Grantville Gazette.Volume XVII (ring of fire)

by Eric Flint

  "The photosensitive paper isn't exactly cheap, Beta."

  Kurt nodded his head rapidly. "I realize that, Herr Doctor. I expect to charge people a small fee."

  "For the image and the interpretation?"

  "If it is permitted, Dr. Gribbleflotz."

  "Well, the Kirlian Imager isn't giving me the results I hoped for, so I don't see a problem letting you use it. However, I still need a personal laborant until Hans returns, so I can't really spare you."

  "I wasn't thinking of performing the imaging when I should be working for you, sir!"

  "You weren't? Very well. Make arrangements with Frau Mittelhausen."

  "Thank you, Herr Doctor."

  Two months later, Grantville

  It was Michael's first visit to the explosives factory and he was curious. He paused at the door of his sister's office to look around. It was crowded with filing cabinets and wall charts. There was a good up-time typewriter on the desk and-wonder of wonders-a computer. Maria Anna was currently engrossed with the computer screen. "How come you rate your own computer, Sis?"

  "Michael.! Long time no see. I get the computer because I handle the books. What can I do for you?"

  Michael had been so busy over the last couple of months he hadn't been able to spend much time with his sister. "I've got an order from Jena for some more Kirlian imagers and photographic chemicals, and I was wondering if Celeste's daughter and her friends can get me some more milkweed latex."

  "You could have phoned."

  "Sure. But then I couldn't have shown you this." Michael tossed a booklet and covering letter over to Maria Anna. He was interested in how she reacted. He'd nearly fallen over laughing himself. "Kurt's calling himself Beta these days. Dr. Gribbleflotz was having too much trouble with two Kurt Stoltzs on the payroll."

  Maria Anna gingerly picked up the booklet and looked at it. Her head shot up. "'How To Manage Your Aura For Personal Health and Gain.' By Kurt Beta. What the hell is happening in Jena?"

  "Read the letter. It explains everything."

  Maria Anna dropped the booklet and opened Kurt's letter. "He's been teaching others to interpret the life forces made visible by the wonders of Kirlian photography. Is he for real?"

  Michael shrugged. "I think so. That's why he needs the additional imagers. He needs them for his students. Frau Mittelhausen has authorized the order."

  Maria Anna grimaced. "Kurt's students? What's he trying to do?"

  "Franchise auroral interpretation, of course."

  "Franchise what? He's selling snake oil."

  Michael shook his head. "No, snake oil is a total fraud. What Kurt Beta is doing is merely pseudo-science, like the doctor and his pyramid. Frau Mittelhausen says people in Jena are lapping it up."

  "You know what I think of the doctor's pyramid."

  "Sure, but it's harmless. Think of what Kurt's doing as being Feng Shui for the soul."

  "What the hell is Fung Shway?"

  Michael paused to consider an answer. Feng Shui wasn't one of those things that were easy to explain. "I think I need to lend you the book I read."

  Several weeks later, office of Boots Bank, Jena

  Marguerite Lobstein called over to her partner. "Johann Diefenthaler wants a loan to take the new photographer course in Grantville and buy a camera obscura photographer equipage. What do you think?"

  Catherine Mutschler looked at the photographs of her and Marguerite's family displayed around the room. "Where does Johann hope to operate?"

  "He wants to operate in Bamberg. There hasn't been anybody else saying they want to work there. Most of them want to operate in Magdeburg."

  Catherine chewed on a lock of hair while she read the detailed loan application. "He's got a reasonable business plan. I think we can make the loan to do the Certificate in Photography at Brennerei und Chemiefabrik Schwarza's school in Grantville easily enough. Tell him the rest is dependent on his passing the course."

  "Right." Marguerite made a note on Johann's folder and tossed it into the yes basket. Then she pulled out another folder. "Oh, dear!"

  Catherine took in the grimace of distaste on Marguerite's face. "What's the matter?"

  "Another Kirlian Imager application."

  "Just because you don't believe in the interpretation of the human spirit doesn't mean it isn't a sound business proposition."

  "Are you suggesting that you believe in that mumbo-jumbo?"

  Catherine shook her head. "No. Of course I don't believe it, but I know there are lots of people who do. If your applicant has completed Herr Beta's course and has a good business plan there is no more reason to deny the application than there was to deny Johann Diefenthaler's. Remember, the only criteria we use to determine whether or not to make a loan is whether or not they can pay it back."

  Marguerite tossed the application across to Catherine. "Very well, you sign off on the loan. I don't want to touch the thing."

  A couple of weeks later, HDG Enterprizes, Jena

  Ursula Mittelhausen smiled at the photograph her sister had sent her. It wasn't as good as the one she had sent to Margarethe, but her portrait had been taken by Frau Sebastian using a proper up-time camera, not one of the new manual exposure Camera Obscura Photographer machines that the traveling photographers were using.

  ***

  Phillip shook Kurt Beta's hand. "Are you sure you have to leave, Beta? There's plenty a man with your talents can achieve here at HDG Enterprizes."

  Kurt shook his head. "Thank you for the offer, Doctor. But my time as your personal laborant has opened my eyes to a world of new opportunities. I intend spreading the science of interpreting Kirlian images. I already have a number of lectures scheduled in Magdeburg, and I have to see my publisher about my new book."

  "Your new book?" Phillip asked.

  "Yes. 'Feng Shui for the Soul.' Herr Siebenhorn gave me the idea for the title. I had previously missed the obvious connection between the ancient Chinese science of Feng Shui and the new art of interpreting Kirlian images, but as soon as Herr Siebenhorn made the comparison, the relationship was obvious."

  Kurt paused to consider just why he'd missed such an obvious connection. The Censors had been hard at work indeed. They'd hidden the truth with careful use of misdirection, surrounding the truths of Feng Shui with claims only the gullible could believe. It had taken him considerable time and effort to sort through all the up-timer material to discover the truth, but now he knew and it was going to make him rich.

  Ghosts on the Glass

  Written by Tim Roesch

  The first time Mary saw the ghosts she was transfixed.

  In the beginning, they had frightened her, the ghosts. Now she found them before they found her. She knew where to look and how. With a clever smudge here or a bit of pigment there, she could enclose them or set them free or leave them completely alone.

  She looked across the street in the early afternoon sun, and was again struck by the ghost on the glass. She looked at the ghost, watched it as the sun moved in the sky. Mary could tell this one needed help, needed her to touch it, embellish it, bring it to life. This ghost, of all the others, was special.

  Mary sighed and felt in those wonderful things called pockets for the small piece of chalk she had borrowed from school and kept for moments like this. She would be late getting home again.

  With a simple mark on the ground it began again.

  Mary had learned not to fight beginnings. She would look at the glass and the ghost would tell her when she had done enough.

  ***

  "Look at it! Just look at my windows. I've had enough, Julie."

  Julie Drahuta tried really, really hard to see what it was that had made Audry Yost this upset. A dirty window shouldn't cause Audry to lose her cool like this. Sure, it looked someone had smeared her window with colored snot and dirt but a little Windex, or the 1633 equivalent, would clean it right up.

  "What am I looking at, Audry?" It was best, in situations like this, to maintain a professional
demeanor, regardless of the circumstances. After all, it was probably a child; a child who liked to eat sherbet with their bare hands then wipe them on Audry's window.

  "Look!" Audry pointed angrily at the large, smeared plate glass window.

  In Julie's experience very little made Audry this angry. She took two very considered steps forward, her eyes scanning the glass and trying not to look at the potted plants on display on the other side.

  Audry might not have access to flower networks but what she had and what she could do with what was available was truly a sight to see, smeared windows or not.

  "See? Smudges! Smudges all over. Look!"

  "Glass gets smudged, Audry." Julie tried not to sound amused. "Hell, I press my nose against your windows from time to time. You have a green thumb and it shows."

  "She does it on purpose! And not with her nose! Every day, I turn my back for one second. One! Next thing I know I have to chase her away and the glass is dirty. She stands there, right in front of my face, Julie, and messes up the window. She does it on purpose. She used her tongue once!"

  "Her what?"

  "Then she smeared it with her nose."

  "With her nose?" Julie leaned in and scanned the glass more closely. Yes, indeed, it was… smudged. No, smudge wasn't a good enough word. There almost seemed to be a pattern…

  "With her fingers too, Julie. Can't you see? Sometimes it's so thick you almost can't see through the glass. I think she sticks her hands in stuff just to dirty the glass. She has to and it isn't random. It's like she looks for clean places to mess up. Look at it. .. every day I have to clean the glass. Every day she smears a different part. If this keeps up, I'm going to wear the darn stuff out!"

  "Just on the outside?"

  "She'd never dare come inside and do that! I've never been this mad at a child, Julie. You know that… but, it's so… so… blatant. She's doing it on purpose!"

  "Do you know who she is?"

  "I'm guessing she's a German kid, a down-timer. She's blond and blue-eyed and she has that look. She understands me when I yell at her though, so she at least knows some English. She glares at me then she's off like a shot. Bam. Sometimes she runs that way or that way. .. if I see her I'd recognize her but… I just want it to stop, okay? Can you talk to her parents or something?"

  "About what time does she do this?"

  "Lately? Usually about midday. She should be in school, right? I mean she looks like she's about ten or so. Sometimes it's after school or before. Some parents need to be reminded to have their kids in school. Schools are for kids… not my window. If she wants to finger paint, she should do it in school."

  "About how tall?"

  "She's a bit tall… maybe close to five feet. Look at the glass. That should tell you something. She leaves enough fingerprints."

  "We don't have an FBI fingerprint database, Audry."

  "I know… just… make it stop, okay? It's really annoying and I'm… more annoyed that I'm annoyed. I like kids, Julie, you know I do. We adopted two, remember?"

  "I'll see what I can do."

  Audry went inside her store. The tinkling bell drew Julie's attention back to the window.

  There was something odd about the smudges. No, smudge just wasn't the word for it. Finger painting didn't describe it either.

  Julie stepped back and struggled. The light didn't seem right.

  Nothing on that glass seemed right.

  It was almost like there was something… ghostly on the glass, an image that was almost there.

  The light just wasn't right.

  Julie looked over her left shoulder to see where the sun was.

  Nope, not quite right.

  ***

  Mary scowled at the glass from the beginning place she had marked across the street from the flower shop. The words painted on the glass were like rocks in a stream or trees in a breeze. The ghost simply used sunlight to make itself part of the letters.

  The ghost flowed around the letters on the glass; changing as the sun changed. Mary had learned that the sun was never in the same place in the sky at the same time. It changed its position slightly each day.

  It was hard to understand, like Grantville and the events that had stolen her family, left them scattered about the burned rubble of her home and memory.

  Mary would understand though. She would work hard and understand. Like Grantville and this ghost on this glass, it would all work itself out.

  All she needed to do was be patient. This ghost would wait for her and she knew another one would appear and it would not be happy if she failed to help this one.

  Her new parents loved her and cared for her. There was food on the table again and it was warm and safe. She might even find another dog to replace the one she had taken for granted until she had found it, like her family, dead.

  She would make this ghost she saw on this glass warm and safe like Grantville made her feel warm and safe. It was the least she could do.

  This particular image reminded her of some place, some event, some person in her past life, the life before Grantville, the life she had tried so hard to forget. Maybe this ghost was all of those things. Ghosts could be whatever they wanted to be.

  This ghost was trying to tell her something. All she had to do was follow the sun behind her and find the right pattern to clothe the ghost, surround it, enhance it.

  Enhance was a word she would have never known before Grantville. Just as she knew she would never have seen this much glass before Grantville.

  But if she hadn't, would there have been ghosts? Mary calmed herself.

  Remembering was not enough; just as forgetting had been too much.

  The ghosts reminded her to live. The dead didn't make memories. They were memories. She was alive and she made memories.

  It was all complicated but it would all work out.

  She would need to come earlier now. She wouldn't be late for chores but she would have to leave school early again.

  The ghost didn't care. It would appear about noon now and she would have to be here to enhance and embellish it.

  ***

  Julie made it a point to be somewhere nearby around midday. For three days there was no sign of a tallish, blond, German female between ten and twelve years old lurking about a flower shop at midday.

  For three days Audry said nothing about smudges though she did wave when Julie walked by. Walking by Audry's flower shop was always a treat even if Julie "had" to because she was on duty. The chief was always interested in potential child abuse or neglect cases. Protecting kids and families was always good PR.

  "Get her blond ass back in school," Chief Richards had said. "But do it nicely. It's probably just some kid who's never seen that much glass before and she likes to touch it or something. Make Audry happy and me happy; get her back in school."

  So, here she was, watching the flowers and plants through Audry's clean windows. Clean so far.

  It was day four into the investigation that yielded results. Patience and perspective are everything in police work.

  This particular day Officer Drahuta was late. There were other issues in Grantville of more import than a glass window smudged by some truant girl. It was slightly past midday when Julie appeared. She noted her reflection on a glass window she passed and smiled.

  Julie was just turning the corner when she heard the yell.

  " Get away! Get away from the glass!"

  Julie ran the twenty or so yards to the florist shop and was confronted by a fuming Audry, a smudged window and the faintest glimpse of running feet turning a corner.

  "She did it again!" Audry pointed. "I went in the back to see how Mrs. Hardegg's miniature roses are doing and when I came out there she was… smudging my window! Where were you?"

  Julie turned and looked at the window. There was still something. .. odd about the smudges. A barely discernible pattern of some kind.

  "Can you leave the window just like it is, Audry?" Julie asked, stepping back.

 
"Sure, why not? If kids can draw on the sidewalk, why not smudge my windows? I can have another installed! Plate glass is just all over the place, isn't it?"

  "What?"

  "Look!" Audry pointed at the ground near Julie's feet.

  There were a series of marks; lines drawn with a thin piece of chalk or maybe dry wall. There were words written next to them. She pulled out her clipboard and began writing.

  "Does she do this to anyone else's store? No! Just mine!"

  "Audry, you're letting this work you into a frenzy. I'll catch her and we'll settle this. It's not like she's throwing rocks through your window."

  "Yet," Audry grumbled and stormed back into her store.

  Julie looked up at the glass then back on the ground. The occasional pedestrian politely moved around her as she scanned the sidewalk. There were faded remnants of other marks.

  She turned and looked around at the other buildings up and down the street. "Why this store?" Julie muttered to herself. There were plenty of other stores along the street, plenty of other windows. What was special about this store and this window?

  She spent a pleasant few hours window shopping, asking other store owners if they had a problem with smudges or tall German girls with dirty fingers.

  Some didn't know what she was talking about. A few had heard Audry's complaints and smiled as they told her, more calmly, what Audry had already told her.

  Julie Drahuta, crack child protection officer, learned one more piece of evidence that Audry either had forgotten to mention or hadn't noticed.

  The girl would often appear just before sunset. She would stand on the edge of the sidewalk and stare at Audry's window. Most assumed that, as a young girl, she was attracted to the pretty displays of flowers and plants in the window. Who wouldn't be?

  Julie wasn't so sure. The smudges didn't appear related to anything behind the glass.