Logan helped with this translation, thankfully. Apparently Jacqueline's letters helped here as well. Computers had been a topic in those letters.
"Logan knew how to use a computer at age five?" Florin asked.
"We had decided to load Reader Rabbit on the computer," Mitzi said. "It's a program that helps young children learn to read, by combining education and entertainment. And we showed Logan how to run that program."
"In a much shorter time than we had expected," Allan continued, "Logan had learned what the reading program had to teach her, and she got bored with it. Then without my knowing it, she started using the air-combat program that I had loaded onto the computer for my own entertainment. But she didn't want to shoot at the enemy planes that were trying to shoot her down; she just wanted to fly. So when I found out, I loaded a flight-simulation program on the computer for her."
Logan explained to the Pascals about flight simulators. And while she was explaining about air-combat games, Norman came home.
Norman greeted the guests, and then announced that no one knew anything more about Blaise than they did a few hours ago.
"Typical of him," Logan grumbled.
The Perspective of Blaise Pascal, World's Greatest Mathematician, standing at the front door of the Julie Drahuta Residence
(very early the next morning)
"Bah!" Blaise spat hoarsely at the door he surmised was the one behind which lived Madam Julie Drahuta. "Damn up-time women. Damn horses. Damn Bamberg. Damn everything! Hear me? Do you?"
The door did not answer him.
"Logan will not care what I went through. She will only laugh and then where will I be? I will be here, without my own clothes, without my horse. . the horse I borrowed. Damn! I will need to replace the horse. Madam Drahuta will shake her head and be done with me. Why can't life be more like a mathematical equation, an algebraic one with one real root for an answer? Why all this chaos? Logan Sebastian, you are not worth all of this. I will go back home and be done with you. This time I will take the train. If you made it to Bamberg then I wish you well! I am done with you."
Logan had been an investment of sorts, but no matter what he did nothing proceeded as it should.
"Nothing!"
Blaise turned away from the door but took only one step.
"Damn you!" Blaise snapped at the unyielding door. The frustration was just too much. "I am wearing the skin of an animal for you. ."
That thought, above all others, eclipsing everything else, was what motivated him to continue on.
With the sort of single minded purpose that had him, in the not so distant past, swinging from a church steeple, or picking pieces of a microwave oven's glass door out of his oversized turnout coat and face shield, or convinced him that a block of ceramics could one day become a computer, and put him on a horse on a fool's errand, Blaise Pascal, world's greatest mathematician, attempted to kick the door open. And much to his consternation, he found the door unlocked.
In fact, as he stumbled through the doorway, he found the door had been more than unlocked and in the process of being opened by an armed man.
Blaise Pascal, world's greatest mathematician and probably the world's worst swordsman, attempted to draw his sword while spinning about to confront the miscreant sneaking out of the Drahuta Residence's front door like some thief in the. . well, early morning.
A thief wearing armor and spurs?
"En garde!" Blaise shouted. He only wished he were as good at what came after those words as he was at shouting the words themselves.
The sword, unscabbarded, opened up a long gash across his upper thigh and nearly unmanned him when he drew it out. His turn led him to a stumble, which prevented him from being slapped silly by a gauntleted hand that had come around in a vicious arc. The stumble then turned into a dance of destruction-Blaise attempted to regain his balance and proceeded to dismantle almost every piece of furniture in the entrance room.
Falling, his sword held in a passable quarte position but with no close opponent, Blaise pulled the large, flintlock pistol from his belt with his other hand. And in a fit of marksmanship worthy of him, he blasted to bits the only remaining intact piece of furniture in the entranceway.
Even being stunned by the violence of the explosion from the overly large pistol, Blaise noticed someone falling down the stairs as he, too, fell.
As he lay there-the sword suddenly far too heavy, the smoking pistol useless-Blaise began to laugh. "You are not worth it, Logan Sebastian! I surrender! Take me home!"
"Holy crap! He's bleeding!" Logan's voice was like sweet though loud music. "Did you shoot yourself?"
Someone tore to shreds the last bits of his once magnificent silk hosiery after removing the scraps of cloth he had wrapped about his legs.
He felt air upon parts of him that should not feel air, but he closed his eyes against the sudden dizziness.
"Unhand me or I will. ." Blaise attempted to sit up. The attempt was completely unsuccessful.
". . Cut your other leg off? What the hell? Help me, Mr. Drahuta! Did you slash him?"
"I was just leaving. He came tumbling in when I opened the door!"
"Blaise!" a voice Blaise felt he should recognize, shouted, "where in the hell did you come from?"
"He came in through the door like there were Indians after him," another voice stated. "Then he beat up all the furniture and shot that little table you liked."
"Jesus Christ!"
Ah yes, Madam Drahuta. Blaise recognized her angry voice, having heard it often and close.
"Mon Dieu!"
Now that voice was difficult to place.
"Logan! I have found you!" Blaise smiled up at his victory. "I wish to go home now. My father is coming. I must introduce him to you. I must. . why am I so dizzy?"
"I swear, Blaise, you make me late for work and I'll kill you!" Logan shouted. But her attention seemed to be much lower down than his face.
"You are always promising to kill me, but I still live!" Blaise would have raised his sword in victory but could not seem to find the strength.
Suddenly, there was a great deal of commotion and light and voices and shouts.
"What are you doing?" Blaise demanded.
"Trying to stop you from bleeding to death," Logan said through gritted teeth.
"Who is bleeding?" Blaise demanded.
"Speak in English!"
Blaise frowned. "I am speaking English."
"You are speaking French!"
"You are making no sense! Oh, father, is that you? I would like you to. . meet. ." and the entire world went black. "Bah!" Blaise exclaimed angrily at the world entire, or very much thought he did.
A guest room in the residence of Julie Drahuta; Director of Social Services for SoTF
(four days later)
"She is not to be allowed in my room!"
Gilberte turned from her needlepoint when Logan Sebastian limped into the room.
It had been a rather quiet day, while Blaise worked on several projects from his bed, which was covered in papers, books and various pens and pencils-and, of course, the calculator that he both cursed and loved at the same time.
"You know, you can get up and move around," Logan said. "Those stitches won't pull out. And I know they've invented the desk by the seventeenth century. You've been in bed all day, again?"
Blaise, as he had done every time he was aware that Logan was nearby, pulled the quilt over his head.
"It is indecent for you to be here!" Blaise stated firmly, from beneath his covers. "Indecent! What will be said if it becomes known?"
"You're such a baby!"
"Baby?" In exasperation, Blaise pulled the covers away from his head and sat up. "Do you know what I went through to find you? I almost died. ."
"Yeah, yeah, you almost killed yourself ten times. I heard it all before, with mathematical clarity to the hundredth decimal point. There are people still out there confirming your story because no one believes it despite all the eviden
ce. You didn't actually kill anyone but somehow the three poachers died anyway. How do you do it? How do you stay at the center of so much trouble and remain untouched?"
"I was not untouched! My horse. . dragged me and I fell into the river. ."
"Last count is three times. How do you fall into a river three times?"
"It was not easy. I was lost and I was not looking for a river; I was looking for a road. The river was in my way. And now, let me remind you, Mademoiselle, my sick room is no place for a lady!"
"Who held pressure on the leg wound?"
Blaise felt his anger rising. "That was indecent. To be touched there by a. ."
Logan glared at him. "I should have let you bleed to death for the sake of decency? Even I know you don't carry a sword that way. Scabbards were invented for a reason, you big doofus!"
"I lost my horse! I needed something sharp to cut my way. ."
"You lost more than your horse; you lost your mind. You left a path of destruction through the forest that looked like a herd of elephants had stampeded."
"I was angry. And the bushes were in my way!"
"Blaise Pascal, world's greatest terror to vegetation. ."
"Logan. ."
A new, much louder voice arrived. "Blaise!"
Blaise-not knowing what he had done now, but knowing by the tone of voice that it must be something quite bad-lowered himself back down, ready to bring the quilt over his head again.
Julie Drahuta came roaring in with a handful of papers and a look fit to kill an invading army. "Blaise Pascal! Did Bill Porter put you up to this!"
Then Blaise did pull the quilt over his head. "He told me to create a plan for electrifying Bamberg," he said through the quilt. "He said it would be good experience while I recuperate from my injuries."
"And how did the town council of Bamberg get a copy of your preliminary report? You don't just 'electrify' a seventeenth century town!"
"There is a plan for a dam and a-"
"Blaise! You just can't go flooding people's property like you're the whole Tennessee Valley Authority all by yourself! If a goat nibbles the bark of a tree anywhere in Europe, not only do they know the name of the tree that was illegally nibbled, but who owns the goat. And then there's two hundred years of court wrangling to see who pays for the damage to the tree, and whether the goat should be eaten or burned and buried, and who gets compensated for the goat! You can't talk about flooding parts of Bamberg like you can do it any day of the week and twice on Sunday!"
Blaise did not respond, not quite certain why Mrs. Julie Drahuta seemed so angry.
"Blaise, let me see your face," Julie demanded.
"I am injured."
"Blaise! You tripped on your sword and cut your thigh and your calf. Your face is fine! And besides, I hear you were out of the house, wandering around Bamberg, for hours yesterday."
Blaise lowered the quilt, slowly.
"No piece of paper will leave this room unless I sign it," Julie said. "And you will not, I mean N-O-T, not talk to anyone other than immediate family members without adult supervision. Is that clear?"
"It is only a preliminary. ."
"Blaise Pascal! Shall we discuss your preliminary cause of death. ."
He quickly pulled the quilt back over his head.
"Blaise?"
"What?"
"Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes."
"How's the leg?"
"Does not hurt much. I am sorry about the bloodstain. Your hospitality has been commendable."
"Blaise, I know you mean well, but you can't go about promising whole towns a working power grid. It gets people's hopes up. And when reality hits them, they're going to be angry. . Do you understand? Angry people become mobs. You are French boy in a German town with an angry mob and no electricity. Do you understand what I am trying to prevent here?"
"Yes."
"Gilberte," Julie said gently, "sorry to disturb your. . needlepoint."
When Julie left, Blaise translated for his sister all that Julie had said. Gilberte responded.
"I didn't catch all of what your sister said," Logan said. "Was she talking about me?"
"She, my sister, asked me how do I make so many people so angry with me so quickly. She remembers me being far less upsetting when I was in Paris. No one wished to kill me there."
Logan shook her head. "That was before you found the power plant and computers."
"It is a simple task, really. Once you know the maths, the rest is, as you say, a piece of cake. It is certainly far easier to create a plan to electrify Bamberg than the math involved in routing the delivery schedules of blimps. Now that is a problem worthy of me. I begin to see the problem of this 'Fedex' and the routing of aircraft with all these passengers and cargo and destinations and arrival times. It is way multivariate."
"Can you ever stop talking about math?"
"Can you ever stop talking about flying? You would think a bag of hot air is more important than I am!"
"Maybe if you came up in a balloon you would understand."
"I would like to go up with you in one of those blimps and test my theories concerning atmospheric pressure to see if I was correct. I will let you hold the barometer. My name is used to measure units of barometric pressure so I must insure my former self was, indeed, accurate."
Logan blurted out with fury, "Only you would be so big-headed you would check yourself to see if you were good enough to be you! You are impossible! I will have to go up at least five thousand feet to begin to see the curvature of your head!"
With that, Logan stormed out of the room
"Gilberte," Blaise said softly, "she can not be allowed in Paris. She will be the death of all the ladies at court, and there is no way I can become accomplished enough with the sword to defend her honor, let alone mine. What am I to do?"
"Who says we are going to Paris? More importantly, what did she say and what did you say?"
Blaise told her.
"First of all, dear brother, when a lady asks you to accompany her in a device that floats gracefully into the air, do not threaten to take atmospheric measurements and allow her to hold this. . this. . barometer!"
"Your husband helped me do just that in this future that will no longer happen. She should be honored to be involved in such a momentous experiment! Your husband was, according to the history books. ."
"You are lucky she did not slap you across your foolish face! Or hit you with that famous stick of hers! You have all the romance of a. . of a. . dead horse." Gilberte stuttered. "You are incorrigible! No wonder there is no evidence that you married."
"Romance? With Logan Sebastian? She would kill me. Then, because she is a witch, she would raise me from the dead just so that she could kill me again. She tried to drown me! And that was by accident! I will not bore you with the ways and manners with which she attempted to murder me on purpose!"
Gilberte frowned at her brother. "I would not blame her if she tossed you off this blimp device!"
"I had not thought of that. Maybe I should go up without her. But you see how dangerous she is? How do you think I learned how to use the Taser? I know precisely how effective it is because she tested it on me. Of course, I increased its voltage, but don't tell her that. Also, I know for a fact that she has her grandmother's pistol. What kind of woman gives her granddaughter a pistol, I ask you? And with five discharges when one should do more than adequately. Women are emotional enough without the ability to fire such a weapon five times! Romance? Bah! Survival is more the term that should be used when one discusses Logan Sebastian. I am lucky to be alive!"
"Why do you like her?" Gilberte looked at her needlepoint.
There was a long silence.
"She makes me think. She gave me a metal ruler." Blaise produced the piece of metal from its place under his pillow. "See? It has her name scribed upon it. She told me it was more accurate than the plastic one I was using, and she was right. Logan Sebastian makes me think. That is what I like ab
out her."
"You mean you had to be cut down from a church tower because this Logan gave you a ruler?"
"She has that effect on me." Blaise shrugged. "What can I do?"
The Front entranceway to the residence of the Director of Social Services for SoTF
(late afternoon)
"I see your conversation with boy blunder went as well as mine." Julie laughed when Logan tried, unsuccessfully to storm past her and out into an unsuspecting Bamberg.
"He's completely recovered," Logan grumbled. "He sees me and he starts talking mathematics like it's a hot article in Seventeen magazine. He wants me to take him up in a blimp so he can read the barometer I'm holding and figure out if he calculated the change in air pressure correctly the first time. I should toss him overboard like rotten ballast and see if he bounces. I mean, with Blaise, once is enough. We got probability and his damned triangles. What else do we need him for?"
"Logan," Julie said sternly, "you really don't mean that. Stop talking trash like that."
"Yeah, okay. By the way, thanks for convincing my mom and dad to let me stay. And thanks for helping my parents negotiate the apprenticeship contact. I doubt if they would've known what to negotiate over, on their own."
"You're welcome, Logan. It's probably the first apprenticeship contract that's closer to a late-twentieth-century employment contract than a traditional apprenticeship contract. Except that, unlike a twentieth-century job, you can't just give notice and quit. You're bound to Antonio Sorrento for at least ten years."
Logan looked down. "Yeah, I know." Then she looked back up at Julie and smiled. "And thanks for giving me a place to stay too. I don't think my parents would've let me stay in the tent. I guess that was a dumb idea."
"Sibylla needs a roommate who's closer to her age."
"It was nice of you to adopt her and her brother. Maybe my mom should adopt a kid or two. She's good with young kids." Logan shrugged. "I thought it would be less scary to be out on my own. I mean, I'm not really on my own, but you know what I mean."
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