Grantville Gazette, Volume IX Read online

  Grantville Gazette IX

  Eric Flint

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  GRANTVILLE GAZETTE IX Copyright © 2007 by Eric Flint

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  DOI: 10.1125/0022

  First electronic printing, June 2006

  Production by WebWrights, Newport, TN

  Assistant Editor's Preface

  Wow. Here we go again. Grantville Gazette, Volume Nine.

  Who knew, back a few years ago, just how many people would be interested in the continuing soap opera of Grantville, WV, United States of Europe? I certainly didn't, but I spend part of every single day being happy that I picked up that book with the pickup truck and hillbillies on the cover.

  In this issue, as usual, we continue telling the "little" stories. By that, I mean the stories about the regular, everyday people who wound up in a situation they never could have anticipated, even if they'd been science fiction readers in the first place. The everyday sort of young man who misses speeding on the highway—as many young men would, I suspect. Read about him in Mark Huston's "Gearhead." The everyday sort of young soldiers, who always complain about the food in the dining hall on base. You can read about them in Kerryn Offord's "A Matter of Taste." Terry Howard's "Anna the Baptist" looks at religion in a manner that Pope Urban just might not appreciate all that much. And Richard Evans' postulates a "super secret" organization of up- and down-timers in "Order of the Foot." "Pocket Money" by John and Patti Friend shows us just how determined kids can be . . . if there's something they want badly enough.

  For European everyday sorts of people, try "Mail Stop" by Virginia DeMarce—although I must admit that Martin isn't the sort of guy you run into just any day of the week. He's a touch unusual, what with that newly acquired hillbilly accent of his. "NCIS - Young Love Lost," by Jose J. Clavell shows us a grittier side of the coin, while Iver P. Cooper's "Under the Tuscan Son" takes us to Italy and a young man with ambitions. John Zeek's "The Minstrel Boy," tells us about the desire and longing for family, while Karen Bergstralh's earnest blacksmith faces misfortune in "Tool or Die."

  What changes will having crystal radios cause? Gorg Huff and I explore a bit of that in "Waves of Change," while Kim Mackey's "Little Jammer Boy" presents the more, ah, reactionary side of that argument. We're still talking about Russia in "Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part 2," and Kim brings his "Essen Chronicles" to a close in Part 3 of that story.

  Non-fiction this issue covers the usefullness of mica, from Iver P. Cooper's "The Sound of Mica," while Rick Boatright's "Radio, Part 3" tells us one of the uses. Food—and yes, it is food—is covered in Anette Pedersen's "The Daily Beer," while Kerryn Offord explains sweeteners in "White Gold." Terry Howard discusses just why the Anabaptists were so unpopular in "A Tempest in a Baptistry."

  Finally, we have a new feature in this issue. For lack of a better term, we're calling them "European Interludes." They began with a multi-part challenge: Write me something that doesn't use a single up-timer. It can't be set in Grantville or Magdeburg. Tell us what starts happening in the rest of the world, when all the knowledge that Grantville has starts leaking out. The characters don't have to succeed, they just have to try.

  We had a lot of takers. Quite a number of challenge stories are included in this volume and more have been written. Those will be included in future volumes.

  We hope you enjoy it.

  Paula Goodlett and the Grantville Gazette

  Editorial Board

  FICTION

  Mail Stop

  by Virginia DeMarce

  Home, Sweet Home

  Frankfurt am Main, March 1633

  Martin Wackernagel drew up his horse, first looking back at the route he had just completed and then forward toward the walls of Frankfurt am Main.

  Via regia. Die Reichsstraße. There would never be anything to equal the Imperial Road. Sure, if you wanted to be prosaic, it was just one more trade route, a commercial connection between the great cities of Frankfurt and Leipzig and their fairs. It had been for centuries.

  But it was more than that. He hoped that it always would be. Merchants, teamsters, journeymen looking for a new place to demonstrate their existing skills and acquire new ones. Crowned heads, princes of the church, pilgrims on their way to the great shrine of St. James of Compostella, Santiago, in Spain. Victorious soldiers who had triumphed and beaten soldiers in retreat. Unemployed soldiers looking for work, entertainers looking for audiences, peddlers, and beggars. Sometimes it was hard to tell them apart, but they all used the road.

  Martin loved the road. He had been riding it as a private messenger for fifteen years, ever since he finished the apprenticeship that his father had forced on him and refused to go ahead and become a journeyman in the trade. Not that he had anything against Uncle Reichhard. He had been a good master, but he was a belt-maker. Belts were necessary, of course, but not very interesting.

  So, then and now, he carried messages from Frankfurt to Erfurt via Hanau, Langenselbold, Gelnhausen, Wächtersbach, Soden and Salmünster, Steinau an der Straße, Schlüchtern, Neuhof, Fulda, Hünfeld, Vacha, Eisenach, and Gotha to Erfurt; then back again. Sometimes he had covered the further stretch to Weimar, Naumburg and Leipzig if there was no one available in Erfurt to pick up the rest of the run, but Frankfurt to Erfurt was his regular route. Or had been, until he started adding the leg that took him to the new city of Grantville, which sent out a truly amazing amount of correspondence.

  He knew that all of this caused his mother a lot of distress. She recited with some frequency—every time he got back to Frankfurt, in fact—a lament that she was beginning to wonder if he would ever settle down and get married.

  It wasn't as if, being a widow, she needed him to marry and make a home for her. She lived very comfortably with his older sister Merga and her husband Crispin Neumann. She just wanted him to settle down and marry. No special need for it—just a want.

  She just could not understand why he loved the road so much.

  Good Lord, Mutti, he thought. Do you suppose you could let it go just this once?

  Mechanical Ingenuity

  Bonn, Archdiocese of Cologne, March 1633

  Arno Vignelli had something to sell. Of course. He was an Italian engineer. Most engineers were Italian. They made incredibly ingenious machines in Italy. Italians produced clever devices and then crudely set out to make their fortunes by selling them to that portion of Europe's population that lived north of the Alps.

  Evrard Holmann's job, at the moment, included investment in new technology on behalf of Duke Ferdinand of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne. He shuffled through the papers on his desk. The man now standing in his office was the student of someone famous. Holman shuffled again. He had the information here somewhere, he was sure. He moved the pile in front of him to the side and snagged another one which should have the letter of introduction. Vignelli had also been to Grantville. He had built this particular device on the basis of something he had observed there.

  Vignelli ignored Holman's paper shuffling and went on running through his spiel. "Then, at this 'museum,' I saw the machines which lie at the basis of my new invention."

  "Museum?" Holmann raised his eyebrows at the unfamiliar term.

  "It is, ah, like a cabinet of curiosities, but the size of a building. It is devoted to the history of the region where
this Grantville came from. And since it was a region where people used many various and different technical devices, it is full of them. That is where I saw the 'mimeograph.'"

  "They let you come and examine this freely, with no restrictions?"

  "Well, not freely. There is a charge to visit the 'museum,' but it is really a quite small one. I could afford to return for several days in a row. They had a placard posted that indicated the costs. The fee is reduced for visits by groups of school children. Otherwise, as to 'with no restrictions,' yes. There were guards, but to prevent damage and theft. Not to prevent visitors from examining the exhibits closely."

  "Very well. Go on."

  "I saw this 'mimeograph.' It is not a press. It works on a very different basis, using 'stencils.' I thought that I could make one. With enough time and money and workmen. It would be difficult and very expensive to make, with much hand-fitting of metal parts, especially teeth, and the need for several springs, but it could be done."

  "Expensive?"

  "If I had tried to copy the 'mimeograph.' There was a lever to partly open the 'drum' so that it could grasp the 'stencil' for example. If the grasping foot did not come together precisely, the stencil would be torn loose and ruined. Many other complications. But I did not copy it. There was another machine, a 'hectograph' it was called. Much simpler, but calling for more complicated inks. I thought—if there were some way to combine these. That was when I saw the 'washing machine.' More precisely, when I saw the 'wringer' attached to the washing machine." Vignelli smiled.

  "Wringer?"

  "Two wooden rollers, fastened together and cranked by gears. The laundress feeds the wet clothing through them. The movement of the turning rollers moves the cloth through them; the pressure of the two rollers forces the water out of the cloth much more effectively than it can be wrung out by hand."

  Holmann nodded. He could visualize how that worked.

  "So," Vignelli beamed. "I thought. Take a tray, like the 'hectograph.' Run it through two rollers, one above and one below, as if feeding the cloth. But how to ink it? One more day, two more days, I came back and looked at them again and again. Then, on the third day, when I came in, I looked at the counter where the girl who took the fee I paid was standing. She gave me a receipt. She 'stamped' the date on it, with a mechanical device. It is quite delightful, and simple. I will have to make one some time."

  "You are wandering from the point."

  "Not really. To get the ink on the stamp, which transferred it to the receipt, she had a little tray, with a pad in it. Not something alchemical. Just a cloth pad inside the little metal tray, soaked with ordinary printer's ink. Boiled linseed oil and carbon black. She had that in a bottle. There was a hinged lid, so the pad could be closed at night so the ink did not dry out. When I asked her, she showed me how to ink the pad, just using a swab and letting it sink in. And then I knew. The hectograph tray, the inked pad—a thin silk covering is best, but fine linen such as is woven for ladies' handkerchiefs and collars will do—the stencil, the piece of paper on top of the stencil, another waxed sheet to protect the rollers from becoming inky, the whole thing moving back and forth between the two rollers of the 'wringer' until the paper is inked. Simple. Cheap. Anyone could make one—any decent craftsman, at least. It was like a divine revelation."

  "Show me," Holmann said. "Archbishop Ferdinand invests in results, not concepts."

  "See," Vignelli said after he had finished the first demonstration. "The operator can release or tighten the tension on the rollers. He can make a second pass if the ink is getting dry and the paper does not become dark enough the first time."

  "I don't think that I believed you," Holmann said. "But it is clear. How many of these machines do you have available?"

  "I have already completed ten. At least, my shop had completed ten at the time I began this journey and that was several weeks ago. I have five more almost finished and my assistants are in the workshop even as I talk to you here. I sold two—well, received orders for two—in Frankfurt on my way to Cologne. The eight available, I can deliver as fast as the parts can be transported, unless, of course, my head assistant, who left for Vienna the same day that I started north, has received orders there."

  "Tell me about the 'stencils.'"

  "They are not durable. You cannot print a large number of copies from a single stencil. The best ones that I have made, waxed silk, allow a hundred pages, perhaps. With good fortune, if the stencil does not wrinkle. Waxed paper will not make more than twenty-five copies, usually, before it begins to deteriorate."

  "That doesn't sound good," Holmann complained.

  Vignelli suspected that a skilled operator could get many more copies from a stencil—perhaps as many as a hundred from a paper stencil and a thousand from a silk one. But not all operators were skilled and presenting inflated claims to the dukes of Bavaria tended to have permanently fatal consequences for the businessman who presented them. The archbishop was a younger brother of Duke Maximilian. Much better that he should perhaps receive a happy surprise rather than an unhappy one.

  "But think. They are simple, even if not durable. Once a traditional print shop somewhere—such as in Cologne—has created the form for cutting the stencil, it can make as many stencils as may be needed. If the shop producing the pamphlet or placard will need to make five hundred copies, then make five stencils. Make a couple to spare. They aren't that expensive. If you want the item copied in ten different towns, if it should be the case that the archbishop has bought ten of these copying devices, then make ten stencils. They are lightweight and easy to distribute. Why, they can even be sent through the mail, properly protected and packed."

  "Better, but . . ."

  "At need, it is even possible to make a stencil without a print shop. Just to copy words from a manuscript."

  "How?"

  "It is best done for large placards, but this way." Vignelli opened a box and tumbled a batch of multi-colored letters on the table. "The up-timers use the Latin letter forms as we prefer them in Italy, not the German Fraktur. These, I understand, were for children in their earliest years, so they are large. Such a treasure, but possibly not surprising. I was highly gratified to discover how many Italians reside in this Grantville. The letters had magnets in the back and could be arranged and rearranged on a magnetic board. I have removed the magnets, of course, for safe-keeping. They are in my shop."

  "Which is where?"

  "I have established myself in Bolzano. Bozen, you may call it, in the Tirol. The duchess has created a very favorable business climate."

  "No wonder. The regent, Duke Leopold's widow, is a Medici," Holmann griped. "Damned family of Italian pawnbrokers, even if they have clawed their way up to Grand Dukes of Tuscany and given two queens to France."

  "Not to mention a couple of popes," Vignelli answered mildly. "Let me show you how to use these letters to make a stencil. Of course, any craftsman can make such letters from thin wood. There is no need for them to be of this up-time material."

  "You just carry them around to impress potential customers, then?"

  "Of course. Now. First draw around them on the piece of paper you intend for your stencil. Then cut them out with a razor blade, quite carefully. Only then wax the paper. Otherwise, no matter how careful a craftsman may be, the wax cracks and the ink seeps through. If the wax does not coat the stencil completely, the paper remains permeable to the ink. We are experimenting with hand-stenciling smaller letters by pricking the paper with a needle, but . . ."

  Holmann had made up his mind. "Hold that for my workman," he said. "You can explain the rest of it to him. The archbishop will take four of your machines. Is it possible to deliver them, ah, inconspicuously?"

  "Certainly," Vignelli said. "They are easy to assemble and I have prepared a sheet of directions. When they are disassembled, no guard at a town gate will give them a second glance. If there were a need for easier passage through tolls and customs or other inspections, the parts can even be ship
ped separately."

  "A need?"

  "If, for example, there were some need for the archbishop to ensure the preparation of literature in such a city as Magdeburg, or if a partisan of the emperor who is residing in Nuernberg might need discreet access to a way to provide information to the people. I call it," Vignelli said proudly, "a 'duplicating machine.'"

  News of the Day

  Frankfurt am Main, March 1633

  Martin delivered the bags he was carrying, saw to the stabling of his horse, and picked up the latest newspaper, fresh off the presses. Originally it had appeared weekly, but it came out twice a week now. You could buy it in every post office in Europe, of course, even those outside the CPE, but you got it first in Frankfurt, since that was where it was printed.

  He stood there, looking absent-mindedly at the sales rack.

  There were a lot of other newspapers, of course. You could buy those at the Frankfurt post office, too. Nuernberg, Augsburg, and Leipzig. Berlin, even. Since the beginning, since the day a baby avisa grew up to be a regularly circulated commercial newsletter, post offices and newspapers had gone together. Before the war, there had been four or five real newspapers—not just occasional broadsides—in the Germanies, all weeklies. Five years ago, there were a dozen. Before the war, all of them together had printed perhaps five hundred copies per week. Five years ago, perhaps five thousand copies per week. Now, since the Ring of Fire—especially since the main theater of war with its plundering and marauding armies had moved away from the central cities of the Germanies—there were probably two dozen weekly papers and a half dozen that appeared more than once a week. Twelve thousand issues per week, perhaps.