The Grantville Gazette - Vol 3 Part 7

"If that is what music will become, may G.o.d spare me fromit. "

She chuckled,then said, "With that att.i.tude, you must be a musician. Do you sing or play?"

Without thinking, he said, "Violin," then closed his eyes in pain.

"Can I see it?Your violin?"

Eyes still closed, he raised his crippled hand from his lap and laid it on the table. "Oh, my G.o.d," he heard her say softly. Steeling himself, he opened his eyes, expecting to see horror and pity, and was almost unmanned when he saw an incredible empathy-she not only knew his pain, she shared it with him. "It looks recent.Some kind of accident?"

"No.A jealous rival."

The anger that flared in her face surprised him. Eyes narrowed to mere slits, she hissed, "That's just evil."

He shrugged. "I cannot disagree, but it is done."

"No wonder you looked so lost when you walked in. You've lost your cornerstone, haven't you?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not," he said slowly,then gave a small smile, "but I believe I must admit to a kinship with Job. I rely on the Lord, but I do have some questions I would like to ask Him." She laughed, and he was lost in the silver skirling of her voice.

"I'm Marla Linder. What's your name, wandering musician?"

"Franz.Franz Sylwester, fromMainz." He recovered enough of his manners to stand and give her a bow, hand over heart.

"Sit down, sit down." She looked at him closely, and said, "Mainz. Are you Catholic?"

"Well, enough so that I could play in the bishop's chapel. But my best friends are Lutheran, albeit quietly so inMainz ."

She quirked hermouth a little, and said, "From the looks of you, you haven't had much luck lately, have you?"

"No. A one-handed musician has no...no means to support himself."

"Have you thought about learning something else?" She interrupted him as he started to reply, "I mean, learning to play something one-handed, like a trumpet?"

"The thought, yes, but... there is something to violin, something about shaping the music... molding it...

that trumpeters cannot do, that only strings can do. If I cannot do that..." He shrugged.

"Hmm," she said, "I think I know what you mean, but you might be surprised." Someone called her name and beckoned toward her from the platform."My turn. I have an idea for you. Wait here and we'll talk again after I'm done."

Her name was Marla. She talked with me for a short time, and then she went to the platform and sat down behind one of the flat cabinets. I steeled myself for more discord and chaos, and was surprised when a much more harmonious sound was heard. She sang several songs in something like a ballad style. They were nothing like our songs: tempi were very loose and meters seemed to meld from one to another smoothly; harmonies were still dissonant, albeit not nearly so much as "the world's greatest rock-and-roll, blues and country and western band." Not at all structured like anything I had ever heard before, yet somehow intriguing. Some of the songs were pleasing, like the lullaby she sang to a sweet baby named James. Others were disturbing, like the one where she was imploring someone about killing her softly with a song. The last song had me wondering what language she was singing in, there were so many words in it that sounded like English yet made no sense. Even the t.i.tle was confusing: "I dig rock and roll music," yet it had not one mention of a shovel in it at all.

In some strange way, the cabinet she sat behind was some kind of instrument, but it could not have been because it was so flat and narrow that there simply was not room for any kind of works within it. Nonetheless, it produced a most unusual sound. In timbre it was somewhat bell-like, perhaps like bells struck with soft mallets. That does not do it justice; suffice it to say that it was a sound I have never heard before.

I took some comfort in the fact that if the Kappelmeister had been present he would have been gibbering; partly over the strangeness of what was being called music, and partly over a woman singing unaccompanied, albeit only in a tavern. In fact, that thought quite warmed my heart, and I was smiling when Marla returned to my table, claimed me and led me out into the evening.

Friedrich, she found me shelter, and a place to work to earn my keep.But oh so much more importantly, she took me to people who showed me a new world, a world of music that I thought I had been barred from. First she took me to the school. It is not a gymnasium-they call it a High School, and all the children of the residents attend and learn arts and sciences. And music, Friedrich, they learn music! There is a professor there, a professor of music. Herr Wendell is a master in command of his art. He teaches these students, these youths, to play music, and to play it with pa.s.sion. These youth, they play all manner of reeds and horns and drums. Everyone calls them a band. (They are not, however, to be mistaken for the "rock-and-roll" band.) Except that sometimes Master Wendell calls them a symphonic wind ensemble. He does not lead from a clavier, Friedrich. Instead, he stands on a platform in their midst, and by his gestures he shapes them as a potter shapes the clay. He was the one who showed me how our polyphony changed over time to a new style of music he called h.o.m.ophony, and began teaching me how to understand its forms.

Friedrich, you will not believe what they can do, the flutes and reeds and horns they have!

Especially the horns! They have finely made sackbuts-except they call them trombones, which I find to be an odd name. And they have trumpets and other horns of all sizes, all made with great artifice with an innovation called valves that allow them to play diatonic tones in all registers.

They can even play chromatic tones in all registers! They are incredible! But most astounding of all is what they use in place of the harpsichord. Oh, Friedrich, there is an instrument called a piano, that is to a clavier what the finest flute is to the crudest willow whistle! All of this Master Wendell revealed to me over several evenings.

Marla also introduced me to her friend, Herr Ingram Bledsoe, a maker of instruments, who makes some small instruments; some, as he says, "from scratch," meaning they are crafted totally byhimself , and some from "kits". This is another changed word in the Grantville dialect of English that Herr Bledsoe had to explain to me. His "kits" are not baby foxes. He showed me boxes of instrument parts that had already been cut out from the wood and metal, and explained that he was able to buy these from other people and then a.s.semble them into the instruments himself. He had several harp "kits",and some guitarras also. It seems to me that using these "kits" would rob you of the pleasure of searching out and selecting the wood, and bringing out of it the very shape you wanted. In their old world, however, it seems that the ability to accomplish things quickly was important, and there is no doubt that putting together the parts that someone else has crafted would quickly give you a finished instrument. He also repairs many of the instruments they brought from the future.

This next part is for Anna. I was in Herr Bledsoe's workshop one day when I made the mistake of saying that women had no strength for music.

Memory again.

Marla looked athim, eyes narrowed, and said quietly, "Is that so?"

He knew her well enough now to recognize the warning signs, and said, "Well, so my masters taught me."

"Your masters were fools, but I don't expect you'll take my word for it. Tomorrow is the town Christmas Party. There will be a concert in the Methodist church. Yoube there," and she turned and stalked out. He turned and looked at Ingram. "Did I say something wrong?"

Ingram just laughed, and said, "Yep, you did. I'd be there tomorrow, if I were you."

Knowing what was good for him, he went to the concert. Once again, Grantville shocked him, and he spent most of the concert in a daze. First of all, over half of the choir of almost sixty people was women!

And Marla was among them. Second, the player at the piano was another woman! Third, they were good! The women's voices had a range and a power and a timbre that the boys' voices he was used to hearing on soprano and alto simply could not possess. And the pianist was extremely accomplished, demonstrating to him the power of that instrument as well.

There came a point where Marla stepped out from the choir, and nodded to the pianist, who began a quiet introduction. The epiphany came when Marla began to sing.

"Ave, Maria..."

As she sang that beautiful melody, he was transported to another realm, lifting on the effortless soaring of what seemed to be the voice of a very angel from G.o.d. He closed his eyes, drinking in the splendor with his ears, seeming to rise out of his body while she sang. When the beautiful song came to a close, he was the first one on his feet, clapping with all his might, tears pouring down his face.

Anna, you were right all along. Women can be musicians, professional musicians, and can be just as good as any man. Marla is the proof of it. I grovel at your feet, as I groveled abjectly at hers after the concert.

Friedrich, there is more knowledge of music in Grantville than there is in all the courts and chapels ofEuropecombined!Knowledge of our music and its past and what music had grown into in their time. Master Wendell and Marla have shown me that within our generation the center of music moved north from Italy toGermany, and thatGermanyremained the center of the greatest music for almost two hundred years. They have devices that play music with no musicians (they say it is not magic, just superior mechanical arts), and I have heard the music of Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and so many others. I know those names mean nothing toyou now, but they are giants, Friedrich, giants. There is so much here, so much to feed on. But it rests on such a slender reed.

One last memory unrolled. Marla turned off the device that had just finished playingDie Kunst der Fuge by Johann Sebastian Bach, and waited with Marcus Wendell while he returned from the heights that the order, structure and innovation of the masterwork had transported him to.

"I seem to spend much time crying around you," he muttered, wiping his eyes with his sleeves."Very unmanly."

She shook her head, and said quietly, "To me it's a mark of how great a heart you have for music, that you can be so touched by the greatest."

"This Bach, this master of contrapuntal art, he was born when?"

"He was... will be... that is, 1685, I think. He's the beginning of the German era of great musicians."

He sat with brow furrowed, thinking intently, and finally looked up. "Marla, this b.u.t.terfly effect you explained to me... how because you exist here, now, that ripples of change have begun and that the future you knew will never happen, people will never be born..."

"Yes?"

"Is that true of Johann Sebastian Bach?"

Sudden sucking of air, twin expressions of horror on Marla and Marcus' faces, twin exclamations of "Ohmigawd!I never thought of that!"

Friedrich, we need you. We need you and Leopold Gruenwald and Thomas Schwarzberg to join us here, you three and as many of the others as you can convince to come. For you, Herr Bledsoe will teach you of how pianos are made, and how to repair and maintain them, and of guitars. For Leopold, Master Wendell will show him all the wind instruments that he has, horns of all shapes and sizes, flutes and reeds, and new forms such as the saxophones. We desperately need Thomas to help copy down all the music that is available on their devices before they wear out. We must preserve and spread our German heritage, our legacy that has come from a future that will never be. And last but not least, bringAnna, so that she can learn from Marla and the others and become the musician she so wants to be.

Oh, come, Friedrich! Come for the joy of it, come to become the renowned master the Lord means you to be, come because I love you and need you. Send word as soon as you can.

Franz set the pen down and leaned back in his chair. Marla wrapped her arms around his neck from behind, and said, "Will they come?"

"Oh, yes. Friedrich at least will come, and Leopold should. Once Thomas learns of all the new music hecan learn, no one will be able to hold him back. If they come, others will come with them or follow soon after. And of them all, Thomas is probably the one we need most. He can notate any music that he hears, so he is the solution to preserving so much of what you have on the CDs and...records ." He tilted his head up and she leaned down to kiss him. "Yes, they will come, and together we will learn and save your music." Remembering the "movie" she had shown him the day before, he grinned and said, "And the Grantville hills will be alive with the sound of music."

Other People's Money

By Gorg Huff

I.

When Sarah Wendell had agreed to go out with David Bartley, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. She had totally forgotten that she was months away from her sixteenth birthday. The Wendell house rule was no dating till sixteen. Remembering that little detail hadn't been a problem when other boys asked her out, as several had in the last few months. David had his own version of the Delia effect. You sort of felt you were more grownup if you did what the adults wanted. Mostly David's thing worked in business matters, but this time the switch between working out how to finance the twin's scheme and his asking her out had come too quickly. On the other hand...

David wasn't allowed to date till he was sixteen either, and he knew she wasn't. Knowing David, there was no way he had done it on purpose. It was kind of nice to know that she was as capable of making him forget that sort of thing as he was of making her forget them.

Similar thoughts occupied David's mind. In his anxiety over how Sarah would react, he had forgotten that it wasn't entirely up to her. Apparently she had, too. When you spent half your time running-well, helping run-what was rapidly turning into a multimillion dollar business, you tended to forget that you weren't old enough to date or set your own bedtime.

David had spent most weekends since the merger traveling to nearby towns to set up Higgins Sewing Machine Company franchises. It was amazing the number of villages that dotted this part ofGermany . It had come as a surprise since the Ring of Fire that the seventeenth century was so well populated. So a great deal of his time these days was spent sitting down with merchants or master craftsmen two to three times his age, explaining to them how to deal withrent with an option to buy payment plans and other intricacies of adding a sewing machine outlet to their other businesses. Then there were the two times he had had to revoke a franchise agreement because the holder didn't realize that they meant it when they talked about a policy of honesty and fair dealing.

He wasn't exactly in charge of any of that. Truth to tell, he was sort of Karl Schmidt's tame up-timer, sort of physical proof of Karl's up-timer connection. Still, he was involved, and did have a say. He got away with it in spite of his age because he was one of the magical up-timers, and because he always had at least Johan with him and usually Adolph or Karl to provide an introduction. He had also gotten away with it because he worked really hard at forgetting that he was fifteen when he talked business.

The fact that he was wealthier than his whole family had been up-time and had what amounted to his own man-at-arms didn't help with the bedtime business either.

All of that cut no ice with Grandma. He was fifteen, he was not allowed to date, and his bedtime wasten o'clock on weekdays.

Well, he had put his foot in it. It was time to talk to Grandma.

Delia Higgins was trying to figure out how much she could rob Peter to pay Paul. That d.a.m.n warehouse was threatening to become a bottomless pit. Delia was honest enough to admit that it wasn't the warehouse itself that was the problem; it was the research money that she had showered onGrantvilleHigh School . Alexandra Selluci ought to teach extortion.

No. Delia admitted to herself that she needed to learn frugality. Her agreement to build the warehouse, her remaining dolls, plus her property had provided her with a drawing account that had seemed limitless.

She had wanted to use concrete in building the warehouse and as much in the way of up-time building techniques as possible. She had wanted more than that: she had wanted a work of art, the best combination of up-time and down-time construction techniques possible. So she had gone to Alex.

Alex had been trying to make bricks without straw in terms of helping to reorganize the chemistrydepartment with half the teachers gone, more than half the students not speaking English, and budget constraints from h.e.l.l. She had made it quite clear that she had no time for the next "hare-brained project of Old Lady Higgins, Grand Dame of the Sewing Circle."

Delia, her blood up, had promised to pay for the whole thing. That had shut Alex up. She realized that Delia meant it, and could actually do it. Alex had brought in Ambrose Salerno. The upshot of it all was that theGrantvilleHighTechCenter got a brand new concrete research program, complete with structural engineering courses where the teachers were half a chapter ahead of the students, or sometimes half a chapter behind, and Delia had a great deal less money. She couldn't really regret it. The kids that had gone into concrete were phenomenal. They were about four to one down-timer to up-timer, about average for the high school. They wanted to build things. Great big things, dams, skysc.r.a.pers, and roads, and were willing to work at it.

Then there was all the housing that was being put up, driving up prices, and her two builders arguing over design and materials. Between it all, she had spent all her doll money and more before the dolls were sold. She had gotten the warehouse built, and if not exactly a work of art, it was functional, and very large. Unfortunately it was only about half full at the moment. It wasn't paying enough to handle what she owed.

David's deferential interruption was something of a relief. Wise Grandmother was a role she found much more comfortable than Hard-nosed Businesswoman.

His problem was a hoot. So much so that she had difficulty keeping from laughing. She managed because it was clearly so important to David. David had forgotten again that he was just a kid. Not a hard thing to do if you weren't looking at him. He looked like your typical fifteen year old in the middle of a growth spurt: all angles and elbows, dark brown hair, short in the up-time style, pale blue eyes that usually looked a lot older than they did just now.

Judy the Elder had been secretly pleased at Sarah's announcement. She herself had been a tall gawky wall flower in high school. Not dating till sixteen had not been a problem; getting a date for the prom had.

It wasn't till college that she had bloomed.

Fletcher was neither pleased nor secret in his displeasure. His displeasure had several causes that he disclosed to his wife with great zeal. An unkind observer might even have said with satisfaction.

First, he had been hoping for a few more months of relative tranquillity before the horde of h.o.r.n.y-and now mercenary-boys started making their runs at his daughter.

"Well, David isn't after her money," Judy the Elder pointed out.

Fletcher gave his wife a look that indicated more clearly than words that his mind was not relieved.

Eliminating mercenary just left...

Well, what it left didn't bear thinking about.

Judy the Elder decided to let her idiot husband get through his rant, so they could discuss things rationally.

Second, David knew the rules and his ignoring them was personally disappointing. Fletcher had trustedDavid.

Judy still trusted David, and was quite sure that he had simply forgotten. It wasn't a teenage power play to show the grownups who was boss. For one thing, David generally worked fairly hard not to show who was boss. She held her peace. It wasn't easy, but she did it.

Third, especially in this latter day Dodge City that Grantville had become, family rules were one of the very necessary safeguards, not just to keep the kids out of trouble, but to keep them alive.

This was a potential crack in the wall. Their kids already had one unfair advantage in the generation conflict. Sarah already had a net worth greater than her parents and Judy the Younger with her Barbie Consortium was gaining. Wendell really couldn't pull out the argument "As long as you live under my roof." Sarah had the wherewithal to provide her own roof, and Judy probably could in a pinch.

Another good reason not to get angry when it wasn't called for, Judy thought, but she kept her peace and let the Bull Male protective father run down. Then they could actually discuss the matter.