Grantville Gazette 38

'That means it was better than 'nice.' That's good. You don't want to marry someone whose kisses are only 'nice.''

July 1633

Veronika accepted the invitation vouchers from the male half of the last couple and checked the name. Privately, deep inside, where Lyle Kindred couldn't see it, she was jumping up and down like an idiot. Herr Kindred was the publisher of the Grantville Times-the largest newspaper in the area. She picked up the last of the name tags she'd prepared and handed them to his wife. 'It is good of you both to come, Herr Kindred, Frau Kindred.'

Lyle was looking around, waving to people he recognized while his wife pinned the name card onto his jacket. 'I couldn't afford to stay away. Mary Jo wouldn't let me.'

'I wouldn't let you? Since when have you ever listened to what I've said?' She turned to Veronika. 'Lyle insisted on coming just so he could get his hands on the free sample you promised in your invitation.'

Veronika pointed to the stack of one-quire bundles of paper on the table. 'The free sample packages will be handed to you when you leave, Herr Kindred. And I'm sure you'll appreciate the quality of the paper. Now, is there anything you would like to see?'

'Lyle wants to see the paper being made. Is that possible?' Mary Jo asked.

'Yes. We expected that request and have arranged for the machine to be running during the open house. If you'd like to follow me?'

'Come along, Lyle, don't keep the young woman waiting.'

'The Spengler mill makes paper by an almost continuous process,' Veronika explained as they walked towards the mill hall.

'How do you get continuous?' Lyle asked. 'I've seen a few mills, and they all use paper molds on an endless loop. There seems to be a problem with the wire mesh breaking.'

'Gottfried solved the problem of the mesh breaking by not allowing the mesh to flex. In place of an endless loop going around rollers, he has a single large roller with the mesh fixed to it.'

'This I've go to see,' Lyle said.

'And see it you shall,' Veronika said as she guided the couple into the hall. 'There it is.'

The large mesh covered cylinder was about six feet in diameter and two feet wide. It rotated slowly as a constant stream of pulp poured out of the headbox.

'The paper's pretty fragile on the cylinder, so we have this felt roller here to remove the still wet paper,' Veronika said as she pointed out the feature. 'The paper then passes through a couple of squeegee rollers before being rolled up at the end.'

'You're making paper in rolls? Can we buy it that way rather than ready cut?'

Veronika reluctantly shook her head. 'You can buy the rolls, but all you'll be getting will be expensive artificial logs. There's still too much water in the paper, and we can't press it out once it's rolled up. So we have to take the rolls and move them to a cutting bench where the paper is unrolled and cut to size. We can then squeeze the rest of the water out of the paper the old-fashioned way.'

'Pity,' Lyle muttered. 'It'd be good to have rolled paper for when we can get a continuous press.'

'Oh, that's not to say Gottfried isn't working on solving the problem. It's really just a matter of getting the right materials to squeeze the water out of the paper before it is rolled up.'

'So how long do you think it'll be before we can get paper by the roll?'

Veronika shrugged. 'Nothing we've tried so far has worked, and we fear we might need rubber.'

Lyle nodded in understanding. 'Everything is waiting on rubber. We need it for some of the up-time printing innovations I want to introduce as well. So until you get some rubber you'll be making sheet paper? How much can you make?'

'How much would you like to buy?'

'How about thirty reams of Crown a week?'

Veronika whistled silently. Thirty reams was enough paper for fifteen thousand four-page newspapers. It was hard to imagine the people of Grantville were buying that many newspapers every week, let alone buying that number of copies of just the Grantville Times. 'We can do that. The mill has a nominal capacity of thirty reams a day.'

'If the Times were to become a daily, we'd be looking at something like a hundred reams a week. Would that present any problems?'

Veronika clamped down hard on her immediate desire to agree to anything to secure the order. Instead she stopped to think. 'That'd be over half our capacity. I'm not sure how Gottfried would feel about being so committed to a single client. Could I get back to you on that later?'

'Sure,' Lyle agreed. 'I just thought I'd ask. We won't be going daily for a while yet anyway.'

****

The Kindred's were the last to leave, and Gottfried stood beside Veronika as she handed Herr Kindred his free sample. 'I'm sure you'll be impressed with the quality of that paper, Herr Kindred.'

'I'm sure I will, and I'm very impressed with your young lady,' Lyle said.

'Yes, why ever didn't you bring Veronika along to the Chamber of Commerce dinner?' Mary Jo asked.

'I thought it was a business affair,' Gottfried muttered.

Mary Jo giggled. 'Oh dear, you poor thing.' She turned to include Veronika in the conversation. 'Your man here was absolutely swamped by the young daughters and granddaughters of members of the Chamber of Commerce, all intent on sinking their hooks into the owner of a paper mill.'

Gottfried stood taller and prouder when Veronika failed to say he wasn't her young man. However, he knew he had to say something to assure her that he wanted to be her young man. 'I thought I'd never get out of there in one piece.'

'So next time, take this delightful young woman,' Mary Jo said. 'I'm sure she's capable of protecting you.'

'Next time, I will.' He smiled at Veronika. 'If you'd like to, that is.'

'I'd like that,' she said.

September 1633

Gottfried stood at one end of the paper hall looking back at his mill. He still wasn't making roll paper, but his mill was the most efficient paper mill in the Confederated Principalities of Europe. No, make that the world.

'It's safe to leave it in my hands, you know,' Friedrich Stisser said from beside him.

'That's very easy to say, but she's my baby, and I worry.'

'Yes, but you also want to experiment with new techniques.'

'Yes, I do.' Gottfried sighed. He just had to learn to let his baby go; otherwise he'd never have time to experiment with techniques to make chemical pulp. 'I'm having trouble with the scale model wood-chipper.'

'There you are then. You go off and play with your wood-chipper and leave the mill in my capable hands.'

Gottfried had wanted someone he trusted to help in his mill and Friedrich had leapt at the opportunity to get away from making bricks. However, he wasn't a trained papermaker, and Gottfried worried.

Friedrich grabbed him by the arm and marched him to the back door before pushing him toward the separate shed where he was building his chemical pulp mill in miniature. 'Go on. You'll never make any progress if you can't trust me.'

Gottfried was torn. The mill was making thirty reams a day, and everything was going well. There wasn't anything that should go wrong, but there was a world of difference between should and could. 'If you have any trouble . . .'

'Call you. Now stop worrying and go.'

Saalfeld

Veronika and Catrin were working their way through yet another pile of tax invoices when Andreas Rottenberger burst in. 'The Spanish have invaded the United Provinces.'

'What? Invaded? Where did you hear that?' Veronika asked.

'The radio net,' Andreas said.

Veronika glanced at the cheap radio by the counter that was tuned into the Voice of America broadcasts. 'There's been nothing on the radio.'