Grantville Gazette, Volume I

by Eric Flint

To Gerhard Eichhorn, the gloom in Steel Mountain House was as palpable as a cold north wind along the Rhine.

  Deservedly so, he thought, when the family's only son is about to die. For four days Simon von Hardenrat had become weaker and sicker. Gerhard had been called in on the second day when the family became alarmed at Simon's high fever. Nothing Gerhard had attempted had seemed to work, despite the new medical knowledge he had gained thanks to his trip to Grantville in 1632.

  What good is knowledge if it only informs your own helplessness?

  "Any change?" Gerhard asked as he entered Simon's bedroom. Peter von Hardenrat, Simon's father, shook his head wearily. Peter had relieved his wife at his son's sickbed sometime in the early morning.

  "No major change, Herr Eichhorn. The fever is no worse, but no better, either. We keep bathing him with cool distilled water, as per your instructions. But I fear the infection is spreading. And his neck is starting to bulge."

  Gerhard Eichhorn sighed. "It is as I feared. He may have either diphtheria or a very severe bacterial infection. Something the Americans called Staphylococcus aureus."

  Peter nodded. "Is there anything we can do? Besides pray?"

  Was it time to try again? thought Gerhard.

  The first experiments had not been very successful, leading Gerhard to suspect that the Americans had been right about the need for purification. But the Antonite monks had been working for almost two years with the Penicillium Notatum cultures. Maybe they had had better fortune.

  "Perhaps." Gerhard said. "How well do you know the praeceptor of the Antonites in the hospital on Schildergasse?"

  * * *

  "Surely you're jesting, Father. Could it really be that simple?"

  Gysbert nodded. "It seems so, Wolf. Borax is the solution to our contamination problem. And not only does it limit most contaminants at only two-tenths of one percent, but in combination with the pressed pea juice you discovered as a medium, the yields are thirty to forty percent above baseline. Clearly borax not only lowers contaminant levels. It also acts like a fertilizer to improve production. We can start thinking about experiments with people soon."

  Wolf cocked his head. "Is that wise, Father? I thought the literature said the penicillin had to be purified to be effective."

  Gysbert smiled. "I think the literature may be wrong, Wolf. Remember that cut I had last week? It became a bit infected. So I decided to do a little experimentation on myself. What do you think?" Gysbert held up his finger for inspection. Clearly the cut had healed well, with no sign of redness.

  "But . . . I thought the Americans said . . ."

  Gysbert smiled again. "Perhaps the Americans don't know everything, Wolf."

  "Father Gysbert?"

  Gysbert and Wolf looked at the door. Dietrich Tils, the praeceptor's secretary, was standing in the doorway.

  "Yes, Dietrich?"

  "The praeceptor wishes to see you. Immediately."

  * * *

  "And if Hardenrat's son dies, Gerhard, what then?"

  Gerhard shrugged. "He is a fair man, Gysbert. And one of Cologne's most prominent citizens. If you save his son, the Antonites will gain a powerful friend indeed. Isn't that so, Praeceptor?"

  Matthias Wagener nodded. "And he is indeed a fair man, Gysbert. If we try and do not save his son, he will not hold it against us. But if he discovers we could have done something and did not try . . ."

  "Fine. Let us try then. But we must remember that penicillin leaves the body very quickly. The boy will have to have additional doses of the juice every three hours. How should we administer it?"

  "As throat and nose drops, I think," Gerhard said. "Do you have enough?"

  Gysbert nodded. "Just enough for ten days, I think. If he isn't cured by then . . . may God have mercy on his soul."

  Magdeburg,

  January 1635

  "Holy crap, James, is this for real?"

  James Nichols nodded at Mike Stearns. "As real as it gets, Mike. This hospital in Cologne is saving lives using home-made penicillin." He smiled. "I told you sending out those cultures would pay off."

  "But I thought we needed some high tech to make penicillin."

  "Well, you do to make pure penicillin. But this stuff is pretty crude. Turns out this monk, an Antonite named Gysbert Schotten, is a pretty decent jack-leg biochemist. So through a bit of luck and a lot of hard work he was able to make enough crude penicillin to start supplying most of the hospitals and physicians in Cologne. It won't be enough for a nation of millions, but it's certainly enough to take care of a city of forty thousand."

  "So, should we start making this stuff?"

  James smiled. "We already have." He shook his head. "Who would have believed it? Pea juice and borax to improve the yield. One of those 'duh' moments, like Greg Ferrara had. It might not be as effective as pure penicillin, but if we need an antibiotic that we can use topically, it should work in a high percentage of cases. And the nice thing is, we can spread this around to a lot more places than sulfanilamide or chloramphenicol. We just need to try and make sure that people use it wisely. Back in the fifties they were putting penicillin in everything from toothpaste to lipstick."

  When James had left Mike walked to the window of his office. Pea juice and borax. Not something that had been in any of the books in Grantville, that was for sure. Synergism. Up-time ideas fusing with down-time hard work and perseverance.

  Smiling, Mike Stearns turned back to his desk.

  Little Angel

  By Kerryn Offord

  Grantville,

  January 1634

  Maria Helena Kolb slowly searched the line of trees. Somewhere, hidden in the shadows, she was sure Benji Matheny was hiding in ambush. Time to send in the cannon fodder. "Daisy, Regina, when I give you the word, I want you to run around that tree over there and, if you find Benji, throw your snow balls at him." Maria Helena smiled at the younger girls. "Do you understand?"

  Both girls held up their hands, each holding a carefully crafted snowball, and nodded.

  "Right, then wait a moment for me to make some more snowballs."

  Daisy and Regina waited impatiently while Maria Helena finished shaping some snowballs. "Are you ready yet, Maria?" Daisy asked.

  Maria Helena checked her access to her ammunition, then taking a snowball in each hand, nodded.

  Daisy and Regina burst out from behind cover and ran for the tree Maria Helena had indicated.

  Benji stood up and opened fire on them. Maria Helena, still behind cover, was presented with Benji's back as a target. She, quite naturally, took full advantage of the exposed target, and opened fire.

  It was a massacre. Three to one odds, even if two of the three were barely four years old, were enough to completely trounce eight year old Benji.

  Totally outgunned, and short of ammunition, Benji took to his heels, the girls in pursuit.

  * * *

  "Where do you think you're going, young man?"

  Benji threw a look over his shoulder. The girls were close now. He ran up to his Great Grandma Aggie and took shelter behind her. Peeking round from behind her he could see Maria Helena idly tossing a snowball in her right hand. It wasn't right that a girl should be able to throw as well as she could. "They ganged up on me, Granny Aggie. It's not fair." Benji noted that Maria Helena was patiently waiting for him to make a break for the house. "Granny, tell Maria Helena to drop that snow ball."

  Aggie Beckworth smiled at Maria Helena. "Okay, girls, you've had your fun. You can drop that snow ball you're tossing, Maria Helena."

  Maria Helena looked from the snow ball in her right hand to Benji, who was making faces at her from the protection of Granny Aggie. With a sigh she gave it one last toss and let it fall to the ground.

  Benji slid out from behind Granny Aggie and . . .

  Thwak!

  The snow ball Maria Helena had been hiding behind her back was in flight almost before Benji stepped clear of Aggie. It hit him flush in the face. The snowball Benji had been in the act
of throwing went wide.

  * * *

  Aggie Beckworth struggled for breath as she laughed at the shock and surprise on Benji's face. She hastily grabbed a handkerchief from a cuff and coughed into it. It took a few minutes for the coughing spasm to come to an end. Short of breath, Aggie looked down at the anxious faces. "It's all right, children. Just a bad cough. Now get inside where it's warm. We don't want you catching a cold."

  Benji, Daisy and Regina ran up to the house, shaking the snow from their clothes before going indoors. Maria Helena gave Aggie a searching look before walking back to the house. Every few steps she looked back to make sure Aggie was following.

  * * *

  Lora Matheny looked from the blouse in her hands to her daughter. "Look at this blouse, it's filthy. How did you get it so dirty?"

  Scuffing her feet, Daisy looked up at Lora through her eyelashes. "Me, Regina and Maria Helena had a snowball fight with Benji."

  Lora sighed. She had a pile of washing to do, and she was sure her washing machine was on its last legs. The weather was lousy for drying clothes, so she had washing draped all around the house drying. The laundry door was sticking, and with her husband Jeff still working in Nürnberg, she'd asked her father if he could fix it. He'd promised to come in after work, and that meant she'd probably have an extra for dinner. Two, if he brought Uncle Stu along to help.

  "Go and play with Regina and Maria Helena then, and try to stay clean."

  "Yes, Mommy." Daisy slipped away.

  Lora walked over to her favorite chair and slumped into it. She was exhausted. It wasn't that the kids were a real problem. They could be trouble, but that, as Jeff always said, was in the design specifications. It was everything that was getting her down. Yesterday she'd visited her mother at the assisted living center. If you could call what her mother was doing living. Her half-sister Karrie was just as bad. The rental income from Mom's home was contributing to their care, but things were tight, so tight that Grandma Aggie had moved in so that her place could be rented out. It made for a crowded household, but she wouldn't have it any other way. Family was important. If only the sun would shine so she could get the washing dry.

  A few days later

  Dell Beckworth lowered his pack to the ground. Then, rifle in hand, he joined his brother at the edge of the ring wall. Together they looked out at the scene below. "Any idea why our bit of hunting ground is suddenly worth twenty percent more than last year?"

  "Nope." Stu kicked away a bit more of the unstable cliff edge. The brothers watched the loose soil and rocks fall to the ground a couple of hundred feet below. "The way we're losing bits of it over the ring wall, I'm surprised anybody wants to buy it."

  "Yeah, but the letter came from someone." Dell reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the offending letter and reread it. "Yep. It still says Joachim Schmidt wants to buy our bit of dirt. Any idea who Joachim Schmidt is?"

  Stu shook his head. "Nope, and Mrs. G. doesn't know who he is either."

  Dell raised his eyebrows at that little tidbit. In his admittedly limited experience, Mrs. Gundelfinger knew everybody and everything that was happening in Grantville. "What? Something the marvelous Mrs. G. doesn't know? That's a first."

  "Hey, don't knock her information network, Dell. It saved us a hell of an embarrassing interview when you dropped that letter of credit from the Mehlis City Council right under her feet."

  Dell shuddered. That had been a bad moment. "Don't remind me. The way she picked it up. Looked at it, then smiled up at us, and casually asked if we'd bought a bridge recently still gives me the heebie-jeebies."

  "Yeah, that was a nasty moment. But things got better when she asked us into her office. Hell, she even paid us something for the information the Mehlis city council had Derek Modi designing their new bridge. I'd say having Mrs. G. accepting us as clients is the first bit of good luck we've had in years."

  Dell folded up the letter and put it away. "Yeah, lucky. From the latest financial report she gave us, we could be out of debt inside ten years." He spat over the edge of the ring wall. "Shit, I'm fifty-five this year. I want to be more than just out of debt in ten years time."

  "Ain't that the truth? Still, if we accept that offer for our bit of hunting ground we could give it to Mrs. G. to invest."

  Dell paused to survey what he could see of their land. It was typical West Virginia hill country. Wooded hills that looked like inverted ice-cream cones. "Yeah, except she gave us a 'don't sell' warning even before that letter arrived."

  "Makes you wonder what she knows that we don't? But I bet Mr. Too Big For His Britches has the same information."

  Dell grinned at the name they had for one of the more successful opportunists in Grantville. Both of them hoped to one day see Mr. Too Big have a Too Big fall. "Yeah, as an ex-county commissioner he'll have the contacts. You think Joachim Schmidt's a front for him?"

  "Yeah, I'd bet money, if I had any. It's unusual for the bastard to offer over the odds though. That means he must be in a hurry to close the deal." He cast a curious gaze over their acreage. "I can't think what could raise the value though. You can't build on it. You can't really harvest the timber. It's too much trouble to selectively log, and if you did any clear felling, the hill would slide out from under you." He looked down the slope, towards a rocky outcrop. "The only thing I can think of is that that seam of coal."

  Both of them looked in the direction of the dog-hole mine where they'd harvested coal to heat the hunting hut that was now lost up-time. Stu shook his head. "But Mrs. G. says we don't own the coal. The mineral rights on most of our land were owned by the coal company, and they escheated to the government."

  "Most of the mineral rights?"

  Stu sighed. "Yeah, most. Great-grandfather John Beckworth didn't sell the rights on the piece he bought way back when he first settled in the area."

  "Don't tell me. That bit was left up-time."

  Stu nodded. "An accurate survey might show some of the bit left behind still holds its mineral rights, but I wouldn't bet on it."

  "Shit, our luck stinks," Dell said. "Come on. We've seen all there is to see. We might as well head home. Just keep an eye out for dinner."

  * * *

  "Hurry up and finish your breakfast, Daisy. You don't want to be late."

  Daisy struggled to swallow. She shook her head. "No, Mommy." Toddler Haven was a fun place to go, but Mom only let her go one morning a week. She wished it could be more often since most of her friends went there. Daisy rubbed her jaw. It hurt. She looked at the remains of her breakfast. She didn't think she could eat any more, so she slipped from her chair and ran over to give her mother a hug.

  Lora hugged her back. Then she helped Daisy and her adopted sister, Regina, into their winter jackets and helped them put on their mittens. Once the girls were dressed for the elements, Lora put on her heavy coat and they set out for Toddler Haven.

  * * *

  "Mrs. Matheny, Gaby McPherson calling from Toddler Haven . . ."

  "Hi, Gaby. I hope Daisy and Regina are behaving themselves."

  "Actually, it's about Daisy that I'm calling, Mrs. Matheny. Mrs. Beckworth has taken Daisy to the hospital. She said to tell you to get there as soon as you can. Regina is still here at Toddler haven, but Mary Moran says she'll take her home with her."

  Lora gulped for air. "Can you give me any idea of what's wrong with Daisy, Gaby?"

  "Not really, Mrs. Matheny. Daisy complained of neck pains and a sore jaw. And she's wet herself. She was awfully embarrassed about that and the fuss Mrs. Linder and Mary were making. It might just be a bug that's going around, Mrs. Matheny, but Mrs. Linder insisted Daisy should see a doctor."

  "Right. Thank you for calling, Gaby, and thank Mary for me. Bye."

  Lora hung up the phone and stood staring into the distance.

  Aggie placed a hand on her shoulder. "Is something the matter, Lora?"

  "They've sent Daisy to the hospital, Gran."

  "Come on, we'll have to
pack a bag for Daisy in case they want to keep her overnight, and something for you. You'll want to stay with Daisy. Don't worry about Tommy, I'll take care of him." Aggie hesitated. "I'll give your father a call. You don't want to be alone at a time like this."

  * * *

  Dr. Susannah Shipley was nearing the end of her shift in the emergency room when Daisy Matheny was brought in by a panicky Heather Beckworth. By the time Heather finished her description of Daisy's symptoms she was already fearful of the probable diagnosis. Susannah tried to put Daisy at ease while she did a quick examination. She paid special attention to the jaw and abdomen. Next, she asked Daisy whether she had hurt herself recently. Daisy showed Susannah the sore finger she had scraped while picking up snow during a snowball fight. It had happened three days ago. Susannah made a quick mental calculation and came to a shocking conclusion. This little girl was probably going to die. But she wasn't going to give up without a fight.

  "Nurse, find me a critical care bed for Daisy Matheny and admit her immediately. I need to call the pharmacy."

  Nurse Annette Salerno grabbed a phone and started to make arrangements to admit Daisy.

  Susannah used another phone to call the pharmacy. "Raymond? I've got an emergency. Do we have any plasma in stock from someone we know had a tetanus booster shot? The more recent the better."

  "What sort of emergency, Susannah?" Raymond Little asked.

  "A four-year-old girl with acute tetanus poisoning. I know the patient. She hasn't had any vaccinations against tetanus. She should have had her first DTaP shot just before the Ring of Fire, but she was ill."

  "Oh shit! Right. Just a moment and I'll check."

  Susannah waited impatiently for Raymond to come back to the phone.

  "We've running low, but I can send you a couple of units. The antibody counts might not be very high though. It's been almost four years since the donors had their booster shots."

  "That's better than I expected, Raymond. It'll have to do, since it's all we've got."

  * * *

  Dell Beckworth left Lora at Daisy's bedside and made his way to Dr. Shipley's office. "Can you tell me what's wrong with Daisy, Doctor?"