"A lot more rowdiness, it sounds to me like. Solid citizens leaving and flibbertigibbets coming in."
"Mother," Debbie said.
"The music people will stay here, too," Missy said. "A lot of them at least. For a long time. Because of the sound equipment."
"I don't actually see many of the businesses moving out, Mrs. Hudson," Ron said. "Not for years, at least. Especially not the ones heavily dependent on technology. Or electricity and telephones. Just think-the USE left the Federal Reserve here, even when it went national and not just part of the NUS/SoTF government. The Voice of America will stay here. Nobody can move the mine, either."
"What about you and Bill?" Willie Ray asked.
"Lothlorien isn't going anywhere. We'll be starting up branches in other places, sure, but it doesn't make sense to move our headquarters. Especially now that they're pushing the railroad network out, so travel's going to get a lot easier."
Eleanor Jenkins started to laugh.
"What is it Grandma?" Missy asked.
"I suddenly got this improbable vision of Grantville turning into
… what should I call it? A university town, maybe. Like Charlottesville, or Raleigh."
Ron smiled at her with bland politeness. "The way Dad put it in his last letter was 'Berkeley, not Sacramento.' A hotbed of radical thought, avant-garde literature, art and social customs, and progressive ideas."
Chad spewed coffee all the way across the table. "And I'll be representing this hippie district in the state senate?"
"How would you describe it, Ed?"
"Pretty much what we expected, back when we first talked about it last summer. There's a general sense of dislocation. It's not just that Grantville wasn't picked as the state capital. It's that it didn't even get picked as the regional capital for Thuringia. We came in as a respectable second to Erfurt, but really not all that far ahead of Weimar and Eisenach."
Chad Jenkins nodded. "Debbie calls it a malaise. That's sort of general. But with some people, it's more than that. People who feel that we've been thoroughly dissed. People who already had personal grievances and this just makes them worse. Take Bryant Holloway-my niece Lenore's husband. He already wasn't happy that she'd gone back to work. When she told him that she intends to keep her job and move to Bamberg when the state government goes, all hell broke loose."
"That doesn't make a speck of sense," Henry Dreeson said. "With Bryant's job, he's out of town more than he's here. He can see her and Weshelle just as often if she's in Bamberg as if she's in Grantville."
Ed shook his head. "Sometimes sense doesn't have anything to do with it. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the middle of one of those 'theater of the absurd' plays. I never liked acting in those."
Veronica Dreeson breathed a sigh of relief when Ed and Chad left. Finally, maybe, Henry would be able to get some rest. Dorothea and Nicolas' baby had turned out to be colicky, to the point that her incessant wailing disturbed Henry's sleep, even when he had his hearing aid out.
She was planning to segregate out a portion of her income from the schools, the payments received at the beginning of the second semester, and lease a trailer for them, just as soon as she could.
She would be very relieved to have a little privacy again. Perhaps most people would not consider a household of eleven persons to be private, but none of the remainder were-clingy-the way Dorothea often was.
She hoped that Nicolas got a promotion fairly soon. It would be very nice if he could pay the rent himself.
Magdeburg
"Cory Joe said I should see you, Sir."
Frank Jackson looked up from his desk. Cameron Hinshaw, one of the army's radio operators, was standing in the doorway to Jackson's office. He was looking a little uncomfortable, and seemed to be fidgeting between standing at attention and a more relaxed pose.
Frank had to suppress a smile. He'd seen the same thing lots of times by now. One of the problems with being elevated to the august status of a "general" after the Ring of Fire, when you came from a small town like Grantville, was that most people in town had already known you-often quite well-back when you were just a coal miner and a local union official. Not to mention how many people in Grantville were related to each other, one way or another.
So, when they had to deal with you officially they weren't always sure how to go about it. Even if, like Cameron here, they were soldiers in the same army and had military protocol as a guide.
"What's your problem, son? The radio service getting you down?"
"No. Uh, sir. Not exactly. Do you remember that my mom, Laurie, was married for a while to Gary Haggerty? He's Veda Mae Haggerty's son."
Jackson nodded.
"Well, even though Veda Mae broke the marriage up, and Glenna Sue drowned last spring, we still have Duane to think about. He's my half-brother. So Mom talks to Gary pretty regular. Gary said something about this guy who works for him, a Frenchman named Jacques-Pierre Dumais. If you wouldn't mind looking at this last letter I got from Mom…"
Frank sent him on over to Francisco Nasi with it.
Chapter 43
Grantville
Lenore unlocked the door and pushed the stroller through, locking it again behind her.
There was a sound coming from the rec room. Surely she hadn't left the radio on that morning? Leaving Weshelle in the hallway, she slipped out of her boots and walked to the back of the house.
"Bryant?"
He was sitting on the sofa.
"It's me, all right."
"I hadn't expected you."
"Surprise, surprise."
"I'll go get Weshelle out of her stroller. I left her by the door when I heard noise back here."
He followed her. She ignored him as she pulled off the covers and unbuckled the complex of straps.
"Let me put her in the playpen. Then I'll start some supper." Lenore started for the kitchen.
"Since when is the playpen in the kitchen?"
"We keep each other company. I'm in the kitchen quite a bit."
Lenore suddenly remembered that she had left a large batch of papers from work spread out on the table. She'd been working on them evenings, since the report wasn't due until next week. If Bryant saw them…
"You can go back and finish catching the news."
"If you don't want me in the kitchen, then maybe that's where I'd better be. Trying to hide something. Maybe a boyfriend after the husband, like you had one before the husband?"
She looked back. "Not likely."
"If you're trying to hide the fact that you went back to work as soon as I left time, give it up. Veda Mae told me. Enjoyed herself, in fact. Like she's been saying, you couldn't wait to show off all that fancy education instead of staying home like a decent mother."
"Weshelle is perfectly fine with Chandra."
She started clearing the papers off the table in the breakfast nook, Weshelle still on one arm. Bryant picked up the transcriptions she had already completed and started tearing them to pieces.
"Stop that!" She grabbed for them.
He pushed her away.
She caught herself on the refrigerator, then backed out of the kitchen. He was still tearing up the papers. Once in the hall, she reached for the phone.
"Wesley is not here," Clara said. "He had to work late. There is a problem?"
"Clara," Lenore said. "I need Dad. I need help now. Bryant is here and he found out I went back to work. Clara, I'm afraid."
"I will come," she said. "I can get there more quickly than I can find him."
"Damn you for a Kraut bitch." Bryant's tone was threatening.
"I have told you nothing but the truth," Clara said stubbornly. "For what you have done, for what you have threatened, she should pick up Weshelle and come away with me now. Right now. This moment."