Grantville Gazette Volume 25 Read online

  Jim Baen's Universe

  Grantville Gazette, Volume 25

  Grantville Gazette, Volume 25, 1 September 2009

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this magazine are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Grantville Gazette

  A 1632, Inc. Publication

  Grantville Gazette

  P. O. Box 7488

  Moore, OK 73153-1488

  What is this? About the Grantville Gazette

  Written by Grantville Gazette Staff

  The Grantville Gazette originated as a by-product of the ongoing and very active discussions which take place concerning the 1632 universe Eric Flint created in the novels 1632, 1633 and 1634: The Galileo Affair (the latter two books co-authored by David Weber and Andrew Dennis, respectively). This discussion is centered in three of the conferences in Baen's Bar, the discussion area of Baen Books' web site. The conferences are entitled "1632 Slush," "1632 Slush Comments" and "1632 Tech Manual." They have been in operation for almost seven years now, during which time nearly two hundred thousand posts have been made by hundreds of participants.

  Soon enough, the discussion began generating so-called "fanfic," stories written in the setting by fans of the series. A number of those were good enough to be published professionally. And, indeed, a number of them were—as part of the anthology Ring of Fire , which was published by Baen Books in January, 2004. ( Ring of Fire also includes stories written by established authors such as Eric Flint himself, as well as David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, Dave Freer, K.D. Wentworth and S.L. Viehl.)

  The decision to publish the Ring of Fire anthology triggered the writing of still more fanfic, even after submissions to the anthology were closed. Ring of Fire has been selling quite well since it came out, and a second anthology similar to it was published late in 2007. Another, Ring of Fire III, is forthcoming. It will also contain stories written by new writers, as well as professionals. But, in the meantime . . . the fanfic kept getting written, and people kept nudging Eric—well, pestering Eric—to give them feedback on their stories.

  Hence . . . the Grantville Gazette. Once he realized how many stories were being written—a number of them of publishable quality—he raised with Jim Baen the idea of producing an online magazine which would pay for fiction and nonfiction articles set in the 1632 universe and would be sold through Baen Books' Webscriptions service. Jim was willing to try it, to see what happened.

  As it turned out, the first issue of the electronic magazine sold well enough to make continuing the magazine a financially self-sustaining operation. Since then, even more volumes have been electronically published through the Baen Webscriptions site. As well, Grantville Gazette, Volume One was published in paperback in November of 2004. That has since been followed by hardcover editions of Grantville Gazette, Volumes Two, Three and Four.

  Then, two big steps:

  First: The magazine had been paying semi-pro rates for the electronic edition, increasing to pro rates upon transition to paper, but one of Eric's goals had long been to increase payments to the authors. Grantville Gazette, Volume Eleven is the first volume to pay the authors professional rates.

  Second: This on-line version you're reading. The site here at http://www.grantvillegazette.com is the electronic version of an ARC, an advance readers copy where you can read the issues as we assemble them. There are stories posted here which won't be coming out in the magazine for more than a year.

  How will it work out? Will we be able to continue at this rate? Well, we don't know. That's up to the readers. But we'll be here, continuing the saga, the soap opera, the drama and the comedy just as long as people are willing to read them.

  —The Grantville Gazette Staff

  FICTION:

  Franconia! Parts 2 and 3

  Written by Virginia DeMarce

  PART II

  ASK AN AUGUST SKY

  If that my lines, being placed before thy book,

  Could make it sell, or alter but a look

  Of some sour censurer, who's apt to say,

  No one in these times can produce a play

  Worthy his reading . . .

  Which to this tragedy must give my test,

  Thou has made many good, but this thy best.

  Joseph Taylor

  (To his long-known and loved friend,

  Mr. Philip Massinger, upon his "Roman Actor")

  Magdeburg, May 1634

  'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,

  Hard times, hard times, come again no more.

  Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.

  Oh! Hard times, come again no more.

  The guitar provided a driving rhythm behind the young woman's voice as she repeated the refrain for the fourth time. There were many better voices in the world, but perhaps none better suited to this song.

  Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,

  While we all sup sorrow with the poor.

  There's a song that will linger forever in our ears,

  Oh! Hard times, come again no more.

  In response to Philip Massinger's wave, the waitress plunked another stein of beer down on the table in front of him. Why hadn't he heard this song in Grantville? It was obviously an up-time song. It was the music, the rhythm, that made it new. The music with the words. The singer smiled at the audience. "I learned that off a Bob Dylan album."

  Not that its ideas were new. He had already written, years before,

  Some undone widow sits upon mine arm,

  And takes away the use of it; and my sword,

  Glued to my scabbard with wronged orphans' tears,

  Will not be drawn.

  He had intended to move to Magdeburg for the urbanity, the opportunities, of a large city. He had come to see it, leaving the boys in Grantville with his wife to finish the school semester. He had come to see the capital of this new . . . nation, yes, nation . . . growing and developing. He was no stranger to the idea of nation. Or country, at least . . . And patriotism, if not yet called by that name.

  What though my father

  Writ man before he was so, and confirm'd it,

  By numbering that day no part of his life

  In which he did not service to his country;

  Was he to be free therefore from the laws

  And ceremonious form in your decrees?

  Or else because he did as much as man

  In those three memorable overthrows,

  At Granson, Morat, Nancy, where his master,

  The warlike Charalois, with whose misfortunes

  I bear his name, lost treasure, men, and life,

  To be excused from payment of those sums

  Which (his own patrimony spent) his zeal

  To serve his country forced him to take up!

  Zeal to serve his country. How did it differ from this "patriotism?" As Tom and Dick's grandfather had written, A rose by any other name . . . Fanciful. Having passed a half century on this earth, he was becoming as fanciful as a man in his dotage. In any case. The song needed to go into the play that the boys were writing. Rewriting. What would the authors care if he added to their work? Or the composer care if he added his song to the opera of other men? They were dead. Or not yet alive. So he would go back to Grantville. Magdeburg could wait for him. For six years, after leaving Oxford, he had toured these Germanies in a troupe of actors. He could tour them once more before finding a safe haven in the capital of this new country . . . this new nation.

  Grantville

  Joe and Aura Lee Stull hosted the cast party for the high school production of Oklahoma!
because . . . Amber Higham counted the ways. Their son Billy was stage manager . . . they had room . . . Aura Lee was willing to do it. Unlike pre-Ring of Fire cast parties, it included parents, foster parents, guardians, and anyone who had been willing to loan a costume or a prop, which made it a fairly large undertaking. Amber looked around and concluded that except for her nagging worry as to exactly where some members of the chorus—specifically Anthony Green and Carly Baumgardner—were and what they might be doing there, it was going very smoothly. She moved to the kitchen door in hopes of spotting the truants in the back yard. Warm weather was a blessing. Warm weather was not always a blessing.

  A good-sized group of the men had retreated to the back porch. Joe Stull wandered into the kitchen and slid past Amber, with an expression on his face that made her suspect he was vaguely hoping that Aura Lee was too busy to notice his flight from hospitality duty. Not all truants were teenagers.

  * * *

  "I am a playwright, yes." Philip Massinger waved his hand at someone, a German, whom Joe hadn't met yet. "But an artisan of words, in no way really different from a wheelwright or a millwright. I take materials. Words, perchance immaterial but yet materials. A man can scarce write a play without them. I have my tools. Pen and paper rather than hammer and anvil, but tools."

  The other man grunted.

  "A wordsmith," Massinger continued. "Just as you may have a blacksmith or a goldsmith, and there is no more mystery to the craft. It is something that can be learned. True, some write better plays than others, but then everyone knows that some masters in any craft produce better work than others. Some, perhaps, one should just call 'fully competent.' Others have a spark of genius. But that applies as well to the making of saddles as the making of poems." He paused. "I even work frequently with others, meshing my work with theirs. An immature poet imitates; a mature poet steals. Yet I consider myself to be changing the products of others to meet specifications. Improving upon them, I would hope. You have a word for this. I found it when I looked myself up in the encyclopedia. I was known for many collaborations. Most, alas, had been lost by the time of the Ring of Fire, so I presume that I will have to go to the labor of writing them again, those I produced between now and my death, with no idea beyond the titles of what they may have contained the first time I wrote them. However . . ."

  Massinger's voice trailed off; then resumed in a different tone.

  "Joe, good to see you. Have you met Wilhelm Schaupp from Weimar? He's the uncle and guardian of Zacharias, who's living with George and Lorrie Mundell while he goes to high school. Zach's the boy who translated a lot of Tom and Dick's version of Oklahoma! into German for us. I'm trying to talk him into letting Zach go on tour with us this summer."

  "Yeah, I know Zach. Billy's had him over several times. Pleased to meet you." Joe stuck out his hand.

  Massinger smiled as he continued his introduction. "Herr Stull is the Secretary of Transportation for the State of Thuringia-Franconia."

  Schaupp looked at his new acquaintance with considerably more interest and took the hand that was waving in front of him.

  "Herr Stull's son Billy will be touring with our troupe this summer, I hope." Massinger's emphasis was subtle, but unmistakable. After all, what minor bureaucrat in Weimar would object to having his nephew become a close friend of the son of a higher state official? Well, there might be one. Somewhere.

  "In your dreams," as Billy would say.

  Herr Schaupp would be a summer friend, whose flattering leaves, that shadowed a man in his prosperity, would with the least gust drop off in the autumn of adversity. Not that one should disdain the shade while it existed. Perhaps some patronage might be attainable through Schaupp. Massinger smiled, his pale blond, almost invisible, eyelashes blinking in the flickering light of the gas lanterns that the Stulls had installed at the rear of their house.

  * * *

  "All the girl who plays Laurey has to do is look pretty and be a soprano with enough volume that her voice fills the theater. She doesn't have to be able to act. She doesn't even have to be a spectacularly good singer, because the sung portion of the role has a lot of duets and ensembles. Amber has assured me of this. The person who plays Ado Annie has to be able to act, but not Laurey. Pretty is enough. Stand, look pretty, and sing a little."

  Antonia Massinger frowned at her husband.

  "Tom will play Ado Annie, in any case. I have found no girl in Grantville with the proper feel and timing for comedy."

  She would play the part of Aunt Eller herself, of course. There had never been any doubt of that, not from the first glimmer of Philip's new idea. One of the many things she hated about the English was that their benighted censors had never allowed her, in nearly twenty years, to appear upon the public stage. Private theatricals, yes, but not public ones. If she hadn't loved Philip so much—if she hadn't impulsively plunged into marriage with him, a foreigner, when she was barely twenty and had a great career before her in Stuttgart—she would have shaken the dust of the place from her sandals and returned to civilized lands. What had Dick's girlfriend told her the word was? "Retro." Yes. England was certainly "retro."

  Now that she was back home, she intended to be a full partner in their enterprises, and that included casting the female parts for this . . . cabaret . . . that the boys wrote and which, greatly expanded by Philip, they would include as a novelty in their tour this summer. And going back on stage. Playing any roles that a woman nearing her fiftieth year could play. One had to admit that the English at least wrote meaty roles for a woman of a certain age. Gertrude. Lady MacBeth. Perhaps it was because the playwrights knew that men, not infrequently themselves or their next friends, would be acting them and thus granted themselves starring parts. But one should take a boon where one found it without excessive questioning of the bounty.

  "This means?" Massinger steepled his fingers together.

  "Barbara Ostertag has the range to sing Laurey's songs. Lorrie Mitchell, the up-timer she lives with, is willing to let her go with us. Even if that were not so, Barbara is twenty, of age as the up-timers see it. She can make up her own mind."

  "You. Barbara. Tom. Who else?"

  "We can hire local singers for the chorus every place we go. That will increase interest in the piece. Not to mention saving a lot of transportation expense. The music will all be new to them, but it is not that difficult."

  "Not as we have transcribed it for the cabaret. My ears are much more at peace with the songs from Oklahoma! when they are performed without the orchestra. With just the melody line and a lute, a couple of violins, perhaps a recorder for the themes. Or violin, viol, shawm and sackbut. Pipes, perhaps? No dissonant overture. No clashing intervals or harmonies. No . . ."

  "Old-fashioned, Philip. Grievously old-fashioned. The young people . . ."

  ". . . rarely have enough money to pay for tickets. It is their parents who pay for tickets. If we offer a play that pains the ears of those who attend the first night, there will be no audience for the second or the third." He shook his head. "Who will understudy Barbara?"

  "Anna Maria Reisdorfer. The girl from the 'beauty shop.' In a pinch, she can also understudy Tom. We only need to hope that both Barbara and Tom are not indisposed for the same performance."

  "Find someone else who can understudy Tom. I have trust in divine providence, to be sure. But not that much trust. Surely one of the boys from the troupe we gathered together on our way to Grantville can do it."

  "We have been here for months. Their voices have all changed. The male roles are no problem. There are three of us who could understudy Dick for the role of Jud. Any of them can also understudy Ned Bass for Will Parker. Two who can understudy Ludovic for Curly. All of them, with enough makeup, can understudy you if the need arises. Don't worry. I will find someone else who can act Ado Annie. As Amber says, that role must be acted."

  "I want an up-timer, even if she may be lacking in the timing and feel for comedy. Another novelty. Something we can put on placards t
o attract the audiences. We're not in this business as a matter of charity. When she isn't needed as Ado Annie, she can sing Gertie. When she is . . . always make sure that one of the chorus members knows Gertie's lines."

  "Yes, dear." Antonia's voice dripped honey.

  "Ask Amber. She must know someone."

  "Yes, dear." A pause. "Do you really think I was born yesterday?"

  The motion of her buttocks, as she departed, had to be classified as a flounce. Ah . . .

  The sum of all that makes a just man happy

  Consists in the well choosing of his wife:

  And there, well to discharge it, does require

  Equality of years, of birth, of fortune.

  In this matter, Massinger counted himself fortunate indeed.

  * * *

  "Mariah Collins for Ado Annie," Amber said. "She sang a couple of character roles. And Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls her senior year. Her perpetual case of the sniffles brought the house down, though Grantville always has a pretty generous audience for the high school plays. She graduated in 1632. Not a pretty girl, I'm sorry to say, but she has aptitude. She took the geology summer camp training right after she finished high school. She's been out in the field working, but just finished up her contract and came back to see about her sister Megan. Their parents were left up-time and she's not too happy that Megan's gotten engaged to Ronnie Baumgardner.

  "Actually, Ronnie's okay as far as I know, but his father . . . I can see her point. Zane Baumgardner isn't anyone that I would want on my grandchildren's family tree. If I had ever had children, that is. Way too late, now that I finally have a decent man in my sights. He's still not someone I'd want on my prospective step-grandchildren's family tree. Thank goodness, none of my nieces ever got involved with the guy.