Grantville Gazette - Volume V (2 page)

"I'll take you there," said Jabe. "You shouldn't walk alone."

Prudentia's responding smile had an undertone that embarrassed Jabe a little. Mostly because he was quite sure she wasn't fooled at all. In point of fact, Grantville's streets were quite safe, even at night—and Prudentia knew it just as well as he did.

However . . . She didn't seem to mind.

Prudentia's arrival in Grantville had been overshadowed, first by Mazarini's visit and then by the Croat raid and its aftermath. Artemisia Gentileschi wasn't a household name in a town like Grantville, certainly, but Father Mazzare had known who she was. So had Balthazar Abrabanel. He had recalled some rumors that Prudentia's grandfather Orazio had relocated to England from his native Rome, but if that was true Balthazar had never crossed paths with the man.

Before long, Prudentia Gentileschi was a minor celebrity—much to her embarrassment. Living arrangements were soon made, with Tino Nobili agreeing to provide lodging. Though Artemisia had wanted her daughter to be educated in Grantville, it was soon determined she already had an education which surpassed almost all Grantville's down-time citizens, and more than a few up-timers as well. In the end, Prudentia became a part-time student, mostly taking courses she chose for herself, and assisted the art and art history teachers in Grantville. In return for the latter, she was given a modest stipend to supplement the money her mother had sent with her.

Jabe and Prudentia spent most of the walk to the Nobili home in awkward silence, or even more awkward small talk. Jabe knew he was caught in the painful limbo between friendship and romance. The worst of that limbo, of course, being the fact that he had no idea if Prudentia felt the same way—and had no better idea how he might try to find out.

Even with an up-time girl, Jabe would have been too shy to try for a goodnight kiss, unless the girl was practically waving flags at him. With a down-timer like Prudentia, he didn't have a clue how he'd recognize a waving flag even if he saw one.

At the Nobilis' door, they bid each other good night. Jabe spent the walk to the barracks alternately cursing himself for blowing his chance with Prudentia—if there'd been one at all—and wondering what was going on.

At the barracks, Jabe had to fight his way through a gaggle of reporters surrounding Captain Henderson Coonce. Coonce looked more than a little resentful and Jabe didn't suppose he could blame him. The captain was in charge of basic training. No one had said anything to him about being a press liaison as well.

Normally Frank Jackson would be doing this, but Frank was in Magdeburg. The army had no officers above the rank of captain currently stationed in Grantville. That meant Henderson Coonce was the ranking army officer in town. That meant he had to deal with the press. Rank may have its privileges, but at the moment Captain Coonce was obviously thinking only of its curses.

"I'll tell you one last time," Coonce growled. "You'll have a brief statement
after
I tell my men what's going on. Anyone doesn't like that can leave right now, before you get an MP escort. And I ain't answering questions after the statement. We'll have more for you, soon as we get it."

Coonce meant to be intimidating and it mostly worked. It did not, however, work on Joe Buckley, who had the well-deserved reputation of being the most aggressive—some would say obnoxious—reporter in Grantville.

"Don't you think the public has a right to the news, Captain?"

Coonce looked like he wanted to use Buckley's guts for garters. "You think you're more important than the families, Buckley? They get told first."

Buckley, for a wonder, gave up pressing for answers. After the reporters started leaving, Jabe walked up to Coonce and came to attention.

"Took you long enough, Private," Coonce grumbled.

"Sir. I had to escort Miss Gentileschi back to the Nobilis' house, sir." Jabe stared straight ahead, still at ramrod attention. Someone other than Jabe could have seen the girl home, of course, if it had to be done at all, which it didn't. Fortunately, Coonce didn't pursue the matter.

"At ease, Private McDougal. You're not too late."

They went inside and Jabe found a seat in back with the other enlisted personnel. Officers and noncoms sat up front.

"This is gonna be short and sweet, people," Captain Coonce said. "Earlier today, the Danes tried to take Wismar. We turned 'em back and they took heavy losses. They cut and ran."

He let the cheers die down, then continued: "We took our own casualties, however. I can't tell you who yet, and that comes straight from the top. Things are dicey right now, but General Jackson will be flown back to Grantville, hopefully in the next couple of days. I imagine we'll all know more then. Dismissed."

With that, Henderson Coonce strode out to face the press once again. From what Jabe could catch from his muttered grumbles, the captain was expressing severe reservations concerning the wisdom of the Founding Fathers when it came to the much-overrated value of freedom of the press.

Mike Stearns imagined that he looked like hell. He felt even worse. He hadn't gotten any sleep the night before and wasn't counting on getting much tonight. Mike had walked from the radio shack to his rooms so many times the last few days he could have made the trip in his sleep.

It may yet come to that, Mike thought. He stood up and stretched, stepping away from the radio. The radio window for the evening was now closed, and Mike could do no more here tonight.

He called for his escort for the evening. "Pete! I'm ready to head back."

Pete McDougal opened the door. "If you don't mind me saying so, you look like nine kinds of rough," he said.

"Ten kinds, Pete."

For the first few moments, they walked in comfortable silence. The two had been fellow UMWA officials in their local before the Ring of Fire and had known each other a long time.

Mike shook his head. "Medals don't seem like enough, Pete. I wish I could do more. If we were up-time these kids would have been all over TV.
Dateline NBC
,
Sixty Minutes,
the whole works."

After hearing Pete's response, Mike abruptly changed course, leaving Pete scrambling to keep up. "What a great idea! Let's go get Frank out of bed."

Mike had hoped to have Jesse Wood fly Frank Jackson back to Grantville the day before, but things hadn't worked out quite that neatly. As Frank and Jesse touched down, the American general found himself, for once, a little grateful he was in the early modern world. At least, Frank thought, the thirty-minute news cycle was a thing of the past. Or future, depending on how you looked at it.

By now, it had been officially acknowledged that Eddie, Larry, Hans, and Swedish sailor Bjorn Svedberg had been killed in action at Wismar, but the situation in Magdeburg had not left time for the release of a detailed statement. Until now.

Frank found Henderson Coonce waiting for him at the airstrip, truck engine running. Coonce saluted, and they drove to the high school. Even if Frank had been vain enough to think his rank entitled him to a chauffeur with captain's bars, Henderson put paid to that notion by complaining the whole way. By the time they pulled up to the high school, Frank was ready to recruit an entire regiment's worth of press officers, just to shut Coonce up.

"If you don't want to wait, Captain, I'll ring when I'm done," said Frank.

"I can wait," said Coonce.

"I
said
you'd get your press officer."

Coonce smiled. "I heard you, Frank. Why do you think your ass ain't walking back?"

Military protocol in the new little United States still had a long way to go. Frank just shook his head and went into the school.

He found Janice Ambler and Jabe McDougal waiting for him. Jabe sprang to attention. Prudentia Gentileschi sat quietly in a corner, sketching something off of a television screen.

"At ease, Jabe. We're not in the barracks."

He went straight to the subject. "You still have all that video stuff you were doing after the Ring of Fire? That oral history project you were working on?"

"Sure, sir," replied Jabe. My tape's almost gone, though."

"Have you got footage of Eddie and Larry? Hans?"

Jabe nodded.

"Good. Can you put something together? By noon tomorrow?"

Jabe hesitated. He was only a self-taught video documentarian and even before the Ring of Fire he was far from certain he'd wanted to make a living making movies of any kind. Jabe had thought of his video projects as little more than a hobby.

But it was a serious hobby, so Jabe knew that the rule of thumb for editing footage was that one hour's work yielded one minute of usable footage. Cutting hours of footage down to sixty minutes in less than a day?

Insane.

For this, though, Jabe couldn't say no. "You'll have it, sir, Ms. Ambler. It'll be ready."

"Would you mind if I observe you?" Prudentia had been so quiet her presence had been forgotten.

Jabe crimsoned. "Sure, Prudentia. I wouldn't mind."

Frank told Jabe he would clear the young man's absence from the barracks. All of Jabe's video gear was at his house, in his old basement room. Frank continued to talk to Janice; his statement would be simulcast on VOA radio. Jabe and Prudentia left.

Jabe was preoccupied enough not to be nervous around Prudentia—at least not nearly as nervous as he usually was. Without even thinking, he broke the ice.

"What were you sketching, Prudentia?" he asked.

"A scene from
Dr. Strangelove
. General Ripper sitting at his desk, looking at his cigar. A lot of interesting play with light and shadow. It would, I think, make a good painting."

Without wanting to, Jabe blurted out the question that had really been bothering him. "Why did you want to come with me?"

"I grew up around artists, you know. I love to watch them work. I find it very inspirational for my own art."

"I'm not an artist."

"It may be so, but from my understanding of this
Orbis Incindiae
it is unlikely I shall ever see an artist in this medium of film, not anytime soon. Besides," she added, "you have a good eye and good sense of the beautiful."

Jabe flushed. Hastily, he decided the best course of action would be to shift the conversation away from himself. "How have you liked Grantville? It must be a lot different than the places you've lived."

"It is. I miss Napoli and Roma, but Grantville is a fascinating place. And the things I've learned, especially about the science of optics and behavior of light, have been magnificent. It's been most useful to me. But your beliefs and customs are rather shocking. Mother would not approve of me walking home with you."

"Why not? It's not like we're going to, you know, um, well . . ." That sentence trailed off into confused oblivion.

Prudentia smiled. "I trust you, Jabe. It's just that my mother's experience with men, especially when she was young, has led her to be . . . wary."

The McDougal house was empty, save for the dogs. Zula McDougal was still at work, Karin Jo and Kyle were still at school.

Hatfield, Llewellyn, and Dottie greeted Jabe with their usual enthusiasm. Hatfield, a golden retriever-husky mix, made his usual strange Chewbacca noises, with Llewellyn—Lew, for short—and Dot, both Pembroke Welsh corgis, adding to the din with their barking. Hatfield had been adopted from a shelter. Lew and Dot were originally only going to stay with the McDougals for a short time, until they found homes, but the Ring of Fire had made them permanent residents. Jabe's younger brother Kyle was trying to train the dogs to do useful work.

Jabe gave Hatfield a quick tummy rub and then scribbled a note, leaving it on the table where the first person home would see it. Prudentia phoned the Nobilis. Jabe escorted his guest to his basement room. He had originally shared a room with Kyle until the two brothers decided that absence would make the heart grow fonder and Jabe fled to the basement. It could get damp and chilly down there, especially since the Ring of Fire, but Jabe was more than willing to sacrifice a few comforts for privacy.

Jabe turned on his computer and pulled an extra chair up to the desk, while he looked through his tapes and got his camera.

Prudentia admired Jabe's computer, caressing its curved lines. She had seen many computers since coming to Grantville and they usually struck her as ugly in their design, even if they were quite useful things. This one was different, though. It seemed to have been designed by someone with a true artistic sense.

"Pretty, isn't it?" said Jabe as he sat down and began connecting his camera to his computer. "I've always loved Macs. I saved up for three years to buy this one, and the video stuff. 'Course, Eric Hudson helped me get the camera. He knew a guy in Morgantown who wanted a better one and was selling this one cheap."

Prudentia was less interested in Jabe's tools than his motivations, his inspirations. "Why do all this?" she asked.

Jabe reflected for a moment. "After the Ring of Fire, I got to thinking about how we were going to remember it. You know, what the history books would say. I got to thinking, well, I should talk to people in Grantville about the Ring of Fire. Get their memories of it before too much time passed so we wouldn't forget. I figure one of these days I'll watch all the interviews again, write the words down. Do a book."

Prudentia nodded. "So, then, why do you have extra on the soldiers?"

In the world Prudentia grew up in, mercenaries and prostitutes were below even actors in social rank. Even after a year in Grantville, she was still often uncomfortable with the Americans' peculiar notions of status and social mobility. She was grappling with her attitudes, though, and could see advantages to the way the Americans did things. After all, hadn't she been sent here because of that? Her mother Artemisia had fought against established customs her whole life, and wanted something different for her daughter. Prudentia was eager for any new insights.