!632: Joseph Hanauer

by Eric Flint

  Yossie was not alone in being surprised at the man's ignorance. It was one thing to meet a charcoal burner or a smith who did not recognize that they were Jews, but this man was obviously well educated.

  Yakov cleared his throat, and then spoke carefully. "Herr Green, we have heard hints about Grantville's toleration of religious differences even when we were in Hildburghausen last week, when many people were still calling it the pit of Hell. Now you tell us of Catholic and Protestant churches together in the town. Am I right?"

  "Yes," he said, and then hesitated. "People called Grantville the pit of Hell?"

  "Yes," Yakov said, with a smile. "The people of Schwarzburg saw it as a great pit opening in the earth, with thunder and lightning. The first rumors that reached the west from there were terrifying."

  "Yet you came here? You are very brave men."

  "Either that or we are fools," the Rabbi said. "The story you people tell of coming from the year 2000 is hardly reassuring. We tried very hard to avoid coming here, until all of the alternatives sounded even worse. But we were speaking about toleration of religious differences in Grantville, were we not?"

  "When my wife told me about your group, she said that there was something that set your group apart from other Germans she had met. If it is a matter of religion, truly, you need not fear."

  "Thank you," Yakov said, and then hesitated. "We are Jews."

  Yossie did not know what reaction he expected, but he certainly did not expect Herr Green's reaction.

  "I must apologize for my stupidity," Herr Green said. "I have intruded on your Shabbat and I have been blind to hints that a man of my education ought to have seen. Ah, shalom alachum to you."

  "Alechum sholem," Yakov said, while Yossie marveled. The fact that the man had pronounced the Hebrew greeting at all was incredible, even though the man's pronunciation was quite bad. Outside of the print shop in Hanau, he had never encountered a Christian who knew any Hebrew at all.

  "Those yellow circles on your coats, they identify you, yes?" Herr Green asked, pointing.

  "They are Jew badges," Yakov said.

  "They are a symbol of one of the most shameful things that Christians have ever done," Herr Green said forcefully. "I say this as a committed Christian. Under the laws of Grantville, nobody will ever require such badges. If you wish to remove them, you are welcome to do so."

  "Imperial law demands that we wear the badge," Yakov said.

  "Imperial law does not apply in Grantville!" Herr Green said.

  "That is a dangerous boast," Moische said. "I am curious, though, about the multiple churches of Grantville. I am no expert on Christians, but so far as I understand, Protestants believe that Catholics are doomed to eternal hellfire for their beliefs, and Catholics believe the same of Protestants. How did this change in your time, so that Protestants and Catholics could live together in peace?"

  Yossie knew that Moische and the old Rabbi were deliberately exaggerating about the inability of Catholics and Protestants to live together. In lands where the Catholic Church had forcefully put down Protestants, relations were indeed grim, but in towns such as Hanau, however, the churches did coexist.

  Herr Green frowned. "We never really solved our problems. Perhaps we never will. Some churches have agreements with each other, but others allow no compromise on issues of doctrine. If we have made any progress, it's in learning to live and work with people with whom we disagree. You cannot force a person to believe in God! In my country, the United States of America, we determined that the government must remain neutral in all matters of religion."

  Herr Green paused. "I suppose I should be as open with you as you have been with me. I am a minister, a pastor in a church that was, in parts of America, one of the dominant Protestant churches. Now, I find that when I try to explain my church to German Catholics or to German Lutherans, they react as if I am a dangerous heretic."

  None of them responded to this remarkable admission. After an awkward pause, Herr Green, or rather, Pastor Green continued. "My church is called the Baptist Church. There are a few Baptists in this time in England, and there are some common beliefs shared between Baptists of my time and some of the Anabaptists of this time."

  He paused, but again, there were no questions. "As I said before, when my wife met with you, she said that there was something different about you. I came up here to find out about that. I came to welcome you and tell you about the churches of Grantville. What I hoped for was that you might be a group of Anabaptists, so that I could speak about religion to Germans of this time who would not consider me as a cousin of the Devil."

  There was another pause. This time, though, it seemed that Pastor Green was done. Moische broke the silence. "I do not know how to respond to what you have said. I wonder, though, about what you said about our welcome to Grantville. Do your offers of houses and work change now that you know we are Jews?"

  "No," Pastor Green said. "You are still welcome."

  Yakov cleared his throat. "Even if we Jews are doomed to burn in Hell by your Christians from the future, just as we are by the Christians of this time?"

  "I would not have put it so bluntly, uh, is it Rabbi Jacob?"

  "Yes, I am a rabbi," Yakov said, surprised.

  "You are right," Pastor Green said, "That is how many Christians see Jews. We sincerely wish you would accept the salvation offered by Jesus Christ. Despite that, you are welcome. It would be entirely wrong for us to make your welcome to our community conditional on your acceptance of any faith."

  Yakov nodded slowly. "I thank you for your honesty, Pastor Green. You have certainly given us something to think about as this second day of Shavuos comes to an end."

  "Second day of what?" Pastor Green asked.

  "The festival of Shavuos, Christians call it Pentecost."

  "Pentecost?" Pastor Green asked. "Why, I suppose you are right, tomorrow is the seventh Sunday after Easter. The feast of weeks? Isn't the Hebrew for week shavuah? So in that case, the plural is shavuoth, isn't it?"

  Yakov nodded. "Jews from Spain, Africa and Turkey, pronounce it shavuot. We Jews in Germany pronounce it shavuos."

  "It's good to find that the Hebrew course I took in seminary wasn't a complete loss," Pastor Green said, with a smile. "Shavuos is a harvest festival, am I right? The day of the first fruits?"

  Yossie was amazed to hear such a conversation as Yakov replied, "In Shemos, what you would call the book of Exodus, Shavuos is described that way. It is in the section called Ki Tisha, soon after the story of the Golden Calf."

  "Chapter thirty-four," Pastor Green said.

  "Yes," Yakov said, with a smile. "It is one of the three Chagim, what is the German word . . . pilgrimage festivals. But it is more than that. We also consider it a celebration of the giving of the commandments at Mount Sinai, because the very same text connects Shavuos so closely to Sinai."

  Pastor Green seemed to enjoythis turn of conversation. "For Christians, we also think of it as a commemoration of revelation, but in our case, for the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, as recorded in the Book of Acts. But I am curious about one thing, you said the second day of, of Shavuos? I don't remember anything in the Bible about two days."

  "Your memory is right," Yakov said. "I think you know that the Jewish calendar is based on the lunar month. According to the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, each month was counted from the sighting of the new moon by observers on the walls of the Temple in Jerusalem. If we were in the holy land, we would celebrate for only one day, but here we are in galus, in exile far from the land. To account for the uncertainty in the date, the Talmud says we should celebrate for an extra day. Of course, we also have an arithmetic formula that lets us know when the new moon will be observed in Jerusalem, but we keep the festivals for an extra day anyway, to remind us of our exile."

  Yossie had never heard Yakov speak so freely about Jewish matters to a Christian, even in the protected context of Master Hene's print shop. Yossie was used to censoring his langu
age carefully when speaking to Christians, carefully avoiding the use of the Hebrew words that made up a large fraction of his Jewish dialect. Now, he was shocked to hear Yakov letting down his guard.

  Pastor Green excused himself to leave shortly after that, and then it was time for their afternoon prayers. After they had finished the final meal of the Sabbath, though, they talked long into the evening about what they had learned from Pastor Green about the town of Grantville and the strange world from which it had come.

  "Reb Yakov," Yossie asked, after the talk had turned from detail back to generalities. "I still don't understand something. What made you start talking about the Talmud with a Protestant preacher?"

  The old rabbi paused, stroking his beard. "It was a mistake, at first. I never should have mentioned Shavuos to him, but I did. Once the topic came up, though, he seemed to enjoy it, so I said more, and more. I suppose you could say I was testing the tolerance he spoke of with such evident pride."

  "So have you reached any conclusions?" Basya asked.

  "Have you?" Yakov asked.

  "Reb Yakov, I wish I'd been listening to the original conversation," she said. "But listening to you men talking, it sounds like this preacher may be telling the truth about Grantville."

  "He may be," Yakov said. "So I think we will stay a while to learn more about these people."

  Part Two: These Things Have No Fixed Measure

  Twelfth of Sivan, 5391 (June 12, 1631)

  As Yossie walked down the road Thursday morning, he was struck by an unlikely fact. His surroundings no longer shocked him. When he'd arrived in Grantville, the well-painted houses made of sawn planks had seemed very alien. Now, only a week later, he was living in such a house in the outlying village of Deborah. Then, the sight of the yellow buses taking children to the huge school down the valley would have frightened him. Now, he had ridden such a bus once, and he was about to ride one again.

  The marvels that Grantville had somehow brought from the distant future were overwhelming, but after a week, Yossie was starting to see more. The future world from which Grantville had come may have had its wonders, but it had not always been kind to Grantville.

  In the world Yossie knew, he could blame abandoned houses and recent ruins on the war that had now lasted for more than a decade. As he passed the remains of abandoned buildings that divided upper Deborah from lower Deborah, he wondered what had happened in Grantville's world to cause such damage.

  When he came to the main road through lower Deborah, Yossie put aside his questions. Two men were standing on the corner where he'd been told to wait for the bus. They were wearing the closely cut trousers of faded blue twill that many Grantvillers favored, but his eyes were on their helmets. They were not like the military helmets he knew, and their colors were both bright and strange.

  The day before, Yossie had gone to a meeting in Grantville for refugees who wanted work. Most of the Grantvillers with jobs to offer needed the help of translators to address their German-speaking audience. The man who spoke for Grantville's coal mine had been an exception, speaking fluent but oddly accented German.

  Yossie had heard several times about the mine, but he had never seriously considered working there until that meeting. The man who'd spoken wasn't a very good salesman, although he did try. He spoke about how important the mine was to Grantville, and about the value of the coal rock they would mine. That was not what moved Yossie. The first thing that impressed him was the man's apparent enthusiasm for working in the mine, while the second was his plain-spoken honesty about the dangers of the work.

  Yossie was also curious about the man's strange position at the mine. He'd said that he wasn't the owner or foreman or overseer, but just a mine safety engineer. The term was strange, and after he'd explained it, the idea was even stranger. Yossie had never imagined that a nobleman or company would hire someone just to prevent others from hurting themselves.

  The bus interrupted Yossie's thoughts as it rumbled into view. After it stopped, he hesitated briefly, watching the Grantvillers get on. The smell and noise were still strange, but if the Grantvillers could ride, he could too.

  The bus was another example of Grantville's odd mixture of wealth and disrepair. Yossie couldn't even begin to estimate the value of the machine, but he was sure that it was immense. Why, then, had nobody made an effort to repair some of the torn seats?

  The bus stopped several times on its way through Grantville, picking up more men at each stop. The Grantvillers rode together at the front talking and laughing. It seemed that they all knew each other. The Germans riding in back were quieter. For many, this was their first ride on such a vehicle. They were all refugees as well, strangers in Grantville and mostly strangers to each other.

  At a stop in central Grantville, a man sat down beside Yossie. "I'm Thomas Schmidt," he said said as the bus lurched onward. "Who are you? I saw you talking to Herr Koch yesterday."

  "Joseph Hanauer," Yossie answered, puzzled by the man's accent. It was not the Thuringian accent he was growing used to, nor any accent he had heard in the lands to the west.

  A month ago, he would not have expected a Christian stranger to sit by him. Now, Yossie understood that his status as a Jew was invisible to the man. Yossie was not trying to hide it. His clothing proclaimed that he was a Jew, but the Germans of the Thüringerwald didn't seem to understand what would have been obvious to those of the lands to the west.

  "Who is Herr Koch? Do you mean the man from the mine?" Yossie asked.

  "Yes," Thomas said. "Herr Koch said this mine needed a smith, and I am the son of the son of a smith. If it can be made of iron, I can make it. Do you have a trade?"

  Yossie started to tell about the print shop in Hanau. The bus turned onto a well-graded gravel road that followed the curve of a side valley while he talked. Yossie had just started to explain that he hadn't been an apprentice but merely a common laborer when the view out the window drove thoughts of Hanau from his mind.

  A line of alien structures came into sight. Two round gray towers dominated the curving row of buildings that followed the valley floor. The complex was almost half a mile long, and each building was linked to the next by a long sloping tube. The towers looked like they might be made of very fine stonework, but the other parts were a mystery. Were the rust stains on some buildings evidence that they were made entirely of iron?

  The valley ended abruptly in a high black cliff not far beyond the strange structures. Yossie knew those cliffs, but neither he nor anyone else understood them. They marked the border between the familiar German lands and the strange land of Grantville that had somehow come from almost four centuries in the future.

  One of the Grantvillers riding at the front of the bus stood up, holding the seats at each side for support as he addressed them, in English. "Welcome to Murphy's Run Mine, folks."

  The bus went past many of the mine buildings and through a gate in the woven wire fence that paralleled the road. They passed a strange framework with great wheels on top and then came to a stop.

  Yossie recognized the man waiting for them despite the helmet he was wearing. It was the man Thomas Schmidt had called Herr Koch.

  "Good morning, Guten Morgen," he said, after they had gotten off of the bus. "I am Ron Koch," he said, and then he repeated himself in strangely accented but fluent German. "Our job today is to take this thing apart." He waved at a long line of machinery that ran up the side of the valley.

  After giving more detail about the day's work, he announced that each of the Grantvillers would begin the day by supervising one or two of the new men. Then he began calling out names and handing out slips of paper. Yossie's slip of paper said "Joseph Hanauer arbeit mit Bob Eckerlin." Yossie was briefly puzzled by the printing. It was blurry, almost as if a layer of inked cloth had been set between the type and the paper as it was printed.

  After a bit of confusion, Yossie found Bob Eckerlin. Each of them had pronounced the name of the other so badly that Yossie wasn't sure of the
ir pairing until he'd seen Bob's sheet of paper. Bob's paper was printed in the same odd way as his own, but it said much more, and all in English.

  For the next few hours, Yossie did his best to do as Bob directed. Bob began by showing Yossie how to wear a helmet like those worn by the Grantvillers. The hard hat, as it was known, had a complex web of straps which had to be adjusted to make it fit his head. It was lighter than he expected and surprisingly comfortable, but it was some time before he got used to wearing it instead of his own felt hat.

  Yossie and Bob had the task of removing things called rollers from the long framework that led up the hill away from a strange structure in the valley. There seemed to be hundreds of these rollers, and Yossie could easily see how their arrangement had allowed something to slide along the structure with almost no resistance. Each roller was held in place by screws that worked exactly the same way as the great screw of a printing press. All of them were iron, though, and perfectly identical.

  Bob Eckerlin knew almost no German, except a few stock phrases, but he knew enough to teach Yossie the names of things. They were using wrenches to remove bolts from the rollers that were part of the conveyor, and then putting the smaller parts in a cleverly made metal bucket.

  Unfortunately, Bob's sparse German was insufficient to explain what it was that this conveyor had once done. Above them, the conveyor disappeared over the curve of the ridge, in the direction of the ring of black cliffs that marked what some Grantvillers called the Ring of Fire. Only a week ago Yossie had looked down those cliffs to see Grantville for the first time.

  Working up on the side of the valley, they had a good view. The conveyor rose from the base of a metal building and what looked like another conveyor ran from there up to the top of a round gray tower. More conveyors linked that tower to a black building, and there were towers and conveyors beyond that.

  Other crews were at work along the conveyor. Some were removing the arched roof over the rollers. Others were doing more mysterious things. A teamster with a freight wagon made regular trips along the conveyor taking loads of salvaged material down the hill.