Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 (20 page)

"I understand completely," Inger said. "The male ego can be so fragile. But are you saying you know how to operate a radio?"

"Yes," Catrin said. "Not that it's difficult. Anybody who can follow the instruction book can operate one."

"It probably helps if you can actually read the instruction book," Inger muttered as she glared at Agmund.

He held his hands up defensively. "It's not my fault the manuals aren't written in Norwegian." He turned to Catrin. "Looking after the radio and training others in its use will be another of your duties."

Catrin thought about how much fun it would be teaching males how to use the radio, and sighed. "Gee, thanks."

"Don't mention it," Agmund said.

June 1635

Catrin had been enthusiastic when she'd been told she was to be fitted out with a complete set of furs, but then she'd seen the fur in question. Reindeer lacked a certain glamor. Actually, it lacked any glamor. However, she'd learned to love the warmth of her new furs on the trip north, and it wasn't even winter.

She stood on deck as the ship approached Kirkenes. It wasn't a very big settlement, but then, she hadn't expected it to be. There were half a dozen buildings, all made to a new design first introduced as worker accommodation for the construction gangs working on the hydro-electric facility being built at Glomfjord.

For various reasons—mostly to do with efficiency and economy—they'd elected not to build from locally foraged materials, and had instead decided to ship prefabricated structures from Arendal. An up-time engineer had shown Magnus Kristjanson how he could turn the plywood he was making into
Engineered-Timber I-Beams
, and these were clad with Norwegian cedar planks nailed vertically to batons that were in turn nailed to the engineered-timber frames. Catrin had walked through one such cabin, with its wall cavities packed full of insulation, when the ship stopped off in Glomfjord, and she had found the structure to be both brighter and warmer than a conventional log cabin that had been built at Glomfjord only a couple of years previously.

Because of the depth of the water close to land the ship was able to float up against a short timber wharf built out from the land. That meant that once again Catrin didn't have to climb down into a lighter to be delivered to land. Instead she could walk. She wrapped her new fur coat tightly around her and walked down the gangway onto the Kirkenes dock.

The hovercraft was going to be one of the last items unloaded, so Catrin made her way toward the people who'd gathered to welcome the ship. As she got closer her eyes lit up. It couldn't be, but surely that was the hunk from Saalfeld standing there. She'd all but forgotten about him, or at least forgotten him as much as a girl could forget such a dreamy guy.
Hello, Handsome
. She had been heading toward one of the older men, but she immediately changed course. If nothing else, she knew the hunk spoke German.

"Hello, remember me? I'm Catrin Schmoller. We met when you visited the Saalfeld City Council office back last year. Agmund Torgeirson sent me. I'm the hovercraft pilot, and I'm supposed to help out with the radio."

"Hovercraft?" he asked. "What is Papa up to this time?"

Papa? The hunk was the handsome young man Inger Mogensdotter and Agmund Torgeirson had been trying to offload? Things were certainly looking up for Catrin. She passed over the letter Agmund had given her to deliver to his son. "I'm sure this will explain everything."

Their eyes met, and this time Catrin knew the hunk was really seeing her. She didn't flutter her eyelashes like she had last time they met. Instead she just offered him a bright smile, and was silently filled with joy when he responded with a bright smile of his own before turning to his father's letter.

****

Anna Nicole . . . Bozarth?

Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

"Who is that?" Sergeant McIntyre asked. The young woman came storming through, trailed by a servant who was apologizing for all he was worth.

"That, my lad, is Miss 'Lead Acid' Krügerin," Johan Kipper told him. "The battery queen."

"Who is she?"

"Just another of the rich nobodies who have appeared since the Ring of Fire," Johan said, still looking around for David Bartley. They were at the Magdeburg Opera House and didn't much care for the opera.

"Like you?" the sergeant asked, slyly.

"In a way, lad. In a way," Johan said. "Miss Elzbeth Lead Acid Krügerin is the Anna Nicole Smith of the seventeenth century. She spent the years between 1631 and 1633 pushing an old up-timer around in a wheel chair and now she owns the controlling interest in the biggest battery factory in Germany."

"She's the who?"

"Doesn't matter. Just that a lot of people think that she married the old guy for his money."

"So what happened?
Did
she marry him for his money?"

Johan looked around the lobby one more time. He didn't want to see the last half of the play. There were people who loved opera, as the line from
Pretty Woman
went, and people who didn't. Johan was one of those who didn't. Especially this one. He had time. He looked over at the newest sergeant of the Exchange Corps and decided to enlighten him. "It all started . . ."

****

"You want my chair, Frank Jackson, you can take it from under my cold, dead ass."

The chair in question was one that had been paid for by Social Security. It was battery powered and it let Gordon Bozarth get around. Gordon was sixty-nine and suffered from clogged arteries in his legs. He could stand and cover about a hundred feet before his legs ran out of blood and he fell on his butt. The chair gave him mobility and let him get by without the aid of a family that was less than fully supportive even before the Ring of Fire had left his only source of income up-time. Gordon took a breath. "Frank, this is my only way of getting around. I need this chair. Why don't you guys use a car battery?"

"We are, but the science teachers over at the high school say that your batteries are a different kind."

"My batteries are lead acid, same as a car battery. "

"They're lead acid sure enough, but not the same as car batteries. They are deep-cycle batteries."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Do I look like a geek?"

"No. You look like a dumb ass coal miner, just like me. But, Frank, I need my chair."

"So does everyone else who has one, Gordon. Most of 'em are worse off than you are."

"Well, what's so all-fired important about batteries?"

"Oil."

"Frank, have you gone nuts? Even I know there's no oil in a lead acid battery."

Frank grinned, and Gordon wanted to punch him. Gordon wanting to punch someone was not an uncommon occurrence.

"It's like this. Most of our transportation up-time ran on oil. Gasoline, diesel, basically oil. Hell, damn near everything ran on oil. And while there is some oil in Europe, there isn't all that much. So we are having to look at everything we might be able to use for power. Steam, electric, alcohol, anything. We don't know if we can build up-time batteries. We don't know if we can build good steam engines . . . we don't know much of anything yet but we're gonna run out of gas and we have to have something to fall back on. We do have electricity and if it won't work as well as gasoline engines, it's probably better than nothing. If we can do it."

"All right. But I want some stuff in return," Gordon said. "First, if I'm not going to have a powered wheel chair, I am gonna need someone to push my ordinary chair. And I want someone young and pretty."

Frank shook his head. "You're a dirty old man, Gordon, and I ain't a pimp. You can find your own keeper and I hope he's fifty and uglier than you are."

"Can't happen, Frank." Gordon gave a grin back. "Ain't no one uglier than me. You know that. Anyway, the other thing I want is I want in. The government, your damned emergency committee, can't do everything unless you've gone commie on us. That means private enterprise. Private companies figuring out how to make batteries and if someone is going to get rich off my chair battery, it's going to be me. At least partly me."

****

Frank Jackson sat across from Coleman Walker and prepared to do battle for a fellow member of UMWA. Gordon might not be Frank's favorite person, but he was an upstanding member of the union and he had lost pretty much everything when the Ring of Fire happened. No more Social Security and no more union pension either. But even here the UMWA would take care of its own, even if they had to come up with excuses to do it. "All the deep-cycle batteries are in use, Coleman, and we are going to have to pay through the nose, however we manage it. Besides, Gordon is old and not in good enough shape to work, but not bad enough for a nursing home."

"So?"

"So, we are going to have to take care of him, anyway. All he has is his chair, a much-used truck, and that old trailer. He doesn't even own the lot it's on. Either we find a way for him to support himself or we end up supporting him."

"Which would be cheaper in the assisted living center."

"Not really. He manages pretty well on his own and the assisted living center is packed and it's going to get worse."

"What do you want me to do, Frank?"

"Make him a loan. Use the chair and its battery as the collateral."

"It's not enough and you know it," Walker said. "Look, Frank, I know he's union but that doesn't entitle him to special treatment from the bank."

Special treatment was precisely what Frank was after, though he wasn't about to admit that to Coleman if he could help it. "I know that, but think about it. How much are we going to be out taking care of him for the rest of his life, which might be six months or sixteen more years. This way, there is at least a chance of a pay off. I'll talk to Mike and the Emergency Committee will sign off on the loan."

"All right, but you know and I know that getting that old fart to put together a real battery factory is a pipe dream."

"Maybe, Coleman, but it's a cheap pipe and I know Gordon. He's not the nicest guy around, but if he sets out to do something, he is going to give it a good try. He's not stupid and he works hard. We may not get a battery factory, but we will get something useful."

"
Humff
," Coleman snorted.

Frank didn't smile. Coleman was probably right but it might work.

****

Elzbeth Krügerin had had cow pox when she was a girl and had never had smallpox with the blemishes that it left on the survivors' faces. She had a substantial chest and wide hips with a narrow waist. She was five foot five inches tall with strong hands and arms from working on a farm from the time she was little until 1630 when her village was burned out. She had been wandering around central Germany, finding what work she could for the last year and a half and she had ended up at the refugee center just in time to read the notice for personal assistant to an elderly man. She also had a very wide pragmatic streak. To the best of her ability, when she went to apply for the position, she arranged her clothing to make her assets as predominant as possible. She needed a job and if that meant an old fart got to look at her tits and ass, he was welcome to look. For a good enough job, he was welcome to do more than look, though at that age he probably couldn't. Five people applied, three of them men and the other woman was fifty. Elzbeth got the job.