Etienne began, "I thank you, we thank you, for your good wishes about Blaise. To tell you the truth, Mr. Sebastian, it had occurred to me that our first meeting might be on opposite sides of crossed swords."
Logan glared at the man but maintained her cool.
"What?" Allan said. "Because of Blaise and Logan?"
"Yes." Logan translated unnecessarily and with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
"Never." Allan almost laughed until he saw his daughter's face.
Mitzi added, "Blaise has always behaved as a gentleman toward Logan, Monsieur Pascal."
"I am most relieved to hear that, Mrs. Sebastian," Etienne said.
"In fact," Allan said, "the danger between Blaise and Logan might be that Blaise does something perfectly gentlemanly, which ends up infuriating Logan."
Julie flinched as Logan had difficulty translating "infuriating."
Gilberte finally spoke up, and Julie translated, gratefully. "Yes, my sister, Jacqueline, has said that American women are dangerous."
Allan chuckled. "Well. . when it comes to being dangerous, Blaise is right up there with the best of them. However, the danger Blaise poses is always unintentional-and frequently directed at himself." Logan translated that with apparent glee, but as far as Julie could tell, accurately.
"Yes." Etienne frowned. "Jacqueline has also informed us about Blaise and his difficulty with a church steeple."
Allan chuckled again. "Events like the steeple incident are what make me think that Blaise and Logan just might be perfect for each other. The things we could tell you about some of the ridiculous things that Logan has done."
Logan's look attracted the attention of the Pascal's.
"Yes, please do tell us," Florin said. "It might be well that our family learn as much as we can about Logan."
Gilberte glared at her husband. Florin gave Gilberte a conciliatory smile.
"Okay," Allan said. "When Logan was eight, about a month before the Ring of Fire, we let her see an old movie called A Night to Remember, about the Titanic."
"Oh Jesus Christ! Not that again!" Logan blurted.
Now Mitzy glared at her daughter.
Julie explained to the Pascals what a movie was, and what the Titanic was. Apparently, Jacqueline had made her job easier by describing movies in detail, in previous letters.
"Dad! Stop it!" Logan growled.
Allan continued, "We went to a child's birthday party. Part way through the afternoon, when the adults all went to a nearby pond, Logan had all the smaller children in the water."
"She had them all in floaties-duct taped the floaties right to them," Mitzi said. "She was pretending they were all survivors of a ship wreck, and she was the surviving ship's officer taking them to safety."
Julie had to struggle to keep from laughing out loud. She hadn't been there but had heard all about it even after the Ring of Fire.
Julie explained to the Pascals what floaties are, and what duct tape is. It took awhile without Logan's help.
"Logan was leading them in a variation of that Psalm." Allan smiled. "Yea, though we float through the pond of death we will fear no shark attack. ."
"Some of those kids looked terrified," Mitzi said. "Oh Lord, I thought someone was going to dive in and drown Logan right there and right then."
Logan didn't convey the second part of what her mother had just said, but Julie discerned that the Pascals were filling in the blanks from the less-than-complete translating. Despite the occasional incomplete translation and the frequent melodramatic facial expressions, Logan seemed, at least, to not be intentionally mistranslating.
"She even had Styrofoam ice chests as icebergs," Allan said. "I don't know what some of the parents were more upset about, their kids floating in the pond or the warm beer."
Julie explained to the Pascals what Styrofoam ice chests are. She wasn't sure if she was successful.
"Logan did keep all of them herded together, though she had them pretty far from shore," Mitzi said. "But no one drowned. And she did whack a water moccasin with her lacrosse stick, before the snake got close to any of the tots."
Julie explained to the Pascals that a water moccasin is a very dangerous, poisonous water snake, but apparently, not more dangerous than Logan Sebastian.
"Logan wanted me to skin it," Allan said, "so that she could use it as a hat band."
Julie could see realization dawn over the Etienne Pascal's face.
"My good lord in Heaven," Etienne whispered, when it finally made sense.
After a long pause, Florin pressed further about Logan. "Logan came here to Bamberg to become an aircraft pilot. Is this common in your up-time world, that girls wish to become pilots?"
"It's not as common as many other things," Allan said. "But it's not so rare that anyone would be surprised by it."
"How did Logan come to this interest?" Florin said, conspicuously not looking at Logan.
"When Logan was about five years old," Allan said, "she came to me and asked me to make the other airplanes stop shooting at her. I had no idea what she was talking about, so I tried to get her to explain, but she just kept repeating that the other airplanes keep shooting her down. When I asked her to show me, she took me to my home computer and ran my air-combat program."
Logan helped with this translation, thankfully. Apparently Jacqueline's letters helped here as well. Computers had been a topic in those letters.
"Logan knew how to use a computer at age five?" Florin asked.
"We had decided to load Reader Rabbit on the computer," Mitzi said. "It's a program that helps young children learn to read, by combining education and entertainment. And we showed Logan how to run that program."
"In a much shorter time than we had expected," Allan continued, "Logan had learned what the reading program had to teach her, and she got bored with it. Then without my knowing it, she started using the air-combat program that I had loaded onto the computer for my own entertainment. But she didn't want to shoot at the enemy planes that were trying to shoot her down; she just wanted to fly. So when I found out, I loaded a flight-simulation program on the computer for her."
Logan explained to the Pascals about flight simulators. And while she was explaining about air-combat games, Norman came home.
Norman greeted the guests, and then announced that no one knew anything more about Blaise than they did a few hours ago.
"Typical of him," Logan grumbled.
The Perspective of Blaise Pascal, World's Greatest Mathematician, standing at the front door of the Julie Drahuta Residence
(very early the next morning)
"Bah!" Blaise spat hoarsely at the door he surmised was the one behind which lived Madam Julie Drahuta. "Damn up-time women. Damn horses. Damn Bamberg. Damn everything! Hear me? Do you?"
The door did not answer him.
"Logan will not care what I went through. She will only laugh and then where will I be? I will be here, without my own clothes, without my horse. . the horse I borrowed. Damn! I will need to replace the horse. Madam Drahuta will shake her head and be done with me. Why can't life be more like a mathematical equation, an algebraic one with one real root for an answer? Why all this chaos? Logan Sebastian, you are not worth all of this. I will go back home and be done with you. This time I will take the train. If you made it to Bamberg then I wish you well! I am done with you."
Logan had been an investment of sorts, but no matter what he did nothing proceeded as it should.
"Nothing!"
Blaise turned away from the door but took only one step.
"Damn you!" Blaise snapped at the unyielding door. The frustration was just too much. "I am wearing the skin of an animal for you. ."