awarding it a royal charter. Funds and facilities will be provided to the society to conduct scientific experiments on anything the members wish, as long as the members are always available to advise the king on scientific matters. Do you feel Dr. Gribbleflotz would be interested in being the society's president?'
'I believe Dr. Gribbleflotz would be most happy with such an offer.'
'Good, very good. And, of course, as Dr. Gribbleflotz would be the premier scientist in Bohemia, it would be fitting if he were awarded doctorates by the universities of Bohemia.'
'Prague, and the new university funded by Herr Roth?'
Heinrich smiled. 'Actually, I was thinking of Prague and Olmutz, but I'm sure Herr Roth would feel offended if his new university wasn't invited to similarly honor Dr. Gribbleflotz.'
After an hour of discussion, Lips escorted Herr Niemann back to his portion of the palace. He stopped at a window and stared out on the street. Revenge was going to be sweet, even if Phillip never knew he was getting revenge. He wondered how Dr. Stone would react to receiving an invitation to present a seminar on the chakras to the Royal Academy of Science in Prague, signed by the academy's president for life, Dr. Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz.
****
Dreams Can Come True . . .
Estil Congden flicked an imaginary piece of lint off the sleeve of his white dinner jacket and looked around the room. Business was good tonight. The place was full, but still spacious. The customers were well-dressed and the women's jewelry glittered in the soft lighting. Ah. There. One of the wait staff's shoes weren't polished. Estil headed toward him . . .
There was a loud clack of balls and a shout of, 'Ou eee, Dog, you just hit hard and hope, don't you? Talk about getting lucky. Shee-it.'
'Estil, get your head out of the clouds and get me a beer.'
Month after month, year after year, Estil's mind listened to the murmur of the background conversation and the soft clatter of carefully controlled billiard balls.
The fantasy, though, was a private matter. Estil never talked about it. His sincere belief was that if you talked about something you wanted to do, someone would either make fun of you, make fun of the fantasy, treat you like dirt to drag you down, or otherwise screw with your life.
They always did. Mom had. Dad, such as he was, had. And that damned Odetta, well, she'd run off to Magdeburg. But it didn't matter. He'd never told her anything, anyway.
When someone asked about his aspirations in life, and insisted on getting an answer, Estil would say, 'My goal in life is to be shot by the jealous husband of a young wife when I'm sixty five.' And that was all the answer he would ever give. Because he knew if he ever so much as shared his dream with anyone, it would be lost as a dream. It would become an ambition or-worse-a goal.
A customer leaned up against the bar, 'Estil, shot of whiskey, make it a double, and this time make sure the glass is clean.'
Estil grabbed a shot glass from under the bar and made a production of holding it up to the light then polishing it with the bar rag.
'Shit, Estil, just give me the damned whiskey.'
Estil knew that if he ever talked about the dream, he'd be laughed at. If he talked about it, it would become an unobtainable heartbreak instead of a refuge from reality. Estil had enough unrewarded genius, enough unrequited loves, enough unfulfilled great expectations to last two lifetimes, if not three. Estil's poetry, outside of the one poem picked up in a contest collection when he was a sophomore, could not find a market. His chosen profession, poet, was closed. The love of his life went off to college and married someone else. He never did win the lottery.
'Estil, 'you know who' wants a brandy,' the waitress said, setting her tray on the bar. One man in the whole clan of Club 250 regulars drank brandy. Ken kept some cheap stuff in stock for that one customer and the rare occasion someone else might ask for it.
Estil dreamed of brandy. Not the cheap stuff. The real thing. An aged, mellow, deep-amber liquid, in a real snifter. Not, alas, brandy as a pair of jugs, half exposed to the world by a push-up bra, in a Daisy Mae tied up over a sprayed on pair of hot pants.
'Estil,' Ken said, 'quit your daydreaming and help clear the tables.'
Estil knew it never would-never could-happen in Grantville, back then or now, even if there was still a lottery. You could build it but they would not come. New York no longer existed. Estil's dream of being the owner and occasional, casual bartender of an up-scale classy cocktail lounge was safe. He had never once shared it with anyone. The closest he came was the time he got caught reading his second hand copy of a bartender's bible. It told how to make any drink ever conceived of, from a simple classic fifty/fifty Martini to a Rusty Nail or a Hairy Navel. He read every page and remembered every step of every drink, especially those which had ingredients he had never even heard of, much less seen.
****
Someone once saw him reading it and asked, 'What in the world are you reading that thing for?'
He answered, 'I'm a bartender. I should know these things.'
'Est, all you need to know; is whether the beer is cold and whether the shot glass is clean.'
'And if someone asks for a Manhattan?'
'It ain't goin' to happen.'
'Yeah, well maybe I'll go to New York and open a place of my own.'
'When hell freezes over, Est.'
****
In the real world Estil got promoted from bus boy, to waiter, to bartender, and-eventually-to bum. Now, magically, another brave new world was here. It was three hundred years older and three hundred years uglier. Estil wanted nothing to do with it.
When Odetta dumped him he was demoted from bum back to bartender. The number of patrons in Club 250 was shrinking. Some were in the army, others were working out of town. So his hours were getting cut. As things got worse, Estil had more time to dream.
****
On the day after Thanksgiving, in the year of Our Lord 1634, Lyndon Johnson showed up at the bar in Club 250.
'Estil, how would you like a short term job?'
'Doin' what?'
'There's been a request from Magdeburg. Someone with more money than sense saw one too many movies while staying at the Higgins Hotel when they were in town. They want to throw an American party and need a cocktail expert.'
'I can't do something like that.'
'Sure you can. You do a good job organizing wedding receptions. I know you do; I was the best man at two of them. If you can do that, you can run a cocktail party. And, I happen to know you enjoy doing it. You still have that copy of the
'I don't want to go out of town. Besides, I'd have to miss work.'
'Hey, It's just Magdeburg. That's just a train ride away. And Ken said it would be all right with him if you missed a few days, as slow as things are.
