by Eric Flint
The "unsols" were usually dross, with few of them able to hold Ursula's interest as far as the bottom of the first page. The rule was to try and read at least that far before making a decision. Anything that passed got seen by one of the readers, people who were happy to be paid to read through the unsols and give an opinion. If enough of the readers liked a manuscript, then Ursula would read it, but not until then.
Ursula took the first unsol from the top of the basket. She struggled through the introductory sentence, all seventy-five words of it. Ursula was ready to junk it there and then, but there was the rule. Always read the first page before making a decision to dump a manuscript, it might get better. It was hard going, but Ursula managed to get to the end of the first page. There was no stamped self-addressed envelope supplied, so it went straight into the recycle bin.
The next was a bit better. It had a self-addressed envelope, so Ursula put one of the standard rejection forms into the envelope and put it into the out basket. The post would return it to the author.
An hour later there had been nothing worth while and Ursula was starting to get frustrated again. She reached for the next manuscript and started reading.
"Frau Fröbel? If it's not too much trouble, could you please have a look at these?"
Ursula looked up. Stephan Greiner, one of the sales assistants, was standing in front of her desk with a bundle of envelopes in his arms. "Sure. Put them on the top, I'll get to them shortly."
"Thank you, Frau Fröbel. One of them was written by my cousin Anna."
Ursula watched Stephan walk out of her office before turning her gaze to the unsols pile. There was a bundle of four envelopes tied together with string on the top of the pile. It was the first time Stephan had ever pushed forward a manuscript, and if she remembered correctly, his cousin Anna was training to be a teacher. At least she should know how to construct a sentence. She quickly dealt with the manuscript she had been looking at and reached for the bundle.
Ursula spread out the four submissions on her desk. Three of them were regular books. All words, no pictures. But Ursula's eyes locked onto the fourth manuscript. It looked like an illustrated children's book. She had a quick skim through. There were pencil sketches on every page. Then she discovered the single watercolor tucked into a protective folder at the back. Ursula considered the image for a moment. It would be a challenge to reproduce that in a book.
Ursula settled down to do a little reading.
Four hours later
Johann Schmucker looked up from the report he was reading across to his business partner. "Friedrich, we really need something special to take to Frankfurt for the fair. Something more than translations of up-time works."
Friedrich Schwentzel leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the desk. "Yes, but what? Herr Craft still hasn't delivered a useable version of his Abbreviated Manual of Statistical Principles and we haven't had anything better than a bit of poetry and short stories in the last couple of months out of Ursula's unsols."
Johann grimaced. "Yes. Ursula has become a little vocal about the Craft rewrites."
"She enjoys it, Johann. Take no notice of her complaining. That's half her fun."
Johann looked skeptically at Friedrich. "When she storms in here after yet another lousy rewrite, I hope she puts the blame where it belongs."
A pocket battleship suddenly burst into the office, several large envelopes in her arms. So surprised was he at Ursula Fröbel's entry, Friedrich over balanced on his chair and fell backwards onto the floor.
Johann managed to remain seated. "Yes, Ursula?"
Ursula dumped the envelopes onto his desk. "For months the unsols have yielded nothing but rubbish, then suddenly, not one, but four good manuscripts land on my desk on the same day. And not only are they well written, they are written in German."
Johann had pushed his seat back when Ursula dumped the envelopes on his desk, his recent discussion with Friedrich at the front of his mind. Now he moved his chair forward and opened the top envelope. "What kind of stories are they?"
"Romances."
Johann looked down at the wad of pages in his hand. The first thing he noticed was that it was all neatly typed. "An up-timer author of romances written in German?"
"Only two of them are by up-timers, Johann. A Hazel Patton, and a Marcie Haggerty. The other two are local girls. Elisabeth Müller, and Stephan's cousin, Anna Greiner."
Friedrich, who had scrambled to his feet and righted his chair, walked over to the bookcase. Pulling out the Grantville Genealogy Club's Who's Who of Grantville Up-timers, he checked for the entries of the two up-timers. "Hazel Patton. See Hazel McDonnell. Just a minute. Ah, here we are. Hazel McDonnell. Born September 21, 1929. She is the sister of Dr. McDonnell, and before the Ring of Fire she was a retired school teacher. Since then she has been working at the Fluharty Middle School tutoring the new teacher trainees." Friedrich looked up to see how that information was received.
Ursula nodded. "That doesn't surprise me. Stephan's cousin is a teacher trainee there. What about the other up-timer. The name seems familiar."
Friedrich flipped through the pages. "Marcie Haggerty, born March 15, 1982. Father Gary Haggerty. Ah, that explains your familiarity, Ursula. She's one of Frau Matowski's ballet dancers."
"I thought I recognized the name from somewhere." She turned back to Johann. "You both need to read these manuscripts. They are good, and they are different."
"How do you mean, different?" Friedrich asked. .
Ursula smiled. "Read them yourselves and find out." With a final smile Ursula left the office, shutting the door behind her.
"Phew!" Johann wiped his brow. "She had me worried for a moment there."
"Yes, well, don't just sit there, pick one and give me another. If Ursula wants us to read them, we better."
Johann passed Friedrich one of the envelopes. "Who's the boss here anyway?"
"You have to ask?"
Johann sent a glance towards the door. "No, I guess not."
Frankfurt-am-Main, October 1634
Johann Schmucker walked around the Schmucker and Schwentzel display booth at the Frankfurt book fair. People, potential buyers, were examining the stock. In pride of place was the Schmucker and Schwentzel encylopedia, the new dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information. Beside it the Who's Who of up-timers also attracted some customers. The new romances by Anna Greiner and her friends were attracting a lot of interest, but it was the illustrated children's story by Frau Patton that was attracting the most attention. Who'd think a romance between a tough down-time alley cat and a pure bred up-timer cat could attract so much attention. Of course some of the attention might have been due to the illustrations that appeared on every page. Being able to duplicate the colors Frau Patton had used to paint her characters placed Lady Chatterley's Lover in a class of its own. Nobody was using color like Schmucker and Schwentzel.
"Herr Schmucker, this gentleman is interested in subscribing to the encylopedia."
Johann offered his hand to the man beside Stephan Greiner. "Johann Schmucker. You have made a wise decision. When complete our encyclopedia will be the definitive reference of up-time and down-time knowledge. There will be nothing to compare with it, not even the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica."
Martinus Waldburg shook hands. "The subscription would be for my employer. However, there is the small matter of the earlier volumes. My understanding is that they are all sold out."
"You are correct, Herr Waldburg. However, Schmucker and Schwentzel will soon be reprinting all of them."
"A second printing! That will be excellent. My employer will be overjoyed."
Johann opened the order book. "If you'll just give me your details."
* * *
After dealing with Martinus Johann returned to watching the people looking at his books.
"How can you do this?"
Johann turned to see a man waving the flyer showing the proposed prin
ting schedule of the second printing of the encyclopedia.
"You claim that your second printing will deliver the older volumes at such a rate that a person subscribing to the second printing will complete his set of the encyclopedia at the same time as those who subscribed to the first printing. There's no way you can set the pages fast enough to meet that schedule, and I doubt you've stored the old forms. It would need a massive warehouse to store them."
Johann grinned. "There isn't enough type in all Thüringia to keep that many pages made up, Mein Herr. However, we don't have that problem."
"What? How can you not have a problem?" The man was incredulous.
Johann smiled and tapped his nose. "We have a new method of printing back in Rudolstadt that means we don't have to store assembled forms."
"How can you do a second print run without having stored the forms?""
"We have a way. I presume you are yourself a printer?"
The man nodded. "Yes, Wolfgang Abegg. Perhaps you've seen some of my books. I do a lot of law texts."
Johann shook his head. "Sorry, I don't think I've seen any. That's more my partner's field."
"Partner? Master printers don't have partners."
"In Rudolstadt they do. It's the influence of the up-timers." Johann paused to consider Wolfgang. "You have heard of the up-timers and their city?"
"Grantville? Of course I've heard of the city from the future. Who hasn't? So they have taught you a new way of printing? Is it for sale?"
Johann almost said no, but then he took a moment to think. "Maybe, it depends on what you have to offer."
"Come with me. I'll show you my stand, and then we can talk."
The office of Abegg the printer, March 1635
Wolfgang Abegg picked up the bound book. Flicking it open, he paused to admire the title page. "Printed by Wolfgang Abegg of Frankfurt am Main". He carefully avoided looking at the next page where it announced the book had first been published by Schmucker and Schwentzel of Rudolstadt. He grinned to himself. No doubt Johann had the very same reaction to books Schmucker and Schwentzel published using flongs he sent them.
The flongs were a marvelous technical advance. Wolfgang had heard of people making clay molds of set type and casting whole pages or forms at a time, but Johann was the first person he knew of to try papier-mâché, and to have success in casting forms. The papier-mâché flongs were magnificent. A book like the romance in his hands needed fewer than thirty flongs, and they could be sent cheaply by the new air parcel service linking Grantville to Frankfurt. Within days of the first printing of a book in Rudolstadt, Wolfgang could be printing the same book in Frankfurt. The potential savings were staggering. Not that Wolfgang's fellow master printers had been impressed by that thought. However, his print shop was currently the only one on the River Main with the new technology, and he had journeymen beating down his door for the opportunity to learn from him.
Wolfgang put down the romance and picked up the latest offering from Schmucker and Schwentzel. The Trojan Horse was another of Hazel Patton's illustrated children's stories. Opening it randomly he admired the printing of the color illustrations. He could hardly wait until his son returned from learning the new color printing method. The illustrated books were very expensive to print, but the sales of Lady Chatterley's Lover more than justified the effort. If Frau Patton could just be persuaded to write a story featuring Brillo the ram, now that would sell well.
Grantville, April 1635
"I don't know how you get away with it, Gran," Caroline Dorrman said.
Hazel Patton smiled at her heavily pregnant granddaughter. "Get away with what?"
"'Get away with what.' she asks. Your children's books. I mean, Lady Chatterley's Lover. How could you do that?"
Hazel reached down to scratch the ears of her pure breed Siamese. "It was very easy. It was about Lady Chatterley here."
"And the hit and run merchant that got her pregnant. I remember what you had to say when her ladyship had her kittens."
"Yes, well, of course I was upset. What did you expect? I'd paid a hefty fee to have Chatters serviced by the perfect sire and what happened? Trojan got in first."
"Well, I'm sure that book you wrote about Trojan's exploits more than paid you back."
Hazel smiled. "I'm doing quite well out of The Trojan Horse."
"So what are you writing now?"
Hazel grinned. "I've got a couple on the boil. Samantha will star in Lady Chatterley's Daughter." Both of them turned to look at the cat sprawled out on the window seat. Except for the eyes she was the image of her mother. Those emerald green eyes though, were all Trojan. Hazel nodded towards the cat sprawled out in front of the fire. He was a very big cat, something like a Maine Coon cat, but with his mother's Siamese points and her blue eyes. "While Tiger gets to appear in his own story, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof."
Caroline giggled. "I'm not sure I want to know what inspired you to pick that title."
"It's quite innocent, Caroline. It was a hot summer, and there is this tin roof . . ."
Caroline held up her hands. "Don't tell me. I want it to be a surprise when I read it, but tell me. How can you write a romance about Tiger? I mean, didn't you take him to Dr. Blocker to have him, you know, fixed?"
"Artistic license, Caroline, artistic license."
* * *
Stepping Up
Written by Jack Carroll
American Electric Works
The president's office
7:30 PM
Gottfried voiced an untranslatable grunt of frustration. "How on earth do they come up with this?"
Landon looked at the page. "Hmm. Yes. You have every right to be confused, the author should have shown some intermediate steps. Well, let's walk through it . . .
". . . so that's where equation 16 came from."
Gottfried mused, "I see. And from there it's not much of a leap to the wave equation. And from that, we get the speed of light, and radio, and everything else."
"Right."
"Why can't these books be available in Latin? Nobody can study all this new physics without coming to Grantville and learning English first." That was a half-mutter from Manfred von Ochsendorf.
Landon looked sidelong across the small conference table. Manfred was no pampered son of the nobility. His was a "bauer" von, and he worked as hard at his studies as anyone. On the other hand, he was young, and not the soul of patience when something wasn't the way it should be. "Very true," Landon said drily. "What are you going to do about it?"
"Professor! What do you mean by that?"
"Easy, Manfred. I wasn't making fun of you. Your question deserves a serious answer. So does mine.
"Sure, the textbooks and teaching guides for this course should be published in Latin. Then the subject could be taught anywhere in Europe. But just how is that going to happen? Think about it. When you and your classmates finish this course, you'll be the first scholars in history to understand both electrodynamics and Latin. Unless you're willing to step up to the plate, it may not get done for a very long time."
"Step up to the . . . ?"
"You haven't heard that expression? It comes from baseball. Have you had time to watch a game? Well, when your side is at bat, and your turn comes, you step up to the plate and do the best you can for your team. A whole lot of people have been doing that, the last few years. For instance, I never expected to be a company president. Heck, I wasn't an electrical engineer before the Ring of Fire hit, either. "
"You weren't!" Anneke Decker said with surprise.
"No. You didn't know that? Well, let me tell you a little story.
"After I finished college in 1998, I came back to Grantville intending to teach math and physics. I got moved over to metal trades for a while, because the school was short in that department and I had the experience from working in Dad's machine shop a few summers. But I picked up one physics course, and I was preparing to teach calculus and analytic geometry to seniors in the fall, when everything got
turned inside out.
"A couple of weeks after the Ring hit, I got word through the family grapevine that the power plant was looking for somebody who knew physics. Turned out they had a real situation on their hands.
"The deal was, the big turbine generator that came through with the Ring had enough spare parts to last maybe a year and a half. With survival pretty much riding on Grantville's technology edge, they stepped up with a plan to replace the turbine with a generator they could sustain.
