Grantville Gazette 36 gg-36

by Paula Goodlett

  Bennet laughed. "No, just a slut and maybe a witch. I've heard about up-timer women! The presumption of the temptresses is beyond belief!"

  Rothrock was disquieted beyond words.

  The Thuringen Gardens

  June

  The noon rush was about to hit. Carlos did a quick eyeball check of the stock behind the bar, to see what they'd need to bring up right away. A glitter in the lost-and-found box caught his eye. He picked it up for a better look. It was a little polycrystalline cluster, with a void near one end. Somebody had strung it on a leather shoelace, with a complicated knot. He tilted it. The color changed from burnt orange in one direction to purple the other way. Huh? What in hell? Ametrine? He mumbled, "How the heck did this turn up?"

  Jake Chekhov was out front, wiping down tables. If Chekhov wasn't the king of grouches, he was at least a count. He half-turned his head and growled, "How is what a turnip?"

  "Huh? Not a turnip, Jake. I said 'turn up.' It means, how did it get here?" It didn't make a damn bit of sense for a chunk of ametrine to be in Germany-or anywhere in Europe, for that matter. The part of South America that stuff came from probably hadn't even been explored yet.

  Chekhov glanced at the cluster Carlos was holding, and said, "That junk? It was onna floor last night. I woulda swept it out, but that string says it belongs to somebody, so I stuck it in lost-and-found like you said to. Why?"

  "Why is because it's a rare mineral. Really rare. If anybody asks, tell them I've got it. I want to show this to Oughtred and ask him if he's seen anything like it."

  Chekhov got a funny look on his face. "That mean somebody'd pay money for it?"

  "They would, up-time. But who the hell knows, now?"

  July 9

  A bang like a howitzer shook Carlos awake and blew away the remnants of his dream. Livie was up on her knees, looking out through the blinds with a broad grin on her face. She looked down at him when he moved. "Did you see that? What a heck of a fireworks show!"

  Just as he turned his head to look, another blue-white lightning bolt lit up the sky. He pushed the covers off and swung around to see better. Livie moved in and put an arm around his shoulders. She kissed his earlobe for a moment, then looked out the bedroom window again. He glanced at her sidewise, speculatively. "Are you thinking about making some thunder of our own?"

  "Could be, big boy, could be. Kiss me right here."

  ****

  Olivia was humming to herself when Carlos finished shaving and came into the kitchen. "Toast'll be ready in a minute." She poured the coffee.

  For a few minutes they didn't talk; they didn't need to. There were a few distant rumbles as the storm line moved on and the rain tapered away.

  As Carlos finished washing up and put away the silverware, he snapped his fingers and pulled open the next drawer down. "Oh, yeah, don't want to forget this."

  Olivia looked over at the small cluster of crystals he was holding, strung on a strip of leather. It didn't look familiar, but she'd never been quite the rockhound Carlos was. It was more the outdoors itself that she enjoyed. "Mm? What's that?"

  "Real good question. It looks like ametrine, and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The janitor found it on the floor at the Gardens. I want to show it to Will, and see if he's seen anything like it."

  "Oh, yeah, it's about time to load up our gear and get over there, isn't it? I just wish he'd built up a little more rock climbing experience, before tackling this mineral survey grant on the Wall. If you ask me, all these down-timers take too many chances. As sensible as he is most of the time."

  "Well, that's why we're going along this first time, right, to show him the ropes?"

  Olivia stuck out her tongue and threw a gardening glove at his head.

  "Seriously, it should be a lot more manageable once we help him get that first line of fixed anchor points set. And it's not like El Capitan, this is all business. Won't be any hot-dogging."

  "Better not be. I'll give him an earful if he pushes things."

  "Yes, Mother."

  Murphy's Run

  This was nothing like sport climbing. Will began by shooting an arrow trailing a lightweight cord across to where Carlos was standing on the clifftop. In a few minutes they had a line dropping from a solid-looking tree, protected by a heavy canvas covering where it went over the edge, coming down at an angle to their starting point on the south slope. Will anchored a second line close to where he and Olivia stood, and looked at her inquiringly. Olivia nodded. Good. They had a few minutes' wait, until Carlos could work his way back down through the woods. Olivia used the time for one more visual check of their equipment.

  Carlos buckled on his harness and hung his gear, ready for use. "Will, suppose I demonstrate the first few, and then you take the lead? Livie, you want to belay?"

  "That seems reasonable, Carlos."

  "Sure. On belay."

  Will watched closely while Carlos clipped onto both lines, then Olivia started carefully paying out slack in the side line from their starting point while he "ascended" the overhead line at a slant, ending up several yards out on the Wall at their original height. There was nothing but mirror-smooth hard rock wall at that spot. Carlos pulled a star drill and a hammer out of his tool belt, both of them secured with lanyards, and proceeded to drive a hole a couple inches deep. Next he brushed the dust out of the hole, tapped in a lead shield, and cranked a forged eyebolt into it and set a carabiner ring. Next, he hauled in the line that was to be left in place, slipped that and his trailing line into the ring, and closed it. No, this was nothing like sport climbing. This was somewhere between high construction work and ship rigging. "Want to watch another one, before we switch?"

  "Yes, please."

  "Okay, slack."

  Will continued observing as Carlos maneuvered out further and set the next rock anchor.

  "Very good, Carlos, I believe I understand it. Did you capture the dust you drilled out?"

  "I got some of it. It's in these two bags. Just a second while I number them. After that, I'll come back and we can switch. Livie, you want to take up on the side line for me?"

  Will turned and made a series of hand signals to the student down on the valley floor with a theodolite and a field book. There wasn't much wind, but it was still difficult to shout that far. Carlos came back to the starting point, and they went to work.

  Along the Schwarzburg road

  James Rothrock looked to be sure Bennet was ready to resume the upward trek. It was laborious to take a roundabout route up the slope to where it met the original Thuringian terrain, then up again on the hillside outside the Ring, but far easier and safer to climb to the clifftop and then descend by ropes, than attempting the route straight up to the cave above the place where George had found that tantalizing fragment.

  This time they were bringing a collapsible canvas bucket and a spare line, so that they could haul away a much greater quantity of what they'd discovered than they could carry on their backs while climbing back up.

  Rothrock casually glanced toward the Wall to his right, and froze. Another party had come into view around the flank of the cliff. That in itself was not to be wondered at, but . . . there was something familiar . . . He reached into the handcart, snatched at a side pocket of his backpack, and pulled out a small telescope. Bennet looked at him curiously as he focused the thing. He couldn't quite make out the faces, but by the shape of the man, and the rhythm of his movements, Rothrock knew. "Mars and Jupiter! George, Oughtred himself is crawling sideways across that cliff! What a strange way to proceed!"

  "What? Let me see."

  Rothrock passed over the instrument. Bennet stared at the cliffside for a short while. "There are two others there with him. Who do you imagine they could be?"

  "Not anyone I can recognize, but by their size and the cut of their clothing, I should think up-timers, Americans, more than likely. We had best watch what they do, and not reveal ourselves until we know better what is happening here. Come, we can watch
from under the trees there."

  Hours passed. The party on the cliff moved slowly, starting and stopping, as if they were searching for something, or closely examining what they saw as they went along. But then . . .

  "James! Look where they are now!" Rothrock saw, and his lips tightened. They were coming close to that cave, the one where they'd made their discovery. The party reached it. And went inside.

  Rothrock stared in consternation. "Our mine is there! Do they intend to poach on it?"

  "Ha! If they try, we could put a quick stop to that. After what we have risked, they certainly shall not."

  "What? What do you mean?"

  Bennet pointed to the far ridge, the one that held back a deep, still lake.

  Rothrock could not stop his jaw from dropping. "Murder? Have you lost your mind? Why, by all that's holy? Our mining right is already recorded in the county archives! By the law here, it's ours! And even leaving that aside, how in the turmoil that would surely follow, could we accomplish the purpose for which we came here, to restore the correspondence between Oughtred and His Lordship?"

  "Oh, a record, my young friend, a legally recorded right to bring forth what we found! Do you really imagine that these people, who made all these laws and offices for their own purposes, all of them related by blood, could find no way around that? Yes, we saw it recorded in ink in a bound record book. Do you care to wager that they couldn't cause it to vanish into thin air, like a conjurer's trick?"

  Rothrock felt his face tighten.

  Bennet laughed until he started coughing up blood, gagged on the clot until he spat it on the ground and could speak again. "He thinks nothing of showing that hidden place to those others. He shows not the least sense-nor, I do think, do you!"

  "You call him a fool, now? Whether he is or not, remember our errand. We have found William Oughtred; he not only lives, he looks to be well. But now we must watch for a chance to speak with him in strict privacy, and learn whether he acts freely, or whether those strangers have some hold over him. Look, they have come out; they couldn't have penetrated so quickly to where we did. We shall watch where they go."

  William Oughtred's cabin

  Murphy's Run

  It had been a pretty good day, with two rows of anchors set, but they'd all had enough. Carlos finished writing up his observations in one of Will's regular-size scientific notebooks, refreshing his memory from the little dollar-store address book Will carried in the field. He passed it over to Olivia, so she could make her own additions. It was just such a compliment that a real scientist thought a couple of country rock dealers had ideas worth listening to. And that's what he was now, too; it hadn't taken William Oughtred long to understand what Francis Bacon's controversial ideas would have flowered into, in another generation-not that Bacon was the only one questioning the old ideas of where knowledge came from.

  About the time Will brought coffee to the table, along with some bread and cheese, Olivia put down her pen and looked up. "Carlos, what was that thing you wanted to show Will?"

  "Oh. Yeah." Carlos picked his pack off the floor and dug into it. He laid the little crystal cluster on the table. "You've been looking at rocks all over the place. Seen anything like this?"

  Will turned it back and forth in the late afternoon sunlight for a minute or so, then he got up and took down a box of labeled rock samples from an upper bookshelf. After a few seconds of poking around, he took one out.

  "Here, Carlos. Tell me what you make of this. Tim Morton brought it to me two years ago, but as yet I have no idea where it fits in the world." The chunk was half the size of Carlos's hand, but it was crystals on one side and a rough crust on the other.

  Olivia was looking at it from the other side of the table, though. She suddenly reached out and pointed her finger at the dull backside. "Oh, my God, Carlos! Look at this!" She grabbed it and turned it over. There was a painted number 214, weathered out. It was a piece of their stolen cathedral geode.

  And the colors flashed as she turned it. "Madre de Dios! It's ametrine!" The guy who'd sold the unbroken cathedral geode must have thought it was something a lot more common. What he'd charged was a long way short of what it must have been worth.

  Will was looking at Carlos as sharply as he'd looked at the rock. "You know what it is?"

  Carlos got himself back under control. "Yeah, we do. Ametrine is a rare precious stone, it's a kind of fusion of amethyst and citrine and has zones of the different gemstones. The source I know about is a place in Bolivia called the Anahi Mine. Legend up-time had it that Spain has a good-sized piece in its royal jewels, had it since the sixteenth century. Anybody's guess whether that's true or not. Sometimes it's called trystine or Bolivianite."

  Olivia zeroed in on the thing that mattered. "Will, you said Tim Morton found it? Where?"

  ****

  On the way over to the Morton place, Carlos was still trying to take it all in. Olivia filled Will in on what had happened at the storage shed in 1631. All the evidence had screamed that it happened up-time, and what was gone was gone forever. It was such a crushing loss. What it all might have been worth down-time-now this.

  Jack Morton came out at the sound of footsteps on the front porch. When Carlos took out the little cluster, his face lit up. "Hello, Mister Villareal. You've found my lucky piece? I wondered what became of it."

  Carlos was too speechless to tell him. Livie did, gently. More of the story came out, as Jack led the way down to the edge of the property, by the road along the bottom of the run. He pointed to the patch of dirt and weeds, where he and Tim had found fragments of all sizes, fanned out around an old concrete well casing a few feet from the road. Will squatted down for a close look. "See here, this is scarred and cracked on this side. This is where the geode must have struck and broken apart."

  "Hit? You think . . ."

  "Yes. Consider the physics. Olivia, you told us that you found the stones gone a few days after the Ring of Fire, and thought they must have been stolen up-time? What we can see here tells us that the thieves must have used an open truck, and rushed off without securing the load properly-likely because of haste or stupidity. So, then, there is a deep pothole, and there is the well casing. I believe the geode was dislodged by the jolt, and fell free, still moving. That motion then carried it on a ballistic arc-" He showed what he meant with his hand, and then pointed his boot at the banged-up well casing. "-here. Where it struck at the speed the truck was traveling, and shattered from the impact."

  Carlos felt a flicker of hope. "Jack, did you guys keep any of it? Besides that little piece you had, and the hunk you gave Oughtred?"

  "No, just those. Father found someone to buy all we could find. It was a considerable task to carry it all off. It took us several trips."

  I can imagine. That beast weighed two hundred pounds. They sure didn't get what it was worth, not if Tim is still tending bar for me down at the Gardens.

  Meanwhile, Olivia was looking at the painting on the wall, of the front of a jeep. She suddenly asked, "What's this, Jack?" She was looking at one spot.

  "Oh, the car? I painted that when we first moved here, with a bit of what was left over when we repaired the window frames. Not something I would stand here and do again, I'll tell you, not after hearing a couple of rocks thump into the ground. Cool, isn't it?"

  "Yes, but what's this?"

  Carlos looked at where she had her hand, and froze.

  Jack ran on, "Those two little boulders? They were lying just over there. I thought they would do well as headlights, if I were to cement them in the right place and paint them."

  Carlos sucked in his breath. The things were spherical, about six inches across, and the last time he'd seen them was in the shed behind the laundromat, before the Ring of Fire. They were two of the three smaller geodes, from the same lot as that monster cathedral geode.

  "Livie, do you mind if we ask Will to dinner tonight? I think we have a lot to talk about."

  ****

  Olivia pushed
a little bit, trying to make it home before the rain really got going. They still had to dash in through the garage to keep from getting drenched.

  A couple of minutes later Paola and Beth came in and vanished into the photography studio behind the kitchen. Will looked at them intently, and raised an eyebrow.

  "My two younger daughters."

  Paola had a package in her hand when she came out, and said, "Mom, I have to go to Leanna's, I need the keys-Oh, hi, Mr. O!"

  "Wait! I need to know-" She was out the door while the words still hung in the air. "Mr. O?"

  Will chuckled, "I'm sometimes called that at the high school. Some of the students are quite impressive." He smiled toward where Paola had gone. "That one is what they call a math head. She has a quick theoretical grasp. She would do well to continue with it."

  "Oh. Cute. I hadn't heard that name, but then I hardly ever get to the high school."

  "But you do teach, I recall?"

  "Well, I taught photography for a while, more the artistic side than the technical. But I decided I'd better hang onto the film I still have in my freezer. I hear they're about ready to start making it, though, so maybe I'll start giving lessons again."

  Will gave her a sympathetic smile and went over to look at the large portrait on the wall above the fireplace. He studied it closely for a few moments. "Speaking of photographs, this one is quite impressive. I don't believe I've seen one this fine. Done by a student of yours?"

  "No, my mom and I took a trip to Malta in 1981. We went over to Gozo for a couple of days, and when Mom spotted a portrait studio near the beach, she wouldn't let up until I had my picture done. He really was an artist, but I think he went overboard with the costuming and props."

  "Mmm-hmm. I like the way he used the mirror to show your face from two angles. Quite ingenious. Well, that explains the wall plaque beneath the mirror. Do you know what it says?"

  "No, it's Greek to me."

  "Ha! It's from Homer, the Odyssey. 'There is an isle, Ogygia, which lies far off in the sea. Therein dwells the fair-tressed daughter of Atlas, guileful Calypso, a dread goddess, and with her no-one either of gods or mortals hath aught to do.' A very apt description of Calypso, I might add."