"Grantville Gazette Volume 24" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

Power Play
Written by Douglas W. Jones

I'd gotten a decent night's sleep after the hard ride back from Eisenach. Much of Grantville had stayed up late celebrating their victory over the Croats, but I'd slept through most of it. After breaking my fast, I wandered over to the police station to see how the Grantville police were dealing with the aftermath of the raid two days before.

"Sergeant Leslie," Angela called, smiling. "Am I glad to see you!"

Before I could reply, the phone rang and she picked it up. "Grantville Police," she said, and then paused. I listened to half a conversation while she took notes. Angela Baker is a sweet young woman, but I'd seen her handle some tough situations in the months that I'd served as Mackay's man with the Grantville police.

She picked up her radio microphone as soon as she hung up the phone and transmitted a terse message full of the ten-codes that the American police seem to love. The message was acknowledged by what seemed more a squawk of static than words, but she seemed satisfied.

"Where is everyone," I asked, after she finished with the radio.

"Out," she said. "While everyone else celebrates, we work. That call was about a wounded Croat cavalryman who crawled out of the woods east of town. We've had some cases where they're still armed and dangerous, but some died before we got to them. Add to that the fact that the king is in town with his cavalry, and we're busy. What I was going to say is…"

The phone rang again, so again I waited while she took notes. When I first began working with the Grantville police, I thought girls like Angela were menials, but I'd been wrong. Her job wasn't just to answer the phone and relay messages, it was to decide what mattered and what could wait. If something did matter, she had to know who to tell.

"A horse wandered into someone's back yard," she said, shaking her head as she put down the phone. She looked up at me and went on in a more serious tone. "John, we're short handed, and I have a call here that needs attention now. I know you're not officially Grantville police, but could you go out and take a look at this for us?"

"What is it?" I asked.

"The power plant phoned just before you walked in the door. They say they think they might have been attacked."

"They think?" I asked.

"Weird, isn't it. The rest of Grantville is darned sure it was attacked, but out at the power plant, they just think. Could you ride out there and see what's going on? Take notes, collect evidence."

Ten minutes later, I was on my horse on the road up Buffalo Creek. I'd hoped to spend the day helping celebrate Colonel Mackay's wedding, but I knew how much Grantville depended on electric power. In the past few months, Grantville's electric powered machine shops had become the key to supplying the king's new artillery.

It's a three mile ride to the power plant, but even before I got to the fairground on the west side of town, the whole atmosphere changed. Where the center of town was bustling with work cleaning up after the Croats, the west side was calm. I saw no broken windows and no bullet scars on buildings. If any Croats had made it west of town, they'd left scant evidence.

Not long after I crossed the railroad tracks at Murphy's run, the valley turned, giving me a view of the great cliffs south of Schwarzburg that mark the border of Grantville's land. A bit over a year before, Grantville and a round chunk of America from almost 400 years in the future had been plunged through a ring of fire into the center of Germany. The ring of cliffs around Grantville mark the mismatch between the German mountains outside and the American mountains inside. I've been in and around Grantville for most of a year now, and it's still terrifying to think about what God or the Devil did in that instant.

As the valley straightened out, the castle at Schwarzburg and the power plant below it came into view. A year ago, there was just a small cluster of houses by the power plant. Some people called it Spring Branch, after the stream that used to flow into Buffalo Creek there. Now, the Schwarza River flows into Buffalo Creek at Spring Branch, and the village has more than tripled in size. The power plant workers put up some of the new houses, a cluster of what the Americans call mobile homes, but the biggest growth started as a prisoner of war camp just west of the plant. By fall, the camp had become a refugee camp, and now that was fast becoming a permanent village, housing for workers at the power plant and at the new businesses growing up around it.

"Someone here called the police?" I asked, at the power plant's guard house.

"You not police," the guard said, looking at me through the woven steel wires of the fence around the place.

" Nein," I said, switching to German. The old man didn't look like he could guard much of anything, but he controlled the gate in the eight-foot high fence around the plant. "I'm John Leslie, cavalier with the Green Regiment. The police are a bit short handed, so they asked me to come out."

"I'll phone," he said, suspiciously, walking back into the guard house.

While I waited, I looked. I'd seen the power plant from the road many times, but I'd never been inside the fence. The place is immense and strange. Tall stacks on the east end of the building give off faint brown trails of smoke. The walls of the plant are iron in some places and brick in other places, and they must be fifty or a hundred feet high. It's not a fortress, but if it weren't for the huge windows, it would be easy to mistake it for one.

"Come in," the guard said, walking out to the gate. He pulled it just wide enough for my horse. "Tie up your horse this side of the railroad track, the grass is good there. Someone will come for you."

A man came around the corner of the plant as I took care of my horse. "Mr. Leslie?" he said, in American style. "I'm Tom McAndrew. You're here instead of the police?"

"I've been the Green Regiment's man with the Grantville police for most of a year now," I said, taking out the pad of paper Angela had made me take and writing down Tom's name. "They're a bit short handed what with the raid and the king's visit and all, so I said I'd help. What happened here?"

"Someone's been shooting at the plant," he said, leading me around the corner.

"It looks like it'd take a cannon to hurt this place," I said, looking up at the thick brick walls. "Of course, those big windows are a weak point."

The west wall of the place wasn't as high as most of the walls facing the road. Perhaps only 30 or 60 feet high, and parts looked newer. The windows began halfway up and ran almost to the top. If they'd had colored glass, they'd have belonged in a cathedral.

"They're not aiming at the windows, they've been shooting at our switchyard."

"Your what?"

Tom paused, and then pointed. "That's the switchyard," he said, pointing to the place where all the different electric wires converged on the plant. A line of tall towers carried six great wires off to the south while wooden poles carried three great wires off to the north. Smaller lines also came together at the place. There was a ring of high wire fence around the yard, and inside, a maze of strange stuff, all made of gray metal except for some parts that must have been green glass or brown glazed fine china. A faint hum seemed to fill the air as we came near.

"I'm afraid I don't get it," I said, dismayed. "I'm just a poor Scot, they should've sent an American."

Tom smiled wryly. "Don't worry, most of the folks in Grantville don't understand this stuff either, but I suppose they do their best to sound like they do around downtimers. The switchyard is where the power from the plant gets switched onto one line or the other. Those boxes with two connections each are circuit breakers to cut off power to the power line if there's a problem."

"Connections?" I asked, puzzled. "You mean those pillars of crockery coming out the top?"

"Right," he said, grinning. "Now, the big boxes with six connections each are the transformers, they change the voltage."

"Voltage?" I asked, feeling lost.

"That's a measure of how strong the electric power is," he said. "Forty volts is enough to kill a careless man, less if his skin is damp. When people turn on an electric light, that's just one hundred and fifteen volts. The bus bars are those three pipes that go across the top of everything. They run at thirty-five kilovolts, that's thirty-five thousand volts, three hundred times stronger than the power for an electric light. The three main circuits going out of the plant are one hundred and thirty five kilovolts. Of course, there's only one that still works, the one that goes over the hill to the mine."

I shook my head, lost in all this detail. "So how do you know someone was shooting at it."

Tom pointed. "Look at the insulators."

"Insulators?"

"You called them towers of crockery. They're glass or porcelain, crockery if you wish. Their job is to support the bus bars and the wires without letting the electricity leak out. Electricity only goes through metal, it can't go through insulators. The bigger insulators are for higher voltages. Anyway, take a look at the insulators holding up the bus bars."

I looked, and indeed, two of the insulators holding up one of the bus bars were shattered. Looking at the gravel below, I could see fragments of broken crockery.

"I see," I said. "Nobody seems to be in a panic, though. Why is this important."

"Because it could have shut down the plant. It should have. I wouldn't have expected the bar to hang in the air like that. The two insulators at the other end of the bus bar must be holding most of its weight, and the rest is being taken by the rigid feeders that drop down to the two newest transformers below. If the bar had sagged down just a bit more, we'd have had an electrical explosion and the power plant would probably have been dead for at least a week while we fixed the damage. As it is, we've got a problem because we only have one spare of that insulator. We've taken it to a potter so she can try to make a duplicate."

"You think it was done with a gun?" I asked, looking around. The closest the outer fence came to the switchyard was about ten rods, either from the south across the creek or from the edge of the refugee camp to the west. "It can't have been done with a common matchlock, it's too far. Whether it was German or American, it was a long rifle. If we could find a bullet, that would help."

"I have the key," Tom said, "but it's dangerous in there. Keep down, don't get tempted to climb up on anything."

"I heard you talking about thousands of volts, when what, forty are enough to kill a man."

"Right," he said, as he unlocked the gate in the switchyard fence.

I wasn't happy in that switchyard with the humming of the electricity all around me, but I did my best to ignore it. It was the broken insulator on the ground that I wanted, not anything up high. I didn't move anything, but just looked at the pieces where they'd fallen. "Do you see," I said, pointing to the shattered pieces of one insulator, and then pointing up at where they'd come from.

"What," he said.

"The pieces are scattered, but they're mostly east o' where they came from. I'd bet the shooter was over there somewhere," I said, waving at the refugee camp to the west.

The pieces of the other insulator were scattered in the same way. I wanted a bullet, so my eyes were on the gravel. Lead doesn't bounce very well. If a bullet hit an insulator head on, it would likely drop to the ground right under it.

"Look there," Tom said, pointing at the wall of the power plant.

"What?" I asked, straightening up to look where he pointed. There were fresh bullet scars on the brick wall of the power plant. It was obvious that a shooter trying to hit an insulator at 50 yards was bound to miss a few times.

"That's good," I said. "But help me find a bullet before we leave here."

We looked for another few minutes before I found a smashed bullet. "Take a look," I said, holding it in my hand.

"It was a round ball, wasn't it."

"Right," I said. Not with a flat bottom, like your rifles shoot, but it was shot from a rifle, you can see the grooves. We're looking for a downtime marksman, I think, perhaps a jager."

"Yayger?" he asked, while I pocketed the ball and a few pieces of shattered insulator.

"Professional hunter," I said. "They usually use good rifled guns."

The area under the scars on the side of the powerplant was weedy, there was no hope of finding a bullet there, but standing under the scars on the side of the building and sighting back through the switchyard toward the refugee camp, it was obvious where the shots had come from.

"Want me to go with you?" Tom asked, as we stared at the building the shooter must have used.

"That would be nice. Back through the main gate?"

"Faster through the west gate," he said. "The railroad used to go out that way, before they pulled the track last summer. I have the key here."

When I'd first seen it, the refugee camp had been nothing but a few parallel rows of light sheds. Just about every time I'd visited, there'd been changes. What had been sheds had been closed in by winter, and with the coming of spring, the pace of construction had increased. The shooter's building had a new second story, and as we came up to it, a roofing crew was at work adding a good slate roof on top.

"Hey, who you," a German carpenter asked, as we stepped inside.

"I'm from the power plant," Tom said. "John is with the Grantville police. Who are you?"

"Johann Schneider."

While I tried to figure out what question to ask, I wrote down his name. "What happened here during the Croat raid?" was the best I could do.

"Well," the carpenter said, answering in German, "the news of the Croats came before we got to work. We decided to lock the old prison camp gates and move the women and children into the inner houses. I think we could have held off a cavalry attack for a long time."

I nodded, looking around. "You're probably right. Horses are no match for a woven wire fence with barbed wire on top. You had guns?"

"A few," he said. "Mostly matchlocks, but enough to keep an attacker from trying to cut his way through the fence, and three of us had American pistols."

"No rifles?"

"No," Schneider said. "Everyone who had a gun had it out. I didn't see any rifles."

"So what happened afterwards. When did you get back to work here?"

"When news came of the victory, we had a bit of a celebration. It was time for the noon meal, so it was afternoon when we got to work."

"Did you see anything in this house when you got back to work?"

"Like what?" he asked, and I was stumped. I didn't want to ask for evidence of someone shooting at the power plant. I'd learned from the Grantville police that it was bad to ask leading questions. "Well, any sign that something odd had happened here."

"Now that you mention it, there was something," he said, frowning. "That window was broken out, and there was a sort of sulfur stink in the air."

The window he pointed to had only a few fragments of greased paper around the edges. It faced the power plant, and someone had torn out the paper. When I walked over to the window, I could see powder burns on the sill. Someone had fired a black-powder rifle out the window from close by. "Tom? Take a look."

Fortune didn't smile on us when we asked around, nobody remembered hearing the shots fired. People told us that the power plant makes odd noises on occasion, and it seemed likely that the shooter had managed to muffle the noise of his gun by shooting from inside the house.

Around noon, Tom suggested we break for lunch and recommended a tavern out by the main road. The place had decent food, and they'd set up tables in the shade of a big tree. Halfway through our meal, when the serving maid came to ask if we wanted more beer, I thought to ask the same questions I'd been asking in the camp.

"Around the time of the Croat raid, did you happen to see anyone around here with a long rifle?"

She frowned. "There was a man here the night before who had a big flintlock rifle. He said he was visiting a friend in the camp."

"Can you describe him?"

"Weatherbeaten, thin, he had a brown horse with a white cross on its nose. By his accent, he was Franconian."

"Have you seen him before then, or since?" I asked.

She hadn't. I paused, puzzled, and then looked across the table at Tom. "A jager, it would seem, and from Franconia. How in creation would such a man know to shoot at your, what do you call them, insulators."

"It's an obvious way to attack a power plant," he said.

"Obvious to you," I said, "But you had to spend half the morning explaining things to me enough that I could understand what he'd done. Someone here, someone working in your plant, must have taken the time to explain the same things to that man, or more likely, to whoever hired him."

"You think we have a spy in the power plant?"

I nodded.

When I got back to the Grantville police station, Angela Baker asked what I'd found. When I told her, she immediately dialed the telephone and asked for Chief Frost. "Yes," I heard her say "I know he's at the wedding banquet, but he should hear this himself." There was a pause. "Yes, I suppose it's poor form to walk out on the king, but if I can't get Chief Frost, then I need to speak with Mackay immediately."

She looked up at me with a grin. "I still can't believe we have a king here in…" Someone on the other end of the telephone must have spoken, because she stopped suddenly and then handed me the phone.

"John Leslie here," I said, using my best telephone manners. It was Chief Frost.

I went on to tell what I'd seen at the power plant, leading up to my guess that there was a spy in the plant to teach a German huntsman what exactly he needed to shoot at.

"Good Job," the Chief Frost said. "And thanks for helping cover for us when we're stretched thin. I'll mention your work to Colonel Mackay, and please, write up a proper report, or have Angela help you write it up. I'll forward a copy to Rebecca."

I didn't expect Chief Frost to say he'd forward a copy to Rebecca Abrabanel. To hear Grantville's policemen talk, you'd think nobody ever reads their reports. Now, my report was going to be read, not by some clerk, but by one of the most important people in Grantville.

Angela was a big help with the report, but we took frequent breaks when the telephone rang or a garbled burst of static on the radio needed action.

On one of the telephone calls, Angela put her hand over the telephone mouthpiece. "Power plant again," she said to me, and then uncovered the mouthpiece. "I think you should speak to Sergeant Leslie, he's the one who figured it out this morning."

When I took the receiver, the man on the other end introduced himself as Scott Hilton. "I'm the steam engine project shift supervisor for the power plant. Tell me why you think there's a spy in the plant," he said.

When I finished answering his question, he sighed. "I hate to say it, but I don't think this is our first attack. When I heard there might be a spy here, I didn't want to believe it, but at the same time

…" He stopped, and there was an uncomfortable pause. "Well, I wanted to hear it from you before I go off half cocked."

I had to grin at the American expression comparing a man to a half-cocked pistol. "So are you fully cocked now?" I asked.

"I suppose so," he said, with a chuckle. "As I said, I think there were other attacks on the plant."

"Why?"

"We've had accidents," he said. "We expected some accidents, but there've been some odd ones. We're trying to build machines none of us are really prepared to build, you know."

I didn't know, but I didn't interrupt him.

"When you've got enough plain ordinary accidents, it's easy to think that everything that goes wrong is an accident. Now that we know someone's trying to attack us, I'm pretty sure that some of those accidents weren't so accidental. I just talked it over with Landon, my boss, and he agrees. There are two that we're pretty sure of, a main bearing failure and a cylinder head that burst."

"I'm afraid I don't understand. What's a main bearing, and what's a cylinder head."

He paused for a few seconds. "Tell you what. My wife and I will feed you dinner tonight, and then I'll give you a quick lesson on steam engines. That way, when you do come out to the plant, things'll make a little sense."

He gave me directions to his house before he hung up. All the while, Angela was watching me. "It sounds like you're not done with the power plant," she said.

"It seems that there might have been other attacks."

"Let's finish today's report first, before you start on tomorrow's work," she said. "Tomorrow, take better notes so this job won't be so hard!"

Scott Hilton lived up the slope on the northeast side of town, far enough from the main roads that the Croats hadn't gotten into his immediate neighborhood. The Hilton house was what the Americans call a foursquare, two stories, with bedrooms above and living area below. As I started up the steps to the large front porch, the silence was shattered by a boy's bellow.

"Ma, he's here!"

Two boys disappeared into the front doorway as I stepped onto the porch. As it developed, there were five Hilton children. Lisa, the oldest, tried to help control the younger ones. Hans and Jacob were the two who'd announced me, and there was a toddler underfoot as well as a baby. There was also a middle-aged German woman, Maria.

Dinner was noisy. Sylvia, Scott's wife, seemed to thrive on the disorder. Between interruptions, she managed to give a short history of the family. "Hans and the two babies, they were the Zimmermann family, from a little village north of here. Maria took care of them after their place was burned out. We took them in after they showed up at church."

"Mister Hilton, how long have you worked at the power plant," I asked, as the children's full stomachs began to quiet them down.

"About a year, Sergeant. Before the Ring of Fire, I worked in Fairmont, that was a town off beyond where Rudolstadt is now. When they asked if anyone knew anything about steam engines, I said yes. I've been at the power plant ever since."

Sylvia interrupted. "The one thing Scott didn't tell me when we got married was his fixation on steam. Just about every weekend, it seems, we would go traipsing off to the darndest places to take photos of greasy old pieces of junk."

He chuckled. "Right, only now, that photo collection is a gold mine and I'm working full time, and then some, trying to recreate some of that junk."

"You're not going to show him your photo collection!" she said.

"No," he said, pushing himself away from the table. "Come down to the cellar, I want to show you a little steam engine."

There was a half-cellar under the downhill side of the house, and half of that was a small workshop. After Scott turned on the light, he pulled a tray of machinery off of a shelf.

"This here's a toy steam engine," he said. "My father brought it back from Germany when I was a kid. This half is the boiler," he said, pointing to a shining round barrel a bit bigger than my fist. "It was supposed to burn a special fuel, but I ran out of that years ago, so I stuffed the burner with rags and if you soak it with alcohol, you can make it work. Let me fire it up for you."

Five minutes later, with the boiler half full of water and the burner rag saturated with gin, blue flames engulfed the boiler and a puddle of blue crept out from the copper shell around the boiler.

"Don't worry about the fire," he said. "So long as it stays on the metal base, we won't burn down the house. While we wait for the water to come to a boil, take a look at the engine itself."

There was a wheel, he called it a flywheel, and when he spun the wheel with his fingers, it cranked a pair of plungers in and out of a metal post off to the side of the flywheel. The plungers were piston rods, and the metal post held the cylinders.

"Why is this piston rod bigger than that one," I asked, only to find out that there was more to learn. There was only one cylinder and one piston rod. The smaller rod was called the valve rod.

About then, the boiler began to whistle. "That's the safety valve," Scott said. "When the boiler is up to pressure, it lets off the extra steam into a whistle. That tells us it's time to run the engine, and letting off the extra steam keeps the boiler from exploding."

As he spoke, he turned a little wheel with his fingertips. "This is the throttle valve," he said, as steam began to hiss out from around the piston rod and the valve rod. "Give the flywheel a bit of a spin with your finger."

I did, and to my surprise, the flywheel began to turn faster and faster, until the machine was humming and the spokes and other moving parts were nothing but a blur.

"Too fast," he said, turning the throttle wheel slowly back. The engine slowed, until it was chugging along at the tempo of a fast march.

"What makes it go?"

"There's a piston in the cylinder, and the steam can push it from one side or from the other. The piston pushes the piston rod, and that turns the crank. Each time the piston reaches one end or the other of the cylinder, the crank slides the valve the other way. That reverses the direction the steam is pushing the piston."

"So what use is it?" I asked, fascinated but puzzled.

"This one is no use at all," Scott said, grinning, "except as a toy for overage boys like me. What we're trying to do out at the power plant is build fourteen machines like this, except a whole lot bigger. Those machines will be able to generate all the electric power Grantville needs."

"But you already have a power plant," I said.

"Yup, but the machines in that plant need supplies we can't get from anywhere in the world, not since the Ring of Fire. We might be able to run the old machines for another year, if we're really lucky. Machines like this toy, though, we can make all the parts ourselves and we don't even need special oil. Beef tallow should work just fine to oil it, and if we can get enough whale oil or even olive oil, that'll be even better."

"Should we add more fuel to the fire?" I asked, as I noticed that the blue flames around the boiler were almost completely out.

"No, this fuel was meant to be drunk, not burned," he said, picking up the toy steam engine and blowing out the last remaining flames. "Come upstairs and we'll share a drink while I tell you something about the problems we've been having."

He put the toy steam engine back on its shelf and picked up the bottle of gin before leading me back up the stairs. "Have you ever had a Martini?" he asked, on the way up.

"A what?"

"Here, sit, I'll make you one," he said, waving me into his parlor. "I've had a bit of trouble getting Vermouth, but I think I've finally got my hands on something that works."

He disappeared into the kitchen with the bottle of gin, and in a minute, came out and handed me a glass of cold clear liquid with ice cubes and a pickled olive floating in it.

"To the king," he said, raising his glass before he took a sip.

"And to Grantville," I said, returning the toast. I'd heard enough of the American attitude toward nobility in general to understand that his toast was unusual. I imitated him, taking just a sip of my drink after the toasts.

Scott launched into the history of the power plant over his drink. "Unit Five, that's the big turbogenerator out at the power plant. It isn't likely to outlast the year. Right now, it's generating almost all our electric power, and we've got to build replacements. We knew that much as soon as we came through the Ring of Fire. The oil filter system and oil are our big problem. We've even got two guys trying to re-refine the oil, but even if they're successful, something else will probably go wrong."

I was totally lost, but one thing puzzled me more than all the rest. "Unit Five? Does that mean there's also a Unit Four?"

"I asked that too, after I started at the plant. Each new generator at the plant gets a number, in order. When they built the plant back in the 1920's, over seventy years before the Ring of Fire, it was a much smaller place, with two units, numbers one and two. They were only a few megawatts each. Then they enlarged the place in the 1930's and 1940's and put in two new units, three and four. Those two might have added up to fifty or a hundred megawatts, and once they were working, they scrapped one and two. Now, the hall that used to hold one and two is the plant machine shop. After World War II, fifty years before the Ring of Fire, they replaced Units Three and Four with Unit Five. That's about two hundred megawatts. The space where Units Three and Four used to be is where we're building our new units."

"What's a megawatt?" I asked, befuddled. "Are they like the kilovolts I heard talk of this morning?"

"Yes and no," he said, launching into a confusing description of the difference between force and power. I must have looked baffled, because he gave up halfway through, took a sip of his drink, and started over. "Think about a mill," he finally said. "You can measure the power it takes to turn the millstone in watts, or you can measure it by how many horses it takes to turn the wheel. One horsepower is about 750 watts. Anyway, two mills might need the exact same amount of power, but one could get that power from a high wheel with just a trickle of water, while the other gets it from a low wheel in a broad stream. You can think of volts as the height of the fall."

He paused to pick the olive out of his glass and pop it into his mouth. "Ah, these Italian olives are pretty good."

All I had left in my glass were two cubes of ice and an olive, so I imitated him. I don't eat olives very often, but it did seem better after soaking in my gin martini.

"Earlier, you said you'd had lots of trouble with accidents," I said, after spitting the olive pit into my glass. "And then you said you expected lots of accidents. Why?"

He sighed. "We're in way over our heads, that's why. Nobody in Grantville has ever built a steam engine bigger than a few horsepower, and now we need to build an engine with a thousand horsepower. Andy Frystack has built little engines, and he's a good machinist. The people at the power plant know steam, but not piston engines.

"Then, think about the size we need. The engines I've tracked down that put out a thousand horsepower all run over a hundred tons of iron, and we want 14 of the things. That's a lot of iron. Even if we can get the iron, who around here can cast pieces that big?

"Accidents? We've had castings break. Bad foundry work is the obvious explanation. We've had steel bolts snap. We might have made a mistake guessing the force they could handle. We've had bearings fail for lack of oil. We're used to automatic oiling systems, we probably didn't oil them enough. We've been lucky, so far. Not too many pipes have burst, and nobody's been killed, but we've come very close to catastrophe.

"Before you go inside that plant, I want to make sure you understand that it's a dangerous place."

"I got a lecture on the danger of electricity when I visited this morning." I said.

"It's more than that," Scott said. "We're working with chunks of iron that weigh a ton or more. Chunks of stone, too, for the engine foundations. Be careful what you walk under. Steam pipes are hot. We work with superheated steam at four hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. That's a high enough pressure that it is like working with gunpowder. Steam pipes can explode like bombs, and the cylinder of a steam engine can shoot a piston just as well as a cannon can shoot a cannonball."

Scott Hilton met me at the power plant the next morning and led me into the building. "This is the hall they made for Units Three and Four," he said, as I gawked at the scene. "Now, we've built Unit Six at the far end, and we're building Units Seven, Eight and Nine."

The room was huge, filling perhaps a quarter of the whole power plant. Huge windows along the south and west walls spread a soft light through the room. The place reminded me of a cathedral, except for huge machinery and construction toward the east end and a work crew digging a pit toward the middle.

Scott led me to the construction area. A crew of masons were at work there, filling a newly dug pit with stonework. Scott's explanation mostly went over my head. "This is the foundation for Unit Eight," he said. "Parts of it stand up high to hold the cylinders, but we need access to the steam and condensate pipes, and of course, there's the pit for the generator and flywheel."

While we watched the masons, a huge door at the west end opened to admit a four-horse team hauling a heavy freight wagon.

"Ah," Scott said. "They're delivering a stone for Unit Eight. Watch."

At first I didn't notice, but there was great bridge spanning the width of the room and it was moving toward the freight wagon. As a huge hook lowered from the bridge, I realized that it was a crane. When it reached the wagon, the teamsters hung their load from it, a single large stone.

"How much does the stone weigh?" I asked.

"About two tons, solid quartzite," Scott said. "It's quarried from the ring wall north of Schwarzburg, less than a mile from here, all downhill for the heavy stones. The little stones go to that new warehouse they're building in town, we keep the big ones."

As he spoke, the crane silently carried the stone toward the awaiting masons and lowered it onto a bed of fresh mortar.

"What's all that stuff," I asked, pointing to piles of ironwork stacked along the wall beyond the masons.

"Parts. We're getting parts from foundries and forges scattered all over. Some workshops are better at little castings, other can do big ones. Some forges do wrought iron, some can give us the little steel parts we need. When the parts come in, we line them up over there until we're ready to use them. Let's look at Unit Seven. There, we're starting to put things together."

He led me to the narrow space between Units Six and Seven. Six was a huge version of the machine I'd seen in Scott's basement, churning away at double-time and making a quiet pop-pop noise as it worked. About half of the big iron pieces of Seven were in place, with a group of men hard at work on one of the big pieces.

"They're turning the low-pressure cylinder right now," Scott said.

"Turning?" I asked. "Looks like it's not moving at all."

"Boring, I should say," Scott said. "See, they've run a boring bar down the middle of the cylinder, between those cast iron centers attached across each ends. There's an electric motor turning the boring bar, and there's a tool on the bar that goes round and round scraping the inside of the cylinder to be exactly thirteen and a half inches radius, as close as we can make it. It's not that different from boring a cannon, but a whole lot bigger around."

Turning to look at Unit Six, I could see similarities to the engine I'd seen the night before, but there were differences. "On your little engine, the valve and the cylinder were right together on the same side of the big wheel, but here, they're on opposite sides."

Scott looked baffled, and then chuckled. "No, my little engine at home has just one cylinder. Here, we have two cylinders, and each has its own valve system. The thirteen inch one on the far side is the high pressure cylinder, the twenty-seven inch one on the near side is the low pressure cylinder."

He must have seen the baffled look on my face. "It's a compound engine. That means we use the steam twice. The high pressure steam is four hundred pounds per square inch. We get half the work out of the steam dropping the pressure to seventy-five PSI, that's pounds per square inch. The low pressure cylinder gets the other half of the work, dropping the pressure to near zero."

I surveyed the immense thing, wondering how I could possibly be of any use. "You said you thought there'd been attacks? What kind of attacks?"

He led me over to the great crank on the high pressure cylinder side. It was whirling around and around, almost too fast to follow with my eyes. "See that thing on top of the main crankshaft bearing?" he asked, pointing to the trunnion bearing behind the crank.

On top of the heavy ironwork was a polished copper fitting a bit bigger than my fist. "That's an oil cup," he said. "It's full of oil, and the oil in it slowly drips down into the bearing. Without oil, the bearing would burn up and wreck the engine."

"Burn up?"

Scott paused before he answered. "Ever see how hot a wagon axle gets if there's no grease on the hub? This wheel is turning so fast that the metal itself will melt if it runs dry."

"So what happened here?" I asked.

"Every half hour, the engine master comes through and tops up the oil in each of the oil cups. A month and a half ago, right after we got this engine working, the bearing caught fire. Afterward, we found that the oil cup was missing, broken off. The engine master swore that the cup was there not twenty minutes before."

I looked at the cup. "But the engine wasn't wrecked?"

"It came close. The engine master was nearby, and when he saw the smoke, he killed the engine. We had to re-turn the axle and replace the brasses before we put the engine back in service."

"So we're looking for someone who knows the engine needs oil," I said. "This engine master you mentioned, I should talk to him."

"Probably," Scott said, "but Franz was badly hurt in the next accident. Come here."

He led me into the space between the two cylinders. There was a confusion of moving parts there, with the great wheel spinning madly not far in front of us. A cast-iron case as big as the great wheel gave off a hum that sounded like the electric switchyard outside.

"What's all this," I asked, and got more than I wanted. The great wheel was the flywheel, the humming case beside it was the alternator , with another wheel inside it called the forty-eight pole rotor. I'd been right about the sound. The alternator was the part of the engine that actually made electricity. The spinning shaft along the side of each cylinder was a camshaft that worked the valves, and the whirligig on the end of each camshaft was the governor that controlled the engine speed.

"My little engine at home has piston valves, but that kind of valve doesn't work very well at high speed. When we started working on this engine design, some of us wanted to use Corliss valves, but the Masaniellos convinced us to do it with balanced poppet valves. They're faster and the parts are easier to machine. The camshaft here works the poppets."

I was totally baffled, except that I could clearly see his finger pointing at the spinning shaft he called the camshaft. "What was the next accident you were talking about?" I asked, trying to bring things back to something I might be able to understand.

"That's what I was getting at," Scott said. "Right after we got this engine restarted, the head of the low-pressure cylinder blew. Steam and hot water sprayed out and it scalded Franz, the engine master I was talking about earlier."

"Blew?" I asked.

"The end of the cylinder exploded," he said.

"Like a burst cannon?" I asked, remembering a gun crew I'd once seen shredded by the final shot they fired.

"The cylinder casting held," Scott said. "This is it, but the head cracked and some of the bolts that held it on pulled out. We had to put in new bolts and use the head intended for Unit Seven to repair it."

"While we were repairing it, we found that the cam for the exhaust valve at that end of the cylinder was loose. We'd just changed the valve timing when the bearing failed, so I can't believe that the key that held it to the shaft fell out on its own. With that cam loose, some of the steam that should have come out through the valve turned to water. The water had nowhere to go and the piston was pounding on it one hundred fifty times a minute. The water had to go somewhere, and with the valve stuck closed, the end of the cylinder exploded."

I scratched my head. "So we're looking for someone who really knows how these engines work. How many of you uptimers know enough to do this kind of damage?"

"Anyone who's ever worked on cars knows how much damage you can do by letting an engine run dry," he said. "The trick with the exhaust valve, though, you really need to understand steam engines to know the damage that can cause. This engine has eight valves total, and there are only two of them, the low pressure exhaust valves, that can wreck the engine if the cams are loosened."

"So it has to be a steam engine expert," I said, frowning.

"Right. And there aren't many of us."

"How will you prevent it from happening again?" I asked, as Scott and I looked out over the machinery hall. "Some o' those accidents might really have been accidents, and even if we catch whoever did it, there might be others."

Scott scratched his head. "We learn something from each problem we have. We're working on automatic oilers, so nobody has to climb around in dangerous places to get oil into the bearings. After that cylinder head blew, we redesigned the poppets. We needed to do that anyway, balanced valves are harder to make than we thought. Each valve is really two valves on one stem, and our first ones always leaked. The new ones have a spring in them to help get a better seal, but the spring also lets the valve leak if the cylinder goes over pressure, just enough to protect the engine."

About then, a whistle blew. "Lunchtime," Scott said. "There's a lunch room in the plant, or we could go out to eat."

"A lunch room?" I asked, uncertainly.

The place, it seemed, was a room where you could buy food. American style sandwiches, the little cakes Americans call cookies, and a choice of water, milk or weak beer to drink. I've eaten worse, but I'd have preferred better.

Scott looked quizzically at me as I sat down. "You're a soldier with MacKay's regiment, right? How'd you get involved with police work?"

"When the regiment moves into a town, someone has to smooth things over with the town watch," I said. "The watch and the local militia can be our best friends, but if we hit it off wrong, well, they're armed as well as we are. I was pushed into police work, as you call it, by stopping a fight.

"What happened?" he asked, after swallowing a bit of his food.

"MacKay was new to the regiment. This was when we were in the marshes up north. He didn't know the regiment, we didn't know the land, and we set up camp outside this village. The quartermaster went to buy cattle, and suddenly, it seemed we were about to do battle with the militia. I saw it happen, just a little thing, really. MacKay had assigned John Storm to help the quartermaster. John was a wild one, God rest his soul. He pushed a militiaman aside as they walked into the market. Instead of pushing back, the guard pulled his sword."

"You did something?" Scott asked, after I'd eaten a bit of my sandwich.

"Aye, I whacked John on the rump with the flat o' my blade. That stopped it from going bad, but John complained to MacKay. Ever since, MacKay's pulled me into dealings with town watch. By Badenburg, he had me in charge of working with the watch. When we came to Grantville, MacKay asked me to work with your police even before he understood how different they are from the kind o' town guard we expected."

I took a bite, and then pulled him back to the big question. "So who knows enough about the power plant to plan the attacks you've had?"

Scott looked thoughtful as he chewed. "Uptimers mostly. You can rule out most of the power plant staff because they know the old turbines, not the new engines. It's got to be someone who really knows steam. That means me, Andy Frystack, and Andy Prickett. We're the three shift supervisors. Then, there's Vince Masaniello and his sons Lou and Charlie. They're doing lots of consulting on the project, but mostly, they're not here. Dick Shaver and Monty Szymanski have also been involved, but damn it, I can't see how any of them could do something like this."

"If we could figure out who was here when that oil thing got knocked off the trunnion bearing," I mused.

Scott looked up sharply. "We can! We keep a log. Everyone signs in and out of the building. I signed you in today. The guard at the gate keeps a log too, so we know who comes in and out the main gate."

I shook my head. The whole idea of keeping such records was foreign, but it was just like the Americans to do it. The police reports Chief Frost was always demanding were the same kind of thing.

One of the upper chambers of the power plant was almost like a library, with cabinets and shelves full of papers. We went up there after our noon meal. With a bit of help from the woman clerk who worked there, we found the papers for the weeks of the two accidents.

"The first accident happened during the night shift, midnight to eight AM, I was shift supervisor," Scott said, comparing the two sheaves of paper. "That's the least popular shift, with most of the world home in bed. You see Franz Schneider here, the engine master. He signed in and out in his own hand the day the bearing failed.

"Now, the second accident happened first thing in the morning, right after the eight AM shift change, so it could be someone on the night shift who set things up. People take turns working the night shift, and Franz was on the day shift that week. See here, he signed in in his own hand, but he couldn't sign out because he was hurt. It looks like Andy Frystack signed him out after the accident."

Scott continued mumbling over the log sheets, and then leaned back. "The way I see it, Thomas Eisfelder, Charles Martel, and Manfred Kleinschmidt are the three who matter. Those are the downtimers working on our steam engines who were there on the right shift for each accident," Scott said. "I don't think we need to worry about the masons and the common laborers working on the foundations, and the uptime steam crew are out too, since they all think in terms of turbines."

"What if it's a spy," I said, after doing my best to write down the three names. "Someone outside paying off a laborer to fix the engine the same way someone paid off that jager to shoot at the, uh, crockery insulators in the electric yard outside."

Scott scratched his head. "How would you tell a common laborer or a mason to pull the key from the exhaust valve cam on the low-pressure cylinder of Unit Six? And if they did, wouldn't someone notice them working where they weren't supposed to be?"

"OK," I said. "So tell me why those three mechanics?"

"They're three downtimers who really seem to understand what they're doing. Some people just do what they're told and don't ask questions. Some people ask questions and never seem to learn. These three guys are curious. They're the kinds of guys who figure out how things work. They ask good questions."

I nodded. "It sounds like you want more people like that, but if they're not on your side, they can be dangerous."

"Right," Scott said. "So the next thing to do is track them down and question them, right?"

I shook my head, thinking of some of the American movies I'd seen. Dan Frost had just about forced me to see one particular movie about a policeman, Murder on the Orient Express. "We need to learn everything about them before we confront them."

"Then you need to read their personnel files," Scott said.

The plant had a folder of paperwork on each employee. I had little use for the pages showing the hours worked and dollars paid, but there was more. For each person working at the plant, there were notes written about their work. "Part of my job as shift supervisor is to keep notes on the people working for me," Scott explained. "That way, if we need someone for a special job, we can look through the papers to find who's best for that job."

I needed Scott's help understanding the notes, but the story they told was interesting. Two of the men were from the west side of the Thuringer Wald, not quite in Franconia, but close enough. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection with the Franconian jager who'd shot at the electric yard. Thomas Eisfelder had worked in a mill on the Werra river downstream from Eisfeld, and Manfred Kleinschmidt had been an apprentice gunsmith in Suhl. The third man, Charles Martel, was a French locksmith, a Huguenout refugee.

"So do you want me to set up interviews with them?" Scott asked. "Manfred Kleinschmidt is here now."

"No," I said. "What I want to do is talk to their friends. You gave me their home addresses, you told me when they're supposed to work in the next week. I don't want them to know I'm interested in them."

It was drizzling when I went back to the police station that afternoon. I dreaded the report writing that Angela Baker was bound to want, and she didn't disappoint me. Angela insisted that I write up the results of my day's work immediately, and Chief Frost was there to back her up.

Angela helped set my day down on paper, and when we got to the three names, she immediately turned from the report. "Vera! I have three names, can you look them up for me? Eisfelder, Thomas. Martel, Charles. Kleinschmidt, Manfred."

Vera was an older woman who worked in the back chamber. When people cursed the reports they had to write, they swore that Vera was the only person who ever saw them. Now, while we finished writing up my day's work, Vera searched through her files for anything the police might know about the three mechanics.

"I have one arrest record," Vera said, a few minutes later. "Thomas Eisfelder, drunk and disorderly at the Thuringer Gardens back in March. Got in a fight with another drunk. Pled guilty, paid his fine. No arrest records for the others."

Chief Frost had walked out of his chamber while Vera spoke. "That's a start," he said, "but you know who might have more? The Red Cross. To get that, you'll need a warrant."

"What?" I asked, and then remembered. "You mean like an arrest warrant?" I'd been with Ralph Oferino when he'd arrested a thief. In addition to a ritual involving reading a list of rights, Ralph had read the charges of theft and sale of stolen property from the arrest warrant.

"Almost. A search warrant is an order from the court that requires the Red Cross to show you their files. Vera will type it up while you finish your report, and then we'll have to get Judge Tito's signature before you take it over to the Red Cross."

Half an hour later, I set off through the rain to find the judge. Vera had telephoned and found that the Judge was teaching a late afternoon class out at the high school. I was a bit annoyed to have to do it myself, but Chief Frost had made it clear that the Judge wouldn't authorize a search warrant unless I was there to answer questions, and he couldn't spare anyone to go with me.

Grantville's high school is almost as far east of town as the power plant is west, down Buffalo Creek past the village of Deborah. I had to hurry because the judge's class was supposed to end precisely at five o'clock.

I'd heard that the Croats had wrecked the front of the school, but I hadn't been there since the raid. Temporary wood panels filled most of the huge window openings by the entrance. As I walked into the building after tying up my horse, two carpenters were at work hanging a new wood door. Despite the damage, the business of the school continued.

I had to ask for help finding Judge Tito's law class. It was classified as adult ed, and it was being held in one of the Tech Center classrooms at the back of the school. On the way there, I passed a sign board listing a number of shops. I would have ignored it except that, among the listings for electrical, carpentry, and automotive, it listed a steam engine shop.

When I found the Judge's room, I heard laughter. Peering through the pane by the door, I saw a middle-aged uptimer in front of the class. He looked vaguely Spanish. The students, mostly young men and a few women, laughed again as I watched them pack up their notes. It seemed that he'd ended his class with a bit of humor. He didn't look like my idea of a judge, but I knew I had to be careful about looks when I dealt with uptimers. Mike Stearns didn't look like the equal of a king, but it now seemed he was.

"Sir, are you Judge Tito?" I asked, after all the students had left.

"Yes, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"Sir, I'm told I need a search warrant," I said, making a small bow as I pulled out the papers. "Chief Frost said we need your approval."

The Chief's warning about Judge Tito proved to be right. For the next five minutes, he quizzed me. He had three basic questions. First, he wanted to be sure that my relationship with the Grantville police was legitimate. Then, he wanted me to explain the crime I was investigating. Finally, he wanted to know precisely why I was interested in any records the Red Cross might have on Eisfelder, Martel, and Kleinschmidt.

After I'd explained my case, he signed the typed copies of the warrant Vera had prepared. "I keep one," he said. "You return one to the police station and take the other to the Red Cross. They'll be closed by now, so you'll want to be there bright and early tomorrow. Good luck figuring out what's going on at the power plant."

On my way out, I decided to poke my nose into the steam engine shop. When I found it, I saw that it was in space that had once been one end of the auto shop. A group of men at one end of the room had an American car hoisted into the air so they could look at its undersides. At the other end, a small group of men was clustered around a pair of middle-sized steam engines.

An old man looked up as I walked over to the engines. "Can I help you?" he asked.

He introduced himself as Dick Shaver, the teacher for the evening steam class, and then invited me to join his students. I just watched and listened for ten minutes, saying nothing. The two steam engines were huge compared to the toy machine that Scott Hilton had shown me, yet tiny compared to the monsters at the power plant. One was turning lazily, making quiet put-put noises. The other was partially disassembled.

Only after the students had been set to work on their tasks did Dick turn back to me. "Any questions?"

I looked at the engine they'd opened up. "You've got the valves opened up, right?"

"You're a downtimer," Dick said, looking a bit surprised. "You know 'bout steam engines?"

"A little," I said. "Scott Hilton showed me round the power plant."

He brightened. "Lovely monsters they're buildin' out there!"

"So what are these machines for?"

"Teachin' and experimentin'. Gotta teach kids how they work, and gotta try new setups. The one we're workin' on was the second we made. Worked OK, but we know how to do better, so we're rebuildin' the valves. Good work for the kids."

I didn't see any kids in the room. His youngest students might have been eighteen, and two of them were near my age. "What kind of students do you get here?" I asked.

"All kinds," he said. "The worst, the best, an' everythin' between. Take Hans there," he gestured at a young man. "He's the son of a miller, grew up aroun' machines. He catches on right quick. The best we get are like that. Had a guy in here last spring, Manfred from Suhl, apprentice gunsmith 'for he come here."

"Manfred Kleinschmidt?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's right. He went to the power plant, didn't he. How's he doin'?"

"Mr. Hilton says he's one of the three best men he's got," I said, wondering how I could get more information out of him. "I didn't know he was from Suhl. Why'd he leave? I thought the gunsmiths there were doing really well."

Dick Shaver scratched his head. "Well, there's two answers to that. He said he was kicked out cause he was sweet on the boss's daughter. Might even be true, but the way I figure it, he probly come here as a spy. Pretty near every master gunsmith wants to learn the secret of our uptime guns y'know."

"You really think he might be a spy?"

Dick smiled. "There's people comin' here from all over to spy on how we do things. Seemed sorta funny at first, but what the heck, we got nothin' to hide. May as well show them the answers, even if they're a mite shy 'bout comin' out ans askin' straight questions." Suddenly, Dick Shaver turned to his students. "Stop! Halt!" he said, before turning back to me. "I gotta see to my students before they wreck that valve seat."

"My pardon," I said, turning to leave. "But before I go, I wonder. You're not teaching how to make guns, you're teaching how to make steam engines."

"How are steam engines like guns?" he asked, with a smile. "Well, for one, you bore a cylinder exactly the way you bore a cannon. Thanks for the visit."

I stopped at Tip's Tavern for supper on my way back into town. That's when it struck me. What Dick Shaver meant when he called Manfred Kleinschmidt a spy applied just as well to me. I was the Green Regiment's spy trying to understand Grantville's police department.

Claudette Green was in charge of the Red Cross office. She read my warrant closely before sending a young German girl into the back closet to find the papers I needed. While the girl was at work, Claudette looked me over. The look on her face wasn't approving.

"Good woman," I said, feeling awkward. "Is there a problem?"

"What do you know of the Red Cross?" she asked.

"'Tis a Christian charity," I said. "You help those wounded in battle, you help those seeking refuge," I drew breath to say more, but then realized that I'd said all I knew.

"Close enough," she said. "Do you understand that refugees might be less willing to seek our help if they know that our records might be turned over to the government?"

"No," I said, before I realized that admitting so might not have been wise.

"Think about it," she said. "If I could, I would demand an oath that you disclose nothing of what you learn here. Certainly nothing about any man who turns out to be innocent."

"On my honor," I said. "I will try to keep to your wish."

" Bitte? Die papieren," the girl said, from behind me.

" Danke. Let's see what we've got," Claudette said, sitting down to look at the papers. "Here," she said. "We have a folder for Thomas Eisfelder, nothing on the others."

In the next few minutes, I learned that Thomas Eisfelder had arrived in Grantville penniless a few weeks after the Imperial army and half of the king's army had swept south on the road to Coburg last fall. His home village somewhere not far from Eisfeld had been looted and burned by one army or the other.

Eisfeld has one foot in the Saxon Dutchies of Thurungia and the other in Franconia. A Franconian jager had shot at the power plant, so as far as I was concerned, anyone from the Werra valley was suspect. On the other hand, Thomas's story wasn't too different from those of half the Germans in Grantville.

"Ah," Claudette said, turning a page. "We helped him with job placement too. Look at the skills inventory."

I was mystified, but she translated the arcane paperwork for me. "It says he was the son of a millwright, apprenticed to his father. A good woodworker, some blacksmith skills, and good at machinery. We placed him as a carpenter with Ted Moritz first. When Mansaniello's steam engine company asked us to look for people who knew machinery, we told Eisfelder about the job."

"That's all you have?" I asked, after she started putting the papers back in order. "What about Kleinschmidt and Martel?"

She looked up at me with a serious look. "We're not the only refugee aid organization here in Grantville. Some of the churches help their own, and some people fend for themselves."

The mention of churches jogged my memory. Charles Martel was supposed to be a Huguenout. I knew that was some kind of French Protestant, but beyond that, I couldn't say much. I go to church when I can, but it's hard to keep track of all the different kinds of heretics on the fringe of the Protestant world. Some church in Grantville would probably accept the man, but which?

I set off across Grantville toward the Presbyterian Church. It's probably the poorest church in Grantville, but it's basically Calvinist, so that's where I've gone. Three men were standing outside, looking up at the building as I walked up.

"Wishing you a good morning," I said, as I recognized Pastor Wiley.

"Good morning indeed," he said. "I know your face from Sunday morning services, but I'm afraid I don't recall your name."

I introduced myself, and in turn, learned that the others were Deacon McIntire and Hans, a local stonemason. "The old building is a bit small and a bit run down," the pastor said. "We're talking about how to go about building a new church here, without closing the old one during construction."

He was modest. The old building was not merely a bit small and a bit run down. Since I'd first attended his church, the congregation had more than doubled. They talked about the new building for a few minutes, explaining that it would be made of brick and stone, and how they planned to build it around the old building. Finally, Pastor Wiley looked up at me, puzzled.

"So tell me, John, why is it you came?"

"I came to ask you a question. I've recently come across a man who is a Huguenout, and I wondered what you know about that church?"

He scratched his head. "I can't say I know much about Huguenouts, except that they're French Calvinists. I hardly knew that much when one of them showed up here back in June and asked for help. If I knew French, he could have explained more, but we had to make do with his bad English."

"So he comes to this church?"

"Yup, you've probably seen him yourself, dark hair, short, sort of a hooked nose, goes by the name of Charles. Usually sits in back. He looks like a man who could use a friend. I'll introduce you on Sunday."

"Were you able to help him?" I asked, wondering if he might be Charles Martel.

"I think so, at least, he thanked me. He said he was a locksmith, showed me a padlock, an uptime lock, mind you, and asked where he could learn how to make locks like that. I sent him to Reardon's Machine Shop, not that they make locks, but I bet they could if they wanted to."

"So Huguenouts are French Presbyterians," I said, trying to hide my recognition. A Huguenout locksmith named Charles could only be Charles Martel. I didn't want to leave the pastor thinking I was interested in him.

"Close enough," the Reverend said. "At least, more like us than Lutherans or Methodists. If your friend is ever in Grantville on a Sunday, tell him we're here and he's welcome."

"I will," I said, before I took my leave.

It was near noon, so I decided to stop at Cora's for something to eat before I went up to the police department to write up my report. All the Americans seemed to want their noon meals precisely at noon, and I'd learned that there was no point in trying to change their schedules to suit my habits.

Cora's coffee shop serves much more than just coffee. I've tried coffee made the Turkish way and made the American way, and I can't really stomach either. Cora has other drinks, though, and some really good pastries.

I was sitting at a corner table sipping mint tea and savoring a chunk of fruit cake when Cora walked over.

"Sergeant Leslie!" Cora said, smiling. Bernadette Adducci had introduced me to Cora just once, when I first started working with the Grantville police. It seems that she never forgets anyone.

"Good day, Cora," I said. "This fruit cake is excellent."

"It takes some inventing to make decent pastries when sugar is so hard to afford," she said. "I've got a German girl back in the kitchen who knows what she's doing, and between us, we've had fun."

A thought struck me. "Cora, you seem to know everything about everyone. I'm looking into three downtimers. I wonder if you've heard of any of 'em. Mind if I ask?"

"I can't guarantee results, but you're welcome to ask."

"Do you know anything of a man named Thomas Eisfelder?"

She shook her head. "Sorry, nothing."

"And how about Manfred Kleinschmidt?"

"I've had a Manfred in here," she said. "He stops in here sometimes on his way home from work. He sometimes works the night shift at the power plant, and he likes my breakfast menu."

"Sounds like the right man," I said. "What d'ye know about him?"

She grinned. "Not much, aside from the fact that he seems to be a nice guy and he's in love with a girl in Suhl. My German's not good enough yet to get the whole story. That's one hit and one miss. Who's your third man?"

"Charles Martel."

"The Frenchman?" she asked. "He works with Manfred, they've come in together a few times for breakfast, but he's also been here for dinner sometimes. He says our pastries are good, but not as good as the ones they make in Paris."

"He's from Paris?"

"That's what he says. I think something awful happened to his family there and he blames it on that Cardinal, what's his name from The Three Musketeers."

"Cardinal Richelieu?" I asked. I named the only cardinal I knew of in Paris while I wondered what he had to do with three gunmen. "Something awful? D'ye have any idea what?"

"Richelieu, right," she said, and then paused. "One morning, a pretty girl smiled at Charles, and I saw him begin to cry. He said the girl reminded him of his petite Marie, his daughter, I think. Lots of people around here have lost family, so I said she should rest in peace. He got mad at me then, swearing at the Cardinal, I think, but it was mostly in French. What I got was the word prison, that's the same in French, you know, and that it happened last May."

"My thanks to you," I said trying to string together what I'd learned.

"I got two out of three of your men. Not bad, is it?"

"Not bad at all," I said. "And a good story for one of them. I suppose now that I need to go try the pastries in Paris to see how yours compare."

She smiled at that and then turned to greet another customer while I sat there thinking. Something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

The pieces began to fall in place after lunch when I stopped into the police station to report on my morning's work. Much as I dreaded writing the reports the Grantville police demanded, that was what forced me to put all the facts I'd learned into order.

There were more facts on hand as well. Deloris Francisco had been on the evening shift the night before, and she'd phoned the landlords of our three suspects and written up a report on them. She'd learned that Thomas Eisfelder had come to Grantville simmering with anger at all soldiers for what they'd done to his home. The time he'd been arrested, it was for attacking a soldier. She'd learned that Manfred Kleinschmidt liked to carve wooden toys in his spare time, and she'd learned that Charles Martel had a great big Bible, all in French, that he read in his spare time.

Jill had a date for Martel's arrival in Grantville, the fifth day of June. That was in good agreement with what Pastor Wiley had told me, and it was as I was thinking about the dates that I realized what was wrong.

"Angela," I asked, looking up from my hastily scrawled notes. "How far is Paris from Grantville?"

"I don't know," she said. "Does it matter? I can phone the library and ask?"

"Please do that," I said.

A few minutes later, she had the answer. "It's about 500 miles by road."

"Call the power plant," I said. "I want to speak to Scott Hilton."

"What's it about?" she asked, dialing the phone.

"I think we need to arrest Charles Martel," I said, as she handed me the phone.

"Chief!" she called, while the phone was still ringing.

As things worked out, we didn't get out to the power plant until late afternoon, but Scott had told me that Martel was working the evening shift. I had ample time to explain everything to the chief and it gave the chief time to arrange backup. The Grantville police rule is to bring backup, as they call it, when you set out to arrest someone.

So it was that I set out for the power plant with Jurgen Neubert and Rick McCabe. Rick would have been enough, but Chief Frost wanted Jurgen along for the experience. By the time the evening shift began to arrive, we were all hidden away. Scott and I were in an upper room he called the steam project office, a room cluttered with drawings and books, while I had Rick and Jurgen waiting behind a closed door across the hallway.

The guard at the gate phoned us when Martel checked in, and then Scott gave him ten minutes before phoning the machine shop and asking for Martel. Two minutes later, the Frenchman came into the office.

"Charles Martel?" I asked. He was a small man, dark haired and thin.

" Monsieur? " he asked, looking puzzled at the sight of me.

"You left Paris in May, and you arrived in Grantville on or before the fifth day in June. Why would a Paris locksmith be in such a hurry to come to Grantville?"

Charles gave a weak smile. "Ah, c'est comme sa. Un, a man in Paris give me un cadinas, a lock. Il a dit, he say it is from here. I am un maitre serrurier, quel est le mot, master locksmith? I never see such a lock before, so I come to here."

"How did a lock from Grantville come all the way to Paris and to you?"

" Je ne sais pas, " Charles said. "A man, he come and he give it for me. Il a dit, if you want learn this thing, go to Grantville."

"So you came five hundred miles in less than thirty days. I'll bet you didn't travel on the Lord's day, so you came at least twenty miles a day. You didn't carry that great big Bible of yours on your back, who paid for the horses? Surely a locksmith can't afford to abandon his family to run halfway across Europe."

The look on his face shifted from confidence to fear, but he said nothing. I glanced to the doorway, checking to see if Rick and Jurgen were in place.

"And your family, why did Cardinal Richelieu throw them in prison? Did he do it to force you into his service? Did he pay for the horses? What did he ask you to do when you got here?"

"Cardinal Richelieu," he said, and then spat. " Il est un diable. He did say that I only need make the petites choses to save my woman and my girl."

"Just little things," I repeated. "Like telling that Franconian jager where to shoot?"

" Je ne sai pas who did shoot on the insulators. I just send a letter expliquant les insulators."

Scott Hilton had kept his silence, but now he spoke. "You almost killed Franz Schneider!"

"I not want to make bad to anyone," he said, with a sigh, letting his head drop. " Tout est perdu, " he added, and then exploded out the door.

As I turned to follow, Rick was on the floor holding his gut where Charles had butted him. Jurgen disappeared down the steps at the end of the hall as I passed Rick. I joined in the chase, and the next minute was crazy. Charles Martel may have been a small man, but he was fast.

As I came out into the hall where the new steam engines were being built, Martel was halfway up a ladder to an overhead walkway. A siren sounded as Jurgen started up the ladder. "Attention, achtung, stop, halt." It was Scott's voice coming through a speaking machine so it was louder than life.

I started for the ladder, but Jurgen was already there, so I stopped. Martel would have to come down somewhere if he was to get out of the building. It seemed that the best thing to do was to follow him from below.

The catwalk along the top of the hall rang as Martel ran, and then he started across the bridge that spanned the hall to hold up the crane. There was a little cabin on the bridge right above the hook, and before Jurgen was halfway to the bridge, Martel was in the cabin and the bridge was moving. It did not move quickly, but it moved toward Jurgen fast enough that Jurgen retreated to the safety of the ladder as the bridge came at him. At the same time, the cabin and the great hook moved away from the catwalk and the hook began to drop.

A woman's voice rang out through the speaking machine. "Someone kill the six-hundred-volt power," she said. The moving crane drifted to a stop, with the hook swinging ponderously below it, coming close to the spinning flywheel of the new engine with each swing. Jurgen warily climbed back onto the catwalk and began edging toward the crane as Scott and Rick came out beside me.

"That was close," Scott said, as we stood watching the crane.

"What?" I asked.

"If he'd kept going, lowering the hook and coming this way, he could have hit Unit 6. If he'd hooked the flywheel while it was running, he could have wrecked the crane and the engine. Good thing Nissa noticed the threat and killed the motor generator set."

"How'd he know how to work the crane?" Rick asked, as Jurgen stepped onto the catwalk that led along the beam toward the crane cabin.

"We do a lot of cross training," Scott said. "We don't want to be stuck with just one person who can…"

He fell silent as Martel bolted from the little cabin above the hook, making for the opposite end of the bridge from Jurgen. There was no catwalk at that end, just a narrow ledge along the south wall of the building. As Martel walked along the ledge, he was sharply outlined against the windows behind him.

"He'll not get down from there easily," I said.

Scott scanned the wall. "See that loop of chain at the east end? It works the windows, he could shinny down." He ran for the bottom of the chain just as Martel began pulling up on it.

The chain rose up out of reach just before Scott got there. As Martel pulled the chain, it turned a wheel at the top. The wheel turned a shaft that pulled the tops of the windows inward while their bottoms opened out. I didn't understand what was happening at first, but Martel was letting the chain out the window behind him.

" Va au diable, vous tous! " Martel called, as he began backing out the window.

I turned to run for the outside door, but that was at the west end of the hall, and Martel was escaping to the east. Rick and I made it to the door together, and he beat me around the corner of the building to the south. A row of great wooden boxes separated the plant from the Buffalo Creek, with clouds of fog rising from three of them accompanied by a sound like a waterfall. I came around the corner of the building just in time to see Martel jump to the ground and flee toward the creek between two of the boxes.

Scott Hilton came around the east corner of the plant running toward us, and as we met, Jurgen's head appeared in the open window above. The three of us on the ground followed Martel between the great boxes, but when we arrived at the creek, it wasn't obvious which way to go. The creek was shallow, Martel could have crossed it, but he could just as easily have gone upstream or down.

We split up, but there were too many places to hide and it was already getting dark in the shade of the ring wall, although the sky was still bright. We never did find Martel, even after we went back inside and organized every man the plant could spare for a search. I learned that the giant boxes were cooling towers, even though they weren't towers. I learned that the coal pile had a faint sulfur smell when you walked around it, and I learned that the fence around the power plant was over a mile long. Officially, the fence had only three gates, the main gate, the railroad gate at the east end, and the old railroad gate at the west end, by the refugee camp, but there were also gaps in the fence where the creek flowed through.

My guess is that Martel got away after dark and fled the Ring of Fire. How he got out of the plant, we may never know. The gates were all locked or guarded, but he could have waded out along the creek, and the railroad gate was opened every time the railroad brought in another load of coal from the mine.

When I got back to the police station, Chief Frost was still there, and he was furious. He knew what had happened, Scott had telephoned from the plant. "Damn it, Sergeant Leslie, you should have just slapped the cuffs on him and brought him in. No need to try for a parlor scene like in an Agatha Christie story. And you should never have let Jurgen go climbing around on that gantry crane! He could have fallen. Leave that kind of monkey business to the folks at the plant."

He paused. "One more thing. Scott Hilton said Martel had been working on making poppet valves for those new steam engines. He said the threads on the inside of the nuts that hold the valve heads to the valve stems were almost drilled out, so the nuts would be likely to pop off inside the engine."

The next morning, I got to see Martel's Bible. The police got a warrant to search Martel's lodgings, and they found very little aside from an Olivetan Bible and a Master padlock. A French Calvinist would treasure that Bible, but it wasn't a Bible a man would want to carry on a long trip, nor was it a Bible a tradesman would be likely to own. The Bible showed signs of ample use, with many passages underlined. Chief Frost guessed that the underlined words and passages might be part of a code, but I've seen serious students of the Bible mark bits of the text like that. We may never know the truth about that book.

Colonel MacKay showed up while I was looking at the Bible. He started in on me as soon as he saw me, but Chief Frost stopped him. "Colonel, I already chewed him out. You're not saying anything I didn't already say, and I've had a good night's sleep since then. I think we did pretty well, considering. It sounds like this Martel fellow admitted what he did. I doubt he'll come back. The question is, are there other saboteurs in among us? There was that derailment last month, was it an accident? And what do we do if someone like Martel is working at the coal mine?"

Art Director Note: The steam engine pictured in the title bar is from a photograph by Douglas W. Jones. I took the liberty of adding a bit more alcohol flame to it, for dramatic effect. My thanks to Doug for all the time and effort he put into getting me the right shot. – Garrett

A Job Well Done

Written by Kerryn Offord

July 1634, Magdeburg

Katherine Franzius surveyed the contents of her wardrobe. What to wear to work today? It hadn't been a problem when she first started work at Magdeburg Concrete two years ago. Back then she'd made do with a single dark blue skirt and jacket, and choice of two linen blouses for work-the standard uniform of typewriter operators. However, it wouldn't do for the executive assistant to the head of operations to be mistaken for a lowly typewriter operator. She now wore clothes that properly portrayed her importance and standing within the company. She spared a glance for the several inches of empty wardrobe. Maybe it was time ask Ronald about granting her a dress allowance again. It must be all of two months since she last asked, and clothes that projected the required image were expensive.

She finally settled on a white cotton blouse with a narrow lace ruff and a slate-blue calf-length linen skirt topped with a fitted doublet-style linen jacket in the best black Lothlorien Farbenwerke could produce. She adjusted the lace ruff so that it showed above the jacket collar and twirled around a couple of times, looking in the mirror to admire how the skirt swirled around her silk-stocking clad legs. Happy with her choice, she hunted for a particularly nice silver-buckled belt and matching handbag she'd bought just the previous week and examined the finished product in the mirror. That brought a happy nod from the image.

Next she opened her shoe cupboard. The last few days had been particularly hot, so she wanted something open. But she also had to walk to work, that meant the light sandals wouldn't do. There really wasn't anything suitable, which meant she needed to go shopping for shoes again. That brought another smile. Katherine enjoyed shopping. It was one of the fruits of her climb to executive assistant that made it all worthwhile. When she first started work at Magdeburg Concrete she'd barely earned enough to pay the rent on a single room apartment, let alone a shopping spree. However, her position had grown with the company. Within weeks of starting she'd found herself assigned as secretary to Ronald Chapman, probably the single greatest piece of luck to ever fall her way. With Ronald heavily in demand outside the office for his knowledge of how the concrete machines worked, she'd often been left in sole charge of the office. She'd flourished on the responsibility, actively seeking more and more of it until now she was more than a secretary; she was Ronald's executive assistant, his trusted confidant and advisor, and one of the highest paid employees at Magdeburg Concrete. Ronald happily left her in charge whenever he could escape the office.

Katherine settled for a pair of low-heeled black pumps with a narrow strap. Her hair, in its businesslike chignon, needed something more than just hairpins to hold it, so she dug through her hats, scarves and gloves drawer for a crocheted white snood and pinned it on over her hair. She examined herself critically. The white lace netting contrasted attractively with her almost black hair. Now all she needed was a little jewelry and she'd be dressed. She unlocked her jewelry drawer and ran her fingers over the various compartments. Yes, the small silver wristwatch today, and a similar sized silver bracelet for the right wrist for balance. No rings for work, but a pair of simple pearl earrings would be okay. Katherine checked that she had money for breakfast and lunch before slipping her purse into her handbag and then picked through the contents of the bowl on her bedside table for a few office-day essentials. She added a couple of handkerchiefs from the top drawer, wound her watch and checked it against the more reliable bedside clock. She'd been awake less than an hour and she was already ready to leave for work.

Ronald Chapman rolled out of his bed and staggered over to the jug and bowl on a table by the window. Splashing cold water over his face helped him wake up. He shaved as best he could with his clockwork shaver. A blade shave would have been better, but he wasn't game to try it with cold water, especially in his present condition.

He was doing up his boot laces when his eyes fell on a scrunched up ball of paper, the letter from his landlord he'd found tacked to his door when he stumbled home at two in the morning. That had been the perfect end to the perfect day. The number two kiln had been working perfectly all year and then, right in the middle of a major order, and a week before it was scheduled to be taken offline for preventative maintenance, it decided to fail. It'd taken Ronald and his team less than an hour to locate the problem-uneven wear on a bearing because of a poor casting-and another ten to fix it. He smoothed the letter out and read it again. Yep, it still said that the owner wanted to turn the apartment building into condos, and unless he wanted to buy his apartment he wasn't going to have a home come September. He'd have to get Katherine to find him a new apartment.

Arendsee, Altmark, north of Magdeburg

Christine Niemand was the first of her family to waken. She slipped out from under the thin blanket that was their only covering and quickly washed and dressed before waking her brother and sister.

While they washed and dressed, she got breakfast ready. She lifted the heavy stone off the lid of the cooking pot and divided the cold remains of last night's eel stew into three bowls, putting the empty pot to one side to be washed later. Then she turned to another old pot and removed the heavy stone and lid from it. It held the remains of an almost stale loaf of bread. She cut off chunks for each of them and placed them on the table before putting the remaining bread back into the pot and covering it. She'd learned the hard way that the extra weight of a stone was necessary to stop the rats getting into the food.

She looked up after saying the prayer for their meal to find her brother Claus looking at her. "Is there something you want to talk about?"

"Pastor Heyl thinks I could earn a scholarship to the Latin school in Stendal if I could get extra tutoring before the tests."

Christine reached out and hugged her brother. If he could earn a scholarship that would be one less drain on her meager purse. Unfortunately they both knew there was no way she could afford to pay for the extra tutoring.

"Pastor Heyl is sweet on you, Chrissy. If you were to marry him. .." Claus fell silent.

Christine couldn't meet her brother's eyes. She tried to remember that he didn't mean to be selfish. She tried to remember that earning a scholarship to the Latin school was his best chance of helping them better their situation. The alternative was a life of poverty, and at seventeen that wasn't a pleasant future to look forward to. "I'll find the money somehow, Claus. Now eat your breakfast."

After breakfast Christine sent Ilsa and Claus off to school with an eel pie wrapped in a square of cloth for lunch before tidying the cottage and washing the dishes. Then she walked over to her friend Margarethe's cottage where she poured out her problems while they carded wool together.

"How are you going to afford the extra tutoring for Claus?" Margarethe asked.

Christine paused in her carding. "I don't know."

"Pastor Heyl is sweet on you," Margarethe suggested.

"Not you too, Margarethe. Claus has already suggested I marry the pastor, but he's so old. Why, he must be at least forty."

"That's not so very old."

"Maybe not to you, but if I have to marry, I'd rather it be to someone with a little life in him. Not some dried up old stick like the pastor."

Margarethe sighed heavily. "What about Fritz Winkler? He's been sniffing about since your father died."

Christine shuddered. There was something about Fritz and the way he looked at her that scared and revolted her. "No. Anybody would be better than him, even Pastor Heyl."

"Anybody?" Margarethe asked.

Christine looked at her friend suspiciously.

"I was tearing out a few pages to help start the fire this morning when one of the advertisements caught my eye." Margarethe reached for a much mutilated catalog and passed it over.

Christine looked at the advertisement. "Wives of Distinction?"

"Yes. You should get your name on their books. You never know, you might find yourself a rich husband."

Christine snorted. "That's not going to happen."

"Yes, well, maybe expecting a rich husband might be a bit much, but surely someone better than Fritz Winkler or the pastor. What do you have to lose?"

Christine sighed. She didn't really have anything to lose and she could gain a future for herself and her brother and sister. "Very well, I'll write a letter."

Magdeburg

The first thing Katherine did after sitting down at her desk at Magdeburg Concrete was to reach for the contents of her out-basket. An executive assistant shouldn't have to check her out-basket at the start of every day, but her boss often worked long after she'd left for the day and when his in-basket ran empty he often started on hers, dumping anything he finished into her out-basket. From where, if she didn't intervene, it could be filed without her ever seeing the documents. At least this morning she didn't expect to find any surprises. The gate guard had told her that the cement kiln Ronald had been called away to work on early yesterday afternoon hadn't been fixed until nearly two in the morning. He should have been too tired to come into the office after that. She let her mind wander, imagining a world where Ronald left her in-basket alone.

She glanced down at her wristwatch. Was that the time? With Ronald having worked so late he'd need his morning caffeine fix more than ever today. She rushed into the small kitchenette off her office and started preparing the coffee.

Ronald waved to the guard as he walked through the gates of Magdeburg Concrete and walked to the company cafeteria where breakfast was being served.

It was a cheap and simple meal of hot mush and a thick slice of bread spread with dripping. All washed down with a mug of small beer. The company firmly believed that offering a good meal to start the day kept the accident and absenteeism rates down. Ronald paid for his meal and hunted for a seat.

Even though he was the sole up-timer in the cafeteria, and one of the bosses, everyone ignored him. He'd been using the cafeteria since it was first started and now the workers were used to him eating with them. They left him alone and got on with their meals and conversations, leaving Ronald to eat in peace.

When he finished eating he took his tray to the cleaning station like everyone else. He didn't make a fuss about the workers who were still eating. As long as they put in an honest day's work he didn't care how long they took. So far this studied disinterest was delivering the dividends in worker-employer harmony he'd promised when he proposed the policy to the company's directors.

Ronald pushed open the door to his office and settled himself behind his desk. After dropping into his chair, he glared at the empty desk in the outer office. "Kathy!"

Katherine poked her head out of the office kitchenette. "Two minutes."

He sighed. With barely four hours sleep he desperately needed that first hit of caffeine.

A couple of minutes later Katherine waved a mug of coffee under his nose. He grabbed it and inhaled the first couple of inches. Then, still sipping, he gently leaned back on his chair and looked up at his executive assistant. "You're a lifesaver, Kathy."

She smiled modestly back. "Herr Knaust wishes you to contact him as soon as possible."

"Any idea what he wants?" The question was a polite fiction. Katherine was a compulsive knower of everyone's business.

"There may be delays in the Magdeburg Towers project."

"What does that have to do with me? Aren't the Towers being built by Magdeburg Growth Holdings?" Ronald was pretty sure he was on firm ground here. He walked past the construction site nearly every day and you couldn't miss the billboards advertising the development. However, he didn't like the way Katherine was looking at him. It was sort of condescending, and she sure did condescending well. "What's my connection to Magdeburg Growth Holdings?"

"You are Magdeburg Growth Holdings, Ronald. It's your personal front company."

"I have a front company?" Ronald was surprised. "I thought it was only criminals and people with something to hide who had front companies?"

"We set it up last year when you invested in the new bridge. You didn't think it would look good if a principal of a concrete company was a major shareholder in the new bridge." Katherine paused to glare at Ronald. "You signed the authorization yourself, remember?"

Ronald tried his best to out-glare Katherine. He definitely remembered that conversation. He even remembered talking about building a skyscraper to profit from the booming demand for accommodation. What he didn't remember was asking her to do the paperwork to create a front company. Nor, for that matter, did he remember asking her to invest his hard earned money in the new bridge over the Elbe or an apartment block. He didn't doubt he had signed the authority, he just couldn't remember doing it. But then, last year he'd been so busy with the expansion of Magdeburg Concrete's production capacity that he hadn't had time to actually read every file that passed across his desk before signing off on them.

Things had improved over the last six months, though. With the mad rush over he'd actually had time after the rest of the office staff left for the day to read the documents Katherine left in his in-basket. Heck, sometimes when he finished the contents of his in-basket he even helped Katherine by clearing the contents of her in-basket.

His glare failed to make any impression on Katherine and she continued to stand in front of him, completely unaffected. "Okay, so I own an apartment block. What's gone wrong?"

"Nothing has gone wrong. Construction is ahead of schedule and the Towers should be habitable three months early, on the first of October."

Ronald had learned the hard way to be sensitive to words. He easily picked up on the important one. "Habitable?"

"Yes. If you don't insist on the elevators running Herr Knaust is proposing a deal that can have everything else up and running by the end of September. However, if you want the elevators, it will now be April of next year at the earliest before they can be completed."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Towers supposed to be seven stories high?" Katherine nodded. "And aren't they supposed to be luxury apartments?" Again Katherine nodded. "Nobody willing to pay for luxury is going to pay to walk up stairs. Of course I want the elevators. What's the hold up?

"Furttenbach and Parigi won the design competition for the new opera house complex and our elevator contractor wants to supply the elevators the design calls for. However, they can't meet the opera house's tight deadline and deliver your elevators on schedule. They want you to accept a delay of three months."

"What the elevator contractor wants to do isn't our problem. Don't we have a contract?" Ronald asked.

"Yes, but Herr Knaust believes he can get the contractor to lower his price and as they need the elevators delivered on a very tight schedule, Kelly Construction has suggested that they could connect the Towers to the opera house power plant. That would give the Towers steam for heating and electricity at a much lower cost than if you had your own steam plant and generators. As it only adds three months to the existing schedule and you can still let the apartments-even if at reduced rates-two months early, Herr Knaust considers it a win-win situation."

"What about the boiler and generator that were supposed to go into the Towers?" Ronald asked.

"They aren't installed yet, and Herr Knaust is confident they can easily be sold to another developer."

Ronald chewed over the information. Here and now a steam plant, even for something as small as Magdeburg Towers, was a pretty significant capital investment. And, as for running costs, if the plant at Magdeburg Concrete was anything to go by, he was sure they'd be high. "Okay. Tell Herr Knaust to get the best deal he can."

"I'll just go and type up instructions for Herr Knaust for you to sign."

Ronald knew Katherine well enough to be sure she had already typed up instructions based on what she thought he should do. The time it took before she came back would tell him how well his decision matched what she thought should be done. He waited until she was at the door before calling. "Are you sure you don't already have instructions typed out ready for me to sign?"

Katherine hauled open the office door and, as if the thought had never crossed her mind, turned and glared at him. Then she stepped right into William Roberts, the other up-time senior executive of Magdeburg Concrete, who had just stepped through the door.

There was an exchange of stilted apologies full of "Fraulein Franzius" and "Herr Roberts" before Katherine escaped, shutting the door after her.

Bill Roberts looked from the closed door to Ronald. "You done something to upset your secretary?"

Ronald shook his head and leaned his chair back on its back legs. "Kathy'll get over it easily enough."

"I hope you're right, because Debbie's dumped another charity event on my lap. The Arts Council ball, and I don't see why I should be the only one to suffer. Unless you've got someone I haven't heard about tucked away, you'll have to ask your secretary to save you from the ravaging hordes again. Is she likely to be agreeable?"

Ronald grimaced. At any social event he attended he faced having the down-time partners of Magdeburg Concrete introducing him to their daughters and grand-daughters, all the time suggesting that it was time he thought about marrying. It had gotten so bad lately that he'd been driven to begging Katherine to accompany him in an attempt to deflect some of the attention. It was enough to put a guy off marriage completely.

Katherine poked her head into the room and nodded vigorously. "And I'm Ronald's executive assistant. Not his secretary."

The door shut as quickly as it had opened and Ronald and Bill were left alone in the office. Ronald glanced over to Bill. "We'll be there."

"She listens through the door?"

"Kathy assures me it's an essential part of being a successful executive assistant. It means she doesn't have to rely on me to tell her things she needs to know to make my life easier."

"Jeez. And you let her get away with that?"

"Bill, it works for us. As you're always telling me, if it's not broke…"

"Don't fix it. Okay, if you're happy, I'll stay out of it. But it wouldn't work for me."

"Yeah, well, you're not me. If you can get the invitations to Kathy, she'll make sure we turn up."

"You know, your secretary just about runs your life as it is. Why not marry her and let her run the rest of your life?"

Bill had only been gone a few minutes when Katherine came in with the authority for Herr Knaust. She sniffed delicately. "I wouldn't marry you even if you asked me."

Ronald signed the letter and handed it back. "I know. I'm not mature or sophisticated enough for you."

The pair exchanged smiles of mutual understanding.

"Partnering me to the Arts Council ball isn't going to interfere with your love life is it?" Ronald asked.

Katherine shook her head. "No. Joachim is busy that evening."

"He must be a real understanding guy if he doesn't mind you going out with your boss."

"Joachim understands that the duties of an executive assistant are many and varied, and that I get paid triple time after midnight."

"Yeah, I love you too." He shook his head. "Debbie's going to have to cut down on her charity events. They're costing me a fortune."

"Do you know what you need, Herr Chapman?"

Ronald lowered his chair onto all four legs. When Katherine called him Herr Chapman, he knew he wasn't going to like what she had to say. "No, Fraulein Franzius, I don't know what I need."

"You need a wife."

He was glad he wasn't still leaning back on his chair. That suggestion coming from Katherine would have had him rearing right back and tipping over. "Not you, too? I thought you were on my side."

"I am. You don't have to marry one of your partners' daughters or grand-daughters, though. Any suitable woman would do. Think of the money you'd save. Besides, you're lonely. You need a companion."

"If I want a companion, I'll get myself a dog."

"And where would you keep it? You live in a one-room apartment on the third floor of a residential hotel. At least a wife can clean up after herself, and exercising her would be much more fun."

Ronald glared at Katherine. It was so long since he last had a woman the idea of a wife was almost attractive. It wasn't that women, even prostitutes, weren't available. The big problem was that he was scared. Syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases were endemic and the antibiotics to treat them were sadly lacking. Sure, they had condoms here and now, but he'd heard they had to be made to measure out of sheep intestine. Just trying to picture being fitted for one was enough to put him off.

Suddenly he remembered the letter from his landlord. He passed it over to Katherine. "Can you find me somewhere else to live?"

"I can investigate what's available, but what about Magdeburg Towers? You could move in to the penthouse with your new wife."

"I don't need a wife, Kathy. I'm not even looking for one," Ronald protested.

"That's because you've forgotten what you're missing and you work too hard to meet anybody but the simpering girls your partners push under your nose. But don't worry, a good executive assistant is always ready to provide her boss with everything he needs."

"I am not going to some tacky singles bar, and I don't do blind dates." Hopefully that would stymie Katherine. Without his cooperation there was no way she could find him a wife. Although the way she smiled just before she waltzed out of the office didn't look good. Ronald leaned his chair back on its rear legs again and mulled over his conversation with his executive assistant. Surely he'd covered all the bases?

August, Arendsee

"Stick out your tits, love. The customers like to see what you've got to offer."

Christine swallowed her temper and stuck out her chest as directed so the photographer from Wives of Distinction could take his photograph. She didn't approve of having her photograph taken, but Frau Saling, the agent from Wives of Distinction, had insisted that men responded more often to listings if they knew what a woman looked like.

"Right, love, you can relax now." The photographer removed the double-dark from the back of the camera and handed it over to Christine. "Take that over to my assistant and wait."

Christine took the flat wooden cassette gingerly in her hands and hurried over to the photographer's tent. Behind her she could hear the photographer calling out instructions to the next girl in line.

"Name?" The photographer's assistant asked.

"Christine Niemand." She watched the assistant write her name in chalk on a blackboard. He pointed to a bench. "Wait over there. In this light, it'll be half an hour before your prints are ready."

Christine walked over to the bench and sat down. She felt as if she was selling her body for a wedding ring and security for her family, but in the last couple of weeks her situation had deteriorated significantly. Frau Cratzmann had discovered that her precious son, Fritz Winkler, was pursuing Christine. Unfortunately, she held Christine responsible for his behavior, and as her husband was Christine's village-appointed legal guardian things weren't looking good for Christine keeping her family together.

"Niemand, Christine."

Christine jerked up, saw Frau Saling and hurried over to her. She was examining a couple of pictures. It took a moment for Christine to realize they were her pictures.

"These are good enough. There's no need to take new ones, so you're free to go. I wish you success in your hunt for a husband."

It was a few seconds after Frau Saling walked away before Christine realized it was all over. She was going to be listed with Wives of Distinction. She looked around. Some of the other girls were milling around talking to each other, but for Christine time away from her spinning and carding was time she wasn't earning. She started running for Margarethe's.

Late August, Magdeburg

Ronald and Katherine's footsteps echoed throughout the penthouse. The space was enormous, especially when he compared it to the hotel room he'd been living in the last couple of years.

"Master with full en suite. You'll be needing a bed, linen, a dresser and a chest of drawers." Katherine stood in the middle of the room taking notes.

Ronald looked into the en suite. There was a sunken tub big enough for two, twin shower, and twin hand-basins. He could fit his current apartment in one corner and still have plenty of room. "I don't think I'll be moving in here. I'd get lost."

"Nonsense. A few weeks and you'll be wondering how you survived in your poky little room."

"This whole apartment is way too big for one person."

Katherine smiled at Ronald. "There's an easy solution for that."

He glared back at her. He'd hoped she'd forgotten her silly idea of finding him a wife. She'd certainly been quiet on the subject lately.

"Anyway, if you remember, your landlord is kicking you out shortly. You need somewhere to live before the end of the month. As you own the Towers, it'd be foolish for you not to live there."

"But the penthouse? Why not a nice little studio apartment on the second floor?"

"Because until the elevators are installed the closer to the ground an apartment is, the higher the rent it commands, and you need all the income you can get to service your mortgage," Katherine answered.

"Surely the rent for the penthouse would be more than the rent for a studio apartment lower down?"

Katherine shook her head. "You know better than that, Ronald. Nobody who could afford the rent for this much space is interested in climbing seven flights of stairs."

"So I get stuck with it," Ronald grumbled.

"You and your family."

Ronald suddenly had a horrifying thought. "Hell, with this much space they'll expect me to put them up whenever they visit."

"All the more reason to start your own family," Katherine answered.

"Will you stop that? I am not looking for a wife."

"How will you feel when you're a lonely old man with no family to comfort you?"

Ronald snorted his contempt for that idea. "A hell of a lot better than my big brother will feel with his mob of bloodsucking leeches hanging around."

Katherine glared and stamped off into the distant bowels of the penthouse apartment. Left, for once, triumphant, Ronald celebrated his victory over his executive assistant by investigating his new home.

Katherine had met Ronald's brother and his children. Calling them bloodsucking leeches was probably an exaggeration, but there was sufficient truth in the comment for her to feel Ronald had won that argument. Losing wasn't something Katherine condoned, especially not losing to Ronald. Recovery from such a serious blow to her self-esteem was going to take serious therapy, and when a woman needed serious therapy there was only one kind worth bothering with-retail therapy.

She tried a few of her regular shops, but nothing called out to her. So she drifted a little further afield. That's how she came across the tiny office of Wives of Distinction. A brief perusal of the exterior advertising perked up her spirits. A marriage agency! Why hadn't she thought of that?

The gentle tinkling of the door bell attracted the attention of the woman seated at a desk. She looked up from what she was reading. "May I help you?"

"I was just passing when I saw your sign. You find husbands for single women, don't you?"

"Yes, we do. Are you looking for a life partner?"

Katherine shook her head. "Not for me, for a friend." She saw the knowing look in the woman's eyes and hastened to correct her. "Truly, a friend of mine is looking for a wife."

"Ah, Then you've come to the right place. What kind of wife is your friend looking for?"

"Young, healthy, intelligent…" Katherine hunted in her mind for other qualities Ronald might like. "Not too plump. Actually, skinny would better describe his taste."

The woman opened an index card box and collected several lengths of wire from a drawer. "How young?" she asked, a wire ready to thread through one of the holes punched along the edge of the cards.

"How young do they get?" Katherine asked.

"I've recently added a seventeen-year-old, but most of my clients are in their mid-twenties or older."

Katherine was surprised. Most people waited until they were in their twenties before marrying. It tended to take that long before they could afford to do so. "Why would a seventeen-year-old be looking for marriage?"

Frau Saling pulled a card out from the back of the index box. "The poor thing was orphaned last year and left with the care of her younger brother and sister. She's currently supporting her family on what she earns as a spinster."

"In other words, she's slowly starving to death?"

"She's certainly not plump, and as for intelligent, her brother hopes to attend the local Latin school on scholarship."

"Could I have a look at that card?" Katherine asked.

Frau Saling passed it over. "Would you like me to sort out some other candidates?"

Katherine was busy reading the scant details on the card and waved Frau Saling's question off. "It says here that there are two photographs. Could I see them?"

"Viewing a girl's photographs costs ten dollars."

"What? Ten dollars just to look!"

"I run a business here. A lot of my clients can't afford the services of a photographer, so I send out my own man and charge the men for photographs to cover my costs."

A nice little racket if ever there was one, Katherine thought as she rummaged in her handbag for her purse. The woman probably did way better than just cover her costs.

Frau Saling pulled a folder out of her filing cabinet and placed the two photographs on her desk.

Katherine looked at the girl in the photographs. She was perfect. Her story would appeal to Ronald's noble instincts, of which she felt he had way too many, and her looks would strike at the man in him. "Could I have a copy of the listing and the photographs, please?"

"Just the one girl? You shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. After all, the girl might not be interested in your friend."

"Just the one." Katherine was adamant.

"You'll have to wait a couple of days for my photographer to print off your copies."

Katherine looked down at the photographs. She wanted to strike while the iron was hot. "Why can't I have these photographs?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't allow that. What if someone else wanted to see them?"

Katherine hadn't risen to the position of executive assistant to the operations manager of Magdeburg Concrete by being stupid. She reached for her purse again. "How much?"

Frau Saling smiled. "For one hundred dollars you can have the photographs and as a special favor, I'll remove Christine's listing until I get replacement prints."

Katherine thought about it for a full thirty seconds. Even on her salary it was a lot of money, but the opportunity was too good to miss. She peeled off a hundred dollars and passed the fistful of notes over. "I'll take it. What's the deal if my friend wants to get in touch with the girl?"

"On payment of a small fee he gets a letter delivered to the girl and a guaranteed reply, even if it's just a 'thank you, but no thank you.'"

Katherine accepted the schedule of fees from Frau Saling, and nearly choked when she read the magnitude of Frau Saling's "small fee" to deliver a letter outside of Magdeburg. She stared down at Frau Saling and pointed mutely to the offending number.

"I have to make a profit, and it does cost a lot to have a courier deliver the letters and collect replies. Of course, if your friend puts his address in his letter to the girl there is nothing stopping her writing to him without going through my agency, using the regular mail."

Katherine could understand her point. The fee for delivering the introductory letters might be the last she received from a client, so she would have to charge as much as the market could bear to remain in business. "Do you have any recommendations as to what my friend should say in his letter?"

Frau Saling pulled a single printed sheet from a box by her desk and passed it over. "Just get him to follow these simple rules, and tell him he should include at least a full face photograph. It's only fair that the girl gets to see what the men who wish to correspond with her look like."

If the men were writing letters and adding photographs, how, Katherine wondered, did Frau Saling know the photographs were actually of the men writing the letters? Immediately following that thought Katherine started worrying about Christine's photographs. "How do I know these photographs are really of the girl in the listing, or even that she really exists?"

"My agency's continued existence depends on its good name. Every girl I list has been personally vetted by me or one of my assistants. I can assure you, Christine exists, and she is the young woman in the photographs. I know. I was the person who vetted her."

Satisfied, Katherine took her leave.

Now, how was she going to draw Ronald's attention to Christine? Katherine spent the walk back to the office mulling over the problem. Finally she decided she'd hit Ronald when he came into work the next day. Around the time he had his first caffeine hit of the day, when he was at his most relaxed and susceptible. Katherine smiled smugly to herself. A girl didn't rise to executive assistant without learning how to manage her boss.

Next day, Magdeburg

Katherine spied Ronald walking past the gatehouse. She put down her binoculars and went to start the coffee. Ronald was a creature of habit and she knew to within a couple of minutes how long he'd take to finish his breakfast at the staff cafeteria.

Then she went into Ronald's office to check that everything was ready. The folder with Christine's data sheet and photographs was sitting on top of his in-basket, ready to be the first thing Ronald reached for after she served him his coffee. Perfect. Now she just had to wait.

Ronald was greeted by the smell of freshly brewed coffee as he entered his office. He could see the mug sitting on his desk waiting for him. Grabbing it, he slumped into his chair and reached for the first folder in his in-basket. He dropped it onto his desk and flipped it open.

He stared. Who the hell was this girl? He laid the contents of the file out on his desk. There were two photographs, a typed description, and an information sheet from "Wives of Distinction" giving instructions on how to write an introduction letter. "Katherine Franzius, get in here right now!"

Katherine appeared. "You called?"

Ronald pointed. "What's the meaning of this?"

"It's the woman I think you should marry."

"Woman? She's just a kid." Ronald grabbed the data sheet and read it again before waving it under Katherine's nose. "Hell, she's the same age as Gerald's daughter."

"A little younger, actually, but if you read her description of herself you'll see that she's virtually raised her sister as her own child since their mother died five years ago. And more recently, since the death of their father last year left her and her brother and sister orphaned, she's been the sole source of support for her family. That kind of thing matures a person very quickly."

Ronald read further down the data sheet. Yes, it did tell about Christine's situation. "Why the hell would a seventeen-year-old girl want to marry an old guy like me?"

"Security. Maybe even affection. And if she's lucky… love."

Ronald looked up at her in surprise. That wasn't the kind of thing he expected to hear from his ever-so-elegant assistant. He pushed the photos to one side and reached for the next folder. Katherine was still standing beside him. "Don't just stand there. Get back to work."

He pretended interest in the new file until Katherine was back in her office, hammering away on her typewriter. Then he lowered the file and glanced over at the photographs. The full length one was a bit tacky, until you looked at the eyes. They seemed to be calling out "this isn't the real me." And then there was the portrait. There was something about the girl in the photograph that just reached out and grabbed him. He turned back to the file he was supposed to be reading.

At three o'clock Bill Roberts dropped by for a mug of coffee. He couldn't help but notice Ronald hastily covering something on his desk. So he deliberately lifted the files to reveal two photographs. He got a hand on them just before Ronald could grab them, then stepped back to examine them. She was a good looking girl, but he didn't recognize her. "Who is she?"

"She's the seventeen-year-old girl currently at the top of Kathy's list to become Mrs. Ronald Chapman."

The statement was delivered so nonchalantly that at first Bill didn't take it all in. Then it struck. "Your secretary is trying to marry you off to this sweet young thing?"

"Yes, and I've told her the girl is way too young for me."

Bill reexamined the photographs. He had vague memories of some of Ronald's previous girlfriends. The memories were so vague that he started wondering just how long it'd been since Ronald had a girlfriend. His best guess was some time back up-time. This girl was attractive without being really beautiful. However, she had the kind of looks that promised to improve with maturity. And why, if she was way too young, did Ronald look as if he wanted to mug him to get the photographs back. "Be sure to invite me and Debbie to the wedding."

"I am not getting married, Bill, regardless of what Kathy thinks."

Bill waved the photographs, and Ronald snatched them from his hand. "Anything you say." Bill wanted to laugh. His friend was all tied up in knots over a seventeen-year-old girl he'd only seen in a pair of black and white photographs. He'd have to tell Debbie about this.

All through the afternoon Ronald found his eyes drifting to the photographs. There was something about the girl that got to him. It was more than just her story of sacrifice. There was also the way she looked. It wasn't any one feature-although her enormous eyes held Ronald every time he looked at her portrait-it was the whole package. Ronald felt more aroused than he'd been in years, and the photographs weren't even mildly pornographic.

He tried to decide why he was responding to the photographs. Maybe it was the promise he saw in those eyes. And maybe he was just fooling himself, seeing something that wasn't there. He pushed the photographs to one side and got back to reading files.

Finally, just after four-thirty, he gave in to the siren call. Maybe she wasn't what he imagined. Maybe she wouldn't want anything to do with a man more than twice her age. But it couldn't hurt to make contact. Ronald grabbed the folder and walked out to talk to Katherine. "Okay. What do I have to do?"

"Write to her telling her you would like to get to know her better, objective: marriage." She passed a couple of typed pages. "I've made a few suggestions. And you'd better put in some photographs so she knows what she's getting. I suggest you pick one or two of these." She handed him six photographs of himself. "I recommend these two."

Ronald scowled. He'd only just arrived at the idea of finding out if the girl he imagined really existed and here she was talking about marrying the girl already. Could he marry a girl half his age, one who was younger than his niece? Well, certainly not if she was anything like as immature as Elizabeth Ann. But maybe this girl was the girl he imagined her to be. He turned his attention to two photographs Katherine had recommended. One was a full face shot and the other a full length one. He could see why the full face had been included. It was a good honest photograph of his battered face, but… "Why that full length shot?"

"Because it shows you in the Magdeburg Concrete company coveralls. You want to provide evidence that you are gainfully employed."

"Surely the one in the suit would be better for that?"

Katherine shook her head. "It's obviously an up-time suit. You want to look as if you can afford to support Christine and her family without looking rich, and everyone knows all up-timers are rich."

Ronald collected Katherine's suggestions and the photographs and retreated back to his office. There he sat down over a blank piece of paper and wondered what the hell to write. "Kathy, any chance of coffee?"

"I'll put on a fresh pot."

"Thanks." While he waited for the essential thinking fluid, Ronald jotted down ideas of what he should say. He didn't like some of Katherine's suggestions, so he crossed those out. He had to think carefully about what to write if he wanted to discover if she was the girl he was imagining her to be.

A few minutes later. Katherine came in with a mug in each hand. Placing his in front of him she sat on the corner of his desk and sipped her own. "How's it going?"

Ronald grabbed his coffee and took a healthy swig. "How do I tell her where I live without giving away what I'm worth?"

"That's simple. Just tell her you live at the top of a seven-story apartment block. Her imagination will fill in the blanks."

"Pardon?"

"I doubt she's heard of elevators. She'll most likely associate living on the seventh floor with cheap accommodation."

"Okay, that solves that problem. What about the fact I don't have a down-time name?"

"You might not have a local name, Ronald, but it could be an English name. I wouldn't worry about it. Just don't tell any lies. Nothing gets a girl's back up like being lied to."

Ronald took Katherine's comments seriously. He also wondered who'd had the nerve to lie to her. "Right. Thanks for the coffee. You can go now. I've got a letter to write."

He waited until Katherine was back at her desk before he went back to his letter. He wanted to say something that would capture Christine's interest enough for her to want to respond without telling her too much, or making any commitment.

After dozens of screwed up attempts he finally put down his pen. While he stretched his fingers, he read the letter through. It wasn't perfect, but then, who could write a perfect letter to a stranger? However, it said what he wanted to say. He just hoped it was enough to get Christine to respond. Heck, could she afford to respond? Could she even afford paper and pen? He got to his feet and walked over to the stationery drawer in Katherine's office."

"May I help you?" an aggrieved voice asked.

With his hands buried in the drawer, pushing papers all over the place, Ronald realized Katherine didn't sound happy about something. "I'm after some reply-paid envelopes."

Katherine pushed Ronald aside, pulled out another drawer, and produced a reply-paid envelope.

"Could I have half a dozen, oh, and some writing paper and maybe a good pencil or two?"

Katherine dutifully produced the requested objects. "Are you thinking Christine might not be able to afford to correspond with you?"

"Yes."

"That's very good thinking, Ronald."

Ronald was back in his office and assembling the package for Christine when the similarity between Katherine's tone of voice and his mother's whenever he'd done what he was told as a child struck him. For a moment, he wondered what his mother would say about him marrying a seventeen-year-old. Then he laughed. She might call him a dirty old man because of the age difference, but she'd be happy to see the last of her six children finally married.

He was just about to take the letter to Katherine for delivery when he remembered just who'd be handling delivery of his letter. There were some things a man didn't want his executive assistant seeing, and he knew Katherine too well to expect her to deliver this letter without wanting to have a look at what he'd written. Pulling out his wallet, he found a stamp, which he stuck across the flap before signing his name across both it and the envelope. Now there was no way she could inspect the contents without leaving a clear sign the envelope had been interfered with. He walked out and dropped it on Katherine's desk. "What do I owe you?"

"Plenty." Katherine handed him the receipts from Wives of Distinction.

The total surprised Ronald but if Katherine was happy, who was he to complain. "Fill out a chit for me to sign and you can draw it from petty cash."

Katherine walked into Wives of Distinction just as Frau Saling was closing.

"Is it something quick, I'm just closing," Frau Saling said.

Katherine proffered the envelope and a bundle of notes. "My friend would like to have this sent to Christine as soon as possible."

Frau Saling carefully counted the money. "It'll take several days for delivery. Please tell your friend not to expect a reply for a couple of weeks."

"A couple of weeks? For the fee you're charging, I expect a little more urgency."

"Fraulein Franzius, Arendsee is four days away by horse."

"Oh! So Christine lives in Arendsee?"

Frau Saling shrugged. "You've paid for me to deliver a message. If she chooses to respond she will probably give you her full name and address anyway, so what have I lost? Just don't let your friend go looking for her without her permission."

"I'll tell him. Thank you, Frau Saling."

Sarah Saling shut and locked the door after Katherine left. Then, after pulling down the blinds, she sat down with the letter from Katherine's friend.

Rats! Someone had sealed it. Then she realized it had been sealed with a stamp. Who would waste a dollar stamp to seal a letter? She tried to decipher the signature. It looked like "R something man." She sat up. That messy connected writing was mostly only used by up-timers and she knew Fraulein Franzius was a secretary at Magdeburg Concrete. Maybe it was one of those up-timers. She reached for her copy of the Who's Who of Grantville Up-timers. William "Bill" Roberts was married, which left Ronald Chapman. That certainly fitted the signature across the stamp. She read further. Ronald Chapman was one of the few remaining single up-timers with real money and prospects. But what would a wealthy up-timer want with a young girl like Christine? Then she remembered what she knew of human nature. She frowned down at the letter in her hand. Should she, shouldn't she? The trouble was she'd accepted money to send the letter, and besides, what a feather in her cap it would be if one of her wives of distinction married Ronald Chapman of Magdeburg Concrete.

Arendsee

"Chrissy, there's another letter waiting for you at the town hall."

Christine jerked out of her working trance and looked up to see her brother. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

"Pastor Heyl sent me. Everyone wants to know if this one's any better than the last one."

Christine looked over at Margarethe, who was listening intently. "Off you go, girl. Maybe this one's the one."

"Oh, Margarethe."

"Go on, off you go, girl."

Christine put down her carding paddles and ran barefoot after her brother.

Christine opened the envelope as she walked away from the town hall. There was the usual cover letter from Wives of Distinction and a thick envelope. The cover letter was from Frau Saling and said that the enclosed letter was from "Ronald of Magdeburg." She stuffed Frau Saling's letter into the pocket in her work apron and concentrated on the letter from Ronald. It was addressed simply to "Christine," which was all the address he should have for her.

She found a bench to sit on, spread her apron across her knees, and emptied the contents onto her apron. She welcomed the photographs. The last couple of men hadn't included any. Ronald of Magdeburg wasn't a young man, and he wore spectacles, but he wasn't unpleasing to the eye, and he had a nice smile. He certainly looked as if he still had all his own teeth, unlike some people she could think of.

"Can I see?" Claus asked.

Christine passed over the photographs and continued to look through the contents. There was a pencil, one of the fancy new ones that Claus dreamed of having. She'd have to keep a firm hold on that. There was also good quality writing paper and reply-paid envelopes. It certainly looked as if Ronald of Magdeburg really wanted to hear back from her. That was a change after the last man. He'd seemed to think Christine should up stakes and move to his village just because he wrote to her. She knew her situation wasn't good, but it wasn't that dire.

She looked at the envelopes. They were addressed simply to "Ronald Chapman, Magdeburg Concrete Inc, Magdeburg." She stuffed those with the writing paper into her apron pocket. That left the letter.

"Well, is he better than the last one?"

Christine hastily shoved the letter protectively into her apron pocket. Margarethe had finally caught up with her, and she wasn't the only villager standing around looking interested. "Yes."

"What's his name? And what does he have to say for himself?" Margarethe asked.

"His name is Ronald Chapman. He's nearly forty, never married, and lives in Magdeburg where he has worked for Magdeburg Concrete for over two years."

"That's nice. It sounds like he can afford to support you and your brother and sister," Margarethe said.

Christine pulled out the letter and continued reading. "He says Claus could go to any of the Latin schools in Magdeburg, that Ilsa can attend the local St. Veronica's Academy, oh! And if I'm interested, I can enroll for classes at the Duchess Elisabeth Sofie Secondary School for Girls." She hugged the letter to her breast. "I could go to school, just like Claus."

"It sounds as if you've found yourself a rich man this time," Anna Cratzmann, mother to Fritz Winkler, interrupted. "You'd be wise to snap him up whilst you've got the chance and save the village the cost of your support."

"Oh shut up and leave the girl alone, Anna. Go on, Christine, tell us more. Where does he live?" Margarethe asked.

Christine searched through the letter. "He says he's recently moved into new accommodations on the seventh floor of a new apartment building, and that there is plenty of room for all of us."

"The seventh floor! Who'd want to live on the seventh floor? Think of all the stairs. Maybe he's not so rich after all," Anna said.

"I'm not looking for a rich man, Frau Cratzmann. Just a good man who will care for me and the children."

"Well, you haven't had much luck to date. Maybe you should catch hold of this one."

Magdeburg

Ronald looked at the envelope Katherine had just dropped on his desk. It was one of the envelopes he'd sent Christine and surprisingly enough Katherine had failed to open it. He waved it gently. "You on strike?"

"I thought that you would prefer I didn't open it." Katherine came back with the sweetest of sweet smiles.

Ronald wanted to take that comment on face value. It was unusual for Katherine not to read any mail that came to him through the office, but then, she knew a letter from Christine was likely to be personal and confidential. He slit it open and was pulling out the enclosed letter when he realized Katherine had moved to stand just behind his shoulder. He glared over his shoulder at her. "Do you mind?"

"This letter is important to me," she protested.

"How do you work that out?"

"Because it might be from the future Mrs. Ronald Chapman."

"Kathy, if you behave yourself I might let you look at it after I've finished reading it, but you're not going to read it over my shoulder. Okay?"

It was obvious to Ronald that it wasn't okay, but it was equally obvious Katherine was ready to concede some ground. He waited until she was back at her desk before he pulled out the letter and opened it.

November, Arendsee

Christine sat staring at the latest letter from Ronald. "Margrethe, he wants to meet me."

"Progress at last. I thought he'd never ask. After all, there're only so many ways you can beg him to come and rescue you without actually saying so."

"I haven't been begging," Christine protested. Yet, she thought. It might have come to that if Ronald hadn't asked this time though, but now that he'd written saying he wanted to meet her, she was terrified. She didn't want her desperation to scare him off. "But I'm not ready. How do I convince him to marry me?"

Margarethe patted Christine gently on the shoulder. "I didn't outlast three husbands without learning a thing or two about men and what makes them tick. Are you still a virgin?"

"Yes." When had she ever had time to be anything else?

"That's a good start. Now, what you have to do is…"

Magdeburg

Ronald leaned back in his chair and reread Christine's letter. She was happy for him to visit. That was a major step. He pulled his old Rand McNally atlas from the bookshelf and flipped it open to central Europe and looked at the small dot that was Arendsee. It was about fifty miles away as the crow flew, or about eighty miles following the modern roads. Unfortunately, he had no idea what roads actually existed that far north of Magdeburg here and now, and with work commitments and winter upon them this would probably be his only chance to see Christine in her home town before next spring.

He frowned at the thought. Reading between the lines Ronald was pretty sure Christine was living hand to mouth, which meant she might not be around next spring. He had to see her soon and persuade her to marry him.

He froze. Where the hell had that thought come from? Ronald stared unseeing at the atlas. Was he really thinking of marrying a seventeen-year-old girl? He fingered her latest letter and traced a finger over her signature. It sure looked like it, but why? He wasn't in love with her. He couldn't be. He'd never met her, and surely you couldn't fall in love with someone you've never met. Maybe her situation was dire, but rescuing her and her family from near certain death was hardly a good reason to marry her. He could always send her money. He had enough of it. He pulled open his top drawer and pulled out Christine's photographs. He sat and stared at them and found that they still had their power to arouse him. Sex? Was that why he was prepared to marry Christine? Was safe sex a good enough reason to marry anyone? Ronald placed the photographs back in their drawer and stood up. It might not be a great reason, but it was more realistic than imagining himself in love with her. Besides, maybe he'd find that they didn't suit each other and all this worry was just wasted effort. Anyway he needed to tell Katherine she'd be minding the office for the next week or so.

Katherine looked up as Ronald approached her desk. The fact that he was carrying the atlas suggested he might be going on a short trip sometime soon. About bloody time, she thought. He'd shared Christine's letters with her, so she understood the terror Christine must be feeling as Ronald dilly-dallied about.

"I need to be out of the office for a few days."

"You intend traveling to Arendsee?"

"Yes. It's past time I met Christine. Letters just aren't a good enough way to get to know someone."

Katherine reached into a drawer and removed a folder. She passed it over. "Travel documents, tickets and two thousand dollars in cash." She reached back into the drawer for a draw-string purse which she placed on top of the folder. "And five hundred dollars in coins, just in case the smaller villages in the old Brandenburg territories don't accept paper money." She traced along the River Elbe on the map. "The steam ferry can carry you as far as Werben. From there you'll need to hire a horse or walk about twenty-five miles to Arendsee. At this time of year that's nearly a full day's travel, so unless you want to arrive tired and exhausted as the sun sets, I'd advise you to stay overnight at Seehausen."

"You seem to know a lot about that area of the world."

"The travel arrangements are the same as those Joachim used last time he visited his parents. He had to pass through Arendsee on his way to Salzwedel. Now, the real question is, having decided to meet Christine, will you be asking her to marry you while you're in Arendsee?"

"I wouldn't be going if I wasn't seriously thinking of asking her to marry me."

"Good, and if you ask I'm sure she'll accept." My God, was Katherine sure Christine would accept. She passed Ronald an envelope. "Then you'll want this."

Ronald accepted the envelope gingerly. "What's in it?"

"Character references and a copy of your tax returns. You'll need them to convince Christine's legal guardian to give permission for her to marry."

Ronald fingered the envelope. "I'm more than twice Christine's age. Do you think there'll be any trouble getting her guardian's consent?"

Biting back a grin Katherine shook her head. "No. I doubt there will be any trouble." Was she ever sure there would be no trouble! Ronald was offering to rescue the village from the possibility of having to support Christine and her brother and sister. Whoever the council had appointed as the family's guardian wouldn't hesitate to consent to the marriage, as long as the documentation was all in order. "Finally, you'll need a betrothal gift. I can get something suitable…"

"No, I'd better do that."

Twelve months ago Ronald would have been only too willing to allow her to purchase a betrothal gift. Katherine hoped the future Mrs. Ronald Chapman would be properly appreciative of how well she'd trained her husband. "I'd recommend that you look for something small and pretty, like some decorated combs or even an enameled cosmetic box. Anything too big would be a nuisance to carry that far and fine gloves or shoes would only be a good idea if you had an idea about her size."

"Shoes? As a betrothal gift? I can understand the others, or even jewelry, but what woman would want shoes?"

"Ronald, strange as it may be to you, most people consider themselves lucky to have one pair of shoes. A new pair of shoes would be a magnificent betrothal gift."

She followed Ronald's stare down to her feet. Today she was wearing a pair of red low-heeled pumps. She smiled. "Obviously, I'm not most people."

"Obviously. Well, Christine can buy all the shoes she wants when she gets to Magdeburg. I guess I'd best look at some fancy combs."

"With her mass of hair, combs are a good choice. If you tell whoever serves you that they are to be a betrothal gift, you'll be shown something suitable."

Arendsee

Ronald hadn't realized just how unfit he'd become over the years. He'd certainly thought all the walking he did just going to and from work, as well as coping with seven flights of stairs twice a day, would have prepared him for the hike from Werben to Arendsee. How wrong he'd been. Of course, the fact that it started to rain just as he left the ferry at Werben and hadn't let up since hadn't helped. He could have hired a horse, which would at least have lifted him out of the sea of mud that was the road to Arendsee, however, never having ridden a horse in his life, Ronald hadn't thought that this trip was the best time to start.

Where did he start looking for Christine? The church was surely the center of everything in such a small community. At the very least there would be someone there who could point him in Christine's direction.

Someone dressed like a Lutheran pastor answered the door. "Excuse me, but could you tell me how I could find Fraulein Christine Niemand?" Ronald asked.

The pastor didn't look at all friendly while he studied Ronald. "I could."

Ronald waited patiently. It didn't look as if the pastor wanted to help him find Christine. In fact, he didn't look happy to see him at all, and it wasn't as if Ronald was standing in the church dripping all over the floor. "Yes?" Ronald prompted.

"Are you the man from Magdeburg that Christine is expecting?"

"Yes." Ronald certainly hoped he was.

For a moment he thought the pastor was going to slam the door in his face. Instead the man asked, "Please wait outside while I locate a guide."

The door was shut before Ronald could get a word out.

Several cold and wet minutes later, the pastor returned with a boy. Ronald realized who his guide must be just as the pastor introduced him.

"This is Claus. Christine's brother. He will guide you." The pastor turned to Claus. "Hurry right back."

They were a safe distance form the church before Claus broke the silence. "Are you really going to marry Chrissy and take us back to Magdeburg with you?"

He was happy to hear that Christine had openly talked about marrying him and moving her family to Magdeburg. It gave him hope. "If we find we like each other I was actually thinking that we'd marry in Magdeburg."

"Like each other? But you have to marry Chrissy."

"Why?" Ronald had his guesses, and even though he was sure Christine wouldn't be happy to know he'd questioned her brother, he felt he needed all the information he could get if he was going to persuade Christine that she really wanted to marry him.

"Chrissy isn't really earning enough to support us and she won't be able to catch any eels when the lake ices over. Not that I'll miss eating eel." Claus stepped in front of Ronald and stared up at him. "We won't have to eat eel, will we, in Magdeburg?"

"I don't think I've ever eaten eel."

"You wouldn't like it," Claus replied authoritatively.

"Then I can promise you eel won't be on the menu unless someone asks for it."

"You mean Chrissy? That's all right. I don't think she likes eel either."

"Then I'm sure you won't be expected to eat eel in Magdeburg."

"Good."

They walked on in silence for a few minutes before Claus started talking again.

"You're awfully muddy."

Ronald smiled down at the boy. "And wet. Don't forget wet. It started to rain just as I landed in Werben."

"Werben? Did you come down from Magdeburg in the steam ferry? Are we going to travel to Magdeburg on the steam ferry?"

Right there Ronald knew how he could gain Claus' support for his marriage to Christine. "Are you interested in steam engines?"

"Oh, yes, especially the new steam turbines American Electric Works is developing. I've read everything the newspapers have reported about them."

"The new opera house just across from my apartment is supposed to be getting a steam turbine early next year. I know some of the people involved and I might be able to arrange a visit, if you're interested?"

"Interested? In seeing a steam turbine? Oh, yes, Herr Chapman."

"Then when we get to Magdeburg I'll arrange for you to be shown around the new power plant. Of course, your sister might not want to marry a man twice her age."

"Oh, Chrissy wants to marry you, Herr Chapman. You might be nearly forty, but at least you're not a dried up old stick like Pastor Heyl."

Ronald assumed Pastor Heyl was the man back at the church. No wonder he'd been so short, the poor guy must have wanted Christine for himself. Well, tough titty. It looked like the better man had won.

"Chrissy, Chrissy, he's here. Herr Chapman's here to take us back to Magdeburg," Claus called through the open window.

Christine put down her carding combs and hurried to the door. "Come on in out of the rain." She held the door open for Ronald and Claus. "Get those rain capes off. Claus, you hang them up."

"Pastor Heyl said I was to go straight back after guiding Herr Chapman here."

Christine cursed quietly to herself. Not only was her friend Margarethe out when she most needed her, but Claus was about to desert her as well. "Very well, off you go." She turned back to Ronald who had taken off his rain cape and was standing looking a little lost. "Here, give me that." She took the dripping cape and hung it from a peg.

She turned and had her first good look. He was looking back at her just as intensely. Christine hoped he liked what he could see. Not that he could see much. She'd bundled up as best she could in an attempt to stay warm while she carded wool. She was nervous and didn't know what to say or do.

"I don't suppose I could warm myself in front of the fire?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. You must be near frozen. I'll just add some wood." Christine hastened to add some wood to the fire and then moved to close the shutters. It was silly to build up the fire when the window was open. This darkened the room, making it feel much more intimate than she liked. "If you stay where you are, I'll light a candle."

"No, don't bother. I've got a lantern."

Christine watched a flame appear in Ronald's hand, and then there was the yellow glow of a lamp.

Ronald set the storm lantern on the mantelpiece and had another look around the room. It didn't look any better in the lamplight than it had when he first walked in. Three people actually live in this tiny little hole? It was smaller than the room he'd had in the hotel and that was saying something. The window Christine had been working by had been the only source of light, and he was only calling it a window as a courtesy. It was just a rectangular hole in the wall that could be shut off by closing a couple of heavy wooden shutters. Certainly there was no glass to keep out the elements. No wonder she was bundled up, she must be nearly freezing. "There's no way you can stay here. How soon can you be ready to leave for Magdeburg?"

As soon as the last word past his lips he mentally kicked himself. You silly, silly fool. He was assuming way too much. He reached out to hold Christine's hands. They were cold. He kept hold of them while he stared into her eyes. "Christine. Can I call you Christine?" She nodded. "Christine, will you do me the honor of being my wife?"

There was a startled cry from Christine, then a quiet, almost whispered, "yes."

Ronald swallowed. He knew he was close to screwing up. He released her hands and hurried over to his backpack where he extracted a small box before returning to place it in Christine's hands. "I was told that I should get a suitable betrothal gift. I hope you'll like this." He felt a bit guilty offering a girl a bunch of plastic combs instead of an engagement ring, but the woman in the store had insisted they were perfectly acceptable.

Christine accepted the gift wrapped box tentatively, as if she was shocked by what was happening. Ronald wasn't at all surprised. He was a bit shocked himself. Things certainly weren't going as he'd planned.

She carefully untied the ribbon, rolled it up and placed it in her apron pocket. Then she peeled away the colorful wrapping paper to reveal a fancy gold leaf embossed red cardboard box. "It's beautiful, thank you, Ronald."

"Open the box, Christine." Ronald was shocked that a simple cardboard box could inspire such a reaction, but then, maybe Christine's life had been a bit short in gifts of any kind.

Christine opened the box, and froze. She carefully touched each of the, in Ronald's opinion, gaudy plastic combs. "Oh, Ronald."

"You need a mirror. Just a minute, I've got one in my pack." Ronald hurried over to his pack and found his portable shaving mirror. When he handed it to Christine, he could see the tears in her eyes.

She turned to set the mirror on the mantle above the fire and started fiddling with her hair, leaving Ronald to stare at her back. It was a very nice back, and that neck… Ronald felt certain physical stirrings and clamped down hard on them.

"How do they look?"

Ronald realized Christine had finished doing her hair while his mind was wandering. "Nice." As soon as he said it he recognized it was a typical male cop-out phrase. "Really, they look pretty. You look pretty."

Christine smiled tentatively and Ronald relaxed. He was betrothed. He reached out for her hands again. "I have to get back to work soon and as I don't think we can marry before I have to get back, will you be happy to wait until we get to Magdeburg before we marry?"

Christine nodded.

"Right. Well, when can you be ready to leave?"

Christine pulled her hands free from Ronald and took a step back. "Leave?"

"Well, yes. I work in Magdeburg. Surely it was understood that you'd have to live in Magdeburg if we marry?"

"I'm sorry. Of course I knew we would have to move to Magdeburg. It's just…"

Ronald regathered Christine's hands. "You're scared of leaving the safe world you know. Don't be scared. I'll look after you."

Ronald was surprised by the sudden defenseless look on Christine's face and the tears that started falling. He drew her into his arms and Christine buried her face in his chest. He finally realized what it had been that had called out to him from those photographs back in Magdeburg. Need. Not just the need for someone to rescue her from poverty, or for someone to take some of the weight of responsibility for Claus and Ilsa from her shoulders. No, what Christine really needed was someone to care for and about her as a person in her own right. Ronald had never been needed before. The feeling of being needed by Christine was… just amazing. He felt so strongly that he was scared that he might be too demanding, too soon. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and mentally promised to let her set the pace of their relationship from now on.

He didn't know how long they stood there, but eventually Christine pushed them apart so she could comfortably look up at him. "We'll need permission from my guardian, Herr Winkler, for me to marry, and I'll have to see my landlord, but there is nothing to keep us in Arendsee."

Ronald reached inside his jacket for the envelope Katherine had given him and passed it over. "That's a couple of character references and a copy of my last tax return. Will there be any trouble getting permission for you to marry?"

Christine passed the envelope back to Ronald. "Please keep it to show to Herr Winkler. I'm sure there will be no problem getting his permission to marry, but you'll have to talk to him yourself."

"Sure. How about you lead me to your Herr Winkler and then you can go off and see whoever you have to see before you leave." Ronald pulled a drawstring purse from inside his jacket and passed it over. "Here, take this. It's likely to be a three day trip back to Magdeburg. Buy anything you and your brother and sister might need."

Magdeburg

The sun was breaking through for the first time in five days, just in time for their arrival in Magdeburg. Christine snuggled down with Ilsa in Ronald's sleeping bag and studied her betrothed as he stood at the railing with Claus. She was happy that Ronald and Claus got on so well. It was the one bright spot of the trip to Magdeburg. Ilsa had not traveled well. She'd tired quickly, walking mile after mile in the mud and Ronald had had to carry her most of the way. Then she had been sick on the ferry and Christine had spent the whole trip caring for her.

She wished she'd been able to get to know Ronald better on the journey instead of spending all her time caring for Ilsa, especially as she was still getting over the shock that he was one of the up-timers. She'd realized he must be quite well off when she examined the contents of the purse he'd so casually given her so she could do a little shopping, but not that well off. Not up-timer rich. It had been Claus who had asked. He'd picked up on Ronald's fancy rain cape, the mirror, the sleeping bag, and the little things that Ronald just seemed to accept, like the plastic water bottle, the plastic bags that had kept everything dry in his pack, and the magnetic chess set he used to play with Claus.

Christine could sort of understand why Ronald had kept it quiet. A rich man could never know if a woman would have married him if he wasn't rich. Sure she had only agreed to marry him because he could afford to provide for her family, but that was normal. No sensible couple married if there wasn't the money to support the household. Ronald was just better able to support a family than most men. What she didn't understand was why he wanted to marry her. Surely a rich up-timer could have his pick of women?

A couple of days later

Katherine waited for Ronald to have his first mouthful of the first mug of coffee for the day before popping her first question. "How are you enjoying the benefits of being betrothed?"

"What benefits?"

Katherine froze. Surely not. She studied Ronald closely. He wasn't blushing, which was a really bad sign. He nearly always blushed when she talked about sex. "You are aware that the three purposes of marriage are procreation of children, mutual support and companionship, and a remedy for lust?"

"I know you, Katherine. You're asking are we having sex. Of course we aren't. We're not married yet."

Katherine clamped down hard on her tongue. She really shouldn't give voice to her thoughts. Not to her boss. On the other hand, what could he do? He couldn't afford to fire her, he depended on her too much. "What kind of pea-brained inadequate jerk are you? You're in the seventeenth century now, not the twentieth. Being betrothed is almost as good as being married. That poor girl is probably curled up in her bed, crying her eyes out, wondering why you aren't interested in her. Any normal man would have already dragged her into his bed, but no, not you. You have to be noble and…"

"Kathy, she's only seventeen."

"Seventeen is old enough to marry and have children."

"Yeah, well, that's another reason. Christine's spent the last five years being a mother to her baby sister. She should have some time without responsibility for a baby."

"Ronald, there are ways of preventing conception."

"Yeah, and the doctors back in Grantville have a name for couples that use them. They're called parents."

Katherine could see Ronald wasn't interested in a discussion on the merits of the various tried and true contraceptive techniques available to down-timers. Well, there were always the modern tried and true methods. "Magdeburg Rubber Products is making Beaubriand-Levesque Rubber Preventatives under license in their new factory."

"Condoms? Why are they wasting precious rubber on condoms?"

"I believe the military is one of their largest customers." Put that in your pipe and smoke it. "You can get some from the company store, and on your way home stop off at the store on the corner and buy her some chocolates and flowers. And make sure you get at least the one pound box of Dulcinea Special Collection Dark Chocolate. Nothing says you're sorry like fine chocolate."

"You're saying Christine has been expecting to share my bed ever since we became betrothed?"

"Well, of course she has. Now, get off with you. I don't want to see hide nor hair of you before tomorrow, and I want a full report."

"What the hell? A full report? Not damned likely."

Katherine grinned at the horrified look on Ronald's face. The poor dear was so horrified by her suggestion that he hadn't even realized he'd used expressions more suited to the shop floor in front of his executive assistant. "Well, just make sure something happens that you could have reported if you felt so inclined."

Ronald pushed open the door of the penthouse and poked his head in. He couldn't see anybody. He left his boots by the door and leaving his gifts on the dining room table he headed for Christine's bedroom in case she was, as Katherine had suggested, curled up crying in her bed.

She wasn't in her own room, so Ronald widened his search.

He found her in Ilsa's room. She was curled up hugging a well-loved soft toy, a Brillo-the-ram that her father had bought for Ilsa just before his death. He walked over to the bed and gathered the sobbing girl in his arms and carried her into his bedroom. All the way there he could feel the tension in her body and her brilliant blue eyes staring at him.

He lowered her to the bed and pulled the quilt over her. Then he climbed in alongside her, spooning his body around hers and putting his arms around her. Gradually the tension left her body.

Next day

Katherine studied the smiling faces of Ronald and his betrothed. It appeared that everything was on track for a satisfactory conclusion. Ronald was being very attentive to Christine, and she was responding well to the attention.

She was everything Katherine could have hoped for. Young and healthy, the girl would occupy Ronald's time quite nicely. However, first things first. "Lutheran?" She directed the question at Christine.

"Yes."

"Right. Then we'll want to make an appointment to see Pastor Gerhardt about posting the banns. He's the current must-have Lutheran celebrant. "

"Must-have celebrant? This is a marriage we're talking about, not some social event," Ronald said.

"Ronald, remember who you are. Your wedding is a perfect time to repay your social debts and it'll be a marvelous business opportunity. Frau Roberts and I have already assembled a guest list for the wedding banquet." She turned to Christine. "Is there anybody you would like to invite?"

"Just my mother's friend. She was a great help to us when Mama and then Papa died, but Margarethe could never afford to travel all the way to Magdeburg."

"Nonsense. Ronald, tell your betrothed that if she wants her mother's friend at her wedding you'll happily pay for her to come."

"She's right, Chrissy. It's your wedding day. If you want Margarethe there, just say so."

Chrissy didn't say anything. She just reached out. Her arms snaked around his neck, pulling his head down to hers.

Katherine looked on with interest. Ronald's technique needed a little work, but he seemed to have the basics down pat. At least he wasn't fighting her off. "I'll see about the invitation after we've confirmed things with Pastor Gerhardt. Now, Christine, your first important appointment is for this afternoon."

Ronald drew his mouth away from Christine's. "Appointment? What appointment?"

"With the designer. You and your bride-to-be need new clothes to be married in," Katherine explained.

"I don't need any new clothes. Why don't you take Chrissy shopping, Kathy, and I'll stay and get some work done."

Katherine shook her head. "No, you need to be fitted for a new suit as well."

"I'm not getting fitted for a blasted penguin suit."

Katherine just smiled and led the happy couple out of the office.

December

The wedding banquet was being held in the Magdeburg Concrete Company cafeteria. It wasn't the biggest space available but it was properly heated. Something all the guests were happy to appreciate as sleet battered against the windows.

Ronald's eyes locked onto Christine. With her white skin, a white wedding dress would have been wasted on her. Instead she and Katherine had settled on a dress of the finest merino wool in the same shade of blue as her eyes. The low scooped neckline left a lot of skin exposed, which was a perfect setting for Ronald's wedding gift, a truly magnificent lapis lazuli necklace that closely matched the color of her eyes.

Right now she was talking to Otto Gericke and another Magdeburg socialite. A month ago she would have been terrified at the thought of talking to them. Fortunately, Lady Beth Haywood and the staff and senior students at Duchess Sofie's had taken her in hand over the last three weeks and now she was greeting guests as if she'd been born to it.

Christine Niemandin verh. Chapman tried desperately not to wipe her sweaty palms on her pretty new dress. She'd never had to deal with such people as Otto Gericke and, and-oh dear, she'd already forgotten the other man's name-before. The staff and senior students at Duchess Sofie's had done what they could to help prepare her for dealing with such important personages, but three weeks just wasn't enough time.

She rubbed her fingers over the wedding band Ronald had given her. Just touching it reassured her that she was really married, and that she and her brother and sister wouldn't go hungry again. She had promised herself that she would be a good wife, but she didn't know what Ronald wanted from her. Surely no single man would rent an apartment as big as the penthouse if he didn't intend to marry and have children. But he was still taking precautions against getting her with child. Maybe he hadn't expected to take on a ready-made family. Christine thought about that for a few seconds. That had to be it. Maybe he couldn't really afford more children yet. Of course she could suggest ways in which they could economize, such as moving to smaller, cheaper quarters. And she didn't really need lots of new clothes. But what about shoes? She glanced down at her feet. They were clad in a light pair of dancing pumps, but she'd also bought three pairs of real leather shoes and a pair of outdoors boots. It had been so good to have properly fitted footwear that she'd gone a little overboard. Maybe she'd overdone it. She'd have to ask Ronald's executive assistant what she thought.

She glanced around. She could see Katherine standing to one side with her partner, Joachim Schnobel. She raised her hand and gave Katherine a little wave. Then her eyes found Ronald. They stared at each other for a moment. Ronald's face lit up and he started to walk toward her. Christine knew her duty. She set off to meet her new husband halfway.

Katherine was quietly confident that her in-basket was safe from Ronald's depredations for the foreseeable future. He was enchanted with young Ilsa, basked happily in the hero worship of young Claus, and finally, he was quite clearly totally besotted with his child bride, and she with him. Yes, with his new responsibilities to occupy his time Ronald wasn't going to continue working in the office long after everyone else had gone home. Nor would he be coming in on Sundays to do a little work. Gone forever, she hoped, was the risk of Ronald initiating something when she wasn't around. Now, at last, nothing would happen in the office that she didn't know about.