by Eric Flint
Nissa was in better shape. Always self-sufficient, she became almost cold. Her emotions ran to the extremes, with bouts of rage alternating with bouts of crying. But in between she was all but a mannequin walking around the plant. It was only around Claude that she began to show some signs of life.
Claude and Nissa had been partnered in the control room for six years, and it was there that they began to recover their spirits. Other workers occasionally heard the sound of crying from behind the closed doors. Less often, they heard laughter.
* * *
It was after the first big battle that Nissa and Claude began to really take notice of the world outside the plant. The new U.S. government had built a refugee center next to the plant to take advantage of the waste heat from the boilers. After the battle, the prisoners that were brought to the refugee center were, for the most part, pathetic. Nissa stood on the middle level of the #2 Boiler catwalks and watched them as they sat in the sun. Few of them really looked like soldiers. Most of them looked like farmers, and all of them looked thoroughly miserable. The bright lights at night left them confused and dazed. The loud voices that came from high in the air left most of them terrified. And the armed men who surrounded them simply stared, never answering even the most innocent question.
The refugee center had been equipped with several makeshift water heaters that had been built using spare heat exchangers and pumps from the plant. Low-pressure steam was piped over and run through the heat exchanger shells while water from the plant's fire main was passed through the coils. Hot water, a most uncommon luxury, was available for everyone. Even the soldiers.
Claude returned from the refugee center chuckling. Nissa looked at him with a question in her eyes, and he burst out laughing as he explained. "They just made all of the soldiers take a shower. Talk about a bunch of miserable mo fo's. I swear, most of them would rather've been shot!"
Nissa grinned, more from seeing the life come back to Claude's eyes than from his story. "I wish that I could've seen that."
"I'll bet! Couple of hundred naked men to ogle. Wouldn't have been right though. It was bad enough that the army guys were watching 'em. Worse than prison. One of the Scots was there and said that most of the prisoners were convinced that they were being condemned and wailing about the Inquisition. It seems that their own people are likely to turn against them and denounce them if they appear too clean. Be the first time that I've ever heard of someone being shot for not stinking."
Nissa's eyes clouded for a moment. "They wouldn't be shot. They'd be tortured and then burned at the stake."
Claude calmed down immediately. "Oh. Didn't know that. Still, from what I've heard, burning would be too good for some of them. Did you hear about the family that hid their girls under a shithouse to save them from the 'friendly' troops?"
Nissa nodded. "There's a long history of that, Claude. I've been talking to Ms. Mailey, the history teacher. Seems that the losing side's baggage becomes the property of the winning side. Including any women and children that are there. What she describes sounds a lot like slavery to me. White men taking white girls as sex slaves and drudges. Makes me sick to think about it."
"Well, those boys down there ain't taking nobody for nothing, I can tell you that. Even the toughest are a bit timid in the face of a twelve-gauge shotgun."
Now Nissa did grin. "Especially bare butt naked."
Claude nodded. "I need to get something to eat. Coming?"
Nissa nodded and joined him on the short walk. "I'm getting sick of this place," she murmured.
Claude nodded but that was all the answer that he could manage. They made their way to the plant break room and grabbed a couple of sodas. The machines were running low, and they were all too aware that when they were empty, they would never be refilled.
"I've been thinking about home, Nis. A lot." He paused to look around. "This isn't a home. This is . . . work. I . . . I need someplace to call home."
"Claude, please don't. You're tearing yourself apart, and me, too."
"Sorry, Nis. I'm really sorry. I'm really depressed." He paused to sigh deeply. "I'm really lonely."
"You're really going to get smacked in the nose if you keep that up," Nissa said softly. "I'm depressed enough without your help."
"So what do we do?"
"We? What's this we shit, White Man?" Nissa grinned as she spoke, uttering the punch line of a joke that was almost as worn out as she was.
Claude gave her a lopsided grin. "Us. I've been thinking about us lately, Nis. About how we used to be. You know, Bill has turned his office into an apartment of sorts. He already had a fridge and coffee maker, and his office has a private bathroom. He has to shower in the locker room, but that's not a big problem. I was thinking about doing something like that."
"Oh? And just where do you plan to do this?" Nissa asked, curious in spite of herself. Claude rarely talked about plans that he hadn't thoroughly thought out.
"Well, I want a place with a private john. I hate having to walk down the hall to piss in the middle of the night."
"Where, Claude?" Nissa said softly.
"A nice, big place. Not as big as a real apartment, but with enough room for a king size bed." Claude grinned and winked at Nissa as he mentioned the bed.
"Where?" she growled.
Now Claude was grinning. "Well, it has to be close. Don't want to walk to work in the snow, you know."
"Yardley!"
"Upstairs."
Nissa just looked at him for a moment. "Ya ain't getting Bill out of his office, Claude."
"Nope, sure ain't."
Nissa's eyes narrowed with real anger. "Talk or die, Yardley."
Now Claude laughed. "Remember when this was going to be the central plant of a huge power corporation?"
"Before my time, but go on," she answered softly, intrigued.
"Well, there are other offices upstairs besides Bill's."
Now Nissa's eyes grew from slits to round orbs. "You're insane."
"Yep. Ain't it great! The CEO's office is just sitting there, ready for us to move in."
Nissa eyed him carefully. "Us, Claude?"
"Us, Nissa. I'm not talking anything permanent, unless that's what you want." There was a twinkle in Claude's eyes as he continued. "What d' ya say? Wanna shack up?"
Nissa's laughing assent was punctuated by her punching his chest.
A Matter of Consultation
S.L. Viehl
"Now I know how Hansel and Gretel felt." The spring breeze had Sharon Nichols buttoning her jacket as she eyed the forest. Her paramedic training hadn't covered hikes through the woods. "How did they find their way out? With a trail of bread crumbs?"
"They torched the witch and ran." Anne Jefferson also scanned the tree line. A registered nurse, she'd grown up in the backwoods of West Virginia, and unlike her friend felt almost at home. "Not an option today."
Ragged stumps lined either side of the forest path, but the woodcutters had barely made a dent in the dense groves of oak and birch. According to rumor, none of the locals went into Thuringenwald unless they desperately needed firewood, venison, or the witch.
Their patients didn't need chopped wood or deer meat.
"One thing." Sharon glanced sideways at the nurse. "Becky said if she lives in a gingerbread house, she's got dibs on the chocolate. All the chocolate."
Anne grinned. Some of their needs were serious, while others—like Rebecca Stearns's pregnancy cravings—were just plain painful. "Fair enough, but if she's got anything that even remotely resembles coffee, it's mine."
The forest canopy made the air lacy with sunlight and shadow, as disparate as the well-endowed, dark-skinned Sharon and the pale, redheaded Anne. Oddly, the sight of a black woman and a white woman together didn't seem to shock the natives as much as what they wore. Their clothes, like both women and a huge chunk of the town of Grantville, West Virginia, had traveled back in time to land in the middle of seventeenth-century Germany.
Time would
eventually catch up. In three hundred and seventy years.
The carpet of twigs, dead leaves and moss grew thicker, and made crunching sounds beneath Sharon's sneakers. "You really sure this witch can help us?"
"Mathilde said Tibelda was the only decent healer the prostitutes in Jena had, before the burghers drove her out." Anne didn't think much of those upstanding citizens, not after hearing what they'd done to many of the refugee women from Palatinate. "Her knowledge of the area alone could save us a lot of time and foraging."
"I hope so." Sharon ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch. "Why does she live all the way out here by herself?"
"Remember how twitchy these people are." Anne paused to adjust the straps on her backpack. "A cow drops dead, the local healer gets blamed, then someone starts piling up wood and asking who wants extra crispy or original recipe."
"Better keep that in mind, nurse." Sharon tilted her head and squinted. "I think I see something up there."
The cottage that appeared around the next bend wasn't made of candy, but the mud-brick walls and thatched roof looked solid enough. A large patch of ground on one side had been cleared to make way for a thriving garden. As they drew closer, Anne smelled freshly cut rosemary, and spotted some familiar white and pink flowers in the garden's front row.
"See those?" She pointed out the blooms. "That's yarrow. It's an excellent astringent and coagulant, and even works as bug repellent. This is definitely the place."
"Why do we need her?" Sharon asked as she went to knock on the front door. "You know more about plants than anybody."
Anne thought of her grandmother, who wouldn't be born for three centuries. "We need her. This is her turf, not mine."
The door opened an inch, and a suspicious eye peered out. "Was willst du?"
"Guten morgen, Frau Tibelda." Being more fluent in German, Anne handled the introductions. "Mein name ist Anne Jefferson, könnten sie mir bitte helfen?"
The door opened to reveal a gaunt, elderly woman wearing a plain peasant's dress. A faded cloth covered her hair with the ends knotted under her prominent chin. She gave both women the once-over, uttered something scathing, then shut the door.
Sharon frowned. "What was that?"
"She said she doesn't perform abortions." Now Anne hammered on the door. "Bitte, Frau Tibelda, ich bin Englisch Krankenpflegerin!"
"You dress like harlots," Tibelda said through the door, in heavily accented but understandable English.
"We're not. Please, open the door."
The gap and the eye appeared again. "What do you want?"
"Some help." Anne brought out their bribe—dried parsley, one of the last bottles in stock at the Grantville A & P. "This is for you."
Tibelda emerged and took the bottle. "It should be dried on the stem, not crumbled." She opened it and sniffed. "Too old." She thrust it back in the nurse's hand. "Go away."
"Wait!" Sharon caught the door before it slammed shut. "Mathilde said you took good care of the women in Jena. There are other people who need your help, and they can't take no for an answer."
Either Mathilde's name or the compliment appeared to mollify the old woman, for the door swung inward.
Sharon and Anne walked in. Crude furnishings within the cottage provided Spartan comfort, while bunches of flowers and herbs hung suspended from the network of boughs supporting the roof thatch. Another door at the back of the cottage stood open, revealing a well-stocked pantry. The air smelled fragrant and delicious, thanks to something bubbling in a pot hung over the hearth. A thin pallet occupied one corner, while a simple cross nailed to one wall provided the only decoration.
"Just like Granny's." Anne's eyes grew misty. "Right down to the simmering stew pot."
Sharon gave her friend's arm a squeeze. When Grantville had been wrenched from the year 2000 and thrown back through the Ring of Fire to 1632, Anne had been shopping in town. She'd lost her entire family, including her beloved grandmother, who'd lived only twenty miles away.
Tibelda went to stir the pot. "Where are the people who need me?"
The two women exchanged a look before Anne began with, "You may have heard about Grantville—"
"The place of endless wonders, and witchcraft." She snorted. "I've heard."
Anne wondered if the old woman resented the competition. "People who have lost their homes and families to the war have taken sanctuary with us. Most of our refugees arrive wounded."
"War destroys everything." Tibelda didn't sound impressed.
"We've used our own supplies up 'til now to help these people, but we're running low now," Sharon said. "Especially on medicine."
Tibelda sampled what was in the pot. "So you need my herbs."
"We need your knowledge," Anne corrected her. "I know a lot about herbal medicines, but nothing about what grows here or can be had from traders. You do. We'd like you to come back to Grantville and teach us."
Tibelda removed a handful of leaves from a pocket in her girdle, and tossed them in the pot. "You could be witch-hunters, sent to test me."
"Show time," Sharon murmured.
"Frau Tibelda, watch this." Anne removed a syringe and a small vial from her pack. While she prepared the injection, the paramedic rolled up her sleeve and tied off her upper arm.
The sight of the needle seemed to mesmerize the old woman. "What are you doing?"
"Proving we aren't witch-hunters." Anne slid the slanted needle tip into Sharon's vein and depressed the plunger. "Would they do something like this?"
The old woman came closer, so engrossed she spoke in rapid German. "So small—like a bee sting. Why does she not drink from the bottle instead? Why put it in her arm? How do you distill it to make it so clear?"
"She wants to talk shop, right?" At Anne's nod, Sharon grinned. "We've got her."
"Alte Hexe!" Someone pounded on the front door. "Aufmachen! Du wirst mir helfen!"
Sharon rose, still holding her arm. "What's that mean?"
"Someone else wants help, and they're not asking nicely." Anne swept everything off the table and into her pack. "Do you have a back door?"
"No, hide, in here. Quickly!" Tibelda shoved Sharon in the pantry. Before she could do the same with Anne, the door flew open and three men strode in. From their rough, sweat-stained clothes, bleached hair, and ruddy skin, the nurse guessed they were farmers.
Very upset farmers.
The largest began gesturing wildly while speaking in German too rapid for Anne to follow. When Tibelda shook her head, he shouted "Ist Drud!" and came after her.
"Hey." The nurse shoved him back, and he stared at her with almost comical disbelief. "Hau ab, you jerk."
"Do not do this. They need our help."
"What for? They look healthy enough."
"A man in their village is dying." The old woman didn't blink as the other two men brandished crude but very lethal looking scythes. "And they won't take no for an answer."
* * *
The jolting ride to the village in the back of the farmers' cart didn't seem to bother Tibelda, who sat in calm silence. Anne alternated between glaring at her bound wrists and wondering how long it would take her friend to get help.
Thank God Sharon had the good sense to stay out of sight. "Why didn't they tie you up?" she asked the old woman.
"I did not punch any of them in the face."
"True." She sighed and rubbed her bruised knuckles. She'd never hit anyone before in her life, but she'd never been shanghaied by men with razor-sharp weed wackers, either. "Do they usually kidnap you when someone gets sick?"
"Drud's wife sent them. She knew I would not come to the village willingly."
"Really." Anne eyed the scythes propped on the shoulders of the men guarding them. "I take it she doesn't like you much."
"No." Tibelda's mouth twisted. "She doesn't."
By the time they arrived at the village, Anne's hands and backside were numb. "Finally. Can someone untie me now?" Everyone seemed to be ignoring her, and she turned around.
>
Two well-dressed men emerged from one of the farmhouses. The older of the two men sported a snow-white goatee, expensive black robes and a skullcap on his balding head. The younger man's traveling clothes were not as fine, but he had an appealing smile and shrewd dark eyes.
"Who are those guys?"
"They brought Drud here," Tibelda said. "One of them is a physick."
"A doctor? Then what the heck do they need us for?"
Her companion sniffed. "They say he does nothing for Drud."
"Terrific." She tried to rub the back of her neck and nearly dislocated her shoulder. "So he's either a lousy doctor, or a lazy one."
Tibelda shrugged. "Most of them don't bathe or cure people."
"I see the prodigal farmers have returned, and with such interesting companions." The elder man spoke German with a distinct accent—or sneer, Anne couldn't decide which. Whatever it was, it sounded British.
"I speak English," she told him. "Who are you?"
He showed some mild surprise, then inclined his head a degree or two. "William Harvey, physician in ordinary to His Majesty, King Charles of England."
Anne barely noticed the farmer untying her wrists. He can't be that William Harvey. Can he? "Are you the Dr. Harvey who was—who wrote that blood circulates through the body?"
"Yes." He frowned. "You have read my books?"
"Not exactly." Anne skipped the explanations as she grabbed her backpack and climbed off the cart. "I'm Anne Jefferson."
"Lady Jefferson." The younger man stepped forward and offered a more courtly bow. "I am Adam Olearius, scholar and ambassador for the Duke of Holstein."
"Anne is fine." Probably another loser from Jena, Anne thought, and addressed Harvey again. "Doctor, what are you doing in the middle of Germany?"
"Until recently I accompanied the king's cousin, His Grace James Stewart, the Duke of Lennox, on his tour of the Continent." Harvey invested each word with weighty significance. "His Grace sent me from Belgium to Holstein, to meet with the duke and Ambassador Olearius before he begins his tour of Persia. Why is that woman glowering at me?"
