Grantville Gazette 46 gg-46

by Paula Goodlett

"Yes, computers. . you know Blaise Pascal, do you not?"

  Logan couldn't help but glare up at the man. "Yeah. So?"

  "He is working on computers, yes?"

  "All the time."

  "I see. Well. . if, as you say, I am interested in more than these balloons, possibly interested in creating an air courier service-and let us agree that I am in need of more pilots-then I will also need some way to schedule them. I am told that computers can help with scheduling, yes?"

  Logan glared at him for some time, long enough for the man to appear slightly unnerved.

  "Blaise's computers can't even add four digit numbers yet without blowing a gasket," Logan forced out between clenched teeth. Then she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Look, I'm here to train as a pilot. Back up-time, twelve-year-olds could get a pilot's license. My mom thinks I should go to college because she still thinks up-time is like down-time, only without fast food and cable television. I am tired of pretending. Kids my age are apprenticing-not flying around in a holding pattern called school."

  "Learning is important. ."

  "I overheard one of the teachers tell a student that if the Ring of Fire reverses then everyone will need proof they graduated high school. Bah! That's stupid. I'm here, now-and I want to be a pilot. So are you taking on trainees?"

  Antonio appeared ready to speak, but Logan felt the need to make certain things clear.

  "And if you're worried about me being a girl. . well you can stop worrying." Logan hoped the look on her face made her appear more mature and less angry.

  "I learned many things in Grantville. One of them is that being a girl means something different now. With an appropriate chaperone, I think-"

  "Chaperones. ." Logan muttered in disgust.

  "My crew is mostly men. I have had two women pilot the Pelican-"

  "See? So, are you going to let me show you what I can do?"

  "I do not give rides. ."

  "I'm not asking for a ride. I'm asking for a chance to show you I can fly the thing." Logan closed her eyes and tried to reach a calm, quiet place inside herself. "Please."

  Logan took off her backpack and zipped it open. She pulled out her final card. "I've got a barometer. . and I know how to use it."

  Antonio's expression shifted from skeptical to delighted. "I see. ."

  "I heard the complaints about getting your down-time altimeters properly adjusted, so I brought this. As you can see, it's an up-time device-made in the twentieth century. I calibrated it against the mercury barometer in the physics lab, and I have all the corrections in my notebook."

  Logan pressed her advantage. "Look. . suppose you hire me as a pilot trainee. I won't have any reason to carry my barometer with me all the time. So you can keep it for me-in your office, on your desk-when I'm not using it."

  The office of the Director of Social Services for the SoTF, Bamberg

  (later that day)

  Julie Drahuta sat in her office in the building that housed the government of the State of Thuringia-Franconia and tried to keep a serious expression on her face.

  "You didn't have to send the police," Logan muttered sullenly.

  No matter how often it happened, it always amazed Julie how fast a relatively boring, mundane day could change into something worthy of sitcom, a tragedy, and a comedy, all at the same time.

  "Logan," Julie growled. "Don't use that tone with me. And I didn't send the police after you. I merely suggested to a few people I know that I'd really like to know where you are-because I know that when your mother gets here, she'll want to know exactly where you are."

  Logan stared at the floor. "So, how much trouble am I in?"

  "That depends," Julie said to the frowning figure of aggrieved adolescence who sat before her. "It depends on whether your father lets your mother stew during the train ride all the way from Grantville, or if he tries to cheer her up with amusing stories about the other stupid things you've done and survived."

  Logan looked up. "I'm not a kid anymore."

  Julie looked into the girl's eyes-no, the young woman's-eyes. She had to remind herself that Logan wasn't eight any more. The Ring of Fire had happened almost five years ago. Kids did, indeed, grow up.

  "How long have I known you?"

  Logan shrugged. "A while. ."

  Julie, through her husband and his family, had known Logan Sebastian since before the girl was born.

  "You scared the living daylights out of your parents, Logan. Granted, you made it here without being killed, and-if this Sorrento person is any indication-you reached your goal. Well, part of it."

  "My mom wouldn't have let me go. She would've told me I need to stay in school. . But for what? So I could become an aeronautical engineer and design stealth fighters? I don't need to be ten times smarter than everyone else when four or five will do."

  Julie smiled. "Spoken like a true teenager."

  "There are no teenagers here," Logan stated.

  "If your mother's mood is any indication, you might be right."

  "She's not gonna kill me. Smack me around a bit, but I can handle that." Logan shrugged. "When she calms down, she'll listen."

  "Your mother said it was a good thing you took your lacrosse stick with you." Julie shook her head. "She asked me about child abuse laws in the State of Thuringia-Franconia. I told her that they were. . still being worked on, since what a down-time German thinks is child abuse doesn't quite match what an up-time West Virginian thinks child abuse is. For that matter, there's a great deal of argument about what defines a 'child.'"

  "I'm thirteen," Logan asserted. "This isn't West Virginia. Tell my mom I am not a child."

  "Logan. ."

  "I know what you're gonna say, so don't say it. Aside from all that stuff about baking bread without a bread maker and how to dig a latrine or hoe a line of turnips, I know a lot more than any down-time thirteen-year-old. I could probably take that gas bag up based on nothing more than my flight simulator experience. I might make a few mistakes, but most of the mistakes you make in a lighter-than-air craft involve falling, slowly. I know about thermals and wind shear and prevailing winds and stuff like that. I don't need to waste five more years while the world goes by without me!"

  "Are you raising your voice to me, young lady?"

  Logan slumped in her chair. "No."

  "First of all, you were very rude to Mr. Sorrento."

  "I'm sorry about that. I was mad."

  "I think you gave a very good lesson on how not to interview for a job. With that in mind, I will tell you that he asked me what I knew about you."

  "What did you say?"

  "I said that Logan Sebastian usually gets what she sets her mind to. I told him that you do know mathematics. I gave him a brief explanation of what flight simulators were and he seemed impressed. He was also impressed that your father taught math."

  "Of course, I can do math. I can also tell the difference between an altocumulus and stratus cloud. See? I could do this. ."

  "Logan, there are dead bodies of people older than you between here and Grantville. You worried your parents out of their minds! That was both unfair and unkind, and I have known Logan Sebastian to be many things, but unfair and unkind-especially to her parents-is not among those things. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Crystal clear. But I am not some vase that needs to be packed in bubble wrap. They were being unfair to me. They were holding me back."

  "Okay, I admit, your mother is a bit overprotective and your father. . after the Ring of Fire especially, has been a bit overindulgent with you."

  "Overindulgent?" Logan said with surprise. "Once I found Blaise for him, he barely knew I was there. He thinks the whole thing is funny, like a big joke. Blaise has come very close to saying that, in Paris, there were some who would think I was a prostitute because of what I wore and stuff."

  "Blaise is a different story, and leave Paris out of it. Now, your father has a great deal of faith in you. He has faith in you being able to take care of you
rself. Running off to become apprenticed to a blimp-"

  "They're not blimps." Logan pouted.

  "Logan? Don't pull that crap with me, of all people. If I want to be lectured to about all the things I don't know, I will sit down and have a quiet discussion with Blaise Pascal, world's biggest pain in the butt. I know your father would have expected you to discuss this 'apprenticeship' thing with him-not go running off like some sort of dingbat heading for the circus!"

  "Thirteen-year-old girls get apprenticed here and now all the time. If I have to live with this Ring of Fire crap, then Mom and Dad have to, too. She treats me like I'm some sort of fragile antique. The older kids who came through are off doing stuff, and the younger kids think outhouses and swords are cool."

  Julie shook her head sadly. "I know a few adults who think swords are cool, too."

  "Is Mr. Drahuta still wearing his spurs into the house and marking up the walls with his sword?"

  "We're not discussing my husband. We're discussing you, Logan."

  "I'm thirteen now, not eight! What about Blaise? He was hanging from the church steeple and did anyone take away his pocket calculator?"

  "Since you brought him up, again, there is some news about Blaise."

  "What did he do now?" Logan exhaled an exasperated sigh. "Accidentally stab Mike Stearns with a mathematical equation?"

  "I received a radiogram, telling me that some idiot gave Blaise a horse. He's on his way here."

  "Who the hell gave that car wreck a horse?" Logan shouted. "And what's he coming here for?"

  "For you."

  Logan stood up. "For me?"

  "Logan, sit down. You just up and left, and he has it in his head that he-being a member of the French nobility, sort of-has to come and save you. So when no one was going to lend him a car, he borrowed a horse."

  "A car? Who the hell was going to give him a car?"

  "Logan? Your language! Now, I haven't spoken to Jacqueline so I can't confirm it, but he's got it in his head that his father is coming and it would look bad if he didn't try and save you. Apparently, he needs to prove to his father that he didn't dishonor you. And-if Jacqueline can be understood, she lapses into French when she's real nervous-her father is supposed to be 'sneaking' into Grantville any day now to reacquaint himself with his son and maybe fight a duel with your father over your honor."

  "I don't need to be saved, and my honor is just fine!"

  "Logan? You are-"

  "A car? He looks at cars as neat toys to test principles of physics. I'll probably have to go and save him. And his father probably thinks I ain't good enough for the twerp."

  "Logan. ."

  "Okay," Logan grumbled. "I'll go and set up my tent at the airfield and wait for Blaise to come and save me."

  "You are not going anywhere," Julie stated firmly. "I'll put you up in my house."

  "I got a sleeping bag and a tent. ."

  "Fine. You can store them in my house. You are not setting up a tent in Bamberg. This is not your backyard. That is final."

  "Mr. Sorrento said he'd take me on as a pilot trainee. I can sleep out with the airship. A real air ship, not cobbled-together wannabe's pretending to be something they're not!"

  "Logan. ."

  "I hate my life."

  "Logan, what's really bothering you?"

  Logan didn't respond.

  Julie knew that it could take a while to draw out the real story from Logan. But after her encounters with Blaise Pascal, she knew that she had the patience to deal with just about anything involving a young teenager. And beyond that, she knew that Logan was probably right about Blaise needing rescuing-she had already contacted the Jaegers who patrolled the road between Grantville and Bamberg.

  When Logan finally spoke, it came out in a torrent. "I know enough to know I can't have everything I want, okay? A lot of kids my age are hoping the Ring of Fire will happen again and everything will be like it was. We know enough to know what we lost, but not enough to make do with what we got left."

  "Everybody has had to deal with that, Logan. Even the down-timers. We were quite a shock to them."

  "I get it, okay? I'm making do with what I got. I'm willing to meet the world half way, but I ain't backin' down one inch more. Not one inch! If I can't fly a wide body, then I'll fly a blimp thing! At least it carries more stuff than a hope and a prayer. I can't do it, though, if my mom thinks I'm still thirteen in the year 2000, not thirteen in 1636."

  "There were better ways to go about it," Julie said.

  "Like how? This is the seventeenth century. You gotta just do it. My mom probably thinks it's cute that Blaise is worried about what his father is going to think about 'us'-like there's an 'us,' but it isn't cute. It's life. Blaise has to think about what people are going to think about him and me. Girlfriend and boyfriend doesn't mean the prom and getting your driver's license and stuff going on in the back of a car that I'm not supposed to know about. 1630-something means I gotta prove I can embroider and teach my kids about the Bible and run a house while my husband is away digging holes in the ground or farming or beating iron into stuff or stabbing people with it. Everything's different and what was cute up-time ain't cute now. Being a thirteen-year-old teenager is cute up-time, but it ain't cute at all down-time. Down-time, teenagers don't exist."

  "Logan, I know this must be hard on you."

  "You have no idea."

  "I would like to think I have some idea. . I mean, I did find Blaise Pascal hanging from a church steeple, didn't I? And trying to control my husband hasn't been a picnic either. . I am told no sane man wanders about his own house dressed in cavalry armor."

  "Everything's different, and nobody asked me if I wanted it to be," Logan said. "Well, I'm not going to apprentice myself as some old woman's handmaid. If Blaise wants me to accept that he's a French gentleman and the world's greatest mathematician, then he's gotta accept that I want to be a pilot."

  "Has he told you this?"

  "No." Logan closed her eyes. "He's probably scared I'd hit him."

  "Is he smart to be scared?"

  "If he wants embroidery done for those stupid cuffs of his, then he's gonna have to hire someone to do it 'cause it ain't gonna be me! I'm not marrying Prince. And I'm not gonna disrespect my dreams of 747s by embarrassing myself in one of those rinky-dink air-catastrophes-waiting-to-happen. Until they can make real airplanes, blimps will have to do. Blimps don't pretend to be something they're not!"

  "I see," Julie said.

  "You adults always say that. Do you really 'see'? Do you? I'm in the middle and I gotta make do. I was old enough to remember the world wide web, but not old enough to be allowed to go out and make the best out of the crap that got throw'd at me. And I wasn't young enough to forget that once I could actually fly a 747, or go to the moon, or something like that. Now I'm caught between the world's greatest mathematician and washing underwear by hand. I know it'll all look better from a few thousand feet up. I just know it!"

  Logan sighed. Then she continued. "I don't wanna be one of those old people who sit on the porch, talk and talk about all the things they coulda done but never did because they had to work the mine thirty hours a day or their girlfriend got pregnant. Hell, I don't even want a porch."

  Julie didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or slap Logan silly.

  The Home of Julie Drahuta, Director of Social Services for SoTF

  (afternoon of the next day)

  The American Perspective

  "I'll slap her silly!" Mitzi Sebastian shouted.

  "Honey, baby, control yourself." Allan Sebastian hugged his wife. "Besides, as the aggrieved father, I get firsties."

  "This isn't funny, Allan. She could have been killed or. . assaulted."

  "She could have been killed or assaulted up-time, too. At least here they allow a certain vigilantism that makes the actual 'assault' part less common. Personally, I'm more worried about Blaise wandering loose, trying to ride to her rescue, than I am about Logan up in a balloon. Apparentl
y this Sorrento guy hired a chaperone for her. He has good references. Julie told me he has connections straight to the top of government."

  "Oh, I feel much better now." Mitzi was about to scream at her husband for his nonchalant attitude. But instead, she took several deep breaths to regain control of herself before continuing. "Okay, I will admit things are a lot less lawless in the seventeenth century than I imagined. Well, other than the wars raging back and forth and the sack of cities. On the whole, there aren't as many crimes as I would have imagined."

  "And she does have that lacrosse stick."

  "Shut up about that lacrosse stick. I know for a fact she took my mother's old thirty-eight with her, too. But she ran away," Mitzi complained. "She ran away like. . like we were abusing her or something."

  "Our Logan? Run? She walked away with a plan. She didn't run off to become a movie star or to join a circus."

  "They don't have circuses in the seventeenth century, do they?"

  "You're missing the point. She walked away to get a job. Makes sense, sort of. ."

  "She left us with nothing but a note and an empty bed. I'm furious! She should have talked to us like a normal thirteen-year-old."

  Allan laughed. "You noticed her bed was made and her room clean."

  "Okay, like our thirteen-year-old. We didn't raise her to go haring off after any old thing. We taught her to talk to her parents, not run away from them. Didn't we? Did we fail that badly?"

  "She's not eight anymore, Mitzi. She's been chompin' at the bit for some time. The seventeenth century doesn't have the child labor laws that the twenty-first did. You can't keep her in her room playing with Barbie dolls and collecting college brochures until she's eighteen."

  "Barbie dolls? I wouldn't dare give her one of those. She wouldn't talk to me for a month. And she was collecting military brochures. She tried to apply to the NavalAcademy before the Ring of Fire, did you know that?"

  Allan nodded. "Of course. Who do you think got her the brochure?"

  "But she's just thirteen, Allan. Thirteen. ."

  "There are quite a few who think it's silly to keep young adults as children at home. Most kids are well into their apprenticeship by thirteen. Even girls."