Grantville Gazette V

by Eric Flint

  Some of the Germans doing the digging obviously knew the victims, because when they found bodies, they knew their names. Some of them broke down pretty badly, and Pastor Decker had his work cut out comforting them.

  II. Relations with the Castle

  There were observers on the cliff top overhead all the time. We saw them when we arrived in the morning, and made a point of waving to them in a friendly way before we went to meet with their work party below. They watched us pull together the temporary bridge. In midmorning, just before eleven, a delegation came down, a dozen or so. Most of them were there to join in the work, but there was also an officer and two guards.

  The officer's name is Franz Saalfelder, and he's the same guy our first crew met with last Thursday. I think his last name isn't really a family name, but that it really means he's from the town of Saalfeld, the town just to our east. He's a captain of the house guard in the service of Graf Ludwig Guenther. Graf means count, and he's the ruler of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. I suppose you could say that Grantville is now in the county of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.

  One interesting thing I found is that the people in Schwarzburg all seem to refer to the Ring of Fire as "the pit." They saw the flash and heard the boom, same as we did, but to them, it was like a great pit opened up and there we were at the bottom. As near as I can figure out, the captain had the following subjects on his mind:

  First, he is really worried about resupply. The Ring of Fire cut his primary supply line, and getting food in over the hills is going to be very expensive. Down in the Saale Valley they grow grain and vegetables, but up here in the hills the farming they do is mostly livestock. The economy is largely forestry and mining. I'm guessing that the Schwarza valley has always been a food importer.

  Second, he is worried about refugees. We aren't the only ones worried about those raiders in the farmland to the north and east. They've driven people from their homes, and some of those have come up the Schwarza valley to the area protected by the castle. The resupply problem would be serious without the refugees, but with them, everything is worse.

  And, of course, he's worried about us. I told him that we were worried about him too, since he has the high ground, but that I thought we were better off cooperating. I told him about the skirmishes we've had with the raiders, and said that we would do everything we could do to make sure that they never got through Grantville to him.

  That led him to ask about our weapons. He said his scouts had been all the way around the Ring of Fire, or the pit, depending on whose words you use, and that they had heard stories about some of our skirmishes. All I had was a pistol, and I'm no great shot. I gave him a demonstration, then pulled the clip from my gun and let him handle it. He seemed fascinated by the idea of putting the bullet, powder and primer all together in one cartridge and also by the complexity of the pistol mechanism.

  The captain was curious about what the power plant was, and I had no good way to explain that. He had already guessed that it was some kind of mill or forge. I told him that it was a mill, but that I didn't know how to explain what it was that we make there. All I could do is give him a name for it. So, now it is an Electrischemühle. I explained that when he sees bright lights at night, those lights burn the electricity they make there.

  One thing the captain let slip may be of importance. The graf is away north, fighting the Catholic armies and trying to keep the Swedes out of his lands, despite the fact that they are officially on his side. So the captain is almost on his own. There is a garrison at Rudolstadt, and he's managed to reestablish communications with them.

  I explained to him that the road crew would get to work Monday with his permission, to build a road up to Schwarzburg. Then I explained that it might alarm the Germans because we would use machines.

  III. The Military Threat

  I only went up to the castle when we took up bodies. Even then, I wanted to make sure we got the body bags back, so I didn't see that much. Yes, they have cannon, but how many I can't say. I saw only one, from a distance. It was tarnished to a brown shade that looked like brass or bronze and it had a barrel perhaps four feet long and a foot around at the breach. I couldn't see the muzzle or any cannon balls, so I don't know the caliber. It didn't seem right to be nosing into things like that, what with the job of getting the body out of the body bag and into a burial shroud.

  IV. Church Relations

  I don't know if anyone in Grantville has thought through what's going to happen between us and the churches of this land. I remember studying in Sunday School about the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and how hard it was for the Church to come to grips with religious diversity.

  Pastor Decker didn't get to this subject right away, but you could tell from the way he asked it that the answers we gave would be important. He asked what religion we were in Grantville, after he'd noted that he understood that we were using the Gregorian calendar, which he thinks of as the Catholic calendar.

  I explained that I was Catholic and so is Miles Drahuta, and then I had to ask around. Ron Koch turned out to be Lutheran, Brick Bozarth was Church of Christ, which I had to explain was another Protestant denomination, and Pete McDougal added to the confusion by saying that his wife was Catholic but that he was more of a non-practicing Presbyterian than anything.

  The pastor wondered if the fact that more of us were Catholic than any other religion was the reason that Grantville used the Gregorian calendar. I explained that the whole world switched to that calendar long before I was born, not because of religion, but because it worked better than the old one.

  The pastor was very confused by the fact that we could work and live together not caring that our neighbors or coworkers had different religions. It took me a while to figure out how to answer him, but I think my answer was good. I told him that we have only to look back on the Thirty Years' War and all the other wars of religion to see how failure to tolerate religious difference can ruin entire nations.

  He asked how could I, a Catholic, justify helping to properly bury Lutherans, when my church had declared that they were certain to burn in Hell. I asked him how could I, as a Christian, refuse to help properly bury another human, as all of us are made in God's image.

  He needed to probe the limits of our toleration, asking if we would accept Anabaptists or Mennonites, to which I said that we would welcome them. He asked about Muscovites too, and it took me a bit to figure out that he meant Russian Orthodox. I told him that I thought that we had several Orthodox Christian families in town. Then he asked about Jews. I said that there was a Jewish family that had been in Grantville for many years, the Roths, and that the Abrabanel family had just arrived in town from Holland and already Rebecca Abrabanel is part of our government. He asked if I would tolerate the Jews if they came in numbers enough to build a synagogue, and I said of course. Then he asked about Turks, and I said that I didn't know if there were any Muslims in town but again, if they were there, they could build a mosque.

  I think some of our clergy are going to have to get together with the German clergy and have some very long talks.

  4

  To be delivered to Martin Mühler at the Maegdleinschule, Eisfeld:

  Written on this twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord 1631, or the second day of June in the Catholic calendar of Pope Gregory. I will explain in a moment why I mention this other date.

  Martin, thank you for replying so promptly to my last letter. I wrote that letter in a state of great alarm. At the time I wrote it, I knew nothing about what had happened but what I could see with my own eyes. Now, Martin, I have actually been down in the pit and I have spoken with those who are within.

  So much has happened since I last wrote. Captain Saalfelder of the castle guard has sent good men to scout around the place we at first thought might be the very pit of Hell, and even into the pit. We have found a roundabout way to get messages safely to and from Rudolstadt

  Thursday, we had visitors from within the pit, and althoug
h they spoke mostly English and had almost no German, they had a letter written to the captain in excellent German. It was a most remarkable letter, claiming to be from the Grantville Emergency Committee and asking us for permission to build a road up the wall of the pit. The captain showed me the letter, and it was remarkable even to look at. The paper was the most perfect, and it was printed, not written, using a humanist style of type. The signature was even more remarkable—it was signed by a woman, Rebecca Abrabanel. Is that name not Jewish? Also, the letter was dated using the Catholic calendar!

  As I wrote before, several houses fell into the pit when it opened. It has fallen on us to give a proper burial to those who fell in those first horrible moments that Sunday noon. Our visitors said that we were welcome to come down to try to find the bodies, and they said they would try to get us help. Friday morning, one brave man, the farmer Johann Schwarz went down. His wife was one of those lost. He came back, reporting that there were bodies. More important, he came back unharmed, so Friday afternoon, six of us went down.

  More of us went back Saturday. Not too long after we had started, we were joined by five men from this strange new town of Grantville. Even the names of the men were strange, Mark O'Reilly said the name was Irish, Pete McDougal has a name befitting one of the Scots mercenaries this accursed war has brought to our land, and the names Brick Bozarth and Miles Drahuta I cannot place at all. All of them were from this country called West Virginia, which is in a kingdom called the United States of America which is, indeed, in America across the ocean.

  Everything about these men was remarkable. Their clothing, their tools, what they did first, how they worked, but at times, it was as if they were working miracles. This man Mark O'Reilly said that all of the others had been trained in rescue work because they were miners by trade. All of them had helmets and vests that were bright colors, so that if any of them needed to be rescued, they could be found easily.

  The first thing they did was a great puzzle. Instead of joining immediately in the search they began to string ropes. Safety ropes, Mr. O'Reilly called them. Then they built a bridge across the foot of the great new waterfall the Schwarza has made where it falls into the pit. Mark explained that he did not want more people to die or be injured in searching for the dead. Indeed, these ropes and the bridge they built were a great help.

  Their tools were amazing. The most fearsome was a saw. It sounds so simple to call it just a saw, because it had an engine on it that roared most unpleasantly. Although it was small enough to hold easily with two hands, it could cut through a tree as big around as a man in only minutes.

  They had two of these saws and also a machine that was so simple that I believe one of our smithies could easily build one. They call it a come-along because it makes things come along. The machine had a lever, a ratchet, and a windlass drum, with cable and hooks, so that one man could lift a ton if he worked patiently with the lever and ratchet. The rope was made of steel wire, but that was the only new idea in this machine.

  Their shovels were more finely forged than any shovel I have seen, but they were just shovels. By the end of the day, they had helped us recover five more bodies. Three of those would have taken days to get out without the saw and the come-along.

  These men claimed special training in what they call rescue and recovery work, and they had with them two items that were horrible proof of that. They called them body bags. These were made of the finest oiled canvas, with a remarkable sliding fastener to hold each closed, and with many handles very finely sewn to the sides all around. These bags were good for only one thing, and that was for carrying the dead out of difficult places.

  While I am talking about strange tools, I should say something about the engine that is even now being used to build the promised road up from the bottom of the pit to Schwarzburg. It is yellow, and the size of a small hut. For most of last week, it has sat beside a great pile of charcoal near a huge mill building not far below us, doing nothing. On Friday, though, a man came out of the mill building and climbed onto this engine, and it seemed to come to life with a rumble like distant thunder. It pushes things around. It has a great blade, like a broad shovel on the front, and it pushes with the power of many oxen. That first time we saw it used, it was put to use shaping that pile of charcoal.

  Today, as I watch, there are just five men working slowly up the side of one of the mountains within the pit. They are using their marvelous saws to cut the trees in the path of the road they are building. Sometimes they use the come-along to pull the fallen trees where they want them. One of the men is working the great engine I mentioned. With this machine alone, he is doing the work of fifty or one hundred men cutting a road into the side of the mountain. I believe he will complete this road by noon, yet it must be almost a mile in length.

  But, let me say more about my conversation with Mark O'Reilly. Although his German was not good, he had with him a remarkable little book, a dictionary. Part of it contained English words and their German equivalents, and part contained German words and their English equivalents, all organized by the alphabet. There was one problem with this book. His dictionary contained German as it will be spoken more than three centuries in the future. With his bad German and this dictionary, however, we spoke of some of the most remarkable things.

  One curious thing came out. I have been speaking of the pit, because from Schwarzburg, it appears that Grantville lies at the bottom of a great pit that has opened up in our lands. The people from Grantville refer to what has befallen them in different terms. They call it the Ring of Fire because, for a fleeting moment when their town was inexplicably transported to our doorstep, they were surrounded by a strange circle of fire.

  They have no understanding at all of how this happened. Whatever devilment there is behind what happened, whatever God's purpose may be in this, it is no clearer to them than it is to us. They may have wondrous tools, and they do indeed appear to come from our future, but they are afraid of the same things we are., They fear not having enough food to eat, and fear that the war that is sweeping south after the fall of Magdeburg will consume them.

  The people of Grantville know of the war that plagues our lands. They call it the Thirty Years' War, because, from the point of view of their future, it lasted thirty years. Mark O'Reilly says that this war murdered one third of the population of Germany. Yes, murder is the word he used. He said that, from this and other wars of religion, the Church of his day, not just the church of the popes, but also the many Protestant churches have learned that they must tolerate each other even when they disagree deeply about doctrine.

  This is the most remarkable thing of all. In this town of Grantville, there are many Protestant churches and also a Catholic church. He said that the different churches disagree on many matters of theology, but that they have been there for many years, and living in peace despite these differences. All of them have used the Catholic calendar for many years, not because of any Catholic victory, but because they have agreed that Pope Gregory's calendar is more rational than the old calendar.

  Among the men from Grantville working with us, Mark O'Reilly and one other were Catholic, one was Lutheran, one was Presbyterian, which I take to be a kind of Calvinist, and one from some Protestant group called the Church of Christ. Strangely, the Presbyterian said he had a Catholic wife, but even more remarkable than this was the fact that Mark O'Reilly did not know the religions of most of the men he was working with. He had to ask, and he only thought to do so in response to my questions.

  I learned that there are indeed Jews in town. One Jewish family is headed by a goldsmith who has been a respected merchant in town for many years. This Rebecca Abrabanel who signed the letter we saw last week is indeed Jewish, but she and her father are from our world, from Amsterdam. You may measure the warmth of their welcome by the fact that she seems to have taken a very high seat on this emergency committee they have established to rule their town. Mark O'Reilly did say, though, that he thought the head of this
emergency committee, a man named Michael Stearns, was some kind of Protestant.

  Again, note my words. He thought. It seems that he has never inquired about this matter. I am not talking about a man who lacks curiosity or judgment. This man was most curious, deeply concerned about the safety of his men and of the men from Schwarzburg, and very interested to learn what I had to say. Despite this curiosity, despite being well educated, despite the fact that he had a sharp wit, he had never inquired. I can only conclude that we will find this Grantville to be very different from any place we have ever imagined.

  Mark O'Reilly said that he was no scholar of religion, but he knew far more of the Bible than the Catholic laymen I have met. When I questioned how Grantville's religions could be so tolerant, he quoted a document with which I am unfamiliar, saying that all men are made equal, but then he showed how this follows from the book of Genesis, since we are all descended from Adam and Adam himself was created in God's image. The logic of this argument is very compelling. If indeed every man is an image of God himself, not in the idolatrous sense but because that is indeed how God made us, then indeed, it would be disrespectful of God himself for us to treat each other with anything less than respect, even when we may disagree deeply.