Very rude requests, to boot. The man could be quite insufferable.
Night finally fell, on that first day. Tom thought it had probably been the longest day in his life. It had certainly been the most harrowing.
Two thousand feet above him, as she tried to get to sleep, his wife Rita thought exactly the same. And she was afraid she’d have the nightmares to prove it. Throughout the day, she’d been getting periodic flashbacks to the gunfights of the night just passed. The most upsetting was the look on the face of the soldier whom she’d shot dead outside the broken shop window.
He’d been young, barely more than a boy. At the very end, just before she pulled the trigger, he’d obviously understood that he was about to die.
That look…
It hadn’t been so much an expression of despair as one of sorrow, for the things he would now never see, never do, never know, never feel. Rita was quite certain that she would carry that memory with her for all her days on earth, however many they might prove to be. She could live to be a hundred, and would never forget the man whom she’d severed from whatever days might have been his.
Not far from her in the gondola, on the other hand, Stefano Franchetti and Mary Tanner Barancek were having a very pleasant evening. They were engaged in the sort of lively conversation that young people think is dazzling beyond belief-no greater conversation had been held anywhere on the planet since Socrates questioned his guests-because every sentence, every phrase, seemed loaded with suggestion and invitation.
The conversation was all the more dazzling for the fact that Mary’s grim aunt and her two fellow Furies were no longer on board the Pelican. They had been dropped off in Regensburg when the airship made its refueling stop earlier in the day. Rita had pointed out that there was really no purpose in the three auditors staying aboard, and the Pelican could use the extra lift provided by their departure to carry more fuel. Willa had been reluctant, but finally agreed when Maydene stated-quite bluntly-that there was not much opportunity for premarital coitus in the gondola of an active airship, especially with Rita not more than ten feet away from the youngsters in question. Estelle then weighed in by pointing out-just as bluntly-that even if such activity did take place, the girl was now of legal age and she’d hardly be the first country bumpkin to get screwed by a slick fellow of the Latin persuasion. She’d survive.
Bonnie Weaver and Heinz Bocler did not get to sleep until much later in the evening. The secretary stayed up for hours, checking with everyone in the refugee camp to make sure that they’d gotten something to eat and that no one, especially children and the elderly, was going to spend the night in freezing conditions. Those people who were short of blankets or other sorts of bedding got some loaned to them by people who were in better shape. On their own, they might or might not have made such offers, but the combination of Bocler’s quiet persistence and his ever-ready notebook turned the trick. No one doubted for a moment that if the province administrator’s personal secretary said he would keep accurate records of who had lent what to whom, it would surely be done and done properly.
In the event, Bonnie wound up keeping most of those records. She accompanied Heinz on his rounds and figured out early on that it made more sense for him to concentrate on wheedling people and for her to do his bookkeeping for him. It wasn’t that he was a better wheedler than she was. Actually, he was rather inept at it. But he was extraordinarily persistent, long past the point where Bonnie herself would have stalked off in disgust at someone’s recalcitrance and pigheaded selfishness.
So, she let him wheedle and cajole and harass and pester, while she wielded the magic pen. That worked because Heinz always introduced her as his secretary, which apparently satisfied the proprieties. It turned out that maintaining a clear and precise chain of bureaucracy was every bit as essential in Heinz’s line of work as maintaining a clear and precise chain of custody was for police work.
Who knew?
Chapter 13
The second day was a carbon copy of the first, for all intents and purposes. Two small armies kept moving slowly down the Danube. They were of approximately equal size, fifteen hundred people in each. But two-thirds of the leading army consisted of civilians, where the entire pursuing force was made up of infantrymen.
For whatever reason, however, the following army was moving no faster than the one it was pursuing. Hour after hour, now two days in a row, it remained about a mile behind. Close enough to make the fact of a pursuit obvious, but not so close-not once-as to make it necessary for Tom to break off the march and arrange his men into a defensive formation.
That was odd, on the face of it. Very odd, in fact. No large body of people could move quickly under these conditions, that was a given. Still, the pursuing force was made up of men in fit condition-well, mostly-and carrying nothing more than muskets and backpacks, with a supply train bringing up the rear. In contrast, a very large percentage of the fifteen hundred people ahead of them were composed of elderly people, children, the ill-there were two very visibly pregnant women in the mix, even. Not to mention carts and wagons of all sorts including field guns and caissons. You’d think they’d have been able to move at least a little bit faster.
By the evening of the second day, when they made camp for the night again, Tom was pretty sure he knew what was happening. And he’d had all day to decide what to do in response.
So, he assembled a war council of his top officers, to which he also summoned the leaders of his (very unofficial) air force.
The suspicion privately entertained by some that he’d done so in order to see his wife again was actually quite unfair-as was proven by the fact that, once the meeting was over, Rita got back into the Pelican and flew off.
Stefano Franchetti’s uncle Filippo attended the council as well. The Albatross had successfully spirited away the two young Bavarian heirs from Amberg the day before. Actually, they’d done it in plain sight at the airfield and in broad daylight because the Bavarian cavalry was still a good two days away. At Ed Piazza’s request, once Filippo brought the boys to Bamberg, Estuban Miro had agreed to send the Albatross down to the Danube to provide whatever assistance it could to Major Simpson and its sister airship.
When Tom finished explaining his plan, the reaction of his officers was stalwart and supportive. The reaction of the two Franchettis was enthusiastic. That of Rita, uncertain. That of Heinz Bocler, dubious. That of Bonnie Weaver, agitated.
The officers were stalwart and supportive because they were soldiers and, besides, the plan didn’t require them to do anything.
The Franchettis were enthusiastic because they foresaw their future fame. Their sure and certain place in the history, since they would fall into the blessed category of “The Men Who First…”
Rita was uncertain because she didn’t know enough about the issues involved.
The provincial secretary was dubious because he was a dubious man by nature.
Bonnie was agitated because she’d not only taken some chemistry courses but, in her days hanging around with Larry Wild and his friends, had picked up a fair amount of knowledge on the subject. And because Tom wanted to put her in charge of the technical side of the project.
“You need to add styrofoam to the gasoline to make decent napalm,” she protested. “Where are we going to find that much styrofoam? I doubt if there’s even much left in Grantville, these days.”
“You can substitute soap or sugar, can’t you?”
Bonnie frowned. “Well…I remember Larry and the guys talking about it. They wanted to try, naturally-boys! But they never got around to it. Besides, I don’t know what kind of soap and I think it’s supposed to be powdered sugar and that’s a lot trickier than it sounds. There’s probably enough sugar in Regensburg, now that they’re making it from sorghum around Freyburg, but very little of it will be powdered. And it’s pretty expensive, no matter how it comes. Who’s going to pay for it?”