"They're not blimps." Logan pouted.
"Logan? Don't pull that crap with me, of all people. If I want to be lectured to about all the things I don't know, I will sit down and have a quiet discussion with Blaise Pascal, world's biggest pain in the butt. I know your father would have expected you to discuss this 'apprenticeship' thing with him-not go running off like some sort of dingbat heading for the circus!"
"Thirteen-year-old girls get apprenticed here and now all the time. If I have to live with this Ring of Fire crap, then Mom and Dad have to, too. She treats me like I'm some sort of fragile antique. The older kids who came through are off doing stuff, and the younger kids think outhouses and swords are cool."
Julie shook her head sadly. "I know a few adults who think swords are cool, too."
"Is Mr. Drahuta still wearing his spurs into the house and marking up the walls with his sword?"
"We're not discussing my husband. We're discussing you, Logan."
"I'm thirteen now, not eight! What about Blaise? He was hanging from the church steeple and did anyone take away his pocket calculator?"
"Since you brought him up, again, there is some news about Blaise."
"What did he do now?" Logan exhaled an exasperated sigh. "Accidentally stab Mike Stearns with a mathematical equation?"
"I received a radiogram, telling me that some idiot gave Blaise a horse. He's on his way here."
"Who the hell gave that car wreck a horse?" Logan shouted. "And what's he coming here for?"
"For you."
Logan stood up. "For me?"
"Logan, sit down. You just up and left, and he has it in his head that he-being a member of the French nobility, sort of-has to come and save you. So when no one was going to lend him a car, he borrowed a horse."
"A car? Who the hell was going to give him a car?"
"Logan? Your language! Now, I haven't spoken to Jacqueline so I can't confirm it, but he's got it in his head that his father is coming and it would look bad if he didn't try and save you. Apparently, he needs to prove to his father that he didn't dishonor you. And-if Jacqueline can be understood, she lapses into French when she's real nervous-her father is supposed to be 'sneaking' into Grantville any day now to reacquaint himself with his son and maybe fight a duel with your father over your honor."
"I don't need to be saved, and my honor is just fine!"
"Logan? You are-"
"A car? He looks at cars as neat toys to test principles of physics. I'll probably have to go and save him. And his father probably thinks I ain't good enough for the twerp."
"Logan. ."
"Okay," Logan grumbled. "I'll go and set up my tent at the airfield and wait for Blaise to come and save me."
"You are not going anywhere," Julie stated firmly. "I'll put you up in my house."
"I got a sleeping bag and a tent. ."
"Fine. You can store them in my house. You are not setting up a tent in Bamberg. This is not your backyard. That is final."
"Mr. Sorrento said he'd take me on as a pilot trainee. I can sleep out with the airship. A real air ship, not cobbled-together wannabe's pretending to be something they're not!"
"Logan. ."
"I hate my life."
"Logan, what's really bothering you?"
Logan didn't respond.
Julie knew that it could take a while to draw out the real story from Logan. But after her encounters with Blaise Pascal, she knew that she had the patience to deal with just about anything involving a young teenager. And beyond that, she knew that Logan was probably right about Blaise needing rescuing-she had already contacted the Jaegers who patrolled the road between Grantville and Bamberg.
When Logan finally spoke, it came out in a torrent. "I know enough to know I can't have everything I want, okay? A lot of kids my age are hoping the Ring of Fire will happen again and everything will be like it was. We know enough to know what we lost, but not enough to make do with what we got left."
"Everybody has had to deal with that, Logan. Even the down-timers. We were quite a shock to them."
"I get it, okay? I'm making do with what I got. I'm willing to meet the world half way, but I ain't backin' down one inch more. Not one inch! If I can't fly a wide body, then I'll fly a blimp thing! At least it carries more stuff than a hope and a prayer. I can't do it, though, if my mom thinks I'm still thirteen in the year 2000, not thirteen in 1636."
"There were better ways to go about it," Julie said.
"Like how? This is the seventeenth century. You gotta just do it. My mom probably thinks it's cute that Blaise is worried about what his father is going to think about 'us'-like there's an 'us,' but it isn't cute. It's life. Blaise has to think about what people are going to think about him and me. Girlfriend and boyfriend doesn't mean the prom and getting your driver's license and stuff going on in the back of a car that I'm not supposed to know about. 1630-something means I gotta prove I can embroider and teach my kids about the Bible and run a house while my husband is away digging holes in the ground or farming or beating iron into stuff or stabbing people with it. Everything's different and what was cute up-time ain't cute now. Being a thirteen-year-old teenager is cute up-time, but it ain't cute at all down-time. Down-time, teenagers don't exist."
"Logan, I know this must be hard on you."
"You have no idea."
"I would like to think I have some idea. . I mean, I did find Blaise Pascal hanging from a church steeple, didn't I? And trying to control my husband hasn't been a picnic either. . I am told no sane man wanders about his own house dressed in cavalry armor."
"Everything's different, and nobody asked me if I wanted it to be," Logan said. "Well, I'm not going to apprentice myself as some old woman's handmaid. If Blaise wants me to accept that he's a French gentleman and the world's greatest mathematician, then he's gotta accept that I want to be a pilot."
"Has he told you this?"
"No." Logan closed her eyes. "He's probably scared I'd hit him."
"Is he smart to be scared?"
"If he wants embroidery done for those stupid cuffs of his, then he's gonna have to hire someone to do it 'cause it ain't gonna be me! I'm not marrying Prince. And I'm not gonna disrespect my dreams of 747s by embarrassing myself in one of those rinky-dink air-catastrophes-waiting-to-happen. Until they can make real airplanes, blimps will have to do. Blimps don't pretend to be something they're not!"
"I see," Julie said.
"You adults always say that. Do you really 'see'? Do you? I'm in the middle and I gotta make do. I was old enough to remember the world wide web, but not old enough to be allowed to go out and make the best out of the crap that got throw'd at me. And I wasn't young enough to forget that once I could actually fly a 747, or go to the moon, or something like that. Now I'm caught between the world's greatest mathematician and washing underwear by hand. I know it'll all look better from a few thousand feet up. I just know it!"
Logan sighed. Then she continued. "I don't wanna be one of those old people who sit on the porch, talk and talk about all the things they coulda done but never did because they had to work the mine thirty hours a day or their girlfriend got pregnant. Hell, I don't even want a porch."
Julie didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or slap Logan silly.
The Home of Julie Drahuta, Director of Social Services for SoTF
(afternoon of the next day)
The American Perspective
"I'll slap her silly!" Mitzi Sebastian shouted.
"Honey, baby, control yourself." Allan Sebastian hugged his wife. "Besides, as the aggrieved father, I get firsties."
"This isn't funny, Allan. She could have been killed or. . assaulted."
"She could have been killed or assaulted up-time, too. At least here they allow a certain vigilantism that makes the actual 'assault' part less common. Personally, I'm more worried about Blaise wandering loose, trying to ride to her rescue, than I am about Logan up in a balloon. Apparently this Sorrento guy hired a chaperone for her. He has good references. Julie told me he has connections straight to the top of government."