High Road to Venice
Merton Smith rolled his wheel chair over to the phone and called up the weather service. “Hi, Dan. How’s it look for a flight to Venice?”
“Not horrible. The reports from the weather stations are mostly in. There is a warm front that was moving in from the west but it seems to have stalled. We don’t know why, but we suspect that something is going on in the east. I wish we still had the stations in Saxony and Brandenburg.”
“Politics.” Merton snorted. “They screw up everything. So what do you figure is out east that Saxony and Brandenburg aren’t reporting?”
“It’s a cold front, Merton. We just don’t know how big it is.”
“Okay. How’s it look on the south side of the Alps?”
“That’s the good news. Clear and sunny all the way to Rome. Bolzano is reporting light winds through the pass and wants to know when you guys are coming.”
“Looks like today’s a go,” Merton told him.
* * *
Johan Schroeder did the walkaround. He was the pilot, Merton the co. Besides, Merton couldn’t walk, at least not all that well. Merton had gotten new fiberglass prosthetics but wasn’t all that used to them yet. Honestly, Johan wasn’t all that comfortable with Merton. A man who was missing both legs to above the knee shouldn’t be piloting an airplane even if he was an up-timer and familiar with the engines. Johan checked the bag for leaks. It was double thick canvas with tar between the layers and oiled leather at the bottom where it contacted the ground, where the greatest wear would occur. He wiggled the flaps and the rudders. Checked for dings in the wings, body, and tail. Checked the bag fan, then climbed the step ladder and went aboard the plane where Merton was already in the right seat. By tradition, the left seat in a fixed wing was the pilot’s seat. Johan headed back and checked the cargo. “So what do we have?”
Merton turned in his seat and read off the passenger list. “Eight passengers plus the cargo has us traveling a bit heavy, Captain. We have two Venetian bigwigs that were in Grantville for shopping and business. Lucco Ricci and Alberto DeLuca. DeLuca is the redhead. There’s a little boy that was sent here for surgery on a deviated septum. His dad is some sort of muckety-muck or something in France, so they sent him to Grantville by way of Venice. He’s five, and I’ve been calling him Frankie. His nanny, Mademoiselle Babin, isn’t crazy about that, lemme tell you.”
Johan caught sight of a really differently dressed stranger. “Who’s the guy in the robes?”
“Magdalena said he’s a sultan or something from Algiers, or North Africa anyway, who wanted a look at the library in Grantville. Can’t pronounce it right. Hafsid Bey Sidi Uthman, that’s it. Peter back there is a certified electrician the sultan hired to wire his palace. The blond guy is Matthew Howard, English kid on his grand tour.”
“I heard about him,” Johan said. “He cut quite a swath through the young women in Grantville. Good thing he didn’t stay more than a month.”
“Yeah, he’s headed to Rome, he said. And the last is David Bartley, who’s going to Venice for a week on some business.”
“About standard,” Johan said. “Half a million in cargo and five million in ransoms.” Then he waved to Magdalena that they were ready and the passengers started to board.
* * *
“Welcome aboard, sir, ma’am.” Johan got the passengers settled in then headed up front for the usual speech. “Folks, we’re not having box lunches this trip. Nürnberg is only eighty-five miles away and we have to stop to refuel, since the trip is about four hundred miles. TransEuropean Airlines will have a catered lunch waiting for us when we get there. There will be snacks and drinks for the long leg of the trip, which is the one to Bolzano, where we refuel again. Then it’s just a hop, skip and jump to Venice. We should be there before sundown.”
Sidi Uthman asked, “This lunch? I did explain my dietary requirements . . .”
“I’m sure our office sent word ahead, sir.” Johan made his way back up front, resenting a bit that it was him acting as greeter. He wished again that they could afford the weight of a stewardess. But these weren’t up-time passenger planes. They were more like an air-going stagecoach in the amount they could carry. They were roomier per pound or passenger they could carry than an up-time aircraft would be, which made them pretty luxurious stagecoaches. But that was because they had less lift for their size.
About a quarter hour later, they were in the air and headed south.
* * *
“Stop that squirming, Francois!” Mme. Badin snapped. “Can’t you just look out the window?”
Francois tried but he really had to go. He’d been too excited to visit the restroom before they took off. Then Mr. David Bartley leaned over the seat in front of him and said, “I need to go use the facilities. I’ll take him, if you like.”
Mme. Badin gave Mr. Bartley a measuring look. Francois knew that she was uncomfortable with airplanes, and the idea of getting up and walking around in them made her even more nervous. He squirmed some more. “I really need to go.”
“Very well. But be careful.”
The young Englishman stood up and headed to the can, just beating Mr. Bartley and Francois. “Don’t push the red button!” Mr. Bartley said and Francois looked up in time to see that Mr. Bartley was grinning.
“No fear,” Matthew said. “I’ve been told all about the red button.”
Francois looked up at the two men. He hadn’t been told about the red button. He wondered what it did. He knew enough to know that red buttons did bad things.
“Just not till we get out of range of Grantville,” Mr. Bartley explained. “You don’t want your poop landing on the head of someone who’ll complain to the mayor, do you?”
Francois felt his eyes get even wider. Then Matthew came out and agreed. “Yes. The red button opens a hole in the bottom of the plane. Then poof! Everything that’s, ah, collected during a flight will fall down out of the sky. Best to do that over a forest or something, so you don’t drop it on someone’s head.”
Francois went in and spent some time looking for the red button but didn’t find it. He became convinced that Mr. Bartley and the Englishman were playing with him. Then he spent some time giggling about how it would work. He was still giggling when he got back to his seat. His nanny, after he told her the story, turned around and gave Matthew and David a very stern look. They glanced at each other, trying to hold back the laughs. It wasn’t true, of course. The toilet in the Monster was emptied on the ground by much more conventional means. But it made a fun story for Francois.
Shortly after that Francois got to visit the cockpit where they steered the plane. It was big, almost as big as the cabin. There were cabinets and things where they stored stuff for the plane. There were two chairs. At first Francois thought they weren’t locked to the floor like the seats in the cabin were. But they showed him the little rails that let the seats be moved, then be locked down again. So that the copilot could be navigating when he wasn’t copiloting and the pilot could handle the radio and stuff. But the chairs were still attached to the floor.
It was while Francois was down on the floor looking at the rails that he saw the copilot’s feet. Now Francois was greatly impressed with the medical know-how of the doctors in Grantville. They had fixed his deviated septum. The idea that they could make legs that were real legs seemed to him quite likely. Besides, these didn’t look at all like the peg legs he had seen. They had feet. It also seemed quite a neat thing to have. “Did the doctors fix your legs like they fixed my seppum? Did they hurt after they sewed them on?”
“No, I’m afraid not. The guy who designed the Monster had more to do with my legs than the doctors did. They aren’t sewn on; I take them off at night like shoes,” the copilot explained. “They are made of a composite, the same as the airplane.”
“Why not just use wood?”
“Wood is heavy and artificial legs don’t have muscles in them. Well, these have springs in them which help, but they aren’t really the same as muscles. So Georg used composites to keep the weight down. I’m still getting used to them but they are better than sitting in a chair all the time.” They didn’t explain to him that Merton the copilot had been in an accident at a machine shop a couple of years ago and had lost both legs above the knee. The loss of his legs had been especially hard on Merton, and the Ring of Fire had made it harder still, because it had turned back the clock in the field of prosthetics. It had never occurred to Merton before the accident that the switch from “disabled” to “physically-challenged” had been anything but political correctness. The difference between a peg leg and an up-time prosthetic limb was the difference between a disability and a challenge. At least in Merton’s case. It was, for all practical purposes, impossible to walk on a couple of peg legs that started above the knee. That was not true with up-time prosthetics.
The composite legs that Georg had made for Merton at Farrell’s request fell somewhere in between an up-time prosthetic and a peg leg but rather closer to the up-time product. They allowed Merton to walk with the aid of something to hold on to. He’d been told that once he got a bit more used to them he might even be able to get by with a couple of canes instead of a walker.
Francois spent the rest of the hour and a half flight to Nürnberg looking out the window, mostly at clouds. When that got old he looked at the passengers. Francois was a child of nobility. But for most of his life he had been a hidden-away child. Not that his parents didn’t love him. They did. Still, he had been sick most of his life, so he hadn’t been able to play much. He had met more people in the hospital than in France. All he really knew of France was Mama, Papa and Mme. Badin . . . well, and a few doctors that Papa had had look at him. Not being sick was quite a novelty in itself. So was being able to breathe through his nose. During his recovery from the surgery he had gone from shy to curious, perhaps even overly curious.
* * *
“Ah.” Sidi Uthman pushed his chair back and burped delicately. “Most interesting, indeed.”
The meal had been leg of lamb with mint jelly, not something Merton much cared for at the best of times. But, he figured, whatever it took to make a passenger happy. Gods knew, they paid enough for this treatment. For him there was a large pot of coffee, which he appreciated.
“More please,” Frankie said. David Bartley poured himself and the kid another cup of cocoa, while his nanny enjoyed a glass of wine with the Italian merchants. Peter Hartz stuck to beer.
“Merton,” Johan called, “time to preflight.”
* * *
Back in the air, Johan pointed the nose a bit west of south. “That cold front must be weaker than they predicted,” he said. “We came in a bit farther east than I thought we would.”
* * *
“What is taking you to Venice, Herr Bartley?” Alberto DeLuca asked. He was a portly man in his late thirties or early forties.
David looked at him then smiled. “Ships. OPM has been asked to invest in a shipping concern, so I’ll be looking at ships. And talking to people about what it should cost to refit them with some up-time devices that should allow smaller crews.”
“What sort of devices?” asked Lucco Ricci.
“Electric winches, batteries and a drag generator.”
“What is a drag generator?”
“It’s what Brent Partow calls a small generator that you drag behind a sailing ship. It uses the motion of the ship through the water to charge the batteries. The idea is that a ship rigged with the system would be able to use the wind indirectly to raise the sails and a few other things, decreasing the crew size from a third to half. We’re not entirely sure it will work or how big the units would be. I’ll also be pricing glass and silks.”
The conversation went from there. With David talking about silk and glass while DeLuca and Ricci tried in vain to move the discussion back to the availability of the shipboard power system. Every once in a while David would let slip some tidbit about how the initial investment would be significant but the savings in crew cost would probably pay for it in the course of a single journey, then go back to talking about the price of silk. All in all David thought it was going very well.
* * *
About an hour and a half later, Merton started getting worried. “Shouldn’t we have seen Munich by now, Johan?”
“It’s the damned clouds,” Johan muttered. “Can’t see properly half the time.”
“Point it a bit farther east,” Merton said. “It can’t be that far.”
* * *
“Still no Munich,” Johan whispered.
“Maybe we better land and ask?” Merton suggested.
“Not in Bavaria.” Johan shuddered. “You don’t want to set down in Bavaria. Not ever.”
* * *
“We can’t be that far off course,” Merton said.
“Far enough that we don’t know exactly where we are,” Johan said. “Keep looking.”
Merton suppressed the urge to stick his tongue out at Johan, and kept looking. They were passing over the foothills of the Italian Alps. That was clear enough, but where? “Turn right and follow the valley?” Johan had made this trip a lot more often than Merton had.
“Might as well. I don’t have a clue where we are, but I wonder where it leads.”
“Bolzano, I hope. But at the very least, I hope it’s within Duchess Claudia’s lands. We should be safe as long as we land in the Tyrol somewhere.”
“There’s an outpost,” Johan said, pointing to a building below. “Might be a customs station.”
“And you’d better turn north and follow that pass,” Merton grunted. “I’m really not liking this at all. Much more of this and we’ll have to land, no matter where we are.”
* * *
“Well, do we take the chance?” Johan’s voice was worried.
“It’s a lake. We know we can land there,” Merton pointed out. “All we have to do is find out where we are, then we can plot a course to Bolzano. We’re not hurting for fuel yet, but if we keep flying around like this we will be.”
There wasn’t much help for it. They had to know where they were. As it was, the passengers were getting restless, probably catching their own tension.
“Going down,” Johan said. The clouds were low and spotty over the lakes, more mist than anything else, but they could see enough of the lakes to be sure of their outline and one thing about water landings, the water was flat. “Give me twenty percent flaps. I want time to look around a bit as we come down. We’ll turn at the end of the lake and come back for landing.”
Merton set the flaps and the Monster slowed.
* * *
“Folks, make sure your seat belts are fastened,” Merton announced. “We’re going to land for a bit. Just as soon as we clear up the problem we’re having, we’ll be on our way again.”
“What’s the problem?” Matthew said.
“Probably something electrical.” Peter grinned. “Luckily, I can help with that.”
“Are we lost?” Frankie’s face was aflame with curiosity. “Are we stopping to ask directions?”
David Bartley and Sidi Uthman shared a look. “Certainly not.”
Nanny snorted. “Men never ask for directions. They’d rather ride—or fly—around in circles all day.” Then, as the implications of what she had said occurred to her the joke seemed to lose its humor. If they weren’t stopping to ask for directions, what was wrong?
Matthew looked over at their only female companion, who’d gone white around the lips. “It’ll be fine, Miss. The engines are running steady. It’s probably just a an odd reading on an indicator or something.” He started trying to distract her with stories while the rest of the passengers looked out the windows.
Hearing the conversation through the open cockpit door, Johan said, “Time to ’fess up. Hold her steady for a minute.” Then he got up and went back to face the music. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid Frankie is right. We’ve missed a couple of our check points, probably because of the spotty visibility we’ve had today. So we’re going to land at a small village on the edge of the lake and ask for directions. It should be no more than a chance to stretch your legs for a few minutes. Then we’ll be on our way.”
Frankie crowed. “I was right!” And started giggling.
“Amazing!” Nanny laughed.
“Captain!” Mr. Bartley protested. “You’re letting down all mankind,” though to Frankie he didn’t really sound displeased.
Slightly red-faced because it was always embarrassing to admit they were lost, Johan said, “Our director, Magdalena Van de Passe, made stopping to ask directions airline policy.”
“Ah, that explains it,” Alberto DeLuca proclaimed jovially. “Our pilot and copilot are true men, self-sufficient in all ways, but like all gentlemen they must yield to the quirks of the ladies.” He gave a florid bow to Nanny.
* * *
Blushing harder, Johan retreated to the cockpit and went back to the controls. By now they had flown over the village and he turned around to take up their landing approach. By they time they had finished the turn they were five hundred feet above the ground and losing about fifty feet a minute.
“Forty percent flaps,” Johan told Merton and he throttled back the engines. The Monster slowed as they came back into the mist over the water. It was the wrong order. A mistake no bush pilot would make, nor any pilot with experience landing pontoon planes, but neither Johan or Merton had that sort of experience. Compared to just about any up-time multiengine pilot they were rank amateurs. What they had seen was the air cushion landing gear go over bumps and ditches on land and logs floating in water without missing a beat. They had over flown the lake just like they were supposed to and it looked clear. With the patchy mist, shadows from the mountains, and the altitude of their flyover, it wasn’t what a bush pilot would consider a proper examination. In fact, for half the flyover Johan had been calming the passengers rather than looking out the windows for debris or boats on the lake.
“Inflate the bag,” Johan said and Merton started the motor that would fill the ACLG.
A few seconds later Merton reported, “Bag deployed.” They were now a hovercraft—or would be in a few seconds. They were almost half a mile from land, down to ten or so feet over the water and sinking slowly on flare effect. “Jesus! Pull up. Pull up! There’s a boat!”
Johan jerked the stick back.
* * *
The last thing Thoman Klein expected was for a monster of any sort to drop on his head. Much less a monster that made those hideous growling noises.
It was the noise that drew his attention. Normally Lake Heiterwanger, especially this far from shore, was dead quiet. All the better for “not really fishing” as far as Thoman was concerned. He just had to get away from his wife, his mother and their constant chatter now and then.
When he turned to see what was making the noise, all the blood drained from the upper part of his body. A massive, rawhide-colored . . . thing was coming right at him. And above the thing, which looked like a lobed bag of some sort, was a bright blue . . . other thing. With wings. Four wings.
Thoman grabbed his oars, but it was too late. He jumped.
* * *
The Monster did miss Thoman, but just barely. The landing gear, made only of leather and canvas, caught the bow of his boat. The plane was traveling at over thirty miles per hour; the leather balloon—or at least a portion of it—wrapped around the bow of the skiff and flipped it neat as you please, lifting the starboard side up into the undercarriage of the plane. There was a loud bump followed by shouts from the passengers but the air cushion had cushioned the blow. Not without damage. A rip over ten feet long was torn in the bottom of the bag. Then they were down, trailing strips of leather and a shattered skiff. Now the water itself made up the bottom of the bag, plugging the major leak and leaving only the minor ones. The largest of which was a tear about a foot wide in the rear wall of the bag. They weren’t going to sink. Heck, they wouldn’t sink even if the bag were removed entirely. They would become, in essence, a flat-bottomed boat. With most of the bag still in place and the bag motor running they were still a hovercraft, just not a very efficient one. The skirt on a hovercraft is supposed to leak; that’s what makes it slip over the surface with very little drag. It just wasn’t supposed to leak quite as much as it was at the moment.
Johan made a wide circle on the water and headed back to look for survivors. He saw a head bobbing in the water. “Take the stick, Merton, and get us up beside that guy. I’ll go out and throw him a rope.”
“I have the stick.”
Johan got up, opened the emergency locker and grabbed a rope, then went through the opened door into the passenger compartment. “Keep your seats, folks. We had a problem on landing.” The door to the cockpit was generally left open in flight. It was there primarily as an extra security measure when the plane was on the ground, making it a bit harder for someone to steal it by climbing aboard and flying off. “Folks, we hit a boat. Apparently someone was doing a bit of fishing. We’re going back now to pick up the survivor.” Then he opened the door and stepped out onto the bottom wing.
He watched as the plane approached the man in the water. Who was swimming like hell in the other direction. “Hold up there. I’ll throw you a rope,” Johan shouted over the noise of the engines.
* * *
Thoman looked over his shoulder to see the thing approaching him and a man standing on it with a rope in his hand. In the blink of an eye he went from being more scared than he had ever been in his life to more angry. They had almost killed him. Thoman didn’t have the words for what these up-timers were and he could cuss for half an hour without repeating himself. He was so mad he almost didn’t grab the rope that was thrown to him. The man on the machine pulled him toward it and he almost let go. The water around it bubbled and foamed like a witches’ brew. But he was a quarter mile out from shore and the water was cold. He wasn’t at all sure he could make it back to shore. The man who pulled him up was well-dressed, if in a strange style.
Damned up-timers and their flying machines. “You wrecked my boat,” he yelled as soon as he was out of the water. “You lost me my trolling rig and my lunch. You soaked my clothes and almost killed me. I want restitution.” There were faces in the doorway by now, watching the show. Then one of them spoke.
“Clearly he doesn’t know his place,” the man in the funny hat said. “You ought to throw him back in and be done with it.”
The man who had pulled Thoman out of the water gave the fellow in the funny hat a look, then said, “Was there anyone else on the boat?”
Thoman shook his head.
“We can talk about restitution once we get you back to shore. Meanwhile, step inside where it’s warm.”
It actually was warm inside the thing. And the seat the man showed him to was comfortable, although he didn’t much like the seat belt. And he wasn’t too impressed with the giggling little boy who kept peering at him from between the seats in front of him. And sticking out his tongue.
Plus, there were too many languages being spoken—particularly by the man in the funny hat. Who kept looking at Thoman and sneering.
Not to mention, he was still angry about the boat. These people were going to pay for that boat. Or else.
In a day of strange happenings, probably the strangest was after they’d gotten this monster machine to shore and unloaded. A man came struggling out of the front of the machine, using a very odd contraption that he called a walker. A man with, of all things, fake feet. Thoman had seen a peg leg before. But never fake feet.
“My name is Merton Smith. What is the lake called?” the man with fake legs asked.
“Heiterwanger See,” Thoman told him.
“Where’s the nearest large town?”
“Why do you want to know?”
Merton Smith gave Thoman an apologetic look. “We got off course. We were landing here to ask for directions. It’s happened before and usually it’s no problem, but the mist hid your skiff.”
“Well, you’ll get nothing more out of me or the rest of the village, either. Not until you’ve paid for my boat and for nearly killing me.”
* * *
“How much?” Lucco Ricci, one of the businessmen from Venice, squeaked. “For that?” That was what was left of Maximilian I’s rustic cabin. Located outside the village of Heiterwang; it was not in good repair.
“This is a small village, milord. There is no inn. And Her Grace’s letter of transit doesn’t give you the right to just take what you want. You could, if you like, sleep in that contraption you arrived in.” It was said with all the proper deference but it translated to: Take it or leave it.
The very scruffy—and quite sharp—headman of the village gave Ricci a look. One that David could understand. It was a small village and you could tell it didn’t have an easy time of things in general. Plus, here in the late spring, there wasn’t a lot of surplus food to be found in most places. Still, David thought the villagers were making a mistake. He looked around. While not the best time of year, this was a beautiful place. The fact that Maximilian I had liked it for trout fishing suggested that with a little work it would make quite a nice resort, with fishing in summer and skiing in winter. Which would be a really nice source of additional income for the village. Lucco Ricci looked over to Johan.
“They have canvas and leather that we can buy. We can fix the bag with that and the patch kit and a bit of help sewing from the villagers,” Johan said. “It’ll take some time, though, so you may as well take their offer. We won’t be able to leave until tomorrow. If then.”
Lucco Ricci nodded and gave over the coins. The village had insisted on silver, not trusting USE dollars. Luckily Lucco had been in Grantville doing a bit of arbitrage. He had brought a couple of hundred thousand USE dollars to Grantville and used them to buy silver, which he was taking back to Venice. Most in slugs of ninety-nine percent pure silver electrically separated from copper, but some in silver coins of various denominations and from various mints. It was all destined to make Venetian coins.
Merton and Johan had gone through their books and charts and found what they thought was the right lake. There were two of them connected by a narrow waterway, the Plansee and the Heiterwanger See. “See” apparently designated a mountain lake. The village that the Monster was sitting near was called Heiterwang, which fit. If that was where they were, they were over forty miles west of where they were supposed to be.
“Can I help?” David asked.
“Yeah,” Merton said. “You can help me get back to the plane. I’ll be spending the night guarding the cargo. These are Claudia de Medici’s lands, but considering the attitude of these people, better safe than sorry.”
With a lot of help from the villagers—some of who seemed to really be enjoying the novelty—they’d managed to get the plane up on jacks. Johan and some of the local men who sewed sails were working on repairing the bag.
It was a long, cold night.
No one but Signore DeLuca had very much in the way of coins. And while they grumbled, the right of transit document that Claudia de Medici had given them did stop the villagers from trying to impound the plane and hold them all prisoner. Still, Johan had to sign a promissory note with Signore DeLuca for funds to pay for the damned boat and their lodgings and food. Probably it wouldn’t be a problem, since they truly didn’t have much choice. Magdalena would understand that they had to do what they had to do.
Sultan or vizier or whatever-he-was Sidi Uthman was very unhappy with the provisions they found. He was happy to make that displeasure known, too, and kept threatening to sue.
Johan could hardly wait to get out of Heiterwang.
* * *
“Magdalena! Magdalena! Venice wants to know if the plane took off on time.”
“Certainly it did.” Magdalena van de Passe looked up from the invoices and other assorted paperwork on her desk. “It arrived in Nürnberg on time, too, and departed nearly on time. Why?” Magdalena didn’t panic. It was quite common for their flights to be off-schedule. It had happened before, and was very likely to happen again. Almost anything could cause a delay, from sudden storms to adverse winds.
“Because it hasn’t arrived in Bolzano yet. And Duchess Claudia was expected at a dinner in Venice tomorrow night. She was planning to take the Monster from Bolzano.” Which Magdalena knew was a hundred miles even as the Monster flew. There was no way Duchess Claudia would make her dinner party if the plane was delayed too long. And that could well have political consequences.
Magdalena looked at the clock, then did some calculations. Really, the Monster should certainly have been in Bolzano by now. “If it hasn’t arrived in another two hours, then I’ll worry,” she thought.
Actually, she worried every time the plane took off. It was the only plane TransEuropean Airlines owned. Markgraf Smith Aviation nearly had a two-engine model, the Neptune, ready for test flights, but it would be at least a month before that plane was ready.
Magdalena didn’t get back to the paperwork. The first call came from Delia Higgins, wondering if she’d heard that the plane had arrived in Venice. She was worried about her grandson, David Bartley.
The next call was from Farrell Smith, worried about Merton.
The calls kept coming for the rest of the afternoon, then stopped as all the people concerned drifted over to the airline’s offices, waiting for news.
Magdalena and her secretary stayed busy serving refreshments and trying to reassure everyone that things were all right.
“Perhaps they had to set down at one of the customs stations. We have an agreement with Duchess Claudia, but the radios don’t always work well in the mountains.”
“Oh, I’m sure everything is fine. It’s probably interference from the storm.”
By the time darkness fell and there hadn’t been any news, Magdalena was finding it very hard to reassure anyone. Including herself.
* * *
“Is there any word?”
Farrell Smith looked like he hadn’t slept a wink. Magdalena figured he probably hadn’t. Neither had she. “Not yet, Farrell.”
“There’s so much that can go wrong . . .”
“Merton and Johan are experienced, Farrell. As experienced as any of us. You know that.”
“Yes. But . . .”
“All we can do is wait, Farrell. Someone will be at the radio twenty-four hours a day until we hear.”
Not much got done at Markgraf Smith Aviation that day. Farrell Smith was too worried to leave the radio shack and go work on building another airplane. Delia Higgins joined him, along with Johan’s wife and a number of others.
It didn’t help matters that the press had gotten hold of the story, either. Nosy reporters were constantly asking family members how they felt, which at one point almost caused Farrell Smith to bloody a nose. The Street’s headline read DAVID BARTLEY MISSING and the National Inquisitor asked WHAT’S REALLY IN THAT SKY? Both headlines were in 32 point type and hard to miss.
* * *
By the beginning of the third day, none of the crew or passengers could wait to get out of Heiterwang.
“Let’s just get in the damn thing and go,” Merton said. “I’m getting tired of being looked at like I’m a freak, for one thing. For another, I’m sick of dried fish and peas. Rain or no rain, cold or no cold, let’s get out of here before we have to pay three times the going rate for something else.”
“Amen,” Matthew said. “I’m deadly tired of this backwater.”
Johan checked the bag one more time. It was holding air. Sort of. Just at the moment, it was still leaking in some places it wasn’t supposed to—but they still had a bag. Then he looked up at the sky. The weather was a concern, but he had flown in rain before. Just not very often. Still . . . He signaled Merton cut the air cushion fan, then he and the passengers climbed aboard.
“Fasten your seat belts folks.” Johan smiled. “We are so out of here.”
Merton had already restarted the fan when Johan took his seat. “Give the bag a bit more power, Merton.”
It was choppy almost from the moment they left the ground. Turbulence was coming off the back slope of the mountains. Johan tried to climb above it and ran into a monstrous head wind. The valley had clearly been protecting them from the worst of the storm. The Monster clawed its way east for about twenty minutes, then sleet started falling. The icy rain from the north that had been blocked by the ridge on their left was blocked no more. They started looking for a place to land. But it was hard to see with the icy rain. They kept flying with their wings getting heavier from the ice every minute. Wing icing was a danger to aircraft and passengers because it added weight and disrupted air flow over the wings. It could also literally freeze the control surfaces in one position. The Monster didn’t have deicing systems. They had to land soon or they would crash.
“Grantville Base, Grantville Base. Jupiter One, Jupiter One.” Merton tried to radio, but he was needed to help control the plane. They had no way of knowing if any of their message got through.
It was several minutes later when they found a flattish piece of ground. The landing wasn’t a problem. And there were a couple buildings off in the distance. They used the bag to get close. No one was out in this whether and the wind hid the sound of the engines.
Once they got close to the houses, they cut power to the bag and settled. Then Johan went out and tied the plane down.
It wasn’t a village; it was a high pasture with some woodcutters in residence. The sheep would be coming up in a few weeks. Perhaps because they hadn’t landed on anyone’s head, the people seemed much more friendly. The villagers were willing enough to take USE dollars, but only at a lousy rate of exchange. The crew and passengers spent a fairly comfortable night and the next day, waiting for the storm to pass. Johan stayed on board the plane that first night and Merton the second.
* * *
“The storm is getting worse, according to Bolzano.”
Delia Higgins’ face went even paler, but Magdalena kept on. “Bolzano also says that they got what they think is a message from them. But there’s a lot of interference from that storm. We just don’t know yet.”
The newspaper headlines that day were even worse. And they had reporters hanging around looking for comments.
* * *
Siegfried looked at the plane. “I’m not sure about this, Karl.” He had had a tour that afternoon. It was impressive. What they called the cockpit was more of a cabin. The whole plane was roomy. “It’s one thing to pick up a bit of the readies knocking off the occasional stranger on the Brenner Pass. But these are important people.”
“Important people bring big ransoms. Now shut up and help me up onto the wing.” Siegfried made a cup of his hands and Karl climbed up. The plane wobbled a bit, not much.
* * *
Merton wouldn’t have noticed the plane wobble if he had been asleep but the cold weather was making his stumps ache. He looked out the window thinking the wind might be picking up again. But it was still as death. Then the plane shook again. Someone was on the wing. A little nervous, but mostly embarrassed, Merton closed the cockpit door and started putting his legs on. He started to call a greeting but checked himself. What would anyone be doing out at the plane at this time of night? He checked the clock. It was three in the morning. Well, three fifteen.
“I don’t see the cripple they left guarding the plane, Karl.”
“Will you shut up,” hissed another voice. “We want him alive. He’s an up-timer and they’re all rich, so he will be worth a good ransom.”
Merton forgot about his right artificial leg and opened the gun case just as quietly as he could. The gun case had four Suhl revolvers and a 30.06 for just this sort of situation. He managed to get the case opened while Karl and whoever it was continued to argue about whether this was a good idea and whether they should take the risk of trying to take him alive or just cut his throat. He gathered that there had been an ongoing debate about whether to rob them since they had arrived. Their planned morning departure had brought things to a head.
Merton was sitting in the copilot’s seat by then, with it turned to face the cockpit door, a blanket on his lap and a six-shooter under the blanket. He’d been as quiet as he could. The plane itself, to prevent engine noise from bothering the passengers and because it was a natural function of the way the body of the plane was made, was pretty close to soundproof. But the partition between the cabin and the cockpit was about as soundproof as a Japanese paper wall.
Merton was sitting in the cockpit wondering what he could do. When the cockpit door was pulled open, he saw the long knife silhouetted by a lamp, and reacted. The barrel of the forty caliber six-shot revolver came up two inches. He squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell. From four feet away the bullet hit the center of the sternum and didn’t even slow much. Instead, both bullet and sternum disintegrated into an expanding shock wave that went a long way toward destroying both lungs and the heart of the knife-carrying bandit.
As the first bandit fell out of his sight picture, Merton fired again. It wasn’t until later that he realized that the second bandit was not advancing, but stood still in shock, perhaps beginning to bring his weapon up or perhaps just raising his hands to surrender. Merton would never be sure which and the question would haunt his dreams.
But that would come later. For right now Merton needed to find out what was going on. He finished putting on his legs, cursing the darkness but afraid to turn on a light. The lamp had gone out when the second fellow dropped it. He stuck another couple of pistols in his coat pockets and grabbed the 30.06. Then he checked the windows. The sleet had given over to rain that afternoon and by now the ground was muddy, not icy. It was black as a pit. He couldn’t see a damned thing. Stepping over the bodies of Karl and his whiny friend was a chore in itself with his walker and his fiberglass legs.
The Monster had two doors, the passenger hatch and an emergency exit/cargo hatch on the other side in the back. The passenger hatch let the passengers step out onto the wing on the right side of the plane, the cargo hatch was behind the wings which meant its bottom was about five feet off the ground. As might be expected, Merton much preferred the passenger hatch. But the passenger hatch was the one that the bandits had entered and, more importantly, it was visible from the buildings.
Merton went to the cargo door in the back. He opened it and hung on and lowered himself to the ground. As he was trying to manhandle his walker out of the cargo hatch he slipped on the wet ground and landed on his ass.
* * *
“What’s taking so long?” Herman asked, more to himself than anyone else. This wasn’t their usual mode of operation. Herman had figured that the plane was the greatest danger, or at least the most unknown. Who knew what it could do with a pilot on board?
The plan was to have Siegfried and Karl secure the plane, then Siegfried would report back and the rest of them would take the passengers. But they had been gone . . . it seemed like an hour, but honestly was probably closer to half of that. Still, they should have been back by now. And there were the sounds muffled by the rain but they might have been gun shots. And Herman had told Karl and Siegfried to be quiet about it. Could the pilot have gotten the drop on them? No, he couldn’t have. He was a cripple and even if he had gotten a shot off, the other one would have gotten him. But it was taking too long. “Albrecht. Go check on those idiots. Find out what’s taking so long. If they’re going through the goods without the rest of us, they’ll regret it.”
Albrecht grunted and nodded. Then stomped out into the dark.
* * *
Francois had to pee. He was a big boy now so he got up without waking Nanny Badin. They were all sleeping in the one big room but there was a nice fireplace. What Francois was a little nervous about was going out to the outhouse on his own. He wished there was a chamber pot or that he knew where it was. After due consideration he went looking. In the process he inadvertently stepped on Sidi Uthman, then tripped and fell on David Bartley. Who jerked up in surprise, which woke Lucco Ricci.
The noise woke Nanny Badin, who directed Francois to the chamber pot. By then everyone was awake.
* * *
Merton froze when he saw the light. The Monster was positioned for takeoff first thing in the morning, which meant it was facing down a slight grade and facing mostly away from the woodcutters’ cabin. To make it a short walk for the passengers, it was placed close to the cabin. The lamp and the man carrying it came into sight heading for the passenger door of the plane. Merton was standing in the open with his walker between the tail of the plane and back corner of the cabin. Which fortunately meant that the man with the lamp was facing away from him.
* * *
About the time Francois was doing his business, Albrecht was discovering a much worse mess on the floor of the passenger section of the plane. The door to the cockpit was closed and from the position of the bodies the last mistake Karl and Siegfried had ever made was to open it. It wasn’t a mistake that Albrecht was anxious to repeat. He rushed back to report to Herman that everything wasn’t going exactly according to plan.
* * *
Merton moved as fast as his walker would take him as soon as the man with the lamp reached the door of the plane. But Merton couldn’t move fast. He had barely rounded the corner of the cabin . . .
* * *
Master Uthman, a Bey of Tunisia and member of the Hafsid family, didn’t fly well and was not nearly as comfortable among heathens as he had expected to be when he volunteered to undertake this journey for his family. It wasn’t that he was treated badly. In fact, he had been treated extremely well . . . but flying terrified him. He wasn’t used to feeling helpless and at the mercy of others. So he had lashed out, which he sort of regretted. Sort of. The notion that he terrified a little boy didn’t appeal to him. Made it hard for him to sleep. Not that he could apologize. A person in his position didn’t do that. But he found that he wasn’t sleepy after the little boy woke him. Rather than lie there, he got up and found a seat in a corner to think.
He had just sat down when the woodcutters came though the door armed with pistols and knives. Which, as it turned out, was a very good thing. He wasn’t where they were expecting him to be and he was armed. Unlike an airplane bumping around over hills and dales in the sky that couldn’t be seen, this was a danger that Uthman could deal with. It was almost with a sense of joy that he reached into his robe and pulled out his brand new Suhl revolver. The bandits were looking at the passengers sleeping on the floor of the large room. And Uthman didn’t hesitate or ask them to put down their weapons. He started shooting.
Blam. Aim. Blam. Aim.
Now the bandits were reacting, turning in his direction. That’s when Bartley opened up, followed a second later by Peter. Lucco Ricci and Alberto DeLuca had their guns out, but by then there was nothing left to shoot at. Matthew Howard had put himself between Miss Badin and the bandits, the last few of whom had turned tail and run.
The room was full of gunpowder smoke. Uthman was shocked at the amount of firepower a few people with revolvers had compared to single shot weapons. Four men lay dead . . . more than dead. Ground up for sausage. Then he heard more shots from outside.
* * *
Merton had almost reached the back door when he heard the shooting and turned in time to see the bad guys making a quick exit. They were running away from the cabin and didn’t seem to want to get close to the Monster either. He pulled a pistol from his coat pocket and fired off a few rounds. He doubted if he hit anything. They kept running anyway. “Hello in the house!”
“That you, Merton?” Johan’s voice.
“Yeah. Everybody all right in there?”
“It appears to be. Come ahead.”
Merton made his way into the building to a scene of carnage. And a room full of armed people. “Where did all the guns come from?”
“Who would go all the way to Grantville and fail to buy a repeating pistol?” Sidi Uthman said.
David Bartley snorted. “He’s right. I’d be surprised if Frankie doesn’t have one.”
“It’s in his luggage. For when he’s older,” Miss Badin acknowledged, still holding the small lady’s gun that she had failed to bring into action. All the guns were on the small side, suitable for hiding in a large pocket or a shoulder holster. Concealed weapons. Holdout guns.
“Turns out me and Frankie were the only ones in the room that weren’t packing,” Johan said. “And it’s the last time I’m not going to be packing for some time to come.”
David looked at Merton. “Johan Kipper got mine for me years ago. He’s told me more times than I can count that I have to be ready to be my own last line of defense. It was probably true up-time too, but having money makes you a target. I suspect that most of your passengers have been armed, just not in a hurry to advertise how.”
* * *
Johan and Peter removed the bodies from the Monster, while Uthman, David Bartley and Merton kept watch.
“You did well, Mr. Bartley,” Uthman said.
“If money makes you a target it can also provide you with excellent training.” David smiled. “Johan Kipper insisted that I take advantage of that training. He provided most of it. I’ll probably hear I-told-you-so for the next year, about his not being along. I assured him that flying was perfectly safe.”
Uthman snorted, amused at the notion that anything in life was safe. He also realized that the safest he had been in the last few days was while he was in the air. It wasn’t going up into the air that should frighten him, it was coming back down to the ground.
* * *
They took off with the sunrise, not seeing any sign of the bandits. The weather was clear and cold with only high clouds so they climbed looking for landmarks and found what they figured had to be Innsbruck. So they turned south along the Isarco River valley. When they saw the Torre delle Dodici and Reifenstein Castle they knew they were back on course.
Merton checked the fuel gauges “From what I can tell getting lost didn’t cost us much fuel. Mostly landing and taking off.”
“Bolzano Base, Bolzano Base. This is Jupiter One. We’re about fifteen minutes out,” Johan radioed.
“Grantville will be glad to hear that, Jupiter One,” a voice reported. “You’ve had half the world in a fizz. What the hell happened to you?”
Johan glanced back toward the passenger compartment. Mr. Howard and Miss Badin were sitting next each other, which amused little Frankie no end.
“It’s a long story,” Johan replied. “Mostly weather.”
* * *
“Man, I need a shave,” David said, rubbing his chin. “And a shower. A hot shower. Real soon.”
Uthman laughed. “If you’d only grow a proper beard, Herr David, you’d only need the shower.”
David glanced around at the passengers who were debarking. “None of us look any too pure, I guess. But we did get here.”
“Well, not quite yet. We still have to fly from Bolzano to Venice. Still, Her Grace keeps a house especially for air travelers. Electricity, hot and cold running water and quite a nice restaurant.”
* * *
“We got word from Bolzano. They’re down and safe. Everybody is fine. No details yet.”
Oh, thank God, Magdalena thought as she fought to keep from bursting into tears. That wouldn’t do at all. She had to go to the waiting room and reassure the people who’d been waiting for nearly five days. She also had an airline to run, so while she had the radio on the line, and before the morning window closed she said, “Find out what the delay was if you would and how soon they can be back here. This has thrown our schedule all to hell. Oh, and if you could, see who is going to sue us over the delay.” Magdalena didn’t realize that she came off as awfully hardnosed about it all. And in truth she didn’t, not more than the radio operator thought she should. She came across as what she had become. The Boss.
* * *
“So, you had interesting times, I hear.” Duchess Claudia took a sip from her wine glass. “But all is well that ends well.”
“I’m glad your agent was able to reimburse Don DeLuca,” Johan said. “There are a number of things I’m going to recommend to Fräulein van de Passe when we get back. We’ve become too accustomed to dealing in USE dollars and forgot that not everyone is willing to deal in them.”
“The villagers in Heiterwang are going to soon receive a . . . ah . . . visitation.” The duchess sniffed. “All of my people should know by now that I believe in business. Running off business on their part does nothing to improve the duchy. Should you ever happen to land there again, I can assure you of a better reception.”
“I wouldn’t be too harsh on them, Your Grace,” David Bartley said. “All in all their attitude was understandable, if not the wisest in the long term. They overcharged but didn’t threaten, at least not after they saw your letter of transit. And overcharging travelers in distress is a tradition of long standing . . . plus it’s one that continued into the twentieth century.” He snorted. “Even Herr Klein’s attitude was understandable, given the circumstances. What I’m worried about is the ‘woodcutters’ at the second landing. We shouldn’t have run into bandits in a random landing. It’s not just finding a needle in a hay stack. It’s sitting in a hay stack and finding the needle the hard way. Which suggests that they might actually have been woodcutters and if your woodcutters are moonlighting as bandits, you have a real problem.”
She paused a moment. “As for the woodcutters, I appreciate your actions. And I’ll be sending people to investigate that, as well.”
“I won’t say we got them all,” Merton said. “But we got a lot of them. We’ll write it up in detail while we’re in Venice, but, we’ve got to get going.” He held up the radio telegram. “We’re behind schedule, you know.”
Duchess Claudia nodded. “Please do get us a report, as soon as you have the chance. Meanwhile I need a ride to Venice. I will have to apologize for missing the dinner last week.”
“Well, I’d better get out to the plane.” Merton got to his feet and grabbed his walker. Then he headed to the refueled plane and got back aboard ahead of the passengers.
* * *
Johan was checking the plane out as thoroughly as he could here. Due to all the bouncing around, both in the air and in the water—not to mention on the ground—he was concerned about cracks in the body. He was particularly careful around the fuel tanks, since they’d found out the hard way that the fuel could essentially melt their composite. The last leg to Venice had been blissfully uneventful. Still, Johan wanted to know what he was working with as much as possible before they took off for the return trip. Safety protocols from the up-timers were making their way into the down-timer consciousness. “Looks okay.” Merton said after looking over the lists.
“Yes it does.” Johan agreed. “I’m a bit surprised.”
“Wood and glue are easier to maintain, Uncle Hal says. But they also take more maintenance too. What surprises me is how little flack we’ve gotten from the passengers. Granted, everyone was getting along all right by the end of the trip but I would have expected some heat after we got where it was safe.”
Johan looked up from his examination in confusion. “Why?”
“Why?” Merton’s confusion was clear on his face. “We crashed! Then we landed in a nest of bandits!”
“Yes. So? No one died in the crash. No one was even that shaken up thanks to the seat belts. Wagon wheels come off all the time; horses go lame or step in a hole and throw their rider to the ground; people sometimes die and are always thrown around. And most people think themselves lucky if they make a four hundred mile trip without running into bandits.”
What was confusing Johan and, for that matter, Merton was a difference in world view. One that had been shrinking since the Ring of Fire but was still there. Call it a difference in “comfort level with risk.” Not that West Virginia miners were a particularly risk-averse group by up-time standards. By the standards of people who had grown up in war torn seventeenth-century Germany, the up-time attitude toward risk versus reward—even among West Virginia coal miners—was a bit on the squeamish side. Of course, an average up-timer would see the large majority of down-timers as shell-shocked adrenaline junkies with no regard for safety or even sanity.
Still, people adapt. Johan was still willing to take what an up-timer might consider insane risks if there was a profit to be made in the doing—but at least now he studied the risks so he knew what they were. And Merton was willing to get back in the Monster and fly back to Grantville; he was just surprised that the passengers were not screaming bloody murder.
About then a woman showed up. Nose in the air. “Signore Lucco Ricci informs me that if one is to travel to Grantville, this device is the best means.”
The woman so obviously felt superior that Johan took a step he knew was going to get him a dirty look from Merton. He cast a quick glance at Merton, then spoke quickly—before Merton could stick his foot in his mouth. “I’m glad Lucco enjoyed the trip. I’m Captain Johan Schroeder. This is my copilot Merton Smith von Up-time.”
Sure enough, Merton started to open his mouth and blow the whole gig, but Johan gave him his best glare and he settled back down. Johan knew that Merton figured the whole “von Up-time” thing was silly, but he also knew that most people considered matters of rank vitally important. Johan’s rank as captain gave him a degree of social position, but not as much as the von Up-time gave Merton. It was another area where up-time and down-time attitudes were at odds.
Johan smiled his own superior smile. “We do have a couple of seats available for the next flight to Grantville. We leave on Tuesday, but you’ll want to buy your tickets now.”