Mary Timm hated church steeples.
There was no glass in them. They blocked the light in odd ways, cast shadows where shadows had no place being. They stabbed the sky and mocked the sun. They interfered with her art.
Having a boy hanging from one didn't help either.
"Boys!" Mary snarled as she marched into the fire department.
Mary couldn't help but pause a moment when she walked inside. Now here was a place that was worth coming to. There were bright colors and shiny pieces of metal and reflections and windows. She would very much like to linger on this late fall morning but she knew she couldn't. Whatever Blaise was screaming from up there, hanging from the steeple, it would have been cruel to leave him.
"Shouldn't you be in school, Mary?" one of the firefighters asked. Though Mary was only eleven, she had a look of frustration and forbearance of one much older.
"There is a boy hanging from the church tower."
The five men standing in the large garage stopped and looked at her.
"What?" one asked in English.
"There is a stupid boy hanging from . . ."
She jumped when the alarm went off.
"Just got a call!" Another man ran into the garage. "Some crazy kid is hanging from the steeple at the Catholic church!"
"That's what I was trying to tell you!" Mary yelled.
The small garage erupted into activity and Mary fled to a corner to stay out of the way. With an explosion of noise and activity the fire trucks raced out of the garage.
In the quiet after the last truck drove off Mary glanced up at the windows high on the walls then at the nice, neat squares of light on the clean floor of the garage.
"What a waste of light." she muttered to herself. With a sigh she turned and walked back to the church with the crazy boy hanging from that stupid, light-blocking steeple. If God truly loved her, He would have Blaise Pascal knock the steeple down so that at 9:30 in the morning the light would hit the window of that nice building a block over and . . .
Julie Drahuta hated mornings.
Mornings should be calm, pleasant times. If she had her way, the day would begin slowly, comfortably. There would be time to sip some coffee, read a newspaper, have a nice quiet breakfast.
"But no! I have to be here asking myself why a smart boy like you was hanging from a church steeple! Jesus God! What were you thinking?" Julie tried to calm herself. She glanced up at the steeple then back at the tear-stained, rope-burned, bruised, angry boy before her. In her admittedly grumpy opinion, he was being tended to much more carefully than he deserved.
"It did not work! It did not work!" Blaise waved a plastic ruler at her. Then he threw it on the ground and stamped on it.
"Hey! Stop that!"
"It didn't work!" Blaise shouted. Julie pulled him away from the object of his tantrum. The rest of his comments were muffled and in French; a very foul French one might not expect to hear coming from the mouth of an eleven year old. She wrapped him up in a hug.
To a casual observer it might appear that Julie was trying to suffocate the boy.
"Should I call a child protection officer?" a firefighter asked as Blaise screamed, muffled by Julie's hold on him.
Julie turned with a slow, reptilian grace that wiped the smile from the firefighter's face.
"That will be all, Gus," Julie chirped with her best brutal, violence-promising smile.
"You know . . ." Chief Matheny scratched his head then replaced his helmet as he looked up at the steeple then around the base. "I've seen kids do the oddest things and get themselves into situations the experts can't write about in textbooks because no one would believe the book. Gus, look around for any loose equipment."
"I'm sorry you had to go to all of this trouble, Chief Matheny." Julie sighed as Blaise Pascal, the world's greatest mathematician, sobbed and cursed in her arms.
"This beats all. Wiley Coyote couldn't have done better with two credit cards and a direct number to ACME. What's worse, the darn thing almost worked. The crossbow worked, the block and tackle worked, even the attempt to counterbalance his weight with that bag of rocks worked. The harness slipping up around his neck was a mistake anyone could have made. That definitely didn't work."
Julie looked at the bruises on Blaise's neck. They looked similar to the sorts of marks a victim of strangulation might have.
"He's a handful." She tried to smile.
There was a flurry of cursing; some of it in a broken English that made the curse words sound less vulgar and more humorous. Blaise tried to stamp on the plastic ruler again.
"Blaise! Enough!"
"Of course, getting up is a lot different than getting back down. Cats sometimes have that problem and they're excellent climbers." Chief Matheny shook his head.
"What has the imp of Satan done now?" a distant female voice screeched in French.
That had been one of the first complete French sentences Julie Drahuta had learned. Considering the relationship between Blaise and his governess, she could understand why.
Watching Madame Delfault approach one might think Blaise was going to be the very much "former" greatest mathematician in the world.
Julie wasn't concerned. No one would argue that Madame Delfault always sounded one moment away from going psycho on the boy. She treated Blaise with the sort of loving care one might have expected from his mother, who Julie knew from history books had died before Grantville had appeared.
"I thought Bill was joking about some boy wanting to hook an indoor extension cord to the mains out at the power plant. I don't see it as funny now. He's going to kill himself by the numbers if someone don't make it clear to him that life's too short to die by accident. You figure out what he was doing, Julie?" Chief Matheny glanced quickly at the approaching governess.
"I was called away from a late breakfast to find him being lowered to the ground by your very professional fire department." Julie sighed. She pushed Blaise away from her in such a way that he would be able to see his governess approach.
Julie Drahuta might know that Madame Delfault loved the boy but Blaise wasn't sure about that, apparently. If Blaise was an imp of Satan then in his eyes Madame Delfault was the wrath of God approaching. Julie smiled. For a smart kid, he was easily fooled.
"Tell me what you were doing or I give you to her" Julie said slowly.
"It was the fault of that!" Blaise pointed with his chin. He was too smart to take his eyes off his approaching doom.
"What were you doing?" Julie snapped.
Blaise pulled a piece of notebook paper out of his pocket then hunched his shoulders to more fully hide behind her. He handed the paper, as bruised and battered as he was, to Julie.
There were triangles and numbers and erasures and even a stab mark.
"What is this?"
"She is coming!" Blaise whispered. "Do something!"
"You were trying to measure the height of the steeple with that piece of junk?" Chief Matheny laughed, pointing to the cheap plastic ruler.
Blaise tried to stomp on the ruler again. With the foot that was missing a shoe.
"Young man" Chief Matheny shook his head. "Next time come by the fire house. I'll get you the proper tools to do a similar triangle calculation. Hell, to avoid this mess, I'll get you the building blueprints. And this harness? You raise yourself up anything taller than a kitchen table with something like this again and I'll strangle you myself. And I'm taking that crossbow too. You make it yourself?"
Blaise nodded silently.
"Blaise Pascal! What have you done?" Madame Delfault had finally gotten past the crowd and rushed up to inspect her charge.
"And I think I am going to inspect your 'laboratory,' Blaise." Julie looked at the crossbow and shuddered. Somehow she knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the markings on it were not for show. It was, for all intents and purposes, a sniper crossbow, if she was reading the markings on it correctly. It explained how the rope had gotten through the open cupola that supported the cross at the top of the steeple.
Blaise tried to hide from both Madame Delfault and the chief of Grantville's fire department.
A sudden thought made Julie ask, "Did you see a little girl around here?"
"Mary's in the church. She's looking at the stained glass windows. She likes windows. That she does. She paints pretty pictures on glass. I hope she learned her lesson about glass and how sharp it is when it breaks." Chief Matheny shook his head. "Regular 'Our Gang' you got going, Julie. Try to keep 'em alive, would you?"
"That's my job, Chief," Julie could smile too.
Allan Sebastian hated education.
Teaching would have been his dream job if it wasn't for all this 'education' stuff.
He remembered his first classroom, the smell of it and how it felt to write his name on the chalkboard. He remembered his first stack of papers to be graded and the first report cards he had signed.
He had assumed after the Ring of Fire struck that there would be no place for some middle school math teacher. He had figured that he would have to struggle to remain teaching.
That last part was true. With all the offers and opportunities for someone who knew numbers it was a miracle he hadn't been kidnapped and taken by force to some royal court. Certainly the titles "Royal Accountant" or "Royal Engineer" had a certain ring to them, and he'd already been offered both positions. The loud bevy of relatives who had come through the Ring of Fire with him, including his eldest daughter, reminded him every day of all the opportunities there were available for a man with his experience.
Why couldn't he just be left alone to teach?
Then his youngest daughter had introduced him to Blaise Pascal. That had beenonly a few months ago.
August? It seemed like decades ago.
"I don't need to see the damn book, Allan!" Archie Clinter slapped his hand down on his desk. Allan had known the principal of Fluharty Middle School long enough to know it wasn't a sign of anger but of frustration. Archie didn't deal with frustration very well. Oddly enough, considering his job, he didn't have to.
Allan slid the encyclopedia closer to Archie; taunting him with it. There was a picture on the page of a much older Blaise. He was probably thirty in the picture and dead almost four hundred years. That same Blaise was eleven now and outside Archie's office waiting for doom to descend on him.
How the world had changed.
"I understand, Allan! I get it. Blaise Pascal; world's greatest mathematician. Do you understand me? You will note that he died at a ripe old age in this here book! But he almost died at eleven hanging from a church steeple! What the hell was he doing up there and not in class? What the hell happened? And why are you here and not Owen? Blaise is his responsibility. He's the Gifted and Talented Education teacher . . . more or less. We agreed with you, Allan. Blaise is gifted. Okay, I admit that. We admit that."
"Yes. Where is Mr. Maddox?"
"Look, he has his hands full with the normal special ed kids."
"Normal special ed?"
"You're confusing the point! You are not special ed qualified. If we were . . .if this was . . ."
"Blaise would be four hundred years dead and Owen Maddox would still need a special ed teacher for himself." Special ed qualified or not, Allan knew he was a better teacher than Owen Maddox, at least when it came to kids like Blaise and his sister.
"And he would have you before the school board!"
"Lucky for Blaise the school board has less time to play petty politics. It actually has to perform now, not sit around and bicker about things it knows nothing about, like education."
"That is not fair."
"David Weller."
If Allan had slapped Archie across the face it might have had a lesser effect on the man.
"Look, you want him, fine. Maybe you can keep him out of everyone's hair. Okay? Case closed. It's probably moot. Julie wants a piece of him. Steve is annoyed with the boy. That toy he had, that crossbow, put a steel tipped bolt . . ."
"He made it."
"That's the point. He should be in school, not making crossbows. Gifted child or not, he has to be like everyone else."
"Do you listen to yourself?" Allan asked quietly. "I mean, really listen. Blaise isn't a theoretical 'gifted' child. The mentally-challenged need someone who knows mental challenges. Leave them with Owen. He likes them and does a fair job with them. He is so far out of his depth with Blaise or kids like him that it is almost funny. I want Mary and Jacqueline too."
"You are not . . ."
"We are not in West Virginia anymore."
"That is no excuse for . . . "
Allan placed a piece of crumpled and bruised paper over the picture in the book.
"What's this? Your resignation? His suicide note?"
"The boy you want to be like everyone else was trying to demonstrate the theorem of similar triangles. He wasn't pulling a prank. He was trying to apply a mathematical theorem with a crossbow and a cheap ruler. Looks like he might be more than one kind of genius."
Archie took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Allan, how can you do that dead? I can have Blaise put in your class. I don't know about Jacqueline and Mary. They are elementary school kids."
"You can't keep someone like him in a regular classroom. You'll kill him in a regular classroom. Jacqueline might kill in a regular classroom. She hates the Fluffy Bunny reading series. I don't blame her."
"Second graders love the Fluffy Bunny reading series."
"You are missing the point! Jacqueline, like her brother, is gifted. Have you seen some of the stuff she's written?"
"I've heard some of it. Her reading teacher gives me a synopsis. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Some of the words she uses . . . I thought we were talking about Blaise."
"We were talking about me taking Blaise, his sister and Mary."
"I can probably give you Blaise . . ."
"All of them."
"Allan . . . he is a child. Okay . . . a smart child . . . "
"We failed, Archie. In the year 2000, we failed. We failed kids like him. We were looking to save a few bucks and free up some class space so we ignored or didn't fund the gifted programs. Nobody felt sorry for 'gifted' kids. Who the hell did they think they were anyway? Acting so smart. Suck it up and deal, smart ass! Stop being so smart and be like everyone else!"
"Allan . . ."
"That boy out there wasn't scared that he almost died. He wasn't vandalizing the church or pulling a prank. He was applying math. It didn't work so he was going to show that stupid, cheap ruler . . . If he had the metal one I gave him this wouldn't have happened."
"He was making a catapult with that ruler. Owen was right to have taken it from him. Imagine the chaos if every kid made a catapult in class . . . "
". . . a trebuchet . . . " Allan added.
"Whatever! I don't care if he was making a nuclear reactor! He was . . ."
"Blaise, the boy who is sitting outside your office right now, the same boy who is in this encyclopedia, was deriving equations to relate load arm length to trajectory. I have the math he was doing in my classroom."
"He was misusing school property! Like the time he took apart the computer in class . . . "
"Okay, fine, he was 'misusing' an expensive metal machinist's ruler which, by the way, I gave him. He's taught himself algebra and now he's working on calculus, Archie. He wasn't doing it because he wanted to get into college or because Dad wouldn't let him have the car if he didn't score above 1200 on the SAT. Learning and creating are what he does. You put him in a regular classroom then you're right, Archie, he should have broken his neck up there. He would be better off than he is in that classroom."
"Allan, you're being melodramatic . . ."
"You remember another kid who wasn't so lucky?"
"Allan," Archie looked up at Allan with pleading eyes, "Don't. Don't even. . . "
"We failed them. We failed him. He killed himself because someone thought it was better to put him with kids his own age and pretend he wasn't writing symphonies. Are we going to do that with Blaise, Mary and Jacqueline? We know what Blaise is capable of. And his sister, what about her? She's writing books and she's eight."
"Allan . . ."
"We don't need school board meetings and committees. We don't need to convince a mother that her boy is just like everyone else. We don't need to lie to anyone. The Ring of Fire gave us a brand new start."
"We didn't lie, Allan. It was decided that . . . it would have been better for him . . . Allan . . . David Weller was different. He . . . he . . . "
"Maybe we could have lied about David Weller and pretended it was a fluke and now that he's dead who's to say what he was or wasn't? He didn't get his name in an encyclopedia. He didn't have a chance. We didn't give him a chance. Owen didn't think the boy was gifted, then blamed his 'gift' for the suicide."
"Enough!"
The death of David Weller was a sore issue with Archie. Allan knew that. David Weller's grave came through the Ring of Fire. His parents and family didn't.
"When will we admit to knowing we were wrong?"
"Allan," Archie sighed, "you are not being fair."
"Fair?" Allan whispered back like a judgment of guilt.
No one likes to find a child dead. Finding a child dead by his own hand was far worse.
"We were trying to make the best out of . . ." Archie closed his eyes again. "We did our best, Allan."
"I don't blame you. They dumped him in your lap because the school board was too afraid to deal with it themselves. They asked me to put together a few math sheets for him. Keep him busy, I was told. Keep him busy and quiet."
"Allan . . ."
"No one likes the gifted. We had the Special Olympics and everyone clapped as the 'special' people staggered across the finish line or threw a ball. A ten year old writes symphonies and we hush him up and tell him to be like everyone else. Not again, Archie. Never. I won't hush him up. There is a genius waiting outside your office right now. Let's do better this time."
Allan stood and left.
Archie stared down at the book. The picture was covered by the piece of notebook paper but the name was not.
BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662)
Archie looked down at the end of the entry.
Whether we look at his pure mathematical or at his physical researches we receive the same impression of Pascal; we see the strongest marks of a great original genius creating new ideas, and seizing upon, mastering, and pursuing farther everything that was fresh and unfamiliar in his time. We can still point to much in exact science that is absolutely his; and we can indicate infinitely more which is due to his inspiration.
With something that could be tears in his eyes he looked up at the walls of his office.
He remembered when he had first accepted the position as principal. He had held it in his mind like he had held his first child.
He remembered how his shoulders had gone back and the smile that refused to leave his face. He remembered how proud he had been.
Now, looking at the pieces of paper on the walls of his office from places that probably wouldn't exist, ever, he remembered the opposite moment.
He remembered finding a boy hanging from a pipe in the boy's washroom on the second floor.
The tears in his eyes were real now.
Julie hated being right.
Of course, she loved it too. Her greatest successes had come from being right when everyone else had been wrong.
"Tell me I didn't waste your time." Julie sighed, the crossbow dangling from her hand.
Chief Matheny looked around the room. Stepping into it was beyond possibility without a wrecking bar and explosives. Someone, a very young and dangerous someone, had carefully planned this room to hold everything it contained and still allow a small body to worm its way in and breathe.
"Swing a cat, hell," Chief Matheny whispered. "There's not enough room in here to think about swinging something." His eyes danced around the room.
"Some of this stuff looked . . . dangerous. I called you right away."
"How was this allowed?" Chief Matheny asked quietly. "How did he get those manuals on electrical contracting and how . . . how does an eleven year old boy read them then . . . are those the electrical blueprints he's got there? Damn. And how was it that he didn't electrocute himself when he did that?" Chief Matheny looked at the wall.
"Chief?" a firefighter asked from just over his shoulder.
". . . This is what we are going to do. First, I want the power shut off to this entire building while I try to figure out what that boy was trying to do to that junction box and outlet. Then, I want everything in this room dismantled and removed from this room. This is a hotel, not a research lab. People live here and they could have died here, Julie. That's a container of hydrochloric acid. Either someone has a pool somewhere with a missing container of pool acid or young Blaise found a meth-lab. I don't think there are pools big enough . . . if he got his hands on pool acid, what has he got in those bottles . . . ?"
"Where do you want us to put everything, Chief?" a firefighter asked.
"In the shed behind the firehouse." Chief Matheny turned and fixed Julie with a stare that made her back up a step. "That boy is going to need to be as close to emergency response as I can get him. Your job, Officer Drahuta, is to protect children from the predations of adults, correct?"
Julie nodded.
"Keep the boy away from me until I control my temper. Then I suggest you find someone to protect the town of Grantville from the predations of this boy. I have a book with some color pictures in it back at the firehouse he needs to see and I agree with Bill. Keep his little ass away from the power station until someone teaches him that you do not do that to a junction box in a structure with people sleeping in it!"
The silence was profound.
No one had ever heard Chief Matheny shout. They did know that Chief Steven Matheny hated fires. Even small, well-tended ones.
Blaise hated that ruler.
He hated it with an intensity that Satan must save for mankind.
Tears dripped in fearful, trembling streams from angry eyes.
The ruler had been off by at least a thirty-second of one of those God cursed things called inches. The metric system, invented by the French of course, was better. The metric system wouldn't have failed him.
The angle was measured perfectly. His calculations were flawless.
It should have worked! He had been wrong. Wrong!
Because of that damn ruler . . .
Blaise shook himself. Or, rather, someone else did.
"Snap out of it!" Mr. Sebastian shook him. "We'll go to my room. I think you've been punished enough just by sitting here all this time."
"At least a thirty-second of an inch." Blaise glared up at Allan Sebastian with tears in his eyes. "I hate that ruler! I had to prove it was wrong, not me!"
Allan Sebastian leaned in close. So close his nose almost touched Blaise's.
"No mathematical equation is worth dying for," he whispered harshly. "Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mr. Sebastian." The world's greatest mathematician nodded.
"Your punishment is . . . I want ten rulers to replace the plastic one you broke. They will be accurate to at least a thirty-second of an inch . . . no! One sixty-fourth of an inch. Ten, Blaise. I want ten. You will make them. I want them all by the end of the week. Understand? Whatever else you have to do, whatever other punishments, that one is mine. You want my help? I need yours."
"Yes." Blaise nodded and stood up. He didn't expect the slap. It came, at least to him, from out of absolutely nowhere.
"You fool!" Jacqueline would have hit him again had Allan not grabbed her arm and spun the girl about and wrapped her in his arms. "Let me go! I will kill him! He is my brother! I have the right to kill him! What would Father say?"
"Hold her!" Blaise begged Mr. Sebastian. His sister had hit him with her prized notebook. Blaise knew, though didn't fully appreciate, that his sister saw writing in much the same way he saw mathematical equations.
For his sister to hit him with her notebook meant she was very angry, possibly worse.
"Fool!" Jacqueline screamed, tears in her eyes.
Jacqueline loved her brother.
She had waited and watched all day as Blaise was berated and shouted at. One thing she knew without any uncertainty. The adults hadn't been merely angry. They had been scared too. Her brother had almost died.
She loved him even if some fool book declared him the world's greatest mathematician, which had caused something of a panic in their father's circle. Because of that stupid book they had been sent fleeing from Paris.
She loved her brother enough to want to kill him because she would have very much hated to see him dead.
Archie hated making this kind of decision.
He looked at the eleven rulers on his desk.
"That one was the most difficult." Blaise pointed at the last ruler he laid on Archie's desk.
Allan laughed. It was a short, quick laugh.
"This one," Blaise pointed at the first ruler he had put down, "is the best, I think. If there are to be twelve of these inches in a foot then one should use the base twelve system to number the units. I could do one in base two . . ."
Allan raised his hand. Blaise subsided but only barely.
"Okay, this is what we'll do," Archie began firmly; his words humming with official tones. "After Christmas break I'll make you the gifted . . . the GATE teacher. Owen won't like it, but tough. Okay? I said it. Don't say a thing, Allan. I don't want that boy's name mentioned again. I don't have the time to remember what for all intents and purposes never was."
"You are talking of me?" Blaise asked.
"No," Jacqueline snapped. "not everything is about you. He means David Weller."
"I'll put Jacqueline in your class with Mary Timm. Just don't . . . "
"How did you learn about him, Jackie?" Allan asked.
Jacqueline wasn't sure if she liked being called Jackie. It made her name sound all American.
"Logan showed me his grave. She told me about them. She told me all about him. He would make a good story."
"No!" Archie spun about. His eyes were looking for a taller person, presumably older, to shout at. He almost didn't look down at Jacqueline. "I mean, I would rather . . . you did not. Besides, to do the story right you would need to talk to the person who found him. I know he won't speak to you. Hear me?"
Archie turned back to Allan. "You win, okay? What else do you want? Huh? You're the GATE teacher now. You won. Two eighth grade math classes in the morning then you get them. All of them. Okay? All I ask is that we forget the past. Finally. Can we do that? Can we . . ."
Archie turned to go then stopped. He looked about frantically.
"Mary? Where's Mary?"
"Upstairs." Jacqueline whispered, "She is in the boy's room. She is looking for ghosts on the glass."
Archie stared at the door leading out of Allan's classroom.
"I'll go get her, Archie."
"No," Archie said softly. "I will."
With that he turned and faced Jacqueline with a look he might have hoped looked stern and forbidding. Jacqueline saw something else.
"I normally don't talk to eight-year-olds like this, but I will now. Do not write about David Weller. Do not write his story. If you do I will expel you and you will have to buy all that paper you use."
Jacqueline clutched her notebook closer to her.
"Can I write a story about the death of Fluffy Bunny? I can write a book . . ."
Archie raised his hand. "Deal."
He shook her hand and left in search of Mary Timm.
The upstairs boy's room had large windows.
Jacqueline loved human emotions.
She collected them like a painter collects pigments, as a warrior collects scars and stories.
Now, for the first time, young Jackie wasn't so certain of her love of those things.
She had, in her short life, never seen desolation before. She wasn't sure if she could write David Weller's story now that she saw what it might mean.
"Are you okay, Jackie?"
Jacqueline plummeted into Allan's arms.
"Jackie?" he asked.
"Promise me." She prayed the prayer of all artists, punctuated by tears. "Promise me that when I die you won't try to forget about me."
"I won't. I promise."