The Grantville Gazette - Vol 9 Part 40

Paul wasn't able to steal the magazine when he left the jail, but he had been able to copy several of the pages by hand while he waited, tracing the drawings and writing down what he could of the information with them. There was a kind of triangular flying machine that was simple to make, and he knew he would be able to build it. He had the drawings in his pockets when he left.

Paul turned south, heading toward a warmer climate as the year turned cold, and finally made his way to Venice. He gave out dribbles and drabbles of information about the strange people in Germany and their amazing devices to several wealthy men in search of a patron, and finally found one in Don Giovanni Romano, a merchant with ties to many other wealthy men.

"You speak of wonders, Heir Meinhart," Don Giovanni said when they had first met.

"Wonders indeed, Don Giovanni," Paul had replied, bowing low. "Wonders that let but a few handfuls of these people defeat whole armies. Wonders that they freely discuss amongst themselves, and pay no attention to who might be listening."

"Tell me of these wonders," Don Giovanni commanded, and Paul happily complied.

"These people have weapons that shoot a hundred bullets in the time it takes a musketeer to shoot one.

They have great machines that move on their own, traveling faster than the fastest horse, and carrying many men shoot thing their terrible weapons. And, the greatest of their wonders, they possess the knowledge of how to fly."

"Fly!"

"Fly, Don Giovanni. I had the opportunity to copy some plans for a simple flying machine, one that they don't think of as valuable. " Paul sat forward, sensing that he had the rich fool hooked.

"Show me," Don Giovanni demanded and Paul brought out his drawings.

"You see, it is simple. A frame and some cloth, stretched tight. While I couldn't copy all of the drawings and pictures, I remember them well enough to be able to build one of these machines-with the properpatron, of course." Paul smiled and Don Giovanni smiled back.

"Of course."

Don Giovanni provided Paul with everything he asked for, and in return Paul provided Don Giovanni with a flying machine. It was triangular, seven yards across the base and four yards from tip to tail. Don Giovanni had provided Paul with fine, light-weight yew wood for his spars, and a small fortune in silk for the cloth. It took some time, and not a little trial and error, but the day finally came that Paul arranged for Don Giovanni and his friends to meet him on a hillside near the sea.

"Don Giovanni, I am pleased that so many of your friends could join us today," Paul said as he bowed to all of the n.o.bles.

"I hope you have something to show us that is worth the trouble," Don Constanza said. "I have a much prettier person I would rather be spending the day with."

"You will soon be happy that you came here today, Don Constanza," Paul said, not adding that if he had been a man of vision he would have been the one celebrating this day instead of Don Giovanni.

Paul walked over to where his helpers were holding his flying machine, the so-called "hang glider" and got under it. He lifted the contraption and looked at the supports. He'd eliminated several of them in order to shed weight, but still it felt like he was carrying a barrel on his back. He felt the breeze in his face and remembered the pictures of men running down a hill and sailing away, and his feet began to move.

Faster and faster Paul ran, and as he did he felt his load lighten. Then, as the breeze freshened, he felt his feet start skimming along the ground, and he jumped up to drape his stomach across the bar. A gust of wind lifted him and he felt a rush of excitement as he soared over the astonished n.o.bles. Then he heard a crack.

Don Giovanni and his friends watched Paul soar fifty meters into the sky. They cried out in wonder as the flying machine lifted the man high above them. Then it collapsed, folding around its inventor like a napkin around a bone, and crashed to earth.

Don Giovanni heaved a great sigh of disappointment. "He seemed so sure." Turning to the men who had been a.s.sisting Paul, he said, "Salvage the silk. Whatever you do, salvage that silk. Take the body to the church for burial."

"Man was not meant to fly, Don Giovanni," Don Constanza said. "I told him that when he approached me. Come, I know what will lighten your heart."

Contents Gearhead

by Mark H Huston

It was quiet. Way too quiet. Of all the things Trent Haygood hated about the seventeenth century, the quiet was the worst. He missed the sounds of engines. Internal combustion engines. h.e.l.l, he'd be happy with some noise from a steam engine. As he sat on the front porch of his parents' home, he leaned forward and listened.

He held his breath and focused his hearing for some sign of mechanized civilization, anything. He listened carefully.

Only a cow mooed in the distance.

He sighed, leaned back into the chair, and put his hands behind his head. Back up-time, he could almost always tell you what kind of vehicle was coming down the road just by the sound of the motor. Mopar, Chevy, Ford, old KW or Freightliner.

Things were getting a little noisier lately, he had to admit. It had been a slow rebuilding. There was the occasional airplane now, built from Formica and car engines. Someone else was also building aircraft, having bought up a lot of motorcycle engines for propulsion. Cars and trucks never did go away altogether. Folks were pretty creative in these parts, so if there was something to be had that was sorta liquid and flammable, then someone modified a motor to run on it. His old man had reestablished the family distilled spirits business while he was away, and that was always good for fuel or trade.

He still missed the background noise of motors. He considered it the basis of true civilization. Not the stinky, organic things-like horses and oxen-that moved people and goods from place to place in this time. Or the dreadfully slow barges, lolling up and down the river like some demented version of "Life on the Mississippi" that went horribly bad.

There was the train. A bunch of folks had gotten together and built an honest-to-G.o.d steam engine. Still, it wasn't the same thing. It was slow, maybe five miles per hour. But it worked. He sighed.Maybe by the time I'm fifty or sixty, there will be real racing again. Not horse racing, but NASCAR. G.o.d, he missed NASCAR. Big E and Little E were the thing in 2000. Daytona had happened, the season was underway, and it was looking like another great year. Ford had a good car, and Jeff Gordon was as still strong. Trent never liked Jeff Gordon. Too pretty. Plus he was from California, of all places.Who ever heard of a NASCAR driver from California for crying out loud?

It was still quiet. No engines anywhere to be heard. He sighed again.

Trent had been a high school senior when the Ring of Fire hit Grantville and had been conscripted into the military at graduation, along with the rest of his cla.s.s. He had spent most of his time drilling, marching, and waiting. He never got to fire a shot in any battle. In the first his rifle had jammed, and in the second he had been held in reserve, and in the last one he had broken his ankle marching and sat out the whole thing in the rear. It wasn't like he was trying to avoid things; it just worked out that way. He didn't even have any good stories.

He had been transferred to Grantville, detailed to work with the phone company as a trainee, but stillstuck in the army. It was boring. He knew that wasn't what he wanted to do with his life, telephones or the army. He had known back home, back up-time. He had gotten a small scholars.h.i.+p to become a race mechanic at a school in North Carolina. He was going to work for a NASCAR team. He had built and raced his own car senior year and had done pretty well. He finished third at Tyler County speedway in his first season. It was not what you would call a big time racecar, just an old P-Stock Camaro that he had welded a cage into, and built a motor to meet-well, exceed actually-the rules. His dad and a couple of buddies had been the crew. They didn't spend a lot of money, as it was a basic car, running in a basic cla.s.s on a small dirt oval track. Towing the car to the track was the toughest part of the deal.

G.o.d, he loved that stuff. The odor of racing gasoline and the smell of hot brake pads were perfume to his nose. They had called him Mario Haygood at school.

Some of the funds for the racecar came from the little side business his old man had, back before the Ring of Fire. Trent smiled as he recalled the fun he had making the "runs" over to Clarksburg.

Today, all that remained of that car was the V-8 engine on a stand in the garage, a transmission, front subframe, drive shaft, and the wheels and tires. Everything else had been salvaged, sc.r.a.pped, sold or subst.i.tuted for something else. The fuel cell and most of the safety equipment and the racing seat went to the air force, the battered body went to the sc.r.a.p yard and the roll cage tubing was pulled out and sold.

Other than some gla.s.s and wiring odds and ends, it was all gone.

He stood up and stretched. The family home was not in Grantville proper, but on a road off Route 250, about a mile and a half from town. Dad moved here because it was quiet, before the Ring of Fire happened. Quiet. Still too quiet. He sat back down into the lawn chair.

Times like this, up-time, he would get into his street car, an old beat up Ford Fairmont and go blasting around the back roads, chewing up the already old tires, and overheating the inadequate brakes. The thing had an old straight six in it, and it barely had enough power to get out of its own way. But it was still driving, and West Virginia hill country had some challenging and twisty back roads that were his playground. Guys would make fun of his beater, but all his extra money went to the racecar. Even in the land where beaters were almost an art form, his was a beater. He smiled at the memory of that car. That one, too, had gone to the sc.r.a.p yard, after stripping some of the items out of it. He kept the steering wheel, almost everything else was gone.

That old beater was special. After all it was in that car that he and his first girlfriend had-he paused again. His old girlfriend had gone off and gotten married while he was off getting bored to death in the army. He started to feel even more depressed.

"I wish I could go for a drive. Somewhere. Fast. Push it to some limit, screw conserving resources.

Fast." He paused, surprised that he had been speaking out loud. "Way too frigging quiet. I am talking to myself, for heaven's sake. Out loud." He walked to the front yard, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"This SUCKS! It REALLY SUCKS! I WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW THAT THIS REALLY, REALLY SUCKS!" He paused to listen.

The cow mooed again, off in the distance.

Trent gave the unseen cow a defeated shrug, walked back into the house, and flopped onto the couch.

Face down on the couch, he mumbled into the cus.h.i.+ons, "This still sucks." He rolled over onto his back, and put his feet up and stared at the ceiling. "What are you going to do with your life, Trent, old buddy?

What the heck does a gearhead like you do for a living? There is absolutely nothing here that goes fast.

Nothing." He paused, looked out the front window, and sighed again. At least before the Ring of Fire, when his old man would have him make a run over the mountains into Clarksburg to drop off some of his special distilled spirits, he could have some fun. But since the Feds went away, and Clarksburg went away, and the racetrack went away, motor sports excitement was hard to come by. He smiled as he remembered some of the high-speed runs he made. Dad liked to use him for runs. At the time, he was only sixteen and still a minor. He wouldn't get in as much trouble if he got caught.

The thoughts of those good times made him itchy. He jumped up from the couch, went to his room and grabbed a few dollars, and headed out the door.

He finally ended up at a little joint on Main Street. He took a seat at the window and watched the traffic go by. Foot traffic. Occasionally a horse. Some sheep went by. He grimaced. A couple of years ago, he would have been astounded at a bunch of sheep being driven through town, down to the banks of Buffalo Creek. From where he was sitting in the front window, he could look down the street. He could see the place in the streets where the Croats were cut down as they tried to take the town At the end of the street, the road split into a Y shape and each road crossed Buffalo Creek on a pair of concrete bridges that had made the trip, along with everything else from up-time.

Between the bridges and across the creek, there stood an old brick three story building that was once part of the early mining industry in town. It was now four or five retail shops on the first floor, with apartments jammed onto the upper floors.

The way that the building was situated, made the side of it an ideal billboard at the end of the street, in the crotch of the Y. For as long as Trent could remember, that sign had read "Welcome to Grantville.

Wors.h.i.+p with us". And then it listed the six or so churches in town. Several had been added, including a synagogue, since the Ring of Fire.

He recalled that his old man had stood in front of that sign when Trent was a kid, and cussed out Reverend Wiley, the Presbyterian minister for the town. Something about his first wife. Or maybe his second. Trent wasn't too sure. But Trent's old man had stood in the same place and cussed Reverend Wiley, that Dan Frost had stood when he opened fire on the raiding Croat cavalry. He had taken out several horses, enough to stop the charge cold. Trent wondered how many of the Croats were able to read that sign before they died. He shook his head slowly. He had been detailed as part of the burial crew. It was not something he ever cared to repeat.

It was while he was staring at the sheep as they made their way down Main Street, that he had the idea.

THE idea. His beer was halfway to his lips, when he stopped to listen. He heard a small motor, sounded like a Honda motorcycle, put-putting from around the corner. The sheep took an instant dislike to the noise and began to get fidgety. They parted for the vehicle that was coming down the middle of the street. It had everything that he needed to make a car! Four wheels and a motor, brakes, suspension, everything. Why didn't he think of it before! There was an old LP gas tank on the back of the vehicle, so it was powered by natural gas. Of course. It was a four-wheel drive All Terrain Vehicle. There were hundreds of them in the county! Why didn't he think of it before? There was his racecar. With a few modifications, more horsepower, larger cha.s.sis and steering a.s.sembly, someplace to sit . . .

He looked at the ATV as it scooted past the sheep and took off down the road, across the bridge and softly rumbled up the hill and out of town. He smiled. For the first time in a while, he smiled widely.

Trent was going to go fast again, and a highly modified ATV cha.s.sis was how he could accomplish hisgoal. And, like a true gearhead, there was nothing that was going to stand in his way.

He started out by selling his old performance V8 from the racecar to the mine. The mine needed it to operate one of the pumps, and at three hundred horse power, that engine was the only thing that could do the job. That money bought him the basic components; a pair of clapped-out, beat-up, s.k.a.n.ky, old ATVs, that looked as if they were pulled out of a creek. They were just about junk. But both engines turned over, they had compression, and the gearboxes were in good shape. He bought them from Mitch Kovacs. Mitch, who Trent knew was not the brightest crayon in the box, thought he had gotten a great deal. Trent knew better.

He dragged the two pieces of junk home by hiring a tow truck. He refused to call it a tow wagon. It was an old rear end off of a tow truck grafted to a harness and a pair of large horses. The driver was proud of what even Trent recognized as very large horses.

Trent scoffed. "I don't see what the big deal is. h.e.l.l, it's still only two horsepower."

The tow-wagon driver was unimpressed with the observation.

He disconnected the two ATVs from the tow-wagon, paid the grizzled and now grumpy German, and pushed them into the garage one at a time. He stripped the two machines down, cleaned everything and took inventory. He had purchased what amounted to about three fourths of an ATV between the two junks. Still, it was enough. He even had parts left over, which he promptly sold. Both of the ATVs had good transfer cases and selling those brought in nearly twenty percent of what he had spent on them.

It helped that his old man had the handyman business. Bartering was a large part of that business, so Trent bartered too. Sometimes doing two or three deals to achieve the part, or the welding rod, or the fasteners he needed. It was difficult and sometimes it seemed impossible.

But nothing distracted him. Girls? Nope. Hanging out at one of the bars downtown? Nope. Bustin' a.s.s all day to pay for some minor part, or to buy something to trade, was the only thing he was focused on all summer. And after working like a dog all day, he would come home and work well into the night, by candlelight at times, until he would drop. He would get up and do it all again the next day. He never seemed to tire. He was a gearhead on a mission.

He needed rod end bearings for the steering and tie rods. For those, he acquired a fancy halter, which he traded for an air conditioning compressor that he rebuilt, and then traded for some rod ends that were "acquired" from some piece of mining machinery. His old man always told him never to ask many questions. He didn't.

He also enlisted the help of the boys next door, the Marcantonios. The three grubby pre-teen boys turned out to be excellent scroungers.

With his father's connections, and working "favors," he was able to pay for much of his machine work.

He re-roofed three houses that summer for his old man. It took work. Hard work.

He didn't need a lot of drawings before he started the build. He had visualized the entire project in his head on the very first day. First, he lengthened the frame. He then relocated the motor mount, built a roll cage from pipe and tubing, improved the brakes, fabricated the new seating mounts, changed the controls from motorcycle type to car type, including adding a sequential s.h.i.+ft that he controlled by hand. He grabbed an alternator and built an electrical system out of the remnants of the old racecar and the Fairmont. Even used some gla.s.s for the front winds.h.i.+eld. He spent quite a bit of time on gearing and tiresize, and he ended up using the old racecar wheels and tires to get the correct gearing for the speed he wanted. They were tough dirt track tires with only a few laps of use. They would be good for a while.

The cha.s.sis was done. All that remained was the power plant.

What fuel should he choose? Granted, he could use LP Gas, like the other ATV. Conversions were not that hard, he had seen several around town, even before the Ring of Fire. All he needed was a nozzle in the carb, and a pressure compensated regulator. Everything would be easy except the regulator. He looked at other installations; there were plenty to look at around town. But with gasoline now in production, and the old man's former side business of distilled spirits going strong, he chose to stick with gas. Horse-trading the two commodities was already shaping up as a lucrative side business for the family, and everyone did their part.

When the motor finally came back from the machine shop, he could hardly wait to put it together. But he controlled his excitement, and closed up the garage to a.s.semble the new motor. If everything was done correctly, if all of his calculations and the performance engineering handbooks were correct, the motor would produce over one hundred twenty-five horsepower.

Gently, he laid a clean sheet on the workbench to provide a pristine altar for the final a.s.sembly. He laid the precious and gleaming components out on his workbench and began to carefully measure everything with his micrometers and calipers. He positioned everything, head, valves, connecting rods and pistons, wrist pins, crankshaft, carefully and in an exact order.

He measured and recorded all that was measurable, and compared it to the ideal. He had carefully figured the copper-and-lead head gasket crush by testing several different combinations. If the gasket was too tall, he would lose horsepower. If it crushed too much when he tightened the head down to the block, the valves could strike the pistons and ruin the motor. He looked at every angle, every measurement, and every dimension as carefully as he could. He knew that there would be no way to go back to the auto parts store and get a new set of valves. If he needed that, he would have to get a motor from somewhere and disa.s.semble it for parts. Finally, after three days of painstaking trial a.s.sembly, final a.s.sembly, and mounting the motor in the cha.s.sis, he was ready to fire it up.

There are times in the life of a gearhead that are special. And when the motor leapt to life without a moment of fuss, exactly as it was supposed to do, Trent knew that this was one of those moments. It was his project, his release, the thing that he had poured his energy, brainpower, and (too much) money into.

His very soul finally revved back to life on that late summer evening. The exhaust tone even sounded right, slightly dissonant, unusual, and sharper than it should be as the motor ran. Trent caught his reflection in the rear view mirror as he revved the engine in the back. He looked tired, he thought. Older somehow.

His reflection would vibrate as he revved the engine until it disappeared, and then returned when the revs dropped. He checked everything carefully, let the entire thing come up to operating temperature, and shut it down. He began to look at every hose and gasket, inspecting it for any signs of leakage.

It wasn't long before Trent noticed the three faces peering into the open garage door, drawn there by the harsh engine noise. The faces belonged to the kids that lived next door, the Marcantonios. One was an up-timer kid, Joe Marcantonio, the other two, Hans and Manny, were down-timers. All were dressed in cutoff jeans, sneakers, T-s.h.i.+rts and ball caps, and were between ten and thirteen years old. Trent couldn't tell the original hillbilly from the two German ones. And he had done everything he could to turn them into little hillbilly gearheads the past couple of months of summer.

"d.a.m.n, Trent," Joe said. "We didn't know that you had the motor back yet. That sounds like . . . Trent, I have no idea what that sounds like. It sounds-well-nasty." "Ya. That sounds loud! And fast. How fast can it go?" Hans was nearly shouting.

Trent gloated. Just a little. "Aww, I told you racing virgins that the old racecar was louder than a shotgun going off, except that it's constant. You two smarty-pants said that I was full ofScheiss . Told'ja it was louder than anything that you ever heard. We used to rev up the racecar in the garage and the dust would fall out of the rafters from the sheer noise. But no, you guys said it was just another story. What d'ya think now, boys? Ha!"

Joe stepped across the threshold of the garage door, and the two down-time boys looked at each other and crossed over too. The garage had been verboten to them until now, but if Joe was crossing, and the door was open, maybe it was now okay. They stepped carefully across the threshold.

Joe crouched down to Trent, as Trent was checking some connections in the back, making sure it was all tight, no leaks, and nothing had vibrated loose. "Uhh, Trent. Is there any chance that I might be able to have a-"

"No. No rides. Not yet anyway. I built this for me. For a reason." Trent looked away from the kids, and seemed to focus more than necessary on the task at hand.

Joe scratched his head. "C'mon Trent, we stayed out of the garage and out of your way like we promised. You said that-"

"I never promised you guys rides."

Manny stepped up. "Not exactly, but you said if we left you alone, you'd take care of us when it was done. It looks done. And it's not like you built it all by yourself. Me and Hans scrounged the metal for the brackets off of old Mr. Lawler's fence. And Joe got the drill bit you needed for the steering rack, and I got the seats from-well, don't ask where I got the seats, okay? I just found them. I told you that."

Hans stepped beside his brothers. "We could, ya know, sort of un-find them."

Trent squirmed. "All right, all right. You guys are right. I couldn't have done it without you. But n.o.body else drives. I drive." He stood up and faced them. "Only I drive this thing. I have no idea how the car is going to handle. It could be pretty squirrelly. I set it up to have a low polar moment of inertia, so it will rotate quickly, and the spring rates are too high for the weight-"

Joe giggled. "You call this thing a car? Looks more like a dune buggy than a car."

"Yeah, what do you know about a car, you doofus? You'll probably never drive anything faster than a horse and buggy." Trent looked at Manny and Hans. "And it is going to be twitchy. I made it that way.

And it will take a beating, or at least it should. This motor doesn't have a lot of horsepower, but this thing is lightweight. It should fly with the modifications I've done."

Mannys' eyes grew even bigger. "You mean this will fly too! Holy c.r.a.p! How high?"

All three of them took turns. .h.i.tting Manny.