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

Birdwatching
Garrett W. Vance

Prelude

The flash was so bright it pierced her closed eyelids, waking her from her nap. A thunderclap followed, Pam Miller felt the deep vibration even in bed. Spring storm, maybe I'll get up and watch the show. After a few minutes with no further drama offered by the April skies she went back to sleep.

Awakening hours later in post twilight gloom she felt disoriented. It took her a moment to remember it was Sunday and she was home in bed. A 'mental vacation' she had called her lengthy afternoon nap, although she didn't feel particularly rested. She reached over to switch on her bedside reading light. After several clicks with no response Pam noticed the digital alarm clock was also dead. Great, the power's out. She fumbled around in the bed stand's drawer groping for the flashlight she kept there; finding it she got out of bed with a groan to make her way to the kitchen.

She had left the kitchen door propped open; a chill breeze blew through the screen door, smelling strongly of pine. Her nose wrinkled at the unusually powerful scent. Pam peered out into the darkness of her garden, her flashlight playing across the six foot tall tower of the bird feeder, then the row of large rhododendron bushes that made the border between her yard and the copse of box elders and maples stretching up the hill beyond. There were a few pine trees up there she thought, but couldn't recall them ever putting off such a noticeable smell before. She shivered; the breeze was unseasonably cold so she hastily closed the door. After a dreary dinner of cold pizza which the candlelight failed to lend any romance to, Pam sighed and decided to call it a night. So, this is the exciting life of the divorcee. At least her ex-husband had helped warm the bed sheets.

The next morning she woke up before dawn feeling refreshed, finding the unusually cool air pleasantly invigorating. It must have blown here all the way from Canada! The power was still out so she made a fire in the wood stove that helped save on electricity in the winter. Soon she had a nice cup of rich 'Italian Roast' coffee, milk no sugar, warming her up, and sat down to enjoy the morning show at the little table she had placed beside the picture window looking out on the garden. Breakfast time at the bird feeder! A group of black capped chickadees were already enjoying some sunflower seeds in the pre-dawn grayness. Soon they were joined by a pair of rufous sided towhees, an attractive bird with a black head and rust colored sides. She sipped her coffee enjoying the company.

Pam had always loved birds, it was fostered in her at a young age by her grandmother in Fairmont who delighted in the nature walks they took together through the friendly West Virginia wooded hills. She had learned their names and over the years had observed their habits. She never really thought of herself as a 'birdwatcher' but her interest had only increased as the years went by. A well-worn copy of Peterson's Eastern Birds field guide lay beside a small but useful pair of field glasses on the table before her-nothing fancy, just a hobby. The birds had become regular company once she had put up the bird feeder. It was company she welcomed a little more than she liked to admit. After the divorce she had rented this little one bedroom house on the outskirts of town, a truly tiny place but featuring a spacious garden for her to putter about in. It was good to keep busy, between the garden and the birds she didn't feel all that lonely… most of the time. Morning with the feeder had become a daily ritual.

What in blue blazes happened to the power? Pam got up to pour herself another cup of coffee from the old copper kettle on the wood stove. Returning to the table she hoped that her favorite birds would make an appearance today, it would be nice to see them. A few minutes later her hopes were rewarded. A flash of flaming scarlet winged over the rhodies to alight on the bird feeder in red splendor. The cardinal had come. The brilliantly plumaged male dipped his crest at her in what she liked to think was greeting and proceeded to help himself to the sunflower seeds. Even in the lingering shadow of night he glowed. Soon he was joined by his olive hued mate who wore just a blush of rose on her head and wings-nowhere near as striking as the male, of course, but still a very elegant and beautiful bird.

She watched them closely as they ate and was mesmerized for a time, deeply enjoying their bright movement in the stillness of the dawn. No wonder they were chosen as our state bird-we weren't the only state that had chosen cardinals, either! The cardinals sometimes seemed to her as if they didn't even belong in a place as normal as West Virginia; they had the look of a fanciful jungle bird from some exotic clime, such was the glamor of their crest and hue. They brought a sense of wonder to her garden and she was awfully glad to have that

… it was important. Everything else seemed so drab these days.

Her eyes were taken away from her cardinals by the fluttering of a new arrival at the feeder. A bird about the same shape and size as the towhee was now testing the sunflowers with an inquisitive peck. It had a brown back, a creamy light orange border on the lower breast curved up around an eye catching bright blue bib flashing from breast to beak. It was a lovely thing and she realized with some surprise that she had no idea what it was! A new bird for her list and one definitely not common to the area! She grabbed her field guide in excitement and began flipping through its pages in search of the new, her attention torn between studying the strange bird and trying to locate it in the pages. As she searched it was joined by two more, another sporting the blue patch and then a drabber brown bird that shared the same creamy breast and belly-the female, obviously!

"This is ridiculous." Making herself go slowly and concentrating on each page she made her way through the entirety of Eastern Birds. There was nothing that matched the strangers at her feeder. Eyes narrowed stubbornly she went over to the small bookshelf by the bedroom door. She found the little Golden Guide to American Birds she'd had since she was a kid. On a whim she also grabbed the rarely opened Birds of the World her ex had given her as a birthday present. It was a typical gift from him, an attempt to show that he knew what her interests were but a failure to know them in any depth. He didn't understand her birdwatching, or for that matter her, at all. In Trent's mind it was a pastime for doting little old English spinsters. Which is what you are becoming, isn't it? Shaking the bitter thoughts from her mind she hurried back to the table. Amazingly the new birds now outnumbered the ubiquitous chickadees, nearly a dozen of them feasted in her garden!

"All right then, so they've wandered in from the western states." she mumbled to herself. The Golden Guide was quaint and full of pleasant childhood memories but it was an overview of all of North America and really wasn't any use. She would have to order Peterson's Western Birds; strays were rare but they did happen. She picked up her coffee then nearly dropped it in surprise. The cardinals had flown away and a new bird had taken their place at the feeder. It was as large as the cardinals, its body was a powdery orange combined with patches of light gray and it sported a bright blue bar on its wing. In place of a crown it had light and dark stripes running back from its sharp beak. It called out in a harsh rasping call causing the chickadees to scatter away into the safety of the rhododendron. She had never seen this bird before but she knew its voice: it was a jay, and it sure wasn't blue!

"What the hell!?" She grabbed Birds of the World, flipping directly to the corvids, the family that included jays and crows in its genealogy. There it was in a color plate photograph. The Eurasian Jay. Definitely a European bird and here it was helping itself to her feeder.

Maybe one stray in a day but not two, not two in a whole season! The odds are too much against, especially across the damn Atlantic! She watched in amazement as the big bird made itself right at home in her garden, devouring the sunflower seeds with messy relish in the morning sunlight… the morning sunlight… Pam stood up at the table, the wonder of the stranger birds forgotten.

Pam ran out the kitchen door into cold air, rife with the scent of too many pine trees. She stopped near the feeder, the birds scattering into the bushes at her intrusion. Pam watched the morning sun climb higher above the hill into a somehow too blue sky, no haze, no drift of pollution. The sun was beautiful, the sun was warm. The sun was in the wrong place.

"That's not possible." A lot of people go through their lives not caring or noticing where the sun rises and sets throughout the seasons and she was not one of them. Pam paid attention to things like that, to the world around her and this was wrong. She stood very still in her garden as the shrill cries of a bird that shouldn't be there rang out in a morning that shouldn't be happening.

She was afraid to move for a very long time.

One Year Later

There was no coffee left. Pam sat at her table with a cup of hot water that she'd poured some fresh cream and a single drop of artificial vanilla into-a poor substitute but it made the morning a little warmer. She watched what she now called the 'bluebibs' at the bird feeder picking at a meager assortment of flax and some wild grasses she had gathered. She couldn't give them very much since she was saving the sunflower seeds for next year's garden.

Pam frowned at herself. If she had been smarter last year she would have planted the entire yard in sunflowers! She, like everyone else in Grantville had been too busy just trying to survive. Her cranky landlord's precious grass had been turned up to put in vegetables in the rush to grow enough food for a seventeenth century German winter. Pam had grimly enjoyed that; the mean old coot hadn't even allowed her to plant a few trees along the road; such was his obsession with that damn grass. At least she'd had sense enough to plant one row of sunflowers in the midst of the chaos; twelve dried sunflower stalks from last year tied in a bundle leaned against the wall beside her garden window, their round heads full of seeds. There had been times where she had looked at those seed pods hungrily but had not allowed herself. If she could get enough of them growing this coming year she would have enough for the birds and not feel guilty. No one starved, I'm right to horde the seeds.

A few black capped chickadees that had come with them through the Ring of Fire mixed with the native German birds at the feeder. They were tough little buggers; they had made it through the first winter and just may have a chance here. I'm glad to see them, I just wish.. . She knew she should just forget about it but she had never given up hope… I just wish the cardinals were still here. She knew the chances of a breeding population were entirely too slim. Pam swirled her faux coffee around in the cup. She had been through it in her mind a thousand times. First of all I can only guess at the number that came through with us. Anywhere between the six I actually saw at one time at the feeder and maybe ten… twenty… or more? Wishful thinking!

By autumn of that first year there were none to be seen. She had spent every morning watching for them but now only the chickadees and the native birds came to her feeder. She sometimes tried to make herself feel better by considering that there were still lot's of cardinals… across the Atlantic. It never really helped much and usually just made her feel more lost. Even so, she couldn't help thinking about her lost cardinals. Were they eaten by some new unaccustomed predator? Various stoats and weasels from the Thuringian forests had found their way to Grantville and the formerly spoiled up-time house cats turned hungry feral predators were probably the biggest danger. Maybe they flew away too far to find each other again. That was also pretty likely. The chances of a successful breeding population remaining here in Thuringia were extremely low. And even if they did, she wondered if it would really be a good thing.

Whenever nature's balance was changed something inevitably paid. Transplanted species had often become pests back up-time. The English sparrows and starlings brought to America to make it feel more like home had bred in such numbers that they often threatened native species. The starlings had begun with only one hundred introduced to York's Central Park in the 1890's eventually spread throughout the entire North American continent. It wasn't natural. But then again, neither are we. There was some small hope for cardinals in Europe, if they stuck together and could breed fast enough for their population to grow. They are out there somewhere, out there in this time's Germany. I need to believe it.

Pam found herself becoming more and more devoted to her birdwatching. It was a hobby that didn't require technology or resources that could be better spent on Grantville's survival. She began taking long walks around Grantville, sometimes even stepping over what she personally called 'The Rim' to venture into Thuringia proper. This edge was becoming less and less apparent as West Virginian and German plant species mixed and mingled along the ring's edges. Grasses and runners had already covered most of the raw exposed earth created by the mismatched elevations. Nature at least was going to absorb the presence of this misplaced chunk of the world quietly. "Not so its people!" She laughed aloud thinking of the political turmoil their American presence had created across this century's Europe. We are a weed that isn't going to die off too easily.

On a fair June afternoon Pam was watching a flock of native birds playing in the pine trees at the forest's edge from a vantage point atop a crumbling Grantville embankment in the process of sliding into a Thuringian meadow at the rim. The birds were about thirty yards away across the meadow. She sat comfortably in the tall grass with her legs dangling over the rim half in, half out, enjoying the bird's antics with her field glasses. They were true beauties, bright lemon yellow with black wings and tail. She was quite sure they were orioles and had dubbed them such in her notebook. She put down the glasses to look at the pencil sketch she had made. It was in black and white, she was hoarding the lone box of colored pencils she possessed back at the house until she became a better artist. Around the simple but fairly accurate drawing she had described the colors in detail in her notes. At the bottom of the page she had whimsically written 'Lemon Oriole.'

"And why shouldn't I give you a name?" she asked the distant flock. It's not like anyone else cares. She had made nonchalant inquiries after European bird books at the school library and every private book collection in Grantville. Oh, just thought it might be interesting to know what's in my garden these days. Even a guide from Great Britain would have been useful as she knew it shared many species with the mainland. There wasn't a single one. What the hell do coal miners care about European birds anyway? This made her frown; she felt self conscious at her hobby. She had publicly kept her interest quiet, she really didn't want the other townsfolk to know how much it had come to mean to her.

Pam dreaded the day when someone would inevitably refer to her as 'The Birdwatcher'-yeah, that would stick. "Then they'll be sure you're a nut." She thought of her ex-husband Trent down at the mine chuckling along with them. " Yeah, I always thought she was a birdbrain!" Pam blew a blast of air at a loose strand of hair that had fallen across her face. She knew she wasn't being fair, Trent wasn't mean-spirited like that. He would keep quiet and just shake his head knowingly. Come on, let's not do this today. Just watch the damn birds, Pam. She put the field glasses back up to her eyes. There were men there.

A trio of rugged-looking men had come out of the woods and now walked along the tree line. One had what must be a crossbow strapped to his back and they all wore sizable knives hung from their belts. Down-timers. Most of the dangerous sorts had been scared off over the last year, but you really couldn't be too sure. She was far from any road and at least a mile from anyone's house. They may be just regular folks about their business… or not. Forcing herself to move slowly despite her racing heartbeat Pam pulled her legs up to her chest then slid on her butt backwards into the tall grass, keeping low. Any eye, animal or human, was attracted to quick motion. She watched the men continue on their path, snippets of their deep voices conversing in German came to her ears. She carefully turned over to crawl away from the bank's edge on her belly, not looking back. They didn't see me. She crawled through the grass until she reached the path through the maples she had taken to get there. She ran as far as she could until the stitch in her side grew too painful, then continued walking quickly home.

Later that night Pam set at her table looking glumly through her notebooks. She had calmed down with the aid of some kirshwasser. Here was something she definitely liked about Germany. Yay for booze. She looked glumly at her notes. Her drawing of the oriole looked crude and amateurish to her now.

"This birdwatching thing is going to get me killed." Pam closed the notebook and stared at the darkness beyond the garden window. I need to be more careful. That was a fact. These were exceptionally dangerous times she now lived in. But she couldn't just stay in her garden anymore, it would drive her crazy. She had to get out.

Maybe I need to hire a bodyguard. She smiled and lifted the shot glass in a jaunty toasting motion. "Not a bad idea."

What the hell was I thinking? The next day Pam stood before a small crowd gathered near town hall. This corner had become an unofficial mustering point for Germans looking for work; as news of Grantville's opportunities had spread the population of the corner had increased. At the moment there were twelve men and four women, ages ranging from thirteen to sixty, in various degrees of health and what she considered shabbiness.

Pam tried to look nonchalant as she attempted to covertly eyeball them. Knowing they were on display many of the would-be workers smiled broadly and bowed as if she were a visiting princess, which only made her more uncomfortable. Oh, just do it, Pam! Squaring her shoulders she approached a fairly tall fellow who looked to be in his early twenties. He was thin and obviously in need of several good meals but seemed strong enough; although there wasn't much of the warrior about him.

"Uhh, do you speak English?"

"Ja!"

"Good! What's your name?"

The fellow hesitated slightly, a worried look on his face. "Ja?" he replied hopefully.

This isn't working.

"Okay, thanks." Pam moved away from the young man trying not to see his disappointment. She felt sorry for everyone here; desperation was heavy in the air. I need someone with at least a little English; my German is just not good enough yet. Actually, I can hardly speak it at all. That's got to change.

A determined-looking red-cheeked woman trundled up to her. She appeared to be in her late fifties but was probably only around forty. The hardships of this century could age people so quickly. Her round face was stern but had an honest look to it.

"I can English," she announced in a low, confident tone.

Pam smiled meekly. "I'm sorry, but I need a man, a herr… someone strong."

"Strong man." The woman nodded at her. "I know." With a business-like bow the woman motioned for Pam to follow her. Pam did so, not really having a better plan. The woman led her over to a brick wall where a man was leaning. A wide-brimmed hat the color of dirty white socks that may have once had some kind of shape was pulled down over his eyes.

"Gerbald." She pointed at the man. 'Gerbald!" she announced loudly to get his attention.

The man slowly looked up, peering out from beneath the uneven felt brim, looking first at the German woman then at Pam. His eyes were a beautiful cobalt blue within a woven nest of deep wrinkles. He stood slowly up from the wall and gave a nod to the approaching women.

"Hello. I am Gerbald." The pitch of his voice had a pleasant depth, there was weariness there, but Pam heard confidence as well.

"Gerbald strong!" the woman proclaimed with a proud smile.

Gerbald chuckled. "My wife, Dore." He leaned his head toward the determined woman. "Dore is also strong." His eyes creased further with amusement, the remarkable blue shining out. Dore stood taller and moved proudly to his side.

I like them. Pam smiled back at the pair. "I'm Pam. It's good to meet you."

Gerbald was around five foot eight inches tall with wide shoulders and a solid-looking build. He wore a battered sage green long wool coat crossed by a wide brown leather belt, mustard breeches and knee high brown leather boots; an ensemble which made Pam think Robin Hood! What looked to be a saber hung at his side; there was little doubt that he had been a military man of some sort. Pam thought he might be around fifty-five but knew he was likely older. In any case, he seemed to be hale and in good health and the sort of man that other men don't trifle with lightly. Her smile broadened.

"Were you a soldier?"

"Yes, a long time. Not now. Good soldier, not bad man." He looked a bit worried that his former profession might not go over well with this female potential employer.

"Soldier my job before, but I am tired. I don't like fight anymore, too sad. Peace." He looked at Pam hoping she would understand him.

Pam's instincts seemed sure that he was sincere and very likely legitimate in his claims. There were a lot of men like this in these times, men who would have been farmers or carpenters if not swept up by the omnipresence of war. Gerbald cocked his head at her, one eyebrow lifting the brim of his monstrously ridiculous hat slightly upward.

"You… you need soldier?"

"Yes. Well, not exactly. I need a guard. Someone to go with me outside of Grantville, into the forests and fields. I am looking for. .. things, in the countryside. You would guard me. Stop bad men from hurting me."

Gerbald nodded. "Yes, guard. I can do."

"Great!" She looked at the couple and realized there were a lot more things to discuss-how much would she pay Gerbald? Where did the two of them live? I'll figure it out. I've done well today. Pam was exceptionally pleased at succeeding in her mission, she was sure she had done better than she could have hoped. "Well, Gerbald, Dore, let me buy you a beer and we'll talk some more about the job." And so they headed for the Thuringen Gardens, a trio of contentment.

Over several rounds of the Gardens' fine beer, Pam learned a little more about Gerbald and Dore. He, like so many men of the age and region, had been a soldier for hire, and Dore his camp follower mate. He had left his last employer because his captain had ordered him to do something that Gerbald did not want to do, something he wouldn't go into any detail about. The name Magdeburg came to mind, but Pam did not press the issue. She knew he was being purposefully vague regarding many details of his soldiering career; it was perhaps better she didn't know. Dore sat stone-faced and silent during this part of the conversation. She was plainly deeply devoted to the man. Pam didn't hold their secrets against them; how could someone like her really understand the horrors that these people had faced in this war-crazed world they were born to? Her gut told her she could trust them and so she would.

Pam had asked around at the Research Institute about the going rate for German laborers in Grantville. She had told her co-workers that she wanted some odd jobs done around her house and yard; she was still intent on keeping her birdwatching habit very quiet. Why do I do that? Just because Trent didn't get me doesn't mean they won't. She pushed the thought out of her head, there would be time to indulge in 'Pam analyzes Pam' later. Pam made a tidy wage in the current economy, her up-time lab work experience and scientific knowledge had significantly increased in value here under these extreme circumstances. She was useful and in high demand. Now that's a new concept.

She offered Gerbald a little more than the current going rate, much to Dore's obvious delight. She only needed him part time and wanted to keep him around-the hiring process was not a performance she wanted to repeat any time soon! The deal was made and settled with a handshake. It turned out that the pair had lodging in a group shelter not too far from her place, which would be convenient. This news came as a relief to Pam. Her house was so cramped even for one that she had not been asked to take in refugees the last winter and besides, she very much valued her privacy. Gerbald and Dore walked her home so they could see where she lived and Pam went to bed, excited about the next day's birdwatching.

Pam got to the institute early the next morning. She worked like a whirlwind. She felt infused with boundless energy; now she was going to be able to go out past the rim and be as sure as anyone could be of her safety. There was no doubt that Gerbald could handle anything short of an army of bandits. She didn't take a lunch break and left around one, claiming she needed to go supervise the workers at her place. The days were getting long now and they would have plenty of time to hike out to her intended region of exploration and back before dusk. Pam's house was on the outskirts of Grantville at the northwest edge of town. The new northwest, that is. She and Gerbald would walk some gravel back roads and paths that didn't see much traffic these days.

When she arrived home, flushed from excitement and the extra speed she had put into her gait, she found Gerbald and Dore standing at attention on the road beside her front yard's edge.

"Hello, come on, come in!' She bustled up the incline of the long walk to her front door with them in tow. She had a big yard and a small house, just the way she liked it. She had kept her smaller back garden a private paradise of flowers and shrubs for her birds while the spacious front yard was now filled with row after row of rapidly growing sunflowers (Her up-time landlord would hate that!) watched over by an empty aluminum laundry tree. Except for a few rows of useful vegetables it had all gone to sunflowers this year. Her former landlord had mercifully been left up-time in Fairmont-the place was going to really be hers now and she could do with it as she pleased. She wondered sometimes if the bossy old coot had ever tried to drive out to Grantville on a mission to crab at her about keeping the lawn mowed precisely to his picky specifications only to find a chunk of this time's Thuringia in place of his property-that would be a surprise! Now available in Marion County: Real German farm, quaint out buildings, wooded setting. Pam figured they would never know.

"Sorry about the mess. I live alone and I've just been too busy to clean much lately." Dore and Gerbald nodded politely, standing just inside the door as Pam bustled about the small living room's clutter, gathering her notebook and field glasses. She pushed a sweater for the cool evening walk home into her rucksack, threw it over her shoulder and headed for the door. Dore looked a polite question at her.

"Oh yeah, Dore… well, you can wait here for us if you like, just make yourself at home." She motioned to the overstuffed loveseat that was still partially visible under a week's worth of laundry in waiting. "Have a seat and take it easy!" Dore smiled sweetly, nodding her understanding. "See you later!" With an indelible grin etched on her face, Pam marched down the walk, Gerbald in practiced step behind.

They walked northwest passing Highpoint on their right. Pam was eager to visit a new lake she had heard had formed where the watercourse of a lazy Thuringian stream had found a big West Virginian hill in its path. She thought there might be some marsh birds there and it sounded like some interesting "rim" terrain that she hadn't seen yet. Even after a year there was something about that border between her original everyday world and this strange (new? old?) century they now inhabited that drew her to it. Seeing it, being at the edge helped make it real to her, something that watching cars be replaced by horses in the streets of Grantville and the loss of such everyday items as toothpaste and deodorants still failed to do.

The retired soldier wasn't a small talker which suited Pam perfectly. They reached their destination at the top of a rolling hill ending abruptly in a razor straight plummet. Pam stayed well back from the edge which was now crumbling and unsafe-it would be a long fall. Below them a lake had formed, the top halves of dying German pine trees stood forlornly in murky water, the upturned roots of a West Virginia red maple that had lost its purchase were now a bleached tangle at the steep shore. She decided to make their way down the left side of the hill to a narrow flat spot along the rim where the water had flowed into a West Virginia hollow creating a narrow shady marsh.

"Gerbald, I'm going to be looking for birds. I'd like you to just stay quiet and keep your eyes open for any people." Gerbald nodded his understanding and backed off to stand under a nearby sycamore, calmly scanning the jumbled landscape. Pam pulled her field glasses out to begin looking for activity. A lone duck bobbed along at the far end of the new lake but it was too distant to make out in detail. A Eurasian jay gave a shrill cry from farther down the shore but remained out of view.

Around thirty minutes went by. Pam decided that there wasn't really much to see after all, so she wandered over to where Gerbald stood under the sycamore to collect him for the walk home. She noticed some of the "bluebibs" that so often visited her garden flitting about in the tree's higher branches. Even though these had become a regular backyard visitor she put the field glasses to her eye out of habit to watch their antics for a few moments while Gerbald quietly observed her. Shortly she joined him under the tree.

"Well, not much to see here. Let's start walking back, I guess." Gerbald, who instinctively understood her general preference for quiet, took this as a cue that it would be all right for him to speak.

"You are… seeing birds?"

"Yes, I am. I watch them." Gerbald nodded but made no further comment. Pam decided that she had to talk about her… obsession?- with someone and her new bodyguard was the only logical choice. If he were going to be following her around daily, he might as well understand what she was doing.

"I like birds. A lot. They are beautiful. I like to watch what they do, see where they live." Gerbald nodded understanding politely.

"These up here-" she pointed into the branches above them. "I call them 'bluebibs.' They are from here, Germany."

"Blaukehlchen"

"Pardon?"

"Blaukehlchen." He motioned upwards with his misshapen hat's brim. "Bird is named." Pam's eyes went wide.

"You know the name of that bird? In German?" Gerbald shrugged and nodded.

"Do you know the names of a lot of birds?" She felt an excitement growing.

"Some. They pretty. My father… he like bird. He tell name, I listen."

"Blau-kehl-chen." Pam carefully tried to pronounce the German name. "Blue… Chin?" She asked, pointing to her own chin. Gerbald smiled in what she took as assent.

"You know German a little."

"Not very much. That was just a guess! Well, I wasn't far off when I called them 'bluebibs' it seems." She grinned. Pam quickly dragged her notebook and pencil out of the rucksack. Beneath her drawing of the little blue-throated bird she now wrote "blaukehlchen " followed by "blue chin" in English. "So, now you have a name after all."

Somehow knowing the local name for the first German bird she had met on that shocking morning made Pam feel better. There was order here; wild things had been given names long before her coming and it made this century somehow less alien. It wasn't like we ended up on Mars. That rather chilling thought made the oddly patched together landscape before them look positively homey. Mars would have been a short stay. Pam pushed thoughts of a Grantville frozen and lifeless in the shadow of Olympus Mons firmly out of her head. She looked back at her notebook-an idea was forming.

Pam flipped to the "lemon oriole" she had drawn the other day.

"Gerbald, this bird is yellow and black." Gerbald looked at the drawing carefully.

"Pirol".

"Pi-rol?"

"Yes, I think. Yellow bird and here and here…" He pointed at the wings and tail. "… is black."

"Yes! I wonder if there is a direct translation for pirol in English. Well, it's a prettier sounding name than 'lemon oriole' anyway!… Pirol." Pam realized that she was about to begin studying German in earnest.

"Gerbald, from now on when we see a bird, please tell me if you know its name in your language." An idea was forming in Pam's mind, she put it on her mental back burner to simmer-in time, in time.

"Yes, I do for you," he said with a note of enthusiasm. It was going to be a pleasant job helping this nice American lady watch birds.

On their way back Pam suddenly came to a complete halt. Gerbald had already learned to anticipate this and also stopped, quietly-there must be a bird in their vicinity.

"Over there Gerbald-look!" She slowly raised her hands to point at a nearby thicket. Gerbald, whose former profession had sharply honed his powers of observation in the field, saw a bird with a black head and rust colored sides hopping about the twiggy growth.

"I am sorry. I not know that one." He apologized in a hoarse whisper. Pam's face shined with joy.

"I know!" she was obviously struggling not to jump up and down. "Gerbald, that is an American bird! I didn't think there were anything but chickadees left! It's a towhee, from here, from Grantville! It's an up-timer bird!" Pam allowed herself the thought: Maybe the cardinals made it through the year, too. They watched the towhee for a very long time. If it hadn't eventually flown away into the darkening shadows beneath the trees it seemed likely they would have stood there until dark.

Back at the house Pam practically skipped up the walk in the gathering dusk, past the aluminum clothes tree festooned with her bed sheets and weeks worth of laundry. It took a moment for the change in her yard's scenery to register-then she saw several of her bras and felt her cheeks redden.

"Let's get inside." She hastened Gerbald through the door into her immaculately clean living room. Pam's eyes widened. She had left behind a disaster area of clutter.

"Dore?" she called out questioningly.

" Ja, I am here!" Her voice came from the kitchen.

Pam entered followed by Gerbald who stood in the doorway so as not to crowd them in the narrow space. Dore was happily humming as she fussed over a big pot of what Pam had come to know as spetzel boiling away on the wood stove.

"Dinner!" she announced proudly.

"Dore! You didn't have to do that! I didn't expect you to work, I told you to just take it easy!" Dore, whose English was not as good as Gerbald's looked to her husband with a worried question. He spoke to her in German briefly. Dore looked embarrassed.

"You… you not like I do?" Her tone was very meek.

Pam now felt bad for embarrassing the woman. "No, I don't mean that. You did great! Really, really good, I like it and God knows I have let the place go. I just didn't expect it." Pam pulled her pocketbook out of her rucksack. "Here, let me pay you for what you did today." She begin to pull some money out but Dore looked alarmed.

" Nein! No, good lady, I not do for money. I do-" Her English faltered and she began to speak quickly to Gerbald who nodded. He turned to Pam with a slight smile.

"Dore say she like to do for you. Money, she no need. You give me good job, Dore very happy! She do-" He swept his arm around to indicate the various housekeeping Dore had performed. "She do to say thank you." Dore watched Pam with a concerned look, afraid to have displeased her husband's new employer.

Pam rushed over to her and took both her hands in hers. "Thank you , Dore. You are very kind. I am happy to know you and Gerbald." Her face felt hot and flushed. Pam was not given to displays of affection and knew this about herself. Her ex-husband knew it all too well and she had admitted that she should have been more affectionate with her son Walt. She loved Walt very much, and had loved Trent once, too, but she just wasn't good with people.

Pam realized that she had been alone for a very long time now and there was something about the simple goodness of these two people she had barely met which was filling her with unexpected emotion. Pam held Dore's hands tightly and smiled at her, her lips trembling and eyes moist. The older German woman could see the pain there, and the hope; understanding without words Dore squeezed firmly back and gave Pam a long look with her sensible hazel eyes, a look that said "You are going to be all right."

"You good lady. Good luck we meet you." Dore released her hands from Pam's grip with a last heartfelt squeeze, then led her to the door, shooing Gerbald outward. "You go, sit. We eat!"

Another Year Later

Pam, Gerbald and Dore established a routine that suited them all nicely. Five days a week, Pam and Gerbald went on birdwatching expeditions. On the fourth day, she would give Gerbald money for Dore to go shopping with for the next evening's dinner. On the fifth day, Dore came to the house with Gerbald and the groceries, did the laundry and general housecleaning and then made the wonderful dinner they would all share.

With the help of her new friends, Pam's German studies made rapid progress. Gerbald could read and helped her with her lessons on days when the weather was just too nasty to go traipsing about the countryside. The focus of her studies was of course the translation of German bird names into English, but she was learning to speak as well. She soon learned she had been mistaken in her assumption that the " kehlchen " in blaukehlchen meant "chin" in English. Even though it sounded like "chin" to her untrained ears, it meant really "throat." This turned out to be a common pitfall when learning a language that is a close cousin to one's own; the occasional appearance of "false friends," words that sound like they should mean the same things in both languages but really don't. The "bluechins," formerly "bluebibs" were now properly "bluethroats."

On the weekends Pam devoted herself to painting birds. She had perused a few artist's how-to books at the library, tried some of their suggestions and then decided that the best way for her to learn was to just sit down and do it. She had liked to doodle as a girl and recalled that she had always received A's in art, but never really believed she had any talent. It was possible she actually didn't have any talent, but she did have determination. Her paintings were not intended to be hung in a gallery after all. They were scientific works; their sole purpose was to catalog accurately the birds of Thuringia she encountered. She started by copying the illustrations in her own small collection of field guides. After she felt she had learned some of their basic techniques, she tried applying them to something closer to a live model, starting with a photo of a mallard duck. Her first attempt was definitely more "Daffy" than "Audubon" but she kept at it.

After this Pam began to paint in the field. She would quickly pencil sketch in the birds she saw, then try to capture their colors with her brushes. If they held still long enough, she would focus in with more detail. Gerbald offered quiet encouragement with approving nods as he kept his eyes open for intruders. Gerbald's steady and watchful presence made Pam feel safe, which allowed her to better concentrate on her work.

They had taken to ranging several miles past the rim on some days, seeking nesting grounds amongst the fields and forests of Thuringia. Although the situation had become fairly quiet in the region, there were still plenty of opportunities for brigands to sneak about. She and Gerbald had made it an unspoken rule to avoid strangers by staying hidden when they drew near. She had always considered herself fairly adept at moving surreptitiously in the field, but Gerbald proved to be a master of the art and a good teacher. They often made their way past other people under cover, off the road or path without those they observed ever having a clue they were in the vicinity. This pleased Pam who still preferred not to be seen wandering the area in the company of a man by fellow Grantville residents.

One Sunday afternoon in April, Pam walked into town to do a little shopping. Another year was beginning here in her new world and she felt amazingly optimistic about it. She realized that in many ways she liked her current life better than the one she had lived before the Ring of Fire. Why not? She hadn't felt this happy and focused in years. With a tinge of regret she wondered what her ex-husband Trent would think of her now. He had remarried of course. Ah well, I'm glad he's found what he was looking for. Maybe I have, too. Near the Freedom Arches, she saw a peddler's wagon parked at the curb. A cheerful-looking chubby fellow with a beard sat in a chair on the sidewalk. He reminded Pam of Burl Ives. Pam wandered over to the wagon.

"Hello good lady, welcome, welcome! I am a seller of beautiful things, please, maybe you like." He greeted her in accented but clear English. Pam was always impressed by the knack for languages Europeans possessed. She felt a surge of pride at her growing German abilities; there were a lot of up-timers who simply weren't bothering to learn the language that surrounded them.

Pam smiled at the fellow, stepping closer to look over the multitude of gewgaws perched on shelves in the wagon's open side or hanged by hooks from the propped up panel that formed a protective awning. Tin whistles, whimsically carved and painted wooden toys, mounted deer antlers, etchings of famous buildings of Europe. She wasn't much of a collector of such fancies, but she was impressed by the quality of workmanship. It was apparent that the peddler had a fairly wide range, certainly not all of his goods were locally made. She looked at the jovial peddler as an idea came to her.

"Sir, you travel a lot, don't you?" The peddler stood politely when she addressed him.

"Why yes, of course! Well, as much as is safe in these troubled times, but my business takes me all about the Germanies and even down to northern Italy on occasion. I am always seeking new fineries for my selection. Do you like what you see?"

"Yes, very nice." Pam hesitated. Oh why the hell not? "I would like to ask you something. In your travels have you ever seen a bright red bird? It would be a new creature; it came to Germany with us."

"A red bird?" The peddler was somewhat surprised at such a question. "Why, I see many birds and animals in my travels, out on the open road as I am."

"This one I think you would notice. It's a beautiful bright red and has a black mask around its bill. On the top of its head is a pointy crest, like a hat." Pam's description was accompanied by a sort of pantomime of the cardinal's features.

The peddler nodded, a look of comprehension came to his eyes. "A red bird, face is black! Yes, yes, I have seen such a bird! I was down in Bavaria… here, I show you!" Pam's eyes went wide. The peddler ducked his head under the wood awning and proceeded to shift some of the items on his top shelf around. "Yes, here it is!" He pointed. Against her will, Pam followed the course of his finger to the shadowy upper shelves.

It was a bird. A red bird. A cardinal.

Stuffed.

Pam stood frozen in horror. The cardinal was posed with its wings outspread as if about to leap into flight from the gnarled branch it was mounted to. Glass orbs replaced living eyes, the beak open as if frozen in mid-song.

"Pretty nice, yes? A trapper sold it to me. He snared it in the woods last month. What a pretty bird, a nice display for your home!"

Pam started to cry.

Hours later, Pam sat at her window side table, a bottle of what was passing for whiskey these days half-empty before her. She poured herself another shot. Her bird guides, notebooks and precious painting supplies lay scattered about the floor behind her.

"God damn people!" The anger welled up again and she felt her face grow hot. She was on an emotional boat ride through fiercely stormy seas, rising on crests of towering wrath, sliding down into depressions of black despair. She hadn't eaten and the whiskey was only making her head hurt, the fiery liquid in her belly failing to warm the icy sense of helpless loss.

At five o'clock Gerbald arrived to begin the evening's work. Drunkenly Pam ordered him to go home. "No birds tonight," she said, her voice thick with pain and anger. Her head slumped onto the table with an audible thump, mind reeling with images of dead cardinals mounted in dead trees, forgetting Gerbald was even there.

The unflappable German's face creased up in worry, an emotion rarely seen there.

"I get Dore," he told her, exiting quickly.

Dore came through the door huffing and puffing. She was a bit on the heavy side and had run as fast as she could all the way to Pam's little house. Gerbald followed, barely having broken a sweat but face grey with concern for Pam. They found her still at the table, mumbling incoherently. One on either side, Gerbald and Dore gently lifted her, moving her over to the overstuffed loveseat. Pam began to weep softly, Dore held her close like a child, murmuring comforting words as she stroked Pam's hair. After carefully picking up the items Pam had cast on the floor in her despair, Gerbald paced about the room, his strong arms crossed in helplessness.

After a time, Pam became coherent enough to haltingly detail what had happened. Her friends listened closely with heartfelt sympathy. Dore made some thin chicken broth for her, gently feeding it to her as one would a small child. Pam had calmed down now and become sleepy, Dore helped her into bed, giving her a fond kiss on the forehead before turning out the light. Pam softly thanked her, the forgetfulness of sleep coming soon after, a welcome darkness.

Pam safe in bed and sleeping off her day's tragedy, Dore sat down on the loveseat. Gerbald sat in Pam's usual chair at the window side table, his brow furrowed in deep thought. Dore steepled her fingers contemplatively in her lap. They shared a long look of painful concern for Pam, whom they had begun to think of as a well-loved younger sister more than an employer. Pam didn't know how protected she truly was by these two strong-hearted Germans.

At last Dore spoke softly so as not to wake Pam in the bedroom behind her. "This bird. Show me."

Gerbald nodded. Opening Eastern Birds, he found the cardinal, Pam had shown it to him and he well knew it was her favorite. He walked the book over to Dore. "This one, the red one. It is special to her."

Dore studied the small painting carefully. "I can see that! It is an American bird from up-time, yes? " She used the English term for the concept.

"Yes. Some few of them came here with Grantville. She searches, but we haven't found one yet. Now she finds a dead one, it is too sad for her."

Dore nodded slowly. "Tomorrow we start," she announced confidently as she began the process of extricating her bulky form from the lumpy old loveseat. Gerbald brightened, giving her a hand up. She patted his arm affectionately.

"Yes. We will." He grinned.

"It is a red bird with a pointy hat," Dore told the women she worked with at the laundry.

"It has a black mask around its beak," Gerbald told the men he did construction work with during the day.

"If you see one, you must remember to tell me," Dore told the vegetable farmers who had brought their produce to market from the outlying farms.

"If you see one, do not kill it!" Gerbald told his companions at the tavern over a lunchtime pint of dunkel beer.

"It is an American bird," Dore told the mail riders at the post office.

"Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors."

"Tell everyone! The red bird must be found!"

Pam recovered from her upset more quickly than she might have expected. It was dawning on her that she had changed since the Ring of Fire. Her depressions had grown shorter and she hadn't the time for the long sessions of self pity she had once indulged in. The stuffed cardinal had been awful, a terrible waste but it was also evidence that at least one of her cherished birds had survived two German winters! There could be more. In retrospect, the incident lifted her hopes more than dashed them.

Her list of American birds had grown by a large number this spring, more and more species were emerging from the woodwork: tufted titmice, redhead ducks, turkey vultures, killdeer, ruby-throated hummingbirds, scarlet tanagers-it was incredible! She had even witnessed a confrontation at her feeder between a gray and orange Eurasian jay and an eastern blue jay! The American blue jay had triumphed, boasting loudly in harsh jay tones as the native jay presumably fled back to the safety of the Thuringerwald-but for how long? It had some new competition!

It was strange how in that first year the American species had vanished from sight. Pam supposed it wasn't really unusual for animals to go to ground for extended periods when threatened. Perhaps the Ring of Fire had affected birds more powerfully and in different ways than it did mammals, which had continued their daily existence seemingly physically unaffected by the event. Birds had different senses, particularly migratory birds with their feel for Earth's magnetic fields. Who could know what havoc something like a journey through time and space would play on avians? Pam continued her project with a very welcome new wrinkle: Translating the names of the transplanted American birds into German!

Gerbald came up the road at a flat out run, his sage green coat tails flapping behind him. Pam, sitting on a lawn chair by the front door enjoying a pleasingly balmy May afternoon watched in amazement as he leapt from the road over the short decorative fence at the corner of the yard to cut across the rows of sunflowers instead of ambling up the walk as he always did. Pam couldn't help but chuckle seeing his goofy misshapen hat bouncing just above the cheery yellow discs of their blossoms as he zigged and zagged his way up the yard. She stood up quickly, now worried that something bad might be happening to provoke steady Gerbald into such flight!

"Gerbald!" What's going on!"

"Pam!" He paused for breath. He must have run a long way, as Gerbald rarely showed any strain when exercising. "Get your field glasses. We must hurry!" Pam only hesitated a moment before rushing into the living room after her gear. Gerbald waited for her by the road, obviously in a great state of excitement. Equipped, Pam ran down the walk to him.

"Can you run?"

"Yes, let's go!" Gerbald took off at a steady trot, Pam running behind. They headed down the road into town. As they neared the end of that odd mile, it occurred to Pam that she was in pretty good shape these days. My God, this would have killed me two years ago! A brief thrill of pride shot through her but was quickly brought down by a sudden dark thought- People are going to see us! Gerbald looked back to check on her progress. Pam raised her hand in a brief wave, I'm all right, keep going. Whatever it was it must be important. Gerbald well knew her feelings on the matter of exposing their activities. This better be good, mein Herr!

Rounding a corner onto the main street, Gerbald led her to the city park where a small group of down-timer women were talking in hushed tones.

"Dore!" Pam exclaimed as one broke from the group to approach her and Gerbald as they came to a halt at the grasses' edge.

"Pam! Oh, it is good. Look, look!" Dore's chubby finger, flushed red from the hot water of the laundry, pointed up into a tulip tree near the town's bandstand. Pam's eyes followed, a look of stunned disbelief now on her face.

"It is the one, ja? The red bird? The American bird?" Dore's voice was filled with hope that she was right. Dore reached for her, beckoning her to come closer.

Pam slowly advanced to take Dore's offered hand, her eyes unblinking as she continued to stare into the tulip tree's branches. It was there. It was really there. A red bird. An American bird.

The male cardinal tipped its head at her as if in greeting, just as it used to do at her feeder every morning. His mate, rosy blush on peach in the spring sun, hopped down a branch to join him. A third cardinal appeared above them. He looked to be a yearling. The young bird threw back his scarlet crested head. He opened his beak with a thrilling song, the loveliest music Pam had ever heard, a symphony in the park, a serenade, the bright music of her heart's desire. Tears came, soft warm streams of relief and hopes satisfied. She felt Gerbald's comforting presence at her side as Dore squeezed her hand-the woman was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning.

"How? How did you know?" Pam asked. Dore chuckled.

"Know? We know much! Pretty smart!" Dore tapped her temple with her free hand. She started to laugh happily aloud, but quickly realized the need for quiet and clapped the hand over her mouth so as not to startle the nearby cardinals, hazel eyes sparkling with delight.

Gerbald spoke softly in his deep tones. "I show her picture. We tell everybody we meet, look for that red bird."

" Der Amerikanische rotvogel!" Dore interrupted proudly "My friends, washerwomen same like me, say today they see here in park. I send Gerbald!" If Dore grinned any wider Pam swore her head would split in two.

"I must thank them. And you." Pam hugged first Dore and then Gerbald who froze stock still in discomfiture. Shyly, he gave Pam's back a gentle pat with his large hand.

"You are happy now, Pam. We are happy, too," he told her. To his relief, Pam released him in order to take another long look at her wonderful cardinals. A number of Grantville children and their German schoolmates had approached, drawn closer by the scarlet birds in the tree.

"Hi, Ms. Miller!" one of the Grantville youths greeted her. "Those are cardinal birds up there, aren't they? Like back in America times?"

Pam looked at the earnest young face, a face full of curiosity, and wonder. I have another job ahead of me now. Her decision was made so quickly and so decisively she didn't have time to be surprised by it. Who are you and what have you done with Pam Miller!?

"They sure are, honey! They came through with us. But see that smaller one up there? It was born here, in Thuringia. They live here now, same as we do. They even have a name in German: Amerikanische Rotvogel!" The name cardinal might be a touch problematic given the religious tensions of these times. Back up-time I heard some folks calling it "redbird," I recall. "'American Redbird," yes. That has a nice ring. Why not a new name in a new place?

The girl smiled at Pam. "I saw a whole bunch of them over by my uncle's orchard. Ten or so! They sure are pretty." Pam's heart left her body to fly around the sun a couple times. Joy, oh joy, oh joy!

"Hey, who is your school teacher?"

"Mrs. Clinter."

"Okay. I'm going to come see her pretty soon. Do you think your class would like to learn more about birds?"

"Yeah, I sure would!" The other children who had gathered around all chimed in their agreement.

"That's good, kids. That's really good."

A week later Pam sat at her window in the dawn hour. She had grown to appreciate the sun's new path; it had given her garden more light in the morning. The cardinals- rotvogels!- had rediscovered their source for sunflower seeds and now joined the tufted titmice, blaukehlchen and chickadees for breakfast nearly daily. She had counted as many as twelve of her treasured birds at once so far. Reports were coming in from Dore and Gerbald's word of mouth network that they had been seen on the road to Magdeburg! The species had adapted and was now spreading.

Pam leaned back contentedly in her chair. She had prepared her notebooks and paintings for the show and tell sessions she was going to do at the school today-Mrs. Mason had been so taken with the idea that Pam had been asked to visit every class! Birdwatching field trips were being planned as well as a special summer nature program series that Pam would help implement. Pam learned that many of the town's educators shared her hopes to avoid some of the ecological misdeeds of the up-time past by engendering a love and knowledge of nature in the school kids. What a good place to start! She looked down at the two documents on her table.

The first was titled "Birds of the USE. A Field Guide to Native and Transplanted Species." She had made her lists and written up a plan for organization by bird type. What she was going to do about the scientific names of the European species she still had no idea-she would figure out something. "Is Linnaeus around these days?" The question was only half in jest-she had better find out!

The second was a proposal she was drafting. It could certainly use a lot of polish but she felt she had made a good start.

Citizens of the United States of Europe and their official representatives,

The following is a formal proposal submitted by myself, Pam Miller of Grantville, based on my personal observations and field studies. The proposal contains two separate yet related issues.

In Brief:

1. All transplanted American bird species (A list of sightings will be provided) be given protected status in the USE until we can determine what, if any, positive or negative effects they will have on the local ecology. I believe these animals have as much right to a new life here as we do and that we should allow them the chance to adapt as we have.

2. I would like to move that the cardinal, also known as the American red-bird and Amerikanischer rotvogel, be considered for status as the national bird of the USE. We are a new nation. We need a new symbol. I give you a bird that was once hailed as the state bird of West Virginia, a bird that is quickly gaining recognition amongst the down-timer population who admire its unusual beauty.

A bird from the Ring of Fire. A bird which has survived the journey. A bird which is thriving here and spreading its range.

A bird like us.

The Monster

Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

The Eagle Flies

Magdalena van de Passe stood outside the building and stared. She paid not the slightest attention to what was going on around her; she had eyes only for the plane that was flying overhead. She had seen airplanes on TV, but she had seen dragons and giant apes on TV, too. A civilized person and old Grantville hand, she knew that just because they had it on TV didn't mean that they could do it in the here and now. It didn't even mean that it was real up-time.

She couldn't hear the engine, or maybe she heard it just a little; it might be her imagination. It didn't matter. The plane was real. Man had learned to fly and could do it in the here and now. And she was going to. She didn't know how, she didn't know when. But she was going to fly. Whatever the cost. She felt almost like she was flying now. After the plane had gone over and while people were running off to wherever they were running off to, Magdalena went back inside. She needed to be alone and to think. Her life had just taken a sharp turn and was running off in a new direction. She needed to catch up with herself.

Back in the building, she looked at the books that had accumulated over the last months. She had come to Grantville at the combined request of her father and her patron. An engraver from a family of engravers, Magdalena was here to learn about opportunities in that field and opportunities in general. To facilitate that, she was studying up-timer business practices. She had found it interesting; now she found it positively engrossing. Right there on her desk was a paper on the costs of mule trains and how they compared to barge traffic, the new rail lines, and trucks on the improved roads. What about airplanes? How much would they cost? How much could they carry? What were their hidden costs?

Suddenly, Magdalena's life was making another turn or perhaps she was catching up with the last one. The outline of a plan was forming. There were a lot of pieces missing, but she could fill those in; she was sure of it. Meanwhile she had some letters to write.

Dearest Father,

I pray that you will put aside your reasonable skepticism and gift me with a continuation of that trust you gave me when you sent me to this place of wonders. For what I have to tell you next may make you wish you had sent my brother instead.

Magdalena had been sent instead of her brother because she was probably the least trusting member of the family. Her brother was a talented artisan but "he'd buy the Brooklyn Bridge without even arguing the price," as she had heard Cora Beth say.

I would not believe the report I must now make lest I had seen it with my own eyes. Not ten minutes ago, I stood outside this very building and watched a flying machine overhead. With my own eyes, Papa. I would not accept such a claim on lesser evidence. Nor can I truly expect you to. What I do ask is that you begin to let yourself consider believing that it is possible.

I make this request because one thing came very clear to me as I watched the manmade bird sail over head. There are no toll collectors in the sky.

Your Services No Longer Required

"Sorry, Georg. But with Jesse Wood running the Air Force…" Vanessa Holcomb actually seemed sorry, though they hadn't gotten along. Kitt Aviation was letting all the down-timers go, because Jesse Wood had beaten them into the sky and would be deciding who got the government contracts. They said they were going to have to cut back. The rest sort of flowed over him as he dealt with the fact that the sky was no longer his to claim.

Two days later Georg Markgraf paced back and forth outside the Gardens. This was a crazy idea. He wasn't any good with people; he knew that. Maybe he should try to join the Air Force… but the line was long for pilot training. Besides, he wanted to build planes more than he wanted to fly them. And the up-timers had that part pretty much sewn up, so far as the Air Force was concerned. He had tried the Kelly's; they weren't hiring either. That left starting his own company.

Georg finally ran down and most of his guests left, but Farrell Smith stayed. "Kid, you are not good at public speaking. Your presentation skills are pitiful. You're not well organized and you get distracted. In fact, you pretty much suck at it."

Georg slumped and buried his head in his hands. "I know. I know. But I can build a plane." He thumped his chest. "In here, I know it. I have seen the designs at Kitt. Seen the designs at Kelly. I understand aerodynamics; the numbers and concepts make sense to me. I can do as well. Better. Because they are not considering what we can do now. They all concentrate on what can be salvaged, not what can be built anew."

"How do you mean?"

"Craftsmanship!" Georg held up his hands. "I don't mean fancy doodads. I mean the ability of a good craftsman to judge wood, its strengths and weaknesses, by feel. To shape it using the structure of the wood itself. I mean the skills of a good leather worker to make a saddle or a wine sack and pick the right leather for the right job. Those skills can be combined with your up-time tools and knowledge to craft airplanes."

Farrell kept him talking late into the night. Because the kid had a point. Just before Farrell left, Georg asked, "Do you think any of them will invest?"

"Not a chance, son. I'd be running too, if I didn't know you a bit and Dad hadn't said some good things about you." Farrell shook his head. "Those folks came here half sold after Jesse Wood's flight. You managed to convince them that investing in flight was crazy."

"What do I do now?"

"You wait. Just hang on and let me see what I can do." Farrell assured Georg that he'd contact him in a couple of days. The boy had good ideas. After listening to him talk about the monocoque design he had in mind, Farrell was convinced of several things. Georg Markgraf was as qualified as anyone in Grantville, outside of Farrell's father, Hal, to design aircraft. Georg wasn't, however, qualified to run a company whether it designed aircraft or made thumb tacks. And, finally, Georg had to be prevented from making presentations in front of potential investors at all costs.

Farrell paused, then turned back. "Georg, where are you staying?" With the kids moving out, the house was a bit empty. He'd have to clear it with Mary but perhaps the kid could stay with them. Farrell wasn't really qualified to run a business, either. He could put together a presentation, even if it would end up sounding like a lecture.

"I was sharing a room with a friend. It's paid for the rest of the month."

Farrell wasn't all that much of a salesman himself, but after years of teaching shop at least he could sound like he knew what he was talking about and keep on point. He made the presentations. The fact that his father was the one and only aeronautical engineer who had been brought with the Ring of Fire didn't hurt and the timing was good. After Jesse Wood flew and, especially, after Hans Richter soloed, people were ready to throw money at flight projects. It had been proven that it could be done down-time and the down-timers-even more than the up-timers-saw the potential benefit.

There were more than rational reasons for this. The simple fact was that the New US, and much of the CPE, was caught up in the romance of flight.

We Need a Bigger Plane

Vrijheer Abros Thys van Bradt found it necessary to leave Amsterdam due to the sudden arrival of unwelcome guests, an army of Spaniards under Cardinal Infante Don Fernando. He was forced to leave behind most of his wealth, taking only his wife and immediate servants. From there he had gone to an estate owned by a cousin. There he lived in the Orange portion of the Netherlands till the news of Hans Richter's heroic death reached him. It brought to mind a fairly minor investment he had made.

As the primary patron of the de Passe family, he had been allowed to read the letter she had written to her father and he had believed it. More than the word of the flight he was impressed with the cost analysis of other forms or transport that she had sent along. It was nothing he didn't already know, but it had taken him years of experience to get the feel for it.

Reminded of the investment by the events at Wismar, he arrived in Grantville on November fourth, with very little cash on hand and much of his wealth locked behind a siege hundreds of miles away. He still had connections and, surprisingly, the Amsterdam guilders were worth more than expected.

"So, girl. Tell me about airplanes and this airline you want to start."

Magdalena told him. She told him about the other investors she had lined up, about the costs she had calculated and what they would need. They discussed where they would get fuel, oil, pilots, aircraft and a host of other things.

He provided introductions to other investors and helped to persuade them to invest. The strategic reserve of fuel had been used, which had driven the price of fuel through the roof but that was a temporary problem.

"Yes, but," Fredrich Klein, one of the investors said yet again. "There is still the problem of shipping the fuel. That doubles the price right there, more than doubles it, I'd say."

"No, it doesn't," Magdalena said, "the fuel is a mix of fifteen percent gasoline and eighty-five percent methanol. Methanol is really just alcohol-twice distilled spirits, but not the drinkable type. So even when you do need to ship the gasoline to the airport, you only need to ship fifteen gallons for every hundred gallons of fuel."

Vrijeer van Bradt nodded. "It will take organization to set up airports and find the most economic way to get this gasoline to them. But Magdalena makes a good point. Spirits are available almost anywhere and-since they are not for drinking-the cheapest, poorest quality can be used."

December 5 1633

Dear Sirs:

TransEuropean Airlines is seeking bidders to produce one or more aircraft to open passenger and cargo service to various cities within and without the USE. The planes must be capable of carrying at least ten passengers or one ton of cargo for a distance of at least three hundred miles non-stop.

We will provide partial funding on approved designs. Further, we will provide aid in acquiring or constructing engines, within reason. We will provide final payment after successful test flights are completed.

On successful completion of testing of the first aircraft, we will guarantee to buy up to ten more, if the manufacturer can provide them to us within a reasonable period of time.

Contact M. van de Passe

Address: 2613 Makem Rd

Phone: 85-767

Magdalena looked at the letter and smiled. It had taken some wheedling, something any artist learned to do early. Still, it hadn't taken all that much. For every lord who controlled a pass, there were a dozen merchants and lords who resented having to pay the tolls. It was only partly economics; a big part was anger and the desire to get some of their own back. They liked the idea of their cargos sailing over the toll stations of "Baron-I'll-take-mine-off-the-top." That was where most of her investors had come from, people that had been hit with tolls or robbed by bandits.

Yes, it was a potentially profitable venture but the way their faces lit up at the thought of flying over all the tolls and risks of land travel… Magdalena honestly thought that some of them wouldn't care if they lost money on every flight as long as "Baron-Off-the-Top" didn't get it. Of course, each of the investors had their own unreasonable "baron" that they had to deal with, whether it was a Lutheran school or a group of merchants that collected the tolls. In fact, more than a few of the investors collected tolls of their own. That didn't change the fact that they resented it when they had to pay them.

The letter would go out to Kelly, to Kitt and to anyone else who might be doing anything serious in terms of aviation.

"I'm not sure I believe this." Georg Markgraf sat at the desk, staring at the computer screen.

Farrell glanced over. "What'ya got?" The computer was running an Excel spreadsheet, full of formulas, drag coefficients, lift calculations, wing stresses… all he had to do was plug-in a few variables and out came a pretty good estimate of the flight speed, stall speed, ceiling, empty weight, loaded weight. In general, the results were the probable flight envelope of the projected aircraft.

"That letter we got from TransEuropean Airlines. It got me to thinking. So I started plugging in numbers to see what I got."

"Umm hum?" The spread sheet had had started with something Farrell's father, Hal, and Vanessa Holcomb had put together. Excel was such a powerful program that the various designers, including Georg, had started adding bits. More formula based on up-time books, then more based on experimentation to fill in the gaps. It was a pretty good tool by now, one that let you try things and get a rough idea how they would work.

"Well, I plugged in a hundred and twenty-foot wingspan and got a stall speed of like twenty miles per hour."

"Never work. With the materials…" Farrell stopped speaking because Georg was glaring at him. He had forgotten Georg's wing stress kludge.

"I know that." Georg's irritation was as evident in his voice as it had been in his look. Then he visibly shook it off. "We couldn't support even an eighty-foot wingspan. Not in a monoplane."

"A biplane? They're a lot less efficient. You only get about eighty percent as much lift for the wing area."

"Sure. But the upper and lower wings support each other, so they don't have to be nearly as strong. And if the lower wing is shorter than the upper, we only lose lift where both wings are involved. It lets us extend the upper wing farther out. With a seventy-foot lower wing, we could have a hundred-foot upper wingspan."

"What about drag?"

"A lot, but drag is a function of speed and this would be slow." Georg laughed. "To think I would ever call sixty miles per hour slow. I'm more concerned about the strutting disrupting laminar flow."

Farrell scooted his chair over to the computer and started examine Georg's numbers for real. The four Jeep engines would only put out a grand total of maybe six hundred horsepower. But that was all this thing would need if the numbers were right. "A biplane with those? And have the darn thing fly?"

Georg waved his hand at the computer. "The spreadsheet says we can." He drew pictures in the air. "The upper wing would have a hundred feet of span, the lower seventy. The lower wing is as much to support and strengthen the upper as to give added lift." He sat back down at the desk. "I've got to check these figures. Go away."

Farrell did. There wasn't much point in trying to talk to Georg when he was calculating.

Slowly, as he went through checking the formulas to be sure he hadn't dropped a decimal some place, Georg began to believe it. It would be, he was convinced, unlike any plane that had ever flown. It would be more like a powered glider than an ordinary airplane.

Georg loved the DC3. He had ever since he had seen one in the movies; more so after he had read up on them. A lot of flight enthusiasts loved that plane, he'd discovered. The DC3 Dakota was perhaps the most-loved plane in up-time history. It was also totally out of the technical reach of anyone down-time. It had two radial engines, each putting out over a thousand horsepower. It was all metal construction and that much aluminum simply wasn't available. But it-or as close to it as they could get-was what TEA wanted.

The biplane that was staring back at him from the numbers on his computer screen would have over one and a half times the wing area of the DC3. It would need it, because it would have barely a third of the horsepower. It would need the extra lift just to get off the ground, as under-powered as it was. Its cruising speed would be less than half that of the Dakota's, but then its landing speed would be a lot less, too. With a full cargo load, it would have about five hours flight time. Right at three hundred miles.

It would carry a ton and a half of cargo, perhaps a bit more. The body would be a semi-monocoque construction-part of the structural support coming from internal bracing, part from the shape of the structure-made of a composite of fiberglass, and viscose that they had been testing, making for a light strong airframe. It would be a lot like the Dakota, except it would be made of fiberglass rather than aluminum. It would be well-streamlined, even the supports between the wings. But in power and speed it would be closer to something out of World War One or earlier.

"We really can do it." Georg pulled out a paper and pen and started to draw.

Hal Smith snorted. "I can see what the kid's gone and done, Farrell. He didn't know it, but he's reinvented the wheel. If he'd ever seen a picture of the Ilya Muromets built by Igor Sikorsky near the dawn of aviation, he'd have recognized it right off. This is as close a cousin to it as I ever saw."

"So it will fly?" Farrell asked. "I thought it would, but couldn't be sure."

His dad gave him the look that said "I always was disappointed in you." Then he nodded. "It'll fly… assuming you can build it."

"Hand me the scraper." Georg didn't look up. He had heard a sound and assumed it was someone who belonged there. An instrument was put in his hand. He glanced at it. "Not that one. The corrugated one." He stuck his head out from under the section of fuselage enough to see a pair of legs in the split skirts that all the ladies seemed to be wearing these days. He didn't recognize the legs. "The wiggly one."

Having received the right scraper, he went back to his work. "Sorry. I have to get this done before the viscose dries. It's like cardboard, you see. The strength comes from the shape and where the bits connect." Having gotten the fabric pressed into the grooves, Georg climbed out from under the section he was working on and looked at his unknown helper.

He saw a woman of medium height and quite a nice figure, but it was her eyes that really caught his attention. Intelligent eyes that were examining what he had been doing. "Ah… Are you looking for work? We don't have anything right now, but check back in a couple of weeks. We're expecting a big contract."

"I've seen cardboard. This doesn't look like it. Isn't cardboard supposed to have flat sheets on either side of the curvy bits? And aren't the curvy bits straight?"

Georg grinned. He couldn't help it. "I'm constantly trying to figure a way of putting it that makes sense myself. Corrugated cardboard's inside sheet is given a curvy fold in one direction because it's easier to do it that way in a cardboard making machine and because cardboard is mostly used for making boxes. The corrugations add strength, but primarily in one direction. We need the added strength to go in different directions at different places in the structure. So we adjusted the corrugations to curve around the structure to give added strength where we need it in the direction we need it."

Georg waved his hand at Joseph Kepler. "Joseph is the carver. I just told him where the stresses were going to be. We'll add a smooth top coat later for added strength and streamlining."

Farrell finally got off the phone and headed for the shop. He had to get Georg out of there before he blew the deal. When he entered the shop he found Georg and the crew talking with a young woman about engraving, and how it was sort of like the way they made the forms. "I hate to break this up but Herr de Passe is on the way from TEA and we need to get Georg out of here before he opens mouth and inserts foot." Farrell looked around the shop. "And get this place cleaned up. Let's try to look like a real company that might actually be able to build the airplanes they want."

"Too late," Magdalena said.

"You're not ready for this thing yet, Georg," Magdalena said after they had shown her the designs for what Georg called the Jupiter. "I've seen what you're trying and like most of it, but you don't even have a single engine plane in the air yet. Do you have any idea how much the fiberglass costs? It's too much to invest on a first plane. Finish the Mercury. You have a buyer for that one. Learn from it and refine your designs."

It clearly wasn't what Georg or Farrell wanted to hear. Well, it wasn't what Magdalena wanted to say. But facts were facts. After they had built a smaller plane that would fly, she would talk to them again.

They finished the Mercury and sold it to Cristoforo Racciato. They did learn from it. The Mercury was a bit of a mishmash of concepts and Cristoforo was quite good about telling them where he was having problems with it as well as what he liked. Cristoforo was introduced to Magdalena and took her flying. Georg wasn't sure how he felt about that. He wanted very much for TEA to buy his Jupiter four-engine biplane. But Cristoforo was charming and Georg wasn't. So he found himself glad that Magdalena was flying in his airplane but wishing that Cristoforo was rather less charming.

Cristoforo munched contentedly on a sandwich. He loved eating in the air. In fact, he loved doing just about anything in the air. He checked the gauges on the Mercury, then glanced at the horizon. A storm front was building, but he figured he could beat it to Leipzig. Or at least find a field closer to Leipzig to set down in. A little later, looking back, he saw lighting and begin to look for a good place to set down.

Five minutes later, he was still looking and the storm was getting close. He pushed the stick a little forward as the world turned into gray mist. Slowly losing altitude, he tried to get below the clouds where he could see to land. He was going to be late and Gus had said that the parts were needed in a hurry. He'd offered Cristoforo enough money for a dozen tanks of gas. While Cristoforo was trying to figure out how to explain to Gus that it wasn't his fault, the engine died. He tried to restart. He was losing altitude too fast, so he pulled back just a little on the stick and tried the engine again.

Between the added weight of the rain and the added drag of flying through raindrops, the plane was handling a bit differently than Cristoforo was used to. It went into a stall and he wasn't ready for it. The delay in his response cost vital seconds and Cristoforo's lack of experience cost more. Still, he almost made it.

He had managed to pull out of the stall, induced spin and had the plane level again but he had used up all his altitude doing it. He was going to land-like it or not-and he was coming in hot, fast and heavy. The field had been plowed and was in the process of being turned into mud by the rain. The Mercury bounced once on the top of a furrow but then a wheel hit in a furrow. The wheel stopped, but the plane didn't. It nosed into the mud, bounced again and landed upside down. The cockpit roof collapsed and his skull was crushed by the impact.

Heinrich Bauer heard the noise and went out in the rain to check it out. What he found was what was left of a plane in his field. Well, partly in his field, partly in Johan's. He wasn't the only one. Several of the villagers had come out to determine what the noise had been. After checking on the pilot and confirming that he was in fact dead, they retreated back indoors to try to figure out what to do.

The next day they sent a rider to Leipzig and started cleaning up the mess. They were later told that they should have left everything just where it was till the investigators got there, but by then it was much too late. They did collect up the bits of wrecked plane and scattered cargo and put it in a barn in case it might be worth something, but they had work to do.

It wasn't that they weren't sorry about the boy. He had never done anything to them but crash in their fields, and it was clear enough that it hadn't been on purpose. But he was already dead. There wasn't anything they could do for him. And they had no reason to believe that anyone could tell anything from the crash site that they hadn't been able to tell.

"Damned shame." Georg shook his head and continued to pick through the rubble of the Mercury. It had been sent to them by the Racciato family in the hopes they could determine what had gone wrong.

Cristoforo had been a good kid.

"It seems to me that he waited a little long before he tried to set her down," Farrell said. "Or maybe it was just bad luck. The clouds were pretty low that day from the reports."

Georg nodded. But he was busy going over the report. "Look at this. The villagers didn't hear anything until the crash. The engine must have died. Water in the carburetor, you think?"

"Hard to tell. We'll know more after we go over the engine." Farrell pointed to a piece of the wreckage. "It could be that the weight of the rain on top of the weight of the cargo pulled some screws loose."

On the strength of Cristoforo's praise they had gotten two new orders for Mercury-style aircraft. With his death, those orders had been canceled. Georg was convinced that they would have kept them, at least kept one of them, if the designer had been an up-timer. And they still didn't have a contract with TEA.

The Contract

December 1634

Whap!

Georg jumped. Magdalena could be fairly temperamental, but she didn't usually try to beat the table to pieces as she was doing now. "Ah, Magdalena? What is the matter?"

Whap! The file folders hit the table again while Magdalena worked out her frustrations. "They won't sell. 'We're going to build them, and fly them,' they said. So TEA can't buy their plane."

Georg cast a glance at Farrell, who hid a grin of relief. "We have the plans for the Jupiter ready, Magdalena. Well, almost ready."

Georg and Farrell had both been worried that one of the other aviation companies would beat them to the punch. Now, with the refusal to sell to TEA, they still had a chance. Georg, for more than one reason, wanted the sale to TEA. Not only did he want his own plane in the air, he was very interested in Magdalena, who appeared to return that interest.

Magdalena glared around the room. "I have a sneaking suspicion that you're not quite as sympathetic to TEA's plight as you pretend to be." Then just a touch of grin showed through the storm. "Never mind. Show me the progress reports. Where are you with the Jupiter?"

Magdalena was learning to be a pilot and had seen sea planes on TV since coming to Grantville but she wasn't an aircraft designer. An airport, while not that difficult to build, was needed for a large aircraft. At least she assumed it was. She didn't want a repeat of what happened to Cristoforo. Not with a plane full of passengers.

She asked Georg to replace the wheels with pontoons or make the fuselage into a hull.

Georg promised to look into it. It was only a couple of days later that he delivered the bad news.

"It won't work. Pontoons don't sit on the water, they sit in the water. They displace as much water as the weight of the plane on top of them, all the cargo and fuel it's carrying, plus the weight of the pontoons themselves. When the plane tries to take off they push that much water out of the way. All the way from the start of the taxi to lift off, and drag more water with them."

"But there are sea planes all over the movies from up-time."

"Yes." Georg snorted. "And thousand horsepower engines to pull them out of the water." Georg's face was a picture of desperation. "The long wings that let us take off at thirty miles per hour are just that much more weight when you put the plane on pontoons. I talked to Herr Smith about it. The flying boats of the thirties used ten percent of their fuel loads on takeoff and landing. They ran those thousand horsepower monsters full out-they had to just to get into the air-then they cut the power way down for level flight. I'm sorry, Magdalena, but with the engines we have, it would never get into the air."

"I'll hire Maria," Magdalena said. Maria was a friend from before she had come here. She had a knack for finding things in the National Library.

"Won't do any good." Georg glared at her. He was not, she knew, that fond of Maria. "I've already studied everything they have on aircraft."

Nor did he lack for ego. Sometimes Magdalena wondered what she saw in him. A lot of the time, actually. Yes, he was the smartest person she had ever met, but sometimes he was a real jerk. Of course, sometimes he was anything but.

"TEA needs a certain amount of flexibility if we can possibly get it." She gave Georg one of her best looks. "It's worth a try."

" Eureka, " Maria whispered. What she really wanted to do was shout. MSP Aeronautics was her first major client. They had hired her after their investors had insisted that the plane must be capable of water landing and take off. But who would have thought that she would find it in a Time magazine article? She read the first part of the article again.

"Aug. 25, 1967

Everything seemed normal when Test Pilot David W. Howe eased the LA4 "Lake" amphibian toward Niagara Falls International Airport earlier this month. He radioed a highly abnormal report to the tower: "Bag down and inflated." Seconds later he landed-without wheels-on a cushion of air."

The article went on to describe-with a maddening lack of technical detail-the principles and basic structure of ACLG, Air Cushion Landing Gear, conceived by Bell's T. Desmond Earl and Wilfred J. Eggington. It was simple enough in principle-put an airplane on top of a hovercraft. At least that's the way the article made it seem. Maria spent the rest of the day getting a start on learning about hovercraft to try and fill in some of the technical details that the Time article left out.

"This doesn't make sense," Georg complained. "If this is so good why didn't they use it up-time? This article says it happened over thirty years before the Ring of Fire."

"I have no idea." Maria smiled. "I do know that a lot of stuff they had, they didn't use. Mostly it was because they had something better, but not always. Sometimes-" She shrugged. "-they just didn't."

"I think I might know," Farrell said. "Look at the date. By sixty-seven little private airports were all over the place. I used to love to look at the planes as we went by one on the highway. Most planes had no need for amphibious take off and landing. So ninety percent of the potential market is gone before they start. As for the planes that did need to be amphibious, well, pontoons were a known tech. The FAA already had all the guidelines in place. The manufacturers knew how to build them, the FAA knew now to test them, the pilot knew how to check them before flight. By the time the air cushion came along in the sixties, it was competing with established tested products.

"It probably would have cost Bell millions to jump through all the hoops the FAA would have wanted. For what? Maybe a thousand sales a year and liability down the line if someone blew the maintenance requirements and got themselves killed." Farrell shook his head. "I'd lay five to two that the bean-counters got hold of it and said, 'Don't bother.' Once that happened, well, they never took off because if you owned a plane you could buy pontoons but you couldn't buy this ACLG stuff."

"That's not the real question," Magdalena interrupted. "The real question is 'can we do it'?"

Maria pulled another file from her case. This one consisted of a report she had made after interviewing Neil O'Connor, who had turned out to be something of a creep. Neil was the proud owner of a home-built hovercraft that he had built after the Ring of Fire. After his discharge from the Army-a discharge he and his family didn't discuss-he used it to provide rapid transport down the Saale River. Because it was a hovercraft, it didn't care how shallow the water in the Saale was. It went right over sand bars without even noticing them. He could get you from Grantville to Halle in half a day. And right now the railroads were looking like they were going to put him out of business in the next year or so.

Neil was probably going to be needing a job any time now, and building air cushion landing gear might well be his out. That hadn't kept him from hitting on Maria from the moment they had met. He was one of those up-timer guys that figured any down-timer girl would just naturally be thrilled to be his latest conquest. However, if Maria had it right, they were going to need Neil even more than he needed them. While simple in principle, air cushions weren't all that simple in practice. They weren't just skirts but a sort of a cross between skirts and leaky balloons. The design had to push the air inward.

Neil's air cushion was a series of tubes pointing at the ground, placed in a circle around the outer edge of his craft. There were two layers of plywood above that, with a gap between them. The fan was set into the top layer of plywood. When the fan was turned on the air was spread between the two layers of plywood and escaped from there into the tubes which inflated. The tubes formed an inward curving ring around the craft and as the air was forced through them it much of it escaped into the area surrounded by the ring.

The way Neil explained it, there were three levels of pressure. The lowest pressure was the air outside the hovercraft. The highest was the air in the tubes and between the two layers of plywood. The middle pressure was in the area below the plywood bottom and surrounded by the inflated tubes. It was the way the air had to flow that kept the skirt of the hovercraft from blowing up like Marilyn Monroe's skirt in The Seven Year Itch. Neil had leered at her when he said that part.

The tubes were made of oiled leather, with removable thicker bits at the bottom where the worst wear was. Neil generally had to change out one or more of the extensions every trip, which was one of the reasons why his service was so expensive.

Maria hesitated but she was a professional. "There is another option."

Farrell looked at her and smiled encouragement, so she continued. "Hydrofoils. Herr Bell, inventor of the telephone, was working on hydrofoil landing gear from the beginning of the twentieth century. While it's clear that he got hydrofoils to work, I have not been able to see any case of a plane actually taking off using them. I have no idea why but I think they didn't work." After some discussion-and over Georg's objections-they decided to go with the air cushion landing gear. The Time article was proof that it did actually work.

The problem with air cushion landing gear became apparent as soon as they started to seriously look at it in terms of something designed to leave the ground. Once the ground was taken away the air escaped almost instantly, the skirt deflated and stayed deflated till the plane landed. Not till it was going to land, until it was on the ground. They worried over that a lot. It was the Time article that finally came to the rescue. "Bag down and inflated," the pilot had said. The air cushion on the plane up-time wasn't a skirt, not even a fancy skirt. It was a bag.

Building the Monster

January 1635

The ACLG required several changes in the design of the aircraft. The lower wings were shortened and their width increased. They became short stubby things, barely forty feet wide. The upper wings were increased in length. The Monster began to look less like the Ilya Muromets. While all this was going on, Georg was working out the thousands of details that go into making an aircraft. Where the control runs would go, how to save weight and drag while increasing lift.

Georg really wanted to use monocoque construction and mostly he did, but not all of it could be built that way. The materials he had to work with would actually increase the weight if he tried to make a pure monocoque plane. There were places where internal supports would be needed to save weight. But he spent weeks balancing the numbers to determine just where the internal supports had to go, where he could use the shape of the plane to provide the support. The good news turned out to be the engines. Though water-cooled, they were lighter than expected, if weaker than he wanted. He refined his estimates, did drawings, changed things around, did more drawings, refined his estimates again.

He got in knockdown drag-out fights with Magdalena over weight versus cost, which didn't help his love life any. Lost some, won others, redesigned again. After that he got in knockdown drag-out fights with Farrell, Hans, Karl and the guys in the shop over how to build each and every component. How to make the forms, how to angle the fabric, how much of which glue and resin to use, in what mixture.

Testing and Turnover

"Bag motor on." The putt-putt of the small lawn tractor engine that powered the two fans and inflated the ACLG was loud in the cabin. Farrell looked over at Magdalena and grinned.

He put the engine in gear. "Bag inflating." Farrell looked out the window and saw the large leather bag balloon out below the plane. He waited till the plane lifted on the air cushion, and he started the left inboard engine. The plane started to spin. They hadn't realized just how little drag there would be. He managed to kill the engine but not before the plane had made a full half circle and not before he had scared the heck out of himself and Magdalena. He felt a thump as Georg apparently leapt onto the plane. The door opened. "Magdalena, are you all right?"

Neil was sitting off to the side laughing his ass off. It rapidly became apparent that after checking to make sure she was all right, Georg's next intended destination was to murder Neil. Farrell almost let him. Air cushion landing gear apparently didn't include brakes. And air, it turns out, is more slippery than any grease.

"We'll have to work out some sort of procedure to handle it," Magdalena said. "Start the engines with the props feathered."

"It will take more than that, I'm betting," Farrell countered. "Each engine will be a little different. They'll idle at different speeds. What we're looking at is having to fly the plane from the moment the engines come on."

"Kickstands." Georg snapped his fingers. "Kickstands, like on the bicycles in town. One about twenty feet out on either wing. And maybe one near the tail. They'll have to be retractable. And they won't work on the water or even on muddy ground, but even if you land on water you should be able to taxi onto solid ground."

"But what about water and muddy ground?" Farrell pointed at the four levers that were the thrust controls for the four main engines. "We need something that will let us adjust the thrust on each engine to match the thrust on all the other engines. We'll need it in the water as well as on a runway."

They tried several things before settling on what amounted to an anchor. Near the tail, a retractable tail skid provided drag. Since the drag point was well back from the engines, uneven thrust twisted the plane less. It wasn't a perfect solution but it was workable.

Another day, another test, and this time the Monster only slewed a bit back and fourth as Farrell brought up the engines. When Magdalena retracted the tail skid, off they went. The surprising thing was how fast it picked up speed till the air drag matched the engine thrust. They started to bounce a bit when the air speed indicator read twenty-five mph, which was before they were supposed to. Farrell gave it a bit more power and at thirty-two indicated air speed, they were off the ground. And drifting left. Farrell adjusted the flaps and the engines again.

It handled like a barge. Slow and steady. You turned the wheel and it took a while for the plane to turn. Banks weren't just slow, they were physically difficult. The Monster had a lot of wing and a lot of flaps and no power-steering. In fact, it took both of them to bank it to any great degree. They made a slow circuit around the field and landed.

After that came the water landings. Any stretch of water a hundred feet wide was a landing field. Well, two hundred feet wide. Or a body of water that didn't have trees or too steep a bank.

Fields were landing fields, too, and they didn't have to worry about rocks unless the rocks were three feet tall.

Each flight brought them closer to the final turnover of the plane to Trans European Airlines. Each flight used more of the gasoline-methanol mix that they had adjusted the engines to take.

Testing completed, TEA paid the final delivery payment. It was a great deal of money. Markgraf and Smith Aviation was in the passenger plane business.

TransEuropean Airlines

The Wietze Oil Field

Since its creation in 1633, TEA had been an airline without any airplanes. All outgo, no income. Arrangements had been made, deals agreed to, money spent-all on the basis of Magdalena's promises and the investors hopes. Now they had a plane. They needed fuel. Well, gasoline. They had the alcohol stations. But they had been unable to contract for much gasoline until they could show a working aircraft.

On a sunny Thursday afternoon, the oil men at Wietze looked up into a clear blue sky and saw a plane. It wasn't the first they had seen, but it was the biggest.

The manager came out to see. As did Duke George of Calenburg, who owned the oil fields. The manager was impressed, Magdalena could tell, but not nearly as impressed as the duke.

"There they are." Magdalena climbed down from the plane and helped an older gentleman down after her. The older gentleman was Vrijeer van Bradt. And Vrijeer van Bradt was here to buy gasoline. Lots of gasoline. He wanted it shipped to various places in and out of the use and he wanted to make arrangements for some to be carried by the Jupiter itself.

If it wasn't carrying much of anything else the Monster could carry close to three hundred gallons of gasoline. When mixed eighty five gallons of methanol to fifteen gallons of gasoline that came out to seventeen hundred gallons of aviation fuel. Enough for fourteen three-hundred-mile trips.

Van Bradt looked at the approaching men, then looked at all the people who had stopped working to watch. He rubbed his hands together. "Time to, how do they say? Oh, yes. Let's make a deal."

The first trip to Venice was just the three of them: Magdalena, the copilot, Johan, and Vrijeer van Bradt, along with a bunch of extra gasoline. As luck would have it, they arrived three days after Pope Urban. They hadn't had any intent to upstage the man, since they hadn't known that he was going to be there. The neat thing was he came out and looked at the Monster and blessed it. The official name of the plane was the Jupiter. But it's real name had come about when Colonel Jesse Wood had come by for a visit, taken one look at it and said "What a monster." From then on, no matter what Georg said, it was the Monster.

They spent three weeks in Venice that first trip and a week in Bolzano with Claudia de' Medici. Now that a real live plane was part of the deal, they could work out the details of the agreements they'd previously made. Magdalena came away convinced that Claudia was one smart cookie. The deal they had worked out had real advantages for TEA and Claudia.

Among other things, it just about guaranteed them full cargo loads because Claudia got half-price for standby cargo transport. If they didn't have a full load, they stopped at Bolzano and carried what she wanted, carried it at about the cost of the flight. In exchange for which Claudia provided docking facilities and didn't charge tariff on what they carried. At the end of the year if they hadn't carried at least the required amount of her stuff, or offered to, they paid her a fee.

Three months later

Magdalena glanced back at her passengers who were crowding the portholes on the right side of the plane and over at her co-pilot. Their navigation had been just a touch off this trip. It looked like they would pass about a mile to the east of Munich, closer than the five to ten miles on most trips. They were also a bit light this time. Their passengers were two Venetian merchants who had business in Grantville, and Claudia de' Medici, who was taking one of her free flights.

Magdalena grinned. This was still a very new thing and it was a first flight for all of their passengers. While their ceiling was higher, they were flying at about three thousand feet to facilitate sightseeing. One of the merchants pointed out a feature of Munich that he recognized. The other apparently missed it.

Claudia de' Medici spoke up. "Signorina de Passe, might we go around again to get a better look?"

Magdalena looked over at Johan and shrugged. He shrugged back. They knew relations between Duke Maximilian were in the dumps, but heck. They weren't doing anything, just flying over. She started a slow right turn that would take them around Munich and if they lost a bit of altitude in the turn, that was all to the good. It made for better sightseeing.

On the ground, a captain of the duke's guard cursed. They were rubbing it in. The duke had been livid every time they flew near Munich. Now it seemed they wanted to rub salt into the wound, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. At least, at first he thought there wasn't, but as they circled they got closer and lower.

The captain started shouting, "Load with canister! All cannons! And double the charge!" That got him a questioning look from the sergeant but they did it right enough. It took a couple of minutes for the plane to make the circuit around Munich and by the time they did, they had dropped to eighteen hundred feet and were less than half a mile from the wall. By that time, His Grace had arrived and the captain had the guns aimed at a point in space he thought the plane would fly through.

"What are they doing there on the wall?" Claudia de' Medici asked, just as the puffs of white smoke appeared.

It wasn't a golden bb, not even a silver one. The cannons missed entirely; no single bit of shot from those guns came within a hundred yards of the plane. They were much lower and closer to the cannons than they should have been, and the Monster was a big, slow-moving plane. Still, it wasn't close enough or slow-moving enough-or, most especially-low enough, to be hit by cannon fire. They weren't, however, far enough away to avoid being frightened by it.

What it actually was, was a loose copper fuel line, combined with suddenly ramming the throttles to their stops. The fuel line on the right inboard engine came loose and sprayed the hot engine with fuel. Johan had already kicked the rudder over and started to reverse his bank by the time the fuel line came loose. The engine didn't catch fire; there was fuel and oxygen in plenty but in spite of the heat of the engine, there wasn't a spark.

As the engine died, the torque of the left side engines was no longer balanced by the right side engines. The plane started a right roll and right yaw, bringing it closer to Munich and lower. Magdalena and Johan struggled with the controls. Neither of them were what an up-timer would call qualified. They had more time in the Monster than anyone else, but it was still only a few hundred hours. They had very little experience flying with one engine dead and none at all with it happening suddenly out of the blue.

"The right inboard engine is out," Magdalena shouted. While Johan tried to remember what he was supposed to do. Some of it was obvious they were rolling right, so stick left. They were also yawing right, so left rudder.

Johan noticed that all the engines were at their max. Magdalena must have done it. Then what Magdalena had shouted penetrated and he cut the fuel to the right inboard engine. While Magdalena was holding the stick left, he throttled back on the left engines.

"Take the stick, Johan. I've got to adjust the trim."

It took a few minutes and almost five hundred feet to get everything as well balanced as they could. Magdalena pulled out a pencil and started doing sums. The Monster could fly with three engines. At least, with its tanks half empty. But three engines delivered unbalanced thrust, so the right outboard engine was being run full out.

They couldn't do that with the left side engines or they would end up going around in circles. As it was, they had the left inboard engine at about fifty-five percent power and the left out board at eighty-five percent. The rudder was almost all the way over and they were in a slight left hand bank to keep from slipping right. All of which meant that they were using about twenty percent more fuel than they should be using at this point in their trip.

They weren't in any danger of crashing, not as long as the right outboard motor held. They would just run out of fuel before they got to Frankfurt. As long as the left outboard motor held. They were stressing the heck out of it. The engine wasn't designed to handle that sort of RPM on a constant basis.

They had time before the fuel shortage became critical, but they needed that engine fixed. Normally, they would put down in a field or on a lake or river to fix an engine. It had happened a couple of times before and was generally no real problem. But to do it where people pulled up cannons and shot at you just for flying over seemed unwise. This was not a place where you wanted to land even for a few minutes and they didn't know how long the repair would take.

Johan was not as familiar as Magdalena was with engines. Generally, when they stopped to fix something, he held the tools. They discussed the matter in whispers, in an attempt to avoid alarming the passengers.

"I could go out on the wing and have a look." Johan didn't look happy about it but he didn't hesitate either.

"Don't be silly, Johan. You've never met an engine that you couldn't make worse by looking at it." Magdalena looked down at the rudder pedals; the left one was almost to the floor. "Besides, you weigh one eighty, I weigh one twenty. Which of us is going to do a better job of holding the rudder hard over?" Even with the trim set all the way it was still taking muscle to keep the plane straight and level.

He nodded. "What do we tell the passengers?"

At that point it became apparent that their whispered consultation had not had the desired effect. "You might try the truth." Claudia de' Medici arched an eyebrow. "Just how bad is our situation?"

"Well," Magdalena hesitated. "It would be just inconvenient if the duke wasn't a crazy man. We'd just land, fix the engine, then be on our way."

Claudia nodded. "How far away were we when they fired at us?"

"Around eighteen hundred feet up and a bit less than half a mile off. Why?" Johan asked.

Claudia shook her head. "Crazy people, indeed. To have had any chance of hitting us, even to reach us at that range, he would have had to double charge his cannon. He was willing to endanger his men in order to have a very slight chance of hitting a target that was no danger to him. Just out of spite. I agree. I don't want to land in his territory. What options does that leave us? We seem to be flying well enough on the three engines remaining."

"There are two problems facing us. One is fuel. Flying this way takes more," Magdalena said. "The other is that we are over stressing the remaining right side engine. It will last for a while, but we don't know how long. The longer we wait before fixing the inboard engine, the worse it will be."

"How long will it take to fix the damaged engine?"

"We don't know yet. The only way to find out is to go out and look. Normally we'd land and look but in this case…" Magdalena pointed back toward Munich. "What I am going to do is go out on the wing and look at the engine to see what's wrong with it."

One of the merchants swallowed. "Go out on the wing?"

"It's not that bad." Magdalena smiled at the man. "I've seen it done and our air speed is low." She didn't mention that the only time she had seen it done was in the movies in Grantville.

The Monster had one real disadvantage when it came to wing-walking. Its streamlining. Hand holds were hard to come by. Magdalena wing-crawled to the right inboard engine with one hand on the leading edge of the bottom wing. To keep the engine away from the water when making water landings, it was hung from the upper wing rather than sitting on the lower. There was a support that went from the bottom wing to the streamlined box it was in. But the bottom of the engine casement was four feet from the bottom wing and she was only five feet six.

After she reached the support, Magdalena carefully tied herself to it and looked around. She was terrified and at the same time exhilarated. Standing in the open with just three and a half feet of wing below her, twenty feet from the body of the plane. With a forty-five mile an hour wind blowing in her face. She wanted to shout for joy. She wanted to get back inside the plane where it was safe. Her hands were shaking and that wasn't all. She wanted to jump Georg and would have if he weren't over a hundred miles away.

Instead, she took a few minutes getting herself under control. She forced the cowling open against the wind and examined the damage. By now she wasn't sure whether she wanted to jump Georg or kill him. The cowling worked fine on the ground. But in the air, with a gale blowing in your face, and that gale trying to slam the cowling on your hand, it sucked.

She found the problem easily and it was an easy fix. She decided that she could fix the engine right there, and there would be no need to land. She reached for the line and bumped the strut holding the cowling opened against the wind. It slipped and the forty-five mile per hour wind slammed the cowling against her back and head.

There wasn't time for it to build up much momentum or she would have died at that moment. As it was she was knocked senseless, and left dangling from the strap she had used to tie herself to the support.

Inside the plane Johan, Claudia de' Medici and the two merchants watched helplessly as Magdalena dangled from the strap. Johan started looking for a place to put the plane down. Duke Maximilian be damned, and all his solders with him.

They had come just twenty miles since they had left Munich. No rivers of any size were within another twenty miles but there in the distance was an open field. There was going to be an unhappy farmer.

Johan cut back on the power to the remaining engines and started the bag engine. That was what they had come to call the small motor that ran the fans for the air cushion landing gear.

The farmer watched as the plane floated down onto his field, across his carp pond and out the other side. It stopped, still sitting on the big brown bag. He saw a woman-he thought it was woman, it was hard to tell at this distance-dangling from one wing. Then he saw the large man come out of the plane and run along the wing to the woman. He thought of going to give aid, he thought of calling the local lord, but on due consideration, he decided that he didn't want to get involved.

He knew that the duke didn't like the people from the future. Had even been told that they weren't from the future, also that they weren't people but demons. He didn't know what he believed about them except that he didn't want either the duke or the people who flew mad at him.

Johan reached the still woozy girl only seconds after touch down. He used some ammonia as smelling salts and that seemed to mostly do the trick. Magdalena had been semiconscious as the Monster landed and the spray from crossing the carp pond had helped. "Let me up, damn it. Where are we?"

"What? About twenty miles north of Munich."

"Well, if we were going to land anyway, what the hell was I doing out on that wing?"

Johan paused for a minute. "Got me. I'm not crazy enough to do it, that's for sure."

That was when Claudia stepped out on the wing. "I hate to interrupt, but since I doubt that they have any airplane fuel here and since Maximilian has never impressed me with his forbearance, perhaps we should see about fixing the engine and being on our way?"

Magdalena looked at Claudia, who was standing calmly on the lower wing of the Monster, shaded by the upper wing, and suddenly realized what "unflappable" meant. Claudia was unflappable. Magdalena got up. It hurt, but she did it.

Looking at the engine without the wind in her face, she saw a problem. The nut had been over-tightened and the threads had slipped. "Johan, get me a the five-eighths inch wrench, would you? And the vise grips!"

She had to bang the connection a bit to make it fit again. And she gooped it up to keep the stripped threads from leaking too much. She used the vise grips to lock it in place and taped that. All in all, it took almost fifteen minutes.

Fifteen increasingly nervous minutes. Johan had climbed up on the upper wing, which put him almost twenty feet off the ground and gave him a good view of the surrounding territory. About twelve minutes into the repairs he shouted down, "Riders!"

"How far?"

"A couple of miles, perhaps a bit more."

"I'm almost finished."

"Well, finish later. We need to leave. We'll make a short hop, ten miles or so then you can finish."

"Can't. If we lose the vise grips, we'll be even worse off. Just another minute. Go ahead and start getting ready for takeoff."

"Right! Ma'am, gentlemen… if you'll kindly take your seats, and fasten your seat belts for takeoff."

Claudia might have been unflappable, but Matteo dal Pozzo, one of the merchants, certainly wasn't. In a nervous voice, he asked, "How often does something like this happen?" I don't mean being shot at, but having to land in the middle of nowhere."

"Not that often," Johan said. "Certainly a lot less often than it did in the early days of flight up-time. Our engines are better and better maintained. It does happen sometimes, though."

"So our cargoes aren't really safer than if this were a mule train?"

"Of course they are. A mule train spends the whole trip subject to being found by bandits. It can be tracked by them. We can't. For your cargo to be taken by bandits, they would have to be right where we happened to land. And be there right when we landed."

Claudia laughed. "Matteo, we have regular flights from Venice to the USE. That is worth millions. Perhaps a bit more expansive than a mule train would be and certainly a little less per trip. Still, it is faster and much safer."

While Magdalena was tying down the vise grips, she felt the plane shift under her as the bag inflated and took the plane's weight from the stands. She closed the cowling, and ran.

"The wind's from the south," Johan told her as she was strapping in. "And so are the troops coming our way."

There was really very little choice. They had to get into the air as quickly as they could. They took off into the wind and into the faces of the approaching riders. There were no puffs of smoke from the riders as they passed overhead at only a couple of hundred feet. But Magdalena could see them trying to get their flintlocks ready. And one guy waving a sword at them.

Magdalena couldn't resist. She stuck her thumbs in her ears, then waggled her fingers at him. She leaned back into her seat. "Let's try to keep this a unique experience, Johan. At least on this airline."

Technical Notes:

The Ilya Muromets is, or was, a real airplane built by Igor Sikorsky in Russia in 1913. It had flight characteristics quite similar to those described for the Monster. It was Russia's large bomber during World War One, but was initially designed as a luxury passenger plane with seating for sixteen passengers.

Likewise, the air cushion landing gear is real as is the Time article on it. There is also a small hybrid hover/flair craft that is sold as a sports vehicle. The technology is proven but does have several drawbacks. The primary one is weight, after that comes the lack of friction. It's like taking off and landing on a slip and slide. Everyone seems to assume significant issues in terms of drag while in flight, but from the reports the drag issue is minor to nonexistent. Besides, parasitic drag is more of an issue for high-speed aircraft than for the sort of low-speed aircraft envisioned here.

The composite materials are a bit more iffy. There are several possible routes that might be taken to achieve the desired ends. The fabric could be the fiberglass we used, or silk, or even linen. The bonding agent might be glues or Viscose, the material that is extruded into both cellophane and rayon. Viscose was originally developed to act as a coating for fabric tablecloths. It failed in that use because it made the tablecloths stiff. It apparently didn't occur to the inventor that there were circumstances under which that stiffness might be a good thing. If it had, we might well have had the composite materials revolution a century early in OTL. We can point to no instance of viscose and fiberglass being used together and the specific properties of that composite aren't known to us. It's a WAG.

What isn't a guess is that the down-timers, being made aware of the concept of composite materials that are light and strong, will experiment with the concept using the glues and resins they have. They will, we're sure, combine those glues and resins with up-timer knowledge of chemistry to make new ones. There is, for instance, a better than even chance that they can make carbon fibers within a very few years of the Ring of Fire. Carbon fibers are produced by baking polyacrylonitrile (PAN), however, lower-quality fiber can be manufactured using pitch or rayon as the precursor instead of PAN. Further heat treating can improve the quality. Our point, however, is that while what the particular composite is may be somewhat unpredictable, that some fairly decent ones will be developed, is predictable.

Semi-Monocoque is not quite the same thing as monocoque. What semi-monocoque means is that there are internal supports but fewer of them are needed because some of the stresses are supported by the shape of the structure. The use of corrugations, as in the skin of the Ford Trimotor, is a semi-monocoque; the corrugations in the aluminum add structural strength. Since then, quite a bit more has been learned about ways of effectively adding strength to materials through structure. And most modern aircraft, and car bodies, are of semi-monocoque or monocoque construction.