by Eric Flint
"Yes . . . that tomb is in another valley but now . . . now I can find the right valley. Put out the candle. We don't have many and we need to save them." Jakob complied, plunging the two men and the tomb into twilight relieved only by the light coming from the entrance. Without a word, Jakob began crawling toward that square of light.
Johannes eyed his companion thoughtfully. How far could he trust Jakob? They had known each other for years and run scams together without problems. Still. . . . Lately Jakob had become very friendly with Ali. They often had their heads together, talking softly. Jakob claimed Ali was teaching him Arabic, but Johannes wondered. He was positive that neither Jakob nor Ali had any knowledge of English. The notebook was useless to either of them. However, once Johannes had identified the marker tombs and located the area where King Tut's tomb entrance was buried, the notebook would become irrelevant. Until then, he suspected his life might depend upon their inability to read the notebook.
Back in Alexandria he and Jakob had discussed when and how to end their partnership with Ali once the treasure was in hand. Neither of them saw any need to waste any share of the treasure on the Arab. Having seen the reality of Egypt, Johannes had revised his plans several times. They needed Ali and his Arabic language skills to get back to Alexandria. Perhaps it would be best to allow Ali to get on the ship with them. Accidents at sea were easily accomplished and left no inconvenient bodies. Johannes now wondered if Ali and Jakob were planning an accident for himself.
Perhaps he should sound out Ali. Jakob's strong back would be helpful in digging out King Tut's tomb. Helpful, but not absolutely necessary . . . And there were all these handy tombs in which to hide the body.
Jakob momentarily blocked the light exiting the tomb. He yelled something unintelligible but Johannes paid no attention. He was deep in thoughts of double-cross.
Crawling from the darkness into the bright sunlight blinded Johannes. When hands grabbed his arms, he thought Jakob and Ali had decided to put their own murder plan into action. His vision cleared enough to let him see the wadi floor below the tomb.
Ali and Jakob were on their knees, each held by two large men. Ali was pleading frantically. Jakob had the look of a stunned ox. A number of riders surrounded them. The riders, Johannes realized with dread, were the Sheikh al Balad's Turks.
The pair of large Turks holding his arms threw Johannes down the slope. Skidding on his back, he struggled to stop his slide. If he could evade the men waiting below and make it to that other tomb . . .
Another pair of Turks grabbed him, hustled him the rest of the way down the slope and slammed him to his knees. Someone grabbed Johannes's hair and yanked his head up so that he looked into the face of a richly-dressed man mounted on a magnificent white horse. Something slithered down the scree and the white horse danced and kicked at it. Michael Tyler's notebook broke open and the pages flew about. Several of the Turks' horses shied at the flurry of paper. The Turks' leader curbed his horse's restiveness easily, never taking his eyes off Johannes.
Three Turks scrambled about, grabbing the loose pages. One of them carried the notebook and rescued pages to the leader with the air of a man handling filth. The leader looked away from Johannes briefly. He flicked several pages with his whip. He snarled something at the man holding the notebook. The notebook dropped and the Turk soldier kicked it away. He knelt and scrubbed his hands with sand.
The Turk's leader said a few words and the others replied with a shout of "Insallah!"
Ali burst into a loud wavering wail.
The Turk's leader smiled down at Johannes and gestured. Johannes's head was shoved forward, his ragged turban pulled off and dropped in front of him.
The last words Johannes heard, enunciated clearly in Spanish, were "You are infidels. We do not tolerate infidels."
O For a Muse of Fire
Written by Jay Robison
O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
—Shakespeare, Henry V
Andreas Gryphius, born Greif, waited outside the door to Amber Higham's office. He knew he hadn't done anything wrong, knew that that was not why the high school's drama teacher wanted to talk to him, but Andreas always felt a kind of nervousness when he had to deal with authority. He was also nervous because he was hoping for a teaching position at the high school, and was afraid that he was about to find out whether he'd gotten one.
The door opened and Markus Schneider strode out, nodding a greeting as he left. Behind Markus, and lingering ever so slightly when she saw Andreas, was Antje Becker. Markus was Andreas's age, eighteen, Antje a year younger, and they all knew each other through the high school's RTT—radio, television and theater—program. It didn't take long after the Ring of Fire for Janice Ambler and Amber Higham to realize how vital television and radio would be for information and entertainment. It wasn't enough to have performers and presenters. There would always be a surplus of people who wanted to perform. But any production, be it for radio, stage or television, would need camera operators, electricians, sound technicians, grips and more. Janice and Amber decided to start a joint radio-television-theater program that focused on giving interested students practical experience in the technical side of production. The result was a program for both the radio and television stations, Beyond Our Control, a sketch comedy series produced and performed almost entirely by students. Andreas had become the head writer, Markus the chief director of photography and Antje was in charge of sound.
Andreas was starting to branch out. Writing comedy sketches had become less satisfying over the last few months, especially after he'd written a radio play based on an up-time movie, My Man Godfrey, which cast a mix of local professionals and members of the high school drama club. Keeping the movie's basic romantic comedy and farce intact, Andreas came up with Unser Herr Gottfried, which he considered more suitable for a mass audience beyond the Ring of Fire. It proved quite popular, and Andreas hoped he could parlay his success into the teaching career he longed for, a secure position that would allow him to continue writing his plays and poems and hopefully attract a wealthy patron.
Amber stuck her head out into the hall. "Come on in."
Andreas made himself comfortable in the chair in front of the teacher's desk, but his nervousness must have shown. "Relax," Amber said. "I'm not sending you to detention."
"I had not thought so, Frau Higham. Do you have an answer for me?"
"I do. And I'm hoping you'll see the answer as a positive thing."
Andreas's heart dropped into his stomach. Amber confirmed his dread: He was not going to be hired to teach.
"Andreas, you're better off writing full-time. Teaching's wonderful, so's tutoring, but I know you. You won't be happy doing either of those things because they'll get in the way of your true passion. You'll resent the demands a teaching career will make on you, and you'll take that out on your students, your family and yourself. I've seen too many friends go down that road to want that for you."
"You teach, Frau Higham. And you seem quite happy."
"I do, and I am," Amber said. "But I acted for a long time first. I fed that passion, and over time it became a passion to teach others the craft. But you're not in that place, Andreas."
This was little comfort. "But there's my family's position to think of," Andreas said while trying to hold back tears of disappointment. "My stepfather has never objected to my writing, but he thinks I must find a respectable position to support myself and a future family if I wish to have one. He is not wrong in this."
Amber smiled, a little sadly. "I know we up-timers seem way too eager to flout tradition. But trust me on this one, Andreas. You will be nothing to no one if you go through life miserable and unfulfilled. I don't care what century you grew up in."
"Yes, Frau Higham. I will give thought to your words."
"I know it's scary, but it's time to spread your wings. And I promise I'll do anything I can to help you."
Andreas fe
lt numb as he walked home. Orphaned by the war, he'd traveled west from his native Silesia, sent by his stepfather, Pastor Michael Eder. Andreas found himself in the mysterious new town of Grantville around the time of the Croat raid, traveling there with a group of young nobles and their tutor on a grand tour. The idea was not only for Andreas to get a life education, but also to learn from the tutor, one of the most respected in Danzig. At the tutor's suggestion and with his stepfather's blessing, Andreas stayed in Grantville to take advantage of the high school and its near-university level of education while his traveling companions moved on to Austria and Italy.
Except for one traveling companion. Andreas opened the door to his tiny efficiency apartment. He found his roommate, Paddy, tamping a fresh batch of marijuana into his long-stemmed clay pipe.
Paddy was an orphan too, though unlike Andreas, Paddy had never known his parents. Before Paddy came to Grantville, he didn't even have so much as a last name—he adopted "Antrim" (after the Irish county of his birth) when he arrived—but he did have a quick wit and a likable nature. He also had a beautiful voice, which he could use to imitate nearly anyone after hearing them speak for just a few moments, and when telling his stories, he created different voices for each character. And though he couldn't read ("Never got the knack," he was fond of saying), Paddy could memorize entire stretches of text if someone read passages to him just once or twice. Andreas was often quite surprised to hear his friend spout back scenes he himself had muttered half-aloud while writing.
As Paddy liked to say, all of those gifts were God's attempt to make up for the fact that he'd been born a dwarf and spectacularly ugly. He'd spent his early years in an Irish orphanage. When he was little more than a boy, Paddy was sold to a petty French nobleman who'd wanted a court dwarf. Paddy fully expected to remain in France the rest of his life, but he found himself being traded from court to court, finally landing in Danzig. One of the young noblemen in Andreas's party had brought Paddy along to provide amusement.
The dwarf decided he was staying in Grantville with Andreas and was pleasantly surprised when the local authorities agreed he had a right to do so. Pastor Eder sent his stepson enough for a small room, and Andreas had insisted Paddy move in with him. As Andreas pointed out, it wasn't as if Paddy took up a great deal of space. The money Paddy brought in as a storyteller at the Thuringen Gardens and other places around Grantville helped with the rent and food. Telling stories to the children at St. Veronica's paid for the marijuana that treated Paddy's chronic pain.
The dwarf looked up when Andreas closed the door. "Laddie, you look like someone spit in your porridge."
Andreas watched his friend light his pipe and inhale deeply. "Is the pain bad today, Paddy?"
"Not for much longer. I got to the Medical Exchange early enough to get some Stone Free. 'The stickiest of the icky.'" Paddy said the last phrase in a dead-on impersonation of Tom Stone. Others had started growing the "wonder weed" to keep up with demand for a reliable painkiller that was cheaper than Dr. Phil's Little Blue Pills, but everyone acknowledged that the best stuff came from Tom Stone's greenhouses at Lothlorien Farbenwerke, for which the dyer would take no money.
Paddy exhaled and gave Andreas a stern look. "I'm touched by your concern, lad, but you're changing the subject."
"I'm not going to be teaching this fall. Frau Higham told me I need to keep writing. She said I wouldn't be happy otherwise."
"Frau Higham is a wise woman. You should listen to her."
"But how can I write without a patron? And how can I get a patron without a reputation? If I'd been accepted to teach writing or drama I could have built that, but now . . ."
"Lad." Paddy said the word this time as a command. "You have a reputation. Your work has already reached more people than most established playwrights. What about your work with the school's television company? Or your radio play?" Paddy slid off his chair and drew himself up to his full height—all four feet of it. "I'll not abide you giving in to pity. The opportunities are there if you'll see them."
* * *
Joost van den Vondel sat in the Inn of the Maddened Queen, lost in thought. Anyone looking at the chessboard would see at once that those thoughts had absolutely nothing to do with the game Joost was supposed to be playing. He moved his bishop. His opponent, a thin woman his own age, shook her head before he could take his hand off the piece.
Reconsidering, Joost moved his rook instead. Another head shake. When moving his king brought no head shake, he settled on that move. One of the advantages of playing his wife in chess was that she was a pretty lenient opponent, at least with him.
Mayken De Wolff, Frau van den Vondel, studied her next move. She'd never played maddened queen chess before coming to Grantville not quite a year ago, but she was a natural. Joost, on the other hand, was an atrocious player, no matter what rules he was playing under. He only played because he enjoyed spending time with his wife.
Mayken would never be the picture of health, Joost knew. She was a thin young woman when they met, and giving birth to four children had not been the best thing for her. When they fled Amsterdam just ahead of the Spanish siege, he was sure he was going to lose her. He'd hated being apart from her, spending most of his time in Krefeld with their two surviving children, minding the business, while Mayken lived in Grantville and took advantage of the miraculous medical cures the up-timers had brought with them. Mayken's skill at chess was proof of her ability to look ahead and consider the consequences of many different actions. Joost had missed that, but having her with him wasn't worth her life.
In the end, Mayken's generosity bought Joost three more moves. When she called "checkmate," one of the spectators called out a number. He'd taken bets on how many moves Frau van den Vondel would need to checkmate Herr van den Vondel. Vince Masaniello shouted in triumph.
"You see?" he said to a young German named Felix who was getting chess tutoring. "That's how not to play. If Frau van den Vondel would permit me, I'd like to give her a real challenge."
Mayken was willing. One of the inn's servants brought Joost a coffee and a radio. He and Mayken met regularly for a chess game and conversation when he was in Grantville on business. It was a way for them to connect on days when Joost was busy. When Mayken accepted a challenge from one of the other patrons, Joost ordered a coffee and a radio (the up-timers referred to it as a "walkman"). The Inn of the Maddened Queen kept several of these wonderful personal radios to rent so that if nonplaying guests wanted to listen to music or the Voice of America they could do so without disturbing anyone else. It gave Joost a chance to get lost in thought and get in touch with his muse.
Joost van den Vondel was in the silk business. He was also a dramatist and poet, a very good one. And he was fascinated with the mass communications the up-timers had brought with them. Their "television station," WVOA, reached an audience in the thousands, larger than the audience the largest theater could hold. The Voice of America radio station, which had the disadvantage, in Joost's mind, of not being accompanied by pictures, reached many times more people than the television station did. Joost had resolved to investigate these strange inventions more fully on his current trip.
He slipped the headphones over his ears, expecting to hear music. That's what VOA usually played this time of day. Instead Joost heard: "By popular demand, Voice of America is proud to present Unser Herr Gottfried, starring Helmut Schickele, Maria Bauerin, Patrick Antrim and the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. This program has been prerecorded."
What followed was a pleasant and cleverly written farce. It wasn't terribly original, but the writer knew what he was doing and had potential. Someone worth knowing, and if Joost was correct about the writer's age, worth mentoring. The credits after the production mentioned the writer as Andreas Gryphius. Joost decided he should meet him as soon as his schedule allowed.
* * *
The Sternbock Coffee House was the preferred gathering place for Grantville's art community, such as it was. Most aspiring w
riters, painters and performers were moving to Magdeburg to seek their fortunes. Even so, Theophilus Mendes wasn't lacking for customers, who came to drink powerful and robust Greek coffee, eat Helena Mendes' delicious baklava and talk music and literature. Regulars also came to listen to poetry readings or musical performances and to doodle on the coffee house walls. Theophilus had heard of an eatery in the up-time city of Chicago that allowed people to write and draw on the walls, and he thought it was a wonderful idea. Theo's sons Arcadios and Constantinos, who got stuck with white-washing the coffee house walls every few months, were rather less enthusiastic.
Andreas and Markus sat looking glum. Antje sat looking exasperated with both of them. Wall doodling was the farthest thing from their minds. Paddy and his friend Martha sat sipping coffee and nibbling on pastry.
"You both knew you couldn't keep working with the RTT program forever. You graduate, you move on. That's the rule," Antje said.
"That's easy for you to say, Antje," Markus groused. "You didn't get 'the talk.'" Turning to Andreas, Markus asked, "Did she tell you to spread your wings?"
