Eric Flint - Grantville Gazette.Volume XII

"Sorry about the mess. I live alone and I've just been too busy to clean much lately." Dore and Gerbald nodded politely, standing just inside the door as Pam bustled about the small living room's clutter, gathering her notebook and field glasses. She pushed a sweater for the cool evening walk home into her rucksack, threw it over her shoulder and headed for the door. Dore looked a polite question at her.

"Oh yeah, Dore… well, you can wait here for us if you like, just make yourself at home." She motioned to the overstuffed loveseat that was still partially visible under a week's worth of laundry in waiting. "Have a seat and take it easy!" Dore smiled sweetly, nodding her understanding. "See you later!" With an indelible grin etched on her face, Pam marched down the walk, Gerbald in practiced step behind.

They walked northwest passing Highpoint on their right. Pam was eager to visit a new lake she had heard had formed where the watercourse of a lazy Thuringian stream had found a big West Virginian hill in its path. She thought there might be some marsh birds there and it sounded like some interesting "rim" terrain that she hadn't seen yet. Even after a year there was something about that border between her original everyday world and this strange (new? old?) century they now inhabited that drew her to it. Seeing it, being at the edge helped make it real to her, something that watching cars be replaced by horses in the streets of Grantville and the loss of such everyday items as toothpaste and deodorants still failed to do.

The retired soldier wasn't a small talker which suited Pam perfectly. They reached their destination at the top of a rolling hill ending abruptly in a razor straight plummet. Pam stayed well back from the edge which was now crumbling and unsafe-it would be a long fall. Below them a lake had formed, the top halves of dying German pine trees stood forlornly in murky water, the upturned roots of a West Virginia red maple that had lost its purchase were now a bleached tangle at the steep shore. She decided to make their way down the left side of the hill to a narrow flat spot along the rim where the water had flowed into a West Virginia hollow creating a narrow shady marsh.

"Gerbald, I'm going to be looking for birds. I'd like you to just stay quiet and keep your eyes open for any people." Gerbald nodded his understanding and backed off to stand under a nearby sycamore, calmly scanning the jumbled landscape. Pam pulled her field glasses out to begin looking for activity. A lone duck bobbed along at the far end of the new lake but it was too distant to make out in detail. A Eurasian jay gave a shrill cry from farther down the shore but remained out of view.

Around thirty minutes went by. Pam decided that there wasn't really much to see after all, so she wandered over to where Gerbald stood under the sycamore to collect him for the walk home. She noticed some of the "bluebibs" that so often visited her garden flitting about in the tree's higher branches. Even though these had become a regular backyard visitor she put the field glasses to her eye out of habit to watch their antics for a few moments while Gerbald quietly observed her. Shortly she joined him under the tree.

"Well, not much to see here. Let's start walking back, I guess." Gerbald, who instinctively understood her general preference for quiet, took this as a cue that it would be all right for him to speak.

"You are… seeing birds?"

"Yes, I am. I watch them." Gerbald nodded but made no further comment. Pam decided that she had to talk about her… obsession?- with someone and her new bodyguard was the only logical choice. If he were going to be following her around daily, he might as well understand what she was doing.

"I like birds. A lot. They are beautiful. I like to watch what they do, see where they live." Gerbald nodded understanding politely.

"These up here-" she pointed into the branches above them. "I call them 'bluebibs.' They are from here, Germany."

"Blaukehlchen"

"Pardon?"

"Blaukehlchen." He motioned upwards with his misshapen hat's brim. "Bird is named." Pam's eyes went wide.

"You know the name of that bird? In German?" Gerbald shrugged and nodded.

"Do you know the names of a lot of birds?" She felt an excitement growing.

"Some. They pretty. My father… he like bird. He tell name, I listen."

"Blau-kehl-chen." Pam carefully tried to pronounce the German name. "Blue… Chin?" She asked, pointing to her own chin. Gerbald smiled in what she took as assent.

"You know German a little."

"Not very much. That was just a guess! Well, I wasn't far off when I called them 'bluebibs' it seems." She grinned. Pam quickly dragged her notebook and pencil out of the rucksack. Beneath her drawing of the little blue-throated bird she now wrote "blaukehlchen " followed by "blue chin" in English. "So, now you have a name after all."

Somehow knowing the local name for the first German bird she had met on that shocking morning made Pam feel better. There was order here; wild things had been given names long before her coming and it made this century somehow less alien. It wasn't like we ended up on Mars. That rather chilling thought made the oddly patched together landscape before them look positively homey. Mars would have been a short stay. Pam pushed thoughts of a Grantville frozen and lifeless in the shadow of Olympus Mons firmly out of her head. She looked back at her notebook-an idea was forming.

Pam flipped to the "lemon oriole" she had drawn the other day.

"Gerbald, this bird is yellow and black." Gerbald looked at the drawing carefully.

"Pirol".

"Pi-rol?"

"Yes, I think. Yellow bird and here and here…" He pointed at the wings and tail. "… is black."

"Yes! I wonder if there is a direct translation for pirol in English. Well, it's a prettier sounding name than 'lemon oriole' anyway!… Pirol." Pam realized that she was about to begin studying German in earnest.

"Gerbald, from now on when we see a bird, please tell me if you know its name in your language." An idea was forming in Pam's mind, she put it on her mental back burner to simmer-in time, in time.

"Yes, I do for you," he said with a note of enthusiasm. It was going to be a pleasant job helping this nice American lady watch birds.

On their way back Pam suddenly came to a complete halt. Gerbald had already learned to anticipate this and also stopped, quietly-there must be a bird in their vicinity.

"Over there Gerbald-look!" She slowly raised her hands to point at a nearby thicket. Gerbald, whose former profession had sharply honed his powers of observation in the field, saw a bird with a black head and rust colored sides hopping about the twiggy growth.

"I am sorry. I not know that one." He apologized in a hoarse whisper. Pam's face shined with joy.

"I know!" she was obviously struggling not to jump up and down. "Gerbald, that is an American bird! I didn't think there were anything but chickadees left! It's a towhee, from here, from Grantville! It's an up-timer bird!" Pam allowed herself the thought: Maybe the cardinals made it through the year, too. They watched the towhee for a very long time. If it hadn't eventually flown away into the darkening shadows beneath the trees it seemed likely they would have stood there until dark.

Back at the house Pam practically skipped up the walk in the gathering dusk, past the aluminum clothes tree festooned with her bed sheets and weeks worth of laundry. It took a moment for the change in her yard's scenery to register-then she saw several of her bras and felt her cheeks redden.

"Let's get inside." She hastened Gerbald through the door into her immaculately clean living room. Pam's eyes widened. She had left behind a disaster area of clutter.