by Eric Flint
Minnie considered the matter. She did recognize the Lothlorien name. The dyes; the medications. All she had heard about the old hippie man and his three sons.
She nodded. If Denise thought this Gerry counted as a friend, or even as "not a pain," she was willing to haul the other fellow along, whoever he was.
The other fellow, who turned out to be Gerry's brother Ron, didn't have the carrot top. He was just sort of there. Not at all in the category of, "impossible to miss him when you do see him." Nothing remarkable, nothing dashing, nothing piratical. As the hero of a ballad, Minnie thought, he would have been a total loss. He seemed to be polite nice, too, which was good in everyday life but didn't get a hero far in a ballad, either. She lost what little interest she might have had if he had been more like Denise's friend.
Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer of St. Martin's in the Fields Lutheran Church was finding the conversation somewhat confusing.
But one point was clear. The youngest of the three sons of Herr Thomas Stone, the now-wealthy proprietor of the well known dye works, had chosen, with the consent of his father, to attend the Latin School in Rudolstadt rather than the high school in Grantville. He now, at the age of sixteen, wished Pastor Kastenmayer's assistance in being admitted in the midst of the current semester, with perhaps tutoring for some remedial work he would need to do to qualify.
While in Italy with his father and stepmother for the past nine months, he had devoted himself to private preparatory study under the guidance of two Roman Catholic priests, one of them a Jesuit.
In order to enter a Lutheran school? With the intention of further study at the university of Jena, also a Lutheran institution? Preparatory study which, apparently, the two priests had willingly provided to him?
"Actually, though," Gerry said, "they didn't know that I was going to study Lutheran theology. Because I didn't know it myself, until the very end."
Pastor Kastenmayer's little piece of the earth stopped shaking under his feet.
"You may change your mind yet, before you get that far," the other young man said. That was his older brother, Ron.
Gerry ignored him. "Not until after I shot Marius while Ducos and his people were trying to assassinate the pope. He was one of them. He had a gun. I was right in front of Marius. I shot him in the throat. Blood splattered everywhere. His head almost came off in my arms. I didn't really mean to do it, but I killed him. Marius wasn't normal. Not quite right in the head. He had a gun and he was dangerous, but mentally he wasn't all there. If I hadn't done it, he would have killed the pope. Yeah, I get that. He was a little simple minded, but he would have killed the pope. Now he's the one who's dead instead, and I'm the one who killed him. Did I say that his head almost came off in my arms? And I knew there was nothing I could ever do to make up for it. Until Magda explained that I didn't have to, because God already had. Atonement. It was the greatest thing I ever heard of."
Kastenmayer shook his head and fastened on one clear fact. "Magda?"
"Our stepmother," the older brother said. "She's the daughter of Herr Karl Juergen Edelman in Jena."
Kastenmayer knew Edelman. The small piece of firm ground under his feet expanded a bit.
"She'd already baptized us," the red haired boy was saying. "Right after she married Dad, when she found out that nobody ever had done it."
A third of them are heathen rang through Kastenmayer's brain. That's what Jonas had said about gathering converts from among the up-timers. A third of them are heathen.
"And she's Lutheran, so I guess that she meant to baptize us as Lutherans."
"A valid baptism is a valid baptism," Kastenmayer said firmly. "For any variant of Christianity, whether truth or heresy, orthodox or heterodox." Some points of doctrine might be in dispute among Germany's Lutherans, but he would have given that reply if total strangers had roused him from a sound sleep at three o'clock in the morning and demanded to know the answer.
"She used water. And she said, 'I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
"It was Magda," Ron said grumpily. "In the greenhouse. With the garden hose."
Pastor Kastenmayer, whose acquisition of knowledge about up-time culture had not yet reached the game of Clue, ignored him. "That would be quite sufficient. But I really should get it recorded in the church registers. When did this sacramental act take place?"
The two young men agreed that it had been the spring of 1632. That was before Kastenmayer had been appointed as first pastor of St. Martin's in the Fields. Before the parish had been established. He would have to get Rothmaler in Rudolstadt to enter the three baptisms into the registers there. He made a note.
"But after I killed Marius by accident and felt so awful about it, then she told me about all of the rest of it. She had this book with her. It's called Luther's Small Catechism."
"I've heard of it," Kastenmayer admitted.
"Through it, I have come to understand the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. To accept all that I owe to the overwhelming mercy of God. I am certain that I have a vocation to the ordained Lutheran ministry."
Kastenmayer stared at the boy's freckles. All of his efforts to obtain "payback" for the up-timer who had married his daughter Andrea by converting other up-timers to Lutheranism paled before this opportunity. This young up-timer, of wealthy family, coming to him. Voluntarily.
God was humbling him, he knew. Man proposes, God disposes.
The older of the two cleared his throat. "It's awfully early for Gerry to be making a final decision. Really, all that we're sure of is that he wants to go to school this winter in Rudolstadt instead of here. We thought that if, maybe, you could give him a letter of recommendation to the school there…"
"My mind is made up. All the way."
"Look, Gerry. You can't study to be a Lutheran preacher until, at least, you're a Lutheran. Magda said that herself. She could baptize you, but she couldn't confirm you. Theologically, you're still somewhere out in left field."
This was confusing. "Your father does not consent to theological study?"
"He didn't say no. He'll pay for it," the younger boy said. "Magda thinks it's a fine idea. And she said that I could get confirmed at the school."
"Many men do not make an immediate decision in regard to their life work," Kastenmayer said soothingly. "Consider Dean Gerhard at Jena. He completed two years of the university medical curriculum before committing himself to another path." He prudently did not add that the other path had led Gerhard to the deanship of the theological faculty, since that appeared to be a matter of some contention between the two brothers.
Kastenmayer had spoken, over the past decade and a half, with many decent young men, scarcely more than boys, who had been dragged as soldiers into these incessant wars. Some became brutes. Others could be redeemed, keeping their consciences in the face of the things they had done. This was familiar ground. "Come into my study. I'll prepare a letter to the rector in Rudolstadt for you." He paused. "While you ," he said to the other one, "may and will remain out here."
God had never promised him that things would be simple.
Ron was thinking much the same thing, in a more secular manner. Sometimes, since the events of last summer, his younger brother Gerry had seemed more alien to him than Mork from Ork. Before, he'd at least been able to understand adolescent testosterone overload. This religious kick…
After hearing Kastenmayer's summary that evening, Jonas Justinus Muselius chuckled and wrote to Pastor Johann Rothmaler in Rudolstadt, with an additional quick note to the rector of the Rudolstadt Latin School along the general lines of "we've got us a hot prospect here, so don't do anything to mess it up."
Some days were definitely better than others. Occasionally Jonas felt very tired and started to worry that he was the only person around Grantville who had really faced up to the challenge that assimilating these new immigrants from up-time was going to present for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.
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br /> It would probably be even more difficult, in the long run, than absorbing the Austrian exiles into Bayreuth or the Bohemian exiles into Saxony had been, even though there were far fewer of them. What was the English word? Oh, yes. "Diverse." They were far more diverse.
He was so glad that Ronella Koch was already a Lutheran. Not that anyone of her status would ever be allowed to marry a crippled schoolteacher. But nevertheless, he was glad.
Ron heard motorcycles coming up behind him, which meant Denise and Minnie of course. Or probably. Not many motorcycles appeared on the road out to Lothlorien.
"Want a ride?"
"Sure. Thanks."
She pulled off her helmet.
Not…
The other girl also. Not Denise and Minnie. Pam Hardesty. Tina Logsden's half-sister. He'd been in class with Tina until he'd been accelerated. Then he came back and heard that she'd drowned at the graduation party last spring, while he was in Italy. And-of all people to be on a Harley!-Missy Jenkins. Chip's sister.
Ron hadn't seen much of Chip the last few years. He knew in theory that Chip had gotten involved in the Committees of Correspondence and done a bunch of stuff in Jena, but in Ron's mind he was still a high school jock. Enemy of the people, in so far as the people were geeks, nerds, and hippies-categories which included the three Stone brothers, in varying proportions.
Not to mention that the Stones had been a family of disreputable hippies and the Jenkins family was about as close as a West Virginia town like Grantville ever got to aristocracy.
"I'm stopping here, Missy," Pam said. "I've got a cramp in my leg that I need to walk off. Then I'll go back. I'll tell Christin that you went on up to Lothlorien, so she'll know about when to expect you."
"Why don't you wait for me here? I won't stop; just drop Ron off and do a turnaround. I'm scheduled to work evening shift."
Missy pulled her helmet back on. "You'll have to ride behind. Buster doesn't think we've gotten good enough to try balancing with the sidecars on yet."
"Not exactly where I would have expected to see you perched, Dumpling," Ron said.
"Call me that again and I'll put you back down on the ground." She was noticing, really noticing, that his arms were around her. Not doing anything improper; just there, holding on.
"All right. You haven't really deserved to be called 'Dumpling' since you were in sixth grade. Whatever you did that summer between sixth and seventh was a big improvement."
"It was called puberty and included a waistline." The same waistline, she thought, that he was holding onto. Not a particularly slender or dainty one, but functional for dividing her body into an upper half and a lower half. "Why don't these things come equipped with riding whips? Useful for putting impertinent people in their place and things like that."
"Why the motorcycle?"
"I figured it couldn't hurt to learn. Not since the Ring of Fire. We're having to stretch a lot, all of us, or there isn't going to be enough to go around. Horses don't speak to me. There aren't that many full-size cycles in town, but maybe some day I can get a dirt bike of my own. And anyway…"
"What?"
"It's the people who are trying to keep things exactly the way they used to be who are having most trouble getting along with the way things are now. And also…"
"Yeah?"
"Once I had my first ride, behind Denise, I had to. Talk about a rush!"
"Do you suppose they would give me lessons? I'm not that fond of horses either. It's more fun here on the pillion than it was in the sidecar with Minnie. Did you say that dirt bikes are for sale?"
"You have to keep your eyes peeled, but every now and then there's one available. Mickey Simmons sold Kevin's after he died in that horseback riding accident last spring. I didn't have the money to buy it, though. And it wasn't the kind of thing I could ask my parents for."
Chapter 19
Grantville
"I think, Nani, that before you repeat that story, you had better correct it."
Everyone at the Jenkins dinner table looked at Missy, who was looking at her maternal grandmother.
"I had it directly from someone who had it from someone who saw the whole thing," Vera Hudson said indignantly.
"Very few of someone's 'facts' are accurate."
Missy turned. "Gertrude, now pay attention, because they'll probably be repeating it at school, too." She looked back. "Nani, there's one pretty major problem with what that person thought he saw. Or she saw. Minnie and Denise didn't take the cycles out this afternoon. Pam and I did."
Vera opened her mouth, then closed it.
"That leads logically," Missy continued, "to the fact that Minnie did not pick up Ron Stone and give him a lift out to Lothlorien. This leads logically to the fact that when Ron got off the cycle and kissed the driver, the driver was not Minnie Hugelmair."
She paused. "That's how far your narrative got, Nani. Please note that the last fact that I just provided leads logically to the conclusion that Minnie is not a down-time Lolita and Ron Stone is not a dirty old man planning to commit statutory rape, which is, I think, the direction in which your narrative was tending."
"Mother," Debbie said. "Missy. Uh. Both of you."
Willie Ray said, "Vera."
"Nani, when you consider repeating that story, if you would run through it substituting 'Missy' for 'Minnie' as a kind of preliminary, it might sound a bit different to your ears. What I don't understand is how anyone could confuse the two of us. About the only thing we have in common, as far as looks are concerned, is light brown hair. Even then, hers is straight and mine is wavy."
"Maybe someone just assumed…" Debbie said, a bit lamely.
Missy laughed. "For informational purposes, Mother, Ron and I were born in the same month and I think that he's somewhere between one day and two weeks younger than I am. As the evidence upon which I base this conclusion, I would adduce the monthly birthday lists that graced the classrooms we shared between kindergarten and fourth grade, when our names always came up together and his always followed mine. Since I was born on the sixteenth of December, he must have arrived in the world somewhere between the seventeenth and the thirty-first."
"That's nicely pedantic," Chad said. "You may make a reference librarian yet. Would you care to share with us the sequence of events that gave rise to this, ah…" He spared a sly glance for his mother-in-law. "Misunderstanding."
"Pam and I like to use that road for practice runs. It's good for our level of experience. They've improved the surface to get things in and out of the dye works, but that's the only place it goes, so there isn't a lot of traffic."
So far, so good, thought Chad. At least his daughter had avoided using the word "motorcycle," which acted on Vera like a red flag on a bull.
"We caught up with Ron. I offered him a lift and Pam decided to go wait there. We were talking on the way up. It's the first time we had seen each other for, well, since they left last January. That's quite a while. I asked him if he had learned any suave Italian phrases while they were down there. He said that he'd picked up a lot of the profanity used by workers at the arsenal in Venice. Things like that. Just talking. Then when he got off, he said, ' Mille grazie, signorina, ' and performed a really flourishing bow. Then he took my hand and kissed it. That was followed by Nani's version of the significant event. I would like to point out that I was straddling the cycle, he was standing on the ground, and there was about six inches of clear air in between everything except our lips and the hand he was holding."
She took a deep breath. "We were also in full view of half of the employees of Lothlorien Farbenwerke, I think. It must have been break time or something, so you don't have to rely on Nani's informant as the sole eyewitness. Then I took Minnie's motorcycle back to the lot."
"Thank you," Chad said, thinking that she had used the word "motorcycle." Still, it was probably better to spend the rest of the meal listening to Vera on the topic of motorcycles than listening to Vera on the topic of Missy kissing Ron Stone.
"Plus, he'll be coming by in about fifteen or twenty minutes because we're going to the library this evening since I'm working tonight. The public library. Where your cousin Marietta can watch our every move."
"Oh." That, Chad thought, was definitely a curve ball. Or a slider.
"Not that one cousin or another doesn't watch every move I make in my life. I think I'll wait out on the porch."
Ron looked up the steps. Missy was sitting on the glider, wearing a sweatshirt and a glum expression on her face.
"I think," he said, "that we disturbed the cosmic rhythm this afternoon. Or the karmic balance. Or something that Dad believes in."
He climbed the steps, stopped with his hand on the banister, and looked at her again. He felt a little queasy. Up till now the girls he had seriously wanted to kiss had mostly been… pretty. Preferably gorgeous, but cute was the bottom cut-off and "pretty" covered most of them.
Missy Jenkins wasn't ugly. She wasn't even unattractive. She just wasn't… pretty.
Missy looked back at him. Ron Stone seemed more or less like he always had been. He was a little more adult-shaped than she remembered. Thicker in the chest. He didn't really look like a kid any more. But he was still himself. Straight hair, darkish blond. Medium. Medium height, width, face. Ordinary, except for the hazel eyes which proclaimed "brighter than your average bear." She knew that from being in school with him, anyway. So what had happened?
They had disturbed something, all right.