“You will not. You’re my guest.”
Hugh took his distinctively embroidered cape from the knob on the coat-closet door, revealing his scabbarded sword. “Then at least stay warm in this.”
Michael seemed ready to decline, then nodded his thanks and took the cape. Hugh sat back down, contemplated the firelight sparkling through the bourbon, wondered what foreign fire he’d be staring into a year from now.
Presuming that he was still alive to do so.
Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia
Eddie emerged onto the rapidly dimming streets of Grantville and pushed up his collar against the faint chill. You’d think after spending almost a year and a half on the Baltic I’d have a little better resistance to cold, but no. Having recovered from borderline hypothermia while recuperating from the amputation had left him weakened for quite a long time. In particular, he had been susceptible to chest colds that, up-time, would have been annoyances cleared up by any halfway decent decongestant. Down-time, they were potential death sentences in his then-weakened state. And ever since, cold weather cut through him like a knife.
He strolled west, deciding to take a look at the three trailer homes that had served as his first down-time abode. He smiled to think of the early days when he and Jeff Higgins and Larry Wild and Jimmy Andersen had played D & D there, the game having acquired a strange significance given their displacement in time. It wasn’t because of the “historical value” of the game—because there wasn’t any; role-playing games were about excitement, not accuracy—but because it was somehow a symbol that not everything had changed with their arrival in war-torn Germany. Not every waking minute was toil for food, scrambling to preserve or rebirth technology, find allies, and repel utterly murderous foes. A quick session of D & D, where imaginary warriors and wizards strove to slay evil trolls and troglodytes, was also a reassurance that life had not boiled down only to a mere continuation of existence. There was still time for fanciful adventures, for larking about a fictional world with his very real friends.
But then Jeff had married a down-time firebrand named Gretchen Richter, and her entire loosely-associated clan had moved in. Overnight, fancy had given way to kid-powered frenzy. And that, too, had been reassuring and endearing in its own way. It was as though the house was constantly alive with rambunctious sounds of hope, thanks to all the healthy, lively children that were forever charging around and through its small rooms and tight hallways. Yes, in all its permutations, Eddie reflected, it had been a good house.
He almost walked past the tripartite structure, so changed was it. Gone were the bright, albeit fading, colors of the siding. The local tenants (who paid a pretty penny for the privilege of living in an up-time domicile) had given it a second layer of wood shingles, dug a number of discreet latrines in the back to relieve the burden on the indoor plumbing, tidied up the yard, and replaced two of the doors (and their frames) with solid local manufactures. They had also erected what looked like a huge, wooden carport over the entire structure, evidently in an attempt to preserve the metal and vinyl conglomeration from the elements. However, it created the impression that this was not so much a home as it was an oversized shrine commemorating trailer parks everywhere.
Through the windows, oil lamps glowed to greet the dusk, and then shadows moved with slow purpose toward the largest of the kitchens. A brief pause and then a sharp white-yellow light seemed to blot out all the other fire-orange glows about the house. Clearly, someone had turned on an electric light. Immediately, silhouettes of all sizes began gathering around it, some bearing what looked like outlines of cooking implements, others arriving with already-open books.
It looked ritualistic, Eddie admitted, but he knew damned well it was not some strange species of cargo-cultism, a trait Larry Wild had often ascribed to the down-time Germans before he was killed off the coast of Luebeck almost two years ago. This was the prudence of practically-minded folk, amplified by the parsimony of war survivors. Germans who had lived through the now-truncated Thirty Years’ War were generally not spendthrifts. Every resource they had was kept as long as possible, its life extended by using it only when absolutely necessary. And when that intermittent and gentle use nonetheless wore it out, the object was repurposed—right down to its last component. Objects with limited service lives became especially revered objects: not because of their wondrousness, but because of the mix of singular utility and utter irreplaceability that characterized them. It would be a long time before the up-time boosted labs and workshops of even the best down-timer engineers and inventors were producing freon filled cooling compressors or a wide selection of vaccines or antibiotics.