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Chapter 27


Margaret drifted on a warm, cozy cloud over a landscape woven of green wool, with tufts of brocade sheep rolling over it. In the distance, motor cars frolicked like spring lambs. But as they got closer and closer to her, their engines shrieked in her ears and vibrated her bones in her body.

“Mistress! Mistress!”

Her eyes flew open. A single candle in a bronze candlestick illuminated two faces: Hettie and Liza.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Spirits!” Liza said, her eyes huge in the candlelight.

“Noises, mistress,” Hettie said. “Coming from the rear of the house. The visitors must have stirred up something uncanny. Perhaps they’ve roused your ancestors?”

Margaret flipped back the coverlet. The frosty night air chilled her legs and feet. Hettie immediately stooped to put slippers onto her mistress’ feet and tucked a woolen wrap around her shoulders.

“I very much doubt that. Are all the doors still locked tight? And the dogs have not raised the alarm?”

“Yes, mistress. No one could have entered. No one earthly.”

Margaret sighed. “Has it disturbed my parents?”

“Nay, but it might!” Liza said. “The longer it goes on, the more uneasy your lady mother will lie. You know how poorly she rests.” She wrung her hands.

“I’ll go see if I can find the source,” Margaret said. “You were wise to ask me. Pray go back and make certain that my parents are not disturbed.”

“Yes, mistress!” Eliza took the candle and disappeared into the hallway.

“Shall I come with you?” Hettie asked, although she looked uneasy at the thought. She went to light a taper at one of the few red embers remaining in the banked-down bedroom fire and placed it in the holder on Margaret’s bedside table.

“Follow me,” Margaret said, suppressing a small smile. “You can run and awaken James if something ill befalls me.”

The big old house made odd noises at the best of times. Most of them disappeared in the hustle and bustle of daytime, but once the sun was down and the household went to bed, any creak or crack seemed amplified. As a small girl, she had fretted over the low wailing of a lost soul trapped in the wall of the room next door, only to brave the noise and discover that it came from a reed trapped in the window that caught the wind when it was in the west. Since then, she had been the one to investigate anything uncanny or weird.

She tiptoed from door to door, listening. Nothing unusual. Her youngest sister talked in her sleep, and both brothers snored. Margaret went through the low-ceilinged passage and up a couple of steep stairs to where the Craigs were staying. Those were part of an annex that had been built by the ninth or tenth Baronet to accommodate his very large family, and had the benefit of privacy.

As she mounted the second stair, she heard it. No wonder it had sounded like spirits to Eliza. The faraway wail was definitely coming from one of the rooms. The flicker of candlelight was visible underneath the door. Margaret tapped on the wood.

“Aaron?”

The door wasn’t latched. At her touch, it drifted open.

Aaron sat on the floor with a book and a pad of paper on his lap, reading by a candle above his shoulder on the small end table. As she came in, he dove for a blue-sided box at his side to conceal it, but not before she got a good look at it. The box, about the size of a hen’s nest, had a thin black disk almost the same size spinning on its top. A flat stick zipped across the disk. The noise stopped with a sound like the chain being pulled in a wall clock.

“Cornflakes!” Aaron declared, examining the disk. A faint streak marred the gleaming surface. “I scratched it! My mother is going to kill me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I knocked, but the door was ajar. May I come in?” She tried to glance around him from the corridor, but he put as much of his body between her and the…device?…as he could. She and Hettie moved inside and closed the door almost all the way. It wouldn’t be seemly to be in the chamber of an unrelated gentleman at night. “What is that?”

He looked abashed, then moved so she could see it. Now that he had removed the disk, she could see a round plaque with a peg sticking up from the center. “It’s a record player. It plays music. It belongs to my mom. I thought I was keeping it quiet enough.”

“Not quite,” Margaret said. “The servants thought that the house was being haunted. They approached me as being the only one who is brave enough to face ghosts.”

Aaron looked as though he wanted to laugh, but also ashamed.

“I’m sorry, Miz Margaret. I’ve got all this homework that I have to finish before I go home. I work better when I can listen to music.”

“And this sound, this music is…stored in these flat disks?” she asked, looking at the black circle he held to his chest. “How?”

“Oh, that’s easy, ma’am!” He launched into an explanation of how a vinyl record was pressed from a master with grooves, and that the stylus that was lowered onto the revolving record produced an electric signal that was carried to the amplifier in the player. Margaret held up her hands for mercy.

“Stop, I beg you. I should have known better than to ask. This makes as little sense to me as your explanation of the aqualators. So, it contains songs from the time you come from?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Aaron gestured to another box that sat in one of the small shipping crates like the ones that had carried the aqualators from Magdeburg. It appeared seamless, bright coral on the outside and smooth white on the inside. It held a number of wide but very thin cardboard boxes. “I mean, it’s not really from my time, but my mom’s. And my grandmother’s. Most of these are old. I mean, not as old as your kind of music. But not the stuff I really liked listening to, but Mom wouldn’t let me take my CD player with me. Those are really delicate because they have a laser in them and they’re more prone to water damage, and we were coming here by sea. But they’re pretty good. Do you want to hear some of it?”

“Oh, yes!”

He consulted a device attached to the record player that had a glass-topped square on the front. Behind the glass, a red light like a demon’s eye glared at them. He nodded.

“What’s that?”

“The battery pack. At home I just plug it into the wall, but anywhere else I need a power source. This one’s rechargeable. I made it from an auto battery. I rigged it up so I can charge it from one of the river dynamos. It’ll run for about six hours on a charge. I’m counting on using one of the water wheels we made for the looms at night when no one is weaving. I’ve got about an hour of charge left on this one.”

“I’m impressed by the endless resourcefulness of your people,” Margaret said, shaking her head. “You come up with so many ideas and adapt them for other uses as well.”

“You kinda do that, too,” Aaron said, then his cheeks went red. “Even Herr Trelli was impressed with your ideas. If you wanted to come to Grantville and take classes with him, you’d probably do great.” He selected one of the flat boxes from the red container and slipped the disk from it. “This one is really good. I’ll put the volume down real low. If you two can get close to the speaker, I don’t think anyone else will hear it.”

“No, thank you, sir,” Hettie said, politely. “I will stay by the door and make sure no one disturbs you.”

“Thank you, Hettie,” Margaret said. She thought that her maid was much more likely to be avoiding too much contact with the up-timers’ devices. Apart from motor cars, their sojourn in Thuringia didn’t make her maidservant much more trusting of technology than she had been when they left. “That is very thoughtful.” She sat carefully on the floor beside Aaron. He set the turntable spinning and laid the stylus at the outermost edge of the disk. Immediately, sound began to come through the round pattern of hatch-marked piercings next to the knob that turned the device on.

She heard a cultured man’s voice speaking, though she could not entirely understand what he was saying, followed by some rapid notes that sounded as though they were played on strings, and two voices began to sing. She attempted to follow the lyrics, but found herself frowning.

“It sounds very pretty, but why does it go so fast?”

“Do I have it on the wrong speed?” Aaron glanced at the setting. “No, it’s right. This is what it’s supposed to sound like. It’s rock and roll. Here, I can slow it down for you.” He changed the setting underneath the edge of the disk, and the results slowed down to something that approximated more of what she considered to be music. Now Aaron made a face.

“I like it, I think,” Margaret admitted. “Who is the singer?”

“It’s a group of men called the Beatles.”

“Beadle? Guild officials? Like the man who obtains livery for Master Blackford? A choir? They don’t sound like any choir I have ever heard.”

“No!” Aaron laughed. “It’s a joke. They made up their name to sound like the bugs, beetles. I don’t know why. My granny probably does.”

Margaret had stopped long ago trying to work out the logic of the up-timers. “Where in the Americas do they come from?”

“Well, they’re not American. Or they won’t be, when they’re born. They’re English. They come from Liverpool.”

She gaped at him. “Liverpool? Our Liverpool? The port city, into which you sailed?”

“I guess so.” Aaron’s eyes danced. “I never made a connection to that at all. You say Lye-verpool, and we say Liver-pool, so I didn’t think they were the same thing. Wait ’til I tell Mom.”

“Were they…important?”

“Mom says for a while they were the most famous people in the world.”

“Musicians? Whatever you do, don’t let my brother Nat hear you say that,” Margaret said with a laugh. “He has a knack for music, but no practical skills whatsoever. He attended university, but he’s done nothing with his education thus far. If he feels he can make such strides in the world as a musician, we’ll never get him to focus on industry.”

“You know, there’s a place for everybody somewhere,” Aaron said. “He could do great things just playing and singing.”

Margaret didn’t correct him. She had had to rethink almost everything in her world since she had met the Americans. Wasn’t she turning everything on the manor upside down with notions that had been born in their kingdom? What was one more strange idea? Why shouldn’t Nat hear the music of the future? It might speak to him.

“Then I see no reason not to. Nat, for all his seeming not to care for a thing in the world, is trustworthy. He would very much enjoy hearing your music and learning about how musicians are regarded in the future.”

“Thanks, Miz Margaret!” Aaron said. He beamed. “It’ll be great to have someone I can talk to. It’s kind of lonely not being with my friends. I mean, I appreciate the chance to be here and be doing all the cool stuff we’re doing. But it’s different.”

“Having joined you in the USE and been surrounded by those who spoke in German and Amideutsch, I understand completely,” Margaret said, with heartfelt sincerity. “Have you ever had a dream where you were speaking, saying something of urgent import, and no one seemed to comprehend your words? Or to pass by people and have them not see you as though you were a spirit? To experience that while awake was just as disorienting. I’m sorry you have felt isolated here. We will endeavor to better ease your loneliness.”

Aaron smiled.

“I’m fine, Miz Margaret,” he said. “We’re making the Industrial Revolution happen here, remember?”

“I remember,” Margaret said, and touched the back of his hand. “Thank you, Aaron.”

“No problem,” he replied.

She went on listening. Each of the songs was separated by a few moments of silence. No two were anything alike, and they all had different voices and instruments. But her eyes widened as a familiar sound echoed in her ear.

“That sounds…like the organ at our church!” she exclaimed. “To hear it contained in a flat piece of glass…”

“Plastic,” Aaron corrected her. “Vinyl, really.”

“…Plastic, is a miracle that I feel privileged to hear.”

Aaron shrugged. “It’s nothing, ma’am. We used to have these everywhere. We even had different kinds of music boxes, and instruments that don’t even look like old-time instruments. I mean,” he said, his face going red, “maybe not old-time to you.”

She kept her ear close to the round grille and listened to the last short song before the stick moved to the center of the black disk, and the sound stopped. She sat up.

“Thank you,” she said. “I enjoyed that. Please thank your mother for the gift.”

“I will.” He took the disk off the turntable and tucked it into the colorful cardboard sleeve. When she looked curiously at it, Aaron handed it to her.

She turned it over, reading the words and looking at the pictures. She felt a connection to these young men from the future. Somehow, knowing that they came from a town not that far from where she now sat made her like them more than ever. She studied the photograph on the cover again, and pointed to one of the men. “Who is that? He is as beautiful as an angel in the stained-glass windows at church.”

“Paul McCartney,” Aaron said. “That was his voice you were hearing, except slowed down.”

“I like it. I liked them all, even the ones that I did not understand. And I will try to become accustomed to them at their proper speed. I would love to hear more, but you must keep it very low, or play it when there is other noise in the house. We’re already being accused of practicing wizardry with the aqualators. Music from the future would bring out the witch-finders. Nat will keep your secret, but please don’t frighten my servants anymore. If our staff think the house is haunted, they’ll tell people in the market, and word will spread everywhere! I will keep your secret if I can, but you need to warn me so we can contrive a convincing story.”

Aaron looked abashed. “I will, ma’am. I wish I could use headphones, but I don’t have any here. I should’ve thought of that, but I didn’t. I’ll be careful.”

“Well, good night to you, then. And thank you.”

She left him doing the rest of his homework, and went back to bed, thinking about countrymen of hers who were yet to be born.



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