiral Murad Reis. As Olafur knew from slave gossip, Murad's ships had raided Reykjavik even while the Algierian corsairs had ransacked Olafur's Westmanneyjar. Olafur had seen Cornelis in Algiers, which he had visited as his father's agent.

Olafur mentally reviewed how much money he had left. It was, he thought, sufficient to buy an up-time pistol.

****

Christine hated being asked a question and not knowing the answer. It was like a tooth ache. You could try to ignore it, but sooner or later you had to do something about it. Christine headed back to the library to look up the prehistory of refrigeration. That led her to fish out the copy of Walden Pond she had to read for school.

On the weekend, she visited the nursing homes, figuring that some of the residents were old enough to remember the days before refrigerators were common. Then she quizzed the senior researchers at the GRC, many of whom were retirees, although not quite as old.

Gradually, she put together a new plan . . . "Third's the charm . . ." she said to herself.

****

Cornelis and Sergio left the Grantville Public Library shortly after sunset.

A voice spoke from the shadows. "Janszoon."

Cornelis turned, and froze when he saw the gun pointed at him. A gun held by Olafur Egilsson.

"Cornelis Janszoon van Sallee, the Pirate Prince. Glory be to the Almighty, that he would deliver you to me. At last I will have vengeance for the people of the Westman Islands, and the East Fjords, that were carried off as slaves to Algiers. Including myself and my family."

"You said, 'van Sallee,' so you know I am from there, not Algiers."

"Does it matter whether you are from Sodom, or from Gomorrah? Evil is evil. Your father led the devils of Sallee against the poor fishermen of Grindavik. For all I know, you were there yourself. But even if you weren't, you surely prospered from their misery.

Cornelis' companion cleared his throat.

"I have no quarrel with you," said Egilsson, "provided you do not interfere."

"I beg of you, listen to me," the companion pleaded. "My name is Sergio Antonelli and I am a Venetian merchant. Like you, I was a prisoner of the corsairs. I was given my liberty to guide Cornelis Janszoon safely to Grantville, and back. My son remains as hostage in the palace of Murad Reis, and if Cornelis does not return on time . . . things will go very ill for him."

Egilsson put his free hand over his heart. "I will pray for you and your son. But why would a lord of Sallee come to Grantville, but to learn their arts of destruction? How many more good Christians would die, or labor in servitude and degradation, if this servant of Satan is allowed to return to Sallee?"

That was when Christine arrived on the scene. She turned the corner, and spotted Egilsson. "Hello, Reverend Egilsson, I have good-What are you doing with that gun? Are those men threatening you? Should I call the police?"

Egilsson shook his head. "Do you Americans not say, 'God helps those who help themselves?' This man, this van Sallee, is a corsair spy, here to tell the pirates how to build your steamships and exploding shells and who knows what else. If I let him live, what will happen to poor Iceland? And if I cannot raise the ransom, then his death will be some modicum of vengeance for my countrymen."

Antonelli shook his head slowly. "Have you forgotten the words, 'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord'?"

"Even the Devil . . . or a Papist . . . can quote Scripture."

"Please, hear me out," said Cornelis. "If you have lived in Algiers, then you know that it lives or dies by the slave trade. And Sale is the same. If there is any chance that this will change, it will be because I bring new arts home from Grantville."

Olafur made a noise that was almost a chuckle. "You expect me to believe that your father, the admiral, sent you to Grantville to learn how to beat your swords into ploughshares and your spears into pruning hooks?"

"It's true that he's interested in the up-timers' art of war. Their muskets, their cannon, and especially their flying machines. But what I have learned is that all the great powers of Europe also have their spies here, and are learning to copy up-time weapons. Some of them, at least. Sale is smaller even than Magdeburg, so how can it compete?

"If I can find a practical alternative to the slave trade . . . And I admit it's a big "if" . . . then perhaps we will consider peaceful trade. At least with some of the European states, I doubt that we will be quick to forgive Spain for the way it treated the people of Islam."

Olafur twitched slightly, but the gun barrel remained steady. "A nice speech. Antonelli, how much of that is true?"

"Sir, we have discovered that in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco has much mineral wealth. Minerals that might find a market-"

"And who would mine those minerals?" Olafur demanded. "I'll tell you, the poor slaves. The corsairs would redouble their efforts."

"Only if the European navies let them," said Antonelli. "And the USE has declared strongly against slavery. A black woman, Sharon Nichols, is now the USE Envoy in Rome. It is a message that all the diplomats and merchants of Europe can easily read.

"We would, of course, have to find goods that the people of Sale would want to buy, so they would welcome European trading ships. Based on the encyclopedias, we are thinking about cotton, tea, flour, and manufactured goods."

Christine spoke. "Reverend Egilsson, please. I think I found a way for Icelanders to pay the ransom. With goods that would be in demand in Algiers, if not in cash. Your family can be recovered. But not if you put yourself in jail for murder."

She tried to smile. "And you know, the library will revoke your borrowing privileges if you kill a fellow patron."

Ever so slowly, Olafur lowered the gun. "Can't have that," he said with an answering smile, albeit a fleeting one.

"Thank you, Reverend Egilsson. And if you wouldn't mind, please safety and holster it, too." He did so.

Antonelli put his hand on Janszoon's shoulder. "We'd best leave."

He shook the hand off. "Not just yet. Milady, what are the goods you speak of?

"Ice. Which Iceland has in abundance, you'll concede? Ice cream. Meats, fruits and vegetables preserved by being packed with ice. Mr. van Sallee, wouldn't those be wonderful luxuries for your people? And if not for them, they could be sold in Spain, or Italy, or Turkey. Or perhaps in Brazil, or Spanish America. Or even India."

"The ice will melt along the way."

"There's a solution. There was once a big natural ice trade in America, in the nineteenth century. They cut ice at places like Walden Pond, and shipped it out to Charleston, and Havana, and even Calcutta, packed in sawdust. Or other insulation, but sawdust was the best."

"Sawdust?" asked Egilsson. "I met a woman engineer at St. Martin's who told me about her work at the steam sawmill."

"Sara Lynn," said Christine. "Perhaps you could have her ask them to donate the sawdust. It might be good publicity for the sawmill. And a good marketing gimmick, too, as it demonstrates how sawdust can be used."

Egilsson rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "In Iceland we have some glacial lakes. Jokulsarlon, Fjallsarlon, and Breidarlon. The lakes are filled with icebergs from the glacier.

And of course there are other lakes and rivers that freeze over during the winter.

"But if it's such a good idea, what's to keep someone from getting ice from Norway?"

Christina smiled. "I thought about that. Denmark, Norway and Iceland are all under Danish rule. And I would think King Kristjan feels bad, at least a little, about not paying the ransoms himself. If he gives us a monopoly for, say, ten years, on harvesting ice and snow for export, then that will give us a chance to get the business going. And it wouldn't cost him anything out of pocket."

"You seem to have a head for business," said Antonelli. "But where's the start-up capital coming from?"

"There are a number of possibilities," Christina told him. "We can send a proposal to Other People's Money, or one of the other investment funds. We could get a loan from a bank. Or we could scrounge up private investors ourselves. I sounded out Hendrick Trip-"

"Trip!" exclaimed Antonelli. "You move in more exalted financial circles than I ever did, miss."

"What about when the ice gets to its destination?" asked Janszoon doubtfully. "I don't want to discourage you, but it's very hot in Sale, or Algiers, in the summer when the demand would be the greatest, and since it's a novelty, I am not sure how quickly it would sell."

"Well, that's where you would come in," Christine explained. "Have an ice house built there in advance."

"Ice houses are very expensive," said Antonelli. "You have to dig a hole, then line it with stone. "

Christine disagreed. "I'm sorry, that's not true. At least that's not how we usually did it in the States, before there were refrigerators. We built most of our ice houses above ground, out of wood. There are old ice houses like that on a few of the farms in Grantville, I was told. "Perhaps some people took advantage of natural caves, but that wasn't necessary.

"And perhaps we could get some of the Science Club kids at school to test a few ice house models, and see what design works best."

"In the Maghrib, trees are not as common as they are here." Janszoon warned. "So wood can be expensive. But we do have matmoras, underground granaries, that may have some free space, and there are caves in the mountains."

"Do we have to worry about refrigerators driving us out of the business?" asked Antonelli. He didn't notice that he had said "we."

"Not for a few more years, I think," said Christine. "After all, refrigerators need electricity. And also there's some kind of gas in them. They're both in short supply, so initially the production will be limited. I would imagine that it will be a while before the Barbary Coast gets enough to meet the demand. And anyway, isn't it a bit short of water to make artificial ice?"

"You could say that," Janszoon admitted. "All right. I will demonstrate my commitment to finding a peaceful way by arranging for one of these ice houses to be constructed, once you can show me a reasonable business plan, and that you have investors willing to put up the money you need to harvest the ice, and that your model ice house can preserve ice."

"That's no commitment at all!" Egilsson's eyebrows were pulled down and together, as if they were magnetized. "If this, if that . . . You have promised nothing. Nothing at all."

"What do you expect? I know nothing of this ice trade, so I can't judge the practicality of it all based on my personal experience. Yes, the Americans did it in the nineteenth century, but perhaps it wouldn't work in the here and now. Even with funding, there could be trouble. A winter too mild to produce a decent ice harvest, or a winter so severe that you can't cut the ice. Or problems at sea."

"'Multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra,'" Antonelli quoted. It meant, "many things fall between cup and lip."

Janszoon nodded. "If I build this ice house, and no ice arrives, I will be a laughingstock, and an embarrassment to my father. Sale is governed by the Council of Corsair Captains, and his position as admiral is precarious. One sign of weakness, and they will attack him . . . like a school of sharks that has scented blood."

Christine worried her lip. "I think . . . Reverend Egilsson? I think he's making good points-"

"Good points? I . . . I suppose." The Reverend's expression could have curdled milk.

Janszoon seized upon this admission. "Then does my proposition sound fair?

Egilsson looked at Christine, then back at the provisionally reformed corsair. He sighed. "Fair."

****

Author's Note

Olafur Egilsson (1564-1639) is a historical down-timer. My description of his capture and subsequent adventures is based on Reisubok sera Olafs Egilssonar (The Travels of Reverend Olafur Egilsson) translated by Karl Smarri Hreinsson and Adam Nichols (Fjolvi, Ltd., Reykjavik, 2008). Antonelli's proverb is from the Adagia of Erasmus.

Samuel Rishworth is a historical down-timer, and his activities are, as far as I know, the earliest European opposition to the African slave trade. (Bartolome de las Casas had previously protested the Amerindian slave trade.) He appeared in my story, "Stretching Out, Part 4: Beyond the Line," Grantville Gazette 16.

Cornelis Janszoon and his piratical father were historical down-timers, both introduced in "A Pirate's Ken" (Grantville Gazette 15).

****

Solemn Duty

David W. Dove

Lieutenant Claus Brockman scraped his boots against the edge of the wooden walkway, trying to remove the mud that had accumulated there. It was early May and that meant spring had finally come to Falun, Sweden, and spring meant that the streets were a sticky mess.

He looked down at his uniform trousers with despair; mud was splattered up past his knees. For this duty he was supposed to look his best, but there was no way that could happen now. He tugged on the tail and sleeves of his jacket to make it as presentable as possible and patted his pocket to make sure the package he was delivering was still secure.

He pushed open the door of the shop and stepped inside, quickly closing the door behind him. As he paused for a moment to soak in the warmth of the general store, an older man at the counter looked up to greet him.

The man eyed Claus's uniform suspiciously. "Yes, how may I help you?"

Claus removed his hat before answering the man. "Excuse me, sir, is your name Erik Svedberg?"

"Yes, that is my name."

Claus felt a rush of relief; he had been tracking down this place for almost a year and a half. Perhaps he had finally found the man he was looking for. "Herr Svedberg, I am Lieutenant Claus Brockman of the United States of Europe Navy. Do you have a son named Bjorn?"

The man stiffened at the question and answered warily. "Yes, I have a son by that name, but I have not seen him for almost three years. Why do you ask?"

Claus tried to calm his nerves for what he had to say. "Herr Svedberg, I have news of your son, very sad news. Sir, it is my duty to inform you that Bjorn was killed while fighting against the forces of Denmark."

The blood drained from the man's face as the news registered. "Bjorn is dead?"

A scream of anguish came from the back of the shop and a woman rushed into the room, throwing herself into the man's arms. The man held the woman tightly as she sobbed against his shoulder.

Claus stood in silence, allowing the couple their grief. After a couple of minutes, the man looked up, as if remembering Claus was standing there. "I am sorry, Lieutenant . . . ?"

"Brockman, sir, Claus Brockman," Claus quickly answered.

"Lieutenant Brockman, please forgive my manners." He pointed to the woman next to him. "This is my wife, Helena, Bjorn's mother."

Claus bowed slightly. "Madam."

The man gestured to a small table and chairs in the back of the room. "Please, have a seat."

Claus took one of the seats as the man and woman joined him. The woman was sobbing gently, her face buried in a handkerchief. The man took a few moments to compose himself and then began speaking. "Please, I again ask you to forgive me. You see, nearly three years ago, my son parted under unpleasant circumstances. I have not seen him since that awful day." The man paused as he was overcome with grief and regret, tears flowing down his face. "My last words to my son were words of anger."

Claus felt uncomfortable hearing the man's story. "I am sorry; I did not mean to bring up bad memories."

The man shook his head. "No, that is in the past and not your concern. You said that my son died in battle."

Claus nodded. "Yes, let me start again." He took a moment to organize his thoughts. "On October 7th, in 1633, the city of Wismar was threatened by an invading Danish fleet. A small group of U.S.E. forces was gathered to repel the fleet. Although they were greatly outnumbered, the group was successful; they destroyed some of the invading fleet's ships and repelled the invaders. Regretfully, several men were killed that day, including Bjorn, whose boat was destroyed in the battle."

The man sat in silence for a few moments as he digested the news before speaking. "My son was at Wismar, where that German boy died in the flying machine."

Claus nodded. "Yes, sir. Your son was one of only a handful of men who faced the Danish fleet. Because of them, the city remained safe."

The man nodded in understanding. "My son died honorably then, he fought bravely?"

"I believe he did, sir." Claus reached into his jacket and pulled out the package he carried. He opened it, took out an envelope, and handed it to the man. "Sir, this is a letter from Bjorn's commander. I believe it contains more details on your son's last days."

The woman had regained her composure. "Did you know my son, Lieutenant? Were you there that day?"

"No, madam," Claus answered. "I never met your son and I joined the navy a few months after Wismar." He reached into the package and pulled out two small boxes and two sheets of paper. "I also brought something for you. As a result of your son's final actions, the navy has awarded him decorations."

The man was obviously confused. "Decorations?"

Claus opened one of the small boxes to confirm its contents and then handed it to the man.

The man looked at the box and its contents. Inside he found a medal, a heart shaped metal medallion suspended from a purple ribbon. He looked up at Claus.

Claus picked up the certificate and read. "This is to certify that the Prime Minister of the United States of Europe has awarded the Purple Heart (Posthumously) to Gunner's Mate Bjorn Svedberg, for fatal wounds received in action at Wismar on 7 October 1633. Signed John C. Simpson, Admiral, United States of Europe Navy."

Claus then handed the man another box. The man pulled out another medal; this one a silver star suspended from a red, white, and blue ribbon.

Claus read the next certificate. "The Prime Minister of the United States of Europe takes pride in presenting the Silver Star Medal (Posthumously) to Bjorn Svedberg, Gunner's Mate, U.S.E. Navy, for conspicuous gallantry as a member of the three-man crew aboard the navy boat Outlaw during action against an armed enemy fleet on 7 October 1633 in defense of the city of Wismar. Remaining at his station in the face of hostile fire, Gunner's Mate Svedberg, with cool courage and utter disregard for his own personal safety, manned his weapon until he was fatally wounded. His heroic devotion to duty, maintained at the sacrifice of his own life, was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States of Europe Naval Service. Signed John C. Simpson, Admiral, United States of Europe Navy."

Claus gave both certificates to the man. "In addition to these decorations, I want to inform you that the U.S.E. Navy has commissioned a schooner to be named in honor of your son and his sacrifice."

"A schooner?"

"It's a small, fast ship, sir."

The man had a small, sad smile on his face. "Did you hear that, Helena? They have named a ship after our son."

The woman nodded sadly. "Lieutenant, was Bjorn buried properly?"

Claus felt very uncomfortable, but it was a question he had prepared to answer. "Madam, I'm sorry to say that since Bjorn was lost in a naval action, his body was not recovered, nor were the bodies of any others lost in the sea. There was a memorial service held for all those lost and a monument has been erected at Wismar dedicated to those who gave their lives that day."

The man looked troubled, but nodded in understanding. "That is the way of war. I want to thank you, Lieutenant. What you have done must have been difficult for you."

"Yes, sir, it was, but I accepted the difficulty because it needed to be done." He rose from the chair and stepped away from the table. "Sir, madam, now that I have performed my duty here, I must return to Magdeburg. However, I will not leave town until tomorrow morning, so if you have any more questions, you can find me at the inn on the corner tonight. Please, if you need anything at all, feel free to contact me. Again, I am sorry for your loss."

Claus had just reached the door when the man hurried over to stop him. "Lieutenant, I do have a question. You never served with my son and you did not know him. Why did you come all this way, do all that you have done, for a man you never met?"

Claus turned to the man. "Sir, it is a policy our admiral put in place and, when I think of my own family, one that I agree with. When any member of the navy loses their life, the navy will do everything it can to inform that man's family. Our policy is that no family should ever be left not knowing the fate of their loved one."

It was obvious the man was confused. "But my son was no one important; he was not a noble or an officer."

Claus held himself up with pride in his service. "That doesn't matter, sir. Everyone who wears our uniform is important."

With that, Claus opened the door and stepped out.

****

Erik watched the young man walk away and then closed the door to the shop. He walked back to the table where his wife was looking at the medals with tears in her eyes.

Sitting down again, he opened the envelope. As he began to read the letter, tears ran down his cheeks.

To the family of Bjorn Svedberg,

My name is Lieutenant Commander Edward Cantrell. Writing this letter is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Admiral Simpson offered to write it in my place, but he and I agreed that it would be more appropriate if I did it.

I was Bjorn's commander on the day that he died. Other men died that day as well, among them a lifelong friend. It was only pure luck that I survived, although I was wounded and captured.

But this letter isn't about me, it's about Bjorn. I didn't know him long, but let me tell you of the time I did know him and of his bravery that final day . . .

****

A soft wind came off the Baltic Sea on the late June afternoon in Wismar. A light drizzle washed the dirt from the bronze plaque set into the stone monument erected near the shore.

A lone man dressed in the uniform of the U.S.E. Navy, with the double silver bars of a lieutenant, stood at the base of the stone and read the words cast into the metal plaque. The same message was repeated in English, German, and Swedish:

On October 7th, 1633, joint elements of the U.S.E. Navy and the U.S.E. Air Force defended the city of Wismar against an invasion fleet of the Kingdom of Denmark. Although vastly outnumbered, the small group of defenders successfully repulsed the fleet and kept the city from enemy hands.

This memorial is dedicated to the bravery and sacrifice of the men who gave their lives that day:

Captain Hans Richter, USEAF

Lieutenant Lawrence Wild, USEN

Gunners Mate Bjorn Svedberg, USEN

When he had finished reading, the young lieutenant came to attention and saluted. If anyone had been standing nearby they would have heard his soft-spoken words. "Mission accomplished, Gunners Mate Svedberg."

Boom Toys

Kim Mackey

"Come on, Nick. What's bothering you? You've been like a-what's the American expression?-like a bear with a sore tooth. All day, I might add, even at work. You can tell us; we're your house mates. And best friends. If you can't trust us with your secrets, who can you trust?"

Nicki Jo Pricket sighed. Tobias Ridley was a shrewd judge of character. It had been a mistake to let him be the odd man out in the three-handed game of gleek that Katherine Boyle, Solomon des Caux and she were playing. It gave him way too much time to ponder.

Katherine smiled. "Better tell them, Nick. They'll find out soon enough, as it is on Monday."

Nicki Jo nodded. "I suppose you're right Katy." Then she looked at Tobias Ridley and Solomon des Caux. "But don't talk to anyone until Monday, do I have your promise on that?"

Both young men nodded solemnly and Nicki Jo shook her head.

Almost three years since the Ring of Fire. How could she have suspected how much her life would change in those three years? Right after the Ring of Fire she had been nearly all alone in a hostile Grantville where she had effectively burned all her bridges by "coming out," exposing to the world her lesbianism by bringing her Fairmont lover to the Senior Prom. It hadn't seemed that important at the time. She'd gotten a full ride at WVU in Morgantown because of her grades in science, especially chemistry. She'd never expected to return to Grantville except for rare-very rare-trips home to see her dad and sister. Her dad hadn't been that concerned that one of his daughters was a lesbian, but her mom . . . her mom had stopped talking to her for good.

When her sister had called her the Friday before the Ring of Fire and told her that Mom would be out of town visiting relatives, she had seized the opportunity to get in a last trip home to pick up her few remaining belongings. Amy Kubiak, her best friend throughout her years in Grantville, despite being a class behind, had come home with her from Morgantown that weekend. And been caught like she was. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes was all that had separated them from being on the other side of the Ring of Fire.

At first Nicki Jo had blamed Amy and her bitterness and depression had lasted months before she finally made up with her friend.

But when she finally did, it had been Amy who had saved her, just as she had saved her in high school, by introducing her to Colette Modi who had hired Nicki Jo to help develop the Essen Chemical Company.

For months after the Ring of Fire Nicki Jo buried herself in her work for the biogas plant and in studying chemistry. At WVU Nicki had been taking both organic and physical chemistry her sophomore year, giving her as good an academic background in chemistry as almost anyone else caught by the Ring of Fire. But she needed more, especially practical experience, if she was to achieve her goal of getting a patron outside Grantville. She had been relieved to discover that seventeenth-century Europe was not as hostile to lesbians and homosexual men as she had thought. True, there were cases of women and men being tried for sodomy in Europe, but the cases were rare and usually involved women and men who were already on the margins of society.

It was odd, really. Right after the Ring of Fire Nicki Jo had cursed her luck thinking that she had wound up in a universe where Grantville, filled with her enemies, was the most tolerant town in the world instead of just a hick little village. Only gradually had she learned that homosexuality in the seventeenth century was tolerated, even ignored, except in certain rare cases. Of course, you didn't want to actually go out and flaunt your sexuality, but that was as true of heterosexuals in many ways as it was of homosexuals. So long as you kept things discreet and didn't go out and parade around for gay rights, people were willing to look the other way. It helped, of course, if you were rich and powerful, or had friends who were rich and powerful.

But even that wouldn't help if you weren't discreet.

The case of Mervyn Touchet, Earl of Castlehaven in England, had been a cautionary tale in the value of discretion.

In 1631 the earl and two of his retainers had been beheaded for sodomy. But the case would never have come before the courts if the earl's family life hadn't been highly dysfunctional. Besides being a sodomizer, the earl had also allowed-even encouraged-his retainers to rape both his wife and his new daughter-in-law. That alone would still not have been enough to draw the attention of the courts if he hadn't also threatened his son with disinheritance. In the end, it had been his son who had brought the case before the courts. Other noblemen, disgusted at the earl's inability to control the chaos of his manor-a chaos that they loathed even more than the earl's sexual barbarities-had applied pressure in the right places to ensure his conviction.

With that tale in mind, Nicki Jo and Katherine Boyle had invited Tobias Ridley and Solomon des Caux to share a house with them in Essen. Gossips would assume that they were living in sin, but the more normal and recognized sin of a heterosexual relationship between unmarried couples.

Only the couples themselves, and Colette and Josh Modi, knew that the relationships were homosexual ones.

"Okay," Nicki said, "This is the situation." Nicki thought for a few seconds and then continued. "We've been making toluene so we can methylate morphine to produce codeine efficiently, right?"

Both men nodded.

"Well, after we provided some codeine to the Essen Intelligence Service, the director must have mentioned it to someone, because the ordnance team for Essen Steel is now breathing down our necks to make tri-nitro toluene, TNT. Colette and I have been putting them off for a month, but they finally went to the Governor-General and he's starting to put the pressure on. So we've got to produce some explosives to get them off our backs."

Nicki Jo wrinkled her nose in exasperation. "Not that I want to. I want to save lives, damn it, not make boom toys."

Tobias laughed. "Boom toys are fun, Nick. Besides, the Republic can't afford a very large army, so we need to keep a tech edge."

"I know, Toby," Nicki Jo said, "but our feedstock situation isn't that great. Until we can get a steady supply of nitrates from Peru or Asia, we're limited in how much nitric acid we can produce. We can't produce it with electricity like Grantville can. At least, not profitably. And every ton we use for explosives will cut into our profit on stuff we can get higher margins on."

Tobias looked at Solomon. "Let me and Solomon work on it. We're good at nitration, aren't we you old catamite?"

Solomon gave Tobias a mock scowl. "Catamite am I? Who was on top of who last night, you sodomite?"

"Sodomite? Sodomite am I? Buggerer!"

The two men looked at each other and grinned. Nicki Jo laughed. "Please, guys, I don't want to hear about it. Male sexual bonding is not my thing." She smiled at Katherine, who smiled back.

She knew she shouldn't do it, of course. Tobias and Solomon just weren't quite ready to be on their own yet. Oh, they were good chemists, but they still didn't understand, deep down, how dangerous some of the processes were that they were dealing with. But it would get De Geer and the ordnance team off her back.

"Okay, I'll let you guys have building number one. But you've got to be careful. That was our original pilot plant and it just doesn't have the safety features we've built in to the major production facility. Remember . . ."

Tobias and Solomon laughed, then chorused together, ". . . it's hard to make miracle drugs when you've blown up the chem lab." Nicki Jo had had that sign posted in three different languages at all entrances to the Essen Chemical Company's facilities and laboratories. It seemed to have worked because they'd had no major accidents except for some minor burns, spills, and inevitable glass cuts. But there was always a first time.

Nicki Jo shook her head and wagged her finger at them. "I'm serious, guys. Watch your damn purity. Distill, distill and then distill again. If you even suspect you have too many impurities, destroy it. And for God's sake, make small batches. Just telling the ordnance team we're starting to work on it will keep them satisfied for a few months. Understood?"

Both men nodded solemnly again. Nicki Jo sighed. Now she knew what it felt like to send children off into the world where you couldn't watch them every step of the way. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. She resolved to drop in as often as she could to check up on them.

"Okay, Toby, your turn to play gleek. You still owe me two guilders from last week."

****

Three weeks later, Nicki Jo was deep in conversation with her head chemist, the Hungarian Banfi Hunyades, when Katherine Boyle came hurrying through the door of the Essen Chemical Company's main research lab. The lab was an impressive assemblage of glassware, earthenware and stoneware. Alembics, retorts and ovens were everywhere and the building had been designed to take into account the needs of a down-time chemistry lab that had to depend on seventeenth-century materials and apparati. The majority of the glassware, thermometers and other instrumentation was manufactured by the Essen Instrument Company, a separate subsidiary started up by Colette Modi, Nicki Jo and Katherine, with financial backing from Essen Steel investors. Stoneware came from the Raeren workshops south of Aachen. Ovens, alembics and other metal apparati were built to spec by metalworkers in the Steele area who worked for or contracted with the Essen Steel Company. To the eyes of a twentieth-century chemist, the lab would have seemed a dangerous Rube Goldberg mishmash filled with safety hazards. In the down-time universe it represented the best state of the art chemical research lab in Europe, outside of Grantville.

When Nicki Jo saw Katherine's face, her guts began to twist inside her. Normally there was nothing that could get Katherine Boyle upset. So the worried frown on her face was not a good sign.

"What is it, Katy?"

"I really don't know if it's that much of a problem," Katherine said, "but Tobias and Solomon have kept it a secret for a week, so I thought I better tell you as soon as I could."

"What?"

"According to Franz Dubois, Tobias and Solomon decided they weren't getting enough toluene out to work with, so they decided they'd try distilling out phenol and nitrating that for an explosive instead."

Nicki Jo's face turned white. "Oh shit."

Banfi Hunyades shook his head. "Young fools. Don't they remember the lectures? Or do they simply think they are immortal?"

Of all the alchemists and chemists hired by Essen Chemical Company from the members of the Acontian Society, Banfi Hunyades had the most experience. A man in his late fifties, Hunyades not only came from a long line of Hungarian alchemists, he had also instructed students in chemistry and chemical medicine at Gresham College in London. His experience and intelligence had enabled him to easily pick up on the principles of up-time chemistry and help adapt up-time laboratory techniques and methods to seventeenth-century materials.

"What?" Katherine said. "Is it that much more dangerous than working with toluene?"

Hunyades nodded. "Tri-nitro phenol is also known as picric acid. Many of the metal salts of picric acid are highly unstable, even more so in some ways than mercury fulminate. And you know what kind of precautions we take in its manufacture."

"So what are we going to do?" Katherine asked.

"Tear those boys a new asshole, for one," Nicki growled. She looked at Hunyades. "Will you back me up on this one, Banfi? Sometimes I think Tobias and Solomon are still stuck in male dominance mode. If you help ream them out, it might make more of an impression."

Hunyades nodded. "Whatever you wish, Miss Pricket. Do you want to go now? The experiment still has an hour to run."

"Yeah," Nicki Jo said, "let's shut it down. We may not be back in time and I don't want to leave this up for someone else to stumble across." It took them five minutes to break down the apparati and arrange for a clean-up crew.

Building one, two hundred yards away from the main research lab, had been the first coal tar pilot plant built by the Essen Chemical Company in the spring of 1633. It had been mainly a proof-of-principle plant, designed to establish the needs for a more sophisticated coal tar distilling facility.

Banfi Hunyades, Nicki Jo and Katherine Boyle were thirty yards from the plant when it blew up.

****

It all could have been much worse, of course. Banfi and Katherine were hit by non-lethal splinters from the door while Nicki Jo was knocked unconscious when a bigger chunk dug a groove along the left side of her head. The plant itself had been designed with a weak west wall in case of a hydrogen explosion and that fact helped save the lives of the ordnance team and Solomon des Caux who had also been protected by heavy equipment between them and the blast. The only serious injury was Franz Dubois, who lost an eye to a splinter.

But the three men closest to the blast, including Tobias Ridley, died.

****

It was the fourth day after Tobias' funeral when Nicki Jo's subconscious baggage forced itself into her fore brain. She was in the dark, alone, in her bedroom.

You piece of shit, Prickett. You knew they weren't ready. You knew it was dangerous. And you wanted to absolve your conscious. So much easier to tell yourself you were busy, to let the oversight slide, wasn't it?

Her self-loathing, buried for years, made her choke. Carefully, quickly, she cut her wrist with the small dagger she always carried. Not a dangerous cut, just a nice shallow cut. For the pain. Take that, you bitch. Again, another shallow cut. It had been years since she'd even thought of cutting herself, let alone done it.

It all started in sixth grade. Stephanie Baxter, the Queen Bee. Pretty, petite, popular. She'd hunted around for someone she and her friends could pick on, someone they could all hate with a passion. Her sights had fallen on big, awkward Nicki Jo Prickett. It helped, of course, that Nicki Jo was smarter than any of them.

But that still wouldn't have been enough for Nicki Jo to turn to self-injury without her mother. Karen Prickett had had a difficult time with her first daughter, Angela. She had been bound and determined to do it right with Nicki Jo. The pressure to be perfect had been intense. Nothing Nicki did was good enough. When Nicki Jo protested, tried to rebel, her mother, a hefty woman herself, beat her, often after half-a-dozen whiskey sours. When her dad or sister tried to intervene, they were screamed at and beaten, too. She loved her dad, but he'd been too weak to deal with her mother. So he went passive-aggressive and retreated. Angela did what she could, but by the time Nicki Jo was in sixth grade, Angela had left the house to live with relatives.

So Stephanie had been the tipping point. It hadn't helped that Nicki Jo's burgeoning homosexuality had made her feel attracted to Stephanie. That only increased her self-loathing. By the time Amy Kubiak was in middle school and able to really help, the cutting addiction was already in place for Nicki Jo Prickett.

It was her sophomore year in high school when she finally cut a little too deep, nicking a vein and spraying blood around the girl's bathroom at Grantville High School. It had been a big scene, with paramedics, administrators cordoning off the hallway, everything. Only then, with Amy Kubiak's urging and the insistence of the school counselors, had she gotten the therapy she needed.

But there was no Amy Kubiak in Essen to help her now.

Nicki Jo watched the blood drip from the shallow cuts, feeling the pain, wanting it. She hadn't cried at Tobias' funeral. She never cried. Hadn't cried since she was five years old. She was getting ready for a good, deep cut when the bedroom door opened.

"Leave me alone," Nicki said.

"No," Katherine said, "I won't. I won't let you do this to yourself."

Katherine came over and took the dagger from Nicki Jo's hand. Nicki resisted at first but Katherine's grip was steady and unrelenting. Finally, Nicki Jo let go.

"It's my fault. I should never have let them do it."

Katherine shook her head. "God gives us free will, Nicki. Tobias knew what he was doing, knew it was risky. And Solomon bears as much guilt as you. He could have said something, stopped it early enough. He didn't."

"My fault, mine! I knew they weren't ready, I knew it! But I let my pride, my anger at being pushed into a corner take over. Don't you see?"

"What I see," Katherine said, "is my friend, my lover, letting guilt destroy her. I noticed when I was in Grantville that Americans seem to love guilt. But they don't love what should come from guilt."

Nicki Jo looked at Katherine, a puzzled expression on her face. "What should come from guilt? What do you mean?"

"Certainly not this," Katherine said, holding up the dagger and throwing it contemptuously across the room. "That is just indulging in self-pity. Penance, Nicki. You know that there will be pressure to keep making some kind of explosives. You know that if you don't get involved more of our friends may die. As difficult as it may be for you to accept, you have to get involved. Consider it your penance. It won't bring back Tobias, but at least you can say you did your best to keep others from making the same mistake."

"What if it's not good enough?" Nicki said. "What if other people still die?"

Katherine smiled sadly. "Then that is God's will. But at least you will have done your best to prevent it."

Katherine looked down at the cuts on Nicki Jo's arm. "I think we need to get a bandage on these. Not any worse than some of the glass cuts you've had, but we'll need to put some antiseptic on them."

Penance, Nicki thought, penance. With sudden resolve she went over to her bookshelf filled with chemistry books. Somewhere there had to be an explosive that would help the Republic and yet be easier and safer to make than TNT or picric acid.

"Go ahead and get the bandages, Katy. I've got work to do."

****

"Gelignite?" General De Vries said. "What is gelignite?"

The ordnance team for the Essen Steel Company, minus Franz Dubois, who was still in the hospital, was meeting with the Army of Essen's command group. Nicki Jo had temporarily taken over Franz's scientific advisory role.

"It's like dynamite, General, but safer. It doesn't sweat like dynamite does," Nicki Jo said. "A big percentage of it is potassium nitrate, so that will ease the feedstock burden for it. It requires some soluble gun cotton, but only a very small percentage. The main ingredient will be nitroglycerin. Up-time, Nobel patented Gelignite in about 1875."

"Nitroglycerin? I thought that was highly unstable?" De Vries said.

"That's why we'll turn it directly into gelignite, General. Now, you won't be able to use gelignite in artillery shells, but you can use it for satchel charges for your engineers, and for these." Nicki Jo pulled a short piece of wood with a metal cylinder on the top from beneath the table. "Even with the reduction in active ingredients for gelignite, the army can only afford about a ton a month. So the ordnance team and I came up with this."

De Vries took the club-like weapon from Nicki and waved it in the air. It was light, less than three or four pounds.

"What is it?"

"Well," Nicki said, "Up-time it was called a 'potato masher.' But I think down-time it needs a more martial sounding name, so I've suggested we call them 'warhammers.' It's a grenade, General. With half a pound of gelignite in the warhead, it should be a useful addition for the infantry for both defensive and offensive battles. Once the army has enough of these in inventory, along with whatever satchel charges it wants, we can use the gelignite in construction projects. For Essen Chemical Company's bottom line, making nitroglycerin will also be beneficial since we have to get a nice pure glycerin, which, up-time, had literally thousands of uses."

****

After the meeting, Katherine Boyle, Colette Modi and Nicki Jo Prickett walked back to the Essen Chemical Company laboratory.

"Well," Colette said, "General De Vries certainly seemed enthusiastic about your warhammers. And he even didn't think to bring up TNT again."

Nicki Jo laughed. "I know. But we give them some boom toys, and we get paid to develop a method for purifying glycerin, which will make us a pile of money, none of it related to explosives. Much better than that stupid old TNT."

****

Dueling Philosophers

Terry Howard

September 11, 1635

Renato Onofrio slowly got up from the barber's chair like someone who had a bad back, which in fact he did. "Walt, something I've always wondered about. How's come you're letting that drunken scallywag Jimmy Dick steal your title as Grantville's greatest philosopher?"

"Well it's nice of you to ask," Walter Jenkins said. "And I don't mind you thinking I ought to have the title. But, you know the police gave it to him as a joke, don't you?"

Renato looked at the barber intently. When he didn't see any humor in the man's eyes, he asked, "Are you putting me on?"

"No, it's the gods' own truth."

"Well, it ain't funny. More philosophy gets talked about here in this shop than anywhere's else in town. People are taking Jimmy Dick seriously. You ought to speak up and take the title away from him. He don't deserve it. You've got to know more about philosophy than Jimmy Dick does. I've heard you quoting Augustine and I don't know who all else."

"Renato, it's kind of you to say so. But how would you go about proving something like that?"

"Challenge him to a duel."

"Pistols at dawn, or swords at high noon?" The waiting customers laughed at Walt's joke.

"No, you know what I mean, a verbal duel. What'a'ya call it?"

"A debate." Walt's son, Evan, answered from behind the second chair without looking up. When you've got scissors or a razor or even just clippers around someone's head, you really do need to pay attention and keep your eyes on the job.

"Yeah," Renato said. "That's the word. A debate. Walt, why don't you challenge that dickhead to a debate. Shoot, I bet you could even charge admission. I'd pay to see someone take the obnoxious little creep down a notch or two."

"Naw," Walt said.

"You think about it. You really should. I mean it. Seriously."

With these last words Renato went out the door. Joseph Daoud took his turn in the chair. "What's the burr under his saddle?"

"Renato?" Walt asked. "Two things. He used to rent a whole building downtown for little or nothing. They let him have it just to keep heat on in the winter, as long as he did the maintenance. After the Ring of Fire, they raised the rent and he had to move out of the store front on the ground floor. Then they raised the rent again and he had to move out of the upstairs apartment. Now he's living in the attic, and since Jimmy Dick owns the building, Jimmy is who he's mad at.

"The other thing is, truth be told, he thinks the title should have gone to Emmanuel Onofrio. For that matter, he's probably right, but Emmanuel say he has his hands full as it is; so Jimmy Dick is welcome to the job."

"Still, though," Joseph said, "he's got a point. You've got as much right to the title as Jimmy Dick does. You really ought to debate him. Look, the Lions are wanting to do a fund raiser. The call for kids needing glasses is a lot higher here than back home, and it costs a lot more. Their budget is shot and there's still a waiting list. Why don't you let me see if they think it's a good idea?"

"Naw," Walt answered. His words said no; his tone of voice said maybe. You could tell he wanted to say yes.

Evan spoke up with a dry voice and with a straight face. "Why don't you, Dad? It's for charity. Besides, it would be good advertising. Walt the Barber challenges Jimmy Dick the Drunk to a verbal duel on philosophy, for the title of Grantville's Greatest Philosopher. Marquis of Queensbury be damned. This will be a bare knuckles brawl. The last man standing will be declared the winner and will walk away with the title, 'Grantville's Greatest Philosopher.'"

Everyone laughed.

"I'm not joking," Joseph said. "Renato is right. A lot of people would come to something like this. I was eating at the restaurant when Jimmy dined with the German philosopher from Berlin. The place was packed. People were wanting to see the fireworks. Then it all happened in Latin and no one could follow it until the Berliner got up and stomped out. With the Lions selling the tickets, we could pack any place in town. It would be a great fund raiser and we could really use the money. The branch in Magdeburg is forever asking for help and we just don't have it to give."

"Let me think about it," Walt said.

Evan turned his head away so his father wouldn't see his smile.

"Stop smirking boy," Walt said.

"I wasn't smirking," Evan replied.

"Yeah, you were." Walt gave his son a mild reproof, passing it off as a joke. "I could've heard your face cracking if you'd been in the back room, much less at the next chair."

Evan quietly left telling jokes and chatting up the customers to his father. The older man insisted it was as much a part of the job as cutting hair. Many were the times he told his son, after a customer walked out and the shop was empty, "That fellow didn't need a hair cut, he just wanted to tell someone a joke, or share some gossip, or brag about something going on in his life, or complain about it, or whatever the reason other than a hair cut caused the man to be setting in the barber's chair." On other occasions when the shop was empty he would tell his son, "We're as much psychiatrist as barbers. You need to get better at chatting up the customers. I'm not always going to be here to do it for you. It's the butter on our bread, after all."

****

Over the next week, it seemed like every member of the Lions Club in town came in for a hair cut and every one of them asked pretty much the same question.

At the end of a week, Walter weakened and let them make him do exactly what he wanted to do.

****

Everyone at the Lions Club meeting assumed Joseph would organize the debate; after all, he'd proposed the idea. Besides, most of the other members worked full-time. Luckily, Joseph had his personal retirement account in the bank in Grantville, so he didn't lose it like people with out of town assets did. After the Ring of Fire his retirement hobby farm quit being a hobby. The garden doubled in size. Any other land they could plant went into grain, and the hog raised for slaughter became hogs for a cash crop.

Joseph, being stuck with the job for the crime of suggesting it, decided to make it as much fun as possible. Having sold the idea of a debate to the club, he now needed to sell the idea that it should be fun to the steering committee.

"Okay," Joseph said, "I've checked and they said it's alright to use the sanctuary." The Lions Club met in the basement of the Methodist church once a month unless something came up. "So we can sell three hundred advance tickets and still leave the hundred seats in the overflow area for tickets sold at the door."

Reyburn Berry spoke up. "Joe? Do you really think that many people will show up?"

Sondra Mae Prickett smiled. "Rey, it's all about promotion. I saw a time the store couldn't sell flip flops for two dollars a pair. When we advertised them as 'buy one pair for four dollars and get the second pair for free,' we couldn't keep them on the shelf."

Doris Debolt nodded. "Besides, it doesn't matter if they come or not, as long as they buy a ticket. This is a fund raiser. It's just an excuse to ask people for money."

"Not this time, Doris. This time it's a fun raiser. When you sell a ticket be sure to tell people to be there ten minutes before the opening bell because at five till, unclaimed seating will be considered open," Joseph said.

"The opening bell?" Rey looked puzzled, "You're making it sound like a prize fight."

"Yup. Sure am. It's what they discussed the day it first came up. A verbal duel, bare knuckles, no holds barred, the title goes to the last man standing. Everybody thought it was a hoot. Nobody would have given a damn about some stupid formal debate. Who cares about a debate? But a verbal brawl? We can sell every seat in the house for a verbal brawl. At ten dollars a seat, we're looking at four thousand dollars. The church is free, and we don't have to split the gate. Then we have a coffee and cookie mixer in the basement afterwards which will be worth another thousand dollars."

Rey looked almost cross eyed. "Are you serious!? Do you expect to raise five thousand dollars out of this?"

"No," Joseph said in a flat voice.

"Good, I thought you were serious."

"I expect to raise at least ten thousand."

Rey yelped. "What! How?"

"We have a referee and a timekeeper with a bell. At the end of each round we pass the hat through the hall . . . two hats, actually. Then we tally the take and the round goes to whoever has the most votes at a dollar a vote."

Rey sputtered. "But-someone could buy the match."

"Good. Let them. I don't care who wins. I just want to raise some serious money because every penny we take in is one more penny to put glasses on some kid's face."

Doris, getting whiplash watching the tennis ball bounce back and forth, finally broke the cycle. "But what if someone complains about it being unfair?"

"Let them. We're raising money, not settling the fate of the nation. Actually, it would be good if they do. Then we can stage a rematch and do it all over again," Joe said.

"You're crazy," Rey sputtered.

Doris smiled. "He's crazy like a fox, Rey."

"How are you going to collect the money between rounds without taking up half the night?"

"Just like at a Billy Graham crusade. One man goes down one isle handing out a bucket to each pew and someone collects them at the other end. It goes almost as fast as a man can walk. It will take longer to count it than it will to collect it. But we don't have to post the results before we start the next round. So, we're looking at ten rounds at a dollar a head for four hundred people-that could be another three or four thousand. But I'm only counting on one."

"I think you're counting un-hatched chickens."

"Sure am. But then, everything is donated so it won't cost us anything if it falls through. I cut a deal for ice cream sandwiches at cost and we return any we don't sell as long as we keep them frozen. I'll hit the Abrabanels up to donate the coffee."

Sondra Mae smiled like a pig in a mud puddle. "Sounds good to me. When?"

Joseph shrugged. "Don't know yet; still got some details to work out."

Rey looked concerned. "Such as?"

"Walt's in. Haven't asked Jimmy Dick yet."

"What? You've booked the hall, arranged for snacks, and who knows what else-but you haven't asked one of the debaters if he'll come?"

"The 'what else' includes pricing the tickets and lining up a donation to pay for them, pricing the programs, and getting a donation to cover them too. We'll sell the programs for a dollar each. Best of all, I got a newspaper to agree this is news, not advertising. So the promotional space is free and front page."

"And you don't know if Jimmy will be there!"

"Oh, he'll be there all right. Walt will issue a challenge in the paper. Jimmy won't be able to show his face at any watering hole in town without being laughed at if he doesn't show up.

"The paper will run question requests up to a week before the debate at ten dollars a pop for processing and we get half. If your question gets picked, you get to ask it live at the debate."

"Shoot, Joe, you gonna charge for air?" a bemused Rey asked.

"I would if I could figure out how to do it. We will charge more for front row seats though."

"How much?"

"One hundred for the front row, fifty for the second and twenty for the third."

Rey gagged and sputtered, Doris smiled and Sondra Mae laughed out loud.

Joseph also smiled. "So then, now we've got the finances out of the way, let's talk about making this thing fun."

****

Renato Onofrio turned up out at the Daoud farm so early he must of gotten up at the crack of dawn.

"Renato. You're up early."

"Yeah, well, I wanted to make sure I caught you before you headed to town or something."

"What's up?"

Renato took out a check. "For starters, I want three front row seats. Then I wanted to ask if you needed any help, since you're organizing the debate."

"Sure. How would you like to be the timekeeper? You can do that from the front row and it will put you smack in the middle." Joseph paused, faintly embarrassed. "Listen, we don't have the tickets printed up yet."

"That's okay. Just write me a receipt and I'll pick the tickets up later, when you've got them."

****

"Hey, Debbie, how's it going?" Joseph Daoud asked as he walked into her office.

Debbie Mora's face bloomed with a smile. The business and advertising manager of the Grantville Times said, "Great and getting better."

****

Her boss, Lyle Kindred, was annoyed when he found out she had committed the paper to run what should be a series of ads as news. When he found out she had promised front page coverage, he blew a fuse.

Then she told him she agreed to split the income from selling ad space for prospective questions. He wanted to fire her on the spot. Instead, like the well-married man that he was, he stomped out of the office in high dudgeon. He went home so he could unload on his wife and cool off. He wanted to be calm when he came back and fired her.

When he got home and unloaded on his wife, to his utter shock, Mary Jo laughed so much she seemed almost ready to roll on the floor.

When he came back he called Debbie into his office. "My wife agrees with you. She says it is news, and she says we can afford to split the fee for running the proposed question. She says every question which comes in is five dollars we weren't getting before. She says the circulation will go up because people will want to see who asked what. She says-" With each repetition of the words "she says" Lyle got a shade redder in the face. "-it's going to be the best thing to ever happen to the paper.

"You had better hope she's right. Because if she isn't-well-let me put it this way, your job is riding on this one. If this proves to be something we've got to live down, you won't be here to see it. If we lose money on this, you're out of here one minute after I hear from the accountant."

****

"My boss is eating crow and enjoying every minute of it. I don't mind telling you I'm enjoying it even more than he is. He's already apologized three times." Somehow, Debbie's broad smile got even bigger. "Circulation is up, and I mean way up. Advertising is up, and I don't mean the questions either. People want their ads in our paper because they're getting seen. Ad space on the pages with the questions is at a premium. It's the highest paying space we've ever sold.

"Joseph, you have got to figure out how to get a rematch. I'm telling you, this is a bonanza for both of us."

****

On the way to the church to handle last-minute setup, Joseph's wife, Nina, said, "Joseph, I just noticed something. Almost everyone who volunteered who isn't a Lion is anti-Jimmy Dick. The rest are pro-Walt the barber.

"You noticed? Yeah, you're right. Everyone Jimmy Dick ever crossed, which is half of the serious drinkers in town, is coming out of the woodwork to buy a ticket. Seems like anyone Jimmy ever humiliated, which is half the people he crossed, is wanting to volunteer."

"Why?" Joseph's wife asked.

"Because they're hoping Jimmy will get knocked down a peg or two and they're wanting to feel like they helped make it happen."

****

There were no empty seats in the open seating section. Reserved seating did not lag far behind. The standing-room-only area overflowed and people were being turned away at the door.

A modestly dressed young woman-they were in a church after all-walked across the stage holding up a large sign reading "10 Min. to Bell." Five minutes later, a second lass walked on stage. Her sign read "5 min. to bell." The first one followed with a sign reading, "Any empty seats are now open." There were only a few empty seats, so only a few standees were able to sit down.

Reyburn Berry sought out Joseph Daoud. The man grinned from ear to ear. "Joe, I've got the gate count. At six hundred sold tickets they started turning people away. I have never been so happy to be so wrong in my life. At ten dollars a head, plus the premium tickets, we've already broke ten thousand dollars, not to mention the programs are sold out and early people who went down stairs to the bathrooms have already bought coffee and ice cream. Go ahead. Tell me 'I told you so.' I deserve to hear it."

"What did you say?" Joseph asked.

Reyburn repeated the admission, "I said, go ahead and tell me 'I told you so.'"

Joseph smiled. "Nope. It's been said twice already. I don't need to repeat it a third time. But there is one thing I would like to mention."

"What's that?" Reyburn asked.

With a completely straight face, Joseph said, "Well, this is a church, even if they are heretics. So I would like to say, 'Oh ye of little faith, did I not tell thee we would see at least te . . .'"

Reyburn tried to swallow a laugh and it came out as a snort.

****

Promptly at seven o'clock the bell, borrowed from a gas station, rang a fast series of sharp peals. Benjamin Franklin Leek, having bought the privilege of doing so by paying to print the tickets and the programs, walked on stage before the ringing stopped. A young woman preceded him carrying a sign with his name on it. In the drawn-out voice expected of a ringside announcer, he spoke without a mike, the acoustics in the building being what they were. "Ladies and gentlemen, this verbal duel will be a ten round match, to determine possession of the title, 'Grantville's Greatest Philosopher.'

"As published in the Grantville Times, who are graciously one of tonight's sponsors- for a complete listing of sponsors I refer you to the back cover of the program-this verbal duel will be decided round-by-round with the winner of the most rounds taking the title. If, perchance, it is an even tie, at the end of ten rounds there will be a sudden-death round to break the tie. Each round will be decided by popular vote. Two paper buckets, well, cones really, will be passed. Red for the challenger Walter 'Walt the Barber' Jenkins, and blue for the reigning champion James Richard 'Jimmy Dick' Shaver. You will cast your ballot for whomever you think the round should go to when the cones are passed. The ballot shall consist of paper money or personal checks only. Change will not be counted-and remember, be generous in your voting because all proceeds will go directly, and completely, to provide eyeglasses to needy children."

Benjamin stopped and waited. Nothing happened. Finally he said, "People, my script says I am to wait until the applause dies down."

A scattering of nervous laughter preceded a round of applause. This would have been completely inappropriate in a solemn Methodist church, but not out of place in a rowdy one. It set the tone for the evening by telling people that, for the balance of the night, the rules of conduct were somewhat relaxed.

When the clapping died down, Benjamin pointed stage left and, again in the ringside voice, said, "In this corner, wearing a three-piece suit from Huss amp; Zitzmann Fine Tailors and Haberdashery, weighing in with years of contemplation and study, Walter 'Walt the Barber' Jenkins." Then he faced the crowd squarely and with a hand signal encouraged them to clap, while at the same time one of the cute young lasses walked on stage with a sign reading "applause."

Followed by his son, Walter walked out on stage wearing something rather like the dressing gown a boxer wore into the ring hanging off his shoulders over a sharp three-piece double-breasted suit. The senior Jenkins lifted his hand over his head in a Rocky-style brag of triumph. Evan caught the robe as it fell off his father's shoulders and then the younger barber exited stage left.

"And in this corner," Benjamin theatrically pointed stage right, "wearing pretty much what you will see him in any day of the week, weighing in with his famous sarcastic wit, is James Richard 'Jimmy Dick the Dickhead' Shaver." The young girl turned the sign over. It now read "Boo" and "Hiss." Again nervous laughter chirped away and a fair number of people did what the sign told them to do. Jimmy had not been prepped to expect the totally uneven treatment. If it flustered him in the least he didn't show it. Indeed, his reaction was a stifled yawn. This brought yet another set boos along with some giggles from the floor.

"Gentlemen, yes, I mean you Jimmy . . ." Again, there was a twittering in the crowd. ". . . please remember, even though this is a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckles, last-man-standing event, we are in a church and certain proprieties will be observed. The first offending party will be thrown out." He stared pointedly at Jimmy Dick. The audience laughed. "Then his opponent will be declared the winner. Will the bouncers stand up please?" In the front row were two large, husky men with a reputation of being pugnacious and a history of not particularly liking Jimmy Dick.

Benjamin addressed the debaters, "Gentlemen, to your corners please."

At these words, each debater took a seat as they had been instructed. Walt's seat was a comfortable upholstered chair. Jimmy's was a wooden kitchen chair. The snickers from the audience made it clear that the uneven treatment of the contestants did not go unnoticed. A sense of resentment at the lack of fair play arose among the small minority of uncommitted people in the crowd. The supporters of Jimmy Dick were mad as hell and Walt's fans thought it to be funny as all get out, which is what it was supposed to be.

"It is my great pleasure," Benjamin said in the ringside voice, "to introduce tonight's interlocutor. He will introduce the winners of the questions contest. He will also ask the first question since it was asked much more frequently than anything else. It was also the only completely anonymous question to be asked. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Artie Matewski. Let's give our interlocutor a big hand, shall we?" Enough applause to be polite answered the referee's request, but not a lot extra.

"Thank you, Benjamin. As our referee for this evening already said, the first question tonight was asked, with some variation, thirty-eight times. Over all, they boiled down to the same thing. And, for obvious reasons, it was always anonymous or pseudonymous or placed in someone else's name. There were several variations on the question, but in the aggregate all thirty-eight of them boiled down to the same thing. To wit; 'Why is Jimmy Dick such a jerk and an idiot and what is a jerk like Jimmy Dick doing with the title anyway?'"

"Thank you, Mister Interlocutor," the referee, turning to the participants said. "By previous agreement, according to the coin toss, the first response goes to the challenger." There was no prior agreement and there was no coin toss. The statement was completely bogus. "Mister Interlocutor, if you please?"

"Mister Jenkins, why is Jimmy Dick such a jerk?" Artie Matewiski asked.

"Mister Jenkins, you have five minutes," Benjamin said.

Walt rose from his seat, stepped to his podium and said, "Well Artie, those are not my words. I would never dream of calling Mister Shaver a jerk. I will concede he does have the reputation for being one. It comes from his sharp tongue, his acid wit, and his total lack of anything resembling tact." Having finished he set back down. There was a soft rumbling on the floor and a lot of heads nodded in agreement.

The referee rose from his seat in the middle of the stage and said, "Mister Interlocutor, if you please?"

Artie smiled a smile which could best be described as a shit-eating grin and said, "Jimmy, why are you such a jerk?"

James Richard Shaver rose from his chair, and without stepping to the podium said, "It is difficult to have a name of one who soars with the eagles when you dwell in the midst of anonymous turkeys." As he sat back down the sanctuary roared with applause.

When he could be heard the referee asked, "Mister Jenkins? Do you have a rebuttal? Jimmy, do you have a riposte? Mister Interlocutor, who is our first questioner?"

"Mister Referee, our first questioner is Mary Jean Slater."

Mary stepped up to the mike. "My question is something I have heard argued my whole long life. Is the eternal security of the believer conditional or unconditional?"

Benjamin said "Mister Jenkins? You have five minutes."

Walt rose to the podium. Seeking to avoid giving an answer, he said, "This is a theological question, not a philosophical one." And he sat down.

"Mister Shaver, you have five minutes."

"Philosophy is secular theology, man seeking to understand the meaning of the universe, which is co-extensive with God. So, likewise, theology is religious philosophy; the two cannot be separated. I would appreciate it if my esteemed opponent would answer the question."

Without waiting for the formal niceties, Walt rose and said, "As a Catholic I am instructed to leave the answering of religious questions to the church. The church teaches, anyone who is not baptized is doomed to hell. Of those who are baptized, sin must be repented and penitence must be completed in this life or in purgatory. So eternal security is conditional upon repentance and penitence. I have nothing else to say on the question."

Again the crowed rumbled with approval. The Catholics in the audience, the majority of the down-timers and a good slice of the up-timers present, understood and agreed completely.

The referee cut in before Jimmy could speak, "Mister Shaver, you have two and a half minutes for a rebuttal." While Benjamin spoke, a sign girl hung a large tile on a board behind the three men on stage. The first of eleven spots for cards in a Wheel of Fortune-like display announced to the world the outcome of the first round. Jimmy Dick drew first blood.

Between the applause and the cat calls, over a full minute passed before Jimmy could begin to speak. Still, the timekeeper let the clock run from when the referee said, "You have two and a half minutes."

"Mary, the answer must be both at the same time, because both are scriptural so both must be true." Jimmy quoted several passages to support both sides. When he was saddled with the title, he undertook to study the field. This included reading the Bible again, after a long absence, and works on religious thought. "Now, how can this be? It is a mater of perspective. You see it's like a brick thrown off a roof. To those on the roof, it is falling away; to those on the ground it is falling toward. Which is it doing? Is it falling away or-"

The ringing of the bell cut him off.

A call came from the floor in the midst of boos and cat calls, "You bastard, it is not fair, you are being," in the fluent, but accented, English of a Welshman.

Benjamin stood up and held up both hands for silence. "It is my job to referee this duel. I remind you of what I told the duelist about this still being a church. If we can identify who just said what I heard, the ushers will escort the party from the building." He sought eye contact with the head usher. "Did you see who said that?"

The man shook his head.

"Well, it came from somewhere over in that area," the referee pointed. "Watch it and if it happens again I want the impious fellow thrown out on his-" Benjamin paused. "-Backside." A response of approval, disapproval and laughter created a rumble in the audience.

This was the capstone over the relaxed atmosphere which pretty much finished establishing the tone of the evening festivities.

Benjamin spoke over the noise. "Mister Interlocutor? Who is our next questioner?"

"Mister Referee, our next questioner is Brian Early."

Brian, having won the right to ask his question, found his way to Grantville from Magdeburg for the weekend. "Aristotle and Descartes seem to be in agreement on many things. But . . ."

****

The second and third rounds went to Walt.

At the end of the tenth round a pause ensued while the take-which is to say the votes-were counted. To fill the time Benjamin read a note he had been handed.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been informed that as of this time Walt the Barber is ahead on points by a significant margin. Still, this contest is not decided by popular vote, but rather by the number of rounds. If Walt wins this round the title is his by six rounds to four. If it does not fall to him, then there is a five-to-five tie and we will move onto the sudden-death tiebreaker."

The lass who hung the placards handed Benjamin a note which he read while she hung the card showing the round going to Jimmy Dick.

"Ladies and gentlemen, by a three vote lead, this round went to Jimmy the Dickhead Shaver. So now we move on to one last round. Let me remind you, you are voting on the merits of the debate and not solely on your personal prejudices."

There came a shout from the standing room only section, "Yeah, right! In your dreams, Benny boy! In your dreams!"

If ever there was a roar of angry laughter it was heard that night at that hour.

The evening went to Jimmy when he took the eleventh round by four votes.

****

The arguments started long before people got as far as the coffee line in the basement.

"Who gives a damn about the point spread? Jimmy won fair and square!"

"Hey, man, all I said was-"

"I heard you, shithead. Walt won on the point spread. It don't matter a damn at all. Shit, do I have to point it out to you? In the Civil war the South won the point spread. Now you tell me who won the war. The point spread don't matter one bit. Jimmy keeps the title."

"Yeah, for now. But, what about the rematch."

"What rematch? It's settled."

"The one Walt has every right to demand."

"Yeah, if he's a bad loser! The South shall rise again."

"You want to go outside and repeat that?"

Fortunately someone called the police station in the tenth round when they correctly gauged the mood of the crowd. In spite of a police presence that night, the troubles were not over, merely postponed.

****

Someone approached Benjamin while he was drinking coffee. "Herr Leek, you are referee. Why are you allowing unfair to Jimmy Dick this way? A debate should be even."

"Sir, you are laboring under a misunderstanding."

"What?" asked the German. His English vocabulary was not as good as he thought it was.

"You got it wrong. This was not a debate. It was a verbal duel, a farce, a comedy, an entertainment. I was working from a script. You heard me admit it when the audience did not know its lines. This was a show, just a show. If you want a real debate, then we'll need to do it over."

****

That night, over beer, another debate was going on.

"Where were the fireworks? Jimmy should have torn the man up," Brian complained.

"Hey, I've already told you. Jimmy's changed," Bubba answered.

"Yeah, sure. The leopard changed his spots."

"It's the truth. He's changed. Ever since they started calling him a philosopher, he's been spending most of his days in the library. Then his daughter died and he wasn't around for awhile. When I saw him next-I don't know-he was different somehow."

"Well, he still should have torn the barber up."

****

Three days later, the dispatcher looked up as Lyndon brought in a bloody nose with a split lip and what would be a beautiful shiner as soon as it ripened. The dispatcher winced.

"Hey," Lyndon said, "you should see the other guy."

"Yeah?" she asked, "Where is he?"

Lyndon, thinking about the serious damage the other man suffered, frowned. "He's on his way to the hospital."

"Really? Is this one pro-Jimmy or con?" the dispatcher asked.

"This one's con."

"When you've got him booked, put him in the far cell," the dispatcher instructed.

"It's getting crowded. Why not the middle one?" Lyndon asked.

"Because we don't need another fight through the bars."

"Did that happen?"

"Sure did. So the pros go in the first cell, the cons in the third one and anyone else in the middle cell." Shaking her head because the whole thing seemed like a waste and a mistake, a real tempest in a tea cup that was spilling over into the broader world, she asked, "Whose idea was this anyway?"

"Hey, they raised over ten thousand dollars for the Lions Club to buy eyeglasses for kids who won't get them otherwise," Lyndon said.

Shaking her head again, the dispatcher said, "Look at the trouble it's causing. Are you sure it's worth it? The debate happened three nights ago and it's still being argued about. Have you seen the front page of the Times?"

Lyndon shrugged. "Not today's."

The dispatcher held up the front page. The headline read, "Jimmy Dick agrees to a rematch."

"Shoot," Lyndon said. "This is never going to calm down now.

****

"Hey, Debbie, how's it going?" Joseph Daoud asked as he walked into the office of the Grantville Times.

At the sound of his voice a grin blossomed on Debbie Mora's face. "Great, and getting better. Thank you for coming in on short notice."

"Hey, when you get a call from the chief of police telling you to meet him somewhere to see somebody A.S.A.P. then you get yourself there as soon as possible. What's up?"

"Don't know for sure, though I think I've got a good idea. I'd rather not speculate. Let's wait for Chief Richards to get here. I guess he called me before he called you. I told him since I was brown-bagging it, I'd be in the office all day."

A police cruiser pulled up to the curb, cruisers and emergency vehicles being the only exceptions to ban on vehicular, daylight traffic in the downtown area.

"You saw yesterday's front page?" Deb asked Joseph.

"Sure. You got the rematch you wanted. I've got to admit you had more of an actual debate going on in the paper than we ever did on stage. I think they could have gone on forever trying to decide just how unfair it was and to whom it was more unfair."

"Yes, we do have quite a debate going, but I meant the headline. Besides, now the debate is pointless."

"I liked the day before yesterday's better. 'Civil Unrest and Uncivil Disagreements?'"

The chief came through the door. He nodded to Debbie. "Joseph, thank you for coming in early like this. We need something done and since you created this mess, I figured you ought to be the one to clean it up."

Joseph gave an Italian half-shrug with two hands in the air about shoulder height. "If you're talking about yesterday's headline, what do you think I can do about it?"

The chief stared right through Joseph for a full three seconds before he said, "If it stopped there it wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, the front page isn't the only place that is dealing with the debate. It's affecting the emergency room, the jail, and business in half the bars in town. If it were just up-timers, it wouldn't be bad at all. The pro-Jimmy people know he's is a jerk. The problem is the down-timers who seem to think he's some sort of Saint Robin Hood."

"You have got to be kidding!" Joseph blurted.

The chief shook his head. "Nope. A lot of the down-timers have had that exact opinion of Jimmy, ever since he helped out the Anabaptists. When he organized the armed guard to watch over that start-up church just outside of the Ring until things calmed down, he made a lasting impression with a lot of down-timers.

"Mind you," the chief continued, "most down-timers don't have any use for the Anabaptists, but that's the really strange thing. While they don't like them, they see them as German when it comes to the anti-kraut attitude of Club 250. Somewhere they got the opinion that, while Jimmy drank at Club 250, he was pro-kraut."

The chief took off his hat and sighed. "It isn't true, of course. Jimmy never was pro-anything, unless it was pro-arguing."

Debbie spoke up. "Yeah, so I heard. Is it true one time he got in an argument one night and ended up in a fight and in jail; then the next night he got into it again arguing the other side and landed in jail a second time?"

The chief broke out in a laugh which sure looked like it hurt his belly. When he caught his breath and rubbed his eyes, he said, "No. Not one single time; more like a dozen times. More than once, Debbie, oh yeah, more than once. The point is, people who don't like Jimmy are mouthing off and down-timers are telling them to shut up. Then it turns into a brawl and the down-timers aren't interested in a social fight. People are getting hurt!"

"What do you expect me to do about it?" Joseph asked.

"When you sponsor the rematch, you need to do things a bit differently this time."

"I wasn't planning on sponsoring the rematch."

The chief stared through him again. Them he said, "You are now! And this time Jimmy Dick needs to lose, which he will if it is a fair and honest debate. It must appear to be absolutely fair and honest or we will never put this to rest."

Joseph looked perplexed. "What good would that do? You will still have strong opinions both ways when it's over."

"Look," the chief said, "the last debate was a farce. Yeah, you put on a good show and people got their money's worth. But the real problem was letting people try and buy the outcome. Plus some of your questions were just plain silly. Do it over, do it right, do it quick and do it fair."

"Chief," Debbie said, "you aren't the only one who has a problem. The duel put us in the black. I told my boss I'd get him a rematch and we'd do it all over again. This ruckus and rematch will keep us in the black to Christmas. The third debate will carry us to spring. Then, with any luck, enough people will be in the habit of buying a paper. If we can milk this for enough exposure, we will be able to survive. I need thirty days to run three weeks of questions and sell the ad space which goes along with it."

"There isn't going to be a third debate. We've got to get this settled and over with. We need a clean, fair debate so Jimmy can lose and put this to rest." Chief Richards thought for a moment. "Okay. Set a date a month out. The prospects of a rematch should settle things down enough to get by until then. But you need to run the new format right away so people know it will be fair this time. Just one thing, if it doesn't settle down, the date will have to be moved up. Now, here is how you are going to run the next one. Drop most or all of the theatrics. It won't be as good of a show, but this is no longer about a good show. It's about the peace of the community."

****

The day's headline read "Police say Rematch Will be Completely Fair and Unbiased."

The lead article read, "This morning Chief Richards told the Grantville Times and a representative of the Lion's Club, that he personally would see to it that the rematch would be completely fair. The two sides will chose a mutually-agreeable judge. The third party judge will chose a second judge, and the popular vote will carry the weight of a judge. Each ticket sold will be printed in five sections allowing each person attending to cast five votes over the course of the event."

The second paragraph told about ticket information with the date, the time, and the new location for the event. The high school gym should accommodate everyone wishing to attend.

****

Seeing the chief in Club 250, brought some stares and muttered comments. But there he sat at a table with Jimmy, Walt and Walt's son, Evan.

"Okay then," the chief said. "We've settled on a judge all three of us can agree will be fair-minded and even-handed. Now, if Pastor Green agrees then he will find a second judge, but you two won't have anything to do with that and most likely you won't even know who it is until the night of the debate.

"Again, I want to stress this time it is a debate and not a verbal duel. We really do have to get this settled.

"I've twisted the arm of the CoC to provide the volunteers so we won't have those shenanigans this time. So, let's talk about the questions."

Jimmy lifted a beer and Walt lifted a hand, "Chief, I thought the questions were going to be chosen out of the paper like last time?"

"In theory," the chief nodded, "yes. But I am going to vet them. For instance there will be no theological questions. As a devout Catholic, you can only answer with the official line of the church. Since Jimmy is a devout nothing, he can tear you up and there isn't any way you can come back because it's dogma."

At the words, "a devout nothing" Jimmy looked over his horizontal beer bottle with a glare.

The chief ignored it. "So theology is out because it isn't fair. Then there will be no cheap questions like why is Jimmy a jerk. It's not fair to Walt."

Jimmy snorted and beer flew.

"Not fair to Dad? How do you figure?" Evan asked.

"First, your father has to be polite and Dickhead here doesn't. Second, Jimmy is used to cheap shots and has a whole slew of cute comebacks, like the anonymous turkeys line, ready and waiting in the bank, which are sure to be a big hit with the crowd."

Evan started to object. "Hey, my dad has a-"

"Thirdly," the chief said, "because I just said so. If you've got a problem with it, shut up." The chief was being high-handed and he knew it. He normally wasn't. But this was going to look completely fair. The best way for it to look fair was for it to be fair. And it would be, even if he had to be high-handed, hard-assed and arbitrary about it. It was going to be fair and Jimmy was going to lose. Jimmy couldn't possibly win a fair fight. It would be exactly fair and it would have the outcome the chief wanted.

****

The seats on the gym floor cost more than the bleachers did. But this did not mean the people with the chairs got any more votes, just a better view. The chief watched as the CoC ushers moved the down-timers mostly to stage right and up-timers mostly to stage left. This being by instruction to keep the pro and cons separated as much as possible. Things had quieted down when the rematch was announced, but tensions were running high in the gym. Benjamin took the microphone needed to be heard-it was a gym after all, not a hall built with acoustics in mind. He addressed the crowd in a normal voice.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen."

In the absence of the ringside voice several cat calls rang out.

"People," Benjamin said, "this is not a verbal duel. This is a debate. As such there are stricter protocols than last time. Notably, inappropriate individual responses from the audience will be unacceptable. If this does not meet with your approval, see the cashier on the way out for a refund. Or not, since once again all proceeds will go to the purchase of eyeglasses for under-privileged children.

"Mister Interlocutor, who has the first question?"

The chief sighed.

Lyndon asked, "What was that about?"

"It's all down hill from here. Jimmy is toast and the problems are over. The people who care will accept an honest defeat."

Lyndon was puzzled. "What makes you so sure he's toast?"

"Well, it isn't a secret, but it is a little known fact. Walt studied for the priesthood when he was a very young man. He left when he decided he wanted to be a father in fact instead of in name only. That was about the time he discovered philosophy and started asking question his superiors didn't want to deal with. They started asking if he really had a vocation. So you see? Walt has a clear advantage."

"Which is even more so because you slanted the questions."

The chief just smiled.

"Well, my money is still on Jimmy Dick."

"How much do you want to lose?"

"You're way too confident, Chief. Shall we say one dollar?"

"You're on."

When the first round went to Jimmy, Lyndon smirked. When the second round went to Jimmy, Lyndon chuckled. When the third and fourth rounds went to Jimmy, Lyndon kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the stage to avoid the chief's glare. Round five fell to Jimmy also. Then it seemed as if the barfly ran out of steam. The next four rounds were Walt's and Lyndon wondered if Jimmy could be grandstanding for the crowd.

"Mister Interlocutor, unless there is a tie, who has our tenth and final question for the night?"

"Mister Referee, the last question is from out of town. It is my privilege to read it. 'Is war mankind's greatest glory or greatest shame?' Mister Jenkins, the first response to this question is yours."

"War is mankind's greatest shame," Walt said. Then he gave a heartfelt, well-reasoned defense of his answer lasting four minutes and forty-five seconds. Walt had been supplied with an advance copy of the questions. Jimmy had not been, though Walt did not know this. The crowd, being full of people who had seen more of war than they wanted and were sick of it, responded with applause and a standing ovation.

"Well," the chief said, "we go to a tie-breaker. Care to go double or nothing?"

"No, Chief. I'll be taking enough of your money as it is."

"Mister Shaver," the interlocutor said, "is war mankind's greatest glory or greatest shame."

Jimmy stood and took the podium. "Neither," he said. "A man's greatest glory is to love his wife and raise his children well." Jimmy started to sit down.

The judge interrupted him. "Mister Shaver, you did not answer the question. The question is not what is a man's greatest glory. But rather, 'is war mankind's greatest glory or greatest shame.'" The judge emphasized the word mankind.

"War is only glorious when you win with an acceptable casualty rate. Any casualty rate is unacceptable to the casualties or their families. So, since there is always at least one loser in a war, it is glorious less than half the time. Still, mankind's greatest shame is not war. Mankind's greatest shame is an uncherished child." With this Jimmy did sit down.

No applause followed. At first there was only a dead silence and then a great deal of subdued conversation.

The hat was passed as it was at the end of each round. But the tabs were not counted. The two judges were in agreement. The referee announced the winner at six rounds to five.

Jimmy took the podium and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen-and yes, Benny, I mean you-" This, being a reference to when Benjamin said the same to Jimmy Dick in the first debate, got the laugh Jimmy wanted.

With the crowd laughing, he knew they were paying attention and that he could hold them. He had something serious he wanted to say. "A year ago a man by the name of Wilhelm Krieger came to town. He is Germany's current greatest rising-star in the field of philosophy. No one here ever heard of him. He isn't even in the encyclopedias because he didn't live long enough to get published until we changed history. He asked me the same question about war and I suspect this is the source, directly or indirectly, of tonight's last question.

"When I had dinner with Herr Krieger, I got lucky. Joe Jenkins and Emmanuel Onofrio went with me to dine with the stuffed shirt." Again, the way he said stuffed shirt, got the laugh he needed. "The two of them, being serious philosophers, conversed with Krieger in scholarly Latin so I didn't get a chance to embarrass myself." As he expected he got his laugh. "Or Grantville." Here he neither sought nor got any laughter.

"At the time, both were better philosophers than I will ever be. The title of Grantville's Greatest Philosopher should have gone to them, but it fell to me, and I have spent the last year trying to learn enough to at least talk the game since I will never be able to walk the walk in the footsteps of these two truly great men. And let me tell you, when a dumb hillbilly like me has to learn Latin just because he's been stuck with a title he doesn't deserve, well, it's a life changing experience. But Emmanuel Onofrio can parse Latin right fine like-" Jimmy slipped in a traditional hillbillyism to let people know that he wasn't getting uppity, "-And Joe Jenkins can jabber away in it all day long, and that's without losing his hillbilly accent. So I set out to learn it. Among the other things I learned along the way was a great deal of humility.

"Joe has recently left Grantville and said he will not be coming back. Since he's a man of his word, we will never see him in town again."

Jimmy looked to where he knew Chief Richards stood watching as he had all night. They made eye contact and held it. "With his leaving, we have an empty slot at the top."

Jimmy watched the chief nod. Jimmy nodded back ever so slightly. They understood each other. Jimmy had gotten the message, loud and clear. In the opinion of the chief of police-the chief of police being one of those people whose opinions counted-Jimmy needed to be brought down at least two or three pegs. Jimmy's nod acknowledged the chief had won the day even if Jimmy had won the night.

"Walter's name is Jenkins; so we will not even have to change the letter head; and since he clearly deserves it, it is my privilege, on behalf of myself and Emmanuel Onofrio, at this time, to invite Walter to join the triumvirate as one of Grantville's Greatest Philosophers."

Emmanuel Onofrio turned to his co-judge Pastor Green. "He should have asked me first before sticking me with that title! Now, since he announced it before the world in the way he did, there is no way I can turn it down with out being ungracious or looking like I do not approve of Walt getting the title."

Green looked at the old man he had co-opted to be a judge on the strength of his Masters degree, his forty years in education, his irreproachable reputation and the general respect of the community. The Baptist pastor laughed a light chuckle and then used some inappropriate language. It being rather out of character for the pastor's public persona, but completely on the nail head for the occasion, he said, "Sucks to be you, don't it?"

"What will Jimmy do if someone else comes along that deserves the title, too?"

"Knowing Jimmy," Pastor Green said, "I suspect you will end up with a four person triumvirate."

At first silence filled the gym from one basketball hoop to the other, just like when Jimmy answered the last question. This time, the silence blossomed into a full blown roar of approval.

****

Arrested Development

Virginia DeMarce

February-May 1635

The organ at St. Mary Magdalene's in Grantville moved into the opening strains of "Glory Be to Jesus." Dennis Kovar poked an elbow into his cousin Dominic Grady's ribs. "I love this hymn. It's just so gruesomely gory," he whispered.

"Yeah," Dom whispered back. "If we absolutely have to serve at vespers during Lent, all that blood dripping out of severed veins makes it better."

"Isn't that supposed to be 'sacred' veins?"

"Whatever."

After the service, Father Athanasius Kircher eyed his acolytes. Three hundred seventy years of progress between his own day and the Ring of Fire had not done much to improve the cultural level of pre-adolescent altar boys.

"Tomorrow," he said.

The boys looked up.

"The regular acolytes at the St. Elizabeth's chapel at the fair grounds are both down with tonsillitis. Since Dennis and Dom's families have up-time bicycles that they can use, I want those two to serve at the chapel tomorrow evening. Father Stanihurst will be hearing confessions in English after vespers. Wait and come back to your houses with him. I don't want you out after dark without an adult."

"Aw, hell. Who's serving here, then?"

"What is the proper answer, Dominic?"

"Yes, Father Kircher."

"That's better. Florian, you can serve here tomorrow, and . . ." Kircher looked around the room. ". . . Pete." He pointed at Florian Drahuta, originally Schott, and Peter Bartolli, originally Hunyadi, two more down-time children who had been adopted by parish families."

****

"So here we are," Dom said. "Stuck at the fair grounds. I'm sooo hungry. I can't believe how hungry I am, and it'll be forever before we get back home for supper, since we've got to wait for Father Stanihurst."

"Why wait?" Dennis asked. "I was thinking that I'd just sneak out."

"Father Kircher said to wait. 'Yes, Father Kircher.' Ya, you bet'cha, Father Kircher. How does that song go. 'Yes, your majesty' something, something else, your majesty.'"

"We have the bikes. We can just leave."

"What do you bet that he told Old Stanihurst that we'd be waiting. Nothing escapes Father Kircher. He's like one of those elephants who never forget. Why did the Jesuits have to assign us a damned genius for a priest?"

"Father Stanihurst's not really old," Thomas Bu?leben said. "More like thirty than eighty."

"What's the difference?" Dom shook his head. "What did the hippies used to say? 'Never trust anybody over thirty,' I think it was."

Dennis laughed. "Then, like Dad says, they all got to be over thirty. Like Tom Stone. Now he's got to be eighty, at least."

"I'm going to starve before I get any supper."

"You can't be that hungry."

"I can," Dom insisted. "I am. I'd eat . . ." He waded through his mental catalog of legendary up-time horrible foods, most of which he had never personally enountered. "Well, I'd eat sushi. Or . . . spinach souffle. Or . . ." He reached for more practical experiences-things he had actually seen since his arrival in Thuringia at the advanced age of eight years. "Or that awful stuff that the Scottish guy who married Rachel Tyler fixes. Or . . ."

"I've got food here," Thomas said. "Not a lot. I think that Caspar Engelhaupt stashed some, too."

"Where?"

"You can eat mine if you pay me for it, but you can't eat Caspar's. He has tonsillitis so he's not here and he can't give you permission."

"Maybe if I left him some money, too . . ."

Dennis shook his head. "Not without permission. If he's here some evening and hungry, he can't eat money."

"Hell."

"That's the way it is."

Dom looked up in disgust. "You know? One of these days, if we keep acting like each other's consciences, we'll end up what my grandma calls 'well-behaved.' Okay. What have you got, Thomas?"

"Bread. It's pretty stale. Some raw turnips, pretty wrinkled and dried up. Carrots, the same. A little cheese, but it's probably as hard as a rock by now."

Dom reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jar. "Anything's good if you put enough salsa on it. I'll take them. How much? And where'd you hide it?"

****

Dom wormed along on his hands and knees, following Thomas. "It's dusty back here," he whispered.

"Well, that's the reason I made my hidey-hole back here. The cleaning ladies never come. What's the point in putting my food someplace where they'd find it? They'd just toss it out. Or eat it themselves."

Dennis smothered a sneeze. "Where are we?"

"Getting food," Thomas said.

"That's what we're doing, not where we are," Dom answered. "We're behind the confessionals. This is my Robinson grandparents' old house. When they got sick and moved in with Mom and Dad, they gave it to the church to make a chapel at this end of town because the refugee center was right next door, way back when Grantville was full of refugees."

Thomas turned his head back. "Is that why it's so weird for a church?"

"They pulled out the inside walls to make space for the altar end and the nave. That's why it has two-by-fours here and there out in the middle to prop up the roof beams. What's the sacristy now used to be a breakfast nook next to the kitchen. The carpenters walled in the old screened porch to make this side section where the confessionals are. That's why the roof slants down. They bought old booths second-hand from some other church that was getting new ones and they turned out to be too tall to go all the way to the wall, so there's this space behind."

Thomas grinned. "Handy, isn't it?"

Dennis stuck out his tongue. "If you're really into sneaking into the sacristy, climbing under a table, and squeezing through the bottom half of what used to be a door that won't open all the way any more."

"We're here," Thomas whispered. "Now be quiet, because Father Stanihurst will be coming into the booth any minute. When I figured out that the back and sides of the confessional and the top and front of the bench inside it made a nice, solid, empty box, I sort of borrowed some tools, cut me out a little door in the back, put on a couple of strips of leather for hinges, drilled holes in the little door and the back so I can tie it closed with another strip of leather, and like the magician says, presto. Just be careful to hold the door up, so it doesn't scrape on the floor when you open it."

He collected his money from Dom. "If any food disappears from now on, I'll know who to look for. I'm taking this money home to Mutti." He slid sideways past Dom and Dennis, squirming out the way they had come in.

Dom stuck his hand in the hole, fishing around.

Sure enough. Bread wrapped in old, much re-used, waxed paper. Shriveled vegetables. He dusted off two carrots, handed one to Dennis, and opened the salsa, but before Dennis could take a bite, Dom put a hand over his mouth.

"Wha . . . ?"

Dom shook his head and pointed at the booth.

Something scraped. The door at the side. Now Dom waved his other hand frantically. Father Stanihurst was in the confessional and they were truly trapped. They didn't even dare take a bite of carrot or bread. They were too crunchy. He might hear them.

Dennis nodded.

A slightly different scrape. That was the curtain at the front of the booth closing, the wooden rings sliding along the wooden rod. They were stuck-and about to breach the sacredness of the confessional. They couldn't squirm away without getting caught, not even if they managed to get their shoes off. If they could hear curtain rings on the rod, Father Stanihurst could certainly hear their belt buckles and shirt buttons on the floor.

Dennis gave Dom the look that meant, "This is the sort of thing that Grandma says we could go to hell for."

Dom nodded.

****

The only way out was how they had come in. The other two booths, in use by priests hearing German-language confessions, went all the way to the far wall.

Dom curled up and started sticking his finger in the salsa and sucking it off. He stuck the jar out at Dennis, silently offering to share. Dennis stuck his finger in the salsa, licked, and stuck it back in.

". . . richtig und aufrichtig, wenn auch nicht gesetzlich." A man's voice, speaking German, came from the booth next to the one where the food had been hidden. "Diese verdammten Juden . . ."

The time period for confessions ended. Penitents and priests left the booths. Dom swept the carrots back into the hidey hole as fast as he could, tied the leather strap while Dennis crawled out, and made a run for it, trying to see who had been in the middle booth talking to Father Bissel for that last session. Father van de Enden had been in the last booth, next to the far wall. They managed to be in front of the chapel with their bikes by the time Father Stanihurst came out.

****

"It was a woman confessing to Father van de Enden," Dennis said the next afternoon after school. "Vrouw Mariekje who's married to that Dutch market gardener who put up all the greenhouses out by the grade school. It was Mrs. Drahuta in with Father Stanihurst. That means that the guy who thinks it's a good idea to burn down the Jewish church has to have been the dumpy man who crossed the street just when we got our bikes out of the rack. I don't know who he was. I've never seen him at St. Mary's, but maybe he goes to the chapel all the time."

"What do you think we ought to do about it?"

"I don't think we're supposed to do anything about it," Dennis said. "Confessions are secret."

"They're secret for priests," Dom protested. "I don't think that the 'seal of the confessional' applies to people who were sitting behind the booth just trying not to die of starvation. And he didn't say okay, exactly. 'Right and just, but not legal.' That's what the guy said-that it's right and just to attack the synagogue. It can't be. For one thing, the day care center's just across the street and a lot of little kids could get hurt. If he knows it's not legal, then he ought to know that it's not right, either."

"I dunno." Dennis got up and stuck his thumbs in his pants pockets. "It's not legal to be a Catholic in England. Father Stanihurst told us about that. But it's right." He paused. "Isn't it?"

"I expect so." Dom leaned his bike against the wall. "Yeah, it's got to be. It's always right to be Catholic, but that doesn't mean that other folks don't have a right to think the way they do. At least, that's what Dad says."

"I don't think we ought to say anything to anybody," Dennis concluded. "For one thing, we'd have to admit that we were behind the confessionals, and we'd end up in a million gazillion gallons of trouble ourselves."

****

Nicholas Smithson, otherwise known as Father Nick, realized that if adults ever gave up, it would take only one generation for the world to revert to barbarism. Or, at least, to revert to a worse level of barbarism than it had already attained in the Germanies of the 1630s. Wherefore, he now taught the English-language CCD classes for ten through twelve year old children at St. Mary Magdalene's in addition to his research and all the other extra work that came with the Lenten season.

He paused just outside the door of the classroom. Most of the kids were already here-the English-language class included not just up-timers and foster children of up-timers, but the offspring of meandering down-time English and Scots Catholics, an occasional Pole or Bohemian, a few Italians, a sparse representation of French and Walloons, and even a few German children from intact families who had decided that they would rather speak English all the time, or at least as much of the time as their parents would let them get away with it.

"That's just gross," Maria Pohl was exclaiming.

Father Nick paused a minute to place her. Oh, yes. The stepdaughter of Ingram Bledsoe, the up-time piano manufacturer.

"Gross, gross, gross," Ottilia Halbach chanted.

He had to agree with her assessment.

"Naw, it's not," Aloys Carroll answered. "It's got to be divine planning that Affenfleisch has exactly the same number of syllables as monkey meat. That's got to mean that God really wanted it to be translated."

"Yeah," Thilo Scharfenberg yelled. "Gro? like great. Go, God, go!"

Father Nick flinched.

He had a map on the wall of his office. A map with up-time, plastic handled, stick pins in it. He'd borrowed a box of them from Colette Carroll, Aloys' adoptive mother.

Aloys had kin in Silesia and Bohemia both, but neither family had objected when his soldier stepfather had been killed in the Battle of the Crapper and his mother had signed adoption release papers before dying at Badenburg the same year.

Colette insisted that Aloys and his half-sister keep in touch with their blood relatives, which meant that there were pins in eastern Silesia, western Bohemia, and closer by in Schleusingen where the German translation of Greasy, Grimy, Gopher Guts had shown up.

Then there had been the clandestine priest who had been turned into the English authorities, barely made it to the coast, and ended up dropped off at Danzig when he really intended to head for the English College in Louvain. Picking up the son of a minor Polish noble to accompany to France, thus managing to pay his way, Father Mulhollin had stopped off in Grantville to see Father Stanihurst. The boy was with him, of course. There was now a Polish translation of the song, known to be in at least three Jesuit collegia in the Commonwealth.

And a Latin translation in Louvain. That had already spread to Salamanca and Venice.

Aloys was saying to one of the other students. "Bet ya' can't put it into French. It's the wrong kind of language."

"Can, too," Blaise answered.

"Ugh," his sister Jacqueline said.

Thilo threw an eraser at her.

Father Nick squared his shoulders and walked into the room.

****

"I'm worried about those two boys," Father Nick said to Father Kircher after CCD class. "Dom Grady and Dennis Kovar. They sat quietly through an entire CCD class. No interruptions, no mischief, no inappropriate comments, no expressions of desire for the gruesome and gory. The only thing either of them asked this week is that Dom had a question as to why confessional booths down-time have curtains in the front, when they didn't up-time."

"I sent them out to serve vespers at St. Elizabeth's last week," Kircher answered. "Maybe they're coming down with whatever germ was causing tonsillitis there. What did you tell them about confessional booths?"

"Before I could open my mouth, Thilo Scharfenberg announced that it's because down-timers like it that way and there are a lot more down-timers than up-timers-even in Grantville now. By the time I managed to quell the resulting dispute, they all had to leave for junior choir practice."

"Maybe next week. What would you have told them?"

"Pretty much the same thing, I'm afraid. The Council of Trent isn't that far in the past and Vatican II hasn't happened. With the Holy Father's current troubles . . . and Tino Nobili on the church board . . . well, the confessionals have curtains."

****

Two of the proudest new recruits to the SoTF National Guard, Otto Bu?leben and Melchior Engelhaupt, led out their companies under the watchful eyes of the sergeant. Moving out into the road, almost without thinking, they broke into the fine marching song that they had learned from their younger brothers.

"Und ich, mit keinem spoon."

Jessica Hollering, the commander's adjutant, watching from the sidelines, shuddered, wondering how she could feel so old when she wasn't much past thirty. Most of these kids they would be sending out to fight in the next campaign-the one that everybody pretty much knew would be coming next summer or fall-weren't more than a half-dozen years older than she had been when she learned that song. All by itself, she thought, it would ensure that in Amideutsch, "spoon" was going to substitute for Loffel. Not to mention that the German version inverted "french-fried eyeballs" into "fried French eyeballs."

"Doch habe ich ein Stroh!"

The companies peeled off towards Bamberg.

****

No matter what Dennis said, Dom thought he ought to at least find out who the dumpy man was. At that point, he realized that no matter how many Hardy Boys and Great Detective books you've read, actually detecting something is a different matter. First, he'd need an excuse to go out to St. Elizabeth's again. Well, he could go collect the food. After all, he'd paid Thomas for it and hadn't been able to eat it for fear that it would crunch.

Once he got there, maybe he could just ask someone. "Do you know a dumpy little man who I don't know?"

That didn't seem very precise.

He asked Dennis if he could remember anything more than "dumpy" about the man.

"Down-timer," Dennis said. "Not a miner or a construction worker or a guy who does the kind of work that keeps himself in top shape." He paused. "Wait a minute. You're not planning on doing anything dumb, are you?"

"Uh, uh."

"You're not even planning on doing anything that you maybe think is smart, are you?"

"Uh, uh. I'm not planning on doing anything at all. I'm just curious. We could ask some of the kids who live out that way . . ."

"Who's saying 'we,' white man?"

"Okay, then. I could ask some of the kids who live out that way . . . Just in case, you know."

Dennis shook his head.

****

"They were real people," Dom said that Sunday afternoon of March 4, 1635. "Real people, and now they're dead. Mayor Dreeson and the Reverend Wiley and Buster Beasley. People shot and people axed. There was blood and guts all over the street when we came out of mass."

Father Nick had clustered as many of his CCD kids as he could gather back into St. Mary's church basement to keep them away from the violence outside.

"But none of them were Catholic, were they?" Thilo Scharfenberg asked.

"What difference does that make? We knew them."

"I didn't know them," Aloys Carroll said.

"That's because they weren't Catholic," Thilo said.

Dennis shook his head. "Naw. That's because you're not grown up, so you didn't have any reason to know them. Ask your families, both of you. I'm sure that Watt Carroll knows them all. Well, knew them."

Dom looked at Pete Bartolli. "Your dad, my Uncle Phil, knows them, too. I know that. Buster came into both sporting goods stores a lot." He looked back at Thilo. "He ate at your folks' cafe sometimes, too."

"It's one thing to do business . . ." Thilo protested. "But . . ."

Father Nick started to intervene, but didn't have to.

"Turn it around, Thilo," Jacqueline said. "Think that if, oh, somebody, maybe the Ottomans, came and attacked the Catholics here in town, would you want the other people-the Baptists and the Lutherans and such-not to care because they didn't know us? Or would you want them to help?"

The afternoon wore on and as the riots were brought under control, parents gradually showed up and claimed their children. Charlotte Kovar picked up Dom as well as Dennis very late, saying that Nora was still on duty, pulling a double shift at the hospital.

It made things awfully . . . real . . . that there was a policeman escorting her.

"Okay," Dom said after they were safely in bed with the lights out. "What do we do now?"

"Ain't nothing we can."

"Yeah. There is?"

"Dom, what did you do?"

"I found out who the dumpy man is. He doesn't live here. He's only been here a few weeks, but I guess he had to get ready to make his Easter communion. Caspar knew who I was talking about, once I asked. His name's Weirauch. They call him Endres, and he's Catholic or he wouldn't have been at confession. It was a Catholic who got those people out in front of the synagogue all wound up, Dennis. We can't let him get away with it. We've got to tell someone."

"No matter how much trouble it gets us into ourselves?"

Dom pushed himself up on one elbow and punched his pillow. He nodded and then realized that Dennis couldn't see him in the dark. He sat up and hugged the pillow to his knees. "I think that's where we're at."

"We could go confess it."

"That wouldn't do any good. The priest would have to keep what we said secret."

"I'm not going to the police. They'll tell Mom."

"Anyone we go to is going to tell our moms." Dom lay down again and turned over on his stomach. "I should have just stayed hungry that night to begin with. I ended up having to stay hungry anyhow."

He thought the same thing when he got up the next morning.

"Are they having school?" he asked at breakfast.

"Oh, gosh," his Aunt Charlotte said. "As far as I know, but I didn't think to check." She turned on the radio.

Most of the news was all about the riots, but every five minutes or so, the announcer interrupted to say that the schools were closed.

Dom sighed. No reprieve. For once in his life, he would really have looked forward to going to school.

"Do we have to stay indoors?" Dennis asked.

"Not as long as you stay here in the neighborhood, I think." She stood up. "I wish at least one of your dads was in town. I wish your Uncle Dennis was in town. I'd like some backup on this decision. But no, they're all out saving the republic."

Dennis sighed. For once in his life, he would have sort of appreciated being grounded.

"Uncle Brian's here," he said hopefully. "And Uncle Phil."

"Brian's helping out at the hospital, just like practically everyone else in town who has had so much as a first aid course."

"That leaves Uncle Phil."

Phil Bartolli answered the phone and said that he thought it was okay if the boys went outdoors, as long as they stayed right in the neighborhood.

"Some days," Dennis said to Dom as they sat on the trampoline in the back yard, "a guy just can't win for losing."

"So what are we doing next?"

"I'm not going to the police."

"Father Nick?"

Dennis shook his head.

"Mr. Piazza used to teach CCD," Dom suggested.

"He's the president, now. He's way too busy to talk to a couple of kids."

Dom looked up. A middle aged man, gray with exhaustion, was dragging his footsteps in the general direction of his home. Before Dennis could stop him, he got up and ran. "Mr. Adducci," he called. "Hey, Mr. Adducci."

Eventually, Tony Adducci managed to persuade Dennis that they did have to go to the police after all. But it was better than it might have been, because he went to Press Richards with them.

****

"They're dead, guys," Dennis announced in CCD class. "We saw them when we came out of mass the day it happened, and so did a lot of the rest of you. Dead as splat can be, and now they're buried and in the ground."

"They're in heaven," Ottilia said.

"They can't be," Thilo protested. "They were all heretics. I'm not even sure, from what people said about the memorial service, that the Buster fellow was a Christian at all."

"But they are in heaven," Ottilia protested. "They have to be. Not the attackers. They're in hell. But Mayor Dreeson and the Reverend Wiley and Buster Beasley. They were good people. Mrs. Prickett says so."

"No, they were sinners. All of us are sinners," Blaise pointed out.

"Well, then, for sinners they were good people."

"Mrs. Prickett isn't a Catholic," Thilo proclaimed. "Your foster mother is a heretic, Tillie."

"Mrs. Prickett is a good heretic," Ottilia yelled.

"Dennis was right to start with. They're dead. Dead and buried and in the ground." Dom whistled a note and chanted, "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout."

"What's pinochle," Jacqueline asked.

Father Nick drew a very deep breath.

****

Easter finally came. Sometimes, this year, it seemed like it never would. It seemed like Lent went on forever. But the church calendar said that Easter would show up on April 8, and it did, right on schedule.

"Is it wrong to celebrate," Dom asked Father Nick as he robed for early mass. "Is it wrong to celebrate when so many horrible things have been going on?"

"Never," Father Nick said. "Never, when you think about what we are celebrating. Terrible things happened in the days before the resurrection also, but they did not stop Jesus from rising from the grave. What we celebrate is that man's sin cannot prevent his salvation, so great is God's love for us."

****

The next morning, the VOA early news announced the arrest in Wurzburg of a man named Hans Andreas Weihrauch who was alleged by the authorities to have been one of the masterminds behind the attack on the Grantville synagogue.

Dom and Dennis felt a lot better.

Tony Adducci Sr. spent the afternoon writing a long letter to his son Tony Jr. in Basel.

****

On the first day of school after Easter vacation, Blaise put the French translation of "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy, Gopher Guts" into general circulation, thereby winning a lot of bets.

****

Tony Jr., after he finished reading his father's letter, made a final decision in a matter he had been contemplating for nearly two years and wrote a long letter to "Father Larry, Your Eminence."

****

In Magdeburg, after he read it, Cardinal Mazzare lifted up his head and looked at Friedrich von Spee. "He'll make a good priest, and he comes to it with enough diplomatic and political experience that he won't be surprised by anything he sees."

"Why?" Spee asked. Meaning, of course, whence comes his vocation?

"He says that it's because the up-timers, the ones who have stayed behind at St. Mary's in Grantville, really need someone who knows where they are coming from and how they think. Not all the down-time priests do. Having men with down-time attitudes there, English or German, just isn't going to cut it, not in the long run."

Spee raised his eyebrows.

"They all have the highest respect for Nicholas Smithson, but . . ."

Spee waited.

"According to the boys-something that bothered them so much that they didn't even want to think about it, much less talk about it or deal with it, and that Tony Sr. held back from the police-Father Bissel, in the confessional, did not counsel Weihrauch against his plans to attack the synagogue."

"And Herr Adducci felt justified in withholding this information from the police because . . .?"

"Bissel didn't instigate the action. He didn't apparently, even encourage it. He just . . . omitted to discourage it strongly. There was nothing the police could have done with the information if they had it. So Adducci advised the boys to omit that from their narrative. Father Kircher will be counseling with Father Bissel. Plus, there were other complications."

"Aren't there always?"

"Preston Richards is a Baptist." Mazzare paused. "According to Tony Sr., there are stresses developing within the Baptist church in Grantville. Tony did not want to burden Press' conscience unduly in his dealings with Deacon Underwood, who is, among other things, not a lover of Catholics, whom he considers to be idolaters and drunkards among other undesirable personal characteristics. So . . ."

"What about the boys?"

"Press Richards told Tony that since the police managed to find other evidence linking Weihrauch to the attack, once they knew where to look, he'll try to set it up so they don't have to testify. No point in making them targets for the fanatics if it's not absolutely necessary."

Spee nodded.

"Charlotte and Nora checked with Dennis Grady, too-he being the boys' uncle and as tough a cop as they come. Basically, he said that you avoid unnecessary risks and try to minimize necessary risks, but there's no such thing as a risk-free life. And if you try to make yourself one, you're setting it up to let the bad guys win. So they both have said that they will testify if they have to and their parents have agreed-no matter how reluctantly. Not one of them wants to see Weihrauch wriggle out of a conviction."

Spee meditated briefly on the nature of a sinful world, so awry and askew that the deeds of adult men forced children to contemplate multiple shades of gray before they had even achieved a firm grasp on the distinction between black and white. "If the younger Tony is to become a priest, then you will need a seminary to form him, Your Eminence. Here in Magdeburg, among the heretics, for they will be going out into a world full of heretics and will need to accustom themselves to . . ." Spee paused, searching his memory for the up-time word, since there was no precise German or Latin equivalent. "Accustom themselves to interacting with them. Moreover, if you wish to form the priests it produces in your own image rather than as down-timers, then you must find time in your schedule-somewhere-to teach a significant number of its courses. Specifically, I would recommend, those in moral philosophy."

****

"What d'you think? If a guy swallowed a lighted grenade . . ."

Dennis whapped Dom on the shoulder. "I don't think that would work. A grenade's probably too big to swallow."

"Ja," Thilo Scharfenberg agreed. "Remember when Cunz Kloss tried to swallow a whole hard-boiled egg and it got stuck on the way down? They had to take him to Leahy to get it up again."

"Yeah, but if a guy did manage to swallow a lighted grenade . . ."

"His stomach acid would probably put the fuse out."

Dom was persistent. "All right then. If he did manage to swallow a lighted grenade, and his stomach acid didn't put the fuse out, and it exploded, how far do you think his body parts would fly? Would it be gruesomely gory?"

All of them looked at Blaise, who folded his arms, closed his eyes, and started to do mental calculations in regard to the geometrical implications of flying body parts. The variables were interesting. There would be some nice and hard like vertebrae and some soft and squishy like intestines. Soft and squishy like great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts.

****

Saint George Does It Again!

Kerryn Offord

June 1635, Grantville

Svetlana Anderovna was caught up in a most delightful dream. Yesterday she'd married the man she loved and they'd spent the night making love. She snuggled up to her lover.

Suddenly she was totally awake. Yes there was a naked body in bed with her, but it wasn't, couldn't be, Jabe McDougal. Terrified of what she'd see she slipped gently away from the warm naked male body she'd been all but wrapped around. From six feet away, with one hand on her dressing table and the other grasping her hair brush as a weapon, she was able to identify the man-John Felix Trelli.

The same John Trelli who'd been her escort to Jabe's wedding. The same John Trelli she'd been trailing along behind for months while he helped sell war bonds. The same John Trelli who'd never even tried to flirt with her. She dressed quickly and retreated to the door, her eyes never moving from the pulse she could see beating at his throat at less than a third of her own heart beat. He had to still be sleeping. Nobody could fake that low heart rate. In the near silence of the room she could hear the gentle rumble of a cat purring. But that was impossible. There was no cat in the room, just the slumbering form of John Trelli, known to some as Puss.

Svetlana carefully closed the door and walked off. Hopefully John would take the hint and remove himself before she returned. She shook herself. How could she have been so foolish as to make love to John, a virtual stranger? She'd been distraught, but surely not that distraught? Unfortunate memories of the previous evening flashed past her eyes. Someone she didn't know had thrown herself at John, and he had taken advantage of her distraught state. Svetlana nodded. Yes, it was all John Trelli's fault.

July 1635, Grantville

Sveta swung her head to see how the new hairstyle moved. Not sure what she thought about what she was seeing in the mirror, she turned to the three girls who'd dragged her to the beauty salon. "What do you think?"

"Katy's done a great job," Janie Abodeely said, referring to the beautician who'd been working on Sveta's face and hair for most of the morning. "You look absolutely scrumptious." Julia O'Reilly and Diana Cheng nodded their agreement.

Sveta badly wanted to believe her friends, but the way she'd been brought up, without a woman's influence, meant she'd never learned how to be a woman. In the mirror, she compared her appearance against her friends. She decided that she looked quite passable. She wasn't as beautiful as Julia, who was an acknowledged beauty, but she was at least as good-looking as Janie and Diana. She sighed. She'd love to be exotic looking like Diana, or at least have hair that same beautiful raven-black color, instead of the sort-of-pale-honey color she was cursed with.

She leaned closer to the mirror, to better inspect Katy's handiwork. The eyebrow plucking had been painful, but nowhere near as painful as having her body waxed had been. However, she couldn't complain about the results. She reached out for Katy and hugged the tiny-at least compared to her-beautician. "Thank you, Katy."

"It was fun," Katy said.

"Like exploring uncharted territory," Diana suggested.

Katy giggled. "Now remember, Sveta, you need to take proper care of your skin and hair."

Sveta sighed. This new look was going to be expensive to maintain. Maybe she could . . .

"Don't even think about it," Julia said. "Just pay the nice lady so we can find you some clothes to match your new look."

The "nice lady" was Frau Trelli, the owner of Carole’s Beauty Salon. It had been Frau Trelli, John Trelli's aunt, who'd first introduced Sveta to his cousins Julia and Janie. Sveta couldn't understand why Frau Trelli was being so nice to her. If there was anybody who knew that the supposed relationship between her and her nephew was nothing more than a face-saving exercise, it was Frau Trelli. She had barely had anything to do with John since Jabe McDougal's wedding to Prudentia Gentileschi. For moment-a very brief moment-Sveta felt guilty about that. John had been the perfect camouflage for her distress when the man she loved married That Female. But it was only a brief moment. Then the memory of how he'd taken advantage of her when, distraught that Jabe was forever denied her, she threw herself at him surfaced, and she was able to firmly suppress the guilt.

"I bet she's thinking about Puss," Julia said.

Sveta looked at her friend. Why was Julia thinking that she'd waste a moment thinking about John Trelli? She knew there was nothing going on between them.

"Okay, okay, George then," Julia said, holding her hands up defensively.

The reminder that she'd jokingly said her pet name for John would be "George" lifted her spirits. She wondered how he was enjoying that nickname.

Magdeburg

"You got yourself your own pet, George?"

Puss looked away from his horse, who was thoroughly enjoying his dust bath, to the source of the comment. The speaker was another sergeant in his platoon, and the smirk on his face told Puss that the story had made its way to Magdeburg. Not that he was surprised. It had been too good to expect his family to keep it to themselves.

His Aunt Carole had delegated him to act as the absolutely gorgeous, as opposed to merely sensationally beautiful, Corporal Svetlana Anderovna's escort to a wedding, and she'd objected to using his nickname. Instead, she'd insisted that her pet name for him would be George. That wouldn't have been a problem. He'd been called worse things. However, her comment-some might even call it a joke, but in his experience, Corporal Anderovna didn't do jokes-neatly paraphrased the Abominable Snowman character from the Bugs Bunny video she'd just been watching with Aunt Carole's daughters. Anybody familiar with the video, and his cousins had made sure plenty of people were made familiar with it, could easily make the connection between Corporal Anderovna's throwaway comment and the Abominable Snowman's speech. That had been the source of a lot of male envy. Most guys would be happy to have Corporal Anderovna pet and hug them.

What most of them probably wouldn't know was the source material for that cartoon was John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and any pet falling into the character Lenie's hands tended to be petted and hugged to death. He hadn't bothered to bring that up, because he knew the response would have been "but what a way to go."

For a brief moment the memory of the wedding night surfaced. That had been great. Waking up alone in Svetlana's bed the next morning hadn't been. Not that he'd been surprised that she'd left. She'd probably been too embarrassed to talk to him. She'd certainly done her best to avoid being alone with him for the rest of his leave. Ah, well, he'd never really believed such a gorgeous girl could really be interested in him.

August 1635, Grantville

Sveta lay on her bed in her tiny room in the woman's quarters and waited for the nausea to fade. When it did, she carefully slid off her bed. She was supposed to be meeting her friends after work, but the way she felt, she'd rather not. Unfortunately, if she didn't turn up they'd come looking for her. Even a locked door wouldn't stop them-Diana had demonstrated how insecure her room was just last week by picking the lock in less than a minute.

When she joined her friends, Julia swept Sveta into her arms and hugged here. "You look like death warmed up," Julia said.

"Julia," Janie protested.

Sveta savored the comfort of the hug, something else that had been lacking in her life until . . . okay, she admitted it to herself, until she met John Trelli and his family. She gently pushed Julia away so she could greet Janie and Diana. "I almost didn't come, I felt so sick after work."

"You really don't look too good," Janie said.

Julia pouted. "That's what I said."

"Have you vomited at all?" Diana asked.

Diana was on the medical program, training to eventually become a doctor, so Sveta forgave her the technical language. "No, I haven't puked. I just don't feel well. It's probably something I ate."

"I guess that means no night on the town, so how about coffee and a roll at Cora's?" Julia asked.

Sveta was all for that. "I'm sorry I'm such a party poofter."

"Pooper," Janie corrected. "It's party pooper, and you aren't. You can't help it if you don't feel well."

Sveta let Julia drag her back for another hug before they joined Janie and Diana on the short walk to Cora's.

She managed one step into Cora's before the smell hit her. Diana guided her into an alleyway where she puked up her guts.

"Is she all right?" a breathless Julia asked.

"It depends on what you mean by all right," Janie said. "What was it, Sveta, the smell of the coffee?"

"Coffee with milk," Sveta said. Even the memory of the smell had her trying to puke again.

"What's the matter with Sveta," Julia demanded.

"This is purely a guess mind you," Diana said, "but, I suspect Sveta is suffering NVP."

"What the heck's NVP?" Julia asked.

"Nausea and vomiting with pregnancy," Diana explained. "It's not something you're likely to meet in your veterinarian training."

"Morning sickness? You're saying Sveta's pregnant?" Julia asked.

"In the balance of probabilities, it is a definite possibility." Diana put an arm around Sveta and hugged her. "Could you be pregnant?"

Sveta swallowed. Yes, it was possible. She nodded.

"Do you know who the father is?" Julia asked.

Sveta's head shot up. "How dare you . . ."

"I'll take that as a yes, then. Next question, is it Jabe?"

Sveta glared at Julia. She, like the other two girls, knew Jabe was the man she loved. But Julia's face only showed sympathy. She ducked her head. "No."

"If Jabe's not the father, then who is?" Julia asked.

Sveta kept her head bowed. She didn't want to admit anything about that night.

"Come on, it has to be someone," Janie muttered. "Oh, hell . . ."

Sveta met Janie's eyes. Why was she looking at her like that?

"Puss?" Janie choked out.

"Puss? You think Sveta did it with Puss?" Julia demanded.

"You did it with Puss? Why?" Janie asked Sveta. "You told us you barely know him."

"After the wedding. I was upset, and John escorted me home."

"And you made love with Puss?" Julia demanded. "Even though you were in love with another man? How could you do that to him?"

Sveta didn't like the accusing looks being sent her way. "He was the one who took advantage of me. I didn't know what I was doing." She all but shouted the last sentence.

"Are you feeling better now?" Diana asked.

The voice of reason penetrated, and Sveta relaxed. She did feel better. "Yes."

"Then I suggest we move this little discussion to somewhere other than right outside Cora's."

That was an exaggeration, they were actually in the alleyway beside the cafe that was the gossip capital of Grantville, but Diana's point was well made. Sveta knew there was going to be enough talk about how she bolted after putting one foot across the threshold. "Where?"

"Lacking the other interested party, I think we should drop in on Auntie Sue," Janie said.

"John's mother?" Sveta shuddered. Frau Trelli knew her story. She knew that being escorted to Jabe's wedding by John had been a face-saving exercise. What was she going to think of her?

Janie nodded. "His mom and dad are going to have to be told at some stage, unless you intend getting a termination . . ."

It took a few seconds for Sveta to mentally translate the meaning of the English word. She looked at Janie aghast. "I'm not a baby killer."

"Then we go to Auntie Sue's."

Sveta slumped, defeated. "Very well."

"Hey, it's not as if you're going to your funeral. It's just bad luck that you got pregnant. You must be a real Fertile Myrtle to conceive first time," Julia said.

"Julia!" both Diana and Janie cried.

"Well, it is unlucky," Julia protested.

Sveta made eye contact with Janie for a moment, then dropped her head. It was if the other girl was reading her innermost secrets.

"On the other hand, if they did it more than once, without contraception, they were playing with fire," Janie said.

Sveta ran her tongue over suddenly dry lips. She couldn't bring herself to say the words, so she gave a single nod.

"Was he any good?" Julia asked.

The eager curiosity in Julia's voice shocked Sveta. How could she ask such a question at a time like this?

"Julia O'Reilly, how could you ask such a question?" Janie demanded.

"You want to know if he learned anything from Donetta, just as much as I do."

"Still, you shouldn't ask Sveta a question like that!"

"All right then, how would you ask her?"

Sveta stared at the squabbling girls. Who was Donetta, and what was her relationship to John?

On the Saxon Plain, somewhere near Zwenkau

Puss was feeling particularly unloved. His patrol had been assigned to directing incoming troops to their forming up areas for the battle everyone knew would happen tomorrow. It had been a long and dusty day as thousands of men and horses kicked up the dust as they walked past his checkpoint.

He stepped away to let a wagon proceed and fumbled for his water bottle. He shook it gently as he pulled it from his belt webbing-about a third full.

The first mouthful was used to rinse away the dust. Then he drained the bottle. He wiped the moisture from his lips with the sleeve of his combat jacket while he fumbled the canteen back into its pouch. "What a lousy day."

"Just think of what tomorrow'll be like, Sarge," Corporal Lenhard Poppler said.

Puss scanned the landscape. If it wasn't for the crushed grain, trampled down by thousands of men and horses, it would be a beautiful scene. By this time tomorrow it would be completely different.

Grantville

"Surely I should wait until I'm sure?" Sveta protested as Julia hammered on the door of John's parents' home.

"You've showing the same symptoms Alice and Judy did when they were at about the same stages of their pregnancies," Janie said, naming her sister and sister-in-law.

"Besides, Diana says you're pregnant," Julia said.

Sveta was about to question the logic behind that statement when the door opened.

"Hello, girls. What brings you round this way?" Suzanne Trelli asked.

A strong hand grabbed Sveta's wrist and dragged her up the steps. "Sveta's got something to tell you, Auntie Sue," Julia said.

"Then you'd better all come in. I'll just put the kettle on."

"No coffee," Julia called out to Suzanne's back.

"No coffee it is," Suzanne called over her shoulder before hurrying off.

"Why did you have to say that?" Sveta demanded of Julia.

"Do you want a repeat of what happened at Cora's?" Julia asked. "You know, throwing up at the smell of coffee."

She shuddered at that memory. "No, but what is Frau Trelli going to think?" Sveta asked, wringing her hands.

"Under the circumstances, Sveta, I think Auntie Sue might just think that you're pregnant," Janie said.

"You really should thank Julia for preparing the ground for you," Diana added.

She was hustled into the house and along to the kitchen where she was seated between Julia and Janie.

Suzanne placed a plate of dry crackers in front of Sveta. "Try some of these, you might find that they help."

Sveta stared blankly at Frau Trelli. How were dry crackers supposed to help her? She glanced around at her friends. As she made eye contact with them, each in turn smiled and nodded. Unfortunately, Sveta had no idea what message they were trying to communicate to her.

"I'll make it easy for you. You, or at least our budding doctors, think you're pregnant."

Sveta swallowed. Guilt had her starting to blush. She dropped her head in shame.

Suzanne lifted Sveta's head so their eyes met. "And the reason you want to tell me you're pregnant is because John is the father, yes?"

She didn't actually want to tell Frau Trelli that, it was more a matter of having to.

"Oh, you poor thing." Suzanne reached down and pulled Sveta into her arms. "And John so far away when you need him."

It was too much. Sveta burst into tears in Frau Trelli's arms. Later, when she emerged from her crying jag, she discovered she'd been abandoned by her friends.

"I sent them home. It's not as if you need their moral support anymore."

Sveta dipped her head back into Frau Trelli's shoulder. This time she felt the damp and backed away. "Oh, I've made you all wet."

"I won't rust," Suzanne said, pulling Sveta back into her arms. "Let's make ourselves a nice cup of catnip tea and find somewhere comfortable to sit and chat."

That sounded good to Sveta. Achat sounded a lot friendlier than a talk. She helped Frau Trelli load a tray with a teapot, some cups, saucers and spoons, and the plate of dry crackers, and then followed her into the living room.

Somewhere near Zwenkau

Puss snuggled inside his sleeping bag, inside his bivy-bag, under the star filled sky. Beside him, Corporal Michael Cleesattel was snoring quietly under a couple of military issue blankets.

Puss was having trouble getting to sleep. Everybody believed there was going to be a great battle tomorrow, and you could write a book about all the battles he'd managed to miss for one reason or another.

He hadn't graduated until 1632, so he missed everything before that. When he tried to enlist to fight he'd been given some rubbish about the needs of the service, and sent to train as a military policeman. Okay, so at nearly six foot, he was significantly taller than most down-timers, and he had earned a junior black belt from the martial arts school in Fairmont where Sensei Karickhoff-the then head instructor of the army's unarmed combat school-had taught, and he could ride a horse, and he was a pretty good shot with a hand gun and rifle, but they weren't good reasons for assigning him to the military police.

To make matters worse, he'd graduated from training and immediately been posted to Erfurt, just in time to miss the Croat raid on Grantville. All around him people were getting combat experience and being promoted because of it. Heck, he'd even managed to miss the big battle at Ahrensbok because he'd been posted to the backwater that was the Wietze oil facility, and then he'd been away escorting an oil shipment to Magdeburg when the French raided the place.

With his luck, he was likely to miss tomorrow's battle as well, although he didn't know how Murphy was going to arrange that, not with them being so close to the front line.

Grantville

Sveta snuggled under the covers of her bed in the woman's quarters and let her hands drift down to her belly. Was it really possible that a new life was growing there? That she was really pregnant? If she was, there would finally be someone of her own to love and be loved by. She'd never again be alone and unloved.

The crack of dawn the next day, somewhere near Zwenkau

Puss walked out of the briefing tent ready to swear and curse. He held on to his disappointment until he joined his patrol. "We're assigned to road watch around the field hospital."

Corporal Lenhard Poppler looked westward, towards the area where the field hospital was still being set up. "That's what, two miles behind the lines."

"About that," Puss confirmed.

"Great move, Sarge. How'd you manage to score us that assignment?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

"I like your luck, Sarge," Michael said. "Long may it last."

With the rest of his patrol nodding their heads in agreement, Puss choose not to voice his opinion of his luck. Murphy had struck again.

Grantville

Sveta was dragged out of a deep sleep by someone knocking on her door. It was way too early to be her wake up call. Then she realized it wasn't the manager's voice asking if she was awake, it was John's mother. "Coming," she called as she slid out of bed and grabbed a bathrobe. She was still fumbling with the waist tie when she opened the door.

"Oh, good, you're awake," Suzanne said as she pushed past Sveta into her room.

Suzanne's husband leaned against the door frame and smiled sympathetically at Sveta.

"You can't stay here," Suzanne announced. "Felix, why are you standing at the door? Put the cases on the bed."

"Suzanne's decided that you should move into John's old room," he explained to a confused Sveta.

Suzanne looked around Sveta's room before turning to her husband. "If you'll wait outside, I'll pack Sveta's things while she dresses."

The door closed behind Felix and before she knew it, Frau Trelli had splashed some water into the washing bowl and was pushing Sveta towards it.

"Now you just follow your usual routine, and we'll have everything packed in no time."

"But you don't want me to move into John's old room," Sveta protested.

Suzanne rested her hands on her hips. "You really think I'd make the effort to drag Felix here at this hour of the morning if I didn't want you to live with us?"

Herr Trelli had seemed very relaxed about being dragged about at this time of the morning. From her limited knowledge of family life, the mothers of illegitimate progeny of the household's male members weren't exactly welcome in the family home. Frau Trelli however, took her silence as agreement.

"Right, so what's your problem?"

Sveta tried to blink away the tears that were starting to form in her eyes. "John and I aren't together."

"You're having John's baby. You can't get any more together than that." Suzanne reached out and dragged Sveta into an embrace. "There, there, it's not so bad. John'll do the right thing by you."

The "right thing" was marriage. Sveta knew that. But she didn't want to marry a man she didn't love. She wanted to marry Jabe. But that wasn't going to happen. She wanted to try and explain how she felt, but Frau Trelli's kind eyes stopped her.

Suzanne pulled Sveta close, and she buried her face in Suzanne's shoulder. A hand held the back of her head while another gently patted her gently on the back. "Come on, we have to finish your packing before Felix gets tired of waiting, and you still need to get dressed."

Later that day, somewhere near Zwenkau

Puss took off his wide-brimmed hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve before replacing it. Then he took off his dark glasses and admired the dust that had collected on them since he last cleaned them. He'd long since stopped cursing his luck, and moved on to thanking whatever entity was responsible for keeping him away from the battlefield. The sight of wagon after wagon of wounded men rumbling past had cured him of ever wanting to be caught up in a battle.

A medevac wagon was approaching from the hospital. Puss put his glasses back on and stepped out onto the road to stop the traffic so it could join the flow of vehicles heading for the front. As it rumbled away, Corporal Thomas Klein handed him a mug.

"Fresh brew, Sarge, you drink that while I take a turn."

Puss was happy to step off the road and savor his mug of coffee without too much dust getting mixed with it. His eyes followed the long column of vehicles threading into the distance. It was a pity he wasn't an artist, because that long column of vehicles approaching the field hospital under a red sky would make a brilliant memorial to the battle.

Grantville

Sveta sat cross-legged on the bed in the bedroom of her child's father, hugging the large, well-loved teddy bear that had been sitting on the bed. Frau Trelli had taken her to see Dr. Shipley for a pregnancy test. The test would take a few days to give a result, but the doctor had indicated that everything pointed to her being pregnant, and that, if Sveta was sure about the date of conception, could expect to deliver in March of next year.

She snorted. As if she was going to forget the day the man she loved married another. Still, she had a letter she had to write. She slid off the bed and carried the teddy bear to the desk where John must have sat to do his homework in times past. Together they wrote a letter to John.

A few days later, outside Leipzig

Puss was lying comfortably on the ground, his back supported by his saddle, and the brim of his hat pulled over his eyes. His personal kit was laid out beside him, ready to be loaded at a moment's notice onto Thunder, who was lazily picking at the pile of hay cut from one of the trampled fields.

"Mail for Behrns, Cleesattel, Klein, and Trelli."

Puss tipped back his hat and searched for the source of the call. Seeing the company clerk, he did up his webbing and picked up his rifle before walking over to the mail cart.

There was the usual CARE package from his family, and a single letter. He accepted them and returned to his kit, where the vultures were already circling.

Puss attempted to ignore them. Instead of opening the CARE package, which was what Corporals Klein, Poppler, Cleesattel, and Behrns were interested in, he studied the letter. Normally the family included their letters in the packages, so who was writing to him? A quick glance on the back only added to his confusion. The return address was his parent's house in Grantville. Well, there was one sure way to learn who the letter was from. He used the blade of his clasp-knife to break the seal.

He didn't read far before he froze in abject terror. He blinked a few times before re-reading the first sentence.

"Something wrong, Sarge?" Michael asked.

Puss folded the letter so Thomas couldn't read it over his shoulder. "Sveta,"-it felt funny using Corporal Anderovna's nickname-"is pregnant."

"Oh, like, wow. How'd you manage that?" Lenhard asked.

There was a yip of pain from Lenhard as Michael clipped him across the ear. "The usual way, dummy."

"But he's not even betrothed to the girl," Lenhard said. "Are you?" he asked Puss.

"No." From the cultural awareness module of his military police training, Puss knew that a certain amount of latitude was permitted to betrothed couples. However, good girls did not let things go too far until they were betrothed.

He read the rest of the letter. Sveta certainly hadn't wasted any words. She'd said what she had to say, and then asked him what he intended doing. There was nothing about how worried she was about the situation, but she had to be. Babies were expensive, and a single mother had a lot of obstacles in their way. Well, he knew what he had to do, and he didn't need the fact that she had moved in with his parents to tell him what it was. "Looks like I better ask for leave so I can get home and marry Sveta as soon as possible."

"Don't like your chances," Hermann Behrns said. He glanced around. "Anybody here like the Sarge's chances?"

Three shaking heads told Puss that none of them liked his chances of getting leave. He folded the letter and tucked it away. If he couldn't go to her, maybe there was an alternative. "Then I better have a few words with the chaplain."

"He won't be able to get you leave, Sarge," Hermann called to Puss's back.

Grantville

Felix gave Sveta a sympathetic shake of the head as he laid the mail on the table in front of his wife.

Suzanne quickly sorted out the mail, sliding letters across the table to the down-time sisters who were more daughter substitutes than boarders, and her husband. There was nothing for Sveta.

She hadn't expected anything either. Who would write to her here? Certainly not John. Not yet, anyway. She knew from her job with the Joint Armed Services Press Division that it could take a week just for her letter to get to him.

"You're looking happy, Elisabeth," Frau-call me Sue-Trelli said to the eldest of the boarders.

Elisabeth Muller held up her letter. "My book has done better than expected, and Frau Frobel says they are planning a second printing."

Suzanne clapped her hands. "Congratulations." She hurried around the table to give Elisabeth a hug.

Sveta felt a stab of jealousy watching the easy affection between Frau Trelli and the older girl. She wished she could reach out to Frau Trelli like Elisabeth, but she felt too embarrassed, guilty, and a bit of a fraud. It wasn't as if she was in love with John. She was just pregnant with his child.

Then Suzanne opened the letter from John and read aloud what he had got up to since he last wrote.

Even Sveta managed to smile at some of the things he and his men got up to, although, if one was to believe John, it was mostly his men getting into trouble and him getting them out of it. The letter opened a window on the world of Sergeant John Trelli, soldier, and introduced her to someone completely different from the man she'd shepherded around war bond rallies.

****

Sveta received a reply to her letter three days later. She retired to her room where she cuddled the teddy-bear while she prepared herself for the recriminations she was sure were to be heaped upon her.

Tears began to trail down her cheeks as she read the letter. John was being so understanding. He was even willing to marry her, if that was what she wanted. After talking to Janie and Julia, she'd been almost hoping that he would insist on them marrying. At least that would indicate some interest in her as something other than his child's mother, but there was nothing to suggest that he might love, or even care for her. She buried her face in the worn fur of the teddy-bear and cried.

Eventually the tears stopped, and she was able to return to John's letter. There were promises of financial support, and that he wouldn't pressure her to make a decision. There was also a separate piece of paper a lot smaller than the main letter. Sveta cracked a smile after reading it. It certainly deserved it's "destroy after reading" heading. John's mother-and he freely admitted it-would surely be tempted to kill him if she ever saw what he'd written about her. She hid that page in her Bible and prepared to share the rest of John's letter with his parents.

"It's only what I expected of John," John's mother said as she passed the letter onto her husband.

John's father took the letter and read it. "I'm sure he does want to marry you, Sveta."

"It's good of you to say that, Herr Trelli. But we all know that the only reason we're talking about marriage is because I'm pregnant."

"We'd be happy for you to marry John even if you weren't pregnant," Suzanne said.

****

A week later a package in heavy bond paper was delivered to the Trelli residence. Sveta waited for Mama, as she now called John's mother, to open it, but instead she slid it across the table to her. She accepted the letter knife from Mama and broke open the heavy wax seal.

There was a covering letter from a lawyer in Leipzig, a copy of John's will, and two copies of a marriage contract. She passed them all over to John's father, whom she'd started calling Papa.

"John has made arrangements for the pair of you to marry by proxy," Felix said.

"Is that legal?" Suzanne asked.

John's father nodded. "According to John's lawyer, all we need is for Sveta to sign the contracts before witnesses, and exchange vows with John's stand-in."

Sveta bit her lip. "I will need my father's permission."

"Where does he live?" Felix asked.

"He lives in Savonia, near the fortress of Olavinlinna, in Finland."

"That doesn't exactly sound like we'd be able to send him a letter and get a reply in a few days time."

"No." Sveta knew exactly how long it could take to get news in and out of Savonia, except in winter, when the lakes and rivers froze, making travel so much easier. She'd made the trip herself on her way to Grantville. "At this time of year, it could take four weeks just to get to the fortress from Borga."

"And Borga is where?" Felix asked.

"It's a port on the Gulf of Finland, about thirty miles east of Helsinki, the modern capital of Finland." Before Papa could ask the usual question, Sveta continued. "Helsinki's a lot smaller than Borga. King Gustav I created the town nearly a hundred years ago in an attempt to challenge the Hanseatic city of Reval, and it hasn't done very well."

Suzanne ran a hand through her hair. "You could send him a letter, but, if it's going to take over three months to hear back . . ."

Sveta saw where Mama was looking. Her hands fell protectively over her belly. John's mother's meaning was obvious. She'd certainly be showing in three months time.

"Is your father likely to raise any objections to you marrying John?" Felix asked.

Sveta shook her head. John's family was Catholic, but her father wasn't sufficiently interested in her to care about that.

"Right then. Sveta, you write your father asking his permission, and thanking him nicely for giving it. We'll post that off and set about posting the banns."

"And I'll start planning the wedding," Suzanne said.

****

Later that evening Sveta entered the kitchen with the letter for her father. It'd been a surprisingly easy letter to write, but while she'd chewed over how to explain becoming pregnant to a man she wasn't even betrothed to, she'd been reminded of something Julia had said.

She walked over to the table where Mama had spread out the contents of a large cardboard box, and sat opposite her. "Mama."

Suzanne looked up. "Yes, dear?"

"Who is Donetta?" Sveta didn't like the look that flashed across Mama's face. It looked too much like she'd bitten into something sour.

"Where did you hear that name, dear?"

Sveta recognized evasion when she heard it. Did that mean Donetta had been someone important in John's life? "Julia was asking me what it was like making love with John, and Janie was telling her to stop embarrassing me, but Julia said Janie wanted to know if he'd learned anything from Donetta just as much as she did."

Suzanne stared at Sveta, her eyes opened wide for a moment before she blinked and shaking her head. "No, they couldn't have, neither of them would have been more than thirteen or fourteen." She smiled ruefully at Sveta. "Sorry, ignore what I just said. Madam Donetta Leasure nee Frost had an affair with John right under her fiance's nose a few months before they were due to marry. Things got a bit messy when her fiance realized what was going on, and we had to ship John out of town until after the wedding for his own safety."

Sveta couldn't imagine a man marrying a woman who had a relationship with another man while they were betrothed, not unless there was a good reason. "Was her family very rich?"

"Donetta's parents? They run the tack shop in town."

So, if her family wasn't rich, that only left one reason why the man had married her. "Was she very beautiful?"

"She certainly thought so," Suzanne snorted. "You don't need to feel jealous of Madam, dear. She and her fool of a husband were left up-time."

Sveta wanted to protest that she wasn't jealous, she was just curious. She was left wondering what John had felt for Donetta. "Thank you for telling me. What is it you're doing?"

****

Back in her room Sveta pulled out her Bible and searched for the "destroy after reading" letter. When she'd first read it, she'd thought John was just making jokes at his mother's expense, but now she realized that John just knew his mother.

She glanced down at the list again. After two hours spent flicking through the wedding file Mama had been putting together ever since the birth of her first daughter, Sveta now understood his warning that his mother would insist on a "white wedding with all the trimmings."

September, somewhere en route to Poland

Puss sat in his tent looking at the photographs of the wedding. Sveta looked beautiful. The white princess-style off-the-shoulder dress suited her and he was glad that she'd let his mother have the wedding she'd dreamed of giving his sisters. Losing both of them left up-time had hit his mother hard, which was one reason he'd been sure she'd willingly accept Sveta. That Sveta was carrying her first grandchild had just been the icing on the cake.

And speaking of icing on cake, Mom had sent him a piece of the wedding cake. He savored it as he bit into it. It was a proper fruitcake, and mom had remembered to cut him a piece with plenty of marzipan. While he let the almond flavored icing dissolve in his mouth he checked the rest of the photos. His old friend from school, James Warren, was there with his wife Kelli, and their new baby. He was glad James had accepted his request to be his stand-in; there was nobody he trusted more, and if James had so much as thought about giving Sveta more than a peck on the cheek, Kelli would have decked him.

The thought made him smile. He was getting very possessive about his Sveta. It'd just be nice if he could believe she felt the same about him. But he knew she had only married him for the sake of the baby.

Two weeks later, outside Swiebodzin, Poland

Puss took advantage of the short break to sort through the latest package from home. There was the usual re-supply of the essentials-cake, coffee, cookies, sugar, hard candy, and toilet paper-as well as some writing paper, pens and ink. But more importantly, there were letters from home. Puss distributed everything else amongst his belt webbing and saddlebags, but kept the letters separate. He selected Sveta's and pushed the rest into a jacket pocket.

Breaking the seal he was soon back in Grantville watching the movie made from a screenplay he'd written while he was on the war bonds treadmill. According to Sveta, and she would know, as she'd had the task of typing up his hand-written drafts, they'd actually followed his final screenplay relatively closely. Even to the extent of actually filming the finale at the very castle he'd used as his model. He just wished he'd been there with Sveta to see it.

"Trelli, get your men together."

The sudden thump on his back brought Puss back to the present. "What's happening?" he asked as he hastily folded Sveta's letter and put it safely away.

"Some of the auxiliaries and men of the Gray Adder have run amok and are sacking the town." Sergeant Johannes Coper, the platoon sergeant, didn't seem too concerned that the Finnish auxiliary cavalry attached to 3rd Division had run amok, but he was clearly upset that proper USE soldiers had joined them. "The general has ordered the division in to deal with them."

Puss glanced in the direction of Swiebodzin. It wasn't as if there had been a long siege or anything that would normally justify sacking the place. He turned to ask Sergeant Coper some more questions, but he'd already moved on, which meant he'd better get a move on himself. "Behrns, Cleesattel, Klein, Poppler, get your gear together and saddle up."

****

They entered Swiebodzin behind the division's own cavalry. The MPs didn't do any fighting; the cavalry did all of it. They just got to pick up the pieces.

Puss badly wanted to throw up, but he had nothing left in his stomach. The dead adults had been bad enough, but the children had been much worse. Why would anybody want to bayonet a baby? He rewrapped the baby in its swaddling and placed it beside what he assumed was his mother, who'd been raped and murdered. He stepped back, and as he looked down upon the dead mother and son, he thought of Sveta and their baby, and he wanted to kill those responsible.

But that wasn't the worst. That came when he found a girl who couldn't have been more than eight. She was naked, battered and bruised, bleeding from both the vagina and anus, and white with shock. He'd carried her shivering body to the first aid station the medics had set up in the town square. She didn't make a sound the whole time. He wasn't even sure she knew what was happening to her.

****

Puss hadn't felt anything when he helped lead the twenty, mostly still drunk, rioters who'd been caught in the act to the fence line in a pasture just outside Swiebodzin. There, he'd helped tie the prisoners to the wooden fence before retiring behind the firing line. From there he'd watched the executions by volley gun before advancing to supervise men of the Gray Adder regiment as they collected the shredded remains of their former colleagues and dumped them into the mass grave they'd dug earlier.

It was different when it came to the officers. For a start, they were to be executed by a regular firing squad made up of members of the volley gun batteries.

Ex-Captains Hermann auf der Mauer and Traugott Nachtigall were lined up either side of their commanding officer, ex-Major Johannes Dietrich.

"How can you allow this travesty?" Johannes Dietrich demanded as Puss checked the bindings holding him against the wood support. "We did nothing wrong."

"The men went mad when a sniper murdered Colonel Kuster," Hermann auf der Mauer said.

Puss ignored the comments, but Traugott Nachtigall took offence at his silence. "You rear end mother-fucker, what do you know of war? I bet you've never even been in combat. What right do you have to judge us?"

For a moment he saw that eight-year-old girl again. He looked at the ex-captain, and then to his own officer. "The prisoners are secure, sir."

"Very good, Sergeant. Retire your men behind the line."

Spittle from ex-captain Nachtigall struck Puss and mingled with the blood of an eight-year-old Pole. He looked up at Nachtigall, who seemed proud of his small victory. Puss gestured for his men to leave before following them.

Grantville

In the glory days of 1633 and 1634, the Grantville office of the Armed Forces Press Division had boasted over a dozen staff members, but those days were long gone. Now, the permanent staff consisted of Lieutenant Johann Dauth, the three radio operators who maintained a 24/7 radio watch, and three enlisted women who rotated the position of front desk receptionist while doing their real job of composing press releases and running them off on the duplicator machine for distribution to the local media.

There was some kind of bug going around, and the office was down to a skeleton staff, meaning, instead of getting out of the office over lunch, Sveta had to stay in the office. She'd just settled her mug of hot soup on her desk and sat down when Lieutenant Dauth burst out of the radio room waving a printout.

"Magdeburg's just passed on a story from Scoop claiming USE troops are sacking a surrendered town in Poland."

"Scoop" was the nickname of twenty-year-old Ambrosius Weineck. He had made every effort since joining the Fightin' Flacks (as some called the reporters of the military's press office) to portray himself as the next Ernest Hemingway. He'd earned the nickname for producing a rather long list of "scoops" that weren't.

Her lunch forgotten, Sveta reached for the paper Johann held. A quick skim-and it was a very quick skim-Scoop must have outdone himself in the brevity of the story he filed with headquarters in Magdeburg. "It's a little light on any details. Have headquarters heard from Dirk and Werner?" she asked, naming the two competent reporters the department had with the 3rd Division.

"Not a whisper."

Johann looked ready to pull his hair out, and Sveta couldn't blame him. Either Dirk and Werner hadn't filed anything because there wasn't anything to report, or they were in the thick of it, getting the real story. There was however, another possible source of information. "What are the Times and Daily News getting?"

In theory, the press office shouldn't know what was in the stories the reporters working for the two main Grantville papers were sending over the radio, however, the office had the use of a computer, and the geek responsible for maintaining their computer system had cracked the newspapers' codes. With their computer and their own radios monitored 24/7, the press office was able to read the stories the reporters were filing well before the papers' editors did.

"They haven't sent anything yet," Johann said.

"So either Scoop's gone off half-cocked again, or they're busy chasing the story."

Johann nodded. "I'm sure the boss has already ordered Scoop to get some details."

"What do you want me to do with this?" She waved the printout.

Dauth sighed. "Try and work your usual magic on it so we've got something for a press release."

It was a tall order, but Sveta rolled a fresh stencil blank into her typewriter, and after reading the cable again, started typing.

****

Over the course of the day reports reached the office that confirmed Scoop's original story, and then some. Sveta was typing out yet another update press release when Johann walked quietly up to her desk. This was unusual, as throughout the day he'd announced each new development as he bounced out of the communications room.

She reached up for the papers he held, but Johann pulled them away. "Dirk's filed an interview with your husband. It's pretty graphic."

Having given her a warning, Johann obviously felt free to let her read the story. At first sight, it was a mass of red pencil where parts he didn't want her to include in the press release were marked. Naturally, she started to read those areas first. She bolted for the bathroom.

"Can you write it up, or do you want me to do it?" Johann asked from the bathroom door.

Sveta rinsed her mouth to get rid of the bile taste and splashed her face with water. "I can do it, but can I call John's family first to let them know he's okay?"

"Sure, make your calls, but keep them short. We may need to keep the phone free."

She asked the Fluharty Middle Schoolsecretary to pass on the message to Mama that she'd heard that John was okay after the recent fighting in Swiebodzin. She did much the same with the secretary at the SoTF State Technical College, where she left the same message for Papa. Then she settled down to work the terse filed cables from Werner and Dirk into press releases.

The standard press releases were easy to write, but translating the interview with John into something for general consumption was difficult, as she kept visualizing what John must have seen.

October, 1635, the south bank of the Odra river, near Zielona Gora

Puss was, as usual since Swiebodzin, keeping a watchful eye on the remnants of the Gray Adder regiment. He had been thinking about what happened. Not so much the actual rape, loot, murder and burn that the men had engaged in, but more the message General Stearns' reaction would be sending to them.

"Lieutenant, I've been wondering if the general did the right thing at Swiebodzin by punishing the officers."

"I wouldn't worry about them, Trelli. They had it coming," Lieutenant Heinrich Diefenthaler said.

"I wasn't thinking of the officers, sir. I was thinking of the men who weren't caught in the act. Shouldn't we be trying to bring them to justice?'

"To what purpose, Trelli? By his actions, General Stearns has ensured that such an event won't occur again."

"Why not?" To Puss the problem was obvious, but then, he'd read all of his sisters' college psychology textbooks and anything else he could find to try and understand Donetta Frost's motivations for the affair she had with him.

"I'm sure every officer in the 3rd Division is now planning on imposing stiff discipline so that their men don't run amok and get them strung up in front of a firing squad. But what about the common soldiers? All they've learned is that as long as they don't get caught, they can get away with murder. Heck, they could take advantage of the precedent, and use it to get rid of unpopular officers."

"Trelli, you have a nasty mind," Lieutenant Diefenthaler said. "A very nasty mind. It could become a downward spiral. The officers make themselves unpopular by imposing stricter discipline, so the troops retaliate by going crazy."

Puss nodded. That's exactly what he'd been thinking. "So, do we start searching out the instigators and bring them to justice?"

"I'll pass your concerns on to Captain von Frankenberg, Trelli."

"Thank you, sir." After Lieutenant Diefenthaler walked off, Puss returned to watching the men from the Gray Adder. The regiment was largely recruited from Mecklenburg, where the CoC columns had been involved in some pretty nasty fighting during Operation Kristallnacht. One could almost suggest that they had been predisposed to running amok and committing atrocities even before Swiebodzin. There had certainly been enough of that from both sides in Mecklenburg. All they'd needed was a trigger-like the death of their commander at the hands of a sniper-to send them over the edge.

Grantville

Sveta's friends came bearing gifts. She met them at the door and shepherded them along to her room.

"How's the baby? Janie asked.

Sveta patted her bump. "It's started to move." She was reminded of the first time she felt her baby move a couple of weeks ago. Until then she'd been on tenterhooks. Too many well-meaning (or maybe, just mean) people had talked about the risk of losing a baby before the second trimester. Apparently, once a baby started to move, you were less likely to miscarry. Although, having sent that reassuring signal, it would have been nice if it could stop kicking every time she managed to drop off to sleep.

"Is it moving now?" Julia asked.

Sveta reached out and pressed Julia's hand against her abdomen.

"Oh, it kicked. That's so cool. Diana, you have to feel Sveta's baby moving."

"How are you feeling, Sveta?" Diana asked, letting Julia guide her hand.

"Remarkably well, much to the disappointment of the doomsayers.

"Mom was like that," Janie said. "A bit of morning sickness early on, then nothing for months." She sent Sveta a wry grin. "But I don't think you'll be able to avoid backache as you near term."

"How did your mother cope with that?" Sveta asked.

"She had Dad to give her massages. Oh, I'm sorry, Sveta."

Sveta waved away Janie's concern. She had a husband, but would he even want to touch her? She sighed and picked at one of Diana's cookies. "John's feeling overly concerned about money again." Sveta shook her head. "So what if we can't afford our own home? Lots of children continue to live with their parents after marriage."

"Not Americans," Julia said. "They want their own space, away from their parents."

"Space? Always this need for more space. What about the support of your family?" Sveta shook her head. "And anyway, why is John so worried? With the price people are paying for up-time guns, he's got a small fortune in this room."

"You haven't suggested Puss sell some of his guns?" Julia demanded.

"Not yet." Then she noticed the horrified looks on her friends' faces. "What did I say?"

"Blasphemy!" Julia said.

"Double blasphemy," Janie agreed.

"Sveta, a West Virginian's guns are sacrosanct. Some of them are family heirlooms," Diana explained.

"There are families in Grantville where their guns are worth more than their houses, but they would never sell them," Janie said.

"So, no selling his guns?" Sveta asked.

"Not unless you want to really make Puss angry," Julia said.

"Or you're really desperate for money," Diana added.

Zielona Gora

Street fighting sucked. Puss sat with his back against the wall of a building and checked his weapons. He had a service issue Sharps carbine clone, and a pair of stainless-steel Ruger Vaquero Cowboy Action revolvers in .45 Colt he'd owned for years, a copy of a Gurkha Kukri knife one of his dad's friends had made out of an old leaf-spring, and a bag of grenades. The rest of his patrol was similarly armed, but with their own choice of fighting knife, and a pair of the service issue cap and ball revolvers in place of the Rugers.

The grenades had had proved a godsend in the battle so far. They were modeled more on the WW2 German "potato masher" than the American "pineapple" grenades, but they were miles ahead of whatever the Poles were using-probably the old spherical ball type where you had to physically light the fuse before using. At least the USE grenades could be ignited with a simple pull of a string.

Puss saw the signal from the captain of the company his patrol had been attached to as a sort of fire-support team. That meant they were ready to enter the street. He slung his carbine and raised his head to check on the target. It was less than thirty feet to the building. "Grenades."

Five men pulled grenades from the sacks each of them carried. Almost as one they checked the target, pulled the friction-igniter strings, and with covering fire from Captain Casper Havemann's rifle company, lobbed their grenades towards the target, before dropping behind cover.

Seconds later, the air full of dust and smoke, Puss and his patrol went over the wall they'd been hiding behind and, with more covering fire, ran for the building.

Puss was the first to reach the building. He dropped his shoulder to barge open the shattered door, and he was in the house. With a Ruger held before him in a two-handed grip, Puss advanced into the building. This was the part of street fighting he really didn't like. The enemy could be anywhere, and a grenade dropped from above was almost impossible to avoid.

They cleared the ground floor first, stopping only to tear down the smoldering drapes to prevent a fire. Then, with the rest of his patrol providing backup, Puss advanced up the narrow staircase. It was a bit like playing paintball back up-time, except hits were likely to hurt a heck of a lot more. At the top of the stairs he lobbed in a grenade-no sense taking risks. He followed up the blast, to find the space empty.

Puss smothered the smoking embers before they could catch anything alight while the rest of the patrol checked the other rooms. Other than the men on the ground floor, this house had been empty.

With the first house secure, a section from the infantry company flooded in and started to tear an opening in the attic space dividing wall. When they broke through Puss lobbed a grenade through the opening, and quickly followed the blast. With the top floor cleared the infantry followed a constant flow of grenades down the building until it was clear. In this way they made it to the end of the street without exposing themselves to fire from snipers.

The other side of the street had been taken out by another platoon of Captain Havemann's company, making the road in between relatively safe. Puss and his patrol sat on the steps of one of the row of houses they'd taken and took the opportunity to reload their revolvers and have a drink. They watched Captain Havemann led his headquarters section to the rubble at the end of the street, where he could plan the next step of their street clearance operation.

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

All hell broke loose as the Poles fired a massive artillery barrage along most of the front. Cannon balls tore into buildings and rubble began to fall from the damaged walls. Debris from a critically damaged building fell onto the headquarters section. Two survivors of the collapse started pulling away at the rubble. One fell to sniper fire, but the other managed to pull Captain Havemann from the rubble and drag him to cover.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Puss could already sense the company wavering around him. Havemann was a man with a towering presence. Just having him walk along the line gave his men confidence. Unfortunately, the reverse applied if something happened to him.

"Take this and give me covering fire."

"What the hell?" Lenhard Poppler started to ask as Puss thrust his carbine at him. "You goddamned idiot!" he shouted as Puss sprinted towards the fallen officer.

Puss used a feet-first baseball slide to take cover beside Captain Havemann and the man who'd dragged him to cover. A quick glance at the size of the lumps of masonry covering the rest of the headquarters section told him that these two were likely to be the only survivors. The private was a weed of a man. How he'd managed to drag the captain, who was easily twice his weight, to cover was anybody's guess. The man was still bleeding, but he'd done his best to staunch the flow from the captain's injuries.

The Poles were intensifying their fire around where Puss was huddled, but contrary to what Corporal Poppler thought, he wasn't a complete idiot. He emptied out his bag of grenades and started lobbing them over the rubble. For a few seconds he had a screen of white smoke from the black powder grenades. "Go!" he screamed at the private, while he dragged Captain Havemann over his shoulder in a fireman's lift and sprinted back to Corporal Poppler.

Eager hands relieved Puss of his load, and he took his carbine back. "Who's in charge?"

Hermann pointed to a lieutenant taking cover in a doorway. The man was signaling everyone to pull back. Unfortunately, most of the men weren't taking any notice. They were looking at Puss. Right now, he was the person they were most likely to take orders from. Puss took his lead from the lieutenant and signaled them back. Over the next hour the company made a fighting withdrawal, until they were back where they'd started that morning.

Grantville

The knock on the door was a bit more impetuous than most callers to the Trelli residence used. Except of course, when the call was urgent. The household froze, knives and forks poised in the air. Slowly all eyes congregated onto Papa, who smiled ruefully around the table and laid his knife and fork on his barely-started dinner.

"I'd better see who that is," he said as he pushed back his chair and headed for the door.

The rest of the household was silent. Sveta could almost feel covert glances in her direction. An unexpected caller at this hour could only be bad news, and the most likely bad news was that something had happened to John. A sudden burst of activity from her baby just reinforced her concern.

Papa appeared at the dining room door. "It's Ernst Schreiber, from the Grantville Times, with a photographer. John's okay, but he's been a bit heroic, again."

Sveta looked past Papa. She knew Herr Schreiber from her work. She also knew what not a lot of people didn't-that Ernst Schreiber wrote the Times' famous, no, make that infamous, Rodger Rude column. "What do you want?"

"Sveta!"

"Sorry, Mama." She pointedly didn't include Ernst Schreiber in her apology.

"Just a few photographs of Sergeant Trelli's family and maybe a few words . . ."

Whatever Ernst had intended saying was lost in the ringing of the phone. Felix, already on his feet, answered it. "We know. Herr Schreiber, from the Times has just shown up-what was that? We should expect to hear from the Daily News as well? Thank you."

Felix Trelli hung up the phone. "That was your office, Sveta. Lieutenant Dauth wanted to warn you that Scoop has filed a story about John."

"Scoop!" All the terror she felt about when Ernst knocked on the door found an outlet in that scornful word. She turned on Ernst. "You're trusting something Scoop filed?"

Ernst shrugged. "It's a good human interest story. Local boy haul's officer from the jaws of death, then leads the officer's command in a fighting withdrawal. The press office in Magdeburg has confirmed enough of it that we intend running the story."

If the press office in Magdeburg was confirming anything Scoop filed . . . Sveta swallowed bile at what that suggested. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash of light. Blinking furiously, Sveta tried to focus on Ernst's photographer. "Did you just take a photograph?" she demanded.

It was a bit of a redundant question, as Jacob Fiedler was already swapping out the spent bulb in the flash unit he'd just used. He nodded anyway.

"Don't even think about doing that again."

"That's not very nice, Frau Anderovna. Jacob's just doing his job. We just want a bit of human interest to accompany the main story."

"What is the main story, Herr Schreiber?" Felix asked.

Next day

"ST. GEORGE DOES IT AGAIN!" The headline in the Grantville Times blared out in seventy-two point letters.

Sveta stared at the photograph under the headline. Whoever it was who said a picture was worth a thousand words had something like that photograph in mind. Even after being screened so it could be printed in the paper, you could sense the urgency as the man ran out of the cloud of smoke carrying a man over his shoulders while helping another limp to safety. It was bad enough he'd earned a St. George Medal saving some people from a rabid dog, now he had to risk enemy fire to rescue some soldiers as well.

"Why would he risk his life like that?" she asked Mama.

"Because that's the kind of person John is."

Sveta was close to tears. She was learning to admire the man she was married to, and the silly fool seemed intent on getting himself killed. "I wish he would stop. He's going to get himself killed if he keeps this up."

"Have you ever thought that maybe John doesn't think he deserves you, and that if he proves he's a good soldier, he might be more worthy of you?"

Sveta was stunned by the suggestion, and burst into tears. "But he's given me a family."

Suzanne reached out and stroked Sveta's hair. "I don't think John knows how important a real family is to you, Sveta. I'm reminded of something Betty told me John said back in June, when he first took you around to her place. Do you remember what he said when she suggested that he escort you to Jabe McDougal's wedding?"

Sveta tried to remember back to that horrible day. Slowly the words came back to her. "That a girl with my looks could have anybody she wanted."

"Have you ever wondered what John might have been thinking when he said that?"

Sveta had totally forgotten that conversation. She thought about it now, and came to a surprising conclusion. "John thinks I'm pretty?"

Suzanne grinned. "A bit more than pretty. You're a very beautiful girl."

Sveta thought of the most beautiful girl she knew. "As beautiful as Julia?"

"At least as beautiful as Julia."

"Oh!" Sveta had never really seen herself as being beautiful. She knew she was better than passable, but beautiful was always what other people were called, never her. "More beautiful than Donetta?"

Immediately Sveta wished the name unsaid. She glanced at Mama. There was moment of shock, and then a smug smile appeared on Mama's face.

"Madam's beauty was barely skin deep, Sveta. Your beauty runs deeper, and will last longer." Then Mama enveloped Sveta in a massive hug. "Don't worry, darling, everything's going to turn out all right."

Sveta luxuriated in Mama's embrace. She was happy Mama had accepted her. And even happier that her baby would be born into this wonderful family. Now, if only this war would end . . .

****

Northwest Passage, Part Nine

Herbert Sakalaucks

Bay of Biscay, March 1634

Two days into the voyage and habits were already forming. Meals were done in shifts, with the men usually eating last. Aboard the Grande Dame, Pierre Marion stood in line with a pail and bag to collect the evening meal for the group he ate with. He watched the cook serve out the helpings, one piece of meat and bread for every diner in a group. Captain de Bussy had laid down strict rules that anyone trying to steal an extra serving would be put on half-rations for a week. Fellow passengers made sure the rule was followed.

Rough tables were set up outside the cabins and each table had a bucket to draw the meat ration. Pierre ate with the five other men who made up the informal leadership for the La Chaume passengers. This was his meal to get the pail of pork and the bag of bread. As he leaned against the bulkhead waiting his turn, he could feel a hum from the ship's rigging transmitted throughout the frame of the ship. The tension on the rigging from the wind sounded like the ship was singing. It wasn't the only tension on board. As he watched the people on deck, it was evident that it was not a happy ship. The announcement, as they sailed, that passengers would be charged for the voyage from the money promised for the purchase of their land had left many passengers seething with resentment. The captain had posted sentries throughout the ship as a precaution.

"How many?" Pierre's reverie was interrupted by the cook. It was his turn. The ladle was poised to serve up the pork. "Hurry up, I don't have all day."

The scowl brought a hurried "Six," from Pierre. At lunch, one group went hungry when they angered the cook. Life would be miserable for a week if Pierre caused George to miss his meal. The cook dropped five pieces into the bucket and passed over a full loaf of bread. The cook gave a snort, "Enjoy the bread, it's the last fresh thing you'll get this trip. From here on it's strictly biscuits"

Pierre didn't budge and held out his bucket. "That was only five pieces, I said six!"

"Don't get in a dither. One piece was bigger than the rest. It counts as two. Now if you want extras, they'll cost you."

Pierre looked at the meat. One was slightly larger than the rest, but two were smaller. The sly look on the cook's face gave away the game. If he could skimp on the servings, he could sell the leftovers and no one would be the wiser. It was going to be a long voyage so Pierre made up his mind quickly to stop the scam now. He crowded the cook and said, "The captain said no lying about portions, or we'd be on half-rations. Maybe I should call the officer on watch and see what happens to a cook who shorts a passenger?" Although a head shorter than the cook, he shoved the bucket into the cook's gut to emphasize his point.

The cook backed off and quickly served up another piece of meat. "No need for that. It's a long voyage and the captain wants everyone treated equally." The watch officer was staring at the group to see if trouble was imminent.

Pierre decided that he didn't need to be identified as a troublemaker by the officer so he simply added a last, quiet, comment. "More like the cook wants to skim a little extra for himself. I'm going to pass the word so folks watch you closer." Pierre glanced back over his shoulder as he headed down the ladder to the cabin where his friends waited for their meal. The officer had returned to his previous work. As he reached the bottom, he stumbled over the step that wasn't there. The gloom down below was a sharp contrast to the evening sun. He got his bearings from the argument still going on at his table. He passed a sentry on the way. It was one of Captain Reneuf's men. He paused to chat, but one whiff of the pork and the sentry turned green, stuffed a hand over his mouth and raced up the ladder. Even down below, Pierre could hear the faint sounds of someone getting violently sick over the ship's side. He walked over to the table and set the bucket and bread down.

Phillipe pointed with his knife in the direction the sentry had left. "What did you do to that boy? One look at you and he ran off.!"

"I think it's more like he hasn't got his sea legs and he smelled the pork," Pierre laughed, but then turned serious. "We need to watch the cook. He tried to short me some meat and wanted a bribe to make it up."

Phillipe slammed his knife into the tabletop. "Just like I was saying! Those stinking thieves need to have something done to stop them. If we don't, we'll all be bond servants by the time we land!"

"I know what you think, Phillipe. So does most of the ship." Pierre pointed to the vacant spot where the sentry had stood. "You keep up your loud complaining and someone's going to report you. Maybe they even have already. Reneuf's a good enough sort that he might overlook it. Most others won't." He waved toward the sentry's previous location. "Why do you think he's here? The captain's worried that something might happen."

"And if it does, so what? We Huguenots have always had to fight for our rights. There's enough of us on this ship to do what needs doing. Or are you scared?" Phillipe tried to stare Pierre down.

"You're a fool. The captain's word is law on a ship. What you're hinting at could be called mutiny. The answer for that is a rope. Even if we initially succeeded, there's still the rest of the fleet. We'll get through this trouble. They can't get any worse. Just wait until we land." Pierre pulled out a short knife and started to serve out the meat. "With all the land where we're going, it will be easy to practice our customs without someone watching our every move." Phillipe sat down, but still kept grumbling. Pierre noticed though, that when the sentry returned, his friend kept his voice low.

****

Captain de Bussy's problems had just gotten worse. Bishop de Perpignan sat in front of him waiting for an answer to his request. De Bussy toyed with a writing quill and knife trying to find a way out from the dilemma the bishop had presented him. As a good Catholic, he could not deny the bishop's request to hold a mass each Sunday. As a ship's captain, it was the last thing he wanted to do. With a ship full of Huguenots, only a few of the ship's crew would attend mass voluntarily. The bishop knew that and was pressing for forced attendance. With tensions already running high, it could be the trigger for a mutiny among the passengers. With a sigh, he placed the quill and knife back in the desk drawer and squared his shoulders. He was responsible for the whole ship and his own soul. He would imitate Solomon and divide the baby. "Your Grace, I will allow a sermon, but it will be done before I hold my weekly talk with the crew and passengers. There will not be enough time for a complete mass. That is the best I can do."

"Captain, I must protest! The heretics must be made to attend a full service. I demand you let me hold a full mass!" De Perpignan was a firm believer in the principles of the Inquisition, and secular issues held little merit in his view.

De Bussy stood up and glared at the bishop. His answer was measured, with barely suppressed rage. "Your Grace, on this ship, I am the only person that may demand anything! Be satisfied with what you've been given. This is the second time you've been told. Once more and you will regret the result. You may go." He rang a small bell and his clerk appeared. "Escort the bishop to his cabin!" The clerk gently took de Perpignan by the elbow and showed him out. He had heard the entire exchange. By the next morning, the entire ship knew what the bishop planned.

When Sunday morning arrived, the settlers and crew gathered for the captain's speech. The seas were running high and held the promise of a coming storm. Many of the settlers remained below, with seasickness as their excuse. Some of the children frolicked on deck, enjoying the limited freedom. Captain de Bussy stood on the aftercastle, trying to gauge the temperament of the crowd gathered below. In his twenty years of sailing, he'd never had a hint of mutiny aboard a ship he commanded. Today he had his doubts. He'd posted extra idlers at the stern, out of sight from the crowd gathered below, just in case of trouble. Other ships in the fleet had reported minor problems, but his Grande Dame was far and away the most troubled. He heard a commotion forward and saw the basis for most of his problems pushing through the crowd in full priestly raiment. The fool just couldn't recognize the seriousness of the situation! The richly appointed Catholic garb was sure to anger the Huguenots. At least his two priests following him were dressed plainly. He nodded to his bosun. The squeal of the pipes brought everyone's attention aft.

De Bussy stepped up to the railing. "It's always been a tradition on my ships that I addressed the entire company on the first Sunday of the month. We are sailing to a new land, where a fresh start awaits all of the settlers in the fleet. We are crowded on all the ships, but with three commonsense rules, we should all reach the new land safely. First, any order from a ship's officer must be obeyed without question. They have years of experience at sea and know what's best in any situation. Second, food and water are sufficient for the voyage, but must not be wasted. What we have must last! And third, follow the eleven commandments." He paused, waiting for the inevitable question.

One of the settlers in back called out. "Eleven, I thought there were ten?"

"You have the ten Moses gave and then I added the eleventh. Thou shalt not get drunk! Any disorderly conduct from drinking shall be punished with ten strokes of the lash. Are there any other questions?" He hurried along, hoping to forestall any complaints. "I will give everyone a chance to air grievances each Sunday morning before the midday meal. Just report to my cabin and let my clerk know what you need to speak about. I will take his report and then speak with you." By this time the bishop had joined him at the railing. "We will now have a short service by Bishop de Perpignan to request our Lord's protection on this long voyage."

A low rumble started from the crowd. Pastor Bigeault called for quiet. The angry rumbles subsided but were replaced by conversations. The bishop glared, but launched into the service he had planned. The rising wind drowned out much of his words. After ten minutes of unintelligible half-heard Latin, Elie turned to Francois and, in a low voice, suggested that he bring Champion up for some fresh air and exercise. "There might not be another chance for a while. The weather looks like we might have a storm coming." Francois was overjoyed at the prospect and raced below. The bishop was now into a sermon in French and caught the crowd's attention.

His comments on heretics and the Lord's judgment of them brought catcalls from the crowd. He ignored them and continued, "The Lord said that he will lift up the just in his hand. But the evil ones he will cast down into the bottomless pit," and then paused for effect. Pastor Bigeault cocked his head to one side at that. It wasn't quite how he remembered how the verse went, but maybe something had been lost in translation. The bishop continued, "He will cause . . ."

He had stopped and was staring at something at the rear of the crowd. Francois had just emerged from below with Champion, the big white dog he and Elie had rescued on the road to La Rochelle. The bishop did a passable imitation of a fish out of water. Then he regained his voice and cried out. "Someone stop that thief!" He pointed toward Francois. Everyone just stood there. Some had been dozing and thought it was part of the sermon. Others thought he had lost his place. The bishop then grabbed the nearby bosun and shoved him down the stairs toward Francois. "Arrest that boy. He stole my dog!" As the bosun slowly realized what the bishop meant, he started to head toward Francois. Elie quickly stepped through the crowd to block his path. The bishop hobbled down the stairs after the bosun, followed closely by Captain de Bussy. Elie shielded Francois and Champion from the bosun and stood his ground. The crowd closed in and things began to look ugly.

De Bussy pulled the few sailors in the crowd away. His worst fears were coming to life. He had seconds before a fight would start. He grabbed the bishop by his collar and hauled him back, yelling as he did, "Stand fast! No one here arrests anyone without my permission. And this pig-" He shook the bishop. "-has no right at all!"

Using the bishop as a battering ram, he forced his way through the crowd to where Elie and Francois stood with Champion. He released the bishop and demanded, "What is the story here?" He pointed to Elie to start.

"The boy found the dog trapped in some bushes outside La Rochelle. He'd been there for some time and was nearly dead. I crawled in and freed the dog. He's been with me since. We asked around when we arrived and no one knew anything about him. Ask Captain Reneuf, he was there when we arrived."

Reneuf was across the deck, but yelled out that what Elie said was correct. The captain turned to the bishop. "And your side?"

De Perpignan drew himself up and straightened his vestments. "That is my dog. There was an accident on the road to La Rochelle and the dog disappeared. The boy must have taken him. I was injured and couldn't track him down." He reached to grab Champion. With a low growl, the dog threatened to take off the hand. The bishop drew back to strike the dog with his cane.

Elie clamped a hand on the arm and said softly, "You strike that dog and I'll impale you with that cane."

The bishop turned to de Bussy. "Are you going to allow this heretic to abuse me like this? I have friends in high places!"

De Bussy took a deep breath to calm the fury he felt before he answered. "I've told you twice before that I am the supreme authority on this ship and warned you what would happen if you violated that again. The boy is no thief. If the dog's any judge, you have more to answer for. The boy keeps the dog. Your actions and reputation make me question why I should remain a Catholic." He turned to the bosun. "Escort His Eminence to his cabin and see that he remains there." He stepped up on a hatch cover to be seen and heard by the crowd. "I apologize for the disgraceful behavior of this churchman. You will not be bothered by him again. Disperse and prepare for the meal." He waved the cook over. "Mister Gilbert, everyone who wants gets an extra portion of meat with their meal." A cheer went up from those close enough to hear. The news spread quickly throughout the rest of the ship.

****

While the atmosphere on the ship improved, the weather rapidly worsened. De Bussy was kept busy for some time before he could go below and confront the bishop. He had the bishop brought to his cabin, along with the two priests. When de Perpignan started to protest his treatment, de Bussy seized him by the collar and slammed him into a chair. One of the priests made a move to intervene, but one look from de Bussy squelched the intention immediately. De Bussy planted himself in the bishop's face and laid into him. "I don't care who your patron is! Your thoughtless actions today nearly caused a mutiny. I warned you what would happen if you usurped my authority again!" The bishop shifted in the chair, but the captain shoved him back down. "You are confined to your cabin for the remainder of the voyage. The only times you can leave are to answer nature's call and one hour on deck for exercise each day. You will speak to no one during that hour. Your priests will bring you your meals and will be your only visitors. Now get out of my sight!"

Father Brussard helped the bishop from the chair and gave him support to hobble back to his cabin. Father Valmont stopped and spoke briefly to de Bussy before leaving. "Please don't judge your church by his example. All men are fallible."

De Bussy sighed, "I know, Father, but there are too many like him. Please see that he follows the rules. I don't enjoy doing this."

"I will. Just watch the other. He's cut from the same cloth."

Rather than going to his cabin, de Perpignan asked Father Brussard to escort him on deck for some fresh air. "I'm not sure if we'll have a chance to do this for a few days. Even a landsman like me can see a storm's brewing. Besides, it may be the last chance we have to talk without someone eavesdropping on us." As they walked they discussed what could be done about de Bussy's edict.

Father Brussard endured the bishop's complaints for sometime before finally interjecting, "Your Grace, I am in contact with Monsieur Mousnier. Perhaps he can plead your case to Admiral Duquesne and have the edict revoked." Brussard was less than forthcoming on his relationship with Mousnier. He had reached an understanding with Mousnier prior to sailing to expand his church responsibilities into secular areas once they made landfall. As Gaston's sole agent with the fleet, de Perpignan was isolated and virtually powerless. Brussard hoped to exploit that situation to his advantage. If he could get the bishop indebted to him, it would further strengthen his position.

After an hour pacing the aftercastle, de Perpignan asked Brussard to give him some time to meditate alone.

"Certainly, Your Grace. If you need me during the evening, just call, and I'll be there." As Brussard descended the ladder, a wave broke over the bow and sluiced down the deck. He had to grab hold of the railing to keep from being swept off his feet. He thought about warning the bishop about the slickness of the steps, but reconsidered. It would sound too much like a nagging wife, and the bishop was already vexed enough. He waited until the water receded and then made his way to his cabin.

De Perpignan remained on the aftercastle, leaning on his cane and contemplated what had befallen him that day. The two seamen manning the whipstaff left him to his thoughts. The seas continued to build and presented a stark picture of God's power. The symbolism was lost on the bishop as he seethed about his ill-treatment by the captain. Down on the main deck, a few hardy passengers braved the elements to get some fresh air. Down below, most of the passengers were regretting the extra portions they'd eaten earlier. Eventually, only two men remained on deck. They had been fishermen in their youth and were enjoying the evening.

De Perpignan finally tired of the relentless waves and decided to turn in. He hobbled across the deck and started to descend the ladder. Just then, the ship lurched as it sank into a deeper trough. His grip on the railing slipped and he was pitched onto the ship's rail. He still held his cane and couldn't get a grip with his free hand.

Across the deck the two passengers saw his plight. As the younger one started to go to the bishop's aid, the older man held him back. "Didn't you listen to the sermon today? He made a big deal that the Lord would raise up the righteous. Since he seems to think he's so righteous, he should have no problem raising himself back on deck."

The bishop's struggles caused him to slide further overboard. The only thing holding him was a large splinter that had caught on his stole. As the two watched, the splinter broke and the bishop plunged headfirst overboard without a sound. "Well, I guess he wasn't as righteous as he thought he was. That was definitely a downward direction. The devil seems to have taken his own." With that, the two decided to retire before someone noticed the bishop's absence.

The next morning, after breakfast, Father Valmont went to the bishop's cabin to see how he was feeling. The seas were still running high, with a near gale force wind. Many of the settlers were below decks, sick in their hammocks. He assumed the bishop was suffering from mal de mere too. He was shocked to find the cabin empty, the cot unused. He immediately went to Father Brussard's small cabin to see if the bishop might have stayed there overnight. Brussard was awake but under the weather. He was also alone. Valmont grabbed him and pulled him to the door. "The bishop is missing!" Brussard shook his head in confusion. Valmont dragged him across the hall and showed him the empty cabin. "We must notify the captain and have him organize a search." Brussard fumbled on a pair of slippers and then followed Father Valmont to the captain's cabin. His thoughts were centered on how soon he could be assigned to the bishopric office.

De Bussy was seated at his desk, updating his daily log when Father Valmont knocked. He set down his quill, after wiping it dry and answered, "Come in!" He was surprised by Valmont's appearance. "Not bad news, I hope."

"I don't know. The bishop is missing! His bed is unslept in and neither Brussard nor I have seen him since we retired to our quarters last night." Brussard arrived just then and his nod confirmed Valmont's statement. His green tinge showed that the bishop wasn't his highest priority at the moment.

De Bussy rang for his clerk. "Summon the officers. It seems the bishop is missing. Have the watch officer summon the off duty watches." After the clerk left, he spoke to both priests quietly. "I'll have the ship searched completely, but I hold little hope. He may be sick or injured someplace." After a pause he finished the thought, "Or his body is someplace out of sight. Though it's more likely he went overboard in the storm.

"I'll have the crew look for signs on what happened. After yesterday's incident, it's possible foul play is involved. I'll question anyone who may have been involved or seen something."

Two hours later, after a search that left no area unchecked, the only sign found was a small shred of cloth on the ship's rail. It appeared to have been caught on a splinter and ripped off a cloth similar in color to the cape the bishop had been wearing. The two helmsmen were questioned intensively, but all they could remember was that the bishop had spent some time on deck with Father Brussard. They remembered the priest leaving by himself, and the bishop remaining by the railing, staring out at the seas. They thought he left a short time later and they heard and saw nothing afterward. The passengers were questioned. The two that had witnessed the accident swore they heard nothing while on deck. No one asked if they had seen anything. De Bussy suspected one of the settlers may have had something to do with the disappearance, but the physical evidence of the cloth seemed to point toward an accident. Since nothing could be proven either way, de Bussy opted for the less controversial answer.

That evening, after supper, the two priests held a brief memorial service for the Bishop de Perpignan. Only the captain and the off-duty officers attended.

The next day, de Bussy rendezvoused with Admiral Duquesne's ship and had himself rowed over to deliver the news in person. The admiral shrugged the news off. "I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. From what you say, if he'd been on my ship, I would have heaved him overboard myself. With the injuries he had, an accident is quite likely. You did all you can do. Just make sure to write up a detailed report that I can send to the cardinal when I get a chance. There's no hurry. We have weeks before we even make landfall."

De Bussy heaved a mental sigh of relief. With de Perpignan's connections to Monsieur Gaston, the admiral could have chosen to sacrifice him to deflect criticism. He boarded his boat and returned to the Grande Dame.

The Bahama Islands, May, 1634

The opportunities were there for the taking. Michel Mousnier leaned back in his chair at the wardroom table and surveyed his fellow leaders of the fleet. It promised to be an interesting day. What little breeze reached the room brought a hint of another warm day ahead. Admiral Duquesne had summoned the leaders to a final meeting, while the fleet took on water and finished minor repairs from the crossing. Amazingly, no ships had been lost. The only episode of note had been the death of Bishop de Perpignan. Michel smiled at that, since it removed Monsieur Gaston's most visible supporter in the expedition as well as someone who could have upset his plans. It had the added benefit of providing an unexpected ally. Father Brussard should prove most beneficial in the plans that were unfolding. His ambition should be easily channeled. Admiral Duquesne had given every indication that he would leave all political decisions to Mousnier and Champlain, once landfall was made. The Calverts were an enigma. They had remained apart from the rest of the fleet and seemed anxious to head north. The two frigates they were taking with them would be missed, but they should settle the issues with the northern colonies. He just had to make sure the Calverts sailed soon.

That left Champlain. Samuel seemed to have regained his old vitality as they sailed west. He was like a schoolboy going to meet his first love. The warm weather did seem to be affecting him. If Champlain could just be convinced to honor his commitment to sail for Jamestown, the southern colony would be left in Michel's care. Duquesne rapped on the table to get everyone's attention.

"I'll try to keep this brief. The day promises to be another hot one and the ships are just about ready to sail. I'm sure most of you have some last minute details to attend to." He turned to Captain Villareal. "Were you able to repair that leak that was causing so much concern? I don't want you sailing to New Amsterdam with questions on your ship's seaworthiness."

Michel held his breath. He'd heard of the problem and he wanted Villareal out of the way. Villareal nodded. "My carpenter located the problem. A butt joint had sprung. He's replaced the board and its tight now." Michel stifled a grin. With Villareal assigned to the New Amsterdam expedition, his only opposition in the fleet was now out of the picture. Villareal had made no bones that he favored Gaston.

Duquesne continued, "In that case then, we depart on the morning tide. Lord Baltimore, your ships will sail for New Amsterdam, in company with Villiers and Besancon. Once they have helped you complete your mission at New Amsterdam, they will continue on and land a garrison at Plymouth. From there, they will return directly to France."

The two frigate captains were beaming at the news they would return home before the hurricane season. The Calverts seemed satisfied and didn't raise any objections.

There was a knock on the door that interrupted the discussion. The admiral's steward had brought refreshments. While he served the wine, the admiral gave the two frigate captains detailed instructions on how they were to conduct their operations. When Duquesne began to cover what was to be done with the Dutch if they didn't leave peacefully, Champlain objected.

"Admiral, will it really be necessary to level the town? There are women and children there. Surely some accommodation can be made for those that want to stay?"

"Monsieur Champlain, you must remember that we are at war with the Dutch. If New France is to prosper, it cannot harbor enemies in its midst. We will offer transportation back to Holland on the frigates and the Ark and Dove, or they can go to the islands in the Indies. But they will go! If they choose to fight, then the consequences are on their heads. Cardinal Richelieu was very emphatic on that point. This is the one area I have no leeway in. You have a job to do in the Virginias. The last word we had there was that the settlers there were grudgingly accepting the transfer to France. I need your skills there to make the transition as peaceful as possible. Don't you agree?"

The admiral had backed Champlain into a corner that he could not graciously back out from. Grudgingly, he accepted the admiral's decision. It was hard for Michel to refrain from smiling. Everything had gone as he hoped. The admiral proceeded to agree to send a frigate and corvette with Champlain and his ship of Catholic settlers. The frigate would return south to the fleet after disembarking the company of soldiers it was transporting. The corvette would remain stationed there for protection against pirates and any possible rebellions by the current settlers.

Duquesne then turned to Michel. "That will leave you with two frigates and two ships with Huguenots and three ships with transportees. I will remain with your group until they are settled and then take one frigate back to France. Two will remain for protection against any Spanish attacks, unless you have another idea?"

This was the opening he had hoped for. Michel casually replied, "Would it be possible for Monsieur Champlain's ships to travel with us to our destination? With the added manpower, I would be more confident that we could get proper fortifications erected to aid in repelling any Spanish incursions. I'm sure the delay would be no more than two or three weeks before he could continue on his way, but Louisville would be much safer for the delay."

Duquesne looked toward Champlain, who sat there contemplating the proposal. "I see no harm in that," he replied.

Looking around the cabin for any other comment, Duquesne finally agreed, "Very well. Monsieur Champlain will remain with the fleet until the fortifications are settled for Louisville. Lord Baltimore will proceed directly to New Amsterdam. That's all, gentlemen. We'll sail on the tide."

Michel Mousnier graciously thanked Samuel Champlain for his assistance. Little did Samuel realize that he had just turned over the south of New France to Michel's control.

****

Second Chance Bird, Episode Four

Garrett W. Vance

Chapter Eighteen: Birdwatching

SouthCoast of Mauritius

The days passed by slowly on their stranded shore, becoming weeks, and now nearly two months. Pam Miller, her companions Dore and Gerbald and the survivors of Redbird's crewbusied themselves with various projects to increase their comfort and safety. The sailors used the tools recovered from the shipwreck to improve their shelters, Dore and Pam gathered the fruits and nuts they were sure were safe to eat, while Gerbald searched for game-birds (with Pam's rare blessing for such activities) and fished the bay along with the sailors. They were all alive and in reasonable physical health; staying busy was what they did to remain sane. Despite these various distractions they all felt the world was leaving them farther and farther behind with each passing day.

Old Fritjof had taken it upon himself to be Pam's caretaker. He had cut all the underbrush out from under her stilted hut and made sure that there were no creepy-crawlies lurking there. He cleared a sandy trail from her door down to the beach and swept it clear of leaves and debris every morning before she woke up, but not before leaving a coconut bowl full of cool water from the spring on her porch. Pam was embarrassed by the attention and told him he didn't have to go to all that trouble over her but the white-haired gentleman just shyly nodded and continued to look after her anyway.

"It is no trouble for me, Frau Pam. It is good for a man to have work to do and even better when it is in the service of a fine and important person such as yourself. Don't fret now. You have the princess' work to do. Just call on Fritjof if you need anything. I will be there for you."

Pam was touched by his eagerness to please and thanked him profusely, asking if there were anything she could do for him. Fritjof smiled with his few remaining teeth, his blue eyes still bright and sparkling in his long lived and wind wrinkled face.

"No, no, I am a simple fellow and have few needs. But, if it were no trouble to you, one day when you meet again with Princess Kristina I would be greatly honored if you would pass my humble respects to her. That would be a true kindness to a faithful servant of the Vasa such as myself."

Pam promised to do so, and didn't say it aloud but intended to make sure that on that future day Fritjof would be right there with her to give his respects himself. That would be a real treat for the old guy. I'm going to make that happen. He can get that precious photo autographed in person! The thought gave her a very warm and pleasant feeling. She realized that she had grown very fond of these stouthearted men of the north and that it was a blessing to be caught in such trying circumstances with such trustworthy people around her. Some day I might even look back on this castaway life and miss it . . . but not too much.

One overcast morning Pam and Gerbald, finding they were stocked up with enough food to last several days and utterly bored with life at camp, decided to follow the river into the interior. They had been too busy to explore further since the triumphant discovery of coffee a few weeks prior and Pam was absolutely itching to get back to her search for the elusive dodo.

The going was fairly easy. They passed through a corridor of grassy meadows between the river and the forest's edge. The sun burned the clouds off around eleven, at which point it became hot enough to chase them into the shade of the woods. The forest floor was clear of thick underbrush, a mossy parkway through ancient tree trunks. Pam kept her eyes open for new birds along the way, occasionally stopping to observe and sketch one of the myriad species that inhabited the island. She had decided that her best bet on finding any dodos was to simply stop looking for them, contenting herself with the many other amazing birds that inhabited these isolated forests. She wondered how she would ever manage to catalog them all. It would take ages to do it right . . . but then again she might have that kind of time if they couldn't find a way off this mysterious island. If she could find natural substitutes to replenish her diminishing paper and pencil supplies.

That thought made her mood sour despite the beauty of the venerable groves and soon she was just slogging along in a funk, not really paying attention to her surroundings at all. Just as she was sinking into a really bad mood Gerbald let out the low whistle that meant "Look at that," one of the signals they had developed in their years spent birdwatching in the wilds of the Thuringerwald. Pam froze, carefully scanning the tree limbs for a choice specimen. Gerbald gave her a nudge with his elbow and pointed downward with a small movement of his head.

Pam followed his gaze to a large, odd-looking bird standing just six feet away from them. It had sturdy yellow legs and cracked a nut with its grotesquely large and powerful bill. The bird regarded them calmly with a bright yellow eye turreted in a beak that covered nearly all of its head. Overall it was awkwardly-shaped and a bit comical looking, with fluffy white tufts of feathers puffing out at its tiny wings and arched tail, just as it was in all the illustrations she had seen. It stood a bit more upright and was slightly thinner than it had been portrayed in art. Pam's eyes were wide as she marveled at the living creature here, its breath moving the downy gray feathers of its chest, its ponderous beak clacking softly as it swallowed the nut. It was the strangest bird she had ever seen, a bird she had once never hoped to see, a bird lost forever in her former world. It was the poster child of the doomed and extinct, now, now alive right in front of her stood the dodo.

The three of them stood there for a very long time, content to stare at each other. At last the dodo gave them a dismissive coo (just like a dove!) and dipped its plated head to search for another nut. It found one and the powerful beak anchored on its large skull effortlessly crushed the shell with a satisfying crack, sending the meat down the gullet. Pam felt her face grow hot and wet, she was crying, crying the tears of joy a child might if through some happy magic she found herself in the living presence of a real Santa Claus, stepped out of the chimneys of legend in jolly flesh and blood.

"It's so ugly!" she said softly with a laugh in her voice "And it's also the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" She took Gerbald's hand for confidence, then together they took first one, then another step closer to the dodo, which simply ignored them as it continued its nut-cracking. At last Pam reached out with trembling fingers to gently touch the downy gray feathers. "It's real." she whispered. "This is really happening." She gasped as she saw two more dodos foraging nearby, blithely paying no attention whatsoever to the humans among them.

"Congratulations, Pam," Gerbald told her in the solemn tones of one who has witnessed something wonderful. "Now we know they still live and our sacrifices were not in vain. One way or another we will find a way to save the dodo. Your mission will be a success, Pam, I swear this."

Chapter Nineteen: Dodo Do's and Don'ts

The news of Pam finally meeting the elusive dodos face to face was met with cheers back at the camp. The sailors understood that finding those odd birds was very important to her and to their princess even if they were still a bit cloudy on why. They offered whatever services they could give in supporting Pam's efforts to study the dodo although Pam couldn't think of much they could do beyond the daily task of making sure they had enough food. Pam knew that the men were growing more and more frustrated with their isolation. She realized they were keeping quiet about it in order to give her time to study the dodos now that she had found them, waiting for her to satisfy her needs before making any attempts to leave their encampment in search of the colonists and possible escape from the island. For her part, Pam felt guilty at letting her desire to observe the dodo supersede looking for the very likely captured colonists, but it was a guilt she decided she would accept, just for a while. They had, after all, come all this way! Rationalizations well in hand, Pam and Gerbald marched off into the woods daily, enjoying their prize.

Pam was in a state of bliss as she began her studies. It was as if some beloved cartoon characters from her childhood had come to magical life before her eyes, going about their daily habits for her sheer joy and entertainment. She sometimes shook her head in wonder that she was actually seeing living, breathing dodos. Finally, something good about time travel! Following quietly along behind the humorously waddling creatures Pam observed their behavior with delight. Their rare cries reminded Pam of young geese and they also chuckled to themselves while foraging, a sound much like a pigeon makes. Increasingly Pam thought they might be descended from or perhaps cousins of pigeons.

"Pam, are the dodos eating pebbles?" Gerbald asked, no longer bothering to whisper as the dodos completely ignored their presence. As long as they didn't make too many sudden movements the dodos were unconcerned at having large primates in their midst.

"They don't actually eat them, they swallow them down into their gullet to help digestion. The stones aid in grinding up the food, making it easier to digest," Pam answered, watching a young specimen in hot pursuit of a stumbling beetle.

"I should try that the next time we have dried squid," Gerbald mused.

The dodos could move surprisingly quickly in pursuit of scuttling prey. Like many bird species they were opportunists, consuming whatever they could manage to get their ponderous beaks around. A sudden lunge and the dodo's sharp bill might snap up a juicy frog or wriggling worm. Pam was sure that amazing appendage could deliver a nasty wound if a dodo was provoked and stayed well clear of it, always moving calmly and not getting too near its business end. As far as the dodos were concerned, Pam thought they must consider her and Gerbald tremendous bores. They were ignored totally as the clucking, contented dodos went about their endless and not too difficult search for food.

Gerbald managed to find out just how powerful those beaks could be when he accidentally stumbled through a dodo nest. The nest was a rather unimpressive shallow depression dug in the mulchy forest floor, lined with a bit of down and twigs, but it was home to a magnificent white egg as big as softball. The mother of said egg, who was eating some nuts nearby, let out a shockingly loud whistle like a kettle on the boil and charged Gerbald with credible speed, her beak clacking loudly and gray, downy feathers fluffed out to give her a more menacing appearance. She was a lot larger than a turkey if not nearly as big as an ostrich and her head rose nearly to his abdomen. Gerbald shouted "Yikes," one of his many American TV-isms, and backpedaled away from the angry creature.

Pam watched all this from the safety of a nearby tree. As soon as the ruckus started she had gone up the nearest one, standard procedure for non-climbing critter attacks in the Thuringerwald, good for wild dogs and boars but not much help against bears. As Gerbald turned to break into a run the outraged mother stretched her neck out farther than Pam would have guessed possible and closed sharply around his booted ankle. Gerbald yelped even louder, then managed to shake the dodo loose with a twist. Pam thought that the bill's sharp tip might have pierced the leather. The dodo seemed satisfied at having exacted her toll in flesh and doubled back to make a big scene of stalking around the nest while squawking loudly, a clear message that anyone else wishing to disturb it was going to get the same thing that guy had. By now Gerbald himself was up a tree, massaging his ankle.

"Jesus crippled Christ on crutches cut from the cross!" he cursed in an accent that was more West Virginian than German, his voice full of annoyance. Pam wouldn't say her friend had been afraid during the encounter. Gerbald didn't do fear, but this was as discombobulated as she had seen him in a long time.

"Good gawd, where did you come up with that bit of blasphemy? Dore would pop a vein!"

"Thanks. It's a Gerbald original. That hurt like hell! Mother Dodo put a hole in my boot and even broke the skin!"

"Consider it a sacrifice for science. Ya know, I never would have gotten to witness that nest protecting behavior without you because I'm not dumb enough to actually piss one off." Pam started laughing despite herself. The whole thing, from her safe vantage point, had been nothing short of hilarious. "Channel Thirteen Mega Monster Afternoon Presents: Gerbald the Fearless Dinosaur Hunter vs the Menace of The Mad Dodo Mama!"

Gerbald laughed along with her. It was only his pride that had been in any danger. The dodo, despite its bluster and fearsome beak, hadn't been any kind of real threat to him.

They stayed in their trees for a while, watching as the mollified hen settled down on her lovely big egg, from which vantage point she favored them both with stern glares until, ruffled feathers at last relaxing into their normal softness, she fell asleep.

On their way back to camp that evening, Pam looked back on the mother dodo's defense and began to feel sad. Gerbald had been caught off guard, but if he had really wanted to he could have dispatched the creature with ease. She realized now that all his actions had been to avoid having to injure the dodo rather than to protect himself. Pam now felt embarrassed at having teased him. Even an inexperienced woodsman, say a sailor or a farmer, would ultimately prevail against the big flightless birds.

A darker thought came then, something she knew she must eventually face. Even if she could control human depredations against the dodo, there was still the danger posed by introduced species. Humans had killed their share of the poor things, creatures evolved with no natural predators present and completely unequipped to deal with any serious threats. But from all Pam had read and surmised, the major threat to the dodo's future would be the foreign animals that would inevitably arrive with humanity, whether by design or not. Yes, she would try to stop that invasion and she would make some difference. After all, she had not allowed her colonists to bring along any mammals other than some horses, cattle and sheep, but the rats would be on that ship, too. Even immaculate Redbird carried vermin, despite her and Dore's efforts to eradicate them. How many rats had swum ashore during the wreck? Would they find today's nest and break that pretty shell into a hundred sticky pieces while the poor mother squawked and chased them about in vain?

Gawd, Pam, she thought, there is no point in fretting about this now. We haven't even gotten from Point B to C yet in this mess and here you are worrying about Y. She smiled, deciding to chew on the problem a little more anyway. Well, it's going to come up eventually. Might as well have a plan.

Dogs, cats, pigs, rats and, according to the books, monkeys would be her enemies in the future and she would have to come up with ways to control their populations on the island. She shook her head, knowing that if she lived to see it the day would come when she would find herself in the role of island animal control officer and did not relish the prospect much. Getting the bats out of the Baptist church had put her off dealing with mammals of any sort. She had been able to manage that episode humanely without resorting to killing the poor things, but it would be otherwise with stray invaders on Mauritius. She would have to be ruthless.

Satisfied with her initial studies, Pam began her next project, painting portraits of the dodos. This was for scientific purposes, of course, as well as the genuine pleasure the art gave her. The problem was, despite their general appearance of ungainliness, the big birds covered a lot of ground in a day, sometimes traveling many miles on their sturdy, yellow, four-toed feet. Upon finding them in the morning she would get her bamboo easel, a hand-crafted gift from the bosun, and her precious watercolors all set up in a nice, sunny clearing, but before she could even finish the initial sketches the dodos would plow through the area's edible matter and then wander off, leaving Pam alone to repack her gear and follow. This happened again and again, she was beginning to get frustrated until she hit on an idea.

She and Gerbald spent the next morning gathering nuts, seeds, fallen fruits, beetles and whatever else they could find for dodo treats. After they had a sizable store in hand, they caught up to the dodos at their latest hangout. Overall, the birds seemed to move in a very loose but discernible flock, groups and subgroups working over their various territories in what Pam thought must be a slow, weeks-long, loop, allowing the foraged land time to replenish before coming around to it again. Pam sat up her paints and got to work. A while later, just as the dodos were about to move on, Pam reached into her bag of goodies and threw a healthy hand full of dodo treats across the clearing to the ever hungry birds.

"Here you go, sweeties! Eat it up, yum, yum!" Pam called and cooed while Gerbald rolled his eyes toward the heavens. The dodos looked at Pam with their uncanny yellow eyes, then looked at the treats scattered at their feet. With what Pam felt for sure was a shrug of their tiny wings, they began pecking at the unexpected offering.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Gerbald muttered. "Didn't you say we don't want to make pets of them?"

"I'm not! I'm just feeding a few pigeons in the park, that's all! Just look at this sweet afternoon light. This is great for painting!" Whistling a merry tune, she went back to it. A quarter of an hour later, the dodos had eaten all of Pam's treats and were beginning to move off again when Pam called out a friendly "Yoo-hoo!" and threw them yet another double handful. This time without a pause, the dodos began to eat while Pam went back to painting. After several more repetitions, Pam beamed at what was turning out to be a fine painting. It might even be the one to use for the happy little chapter she would add to her book, Birds of the USE, detailing how the dodos would not be going extinct in this world, thank you very much.

After several hours, Pam decided that anymore work on the piece would just be fussing, so she set about getting her gear ready for the hike home. The dodos were finishing up their latest treat as she woke Gerbald from the nap he had been taking, not part of his standard bodyguard and look-out routine, but then back in Grantville they hadn't been out in the field every day, all day, either. Deeming these woods safe enough and Pam having as nearly a good an eye and ear for intruders as his own, Gerbald got some extra sleep in the way of old soldiers from time immemorial, wherever and whenever he could.

"Come along, Rip Van Winkle. It's almost the eighteenth century. Let's get back."

"Wake me when its the twentieth century or as soon as every European owns a colored TV," he mumbled sleepily from beneath the wide and warped brim of his floppy, mustard-colored hat. He rose languidly to his nearly six feet and stretched like some gray-whiskered, but still deadly, jungle cat. Pam marveled at his ability to sleep anywhere as she finished packing up her gear. As she made ready to leave the clearing, she noticed that the dodos, although finished with their snacks a while ago, hadn't moved on. Instead, they all stood around staring at her.

Pam smiled, a bit surprised at this new behavior. Then she laughed a bit as she realized what was going on.

"Oh, I see, you want another treat! Sorry, kids. I gave you all I had. You're on your own again!" She turned away from them, pleased with her cleverness and the nice piece of art it had yielded and began to walk toward the trail leading home. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Gerbald had not fallen into step with her and was still watching the dodos.

"Um, Pam? You best have a look," he said in a very calm voice.

Pam turned around to see that the dodos, rather than melting back into the forest in search of food, had all moved closer to her, a group of six adults and a couple of youngsters now just a few yards away. They stood in a loose clump, their somehow disconcerting yellow eyes all trained unblinkingly upon Pam. Frowning a bit, Pam took another two steps toward the edge of the clearing. The dodos did the same.

"Shit! They think I'm going to give them more treats."

"One dares not utter the phrase 'I told you so.' Oops. I uttered it," Gerbald commented.

Pam screwed up her face to stick out her tongue at him. She took another step and the dodos followed again. Exasperated, Pam waved her arms around in front of her in what she hoped would be seen as a gesture of discouragement and called out "Shoo! Go on now, I don't have any more for you, now git!" The dodos' heads bobbed around watching her arms gesticulate and then took a moment to sniff around their leathery feet to see if their treats had been let loose by these actions. Not finding any, their gaze returned to Pam.

She looked to Gerbald for support but he just shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't look at me! You're the bird lady," he told her. "Let's just try walking away. They will get bored eventually."

Nodding nervously, Pam turned and headed down the trail at a brisk-but-not-too-brisk pace, followed closely by Gerbald. The dodos came along after, one by one down the narrow path through the forest. Pam was worried that the large, and in such numbers, potentially dangerous, birds might try to rush her, but so far the dodos were content to politely wait for more treats. Following the treat giver seemed their best bet.

An hour later they emerged along the shore near their encampment. Pam and Gerbald, followed by a neat line of dodos. Pers saw them first and whistled up Dore from her kitchen to come have a look. Soon all the sailors stood watching the bizarre procession.

"I feel like the Pied Piper," Pam grumbled, but managed a smile for them, looking for all the world as if she were completely in control of the situation.

"Are these the famous dodos?" the bosun asked, regarding the unusual creatures with wide eyes.

"Yes, indeed they are. Dore, do you happen to have any nuts stored away?" Pam's voice held just enough tinge of desperation to send her friend hurrying into the kitchen to find some. The dodos formed a semi-circle facing Pam, all waiting expectantly for their next feeding. Dore returned with a banana leaf basket full of nuts, which she cautiously handed to Pam, never once taking her suspicious eyes off the gathered birds.

"Gawd, I really hate further associating humans with food, but at this point I have to do something," Pam told Gerbald, quietly.

"I'm not sure why you are so edgy, they are just pigeons in the park after all," he teased. Pam gave him a quick scowl then turned to her flock.

"Here chicky-chickies, have some more nuts!" she called sweetly and threw a heaping handful to the dodos, who eagerly gobbled them up with a gentle clacking of their bills.

"Here, hold this," she ordered Gerbald, thrusting the basket into his hands. Before he could protest she slipped around behind him and made a beeline for her hut, climbing the stairs and slamming the door shut behind her with a loud slap of bamboo. In the meantime, the dodos had finished their snack and were staring at Gerbald and the basket of nuts he now held.

Dore began laughing as did the sailors, all of whom were carefully backing away from the strange creatures in their midst.

"Ha!" Dore called back to her flummoxed husband. "It looks like you are left holding the bag!" she kidded him before disappearing into the safety of her grass-roofed kitchen.

Gerbald shook his head ruefully at being so easily duped. With a sigh he smiled graciously at the waiting dodos.

"Come along then, my feathered friends. Let us see if Gerbald can give you the slip." The dodos followed him as he led them away down the beach into the twilight. Pam wouldn't even come out for dinner that night and eventually Dore sent Fritjof with something for her to eat, growling that she finally understood why the uptime phrase "for the birds" implied something foolish or worthless.

The next day the dodos were hanging around a little ways down the beach, scavenging the tide flats for bits of seaweed and snails. Pam watched from what she considered to be a safe distance through her birding scope as one of the larger dodos managed to catch a scuttling crab. Gerbald was taking the day off from scientific study in order to pout. He had been up well after dark playing a game of hide and seek with his erstwhile followers and had little use for Pam at the moment. Pam just smiled. She knew he'd get over it sooner than later, understanding that no trickster ever enjoys being among the tricked.

The dodos decided to make the beach their home for the time being, sleeping under the palms and occasionally wandering through camp in search of a treat. Although Pam warned everyone not to feed them, they inevitably did anyway. The ugly-cute critters were just too hard to resist. The lonely sailors enjoyed the novelty of having pets about, even ones as odd as these. The only member of the party who was immune to the dodo's charms was Dore, who had no fear of their sharp beaks and who shooed them away from her kitchen and gardens with the mighty force of her bamboo-handled grass broom.

During their stay on the island, the Redbird castaways had been relying on seafood for their protein. There were very few birds present that might be considered game. Gerbald had snared a few black-feathered marsh birds along the river. Pam thought they might be some kind of moorhen, but they tasted pretty much like a mudflat might and had little meat on their sharp bones. They had also tried several species of sandpiper and gull, but the rubbery flesh stank of fish and was so unpalatable they ended up using it all for bait.

The dodos had been among them for several weeks now and their novelty had worn off. Pam realized, to her horror, that the attitude of the men toward their pets had subtly changed. Pam now saw a look of hunger on their faces as they watched the fluffy dodos wander around the camp. Dodos were the largest and juiciest bird they had seen since being marooned, resembling in many ways a plump turkey. They no longer were feeding the dodos for amusement sake, it seemed, but rather to fatten them up for the cooking pot! Even Dore was sneaking a predatory peek at them as she worked on the crab and coconut curry they were having yetagain for the noonday meal.

Pam decided she had better head this disconcerting development off right at the pass. As the men finished their breakfast she walked out into the morning sunlight and harrumphed for their attention.

"All right, you guys," she announced. "I know everybody is hungry for meat but just let me tell you, don't even think about eating a dodo, not even one! Besides, the books all say they taste terrible!" She was really getting mad now and stomped around among the stunned sailors, making sure they all got a good look in her eyes and understood that she meant business! "You lot know how to fish don't you? Well, get off your butts and start fishing! Now! Move!"

The men, hardened navy seamen all, leaped up at her fiery command to prepare the various fishing tackle they had contrived, while Gerbald hastily repaired into the underbrush to gather materials to weave into a new fish trap. Dore hunched over her coconuts with a guilty expression, while Pam continued to stalk up and down the beach keeping a watchful eye on the oblivious dodos. We had better get out of here before history repeats itself Pam thought darkly, denying to herself that she, too, was beginning to wonder what a nice fat dodo might taste like.

Chapter Twenty: Strangers Come to Call

Pam and Gerbald were climbing over the steep southern bluff to walk the next beach over in search of as yet unseen species as well as possible new food sources, when an unexpected splash of color out on the water caught Pam's ever watchful eye.

"Gerbald! Look!" Pam hissed back into the trees. She was now on her belly in the tall grass crawling up to the cliff edge. Gerbald slithered up next to her with practiced grace.

"A ship! But what kind?" his eyes were bright as they focused on the vessel anchored in their bay. Pam carefully grasped the black neoprene strap at her neck to pull her precious birding scope out of its chest pocket home. She cupped a palm over the outer lens to prevent any reflection from the bright southern sun giving away their position. Focusing in she was surprised to see a brightly painted vessel with elegantly carved touches to its woodwork: dragons and sea turtles and cranes. The back and front were both set high and the sails were an odd squared-off shape.

"Hmmm. I think it's some kind of a junk," Pam said.

"Really? I am no seaman but it looks like a perfectly seaworthy boat to me, although shaped rather oddly." Gerbald squinted at the vessel curiously.

Pam stifled a laugh. "No, not that kind of junk. I mean a Chinese junk, a type of ship from the Orient."

"Ah, another one of those homonyms. A rather annoying feature of English, I must say."

"I agree. Christ all mighty, we have to get back down to the camp. Do you think they've seen it, too?"

"Master Bosun always sets a watch. The Swedish sailors are resourceful and well-trained men. We are lucky to have them."

"Darn tootin'!" If one were to be shipwrecked, a friendly band of resourceful Vikings was definitely the way to go.

Pam watched the swarthy-complexioned men going about their tasks on the deck. "They don't look Chinese," Pam whispered, even though it was very unlikely they could be heard against the wind at such a distance. She handed Gerbald the scope.

"Indeed, at least not any such as I have seen on TV or at the movies, although I think some of those were actually white people in poorly done make-up. These fellows look to be some kind of Moor. By their white robes and headgear I would say they are followers of Allah the Merciful." The last came with an ironic chuckle from the old soldier.

"Arabs?"

"Perhaps, or some relative. Turks, possibly. They are well armed with those curved blades, and handle themselves like fighting men. Several have firearms, although those look rather primitive. Oh- oh my." His tone turned dark.

"What?" Pam asked, growing more and more uneasy.

"It's ugly, but you had best see it for yourself. Look there, hanging from the bowsprit."

Pam looked and to her horror saw several severed heads with silky black hair hanging there, grisly trophies swinging in the sea breeze. Despite the state of decay she was sure their features were Asiatic.

"My God, they killed the Chinese who owned the ship! These guys are some kind of pirates!"

"Indubitably." That was one of Gerbald's favorite two dollar words, gleaned from watching TV, of course. "This is not good," he added, with a frown.

"Have you ever fought any like them before?"

"There were some with faces like these amongst the Spanish. Fierce fighters." He handed the scope back to Pam. "Don't worry, they will bleed," he added, his voice taking on a cold edge. Pam looked at the former soldier, still fearsome in his fifties, as his hand went instinctively to the deadly shortsword that hung at his belt.

"No doubt they will. Let's git."

Very carefully, they eased their bodies back from the cliff edge through the grass, leaving little trace of their presence. They made haste through the shadowed wood, down the rocky hillside to their castaway camp. They arrived to find Dore clutching her biggest cleaver, waiting anxiously near the hidden path which was their designated escape route, which led to a refuge in the forest they had prepared for such emergencies. Seeing her loved ones arrive, she puffed out her typical exasperated breath. Before they could begin to tell her what they had seen, Dore addressed them in hushed and serious tones.

"You are late. We know about the boat, too. We were not seen and the sailors have already set up an ambush. They think those men will come ashore for fresh water. They are no Christians by the looks of them. The bosun says they are murderous pirates."

Gerbald nodded, allowing himself a grim smile at the prospect of combat. Pam leaned on her grandmother's walking stick, catching her breath and calming her nerves as she watched Gerbald slip silently into the brush to confer with their men, becoming invisible to any onlooker within an instant. Thanks to his training, she knew how to do that, too, and in a situation like this she was glad of it.

"Come on, Dore, let's get undercover. This is one time where I am more than happy to let the men do their macho warrior thing and stay out of the way."

"Such boys they are. They relish this, you know. Fools."

Chapter Twenty-One: Pam Hatches a Plan

Pam silently led her friend farther down the escape route, a trail nearly imperceptible to any who didn't know it. Dore followed with remarkable grace. For the first time it occurred to Pam that Dore had lost a lost of weight since their voyage had begun. Her sturdy, buxom build had taken on a bit of youthful slenderness. She moved as silently as Pam did. Having been a soldier's wife and camp follower for many long years, Dore was no stranger to slipping behind cover when the weapons came out. They paused at a fallen log in the shade of the trees, not far from the hideout and waited there silently, listening for any sounds of struggle from back at the camp. An hour passed and then two, according to Pam's self-winding, waterproof Timex, more valuable than a chest of jewels in this century. They began to get restless.

"What if they don't need fresh water?" Dore asked quietly.

"Then they won't need to come ashore. I sure would like to take that boat from those bastards, but I don't think our guys can win an attack by sea, even with the pinnace. By the time they got it in the water, those Arabs or whatever they are, would have plenty of time to either pull anchor and scram or prepare to hold them off. They would have a huge advantage." Pam rubbed her chin and began to think about the problem at hand. If they didn't do something, the stranger ship might just sail away without giving them any opportunity to capture it, which was beginning to seem like a very important goal. They were all ready to take a chance to escape in a seaworthy craft at this point, even if the risk was high.

The pinnace just wouldn't cut it on a long voyage. According to the bosun, it was really only supposed to hold half their number safely, being designed as a close range ship-to-shore ferry and lifeboat. Short of being rescued by a friendly ship, which was extremely unlikely this year, they needed to get their hands on something big enough to carry all of them away from this lonely coast. Ideally something big enough to mount that lovely up-time inspired cannon, which would give them a fighting chance next time they encountered bad guys. Pam squatted on the fallen log, going into what she thought of as thinking cap mode, working the problem in her head.

After a while a grin came to her face. "Oh, goodness . . ." she mumbled.

Dore's ear's pricked up. "You have an idea," she stated, knowing Pam's nuances well by now.

Pam nodded carefully as if afraid to lose it. It was ridiculous of course. It was utterly ridiculous and it would probably work. She took one of Dore's firm, wash-worn hands in hers.

"Yes, I have an idea. I think I saw it in an old movie, or maybe on Gilligan's Island, that old TV show Gerbald likes so much. Now, it's pretty crazy but you are going to have to trust me on this, it's going to work. It's going to work because it is crazy" She leaned closer to her older friend and outlined her new plan while Dore listened, eyes growing larger and larger.

"What!" she almost shouted when Pam had finished outlining her plan, then caught herself and hissed, "You want us to what?" Dore's face had a look of shock that Pam had rarely seen before, the look of a very conservative Christian woman who has been asked to do something beyond the pale. Pam continued to nod, now more sure than ever.

"Listen, Dore honey, it's the only plan I've got and I know it sounds bad, it's totally nuts in fact, but we have to do it. There's not much time. The guys' ambush isn't working. It needs bait. It's time for us girls to step up. I know you are made of strong stuff. Now please put your misgivings aside and help me do this. I need you, Dore. I need you to do this with me."

Dore narrowed her icy blue eyes at Pam, her best friend, her adopted little sister, in some ways the child she never had. The formidable, all-purpose, soldier's wife harrumphed mightily and fiddled with her apron strings, lost in thought. Disapproval and mistrust showed in every twitch of her powerful fingers. Pam waited for her to work it out, hoping that Dore would realize the necessity of her bizarre proposal. Seeing the look of fading hope on Pam's face, Dore gripped Pam's hand hard and said, "For you, my dear Pam, only because you would have it. May the Good Lord forgive us."

Shortly she and Dore were in a huddle behind the camp with Gerbald, the bosun and Pers while the other sailors kept their positions. The anchored ship's crew had finished most of their work and looked as if they were getting ready to either set sail or take a late afternoon nap.

Having heard Pam's plan, Bosun exclaimed rather loudly, "You want to what?" His face was a study in astonishment. Young Pers had turned a new shade of pale, his eyes wide as China plates. Gerbald laughed silently into his hand, his entire frame shaking with mirth until Dore slugged him in the bicep; not on his sword arm Pam noted. Gerbald gasped rather too loudly and shook his head. There were tears in his eyes, he was so struck with the pure outrageousness of what Pam proposed. Barely controlling his hilarity, he announced, "I like this plan!"

Dore glared at him menacingly. "As you would, you disgusting goat. To see your own women folk half-naked and dressed like these harlot dancers would appeal to an impious sinner like you. May God have pity on your black and shriveled soul."

"Not harlots, Dore, hula! Hula dancers. Big difference. It's a cultural thing. They live in a warm climate, so they just don't wear as many clothes as we do. Come on, let's go get dressed. It's time to lay the bait."

Gerbald continued to chuckle impiously at the proceedings, making Pam snarl at him with uncharacteristic vehemence "That's enough out of you, dick-head. I need her calm and you are not helping!" She slugged him in the arm, hard, just like Dore had done for good measure. I didn't hit him in the sword arm either, we're going to need that,she thought darkly. Pam was sure he was immune to any physical pain she could inflict but her fierce tone and epithet silenced him immediately, his mirth replaced by a pitiful "I'm sorry" look.

Pam turned to the bosun. "Tell Lojtnant Lundkvist what we're doing. I want the men ready to get between us and them fast." The bosun nodded his understanding somberly. "I'm sure I don't need to tell you fellows that anyone who makes fun of us is going to have to deal with me when it's all over and I won't be as nice as the bloody damn pirates," Pam growled as she led Dore away to the costuming department, her gray eyes brooding like a dangerous storm front. Two voices came back with very earnest yes, ma'ams and one made a strangled cough, trying to cover a fresh round of chuckles. Men can be such pigs, Pam thought as she stalked off. Thank God they're here.

Dore's face was miserable as Pam led her into the cool dimness of their camp's main hut, where they held meetings, stored food and ate their meals.

"Come on, Dore. You need to buck up and get into character. We need to be good actors." Her voice was full of false, but hopefully convincing, cheer.

"Actors? Those sin lovers who appear in all manner of un-Christian garb in your uptime entertainments. Oh Dear Lord, strike me down where I stand." Dore looked up at the grass thatched ceiling of the hut with imploring eyes.

Pam suddenly lost her patience. There wasn't much time and the stress was becoming too much to bear. She grabbed Dore by the arms and shook her with quite a bit of strength, Dore being a very solid individual. Pam raised her voice as loud as she dared. "Damn it all, Dore, listen! We are not sinners. We are doing this to save ourselves and get off this fucking rock, got it? God is merciful, right? He would want us to fight for our lives, right? So whatever we do today, He's going to forgive us! Now grow up and help me pull this off!"

Dore's eyes focused on Pam with startled wideness. Her dear Pam, shaking her and lecturing her as if she were a stubborn child, was an unpleasant first, another of what was shaping up to be a very long day of such unpleasant firsts.

Pam released her grip to hug Dore tightly as she would have her own mother and spoke in a shaky small voice, all trace of anger gone. "I'm so sorry, Dore, but I can't think of anything else to do!" Dore, her arms now released from Pam's surprisingly powerful grip, hugged Pam back for a moment, then gently disentangled herself from her friend's frantic embrace.

"It is I who should be sorry, dear Pam. Sorry for questioning your sincere efforts and being such a pious old fool. I know you would only ask such of me in desperate times, as these are. It is indeed time I 'grow up' and be a help to you." Dore took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She even managed a small smile. "Now tell me, what must we do to appear as harlot dancers?"

That made Pam laugh, her tone a little desperate but warming quickly to the intrinsic hilarity of their situation. She stepped back and eyed her old friend who now stood courageously ready for Pam's orders. Pam, relieved, got started. "Well, first you have got to lose that apron. It's so last century."

Chapter Twenty-Two: Harlot Dancers

As Dore began untying the many clever knots she made her husband navigate through in the private hours, Pam reached up to set free the pony tail she usually tied her hair in to keep it mostly out of her way. She shook her head to loosen up the dishwater blonde flyaway locks, fly, be free! then mussed it all up with her hands to make it look even wilder. Next she carefully emptied her pockets of any valuables such as her scope and put them into her trusty rucksack, which she hid carefully behind a rafter in the shadows of the grassy ceiling. She took off her shirt and stood a little self consciously in her bra, careful not to let Dore see her own shyness. Dore looked at her approvingly as she hung her apron on a branch of one of the hut's primitive support beams.

"You are such a lovely girl, Pam, and still so young. If I were your age and still single I might let the men know it, in a properly modest way of course. You are a candle that hides its light."

Pam was forty-five years old and didn't consider herself either lovely or a girl, but smiled at Dore's praise anyway. She had never been a bombshell of any sort but she was attractive in a "step or two ahead of Plain Jane" sort of way. Her years tromping around the forests and fields downtime had trimmed away any trace of the fat that she felt had made her so unattractive in her late thirties and early forties, the self-pity-cherry-bon-bon-eating years that had followed her divorce. She took a deep breath, sucked in her proudly hourglass waist, and stuck her ample-enough-for-another-look chest out. It seemed things were still holding up well there. She allowed herself a rather pleased grin.

"Maybe I do still got something, huh? Let's hope it's something an Arab pirate type might appreciate." She took a careful step toward Dore. "Now it's your turn, darlin'." Dore made no move and simply nodded to Pam with a Please, do what you must look so Pam gently reached out and began loosening the complex knot-work of braids Dore kept her hair so severely bound up in. To Pam's great surprise, long, lush locks the color of burnished brass laced with strands of silver fell down to nearly her waist.

"Talk about holding your light under a bushel! Good golly what I would give to have hair like yours! You keep it tucked up so tight, I had no idea!" Pam reached out and felt a lock, it was thick and smooth, nothing like the thin, dry feel of her own hopeless hair. Dore blushed a little and quietly admitted that Gerbald was quite fond of it and that's why she kept it long for him, despite the nuisance of its required care.

Pam nodded approvingly. "I'll bet he likes it. It's gorgeous, Dore." Pam shunted aside the bit of jealousy that crept around her mind and said in what she hoped was a firm yet comforting tone, "Okay, next we got to free up your bosom. Take off the smock." Dore complied and the drab gray piece of utilitarian clothing came off.

Like many downtime worker women Pam had seen, Dore kept her bosom tightly confined. Accomplishing this was what appeared to be some kind of wrap made of sturdy canvas. At Pam's silent nod Dore loosened the straps on the dour down-time version of a modesty-defending brassiere. Pam's eyes widened. She knew Dore had plenty in the chest department, but the reality was, well, larger than expected. Jean Harlow, eat your heart out! Dore's chest thrust out heroically like that of a mighty warrior queen, nothing at all like the grandmotherly flaccidity she had expected. Dore, bare to the waist with her hair down had ceased to resemble the humble washer woman Pam had grown accustomed to thinking of her as and was revealed as a Wagnerian goddess, a lovely and fearless Valkyrie. Dore was solidly built, certainly. Even after the island diet the hourglass was perhaps a bit thick, but now that her true buxom, healthy beauty was revealed the effect was something close to ravishing.

Pam let out a long, almost catcall of a whistle. "I'm going to call you 'Wonder Woman' from now on. You are a hottie!"

Dore blushed even harder. "Gerbald, he tells me I am beautiful, but you know him. His sweet talking is shameless. When I was a young girl in my teens I remember the village boys thought well of me and I often felt their lustful looks, but that was so long ago."

"Girl, I'm here to tell you, you still got it and then some! Gawd, Dore, you're gorgeous, and not just in a 'for a woman your age' kind of way. You could make the village boys get down on their knees and beg right now! Shit, I guess that makes me Maryann 'cause you got Ginger nailed."

Dore's face burned the scarlet of a summer sunset. At last she smiled widely in an open way that Pam had never seen before. A day for firsts indeed. A bright bit of Psychology 101 popped into Pam's head and she put it to The Plan's advantage right away.

"Look, Dore, just pretend you are a silly seventeen year old again and these pirate types are the village boys! It's perfectly all right to be a bit naughty in a situation like that. We are just pretending, to save our skins. So just let go and be a little more flirtatious than you would have allowed yourself back then. Well, a lot more flirtatious. We need these clowns to want our bodies badly!"

It was Dore's turn to laugh now, in a shy but pleased way. "The village boys! Yes, I was a flirt sometimes, oh the shame. Very well. I can do that, Pam. We will make this work."

"Right. Now, off comes the bottom parts." Dore's face changed rapidly from glowing sunset to kitchen flour again. Pam thought she heard her mumbling a prayer for forgiveness under her breath as she began to unclasp the ties of her exceedingly modest dresses.

A short time later the women emerged bare-chested, wearing simple grass skirts over their under-garments in materials hurriedly reassigned from the hut's walls, making sure to show quite a bit of leg. Dore's legs were those of an athlete, well-muscled from years on the road and standing at work for long hours, but still shapely. The strings of clam shells they had made to decorate the place while fighting the sheer boredom of their existence were now draped around their necks and bunches of hapless orchids growing nearby had been firmly woven into their free-flowing hair. Each carried a large basket full of that evening's dinner fruit and Pam had used some of the berry juice to brighten up their lips.

"We are some glorious and sex-starved hula harlots in need of some male attention and we always get our way!" Pam announced bravely, and they both nearly lost control to a fit of nervous giggles.

"Now, Dore," Pam said breathing a bit hard to retain composure, "remember these guys are dangerous. We don't want them to get too close. Let's try to lead them back up the trail where our guys can get the jump on them and the fight can't be seen from the ship. When the killing starts, we run like hell, okay?"

"Got it." Dore resembled some kind of wild and dangerous heathen chieftainess, a tigress of lust. If Pam had a mirror she would have been both shocked and proud of her own wanton and wild appearance. She figured she at least somewhat resembled a Caucasian Hollywood extra made into a faux-Polynesian girl, last seen throwing flower petals in the path of Fantasy Island's latest guests. Obviously a counterfeit wahine, but still easy on the eye. A sudden burst of confidence filled her, Goddamn it, we are looking fine!

As they sashayed down the path to the beach as seductively as they could muster, Pam began to feel eyes on her. She tried not to look right or left in order to avoid giving away her men's positions but out of the corner of her sharp and well trained birder's eyes she could make out some of the sailors hidden in the bushes, their mouths open in pure astonishment tinged with a bit of dawning appreciation. You goofballs better keep your eyes on the pirates when we come back this way she tried to radiate back at them. These treats are not for you! All too soon they left the cover provided by the last line of palms perched along the high tideline and sauntered casually onto the still uncomfortably hot sand. Pam stifled a grimace and whispered loudly, "Remember, we want them to come ashore. We must be alluring sirens. Let's get their attention now."

Dore called out sweetly in German, "Come, oh wretched and lustful goats from yon ship. Come and feel my ample breasts in your greasy, godless hands!" Pam almost lost it again but realized they would be better off not revealing their identity as Europeans beyond the paleness of their skin, which she hoped would pass for pleasingly exotic in these latitudes. She stage whispered to Dore, "Don't speak German or English to them. We want them to think we are savages."

Dore's brow knitted below her wreath of exotic blossoms. "What should I say, then?"

"Just use nonsense talk, like to a baby. Boo-loo ooh-loo gaga waga! But make it sound sexy!"

"Boo-loo ooh-loo! Rhumba rhumba!" she crowed back with unfettered heathen delight. "A rhumba is one of those shameless dances Spanish-speaking papists engage in up-time. I saw it on TV," she whispered proudly to Pam.

"That's perfect, Dore. More like that!" Pam whispered back. "Calypso bistro, bongo wongo marimba hoochi-koochi!" Pam shouted at the top of her lungs while performing her best imitation of a parade float beauty queen's welcoming wave. In the distance she could see the junk's crew beginning to rouse to their racket.

About halfway down to the water's edge they set their baskets down on the sand. Pam squinted to see if they had the pirate's attention and found that they did. The sheet-wrapped goons were beginning to chatter and point at them. Pam motioned to Dore to follow her lead and set the baskets down, slowly to make sure there was a nice long view of that which was unfettered and freed to gravity's whims, then began motioning to their abundant offerings with alluring gestures of invitation that would put any game-show co-hostess to shame.

"Ooga, beluga! You swarthy schmucks! We got'sa some froota loopas for you-ah!" She turned again to Dore who was mimicking her gestures. "And now, we dance!" Pam whispered to her blushing, but gamely seductive, friend.

"You start!" Dore hissed at her.

"Ka-looka looka kooka looka!" Pam sang at the top of her lungs as she began to shake her belly and her breasts as hard as she could in a move she had seen on a Don Ho TV special when she was a kid. She continued to vibrate as she slowly turned around to give them a three-hundred and sixty degree view of all the available goods. Dore followed her lead, turning in the opposite direction, her shaking was a speed or two slower but she added a warbling bird-like cry in her powerful church choir alto. Go, girl, go! Pam grinned at her as they came back around again. Next Pam stopped shaking and began a circular swaying of the hips while her arms lithely made gestures of come hither toward the boat.

To both Pam's relief and growing trepidation at what would come next, she saw their ploy was working. Several of the odd-looking ship's invader crew were slapping each other on the backs in what was surely an exchange of lascivious dares. Several more worked to untie a small craft lashed to the deck, a longboat that they proceeded to lower into the water. They've swallowed the hook, line and sinker! Time to reel in! Pam and Dore continued to shake and gyrate their scandalously half-clad bodies as if trying to stay upright in a fearsome earthquake.

Suddenly an older captain-type fellow emerged from the upper decks and began shouting at the crew. He had enormous white handle-bar mustachios and wore a ridiculous oversized turban right out of a storybook. The men just pointed at the beach and looked back at him with shamed but imploring grins. The captain-type narrowed his eyes to stare across the water at the distraction, so Pam and Dore both waved coyly and blew kisses to him. With a dismissive snort and wave of the hand, he marched back into his cabin. Whatever happened next would be no responsibility of his.

The majority of the men immediately began crowding into the boat, stepping on and over each other as they vied for a spot. Still, a few others remained on the deck, either unimpressed by the beachside burlesque show or under strict orders to remain on watch, their faces scowling fiercely. They would have to deal with that bunch of fun fellows later. At least they had most of the moths coming to the flame.

"Oh shit, here they come!" Pam hissed out of the side of her mouth to Dore, who had really gotten into the spirit of the thing and was busy pushing her prodigious breasts up with both hands, in offering to the oncoming boatload of hormones. Pam's eyes widened at this impressive display of wantonness and, not to be outdone, began a snaky, pelvis-thrusting, dance that included some low front bends complete with jiggling. She couldn't be completely sure but she thought the pirate types were now rowing faster. If this wasn't so damned dangerous, I'd be having a pretty good time,she admitted to herself ruefully. Thank the Lord, the Methodist ladies of Grantville aren't seeing any of this!

When the boat hit the shallows and the pirates were just starting to clamber out into the gentle surf, Pam and Dore began their backward retreat to the trail. They left the fruit baskets where they were, hoping to slow them down a bit more. Walking backwards as rapidly as they dared while still beckoning and cooing coquettishly, they reached the line of palms just as their admirers reached the baskets. Pam and Dore both began pantomiming eating the fruits and a fair number of the men paused to fill their hands with the offering, biting into the luscious fruit with sly smiles that anticipated more delights to come, their eyes never leaving the women for very long. Good, now most of them have their hands full of nice, juicy, slippery fruits instead of on their weapons. Pam had caught a good look at the wicked scimitars, daggers and several exotic-looking pistols they wore shoved into their belts and lost any doubts she might have had that they were facing dangerous pirates, or whatever passed for a seagoing scoundrel in these parts.

Pam winked at Dore, mission almost accomplished and began to edge back into the trees, still cooing and beckoning their prey on. Come on, you ass-holes, follow the pretty ladies!

There was some discussion amongst the pirates, undoubtedly as to whether to proceed into the trees or not. This didn't last long as the pirates seemed to feel they were in no danger and if any unfriendly "natives" appeared they would be able to make short work of them. Overconfidence and lust proved to be just the right combination. The pirates assumed they were being led to where the real party would start and gamely followed along.

Pam and Dore had not quite reached the spot where the ambush awaited. Unfortunately, some of the pirates had grown impatient and were catching up to them more quickly than expected, their hands eager to get a hold of offerings intrinsically more alluring than fruit. Pam gave Dore a small push, a signal to move faster. A pirate caught up to Pam just then and grabbed her wrist, hard. Pam felt a note of panic ring through her but kept smiling. Dore paused and was looking back, allowing a look of worry to cross her face. Pam gestured with her chin for Dore to move on but she knew her friend wouldn't leave her. A second pirate was closing fast. The plan was in danger of falling apart and Pam's heart began to race. The one who held her who now used his free hand to grab one of Pam's breasts, causing her to yelp.

That was all the signal Gerbald and the Swedes needed. Pam watched in amazement as a large sage green and mustard-colored blur came rocketing out of the brush. Suddenly the man pawing Pam was sporting a bright red gash where his throat had been, the work of Gerbald's deadly katzbalger shortsword. Pam knocked the dying pirate's still clutching hands away from her, they were all that was keeping him upright. He collapsed into a growing pool of his own blood as if all the bones had gone out of him. An identical fate met the next pirate closest behind, who hadn't even had time to begin to think of pulling out his own weapon. Good. Pam thought, her blood running cold. The decaying, tortured faces of the beheaded Chinese sailors flashed in her mind, and any shreds of guilt at planning the death of these people evaporated.

Pam and Dore began running, Pam pushing Dore ahead of her as much as Dore was pulling Pam into the tall grass away from the action. From a relatively safe distance, she saw Gerbald down a third pirate with his katzbalger as the bosun shoved his cutlass deep into the gut of a fourth. The Lojtnant, not to be outdone, skewered another through the chest with an ornately decorated longsword. No one fired a shot in order to keep the action inland a secret from the remaining pirates at anchor. One or two of the pirates managed to get their weapons out, but Gerbald and the Swedes outnumbered them now and made quick work of them. It was finished as rapidly as it had begun. The sailors dragged the pirates' bodies off into the tall grass to hide them, then scuffed fresh sand and scattered leaves across the trail to cover the drying pools of blood just in case anyone else came looking. Pam hoped they would, since the same fate awaited them as befell their brother pirates.

Pers, for his keen eyes and Rask and Torgir, both experienced marines, remained on watch at the ambush site while the rest of them went back to the camp to regroup. The bosun, in his early fifties although aged prematurely by years of sea winds and the relentless sun, was doing his level best not to look at Pam, and losing that battle. This was possibly the most bare female flesh he had ever seen outside of a dimly lit dockside whorehouse and the poor fellow was obviously shaken. Pam smiled at him patiently and quickly got back to business as he did his best to focus on a nearby palm tree yet still appear to be listening to her.

"Good job, everyone. That worked really well. I have an idea for part two, so tell me what you think." All the men listened intently to Pam's next plan, mostly managing not to stare at the ladies' exposed expanses. Dore stood unashamed beside her, a lioness gazing proudly at her brave and clever young companion, head and other assets held high. Gerbald grinned like a fox in a henhouse, obviously pleased to see his Christian wife of so many years standing before him in unfettered heathen glory. Dore saw his look and rather than become annoyed as she once would have, gave her husband a serene smile. Pam saw this exchange out of the corner of her eye. Oh gawd, what have I unleashed? When Pam finished outlining part two of her plan the men all coughed and mumbled their agreement before fleeing the sight of so much female flesh. Pam giggled as she and Dore retired to the main hut to get ready for their next show.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Boarding Party

The shadows had already grown long. Dusk followed quickly, so they didn't have much time to prepare. On board the anchored ship the pirates had grown increasingly agitated but it seemed there was only one landing craft and it was out of reach on the beach. So far no one had volunteered to swim ashore and check how their comrades might be enjoying their shore leave. The mustachioed and ornately turbaned captain was close to having a conniption fit. He stomped around the deck, sometimes shouting at the empty shore in a menacing bellow.

Just after sunset, during the last few minutes of natural light, a procession of the island's inhabitants came down the trail to the beach carrying torches and more baskets of fruit. Now the two women were joined by a slender male youth dressed in the same grass-and-flower style, whose shyly downcast face was a study in red. The captain shouted himself hoarse at them but all they did was wave as the youth pushed the pirates' longboat back into the water. The two women got in the front while he sat in the back, paddling the unfamiliar craft clumsily toward the junk, canoe style. The women stayed seated so as not to tip the odd craft over, but put their upper bodies to good effect in a shimmying and swaying dance, all the while crooning in their incomprehensible tongue. Slowly they drew nearer to the larger craft. The youth's piloting was unskilled but they were making headway. Nearly all of the crew aboard were gathered at the rail to watch the bizarre shore party approach.

"It's working, it's working," Pam said just loud enough for Dore and Pers to hear. They were singing I've Been Working on the Railroad because it was one of the few the few uptime songs Dore knew the tune to, replacing the words with the same sort of nonsense babble they had used earlier. The giddiness that had helped her get through the first round had faded. Fear ran through her, a cold tingling in the balmy night. She had washed the spattered blood from her face, but she still felt unclean somehow. Her smile was forced and she began to worry that the enemy would see through their act too soon. She jiggled her scantily covered breasts a bit harder in an effort to distract these frightening and undoubtedly ruthless men from the terror that was threatening to creep across her painfully smiling face. Whatever mad confidence had taken hold of her earlier had fled. She was literally naked and exposed.

I can't believe this is really happening it's some kind of a nightmare oh God oh God! As they drew nearer the boat she took a deep breath and forced the inner voice of her fear to stop its nattering. Now was when it mattered most that she stay cool. This was the part that really counted. She could see Dore reflected in the water, waving the torches in a graceful arc. The more distraction the better, plus the light might blind the pirates somewhat to the darkness beyond. They were only a yard away now, Pam coyly fluttered her eyelashes up at the captain, whose outrageous curled mustachios dripped with sweat. She instantly regretted doing that as it sent the already upset fellow into a rage, eyes bulging and face cartoonishly crimson.

With a nerve-jarring shriek, the porculent old pirate captain vaulted over the rail to climb deftly down a rope ladder with a grace that belied his awesome girth. He jumped the last few feet to land in the front of their longboat, causing the craft's back end to rise dangerously out of the water. Dore dropped one of her torches into the water in order to take hold. Pam was bounced upward and back to land painfully on her bottom between her and Dore's bench seats, getting another nasty jolt when the pirate captain began making his way toward them and caused the craft to fall to the surface again with a splash. Suddenly Pers leaped over her, placing himself between them and the invader, armed only with his paddle. Pam looked on in horror as the enraged captain knocked the paddle from his hands and then began pummeling poor Pers with meaty fists. The youth was knocked backward just as Pam had been and was in bad position to defend himself. A kick of the pirate captain's boot knocked the wind out of him and he slumped into the boat's planked bottom.

Pam felt something hard and cool jamming painfully into her shoulder blade. She knew it was the butt of the up-time Smith and Wesson .38 caliber pistol Gerbald had insisted they bring with them for this part of the mission, which Dore had hidden in her fruit basket. She thrust the pistol into Pam's hand.

"Shoot, Pam, shoot! I know you know how!" Dore hissed in her ear.

Pam's eyes narrowed. She was filling with a deep and powerful anger. Pers was no more than a boy! So much like my own Walt! She had naturally grown very fond of the lad and his sunny disposition. The fat captain had stopped beating the boy and was reaching for a nasty-looking curved long-knife at his belt. A cold rage she was sure was founded in deep maternal instinct went through Pam, a partially physical sensation, electrified emotions buzzed through her blood and brain. You really do see red! she thought as tiny red stars began to sparkle in her vision. She gripped the pistol firmly, feeling its weight, clicked the safety off and pointed it at the approaching foe's chest.

I've shot pistols before a hundred times back at Uncle's farm. Hold it steady, get your target in your sights, deep breath, squeeze slowly . . . Pam felt as if she was moving in slow motion but the pirate captain, angling his knife for a murderous stab paused when he realized Pam was armed. His cruel eyes widened. There was a flash and loud crack as if lightning had struck.

Pam watched, half in horror, half in glee, as the pirate captain fell with a bullet through his heart. He hit the boat's side heavily at his waist, then tipped into the water, turban first, with a sizable splash. The heavy pistol had kicked back into her hands hard, jarring her muscles painfully, but she kept it under control as her uncles had taught her, despite her awkward position.

"ARGGHHH!!" Pam's wordless, primal wail was lost in a wider cacophony. The bitter gunsmoke stench helped clear her head. With a twist and a heave, Pam began to extricate herself from between the seats, carefully keeping the pistol pointed away from her friends. Dore helped lift her as best she could with her free hand, she still held the torch, its light flickering crazily across the boat as it swayed and bounced with their frantic movements.

Pam saw that the second part of their ruse was in full effect. During the noisy show they had put on, Gerbald and the Swedes had launched the pinnace and had carefully circled around to the seaward side of the anchored junk. They had succeeded in boarding and were now locked in close combat with the Arab pirates.

There was a loud boom as Gerbald downed one charging pirate with one barrel of his pistol grip Snakecharmer shotgun while sticking his katzbalger shortsword deep into the gut of another. He moved around the deck with the practiced grace of a ballerina, dodging and killing with silent precision. Another boom from the next barrel and two more charging pirates fell, screaming and pawing at their shot-destroyed faces before dying. This is what Gerbald was trained for, how he had made his living from his youth to just a few years ago. War was his first calling and he was very damn good at it. I'll have to remember to thank Walt for giving him that crazy shotgun pistol, Pam mused as she watched him quickly reload it. The Snakecharmer soon fired again, killing one pirate and maiming another, which the katzbalger finished in a single, swift stroke.

Dore grabbed her shoulder and pointed, a pirate trying to flee the losing battle was halfway over the rail and poised to drop into their longboat. Pam shot him in the back, his falling body struck their bow with a sickening thunk before splashing limply into the water. Pam let out a long, low stream of curses under her breath.

Dore gripped her shoulder harder, bringing her face close behind Pam's ear. "It is good, Pam, you help our men! There, shoot that one!" Dore pointed at a pirate who was closing on the bosun, occupied with an opponent, his cutlass clashing and clanging against a blood-streaked scimitar. Pam stared for a moment at the wet, red blade in the enemy's hand. That's the blood of one of ours. She took aim carefully, supported by Dore's firm grip on her shoulders. Her finger squeezed. Now accustomed to the bang and flash, she didn't flinch afterward. She calmly watched the pirate she had shot through the neck drop limply to the deck. My shot went a little high but he's still dead as a door nail.

The bosun separated himself from his dueling partner with a mighty shove. The taller, thinner pirate skidded backward on the blood-drenched deck. The bosun glanced a question at Pam, with a barely perceptible nod she drew on the bosun's opponent as he regained his footing and shot him in the gut. Pam looked away from the messy results, her own gut suddenly sinking, as if meeting a sudden drop on a roller coaster. The deck went suddenly quiet but for the moans of the dead and dying. No pirates were left standing. Lojtnant Lundkvist looked down to see Pam still holding her smoking pistol. He saluted her. Pam's hands lost their strength and she laid the pistol down heavily on the seat in front of her as Dore eased her grip on her shoulders.

"It is all right now, Pam. It is over," Dore told her. "You did well, my friend. It was you who turned the battle's tide. You never even missed!"

Pam thought of each man she had shot and fought throwing up. She had barely eaten a thing all day so it wouldn't have helped much anyway. She looked to the deck where Gerbald had finished hurrying the enemy injured along on their journey to hell.

"Let us leave none alive," he said to Lojtnant Lundkvist and the bosun as calmly as if he were ordering a hamburger at the Freedom Arches. The Swedish marines took the lead in searching the ship, cautiously entering the captain's cabin and then the lower decks, pistols ready. While Dore went to the aid of injured Pers, Gerbald motioned for Pam to join him on the deck. Somehow she managed to climb the rope ladder with nerveless fingers until Gerbald dragged her over the red-lacquered rail. Dore clambered up onto the deck next. Standing unsteadily, Pam saw bodies in the flickering torch light and not all were dressed in bloodstained white. Gerbald looked at Pam proudly.

"Nice shooting, Tex! Four shots, no misses! You turned the battle in our favor!" he told his ashen faced friend, who just blinked at him, half in a state of shock. He saw where Pam was looking and his voice took on a solemn timbre. "Rask is injured very badly. We have lost Mard. Rask and Fritjof are sure to follow him. He is asking for you, Pam."

Pam felt a knot tighten in her stomach. Not the nice old fellow who loved that photo of "The Princess" so much!

"You are sure about Fritjof? Not making it, I mean?"

Gerbald nodded sadly. "I am sorry, Pam. He fought bravely. Please, follow me. Dore, see what you can do for our wounded."

"Pers has also been hurt, but not too badly. I shall tend to Rask first," Dore replied calmly, being used to aftermaths such as these.

Gerbald led Pam to where Fritjof lay, his head cradled by an exhausted bosun. He couldn't stay, as Dore called for his help with Rask. Fritjof's face was pale except for a line of blood trickling into his white beard. Someone had placed a cloth over his wounds, Pam could see that it was dark and soaking wet. Her gorge wanted to rise, but she forced it down.

"Fritjof, Frau Pam is here to see you," the bosun said softly into his ear. The old man's eyes opened, bloodshot and wild, darting about in search of her.

"I'm here, Fritjof," Pam told him, kneeling next to him and taking his hand. Although they were cold and bloodless, his long, thin fingers grasped hers with surprising strength.

"Frau Pam, thank you, thank you. I haven't much time now. I am no longer the fighter I was when I was young but I take two of these dogs to their graves with me."

"You are very brave, Fritjof. I am so proud of you. I know the princess will be, too," Pam told him, tears forming in the corner of her gunsmoke-stung eyes.

"The princess. Will you tell her? Will you tell her that I served her to my last?" His sentences were now punctuated with heaving gasps as his punctured lungs fought a losing battle for every breath.

"I will. I will tell her all about you, Fritjof! How brave you are and how you loved her and how you kept her photo. I will tell her of good Fritjof, loyal friend and fearless soldier!" Her voice caught and she fell silent, trying not to lose herself to weeping, not yet. Fritjof tried to say more but his gasps were coming more rapidly, stopping him from further speech. Pam took the damp cloth from the bosun and began to wipe his face, tears streaming now, mixing with the cool water and cooling blood. The touch of her hand seemed to calm him and he was able to speak again.

"Thank you, Frau Pam, thank you. I see the faces of my ancestors now. They have come for me in the ships of the old times. I see their sails, red and gold. Soon I shall join them." His grip on her hand tightened and his eyes were able to focus on her for a moment. "You were always kind to me. It is you who are the brave one, Frau Pam. All we men see it. I am glad to have you as my captain here at my end." Before she could answer Fritjof convulsed, a final ragged breath and then silence. His grip loosened and his hand fell limp to the deck. Pam let out a low wail, still wiping his forehead with the cloth. The bosun gently pushed her hand aside and closed the old sailor's eyes.

"Fritjof lived a long life, Frau Pam, longer than most who go to sea," the bosun told her in a tone of utmost kindness. "He is with his people now in the next world. Don't weep so."

Pam somehow ceased her keening cry and took a deep breath. She wiped her tears with her arm, her hands shaking.

"Come, good lady. Let us now help those who stay with us in this world." The bosun stood up, his movements those of one bruised and battered in cruel battle but still filled with strength. He took her trembling hands in his and lifted her to her feet. Pam embraced him for a moment, nearly knocking the wind out of the poor fellow, then released him to peer about the deck with tear-burned eyes. She shook herself, then spoke from an icy, calm place in the maelstrom of grief and disgust heaving about her mind.

"I'll go check on Pers. I think he's all right, just badly bruised."

The bosun saluted her, then turned to pull the blanket over the face of their fallen comrade.

Pam returned to the rail to see Pers was beginning to come around in the longboat. The boy was black and blue and he had a bloody nose but his eyes focused on Pam and his pupils weren't dilated.

"How do I look?" he asked cheerfully. Pam let out a laugh, more of a growl really, and told him, "You look like an elephant stepped on you, but you'll live. Stay put there and pinch your nose shut until I come back and tell you to stop." He did as she ordered while Pam went to join Dore where she ministered to Rask.

"Oh, dear. It is not good. A deep cut to the thigh here, and a gash to the side of the belly. I must find out how deep." No stranger to battlefield medicine, Dore went about her examination with the same deft swiftness she would preparing a chicken for the boil, ignoring the man's gasps and moans of pain. Pam was suitably impressed that Dore had developed such sophisticated first aid skills during her years as a camp follower. She knelt down to assist however she could. Under Dore's direction they made quick progress and stopped the bleeding.

Pam cursed under her breath and wished for up-time antibiotics. Back at camp she had a precious plastic bottle of Bactine, an over-the-counter antibacterial and mild local anesthetic she kept in her birding pack's tiny medkit for cuts and scrapes on the trail. She had been hoarding it, using it only sparingly, but she knew she would give it all if needed to help this man. With Rask stabilized and resting as comfortably as they could make him, they stood up wearily.

"I have some antibacterial medicine in my hut," Pam told Dore.

"Good, we will use it. Here come the men. Let us thank the Lord we have prevailed and pray that He welcome the souls of our brave men in His heavenly kingdom." Dore lowered her head and clasped her hands in silent prayer, a common pose for the upright German lady made utterly unearthly by her half-naked condition. This night Dore was a grass skirted and savage warrior queen with flowers in her hair, blood spattered and solemn as she sent the power of her unwavering faith to aid the souls of their fallen on their journey to Paradise.

****

To be continued . . .

Untying the Wind

Iver P. Cooper

In Macbeth (1606), the Second Witch tells the First, "I'll give thee a wind." (I, iii), and later Macbeth acknowledges their power to "untie the winds." Gustavus Adolphus "was said to have been aided by wind magic practiced by the Lapps and Finns in his armies." (Deblieu 34) Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler (1653), declared, "I wish I were in Lapland, to buy a good wind of one of the honest witches, that sell so many winds there and so cheap." (Watson 119).

Winds were important-windmills required winds that were neither too light nor too strong, and for sailors, the wind had to be from the right directions, too. In the new universe created by the Ring of Fire, the wind will aid or hinder aircraft and airships.

In this article, I will try to answer the following questions: (1) what did the down-timers know about the prevailing winds on the eve of the RoF? (2) what can they readily determine about the winds from the books of Grantville and from observation during the first few years after the RoF? (3) if an author needs to determine what winds prevail for a particular season and locale, what's the most efficient way of finding that information?

Pre-Rof Knowledge of Surface Winds

Before the RoF, mariners were already exploiting some of the world's major prevailing wind patterns.

At least since classical times, sailors have journeyed from East Africa to India on the southwest monsoon, and returned on the northeast monsoon (Deblieu 50). The monsoon alternation was even mentioned by Aristotle (Watson 41). The round trip from Rome to India took a year (101). When the Roman power ebbed, the Arabs took over. And once the Europeans circumnavigated Africa, they elbowed their way into this trade, too.

The pre-RoF trade route between Europe and North America likewise evolved to take advantage of favorable winds and avoid unfavorable ones. From Europe, the ships hurry as quickly as possible south through the variables, a region characterized by calms or light winds of no particular preferred direction. The down-timers called them the Horse Latitudes.

The sailors are pleased to reach the northeast trade wind zone, a region in which the winds blow steadily and strongly from the northeast. With this wind (more or less) at their back, they head westward, making landfall in the eastern Caribbean. They go about their business and then head northward along the American coast, passing through the Horse Latitudes a second time, and then arrive in the region of the westerlies. These are not as steady as the trade winds, but are still on average, favorable for the return to Europe.

The trade between Europe and South America is still mostly in Portuguese hands, although Recife in Brazil is occupied by the Dutch. The Portuguese ships head further south than those going to New Spain; if their destination is Rio or Bahia, they must cross the Doldrums (the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone) near the equator and enter the southeast trade winds for the westward haul. However, they have to work their way far enough south in the process so that, by the time they reach Brazil, they are in the southern hemisphere's variable zones, and can work their way along the coast to their destination.

Returning, they zigzag a bit. They descend to the westerlies (which, in the South Atlantic, are stronger and more reliable than their North Atlantic counterparts) and, cross back over the Atlantic. Nearing the Cape of Good Hope, they head north and pick up the southeast trades, which take them back northwest, above the triangular wedge of eastern Brazil. They make the difficult but fortunately short crossing of the Doldrums and then follow the North Atlantic return route to Europe. Note that they can't just round North Africa northward because they'd be fighting the northeast trades.

It is interesting to note that the Cory's Shearwater migrates from the northern to the southern hemisphere along this very route, and times its migration for when the African monsoon westerlies associated with the intertropical convergence zone are weakest (November). (Felicismo).

Those southeast trades also hindered the early Portuguese attempts at circumnavigation of Africa. The easiest (albeit not shortest) sea route to the Cape of Good Hope was by way of Brazil. However, once they developed that route, they were able to enter the Indian Ocean, and join the monsoon trade with India.

There is also a monsoon in the South China Sea, which dominates trade among China and the Philippines, and also affects trade with Japan, southeast Asia, and the Spice Islands of Indonesia.

In 1611, Hendrik Brouwer discovered that he could journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Java (the gateway to the Spice Islands) much more quickly by avoiding the monsoon belt of the Indian Ocean and instead taking advantage of its westerlies (the Roaring Forties). This route was made compulsory for the Dutch traders in 1616. Because you had to turn northeast eventually, to avoid Australia, it led to some inadvertent encounters (shipwrecks) with the Australian west coast when longitude was miscalculated.

Since the 1560s, Spanish ships have taken advantage of the North Pacific westerlies and northeast trade winds (Deblieu 51). The Acapulco Galleon leaves Acapulco with Spanish silver and gold, and takes the trade wind route to the Philippines. Then the Manila Galleon leaves Manila with Chinese silk, heads north along the coast of Japan (taking advantage of the northward Kuroshio current) and turns east as soon as it encounters the westerlies, making landfall off the coast of Upper or Lower California, and returns to Acapulco on the southward California current.

The southeast trades of the South Pacific were used, much earlier, by the ancient Polynesians. Their ships sailed best on a "reaching" course-one with the wind off the beam, and they expanded northeast from southeast Asia and Australia. (Watson 91).

Finally, Norse exploration of Iceland and Greenland was made possible by their exploitation of the polar easterlies. (Deblieu 50).

The desired routes are described in sailing directions composed by governments and trading companies. While these are nominally kept secret, the precautions are ineffectual. For example, the Dutch learned the Portuguese monsoon routes because the Portuguese allowed Dutchmen to serve as sailors on their ships.

Wind Meteorology in Grantville Literature

The Grantville encyclopedias and school earth science textbooks will put this information into perspective. That is, they will explain the physical mechanisms that create the westerlies, the trade winds, etc. However, they aren't likely to provide detailed information about the spatial extent of these prevailing wind regions, the average wind speed, or the steadiness of the wind direction.

Monsoon systems are characterized by prevailing wind patterns that reverse twice a year. There are monsoon systems in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. EB2002CD/"Indian Ocean" explains that the monsoon zone extends north from 10° S, and that in May-October it experiences the wet southwest monsoon with wind speeds up to 24 knots (28 miles per hour), and in November-April the dry northeast monsoon. The term southwest monsoon is something of a misnomer as there's a west wind over the Arabian Sea and a south wind over the Bay of Bengal. The monsoon season begins over the Arabian Sea first. Also note that during the changeovers (October and March-May), there may be "desultory breezes with no strong prevailing patterns" (EB2002CD/"India," "Climate").

EB2002CD/"Monsoon" warns that "At the poleward limit of a monsoon system, the winds shift sharply. In India, for example, the monsoon blows from the southwest in July-August, while north of India the winds are from the east. Over northern Australia the monsoon comes from the northwest in January-February, and at the southern limit the winds again become easterly."

Another monsoon system affects both southeast Asia and northern Australia. Its northern limit is about 25° N. In South China and the Philippines, the trade winds prevail in October-April and southwest monsoon winds in May-September. The summer monsoon is stronger over Vietnam and Thailand, but monsoon winds are weak over Indonesia. Northern Australia experiences northwest summer (November-April) monsoons and winter (May-September) southeast monsoons, but even in summer there are periods of southeast trade winds. (EB2002CD/"Climate").

Another essay notes that monsoon winds of the East China Sea blow from the southeast in summer and from the north in winter (EB2002CD/"China Sea"), but says nothing about their strength. Even less information is given about the monsoons of the South China Sea; essentially just that they exist.

In the Sea of Japan, further north, we are informed that the northwest monsoon prevails December (or September) to March, and the south(east) monsoon in summer (or, more broadly, mid-April to early September). (EB2002CD/"Japan, Sea of"; "Japan").

There are also small monsoonal systems in West Africa and Central America. (EB2002CD/"Climate").

EB11/"Trade Winds" says, "The area of their greatest influence may be taken to extend from about 3° to 35° N., and from the equator to 28° S., though these belts are actually somewhat narrower at any given season, as the whole system of surface winds over the globe moves north and south following the sun."

EB2002CD/"Wind" (my surrogate for the EB2000) says that the trade wind is a "very steady wind that blows westward and toward the equator from the subtropical high-pressure belts at latitudes near 30° N and 30° S toward the intertropical convergence zone. It is stronger and more consistent over the oceans than over land and produces fairly clear skies that make trade-wind islands popular tourist resorts. Its average speed is about 5 to 6 m per second (11 to 13 miles per hour). "

Some further information is provided in EB2002CD/"Pacific Ocean: Climate": "The obliquity of the ecliptic . . . limits the seasonal shifting of the Pacific trade-wind belts to about 5° of latitude. The easterly winds . . . tend to be strongest in the eastern Pacific. . . . The average wind speed of the Pacific trade winds is about 13 knots (15 miles per hour). The weather in the trade-wind belts is normally fine, with relatively little cloud cover. . . ."

There is also a southeast trade wind zone in the Indian Ocean, between 10° and 30° S; the winds are strongest June-September. EB2002CD/"Indian Ocean."

EB11/"Climate and Climatology" comments that the westerlies "are much less regular than the trades. They vary greatly in velocity in different regions and in different seasons, and are stronger in winter than in summer." Note that the southern hemisphere westerlies are more reliable: " Between latitudes 40° and 60° S the " brave west winds " blow with a constancy and velocity found in the northern hemisphere only on the oceans, and then in a modified form."

To this, EB2002CD/"Atlantic Ocean" adds, "the prevailing westerlies of mid-latitudes, . . . are found to be half as strong and about 10° farther north in latitude over the North Atlantic in summer than in winter. "

It continues, "In latitudes 15° to 30° N the North Atlantic is characterized by prevailing high pressure with an attendant lack of intense storms and severe weather." This, of course, is a reference to the Variables (Horse Latitudes).

The essay continues, "Over the South Atlantic the belt of prevailing westerlies extends from about 40° S almost to Antarctica, and the South Atlantic high-pressure area is centered around 30° S. . . ."

With regard to wind conditions in the polar regions, EB2002CD/"Atmospheric Circulation" informs us that "Poleward of 60° N and 60° S, the winds generally blow westward and equatorward as the polar easterlies. In the northern polar regions, where water and land are interspersed, the polar easterlies give way in summer to variable winds."

****

The North Marion High School in Mannington has the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1977)(McGHEST); I checked the 2002 edition and hopefully the relevant points are the same. McGHEST/"Atmosphere" provides a formula for the geostrophic wind (the wind resulting from the balancing of pressure gradient force and Coriolis force; this is dominant above about one kilometer, except near the equator. It also explains how the north-south temperature difference can cause winds aloft to be more westerly than those at the surface ("thermal wind"). McGHEST/"Wind" states that the trade winds run from 30° equatorward, and the westerlies from 30-35° to 55-60°. In winter, it says that these have mean speeds of 15 knots, and in summer, half that. And it says that these systems move poleward in summer and equatorward in winter. McGHEST/"Wind Power" provides a formula for the power of the wind.

McGHEST/"Monsoon Meteorology" states that the average onset date for the summer monsoon rains is June 1 at Kerala (8° N), June 10 at Bombay (19° N), and June 15 at Delhi (28.5° N), affecting the entire Indian subcontinent by mid-July. The monsoon rains withdraw southward beginning in September.

****

More detailed data is available in books and magazines geared for sailors and pilots. Since West Virginia is quite a distance from the sea, I am not very sanguine about finding a treasure trove of relevant nautical literature. Still, there are people in Grantville with nautical or aeronautical experience, and some basic books on navigation and meteorology could be in their private libraries.

For example, there is a reasonable chance that one of the many editions of Bowditch's American Practical Navigator came through the RoF. Chapter 35 of the 1995 edition provides the "generalized pattern of actual surface winds" in January-February and July-August over the ocean, worldwide. It also notes that the North Atlantic westerlies average 25 knots in winter and 14 knots in summer, but are unsteady (blowing between south and northwest 74% of the time). The Southern Hemisphere westerlies are steadier, and 17-27 knots, with the greatest strength at 50° S. http://www.irbs.com/bowditch/pdf/chapt35.pdf

Bowditch isn't very informative about the trade winds. However, a book in my personal library-which has not been proven to be in Grantville-says that the NE trade winds have an average strength of Beaufort force 3-4 (7-16 knots), but can reach force 6-7 in Jan-Mar. Their direction and speed is very steady. The trade wind zone is 2-25° N in winter and 10-30° N in summer, but they are less reliable at the northern margin. See Cornell, World Cruising Routes 34.

****

If there are books on "wind power" in Grantville, they may have a world map showing wind speed distribution. Continental maps prepared in the early 1980s are duplicated in Gipe, Wind Power 406ff (2004), and I believe also in his pre-RoF Wind Power for Home and Business (1993). Of course, these maps do not show wind direction, but the up-timers would figure that the prevailing zonal winds (polar easterlies, mid-latitude westerlies, tropical easterly trades) would extend, in modified form, over the continents.

****

The Ring of Fire itself will perturb the post-RoF weather-the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 will not strike the same places on the same day that it did in the old timeline-but prevailing winds are an aspect of climate, not weather, and shouldn't change much.

The Hidden Treasure-Trove of Wind Knowledge: Ships' Logbooks

Even if we didn't have this info in available Grantville literature, it can be reconstructed to some degree by the down-timers, from ships' logbooks. "Even from the beginning of the great voyages in the 16th century, the positions and weather observations were taken every day. From the 17th century onwards, the observations were in tabular form." (Garcia-Herrera 3). "A Royal Order issued in 1575 required masters and pilots from the Spanish ships who navigated in the Carrera de Indias (the route from the mainland to the colonies in America) to keep a record of each trans-Atlantic journey, including a detailed description of the voyage and of any geographical discoveries, winds, currents, and hurricanes. The completed logbooks had to be delivered to the Professor of Cosmology in the Casa de Contratacion." (Prieto 38).

Naturally, the older the logbook, the less likely it is to have escaped loss or destruction, and I have relatively little information on the nature of logbooks compiled prior to 1750. However, sailors are a conservative lot, and there is reason to believe that the logbooks of the 1630s and before present similar information, albeit in more archaic terms.

The earliest logbook I have been able to read was from HMS Experiment (1697), it was tabular, and recorded the date, the day of the week, the wind direction (on the 32 point compass), the course, the distance sailed that day, the latitude and longitude, bearings to landmarks, and a description that begins with a remark about the weather, including the force of the wind (e.g., "small winds with much thunder, lightning and raine"). (Wheeler 135ff). The description might also mention what sails were set. Records were made at least daily.

Thus, there are three different indications of the wind force: the verbal descriptor, the amount of sail carried, and the distance traveled (the last being a function of the wind speed and direction relative to course). (Wheeler 68). This allows some degree of quantitative analysis of the logbooks right off the bat; wind force terms may be arranged by average distance sailed (Fig. 4). Once anemometers are placed on ships, it will be possible to correlate these traditional indications with wind speed.

At least in the British Navy, logbooks were kept by the captain, the lieutenants, and the master. Diligence was assured by the fact that the officer didn't get his pay until he handed in his logbook. In the East India Company, the journals were kept by the captain, the first mate, and occasionally the second mate. Enough British logbooks have survived to the present so that it was possible to reconstruct the probability of wind from each of the cardinal directions for each month of the year, in the English Channel, during 1685-1700. (Wheeler).

I can't speak about period Portuguese logbooks, because they were pretty much all destroyed by the Lisbon earthquake and fire. Spanish logbooks recorded all astronomical observations, and the distance traveled, course, and wind direction every two hours. (Garcia 16).

In Dutch logbooks, including information about wind force was routine by around 1600. (Koek 82). Dutch eighteenth-century logbooks anticipated the Beaufort scale descriptions by use of wind terms that specified the sail set, e.g., "double reefed topsail wind." (83). But bear in mind that the terminology in the early-seventeenth century must have been different, as reefing wasn't practiced then.

The French captains did keep logbooks, but in the seventeenth century it apparently was not commonplace for them to record meteorological observations in them. One exception was Georges Fournier (1593-1652), who in his 1643 treatise urged his fellows to record wind direction and quality. (Prieto 41).

****

The utility of this wind data is of course dependent on the accuracy of the computation of the place of observation, expressed as latitude and longitude. At the time of the Ring of Fire, you had perhaps half a degree accuracy for shipboard observations of latitude (with occasional several degree flubs). As for longitude, this was determined by dead reckoning, and became less and less reliable the longer you were at sea (so, on a major voyage, you could be off by tens of degrees). This will change as a result of Grantville knowledge, but it will change slowly. The raw logbook data will have to be corrected for the differences between compass (magnetic) and true directions, and for changes in reference meridian. (Wheeler 97ff).

In the nineteenth century, Maury studied American and British logbooks. By then, of course, navigation was more accurate, and addition the wind speeds were quantified at least as Beaufort force and possibly by anemometer (haven't checked this). Maury created track charts which showed what winds were encountered where and when by particular ships. From these, he then prepared "pilot charts" that showed, for a particular "grid box," the frequency of winds from different 16 compass points, for each month. From his charts, he created sailing directions. His directions and charts reduced the average New York-San Francisco passage time from 180 to 133 days. (Lewis; Maury), and New York to Rio from 41 to 21 days. (De Villiers 68).

****

Sailors, of course, aren't going to know anything about overland winds. In 1582-97, the landlubber Tycho Brahe kept a meteorological daybook on the Island of Ven, with an eleven level wind scale, but this was exceptional. (De Villiers 61; Huler 82). There are undoubtedly documents that make reference to winds so strong that they destroyed property, but it's doubtful that there are many systematic records of wind direction and force over land.

Observation of the Wind

At the time of the Ring of Fire, the characters will not know the average speed of the wind, as no devices for that purpose had yet been invented. The wind will be described in qualitative terms. Smith's Sea Grammar (1627) classified the wind level as stark calm, calm, fresh gale, loome gale, stiff gale, storm, tempest, and "hericano"; note that "gale" was then a generic term for a wind, and "breeze" was used only along the coast, in the context of a "land breeze" or "sea breeze." (Huler 85).

In 1806, Beaufort proposed standardization of the British Navy's wind descriptions in log entries, characterizing the wind force in terms of how much sail a sailing ship may safely carry, and his scale was mandated by the Admiralty in 1838. In 1906, the scale was recast, for the benefit of steamships, in terms of sea state.

The first anemometer was one in which the wind caused a hinged, hanging plate to be deflected from the vertical; this was described by Leon Battista Alberti in 1450 (Huler 189). Unfortunately, swinging plate anemometers aren't accurate at sea, because of the motion of the ship. Still, one was carried on a Swedish warship in 1779 (89). The more practical cup anemometer was invented in 1846 (191). There is probably an exemplar at the high school science department in Grantville.

A variety of anemometers are described in the Grantville encyclopedias, and possibly in other Grantville literature (Popular Science back issues, Amateur Scientist column in Scientific American, science fair project books) and it's reasonably likely that at least the Science Department at the school has basic weather equipment such as a barometer, a thermometer and a anemometer mounted on the rooftop. Indeed, it probably has a combination barograph-thermograph for recording pressure and temperature.

So, within a year or two after the RoF, it's possible that anemometers have been built, and governments could require their use on shipboard to record wind information for the ship's log.

Each year, as the logbooks were turned in and analyzed, you would refine the body of wind climatology data for the standard sailing routes. Ideally, you would collect wind data for at least thirty years, the standard period for computation of climatological norms.

****

While the broader development of meteorology is outside the focus of this article, this author thinks it likely that crude but serviceable thermometers, barometers and anemometers will be manufactured within a few years after RoF, and purchased by governments, nobles, professionals, merchants and the military throughout Europe.

Inevitably, meteorological records will be kept, and this will lead in turn to meteorological reports and even forecasts in the newspapers and on the radio and telegraph. In eighteenth-century Europe, informal networks of towns shared weather observations (De Villiers 133), and by the 1840s, weather events were telegraphed across regions of the United States and Britain. (Monmonier, 40).

In Flint, 1633, Chapter 14, Jesse tells Jim, "We need someone to organize a weather service. . . ." In October 1633, the Voice of America, broadcasting from Grantville, features a "local weather forecast." Hughes, "Turn Your Radio on, Episode Two" (Grantville Gazette 20).

I imagine that the weather was mentioned on the weekly Farm-to-Market report mentioned in Huff and Goodlett, "Waves of Change" (Grantville Gazette 9).

Merton Smith of TransEuropean Airlines calls up the weather service in Huff and Goodlett, "High Road to Venice," and he has weather information from as far away as Rome. (Grantville Gazette 19). By fall, 1635, there are weather stations in Russia, at least one of which is equipped with an up-time thermometer and barometer, although their data is transmitted by messenger rather than by radio. Huff and Goodlett, "Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part Seven, The Bureaucrats are Revolting" (Grantville Gazette 9).

Thus, we anticipate that the characters will combine their qualitative knowledge of the winds that prevailed before the Ring of Fire, with the limited quantitative information that the Grantville literature furnishes on late-twentieth century wind climatology, and use it to predict the prevailing winds that will be experienced in the decades following the Ring of Fire.

Winds Aloft

As you go higher, air temperature and pressure drop, at least until you reach 11 km. Upper air weather maps often are identified in terms of the standard pressure at the height the measurements were made, rather than the height (above sea level) directly. Note that one millibar (mb) equals 100 pascals. The weather maps most often available are for the "pressure altitudes" shown below:

Winds increase in speed with altitude, because they aren't slowed down as much by friction with the earth's surface. I assume an exponential increase in wind speed with height, with the reference height being 10 meters (standard meteorological practice) and the exponent being 0.2. The exponent in fact depends on the terrain below, and the stability of the air, and you can find a list of suitable values for different circumstances at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_gradient

Winds also change direction with altitude, either veering (turning clockwise with height) or backing (turning counter-clockwise). Generally speaking, they veer in the northern hemisphere and back in the southern, because the upper air levels experience less "frictional" drag than the lower ones and thus the wind is faster, and this means that the Coriolis force, which is perpendicular to the wind and proportional to the wind speed, is greater. Here's an applet to play with:

http://itg1.meteor.wisc.edu/wxwise/kinematics/testwind2.html

However, veering and backing can also occur as a result of horizontal temperature gradients ("thermal wind") so it's a complex matter. The matter is alluded to by McGHEST/"Wind."

Over the ocean, the average veering is 10.5° at 1,000 meters height (relative to the surface wind), and rising another 1,000 meters adds another 2.5°. (Gray 49). The effects of latitude (0-60°), wind speed and season are minor, with, at 1,000 meters height, perhaps a 4° range (Gray 49, 51, 54). Over land, the veer at 1,000 meters is much larger, perhaps 25-35°. (Gray 75-6).

****

There's a weather proverb, "If clouds move against the wind, rain will follow." It's evidence of wind shear, wind direction aloft being different than wind direction at the surface. (So, too, is the movement of different cloud layers in different directions at the same time.) I am not sure how old the saying is, but I found it in Loudon's 1824 Encyclopaedia of Gardening. The down-timers are much more familiar with the outdoors than we are, and may have noticed this phenomenon. Certainly, ships' officers may be asked to note any evidence of wind shear in the future.

There is limited information in Grantville Literature about winds aloft. The EB2002CD essays on monsoons set forth the vertical thickness of the monsoon zone. EB2002CD also mentions the "antitrade wind," a "steady wind that blows poleward and eastward between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, at altitudes of 2 to 12 kilometres (about 1 to 7 miles). Such winds overlie the westward-blowing trade winds." So, if a transatlantic airship could cruise at an altitude of 2 kilometers or higher, it could take advantage of the antitrades to retrace its steps, if that would be more convenient than jogging northward to the westerlies.

If you are wondering about the jet stream, this lies at 10-50 km, well out of airship reach. (EB2002CD/"Jet Stream").

In the old time line, upper air meteorological data was collected by miniaturized "meteorographs," carried by kites and balloons, beginning at least by the 1890s (Monmonier 69). This surely will happen much sooner in the new universe-if we can't build a meteorological balloon, we certainly aren't ready to launch airships!

"Author's Only" Information on Surface and Upper Air Winds

A prospective author may (indeed, better) know more than his or her characters about the conditions awaiting them. That may mean consulting modern, scholarly sources of wind climatology.

For overland flights over the United States, go here for "wind roses" (graphical representations of the probability of various wind speeds and directions):

http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/climate/windrose.html

and for wind speed only:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/societal-impacts/wind

There is wind data for other parts of the world here:

http://www.windfinder.com/windstats/

Ocean data comes from voluntary shipboard observers, buoys, and, most recently, satellites. You may obtain monthly norms of wind speed and direction for the entire world (sea only) at http://cioss.coas.oregonstate.edu/scow/opendap.html

****

Here is a sample of the combined overland and ocean wind speed data that's available from the wind atlases prepared for the wind energy industry:

http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/windpower/ResourceMap/sse_figure28a_rev.gif

In general, the surface wind speed over land is half the surface wind speed over water, and one-third the speed aloft above the "friction layer." (Watts 117).

This site has separate January and July maps of (separately) wind speed and wind direction for January and July.

http://www.climate-charts.com/World-Climate-Maps.html

This site has flash animations showing changes in sea level pressure and wind vector, and 500 mb height and wind vector, for the entire world on a monthly basis:

http://geography.uoregon.edu/envchange/clim_animations/index.html

Here you can find the monthly mean 850 hPa winds for the entire world:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/realtime/clim/annual/monthly/monthly.12.w850.html

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/climatology/Wind-850.shtml

and for the 200 hPa pressure altitude:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/realtime/clim/annual/monthly/monthly.12.w200.html

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/climatology/Wind-200.shtml

The following website allows you to create maps of vector wind, scalar wind speed, zonal wind or meridional wind, for any of a great variety of pressure altitudes from the surface up, based on the average over a specified year range (chosen from 1948-2011) for any specified month or range of months or the entire year, for the entire world or specified regions. The data is from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis, and is gridded at 2.5 degree intervals.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/composites/printpage.pl

After you generate the map, you can also get a copy of the u-wind and v-wind text data file used to generate the vector wind-u-wind is the east-west component and v-wind the north-south component.

If you are dealing with a trip at the time of monsoon changeover, you may need weekly rather than monthly data. You can create a weekly report by use of a daily composite:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/composites/day/

You may also access daily data here,

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.html

(click on create plot/subset for the wind data of interest).

If that's not enough information for you, you'll need to launch your own weather satellite. . . .

Conclusion

It's a pity that our characters can't carry the winds in a knotted cord, and release the wind they need by untying it. But they can do the next best thing, which is to learn to predict which winds will prevail at a particular place during a particular time of the year.

Bibliography

Meteorology

"Pressure Altitude"

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/slc/projects/wxcalc/formulas/pressureAltitude.pdf

(formula used to convert pressure altitude (mb) to geometric altitude (ft, m) on spreadsheet)

Cavcar, "The International Standard Atmosphere (ISA)",

http://home.anadolu.edu.tr/~mcavcar/common/ISAweb.pdf

Deblieu, Wind: How the Flow of Air has Shaped Life, Myth and the Land (1998)

De Villiers, Windswept (2006).

Huler, Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and how a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry (2004).

Monmonier, Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather (2000).

Watson, Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind (1984).

Gray, "Diagnostic Study of the Planetary Boundary Layer over the Oceans," Atmospheric Science Paper No. 179, Dept. Atmospheric Science, Colorado State U. (Feb. 1972)

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2 amp;doc=GetTRDoc.pdf amp;AD=AD0741717

Lewis, "Winds over the World Sea: Maury and Koppen, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc'y, 77:935 (May 1996). http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%281996%29077%3C0935%3AWOTWSM%3E2.0.CO%3B2

NASA,

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/AmazonLAI/amazon_lai3.php

Voeikov, Discussion and Analysis of Professor Coffin's Tables and Charts of the Winds of the Globe (1876)

http://www.archive.org/stream/discussionandan00voegoog#page/n90/mode/2up

Watts, The Weather Handbook (1994).

Cushman-Roisin, Chapter 8, "The Ekman Layer," in Introduction to Geophysical Fluid Dynamics: Physical and Numerical Aspects (2011)

http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~cushman/books/GFD/chap8.pdf

(for possible use in trying to quantify frictional veering)

Wikipedia "Density of air"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_density

Ship's Logbooks

Garcia-Herrera, CLIWOC: A Climatological Database for the World's Oceans 1750-1854, Climate Change, 73: 1-12 (2005).

Garcia-Herrera, Description and General Background to Ships' Logbooks as a Source of Climactic Data, Climatic Change, 73: 13-36 (2005).

Prieto, Deriving Wind Force Terms from Nautical Reports through Content Analysis: The Spanish and French Cases, Climatic Change 73: 37-55 (2005).

Wheeler amp; Wilkinson, The Determination of Logbook Wind Force and Weather Terms: The English Case, Climatic Change, 73: 57-77 (2005).

Koek, Determination of Wind Force and Present Weather Terms: The Dutch Case, Climatic Change, 73: 79-95 (2005).

Wheeler, An Examination of the Accuracy and Consistency of Ships' Logbook Weather Observations and Records, Climatic Change 73: 97-116 (2005).

Wheeler, British Naval Logbooks from the Late Seventeenth Century: New Climatic Information from Old Sources, History of Meteorology 2:133-145 (2005).

Wheeler, Using Ships' Logbooks to Understand the Little Ice Age (1685 to 1750): developing a new source of climatic data

Wheeler, The weather during the voyage of the Royal Spanish mail Ship Grimaldi, February-March 1795

Garcia, Sailing Ship Records as Proxies of Climate Variability over the World's Oceans

Garcia-Herrera, The Use of Spanish and British Documentary Sources in the Investigation of Atlantic Hurricane Incidence in Historical Times

****

The Progression of Trauma Care and Surgery after the Ring of Fire, Part 2

Gus Kritikos

As in Part 1, I'll include a number of references in this article. Most will be to either canon or Wiki articles giving more detail on some topics than I can include here. I also wish to thank Panteleimon Roberts, Danita and Nimitz Lover for their off Bar input.

For some things, there are no good substitutions.

As I noted at the end of Part 1, only a limited amount of suture material came through the Ring of Fire (RoF). Some is at the physicians' offices, some at the veterinarians' offices, and possibly some at the nursing home. Dr. Ellis or Dr. McDonnell might have a couple of spools of black surgical silk stashed with old office equipment. Because of the war and the change in medical conditions, this small supply will rapidly be used up. I don't know what stocks of plain (unflavored, unwaxed) dental floss will be available at the RoF, but the floss is fine enough and limp enough to thread through eyed needles, as well as strong enough and has a good enough "hand" (the ability to be securely knotted) to act as an impromptu suture material once sterilized.

Up-time, we have a wide variety of suture materials,[i] but down-time the Grantville medical community's options will be limited, at least until material sciences catch up. It's interesting to remember that thread sizes were standardized before specific sutures were in regular use, with size 0 being the smallest thread that could be spun with early-nineteenth century technology. As suture materials advanced, smaller and smaller threads and filaments were made, requiring more and more zeros to indicate the sizes. While up-time sutures are available down to 11-0 size (used for corneal surgery and requiring the use of an operating microscope), the most common sizes used range from 3-0 to 6-0, which is as fine as most human hairs. Size 0 and even #1 sutures are most often used to hold chest tubes in place, or provide closure (when passed through buttons) in very obese abdomens. The use of smaller sutures, along with earlier removal, leads to less scarring, especially on the face.

The first absorbable sutures available down time will be processed from sheep gut. This material was used in Our Time Line (OTL) through the 1990s and is similar to the strings used for violins, violas and tennis racquets. In OTL, two forms were used, plain and chromic. The difference between the two was a treatment with chromic salts that makes the chromic-treated (essentially tanned) material last about twice as long as the plain, at an increased risk of serious inflammation. Gut is best sterilized with iodine solutions, a technique developed in 1906 in OTL. The synthetic absorbable suture materials (polyglycolic acid derivatives)[ii]will probably appear around the same time as nylon and polyethylene sutures do, as the same kind of advancements of the organic chemical industry is needed, and sutures done with the synthetics heal much better than those done with gut. This is especially true in plastic surgery and where absorbable sutures are needed near vascular repairs.

Early down-time non-absorbable sutures will include braided silk, spun cotton, and silver wire. Linen thread may also be used, although it is stiffer than cotton, and causes substantial inflammation[iii]. Both cotton and linen are more flexible and actually stronger when wet, which helps make them useful for suturing. Point of use sterilization will consist of wrapping the suture material around a soft core like a rubber tube and boiling it for twenty minutes. A sample should be weight tested for tensile strength before use.[iv] Braided polyester will probably be the first up-time suture material redeveloped, as it will be usable with the same kind of eyed needles as the silk and cotton.

A fair chance exists that some of the thinnest suture material for a few years will actually be iodine treated horsehair. This is the closest thing available to fine monofilament sutures and is soft enough to thread through the eye of the smallest needles.

Up until the early 1950s in OTL, all surgical needles had eyes to hold the thread, just like the common sewing needles from which they were derived. Despite modifications of the eyes to allow the suture material to lay flat along the tail of the needle, the bulk of the doubled thread causes more trauma to the patient's tissues than the simple passage of the curved needle.

In the early 1950s, a technique to swage the hollow butt end of the needle around the bitter end of the suture material was developed. This resulted in an "atraumatic" needle/suture set, which is much gentler to the tissues than the older method.

One reason for developing the swaged-on units was that monofilament suture materials were too stiff to lay properly in the grooves of an eyed needle. Fine (5-0 or smaller) monofilament suture material, needle drivers, and small swaged-on needles are all necessary preconditions for the development of vascular and cardiac surgery, as was noted in Part 1 of this series. Monofilament suture materials' stiffness does mean that it is more difficult to tie those materials securely. Despite their extra stiffness, monofilament sutures have advantages over the braided forms, both in reduction of tissue damage, reduction of tissue irritation, and reduction in the chances of post-operative infections. Over time, the braided or spun materials allow bacteria to follow the suture track deep into the tissues. Monofilament sutures decrease the risk of this effect. Both nylon and polypropylene may be available before 1640, and but probably not by the time stainless steel needles should be available-around 1636-37. These polymers are easily drawn out to fine monofilaments, especially with the expected down-time technological advances between 1631 and 1640. Thus, braided polyester and silk will probably be the first suture materials to benefit from swaged on needles as a result.

Up-time, swaged-on suture materials come in a variety of precut lengths, generally from 18 inches (45 cm) to 36 inches (90 cm). They are normally double wrapped and sterilized by radiation from Cobalt 60 or other high gamma radiation source. Steam sterilization will work for all of the natural materials except gut, and most of the synthetic materials. A caveat is that heating the monofilament materials while they are coiled may cause a "set," which makes the suture material much more difficult to deal with.

Needles in a Needle Stack[v]

Suture needles themselves come in a bewildering variety of sizes, shapes, and points, many of which are more or less interchangeable. The vast majority of needles up-time have a curve because this allows the needle to pierce flesh with a simple twist of the hand holding the needle driver. This also allows the tissues to meet together in a more natural position. While simple, tapered (conical) pointed needles will have some utility, most often there will be a triangular point with a cutting edge stretching along the inside (cutting) or outside (reverse cutting) of the curve. Straight needles are rarely used, being generally much larger (employed with the hand and not a needle driver), and reserved for situations where that is a feature and not a drawback. One example is closing the wound around a chest tube and securing that tube in place.

Stainless steel has already been mentioned as being the critical material for the development of instruments, suture needles, and orthopedic fixation wires. These three items will be the major driver for the first "laboratory" amounts of stainless steel, as even these small quantities of stainless will be useful. As other material sciences develop, it will be useful for hypodermic and intravenous (IV) injection needles and as supporting needles when intravenous catheters are re-introduced. As supplies increase in quality and quantity, other uses, including as staples for closing the skin (usually done one staple at a time) and for automatic stapling devices for bowel resections[vi] which place up to seventy small staples at a time, and for use in orthopedic plates, screws, intramedullary rods and prosthetic devices to replace hips and knees. Stainless steel will replace silver for closing traumatic gaps in the skull, and stainless steel wire will provide the extra strength needed to reinforce bones that have been cut or splintered, including the sternum (breastbone) after chest surgery. Eventually, exotic alloys and titanium will replace stainless steel for most of the prosthetic devices, but this will probably not happen until the 1650s at the earliest.

Where will it all come from?

Supply sources for all of these developments will end up spread across the USE and into the Union of Kalmar. Secondary sources will develop in the Lowlands, Padua and Venice, and France. In canon, we already have Lothlorien Farbenwerks (initially cannabis[vii], but later dyes and their derivatives); Manning's Medical Manufacturing (3M)[viii] (the providers of insulin among other medications); Daisy Matheny BioLabs (the re-developers of tetanus toxiod[ix], as well as other immunizations); Essen Chemical, (one of the first producers of chloramphenicol, HTH (calcium hypochlorite-used for water purification); gamma hexane hexachloride (one of the safest effective synthetic insecticides), and sulfanilamide[x] outside of Grantville). Other sources include The Antonites, a Franciscan monastery, (producers of decent crude penicillin from a mashed pea soup with a trace of borax[xi] after obtaining their initial culture material from Grantville); and several steel makers. One of the more important people working to provide steel will be Louis de Geer (1587-1652), who controlled much of the Swedish steel production[xii] and who is working closely with Essen Steel. The first imports of chromium could not arrive before the fall of 1635, and more likely sometime in mid to late 1636, from the mines in Maryland. Despite the amazing amount of down-time brainpower that can be brought to bear on the problem, it will be decades before some of the more exotic alloys, including titanium, will be available.

The various orthopedic pins and wires will be easy once high-quality stainless steel is available, as they are pulled in wire mills, and then threaded if needed. It will take some experimentation for the blacksmiths and instrument makers to get the surgical instruments correct. They will probably start with the scalpel handles, then larger clamps, then scissors, and finally the smaller clamps as their techniques improve. Most of the clamps use "box" hinges, where one part fits inside a "box" formed in the middle of another. This is the reason I expect master instrument-makers being associated with each of the New Model medical schools and with the larger New Model teaching hospitals.

As I recall, carbon steel needles in the early modern era were some of the more expensive items that a woman or tailor could own prior to the RoF; and those needles were rather larger than most of the ones used in surgery[xiii]. Add in that the swaged-on models can't be reused, and the cost of needle making will have to drop substantiallybefore the swaged-on models become practical.

It does help that some form of needle making (to support the growing sewing machine industry) is effectively in canon, even if I can't recall it being directly mentioned.

Duct tape but not bailing wire.

Another item that will be in short supply will be sticky tape, especially tape safe to use on human skin. While there are many field expedients (ripped petticoats come to mind) to bind dressings[xiv] to the victims, and many other type of non-adhesive bandages (in addition to rolls of gauze, and triangles of linen called cravats, Dr. Scultetus was credited with the development of the "many tailed abdominal bandage" that bears his name to this day) in OTL, surgical tape was not developed until the late 1800s, after the development of rubber-based adhesives. Adhesive bandages (Band Aid ™ brand bandages or British "sticking plasters"), with the dressing (a sterile gauze pad) already attached to a strip of tape, were not developed until the 1920s. By CE 2000, there were a wide variety of tapes, including many that could be directly applied to wounds as a form of closure (SteriStrips ™ were commonly used to replace sutures or staples after the first stages of healing have completed, reducing scarring). There is also a technique called "butterflying[xv]," where a strip of tape is cut one-third in from both sides, the edges folded back on themselves, and the central portion passed through a candle flame to sterilize it before the strip is applied to close the wound.

Once rubber-based adhesives are available, basic white surgical tape is a matter of mixing the adhesive with zinc oxide to reduce the growth of bacteria and modify the "tackiness." The mixture is then spread along a length of tightly woven, light- weight canvas duck material, and allowed to dry slightly, before being rolled on a wooden or cardboard form. This produces the familiar "sticky tape" that was the standard for securing dressing until the mid 1970s, when more advanced forms (with improved adhesives and lighter, sometimes even non-woven, fabrics became available. This old-fashioned adhesive tape is now mostly relegated to protective taping of athletes, and to improve grips on tools and sporting goods.

How will Grantville influence the development of trauma care and surgery in the New Time Line (NTL)?

The three most important contributions to surgical care that Grantville brings back are the "Germ Theory of Disease," the idea of controlled anesthesia, and 350 years of surgical history. The first leads to propagating aseptic (without infection) surgery methods, which is the first and most important method of preventing needless postoperative complications and death. The second allows the surgeon to operate meticulously when needed, rather than concentrating on speed. By the 1630s, there are already skilled surgeons who can remove a leg above the knee in less than five minutes, but the survival rate of their patients is dismal. Those same surgeons, operating aseptically, and with the advantages of controlled anesthesia, will probably take more than four times as long to remove a leg, but most of their patients will survive the surgery and potentially even thrive. Add in the descriptions of the most important of the 350 years of up-time developments and the open abdominal surgeries already in canon, and the science of surgery will take off in the late 1630s as it did in the 1920s in OTL. The major limitation to surgical advances between 1631 and the late 1630s will be the need to develop the supporting infrastructure, including building hospitals with aseptic operating rooms, creating and producing the needed instruments and redeveloping other materials, including sutures, antiseptics and anesthetics.

Those novel (to the down-timers) techniques will include such procedures as the development of a skin and muscle flap to close the stump of an amputation, bowel resections and colostomies for trauma and cancer, and tracheotomies and the use of chest tubes for the relief of ventilation problems in trauma, cancers or certain diseases. As the technology catches up, there will be a second expansion of surgical techniques, including cardiac and brain surgery, in the late 1640s and 50s, much like that seen in the 1950s and 1960s in OTL.

Aseptic Techniques developed out of the Germ Theory.

Prior to the medical establishment's understanding that there were organisms that caused disease, and those miniscule organisms could be transmitted between the sick and well by instruments, contaminated dressings, and even the very clothing and hands of the physicians and nurses, infections were commonplace consequences of medical care. Before the development of aseptic techniques, any surgery or even much of basic medical care, created almost as much a chance of a nasty death as a wound in combat. Aseptic techniques will cover the operations themselves, the care of the patient afterwards, and just as importantly, the care of the operating instruments themselves.

In OTL, there were several champions of cleanliness in health care. Beginning with Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis in Vienna, and Florence Nightingale in Great Britain, both in the middle of the 1800s, devotees of medicinal cleanliness included Joseph, Baron Lister in Great Britain, Louis Pasteur in France, and Robert Koch and Friedrich Loeffler in Germany in the later years of that century.

One interesting point is that the efforts of Ambroise Pare in the mid-1500s should be remembered in 1630, while they were largely forgotten by the 1800s. Mr. Pare, a barber-surgeon, was instrumental in developing techniques that allowed the French army to reduce the complications from field amputations by a large degree, mostly by avoiding the use of large-scale hot cautery to stop the bleeding of the stump, and an advanced understanding for his time of the value of cleanliness in wound healing. Add in the extra operating time allowed by the anesthesia to the benefits of aseptic technique, and Mr. Pare would have been ecstatic over up-time style care. Dr. Scultetus is in canon as having traveled to Jena and Grantville to learn these very techniques, and he was as honored in his time as Drs. Crile, Halsted, and Oschner are in OTL.

Baron Lister's ideas of "antiseptic surgery" included developing mechanisms to provide a fine mist of an antiseptic solution of carbolic acid (phenol) before and during the operation, ceasing the sprayers when the wound was finally dressed. Building on ideas put forth by Florence Nightingale on the need for clean, fresh air circulation to prevent disease, other physicians discovered that the baron's ideas, while good, caused problems for the patient and the operating team. A modified version of antiseptic surgery arose, where dust-catching filters and germ-killing ultraviolet lights were placed in the air ducts leading to the operating room. Air in surgical suites is constantly cycled through those ducts, preventing the airborne transmission of disease without exposing the operating team to the toxic germicide. Ultraviolet lights of this nature require a special type of glass that passes a higher percentage of those frequencies, but that is one of the few problems with reproducing them in the NTL.

Another place the ideas of Baron Lister and Florence Nightingale are likely to cross is in the construction the Operating Rooms and the insistence on thoroughly cleaning them after each use. Walls and floors of operating suites can be covered with closely set, well-glazed tile as was done in OTL from the 1920s to the early 1970s. Floor tiles may have a slightly roughened surface for the sake of better footing, or terrazzo floors may be used, with some of the up-time tricks making this application easier. Ceilings will probably be enamel-coated "tin" (galvanized steel), as these surfaces can better resist most common cleaning and disinfecting solutions. The tin ceilings will probably be very plain, with only enough embossing to increase the strength and help reduce some of the sound reflection, rather than the almost baroque pressed tin ceilings remaining from the Gilded Age here in the US. There will be one or more drains with "U" traps set in the floor, leading to a separate septic system, allowing for easy disposal of blood or other contaminated body fluids that might spill on the floor, as well as other spilled liquids.

The walls would be sprayed down using a pressure-pumped sprayer, similar to those that have been used by gardeners for fifty or more years before the RoF, and then wiped down with cloth pads on poles long enough to reach the ceiling. This same solution, probably a mixture of formaldehyde in alcohol and water (Formalin, also used as a preservative for tissues preparation) initially, later, one of several others as safer but still effective chemicals come out of the various laboratories, will be used on all environmental surfaces, not just the floor, walls and ceilings. Calcium hypochlorite solutions are another possibility, but this carries more risk of corrosion of various metal parts if not completely rinsed off. While the rooms will need to be completely aired out after the use of the Formalin protocol, the chances of corrosion are much lower.

As noted in Part 1, mild steel tends to rust if left wet. Salty solutions like blood and body fluids just accelerate that problem. Prompt cleaning with mild soap and water using a scrub brush, an initial acidic rinse to remove the last of the salts, followed by a clear distilled-water rinse and air-drying will reduce the chances of corrosion to an absolute minimum. Once dry, the instrument sets are re assembled according to standardized packing lists, wrapped with linen cover wraps, and then steam sterilized. This is again followed by adequate drying time to prevent corrosion. This means that the scrub nurse or technician in the OR will need to stop and lubricate the various hinges with sterilized mineral oil during set-up for the operation, but that is a relatively short procedure. As has been discussed on Baen's Bar, large amounts of high-chromium stainless steels are years, and the exotic alloys probably decades, down the road from the RoF. Doctors Nichols, Scultetus and their colleagues are stuck with mild steel for their new instruments at least through the end of 1636.

Baked, marinated, boiled or steamed: Instrument sterilization in the 1630s

The most common methods of sterilization after the Ring of Fire will include baking at 400°F for at least sixty minutes, the use of formaldehyde or glutaraldehyde[xvi] as cold sterilizing agents, or the use of small-scale steam sterilization. A twenty- to thirty-minute rolling boil in clean water will be a field expedient sterilization method, when a pressure cooker for steam sterilization is not available. I would expect that at least some of the medium sized (sixteen- to twenty-quart) pressure cookers that were to be found in many of the households of Grantville were purchased for use by the medical teams sent out from Grantville, but I did not find any mention of this in canon.

Of these methods, steam sterilization is the preferred method, due to its effectiveness and relative simplicity. It involves fifteen pounds of gauge pressure of steam for thirty minutes, followed by at least an hour to dry in the residual heat after the water and steam have been removed. This may be accomplished in a home pressure canning unit, as noted above, or in a small (six- to fifteen-inch diameter) commercial autoclave unit. Each of the physicians' and dentists' offices should have one of the smaller (six- to ten-inch diameter), and the veterinarians' office should have a larger (twelve- to fifteen-inch) model to handle the larger instruments used in large animal surgeries. Industrial-sized autoclaves (large enough to walk in, and capable of handling cart loads of instrument packs) will be developed by the time the Leahy Medical Center (LMC)is ready to use them, as they are a simple, relatively low pressure, extension of boiler technology. The only tricky part is designing and sealing a pressure tight door measuring up to six feet on a side. Smaller versions of the industrial model, measuring two to three feet on a side, will be commonly used in microbiology laboratories to prevent the spread of contamination from the used Petri dishes as the glassware is sterilized before cleaning and reuse. Almost as tricky will be reproducing the treated paper strips used to confirm that the steam (and therefore the heat) has penetrated to the center of the instrument packages. This will probably be a matter of the analysis of samples from existing stocks of those indicators at the RoF.

A positive demonstration of the sterilization will involve placing a paper packet of bacterial spores, most commonly one of the highly heat-resistant Bacillus species, in the middle of the autoclave load, and putting the spores on culture media (in the microbiology lab) to see if they will grow. If the sterilization is satisfactory, the spores will not show growth in the twenty-four hours after plating, and the load can safely be used. This does presuppose that the LMC will have enough equipment by that time to allow a load to sit for the needed day without being used. This was the industrial best practice when I was working in the sterile instrument department of St. Joseph's Hospital between the time I completed college, and went to basic training. Not much had changed by the late 1990s when I used similar but much smaller-scale techniques in my small town office.

A major problem with the reuse of the items designed to be "single patient use" is that many of them contain heat sensitive plastics. These will not stand the rigors of steam sterilization. It will be several years before ethylene oxide (mid-1630s?) or decades before Cobalt-60 (probably 1650s) radiation sterilization techniques will be practical. Careful cleaning and rinsing, followed by immersion in various solutions of formaldehyde and methanol, will most likely be used in the first years of the 1630s. The more stable, but still toxic, glutaraldehyde solutions should replace the others when it is available, probably around 1635. Because of the toxic nature of these disinfectants, a prolonged period of aeration will be needed to prevent the next patient from being exposed to any residual chemical fumes. Done properly, this "cold process" provides acceptable (even by up-time) standards levels of sterilization, leaving many opportunities for someone to write a story where something happens because it wasn't done correctly.

Cleanliness is next . . .

One thing that carried over from Baron Lister's "antiseptic" surgical ideals was the need for a full skin-scrub for both the patient and the operating team. While the operating team only needs to scrub their arms to the elbows, the Lister's carbolic acid (phenol) solutions were replaced in OTL with first dedicated surgical cleanser: Tincture of Green Soap[xvii], which contains liquid Castile soap along with 15% by volume alcohol and a small amount of glycerin. This is not the best antiseptic solution to use, but, given adequate contact time, it is effective. While iodine is in canon by 1634, derived from seaweed, the iodophor compounds are not going to be available early on. Tincture of iodine is not a good wound treatment due to the cellular toxicity of both the alcoholand the iodine, so it is less effective in the surgical suite. With DDT and gamma hexane hexachloride[xviii] in canon early on, hexachlorophene[xix] will probably be the first relatively safe, highly effective skin germicide to be reinvented.

Precautions will be needed when using the hexachlorophene with infants, small children and patients with significant skin problems, and in uses creating contact with internal body tissues. It is very effective for most other situations, including the ten-minute preoperative scrub that both the patient and surgical team undergo. As iodine becomes more available, various iodophor[xx] compounds will be developed, culminating with the development of something similar to povidone[xxi], which is the most commonly used carrier of iodine in OTL.

Chlorhexidine[xxii] type compounds will come later, as the organic chemical industry develops. Chlorhexidine also requires similar precautions to hexachlorophene, but is less absorbed through the skin. An interesting side effect of the use of chlorhexidine is that the surgical linens will need to be washed with soap and water before chlorine disinfectants are added, or a permanent dark stain will result.

What the well-dressed are wearing for surgery.

The idea of aseptic surgery requires that the patient be protected from outside sources of infection. This developed into elaborate drapes over the patient, and the practice of gowning and gloving the surgeon and operating assistants before the operation begins. In the early years of surgery, these drapes and gowns were made of white cotton or linen, which tolerate hot water, bleach and hot drying methods quite well. Similar cloth is used to double wrap the instrument sets before they are processed in the autoclave. The tight weave passes water vapor easily while remaining relatively waterproof, allowing both a modicum of comfort and protection for the operating team. Masks made of several layers of soft gauze will provide protection against germs being spread by sneezing, coughing or even breathing. Head coverings will be made from lighter material, and will probably resemble "mob caps" for both the nurses and long-haired surgeons. Some sort of beard covering will be needed for those with full beards, although most moustaches and Van Dyke/goatee facial hair will be adequately covered by the masks. The blue, green or gray scrubs and drapes did not come into common use in OTL until the development of closed-circuit TV removed the need for the operating amphitheater, reducing the chance of contamination from massed students trying to watch the operation. The reflection of the operating lights from the white drapes blinded the cameras.

Latex condoms are in canon by late 1634, and the manufacturing technology for surgical gloves is similar. These gloves can be sterilized by a modification of the autoclave technique, albeit with the need to use somewhat heavier latex than the up-time gloves needed. Because of this, the up-time gloves will be washed, tested for leaks, and re-sterilized for as long as possible. Under truly austere conditions, especially in extremely hot weather, the minimum kit for surgical dress will include the hat, mask, long sterile gloves, a light shirt and pants, low waterproof boots and a high-necked apron. The team will need to scrub higher on the arms, and for a longer period, when possible, between cases. If there is a truly massive mass casualty event, such as almost happened during the Croat Raid, then even this step is often abbreviated. Just as the gowns, caps and masks are changed between cases, the boots will need to be disinfected from case to case and at the end of the day. This will be interesting until the stocks of vulcanizable rubber are large enough to make the boots. The boots will also need to remain in the Operating Suite, to help prevent cross-contamination from the rest of the hospital from reaching into the surgical theater or vice versa. Additionally, military field hospitals, especially those operating in extremely hot areas and under mass casualty conditions, will tend toward the operating garb adopted by MASH-type surgeons: caps, masks, aprons and long gloves, with the gloves changed with each case and the aprons changed as available or needed.

Let there be light!

As I noted in Part 1, getting light into the recesses of the body is needed to do many procedures. In 1634:The Galileo Affair, a field expedient operating room is set up to take advantage of the early morning light, supplemented by water-filled clear glass bowls and reflectors to spread the light around the operating area. Panteleimon reports that one of his first posts to the Bar was in regards to this matter, as usually the use of glass globes tends to concentrate light like a burning glass, rather than diffusing it into the needed area.

The high-powered electric lights currently used in the ORs won't be available until decent amounts of tungsten are available, but my first thought was that the use of gas mantle lamps with good reflectors will be a decent substitute after the equipment is available for closed-circuit anesthesia is available and flammable anesthetic gases are no longer common.On further investigation, it turns out that, based on the experience of many anesthetists in austere areas of Africa and South America, the flammability problems (but not the storage problems) of ether have probably been overstated. This means that it would be safer to use the better light sources than to struggle on having to depend on natural light, as the gas mantles would be easier to put inside Davy Lamp screens (something that the miners should be using in any case), and operations can proceed at need into the night or start in the early mornings. Additionally, ether vapors are between two and three times as heavy as air, so mounting the gas mantle lights well above the operating field provides an additional margin of safety. I'll cover the safe use of ether and other flammable anesthetics in the next article. Panteleimon also pointed out that a properly designed down-time operating room will be set up to use the natural north light and indirect light from the other directions, as that is both more consistent through the day and avoids the hazards of direct sunlight which tends to be drying to the tissues. An assistant with a mirror can be used to direct stronger light into the field at need. Another point he made was very vital: while up-timers are used to having bright lights available 24/7/52, they will quickly adapt to the lower lighting levels available down-time out of sheer necessity. I also recall being able to adapt to those needs back in the days when I was doing field medicine in the army, even before decent individual night vision devices were available.

Morpheus and Lethe: The way to make speed less important to a surgeon.

It is already in canon that Dottore Thomas Stone used open-mask ether anesthesia to make it possible for Dottoressa Sharon Nichols to save "Feelthy" Sanchez' life.[xxiii] This was one of the most impressive demonstrations of up-time technology possible for the dignitaries present. Panteleimon was gracious enough to provide two anesthesia textbooks published before the RoF, and produced for the training of anesthetists working in austere circumstances-which turns out to be just as effective and much simpler than my training in a medium-sized community hospital in the 1980s indicated. I believe that even more effective forms of analgesia and anesthesia are possible before 1634, but most likely got put on the back burner due to lack of personnel to produce the more advanced modules. I have taken the anesthesia section out of this article as it now makes more sense to do an entire article the subject.

Needles, needles and more needles.

A question was raised as to the possibility acupuncture as a pain reliever or anesthetic. The general techniques were known, but there are only a few people who might have taken any classes in this subject. The most likely candidates would include Mr. Daoud, who had some training as a chiropractor, the physical therapists, and possibly the two folks with advanced degrees in physical education. This will remain true until someone down-time, perhaps excited by the descriptions in the library, acts as a medical Marco Polo and brings the information (and maybe a fully-qualified practitioner) back from the Celestial Court. One possibility here would be the Jesuit Michal Piotr Boym, ordained in 1631, who was part of a mission to China in the 1640s in OTL. Some of his best-known works in OTL cover the Chinese materia medica and herbals.

Physicians only see the patient once a day, nurses are with them all day.

Patient care aspects of postoperative care will play a large part in the up-time teaching. Outside of the towns large enough to support a hospital, the family will still do most care in the home, with the various traveling nurses and Sanitation Commission folks acting in a support and teaching role. In the hospitals, nurses will provide extensive care, especially in the Pre-Operative and Post Operative (Recovery) suites and the Intensive Care Units. This will be even more important in mass casualty situations, especially those under austere circumstances.

Student EMTs and nurses will probably provide much of the care on the wards as the patients progress toward being discharged. This will be done under the supervision of both their instructors and experienced nurses assigned to those wards. A vital part of this teaching will include the Germ Theory and its impact on standards of cleanliness.

Certain general principles will pertain to nursing care in the 1630s: keep the patient clean and dry, change dressings no more often than needed, maintain adequate fluid hydration and nutrition by any means possible, make sure the patients get their medications on time, and mobilize the patient as soon as practical. A collaboration with Danita for a further article on this subject is in the works, as much of my experience in this area was thirty years ago.

To Cut is to Cure.

Overall, trauma surgery will fall into several broad categories: Lifesaving, Limb salvaging, and Rehabilitating. Lifesaving surgery techniques were nicely described in the book M*A*S*H,based on the experiences of H. Richard Hornberger (writing as Richard Hooker) in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War[xxiv]. His term was "Meatball Surgery": get in, stop the bleeding, control contamination from leaking bowels, and get out as fast as possible. This technique, more formally known as Damage Control Surgery, is still in use today for the most seriously injured patients. Sharon Nichols has clearly been trained in these techniques, even as she takes the time to do some teaching during the procedure. Similar techniques existed in the 1990s for the immediate care of life threatening chest wounds, and these should be known to Dr. Nichols or will be available through a combination of book and lab animal research.

Limb salvaging techniques will build on Dr. Nichols' knowledge, that of down-time surgeons such as Scultetus and Tulp, and the ideas of the barber-surgeon Pare, and Drs. Trueta and Halsted. Aseptic and anesthetic techniques will reduce the number of needed amputations, and the prolonged cast techniques will allow for more tissue salvage over all. Along with the idea of tissue flaps prepared with meticulous dissection, hemostasis[xxv] and approximation to close amputation stumps, the patients will be in much better shape to start with when they get into the hands of the Physical Therapists. This will turn people who might have been housebound into active members of the community.

Lastly, rehabilitating surgeries will correct problems from congenital defects, surgeries before the RoF, and problems that occur because someone did not have a chance to benefit from the up-time teachings. Stump reconstructions will be common, as will tendon-lengthening surgeries (because of limb contractures) due to both old injuries and the pre-RoF state of surgery. Some surgeries will also be performed on patients who are too old to benefit from the non-surgical techniques such as the Ponseti method of treatment of clubfoot.

To Close or Not To Close, that is the question!

Basic wound care in the 1630s, like that under austere circumstances in OTL, follows several basic principles. First, stop the bleeding. Second, cleanse the wound and remove all dead tissue or foreign material from the wound. Third, decide on the method and timing of closure. Finally, apply a dressing and leave the wound alone for at least forty-eight hours. One of the advances made in the mid 1700s by John Knox (an expert anatomist working as a British Army surgeon during the Seven Years War with France) was to limit the treatment of wounds in the field, where contamination by soil and manure was almost assured. Knox also advocated limited manipulation of the wound and the broad use of tincture of time to allow healing.[xxvi] This was an extension of Pare's work two centuries earlier, and was one of the major contributions of Mr. Knox to scientific practice of surgery.

The first step will be direct pressure to the wound for at least five, and preferably, ten minutes. This will allow the minute blood vessels and muscle tissue to form clots to stop much of the bleeding. Small blood vessels, mostly arteries between 1 and 3 mm in diameter, but some veins in the same size range, will need to be clamped and tied to prevent significant blood loss, along with swelling (hematoma) that will interfere with healing. Larger blood vessels are often re-connected in OTL, but this will again have to wait for the development of the appropriate suture material. Down-time, these blood vessels will be tied off, hopefully avoiding a loss of blood supply that will require an eventual amputation.

The second step can be carried out with clean, potable water (and mild soap if it is available), followed by careful investigation of the wound then trimming away any dead tissue. It includes removal of leaves, bullets, cloth and other debris. In the case of impaled objects such as arrows or branches, this may require enlarging the wound so that the surgeon can "get to the bottom"of the wound and make sure that no foreign material is left behind. If there is any question about contamination being left behind, then the treatment should include a modification of the method of Dakin and Carrel.[xxvii] Intermittent irrigations with a weak solution of sodium hypochlorite ( this is in canon in sufficient quality and quantity as of late 1632 or early 1633-the addition of boric acid increases the effectiveness but won't be available until 1634 or 1635) are used to flush the wound for several days. This should not be needed unless there is gross contamination of a deep wound with material such as manure. Alternatively, for wide, shallow wounds, the use of unpasteurized honey is now known to improve wound healing and prevent infections. Manuka Honey from New Zealand is the best known in OTL, but was not widely known in 1999.[xxviii] Granulated sugar was used with good success through the 1980s before being superseded by more advanced dressings. Obviously, the expense of sugar will make it prohibitively expensive, leaving the honey as one of the best alternatives.

The last step is wound closure. In OTL as of 2000, we generally worked with primary closure of almost all wounds if there was enough tissue left to cover the wound, and the wound did not involve an animal bite. Under austere conditions, this is often not the best choice of treatment. Areas with an extremely good blood supply (generally the head, face and neck) will do well with primary closure under most circumstances, thus limiting scarring in cosmetically-sensitive locations. Other areas of the body are best treated with delayed primary closure, where the wound is either packed with a non-stick material (gauze impregnated with petrolatum jelly in the NTL) or the deep spaces are closed loosely with the skin and subcutaneous tissues left open, and the whole wound covered with a bulky, sterile, absorbent dressing. The dressing and wound is then left alone for at least forty-eight hours to allow healing to start.

This is a dramatic change from the care that most medical personnel learned from 1960 to 2000 or so in the industrial world. As a resident physician covering the surgical service in 1987-89, it was common for me to personally have to change dressings and examine surgical and traumatic wounds twice a day. The lessons first taught during WWI and later relearned in the Spanish Civil War and WWII have come back around in these days of "super germs" that jump from patient to patient, to wit: dressing changes expose the tissues to new infection and slow the healing.

After the first forty-eight hours, delayed primary closure can be considered if there are no signs of infection. Otherwise, clean things up again, and apply a dressing that will stay on for one to several weeks while the wound heals by the natural process of granulation. This technique is called "healing by secondary intent," and can leave rather large scars. Dr. Trueta's advance was that he used a plaster of Paris cast to form the outer dressing, thereby keeping the fingers and instruments of well-meaning nurses and physicians out of the wound.[xxix] This was an advantage in treating open fractures of the limbs, as the limb had to be casted to prevent the movement of the bone ends.

Orthopedics

The use of plaster of Paris impregnated gauze cloth to form casts[xxx] to keep broken bones immobilized will be a significant advance over the rag-padded splints used by most bone-setters in the NTL. In OTL, the traditional padding and plaster gauze are made from cotton. Newer fiberglass casting materials used a synthetic padding. Linen gauze will do for the casting material, but the padding needs to be made from a lightly felted or flannel-type material. I'm not sure that the longer, stiffer fibers of linen will work for this. Possibly, Tom Stone had some Cannabis sativa, which produces higher quality fiber, stashed among the C. indica, which produces the higher quality resin so beloved of ladies with menstrual cramps. I believe that the hemp fibers have a soft enough "hand" to be woven into flannel (or made into the soft felt) that can be used for the padding. Cotton should be available in sufficient quantities for medical uses by 1634, based on imports from the Middle and Far East.

Among the simplest of orthopedic techniques, the bone-setters of the NTL already understand the closed reduction and splinting of simple long bone fractures. What the up-timers will bring will be the casting material and techniques, along with the use of radiographs to confirm that the bones have been brought back into natural alignment, and the aseptic techniques needed to care for fractures with wounds. As previously noted, once the injectable local anesthetic agents are again available, hematoma blocks will make bone setting more comfortable for the patient.

The bone-setters will probably also know that the joint above and below the fracture needs to be immobilized by the splint. Similarly, in cases of joint injury, the bone above and below the joint needs to be immobilized for treatment. Most fractures can be handled by these methods, although more complex fractures will take much longer to heal. Femoral neck ("hip") fractures and some femoral shaft fractures will not respond quickly to this level of treatment, and will be a major source of post trauma mortality for a long time after the RoF.

The next step in the management of more complex fractures will have to wait until stainless steel pins and rods are reintroduced. Known as skeletal traction, these pins act to transfer the force needed to maintain alignment directly to the bones. The pins are inserted through the skin to pierce the bone and come out the other side of the limb. Once inserted, traction is used to align all of the bone fragments into some close approximation of the natural bone. The pins are already in canon as of May 1634[xxxi], with the repair of a young boy's hand after he caught his fingers in a moving belt. I do not know if the pin used was from "old new stock" (left over from before the RoF), new stock (doubtful, as this is very early for even the smallest amounts of chromite to be returned to Grantville and appropriately refined to add to a batch of stainless steel) or a pin that was removed from another patient, cleaned and resterilized for reuse. This also argues that plain film radiographs are available at this point, as I doubt that Dr. Nichols would allow the use of this technique in a child this young without them[xxxii].

The traction will initially be provided by the hands of the surgeon's assistant and later continued by a system of pulleys, cords and weights, easily reproduced in the NTL, until the plaster hardens. Hip and femoral fractures will respond to this treatment, but may require three or more months in bed while the traction keeps things in line. "Spica" type casts, where not only one limb, but the pelvic or shoulder girdle is involved, with a strut passed between the limb cast and the body cast, can also be used for some hip and femoral fractures, but has the trade-off of weight versus freedom from traction. The pins can stabilize multiple bone fragments while the plaster cast holds the pins and the whole limb immobilized as the fracture heals. A somewhat more advanced system would use metal (even brass) rings and rods to form a system to provide the support needed to keep the pins in position, but this system will work best when the skin is left intact except for where the pins enter. Balancing the advantages and disadvantages of the systems is something that will have to be learned as the techniques develop.

To deal with fractures that are too complex or angulated to be reduced by traditional closed methods, or fractures that are already open due to wounds or the penetration of the sharp edge of bone through muscle, fat and skin, aseptic techniques allow the surgeon to clean and debride the tissues and to bring the bones back into alignment. Pins and traction are used to align the bones, the wounds are partially closed, and a plaster cast is again used to maintain the alignment of the pins (and therefore the bones) and immobilize the limb.

A surgeon experienced in this technique, with a good anesthetist and a good surgical team would be able to save the life and perhaps even the leg of someone as badly injured as King Charles I of England after his accident on icy roads.

One of the few situations where an open reduction will be needed for an otherwise closed injury will involve a fracture/dislocation of the elbow. Simple closed reduction of this injury often results in entrapment or damage of the ulnar nerve in a high percentage of the cases, while doing the open procedure, followed by pinning and casting, yields good results in the vast majority of the cases. These techniques will improve the lives of folks who suffer fractures, and markedly reduce both the number of amputations and the number of people who die from amputations.

More advanced orthopedic techniques are known to the up-time physicians and recorded in many books and periodicals in Grantville. These techniques, such as several types of open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) and prosthetic joints, will be redeveloped as materials science produces the exotic alloys combining the needed strength with corrosion resistance and low weight. I would expect this to happen while Dr. Nichols is still around to provide guidance to the development teams.

The spread of the up-time techniques of amputation will only be limited by the spread of the controlled anesthetic and aseptic surgery techniques needed to support them. While few surgeons down time were experienced in abdominal or chest surgery, most of them were quite good at leg and arm amputations already, and many of them are well-practiced anatomists. With the development of appropriate tourniquets, the use of tourniquets to reduce blood loss will spread. Taken together, these techniques allow for meticulous stump preparation. Other up-time ideas that will be quickly adopted include the use of rasps and rongeurs to shape and smooth bone ends, sterile bone wax to plug the marrow cavity of the long bones, and the development of muscle and skin flaps that allow simpler healing and earlier use of prosthetics.

Additional improvements in physical therapy, orthotics, and rehabilitation will improve the number of amputation patients who return to an active lifestyle. These and other topics will be covered in Part 3.

****

[i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_suture

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglycolic_acid

[iii]Meade, Jackson, Ochsner. The Relative Value of Catgut, Silk, Linen, and

Cotton as Suture Materials. Surgery, 7(4), 485-514, 1940

[iv] Personal communication with Stanchem, 20101210

[v] Attributed to Ziva David "Why would you look for needles in a haystack?"

[vi] A bowel resection is the operation where a portion of the bowel is removed and the remaining ends are sewn back together.

[vii]1632

[viii]Grantville Gazette Volume 15: "Dog Days" insulin in quantity production by 1634

[ix]Grantville Gazette Volume 10: "Little Angel"January 1634

[x]Grantville Gazette Volume 5: "Ounces of Prevention"

[xi]Grantville Gazette Volume 10: "The Prepared Mind" April 1634

[xii]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_De_Geer_%281587-1652%29

[xiii]Grantville Gazette Volume 19: "First Impressions" Schwabach as "The 'chief seat of needle manufacture in Bavaria.'"

[xiv] Dressings are at least clean, and preferably sterile, and go against the wound. Bandages are clean but not necessarily sterile, and bind the dressings to the body.

[xv] Pictures of these items are included in the material to be posted at the 1632.org site

[xvi]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutaraldehyde

[xvii][xvii]https://www.sciencelab.com/page/S/PVAR/10414/SLG1573

[xviii]"Ounce of Prevention" ibid: Lindane (gamma hexane hexachloride) is being produced by Essen Chemical by the summer of 1632

[xix]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexachlorophene

[xx] Literally "Iodine carrying" compounds- organic molecules that allow iodine to remain in a watery solution

[xxi]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Povidone

[xxii]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorhexidine

[xxiii]1634:The Galileo Affair

[xxiv] http://www.amazon.com/M-S-H-Cassell-Military-Paperbacks/dp/0304366617/ref=sr_1_9?s=books amp;ie=UTF8 amp;qid=1297729088 amp;sr=1-9

[xxv] Hemo (blood) stasis (stoppage)- the act of controlling bleeding.

[xxvi]Knife Man

[xxvii]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Drysdale_Dakin

[xxviii]http://www.physorg.com/news171523022.html

[xxix] Personal communication with Christos Gianou, MD, former Chief Surgeon of the ICRC, and editor of the 2009 ICRC textbook on War Surgery (link to the textbook: http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/p0516)

[xxx]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopedic_cast

[xxxi]Grantville Gazette, Volume 15: "Breakthroughs"

[xxxii] Especially since it is noted that Dr. Nichols has limited experience in small bone orthopedics. Grantville Gazette Volume 4 "Heavy Metal Music" March 1633.

Influences

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

At the start of every year, I buy six calendars. I use them for various purposes, mostly to keep track of my reading or my exercise or my writing. I use the calendars on my phone, which I synch with my computer, to keep track of my appointments and deadlines.

But I still buy a wall calendar because I can’t imagine my kitchen without one. This year’s, Asgard Press’s Vintage Sci Fi 2011 Calendar, is turning into one of my favorites. It presents the covers of old sf magazines in their entirety, reproducing the art in bold vivid colors. I just turned to the month of April and found the cover of Thrilling Wonder Stories from October, 1946.

As usual, the cover presents a scantily clad woman (1946-style) in some kind of peril. Pretty as she is, she didn’t catch my eye (although her pointy bra-shirt-thing did strike me as painful). What caught my eye was the name of the cover story, “Pocket Universes,” by Murray Leinster.

I recently read my first Murray Leinster story last summer, as I prepared to write an article on alternate history for a British textbook. I decided I had better read the classics of that subgenre which I had missed. Leinster’s story, “Sidewise in Time,” appeared in a 1934 issue of Astounding, and had a huge impact on the budding sf field.

My reading experience was fascinating. The story was dated-the characters flat, the style dry and didactic-but it had power. I still remember it months later (which is rare, considering how much I read), and the concepts in it seem fresh, even now.

I haven’t read “Pocket Universes.” I didn’t even know it existed until I turned the page on my calendar, but I’m intrigued. I said to my husband, “How many subgenres did Leinster start?”

My husband, the writer Dean Wesley Smith, knows more about sf history than almost anyone I know. He had no idea how many subgenres Leinster started, but Dean did surprise me with another comment. He walked to the calendar, touched the surface, and said, “Wow. Keith Hammond and John Russell Fearn.”

Those two men were also named on the cover, so I could guess that they were both science fiction writers. But I was astounded that Dean knew who they were. I asked him about it.

He said, “They were major names in their day.”

Major names that I, someone who dabbles in sf history, hadn’t heard of. (Later, Dean told me that Hammond was one of the many pen names for Henry Kuttner, whom I had heard of.)

I’m not surprised by the fact that I haven’t heard of some of sf’s early major names. I started reading sf seriously in the 1970s. My family actively loathed the sf genre, so in our book-filled household, the only sf novels were mine. (Conversely, I have read at least one book from every major bestseller in all the other genres from about 1900 forward, just because those books were lying around the house.) The librarians pointed me to Asimov, one of my favorite lit teachers pointed me to Clarke, and I discovered Andre Norton on my own. But the older names mostly missed me, primarily because the libraries didn’t stock the pulps or sf collections, and I wasn’t allowed into used bookstores (they were filthy, according to my mother, the neat freak).

Still, after forty years of reading the genre and thirty years of working within it, you’d think I would have heard of all of the big names of various times. After all, sf is a young genre. When I came into it, it was still possible to read every sf book published in a given year and still have time to read widely in other genres.

Yet I know that, if I ask my friends who’ve been active in sf longer than I have, they have probably heard of Keith Hammond or John Russell Fearn. These friends might even have read the Murray Leinster “Pocket Universes” story, and could quite probably tell me if it was one of his important, genre-shifting tales.

Even with the deluge of material published in the pulps every single month, sf readers could read everything. Because sf readers formed groups and shared their collections, newcomers to the genre could find classics or important works, even if those works hadn’t been reprinted somewhere else (not that there were a lot of reprint venues back then. Publishing was very different). The small size of the community was both protective and informative.

It actually got smaller by the time I started reading. There were only a handful of magazines and some very important anthologies. The novels were scarce as well. When sf people got together, they could argue about the important works of the year, and be confident that most fans had read (or tried to read) them.

When I quit editing The Magazine of Fantasy amp; Science Fiction in 1997, I had burned out on reading sf short fiction. I continued to read Gardner Dozois’s best of the year volumes to keep my hand in, but I didn’t really try to keep up. After the burnout faded, I came back and was able to keep up relatively well until about six years ago.

Online magazine started and, startlingly, best-of volumes became a cottage industry. One year, I believe there were as many as five in sf alone (and I also read fantasy, mystery and mainstream best-ofs. Romance, my other favorite genre, doesn’t have enough short stories to sustain a best-of volume). I started to get overwhelmed.

Now I’m back reading sf short fiction, and I seriously can’t keep up with this month’s material, let alone this year’s. I am several issues behind on Lightspeed, haven’t cracked an Analog for 2011 yet, and have only read two Asimov’s. I am halfway through two of 2011’s “important” anthologies, and haven’t even purchased the other “important” books. I gave up and only ordered one best-of from 2010, because I never read 2009.

And now-now!-friends, former students, and my favorite writers, are starting to put up original stories as stand-alone e-books. I have five Steve Perry stories on my Kindle and had no time to read one. (Steve, known for his novels, is one of my favorite short story writers. I used to beg him for short stories when I edited F amp;SF and Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine.) Dean’s doing a couple of stories per week, and at least I get to read those because I’m his first reader. Former students, whose work I love, are putting up stories in droves, and I can’t keep track, let alone read them all.

This week, I managed to clear all of my immediate deadlines and realized that I still felt buried. It wasn’t until I picked up my Kindle, saw all the stories I had purchased but not yet read, that I realized why.

That moment-and the appearance of Murray Leinster on my calendar-got me thinking. We have long since passed the days when the die-hard sf fan can read everything. We’re moving into a time when the amount of material-good material-is so overwhelming that we won’t even know it has all been published, let alone whether or not we want to buy it.

I used to flirt with the idea of coming back to editing by doing a best-of collection. Every year, at least one of the major juried awards asks me to sit on the short fiction committee or to give input as to the nominees. I usually decline because I haven’t read everything.

Now I realize that reading everything just in the sf genre is impossible. Best-ofs are no longer the best based on one editor’s opinion, an editor who has taken the time to read (or glance at ) every single short story published in a given year. Now the best-ofs are the best based on one editor’s opinion of the stuff he managed to read in a single year. Locus Magazine, for some strange reason, has stopped reviewing Analog, the oldest sf magazine in the field. Maybe the reviewers at Locus are overwhelmed. Maybe they don’t even try. I have heard from a few of them that AnalogAnalog gets jettisoned from the discussion, not because Analog has ceased to publish good fiction, but because it gets lost in the amount of material published-and reviewers, often the first step toward getting noticed-simply don’t have time to search out the magazine themselves. doesn’t mail review copies. Which means, in this digital oversaturated world,

Reviewers aren’t more important in this world; they’re less important. I’ve actually given up my Locus subscription because the news in it is months old when I get the magazine, the digital subscription price is ridiculous, and the lists of upcoming books/magazine are easily available elsewhere. I follow dozens of bloggers who do a better job of reviewing (and seeing the field) than all but one or two of Locus’s reviewers.

I’m not picking just on Locus. It’s tough for the nonfiction magazines (the trade magazines) of the publishing fields to stay current. RT Book Reviews struggled with this a few years ago and has become the most relevant print source for all genres, although its website isn’t that great. Mystery Scene gives me bang for the buck because it stopped being a review/announcement magazine (although it still does that) and has some spectacular analysis pieces as well as great columns about the mystery field.

In sf, the most relevant nonfiction publications are now online. From SF Signal to Io9, I find my dose of sf analysis, reviews, thought-provoking articles online daily. I’m someone who prefers to read on a device or on paper, and yet I’m reading those sites all the time because of their fascinating content.

I think it’s impossible now for a story to reach every single sf fan. I think there will still be books or stories that shake the genre, but it will take time for that bit of writing to have its impact. Rather than having a top story every month, sf might have stories that influence slowly. Word of mouth will make pieces much more important, filtering that story through the world of sf over the space of years rather than weeks.

I find it odd that in this quick-paced digital world, the influential stuff will hit us slowly. But I think the one thing this new world gives us is time. We have time to discover the story because it remains available. Digital sites have unlimited storage space, so stories we hear about in 2011 will still be easy to find in 2014. That story might not influence my writing in 2011, but it might when I read that story three years from now.

So might, say, Murray Leinster’s “Pocket Universes.” When I finish writing this column, I’m heading to my Kindle to see if the story is available there. Many many older stories, things have been out of print for more than 60 years are now showing up in electronic format. So who knows? Influence is going to spread. Classics will get revived. Old stories, too advanced or outre for their time, might become new classics.

It’s a great new world. As a reader, I find it overwhelming and marvelous all at the same time. I feel like that proverbial kid in the candy store. Only I don’t ever have to leave, and more candy is being delivered all the time.

It makes doing best-ofs and awards lists nearly impossible. But that’s a small price to pay for the wealth of great reading available to us now.

And I, for one, am quite pleased.

****

The Medic

Fox Mc Geever

If Rourke hadn't dived into the shell hole outside the First Bank of Taiwan the instant he saw the two dead marines sprawled behind that burned-out Bradley, the sniper's bullet would probably have taken his head off instead of whacking into his thigh.

He rolled into a ball and gripped his leg. A razor tooth. Had to be. The impact was just like the survivors said-a savage, intense bite burned the instant the bullet's engine started up.

The shock wave of an exploding shell broke over him like the hot breath of the devil himself, bringing with it all the sounds of hell-the explosions, the whoosh of rockets, and rattle of small arms fire.

He tore open his fatigues to examine the wound. Of course it was a razor tooth. The entry wound was too small, too damned precise to be anything else. And there was so little blood. Wasn't that the standing joke among the grunts? That the bullet's little motor mouth drank the blood as the razor tooth chewed its way through you.

"Razor tooth!" He shouted it aloud just to hear himself say it, just to make all this believable. A hot spasm of pain shot up his thigh when the razor tooth's engine cranked up and burrowed its way deeper into the muscle. At least it was only a leg wound. That gave him good odds, maybe an hour before it minced his thigh and went for his vitals. More than enough time for a medivac.

Another shell slammed into First Bank, sending a rain of concrete and glass cascading down around him. An intact coffee mug with a smiley on it landed inches from his face.

"Red zero to red leader!" Lieutenant Bieber's voice was loud and triumphant in Rourke's headset. "Captain! We've taken Ketagalan Cross."

"Switch to cell phone," Rourke hissed. He put his headset on hold and whipped out his phone. Moments later, Bieber's sweaty black face appeared on the LCD screen. His eyes were wide and staring.

"Captain, what's wrong?"

"I'm separated from B Company."

"You're hit."

"Razor tooth. Leg shot."

"Bastards!" Then after a short pause, the lieutenant added, "I'll send a team."

"No time. Blow the Kaimi flyover and dig in."

"But you?"

"Sniper knows I'm alive so he'll have moved on by now. And I've got a medic. I'm . . ." Rourke gritted his teeth when another hot spasm ripped through him. He knew that was only the breath of the dragon. The bite would come soon, once the razor tooth hit bone. "I'm promoting you acting CO. Keep communication to cell phone."

"Understood."

Rourke killed the call and immediately put a medivac request through to GHQ at Kaohsiung. Once his GPS tracker coordinates were confirmed, he shrugged off his backpack and flipped it over. He cursed aloud when he saw the blackened hunk of shrapnel buried in the medic's pouch. Brain juices were oozing out around the shrapnel and giving the Kevlar stitched canvas an oddly skin-like appearance.

For one long moment he just stared at the case, wondering what to do with it. Ever since these little miracles had been introduced a year ago, he was still trying to decide whether the genetically modified brains actually felt anything. The Ingencorp execs said they didn't. Many others disagreed. Some scientists even claimed the medics had a consciousness and they actually experienced the pain they siphoned from their hosts.

It didn't really matter. What was a brain grown in a jar compared to a real life flesh and blood person? Who cared? None of his guys did-especially not the ones taking the hits.

He tossed the backpack aside, dragged the nearest marine into the shell hole, and removed the marine's medic. The boy's eyes were still wide open with shock. They'd obviously been sheltering behind the Bradley when the sniper found them, and he guessed this one had taken the second hit.

He eased the boy's eyes closed and snapped off his dog tag. Once he laid the corpse out in the corner, he released the butterfly clips holding the medic's lid and yanked out the umbilical. The twin ranks of tiny attachment hooks glimmered like metal fangs when he peeled away the plastic cover from the attachment clip. An indicator light on the medic's control panel blinked orange. He pushed the clip hard against the back of his neck. The light turned red. Metal teeth dug into his flesh. In his mind's eye he saw the two microscopic tendrils emerging from the clip, their ultra sound sensors guiding them through the wad of muscle and tendons to penetrate his spinal cord and carotid artery.

The rush of epinephrine the medic administered immediately increased his pulse. Seconds later, the fire in his thigh eased away to a dull throbbing.

He lay back and wiped sweat from his brow. High above the charred, decapitated office blocks lining Shifen Road, black spirals of smoke curled into the sky. In the distance Taipei 101 stood defiantly like a dream tower instead of a financial center. A girlish scream rose up from somewhere off to this right. Chinese. Had to be. Only they could scream that long, that loud.

A trader missile detonated outside First Bank and sent a thick fog of dust billowing down the street that swallowed up the world, numbed the gunfire and crackle of flames, and turned the bedlam to something distant, something far, far away.

Content in this dirty cocoon, he laid his M9 pistol by his side and closed his eyes.

"What do you feel?" a voice asked.

Rourke snapped open his eyes and suddenly, insanely, thought the kid had said something. The dust was settling, layering everything in the shell hole in a fine, gray snow.

"What do you feel?" The voice was louder now, but soothing, like the voice of a priest comforting a mourner. It was coming through his headset. "Please answer my question."

"I feel . . ." Rourke snatched up the M9 and scanned the rim of the shell hole. "Who are you? Where are you?"

"I am your medic."

Rourke stiffened. A talking medic? Impossible. True, they said you'd feel some kind of mental connection, like part of your mind had been numbed. But hear something. Insane. Every time the DoD audited Ingencorp, the results were always the same. Ingencorp wasn't breaching its genetic development license in any way. The brains did what they were supposed to do: monitor injuries, provide emergency life support, and intercept pain signals in the spinal cord before redirecting them to their own pain receptors.

The medic's onboard computer controlled it.

They couldn't talk. They couldn't reason. They couldn't think.

It had to be something else, some shock trauma or side effect of whatever the medic was pumping into him. Either that, or Ingencorp had broken their license and modified the medics, added some automated pre-recorded talk application that enabled the onboard computer to comfort the wounded? If so, it was a true work of genius.

He sank back into the rubble and stared up at the sky. "What are you?" He choked back a laugh. This was madness, like talking to a toy.

"I have redirected your sacrifice. I have also connected an emergency intravenous feed and administered epinephrine to steady your blood pressure."

"Sacrifice. You mean my pain?"

"Pain? I do not recognize that word. Please explain."

A pinprick of pain flared briefly in Rourke's temple, right where his migraines usually started. Using his wrist control pad, he flicked through the headset channels. Nothing. Dead. The red indicator on the GPS was dead, too.

"What do you feel?"

Rourke sucked in a long, slow breath. "How do you think I feel?"

"My sensors detect a high level of chemical markers indicating stress. Please relax and answer my question."

Rourke stared at the medic's case. That certainly hadn't sounded like any automated program speaking. "Why do you want to know how I feel?"

"It is my duty."

Duty. Something in Rourke's mind amplified the word until it sounded loud and abrasive in his skull. The medic had said it so automatically, so passionately, it couldn't have come from any program. Surely he wasn't hearing the brain. No. It was something else, some onboard receiver relaying the voice of some distant controller.

"Who am I speaking to? Where are you based?"

"Please answer my question. Otherwise I must encourage you by ceasing the sacrifice relief."

The pain in Rourke's thigh grew into a savage, snapping animal. "What!"

"What do you feel?

The animal in Rourke's thigh bit hard and hot. "Hopeful! I feel hopeful."

The instant the animal settled, Rourke promised himself that, busted leg or not, he'd personally deal with whoever was on the other end of the receiver the moment he got back.

"State your name, rank, and serial number," the voice said.

"No. Wait. Who are you? What's your rank?"

"I am your medic. Beta version 3.70. Once I have gathered the basic information I will begin calibration of the new system."

"Impossible. You can't talk."

"Version 3.70 is developed for contact. Doctor Zealoto taught me."

Rourke cursed under his breath. Zealoto. He'd heard the name before. Wasn't he the ex-junkie genius who'd developed the medics for Ingencorp? Yes. A former major who'd lost an arm in Baghdad years ago. Said he'd come up with the idea because he never wanted anyone to get hooked on morphine again.

The medic said, "State your name, rank, and serial number."

Some primal instinct told Rourke it mightn't be wise to give his name. They'd given this medic to a grunt, a kid barely out of school who'd probably have answered anything without question. If Ingencorp were behind this obscenity, and they realized an officer was connected, then . . .

He fished the kid's dog tag from his pocket. "PFC Jake Hunter. SE1046374."

"Thank you, Jake."

The idea that he'd now assumed the identity of a dead kid whose mother was probably on her knees twenty-six hours a day praying for his safety, made Rourke's stomach turn. Bile burned his throat. He gulped a mouthful of warm water from his canteen and promptly threw it up.

"What is your opinion of the war, Jake?"

Rourke clenched his teeth when the animal stirred again. For several terrible moments he didn't know which was worse, the pain, or the idea that Zealoto was using a casualty to fine-tune his latest creation. It was sick. Really, really sick. Surely Zealoto knew he'd be called to account once the casualty got back. Surely he . . .

"Of course," a voice cried from the back of his mind. "But only if the casualty makes it."

Every muscle in Rourke's body froze.

"What is your opinion of . . ."

"I hate it. It's wrong. We have no business here."

The pain sank away.

"What do you feel toward your superiors?"

Rourke choked back an insane laugh. "I wish they were right here shitting in their pants." The weight of guilt in his mind eased, like he'd just given Jake Hunter a voice from beyond the grave.

"Thank you."

For the next few minutes the questions rolled smoothly and relentlessly. Was he hungry, thirsty, sick, or calm? Was basic training sufficient? Was the medic's voice adequately comforting? Had he made a will?

That last question made Rourke's chest tighten until it was difficult to breathe. "Should I have made a will?"

"I will now begin the calibration. The results will be analyzed with your medical records to provide invaluable research information toward the war effort."

The throbbing sparked up again in Rourke's leg.

"Which of the following words describes the sacrifice: bearable, high, or excruciating?"

"The will," Rourke hissed through gritted teeth. "Why ask about a will?"

The throbbing in his thigh turned to a hot burning, like someone had tapped open a vein and pumped in acid. His vision blurred. He slammed both fists into the ground. "The will! Should I have made a will?"

The ache in Rourke's temple flared up again, sharp and blinding.

"I am confused," the medic said. "Do you have a head injury? My sensors detect . . ."

"Yes, yes I have. Fix it."

The migraine sank away.

"Which of the following words . . ."

"Okay! Okay!" Rourke grasped the M9 tight and suddenly wanted to shoot something, anything. "I'll do a deal. An answer for an answer."

"Doctor Zealoto did not mention this. I must follow my instructions."

"No. Wait. Isn't your aim to gather information?"

"Correct."

"And the more you can gather, the happier Doctor Zealoto will be?"

"A rational assumption."

And now the medic's voice was no longer cold and neutral. Now Rourke thought he detected an underlying tone that could have been a trace of humanity buried deep within the words. "Then tell me if I should have made a will and I'll answer anything you like."

A short silence followed. "Yes. You should have made a will. The calibration will continue until your vital organs cease to function."

Hot bile flooded Rourke's mouth. He grabbed for the umbilical. The instant his fingers made contact with it, the attachment teeth flexed and bit deeper into his flesh.

The medic said, "If the contact is removed you will die immediately."

"A medivac is coming."

"I have negated your GPS signal and issued a separate evacuation order to my superior. I have also blocked any further communication through this headset. Doctor Zealoto's team will recover me once the area is secure."

Rourke's migraine flared up angrily, brutally. He grabbed his head in both hands.

"My sensors detect more cranial disturbance. I will relieve you." The ache faded. "I will now recom . . . recom . . . recommence the cal . . ."

For the next few moments it was like some great tussle was going on in Rourke's head. Every time the migraine faded, the medic's words wavered. In the midst of this confusion, that voice in the back of his mind was screaming that this was significant.

But how?

Was the migraine somehow overloading the medic? Had Zealoto's modifications to allow it a consciousness diverted resources away from its original purpose? It sounded crazy, but no crazier than a talking medic.

Once the migraine settled, the medic's voice returned loud and clear.

"I will now recommence the calibration sequence."

"Wait!"

"An answer for an answer. Wasn't that our deal?"

Rourke stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth and bit down hard. "Do it!"

This time when the fire was stoked, it flared right up through his chest.

"Which of the following . . ."

"Bearable," Rourke hissed. The word was now like a password, a life-giving thing. He slipped the phone from his pocket and tapped out a text message to Bieber.

GPS gone. Need medivac. Hurry.

The reply was instant.

Medivac in fifteen.

Rourke's heart sank. Fifteen minutes. It sounded more like a life sentence.

"Your turn, Jake."

The tone of the words shocked Rourke back to reality. The medic had said them casually, almost playfully, like the questions were stimulating it. He said, "Do you have a name?"

"Doctor Zealoto called me Mychild."

"Mychild. A nice name. An honest name. Do you feel sacrifice, Mychild?"

"My receptors are currently experiencing an excruciating level of sacrifice."

Rourke went cold. So they did feel. They did suffer. The threads of hatred knotted through his brain loosened slightly. "Can't you take something, morphine?"

"Morphine? I do not recognize that word. Please explain."

"It's . . ." Rourke cursed Zealoto with all his might. Of course it didn't know what morphine was. Morphine was Zealoto's enemy. Besides, how could it analyze all those chemical markers if it was doped up? It couldn't analyze anything. Zealoto was sacrificing this thing just as callously as he was sacrificing the test subject. Had Hunter been picked randomly? Or was it more sinister, was he actually chosen?

And how many other Beta 3.70s were out there gathering calibration information right now?

"How does the sacrifice affect you, Mychild?"

"It interferes with my thought process. Is this what is supposed to happen?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It is our survival mechanism. Do you know why you feel it?" Rourke stared at the medic and suddenly, inexplicably, imagined he was looking at a wounded dog he'd just hit with his car.

"Doctor Zealoto said it was my duty. He said he would relieve me of my duty when the calibration was finished."

Struck by this cool, innocent response, Rourke struggled to reply. What was this thing feeling right now? How could it bear so much pain and still keep talking?

"Did he not . . ." His words were drowned out as two F-32s shot past overhead, the scream of their engines chasing them like angry demons. The world blurred as his hip turned to fire.

"Which of the following . . ."

"Bearable!" Rourke sucked in a deep breath and held it until the fire subsided. "Isn't it your duty to take sacrifice, not inflict it on your comrades?"

"Comrade? I do not recognize that word. Please explain."

"I am your comrade. We're on the same side."

"Doctor Zealoto's instructions cannot be overridden."

Rourke spat out a mouthful of pasty saliva. Maybe he should try and dig the razor tooth out himself. But how? Without pain, he had no idea where it was. All he knew was that it was somewhere around his upper femur. The constant, rattly vibration of the engine was traveling up along his bones and into his skull like some mocking, indecipherable code.

The migraine flared again, its roar insanely painful and debilitating, an angry beast wanting to grow into one of those monsters that sometimes forced him to bed in a darkened room until 50 or 100mg of Imigran kicked in.

"I . . ." the medic said. "I will . . . I will tell . . ."

Rourke held his breath again, this time with a sense of shocked hope. So the migraine was affecting it. It was overloading. If that was the case then what would more pain signals do? He gripped the M9 tight and aimed it at the meaty flesh of his calf. Would another bullet tip it over, overload it completely?

"I will . . . tell . . . Doctor Zealoto you were a valued subject," the medic said.

Rourke's finger froze on the trigger as the migraine sank away. This was insane. He couldn't shoot himself. No matter what the circumstances, he couldn't do it. Besides, even if it did work, what would he do until the medivac arrived. He stared at his watch. Six minutes since Bieber's message. Could he stand the pain of a razor tooth for nine minutes, five minutes, a minute? Beads of sweat rolled down his face. Did he need the very thing that was now slowly killing him?

The medic said, "I have released more epinephrine to counteract a drop in your blood pressure."

Rourke's pulse stabilized. He let the pistol slip from his hand.

"Have you any more questions for me, Jake?"

"Yes." Suddenly Rourke wanted to know what would happen when Bieber's medivac arrived. He didn't waste the question because every part of his brain was already screaming the answer. There'd be no witnesses. The instant the medic realized what was happening it would kill him.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Sixteen months."

Rourke whistled inwardly. Sixteen months. Impressive. What a pity Zealoto hadn't . . .

An image unfolded in his mind's eye, an image of a bizarre debriefing in some dark place beneath Ingencorp's HQ. Zealoto and a half a dozen other white-coated crackpots were gathered around a lab desk. The medic sat on a frame in the center of the table. They were talking to it. Like a cracked egg, the cap of the medic was gone. The raw brain was gray and lumpy under the sterile light. It had a mouth, a tiny, wiry mouth that was opening and closing, talking to Zealoto, telling him . . .

A long, lunatic laugh exploded from Rourke's mouth.

"What is wrong?" the medic asked.

Rourke laughed again. Damn, but that thing had actually sounded worried just then. Almost human-in a very childlike way. Maybe he could talk to it. Maybe he could reason with it, convince it to ease up.

A ray of hope penetrated the cloud swirling around his mind. Maybe, just maybe, he could distract it long enough until the medivac arrived. Then, if he put a round from the M9 into his calf, it might overload the medic and give him time to tell the medivac team what had happened. But what then? He had to bring word of this back with him. He had to expose Zealoto, and overloading the medic might kill it. He'd have no evidence. Zealoto would find out and immediately instigate a cover up.

Before he tried to overload the medic, he needed to find out more.

"Mychild. What did Doctor Zealoto's training involve?"

"He trained me to speak using an automated speech program. The onboard computer converts my thoughts into the sounds you hear."

"And the attachment mechanism?"

"The computer controls it. Doctor Zealoto's team will disconnect it when they arrive."

"But I will be dead then?"

"It is necessary."

"Mychild. Are you not curious as to why you are here?"

"It is the doctor's wish. He is my . . ."

"Father."

"Father? I do not recognize that word. Please explain."

"He's the one that gave you life."

"Life?"

Rourke's stomach tightened so abruptly a dribble of saliva leaked out of his mouth. Could he educate it about life? If he explained what it was like to actually live, could he turn things around and show it that taking life was bad. It seemed impossible. How could he make it understand what animals, humans, and landscapes looked like?

How could he describe a bird?

He ran his fingers over the medic. Besides, what was there to see here? The trees that had lined Kaimi Street were matchsticks now. The buildings were smoking hulks and the sky was stained filthy with dust and smoke. Even if the medic could see what was outside, it might just decide there wasn't much to living anyway.

In a fit of giddy spontaneity he pursed his lips and started to whistle Gershwin's "Summertime."

"That is a pleasant sound," the medic said.

"Yes, Mychild. It is. This is part of what life is about. Enjoyment."

"Enjoyment?"

"Yes. Enjoyment is when there is no pain, no worry, no nothing but a blissful feeling in your heart that life is good."

"I have no heart, yet I think I understand. The song makes the sacrifice seem slightly distant."

Rourke glanced at his watch. Two minutes since the last calibration test. His distractions were working. If only he could show it pictures of home, of the forests, and how Summerton Lake glimmered so beautifully in the summer. If only it was possible to . . .

"Please, Jake. I wish to hear more."

Rourke pursed his lips again. But now his mouth was dry and tight with tension. All that came out was a whoosh of air. He lubricated his lips with water. Still nothing. It was like trying to whistle through a rag.

"What is wrong, Jake?"

"Fear. Another side of life."

"I think I understand. I always felt restless before each of Doctor Zealoto's tests"

"He tested you. For what?"

"To accustom me to sacrifice. There was . . ."

The ache in Rourke's temple flared briefly before sinking away.

"There was," the medic continued. "No enjoyment in those tests."

"How did he test you?"

"People were brought to the laboratory. Strange people. I did not understand their language. When I asked Doctor Zealoto about it he said I didn't need to understand. I just needed to absorb their sacrifice and accustom myself to it."

The breath froze in Rourke's lungs. Prisoners! Was Mychild talking about POWs?

"They screamed, Jake. I did not enjoy their screams."

Raw outrage swept through Rourke's mind. And with it came a terrible truth. He couldn't overload the medic now. He couldn't take the risk. It was a witness. Yes, a witness to something much worse than Zealoto's field tests. He had to get back. He had to find out where Zealoto was holding the prisoners and who was supplying them. The medic had to survive. He had to survive. And if that meant taking a little pain, then . . .

"I do not enjoy your screams either, Jake."

"Then why do this?"

"It is my duty."

"No, Mychild. Zealoto is wrong."

"Impossible."

Rourke gritted his teeth as his thigh began to burn. "It's true."

"I am sorry, Jake," the medic said slowly, almost consolingly. "But I must continue the calibration now."

Rourke's entire body bucked sideways when the fire tore through him, scorching every nerve, tendon, and muscle in his torso.

"High! High! Stop it. Please."

He sank back and sucked in air as the pain receded. A pipe had burst somewhere and water was spilling into the crater, turning the dust and dirt into a mucky, lumpy porridge that reminded him horribly of what the meat of his thigh must look like by now.

He checked his watch and snatched up the M9. Two minutes to pickup. Could he last that long? Should he just try and knock this thing out right now and pray the overload wouldn't kill it. Then again, how many bullets would it take: one, two, a whole magazine full? Would he kill himself in the process? And what about its consciousness? In a very unique sort of way, Zealoto's modifications had made it human. If he killed it, would his conscience consider it murder in some warped way?

No. Not murder. Self defense. Justifiable self-defense; just like he'd be killing an assassin.

He rolled on top of the medic when another shell smashed into the bank and chunks of concrete thudded down around him.

But this thing was no assassin. This thing didn't even realize what it was doing. Killing it would be like killing a child.

"Jake, it is your turn to ask a question."

Rourke barely heard the words. A child. Yes. That's exactly what it still was. A child with all the sensibilities and raw innocence of a five year old. That's why it didn't have a conscience or couldn't fully reason. It hadn't developed those skills yet. Zealoto was rushing things.

"Jake. It is your turn to ask a question?"

And now Rourke detected a note of nagging insistence in the medic's voice he recognized. Impatience. The thing was behaving just like his nephew behaved when he asked a question and he didn't have the answer fast enough.

A rush of natural adrenaline surged through his body.

Sometimes, even when he'd had the answer, he'd made Stuart wait to teach him some patience. Could he keep this thing waiting? Was it possible to make it wait because, if it only learned what a deal was a few minutes ago, there was a major, major chance the concept of breaking a deal was alien to it.

"Jake . . ."

"I'm thinking. Bear with me." He took a deep breath and pressed the barrel of the M9 into his calf.

"I require your question. Otherwise I will finish the calibration."

Rourke tried to block the words. But it was impossible to block out that innocence, that childish curiosity. From somewhere close behind he heard voices. American voices. Someone was calling his name. He raised his free hand and waved it until he heard a confirmation shout. He pulled out his notebook and scribbled.

Need morphine. Medic's malfunctioned. Remove immediately.

"Jake, is there a problem?" The medic's voice was louder and more insistent now. "Please ask your question."

He passed the note to the first trooper that dropped into the shell hole, a wiry sergeant who stared at him briefly before retrieving the medic removal apparatus from his medical pack.

"Jake," the medic said. "I need your question. Otherwise I must continue the calibration."

Rourke sucked in deep breath and curled his finger tighter around the trigger of the M9. "I understand. Please. Have some patience."

"Patience. I do not understand that word. Please explain."

"Yes. It's . . ." Rourke flinched when the sergeant eased a cone shaped device over the medic's attachment clip. More men were piling into the shell hole now. Two were unfolding a stretcher. Another was pushing a needle into his arm.

"Jake! What is happening? I sense a . . ."

"It's okay, Mychild. It's okay. I'm going to look after you now."

The sergeant shot a glance towards him, but said nothing. There was a loud click. Then the attachment clip was loose in the sergeant's hand and he was rolling up the umbilical.

"I'm sorry, Mychild," Rourke whispered to nobody. "I'm so, so sorry. But we'll speak again soon. Somehow."

"You okay, sir?" the sergeant asked.

Rourke nodded and smiled through the pain as they eased him onto the stretcher. He grabbed the sergeant's hand when the man reached for the medic. "I'll take it. It's . . . a personal thing."

He lay back, held the medic to his chest, and wondered if he was ever going to speak to it again. And, more importantly, what he was going to say to it? Apologize? Reason with it? Coax vital information from it?

Would it even talk to him?

And once Zealoto was called to account, what then? Would the medic be "retired"? Would anyone want to recognize its human aspects and accept the moral uproar that followed? After all, it was human. Its consciousness defined that. Though it didn't have a body, it was as human as he was. Yet, to expect the military to go public with this in the middle of a major conflict was probably too much. This wasn't a story for Leatherneck, National Geographic, or Scientific American.

Not yet.

He closed his eyes and hugged the medic tighter.

Somehow, he'd force them to let him keep it. He'd take care of it, take it home, teach it things, and let it know more about the world it was now a part of.

Maybe . . . maybe someday he might even find a way to show it a tree.

Content

Paula Goodlett (ed)
Grantville Gazette 35

What is this? About the Grantville Gazette

The Beckies

Fire and Ice

Solemn Duty

Boom Toys

Dueling Philosophers

Arrested Development

Saint George Does It Again!

Northwest Passage, Part Nine

Second Chance Bird, Episode Four

Chapter Eighteen: Birdwatching

Chapter Nineteen: Dodo Do's and Don'ts

Chapter Twenty: Strangers Come to Call

Chapter Twenty-One: Pam Hatches a Plan

Chapter Twenty-Two: Harlot Dancers

Chapter Twenty-Three: Boarding Party

Untying the Wind

The Progression of Trauma Care and Surgery after the Ring of Fire, Part 2

Influences

The Medic