He held the gun still, ready to react if one of the bandits changed his mind and returned. But they still were running as if pursued by a dragon.
When they had disappeared behind the next grove, Marshall whistled, and Andreas appeared with the mules. As soon as the boy saw his sister, he jumped off his mount and ran to hug her. The girl was still stunned by the bloody dreadful event, which had happened before her eyes. But when her brother reached her, she managed a little smile.
"Come on," Marshall said. "We don't know how long they need to regain composure and return here. So let's gather their belongings and then make like a tree and leave."
Then, smiling at the girl he said, "Maria, do you think you can ride a mule? Or do you want to ride with me?"
Ask a girl whether she wants to ride on a horse, in Ancient Egypt, Rome, Germany or West Virginia, and the reply is always the same.
Maria extended both arms, and Marshall lifted her on his horse's back before his saddle.
Melchior and Andreas gathered the horses and saddles of the bandits, and all together started to Weimar.
Weimar
Some days later
When all the bureaucratic formalities had been completed, and the children sent to Grantville with a representative of the duke of Saxe-Eisenach, Marshall and Melchior again started into the direction of Erfurt.
"Perhaps," Marshall said thoughtfully, "we'll find more adventures in this 'boring' county of yours."
"El ingenioso hidalgo," Melchior muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Oh, never, surely, was there knight
So served by hand of dame,
As served was he, Don Quixote hight,
When from his town he came;
With maidens waiting on himself,
Princesses on his hack
Grantville, New United States
April 1633
The Orient Express came into Penn Station and stopped at platform seven, just when the Hiawatha, hauled by a streamlined class A, was departing from platform ten. The passengers would have been very unhappy for not catching the connecting train south, but fortunately all this happened only on Marshall Ambler's large model railroad.
The dignitaries from the Thuringian towns stood around Marshall with gaping mouths. They had heard that the up-timer was about to give a "presentation on rail operations," but this was not in the least what they had expected, if they had expected anything.
But certainly they hadn't expected the giant table with many trains moving simultaneously, starting and stopping as if by magic. Steam trains steaming, passenger coaches lit, signals changing colors.
"And this," Hieronymus Bruckner, the Ratsmeister of Erfurt cleared his throat. "And all this is a picture of up-time reality?"
"All things considered, yes," Marshall answered. "Much compressed in space and time, of course. Model trains try to show everything on the available space, what normally happens hundreds of miles apart. And I have locomotives from eras that are over one hundred years apart."
"Can I," Andreas Cotta, the Burgermeister of Eisenach, interjected, "see one of these 'locomotives' close up?"
"Of course." Marshall pushed some buttons, and all trains came to a halt. He seized the streamlined Hudson that had drawn the Twentieth Century Limited and handed it to Cotta.
The man carefully took it in one hand. "It's not hot."
"Yes, all the 'steam' engines are driven by electric power on the model railroad."
"But," Cotta wondered, "They were steaming."
Marshall laughed. "That's a simple trick. They burn drops of oil to produce some smoke. When you wait for ten minutes, they'll all stop smoking but still move."
Cotta pointed at the large drivers of the steam locomotive and then to one of the tiny figures on the platform. "Are these wheels really as big as a man?"
"Yes, but often they are much smaller. Usually the larger the wheel, the faster the steam locomotive can go, roughly."
"And you want to build such a thing in real?" Johannes Evander, the mayor of Weimar, asked from behind.
"No, not in the next ten or twenty years. Locomotives that big weren't built in the old timeline before the 1880s. That's over fifty years after the first train ran.
"Here," he took the much smaller model of a Climax from a branch line. "This is roughly what I have in mind." The geared engine had two trucks with two axles each, and the wheels were much smaller than the Hudson's.
"What you can't see here are gears under the original engine distributing the power evenly onto all eight wheels. This type of locomotive runs smoother on bad track and doesn't strain the tracks as much as a normal 'rod' engine. It could even run on wooden tracks with special wheels."
"And what are these colored engines?" Bruckner tried to come forward. "They have no chimneys."
"We had three different types of engines up-time." Marshall took a large red V200. "This is a German Diesel engine. It ran on oil like the APCs you all know.
"And this,"-this was a green Swiss Be 6/8-"has the nickname 'crocodile,' and was originally driven by electric power like all the model trains here. Do you see the rods on the top? They take the electric power from wires above where it can't hurt people."
"And why," Andreas Gompracht, Oberster Ratsmeister of Gotha, wondered, "don't you build electric trains? Electric power is much cheaper than coal."
"We'll do it, just not now." Marshall pointed to the electrified track, where the crocodile had run before. "The wire and the poles supporting it must be made of lots of copper and steel, and steel is our scarcest resource in the moment. Moreover, each of the smaller locomotives needs about twenty tons-four hundred Zentner-of steel. The bigger ones up to a hundred tons. It's simply not yet available.
"They'll need an enormous amount of electric power, so we will have to build larger power plants before we can start to electrify the lines. So, we'll have to stay with steam for now."
Higgins Hotel, Grantville
The next day
The Conference Hall in the Higgins Hotel was bursting at its seams. Not only with the delegations of the Thuringian towns, which the new railroad line was supposed to connect, but also delegates from many other villages had appeared.
The Ernestine dukes had a small entourage each; and that meant at least twenty more people. Even some envoys of the Catholic Church from Erfurt had shown up, although all of the archbishop's properties in that county had been dispossessed by the Swedish king.
Marshall had never encountered so many people in such a small location before. The plan had been to reduce this run by meeting far away in Grantville, but the need to announce it publicly had spread the news widely.
Okay, I've put up with worse things.
Melchior appeared in the small side room. He had checked the big names on the list. "They are all here. And 'all' means-"
"Yes, I can see it. At least one man from every farm along the prospective route."
"Yes, and from even farther away. But the invited guests are all here. We should begin now." His face showed a little impatience.
"Oh yes. Cross your fingers!"
Melchior frowned. "Why should I? There are no witches here; at least I hope not."
"What do you Germans do to wish someone luck?"