Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 (21 page)

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She started her first day by pushing an empty wheel chair behind Gordon as he drove his electric wheel chair up to the school. At the school, she, along with Gordon, watched as a group of high school teachers and students first removed the batteries from his electric chair and then took them apart.

Elzbeth watched trying to understand. It wasn't witchcraft. She didn't believe in witches, at least she hadn't before the Ring of Fire. But put lead plates and acid in a square jug, hook up wires to the jug and to a device of more wires and have it spin . . . well, that was an awful lot like witchcraft or something equally strange.

Herr Bozarth, Gordon as he told her to call him, was grinning at her. "It's like water in pipes," he said. "The electricity travels along the wires and makes magnetism. The magnetism pulls the parts around in a circle."

Elzbeth looked at him and tried to work out what he had said. She just knew that he didn't know that much more about it than she did. Some more . . . certainly. He had lived in the world of electronics for all his life, Elzbeth thought. She was wrong about that, but it would be later that she learned he had grown to manhood in a house without electricity. They spent the day watching the teachers and students of the high school working on the battery, trying to figure out how it worked by looking at it and by using the books they had. Three hours into it Gordon had her wheel him down to the cafeteria and they ate lunch.

Then, back at the lab, they got the report. "Mr. Bozarth," the science teacher said in English, and then kept talking. Elzbeth didn't speak English, and Herr Bozarth apparently felt that since he was the employer and she the employee, it was her responsibility to learn his language, not his to learn hers. So she got to watch what was going on and listen to what they were saying, without translation.

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So it went. Day after day. Herr Bozarth had a trailer that he lived in. It was an Airstream which, it took Elzbeth a while to figure out, was the name of the company that made them. It had electricity, a microwave oven, a stove and a refrigerator that worked. Herr Bozarth also had a five-quart crock pot, and he showed her how to use it.

For the first several days, she wheeled him around, understanding very little of what was going on. He tried to explain, she knew that. They went to the bank and set up a company account. She would learn later what that meant.

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"Come in, Mr. Bozarth," Dori Ann Grooms said as pleasantly as she could. "Mr. Jackson has already talked over your issues with Mr. Walker and your small business loan has been pre-approved. Mr. Walker thinks that a drawing account would be best. With a monthly disbursement for living expenses and further expenses involved in starting up your company arranged on an as needed basis. We aren't trying to be stingy, but Mr. Walker feels that you should be able to manage well enough on an amount equal to your social security from before the . . ."

"Part of the deal was that I got an assistant," Gordon Bozarth said. "That's her. I have to pay her salary plus the extra food she eats. I can't get around without my chair unless I have someone to push the wheelchair. I can't set up a business without getting around."

Dori Ann looked at the German girl and wondered what she assisted the dirty old fart with. But the assistant was part of the deal to get the electric wheel chair. Dori Ann would have been a bit more sympathetic if the assistant hadn't been a young blond with a big chest. The way Mr. Walker had explained this loan to her was as a compromise between charity and business. Since Gordon Bozarth didn't have any close family and his nephews and nieces didn't want to take him in, Grantville was going to end up having to take care of the old coot anyway. Giving him the drawing account gave at least the possibility that something might come of it and got them an electric wheel chair to take apart. Besides, it gave the old guy a semblance of pride. But Mr. Walker didn't want to spend any more money on it than they had to.

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Elzbeth sat and listened, not understanding much of what they were saying though she got the impression that they were talking about her, at least partly. Later, after she had learned some up-timer English, she would learn about the deal that Frank Jackson had struck with Herr Bozarth to start a battery company. She would learn about the drawing account and the monthly living expenses. Her salary too, Elzbeth would later learn, was paid by the Bozarth Battery Company.

That learning was hard, though. He didn't speak German and she didn't speak English. Most days Elzbeth didn't really know what was going on. The work wasn't hard, and it was a little boring pushing him around. He could get around in the Airstream on his own, mostly. It was when Gordon stood for a long period, or tried to walk any distance, that he just couldn't. His legs gave out. And without the up-time electric wheel chair, Elzbeth was the electric motor. The first English word she learned was "stop." The second was "go."

Over the next weeks, she learned left, right, over there, dinner, electricity, and more. She learned enough that three weeks into her employment she was half-way following conversations. Partly that was because she had spoken more than one variation of German for a long time. English, especially up-timer English, was harder to follow, but she was getting better at it. What wasn't happening, as far as Elzbeth could see, was much progress on the battery factory.

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"When we open battery factory?" Elzbeth tried.

"I don't know, girl. I try to talk to your down-time merchants and can't get them to figure out what I mean. We need a container for the wet cells. We need lead plates and a form to make them that will give them a very rough surface. Lead oxidizes as soon as it's exposed to air, but in a very thin coating."

The statement hadn't been quite meaningless to Elzbeth, but it was close. About the only thing she really got out of it was that they needed someone who spoke English
and
German.

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Gordon had become pretty fond of Elzbeth. She was pretty and not particularly body shy, so he had regular nude and semi-nude shows as she changed for bed or dressed and undressed before and after showers and the like. She knew he was looking and didn't seem to mind. And, absent Viagra, there wasn't a lot more he could do than look.

She was willing to work and the Airstream was cleaner than it had been in years. So was he, for that matter. Before the Ring of Fire there hadn't been anyone to clean up for. And she seemed interested in the battery factory. He wasn't sure why. Gordon was an old coal miner, not a businessman. Dori Ann Grooms at the bank had told him a couple of times that he needed a German partner. Someone who knew down-time business practices and could translate between him and the down-time craftsmen. But Gordon was afraid of being taken. He knew that if anyone got hold of the business they could sucker him out of everything and leave him penniless. So he was stuck. He couldn't do it himself and he was unable to trust anyone else. Meanwhile, he had talked himself into the business loan, and the loan was paying the bills for now.

Truthfully, if it had just been him he probably would have done nothing till the note came due. But he gradually realized that he wasn't the only one who would be left out in the cold if he did that. Elzbeth would be out of a job too. He had to do something; he just didn't know what. "Elzbeth, do you know any businessmen? Down-time businessmen?"

But she didn't understand. "Tomorrow we go back to the bank," he told her."

"Good," she said.

****

Dori Ann called over a German fellow to talk with them about what was needed. He spoke German and old-fashioned English, with lots of thees and thous but understandable. And they talked about what was needed.

As a bank employee, he wasn't able to become involved, but he did know several of the people in Badenburg.

"What do you know about the Kunze family in Badenburg?"

Gordon didn't know a thing, but Elzbeth did. "They are very rich. The richest family in Badenburg, with relations all over the place. They are very well respected."

"Right. Well, I know Bernhard and he would make a good partner for you. He has some English, though not as much as I do, and he is picking up more. He is on the city council over there this year, but won't be next year and if you set up a deal with him he can run a lot of the business for you and provide you with technical translations for the down-time craftsmen you are going to need."

"What's the catch?" Gordon asked.

"He will want a piece of the business."

"That's actually good news," Dori Ann said. "Look, Mr. Bozarth, if he was charging a straight fee, well, the bank would have problems endorsing such an expense, considering the lack of progress over the last few months. We want you to succeed, but at some point we have to start wondering about throwing good money after bad."

"How big a piece will he want?" Gordon asked.

"I'm honestly not sure," the German said. "Partly, it's a question of likelihood of success. I don't know that much about it, but you aren't the only battery company."

"I know. When Frank Jackson showed up at my trailer, he said they were doing the same thing with car batteries. But car batteries are different. They have to put out a lot more power over a much shorter period of time. If you try and run a powered chair or a forklift with car batteries, they will . . . well, they won't work." By now Gordon knew quite a bit about the difference between a starter battery and a deep-cycle battery. He hadn't been sitting on his hands, even though he couldn't do the negotiating with the down-timers. He had been studying all he could about batteries in general and lead acid batteries in particular, and most especially deep-cycle batteries—the sort that were used for powering golf carts and other electric vehicles.

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"Well, all right then," Gordon said. "We need to get to Badenburg. If we were still up-time and I still had my chair, I could just ride it for five miles and Elzbeth could walk beside me."

Elzbeth looked at him. "We can get a wagon to take us. I could push the chair that far, but the roads, they aren't paved like Grantville."

Which was what they did. They and the folded up wheel chair went into the wagon. It wasn't difficult. There were horse-drawn wagons that went back and forth several times a day. By this time they were even talking about extending the tram line to Badenburg.

Two hours later they were at the Kunze family home.

Gordon got to sit and listen as Elzbeth explained things to Bernhard Kunze. Bernhard's wife, a plump and pleasant woman in her late thirties, came in while they were talking and joined in the conversation. It was all in German, so Gordon was mostly left out. Then Elzbeth said something and Bernhard started speaking in English.

"My family was in the wool trade for generations, so I speak some English."

"Why? Not to be rude, but why does being in the wool trade make you speak English?"

"Because the English export a lot of wool, or at least they used to."

Bernhard spoke fairly good, if very Shakespearean, English that was fairly quickly morphing into modern English. "Your servant has been explaining your needs to us and I have been asking her about your—what do you call it—power chair?"

"Yes. Or powered wheel chair."

"She said it sped around all over the place and she found it hard to keep up with that first day. You say we can build such things in our time?"

"Not quite the same, but yes. Probably not as efficient, but we ought to be able to build something. Also we should be able to build other things. The same sort of batteries that are used in a power chair are used in a forklift, just more of them. There are a lot of other uses too. Radios, household appliances, that kind of thing."

"What is a fork lift?"

"It picks up heavy loads and carries them." Gordon had a vision of a mechanical jolly green giant picking up carts and dumping them in a giant sack. He wondered if that was the image that his words had given Bernhard Kunze. "They are sort of a cart with a forked arm." He stopped again. "There are a couple in Grantville. You should arrange to see one. Besides fork lifts, the batteries can also be used to provide power for homes and factories."

"So with these batteries we can have electricity in Badenburg?"

Gordon felt temptation, strong and fairly ugly. A simple yes wouldn't be a lie, not quite. "Not exactly," he said instead. "They have to be charged. Lead acid batteries have been around for a long time. They are rechargeable batteries. You have to put the electricity into them before you can get it out. So you can have electricity in your house, powered by a bank of deep-cycle lead acid batteries, but you will have to have them taken over to Grantville to be recharged every so often. How often depends on how much power you use and how many batteries you have."

"Is Grantville the only place to get the electricity to put into the batteries?"

"You know, I'm not sure. I know that you can get them recharged off the power grid and I know that you can recharge them using wind mills or steam engines or anything that will make motion and can be hooked up to a generator. And you can make generators downtime. There is nothing really all that high tech about them. They are just coiled, insulated copper wires and magnets." Which was maybe overstating the simplicity some, but Gordon didn't think it was exaggerating by much.