Chapter 3: Security Consultants
Wednesday, May 11, 1633
For the next two days, the men worked as day laborers, one here or there, occasionally two together. Most of them were assigned to maintenance jobs, providing a strong back and arms to lift as spring repairs and maintenance was conducted on all manner of equipment. The decidedly less-glamorous job was moving rocks out of fields and helping repair fences.
Ursula, Anna, and Astrid cooked the meals and cleaned the room and the restrooms in the refugee housing. They ventured out into Spring Branch and found a market where they bought food for the day. It was open-air, in a cleared area in the middle of Spring Branch, where a row of townhouses built sometime in the last two years blocked the direction of the prevailing wind. They haggled over bread, meat, and root vegetables. Astrid felt it was similar to working for Frau Sophia in the schloss in some ways—but this was for themselves.
Johann came home from school each day and told the adults about his new friends. He liked Grantville school much better than the village school. He was in what the Americans called first grade. The plan was for him to catch up on certain things over the summer and then start second grade in the fall.
On Wednesday afternoon, there was a knock on the door. Astrid rose from her seat at the table in the center of the room and opened the door. A man in one of the mottled green-brown-black uniforms stepped inside. He carried an envelope.
“I am looking for Edgar Neustatter. Chief Frost said I could find him here.”
“The men took day jobs today,” she told him, “but I can give him a message when they return.”
The soldier looked doubtful. “I am supposed to give this to him. It is the contract for the escort to Erfurt tomorrow.”
“I will give it to him.”
“What are you, his secretary?”
Astrid wondered what that meant. But she repeated, “I will give it to him when he returns from work.”
“How do I know you will?”
“Neustatter leads eight men from our village, including my brother and my cousin.” She pointed out the door at the pot over the fire. “We are already preparing dinner for them.”
He frowned. “All right. Make sure you give it to Herr Neustatter. They’d better be there bright and early in the morning. The truck leaves at eight o’clock sharp.”
Astrid did not let the envelope out of her sight. When the men returned, she handed it to Neustatter.
“A soldier brought this, for Herr Neustatter.”
Neustatter grinned. “Thank you, Fräulein Schäubin.”
She rolled her eyes at his form of address. “Neustatter, what is a secretary?”
“Hmm. I do not know.”
Thursday, May 12, 1633
The men left after breakfast. They were the escort for a shipment of goods to Erfurt. Presumably the shipment was military supplies, but nobody said what was in the crates. It would be carried in two pickup trucks, and Neustatter planned to put one man at each corner in the back of the trucks. They intended to reach Erfurt in a single day! And then come back tomorrow.
By mid-afternoon, the women had cleaned everything that could be cleaned. Astrid had nothing to do, so she set out to her class early, intending to ask at the school and find out what a secretary was. Besides, every time she walked through Grantville slowly enough to look around, she noticed some new marvel.
She decided to start at the administrative center. The walls were painted a gleaming white, brown carpet covered the floor, and a wooden counter stood halfway across the room. The arrangement left a lot of open room on the visitors’ side of the counter. Astrid could see why; she waited patiently while several people asked the two women behind the counter various questions. Then one of the women looked at her.
“May I help you, Miss?”
“I hope so. I need to learn what a secretary is.”
The woman laughed. She indicated herself and the other woman behind the counter. “You are in luck. We are secretaries,” she told Astrid in German.
Astrid smiled. “Oh, gut. What do you do?”
“First, who sent you here with that question?”
Astrid related the circumstances.
“We manage all the details. Make sure Herr Saluzzo’s meetings get scheduled, the announcements get made, all the paperwork gets to and from each teacher . . . It sounds like the men in your group might need someone to keep track of their work. When on what day they need to be somewhere, how many, anything they need to bring. Someone also has to handle the money.”
“Danke.”
“How long have you been in Grantville?”
“The men were here during the winter. They came home and got us. We just arrived last Friday.” Astrid wasn’t about to explain that they had fled from Herr Augustus.
“Where are you staying?”
“In the refugee housing in Spring Branch. By the power plant.”
The woman behind the counter—the secretary—nodded. “Has someone from the Ecumenical Relief Committee talked to you?”
Astrid was cautious. “I do not know what that means. But I think those are the people who gave us a room and told us the rules for the refugee housing.”
“Oh, good. They have an office there at the housing, you know. If you need anything or just need to find something in Grantville, just ask.”
Astrid’s face lit up. “Danke. Ursula does not like the market where we bought food.”
“Where was that?”
Astrid described the small outdoor market in Spring Branch.
“You should go to one of the grocery stores in Grantville,” the secretary told her.
“What is that?”
The woman explained briefly.
“Danke! Oh, I must go to class.”
“What is your name?”
“Astrid Schäubin.”
“I am Rosina Herbig.” She indicated the other woman at the counter. “That’s Jenny Lynch.”
Friday, May 13, 1633
In the morning, the women and Johann ate breakfast. Once Ursula had put him aboard one of the buses, she returned to their quarters.
“We need to buy food,” she announced.
“I spoke to a secretary at the high school,” Astrid said. “She said that the people who gave us these quarters would be willing to show us where to buy food in Grantville—at indoor shops. We do not need to buy in the outdoor market here in Spring Branch.”
Ursula looked skeptical.
“All we have to do is go ask Gisele or one of the other nice women to show us a few places in Grantville.”
“Why not?” Anna stood up from the table. “I would like to see some more of Grantville.”
Ursula muttered something about no good coming of this, but joined Astrid and Anna in bundling up the group’s valuables in their packs and then walking over to the office.
That building was wooden, with the same rough look as the refugee housing. Astrid swung the door open, and the three of them stepped into a reception area. A middle-aged woman was seated at a desk. Beyond her, several older women were seated around a table in an open area in the back.
“Guten Morgen. What can I help you with?”
“Is this the . . . ” Astrid trailed off, not remembering the words.
“The Grantville Ecumenical Relief Committee? Ja.”
Astrid smiled her thanks. “One of the secretaries at the high school told me that you could show newcomers where things are in Grantville.”
“Of course. What do you need?”
“We would like to find a place to buy food in Grantville.”
The woman suddenly looked concerned. “Are you out of food?”
“Ja. We would like to buy more. The secretary said there are . . . not markets, but stores that sell food in Grantville.”
“Do you mean a tavern or an inn where you would pay for a meal?”
“Nein. What she described sounded like a market, but inside a building.”
“Oh! A grocery store?”
“Ja, I think that is what she said.”
“If you don’t mind the walk, I can take you to one.” The woman smiled. “Ich heisse ist Mathilde.”
Astrid, Ursula, and Anna introduced themselves. Mathilde waved to those at the table, and one of the younger women took her place at the desk.
The four of them began walking toward Grantville. Mathilde chatted away, telling them about who was who and what was where in Grantville. Astrid hoped she could remember at least some of it.
“This is Garrett’s Super Market,” Mathilde finally said. “There’s Stevenson’s and Johnson’s, too. I just picked the closest one. You can check out the other two on your next trips.”
Astrid noticed that Ursula looked skeptical. She stifled a smile. Ursula was quite confident that her very definite standards were correct. Astrid suspected she meant to see how the up-time “grocery store” measured up before buying anything.
Mathilde held the door open for them. Ursula stepped inside first and stopped just inside the door.
“What is it?” Anna asked.
After a moment, Ursula moved aside, and Astrid could see what had made her stop dead. The store was full of food. Rows and rows of shelves filled the building, taller than any of them were. There was food on all of them.
Between them and the shelves was a row of strange devices. They looked like counters, but as Astrid watched, a woman placed food on the counter, and it moved. The food slid down the counter of its own accord.
“What is that?” Ursula demanded.
“It is a conveyor belt,” Mathilde explained. “The cashier controls it.”
“Oh.”
The clerk behind the counter placed the food in bags that the woman had brought with her. The woman paid and went out the door.
The cashier looked their way and motioned them away from the door. A man hurried in behind them and went straight for the third row of shelves. No one was waiting at the counter, so the clerk approached them.
“You look new here.”
They nodded. “They arrived a few days ago,” Mathilde said.
“Welcome to Grantville. I’m Marilyn Hooper.”
Ursula, Astrid, and Anna introduced themselves.
“I know it’s not much to look at,” Marilyn apologized. “Before the Ring of Fire happened, nearly everything was in packages of plastic or cardboard or metal cans. Nice neat rows. Lots of choices.” Her smile looked a little dreamy. “Back up-time, our country did grocery stores really, really well. We’ve had to make adjustments.”
“I have never seen so much food in one place!” Anna exclaimed.
Marilyn smiled. “We try. Mathilde knows where everything is, almost as well as we do. If you can’t find something, just ask.”
Mathilde walked over to a long row of thin metal rods and pulled a section away from the rest. Astrid realized it was a cart with four small wheels. The front two rotated to face any direction. The rest of it was just the thin metal rods, bent and somehow fastened into the shape of a cart, with a handle and some other complication on one end. Mathilde pushed it with ease.
“Let’s start down there.” She pointed to one end of the store. “Do you have a list?”
“What?”
“A shopping list. We write down what we need, usually in the same order that the store is laid out. Some people plan what they will make for each meal and buy those ingredients. Others just know what they want to have on hand and make meals out of those.”
Seeing that neither Ursula nor Anna were answering, Astrid said, “We thought we would simply eat what was available. We did not expect all these choices. We come from a small village, and we grew or raised almost everything we ate.”
Marilyn nodded. “Like I said, up-time there were a lot more choices. But Grantville’s doing okay.” She shuddered just a bit. “Better than our first winter here.”
“Was there not enough food?” Ursula managed to ask.
“Just barely enough. But the same things day after day after day.”
The three women from the village exchanged glances. Ursula asked the question. “Do you not eat the same foods each day? Prepared differently, of course.”
“Like fish on Friday and taco Tuesday?” Marilyn smiled. “In my family it was meatloaf on Mondays. Matt likes to have burgers at least once a week, but I try to switch the rest up.”
It sounded to Astrid like Grantville clerks were eating like Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia did.
Mathilde thanked Marilyn and led them off to one side of the store. “Vegetables are over here. There are not a lot right now but later in the summer and autumn, this whole area will be full. One reason that people try to move out of the refugee housing as soon as they can is so they can plant their own gardens.”
All three women nodded. That simply made sense. Why buy something you could grow?
Ursula stuck to vegetables they knew. There were a couple others that none of them had seen before.
“What are those?” Anna asked.
“Oh. Carrots.”
Anna blinked. “Carrots are not orange.”
“Ja, up-time.”
Anna and Astrid exchanged glances. Cars and conveyor belts were one thing. But orange carrots?
“Are their other foods different colors, too?” Anna asked carefully.
Mathilde thought about that. “Some of their cabbages are strange. Still green, but bred . . . strangely.”
She turned the cart into the next row, and Astrid saw it was full of bread. And rolls. And so on.
“You may hear an up-time expression,” Mathilde told them. “‘The greatest thing since sliced bread.’ Up-time, the bread they bought was already sliced.”
That seemed strange to Astrid. Why would anyone take the time to do that?
Each shelf had a label: white bread, rye bread, pumpernickel.
“Rugbrød!” Astrid exclaimed.
Ursula, Anna, and Mathilde looked at her.
“My mother used to make this.” Astrid said the words quietly. Her parents and Ditmar’s had died of sickness three years before the men had gone off to war.
“I remember this,” Ursula said. “Your mother was a good baker.”
Ursula added a loaf of rugbrød to the cart. Astrid smiled. That was probably the highest compliment someone could get from Ursula.
Mathilde was smiling, too. “Here you are, new to Grantville, and you already know something I do not. What is this bread?”
“It is Danish bread,” Astrid explained. “It is sourdough made with rye. Sometimes with some wheat.”
Ursula added some more familiar rye bread to the cart as well.
The next row held other baked goods: rolls, something that Astrid had never heard of called strudel that sounded German, various kuchens and torten, and dampfnudeln.
“I could make these,” Ursula said, “if we had a place to do it.”
“There is a community oven at the housing,” Mathilde told them.
“Oh! That changes everything,” Ursula declared. She quickly returned the rye bread to its place on the shelf and began looking for individual ingredients.
Astrid started running through the list of ingredients they’d used when Frau Sophia wanted fresh bread. She quickly decided that Mathilde’s idea of a list for shopping was a good one. They were soon able to find everything and moved on to the meat counter.
It was more than just one counter. One row of shelves along the wall was enclosed behind glass doors.
“These are refrigerated,” Mathilde explained. “So the meat will not spoil.”
Ursula had definite ideas about what kinds of meat she wanted. Astrid let her pick. Whatever Ursula made would be good, and Astrid had a lot less experience cooking meat.
Once they had everything, Astrid wheeled the cart to Marilyn’s moving counter. The food cost most of the money they had.
Marilyn handed Ursula some change. “Have a safe Friday the thirteenth.”
Astrid looked at her curiously. “What is that? A holiday?”
Marilyn laughed. “No. Some up-timers are superstitious and think that when Friday falls on the thirteenth of the month, that day brings bad luck.”
That did not make any sense to Astrid. But she knew that different villages had their own customs. Why not Grantville, too? She had no desire to insult them by mistake, so she said nothing about that. She did have to ask about the other thing, though . . .
“What is an up-timer?”
“Anybody who came through the Ring of Fire from the year 2000,” Marilyn answered. “All of you who were already living here are down-timers.”
“Ja, we are down-timers,” Mathilde confirmed.
On the walk back to the refugee housing with full backpacks, Astrid found herself walking beside Anna. “I did not realize we were calling ourselves that,” she said.
***
The men arrived in time for dinner. They’d been paid well. Some of them wanted to go spend that money right away, but Astrid could see Neustatter had other ideas.
“I would like all of us to discuss it after dinner,” he said.
Dinner was mutton, kale, bread, and small beer. It was good. By the time the women returned from grocery shopping, there had not been enough time to make a stew. But Ursula was a good cook, and they had bought some spices that they’d seldom had access to in the village but which were readily available in Grantville.
“This is good,” Lukas declared.
After dinner, Ditmar and Hjalmar helped clean tableware, cups, and bowls. Once the cooking pot had been carried inside, Neustatter and Karl stoked the fire higher.
“I got a look at some cooking irons today,” Karl stated. “They were not quite what I wanted but gave me ideas. I think with practice I could make clamps to hold more than one pot over the fire.”
Neustatter carefully leaned another piece of wood onto the fire. “That is an interesting thought, Karl. Is that something you could make yourself?”
“I might need some help with the first one, but I think I could find someone at one of the smithies who will show me what to do.”
The outdoor fireplace wasn’t much more than a circle of stones with the ground cleared away for a few feet all the way around it. Previous occupants of the refugee quarters had saved a couple larger logs which served as benches.
“Find a comfortable place,” Neustatter directed after a few minutes. “We need to talk about living and working in Grantville.”
Once everyone was settled, Neustatter looked around the circle. Ursula had brought a chair outside. She sat off to his left, near the fire but not too close, leaning slightly forward. Stefan was sitting on the end of one of the logs, more or less next to her. Their son Johann was beside Stephan. Wolfram and Anna sat on the far end of that log. The other log lay at a shallow angle to the first and was occupied by the Schaubs—Ditmar, Hjalmar, and Astrid. Otto and Lukas sat on the ground next to Karl over to Neustatter’s right.
“This refugee housing is charity from the city of Grantville. I appreciate their good work, but I do not want to depend on it longer than is necessary.”
“Agreed,” Karl said instantly. He was seated on the ground, a bit back from the rest of them, leaning back on his arms, but missing nothing.
“Ja.” Ursula’s agreement was less than a second behind Karl’s.
“We need a plan,” Neustatter said next. “If we control our expenses—what the up-timers call keeping a budget—we can save up enough money to pay for our own housing. There are apartments in several places in Grantville, with more being built all the time, even along the roads outside the Ring of Fire.”
Astrid heard murmurs of agreement from those sitting on the logs.
“In one sense, it does not matter what jobs we take,” Neustatter continued. “We could all work different jobs and pool enough of our funds to afford a place to live. Or we could work together. We might even be able to support ourselves working day jobs. They pay well enough according to what we are used to, but living in Grantville is more expensive than living in the village.”
When he paused, Astrid spoke up from where she was seated. “It feels like that to me, too, Neustatter.” She shrugged. “But I cannot tell how much more.”
By the firelight, she could see Neustatter nodding in agreement. “That is sort of the reason you are in the math class. It may be one way to figure it out.”
“It will take time to learn the math,” she said.
“Of course,” Neustatter agreed. “It will take Wolfram time to learn medicine, too. And Karl the new smithing techniques. But the rest of us . . . I think we could do well guarding goods between towns. There may be work guarding certain locations, too.”
Stefan stood, hands on the back of Ursula’s chair. “Will they not use their army for that?”
“Their army is small, and they do not garrison many locations,” Neustatter explained. “What they had at Alte Veste was most of it. We saw how they fought. They will keep their forces together for decisive battle. They employ mercenary companies for outlying garrisons. I have heard of one in Hof, for instance.”
“I do not want to be in an army.”
Astrid suppressed a smile. Lukas’ grumbling tone and disheveled appearance made her think that if he weren’t part of their group, he wouldn’t be able to be too choosy about his employment.
She saw Otto give Lukas a quick glance and wondered if he were thinking the same thing. She was glad to see it, because Otto had been so quiet since they left the village that he reminded her of what Anna had been like before Wolfram returned.
“I agree with Lukas.” Karl’s words carried easily.
“So do I. And the up-timers are used to private companies doing this sort of thing,” Neustatter said.
“If we can believe the movies,” Stefan put in.
“I talked to Chief Frost,” Neustatter said. “I have another appointment with him next week. But since you mentioned the movies . . . ”
Lukas interrupted before Neustatter could tell them about any movies. “How are we going to decide which jobs to take?”
“We should all have a say,” Stefan asserted.
“My say is that Neustatter decides things like that.” Karl’s voice was a low rumble. He had not bothered to raise it. “It is what we did during the war.”
“That was because he was a chosen man, for a while,” Stefan countered.
“I agree,” Wolfram said. “With Karl.”
Astrid saw from the men’s reactions that this was important. Wolfram wasn’t agreeing with his buddy Stefan. Her brother and cousin looked more intent, Stefan frowned, and Karl stopped leaning back on his hands.
The fire crackled. Karl prompted, “Ditmar? Hjalmar?”
Stefan waived a hand. “Of course they’re going to agree with Neustatter. They are his chosen men, are they not?”
“That is fair, Stefan. Chosen men should speak last. If I spoke first, I might intimidate the rest of you.” Ditmar grinned.
Karl gave a booming laugh. “Intimidate this bunch?”
Most of the men laughed. Even Stefan gave a brief smile.
But then he asked, “What if we do not like the jobs Neustatter picks?”
“What kind of jobs do you not want?” Neustatter asked. “Is guarding wagons acceptable?”
“As long as I am not left out on my own,” Lukas said.
“That is tactics,” Neustatter said. “The problem was not the wagons. Does anyone care what was in the wagons?”
Heads shook all around. “Not as long as we get paid,” Lukas said.
“What about guarding buildings?”
Otto looked up at that. He had been sitting with his legs pulled up and his arms wrapped around his knees. “When it comes to standing guard, a building is just a wagon that does not move. Different shape, so we stand in different places. As long as it is not something for Wallenstein, I do not really care what is inside.”
Hjalmar nodded. “Well said, Otto.”
“I do not want to guard the adel’s riches,” Stefan said.
Neustatter nodded. “I do not think I would take that job if I had another to choose.”
“A good distinction,” Wolfram said. “I would like to not guard anything for the adel, either. But if we needed to, to have food and shelter, I would.”
Stefan frowned. “As long as we charge them extra.”
Neustatter laughed. “I believe we are in agreement.”
Astrid was glad of that. She was tired of sitting on the log and wanted to stretch.
“So what is this?” Ursula asked. “Our own gemeinde, and Neustatter is the head man?”
“Ja,” Karl said.
Wolfram nodded his head. “Ja.”
Lukas sighed. “Oh, all right.”
“Otto?” Neustatter asked.
“Ja.”
“Miss Schäubin?”
“Ja.”
Stefan and Ursula whispered back and forth for a moment. Then Stefan looked up and said, “Ja. At least for now.”
“Me, too!” Johann shouted.
Neustatter laughed. “All right. Team leaders?”
“We are in,” Hjalmar said.
“Gut.” Neustatter smiled. “I will try to find something better than working for the adel or Wallenstein. We will share the profits—after we keep a reserve against hard times. If anyone decides to take his share and go out on his own, I will not hold it against you.”
Lukas spoke up. “I am not sure we need three women to do the cooking and cleaning.”
“You can clean up after yourself,” Astrid shot back. “I am the secretary.”
Monday, May 16, 1633
“Miss Schäubin, is my schedule clear this morning?”
Astrid looked up from her breakfast. She already regretted telling him what a secretary was. “Ja, Neustatter. So far, you do not have a job for the day.”
“Gut. I have an appointment with Chief Frost at ten o’clock.” Neustatter gave her a crooked smile. “Since you are the secretary, you should come along.”
Astrid rolled her eyes and wondered if being the group’s secretary was really a viable job.
The first thing Astrid noticed at the polizei station was that the building itself was little more than a large house. Oh, it might have always been the polizei station, but it was plain and not very big. It had a big porch in front. Inside, a hallway led straight back, but there was a sign on a thin metal post stuck into a heavy metal disc on the floor. It directed everyone who was not a polizei officer to the room on the left.
Astrid saw a couple polizei officers moving from one room to another. They were wearing uniforms. At least one of those uniforms looked down-time-made. The shirts, trousers, and shoes were one thing, but each wore a heavy belt from which hung a holstered pistol and several other items that she could not identify. These men were very different from any town watch she had ever heard of.
Once she and Neustatter entered the room on the left, they saw it was divided in two by a long, tall counter. It looked fairly new and was topped with some substance she could not identify. Another up-time material, like the road-stone. One polizei officer stood in the back of the room, but a woman seated behind the counter seemed to be the one who talked to people.
“Edgar Neustatter and Astrid Schäubin to see Chief Frost, bitte,” Neustatter said. “We have an appointment.”
The woman glanced down at some sort of ledger on her side of the counter. “I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said. She picked up a curved . . . Astrid did not know what it was or what it was made of. The woman talked to it and then told them that Chief Frost would see them now.
Astrid wondered what had just happened. “Excuse me, bitte. What is that?”
“It is a telephone. I can call people in Grantville—or anywhere there are phone wires—and talk to them.”
Astrid’s eyes widened. That was as amazing as trains and cars.
“Danke.” Astrid followed Neustatter to Chief Frost’s office.
Frost immediately stood and shook Neustatter’s hand. “Neustatter.” Then he shook Astrid’s hand. “Miss?”
“Astrid Schäubin.”
“And you are?”
“Neustatter’s secretary.”
Frost’s eyebrows rose. “So, you are forming an agency?”
“That is what we are here to talk to you about,” Neustatter acknowledged. “Astrid is Hjalmar’s sister and Ditmar’s cousin. She claimed the secretary position when Lukas said we didn’t need three women to clean up.”
Dan Frost raised an eyebrow again. “I take it he is one of your single men?”
“Ja.”
“I got your message that farming didn’t work out. What happened?”
Neustatter told him. If he left anything out, it was details that Astrid didn’t know, either. By the end, Chief Frost was grinning.
“How much of a hothead is Herr Augustus?” Frost held up a hand. “I have already had to deal with a couple herren who thought they were going to drag people right out of Grantville.”
Neustatter looked to Astrid, so she answered. “I do not believe Herr Augustus will pursue us this far. He has several servants and great influence in the village, of course, but Neustatter and his men outnumbered Herr Augustus’ men.”
“We outgunned them, too,” Neustatter put in, “with the matchlocks you gave us. Which we will be giving back just as soon as we can.”
Chief Frost nodded. “Let’s talk mission before weapons. I take it guarding the shipment to Erfurt went well?”
“Ja, no problems,” Neustatter told him.
“They’d be happy to work with you again—and they don’t say that to everybody who guards a shipment. Are you looking to stick with that or are you thinking about a detective agency?”
Astrid made a mental note to ask Neustatter what a detective was.
When Neustatter replied, he spoke in a way Astrid had never heard before. Each word was drawn out. “Well, now, I reckon we do not really know how to detective. And you feds do not want us in your way. Better we guard some wagons.”
Dan Frost laughed. “Fair enough. I don’t know what we’d do with a bunch of private eyes, either. Feds, though . . . Where did you pick that up?”
“A television show.” Neustatter frowned. “I do not understand the difference between movies and television shows.”
Dan Frost explained. From what Astrid understood, it had to do with where you watched it and possibly how long it was. Then the chief asked, “Neustatter, has Miss Schäubin here seen either one?”
“Nein, not yet.”
“Security guards might not investigate as much as detectives do,” Frost told him, “but you still need to learn how. Find out when a western or a detective show is playing.”
“I will. It did occur to me that some of those goods that get shipped might need guarding before they left Grantville. Or after they arrived here,” Neustatter added, still speaking in that drawn-out way.
“Now that is a very good observation,” Frost agreed.
They got down to specifics. When Neustatter promised to remember something else, Frost said, “Both of you need to get yourselves notebooks and start writing things down. That reminds me—who will be keeping the books?”
Neustatter pointed at Astrid. “I am sending Miss Schäubin to the math class.”
“You go, too. Always have a backup doesn’t apply just in the field.”
After they left Chief Frost’s office, they walked all the way over to the high school where Neustatter found out that a useful movie would be playing in the high school auditorium on Thursday night.
Thursday, May 19, 1633
This was the first time Astrid had been inside the auditorium.
“This whole building is for movies and plays?” she asked.
“Ja.”
Astrid shook her head. She did not know what to make of that.
“The next building and the fields are for games.”
That made more sense. Astrid had at least heard of ritterakademien. The games themselves seemed strange, and the up-timers did not train warriors here . . . but they had defeated the Croats, so there must be something to how they did things.
Astrid ran her hand over the fuzzy material on the seats. Then the lights dimmed, and she saw her first movie. It was The Untouchables.
Afterwards, Neustatter asked her what she thought.
“Was this typical of up-time?” she asked.
“Nein, I think not. It is from a particular time and place. Other movies and television shows will show other times and places up-time. But it gives me ideas.”
“Oh, gut. I do not think I would like to live in 1930s Chicago. Grantville seems a much nicer place.” After a couple minutes she added, “You should send Wolfram and Anna to see a movie. Anna will like the chairs. Such fine material on a plain metal frame to make a row of chairs that cannot be separated. It is a picture of Grantville, I think. Things fit for the adel but made in large numbers as simply as possible.”
Saturday, May 21, 1633
On the following day, the men again guarded trucks carrying crates of . . . something . . . to Erfurt. Erfurt was becoming Gustav II Adolf’s chief supply depot in the central CPE. This time there would be a return shipment, too, but not until Monday. So, on Saturday, the men explored the base and the city.
“How was the trip?” asked the stocky down-time sergeant who checked in the shipment.
“Fast and quiet,” Neustatter answered.
“Gut.” The man grinned. “Less paperwork.” He held out a clipboard. “Just this much paperwork. Sign here, and Supply will take custody of the shipment.”
Neustatter and the lead driver signed.
“We are interested in guarding more shipments like this,” Neustatter said.
“Heh. I bet you are. Check at the office in the next building. You want Herr Dennis Stull.”
Most of the men headed for an inn. Lukas wandered off on his own.
Neustatter and Ditmar found a smaller building next door to the warehouse. It was a solid down-time building that looked like it had been there for considerably longer than either of them had been alive.
As soon as he stepped inside, Neustatter saw how extensively the inside of the building had been remodeled. A receptionist’s desk was just feet from the door, and a NUS Army corporal sat behind it. A couple wires led down the hall, and Neustatter spotted at least two devices on the desk that probably used them.
“I think I prefer Astrid as secretary,” Ditmar muttered.
“What do you want?” the corporal asked.
“Ich heisse Edgar Neustatter.” Neustatter nodded his head sideways. “Er heisst Ditmar Schaub. We are looking for Herr Stull’s office to ask to guard more shipments.”
The corporal pressed a button on his desk. Neustatter heard a buzz from further back in the building. Within seconds, two more soldiers came down the hall.
“Mercenaries to ask Herr Stull for more convoys,” the corporal said.
“Komm bitte mit.” One of the two soldiers led the way while the other followed Neustatter and Ditmar. The soldier in the lead knocked on the second door on the right.
Neustatter heard a reply in English from inside. The soldier swung the door open.
“Two mercenaries, Herr Adducci. Do you want us to stay?”
A stocky man pushed back from one of the two desks in the office and crossed the small room in just three strides. “No, that’s not necessary.” He held out his hand. “Nick Adducci. What can I help you with?”
“Wir sind Edgar Neustatter und Ditmar Schaub.” They shook hands. “We guarded a couple trucks that came up from Grantville yesterday. We are looking for more assignments like that.”
“You need to see Dennis for that. I handle purchasing, but I don’t have anything to do with how it gets here.” Adducci looked a little frazzled.
Neustatter quickly asked, “Where can we find him?”
“Last I knew, Dennis was around the corner in Records. But if he’s not there, talk to Gordon Kroll. He’s in, straightening out some problem, but his family is up from Grantville this weekend, so try not to take too long, okay?”
Neustatter nodded. “I understand. Danke.”
“And stay away from his daughter. So as you don’t get hurt.”
Another nod. “Mister Kroll is protective of his daughter.”
Adducci laughed. “She’s a martial artist. Last guy who hit on her hit the floor. Pretty hard, I understand.”
“What is that?” Neustatter asked. “I do not know those words.”
“Karate. Kung fu. I don’t know which one. Ways to fight.”
“Danke.”
Neustatter and Ditmar found Records easily enough. It had a sign. Neustatter knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
Neustatter and Ditmar entered the room and found a middle-aged man and a young woman standing before a row of wooden filing cabinets. He was rifling through a stack of papers while she was pulling folders from an open drawer of a filing cabinet.
“Good morning. We are looking for Mister Stull or Mister Kroll.”
The man set his papers on one of the file cabinets. “Gordon Kroll.”
“Edgar Neustatter.”
“Ditmar Schaub.”
After they shook hands, Neustatter said, “Eight of us escorted trucks here from Grantville yesterday. We are looking for more jobs like that.”
Gordon Kroll nodded in understanding. “We have trucks moving almost every day. Some need to be escorted. Some don’t. Will you take assignments on trucks to Suhl, Schleusingen, or Schmalkalden?”
“Ja.”
“What about wagons?”
Neustatter shrugged. “Like trucks, only slower.”
Kroll turned to the girl at the filing cabinet. “Gena, have you seen the paperwork for today’s supply run from Grantville?”
“Right here.”
“Who signed off on the escort?”
“Chief Frost. Edgar Neustatter leading eight men. No problems.”
“All right. You’ve got yourselves an escort mission to Schleusingen. We’re sending a couple wagons from Grantville on Thursday. Report to the fairgrounds at seven a.m. You have weapons, right?”
“Ja. Chief Frost gave us some matchlocks.”
“If you plan to stick with this, I’d start putting money aside to buy some better weapons.”
Neustatter nodded.
“Any questions?”
“Just one, Mister Kroll. It is for your daughter.”
“Oh?” Kroll’s tone was noticeably cooler.
“Fräulein Kroll, what is martial arts?”
Gena Kroll smiled. “It is a way of fighting. Most martial arts that people learned up-time came from Asia.”
“What is it like?”
Gena’s smile got wider. “Do you know how to fall without hurting yourself, Herr Neustatter?”
Neustatter shrugged. “I was in the wars for six years. Carried a pike until I moved up to matchlock.”
“I’ll show you. Take anything out of your pockets that you don’t want to fall on.”
Neustatter laid a couple items on a convenient desk. Then Gena stepped forward with her right foot, crossing her left behind it as she turned. At the same time, with her left hand she grabbed Neustatter’s right sleeve just above the wrist. Her right hand grabbed a handful of lapels. The next thing Neustatter knew, he was sailing over her right hip before landing flat on his back on the floor.
Neustatter came to his feet. “Exzellent! Vorzüglich! How do I learn this martial arts?”
Gena exchanged glances with her father. “I suppose I could teach you.”
Ditmar spoke up. “Neustatter, we have matchlocks.”
“Ja, we do,” Neustatter agreed. “But remember the men who tried to stop the salt wagons? In a situation like that, we do not want to shoot first. What if we had thrown a couple of those men?”
Ditmar thought it through. “The others would have backed down.”
“That is why I want to learn martial arts.”
“Dad?” Gena asked.
“We-e-elll . . . ”
“I can pay for training, of course,” Neustatter put in smoothly.
“We’ll work out some ground rules,” Gordon Kroll said.
“Danke.”
***
The women cleaned their quarters as best they could on Saturday. Johann was supposed to be cleaning, too, but Ursula was struggling to keep him on task.
Someone knocked on the door.
Astrid saw that Anna looked a little apprehensive, and Ursula was still busy with Johann. She crossed the room to the door and opened it.
Mathilde stood there, accompanied by two other women. Astrid did not remember seeing either of them at the meeting in the refugee housing office.
“Guten Morgen, Astrid,” Mathilde said. “These ladies are Minnie Frost and Mary Rose Calafano.”
“Guten Morgen, Frau Frost. Guten Morgen, Frau Calafano.”
“May we come in?”
“Of course.” Astrid stepped back from the door.
“Ich heisse Astrid Schäubin.” She introduced Anna, Ursula, and Johann.
“You’re already cleaning,” Frau Frost noted in passable German. “That’s good. Danny said your group had it together.” The last expression was in English.
Astrid blinked. She had no idea what Frau Frost was talking about.
“My apologies, Frau Frost, but who is Danny?”
Frau Frost shook a finger at her. “You don’t need to call me Frau. I’m just Mrs. Frost. You know my Danny. My son. He’s the police chief.”
“Ja . . . of course . . . I have met Herr Chief Frost.” Astrid couldn’t imagine why the chief’s mother was calling on them. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Oh, no, no, dear,” the other woman explained. “We are on the Sanitation Squad. We go around and talk to new arrivals about health and safety in Grantville.”
The two women from the Sanitation Squad inspected their quarters. “You’re doing it right,” Mrs. Frost pronounced.
“The men were in Grantville during the winter,” Astrid explained. “They are out on a mission right now.”
“Danny said they would be,” Mrs. Frost agreed. “We saw the bathrooms at the end of the row were cleaned. Was that you?”
“Not just us,” Ursula said. “Someone else is cleaning them, too.”
“Good, good. And you know about the showers.” That was a statement, not a question. Nevertheless, four heads nodded. “How often do you shower?”
Astrid was a little surprised at the direct question, but Mrs. Frost explained why it mattered. Other questions followed, and at one point, Johann got sent outside to play.
“All right, ladies,” Mary Rose Calafano continued, “let’s talk about laundry. How many changes of clothes do you own?”
They exchanged glances. “Two,” Anna said. Astrid and Ursula agreed.
“Can you afford a third?”
Another exchange of glances. “Maybe,” Astrid said. “The men saved up money during the winter. They need to put aside some of what they are earning now for better weapons and so on.”
“Changing clothes and washing them frequently keeps you healthy,” Mrs. Frost stated. “If the men are gallivanting around guarding things, they’ll need to do the same thing.”
“I think clothing is like food, ja?” Anna asked. “Mathilde took us to the grocery store, and we found it costs less to buy ingredients than bread. Cloth will cost less than finished clothing, ja?”
“Definitely,” Mrs. Frost agreed.
“I can make clothes,” Anna said. “That would be fun.”
“Let’s talk about some other things, too,” Mary Rose Calafano put in.
In the end, the two ladies from the Sanitation Squad gave them directions to the laundromats. It sounded like it would take most of the day to walk there, wash and dry the clothes, and walk back. Plus, they would need some way of keeping track of everyone’s clothes.
“We will take care of it this week,” Ursula promised the Sanitation Squad ladies.
Monday, May 23, 1633
“You are spending money from what we all earned on this martial arts,” Stefan grumbled.
“Ja, I am. I want to know if this is something we can use. I cannot know that without learning the martial arts. If you have some specialized training you want, ask. If we can do more than other guards, we will get more jobs.”
“Neustatter?” Astrid asked.
Neustatter turned to her and raised an eyebrow.
“Just write it down so that I can keep track of it. What is the English word?” Astrid fumbled for a moment. “Receipt.”
Wednesday, May 25, 1633
A couple days later, the twelve of them from the village attended the observances for the second anniversary of the Ring of Fire. People gathered in the square, not because that was where they had defeated the Croats but because it was just about the largest open space left downtown. There were speeches and prayers. The high school band played.
For those from the village, even though they had not heard about it until long afterward, the Ring of Fire was exciting. It introduced so many new possibilities and, according to the up-timers, had already changed what would have happened. It brought opportunities for many of the up-timers, too, but it took them away from their world. That is not something Astrid had thought a lot about. They had not sought this. It simply happened. Strangely, they did not seem to think that the Lord God caused the Ring of Fire. At least not directly. They were different. It was not just that they had trucks and electricity and glass. They were different.
Thursday, May 26, 1633
The next morning, the men left for Schleusingen. It was two days, each way. The first day went smoothly. On the second day, Otto spoke up. “These villagers are treating us differently. They are less friendly.”
Neustatter considered that. The village they’d just passed through had looked like any other German village: half-timber houses, far enough apart to use thatched roofs. Few signs of specialization had been apparent, aside from a brick oven. It stood to reason that some of the residents would be half-farmers rather than farmers; they’d seen iron here and there, so there was almost certainly a blacksmith.
But it had not felt like any village they’d passed through from Magdeburg to Halle to Grantville, or even any from their mission to Erfurt.
“I think,” Neustatter said, “that this is a good time to explain that we are not mercenary soldiers.”
When they approached the next village, Neustatter spotted a group of men planting a field.
“Wolfram, come with me.”
Neustatter gave a big overhead wave and slung the matchlock over his shoulder before leaving the road.
“Hallo!”
“What do you want?” one of the men called.
“News!”
“We do not like mercenaries!”
Neustatter stopped and called back to them. “That is understandable. We were hired to guard some wagons from Grantville. Have you met any of them?”
“We have talked to one or two. Mostly they go by in wagons without horses or oxen. Last summer we saw a big one they call an APC. It went by with a little army following it. They won a battle over at Suhl.”
Neustatter saw that the rest of the farmers were all watching him. “Suhl joined the New United States.” He looked around. “Are you part of the state of Suhl?”
“So they say. We have not noticed any changes. They did not cut the rents.”
Another of the farmers snorted. “They did not raise them, either, Willi. They just ignore us.”
“What do you need?” Wolfram asked.
An intense but quiet discussion broke out among the farmers. Neustatter could not make out the words. Finally, one man straightened up from leaning on his hoe.
“We hear Grantville has doctors that can really heal the sick. If Grantville wants our support, tell them to send a doctor.”
“I will pass that along,” Neustatter called back.
“Wait!” Wolfram shouted. “May I approach?”
The man with the hoe nodded.
“I am no doctor but I have gotten a little training at Leahy Medical Center. What are your worst cases?”
“Old Johann has a bad cough. Again.”
“Frederick and Maria’s third child is sickly.”
“Wilhelm’s son is lame.”
After a couple minutes, Wolfram held up a hand. “That is as many as I can remember. I will ask at Leahy, if they can send someone.”
When Neustatter and Wolfram returned to the wagons and related the conversation, the senior teamster shook his head. Heinrich was a grizzled man with graying hair. He was still sturdy, though, and very much in charge of the other teamsters. “It helps, some, that we are working for the up-timers, but down here they have not decided if they really trust them.”
Sunday, May 29, 1633
When the men got home on Sunday, Neustatter asked Astrid to schedule another appointment with Dan Frost. Wolfram embraced Anna.
“I need to take a report to Leahy,” he said. “Ask if they can send a doctor to a village we passed through.”
“Hurry back,” Anna told him.
As Wolfram made his way to Leahy, he repeated the list of patients to himself, as he’d done several times a day. “I need a way to write this down,” he muttered. Then he realized, “They are going to make me go to schule.”
Wolfram opened one of the front doors at Leahy and went straight to the admissions desk.
“Guten Tag, Frau Bowers.”
“Wolfram Kuntz, what are you doing here on a Sunday?”
“I should ask you the same thing,” Wolfram responded.
“Magdalena’s kids are sick. Doc Adams took a look and doesn’t think it’s too serious but told Magdalena not to come in for a couple days. It is no good if we spread something to our patients.”
Wolfram nodded. “We just returned from Suhl. We passed through a village out past Ilmenau that needs a doctor.”
“Oh?” Nell Bowers’ voice was now sharper. “What is going on there?”
“Everyday things, I think,” Wolfram said. He started rattling off the list.
“Stop. Start over. Let me write it down,” the admissions clerk requested. When Wolfram was done, she studied the list. “You are requesting a health and wellness visit, right?”
“Ja,” Wolfram agreed.
“I’ll write it up and endorse it, but the final decision is above my pay grade,” Nell Bowers warned. “If they approve it, though, it’d help if you went with them.”
“I will have to check with Neustatter,” Wolfram told her, “and my wife will not like it.”
“Take her along.” Nell held up one hand. “No, listen. I know your group just got back to Grantville. So she’s new here. She can give this village her honest opinion. And we all know that whenever a health and wellness team goes somewhere, they find more sicknesses and injuries than initially reported. It wouldn’t hurt to have someone along who can talk to other women.”
“Send a nurse.”
“Oh, we will. But you know it’s not the same as talking to another down-time civilian.”
Wolfram sighed. Ja, he did know that—or at least, he’d been told that.
“I will ask.”
Tuesday, May 31, 1633
Their appointment time came and went. Neustatter and Astrid sat in the front room of the polizei station and waited.
After a while, Neustatter asked, “Did you talk to Anna about going to that village with Wolfram and the health and wellness team?”
“Ja. She was nervous about it,” Astrid said. “It is safe, is it not?”
“The team took a truck with a radio in it,” Neustatter told her. “I asked. Wolfram and Anna were in favor of spending a few days together. When they return, ask Anna what she thought of it, bitte.”
“You could ask her,” Astrid pointed out.
“The rest of you put me in charge. Danke sehr.”
Astrid grinned. Neustatter’s tone make it clear he wasn’t really thanking any of them.
“If I ask, it is official. Then Anna will wonder if I want her to do this again.” Neustatter shrugged. “Maybe. I just want you to ask Anna, just the two of you, so that if she does not want to, I know that.”
It was close to an hour before Dan Frost could fit them in. The polizei just had days like that.
Dan Frost kicked back in his chair once they were seated in his office. “How is the security guard business working out, Neustatter?”
“Well, I think,” Neustatter answered. “We guarded some wagons to Schleusingen and back. That area feels different than Erfurt.”
“How so?”
Neustatter related the men’s impressions. “That is why we are here. We need a way to convince people that we are not mercenaries. It would help here in Grantville, too.”
“You need an image,” Chief Frost told him. “Start with a name or a symbol, and then live up to it. Just make sure you and your men don’t start believing image over reality.”
“How do we find a name?” Astrid asked.
Frost grinned. “Neustatter, how many movies have you seen? Think through them. Watch some again if you need to. You’ll have to work this out on your own. I’ve got a bunch of drunk-and-disorderlies and a couple serious fights to sort out.”
“Danke, Chief Frost.”
Dan Frost shook hands with both of them. Once they were outside, Neustatter turned left on Route 250, then left again on Market Street. Where the two bridges came together in the town square, instead of continuing straight on Buffalo Street, he angled left and took Clarksburg Street to the Grantville Public Library.
The door opened into a room full of bookshelves arranged in three alcoves down the left side of the room. The three sides of each alcove were each three shelves across and stood about as tall as Neustatter was. At the back of the room, a waist-high barrier surrounded a desk area.
“May I help you?” the librarian at the desk asked.
“I would like to read the television schedule for this week,” Neustatter answered.
“The book is better nearly all the time,” the librarian told Neustatter and Astrid. But she handed over a television schedule.
Neustatter studied it carefully. “No Westerns.”
“There are plenty right over there.” The librarian pointed. “You can check them out. That means we stamp them, and you take them with you, read them, and bring them back.”
“I thought library books were no longer lent out?”
“That’s the non-fiction. They need to be kept here for reference. Fiction books—made-up stories—still circulate.”
“We do not have library cards.” Astrid had learned about those in her adult education classes.
“We can fix that.” The librarian thrust forms at them.
Eventually they escaped the library. Neustatter had a couple westerns, and Astrid had a couple mysteries.
Wednesday, June 1, 1633
The books were short but very clever. The page on the left was in English and then the page on the right was the same part of the story, but in German. This was supposed to help the reader learn the language. Astrid struggled with the English for a few minutes, then got distracted by the plot. She finished the story before she realized what she was doing. She went back and tried to read the English, but it was too much all at once. But Astrid decided she liked mysteries.
She found out that Neustatter had done much the same with the westerns. The men, minus Wolfram, guarded trucks to Erfurt on Wednesday and came back Thursday. Neustatter and Astrid switched books and started reading.
“Neustatter,” Astrid asked later on, “what is a Pinkerton? It is not translated.”
“Pinkerton ran a detective agency,” Neustatter answered. “The up-timers like detectives, but some of them really do not like Pinkerton at all. I do not understand why. We need to find out so that we do not choose a name for ourselves that is disliked.”
Friday, June 3, 1633
Wolfram and Anna returned home on Friday.
“How did it go?” Stefan asked.
“Well,” Wolfram answered. “Our group had two trucks. One of them came back to Grantville with patients each day. We went to four villages. They are very happy with Grantville right now.”
“Ditmar and Hjalmar are watching dinner cook over the outside fire,” Neustatter pointed out. “We can talk about it there.”
The men filed out.
“How much trouble did this trip cause?” Ursula asked Anna.
“Oh, I do not think the men caused any trouble,” Anna answered. “And I hope we did not cause any. The health and wellness team brought some patients to Grantville, and their villages hope that they will be healed. But the medics said they cannot promise that, just that they will take them to doctors. Not even Doctor Nichols and Doctor Abrabanel can cure everything.”
“How was being on the team?” Astrid asked.
“Oh, I was not really on the team. I just rode with them and talked to some of the women. I think it would be better if they sent those women from the Sanitation Squad,” Anna suggested.
“Oh, that is a good idea.” Astrid found her notepad and wrote that down.
Saturday, June 4, 1633
It took two days, multiple trips to the library (the National Library at the high school, not the Grantville Public Library), and some interviews, but by Saturday afternoon, Neustatter, Hjalmar, Ditmar, and Astrid had pieced together enough information.
Allan Pinkerton had been a fairly good detective but had had some serious failures as well. One of them had to do with overstating the size of the enemy forces during the up-timers’ Civil War. Another—and since Grantville was a mining town, this was the one that really angered the up-timers—was that the Pinkerton Agency took jobs as strike-breakers and was on the mining companies’ side in the coal mining wars. One old miner they talked to said, “They oughta burn right alongside those Baldwin-Felts bastards.”
The four of them gathered around the table in their quarters to discuss what they’re learned.
“We need a ‘tchoolee,’” Neustatter began.
“What is that?” Astrid asked.
“A sniper. If Hatfield had a sniper covering him when those Baldwin-Felts so-called detectives approached him, the sniper could have shot them.”
Ditmar spoke up. “You are thinking about a confrontation like the salt wagons.”
“Ja, I am.”
“You would be in close, perhaps using martial arts. You want someone else further back, with an up-time weapon.”
“Why an up-time weapon?” Astrid asked.
“No matchlock is accurate enough to fire into a crowd. You could hit your own man. Flintlocks are no better for that.”
“Could you do it?” Neustatter asked Ditmar.
“Maybe. I need to fire an up-time weapon before I can give you a real answer.”
“That is the first up-time weapon I want,” Neustatter said. “Miss Schäubin, make a note, bitte. We need to find out what sort of weapon would be best—and then probably what would be workable but something we could afford.”
By now, Neustatter and Astrid had notepads. These were not up-time-style spiral-bound notebooks—wire was too precious to use for that. They were stacks of paper between thin pieces of wood. Two curved wooden prongs jutted up from the bottom piece of wood and curved up, around, and back in a half-circle. Each page and the top cover could slide around the prongs, which meant the notepad could be opened flat on a table or a desk. Best of all, the knobs on the ends of the prongs unscrewed. This allowed the removal or replacement of one, some, or all of the pages.
Astrid wrote on her notepad.
5. What is the best weapon for a sniper? What is an acceptable weapon for a sniper that we can afford?
Hjalmar spoke up suddenly. “Alte Veste. Your whole plan was based on what the matchlocks could and could not do. If we had one of the up-time rifles, you would have made a different plan. A shotgun, and it would be yet another plan.”
Neustatter gave a hint of a smile. “Exactly. If we had both of those options, plus one or more reliable pistols . . . Miss Schäubin, bitte?
She obliged and wrote.
6. What is an acceptable and affordable shotgun?
7. What is an acceptable and affordable pistol?
“And one more,” Neustatter added. “Are white cowboy hats available in Grantville?”
“What?”
“You have started reading one of the westerns, ja? The good guys wear white hats.”
Astrid rolled her eyes but it became number eight on the list.
Monday, June 6, 1633
Anna and Astrid began shopping for white hats on Monday morning. They spent nearly the whole day trying to find some. Astrid felt like one of the detectives in the mysteries, searching all day and ending up with nothing to show for it. Genuine up-time cowboy hats were rare and far more expensive than she thought they should spend. Down-time copies were also costly.
That evening, she told Neustatter, “You will have to think of something else.”
He sighed. “Thank you for searching.”
“I think I am beginning to learn my way around Grantville.”
“Now that is very useful, Miss Schäubin.”
Neustatter leaned back and closed his eyes. He stayed like that for a while. Astrid started to help clean up from dinner.
“Aha!” Neustatter sat up suddenly. Startled, Astrid almost dropped the clean bowls.
“We need to see She Wore a Yellow Ribbon again. Or some other western with the cavalry.”
“Why?” Astrid asked.
“I thought of something, but I need to make sure I am remembering correctly.”
“You just want to watch another movie.” Stefan was leaning against a wall in the kitchen area, making sure Johann helped put dishes away.
“That, too.” Neustatter stood. “You should come and see the movie, too. You and Ursula and Johann.”
That will teach you to argue with Neustatter, Astrid thought in amusement. She hadn’t missed how Johann’s eyes had lit up immediately.
“Cowboys?” Johann was already bouncing.
“Ja, cowboys.”
No westerns were scheduled for a few days. Besides, the men had another trip to Erfurt on Tuesday and Wednesday. But on Friday night, Rio Grande was being shown in the high school auditorium.
Thursday, June 9, 1633
On Thursday afternoon, most of the men had returned from work and were outside around the fire when Karl Recker approached with an armload of metal.
“What have you got, Karl?” Lukas asked.
“Clamps. And a couple more arms.” Karl set his burden down next to the fire. “Neustatter and the blacksmith both said I could take some of my pay in iron, and I have been working it. Ursula, may I?”
Ursula frowned but stepped back. Karl picked up a piece of metal that looked like two incomplete loops at right angles to each other. A screw and wingnut served to close and tighten each loop. He loosened one of the clamps and slid it around an upright cooking iron. Then he tightened that one and slid a sturdy iron rod into the other clamp of the pair.
“We tested this at the smithy,” he said. “Ursula, it should take the weight of anything you need to put over the fire. You can loosen the clamp to swing the arm when you want to take a pot out of the fire.”
Ursula tried. “Karl, I could loosen it if I tightened it. But you will have to get it started.”
“Oh.” Karl spun the wingnut with a muscular hand, then spun it back until the arm was steady. This time Ursula was able to loosen it herself.
“Danke,” she said. “Two pots over the fire at once will really help.”
Ditmar came over and peered down at the clamp. “That looks good, Karl. What keeps the two loops from separating from each other?”
“It is all one piece,” Karl said. “It started out as a rod. We put an angle in the middle, with a quarter twist. Then I heated each side, beat them flat, and bent each back on itself. Then I drilled the holes. Making the nuts and bolts was the hard part. Here is the other piece.”
He picked up the second clamp from the ground and attached it to the opposite cooking iron. The rod he slid into place flattened out into a flat surface almost a foot wide and a couple feet long.
Ursula eyed it curiously. “Flatbread?” she asked.
“I was thinking of it as a shelf,” Karl said, “but there is no reason you cannot bake on it.”
“Well, not regular bread,” Ursula said. “But there is a community brick oven for that. This would work for flatbread with no yeast.”
She turned to Astrid. “I can probably figure it out, but I hear stories about all the knowledge at that school. See if you can find out why bread with no yeast bakes differently than regular bread.”
Friday, June 10, 1633
Once Neustatter and the Kirchenbauers returned to the refugee housing Friday night, the movie Rio Grande was a main topic of conversation. Wolfram and Anna even came out of their room to see what all the fuss was about.
Ursula related that the woman who introduced the movie told them it was “black and white.” Once the movie began to play, she had realized what that meant. Unlike the movie Astrid had seen, Rio Grande had no colors. It was reassuring to learn that even up-timers had to make progress in stages. It also helped Astrid understand that time passed in the future. All of the wonderful technology was developed over time. Finally, they would probably succeed in spreading their technology to everyone else. After all, they had done it before.
Astrid thought Neustatter already understood all that. He had found something else in that movie.
“The up-time cavalrymen wore halstücher.”
Neustatter asked Ursula, “Could you make those?”
Ursula shook her head. “They are cloth, but that is all I know. What cut? What color?”
Neustatter stared off into space for a few moments. “In She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, at least some of them were yellow.”
“Yellow cloth will be too expensive to make mistakes,” Ursula stated. “Without seeing it up close, I cannot make it.”
“Describe it, bitte.”
Astrid’s eyes widened in surprise. Anna never gave orders.
“Cloth,” Neustatter began. “Tied in the front, close around the neck. Wider in back, with a point.”
“One moment, bitte.” Anna disappeared into her room and retrieved the pack she had brought from the village. Among her few possessions were some pieces of cloth. She doubled one over, then folded it diagonally. She tied this around her neck.
“Does this look right?”
“Ja,” Neustatter told her. “That is it.”
“I can make these,” Anna declared. “I just need money for the cloth.”
Astrid saw Neustatter looking at her. “Ja, Neustatter, I will go to market with Anna.”
Anna played around with the improvised halstuch, tying it differently on one side rather than in front. Astrid could tell Wolfram approved. It was good to see the playful Anna steadily coming back.
Saturday, June 11, 1633
Anna and Astrid quickly learned that downtown Grantville was very busy on Saturday mornings. Many up-timers were accustomed to working five days each week. They often used Saturdays for going to market. Children did not go to school on Saturdays, either. Or rather, children did not have their regular classes on Saturdays. There were plenty of other reasons they might be at one or another of the schools on a Saturday. Before the Ring of Fire, people drove their cars and trucks in downtown Grantville. Driving vehicles in downtown Grantville was no longer allowed in the central part of the town during the day. It was filled with people.
Anna eventually found what she wanted at Grantville Fabrics and Textiles. Astrid had never seen such fine fabric, some of it of higher quality than Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia’s best garments. And they could afford a modest amount of mid-grade fabric. Astrid was not happy paying that much, but the yellow fabric fell within the limit Neustatter had given them. Because of the way it was cut, they had to buy enough for nine halstücher instead of eight, but Astrid supposed that one would eventually get lost.
They returned to the refugee housing right away. Astrid helped Ursula prepare dinner while Anna got straight to work on the halstücher. She wanted to have them ready for the men’s next mission, which was Tuesday.
Wednesday, June 15, 1633
On Tuesday, wearing their new halstücher, the men escorted a pair of wagons to Schleusingen. One was under contract with the NUS Army, carrying supplies to the town’s gunsmiths and bringing guns back. The other carried goods manufactured in Grantville. It was allowed to form a convoy as long as the merchants paid part of the fee for Neustatter’s men.
The first day’s journey was uneventful. Wednesday began that way, too. When the convoy passed the villages that the health and wellness team had visited, Wolfram reported how their patients in Grantville were doing. Neustatter realized that Wolfram was accumulating a fair amount of good will.
He was just starting to think this might be a pleasantly uneventful trip when shortly after the convoy passed Schmiedefeld, a group of men came out of the woods on the left side of the wagons. Hjalmar was on that side, and he immediately moved toward the back wagon, where he was reinforced by Otto and Karl.
Seven men closed in while two others with matchlocks remained some yards back. Ditmar did the same, while Neustatter jumped down from the front wagon.
“Guten Tag!” Neustatter greeted them.
“Not for you.” The big, tall man brandished a sword. “We will have a look at your cargo.”
“Why?”
“Because we are going to take what we need,” said a grizzled man with a wild look in his eyes.
“We cannot allow that.” Neustatter’s voice projected, but he wasn’t yelling. “This is an NUS Army shipment.”
“Ha! Not likely!” the man with the sword sneered. “They use trucks.”
“Sometimes.”
“And they do not hire mercenaries.” The men attempted to shoulder past Neustatter.
Neustatter’s matchlock fell to the ground as he caught the man by the collar and the sleeve of his sword arm. Neustatter pivoted. The throw was far from textbook. It was more of a sidearm that sent the man around his hip instead of over it. Nevertheless, the man ended up on his back. He had managed to hang onto his sword, but Neustatter quickly pinned that arm against his leg and began to exert pressure, hyperextending the man’s elbow.
The man whimpered and dropped the sword.
Neustatter looked up to see two or three of the others edging back. One of the musketeers was hesitating, but the other hurriedly cocked his matchlock and started to aim—until Lukas came around the front of the first wagon with a leveled matchlock. The musketeer glanced from Lukas to Ditmar and back, then lowered the muzzle of his weapon.
Only the grizzled, wild-eyed man continued to advance, and Karl Recker squared off against him. Karl held his matchlock diagonally across his body at the port arms position, and when the men tried to body him out of the way, Karl thrust all ten pounds of musket into his chest. Karl was a powerful man, and his blow knocked the other back on his heels.
“Stopp!” the man on the ground cried out. “Alle halt!”
All of them did indeed halt.
Neustatter pulled the man to his feet. “What is going on here?” he asked. “You men are not bandits. At least not bandits with any experience at all.”
“We are just villagers. Not even that, anymore. We have been forced out.”
“Why?”
The man studied Neustatter for a while, occasionally glancing to the rest of the men. “Are you really part of the NUS Army?”
Neustatter retrieved his matchlock from the ground. “With these? Nein. They hire us to guard wagons.”
The man stood there for a long moment before he spoke again. “We support the NUS, but the adel do not. The reichsritter can make life very difficult for us.”
“This area is part of the NUS,” Neustatter said.
“Maybe Thuringia, maybe Franconia, maybe something else. Some think the emperor will come back. Ferdinand, I mean.”
Neustatter laughed. “Wallenstein had a hundred thousand men at Alte Veste last September. We were there. Ferdinand is not coming back.”
“Perhaps someone will raise more men . . . ”
“It will have to be a lot of men,” Neustatter told him. “They attacked us. Uphill. Against an army that outnumbered them better than three to one. They went right through us.” It was his turn to think for a while. “If the local lords continue pushing out those who support the NUS, eventually there will be an open clash.”
“On that we agree. But we cannot stay until that happens. Our families are not safe.”
“Are you men farmers?” Neustatter asked.
“Ja, und a couple half-farmers.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Thirty-one.”
Neustatter looked to the teamster driving the second wagon. “Lorenz, do you have a return cargo?”
“Nein.”
“Will you carry the kinder to Grantville?”
“Ja, I can do that.”
Neustatter turned back to the man and held out his hand. “I’m Neustatter.”
“Wilhelm Rummel.” They shook hands.
“We are due in Schleusingen today,” Neustatter said. “We will be back here tomorrow, about midday. Be ready to travel. And do not rob anyone between now and then.”
Thursday, June 16, 1633
Stefan waited until the return cargo was almost loaded before pulling Neustatter and the rest of the men from the village aside. “I cannot believe you are taking them with us. They will turn on us.”
“Those people are desperate,” Neustatter returned, “but not so desperate that they are willing to start a fight they cannot win. A few more days or weeks, perhaps. But by then they will be in Grantville, fed and in refugee housing. That reminds me—Hjalmar, take your team and pick up enough food.”
“We cannot support another thirty-one people,” Lukas protested.
“I will request the NUS repay us. But we will feed them.”
***
Rummel and his men and their families were waiting right where the wagons had encountered them.
“That looks like more than thirty-one.” Stefan wore a very sour expression.
Rummel looked apologetic. “Neustatter, we found another group. Different village, same problem.”
“How many?”
“Eighteen.”
“We are a day and a half from Grantville. Can everyone survive on short rations for that long?” Neustatter described what Hjalmar’s team had purchased.
“We have been surviving on shorter than that. But we have no way to repay you.”
“Our contract is with the NUS Army, not with you. You do not owe us anything. I will tell the NUS Army that it cost two days of food for thirty-one people to make sure there were no bandits on the road to Schleusingen.”
Neustatter did not know if the NUS Army would repay him or not. He would ask, politely. From there, whatever happened, happened. An extra night at an inn and extra day’s food would be understandable enough if a wagon broke down, but he wasn’t sure if refugees would be considered part of the mission.
Regardless, they helped the children and the elderly up onto the second wagon. Without drawing attention to it, Neustatter put Ditmar’s team on the first wagon, right next to the guns. Wolfram circulated among the refugees, checking to see if any were sick or injured.
Periodically one or another refugee would approach Neustatter or one of the others.
“How do I know what jobs they can find in Grantville?” Ditmar asked in frustration. He gestured at his new halstuch. “All they see is this, and they think I am an official.”
Neustatter just smiled. “That is true. All they see is halstücher. It gives me an idea.”
Neustatter casually worked his way along the column of refugees. They were strung out behind the wagons, in no particular order. He collected Hjalmar and Karl along the way.
“Let everyone pass and then be the rear guard,” Neustatter instructed. “I do not want to lose anyone who cannot keep up.”
“We have the rear guard,” Hjalmar confirmed.
Neustatter moved on until he came to Otto.
“Otto, I have noticed that people tend to overlook you.”
Otto grimaced. “I am no one important. I am just another refugee.”
“Nein, you feel like just another refugee, but you look like a wagon guard. Take your halstuch off.”
Otto gave Neustatter a puzzled expression. Then he handed him his matchlock and untied the neckerchief.
“These refugees are from two villages. Now that you do not look like us and have no weapon, do you think each set of villagers might think you come from the other village?”
Otto cocked his head in thought and then gave a rare smile. “Could be.”
“Go find out. Ditmar said all they see is the halstücher and think we are officials. I want to know if that is true.”
“But why?”
“I have an idea,” Neustatter told him. That got Otto’s full attention. “What if some day we are attacked by actual bandits, but some of our guards do not look like guards?”
“I think I like this idea.” Otto stuffed his halstuch inside his shirt and moved off.
Neustatter waited until he saw Otto strike up a conversation, then he drifted back toward the front of the column.
Saturday, June 18, 1633
The men dragged in very late on Friday night. Hjalmar gave Astrid the short version.
“We picked up forty-nine refugees fleeing adel who oppose the New United States. We took them to the office and then got them settled in quarters here.”
In the morning, Anna, Ursula, and Astrid met the women in this new group of refugees. They were in the last row of buildings, which had been nearly empty.
“Ich heisse Astrid Schäubin.”
“Maria Rummel. My brother Wilhelm is the leader of our group.” Astrid judged Maria to be a few years older than herself. “This is my friend Liesl.”
“Welcome to Grantville.”
“What is this place?” Maria’s gesture encompassed all of Spring Branch.
“This is refugee housing,” Astrid answered. “People can stay here when they arrive in Grantville. Then they get jobs and earn money and rent a room somewhere else. There are three refugee housings in the Ring of Fire, but I think this is the largest.”
“I have never seen so many people in one place!” Maria exclaimed.
“Wait until you see Grantville. This is just Spring Branch.”
“Where do you live?”
“On the far side of the next row,” Anna replied. “The middle building.”
Liesl glanced around, almost furtively. “The woman who showed us the showers said we should bathe frequently. Is it safe?”
“Ja,” Anna answered. “And it is so much less trouble than heating water and pouring it into a tub.”
“We have other questions . . . ”
Astrid smiled to herself as Anna launched into the Sanitation Squad speech. Along the way, she offered to show the women from the new group the grocery store and the laundromat.
“We do not have much money,” Maria said. “I do not think we can go to those places yet.”
“You have a much bigger group than we do,” Ursula said. “We need to go anyway. If a couple of you come with us, later you can show the others.”
“I think my brother told me there are forty-nine in your group?” Astrid asked.
“Thirty-one and eighteen,” Maria asked. “Two different villages. We do not know them, but we had the same problems.”
The five women started for Grantville in the late morning. The laundromat was crowded, and they had to wait some time to use a washing machine.
“What are those women selling outside?” Liesl asked.
“Net bags,” Anna replied. “When you throw everyone’s clothes in the washing machine together it becomes difficult to sort out whose is whose later. If each person puts all their clothes in a net, they stay together. Or each family, because we do not have a lot of clothes.” She opened her pack. “Each of the three of us have one net for our family, and then there is one more for the other four men. They will have to sort their clothes out, but Neustatter is tall, Karl is big, so it is not too difficult.”
Anna pointed to the coin slots on one of the washing machines. “They use a coin the up-timers call quarters. That is why we had to change the paper money for coins.”
“The coins are worth more, ja?” Maria asked. “Not the stamped value, but what they are really worth.”
“The up-timers say no, it is all one system,” Astrid answered. “And the down-timers who have lived in Grantville the longest say they are correct.” She shrugged. “I do not understand why. Not yet. But it is important that if you have more than three quarters left when you are done, you change as many back to paper dollars as you can, because the laundromat needs the quarters to work the washers and dryers.”
“Dryers.” Ursula sniffed.
“But they make the clothes so warm.” Anna said it with a smile. She told Maria and Liesl, “Ursula prefers to save money. It is true. If you have a rope or even a good piece of twine, you can hang it inside or outside and drape the clothes over it.”
While they were waiting for the laundry to wash, Maria asked, “What about churches? When are the church services?”
“Nine o’clock and eleven o’clock, but it is all the way on the other side of the Ring of Fire, out on the Rudolstadt road.”
Maria looked puzzled. “We passed two churches, and I saw at least three more in the place you called downtown. What about those?”
“Those are not Lutheran.” Ursula sniffed. “The church across from the fairgrounds is Catholic. The one not far from here is something they had up-time. Downtown the churches are Catholic, Calvinist, and some others from up-time.”
“Oh!” Maria lowered her voice. “I think the people from the other village might be Catholic.”
“You did not ask?”
“They had the same problems we did. We were not trying to find reasons not to work together.”
Once the laundry was done, the women went to the grocery store. It had the same effect on Maria and Liesl that it had had on Ursula, Astrid, and Anna the previous month.
Anna drew Maria aside. “What do you need?”
Maria hung her head. “The Relief Committee gave us enough meat and bread for three days.”
“Then you just need some vegetables today. You can come back and buy more once the men have worked a couple days. You may need several people to carry everything.”
“We can do that,” Maria agreed. She looked curious. “How did you know we did not have anything?”
“We left our village on short notice, too,” Anna said. “But we spent a couple days in Magdeburg, and our men had been in Grantville during the winter, so they knew what to prepare for. There is an outside market in Spring Branch. It is closer, and I think less expensive. You should ask Astrid about that. She paid more attention to the costs.”
“Danke. We will support ourselves as quickly as we can.”
Anna smiled. “You just need a few days. But have you thought about what will happen when your men find permanent jobs, not day labor? Will you all stay together?”
Maria’s eyes widened. “We have not even thought about that.”
“We are going to stay together, but we have a smaller group.”
When the women returned with clean laundry and fresh food, they found that Johann, the children from the Suhl County villages, and some other children in the refugee housing and the larger Spring Branch area were playing together. The game involved a ball, and there seemed to be rules.
Monday, June 20, 1633
On Monday, most of the men took day jobs. Karl worked at a blacksmith’s shop, and Wolfram went to EMT training. But Neustatter came back before midday.
“Miss Schäubin, Chief Frost would like to see us.”
Astrid closed her book and stood up at once. She brought the book with her, expecting they might have to wait at the polizei station. But as soon as they gave their names to the receptionist, she phoned the chief’s office and sent them right in.
“Neustatter, Miss Schäubin. I heard you had some trouble on the way to Schleusingen.”
“It could have turned into trouble, but it did not,” Neustatter clarified.
“The way I heard it, there were no shots fired in the confrontation, and you brought in forty-nine refugees.”
“Ja.”
“Excellent job, Neustatter.” Dan Frost leaned back in his chair. “I mean that. That could have gone badly very quickly.”
Neustatter gave a slight nod.
“I understand your martial arts lessons came in handy.”
“Ja.”
“What if you’d had to fire?”
Neustatter sat still for a minute before answering. “It was short range. Matchlocks on both sides. We had experience and a slightly better position. A couple of us probably would have gotten hit.”
Frost nodded. “I’ve been in positions like that a time or two. We can use someone who can get out of fixes like that with nobody dead.” His pause was obvious enough that Astrid held her breath, waiting for the rest of what he was going to say.
“Neustatter, you need better weapons. Just in case it does go badly sometime.”
“We know.”
“But you need money to buy the weapons. I have a proposal for you.”
Neustatter did not say anything, but Astrid saw that he was paying close attention.
“Join the Reserves. Drill one weekend a month and two weeks a year. You’ll be issued weapons. You could probably carry those when you are on a mission directly for the Army. Plus, it pays. Not much, but some.”
Chief Frost let Neustatter process that, then he added, “Those are not the only refugees coming out of the towns in the Thüringerwald. Anse Hatfield was reporting movement back in January, and it has only increased. We need somebody down there to make contact with them, and there are reasons why it should not be the NUS Army. You did good, and we’ll make sure you get reimbursed for the food.”
“Interesting,” Neustatter declared. “Political reasons.”
Chief Frost nodded. “Exactly.”
Neustatter grimaced. “I have noticed in the movies and television shows that frequently people with political concerns tell the men in the field what they can and cannot do.”
“We believe in civilian control of the military.”
“But not every civilian,” Neustatter stated. He leaned forward slightly in his chair. “If I accepted this assignment, I decide if I have to open fire. Not somebody who is not there.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” Dan Frost declared. “Neither will President Stearns or General Jackson.” He grimaced. “Some others, maybe, but frankly, Mike and Frank aren’t real likely to listen to them.”
Neustatter looked over at Astrid. “Did you understand that, Miss Schäubin?”
“Some of it,” she replied.
In Plattdeutsch, Neustatter summarized the important points so far. Then he asked, “I know when someone joins the NUS Army, he goes to training before joining a unit. It is a different way than we are used to. How long does it take?”
“Eight weeks.”
“I will talk it over with the men.”
Chief Frost nodded. “The other thing you’re going to need is a name. If you’d like a suggestion?”
“Bitte.”
“There are a number of outfits in the area calling themselves this mercenary company or that mercenary company.”
Neustatter nodded. “One of the times we took day labor jobs, I met a couple men who are in the Albernian Mercenary Company.”
Frost scowled. “Try to follow a few more rules than they do, all right?” He looked over at Astrid. “And, Miss Schäubin, file the occasional piece of paperwork, okay?”
Astrid had no idea what he was talking about. But she would find out, so she nodded.
“You may have noticed that we up-timers don’t really like the idea of mercenaries,” Frost began.
Neustatter grinned. “You don’t say.” Astrid thought he was very proud of himself for replying in American.
Chief Frost laughed. “Seriously, though, do yourself a favor and find some other name.”
Neustatter was grinning again. “Has anyone taken the name Wells Fargo yet?”
Frost laughed again. “Good one. Might get tired of explaining it to every down-timer you meet, though. Try something more . . . self-explanatory.”
“Well, so far we guard wagons and trucks. We would like to add guarding buildings. Perhaps even guarding people. I do not object to investigating, but I already know better than to accept a divorce case.”
“I’m not sure detective noir is the right image,” Chief Frost agreed.
“What we have been doing—do you call it a security service?”
“Yes,” Frost answered. “But not the Security Service. That was a British intelligence service up-time. It’ll make people think of James Bond, although I think the Security Service was MI-5, and Bond was MI-6.”
“I do not mind making people think of James Bond,” Neustatter stated. “However, we would need a Q. No one would take our matchlocks seriously.”
Chief Frost threw up his arms. “Honest to Pete, Neustatter! You’ve been watching James Bond movies, too?”
“Ja. I learn things from all the movies, but I probably learn the most from John Wayne.”
“It’s probably better if you prefer John Wayne,” Chief Frost muttered. “Safer for the rest of us.”
“What if you make it your own security service?” Astrid asked Neustatter.
“That’s a thought,” Chief Frost allowed. “Neustatter’s Security Service.”
“There are eight of us men, plus Miss Schäubin is the secretary,” Neustatter objected. “I am in charge because everyone agreed to it—”
Chief Frost waved him down. “I know, I know. Neustatter, we have already talked about the difference between the image you want to portray and the reality. You can be John Wayne, as long as you realize you don’t actually have the cavalry on call. It’s the same with the name. Make sure your guys understand that the name is part of the image.”
“I understand,” Astrid offered. “Stefan will complain, because that is what Stefan does. Lukas will object, because that is what he does. No one else will care, although Ursula will speak up to support Stefan.”
Neustatter looked at Frost. “That is exactly what will happen,” he agreed.
“You’ve got a good secretary,” Chief Frost acknowledged. “I think Neustatter’s Security Service is on the right track. Um, that means it’s getting closer to what you want. If there is one thing we up-timers like, it’s abbreviations and acronyms. People would call Neustatter’s Security Service NSS. An acronym is an abbreviation you can pronounce. Like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—everyone up-time called it NASA. The only thing wrong with NSS is that you can’t pronounce it.”
Neustatter was nodding slowly. Astrid had not understood everything Chief Frost said, but grasped this point. He wanted them to have a name that people could make into a word.
“Nass, Nuss . . . no, that won’t work.”
Astrid spoke up. “Neustatter, that sounds like the character in The Untouchables.”
“Eliot Ness?”
“That works,” Frost told us. “Just need a word for the E. Uh, Neustatter, how far away will you take a job?”
“I had not thought about it. I would prefer to stay in the New United States, but I do not object to guarding trucks to Magdeburg or Hesse.”
“It occurs to me that Europe begins with an E.”
Neustatter was nodding slowly again. “Neustatter’s European Security Services.”
“People are going to think G-men and then see you and think cavalry.”
“That will work. Miss Schäubin, find out how much horses would cost, bitte.”
Astrid made a note:
9. NESS needs mounts.
***
“I do not want to go back to an army,” Stefan grumbled. They were seated around the fire again. He, Ursula, and Johann were in the same place as before. This time, they had been joined by Lukas.
“Nor do I,” Ditmar agreed. He, Karl, and Otto were sitting on the ground to Neustatter’s right. “But we are talking about part-time training that will pay us. Plus, sometimes we would have better weapons.”
“Part-time training after the full-time training,” Lukas pointed out. “Several weeks of full-time training with the sergeants yelling at us.”
Hjalmar spoke from where he, Astrid, Anna, and Wolfram sat on the second log. “Ja, yelling. Not plotting against us, not striking us.”
“I cannot say I am eager for that, either,” Stefan grumbled.
Karl leaned back from where he sat and posted his hands on the ground to support himself. “How does this training work, Neustatter?”
Neustatter explained what he knew. “Some of you have seen movies with scenes of up-time military training.”
“Hard to say if they are accurate,” Lukas said.
“There are plenty of up-timers to ask,” Wolfram pointed out. “Something I have heard at Leahy is that many of them were in their army.”
“That is worth following up,” Neustatter agreed. He looked around the circle. “Ursula? Anna? Astrid?”
Ursula shrugged. “This is up to you men. We women are not joining this army.”
“How long will the training last?” Anna asked.
“Eight weeks.”
“Be sure to leave us enough money to buy food,” Ursula requested.
“Definitely.”
“Hjalmar?” Astrid asked.
“Oh, I expect I will hate much of the training at the time,” her brother admitted. “But I think it will be useful to find out how the up-timers do things. Gaining access to better weapons, even some of the time, is worth it all by itself.”
“I cannot disagree with any of that,” Stefan admitted. “Ursula, if you think you women and Johann will be all right on your own . . . ”
“We will be fine,” his wife assured him.
“Is everyone in?” Neustatter asked.
A chorus of “ja” answered him. Then Lukas stretched and sighed. “We are all crazy, but, ja, I am in.”
“Once we are done with basic training, we will have a company to run,” Neustatter said. “We need a name. Chief Frost suggested Neustatter’s European Security Services. He also talked to me about how we present ourselves. I know it is not all about me.”
“That makes us sound like a mercenary company.” Stefan wasn’t quite grumbling.
“Nein,” Lukas declared. “We need something better.”
“It does make you sound like mercenaries,” Ursula said.
Neustatter started laughing.
“What is so funny?” Stefan asked.
Neustatter caught his breath. “I am not telling you what to decide. I simply point out that after Chief Frost started thinking of names, Miss Schäubin correctly predicted how each of you would react. You, Stefan, would complain. You, Lukas, would object. You, Ursula, would agree with Stefan. And here is the best one: that the rest of you would not care about the name.”
“You think we should listen to her. You are telling us what to decide,” Stefan complained.
“It is a good idea,” Hjalmar said. He looked at his sister. “Really? Are we that predictable?”
“Ja,” Astrid answered.
“Well, of course you like your sister’s idea,” Lukas said.
“Do you have a different idea?”
After a minute, Wolfram spoke into the silence. “I do not.”
“I like NESS,” Karl said.
“Just as long as you are not sitting in the office while we do the work, Neustatter,” Stefan said.
Neustatter laughed again. “The best part of being a guard or a detective is being on assignment,” he said.
“Ja, when has Neustatter ever told us to do something and not done it himself?” Otto asked. “Like Astrid said, I do not care about the name. We can be NESS.”
There was a rumble of agreement.
“Good thing,” Hjalmar whispered to Astrid. “The fire is almost out.”
Thursday, June 23, 1633
Everyone was thankful for the refugee housing in Spring Branch, but they wanted to move out as soon as they could. Ditmar and Stefan explored the whole area between Spring Branch and Grantville.
Partway between Grantville and Spring Branch was another village called Murphy’s Junction. That was where Murphy’s Run—which referred to both a stream and the valley it flowed through—joined Buffalo Creek. The valley soon split, and the western branch extended almost to the Ring Wall. Up that branch was yet another village, Murphyhausen.
Murphyhausen was mostly rowhouses. They were long, two-story half-timber buildings divided up into individual homes. People lived there and worked elsewhere—in the coal mine or in Grantville. It had more room to grow than Spring Branch. Everyone looked at the rowhouses and agreed. Their timing was perfect. There was an opening, and Neustatter rented that rowhouse. All twelve of them crowded in, but it was less tightly packed than their room in the refugee housing had been. The first floor was all one room, except for a bathroom in one corner. A stove sat on one side, connected to the chimney. The far end of the room was a kitchen, while the front was a sitting room. Upstairs was another bathroom with a shower and four bedrooms. The Kuntz and the Kirchenbauer families each got a bedroom. Ditmar, Hjalmar, and Astrid were in the third. Neustatter, Otto, Karl, and Lukas had the fourth. It took a couple days to get used to the stairs, but . . . stairs. This rowhouse was almost as nice as Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia’s hunting lodge . . . er, schloss. And it had indoor bathrooms.
Everyone was happy with the rowhouse in Murphyhausen except Johann, who missed his friends from Spring Brook.