by Eric Flint
A slight cough drew his attention and Becky's. Against one wall of the large room in a rented building that served the Fourth of July Party for its national campaign headquarters, Melissa Mailey was sitting on a couch holding hands with James Nichols. The two of them had come up to Magdeburg for the occasion.
She had that certain look on her face, that Mike remembered from the days she'd been one of his high school teachers.
That certain much-detested look. The one that prefaced the ignorant student about to be enlightened by the oh-so-god-damn-her-well-educated schoolmarm.
And-yep-sure enough, she began it all with a slight sniff.
"That's because it's almost certainly not a reference to football in the first place." (Here she clucked her tongue. Mike remembered that detested mannerism, too.)
"No, no." (And-yep-always the double negative. As if simply telling a dumbass kid that he didn't know squat once wasn't enough.)
"So what is it, then?" asked Becky.
For a moment-very brief moment-Melissa looked a little less than completely self-assured. "Well… nobody actually knows, for certain. It's a relatively recent expression, it seems. There's no reliably dated use of it prior to the 1960s, at least not in print, when it emerged into prominence in the space program."
Rebecca choked a little laugh. "I always find that so odd! 'No earlier than the 1960s'-which is to say, more than three centuries from now."
"But the most common theory is that it comes from military aviation and originated in the Second World War. The machine gun belts for most U.S. aircraft were twenty-seven feet long. So 'the whole nine yards' would have meant using up all your ammunition in a full and complete effort to strike at your enemy."
"Well!" Rebecca seemed to sit a little straighter. "Well, yes, that does make sense."
The two women shared a look of mutual esteem, for a moment. Then Melissa shook her head and made a face. "I have to admit, you're right. This is pretty damn boring, isn't it? James and I could have just as easily stayed down in Grantville, for all the good it did us or we're doing anyone else by coming here."
Nichols shrugged. "What the hell, it's a nice trip."
"It's February," countered Melissa. "It's cold in February."
"Not in that heated compartment on the train it wasn't. I admit, the barge kinda sucked, creature-comfort-wise. But I like to look at snow-covered countryside. Dunno why. Must be my African genetic background."
Melissa looked at him sideways. "It's very well-established in the historical records that almost all Africans brought over to the New World to be slaves came from either West Africa or Angola. Not a snow-covered patch to be found anywhere. African genetics, my ass."
James grinned, very toothily. "Well, sure. That's the white man's version of African history. The same rascals who deny that ancient Egypt was African, and that half the Greek pantheon and Jesus himself were black. In point of fact, I'm quite sure my ancestors were born and reared in the very shadows of Kilimanjaro."
Melissa rolled her eyes. James' grin widened still further. "Did I mention that Neal Armstrong was black, too? Yup. First man on the moon was a brother. Naturally they kept it under wraps and never let him out in public 'less he was wearing whiteface. 'Course, the whole moon expedition was actually a media fraud and it all happened in a studio somewhere in either Culver City, California or Roswell, New Mexico, depending on who you ask. So I guess it'd be more accurate to say that the star of history's greatest and most successful fraud was a brother. But, what the hell. Prestige is where you find it. And speaking of which, Mike, how the hell are you doing in this election?"
"Who knows? I can tell you how we're doing in Magdeburg."
"We're winning by a landslide in the city," pronounced Gunther Achterhof, looking up briefly from the table in the corner where he and Spartacus and three young assistants were keeping a running tally of the vote results as runners brought them in. "The party will win by something like eighty percent. Otto Gericke will get over ninety-five percent as city mayor. Of course, he ran unopposed, so it's not really important."
Spartacus looked up also. "So far, we're doing almost as well in Magdeburg province as we are in the city itself. A little over seventy-five percent. Of course, the only precincts reporting in yet are the ones closest to the city."
Nichols shook his head. "Oh, whoopee. What a shocker." Half-scowling: "For Pete's sake, Gunther, the man in the moon knew we were going to win Magdeburg-city and province both-in a landslide. How are we doing everywhere else?"
"Stop pestering the poor man," chided Rebecca. "We have no way of getting results quickly, and you know it. It will be several weeks before we get the final results from all the outlying areas."
"We'll survive," said Mike, although he sounded perhaps just a tad doubtful. "After all, the Founding Fathers of the old USA had to do the same thing. Just wait and wait and wait till you found out who won the election."
"Would anyone like to play cards?" asked Rebecca.
Grantville, February 22, 1635
The Voice of America announced that on the basis of a survey of sample precincts, the Piazza/Ableidinger ticket had won in a landslide in the State of Thuringia-Franconia.
"Not," Arnold Bellamy said, "that it's exactly a big surprise."
Duke Albrecht of Saxe-Weimar went to the studio and conceded in a very gracious manner. Then, with a sigh of relief, he went home to Weimar.
The station once more brought on Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, who had been providing political analysis throughout the evening.
At the national level, the Fourth of July Party did well in some regions. The SoTF of course. Again no surprise. Mike Stearns would be in Parliament again-as the leader of the Loyal Opposition.
On the basis of early returns, sample precincts again, radioed in from about anywhere a newspaper could put a radio, it definitely looked like the new state capital would be Bamberg. The heart and center of the Ram Rebellion. The symbol of popular democracy in Germany south of the Main. The…
Every reporter in Bamberg was having a ball thinking up new headlines.
Magdeburg, late February 1635
"A landslide, as I said." Gunther Achterhof sounded immensely pleased with himself, as if he'd just pronounced some dazzling new scientific theorem. "The Fourth of July Party won Magdeburg province by seventy-six percent."
He looked at Rebecca. "You won by ninety-eight percent, in your district."
"Well, yes. I ran unopposed." She frowned at the cards in her hand. "And now bridge is getting boring also."
"Start losing, for a change," suggested her husband. "That might perk up your interest."
"Do not be ridiculous, Michael," said Rebecca.
"Fat chance," jeered her partner Melissa.
Grantville, late February 1635
"Well, I've got to say," Joe Stull said, "that it's suddenly become a real high priority on everybody's list to push the railroad through Kronach and all the way down to Bamberg. I guess that's the main thing I'll be dealing with personally and it'll keep me more than busy. The rest of the cabinet will have to handle everything else."
"No question that you and Aura Lee are moving with us?"
"Nope. Billy Lee's going to stay here with Chad and Debbie, to finish high school, but we'll take Juliann. There'll be some school there to suit her. I already talked to Constantin Ableidinger when he was up here last week. Or correspondence courses. Or something. We'll deal with it."
George Chehab frowned. "The decision's going to be easier for some than others. A whole bunch of families who work for the SoTF government are starting to agonize about 'do we go or do we stay?' Especially if half the couple's a state employee and the other half isn't."
Ed Piazza spread both of his hands out on the table. "We're not going to be cutting them any slack."
"How so?"
"Every office moves, just as fast as we can find office space in Bamberg. And we're not going to dawdle on that. Ideally, I'd lik
e to get the whole move done in six months. We're already negotiating for leases. New construction, where we can get it. Temporary buildings, if that's all we can get. Vox populi, and all that. The voters said that we go, so we go. Make it clear to the personnel office. So they can make it clear to everyone who comes in and whines."
Tony Adducci leaned back. "Yeesh-that's hard-nosed. We're going, of course. But where's everybody going to find housing?"
"The CoC people are helping with that-locating rental properties and such. Encouraging landlords to rent. Not that a lot of families won't be crowded into a lot less space than they're used to, next winter," Chehab said. "I'll be pushing electrification and telephones. Not the way they're available here in Grantville, but at some sort of minimal level. Not that we can't live without them, if we have to. Vince Marcantonio's staff have been, all along."
"Vince and the others who've been in the regional administration there since the fall of '32 are coming up to give orientation sessions on finding housing and schools. Janie Kacere's going to talk to the career people. Stacey O'Brien, Tom's wife, going to talk to the wives and mothers." Ed laughed. "Do you think that this is the first redistricting I've overseen in my career? This is nothing compared to the grief an administrator gets every time the system redraws the school attendance boundaries."
"What's going to be left?" Vera Hudson asked. "After the government people go? Could someone pass the potatoes this way, please."
"It's not as bad as the doomsayers make it sound," Chad Jenkins answered. "Do you want gravy?
"The town's keeping the state library. It just doesn't make sense to split it off from the other libraries at the schools, or from the research center. So all the foreign visitors who use those will keep coming."
Missy passed the gravy boat, grinning as she thought of Thanksgiving dinner last year.
Chad kept talking. "And we're getting a sort of consolation prize. The Tech Center's being promoted into the SoTF Technical College, with a lot more faculty and an expanded curriculum. It's going to absorb the teacher training program that's been at the middle school. And the first two, maybe three, years of the Jena/Leahy medical training curriculum. Basic science and nursing through the RN, pre-med. That will be drawing a lot more students into town."
"A lot more rowdiness, it sounds to me like. Solid citizens leaving and flibbertigibbets coming in."
"Mother," Debbie said.
"The music people will stay here, too," Missy said. "A lot of them at least. For a long time. Because of the sound equipment."
"I don't actually see many of the businesses moving out, Mrs. Hudson," Ron said. "Not for years, at least. Especially not the ones heavily dependent on technology. Or electricity and telephones. Just think-the USE left the Federal Reserve here, even when it went national and not just part of the NUS/SoTF government. The Voice of America will stay here. Nobody can move the mine, either."
"What about you and Bill?" Willie Ray asked.
"Lothlorien isn't going anywhere. We'll be starting up branches in other places, sure, but it doesn't make sense to move our headquarters. Especially now that they're pushing the railroad network out, so travel's going to get a lot easier."
Eleanor Jenkins started to laugh.
"What is it Grandma?" Missy asked.
"I suddenly got this improbable vision of Grantville turning into
… what should I call it? A university town, maybe. Like Charlottesville, or Raleigh."
Ron smiled at her with bland politeness. "The way Dad put it in his last letter was 'Berkeley, not Sacramento.' A hotbed of radical thought, avant-garde literature, art and social customs, and progressive ideas."
Chad spewed coffee all the way across the table. "And I'll be representing this hippie district in the state senate?"
"How would you describe it, Ed?"
"Pretty much what we expected, back when we first talked about it last summer. There's a general sense of dislocation. It's not just that Grantville wasn't picked as the state capital. It's that it didn't even get picked as the regional capital for Thuringia. We came in as a respectable second to Erfurt, but really not all that far ahead of Weimar and Eisenach."
Chad Jenkins nodded. "Debbie calls it a malaise. That's sort of general. But with some people, it's more than that. People who feel that we've been thoroughly dissed. People who already had personal grievances and this just makes them worse. Take Bryant Holloway-my niece Lenore's husband. He already wasn't happy that she'd gone back to work. When she told him that she intends to keep her job and move to Bamberg when the state government goes, all hell broke loose."
"That doesn't make a speck of sense," Henry Dreeson said. "With Bryant's job, he's out of town more than he's here. He can see her and Weshelle just as often if she's in Bamberg as if she's in Grantville."
Ed shook his head. "Sometimes sense doesn't have anything to do with it. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the middle of one of those 'theater of the absurd' plays. I never liked acting in those."
Veronica Dreeson breathed a sigh of relief when Ed and Chad left. Finally, maybe, Henry would be able to get some rest. Dorothea and Nicolas' baby had turned out to be colicky, to the point that her incessant wailing disturbed Henry's sleep, even when he had his hearing aid out.
She was planning to segregate out a portion of her income from the schools, the payments received at the beginning of the second semester, and lease a trailer for them, just as soon as she could.
She would be very relieved to have a little privacy again. Perhaps most people would not consider a household of eleven persons to be private, but none of the remainder were-clingy-the way Dorothea often was.
She hoped that Nicolas got a promotion fairly soon. It would be very nice if he could pay the rent himself.
Magdeburg
"Cory Joe said I should see you, Sir."
Frank Jackson looked up from his desk. Cameron Hinshaw, one of the army's radio operators, was standing in the doorway to Jackson's office. He was looking a little uncomfortable, and seemed to be fidgeting between standing at attention and a more relaxed pose.
Frank had to suppress a smile. He'd seen the same thing lots of times by now. One of the problems with being elevated to the august status of a "general" after the Ring of Fire, when you came from a small town like Grantville, was that most people in town had already known you-often quite well-back when you were just a coal miner and a local union official. Not to mention how many people in Grantville were related to each other, one way or another.
So, when they had to deal with you officially they weren't always sure how to go about it. Even if, like Cameron here, they were soldiers in the same army and had military protocol as a guide.
"What's your problem, son? The radio service getting you down?"
"No. Uh, sir. Not exactly. Do you remember that my mom, Laurie, was married for a while to Gary Haggerty? He's Veda Mae Haggerty's son."
Jackson nodded.
"Well, even though Veda Mae broke the marriage up, and Glenna Sue drowned last spring, we still have Duane to think about. He's my half-brother. So Mom talks to Gary pretty regular. Gary said something about this guy who works for him, a Frenchman named Jacques-Pierre Dumais. If you wouldn't mind looking at this last letter I got from Mom…"
Frank sent him on over to Francisco Nasi with it.
Chapter 43
Grantville
Lenore unlocked the door and pushed the stroller through, locking it again behind her.
There was a sound coming from the rec room. Surely she hadn't left the radio on that morning? Leaving Weshelle in the hallway, she slipped out of her boots and walked to the back of the house.
"Bryant?"
He was sitting on the sofa.
"It's me, all right."
"I hadn't expected you."
"Surprise, surprise."
"I'll go get Weshelle out of her stroller. I left her by the door when I heard noise back here."
He followed her. She ignored him as s
he pulled off the covers and unbuckled the complex of straps.
"Let me put her in the playpen. Then I'll start some supper." Lenore started for the kitchen.
"Since when is the playpen in the kitchen?"
"We keep each other company. I'm in the kitchen quite a bit."
Lenore suddenly remembered that she had left a large batch of papers from work spread out on the table. She'd been working on them evenings, since the report wasn't due until next week. If Bryant saw them…
"You can go back and finish catching the news."
"If you don't want me in the kitchen, then maybe that's where I'd better be. Trying to hide something. Maybe a boyfriend after the husband, like you had one before the husband?"
She looked back. "Not likely."
"If you're trying to hide the fact that you went back to work as soon as I left time, give it up. Veda Mae told me. Enjoyed herself, in fact. Like she's been saying, you couldn't wait to show off all that fancy education instead of staying home like a decent mother."
"Weshelle is perfectly fine with Chandra."
She started clearing the papers off the table in the breakfast nook, Weshelle still on one arm. Bryant picked up the transcriptions she had already completed and started tearing them to pieces.
"Stop that!" She grabbed for them.
He pushed her away.
She caught herself on the refrigerator, then backed out of the kitchen. He was still tearing up the papers. Once in the hall, she reached for the phone.
"Wesley is not here," Clara said. "He had to work late. There is a problem?"
"Clara," Lenore said. "I need Dad. I need help now. Bryant is here and he found out I went back to work. Clara, I'm afraid."
"I will come," she said. "I can get there more quickly than I can find him."
"Damn you for a Kraut bitch." Bryant's tone was threatening.
"I have told you nothing but the truth," Clara said stubbornly. "For what you have done, for what you have threatened, she should pick up Weshelle and come away with me now. Right now. This moment."