Eric Flint: TITLE: Grantville Gazette.Volume XVIII

He was a crock, of no use any more except to go to the sheltered workshop a couple times a week and sew pieces of leather together to make soccer balls. Dead beat for a full day after that little bit of work.

Laura Beth wasn't the kind to take umbrage about something he'd supposedly done a dozen years before they ever met. Just think how, stuck here in a town thousands of miles from her own home, his military disability payments gone with the wind in the Ring of Fire, two kids to support, she'd taken hold, gotten a job right away, then a really good apprenticeship learning to be an elevator mechanic. Not that there were many elevators in Grantville, but once old Howell Tillman died, she'd be the only person in the USE who really understood how elevators worked. In a few more years, Howell had told her, the country would be wanting a lot of elevators and people would be beating a path to her door.

Laura Beth was a great gal.

He wasn't going to last much longer. Maybe he could do this little Pam a favor before he went. It wouldn't be that far off the mark. He and Joe were some kind of cousins, after all.

Late March 1635

Pam sent Jean-Louis LaChapelle back to Haarlem with some forms that he was to get Velma to sign. Rodney Trimble wanted his name put on her birth certificate. Jean-Louis would have to get Velma to agree to that. Jenny Maddox had supplied a whole batch of forms for Velma to fill out.

He was also to get Velma to sign a notarized statement that both she and Rodney had been unmarried, neither of them married to anyone else, when Pam was conceived and when she was born. That seemed to be important to down-timers. In the year 1635, it seemed, if you had to be a bastard at all, it was a lot better to be a plain bastard than to be an adulterine bastard. Calvinists weren't any more modern about it than Catholics were.

Apparently Velma had forgotten to mention that one of her daughters was illegitimate when she married Laurent. Jean-Louis thought that they had better not mention it to his uncle.

Haarlem, Netherlands

The second run of lava lamps that emerged from the laboratories of the University of Leiden commanded prices equally extortionate with the first. At that point, Jean-Louis, with the receipts in hand, approached his uncle's wife in regard to the forms he had brought to Grantville.

Velma could scarcely believe that he was willing to transfer half of his shares in the project to her simply for signing some forms from Jenny Maddox.

As for Rodney? Why did he want to put his name on Pammie's birth certificate? He wasn't going to get anything out of it. It wouldn't have occurred to her at the time. By then, she had assumed that he was shooting blanks, not that he hadn't been good at it. Good old Rodney hit the target right on the button, most of the time.

Damned old goat of a lawyer, dying when Pammie was just two, after he'd promised child support if she didn't make it public. Well, maybe that had been better. Lots of little kids were real blonde, but not many of them kept that hair when they got older. He'd been her divorce lawyer, after all. He'd seen Joe lots of times. What the hell? She'd sign the papers. Joe was somewhere up-time and he sure would never have claimed Pammie.

Not that she wasn't happy to take the shares in exchange for doing it, of course.

She didn't mention the transaction to Laurent. He knew, of course that she had shares in the lava lamp project. That had been unavoidable, under the circumstances. She didn't expect to see any of the money from the shares that he knew about. These were another kettle of fish. Invested somewhere.

But why would Jean-Louis care who Pammie's father was? How had he gotten involved? She shrugged. No telling. Given that all she had ever seen of the price of the trailer in Grantville since she had handed the bank draft over to Laurent were quarterly interest statements, it couldn't hurt to have a source of some ready cash that she could stuff under the mattress, just in case.

A girl had to look out for herself.

Too Late for Sunday

Written by Michael Badillo

December, 1633, Grantville

"Roberta Allene Haggerty! Come here for a minute, please."

"What is it, Momma?" Allie answered, entering her parents' room. The "please" didn't fool her a bit. Nobody called you by your full name unless you were in trouble.

"We need to talk, honey."

"'Bout what?"

Her mother studied her for a moment before speaking. "I'm worried about you, honey. You ate three helpings of meatloaf for dinner, and you've been sick every morning this week." She fingered the rosary in her hand for a few seconds before continuing. "Are you pregnant, baby?"

"What?" Why would you even think that, Momma? I'm still a virgin."

"Because you've been eating like a horse," Momma said. "And because you've been so sick. I can't even see you under your baggy old clothes. Have you been gaining weight?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Haven't you weighed yourself lately?"

"Why? I'm skinny; we don't even have a scale in the upstairs bathroom."

"Well, use mine then." Momma stood beside Allie while she stepped on the scale and waited for the dial to stop.

"See," Allie said. "I ain't getting fat."

"My God." This came out as a shriek. "How can you weigh ninety-six pounds? Take off that baggy sweater so I can get a look at you. Why do you have to dress like a scarecrow, anyway?" Momma ran her fingers through Allie's unkempt chestnut hair. "You're so pretty."

Allie didn't much like to do it, but she took off her sweater.

Her mother's face paled. "I can see your ribs… Your collarbones are sticking out. You're going to see Doctor Adams tomorrow morning."

"I'm not pregnant. Why don't you believe me, Momma?"

"I believe you, baby. I'm just worried now, is all."

Allie walked back to her room and shut off the radio. She was worried now, too. She had never been overweight; in fact she'd always been somewhat on the thin side of normal. She'd lost a lot of weight.

Most people had shed a few pounds since the Ring of Fire, just from walking more often. But she hadn't lost any until just the last few months. Since September she had lost twenty-eight pounds, no small amount for a girl who stood five foot four and weighed less than a hundred and thirty pounds to begin with.

She was worried not just because the weight loss and the eating. She was always thirsty, and always cold. She was also slightly hurt that her mother would think she had strayed from God's plan and gotten pregnant. Even if, after their little talk, Momma said that she trusted her. It still hurt.

She changed into her nightgown and knelt beside her bed, rubbing her hands briskly together to warm them before placing them together to pray.

Allie had already finished her chemistry quiz and sat thinking. She really needed a good medical project, something with a lot of chemistry that would help her get ahead in nursing school.

The idea of a blood drive occurred to her. She thought it would be a good idea, if the supplies were available. She made a note to seeDoctor Adams about how to get started.

One problem solved, she turned to the next. Who should she ask to the prom? No one had asked her yet, but someone might still. She decided to wait.

The ringing bell startled her. She hastily gathered up her books and papers and stuffed them into a worn denim backpack. She chided herself silently for daydreaming. She could get by with it in chemistry, but history class was different. She couldn't memorize every meaningless date that ever got written down. Especially now with two different centuries of current events and the Thirty Years' War happening in Grantville's living room. She was making a low B in history and she didn't want her grade to drop.