Eric Flint: TITLE: Grantville Gazette.Volume XVIII

Julie looked at the bruises on Blaise's neck. They looked similar to the sorts of marks a victim of strangulation might have.

"He's a handful." She tried to smile.

There was a flurry of cursing; some of it in a broken English that made the curse words sound less vulgar and more humorous. Blaise tried to stamp on the plastic ruler again.

"Blaise! Enough!"

"Of course, getting up is a lot different than getting back down. Cats sometimes have that problem and they're excellent climbers." Chief Matheny shook his head.

"What has the imp of Satan done now?" a distant female voice screeched in French.

That had been one of the first complete French sentences Julie Drahuta had learned. Considering the relationship between Blaise and his governess, she could understand why.

Watching Madame Delfault approach one might think Blaise was going to be the very much "former" greatest mathematician in the world.

Julie wasn't concerned. No one would argue that Madame Delfault always sounded one moment away from going psycho on the boy. She treated Blaise with the sort of loving care one might have expected from his mother, who Julie knew from history books had died before Grantville had appeared.

"I thought Bill was joking about some boy wanting to hook an indoor extension cord to the mains out at the power plant. I don't see it as funny now. He's going to kill himself by the numbers if someone don't make it clear to him that life's too short to die by accident. You figure out what he was doing, Julie?" Chief Matheny glanced quickly at the approaching governess.

"I was called away from a late breakfast to find him being lowered to the ground by your very professional fire department." Julie sighed. She pushed Blaise away from her in such a way that he would be able to see his governess approach.

Julie Drahuta might know that Madame Delfault loved the boy but Blaise wasn't sure about that, apparently. If Blaise was an imp of Satan then in his eyes Madame Delfault was the wrath of God approaching. Julie smiled. For a smart kid, he was easily fooled.

"Tell me what you were doing or I give you to her" Julie said slowly.

"It was the fault of that!" Blaise pointed with his chin. He was too smart to take his eyes off his approaching doom.

"What were you doing?" Julie snapped.

Blaise pulled a piece of notebook paper out of his pocket then hunched his shoulders to more fully hide behind her. He handed the paper, as bruised and battered as he was, to Julie.

There were triangles and numbers and erasures and even a stab mark.

"What is this?"

"She is coming!" Blaise whispered. "Do something!"

"You were trying to measure the height of the steeple with that piece of junk?" Chief Matheny laughed, pointing to the cheap plastic ruler.

Blaise tried to stomp on the ruler again. With the foot that was missing a shoe.

"Young man" Chief Matheny shook his head. "Next time come by the fire house. I'll get you the proper tools to do a similar triangle calculation. Hell, to avoid this mess, I'll get you the building blueprints. And this harness? You raise yourself up anything taller than a kitchen table with something like this again and I'll strangle you myself. And I'm taking that crossbow too. You make it yourself?"

Blaise nodded silently.

"Blaise Pascal! What have you done?" Madame Delfault had finally gotten past the crowd and rushed up to inspect her charge.

"And I think I am going to inspect your 'laboratory,' Blaise." Julie looked at the crossbow and shuddered. Somehow she knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the markings on it were not for show. It was, for all intents and purposes, a sniper crossbow, if she was reading the markings on it correctly. It explained how the rope had gotten through the open cupola that supported the cross at the top of the steeple.

Blaise tried to hide from both Madame Delfault and the chief of Grantville's fire department.

A sudden thought made Julie ask, "Did you see a little girl around here?"

"Mary's in the church. She's looking at the stained glass windows. She likes windows. That she does. She paints pretty pictures on glass. I hope she learned her lesson about glass and how sharp it is when it breaks." Chief Matheny shook his head. "Regular 'Our Gang' you got going, Julie. Try to keep 'em alive, would you?"

"That's my job, Chief," Julie could smile too.

Allan Sebastian hated education.

Teaching would have been his dream job if it wasn't for all this 'education' stuff.

He remembered his first classroom, the smell of it and how it felt to write his name on the chalkboard. He remembered his first stack of papers to be graded and the first report cards he had signed.

He had assumed after the Ring of Fire struck that there would be no place for some middle school math teacher. He had figured that he would have to struggle to remain teaching.

That last part was true. With all the offers and opportunities for someone who knew numbers it was a miracle he hadn't been kidnapped and taken by force to some royal court. Certainly the titles "Royal Accountant" or "Royal Engineer" had a certain ring to them, and he'd already been offered both positions. The loud bevy of relatives who had come through the Ring of Fire with him, including his eldest daughter, reminded him every day of all the opportunities there were available for a man with his experience.

Why couldn't he just be left alone to teach?

Then his youngest daughter had introduced him to Blaise Pascal. That had beenonly a few months ago.

August? It seemed like decades ago.

"I don't need to see the damn book, Allan!" Archie Clinter slapped his hand down on his desk. Allan had known the principal of Fluharty Middle School long enough to know it wasn't a sign of anger but of frustration. Archie didn't deal with frustration very well. Oddly enough, considering his job, he didn't have to.

Allan slid the encyclopedia closer to Archie; taunting him with it. There was a picture on the page of a much older Blaise. He was probably thirty in the picture and dead almost four hundred years. That same Blaise was eleven now and outside Archie's office waiting for doom to descend on him.

How the world had changed.

"I understand, Allan! I get it. Blaise Pascal; world's greatest mathematician. Do you understand me? You will note that he died at a ripe old age in this here book! But he almost died at eleven hanging from a church steeple! What the hell was he doing up there and not in class? What the hell happened? And why are you here and not Owen? Blaise is his responsibility. He's the Gifted and Talented Education teacher… more or less. We agreed with you, Allan. Blaise is gifted. Okay, I admit that. We admit that."

"Yes. Where is Mr. Maddox?"

"Look, he has his hands full with the normal special ed kids."

"Normal special ed?"

"You're confusing the point! You are not special ed qualified. If we were… if this was…"

"Blaise would be four hundred years dead and Owen Maddox would still need a special ed teacher for himself." Special ed qualified or not, Allan knew he was a better teacher than Owen Maddox, at least when it came to kids like Blaise and his sister.

"And he would have you before the school board!"

"Lucky for Blaise the school board has less time to play petty politics. It actually has to perform now, not sit around and bicker about things it knows nothing about, like education."

"That is not fair."

"David Weller."

If Allan had slapped Archie across the face it might have had a lesser effect on the man.

"Look, you want him, fine. Maybe you can keep him out of everyone's hair. Okay? Case closed. It's probably moot. Julie wants a piece of him. Steve is annoyed with the boy. That toy he had, that crossbow, put a steel tipped bolt…"