1632

Deliverance he had not been able to bring in time.

Many hours.

***

At the entrance to the tent, Oxenstierna stared out across the plains of central Europe. Millions had already died on those plains, since the most horrible war in centuries had begun, thirteen years before. Millions more, in all likelihood, would die on those plains before it was over. The horsemen of the Apocalypse were loose, and drunk with glee.

There was some sorrow in his own eyes, but not much. The chancellor did not pretend to have his king's greatness of soul. He simply recognized it, and gave his unswerving loyalty.

So the eyes were hard, not soft. Cold and dry with future certainty, not warm and wet with past knowledge. Better than any man alive, Axel Oxenstierna understood the soul kneeling in prayer behind him. That understanding brought him all the solace he needed, staring across the plains.

I would damn you myself. But there is no need. A greater one than I-much greater-is bringing you something far worse than a mere curse.

A new breed has come into the world, lords of Germany.

Tremble. Tremble!

Chapter 7

The high school's gymnasium was designed to hold 1,500 people. Looking around, Mike estimated that twice that number were packed into the place. Almost the entire population of the Grantville area was present, with the exception of a handful of men at the power plant and perhaps two dozen members of Mike's mine workers.

The disaster-what everyone had taken to calling the Ring of Fire-had occurred three days ago. Since then the UMWA had become, willy-nilly, the area's impromptu defense force. There was no other body of armed and well-organized men available to patrol the area. Grantville's police force consisted of only five officers, including its chief. Even if Dan Frost had not been wounded, he couldn't possibly have handled the problem of overall defense. Grantville's police force was more than busy enough as it was, maintaining order in the town itself.

There had been no major problems with the townsfolk themselves, beyond an initial run of panic buying which the town's mayor brought to a halt by a quick and decisive order to close all the stores. The police department was patrolling the town, to make sure the order was obeyed, but there had been no significant opposition. Privately, everyone admitted that the mayor's decision had been sensible.

The real problem-which was developing very rapidly-was the influx of refugees who were beginning to creep into Grantville's outskirts. It appeared that the entire countryside was being ravaged by undisciplined mercenary soldiers. So far, none of the soldiers themselves had come near the town, but Mike's men were alertly watching for any sign of trouble.

Mike was standing on the floor of the gym, next to one of the tiers of seats near the entrance. Frank Jackson, along with a small group of other miners, were clustered about him. To his immediate right, perched on the edge of the lowest tier of seats, sat Rebecca Abrabanel. The Jewish refugee was still in a bit of a daze, confused by the strange people-and stranger technology-around her.

Perhaps fortunately, Rebecca had been too preoccupied with her father's medical condition to panic at the bizarre experiences she was undergoing. Most of the other refugees were still cowering in the woods surrounding the town, fleeing from any attempt to coax them out of hiding. But Mike suspected that the woman's steadiness was innate. While Rebecca had all the earmarks of a sheltered intellectual, that did not automatically translate into cringing helplessness. He chuckled ruefully, remembering their conversation in the library. He had barely understood a word, once she plunged into philosophy. But he had not sneered-not then, not now. Mike decided he could use some of that philosophical serenity himself.

Still, Rebecca was hardly blasй about her situation. Mike watched as, for the tenth time in as many minutes, Rebecca self-consciously smoothed her long, pleated skirt, tugged at her bodice, touched the full cap which covered her hair. He found it mildly amusing that she had adjusted well enough to her circumstances to be concerned about her appearance.

The person sitting next to Rebecca, a small gray-haired woman in her sixties, reached out and gave the refugee's hand a little squeeze of reassurance. Rebecca responded with a quick, nervous smile.

Mike's amusement vanished. Understanding Rebecca's fears concerning her Judaism-if not the reasons for it-he had asked Morris and Judith Roth to take Rebecca and her father into their house. The town's only Jewish couple had readily agreed. Balthazar Abrabanel had been there ever since. He had survived his heart attack, but both James Nichols and Jeff Adams, Grantville's resident doctor, had agreed that he needed plenty of bed rest. Balthazar had barely survived the experience as it was.

The next day, when Mike dropped by for a quick visit, Rebecca seemed calm and almost relaxed. But Judith had told him, privately, that the Abrabanel woman had burst into a flood of tears when she spotted the menorah perched on the Roths' mantel. She had spent the next half hour collapsed on a couch, clutching Judith like a drowning kitten.

Mike glanced again at Rebecca. The woman was listening intently to what the town's mayor was saying. He was relieved to see that her expression was simply calm. Intent, curious. Wondering, at what she was hearing. But without a trace of panic.

Mike scanned the sea of faces in the gymnasium. Truth is, she's doing way better than half the people here.

The thought was whimsical, in its origin. But the accompanying flush of fierce, half-possessive pride alerted Mike to a truth he had been avoiding. His feelings for the Abrabanel woman had obviously taken on a life of their own. The image of runaway horses came to his mind, bolting out of a broken corral.

Good move, Stearns. As if you didn't have enough trouble! The runaway horses paid as much attention to his admonition as they would have to a field mouse. Since the first moment he saw her, the exotic beauty of the woman drew him like a magnet. Some men might have been put off by the obvious intelligence in Rebecca's dark eyes, and the hint of sly humor in her full lips.

Mike sighed. Not me. With difficulty, he forced himself to look away and concentrate on the mayor's concluding remarks.

'So that's about it, folks,' Henry Dreeson was saying. The mayor nodded toward a small group of people sitting on chairs near the podium. 'You heard what Ed Piazza and his teachers told us. Somehow-nobody knows how-we've been planted somewhere in Germany almost four hundred years ago. With no way to get back.'

A man stood up on one of the lower tiers. 'Are we sure about that, Henry? The 'getting back' part, I mean? Maybe whatever happened could-you know, happen again. The other way.'

The mayor gave a glance of appeal to one of the teachers sitting next to the principal. Greg Ferrara rose and stepped up to the microphone. The high school's science teacher was a tall, slender man in his mid-thirties. His speech patterns, like his stride and mannerisms, were quick and abrupt-and self-confident.

Greg was shaking his head before he even reached the podium's microphone. 'I don't think there's the proverbial snowball's chance in hell.' He gripped the sides of the podium and leaned forward, giving emphasis to his next words. 'Whatever happened was almost certainly some kind of natural catastrophe. If you ask me, we're incredibly lucky we survived the experience. Nobody suffered any serious injuries, and the property damage was minimal.'

Greg glanced at the fluorescent lighting on the ceiling of the gym. A fleeting smile crossed his face. 'The power plant's even back on-line, so we've got all the conveniences of home. For a while, at least.' The smile vanished. 'But we're still in the position of a trailer park hit by a tornado. What do you think the chances are of another tornado coming by-and setting everything back the way it was?' Greg took a deep breath. 'Personally, I'd have to say the chance is astronomically minute. Let's hope so. Another Ring of Fire would probably destroy us completely.'

The crowd jammed into the gymnasium was silent. Greg took another deep breath, and concluded with simple, forceful words. 'Face it, folks. We're here to stay.'

A moment later, he had resumed his seat. The mayor took his place back at the microphone. 'Well, that's about it, people. As far as that goes. What we've got to do now is plan for the future. The town council has been meeting pretty much nonstop for the past three days, and we've come up with a proposal we want to put before everybody.' He paused for emphasis, just as the teacher had done. 'We'll have to vote on it. This is way beyond the council's authority. So every registered voter here-'

The mayor stumbled to a halt. 'Well, I suppose everybody here, registered or not.' The sour look on his face caused laughter to ripple through the gym. For as many years as anyone in Grantville could remember, Henry Dreeson had been admonishing people to register to vote.

The mayor plowed on. 'We need to figure out a proper structure to govern ourselves by. We can't just stick with a mayor and a town council. So what we want to propose is that we elect an emergency committee to draw up a plan-kind of a constitutional convention. The same committee should oversee things in the interim. And we need to elect somebody as the committee's chairman. He-or she-can make whatever immediate decisions are needed.'

Someone in the crowd shouted out the mayor's own name. Dreeson shook his head vehemently. 'Not me! The town council raised that idea already, and I turned 'em down. I'm sixty-six years old, folks. I'm a small-town mayor, that's it.' The elderly man at the podium stood a little straighter. 'Been pretty good at it, if I say so myself, and I'll be glad to stay on in that capacity. But there's no way I'm the right man to-' He waved his hand. The gesture was neither feeble, nor hopeless. But it conveyed the sense of impending catastrophe nonetheless.

A motion at the edge of the crowd drew Mike's attention. John Simpson, his sister's new father-in-law, was stepping forward to the microphone. The well-dressed man moved with the same self-confidence with which he had addressed numerous stockholders' meetings. He did not push the mayor aside so much as he forced him to yield the microphone by sheer authoritativeness.

'I agree with Mayor Dreeson,' he said forcefully. 'We are in an emergency. That calls for emergency management.'

Another, less self-confident, man would have cleared his throat before proceeding. Not John Chandler Simpson. 'I propose myself as the chairman of the emergency committee. I realize that I'm not well-known to most of you. But since I'm certain that I am better qualified than anyone here, I have no choice but to put myself forward for the position. I've been the chief executive officer of a major corporation for many years now. And before that I was an officer in the United States Navy. Served in the Pentagon.'

Next to him, Mike heard Frank Jackson mutter: 'Gee, what a self-sacrificing gesture.'

Mike repressed his own snort of derision. Yeah, like Napoleon volunteering to take the throne. For the good of the nation, of course.

Quickly, he scanned the faces in the crowd. Mike could detect some signs of resentment at a stranger's instant readiness to take command. But not much. In truth, Simpson's decisiveness was obviously hitting a responsive chord. People floating in the water after a shipwreck are not inclined to question the origin of a lifeboat. Or the quality of its captain, as long as the man seems to know what he's doing and has a loud voice.

He brought his attention back to Simpson. '-first thing is to seal off the town,' Simpson was saying. 'Our resources are going to be stretched tight as it is.