Grantville Gazette, Volume X

by Eric Flint

  Before he could employ his new skills in language and septic engineering, he had to remove all the effluent from the drainage ditch and deposit it in a more permanent location so it couldn't run off downstream to pollute the waterways. This was backbreaking, boring, seemingly endless work and he'd been at it alone all day. There had been some commotion earlier, but nobody had bothered to tell him what was going on and he couldn't leave his work to find out.

  He'd just about finished hacking the frozen sewage into slush and dirty ice cubes, when a sour-looking military policeman arrived escorting a surprisingly cheery person who was carrying a number of buckets. Surprising, that is, for someone about to wade waist-deep in raw sewage with frozen crusty bits on top. Vague recognition kicked in.

  "Hey, aren't you one of those ski-troop heroes? What are you doing here on punishment detail?"

  The man answered something unintelligible: "Eig e skilaupar, jau, meinn neigu noukon hjelte" it sounded like. "Say again?"

  "Sorry," the man answered. "I'll speak German instead. I've gotten used to my Swedish friends understanding me, but they've had some time to learn. My name is Torjer Lien, and I'm a skier but no hero. I'm here for offending a supply officer." He grinned.

  "Why? And what's so funny about it?"

  "Well, the reason isn't funny." Torjer's face darkened, all merriness gone. "It started when the ski troops were asked to test a new piece of equipment, a 'sleeping bag' made to an up-time pattern and with up-time-style zippers." Torjer spoke while he worked, filling two buckets with filth and handing two more to Daniel. "The 'prototype' we were shown looked good, and when we let a recruit use it for a week it didn't rip or break or anything. That's how we test new equipment—if it's recruit-proof then it's probably strong enough for general issue. We told them it was a great idea, if they would only make them big enough that we could actually use them while wearing all our winter clothes and equipment. The prototype was a bit tight when you put your rifle and everything inside, like we sometimes do to thaw out frozen locks and water bottles."

  They carried the buckets over to a hand cart for transport uphill to a large pit. It was going to be some punishment, as there must surely be a hundred more bucketfuls to scoop up and remove.

  "Our boss, Captain Virenius, ordered a full platoon set of sleeping bags just like the prototype except a bit wider. What we got—what the supply officer gave our captain—was bags the same too-small size as the prototype and with a thinner, finer-looking type of zipper. The supply officer claimed these were newer, better zippers than the one on the prototype".

  The two men continued filling and emptying buckets of unimaginable filth. "We didn't know the zippers were bad—he'd charged the army for a larger version with deluxe extra-strong zippers, and only bought the standard size with cheaper zippers. Zippers designed for ladies' dresses!" Torjer shook his head, and continued to work.

  "So out we went, on an exercise to test our new tactics and equipment against friendly 'enemy' units who'd be looking for us, and if we were spotted they'd fire blanks at us. All pretty harmless, but nobody wants to lose a battle even if it isn't for real. So we decided to be serious about it, you know, moving quickly and making cold camp. Just the sort of job for up-time-style sleeping bags, if only the bloody zippers had worked." Torjer spat and cursed for a few minutes in unintelligible Norwegian, apparently without repeating himself.

  "The first few nights were great. I had a good, thick reindeer pelt underneath my warm, cozy sleeping bag and I slept like a baby. Except for when that clumsy son-of-a-taxman Ante stumbled in the alarm line and woke me half an hour before it was my turn on stag. The fifth night, however, we were pretty close to the 'enemy' and everyone was a bit on edge. So when our mess kits began to rattle during dog watch, we all burst from our sleeping bags and ran to our defensive positions. I don't think anyone noticed at the time, but nearly all of us tore those lady-fashion zippers open without using the little pull tab thingy. Nobody had told us that would destroy the zippers."

  Daniel felt confused. "Back up a little. Mess kits? What made them rattle?"

  "We use them for an alarm system," Torjer explained. "You tie a long piece of string to a bunch of tin pots or whatever will make noise, like a couple of mess kits tied together. Run the string out to the sentry post, and he can alert those in the tent without leaving his post. But that's not the point.

  "There was a terrific noise, with the alarm string being jerked so hard it nearly took the whole tent down. We thought all hell was breaking loose, and stormed out into the darkness. Some fool opened fire, and the others followed suit. Including me, no less a fool than anyone. But at least I only reloaded once before I realized that we were shooting at shadows."

  They were making progress on removing the slushy, near-frozen waste, but somehow that only made it worse. The effluent was now running in fits and starts, bringing fresh and rather more odorous waste their way. They had forgotten about all the sewage standing under pressure in the blocked pipes, and with the blockage removed there was something like a volcanic eruption. At least the fresh stuff wasn't freezing.

  "It turned out that the sentry hadn't pulled the alarm string, and neither had any other man. It was a deer—a stupid, insomniac deer that went a-walking right between the sentry and the tent. It tripped in the string, and scared the crap out of us."

  Daniel couldn't quite bring himself to laugh in his present circumstances, but he was still curious. "And what did the deer have to do with your offending the supply officer?" he asked.

  "Nothing much, but the zippers did. They would have failed sooner or later, so it didn't matter if the alarm was raised for a deer or for the whole Danish army. We had opened fire, announcing our presence to the whole county, so we had to leave. Fast."

  Torjer shook his head. "Breaking camp quickly in near pitch darkness and running like the devil himself was after us. That's a recipe for disaster, even in the best of times. And then the weather changed, it turned first wet and then cold. Our skis were soon caked with ice, which isn't nearly as slippery on snow as you might expect. Not when the snow is wet and sticky. Our uniforms were soaked with icy water, which then froze like a suit of ice armor. After a few hours I noticed young Nils Larsson was getting even more clumsy on skis than usual, but when I asked him he claimed to be fine."

  Torjer slipped on something unmentionable, landed in something worse, and after an exceptionally long bout of swearing he seemed to have forgotten the story.

  "And was he? Fine, that is?" probed Daniel.

  "Huh? Oh, him. No, he bloody wasn't. The damned fool had taken his boots off in the tent. Well, you're supposed to do that, but you're also supposed to remember where you put your woolly socks. When that whole deer incident went down he was in too much of a hurry to find both socks, so when we set off skiing he only wore one. Frostbite on three toes, he had. He also had hypothermia, which is why he didn't notice the frostbite. Did you go to that lecture on hypothermia and frostbite, when the up-timers held first aid instruction?"

  Daniel nodded. "Yeah, they told us the extremi-somethings get cold first and then when the brain begins to cool you get stupid."

  "The 'extremities' you mean," Torjer corrected. "That's your fingers and toes, and other things that stick out. Like your privates. Remember what else they said?"

  Daniel gulped, wide-eyed: "If you get bad frostbite, they have to cut it off. Really, the . . . ?"

  Torjer nodded sagely. "Yes, that part too if it's really bad."

  * * *

  Some time later, the two men were about to haul the last cart over to the pit when Torjer's hand slipped and he fell face first on the frozen ground. The sudden additional load made Daniel lose his grip, too, and the cart went backwards into the ditch.

  "There's even shit on the drawbars," Torjer muttered.

  They eventually finished up and walked towards the warm showers, a wonderful invention even if it wasn't quite as social as a communal tub. Waddled to the showers, rather, try
ing to move without touching their filth-soaked and half-frozen clothes.

  Warming up, Torjer picked up the story again. "Now, if someone gets hypothermia near civilization you simply throw him in a hot tub and thaw him out. But when you're in the middle of nowhere and all your gear is wet, you stick him in a sleeping bag and crawl in with him to share some body warmth. Personal privacy be damned."

  "Yes, I remember," said Daniel. "That's what they told us at that lecture."

  "And that's what mountain men like me have always known," replied Torjer, "only we've always used furs and blankets instead of sleeping bags. Problem was our no-good, stinking sleeping bags were too small even for one man, and the bedeviled zippers didn't work so we couldn't put two bags together to make a large one. In the end we put poor frozen-toes into the only bag that still had a functional zipper. Which saved his life, but meant I had to sleep in a bag that couldn't be closed properly." More profanity followed.

  "Look, he had to amputate a toe but he'll be fine otherwise. No longer fit for winter duty, but he'll live. Me, on the other hand, I nearly froze my balls off. The zipper would sort of close, but every time I fell asleep it would open again. Right over my privates, dammit. And me out of my pants, as they were soaking wet and I had to get warm somehow and maybe I wasn't thinking too clearly myself, being cold and all. Remember what I said about extremities? I came this close to freezing my manhood off! Because of a bleeding lady-fashion zipper and that filching, cost-cutting supply officer!"

  Torjer was clearly working up a temper, and Daniel had to concentrate on not laughing. It might be bad for his health to annoy Torjer, he decided. "So you set out for revenge. I guess I can understand that"

  "I sure did," Torjer continued. "Or I tried to as soon as I learned it was this Nilsson-Loo fellow's fault. I skied all the way here in anger, not even stopping for a change of clothes. I took my axe and ran to his office, thinking I'd chop a couple of his toes off or something. Or maybe an ear. I'm not choosy." His mood seemed to brighten. "But while we'd been on patrol, this shit had been happening to the sewers and nobody had thought to tell me.

  "This guy's an officer, right? And the officers' latrines had backed up, spilling right over and running onto his office floor. So there I come, charging in unprepared, and I slip on the filth and lose my axe. Right at his crotch, it went! He'll have to wee sitting down from now on, and it was an accident! A genuine, beautiful, honest-to-god accident with plenty of witnesses. I'd have been hanged if I'd neutered him on purpose, but they can't punish me for an accident!"

  When they were done laughing, Daniel remembered. "Then why are you here, if they can't punish you?"

  "For laughing! Insolence, they call it!"

  So they laughed some more.

  Star Crossed

  By Terry Howard

  "Yoo hoo! Manuel!"

  When Emmanuel Onofrio heard Verlinda Fritz yoohooing down the hall, his mind yelled, "Run!" He was looking forward to a quiet, restful lunch in the teacher's lounge. Keeping the rowdy kids in line so the others could learn seemed to get harder year by year and week by week. He gritted his teeth. "Santo Luigi Gonzaga protect me from pestilence."

  She used the same shrill yoohoo to demand attention as she had used on the playground fifty years before. Since Verlinda was without a brain in her head and three grades younger, he'd ignored her then as he tried to now.

  "Manuel!"

  Any hope she might be stalking game other than her favorite Onofrio ended. Emmanuel disliked being called Manuel almost as much as he disliked being called Manny, since one sounded like it should be followed by the word "labor" in a bad accent. The second sounded like either nanny or mammy.

  "Manuel!"

  There was nothing to do but face the charging cow. He knew from experience if you out ran it, she would just keep coming. "Yes, Mrs. Fritz?"

  She put her hands on her hips. "Well! Emmanuel Onofrio! Just what are you getting all uppity about?"

  Emmanuel hid the flinch. "What can I do for you, Verlinda?" He still he hoped to cut his losses.

  "Oh, Mann! We've know each other for a coon's age. When did I stop being Linda?"

  Oddly enough, Emmanuel didn't mind being called Mann. He didn't speak, so she continued. "Do you know enough Italian to translate engineering texts?"

  Emmanuel shook his head. "No."

  "Who would?"

  "Well, the Renato kids still use it at home." The Renatos were a large extended family of emigrants who left the Grisons of northern Italy for Grantville, where the word heretic was an insult not a legal accusation.

  She frowned. "I really need to find one of us. Half the time someone has to translate for the translator because they don't really know English."

  Emmanuel sighed. He knew what she meant. A great many books assumed a vocabulary now uncommon. In time, perhaps, that vocabulary would be common again, but it wasn't yet. Still, he found her separation of the world into "us" and "them" troubling. "I am sorry, Verlinda. I can't think of a single up-timer who would be of any use to you." Several possibilities came to mind, if they had the time, but he didn't feel like getting into it.

  "Well, think of someone!"

  "Why?"

  "Because it's our job! I have a young man in the library. He spent the whole morning with a book on architecture and a dictionary and barely turned a page. He's a nice boy. He needs help. He's Italian, Carlo Rainyday, or something like that."

  "Carlo Rainaldi?" Emmanuel forgot about lunch. Mrs. Fritz called for him to slow down. He ignored her.

  When he pushed through the library doors, it was clear who Verlinda was referring to. Emmanuel addressed him in Latin, hoping it might be enough like his dialect to be of some use. The young man responded in excellent Latin. Emmanuel smiled. He knew several men with Latin. For a Rainaldi, they would make time. Then his smile became a smirk. He knew who would have the time.

  Verlinda caught up with him in the library where she needed to be quiet. It didn't stop her. "Emmanuel Onofrio, how dare you run off and leave me?"

  Emmanuel remembered those exact words from the playground fifty plus years ago.

  "Shhh! Come here." He went to the encyclopedias, shoved a volume into her hands, pointed at an article and walked off. She followed him reading as she walked.

  "Rainaldi Carlo, 1611–91, Italian architect of the high baroque. He followed in the steps of—"

  "Come, my friend. Let us go find lunch." Switching to English, Emmanuel said, "Mrs. Fritz, please inform the office they need a sub for my afternoon classes. Then call Joseph Jenkins and ask him to come to the library."

  That startled her. "Old Joe! That dumb hillbilly? Why?"

  "He's the only one who knows Latin and has the time."

  "When did Joe Jenkins ever learn Latin?"

  Emmanuel enjoyed Verlinda's consternation. "He taught himself Latin a year ago."

  "Then how good could his Latin be?"

  "As good as mine." Emmanuel was exaggerating a bit. He was sure he could write better Latin than Joseph. He was also sure Joseph was a better Latin conversationalist than he was, which really did puzzle him.

  Emmanuel smirked. "One dumb hillbilly, isn't he?"

  * * *

  Joseph Jenkins spent almost every waking hour, six days a week, tutoring and translating for the young architect. Carlo impressed Joe with his aptitude for study. The boy obsessed on two things. His every thought was in service of one or the other. He loved buildings and wanted to build. He loved a girl and wanted to marry. If forced to choose, he would truly regret not marrying.

  Carlo inspected all of Grantville, from half of a log cabin perched on a cliff, to post and beam barns, which he found ordinary. Stud-built houses covered in vinyl revealed little. Carlo found cinder blocks briefly interesting, but they were only lighter blocks or larger bricks, after all. Brick was brick and Carlo thought he knew what there was to know about brick. Pole barns, a steel framed structure, and even a Quonset hut had their day.

  Prefab
s, modulars and trailers fascinated him. He crawled under every trailer he could get permission to crawl under. Sometimes he would call questions out to Joe who resolutely refused to get under there with him.

  When he dusted himself off it was always the same. His face beamed, dust and cobwebs flew, "Joseph, what you people did with steel and wood is incredible. The quality of the plywood is amazing. You do not worry about it coming apart even if it is dropped on its end or gets wet. Why can't you still make plywood?" He would shake his head. "And chip board, turning scrap into material better than planks, genius, pure genius. What my father could do if he knew the weight-to-span ratios I have at my fingertips boggles my mind!"

  Carlo talked of nothing but buildings. Every attempt to talk of other things, such as religion or politics, was met with a polite but uninterested response, except for the topic of love. When anything related was brought up, Carlo would sigh like a desert wind, shake his head gently as if trying to shake an idea out of his thoughts while being very careful not to succeed. He would end the sigh with the drawn out word, "Angelina." Then he would say nothing else.