1635:The Dreeson Incident (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  "That's pretty much it."

  At least they'd picked on him because of Wes and didn't know anything about his relationship to Francisco Nasi. Nathan picked up his pen.

  Dear Don Francisco.

  He'd better write to Wes, too. Just in case Waters or Higgenbottom asked about it, some day. CYA. Always.

  Grantville

  Jacques-Pierre Dumais decided that he would talk to Velma Hardesty at the 250 Club, sitting at a table right out in the open. Why not? Veda Mae Haggerty had introduced them to one another in public. Madame Hardesty was upon occasion a waitress there. Duck and Big Dog drank there; he worked for them. It was natural enough for him to come in with them, at first, and then to come back. The regulars didn't object, because the Garbage Guys had all vouched for him.

  If you went slinking around, someone was eventually bound to notice that you were slinking.

  As far as Jacques-Pierre was concerned, Grantville's greatest contribution to the education of seventeenth century spies was that delightful couple, Boris Badenoff and Natasha. He had transcribed every episode of the tapes featuring the Russian pair, the squirrel, and the moose, listening to them over and over. With sketches of the best scenes, after he had learned to use the "pause" button. He sent them back to Henri de Rohan for use in training. A splendid object lesson in how not to gather intelligence. Himself, he preferred to go places where he had some reason to be and speak openly with people who also had some logical reason to be there.

  He stopped to examine the place carefully on his way in. The 250 Club had missed out on most of Grantville's ongoing redevelopment. The building itself backed up to a rise. Above it, the hill rose fairly high. There wasn't really anything behind the building except a narrow walkway, because it was too close to the slope. That cut had been made, Duck had told him, nearly a half-century before the Ring of Fire.

  The front of the building was a dull red. The back was painted in a faded dark green, a kind of paint that weathered, but did not peel. Part of the walkway had always been kept open to allow the beer delivery man to run his hand truck to the back door. It was hard to tell the color in places. Before the Ring of Fire, everywhere there wasn't junk, generations of beer deliverymen and meter readers had rubbed against the paint and sworn over damaging their clothes. The rest of the walkway used to be blocked by a pile of old refrigerators, broken bar furniture, and other miscellaneous junk that eventually merged into the former scrapyard if a person went that far. The junk was gone now. The Garbage Guys had paid Ken Beasley enough to make it worth his while to let them have it. The color of the paint was a little brighter where the junk had protected it.

  Redevelopment had hit the area around it. Dumais had seen historical photographs at the museum. Before the Ring of Fire, facing the 250 Club from the road, on the right, there had been a small scrapyard with a few dead cars-not really a wrecking yard, just random accumulation-with a fence made of wired-up pieces of sheet-iron roofing. The Garbage Guys had bought up everything there, also, the owner being too cheap to donate it to recycling. Now there were new buildings and new businesses. On the left, the road curved away from you, and the parking still went around to that side of the building, not that anyone needed a parking lot any more. The next thing in that direction was-once upon a time-a failed gas station, with a rusty brown 1971 Mercury with a torn vinyl top and the right-front wheel missing parked under the portico. The car was long gone for parts. A down-time blacksmith had bought the building and stripped it. Now it was a butcher shop.

  After a full evening of Madame Hardesty's conversation, Jacques-Pierre was tempted to give up the trade of espionage for good. He was suffering from la migraine. Getting any sound information out of the woman would be hopeless. She was utterly indifferent to anything that did not affect her directly.

  She was stupid. She was spiteful. She was frivolous. She believed in astrology and who knew what other superstitions. She spouted platitudes that she found in her horoscope.

  She was also a first cousin of the prime minister of the United States of Europe. True, Mike Stearns avoided claiming the relationship as much as possible-and had, by all accounts, long before he became the prime minister. A prime minister and a waitress in a tavern? Cousins? It would not be possible in a well-ordered world. But Stearns was an upstart and he did acknowledge the relationship in a minimal sort of way. At least, the woman had been invited to his wedding. Jacques-Pierre had confirmed that.

  So.

  If he could put ideas into that hennaed head? Ideas that she could drop into her normal conversation? It wouldn't work in a larger community, but there were really so few of the up-timers. A comment here. An innuendo there. A veiled criticism here. A barbed jab there. Each of them the kind of thing that people who knew the woman might expect her to say, but with the added little fillip that well, she was , after all, Mike Stearns' first cousin. Even if it was on the Lawler side of the family and they weren't that close.

  Jacques-Pierre set out to flatter Madame Hardesty while, at the same time, seeding her mind with comments that would cultivate enough mild dissatisfaction in Grantville about the USE's policy in regard to Louis XIII and Richelieu to persuade Mauger that it was worthwhile to keep employing him. But not so much dissatisfaction as to cause really major problems, since that was not what Henri de Rohan wanted, not at all.

  He must encourage her to undertake a self-improvement project. How? What would she understand? Ah, yes-the practice of transcendental meditation. Reduced to words she might at least pretend to understand.

  The woman was not only lazy but also not known to be interested in public affairs. So he would be careful. Of the subjects that he gave her, "new insights" she should share with others to impress them, only about one in three, maybe fewer, would have any possible political implications. Most of the positive ones would involve the need for up-timers to harbor warm, fuzzy thoughts about French Huguenots and the Calvinist exiles from the Spanish Netherlands. The negative ones would target Gustavus Adolphus' treaty proposals. The remainder would be platitudes such as A Discontented Heart Breeds a Discontented Life . He could easily plagiarize most of them from Seneca, which the Grantvillers would soon realize, if they read Seneca.

  But they didn't. So.

  Chapter 12

  Grantville

  "Hey, Veda Mae. Can I share your table?"

  She looked up. The dining room at the Willard Hotel was crowded for lunch and it was Bryant Holloway. She had known him all his life and he was her cousin somehow through the Cunninghams, so she couldn't very well say no. Therefore, she cleared her purse off the other side where it had been staking her claim and said, "Sure. Haven't seen you for a while."

  "I've been in Magdeburg since the middle of last winter. I'm just back for a month or so now for a fire prevention training conference."

  "What's Magdeburg like?"

  "Start with this. The Fire Marshall of our wonderful United States of Europe is that prick from Baltimore, Archie Stannard. One of the Masaniellos' relatives who got caught in the Ring of Fire because of Vince and Carla's fortieth anniversary party over at Pray Your Rosary Catholic Church, or whatever they're calling it these days."

  "What's wrong with him?"

  "From the minute the Grantville fire department chief Steve Matheny picked him up as assistant chief, Stannard's been trying to make us more 'professional.' Sometimes I thought that if I heard the word 'professional' one more time, I would gag. Steve kept us right up to the mark on equipment and training, but he didn't preach about it. Stannard does. I guess I could have lived with that, though. Since the Ring of Fire, we'd all been on call 24/7 and that wears you out, so I sort of put it down to stress. But then in the fall of '32, Stearns made this agreement with What's His Name, the captain general you know, and Stannard started on this kick of expanding modern fire prevention into the rest of the New United States. It's one thing to work your ass off for Grantville. It's something else when they expect you to do it for a bunch of foreigners."<
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  Sensing a kindred spirit, Veda Mae actually smiled. "You didn't have anyone in Magdeburg back then, did you?"

  "No. But they sent me over to Rudolstadt, right off the bat, as soon as Steve insisted that he needed me to go full-time rather than volunteer. Which I agreed to do, even though, with overtime, I was sure making more at Ollie's than the government pays us. The count over there speaks some English, at least, even though he sounds like one of those Shakespeare plays that Lisa Dailey tried to make us read in high school."

  "Shakespeare's not so bad. We even read some of his stuff back in my day, and he sounded a lot like the King James Version. Which the Reverends Jones never should have gotten rid of and put in one of these so-called modern translations of the Bible." Veda Mae veered off on a tangent, pursuing one of her favorite grievances. By the time she ran down, Bryant had finished half of his lunch.

  "Anyway, you asked what Magdeburg is like. We're trying to prevent all of the wonderful Emperor Gustavus Adolphus' Kraut allies from turning themselves into krispy kritters, which, if you ask me, most of them deserve. They're the ones who messed up and caused the disaster at Underwood's coal gas company. And now Quentin's dead himself, poor guy. None of the Krauts up at Wietze went running to help him, as far as I've ever heard.

  "I'm not even at the Navy Yard, which might make some sense. I drew Station Number One. With Bibi Blackwood, of all people, as Captain and Officer in Charge. I never did hold with women 'firefighters' and I still don't. They even had to change the word from 'firemen.' "

  "I never heard anyone complain that Bibi couldn't handle it. She's a big woman."

  Bryant couldn't argue with that. Bibi was a big woman, all right. He nodded, then said, "At least her boys are grown and Sara stayed back here in Grantville with Dean and his new wife, so she's not distracted by having to find child care and schools. I'll give her that much."

  "Kraut woman."

  "Bibi?"

  "Dean's new wife. Would you believe that her name is Krapp?"

  Bryant laughed so loud that people stared at them.

  "The whole town is going to pot," Veda Mae said. "You can't believe how many decent Americans are marrying these Kraut whores. There must be a half dozen or so who are actually taking classes at that Kraut church out on what used to be Route 250 on the way to Rudolstadt so they can marry them in Kraut ceremonies. And it won't be any too soon for Ryan Baker and his girlfriend if you know what I mean, believe me. Little slut. She works in Cora Ennis' kitchen at the cafe."

  "I can see that it's getting to be a problem. Hell, Veda Mae. Have you heard what Lenore's dad did?"

  "Wes? Not a word. Not since he and the other people we sent over to Fulda were kidnapped by a bunch of ungrateful Krauts. That was in the paper a while back. I don't have time to read the papers much, though."

  "Well, the rest of our people over there got them back, including Wes. Anyway, he celebrated his delivery from the dungeon, or wherever he was, by marrying a Kraut woman himself. Sister of that Dietrich Bachmeier from Badenburg who's a sort of cousin of the guy who's Birdie Newhouse's partner these days. That farmer up at Sundremda. Same last name."

  "At his age, he should have known better. Wes, I mean. Stearns and Piazza must be nuts to have appointed someone as chief civilian administrator in one of our Kraut territories who would behave like that. He ought to have kept his distance, so they would respect him. What did they call it after World War II? 'Nonfraternization policy.' That's it. Not that it worked the way it should have. Arnold Bellamy's own mother was one of those Kraut war brides. He's not from here, of course; he was from someplace in New Jersey when Natalie Fritz married him. So he's half-Kraut himself. And Curtis Maggard's mother, too. The woman's as crazy as a coot. Well, of course, Stearns… Becky's a Kraut, no matter what people say. Sometimes it seems to me that half of this town is going native. Thank god he's no relative of mine. Neither one of them is, Stearns nor Jenkins.

  "Nor, thank heavens, the daughter of that idiot Pat Murphy. Did you hear that she's back in town again, with that Kraut named Junker she works with? Junk's a good name for him. Back from whatever it was she's been doing down in Franconia. Probably up to no good. She's working for Carol Unruh at the Department of Economic Resources, did you know. With that name, Carol's likely a Kraut herself. I know her husband is, that Koch. She met him in Germany, up-time, for all he tells people that he was actually born in Greece."

  It got to be sort of a habit for Bryant. He certainly didn't want to eat lunch with all of the people who had come for the training conference. He was bad enough having to spend the rest of the day with them, listening to mostly German, even if it was peppered full of English words about firefighting equipment, without trying to talk it when he was trying to relax a bit.

  And Veda Mae had lunch at the Willard every day.

  "As I said, the first time that they sent me out of town, it was over to Rudolstadt. Fall of 1632, that was. I ran into Lenore again, there. She was taking some kind of class at the chancery. I knew perfectly well that her family was a little bit out of my league, but she was the only American girl in town, so we started to see one another. What with one thing and another, I proposed. Not right away, but pretty near to it. What do they call it?"

  Veda Mae thought a minute. "Propinquity."

  "Yeah, that's it."

  "I saw a program about it on TV once, before we got ourselves stuck here. Oprah or somebody. You were right about 'out of your league,' though, if I do say so myself. That's why I stuck my oar in when Laurie wanted to go to nursing school. And I was right, wasn't I? Just her wanting to go and get herself above Gary led to a divorce."

  "And Lenore accepted. I didn't pretend to myself that I was her 'Mr. Right.' Lenore was getting close to thirty and, God knows, she's no beauty. String bean with a horse face just about sums it up. How she can be so hellishly sexy is beyond me. I was her 'Mr. Good Enough.' Maybe even her 'Mr. The Best I Can Do.' Hell, maybe I was even 'Mr. It Looks Like He's All I'm Going To Get So If I Ever Want Children I Had Better Take Him.'

  "So we got married in January 1633. She wanted to go to premarital counseling at First Methodist, but I told her I didn't want to. Certainly not sit through a bunch of "holier than thou" from Mary Ellen Jones, calling herself a minister when the Bible forbids it. So we went to Brother Green, at his home. With 'obey' in the ceremony, like it should be. At least they had sent her prissy stick of a father off to Fulda by then, so he wasn't around to interfere."

  Bryant looked down. "Maybe I should have broken it off right after I proposed. Do you know what she said? 'I hope you don't expect to be deflowering a virgin on your wedding night. No history of social diseases. Just for informational purposes.' Then she wouldn't explain any more than that when I asked her to. All she would say was that according to Dear Abby, that was plenty and I could take it or leave it.

  "I should have realized then that she was a bitch, before it was too late. I should have left it. If a woman's been somewhere else before she marries, who's to say she won't go there again afterwards?

  "Anyhow, we moved back to Grantville a couple of months later, after I finished up in Rudolstadt. Then we had the kid. And Lenore invented a stupid name, so she could call a girl after her father. I'd said that I didn't care what name she chose if it was a girl. Hell, I was so tired all the time right then that I didn't even want to think about baby names. But I'd been expecting her to pick something normal. Jessica, maybe. Or Caitlin. Or after one of our mothers. Something like that."

  "I don't think I've ever heard of any other little girl named Weshelle," Veda Mae said. "But at least it isn't a Kraut name. Some of the men around here are letting their Kraut wives give Kraut names to babies that are half-American."

  "I'd hated it in Rudolstadt, being off in a foreign town. Not very far, but too far to go back and forth every day. Then for the two months after the kid was born, she squalled her lungs out day and night, whenever I was trying to get some sleep between calls, so coming back
to Grantville was actually worse in some ways. Given the way that kid yelled, I wouldn't actually have minded being sent to Magdeburg all that much, even if I do have to deal with another batch of foreigners all the time, if it hadn't been for having Stannard as my boss."

  Veda Mae thought for a minute. "Weshelle should be beyond that crying stage now. She's almost a year old."

  "Yeah. Instead, she's starting to walk and gets into everything if Lenore doesn't keep her penned up. Smears food all over her face and into her hair. And all over me, if I let her get near. A whole handful of mashed squash on my good blue shirt."

  Veda Mae nodded solemnly. "Sometimes kids that age can get to be a real pain. Now take Alden Junior's kid, my great-grandson, he's just a couple of months older and the way Alden Junior's wife Kim lets him get away with things…"

  Bryant rearranged the silverware on his plate, pushing the last of the food to the side. "Roasted turnips are not the same as baked potatoes, no matter what the menu here claims. Sometimes I wish that I could get drunk."

  "Well, don't. I'm proud of you for sticking to the Baptist teetotalling line. I do myself, for the Methodists. Even though they're getting slack, these days."

  "Damn kid. Here, I've been gone for nine months and it's pretty clear that Lenore didn't miss me much. Stays in the nursery until Weshelle is sound asleep. Jumps up out of bed in the middle of the night and goes to sleep on the cot in the nursery if she hears the least little bit of fussing."

  "You're right about that. It's nothing but spoiling. If the child goes to the bad, it will be Lenore's fault. Just like Alden Junior's wife Kim. I could tell you…" Veda Mae stopped, annoyed, because Bryant was interrupting her again.

  "She probably said 'yes' because she was far too proper to have a baby in anything but marriage. If not too proper to have sex outside it beforehand. Boy, but that grated on me. I'd been around a bit, myself, had a few girlfriends, but it's different for a man."