Things went downhill from there. An army, even part of Tilly's army, could only take so much, and this one was being cut to pieces from so far away that they couldn't fight back. It took a while, but it started to crumble. Then it broke. All of a sudden, everyone was running and Johan was running with them. But not very far. He was too hungover and, well, just too damned old to run as far as he would have needed to go.
After a few minutes, and on the other side of the baggage train, he stopped. Huffing and puffing, Johan waited for the cavalry to catch him. His hands were already up when they got there.
July 7, 1631
Johan Kipper looked at the Singer sewing machine in total confusion. It wasn't that Johan was stupid, or even ignorant. It was simply that his world wasn't filled with devices of this complexity. There were a few, but not many, and Johan had never seen one. What made the sewing machine worse than the telephones or the lights was that it looked like he should be able to understand it.
Unfortunately, he wasn't allowed to remain in his state of confusion. Instead, Brent Partow, one of young Master David's friends, saw his look and-as boys were wont to do-began to explain. Which would have been a great deal more helpful if the lad had spoken a comprehensible tongue. His English had the weirdest accent that Johan had ever heard. Just like the rest of the up-timers, and it just got worse as the lad got into the details of the inner workings of the sewing machine. It wasn't the twang that bothered Johan. He had heard variations like that often enough. It was the technical words.
"It would seem a very complex piece of equipment," Johan offered. "It would probably take a long time to make. Perhaps something simpler?"
"We could, I guess. But it would be more likely to be copied," young Master David said, but Johan was an old soldier and an old bargainer, and he heard the lack of full confidence in David's voice. "Besides," David continued in a firmer voice, "the sewing machine is what we agreed on."
So it wasn't the best choice, just the one they could agree on. That was more than interesting. "Well, it looks very complicated to me."
"Looks are deceiving," Brent said. "It's not lots of different parts, so much as lots of the same few parts."
His twin brother, Trent, snorted at that. And Frau Higgins said, "Never mind. What we're going to need you to do is help us talk to the local merchants and craftsmen so that we can have the parts made without telling them how to make the whole thing."
Johan walked his rounds about the storage lots and thought about the up-timers and the children and their project. He liked them, liked them a lot. They were kind to an old soldier who didn't deserve it and they made him feel at home. Johan had grown almost to manhood in Amsterdam, watching the best merchants and craftsmen on earth go about their business. He knew that while the up-timers had great wealth, that wealth would be used up soon or late, unless they used it to build more. He understood that. He looked over at the chain link fence and shook his head. Like building a castle wall out of gold: you have to worry as much about someone stealing the fence as you do about them getting what's inside of it.
Over the past several weeks he had been acting as interpreter for the kids as they went about their business and he had managed to keep the local merchants from robbing them blind.
And he, Johan Kipper, would keep protecting them. Always. Johan wasn't quite sure why he felt that way. He finally had a home, a place, and hope. Things he had given up on years ago. He wouldn't give that up, not for anything. His place was with young Master Bartley, who would listen to him and learn from him the way the world worked. And with young Master Donny, who needed his protection. He looked around his home again. Chain link fences and steel containers full of goods, but only a limited supply, no matter how large it might seem.
"All right, Herr Kipper," Doctor Sims said. "Let's have a look. Open wide."
Johan opened his mouth and the doctor looked around in there for a few minutes, then had him sit up.
"Here's the situation. You have a couple of cavities in the teeth you have left, but I don't have any partial plates that would fit your remaining teeth. What I can do is pull those last few and set you up with a full set. I have a couple of full sets that can be adjusted to fit you. I don't like pulling healthy teeth and if I had access to the equipment and supplies needed to make partial plates, that's what I would recommend. But I don't."
Johan didn't have to think about it long. He hated to lose the last of his teeth, but he knew they would be going anyway. He agreed.
Slowly, Johan Kipper was getting used to the up-timers, and at the same time he was coming to realize that he didn't agree with them about how the world worked. He liked what they thought, but to him David would always be young Master David. Mrs. Higgins, whatever she insisted on being called, was always going to be the mistress of the clan, as noble in his eyes as any queen in Christendom. It was very nice that the up-timers thought down-timers their equals, but it wasn't true, not really.
For the next couple of years, Johan Kipper adjusted to life among the up-timers. He learned about post traumatic stress disorder and realized that probably over half the people in Tilly's army had had it to one degree or another. It was, in fact, so common that it wasn't thought of as a disease at all. It was just the way soldiers were. After all these years, treating it was going to take a long time, but even the treatment he got helped a lot. He still had the nightmares and sometimes the flashbacks, but they were controllable. He was much less of a danger to himself and others. At the same time, the effect of the talk therapy and the group had made him probably more effectively dangerous than he had been in years. He could still fight, but now it was when he decided to, not just whenever something set him off.
Financially, he was much better off. The Higgins-Bartley clan were overly generous. So generous that it made him uncomfortable. And it turned out that young Master David had a real knack for the world of business. That knack had been honed by merchants and crafts masters from two centuries, and by Johan himself trying to teach the boy about how to bargain. Johan swore the best up-time bargainer was a novice compared to anyone down-time. But it didn't matter. Up-timers could produce so much, so very much, that they could lose their shirt on every deal and still end up the winner. It had taken the down-timers who didn't live in Grantville a long time to realize just how productive the combination of man and machine really was. In fact, most of the world-even most of the Germanies-still didn't realize. So Johan bargained to keep David and Frau Higgins from being too taken advantage of. He was fairly successful at that, except when it came to himself. They simply would not hear when he carefully explained that they didn't need to give him stock or bonuses.
August 5, 1633
Johan Kipper sat in the cafeteria in the high school, going over reports from OPM. He was on the board of the mutual fund and there was quite a lot of paperwork involved. Still, in many ways it wasn't all that different from when he had first come to work for Mrs. Higgins. He was still haggler-in-chief for Master David's business projects. Johan grinned at the thought, showing a very nice smile. Dentures, of course, paid for by Mrs. Higgins not long after he had gone to work for the family. He would have been able to pay for his own now, if you could still buy the up-time artificial resin-based dentures at all.