by Eric Flint
Oh, damn, damn, damn!
“Well,” she said. “If you’ve been called to your missionary service, then you should do it . . . We’ll all miss you while you’re gone.”
While, not when. Never when. Furiously, she stamped down the remembrance of Benny Pierce’s voice, as it lived in her mind, rendering, “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?” at the Fairgrounds last fall.
While you’re gone. While. Willard Thornton, if you do not come back to me in Time, you’re going to regret it for every moment of the Eternity for which they sealed me to you. While.
May 1633: Fulda
Willard thought that, at least from a distance, Fulda was a pretty place. Getting there had been a pretty decent hike, though, for a guy who wasn’t as young as he used to be. At least, the branch had bought him one of Steve Jennings’ down-time bicycles. He couldn’t ride it a lot of the time, though it did surprisingly well on these plain dirt roads when they were dry and packed. Mud and ruts were different problems, but even then, it was a lot easier to push the thing than it would have been to carry everything he had brought with him on his back.
Willard was transporting a hundred copies of the Book of Mormon. Plus quite a lot more paper, all carefully wrapped in waxed canvas. He didn’t have much more than that, but it was enough. Especially on the up-hill grades. If I had all this in a backpack, he thought to himself, I’d have had a heart attack at least twenty-five miles ago.
The bicycle was good. But a grocery cart would have been even better. Willard could be trundling all his worldly goods with him, like some homeless person in the streets of Charleston.
He headed for the city gate.
The bicycle proved to be the focus of considerable popular interest. Willard had to admit that people of Fulda showed far more curiosity about it than they did about any message he tried to share with them.
* * *
Wesley Jenkins, the NUS civil administrator in Fulda, observed this with profound relief. Derek Utt, the military administrator, as a kind of precaution, tried to make sure that there was at least one up-time soldier in sight whenever Willard was out door-to-dooring.
* * *
By the time Willard left at the end of the month, he had distributed a lot of the one-page flyers and two-page brochures. He didn’t know whether the families had kept them. No one at all had accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon or invited him for a follow-up visit. He believed that his missionary efforts had probably inspired only the placement of eleven orders at Jennings’ bicycle factory in Grantville.
Oh, well.
He dropped his letters for home off at the post office pickup station in the administration building, remembering Howard’s announcement that if they were going to be using mature men with families as permanent missionaries, then the rules about limiting contact with their families were out. That had been all right for young men just out of high school who needed to grow up in a hurry, but in this new universe it would be counter-productive.
Wes Jenkins had seemed a little worried about bandits and the bicycle, the whole time Willard was in Fulda. About the middle of May, he had suggested that since he was sending Denver Caldwell down to headquarters to deliver some reports, Willard should leave when the kid did. Willard wasn’t finished yet, then. About a week later, Wes had suggested that he should to along with a group of down-time traders. Willard still wasn’t finished yet. When he finally decided that he had accomplished as much in Fulda as he probably could, Wes had given him a map the same afternoon.
Shaking the dust of Fulda from his feet, Willard headed off toward the southeast.
June-July 1633: Würzburg, Franconia
Wes’ directions on how to get from Fulda to Würzburg were pretty good. Willard didn’t gotten lost, but there weren’t any good-sized towns along the route for him to visit, either. He picked up a packet of letters and newspapers that were waiting for him at the post office, caught up on the news from home, and went back to missionizing.
A month later, Willard felt that Würzburg had gone well. After four weeks of work, covering a city with twelve thousand or so residents nearly door-to-door, he was leaving behind not only another batch of flyers and brochures, but numerous small pamphlets and three copies of the Book of Mormon. That did mean, of course, if you reckoned it another way, that he would still be pushing ninety-seven copies of the Book of Mormon on the bicycle when he left. He leaned the bicycle against a tree and sat down to rest his feet.
He was also leaving behind one young man, an orphaned journeyman baker from Silesia who had been washed up in Franconia by the fortunes of war, who was setting out to make an informative visit to Grantville. Franzi would be carrying letters from Willard to the branch, to his family, and to the Grantville Times.
Of course, there were a lot more people in the territory of Würzburg than just in the town itself—about a hundred and eighty thousand of them, Dave Stannard had estimated. But they were scattered in little villages all over the place, maybe a couple hundred people each, on the average.
Willard had already discovered, much to his dismay, that Grantville’s attachment to the installation of signposts and route numbers had not been extended to Franconia. Or maybe the attachment had been extended, but not the actual signposts.
He didn’t fool himself about the reason for his plan of visiting first the big towns; then the smaller towns; then do follow-up visits in the big towns. He was afraid that if he left the main roads, he would get lost. Johnnie F. claimed that he wouldn’t, but Willard wasn’t so sure. Johnnie F. was like a homing pigeon—always had been, even when he was a kid. He was one of those people who just never took a wrong turn. Lesser people appreciated sign posts a lot. Willard hoped that the Franconian economy would pick up enough that the administration could start to install sign posts pretty soon.
August, 1633: Bamberg, Franconia
Willard made it to Bamberg even without signposts, checked in with NUS administration headquarters, said “Hi,” to a couple of old friends he knew from his years of working at the Home Center, and found a place to stay that had a shed in which he could lock up his bicycle.
A copyist who was extracting land title registries for Janie Kacere noted that the American Schwarmgeist, the heretical religious enthusiast of whom they had heard so much, was in town. He did nothing unusual until he finished his shift. Then he went and reported to Councilman Faerber.
* * *
Willard had expected to do his work here just as he had before; to go from one house to the next. During his first week in Bamberg, that was what he had done. This evening, he was looking a little doubtfully at his visitor and saying, “I’m really no good at public speaking. I’m not sure that putting up a booth at the weekly market would be the best thing, either . . .”
About public speaking, he was sure. About the booth at the market though . . . After all, the stake in Fairmont had always had a booth at the Grantville Fair, with volunteers to hand out literature and talk to the visitors. A booth in the marketplace might be a way to reach the villagers, too. A booth might work . . .
The next market day, Willard’s booth, so kindly furnished to him by Councilman Faerber, went well. He handed out a lot of material. He was pleased.
* * *
Councilman Faerber was pleased, also. If he had known that as a token of his gratitude, Willard had given a copy of the Book of Mormon to his wife, the Frau Stadtraetin, and to each of his three adult daughters, his satisfaction would have been notably diminished. Frau Faerber found the book quite fascinating. Sufficiently so that she tucked it safely away beneath her handkerchiefs and collars and advised her married daughters to take the same precaution with their copies.
* * *
The second market day, there was more muttering and unrest around the booth. Stewart Hawker, Bamberg’s “hearts and minds” man, was picking up some worrisome rumors. Not bad enough to bother Vince about, of course. But he sent a worried note off to Johnnie F. in Würzburg. Johnnie F. read it
, took the morning to clear a few urgent items off his desk, and told Scott he was running up to Bamberg for a few days. In the nature of Johnnie F.’s work, he spent a lot of time running all over Franconia. Down-time transportation had eradicated the concept of “tight schedules.” A few days would be a few days, more or less. Scott didn’t give it a second thought.
One of the ongoing problems that plagued Franconia’s senior administrators, both military and civilian, was that their subordinates who hadn’t had up-time military service had been, by and large, brought up on the principle that if you saw a problem, you took care of it yourself, as inconspicuously as possible, without bothering anybody. Scott had said to Steve more than once, “I wish that just occasionally one of them would buck it up the chain. I’d have a lot fewer interesting surprises in the morning briefings if they could just bring themselves to do that. Now and then.”
Johnnie F. wasn’t worried about wasting his time in Bamberg. He and Stewart had plenty to do, even if the Willard problem didn’t turn out to amount to anything. Still, on the third market day, he was in the square. So he got to see it all: the arrival of the mendicant friar who attacked the booth; Willard’s defense of his supplies; the arrival of the city watch; the arrest. He noticed that a lot of people who wouldn’t take Willard’s literature when he was handing it out for free scooped it up eagerly after it had been scattered around on the cobblestones.
The court had to have been fixed in advance, Johnnie F. thought. Otherwise, why would it have been so conveniently in session, fully staffed, with no case before it, waiting for the accused and accusers to arrive? He wrote a note, gave it to Stewart, and sent him off on their best horse.
Stewart had only ridden this route once, the other direction, when he came up to Bamberg from Würzburg. An hour and a half later, he bore left when the road forked. There weren’t any signposts. The left fork looked to be more traveled. It was. But it didn’t lead to Würzburg. That accounted for six hours, right there.
Early September, 1633: Bamberg, Franconia
No NUS cavalry had come to Bamberg in the nick of time. Johnnie F. guessed that his message hadn’t gotten to Würzburg—or, at least, not soon enough for Grantville to Save the Day. Again. The show was going to go on.
They weren’t going to burn Willard. Or hang him. Or behead him. Or anything else that was directly lethal. That far, at least, the NUS had managed to impose its will. Heresy was no longer a civil crime in Franconia. Although the local church authorities, at the friar’s behest, had duly declared him a heretic, the valid statues no longer authorized the civil judges to take action. Willard could believe what he pleased. He was not exactly welcome to believe what he pleased, but he had the system’s grudging assent that the law guaranteed him the right to do so.
However, the civil authorities of Bamberg had drawn a sharp distinction between privately holding a belief and publicly advocating it. Since the persecutions of the late 1620s they were almost all Catholics, the city’s well-to-do Protestants having almost all either fled or been executed as witches.
The Commission’s going to have to do something about that, Johnnie F. reflected as he watched. Willard had been duly tried and condemned for inciting to riot, inflaming public opinion, and a half dozen other charges. They were going to flog him, in public. Everything was ready. The bailiffs hauled him out of the cart, stripped him to the waist, folded him over the block of wood, and tied his wrists to the manacles that would hold him in place.
Johnnie F. left the platform. He walked into the center of the square, taking off his shirt as he went. He knelt next to Willard, on the side where the executioner was standing, and as close as he could put himself. He leaned forward, his arms across the block. There was no way that the executioner could flog Willard without hitting Johnnie F. at the same time.
The executioner looked at the VIP stand. The chief judge raised his hand; then brought it down. The executioner brought the knotted lash down. Again. Again. Until the spectators who had been standing around the square dragged him down to the ground. Along with the VIP stand.
* * *
“Why in hell did you do it?” Saunders Wendell asked.
“I went to six o’clock mass in the morning,” Johnnie F. explained. “I mean, I’ve figured that if I was going to join this church, I was going to do it right. I’d actually go; take the kids; things like that. So I went to mass that day, before they were going to have the whipping. And it came to me, there in church. While I was looking at the big painting behind the altar.”
“What came to you?”
“We’re going about this wrong. Okay, we’ve all been brought up to think that the proper thing is that when the saved damsel thanks the hero, he blushes, scrapes the toe of his shoe in the dust, and says, ‘Oh, shucks, Ma’am, t’warn’t nothin.’ We were brought up on cowboy movies. Somewhere inside, we know it’s the proper answer.”
Johnnie F. shifted on the cot. He had a suspicion that even if his heart and mind had no regrets, his body was going to be registering protests about the events in Bamberg’s market square for a long time to come. Not to mention those that Tania was sure to file, once she’d made sure that he was going to live.
“It was the picture. Everything in it was, well, flashy, you know. Showy. All the saints and the angels were really strutting their stuff. Doing miracles. Like the Old Testament prophets, calling down lightnings against the priests of Baal. No hiding your light under a bushel, for these guys. They’re really into ‘show and tell.’ And it’s mostly the ‘show.’ They’ve got to see it. Mumbling about it isn’t going to work.”
He looked around the room. “Hey. Where am I, anyway? And where’s Willard? Is he okay?”
“It’s Sunday morning. You’re in the infirmary at a convent—the local branch nunnery, or maybe a chapter of the organization, if you can call it that, of the ladies that you adopted the kids from in Würzburg. The nuns patched you back together. And Willard. He’s in the room next door. The ladies patched him and salved him and bandaged him just like they did you. That was all done before we got here. But we’ve still put a guard on his door, just in case.”
“When did you two get here?”
“About an hour after your friends and admirers, whoever they are—and that’s a little mysterious, right there, by the way—had tackled the local judiciary and pretty well swamped them. The city government seems to be having a revolution, from what we can tell. Unless it gets too bloody, we’re staying out of it until things shake down. I’ve sent to Würzburg for some more soldiers, just in case, but the truth is we don’t have enough NUS soldiers to garrison a city. Not even one, if we were all together, and we’re spread out over nearly twenty-five thousand square miles. We borrowed a company of Swedes who were just passing through.”
Scott Blackwell laughed. “So they’re standing out in the courtyard, whatever, of this convent, singing Swedish hymns. That’s the racket you’re hearing, if you noticed it. The nurse nun said that the music was maechtig schoen. Who would have thought that people said ‘mighty purty’ so long ago and far away? It was cute. I’ll tell the story more than once. But running Franconia on sweetness and light, charm and persuasion, isn’t going to cut it. What we really need is a regiment. Or two.”
“What we need,” said Johnnie F., “is a hero. A big heroic hero. Us ordinary guys are all well and good for most purposes, but if we’re going to get away with this, if we’re going to get away with everything that Mike Stearns is trying for these folks, that is. We need a hero. A huge, dramatic, bigger-than-life, grab the imagination, honest-to-God, hero! Ask Arnold Bellamy to tell Mike that, will ya’? When he gets back home.”
Suits
Eric Flint
After Arnold Bellamy finished his report, Mike Stearns leaned back in his chair and folded his hands, fingers interlaced, across his belly.
“Thanks, Arnold. I’ll need to think this over and talk to Ed”—he nodded in the direction of Ed Piazza, sitting in another chair— �
��and then I’ll get back to you on it.”
Recognizing a polite dismissal, Arnold rose from his own chair. “Thank you, Mr. President. I realize you’re very busy, but I’d appreciate a response from you as soon as possible. I’m afraid things are going to start blowing wide open in Franconia pretty soon.”
After Bellamy had left the room, Mike got a slight grimace on his face. “Let’s hope so.”
He swiveled his chair and looked out the window. “Suits,” he muttered.
He hadn’t intended to, but he’d spoken loudly enough for Ed to overhear the last word.
“He’s not a bad guy, Mike,” Piazza said mildly. “In fact, I think Arnold’s doing as well as possible, under the circumstances.”
“No, he isn’t,” Mike replied forcefully. He unlaced his fingers and held up a hand, forestalling a protest. “Oh, sure, he’s doing his job well enough. Like you say, probably as well as anyone could. The problem is that it’s the wrong job in the first place.”
Ed cocked his head, just a little, and raised his eyebrows, just a little. It was a familiar expression, that translated more-or-less into: And now will you clarify that quintessentially Stearnsish cryptic comment?
“’I’m afraid things are going to start blowing wide open,’” Mike quoted. “For Pete’s sake, Ed, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing over there in Franconia. Blowing the setup wide open, so we can piece it back together again the way we want it. More or less, anyway. Arnold’s like an engineer assigned to cut a road through a mountain who’s now explaining to me that he’s afraid the dynamite’s about to go off. Well, hey, no kidding. If I wanted to be churlish about it, I could add: ‘It’s about time.’”