Grantville Gazette, Volume IX Read online

  Hans rose early, mounted a borrowed horse and made his way across the boarder. Pastor Holt received him in the study. The room's fireplace was welcome on a chilly April day. A writing desk, a magnificent library of seven books and two comfortable chairs in front of the fire furnished the room.

  "Pastor, I am here in response to the complaint you lodged with the Grantville Police."

  "Good." Pastor Holt said. "We need this nipped in the bud with as little fuss as possible."

  "I couldn't agree with you more, Pastor. But I am afraid I must inform you the chief of police feels there is nothing he can do."

  "What?"

  "He says it is outside his jurisdiction."

  "He intends to let these, these blasphemers, carry on their criminal activities because they cross the border to do it?"

  "Pastor, first, he does not see it as criminal."

  "Nonsense! It is against the laws of God and man!"

  "Pastor, the laws of God are not the laws of the USE. Or of Grantville."

  "They should be!"

  "I agree. But unfortunately they are not. The different churches cannot agree was to what those laws are and . . ."

  "On this point we are in agreement! The re-baptizers strike at the very root of Christianity. How can anyone have confidence in their salvation when someone claims baptism does not save?" Pastor Holt shuddered. "Where does this leave those children who die an early death?"

  "I understand completely. You are absolutely right. Except all of the churches do not agree on . . ."

  "Nonsense. It was settled at the second Diet of Speier. The Catholics, the Lutherans, and now the Calvinists, all agreed the Anabaptists are not to be tolerated."

  "Pastor, there are three established churches in Grantville who practice only adult baptism. They have, or will have, existed for hundreds of years in America. Their existence is not a threat to the Lutheran church or Christianity. The chief feels you will just have to make an accommodation in your thinking. You know they have a radical concept of religious freedom."

  "I can do nothing about what 'they' do in Grantville." It is amazing how much can be said with how a word is pronounced. "But, I will not allow this travesty to be inflicted on the people of my parish."

  "Pastor, Joseph Jenkins claims to have the count's permission."

  "Nonsense! The count is a loyal member of the Lutheran faith. He would never condone this."

  "The chief has known Mr. Jenkins for years. He accepted his statement without bothering to verify it. I overheard the conversation. Mr. Jenkins claimed to have talked with the count. He claimed the count does not want to lose a large party of gunsmiths who were about to move so they could attend church without walking miles and miles. The count, according to Jenkins, feels this acceptance of any faith as long as it does not create social disorder is one of the secrets of Grantville's prosperity."

  "Social disorder? What does he think rebaptism is? Doesn't he know about Munster?"

  "Pastor, you will have to ask the count. I fully sympathize with your problem. Believe me, I will do anything I can to help. But the response I was sent to deliver is: the officials in Grantville are not prepared to do anything."

  "Surely you jest?"

  "I wish I did."

  * * *

  The count did not relieve Pastor Holt's frustration. "Pastor Holt, I know you are aware the Emperor has declared religious freedom."

  "Religious freedom? Yes. But surely it does not include these people."

  "Yes. It does."

  Next Sunday's sermon was a railing accusation against Godless polygamists and anarchists. On Monday, word came from the count to drop it. Pastor Holt had no choice but to obey. After all, the count was the one who appointed him to the pulpit and paid his salary.

  * * *

  About three months later, the English version of the Magdeburg Freedom Arches propaganda broadside started turning up in Grantville. When Jimmy Dick saw the lead article, he wondered just how long he would have to do his drinking at home.

  Red Necks to the Rescue by Leo Nidus

  If you have not been to Grantville then you may not know of a private drinking establishment called "Club 250." There is a sign on the door "No Dogs and No germans Allowed."

  The people who drink there are referred to by the general population of Grantville as "red necks." This is a derogatory term designating a lower class of people. They are presumed to be louts, willfully ignorant, belligerently pugnacious, and ethnocentric in the extreme, as noted by the sign on the door. They are not well considered and clearly stand in opposition to the general policy of acceptance which is a hallmark of Grantville. But since tolerance is so highly esteemed by Grantville's ethos, even red necks are secure by law from any disapproval beyond verbal condemnation.

  Why should I write of these dregs of their culture, the lowest order of society? That is simple. I write of them because of the nobility of their actions and the generosity of their spirit.

  When no place to worship could be found amongst the established churches—yes, churches. Grantville's tolerance fosters over half a dozen different faiths existing side by side without even covert violence—for a small Anabaptist sect, the red necks of Club 250 opened the doors of the club to them in off hours, asking only that they be gone well before the club opened for business. When the sect opened a church across the border and encountered active opposition, including the threat and actualization of violence, these same "degenerate louts" undertook to guarantee the safety of the congregation by standing armed vigil over the services until the violence subsided.

  Why would the dregs of society, the despised lowest order, the willfully ignorant do such a thing? Because they know in their hearts, they hold the conviction deep in their souls, that freedom is not free. They understand that when one man is not free, then none are truly free.

  If today we allow the Anabaptists to be denied the right to freely assemble, then tomorrow that freedom could be denied to others and then to us.

  The price of freedom is the defense of the rights of others, even if it is the right to be wrong. As one red neck put it, "the price of freedom is the defense of idiots."

  Fly Like a Bird

  by Loren Jones

  Paul Meinhart left Grantville in the autumn of 1632, but not before he spent several months in the Grantville jail. He'd been imprisoned for such a stupid little thing, yet the Americans had treated him like a murderer. The one good thing that came out of his imprisonment had been knowledge.

  He couldn't read English. He couldn't read German all that well. But he had a good memory, and the books and magazines that had been provided to him in prison had shown him wonders. One of the magazines, a serial dedicated to things of a mechanical nature, had been inspiring. Especially the pictures. There had been pictures of just about everything, often in fine detail. Including flying machines.

  Paul wasn't able to steal the magazine when he left the jail, but he had been able to copy several of the pages by hand while he waited, tracing the drawings and writing down what he could of the information with them. There was a kind of triangular flying machine that was simple to make, and he knew he would be able to build it. He had the drawings in his pockets when he left.

  Paul turned south, heading toward a warmer climate as the year turned cold, and finally made his way to Venice. He gave out dribbles and drabbles of information about the strange people in Germany and their amazing devices to several wealthy men in search of a patron, and finally found one in Don Giovanni Romano, a merchant with ties to many other wealthy men.

  "You speak of wonders, Heir Meinhart," Don Giovanni said when they had first met.

  "Wonders indeed, Don Giovanni," Paul had replied, bowing low. "Wonders that let but a few handfuls of these people defeat whole armies. Wonders that they freely discuss amongst themselves, and pay no attention to who might be listening."

  "Tell me of these wonders," Don Giovanni commanded, and Paul happily complied.

  "These
people have weapons that shoot a hundred bullets in the time it takes a musketeer to shoot one. They have great machines that move on their own, traveling faster than the fastest horse, and carrying many men shoot thing their terrible weapons. And, the greatest of their wonders, they possess the knowledge of how to fly."

  "Fly!"

  "Fly, Don Giovanni. I had the opportunity to copy some plans for a simple flying machine, one that they don't think of as valuable. " Paul sat forward, sensing that he had the rich fool hooked.

  "Show me," Don Giovanni demanded and Paul brought out his drawings.

  "You see, it is simple. A frame and some cloth, stretched tight. While I couldn't copy all of the drawings and pictures, I remember them well enough to be able to build one of these machines—with the proper patron, of course." Paul smiled and Don Giovanni smiled back.

  "Of course."

  Don Giovanni provided Paul with everything he asked for, and in return Paul provided Don Giovanni with a flying machine. It was triangular, seven yards across the base and four yards from tip to tail. Don Giovanni had provided Paul with fine, light-weight yew wood for his spars, and a small fortune in silk for the cloth. It took some time, and not a little trial and error, but the day finally came that Paul arranged for Don Giovanni and his friends to meet him on a hillside near the sea.

  "Don Giovanni, I am pleased that so many of your friends could join us today," Paul said as he bowed to all of the nobles.

  "I hope you have something to show us that is worth the trouble," Don Constanza said. "I have a much prettier person I would rather be spending the day with."

  "You will soon be happy that you came here today, Don Constanza," Paul said, not adding that if he had been a man of vision he would have been the one celebrating this day instead of Don Giovanni.

  Paul walked over to where his helpers were holding his flying machine, the so-called "hang glider" and got under it. He lifted the contraption and looked at the supports. He'd eliminated several of them in order to shed weight, but still it felt like he was carrying a barrel on his back. He felt the breeze in his face and remembered the pictures of men running down a hill and sailing away, and his feet began to move.

  Faster and faster Paul ran, and as he did he felt his load lighten. Then, as the breeze freshened, he felt his feet start skimming along the ground, and he jumped up to drape his stomach across the bar. A gust of wind lifted him and he felt a rush of excitement as he soared over the astonished nobles. Then he heard a crack.

  Don Giovanni and his friends watched Paul soar fifty meters into the sky. They cried out in wonder as the flying machine lifted the man high above them. Then it collapsed, folding around its inventor like a napkin around a bone, and crashed to earth.

  Don Giovanni heaved a great sigh of disappointment. "He seemed so sure." Turning to the men who had been assisting Paul, he said, "Salvage the silk. Whatever you do, salvage that silk. Take the body to the church for burial."

  "Man was not meant to fly, Don Giovanni," Don Constanza said. "I told him that when he approached me. Come, I know what will lighten your heart."

  Gearhead

  by Mark H Huston

  It was quiet. Way too quiet. Of all the things Trent Haygood hated about the seventeenth century, the quiet was the worst. He missed the sounds of engines. Internal combustion engines. Hell, he'd be happy with some noise from a steam engine. As he sat on the front porch of his parents' home, he leaned forward and listened.

  He held his breath and focused his hearing for some sign of mechanized civilization, anything. He listened carefully.

  Only a cow mooed in the distance.

  He sighed, leaned back into the chair, and put his hands behind his head. Back up-time, he could almost always tell you what kind of vehicle was coming down the road just by the sound of the motor. Mopar, Chevy, Ford, old KW or Freightliner.

  Things were getting a little noisier lately, he had to admit. It had been a slow rebuilding. There was the occasional airplane now, built from Formica and car engines. Someone else was also building aircraft, having bought up a lot of motorcycle engines for propulsion. Cars and trucks never did go away altogether. Folks were pretty creative in these parts, so if there was something to be had that was sorta liquid and flammable, then someone modified a motor to run on it. His old man had reestablished the family distilled spirits business while he was away, and that was always good for fuel or trade.

  He still missed the background noise of motors. He considered it the basis of true civilization. Not the stinky, organic things—like horses and oxen—that moved people and goods from place to place in this time. Or the dreadfully slow barges, lolling up and down the river like some demented version of "Life on the Mississippi" that went horribly bad.

  There was the train. A bunch of folks had gotten together and built an honest-to-God steam engine. Still, it wasn't the same thing. It was slow, maybe five miles per hour. But it worked. He sighed. Maybe by the time I'm fifty or sixty, there will be real racing again. Not horse racing, but NASCAR. God, he missed NASCAR. Big E and Little E were the thing in 2000. Daytona had happened, the season was underway, and it was looking like another great year. Ford had a good car, and Jeff Gordon was as still strong. Trent never liked Jeff Gordon. Too pretty. Plus he was from California, of all places. Who ever heard of a NASCAR driver from California for crying out loud?

  It was still quiet. No engines anywhere to be heard. He sighed again.

  Trent had been a high school senior when the Ring of Fire hit Grantville and had been conscripted into the military at graduation, along with the rest of his class. He had spent most of his time drilling, marching, and waiting. He never got to fire a shot in any battle. In the first his rifle had jammed, and in the second he had been held in reserve, and in the last one he had broken his ankle marching and sat out the whole thing in the rear. It wasn't like he was trying to avoid things; it just worked out that way. He didn't even have any good stories.

  He had been transferred to Grantville, detailed to work with the phone company as a trainee, but still stuck in the army. It was boring. He knew that wasn't what he wanted to do with his life, telephones or the army. He had known back home, back up-time. He had gotten a small scholarship to become a race mechanic at a school in North Carolina. He was going to work for a NASCAR team. He had built and raced his own car senior year and had done pretty well. He finished third at Tyler County speedway in his first season. It was not what you would call a big time racecar, just an old P-Stock Camaro that he had welded a cage into, and built a motor to meet—well, exceed actually—the rules. His dad and a couple of buddies had been the crew. They didn't spend a lot of money, as it was a basic car, running in a basic class on a small dirt oval track. Towing the car to the track was the toughest part of the deal. God, he loved that stuff. The odor of racing gasoline and the smell of hot brake pads were perfume to his nose. They had called him Mario Haygood at school.

  Some of the funds for the racecar came from the little side business his old man had, back before the Ring of Fire. Trent smiled as he recalled the fun he had making the "runs" over to Clarksburg.

  Today, all that remained of that car was the V-8 engine on a stand in the garage, a transmission, front subframe, drive shaft, and the wheels and tires. Everything else had been salvaged, scrapped, sold or substituted for something else. The fuel cell and most of the safety equipment and the racing seat went to the air force, the battered body went to the scrap yard and the roll cage tubing was pulled out and sold. Other than some glass and wiring odds and ends, it was all gone.

  He stood up and stretched. The family home was not in Grantville proper, but on a road off Route 250, about a mile and a half from town. Dad moved here because it was quiet, before the Ring of Fire happened. Quiet. Still too quiet. He sat back down into the lawn chair.

  Times like this, up-time, he would get into his street car, an old beat up Ford Fairmont and go blasting around the back roads, chewing up the already old tires, and overhea
ting the inadequate brakes. The thing had an old straight six in it, and it barely had enough power to get out of its own way. But it was still driving, and West Virginia hill country had some challenging and twisty back roads that were his playground. Guys would make fun of his beater, but all his extra money went to the racecar. Even in the land where beaters were almost an art form, his was a beater. He smiled at the memory of that car. That one, too, had gone to the scrap yard, after stripping some of the items out of it. He kept the steering wheel, almost everything else was gone.

  That old beater was special. After all it was in that car that he and his first girlfriend had—he paused again. His old girlfriend had gone off and gotten married while he was off getting bored to death in the army. He started to feel even more depressed.