Grantville Gazette, Volume IX Read online

  He decided to show off a little. He pushed in the clutch, revved it, let the clutch out too fast with the revs too low, and promptly stalled it. Not what he planned.

  Joe whistled at him. "Way to go, Trent. You want me to drive that thing for you?" The other two laughed.

  Trent just made a face and restarted the motor. "Nice and easy. Test drive, remember?" He felt his ears burning red in the cool of the morning. "Easy out on the clutch, remember the lightened flywheel that makes it a little harder, ease it out, let it roll, and there we go."

  He was doing it. He was driving again. He eased the thing into second gear and picked up a little speed down the driveway. He tapped the brakes, and they grabbed evenly. Back down to first gear, the motor made a nice sound on the downshift. He was at the end of the drive. He had planned to only go to the end of the drive and back, but the motor was just up to temperature, and it felt solid. He smiled. Why not? He turned left down the street and headed out to Route 250, the main drag through the valley.

  "Just down to two-fifty. Check the brakes at a little higher speed." His local street had a little curve to it, so he moved the wheel back and forth to check the steering and suspension. It felt okay. A bit twitchy, nervous. Like the steering was too sensitive for the car. "Damn," he thought. "I didn't think of that. I just used the steering rack that I had, didn't think about the steering ratios." Still it wasn't that bad. It still worked. It was just something that he needed to get used to. He came to the intersection of his street and Route 250. He could just pull out, and use the wider road to turn around. But what the heck. He looked at the gauges again, tugged at his seatbelt, and turned left, away from town.

  "Just run it up to third gear, see how it handles a little bit." So he did, and then fourth gear, and finally fifth gear. He was just loping along with very low revs, well off the power band, just lugging along. . . "Idiot!" he yelled. He pushed in the clutch and revved the motor. "Don't lug this motor. It is the only one you have." The low revs and the load on the motor could have damaged a rod bearing. "Think. This is the only one of these you will ever have. Don't break it the first time out." He pulled to the side of the road and revved the motor a couple of times. Sounded good. Good oil pressure.

  "Okay. Seems to be all right. Let's just turn this thing around and head back. Make sure everything is tight." He paused. "Well, I suppose I could just run up two-fifty to the high school, turn around and come home." He smiled. He didn't stall it this time as he got the thing moving. The motor was making good horsepower and the suspension was softer than he thought it would be. Everything was feeling good. He paused again, and a face cracking grin slowly spread across his face. "What the hell. Let's open it up a little."

  * * *

  Opal Sizemore loved her police scanner. It sat in the center of her bedroom dresser in the extended care facility. The scanner let her know what was happening in town all the time. She had loved it before the Ring of Fire, and had used it to monitor both the police and fire department. As she shuffled past her dresser that morning, she heard the scanner come alive as it had not in a long time.

  "Ahh, Dispatch, this is Car Two. Southbound on Route 250, by the high school, in pursuit of, uhh—stand by, Dispatch . . . We think it is some sort of dune buggy, no plates."

  That would be Ralph Onofrio, she thought. He sounds like he's a little excited.

  "Did you say in pursuit, Car Two?"

  Opal sat on the edge of her bed in front of the scanner. This was the best thing that had happened in a while! Certainly more fun than that Croat raid. Opal figured that today Angela Baker was running dispatch.

  "That's affirmative, Dispatch. We are in pursuit."

  "Haven't had one of those in a while."

  "Yup, that was Angela all right," thought Opal. She always did have a dry sense of humor.

  "Technically, ahh, Dispatch, since Heinrich is uhhh—driving, this is his first one ever."

  "Dispatch copies that. What is your speed and position?"

  "We just passed the mine road cut off, top speed so far is only seventy-five, but there are some straight parts up here . . ."

  "Roger that, Car Two. Be advised the street cleaner's wagon had its wheel break. It's at the outside of the funeral home curve. It was not all the way off the road; use caution. The tow-wagon has been dispatched."

  "Car Two copies, Dispatch. Heinrich, remember the wagon up here. Heinrich. Heinrich rememb—-! The SHIT WAGON! SHIT WA . . ."

  Opal leaned closer to the scanner. She heard a squeal of tires, some thumps, like they hit something, and then a long squishing rumbling sound. And then silence, as Ralph must have released his grip on the microphone. She pursed her lips. It sounded like Angela was worried, too.

  "Car Two, do you copy? Car Two, do you copy?"

  "Stand by, Dispatch. We have a—well, just stand by. We have uhh—broken off pursuit. Yeah. Broken off the pursuit."

  "Copy that. You have broken off the pursuit. Do you require assistance?"

  "We think it was Trent Haygood, Dispatch. I recognize the driving. Nobody else would be that fast. Wait unit I get my hands . . ."

  "Dispatch copies. Do you require assistance?"

  "Well, uhh, sort of, Angela. There's the street cleaner's wagon still out here that will need towing and repair, and the county trucks need to get out here with something to pick up, oh maybe, 'bout a ton of horse shit off the road."

  Opal noticed there was a long pause.

  "Do you copy, Dispatch? Angela?"

  "Dispatch copies. A ton?"

  Opal heard laughter in the background, behind Angela's transmission. Quite a lot of laughter.

  "Affirmative. And have Heinrich's wife bring him a change of clothes. He had his window open when we bumped the parked wagon. He almost got the car stopped, and he just touched the jack. The wagon teetered for a moment, and it uhhh—yeah. I'm gonna tell her—they're gonna find out sometime, Heinrich—sorry, Dispatch. But it seems the wagon dumped the better part of the load into the driver's window."

  "Copy that. So you hit a load of horseshit. In a high-speed pursuit. In 1634."

  "That about covers it."

  Opal clutched her sweater around her neck. And then laughed like she had not laughed in the last ten years.

  "Car One, Dispatch."

  "Go ahead, Dispatch, this is Car One."

  "Car One, you need to respond to the traffic accident and write it up."

  "Already on the way. We just wish we had some film left in the camera."

  They found that Opal had passed away in her room later that morning, when she failed to show up for breakfast. She had a curious smile on her face.

  * * *

  "Well, how did't go?" Manny was jumping up and down.

  Trent had come flying up the driveway, braked hard, and then pulled the car into the garage and closed the door. He was now sitting on the porch with his three junior hillbilly cohorts, catching his breath, sipping a cold beer, and grinning from ear to ear.

  "C'mon, Trent. How was it? Was it fast?" Manny was really jumping up and down now.

  Trent turned to look at them. "Yes. It was fast."

  "How fast?" Manny was jumping up and down so much he was in the air more than he was on the ground.

  Trent looked at them calmly. "Fast enough."

  Joe looked at him with a pained expression. "C'mon, Trent. How was it? Tell us!"

  Trent looked over at the boys. "Not bad, boys. Not bad at all. Kinda like old times." He felt the grin get even wider, if that was possible.

  They all turned and watched as the Grantville patrol car eased down their street, and pulled slowly into the driveway. The car seemed to have a definite purpose, a focus, the way a police car will. The three boys looked at Trent. His mother stepped out onto the porch and looked at Trent. She was not smiling. The police car stopped.

  Trent put his feet up on the porch rail and leaned back. He felt better than he had in quite a while. For now, the world was right again. "Yup. Just like
old times."

  Water Wings

  by Terry Howard

  Somewhere in the North Sea

  The line arcing off the boat kinked between deck and water. Eric, watching for just that, yelled to the crew uncoiling the stiff hose, "Hold it! Back it up!" Then the kink swelled a bit. Eric screamed, "Back it up! Back it up now!"

  Before the offending line could be pulled back up onto the deck, the kink burst.

  "Shit!" Eric yelled. "Get the bell up! Now! Get it up!"

  The crew who had been manning the air pump left their now useless post and manned the capstan to raise the bell. Putting their backs into it, they pushed its arms for all they were worth.

  Eric watched as the collapsed air line came up out of the water at a fast pace. He had brought the details for a diving bell along with the location of the wreck, due north of Castle Point and west of St. Olef's Bay, back from a strange town in Germany called Grantville and was able to convince a local merchant to fund the salvage effort.

  The air line was made of two layers of waxed leather. The book called for rubberized canvas, with the outer layer sewn over the seamless inner layer. No one, outside of Grantville, knew what rubberized meant. It had to be water-proofing. It must really be something because they had absolutely no luck using canvas to make the high pressure air line. Two layers of leather worked. It had to be doused down with hot water before it was lowered away to keep it from cracking and it made a large coil that filled the free deck from rail to rail. The coil barely left room for the air pump and the capstan for lowering the diving bell in the middle.

  "Belay that!" the captain called.

  "But, sir," Eric protested. "We've lost air."

  "I am aware of that, Mister." He turned to the pump crew. "Kyrie Elison, gentlemen," he said, meaning he wanted them to start singing the old church chant and turning the capstan at a slow measured rate. "Bring him up at the regular pace, if you please. We don't need him doubled over and dying on the deck with cramps. That's why we put the valve on the bell."

  The line crew lifted the leather hose over the heads of the now chanting men who now turned the capstan. Eric, worried, turned back to the sea and watched the collapsed air line inch up out of the water.

  Until now, when a line broke they hauled away with all speed to raise the bell before it lost air. Twice they failed. Twice they succeeded, only to have the man die a painful death from horrid cramps. This was the first time a line had blown since they had installed a shut off valve. The pump had to work harder to push it open but it should hold the air in if the pump failed.

  "I can see the bell." Eric called out. Then, without another word, he dove into the cold waters of the North Sea. At the staging platform, eager hands pulled him and the body he had retrieved out of the water.

  "I saw him slip out of the bell. He must have passed out. We need a tie off in there so a man stays in if he blacks out."

  With the bell up, the capstan was switched over to lifting the cargo cable to see if anything had been loaded.

  With five lost to accidents and one lost to illness, Eric wondered if he would be number seven. It was his turn to go down. Well, if my number is up, my number is up. If I die, at least I die rich.

  Under the Tuscan Son

  by Iver Cooper

  November, 1633

  Curzio Inghirami had learned a great deal during his visit to Grantville, but he now was back home at Villa Scornello, the family seat. It was a few miles outside of Volterra, a town in the grand duchy of Tuscany.

  He beckoned to one of the family servants. "Tell Father that Lucrezia and I are going fishing." Lucrezia, his younger sister, giggled for no apparent reason. "Have Cook pack a picnic lunch for us, and then meet us out back in half an hour."

  Curzio and Lucrezia whiled away the time, gossiping about their friends in Volterra. In due course, the servant joined them, basket in hand, and the three began the half-hour walk down to the bank of the River Cecina. The two siblings fished for a while, handing each catch to the servant, then started throwing stones into the river. Curzio reached down for another, then exclaimed, "Wait a moment! Look at this!"

  "Oh, it's just an old pottery shard," said Lucrezia. "Throw or drop it, but don't talk about it."

  "No, wait, it has writing on it. In Etruscan, I think. And here's a Latin word: 'thesaur'–the rest of the word is lost." He thought about it for a moment. "I am sure it must be 'thesaurus.'"

  "I don't think Father Domenico has taught that one to me, yet." Father Domenico Vadorini was the Anghirami family priest, and their tutor.

  "It means . . . 'treasure.'" Their servant blinked, but said nothing.

  "Treasure?" Lucrezia put her hands on her hips and stared at her older brother. "Well, what are you waiting for? Let's find the rest of the vase. Perhaps the treasure is inside!" They started rummaging about.

  "Here it is!" said Lucrezia triumphantly. She turned the broken vase upside-down, and shook it. What came out wasn't a treasure. At least not one which was recognizable as such. It was a lump of what looked like pitch, but with many hairs sticking out of it. "Yuck. Some treasure."

  "Don't jump to conclusions, little sister," said Curzio loftily. He was six years her senior. "There might be something inside. Let's take it back up to the house and examine it more closely."

  "Very well. I am tired of fishing, anyway." Curzio and Lucrezia tramped back up the hill. The servant, a respectful couple of yards behind them, carried the fish.

  Once on the veranda of the family villa, Curzio threw the lump against a stone wall, and it broke apart. "Now we're getting somewhere. Look, there's a folded cloth inside. Some kind of linen. And there's writing on it. Let's go show Father."

  Their father, Inghiramo Inghirami, was impressed. At least by the reference to treasure. However, the writing, some of which was in Latin, was not too informative. It suggested that the 'treasure,' whatever it might be, was located in a citadel, and that the latter was set on a hill near where the little stream, the Zambra, met the Cecina. They knew such a hill, and there were ruins of some kind there. Inghiramo told them that if they were interested, they could, on his authority, direct some of the tenant farmers to help them excavate the site.

  * * *

  "Hello, Curzio," said Raffaello Maffei. Raffaello was Curzio's best friend, and a noted antiquarian. "What brings you and the good Father down to town today?"

  "Have a look at this." Curzio proffered the linen scroll. "I think this message might be in Etruscan."

  "Come with me. We'll compare it to the inscriptions my namesake found." Raffaello led them into the Palazzo Maffei, where they could inspect the Etruscan inscriptions on a funeral stele and on a statue of a mother nurturing a child. Sure enough, the letters were similarly formed. As a frequent guest, Curzio had, of course, seen these Etruscan exemplars many times before.

  "Did you find any more of these scrolls?" asked Raffaello, with the eagerness of a true scholar.

  "Indeed, we did. I found this one inside a strange hairy, tarry offa." The Latin word could mean a ball of dough, or a tumor, or indeed any shapeless mass. "But we have others we haven't opened yet. I wouldn't think of doing so without the benefit of your company."

  "I thank you. You have them here?"

  "A few. Father Vadorini is carrying them."

  Curzio, as the discoverer, was granted the honor of the first incision. He took out the new scroll, and read it. "This is astounding—read this sentence, Father."

  Father Vadorini read aloud, "I am an augur, a prophet of my people. Yet it is not prophecy which compels Man, but the Great Aesar, who, when he created Man, permitted him to possess his own Will." He crossed himself.

  "This is of great theological import! We know that of all the ancient peoples, none were more religious than our ancestors, the Etruscans. And we know that over the centuries, that the Lord prepared the world for the coming of the Savior by granting inspirations to learned and worthy pagans, such as Homer, and Plato, and Virgil. Here then,
is proof that he moved among the nobler of the Etruscans."

  His companions immediately recognized the significance of his comment. This Etruscan divine had apprehended, at an early date, one of the major teachings of the Catholic Church, and one on which the Protestants had grievously erred.

  "We really need a more attractive name for these packages than offa."

  Raffaello considered the problem. "Perhaps you can call it a chrysalis. That is the container from which a butterfly emerges, and these messages, at least to learned men, are as beautiful as a butterfly."

  * * *