Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  Litsa’s curiosity was, as always, easily aroused. “What is ‘cerebral palsy’?”

  “It’s what we call a ‘neurological disorder,’” Missy explained. “Basically, it’s brain damage that takes place before a child is born, for reasons that are mostly unclear. The main symptoms are a cluster of movement problems. They vary from one person to another, but they usually involve poor coordination, tremors…” She made another face. “All kinds of nasty stuff. There can also be problems with seeing and hearing, speaking—sometimes even the ability to reason is affected. And some people with cerebral palsy get seizures too, if I remember right.”

  “And there is no cure?” asked Eva. “Not even in the world you came from?”

  “There’s no cure,” Captain Lefferts said firmly. “But—” He looked at Ron Stone. “That’s why I need the money. My niece is going to have cerebral palsy her whole life. But she might be able to live a normal lifespan, have kids, a career—the whole nine yards—depending on how severe her symptoms are and depending on how much care she gets, especially during her childhood. That can make one hell of a difference.”

  “Yes, it can,” agreed Missy. “But…” She shook her head. “Harry, most of the care you’re talking about doesn’t even exist yet.”

  “You’re right,” said the captain. “My sister and her husband looked into it. What Julie’s going to need are a paediatrician—”

  “Excuse me,” said Eva. “A what?”

  Lefferts smiled at her. “That’s a doctor who specializes in treating children. It’s a medical specialty that doesn’t exist yet. So are most of the others she needs.” He started counting off on his fingers. “Julie will also need a physiotherapist—that’s someone who knows how to help people with movement and coordination problems—a speech and language therapist, an occupational therapist, and an orthotist. I had to look that one up myself. It’s someone who knows how to make devices to correct deformities and support bad joints.”

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “And depending on whether or not she’s got visual or learning problems, she might also need an educational psychologist and a special ed teacher.”

  He looked at Eva. “‘Special ed’ is slang for ‘special education.’ It means teachers who specialize in handling kids with learning disorders.”

  She nodded. All the concepts were clear enough. But…

  “Did you really have people who specialized in all those things?” she asked.

  “Yes, we did,” said the captain. “But we don’t in the here and now—unless someone can generate enough money to make it worth someone’s while to learn how to do them. Or at least some of them. If nothing else, I want to make sure my niece gets the best daycare available. My sister Jill’s willing to quit her job—she works for Grantville’s administration—but she’d rather not because they need the money.”

  He’d hung his hat on a peg when they came into the rathskeller. Now he ran fingers through his thick hair. “Most of all, I don’t want my parents to sell their house—which is what I know they’ll do if I or someone else can’t come up with enough money to take care of Julie properly. It’s right in town so they’d get a small fortune for it.”

  He smiled crookedly. “What’s the world come to when real estate prices in Grantville are like they were in Manhattan or Tokyo back up-time?”

  Eva wasn’t familiar with Manhattan or Tokyo but she understood the point. The value of land in Grantville was higher than it was anywhere else in Europe, and had been for at least the past year. The town that had come from the future was now Europe’s premier tourist attraction—and many of the visitors elected to stay there permanently, if they were rich enough to be able to buy a home or have one built, in the small amount of land that was available.

  “That would probably raise enough,” said Missy.

  “Yeah, it probably would. And then what?” asked Lefferts. “My mom and dad have lived in that house since they got married back in ’73. More’n thirty years ago, now. They love that house—and they have no desire at all to leave Grantville. Which is what they’d have to do, of course, if they sold it.”

  Eva was feeling disoriented again. The Captain Lefferts of folklore was a man who carried out daring escapades, fought duels, seduced noblemen’s wives—half the maidens in Europe, too, if you took the tales seriously—and was either a pirate himself or the bane of pirates, depending on who was telling the story. He was not a man who worried about the well-being of his parents and fretted over providing good care for an afflicted niece.

  Truth be told, it had never occurred to Eva before this very day that Captain Lefferts even had parents or a family. Adventurers of legend never did, really. They just came and went like disembodied phantoms.

  She felt a sudden surge of warmth toward the captain. So she’d been right! He was a nice man. At least, once you got underneath it all.

  She hesitated then. The solution to the captain’s problem was obvious. But Eva was not accustomed to interjecting herself into the affairs of strangers.

  Still…Something about Lefferts made it easy for her to overcome her natural reticence.

  “You should write a book, Captain,” she said. “That would make more money for you than even selling a home in Grantville.”

  Lefferts was staring at her as if she’d turned into a phantom herself.

  So was everyone else, she realized, looking around the table.

  “But it’s so obvious!” she said. “A book titled The Adventures of Captain Lefferts would sell extraordinarily well. And since Captain Lefferts needs the money quickly he could sell all the rights instead of waiting for royalties to come in. Which”—she waggled her hand back and forth, indicating uncertainty—“is probably a risky venture in any event, even with the new laws.”

  Copyright, in the up-time sense of the term, was a new concept in Europe. At the Americans’ insistence, copyright laws had been adopted by the United States of Europe. But whether they would be effective or not was still uncertain. On the other hand, if Lefferts simply sold the rights to his book, the publisher would be able to collect all the money from the sales, at least until pirated editions began to appear. But that always took some time, even without copyright protection, and Eva was sure that a book by the notorious American captain would sell like…

  “You have an expression for it,” she said. “In American idiom, I mean. Sell like some sort of cakes.”

  “Sell like hot cakes,” supplied Missy. She gave her head a sudden quick shake. “Good Lord. Harry…she’s right. If you wrote an autobiography—wouldn’t have to be more than a collection of anecdotes, really; the bestselling titles nowadays have to be short—they’d sell out as fast as they could get printed. I hate to say it, but you’re probably more famous than any up-timer except Mike Stearns. And while everyone knows he’s way more important than you”—she gave him a stern look—“nobody’s ever accused him of fighting a duel because he seduced the wife of a nobleman.”

  “Dammit, that’s not what happened,” Lefferts said, scowling. “The guy was a fuck—fricking wife-beating shith—asswipe before I ever came on the scene. Yeah, fine, I had what they call relations with the lady—but she was a widow by then because I’d already put the fuck—fricking jackass in the ground after he picked a fight with me because I beat him at billiards. Her way of showing gratitude, what it was. I didn’t seduce anybody.”

  Eva clapped her hands with delight. “Oh, that story is even better than the legend! You’d make a fortune!”

  Again, he ran fingers through his hair. This gesture, this time, was more one of exasperation than anxiety. “Look, maybe I would—in theory. But in the real world, I ain’t—I am not—going to be writing any books. Are you kidding? The best grade I ever got on an essay I wrote in high school was a C-minus.”

  Again, he scowled. “And that came from Mr. Wilson in so-called ‘industrial arts’ which is what used to be called ‘wood shop’ and ‘metal shop’ until they started insist
ing you had to write essays as well as make stuff. The best grade I ever got for an essay from Ms. Mailey was a D.”

  He made a snorting sound. “Me? Write a book? Yeah, sure—when pigs start flying.”

  Litsa pointed at Eva. “Have her write it for you. What do you call it? A vampire writer?”

  Missy burst into laughter. “Oh, I like that! ‘Vampire writer! But, no, the actual term is ‘ghost writer.’”

  Missy turned to Eva: “A ghostwriter is someone who actually writes the book while someone else takes the credit for it. They’re often hired by celebrities to write autobiographies for them. The more honest ones don’t try to claim they actually wrote the book. The byline will be something like: ‘as told to’ or ‘as told by.’ In your case, if Harry decided to do it that way, it would be ‘The Adventures of Captain Harry Lefferts, as told to Eva Katherine von Anhalt-Dessau.’”

  Eva shook her head, quite vehemently. “Oh, no! I would not feel right doing that.”

  Lefferts was giving her an intent look. “Why not? You’d be doing all the work. All I’d have to do is brag, which some people claim I’m really good at. Maybe even somebody at this table.”

  “Actually, Harry, you’ve never been much of a braggart,” said Ron.

  His wife gave him a skeptical glance, but Ron shook his head. “No, I mean it. There were always stories about Harry—him and Darryl McCarthy—about as far back as I can remember, in school. That was true even when I was there, which was years after Harry and Darryl graduated. But I don’t remember anyone ever saying that Harry and Darryl were the actual source of the stories.”

  “We weren’t, usually,” said Harry. “That’s because we’d either have gotten into trouble or it was something that only…Well, my dad taught me that some things a guy does he just doesn’t talk about or he’s a jerk.”

  He’d looked away from Eva for a moment, but now he was giving her that same intent look again.

  “Can you write well?” he asked.

  “She is famous for it!” said Litsa. “In her whole family—mine, too, and several others. Eva is a tireless—what’s the word for it in English? I know there is one because I have heard it. Correspondinger, something like that.”

  “Correspondent,” said Missy. “It can either mean a news reporter or just someone who writes a lot of letters.”

  “Yes! That’s Eva! She’s usually quiet in conversations—not like today, and what’s gotten into you, Eva?—but she’s always writing to someone. And the letters are marvelous. I know, I’ve gotten many of them. Well-written, interesting—she’s very, how do you say it? observant, I think—and there’s always something funny.”

  “It’s a deal, then,” said Lefferts. “But I’m not doing anything crooked. Nobody’s ever accused me of being a liar and I’m not about to start. So we’ll do it like Missy says—‘Adventures of me, as told to Eva.’ Make clear that she wrote it, not me. And we’ll split the money fifty-fifty. I wouldn’t feel right taking more than that, since I’m not doing anything except shooting my mouth off.”

  Shooting my mouth off was another colloquialism that Eva was unsure about, but she hardly noticed because she was in the grip of vast uncertainty. She felt like she’d been tossed out to sea in a tiny lifeboat.

  “But—but—but—” She took a deep breath, and calmed herself. “I’m sorry. It’s a fascinating idea, but…” Firmly, she shook her head. “The captain said he needed the money quickly. But if he is to serve the Stones as a security chief in Lorraine he will need to be leaving soon. We would not have time for him to finish telling me all his tales.”

  “You will have plenty of time!” said Litsa. She beamed at the young Stone couple. “Since I need to accompany this expedition in order to write about it for Simplicissimus and you need to accompany me because I need a companion for such a journey. So you can interview the captain along the way.”

  Ron and Missy Stone looked at each other. Ron shrugged. “What the hell,” he said. “The publicity can’t hurt. And since we’re a married couple Litsa and Eva can use us as chaperones so nobody’ll squawk that anything’s improper.”

  Missy looked at Litsa. Then at Eva. Then at Captain Lefferts.

  Then beamed herself. “This is a trip. Okay, then, it’s all settled.”

  Chapter 5

  December 12, 1635

  Gerry Stone finished reading the letter and set it down on the side table next to his chair. The letter had been written by his oldest brother Frank and handed to him by Ron, who was the middle brother of the three.

  “Okay. I’d say that establishes this guy Vincente’s credentials as well as you could ask for. He started off as Frank and Giovanna’s captor, during which time he treated them as well as possible, and then wound up helping Harry and the others to get them out of captivity. So we owe him. Big time.”

  “We owe Harry, too,” said Ron.

  “Yeah, we do. That whole Wrecking Crew of his, even more. Half of them got killed trying to rescue Frank and Giovanna.” Gerry leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “You want to set up some kind of fund for them? You know—what the cops call a widows and orphans fund. At least on TV that’s what they call it.”

  “We can’t,” said Missy. She was sitting next to Ron on a divan facing Gerry. The piece of furniture was down-time made but modeled on an up-time stuffed sofa. The things were still fiendishly expensive but they were staying at the fanciest hotel in Magdeburg. Had it been left up to Ron, they’d have checked into a much cheaper hostelry, but Missy had put her foot down.

  We’re some of the richest people in Europe, and screw it, I’m not risking bedbugs. Just suck it up, hippie husband of mine. You can be thrifty some other way.

  Ron might have argued the point, but Missy was usually not given to extravagant spending. If anything, she was on the frugal side herself. There were some matters, however, on which she thought pinching pfennigs was stupid—and flirting with unnecessary insects was one of them.

  “Why can’t we?” asked Gerry.

  “Because there aren’t any widows and orphans,” replied his brother. “At least not that Harry or either one of the two guys who’re still with him know about. They were all loners except for the Sutherland couple, who didn’t have any kids. And both of them are dead now. Juliet was killed in Rome during the first rescue attempt, and her husband George was killed later in Italy when the pope was attacked. As far as Harry and Donald and Matija know, there aren’t any family members to be supported. Or at least they don’t know who they are or even where to look for them.”

  Gerry shook his head. He was only seventeen years old, but by now, more than four years after the Ring of Fire, he was no stranger to the harshness of the seventeenth century. He suffered himself from PTSD due to the death of a man in Rome whose head he’d more-or-less blown off. In a good cause, sure—keeping the pope from getting assassinated. Gerry still had recurring flashbacks and nightmares about it and thought he probably would for the rest of his life. That killing was at least partly responsible for his decision to become a Lutheran pastor.

  He wondered, for a moment, if Harry Lefferts had the same sort of traumatic reactions. He’d been through enough to get them. Lefferts being Lefferts, of course, he’d probably never admit to it. Gerry couldn’t remember a time when macho hadn’t been Harry Lefferts’ middle name.

  He didn’t much like the guy, but…

  “We owe him,” he said firmly. “And I assume you’ve got something in mind, or you wouldn’t have called me up here from Jena.”

  “How’s university life treating you?” asked Missy.

  Gerry chuckled. “The University of Jena ain’t like WVU, I can tell you that. Or any other up-time university I ever heard about, except maybe Oxford and Cambridge. And why do I get the feeling you’re dodging the question?”

  Ron and Missy looked at each other.

  “Just tell him,” Missy said. “All of it at once. The business with Harry’s the least of it.”
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  His brother tugged his earlobe. “It’s like this, Gerry. We gave you a sketch of what Rebecca and Ed want us to do in Hesse-Kassel.”

  “Yeah, I got that. I think they’re probably spooking at shadows, though.”

  Ron shrugged. “Maybe. But even if they are”—he looked at his wife—“me and Missy have been talking about it. The truth is, it’d be good for the whole country to develop a real economic center outside of Magdeburg and the SoTF. Something ‘high tech’—or as close to it as we can get in the here and now, anyway.”

  “Hesse-Kassel has a lot going for it,” said Missy. “For starters, it’s got a ruler with a brain. Whatever you think of her politics—which aren’t actually all that bad, relatively speaking—Amalie Elizabeth is sharp.”

  “That’s what I hear,” Gerry agreed. “What else?”

  “It’s already got a good university.”

  “Marburg. What else?”

  “The population’s fairly sizeable. Kassel has an observatory—the first one ever built in Germany—and a permanent theater building.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. The Ottoneum. And quit dancing around. I get it that Hesse-Kassel provides a basis—probably as good as any in the USE outside Magdeburg and parts of Thuringia—to create a combination of a college town and a high-tech center. So what’s making you twitchy? Neither one of you usually has any trouble getting to the point.”

  Again, his brother and Missy exchanged glances. Then Ron sighed and leaned back in the divan.

  “The more we thought about it, the more Missy and I realized we’re not big enough and rich enough on our own to do what’s needed in Hesse-Kassel.”

  “’Cause it’s not just Hesse-Kassel,” Missy chimed in. “We’ve got Lorraine—hell, pretty much the whole Rhineland—to deal with, too.”

  “And plague isn’t the only problem,” said Ron. “That whole area’s become a witches’ brew of diseases. Typhus probably kills just as many people, and there’s a lot of smallpox outbreaks too.”