Ring of Fire II

  They'd arrived at Leahy Medical Center. Jürgen parked the car, and the officers headed inside. Marvin paused before opening the door.

  "Mark my words, Jürgen. If Sherry's story is even close to true, there's going to be a world of trouble."

  "Well, Sherry's definitely pregnant," said Dr. Jeffrey Adams as he came into the office where Marvin and Jürgen were waiting for him. "Ten to twelve weeks, probably, based on when she thinks her last period was. Hard to tell exactly without doing an ultrasound, which I can't do."

  "Was she violated, Herr Doktor?" asked Jürgen.

  "She says she was. Medically? There's no way to tell, not now. If she'd gotten an exam right away, we might have been able to say, but nearly three months later?" He shrugged.

  "She didn't mention any names, perhaps, Herr Doktor?"

  He thought for a moment. "She wasn't sure. She said he was German. Definitely a Marine, attached to the Rome delegation. Thought his name was Dieter, Dittmar, something like that. She didn't remember for sure. Said she was pretty drunk at the time."

  "That matches her official statement," said Marvin. "I was almost hoping she was lying. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. This is going to be a mess."

  The constables—Marvin and Jürgen—took Artemisia and Sherry to the Higgins Hotel. It hadn't been easy for Artemisia to turn down Tino Nobili's offer to stay at his place, but with Constantia staying there and the grandchildren often there when Danielle needed a babysitter, the Nobili house was too crowded and noisy for her. The Higgins Hotel would do until Signor Colburn found suitable housing for her and her daughters.

  By the standards of the day, the Higgins Hotel was luxurious, not to mention maybe the cleanest inn on the European continent. Artemisia thought it even put her rooms at Cassiano dal Pozzo's Roman palazzo to shame. There was a helpful staff that would deliver meals to the room upon request; all one needed to do was call them on a device known as a "telephone." Each room had two beds with freshly laundered sheets, a bathroom with running water, electric lighting (and what a marvel that was), something called a "hot plate" for heating water, a teapot and a selection of "Frau Tibelda" brand teas. Artemisia selected a packet labeled "Frau Tibelda's Calming Chamomile" and started some water heating. She noticed the woman standing in the middle of the room, not doing or saying anything.

  Artemisia indicated one of the beds. "That one's yours. You can sleep here as long as you need to."

  The woman—Sherry—didn't move. "Why're you doing this? You don't know me."

  Artemisia studied the teapot sitting atop the burner. "My name is Artemisia," she said, realizing the woman probably hadn't caught her name with all that had gone on. "Your man said some things that made me angry. No one should say that to someone they care about."

  She sat down on the bed. "He's my husband. Ronnie."

  Artemisia nodded. "May I ask you something?" Sherry merely shrugged. "Are you so sure that the child isn't your husband's?"

  Sherry laughed bitterly. "Ronnie's been snipped." Artemisia looked at her questioningly. "So he don't have no kids. You know?"

  Sherry had shut down mentally when Ronnie started laying into her, but she was finally starting to come back to herself. She realized that the woman now making tea for her was clearly a down-timer. Sherry was fuzzy on people's status, but she could tell this Italian woman's clothes were well-made. That probably meant she was important. Which left Sherry even more puzzled as to why this woman gave a damn about the likes of her. Be that as it may, this woman wouldn't know what a vasectomy was.

  "He didn't seem like he'd been unmanned," Artemisia said seriously.

  It took Sherry a moment to realize what Artemisia meant by "unmanned." When she did, she had her first good laugh in months. She laughed so hard she cried, and Artemisia couldn't help joining in. Sherry attempted to explain.

  "No, nothing like that. They didn't cut off his balls. Though in Ronnie's case that might've been good. There's like a little tube thingie that runs to a man's thing. They close that off, and a guy can't have no kids. Ronnie didn't want 'em. Said one woman trapped him that way, and it wasn't going to happen again."

  "I see. Your surgeons truly are skilled if they can do such a thing," said Artemisia. The water was now boiling; she turned off the hot plate and poured two cups. She set a strainer in each to let the tea steep. "That would be difficult, if a man knew for certain he couldn't have children."

  "I've thought about getting rid of it. But . . . I don't know."

  "Abortions are so easy to get here?" Artemisia asked, surprised.

  "Doc Adams'll do them if you're not too far along. Or the Jew doctor, Becky Stearns' dad."

  Artemisia couldn't help goggling a little. This woman—obviously lower class—could speak casually of going to a doctor of such renowned reputation as Balthazar Abrabanel? Artemisia didn't know Balthazar personally, but she was acquainted with several members of the Abrabanel clan's Italian branch, and they spoke highly of Balthazar's medical skills. Artemisia had suspected her daughter's reports of Grantville's wealth and radical notions of equality were exaggerated. Now she knew they weren't.

  "Dotto Adams certainly seemed knowledgeable. And Dotto Abrabanel's skills are widely praised. An abortion from either one should be safe I would think."

  A quick check of the tea showed it had steeped long enough. Artemisia gave a cup to Sherry and took a careful sip from her own. Sherry just held her tea, watching the steam rise off the cup.

  "I've thought about it. But I'm thirty-four. I probably won't have a chance to have another one, especially if I end up trying to patch things up with Ronnie. I always thought I was okay with not having kids, but now . . ." Sherry trailed off.

  "It's not an easy decision." Artemisia paused for a moment, as she decided whether or not to go on. "I have two daughters, you know."

  "Well, I kinda figured the girl going with Jabe McDougal was yours."

  "When I found myself expecting my younger daughter, Constantia, I was faced with a similar decision. I was pretty sure she was my husband's, but not certain. We had been living apart for several years by then but were trying to reconcile. He wasn't the only man sharing my bed at the time. In the end, I decided to have Constantia."

  "That's not the only reason you're helping me," said Sherry rather sharply. It was almost as if she were issuing a challenge.

  Artemisia was not offended. She smiled at Sherry. "You are quite right, Signora Murray. It is not. But that is a story best left for another time. Drink your tea, and then it will be time to sleep. You need your rest."

  "You should call me Sherry. If we're going to be roomies, I don't want you calling me 'senyora.' "

  "Of course."

  "Can I ask you another question, Artemisia?" She nodded. "Did you ever regret it? Having your little girl, I mean?"

  Artemisia smiled. "Not for one moment, Sherry. Not a single moment."

  On Monday morning, September twenty-ninth—two days after the incident at the Club 250—the first order of business for Officers Tipton and Neubert was to pay a visit to Wes Jenkins. Head of the civilian administrative office in Fulda until recently, Wes had accepted an appointment to head up the State of Thuringia-Franconia Consular Service and had moved back to Grantville with his new wife, Clara. He had been at his post less than a month. Wes and Marvin chatted while one of staff looked for a list of Roman embassy personnel. Marvin briefly recounted the events of Saturday night. Wes groaned theatrically.

  "You know, after everything that happened this summer, I was hoping I could just come back here, relax a little and enjoy married life. No rest for the weary, I guess."

  "Are you?" asked Marvin.

  "Am I what?"

  "Enjoying married life?"

  Wes couldn't resist a grin. "We're managing to enjoy it just fine."

  "Well, congratulations, Wes. Really."

  "Thanks. Congratulations yourself, by the way, on Sarah. Clara was telling me the news the other day—don't ask me where she heard about it.
Maybe I'll join you at the Gardens."

  "Sure. If I ever get the chance."

  The assistant came in with a copy of the list and handed it to Marvin.

  "Thanks. Thanks again, Wes. This is someone else's headache now."

  "Thank goodness," Wes said. "Tonight at the Gardens, then?"

  "Sure. As long as no Italian artists pull a knife on any white trash drunks, we're on."

  A cart carrying the Gentileschis pulled up to the front gate of the Grantville Army base. They'd come to pick up Jabe on their way to the railroad station. They were due to leave for Halle on the afternoon train and from there travel to Magdeburg by riverboat. The girls waited while Artemisia went to get Jabe; she wanted to see where the young man worked. After the sentry placed a quick call to the press office, she was let through.

  When she expressed doubts about Jabe being a soldier, Artemisia had assumed that the Americans, like everyone else, let their mercenaries run wild throughout the countryside or in garrison towns unless they were needed for battle. She saw how wrong she was. Even one such as her, not familiar on a personal basis with military procedure, could tell at a glance the people in this camp were orderly and disciplined. No one bothered her as she walked; in fact, one young man was kind enough to escort her to the press office when she got lost.

  When Artemisia arrived at the press office, she found Jabe in the middle of a group as unruly as any Neapolitan mob she'd ever seen. He nodded when he saw her and began fighting his way toward her, handing out sheets of paper and shouting "No comment!" the whole way. When he finally reached her side, the young man looked as harried as a woman with three young children.

  "You're a sight for sore eyes, Artemisia."

  Artemisia understood the intended, if not the literal, meaning of the expression from the obvious relief in Jabe's voice.

  "Do you have to deal with such savage behavior every day, Gia'?"

  Jabe laughed. "No, thank goodness."

  "Then what were you handing out that those people were eager for?"

  "A press release. I'll tell you more about it later. It's about Sherry Murray, so it might end up concerning you anyway, at least partly."

  Artemisia nodded. "If they want any information out of me, they had best be more polite about it."

  Jabe chuckled. "If not, can I get you to pull a knife on them? Maybe it'll improve their manners."

  They continued chatting on the way to the train station. Artemisia was nervous about traveling in such an outlandish device. Talking with Jabe was taking her mind off things, and after the scene she'd witnessed, she was interested in hearing more about his job.

  "Most of the time things aren't that crazy," Jabe said. He went on to explain that Grantville itself had four newspapers: the Times, the Free Press (which published a German edition as the Freie Presse), the Daily News and a relatively new weekly, Freiheit!, which was published by the Grantville Freedom Arches and which hewed to the Committee of Correspondence line on the issues of the day.

  That paper's opposite number was a weekly out of Rudolstadt called Die Wochliche Krone, known as The Weekly Crown to its English-speaking readership. The Weekly Crown was modeled on up-time news and commentary magazines and was firmly in the Crown Loyalist camp. Rudolstadt's newspaper, the Rudolstadt Taggeblatt—or Rudolstadt Daily Times (though it did well to come out three times a week)—was more neutral than the weekly, though it generally tended to be skeptical of Prime Minister Stearns and his policies. In addition, Jabe explained, the papers from Saalfeld, Suhl and occasionally Jena sent correspondents to the Grantville office, and there were freelancers who wrote dispatches for the Thurn und Taxis imperial couriers to distribute along their route. By the time he was done explaining all this, Artemisia was convinced that Jabe showed more bravery by facing these "journalists" than if he'd been fighting alongside the Swede in his military campaigns.

  She could hardly believe it when they arrived in Magdeburg. For all her initial nervousness, Artemisia decided she quite liked traveling by rail. It was far faster and much more comfortable than carriage travel. She didn't even feel exhausted, as she usually did after even a relatively short carriage ride.

  If Artemisia was happy to reach Magdeburg, her daughter was ecstatic. She'd never seen Prudentia so excited, and she couldn't blame her daughter. She remembered the first time she'd completed a commission for an important client. In the years since, she'd painted for people even more important than Grand Duke Cosimo II Medici, but even working for King Philip or the holy father didn't quite match the pride and excitement she'd felt when she'd delivered that first painting to His Grace. She knew Prudentia would be feeling the same thing when she presented her painting to Princess Kristina in just a few days. But even as Artemisia applauded her daughter in a ceremony at Hans Richter Square, she couldn't help wondering what was going on with Sherry.

  Back in Grantville, the police went over the list supplied by Consular Affairs. There was only one person on the list with a name close to what Sherry thought her attacker's name was: Marine Lance Corporal Dietrich Linn. Marvin Tipton wasn't the only one who sensed this was trouble. Just because John Simpson's political campaign was in the past didn't mean that the divisions it attempted to exploit were completely forgotten. No one wanted anything to do with this case and kept trying pass the buck to a higher authority.

  Police Chief Preston Richards didn't know for certain who had jurisdiction over military personnel. Grantville hadn't been near any military bases before the Ring of Fire, so it wasn't a problem the police department had ever had to deal with. He forwarded Neubert's and Tipton's report to Ed Piazza's office. Preston figured this was why Ed was president.

  Ed viewed it as a matter for USE military command to handle and kicked it up to Magdeburg to General Torstensson and his staff. Torstensson's adjutant made inquiries and found that the civilian authorities had jurisdiction. Just to cover themselves, however, the general staff kicked the matter to the prime minister's office. By all reports, Mike had a fit and told Ed Piazza what needed to be done in no uncertain terms.

  The Chief Justice of the State of Thuringia-Franconia poured two fingers of scotch for his father. He had a very big favor to ask, and he was dipping into his last bottle of eighteen-year-old Oban to "grease the wheels," so to speak. Chuck had gotten a taste for the brand on a trip to the Hebrides back before the Ring of Fire, and it became one of the former small-town lawyer's few indulgences.

  "This must be serious, son," said Thomas Price Riddle. "I know how you've been hoarding this ever since the Ring of Fire." He sipped the scotch, smiling in appreciation.

  Chuck locked the Oban away and sipped his own glass. "Alex and Julie have standing instructions for bringing some good stuff back with them. When I told Alex what I was ready to pay, he thought I was nuts."

  "You're changing the subject, son," the older man said. "If this is some sticky legal problem you need your old man's help on, you didn't need to break into the secret stash. Not that I don't appreciate it."

  "It is a sticky legal problem, Dad, but it's not your opinion I need. It's you." Chuck handed his father the memo.

  Tom read it and frowned. "Judge in Extraordinary?"

  "The official paperwork's on its way over from Ed's office even as we speak," said Chuck. "He wants you to preside over this trial." Chuck summarized the facts of the case for his father.

  "But why me?" Thomas asked.

  "Two reasons. The first is that Maurice Tito has more than he can handle on his docket as it is in the Grantville courts. This trial may take weeks, and everything else would grind to a halt." Chuck made a mental note to stay on the state congress's case about appointing more judges to help Maurice handle his increasing caseload. "Second, you're about the only person with a solid working knowledge of up-time military law."

  "I thought you said this was being handled by the civilian authorities?"

  "I did. But you never know what will be relevant these days. Ed said, and I agree, that the judg
e should have experience in military as well as civilian legal procedure."

  "I should be defending the kid, not presiding over his trial!"

  "You're expected to appoint a lawyer, and I'm sure you'll find a good one. And I'm also sure you'll school them in the basics of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to the extent that it will be relevant to the case."

  "That's irregular as hell, and you know it!" Thomas said. "Talk about conflict of interest! That's bad enough, but how can this kid get a fair trial if his lawyer only has a crash course in military law?"

  Chuck sighed. He loved his father and respected him as a lawyer. But the old man could be real difficult sometimes.