1635:The Dreeson Incident (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  Sometimes it was rather difficult to make the most of all the different preferences and prejudices in this town. He could only do his best.

  Jacques-Pierre reached into his pocket. He was not entirely certain why he had taken the course and obtained his citizenship papers, but he had.

  Madame Haggerty was very proud of him. She had served as his witness when he signed the oath of allegiance.

  That pride was why she had given him permission to store some materials of his own in her garage, along with the extra supplies for Garbage Guys that her son Gary, his boss, kept there. This was a great boon. Placards, especially when mounted on sticks and stiffened against the wind, were very bulky. He didn't have room in his own trailer to keep all the materials that would be needed to put on the demonstration at the hospital.

  Veda Mae introduced Jacques-Pierre to the two young women sitting with her, Mademoiselle Hardesty and Mademoiselle Jenkins. He recognized both names and faces, of course, but appreciated the introduction.

  To Mademoiselle Hardesty, he extended his most sincere felicitations upon the anticipated birth of a new sister or brother in the Netherlands.

  Pam gaped at him. "Mom's pregnant? Again? At her age?"

  He was mildly surprised that her mother had not already informed her. He had not thought that Madame Hardesty was a women who felt that her daughter needed to be spared in regard to matters of such delicacy. The inheritance complications alone would, in the absence of a proper marriage contract, affect not only Mauger's children but also those of his wife.

  For the rest, her reaction was so parallel to what his own had been that it was almost amusing.

  "You're sure?" Pam asked.

  "The arrival of the child is expected in August. Your stepfather is blissfully happy."

  "I… Well, thank you very much. I'll have to let Cory Joe and Susan know."

  "It makes sense, Missy," Pam said. Where else would he be likely to hide his records that no one else would look.

  "In garbage cans?" Missy was very doubtful.

  "He's a garbage man. And if you watch the Garbage Guys doing their collections, people mostly put their things out on the curb, they way they did up-time. But for some of the old people, who have trouble getting the cans out when there's snow and ice, the guy running along beside the wagon goes behind the house, wrestles the can out, dumps it, and takes it back. That guy is Jacques-Pierre. All he would have to do, if he wanted to hide something, is put a couple of extra cans with tight fitting lids behind one or two of those houses. Cans that he doesn't bring out and dump into the wagon. Who's going to go around town counting people's garbage cans?"

  Missy looked at her friend dubiously, suspecting where this might be leading. "We are?"

  "Not if we don't have to," was Pam's answer. "I was in class all the way through school with Marcie Haggerty. Her brother Blake's a couple of years younger, and he's a policeman now."

  "Yeah. He graduated with Ron and me in the accelerated program."

  "Let's tell Ron and Cory Joe what we think and see if Don Francisco can talk Preston Richards into letting Blake look in his grandmother's garbage cans. If that doesn't work, though…" Pam frowned. "If they won't assign someone else to do it, if they think we're nuts for suggesting it, or if there's nothing in those particular cans-then, yeah, I guess we are."

  Blake Haggerty reported that there was nothing in the garbage can behind his grandmother's house except garbage. He had avoided all things associated with such formalities as search warrants simply by dropping by and offering to take out the garbage while he was there, which gave him a perfectly good reason to take the lid off her garbage can.

  Then he said, "But."

  "But what?"

  "Dad has a whole batch of stuff belonging to the Garbage Guys stored in her garage. It's locked. I looked through the window. There are three more garbage cans in there."

  "We can do it Sunday morning," Pam said. "That makes sense. Veda Mae does go to church every Sunday. She leaves in time to catch the nine o'clock brunch and say a few cutting sentences about people who aren't there. Then she sits in on the Bible class for adults to make sure that if Simon Jones says anything liberal that she doesn't agree with, she'll be there to correct him. Then she goes to the eleven o'clock service to check to see if the organist is playing any modern hymns. Then she goes out for lunch to make sure she has a chance to spread a little vicious gossip before she goes to work."

  "Do I detect some sarcasm in your description?" Missy asked.

  "Maybe a trifle. Veda Mae palls on closer acquaintance." Pam made a face at her younger friend. Missy could come up with an amazing number of excuses not to accompany her to the Willard and talk to Veda Mae. A little of Veda Mae had gone a really long way with Missy.

  "But it's accurate. That's what she does. She'll be out of the way. Neither of us goes to church, so we won't be missed if we don't show up. It's a perfectly ordinary old garage. No foundation. Just posts stuck into the ground, and the weatherboarding starting to rot where it gets damp at the bottom. We sneak along the alley where the snowbanks are still piled up where people shoveled and make like Peter Rabbit. Wriggle, wriggle, under the boards. We could probably even pull one loose, if it's too tight a fit. She'll blame it on raccoons. People blame everything peculiar that happens in sheds and outbuildings on raccoons. It's one thing that the Ring of Fire hasn't changed."

  Chapter 45

  Grantville, March 4, 1635

  "I called Ron and told him."

  "Missy, this is one thing at least that we could have done on our own. You don't have to tell Ron everything. Do you phone him at bedtime and tell him you're brushing your teeth?"

  "No. The upstairs extension is out in the hall, so it's not really handy for pillow talk."

  Pam stared. As she often did, Missy had taken a purely hypothetical query at face value. If someone asked her a question, she would provide an answer. Or try her best, at least. Born to be a reference librarian. She'd found her niche. "Okay. Why did you tell Ron?"

  "So somebody would know where we were going. I couldn't very well tell Mom and Dad that we intended to go digging around in Veda Mae's garage this morning, and you're always supposed to check in before you go somewhere, so people can find you if an emergency comes up. Just to say where you're going, who you're with, and when you'll be back."

  Pam nodded. In spite of their genuine friendship, the chasm, the abyss, between the way Chad and Debbie had brought up Missy and the way Velma had brought her up yawned very wide at times.

  "Ron thought it was sensible," Missy said a little defensively. "He and his brothers were always expected to check in with their dad before they went off somewhere, too."

  Pam stopped pulling on her boots. It… it actually hurt a little, somewhere, to realize that for all the reputation Tom Stone had as a hippie before the Ring of Fire, that even his kids had been more protected and sheltered and cared about than she and Cory Joe had been. Much less Tina and Susan.

  She shouldn't have left home when she did. At the time, all she was interested in was self-preservation. She had to get out, she had to get out, she had to get out. Maybe-maybe if she had stayed, Tina wouldn't have turned into the kind of risk taker that the little sister who had drowned at the quarry last spring had been.

  "Pam," Missy said. "Pam, what's the matter?"

  She blinked back the tears. "Nothing, really. I was thinking about Tina, for some reason."

  Missy gave her a quick hug.

  Pam stood up. "Let's get going."

  Missy stopped, her boots squeaking on the packed snow. "There are people in there!"

  "There can't be. Why would anyone be there?"

  "I don't know. But there are. Lots of them. Well, four or five, at least. One of them has a handcart out in the driveway and they're loading things into it." Missy braced one hand on Veda Mae's back fence.

  "Blake did say that his father stores stuff there, for the Garbage Guys. Is it Gary?"

  "I
can't tell from here. We're going to have to get a little closer."

  "Why don't I go out and walk on the street? That way, I can look down the driveway with a curious expression on my face. Sneaking closer from an alley is the kind of thing that's suspicious by definition, but walking down the street is something that anyone can do." Pam turned back the way they had come.

  Missy stood there, wishing that she wasn't by herself. She thought of sitting down on one of the piles of snow, but the sun was warm enough that it was starting to melt on top. Ugh.

  The men were still loading the cart.

  ***

  It seemed to be taking an awfully long time for Pam to walk around the block. The blocks in this part of town weren't all that big. She looked at her watch. After a while, she looked again. It was taking way too long for Pam to walk around the block.

  Jacques-Pierre Dumais was feeling a certain amount of distress.

  It was very unfortunate that Mademoiselle Pam, the daughter of that appalling Madame Hardesty, had come along just as Leon Boucher dropped an armload of the placards prepared for use at the demonstration against the hospital. She had paused, looked at the slogans, and said, "What on earth?"

  Luckily she had not seen him, he thought. He had still been well within the garage. Compared to the sunlight on the snow, it was dark there. It was particularly fortunate since Boucher had panicked, run to the end of the driveway, and grabbed her, pulling the navy blue knit hat she was wearing down over her face. She had tried to jerk away, but her feet had slipped on the wet snow. Fortunately, she had not screamed. She had opened her mouth, but Leon, an experienced street fighter if not very bright, had jammed part of the knit hat into it with his fist as he dragged her into the garage.

  Dumais dropped into the Rochellais patois of their childhood. No one else in this town would understand a word of it. "Fool. Idiot," he mouthed under his breath. "Her mother is a friend of the woman who owns this house. What did you think you were doing? You could have ignored her. Or said something casual and she would have gone on. You will be out of town by this afternoon. It wouldn't have mattered that she saw you."

  "I do not believe in coincidences," Boucher answered.

  "That is because you make them impossible. What could she have done? Now we must gag her and leave her here, because we have brought attention to ourselves." He gestured impatiently to the other three men. Turpin and a couple of the hired Germans. They had picked up the signs that Boucher had dropped and put them on the cart, but since then had been standing there like fish with their mouths open. Common day laborers, men with no initiative. "Finish loading the placards. I will be with you in a moment."

  "We can start without you. At the end of the street, which way should we turn?"

  "Toward the right."

  He bound Mademoiselle Hardesty's hands firmly, placed an additional blindfold over her eyes on top of the ski mask, and pushed a rag into her mouth, leaving the knit hat in place over her mouth first. Then he dropped her on a pile of lumber and tied her feet. She would be secure enough until the day's activities were over.

  Releasing her without either harming her or having her identify him would be… more complex. He would deal with that problem when the time came. If all was to go smoothly today, the demonstration planned for Leahy Medical Center needed to start very soon. He pulled the garage door shut and put the padlock back on as Boucher turned to follow the men with the handcart.

  Missy looked at her watch again. The men were gone. She had seen the handcart and some men cross the far end of the alley, headed toward Route 250. Pam hadn't come back. Missy hoped that she hadn't slipped and fallen. The thin layer of melt that was developing on top of the packed snow was pretty treacherous.

  She had better go around and see. Pam was more important than crawling into Veda Mae's garage in pursuit of some probably imaginary espionage papers. If she'd sprained her ankle or something, they'd have to get help. She started back up the alley, the way Pam had gone.

  Nothing. No sign of her.

  Pam wouldn't have had any reason to go beyond Veda Mae's driveway. Missy stopped and looked just as Dumais started to turn.

  "Excuse me," she asked. "Have either of you gentlemen seen another girl? She was coming down this way and got ahead of me."

  As quickly as possible, Jacques-Pierre faced back to the garage door and pulled down the ski mask he was wearing. Involuntarily, he closed his eyes and placed his fingers against his temples. Such a headache, la migraine, to have on an important occasion, the sun glaring on the snow and the day scarcely begun! He should have realized that where one of the girls was, it was only likely that the other would not be far away. He turned.

  Leon, you fool! Don't go dashing at her like that! Don't make threatening gestures!

  Too late.

  Missy opened her mouth and prepared to shriek at the top of her lungs.

  Jacques-Pierre could tell exactly what the girl was planning to do. Among other things he had done in the course of his time in Grantville, in an effort to understand these up-timers, he had attended recreational league sports events. He had observed Mademoiselle Jenkins' coaching. Her voice had carrying power.

  "Leon, you idiot, stop it," he exploded, keeping his voice down in so far as he could. "We're going to be late." Embellished with considerable profanity. He dashed after the other man, grabbed his shoulder, and dragged him down the street in the direction the men had taken the handcart.

  Missy stood there, feeling a little silly for having almost screamed. But she still didn't see Pam anywhere. She stood there for a moment, undecided. Then she walked up Veda Mae's driveway, cupped her hands on either side of her eyes, and waited a moment for her pupils to adjust so she could see inside the garage through the dirty windowpane in the door.

  That was what she was doing when Ron came up behind her. She jumped about a foot when he asked, "Missy? What's going on?".

  "I have never been so glad to see anybody in my whole entire life," she answered. "I think I'm a damsel in distress. Or, at least, Pam is. Help me rescue her. There's something really weird going on this morning."

  Ron felt distinctly relieved. He had felt very foolish all the way as he ran from Lothlorien into town after she had phoned him, with every footstep that slogged through the snow suspecting that he would be greeted with, "What do you think I am, anyway? Some kind of an incompetent ditz?"

  They looked at the padlock, decided it was substantial, and reverted to Plan A, which involved crawling into the garage from the back. Except Ron decided that by this time there wasn't much point in pretending to be a raccoon. He simply grabbed a couple of the old boards and yanked them off by main force, stripping the rusty nails.

  "Pam," Missy was saying. "Are you okay?"

  Pam swung her feet to the floor and sat up. "I have a mouth full of acrylic fuzz that tastes like hair, that's how I am. What in hell was going on here?"

  "I don't have any idea, but I think we ought to tell the police."

  There weren't any police to be had. The dispatcher took the information when they phoned from Pam's apartment, but said that this was going to be very low priority. Probably somebody would get back to them tomorrow.

  Chapter 46

  "There are twenty-five or so men gathered in the parking lot at Leahy Medical Center," Gary Lambert said calmly to the police dispatcher, "with another group about the same size by the emergency entrance." The business manager was reluctant to sound alarmist. "They arrived about nine o'clock this morning and have been there for approximately three-quarters of an hour now, yelling anti-vaccination slogans and waving signs. Thus far, they have not interfered with traffic into and out of the building."

  "If they have been there that long, why did you decide to call us now?"

  "Because other people are joining them. The original group came together, had a leader, divided quietly, and appeared to be a disciplined protest. We don't enjoy that sort of thing, but we really have to put up with it. The regular police
patrols swung by, took a look at the ones in the parking lot, and moved on. I assumed that this meant they shared my feeling that there was no immediate cause for alarm."

  "What has changed?"

  "Quite a few additional demonstrators are coming now. Not in a single group, but in smaller ones, three or four together. They are not waving prepared signs. They already outnumber the original party and they are still arriving. Instead of clustering in one or two places, in the parking lot and by the emergency entrance, they are scattering out here and there around the exterior of the building. A half dozen by the main entrance; eight by the pathway from the laundry to the service entrance; about the same number by the pathway from the bakery to the service entrance."

  "I'll send a couple of cars that way."

  "Warn the cars that something is starting to happen. Several of the smaller groups that were still out on Highway 250 are coming together now, behind the original demonstrators in the parking lot. They are reaching under their cloaks and bringing out signs that protest the practice of doing autopsies as a part of medical education. The slogans they are beginning to shout include 'sacrilege,' of course, and predictions that as a result of these, at the time of the Last Judgment, people will be rising from the dead maimed and incomplete, denied the glorified bodies promised in the resurrection."

  The police dispatcher squawked.

  "This isn't something caused by Grantville. It was a controversy that existed between the medical schools and the yahoos down-time, before we ever arrived. That's why so many autopsies were done on condemned criminals. And why medical students were practicing grave robbing two centuries after the 1630s. It's an emotional thing. Emotionally very highly charged."

  Gary paused. "Very bad theology, of course, but very highly charged."

  "What's the estimated total number of demonstrators at the moment?"

  "Let me check." He looked up from the phone. "What's the count, Maria? All sides of the building?" Then he spoke into the headphone. "Forty-three more within the last ten minutes. With others still coming along the highway. They are attempting to block the first patrol car you dispatched from entering the parking lot. The total is over a hundred and fifty now, including the original fifty or so, but they are moving around enough that it's hard for our people to get an accurate count."