Grantville Gazette 43

  After several minutes of being bent down over the white cloth, she straightened up. "The thread count is sixty-eight. If you measure across the threads, Mr. Moretti, they average sixty-eight threads per up-time inch."

  "Is that good, or ill, or wretched?" he asked.

  Stephanie didn't say what she thought, which was This isn't even good enough for the cheapest Wal-Mart bedsheet! Instead, she asked Shackerley, "What do you think of this?"

  " 'Tis excellent cloth, most excellent," he said. "Upon the London stage, 'twould make fine costumes indeed."

  "Huh."

  Cecilio asked, "So you have heard my tale, and you have seen my cloth, now will you . . . ?

  "Now will I talk with my partner, Tilda. Unless she says 'No, no, no' to buying your cotton cloth, tomorrow you, me, and Tilda will travel to Bamberg. That's a few hours from here."

  "What be in Bamberg?"

  "Another up-timer woman, who knows quite a lot about making cloth from India cotton."

  "And how be this up-timer woman a master or scholar at India cotton cloth, when thine own libraries know little?" Cecilio asked.

  Stephanie noted that Cecilio had dissed her again.

  Stephanie's smile was cruel. "Up-time, Sumitra's father was a floor manager in a cotton mill. Sumitra worked in that same mill for a few months when she was sixteen, as a weaver. Sumitra is from northwest India."

  Then Stephanie's smile changed to sickly-sweet. "Would it be okay if I took your samples home tonight? I'd really, really appreciate it."

  Stephanie was being presumptuous with Moretti: She couldn't simply take tomorrow off without Mr. Saluzzo's permission. But when Stephanie showed the white and gray cotton cloths to the principal, Mr. Saluzzo quickly gave the needed permission.

  "How long till we have cotton underwear again?" Mr. Saluzzo asked Stephanie.

  ****

  "Oh, Stephanie," Tilda Gundlach said, hours later, "do you want to starve me?" Tailor-widow Tilda owned a Higgins sewing machine, was still making payments on it, and those payments weren't cheap.

  "I don't get it," said Aaron Turski, who was Stephanie's younger son. "Frau Gundlach doesn't look starved to me." Aaron sucked in his cheeks to show what he meant.

  Seth Turski, Stephanie's older son, slapped his brother on the arm. "Frau Gundlach doesn't mean starving for real, brainless boy. She means that if she and Mom buy this cotton cloth, something might go wrong, then Frau Gundlach will get her Higgins repoed."

  "Stop it, I'm trying to eat," Aaron said. "Mom, tell Seth to stop hitting me."

  Stephanie eyed the perp. "Seth knows better. Don't you, Seth?" Once Stephanie had collected a shrug from Seth, she turned to Tilda.

  Stephanie said to Tilda, "This could be big, really big. I don't think even Cecilio Moretti realizes what he maybe has got."

  "We might get rich?" Aaron asked hopefully.

  Stephanie smiled at her son. "Mister Moretti will get filthy, obscenely, ridiculously rich, by five years from now. Tilda and I can get a big piece of that, by acting smart before the price jump."

  "What price jump?" Seth asked.

  "I've been thinking hard about this, since this afternoon. Everyone has heard of David Bartley and Admiral Simpson, right?" When everyone nodded, Stephanie said, "What people forget about Admiral Simpson is that he wants so much to put all his people in uniforms, he can taste it."

  Five minutes later, Stephanie was looking straight into Tilda's eyes. " . . . So, that's my idea, that we buy tomorrow all the cotton cloth we can afford. Yes, I know it's bet-the-farm risky. If it turns out nobody wants cotton clothing, you and I are in big trouble. But if Bartley and Simpson make the price of cotton cloth go way up, nobody can touch us. Your call, Tilda. After all, you owe money on your sewing machine, while I've got zillions in blue-jeans money at the credit union."

  "Yeah, zillions, and nuthin' to spend it on," Aaron pouted. "This world needs video-game and comic-book stores."

  "Miss MacDougall says video games are silly," Seth said. "She says only boys with no imagination play video games." Fenella MacDougall was Seth's English teacher.

  "Seth has a cru-ush!" Aaron sing-songed.

  Seth's face turned apple-red. "I'm going to hit you harder if you don't be quiet!"

  "Ahem," Tilda said, acting unaware of the glare and the smirk only a few feet away. Tilda continued, "Stephanie, none of your plans matter if this Sumitra says the cloth is no good. So my next question is, what is Sumitra like?"

  Stephanie replied, "Well, some of that, I'll need to ask her permission to tell you—"

  Hearing this, Tilda's eyebrows shot up.

  Stephanie continued, "A few months after the Ring of Fire, I got a phone call . . . ."

  Stephanie didn't tell Tilda much, especially with Seth and Aaron listening. But Stephanie remembered that day clearly.

  At the kitchen phone

  Turski residence

  August 13, 1631

  "Um, this is the Stephanie Turski residence?" a young up-timer woman asked over the phone. She sounded nervous.

  Stephanie stretched the phone-receiver cord, and went back to cooking potato pancakes. "Yes, and I'm Stephanie. Are you a telemarketer, sweetie?"

  "What?" the voice said. "Oh, I get it, that's a joke. Um . . . my name is Samantha Salerno. I've never took any of your classes, but I go to Saint Vin—to Saint Mary's. Anyway, um . . . I'm calling because kids who know you, they all say you're cool."

  "Thank you, it's always nice to hear that. But sweetie, you didn't call to brighten my day. It sounds like you're in trouble. Or maybe you can't adjust to the Ring of Fire?"

  "Not me, I'm fine. But my friend Sumitra, she's a basket case! She keeps apologizing to me, 'I am sorry, I am sorry,' but she won't tell me what she's sorry for! And she's said several times, 'I caused all this'—"

  "Ah, so she thinks she caused the Ring of Fire?"

  "At first, I thought she was joking, because of . . . "

  Stephanie waited ten seconds, then said, "Go on, you were saying? You thought she was joking, because of what?"

  "Sorry, it's really silly, but I promised I won't tell. Anyway, I thought she was joking, but now I think that she thinks she really caused all this! Please, can you talk to her?"

  "Why not have Sumitra talk to one of the people counseling at the high—"

  "Sumitra says it's because she graduated a month ago, so she won't be allowed to talk to those guys. But me, I think she doesn't want anybody noticing she's talking to a shrink. But she needs to talk to somebody!"

  Stephanie was trying to remember what she'd learned in Freshman Psych at WVU. "Does Sumitra cry a lot?" Stephanie asked.

  "Before the Ring of Fire, never. These days? All the time. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was pregnant!"

  Stephanie asked, "Oh? Why don't you think she's pregnant?"

  "Because the whole year with us, she's never once dated. Which I don't get, because Ent Martin drools like an idiot whenever she walks into the room."

  Stephanie thought, Hm, at least one boy likes her, but she doesn't date. Hm. "Okay, sweetie, I'll talk to her. I'm fixing dinner now, so bring her by in an hour and a half. My address is . . . "

  An hour and forty minutes later

  A young woman from India sat in Stephanie's living room. Sumitra had black, straight hair that also was long, thick, flawless, and shiny like a shampoo model's hair; Stephanie felt a moment’s envy.

  Seth and Aaron had been sent to their rooms. Samantha had just ridden away on her bicycle. Which meant: Stephanie and Sumitra were alone, and would remain alone.

  Sumitra said, while staring at the living-room floor, "Samantha knows about the hamburger. She did tell to you about the hamburger, yes?"

  "No, she didn't," Stephanie said. "What happened with the hamburger, sweetie?"

  Still staring at the floor, Sumitra explained how she'd violated one of the biggest taboos that the Hindu religion had, before and during the Ring of Fire.

  Stephanie asked,
"So do you think the Hindu gods caused all this, just to punish you?"

  The Indian girl continued to stare at the floor, while she sighed and twisted her fingers. "The Hindu gods. The Catholic gods. The Lutheran gods. All them together? I do not know, but I know the gods punish me."

  Stephanie replied, "Sweetie, you're not the only person who feels he or she caused this. I know this for a fact."

  "Other people think this?"

  "Okay, remember that your class held prom, the night before—"

  "I remember this well. I was not invited."

  "I'm sorry, sweetie. Anyway, the day after the gymnasium meeting, Tony Mastroianni told an odd story to all us teachers who had lunch with him. A boy had confessed to Tony, to 'causing' the Ring of Fire. After the prom, the boy had unprotected sex with his date, after already deciding that if she got pregnant, he wouldn't marry her. So however-many days later, Tony said, the boy was convinced that his selfish action and his selfish thought 'made God mad,' so the Ring of Fire happened a few hours later."

  "All because of him?"

  "Partly because of him. Then the next day, a student of mine—I won't mention her name, because she graduated with you—told me how she'd given her virginity to her boyfriend after the prom, besides performing oral sex on him. The next day, we're here in Thuringia, and she decided she was part-way to blame."

  "What happened to the other two people? The girl who maybe is pregnant, and the boy who received the oral sex?"

  "It turns out, both of them got left up-time. In—"

  "So maybe this is, the gods are not angry to me, the gods are angry to us."

  "Sweetie, if God got mad at a girl for giving oral sex, that whore Geri Kinney would have been struck by lightning years ago." Stephanie didn't add, Especially if God even slightly listens to my prayers.

  Sumitra said, "But the gods—"

  Stephanie really wanted to avoid a discussion about religion. Thinking hard, she remembered something that Sumitra had said earlier. "You said, 'Samantha knows about the hamburger.' Is something bothering you that Samantha doesn't know about?"

  The young woman's shoulders began to shake. Between sobs, she said, "Please, do not tell to Samantha. What I tell to you, do not tell to Samantha! Promise to me, please!"

  "I promise, I won't tell her," Stephanie said quietly, then asked just as quietly, "Were you raped? Did a German man rape you?"

  At last, Sumitra's eyes came up off the floor. "What? No. No man. I am the virgin, to all the sex."

  "So what's bothering you?"

  "Samantha is the virgin also. But I do not want to give my virginity to the boy, I want to give this to Samantha! I love her eyes, I love her smile, I love her laugh, I love how she talks the West Virginia. So much I love her hair-smell, and so much I love her skin-smell. Before the Ring of Fire hit, and after, I smelled Samantha, and I was keen to kiss her, and to kiss her, and to kiss her where nobody kissed her ever!"

  "And you think this is wrong? Listen, sweetie—"

  "In old, old India, when two virgins did sex, the judge fined each virgin much money, and the judge cut off two fingers of each girl."

  "Sumitra, sweetie—"

  "The Christians say two virgin girls do sex, this is evil. So I am evil! I did the two evil things—I ate the beef, and I wanted to do sex with the virgin girl when I am also the virgin girl—and Somebody-God said, 'I will punish her. No, she is so much evil, I will punish everyone near her.' Please, you tell to Samantha, 'Sumitra is dreadfully sorry.' "

  The art teacher's response was pure gut-instinct. She threw her arms around the Indian girl, hugged Sumitra close, and murmured, "You poor girl, you poor girl."

  Sumitra struggled to get free. "Why do you do this? I am evil! I made you go to 1631! You not must touch me!"

  Stephanie kept hugging. "If you were evil, would I be doing this? You poor girl."

  Maybe twenty seconds later, Sumitra's sobs turned to sniffles. Several minutes later, the sniffles stopped. Sumitra made one big sniff, and tried to push away. Stephanie let go.

  "What do you think about me?" Sumitra asked. "Honest, please."

  Stephanie said, "Sweetie, I don't know why we're here in Germany. I'm not a brain in science, and I don't know a lot about the Bible—and those people don't know why we're here either. But lesbians I know something about. I've taken classes with some, rehearsed plays with some, and been hit on by some."

  Stephanie stared into Sumitra's eyes and continued: "You are not evil. You are not wicked. I'm sure that you are not to blame for any of this."

  The girl from India threw her arms around the art teacher and squeezed hard.

  One minute later, Stephanie phoned Nicki Jo Prickett, a woman Stephanie knew only by gossip; Nicki Jo supposedly had told people she was a lesbian.

  After Nicki Jo answered the telephone—

  "Nicki Jo? Hi, my name's Stephanie Turski. Um, you don't know me, but I'm an art teacher at the high school—"

  "Yes, I've heard of you." The woman's voice sounded wary.

  "I've been talking to a young woman, a high-school student and, um, she has a problem that I think you can help her with, better than I can."

  "What problem is that?" The voice definitely was wary now.

  "This girl has a friend, a girl friend. And this girl really, really likes her friend."

  "Which explains why the first girl picked the second girl to be her friend. Why are you calling me about these two girls, Ms. Turski?"

  "Because the first girl doesn't only like her friend, she's—she's in love with her friend. The first girl is . . . a lesbian. But she's pretty sure that her friend isn't."

  "So you're calling me because you've heard stories about me. Stories that say I'm some kind of lesbian."

  "I don't know what kind of lesbian you are, Nicki Jo—the stories don't give details."

  "Then the stories are right. I'm a lesbian who keeps things private." The phone went silent for ten seconds. "You haven't mentioned whether this girl has her own transportation."

  "She has a bicycle. No car. You want her to come to your place?"

  "I'd recommend she meet me by the Fluharty mausoleum at the Uphill Cemetery. People might not even see us together, but if they do, they can't hear us talk. Wait, it has to be sometime tomorrow, because it's dark now."

  "Nicki Jo, unless you're busy now, why don't you come to my house? She's here in my living room."

  Wariness was replaced with surprise. "You're inviting me to—sure, that works. I need your address."

  Five minutes later, the doorbell rang. Stephanie introduced the young women—Nicki Jo, it turned out, was only three years older than Sumitra. Then Stephanie grabbed a novel and went into the kitchen, giving her guests privacy to talk.

  A half-hour later, Nicki Jo and Sumitra walked into the kitchen. Sumitra was smiling.

  Stephanie felt good.

  Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia Women's College (formerly the Inn Of The Twin Oaks)

  Bamberg, Franconia, SoTF

  Tuesday, September 9, 1636, soon after 8 a.m.

  Over five years after Sumitra had sobbed in Stephanie Turski's living room, Sumitra was still secretly in love with her best friend Samantha. But now both of the former high-school students were students at Saint Liz College.

  In her dormitory room, college student Sumitra was drying her hair with a worn-out up-time towel that Hilary Chehab had given her. Someone knocked on Sumitra's door.

  "Want me to get it?" Sumitra's roommate Polyxena von Leiningen asked. After all, Polyxena was fully dressed, while Sumitra at the moment was standing naked in front of the basin and pitcher.

  "Would you, please?" Sumitra said with Thuringian accent, as she wrapped her nakedness with a second ratty towel. Five years after the Ring of Fire, Sumitra was proud that her German was better than her English.

  "I hurry to obey, my lady," Polyxena said with a smile, then she walked to the door.

  "Stop that!" Sumitra said with her own smile. " 'No servan
ts,' remember?"

  "Don't remind me," Polyxena replied, showing a comically sad face. Polyxena was one of three Adel women attending Saint Elisabeth College, and all three clearly disliked the decree that anyone living in the former inn may have with her "no chaperones, no personal maids, no cooks, and no servants of any kind."

  To Sumitra, Polyxena was a big improvement over the other two young noblewomen, because Polyxena showed her disapproval of the edict only by making jokes. Even better for Sumitra, Polyxena's jokes were actually funny.

  As for the other two Adel women, Sumitra's thinking was, What do they have to complain about?

  After all, soon after the Educational Order Of Saint Elisabeth Of Thuringia had expropriated the Inn Of The Twin Oaks by mysterious means, the men of Saint Mary's of Grantville had descended upon the building. There was now a water tank and windmill on the roof, and running water at the end of the hallway. So the servantless Fräulein von Whine and Fräulein von Complain weren't as bad off as they claimed to be.

  By now, Polyxena was at the dorm-room door. She opened it, to reveal Frau Witterin, the House Mother.

  Frau Witterin said, "Sumitra, there's a Telegrambote with a message for you. I'll tell him you're not decent."

  Sumitra said, "Tell him it'll be a few minutes till I can come out. If he won't wait, he can give the telegram to you."

  Neither Polyxena nor Frau Witterin suggested letting the telegram boy walk into the building and go straight to Sumitra's door, even with an escort. A rule of the college forbade this. Sumitra thought that the "No man allowed in the dormitory, ever, we mean it, amen" rule was extreme—Nobody's father allowed? No brother? No telegram boy?—but Sumitra knew she'd be outvoted, so she stayed silent this minute as well.

  After Frau Witterin had left and Polyxena shut the door, Polyxena turned to Sumitra. Polyxena's eyes were glowing. "You got a telegram! Who do you think it's from?"

  At times, three-years-younger Polyxena treated Sumitra like a Bollywood bhagwan (star), and this was one of those times. Sumitra was sure that Polyxena was imagining D'Artagnan standing at a telegraph office, sending a telegram to Sumitra, his sari-dressed secret love.