The Grantville Gazette - Vol 3 Part 18

Johann smiled back and shifting his pack, waved, finishing with the sign of the cross.

IV: The Grantville Library

"I'd better get back before Heather starts imagining the bodies are moving again."

"Jenny, leave the poor girl alone. She was just jittery when she realized that the job she was a.s.signed to at the Bureau of Vital Statistics was at the funeral home. Of course, catching you taking a nap in a coffin just might have been a bit much."

Marietta Fielder had known Jenny Maddox since they were kids. Although two more opposite personalities could hardly be imagined, they'd remained the best of friends throughout.

"The simple pleasures I have to give up justto get good help these days. I've still got that extra large coffin ready, just in case you get tired of your current bed."

Mariettalaughed in spite of herself, "No thanks, I'm perfectly fine with my current mattress."

"Will you looky there,"Marietta said, indicating the man walking up the ramp outside the picture window in front of the Grantville Public Library. "Is that some kind of a down-time guy in drag?

"At least he knows how to pick jewelry. That cross perfectly compliments the black gown." Both girls giggled as the door opened.

Mariettagreeted the oddly garbed visitor."Afternoon, sir. If you need any help, just ask."

"Thank you, Frau. May I please see your library?"

"Help yourself. I'm going to have to ask you to leave your backpack up here though. We've had sometrouble lately with people taking books without checking them out. Are you looking for anything in particular?"

Brother Johann looked puzzled and pushed his gla.s.ses back into place. "I don't really know. I've never been in a library quite like this. Is this the only area accessible to outsiders?"

"Now you've done it," Jenny broke in. "Here comes the Public Lending Library 101 speech. If you two will excuse me, I need to go. See you tomorrow,Marietta . Nice meeting you too, Mister...?"

"Brother Johann. I've just arrived in Grantville fromItaly ."

"Funny, you don't sound Italian,"Marietta said.

"No, I'm actually from..." Johann paused. "Very close to here, originally. But I've been serving in the Benedictine library in Subiaco for some years now. I was asked to come here in order to learn what the Lord's purpose was in bringing Grantville to our time."

"Oh! Well then, Brother Johann, welcome to Grantville. You just arrived? You mean you really just got here and came straight to the library?"Marietta was taken aback, half wondering if Johann was pulling her leg and half excited about the possibility of meeting a kindred spirit. She had been initiated into the field of library science at an early age. As a third grader, Mrs. Yardley had noticed her re-shelving the 788.12 section in the correct order. Then she had offered her an after school job as a page.

Johann nodded."Yes, Frau. I asked where the library was and a kind lady pointed me this way. Is this the whole of your collection?"

"Goodness, no."Turning to her friend,Marietta said, "Jenny, I'll see you later. Let me help this man."

After she and Jenny finished their goodbyes,Marietta continued, "This is just the reference and non-circulating section. My name is Marietta Fielder. Glad to meet you. Now, if you will follow me..."

She walked to the back of the room to a step up to an open doorway. "This section holds up to three hundred books and through there"-indicating another door where an even larger room awaited-"are another four hundred-plus books and, of course, fiction.Uh... Brother, are you okay?"

Johann was staring at the ceiling, mouth open.Marietta looked up and saw the fluorescent light fixture.

The plastic cover had fallen out last week and she hadn't had time to replace it.

"That's called an electric light, fluorescent to be exact. It was an invention of the early twentieth century.

You're going to see a lot of new things here, Brother Johann."

"Yes, this I've learned." Johann followedMarietta through the rest of her tour of her home. He also recognized the same love of books and the preservation of knowledge inMarietta that had consumed his life. He listened toMarietta 's explanation of the concept of an up-time lending library and was introduced to some of the staff. He noticed the occasional empty s.p.a.ces in the shelves, like missing teeth in an otherwise perfect mouth. His mind swirled.

"Frau Fielder, perhaps I should take care of my lodging arrangements before the day gets by, and come back in the morning to study your collection. Do you know where I might find quarters?"

"That's easy, if you have money." Johann nodded asMarietta continued, "You ought to go to see Huddy Colburn at Grantville Homes and Land. He's been handling relocations and housing for the emergencycommittee since the ROF. His office is back onMain and just a half block on the right."

"We open ateight thirty Monday through Sat.u.r.day and usually close atseven PM ,"Marietta continued.

"Five on Sat.u.r.days. I'll see you in the morning, okay?"

V: Lodging

Huddy Colburn put the paperwork back in its legal file and laid it on the "Done" pile.Be careful what you pray for next time, Hudson , he thought, and grinned briefly.

The first couple of weeks after the ROF, Huddy had gone into the office once a day just to rea.s.sure his remaining agents that somehow everything would work out. Business had stopped and no one seemed to know what was what going to happen. Then the Mike Stearns plan had kicked in. Just as he had done since coming home, Mike had taken charge. On the strength of his personality alone people had given up driving their cars, pitched in with planting every available square foot of land, turned out for defense drills and did pretty much anything else he asked.

When the first wave of refugees. .h.i.t Grantville everything changed. Mike called Huddy and asked him to take charge of making sure everyone had shelter by winter. That alone had put Huddy and his agents on a heavier work schedule than they had ever thought of in this hillbilly town. Then, with construction firing up to build new housing, Huddy had taken it on himself to teach his agents how to do a simple construction inspection. If the builder didn't pa.s.s, he could count that Huddy wouldn't let the people he was responsible for live there.

A few days later Huddy's cousin, w.i.l.l.y Ray Hudson, breezed into the office with his business partners inThuringianGardens . w.i.l.l.y Ray was looking for some help in drawing up a partnership agreement. All the lawyers were slammed with work, so Huddy pulled out the reference material he had. It was left over from when he put together the buy out agreement to purchase Grantville Homes and Land from Mayor Dreeson.

After that, Huddy became the semi-official Grantville Business Broker. With all the entrepreneurs who had bubbled up since, that, too, had become a full time job. As long as Huddy was busy, he didn't have time to think of Mary, or the other thing.

Well, Huddy Ol' Boy, you wanted to keep busy, so get back to work.He picked up the next file from the bottomless pile on the right side of his desk.

Huddy had just gotten the paperwork spread out so he could figure out what this deal was all about. The bell on his front door rang. Since Maxine was out running errands and the rest of his agents were out looking at construction sites or collecting rents, Huddy leaned his chair to the left to get a view of the thin blond man in a black robe walking into his office.

* * * "So where are we going to put you, Brother?" Huddy reviewed the notes from his conversation with Johann. "Would you excuse me while I look through the available properties files? Make yourself at home, I'll be right back."

Huddy walked out and Johann looked around the office. As a follower of Saint Benedict, he and his brother monks led a Spartan life with only the simplest of necessities. This man's office was anything but simple. It spoke of a life lived in full.

The desk was filled with stacks of files, each neatly labeled. The walls were filled with certificates of some achievement or the other, an old red bandanna, and a misshapen leather glove. More than anything else, there were pictures of smiling people standing in front of houses. Johann was surprised to realize that he recognized one of the houses and the man who had waved at him as he entered the town earlier today.

"Those are my families." Johann was caught off guard when Huddy re-entered the room. "I helped every one of those folks to buy their first home. You help people your way, Brother; I help them create a better life in their own home."

"Herr Colburn, I saw this man earlier today," Johann pointed to the picture. "Who is he?"

"You saw him today? That's Mike Stearns, the head of the Emergency Committee. When he first moved back to Grantville and got active with the United Mine Workers a.s.sociation, he was trying to buy his own home. Some kind of glitch turned up in his credit report and I helped him get it straightened out.

Mike's been sending young members of the local to me ever since."

Huddy gestured with his left hand which held a small stack of cards. "Now, let's go over what's available. I would just send you over toSt. Vincent 's, I mean St. Mary's, the local Catholic Church. But Father Mazzare's been sending folks looking for shelter outside the refugee camps to me for the last couple of weeks. He's out of town this week, anyway."

Huddy sat back in his chair and flipped through the cards he held. He considered the information held on each card before moving to the next. One caught his attention and Johann noted that Huddy looked puzzled for a moment, and then slowly a grin formed on his face. "Brother, first you've got to understand that where we're from, real estate agents can't discriminate against folks due to race, creed, color, or national origin. That means that every property that is brought to us can't do that either. Does that make sense?"

Johann nodded.

"Okay, then. My church just finished rehabbing the bas.e.m.e.nt and made repairs on the heating system. It has room for eight boarders, two of which are singles. It's just a couple of blocks from the library where you say you'll be spending the bulk of your time.

"So, Brother Johann, how do you feel about living in a Presbyterian Church?"

VI: Systems "I'd say he's somewhere between a kid in a candy store and a guy trying to take a drink out ofNiagara Falls ," Gloria Maze commented, as she inserted her sorting rod into the large stack of punch-holed book catalog cards. She lifted some out of the bin and deposited them neatly to the back. "Every time I poke my head back there, he's somewhere else just examining the books themselves, not even looking at the contents."

"Well, what would you expect?" Martha shook her head. "He's discovered almost four centuries of advancement in every field of knowledge. It's a lot to take in at one time."

"Marietta, it's been four days, morning to closing time, taking a break only to say his prayers and he's not even looking at the knowledge.Just the books and the bindings. If I see him run his fingers across the catalog numbers on another spine, I swear I'm going to scream."

Mariettasmiled. "Gloria, do you think he's figured out what they are? The catalog numbers, I mean."

Gloria stopped and looked atMarietta thoughtfully. "We're the idiots. He's never been exposed to modern library science, why would he have known? That must explain the sad look that comes over him every time he looks at the numbers on the spines. He must think we've defaced the books somehow but can't bringhimself to accuse us of it."

"Well, it's high time to begin his education." Setting aside her catalog cards, Gloria walked into the stacks located behind the circulation desk and quickly found the two volumes she was looking for. Both women walked back to the main library room where Johann was sitting, studying yet another book.

"Brother Johann, do you have a moment?"

"Of course, my ladies," he said while standing up.

"Brother,"Marietta began, "We thought this might be helpful to you."

The women laid the volumes on the table and stood on each side of Johann. Gloria motioned him to take his seat and continued. "Brother, these are the keys to the library. It's the instructions to the system that we use to keep the books organized so people can find what they are looking for. It's called the Dewey Decimal System.

"These numbers," Gloria indicated the numbers on the spine of the book that Johann had in front of him on the table, "indicate that this book is about Geography. That's a nine hundred cla.s.sification, see? It's also got the same number on the inside t.i.tle page right here."

Gloria turned to the page and pointed to the 910.285 on the page. "There were several different systems for cataloging books depending on the needs of the library, but most public libraries used the Dewey system. You'll also see the Library of Congress number," she said, pointing to the ISBN 1-879102-69-7 on the same page, "but since we don't use that system, we don't have any publications on how it worked in our library here, or at the school libraries, for that matter."

Mariettatook over. "See, Brother, each hundred means a different thing. 000-099 is General information, 100-199 is where we store books on Philosophy,200 -299 is for Religion and so on. Then the tens digits mean what subcategory the books fall under and so on. 207means the book coversEducation and Research in Christianity, 252 is where published texts of sermons are kept, and 255 is where information on religious congregations and orders are kept."

"Why don't you look through these and if you have any questions, just come up and ask us."

Johann was stunned. This was a true book on how to find books. The letters he had written to other monks on ideas to find order in their monastic libraries seemed the scribbling of a child next to this two-volume set. Crossing himself and saying a quiet prayer of thanks, he opened the first book and carefully began to study this incredible system from the future.

The next day was very hard on Johann. He kept to his well-appointed cell (no, suite, was more like it) in the Calvinist church bas.e.m.e.nt. As he prayed thanks for the marvelous gift of learning about the new system, he yearned to go back to the library even if it was Sunday. When he heard the organist begin upstairs and thechoir begin to sing "Here I Am Lord, Send Me," Johann couldn't believe that he was quartered here in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a Calvinist church.

Even more amazing, no one seemed to think anything of it. Well, the up-timers anyway.

Wilson and Witherspoon, the Scottish cavalrymen, certainly maintained their distance, and he occasionally heard them mutter "Papist" at him after he pa.s.sed on the way to the library in the mornings.

But he also had seen the sharp, disapproving glances that a member of the congregation, John Furbee, cast their way when they began.

But day of rest or not, even during his prayers, Johann's mind kept coming back to this marvelous creation of Melvil Dewey.This is just another cross I must bear , Johann thought, as he redoubled his efforts to cleanse his thoughts of work while in prayer.

It was almost comical to the library staff; watching this black robed monk adjusting his gla.s.ses on his nose, consulting the DDC21, and then hurrying off to one part of the library or the other. His eyes gleamed with excitement every time he located exactly what he had been hunting for. And the look of absolute delight when he found a book that was mis-shelved that he could move to its proper place! That was worth the price of admission every time.

When Gloria took him to the card catalog and explained the triple filing system it represented, she thought he would burst out into song, or whatever it was that monks did when they were excited. Johann went through drawer after drawer of cards, checking to make sure that a book filed under the author's name was also filed under category and subject.

It really wasn't mean at all, Gloria told herself, to have Brother Johann reshelf the returned books for her.

He obviously enjoyed it so much. And Orson DeBolt certainly didn't mind when Johann asked to help him clean up after hours.

Orson had been fussing over all the clutter and trash from so much more traffic through the library since the Ring of Fire. Now he felt that his prayers at theChurchofChrist had paid off; even if they had paid off in the form of a Roman Catholic monk. By the time winter's first snow fell on Grantville, Johann had a firm grasp on the contents of the Grantville Public Library and understood why so many books had been moved to the high school to form the National Library. He even suggested that several other categories of books might be helpful to the researchers over there, trying to find technologies to help them survive in the present era.

As he learned more of the organization systems created in this future, he was less surprised to realize that even these systems were recognized by the people of their age as being less than perfect. There seemed to be an irreconcilable difference between the Library of Congress system and the Dewey system. Later, he was browsing through some of the slick news weekly magazines he had found stored away in boxes.

Johann found tantalizing hints of a system that seemed to be in the early phases of creation that somehow was able to take nouns and phrases from every doc.u.ment and relate it to every other doc.u.ment with similar uses of the same nouns and phrases. These systems had odd sounding names, even by up-timer standards, but one that had won some kind of award he had to read out loud to hear the sound."Google."

How they did this, Johann had no idea but he knew in the words of Solomon, "All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full." Perfection does not exist, did not exist, and would not be found in the works of these Americans. The process of G.o.d's Will continued.

But he had no interest in the technology and gadgets of the twentieth century, beyond those incredible fluorescent lights overhead. Those allowed him to do his work in perfect lighting conditions, no matter what time of day or night.

The organization of the knowledge, he felt, still must contain the secrets the Abbots had sent him to find.

He read the Catholic Encyclopedia and marveled at the various concordances he had located. Some of the Protestant sermons had rung true to him, and even the rulings of future Popes had indicated that the Church of this future had learned lessons from the Protestant movement of his time.

He carefully quoted appropriate pa.s.sages in his reports back to his Abbot at Subiaco, with the requested duplicate message going to the Abbot Prince atFulda . He knew that his colleagues there would print duplicates to distribute to the other Benedictine monasteries that had been notified of his mission, and to his Holiness the Pope. Therefore he was careful to cite only the most conservative of sources.

Then there was the TV! At first, Johann thought of television in the same category as the puppet plays you could find on a town square during market week. Then he saw Charlton Heston portraying Moses in 'The Ten Commandments' and marveled at the parting of theRed Sea .

He was hooked!

Although he had not attended the town Christmas party, he watched the Rebecca Stearns show that night to catch the news of the party and the disturbance that had happened there. After all this time in Grantville, Johann still marveled. In a largely up-time Protestant town, filled to overflowing with down-time Catholics and Protestants of widely differing religious beliefs, a Jewish woman could speak so eloquently about the symbol of the first baby born inside the ROF on Christmas Day. She said it was a sign of the bright future that stood before them all if they just kept working and believing in this American dream of being united by a better future. Believing and keeping their faith in the ideals of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of prosperity for all mankind insured a better future for them all. As Johann wrote his report that night, he realized that he had been shown a light to guide him on his path toward fulfilling his mission. When finished, he rested peacefully.