Blaise did not respond, not quite certain why Mrs. Julie Drahuta seemed so angry.
"Blaise, let me see your face," Julie demanded.
"I am injured."
"Blaise! You tripped on your sword and cut your thigh and your calf. Your face is fine! And besides, I hear you were out of the house, wandering around Bamberg, for hours yesterday."
Blaise lowered the quilt, slowly.
"No piece of paper will leave this room unless I sign it," Julie said. "And you will not, I mean N-O-T, not talk to anyone other than immediate family members without adult supervision. Is that clear?"
"It is only a preliminary. ."
"Blaise Pascal! Shall we discuss your preliminary cause of death. ."
He quickly pulled the quilt back over his head.
"Blaise?"
"What?"
"Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes."
"How's the leg?"
"Does not hurt much. I am sorry about the bloodstain. Your hospitality has been commendable."
"Blaise, I know you mean well, but you can't go about promising whole towns a working power grid. It gets people's hopes up. And when reality hits them, they're going to be angry. . Do you understand? Angry people become mobs. You are French boy in a German town with an angry mob and no electricity. Do you understand what I am trying to prevent here?"
"Yes."
"Gilberte," Julie said gently, "sorry to disturb your. . needlepoint."
When Julie left, Blaise translated for his sister all that Julie had said. Gilberte responded.
"I didn't catch all of what your sister said," Logan said. "Was she talking about me?"
"She, my sister, asked me how do I make so many people so angry with me so quickly. She remembers me being far less upsetting when I was in Paris. No one wished to kill me there."
Logan shook her head. "That was before you found the power plant and computers."
"It is a simple task, really. Once you know the maths, the rest is, as you say, a piece of cake. It is certainly far easier to create a plan to electrify Bamberg than the math involved in routing the delivery schedules of blimps. Now that is a problem worthy of me. I begin to see the problem of this 'Fedex' and the routing of aircraft with all these passengers and cargo and destinations and arrival times. It is way multivariate."
"Can you ever stop talking about math?"
"Can you ever stop talking about flying? You would think a bag of hot air is more important than I am!"
"Maybe if you came up in a balloon you would understand."
"I would like to go up with you in one of those blimps and test my theories concerning atmospheric pressure to see if I was correct. I will let you hold the barometer. My name is used to measure units of barometric pressure so I must insure my former self was, indeed, accurate."
Logan blurted out with fury, "Only you would be so big-headed you would check yourself to see if you were good enough to be you! You are impossible! I will have to go up at least five thousand feet to begin to see the curvature of your head!"
With that, Logan stormed out of the room
"Gilberte," Blaise said softly, "she can not be allowed in Paris. She will be the death of all the ladies at court, and there is no way I can become accomplished enough with the sword to defend her honor, let alone mine. What am I to do?"
"Who says we are going to Paris? More importantly, what did she say and what did you say?"
Blaise told her.
"First of all, dear brother, when a lady asks you to accompany her in a device that floats gracefully into the air, do not threaten to take atmospheric measurements and allow her to hold this. . this. . barometer!"
"Your husband helped me do just that in this future that will no longer happen. She should be honored to be involved in such a momentous experiment! Your husband was, according to the history books. ."
"You are lucky she did not slap you across your foolish face! Or hit you with that famous stick of hers! You have all the romance of a. . of a. . dead horse." Gilberte stuttered. "You are incorrigible! No wonder there is no evidence that you married."
"Romance? With Logan Sebastian? She would kill me. Then, because she is a witch, she would raise me from the dead just so that she could kill me again. She tried to drown me! And that was by accident! I will not bore you with the ways and manners with which she attempted to murder me on purpose!"
Gilberte frowned at her brother. "I would not blame her if she tossed you off this blimp device!"
"I had not thought of that. Maybe I should go up without her. But you see how dangerous she is? How do you think I learned how to use the Taser? I know precisely how effective it is because she tested it on me. Of course, I increased its voltage, but don't tell her that. Also, I know for a fact that she has her grandmother's pistol. What kind of woman gives her granddaughter a pistol, I ask you? And with five discharges when one should do more than adequately. Women are emotional enough without the ability to fire such a weapon five times! Romance? Bah! Survival is more the term that should be used when one discusses Logan Sebastian. I am lucky to be alive!"
"Why do you like her?" Gilberte looked at her needlepoint.
There was a long silence.
"She makes me think. She gave me a metal ruler." Blaise produced the piece of metal from its place under his pillow. "See? It has her name scribed upon it. She told me it was more accurate than the plastic one I was using, and she was right. Logan Sebastian makes me think. That is what I like about her."
"You mean you had to be cut down from a church tower because this Logan gave you a ruler?"
"She has that effect on me." Blaise shrugged. "What can I do?"
The Front entranceway to the residence of the Director of Social Services for SoTF
(late afternoon)
"I see your conversation with boy blunder went as well as mine." Julie laughed when Logan tried, unsuccessfully to storm past her and out into an unsuspecting Bamberg.
"He's completely recovered," Logan grumbled. "He sees me and he starts talking mathematics like it's a hot article in Seventeen magazine. He wants me to take him up in a blimp so he can read the barometer I'm holding and figure out if he calculated the change in air pressure correctly the first time. I should toss him overboard like rotten ballast and see if he bounces. I mean, with Blaise, once is enough. We got probability and his damned triangles. What else do we need him for?"
"Logan," Julie said sternly, "you really don't mean that. Stop talking trash like that."
"Yeah, okay. By the way, thanks for convincing my mom and dad to let me stay. And thanks for helping my parents negotiate the apprenticeship contact. I doubt if they would've known what to negotiate over, on their own."
"You're welcome, Logan. It's probably the first apprenticeship contract that's closer to a late-twentieth-century employment contract than a traditional apprenticeship contract. Except that, unlike a twentieth-century job, you can't just give notice and quit. You're bound to Antonio Sorrento for at least ten years."
Logan looked down. "Yeah, I know." Then she looked back up at Julie and smiled. "And thanks for giving me a place to stay too. I don't think my parents would've let me stay in the tent. I guess that was a dumb idea."
"Sibylla needs a roommate who's closer to her age."
"It was nice of you to adopt her and her brother. Maybe my mom should adopt a kid or two. She's good with young kids." Logan shrugged. "I thought it would be less scary to be out on my own. I mean, I'm not really on my own, but you know what I mean."