Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  With the unit exhausted and threadbare, Horn directed his staff officers to move it off the line: it was too weak, too unreliable, and too ill-equipped to be an effective fighting force. Rear-area security or garrison duty: that was its only role, now.

  The unit’s senior officer, a well-respected fifteen-year veteran by the name of Grieg, was all that was keeping them together. But on the journey to replace the garrison at Biberach, he showed signs of coming down with some kind of fever. By the time they reached Biberach, he was barely able to sit his horse long enough to formally relieve the garrison’s commander. Already weak, he was one of the first victims of the plague that had been festering unknown in the unit, and which broke out even as the burgermeisters were trying to decide where to house their new garrison. Indeed, it was in dealing with them directly that Johann’s father had evidently contracted the disease himself.

  In the wake of the death and misery of the plague, the only officer left was the young, charismatic, ambitious, and utterly ruthless Georg Prum. The unit’s senior remaining NCO tried to restrain his new commander, but he too was weak with fever. Although not afflicted by the plague itself, the fellow nonetheless died, possibly aided by some poison from Prum, it was hinted.

  And so, without a moral compass, resentful of the town that had left them to die in a plague-house, and with no prospects of coming out of long years of warfare with any better prize than their own vermin-ridden hides, Prum’s soldiers willingly became blackmailers. And once little Gisela was in hand, it was easy to leverage each town leader to compromise the next. And so they had become wealthy at last.

  Schoenfeld had, in his few short hours among them, heard enough of the story to be able to make a full report back in Biberach, but when offered the opportunity to travel there along with the courier, he shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t think I’ll be going back there—not if the offer to travel with you to Grantville still stands, Major Quinn.”

  Larry looked a bit sheepish. “I’m surprised you’d travel anywhere with me at all, Herr Schoenfeld.”

  “Johann, please. I cannot say I like the gambit you used here, but I see the wisdom of it—and I did not miss the worry in your eyes when I set out on my own.” Schoenfeld pointedly did not look at North during this exchange. “So, I take it I am welcome to accompany you, then?”

  Larry smiled. “You most certainly are. We’ll start on our way at once.”

  Thomas frowned. “What? No victory parade through Biberach? No basking in the ardent hero worship of a grateful town?”

  Quinn’s smile broadened. “I’ll let you be the recipient of that well-deserved adulation, Thomas. I’ve got to get back to Grantville. And you’ve got an aerodrome to set up.”

  “Well, yes, so I do. And the last thing I need under foot is a meddling Yank who shows up to change my mission, steal my men, and then ruin my battle plans. You made all of this most difficult, you know. Things will be much simpler now.”

  “I’m sure,” said Quinn with a farewell wave, “that from here on, accomplishing the rest of your mission will seem like child’s play.”

  Thomas scowled. “And I won’t miss your so-called jokes either, Larry. Get on with you and your foolishness, now: I have an aerodrome to set up.”

  Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide

  Bjorn Hasseler

  Kat Meisnerin

  September 1635

  “Just remember how you break down a verb,” Friedrich concluded. “If you know the base and its meaning, the personal endings, and the rules for each tense, you can build verbs as you go instead of memorizing long lists of forms.”

  Katharina Meisnerin took another bite of sauerkraut to hide her grin. She remembered telling Friedrich the same thing during their first year of Greek.

  “Danke.” The sophomore went back to his own cafeteria table.

  Friedrich looked over at her with a grin. “See, I listen.” But then it vanished, and he stated, “Memorizing conjugation charts is confusing the Greek II class.”

  Katharina frowned. “Herr Ashmead does not teach Greek the same way that Dr. Green does. He would prefer to have us all memorizing the charts.”

  “I wish Dr. Green were still teaching us. It will be good to know Attic Greek, too, but it is just not the same this year.”

  “I know. But Dr. Green needed to stop teaching in order to try to make the deacons happy, and Herr Ashmead showed up at just the right moment.”

  “So you think it was the right thing to do?”

  No, Katharina thought. “I do not think he had much of a choice. Not really.” But I wish he were still our teacher. I do not always agree with his views, but I did always like his class.

  “If you will excuse me, I need to talk to a couple people before class.”

  “Me, too.” Katharina finished eating, returned her tray, and headed for the table where the theology debate appeared to be winding down.

  “Hi, Katharina,” Joseph Engelsberg greeted her. “I noticed you found a table on the far side of the cafeteria.”

  Katharina smiled. “How was the predestination discussion?”

  “Venimus, vidimus, versavimus. We came, we saw, we debated.” They had Latin next. “You know. Predestination, election…”

  “I foreknew what would be said. But I left so I could not have caused it,” Katharina quipped.

  The bell sounded.

  “May I walk you to class?” Joseph asked.

  Katharina froze for just a second. This was new. “J—Ja,” she stammered.

  “Something else came up I thought you should hear about,” Joseph continued. “I heard a street preacher a couple days ago. Non-Trinitarian, works salvation. Others have heard people like him around Grantville, too.”

  Katharina frowned. “Preaching on the street is bold. They will be safe in Grantville, but I do not want them to lead people astray.”

  “Me, either. That is why I objected to what he was saying. The next thing I knew, a couple of toughs were trying to shove me around.”

  “Joseph! Are you okay? We need to call…”

  Joseph held up a hand in a stop gesture. “I was showing a few men from Comenius’ Unitas Fratrum around Grantville—real busters on their way back from a special mission in Saxony. They pushed back.” He paused. “Have you ever had a bad feeling about something but could not explain why?”

  “Ja.”

  “I have that same bad feeling about this street preacher,” Joseph said. “So that is why I chose to preach on the deity of Christ when the elders approached me.”

  “Joseph!” Katharina exclaimed. “They asked you to preach a sermon? Wunderbar! So things are going well in Rudolstadt?”

  Joseph smiled briefly. “They are. The rednecks do not really even need to guard us anymore, but some of them still come.” He paused. “Would you be willing to look over my notes? And perhaps suggest passages that I missed?”

  “Of course.” Katharina was thrilled he had asked. “I am glad they asked Young Joe to preach.”

  “I am not sure I am ready to be Young Joe,” Joseph told her. “When your friends call you Kat, and you are not sure that is who you are? It is like that. I respect Old Joe a great deal, but sometimes I just disagree.”

  Katharina nodded slowly. He had put his finger on something that had been bothering her, too. “I feel like that about Dr. Green. Sometimes, from everything I can find, he is just…wrong.”

  Joseph nodded. “How is the church?”

  Katharina shook her head. “It is not good. I am afraid the deacons are going to ask Dr. Green to step down. Everyone seems to think there will be another vote soon. I do not want to lose Dr. Green, even though I do not agree with him all the time. I have learned so much from him that I otherwise would not have. Grown. Changed. Maybe it is time for me to realize that I am Kat.”

  They arrived at the Latin classroom.

  “How soon do you need those verses?”

  Carole Ann Hardy

  Wednesday, October 17
, 1635

  “It’s not good. The church is in a real mess. Everything changed after the Ring of Fire but we still had our church. Brother Green is changing it into something we can’t even recognize anymore. It’s all I can do to try to hold the youth group together.”

  The person on the other end of the phone call spoke for a while.

  “I know, Mildred. Believe me, I know. Al Green was new to Grantville before the Ring of Fire. It’s not surprising that he’s siding with the Germans to change the way we’ve always done things.”

  She listened some more. Finally she cut in with, “Listen, Mildred, I really need to get going. The youth group is meeting tonight.…Yes, at the church…I’ll talk to you tomorrow.…Good-bye.”

  Carole hung up the phone and took inventory of everything she had piled on the kitchen counter: supplies for tonight’s activity, devotions book, her list of people she needed to talk to about one thing or another, snacks. She threw it all in a tote bag.

  “Anna Maria!”

  The twelve-year-old was doing homework in the dining room.

  “I’m going to pick up Johann Diedrich and Nona and take them to youth group. Dinner is already cooking. Make sure Helena and Hans Philipp eat their vegetables.”

  “I will.”

  Anna Maria is a good kid, Carole reflected as she started the car and drove off to the high school. Johann had JROTC, and Nona had some religious activity—the BSG or whatever it was.

  Carole Ann sighed. Nona was her sister Mary Jean’s daughter. Roger Dobbs had gotten deployed to Augsburg, and Mary Jean had transferred from the state library to advising the Swabian administration on which books to acquire. It let her be close to Roger, and Carole Ann didn’t begrudge her sister that. But Roger and Mary Jean had left their kids in Grantville. Back in ’31, the four Marbacher children had shown up in Grantville. Carole Ann and Donald Hardy had adopted Johann Diedrich and Anna Maria, while Mary Jean and Roger adopted Helena, now seven, and Hans Philipp, now five. It only made sense for all four siblings to stay with the Hardys while Roger and Mary Jean were out of town. Roger and Mary Jean’s natural children, Nona and Blaine, were staying with Carole Ann and Mary Jean’s brother John Grover and his wife Leota. But since Carole Ann was the youth group leader, she was still responsible for getting Nona to youth group activities.

  She pulled into the high school parking lot. Johann Diedrich was waiting. He was a good kid, too. He was bound and determined to graduate at age eighteen and join the army. That’s too soon. We had Donella and Deirdre start late. It didn’t do them any harm to graduate at nineteen. Too bad I couldn’t convince Mary Jane to have Nona start a year late, too. It’d settle her down. Nona…

  “Johann, have you seen Nona?”

  “Nein.”

  Carole Ann reluctantly shut off the engine and unbuckled her seat belt. “Wait here. I’ll go find her.”

  The first place Carole Ann checked was the classroom where Al Green had taught Greek. That’s where the BSG meetings were. I don’t see why Nona can’t study the Bible with some other group. Why does it have to be Al Green’s group?

  Nona wasn’t there. But she recognized a couple of the students.

  “Hi, Missus Hardy.” They’d quickly learned not to greet her with “Guten Tag, Frau Groverin.”

  “Have you seen Nona?”

  “I think she said she was meeting someone in the music wing,” one of the girls offered.

  “Thank you.”

  Carole Ann stalked down the hall toward the music rooms. Meeting someone! Probably a boy.

  The first two music rooms were empty. Then Carole Ann heard rock music. She’d banned that from youth group. Nona was probably in there listening to rock and roll with a boy. I’ll give her a piece of my mind! She brushed past a German loitering in the hall.

  The music died away. A man’s voice drifted out. “A creedal statement set to music. For all that you insist that yours is not a liturgical tradition…Next time you come to a prayer service, please bring this so Brother Aidan may hear it.”

  Carole burst in. She was right. Nona was just pressing stop. Caught in the act! With a boy. Actually he was a well-muscled man, bald except for an odd topknot of hair. He looked dangerous.

  “Nona Dobbs, what do you think you are doing?”

  Nona looked up, startled. “I’m playing a song for Brother Oran.”

  “Brother Oran?”

  The man held out his hand. “I am Brother Oran of the Celtic mission. Nona was kind enough to share a hymn with me.” He looked back to Nona.

  “What sort of weird religious group is that?” Carole Ann demanded.

  “The Celtic mission. Columba brought Christianity to Scotland in the sixth century…”

  “You’re Roman Catholic!” Carole Ann exclaimed.

  “No, not Roman…”

  Carole Ann whirled on Nona. “What are you doing with Catholics? And listening to that rock music?” She ejected the tape. “I forbade you from listening to rock and roll and you defied me!” She snapped the cassette in half.

  “No!”

  Carole Ann was startled. The exclamation had come from the man who claimed to be a monk, not from Nona.

  “That is irreplaceable.” Oran sighed. “I would have liked Bishop Aidan to have heard it.”

  “It is the devil’s music!” Something the man had said clicked into place. “What was that about a prayer service?”

  “Nona has been kind enough to join us for prayer,” the monk said.

  “What? Nona, how could you?” Carole Ann demanded. “Come with me, at once! We’re late for youth group!”

  Johannes Huber

  Wednesday, October 17, 1635

  The up-time woman sniffed as she hurried past him, towing her daughter along. Johannes Huber waited until they were gone and very tentatively entered the music room.

  The man with the topknot of hair looked up at him.

  “The music?” Johannes asked.

  The man held up two halves of a plastic rectangle with nothing but a thin strand of something connecting them.

  “It is my fault,” the man said. He looked genuinely distressed.

  Johannes took a deep breath and confessed, “I was listening. It was a confessional statement. I know the Schleitheim Confession and the new Dordrecht Confession but I have never heard of this one. And then I heard…some of the rest.”

  “Then you know I am Brother Oran of the Celtic mission.”

  Johannes nodded. “I have not heard of your church before. I am Johannes Huber, one of the Brethren.”

  “What Brethren are these?”

  The two men spent a few minutes explaining their respective churches to each other.

  “I fear I have caused Nona’s aunt to be angry with her,” Oran said. “And the song has been lost. As you say, it was an up-time creed set to music.”

  “Many of us Brethren are attending the Baptist church,” Johannes said. “I have seen her there.”

  “Perhaps I could approach the priest…”

  “Nein. Oh, it is a good idea, but the up-timers are divided. Frau Hardy opposes Brother Green. But there is someone else in the congregation that we can talk to—a man who can sometimes fix musical devices.”

  Oran’s eyes widened.

  An hour later they were talking to Larry Dotson at the hardware store.

  Larry examined the tape carefully, poking a pencil into the spindle on one side and carefully retracting the tape.

  “Yes, I can fix this,” he told them. “I’ll have to charge you for the repairs. It needs up-time glue, and there’s not much of that left.”

  “I will pay what you ask,” Brother Oran stated.

  Larry got around to reading the label. “Huh. How’d this happen, anyway? Cassettes don’t just break like this.”

  Brother Oran hung his head and explained.

  “I don’t care for rock and roll. But chanting isn’t my thing, either. No offense. It’d be nice if someone would set Gospel lyrics to some of t
hat stuff Heather Mason listens to. But there was no call for this.” Larry’s voice was soft as he worked on the cassette. “We Christians ought to do better.” He sighed. “All right. This glue is going to have to set, and then I’ll try to glue the other pieces in. Better give it until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “We will come back after work tomorrow,” Oran agreed. “I fear I have missed the evening service and dinner already.”

  “Please, join my family and me for dinner,” Johannes requested. “I would like to hear more about your church.”

  “I think those two get it,” Larry Dotson murmured as he set the cassette in a safe place and went back to stocking shelves. “I wonder who else gets it.”

  Nona Dobbs

  Thursday, October 18, 1635

  The alarm went off. Nona Dobbs hit the snooze button a couple times. After crying herself to sleep last night she had no desire to face the day. But the third time it went off, she reluctantly rolled out of bed, shut it off, and started rummaging through her closet for clothes.

  Aunt Carole Ann had absolutely forbidden her from going to the Celtic services. Uncle John hadn’t been quite so stern, but he obviously wasn’t going to contradict Carole Ann.

  Nona sighed and began flipping through the hangers a second time. What was she going to do? First Baptist was becoming a never-ending source of tension. She wasn’t allowed to listen to most of her worship tapes. It was the Celtic services that were giving her a chance to relax and enjoy worshipping God. But if she wasn’t allowed to—

  Oh! Her hand closed on the tartan skirt. This wouldn’t be backtalk. Not precisely. She started flipping hangers again, looking for a blouse that matched.

  Nona paid close attention in class. As long as she had something to concentrate on, she wasn’t thinking about being in trouble with Aunt Carole Ann.

  Alicia Rice caught up to her at lunch. “What’s with the Catholic schoolgirl look, Nona?”