The person sitting next to Rebecca, a small gray-haired woman in her sixties, reached out and gave the refugee's hand a little squeeze of reassurance. Rebecca responded with a quick, nervous smile.
Mike's amusement vanished. Understanding Rebecca's fears concerning her Judaism—if not the reasons for it—he had asked Morris and Judith Roth to take Rebecca and her father into their house. The town's only Jewish couple had readily agreed. Balthazar Abrabanel had been there ever since. He had survived his heart attack, but both James Nichols and Jeff Adams, Grantville's resident doctor, had agreed that he needed plenty of bed rest. Balthazar had barely survived the experience as it was.
The next day, when Mike dropped by for a quick visit, Rebecca seemed calm and almost relaxed. But Judith had told him, privately, that the Abrabanel woman had burst into a flood of tears when she spotted the menorah perched on the Roths' mantel. She had spent the next half hour collapsed on a couch, clutching Judith like a drowning kitten.
Mike glanced again at Rebecca. The woman was listening intently to what the town's mayor was saying. He was relieved to see that her expression was simply calm. Intent, curious. Wondering, at what she was hearing. But without a trace of panic.
Mike scanned the sea of faces in the gymnasium. Truth is, she's doing way better than half the people here.
The thought was whimsical, in its origin. But the accompanying flush of fierce, half-possessive pride alerted Mike to a truth he had been avoiding. His feelings for the Abrabanel woman had obviously taken on a life of their own. The image of runaway horses came to his mind, bolting out of a broken corral.
Good move, Stearns. As if you didn't have enough trouble! The runaway horses paid as much attention to his admonition as they would have to a field mouse. Since the first moment he saw her, the exotic beauty of the woman drew him like a magnet. Some men might have been put off by the obvious intelligence in Rebecca's dark eyes, and the hint of sly humor in her full lips.
Mike sighed. Not me. With difficulty, he forced himself to look away and concentrate on the mayor's concluding remarks.
"So that's about it, folks," Henry Dreeson was saying. The mayor nodded toward a small group of people sitting on chairs near the podium. "You heard what Ed Piazza and his teachers told us. Somehow—nobody knows how—we've been planted somewhere in Germany almost four hundred years ago. With no way to get back."
A man stood up on one of the lower tiers. "Are we sure about that, Henry? The 'getting back' part, I mean? Maybe whatever happened could—you know, happen again. The other way."
The mayor gave a glance of appeal to one of the teachers sitting next to the principal. Greg Ferrara rose and stepped up to the microphone. The high school's science teacher was a tall, slender man in his mid-thirties. His speech patterns, like his stride and mannerisms, were quick and abrupt—and self-confident.
Greg was shaking his head before he even reached the podium's microphone. "I don't think there's the proverbial snowball's chance in hell." He gripped the sides of the podium and leaned forward, giving emphasis to his next words. "Whatever happened was almost certainly some kind of natural catastrophe. If you ask me, we're incredibly lucky we survived the experience. Nobody suffered any serious injuries, and the property damage was minimal."
Greg glanced at the fluorescent lighting on the ceiling of the gym. A fleeting smile crossed his face. "The power plant's even back on-line, so we've got all the conveniences of home. For a while, at least." The smile vanished. "But we're still in the position of a trailer park hit by a tornado. What do you think the chances are of another tornado coming by—and setting everything back the way it was?" Greg took a deep breath. "Personally, I'd have to say the chance is astronomically minute. Let's hope so. Another Ring of Fire would probably destroy us completely."
The crowd jammed into the gymnasium was silent. Greg took another deep breath, and concluded with simple, forceful words. "Face it, folks. We're here to stay."
A moment later, he had resumed his seat. The mayor took his place back at the microphone. "Well, that's about it, people. As far as that goes. What we've got to do now is plan for the future. The town council has been meeting pretty much nonstop for the past three days, and we've come up with a proposal we want to put before everybody." He paused for emphasis, just as the teacher had done. "We'll have to vote on it. This is way beyond the council's authority. So every registered voter here—"
The mayor stumbled to a halt. "Well, I suppose everybody here, registered or not." The sour look on his face caused laughter to ripple through the gym. For as many years as anyone in Grantville could remember, Henry Dreeson had been admonishing people to register to vote.