Eric Flint: TITLE: Grantville Gazette.Volume XVIII

"Swing a cat, hell," Chief Matheny whispered. "There's not enough room in here to think about swinging something." His eyes danced around the room.

"Some of this stuff looked… dangerous. I called you right away."

"How was this allowed?" Chief Matheny asked quietly. "How did he get those manuals on electrical contracting and how… how does an eleven year old boy read them then… are those the electrical blueprints he's got there? Damn. And how was it that he didn't electrocute himself when he did that?" Chief Matheny looked at the wall.

"Chief?" a firefighter asked from just over his shoulder.

"… This is what we are going to do. First, I want the power shut off to this entire building while I try to figure out what that boy was trying to do to that junction box and outlet. Then, I want everything in this room dismantled and removed from this room. This is a hotel, not a research lab. People live here and they could have died here, Julie. That's a container of hydrochloric acid. Either someone has a pool somewhere with a missing container of pool acid or young Blaise found a meth-lab. I don't think there are pools big enough.. . if he got his hands on pool acid, what has he got in those bottles. ..?"

"Where do you want us to put everything, Chief?" a firefighter asked.

"In the shed behind the firehouse." Chief Matheny turned and fixed Julie with a stare that made her back up a step. "That boy is going to need to be as close to emergency response as I can get him. Your job, Officer Drahuta, is to protect children from the predations of adults, correct?"

Julie nodded.

"Keep the boy away from me until I control my temper. Then I suggest you find someone to protect the town of Grantville from the predations of this boy. I have a book with some color pictures in it back at the firehouse he needs to see and I agree with Bill. Keep his little ass away from the power station until someone teaches him that you do not do that to a junction box in a structure with people sleeping in it!"

The silence was profound.

No one had ever heard Chief Matheny shout. They did know that Chief Steven Matheny hated fires. Even small, well-tended ones.

Blaise hated that ruler.

He hated it with an intensity that Satan must save for mankind.

Tears dripped in fearful, trembling streams from angry eyes.

The ruler had been off by at least a thirty-second of one of those God cursed things called inches. The metric system, invented by the French of course, was better. The metric system wouldn't have failed him.

The angle was measured perfectly. His calculations were flawless.

It should have worked! He had been wrong. Wrong!

Because of that damn ruler…

Blaise shook himself. Or, rather, someone else did.

"Snap out of it!" Mr. Sebastian shook him. "We'll go to my room. I think you've been punished enough just by sitting here all this time."

"At least a thirty-second of an inch." Blaise glared up at Allan Sebastian with tears in his eyes. "I hate that ruler! I had to prove it was wrong, not me!"

Allan Sebastian leaned in close. So close his nose almost touched Blaise's.

"No mathematical equation is worth dying for," he whispered harshly. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mr. Sebastian." The world's greatest mathematician nodded.

"Your punishment is… I want ten rulers to replace the plastic one you broke. They will be accurate to at least a thirty-second of an inch… no! One sixty-fourth of an inch. Ten, Blaise. I want ten. You will make them. I want them all by the end of the week. Understand? Whatever else you have to do, whatever other punishments, that one is mine. You want my help? I need yours."

"Yes." Blaise nodded and stood up. He didn't expect the slap. It came, at least to him, from out of absolutely nowhere.

"You fool!" Jacqueline would have hit him again had Allan not grabbed her arm and spun the girl about and wrapped her in his arms. "Let me go! I will kill him! He is my brother! I have the right to kill him! What would Father say?"

"Hold her!" Blaise begged Mr. Sebastian. His sister had hit him with her prized notebook. Blaise knew, though didn't fully appreciate, that his sister saw writing in much the same way he saw mathematical equations.

For his sister to hit him with her notebook meant she was very angry, possibly worse.

"Fool!" Jacqueline screamed, tears in her eyes.

Jacqueline loved her brother.

She had waited and watched all day as Blaise was berated and shouted at. One thing she knew without any uncertainty. The adults hadn't been merely angry. They had been scared too. Her brother had almost died.

She loved him even if some fool book declared him the world's greatest mathematician, which had caused something of a panic in their father's circle. Because of that stupid book they had been sent fleeing from Paris.

She loved her brother enough to want to kill him because she would have very much hated to see him dead.

Archie hated making this kind of decision.

He looked at the eleven rulers on his desk.

"That one was the most difficult." Blaise pointed at the last ruler he laid on Archie's desk.

Allan laughed. It was a short, quick laugh.

"This one," Blaise pointed at the first ruler he had put down, "is the best, I think. If there are to be twelve of these inches in a foot then one should use the base twelve system to number the units. I could do one in base two…"

Allan raised his hand. Blaise subsided but only barely.

"Okay, this is what we'll do," Archie began firmly; his words humming with official tones. "After Christmas break I'll make you the gifted… the GATE teacher. Owen won't like it, but tough. Okay? I said it. Don't say a thing, Allan. I don't want that boy's name mentioned again. I don't have the time to remember what for all intents and purposes never was."

"You are talking of me?" Blaise asked.

"No," Jacqueline snapped. "not everything is about you. He means David Weller."

"I'll put Jacqueline in your class with Mary Timm. Just don't.. . "

"How did you learn about him, Jackie?" Allan asked.

Jacqueline wasn't sure if she liked being called Jackie. It made her name sound all American.

"Logan showed me his grave. She told me about them. She told me all about him. He would make a good story."

" No!" Archie spun about. His eyes were looking for a taller person, presumably older, to shout at. He almost didn't look down at Jacqueline. "I mean, I would rather… you did not. Besides, to do the story right you would need to talk to the person who found him. I know he won't speak to you. Hear me?"

Archie turned back to Allan. "You win, okay? What else do you want? Huh? You're the GATE teacher now. You won. Two eighth grade math classes in the morning then you get them. All of them. Okay? All I ask is that we forget the past. Finally. Can we do that? Can we…"

Archie turned to go then stopped. He looked about frantically.

"Mary? Where's Mary?"

"Upstairs." Jacqueline whispered, "She is in the boy's room. She is looking for ghosts on the glass."

Archie stared at the door leading out of Allan's classroom.

"I'll go get her, Archie."

"No," Archie said softly. "I will."

With that he turned and faced Jacqueline with a look he might have hoped looked stern and forbidding. Jacqueline saw something else.

"I normally don't talk to eight-year-olds like this, but I will now. Do not write about David Weller. Do not write his story. If you do I will expel you and you will have to buy all that paper you use."

Jacqueline clutched her notebook closer to her.

"Can I write a story about the death of Fluffy Bunny? I can write a book…"

Archie raised his hand. "Deal."