Grantville Gazette 36 gg-36

by Paula Goodlett

  "I think that's the best idea I've ever heard, Herr Bosun! We look a mess. We'll try to find some new clothes and some for you and the men as well. We are all a bit worse for wear."

  "Well, then, I'll get back to work. May I ask Herr Gerbald here to come help with raising the pinnace? He has an eye for rope work and is the only one of us who can make some sense of this foreign tackle." Then he and Gerbald just stood there looking at her. After a long moment it dawned on her. Oh good Lord! He's waiting for you to say yes, dummy!

  Pam quickly muttered her captainly assent.

  "I would be delighted, Captain Pam!" Gerbald answered enthusiastically. "I have always loved a good puzzle." Gerbald had been in Pam's service for a number of years and knew the high quality of her leadership well, even if she herself didn't see it. Even so, as he left he didn't neglect to give his friend and employer a smirk, pleased at her discomfiture. She stuck her tongue out at him.

  "Ever hear of walking the plank, buster? Yeah, you in the funny hat!" she called menacingly after him. She turned to see that Dore was smiling broadly at her, face flushed with excitement. This rare sight filled Pam's heart with a shiny kind of joy and she grabbed her friend's hand.

  "We need new clothes, sister. Let's go find some booty!" Pam said to her.

  "Yes, ma'am, Captain Pam!" Dore replied in English with her thick German accent, coming to comical straight as a board attention and adding a snappy salute. This made them both start laughing and so they began their exploration of the exotic and alluring foreign ship.

  Chapter Thirty: Galley of Celestial Delight

  They began their tour below decks, deciding to save the captain's cabin for last. No point in putting on something new and then getting it all dirty down in the holds. The junk was certainly unusual-looking on the outside, but a ship was a ship and below decks offered a layout not too terribly different from those built in Europe. In Pam's opinion, it was more spacious and well-thought out in its design. The cabins were larger and the hallways surprisingly higher. None but the tallest of the men would have to crouch as they moved about. Everything was clean and dry, the wood well-caulked and painted with some kind of preservative stain. They found a large storage bay with its deck doors open to let in the bright southern sunlight. Pam walked around its shadowy recesses, lifting tarps and poking at oddly-shaped barrels marked with the wispy brush strokes of strange languages.

  "We should find out what all this cargo is," Dore said, peering into the shadows at a plethora of crates and sacks neatly made fast to the walls and floors. "We may have something of value here. It's likely we will need to trade for supplies sometime in the voyage to come."

  Pam made a slow turn, the light from above catching her hair and bringing out flashes of gold amongst the dishwater blond locks. She was smiling and Dore thought she looked like an angel. Dore was greatly pleased to see her friend happy after such a long ordeal.

  "There's enough room here to make a pen for a flock of dodos." Pam said brightly, "They would have fresh air and light when the weather is good and be well-protected when its not." Her voice was filled with a hope she had not felt in a very long time. "We have another chance now. Maybe I can still save the dodos, bring a breeding population back to Europe, if we accomplish nothing else."

  "Of course you can, Pam. We will help as always," Dore encouraged her.

  They left the cargo hold to continue aft. After climbing some stairs that could have passed for ladders they arrived in a room that made Dore emit a gasp of delight. It was the ship's galley and it was . . . wonderful. There was a pipe built into the wall from which either stored or freshly-caught rain water in barrels on the deck could be drawn with ease over a deep porcelain sink. Next to this was an open window, its square panes made of a thick, ivory-colored laminated paper that would let in plenty of light to work by even when closed. There were fat candles placed here and there for after dark. Pam and Dore entered the seemingly cluttered, yet actually highly-organized space, not sure where to begin their exploration.

  Hundreds of small drawers and cabinets dotted the walls and filled the spaces under the wide, wooden counters. A peek into some of these revealed dry goods, what might be flour, sugar and many dried herbs and spices. A variety of unusually shaped pots and pans hung from a rack above an iron wood-stove. Pam recognized a wok and a steamer. Even though their shape's were strange, she knew Dore would be able to put them to use. Latched drawers held a dazzling array of cooking implements and tools, including ladles, skewers, meat forks and many items less easy to ascertain the purpose of. The room was filled with a delicious aroma of woodsmoke, strong scented herbs and fresh salt air. Immediately adjacent lay a pantry chock-full of dried meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, and many more as yet unidentified items. There was even a row of pots with live herbs growing on a shelf beneath a window. Dore and Pam both clucked over these and immediately watered them with a teapot. They had obviously suffered under the ship's pirate occupation.

  "Good gawd, Dore, it's like a modern kitchen! More like a restaurant kitchen than something you'd have at home. It has everything but an electric dishwasher!" Pam exclaimed, overwhelmed after months of coconut-shell soup bowls and clamshell spoons. She didn't say it to Dore but vowed to herself that she never, ever wanted to eat coconut and crab curry again. Ever!

  The galley of the Redbird, despite being built with several up-time style conveniences, was a greasy hole in the wall compared to this. Pam noticed a cylindrical ceramic pot filled with what must certainly be chopsticks. She pulled two of them out to study them; they were about eleven inches long, one quarter of which was squared and the rest rounded, cut flat at the ends, made of a smooth, yellowish wood that had been stained darker on the rounded, food grabbing end, presumably by use.

  "Hey, Dore, I think I know what country this boat is from-China!" Dore looked at her friend with eyebrows raised in interest. "These are called chopsticks and they're used for eating. When my son Walt got old enough to behave reasonably well for an hour or two, we started going out to eat once a month and tried a lot of different kinds of restaurants. There were lots of Chinese places around and even a couple of Japanese over in Morgantown. Once we tried Korean food up in Pittsburg, but it was a bit too spicy for the guys. Anyway, I'm pretty sure these are Chinese-style chopsticks. The Japanese versions are shorter with pointy ends and the Koreans make theirs from metal. I have no idea why, because they sure were tricky to use. The metal was slippery!"

  Dore looked on with a certain amount of amazement. "It's sometimes hard to believe that you lived in such a world, Pam. You make food from the Far East sound commonplace, available just down the road, when in our time most know little about the world beyond a few miles!" She reached over to the holder and pulled out two of the slender wooden rods herself. "I don't see how these could be used to eat," she remarked after giving them a careful study. She ended up holding one in each hand like drumsticks with a mystified expression on her face.

  "I'll show you!" Pam began to demonstrate. "You put them both in one hand like this and pick up the food between the ends. It's tricky at first but you get the hang of it pretty fast. Especially when you're hungry!" She opened a few drawers until she found what must certainly be dried peas. "Here, watch!" Pam deftly picked up one pea at a time and made a row of six across the counter as Dore looked on, wide-eyed. "I guess I'll have to teach everybody how to use these. I think we left all the clamshell spoons back at the beach. My ex-husband never could get the hang of it. He always had to ask for a fork." With several flicks of her wrist she put the peas back into their drawer and slid the chopsticks back into their container with a satisfying wooden click. "Yup. Must be Chinese. They like their food all right, pretty fancy stuff! I'm not too surprised they had this nice a setup even in these times. Well, lucky us!"

  Equal Rights, Part One

  Written by Jack Carroll and Edith Wild

  June 3, 1631

  The phone stopped ringing before Olivia Villareal could snap the s
pring into place and reach for a rag to wipe her hands. Then it started again. Four quick strides and she was out of the kitchen and across the front room.

  "Hello?"

  "Mom, you gotta get down here! The Wildman is raising hell. He's in the alley banging his piece-of-shit truck into the dumpster and the fence trying to turn around. He's hollering 'There's no business like show business' over and over! Jeez!"

  "Did you call the cops?"

  "They said they'll come when they can. I think something's going on downtown. His mother won't come, and Linda said she'd serve him on toast if she came at all. Hurry, Mom!"

  "All right, try to keep the customers from getting upset. We'll get there as quick as we can. Carlos! Leanna needs us down at the laundromat, right away! Jimmy Wild's raising a ruckus."

  Olivia's green pickup was the closest to the end of the driveway. She was already cranking the starter when her husband slid in carrying a baseball bat. If the cops weren't even coming, to heck with the driving ban.

  When they jumped out two minutes later, the first thing she heard was violent retching. Jimmy had left his truck half on the sidewalk and was busy throwing up the entire contents of his gut, spewing all over the sidewalk almost in front of the Mi Casa Laundromat’s front door; it stunk like cheap liquor and old blood.

  Jimmy caught his breath and looked up. "Jeez! Mary! What the fuck! Carlos! Livia!" He pointed at the alley that ran behind the building, and hollered, "Git back there, you lazy-ass bastards, and look-see!" Then he puked again. "Look in the god-danged damned shed! Monkeys! You domesticated turkeys! Idiots!" Jimmy's eyes shut tight; his knees went out from under him and he dropped onto the blacktop, hard. Blood spewed out from somewhere.

  Leanna stammered, "Oh, crap! Maybe I should call an ambulance? Serve the creep right to drown in his own puke!"

  Carlos was already around the corner of the building, with his bat up and ready for God-knows-what. Olivia, rooting in the glove compartment for her revolver, called out over her shoulder, "Yes, call the ambulance! He looks like he could die right there, you want that on your conscience? Whatever's going on, he's the only one who noticed it, so show some gratitude." She slid out of the truck and ran across the parking lot, to follow her husband.

  There wasn't any noise coming from behind the place, so at least there wasn't a fight going on. Before she could catch up, Carlos appeared around the far corner, with the bat hanging loose in his hand and a half-stunned look on his face.

  "What is it?"

  "Take a look, Livie. Just take a look." He turned and pointed.

  The gate in the chain link fence was hanging open, and the shed door was splintered where the lock had been. Even at first glance, she could see there was a whole lot missing. But whoever had done it was long gone. Carlos let loose for half a minute in Spanish, but there wasn't a thing they could do about it now. They went back around to the front.

  Their sons, David and Jon, arrived on their bicycles from different directions. They were staring at Jimmy. Still acting like fool teen-agers, full of testosterone, and they didn't even have the excuse of being that young any more. The run-ins they’d had with Jimmy Wild since the Ring of Fire were just nasty. Pointless, too.

  Leanna looked like she was about to speak, then stopped with her mouth half-open when she saw her father slump against the storefront. "It's bad, Le. Whoever busted in there knew his rocks. Everything that was worth anything is gone. The worst is that big South American cathedral geode-the jewelry and ornaments I could have made out of that would have carried us for a long time. Just as it was, it cost us a pile."

  "Oh, Jeez, Dad, you think there's any chance of getting any of it back?"

  His lips went hard. "It's been at least a month since the last time we were in that shed. Where we are here and now, yeah, there's thieves and robbers everyplace, but would any of them even know what those minerals were? And the chain on the gate was nipped with a bolt cutter. So what d'you think? Damn. That was half our business. What the hell are we gonna do for cash now? What the hell are we gonna do?"

  Olivia laid her hand on her husband's forearm, the hand that wasn't carrying the pistol. "Carlos, bebe, hold yourself together. We've been through trouble before, we'll get through this. We still have the laundromat, we've got my writing, maybe you can get some commissions from Roth or get the mariachi band going again. We have our health, and we haven't even started rockhounding outside the Ring. We'll make it."

  "The laundromat? My God, look how often we have to fix those old machines. Where are we going to get parts now?"

  David got a blank look for a second, then he focused. "The machine shops?"

  The ambulance siren sounded in the distance.

  Padua

  September

  William Oughtred raised his eyes from the cards turned up on the table. Sir Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, was looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and amusement. "Alas, William. Shall you make good, now? Can you face the gates of Hell, should they stand open in this fabulous prodigy Grantville?"

  "Gates of Hell, milord? For all the exaggeration and embroidery there likely is in the tales we've heard of the place, I deeply doubt that anyone less than the Almighty could have done such a work as to thrust an entire town from parts unknown into the heart of the Germanies. In truth, it's a place I would desire to see for myself, were it not for the expense of the journey."

  Arundel's mouth pursed; he gazed at the candle light coming through the rich wine in his glass for a few moments, obviously considering something. "If you mean that, Master Oughtred, expense can be dealt with. Something of great consequence has happened; if we know nothing else, we know that. In place of garbled rumors, I would greatly value first-hand reports of the place and what it may mean to us, from a sober and clear-headed scholar. Such as yourself. If you wish to go, I shall meet the expense."

  Oughtred's partner in the game just concluded, Arundel's foster son, James Rothrock, was flicking his eyes back and forth between them. The young man evidently had much yet to learn about the turn of a card. Well, he had much to learn about a great many things, though he was no laggard at the learning. "If Master Oughtred goes . . ."

  The earl favored him with a slight smile. "Perhaps, James, but let us see what his letters tell us before we consider sending you as well. But this brings us to another thought: a man should not travel those roads alone, he should go with companions skilled at arms. And I know just who of this household has been showing signs of wanderlust of late." He turned his gaze toward the footman by the door. "Send for Tim Morton. And his son Jack."

  Grantville High School

  October

  The office was full of warm colors and bright sunlight. The drawn-back yellow curtains framed a trickle of leaves falling onto the garden outside. The pictures on the wall portrayed not frowning men of power, but large groups of young people, mostly smiling. Graduating classes? Will had perhaps three seconds to take it all in, before the man behind the desk rose and extended his hand to be shaken. He was quite tall. "Doctor Oughtred? Thank you for coming." He waved toward a comfortable-looking armchair.

  "You do me too much honor. The degree I hold is Master of Arts. From Cambridge."

  "Oh, sorry about the mistake. You are William Oughtred, though, the mathematician? The inventor of the slide rule?"

  "One of the contributors, at least. Is that what you wish to discuss?"

  "Not exactly. I just wanted to be sure of who I was talking to. Look, my name's Len Trout. I'm the principal of this madhouse. When the school secretary spotted your name on the list of research center license holders, I got excited. I'll get right to the point. How'd you like to teach here?"

  Will couldn't have been more surprised if the chair he was sitting in had spun thrice around and deposited a stein of the ThuringenGardens' best in his hand. "Teach? I thought your school was bringing great edifices of never-before-seen mathematics to this world. How could I help with that? I've barely begun the study."

>   "More than you'd think. You can teach Euclidean geometry, right?"

  Will nodded.

  "Solid geometry?"

  Nod.

  "Algebra?"

  "Much of it. Some of the notation has changed, and there are theorems I've not seen before."

  "And how long would it take you to catch up with that? A month? Two? Your reputation precedes you."

  "Well . . ."

  "Never mind, here's the point." Trout's hands waved with energy that had to find an outlet. "This place is bursting at the seams. We've got so many students now, we're running in shifts, and the Ring of Fire left a lot of our teachers up-time. The army and the military labs have taken some more. We're hurting. If you join us, and just teach an introductory course or two, you free somebody else up to teach trig. Or calculus. Or something more advanced. And it wouldn't surprise me any if you were teaching one of those courses yourself, a year from now. So whaddya say? Interested?"

  Will took a few moments to catch up to the blizzard of words and consider the question, before responding. "There is a certain attraction to the notion." He paused.

  Trout took that as an invitation to rush on. His finger came up, pointing vaguely off into an upper corner of the room. "Another thing, faculty can sit in on any lecture they want to, as long as there's space. It's one of the benefits."

  "Hmmm, that could be of use. Having seen how the miracle slashed the very earth asunder, I've conceived a desire to understand what was done there. Perhaps there's learning here that could advance such an enterprise."

  "Earth sciences? Sure. There's a lot of interest in that now; there are minerals we need to find, soon as we can. I'm recruiting for that department too."

  "I shall look into that, then. However, it was for other reasons that I came to Grantville, and I have certain responsibilities. I have inquiries to make, letters to write . . ."