"Never mind, here's the point." Trout's hands waved with energy that had to find an outlet. "This place is bursting at the seams. We've got so many students now, we're running in shifts, and the Ring of Fire left a lot of our teachers up-time. The army and the military labs have taken some more. We're hurting. If you join us, and just teach an introductory course or two, you free somebody else up to teach trig. Or calculus. Or something more advanced. And it wouldn't surprise me any if you were teaching one of those courses yourself, a year from now. So whaddya say? Interested?"
Will took a few moments to catch up to the blizzard of words and consider the question, before responding. "There is a certain attraction to the notion." He paused.
Trout took that as an invitation to rush on. His finger came up, pointing vaguely off into an upper corner of the room. "Another thing, faculty can sit in on any lecture they want to, as long as there's space. It's one of the benefits."
"Hmmm, that could be of use. Having seen how the miracle slashed the very earth asunder, I've conceived a desire to understand what was done there. Perhaps there's learning here that could advance such an enterprise."
"Earth sciences? Sure. There's a lot of interest in that now; there are minerals we need to find, soon as we can. I'm recruiting for that department too."
"I shall look into that, then. However, it was for other reasons that I came to Grantville, and I have certain responsibilities. I have inquiries to make, letters to write . . ."
Trout's hand waved in a quick gesture of acceptance. "Pretty much every scholar who comes here does. So we pay by the course. You tell us how much you can handle. All right?"
"That does seem fair enough. There is one other matter. I have heard that professors here, or instructors, or however they are styled, are not required to take holy orders?"
Trout sat back in his chair, wide-eyed for a moment. "Holy orders? Good grief, no, this is a public school. Government here doesn't stick its fingers into religion, not allowed to, except to defend everybody's right to practice it whatever way they want. Or not practice it. Whatever."
"So the freedom of religion clause in your constitution is seriously meant and upheld, not a theoretical formalism of law?"
"Oh, yeah, it is. Better believe it."
Murphy's Run
April 1632, near Easter
Tim Morton was playing hide-and-go-seek with his stepdaughter Sybil near the edge of their land. Every time he found her-or she him-she squealed, pealing with joy. Sybil was such a pretty, red-haired poppet, just like her mother! Today it was sunny but cold, with snowy patches still lingering here and there. Tim dearly wanted to get her something nice. She was going to be four years old on Sunday. One thing to be said for Grantville, neither of his Deborah's little ones had died or even taken sick since they'd decided to marry last December and settle here. Between his son Jack and Deborah's girls, their pretty little house was packed so full they sounded like a chattering monkey horde.
Sybil came running from her hiding place, calling, "Lookit, Papa! Lookit I found! It looks like purple fire! Come here, Papa!" She grabbed onto his hand and tugged him to the edge of a melting snowbank a few yards from the Ring Wall.
The rock she held up to him was so pretty . . . and there were a good many little stones just like it, lying all over the side of the road! Hmmm. He knew a barkeep in Jena who had a jeweler for a steady customer. Maybe these pretty things would bring a bit of money, enough for a little present or two, just when there was the need. It could do no harm to mention that he'd found them near to the Ring Wall, when he went there next week.
God worked in mysterious ways, right enough.
"Let's show Mama!"
Tim smiled to himself and let her pull him along. If the little whirlwind was done with the game just now, there was that next letter to His Lordship awaiting his hand. What Arundel paid him for snatches of tavern gossip, those bits of political mumblings, wasn't a king's ransom, or even a swayback donkey's ransom, but it all helped. Pretty stones found in the dirt by a Ring-hacked roadside were for another day. Master Oughtred might fancy one of these bright shards, though, the old man being so keen to know what-all the Ring was made of.
Lower Buffalo Creek
Early June
"Does this look all right, Mrs. Penzey?"
Christie went over to look at what Hans Brinker was doing. The label on the sample box he'd just closed looked all right; the boy's name, a sample number, and the date. She turned her eyes toward the field book he was holding up. "You want to be able to find the exact place again, if something looks interesting after you examine your samples in the lab. You have the distances and bearings from the witness trees, but how about the elevation?"
"Oh. Stretch the tape measure up from the ground?"
"That'll work, for now. In a regular geological survey we'd have at least a compass equipped to measure elevation angle, of course. But you've got the idea."
Hans nodded and reached in his bag. She looked around to see how her other students were doing. Will Oughtred and Douglas Jones were doing as much in the way of coaching the kids, as practicing the techniques themselves. The sooner Jones could teach this course, the better.
When she got to the other end of her flock, she had a good view downstream, and saw a familiar figure working at something in the bank. "Hey, Carlos, got a minute? There are a couple of guys I'd like you to meet."
Padua
April 18, 1634
James Rothrock arrived at the blue salon out of breath. The earl of Arundel was gripping a printed publication so hard that it half-crumpled. He thrust it forward, saying, "Look!"
James took it and examined it. It proved to be one of the new scientific journals, printed in Leiden barely two months before. It fell open to a description of the inner structure of the Thuringian mountains, revealed by the Ring of Fire's awesome slicing.
The authors were Rev. William Oughtred, M.A. and two associates in natural philosophy whose names he had not seen before, a Carlos Villareal and a fellow of GreshamCollege named Douglas Jones.
James looked up in astonishment. The earl's face was grim, as he pointed to the top of the page. "You see the date of publication? It must have gone out at the time of my last letter to Oughtred, or not long after. And since that letter left my hands, nothing more, nothing to us."
He began to pace before the window, with a look of furious concentration on his face. It was a minute or two before he spoke again, slowly at first. "That, you will recall, was the letter inquiring as to anything he might know of the nature of the Ring's Fire, this strange gem which has become such a craze among the great and mighty.
"James, I'd felt that I was coming to know and understand Grantville, from his many letters and the writings of others that he sent. But now? I wonder how well I understand anything. One thing that I am certain of-I do not believe William Oughtred would cease writing of his own accord. So. Was I foolishly indiscreet? Has someone been reading our letters, and been moved by its mention to interfere? Or acted for some other reason? To what purpose? And, what harm might they have visited upon him in the doing, to bring about this silence?"
"Sir, you correspond with others there, do you not? Might you ask?"
"Humph. I correspond with Tim Morton, who kept him safe along the journey. But Morton fell silent as well, after that letter left my hands. He would be a much tougher nut to crack, but still, this worries me. What have we all stepped into?" He paced, twice more, back and forth. "Are they safe? Do they need our aid? And what else may be coming our way?"