Lora smiled at the happy picture they made. There had been a special closeness between the two since the night Grandmother Aggie died. These days Maria Helena was almost a typical happy-go-lucky nine-year-old.

Lora had worried about her father. He had felt badly about his inability to do anything to help Daisy and had been the real driving force behind the Daisy Matheny Biolab. Once the biolab was up and running he'd been lost. In the end, he'd taken advantage of some of the contacts he'd developed lobbying for the biolab and gone into business with a gun maker in distant Melis. He was finally showing signs of being over his guilt at not being able to save Daisy.Reading between the lines in his latest letter, Lora was sure he'd found a new woman friend.Well, good luck to him .

Dr. Ellis caught her standing under Prudentia Gentileschi's magnificent portrait of Daisy.

"The artist did an incredible job, Lora. But how did she know what Daisy looked like?"

"Jeff was missing the kids, so we shot some videos and sent them to him in Nurnberg. When Prudentia asked about any pictures we might have of Daisy, Dad sent Jeff a radiogram asking for the tapes. She really caught Daisy."

Dr. Ellis nodded. "Yes. A marvelous memorial for a life lost so young." He gently made to lead Lora away from the painting. "Come, I'm sure your family is wondering what happened to you."

Lora gave the painting one last look before letting Dr. Ellis lead her away.

CONTINUING.

SERIALS.

Franconia! Part 1 by Virginia DeMarce

Grantville, February 1634 "No, no, no, no, no, no, n-o-o-o-o." Amber Higham threw both of her hands up in the air.

The cla.s.s came to a stop.

"This unit worked last year. It worked like a charm. Why isn't it working this year?" She glared at her students. "So, tell me! We're using a down-time period play. We're using an up-time ripoff of the down-time play. Why aren't you getting the connection? Why, why, why?"

For someone who could be so cool when managing adult committees, when Amber was in full steam in the cla.s.sroom, she tended to go for agony.

n.o.body said anything. The couples standing in the middle of the floor looked at her with their mouths half open.

Finally, Mich.e.l.le Matowski looked up from the piano. "Maybe last year you had boys who could carry a tune?"

"Yeah. Or dance." Kurt Washaw, the male half of one of the couples, stuck his thumbs in his pockets.

"This is just a cla.s.s unit. I'm not putting you in costume. I'm not putting you on stage in front of people.

I'm just trying to get you to see that what was 'then' up-time has connections to what is 'now'

down-time."

"Who cares?" That was David Thornton, also a reluctant singer and dancer.

Amber ran her fingers through her gray-streaked hair. She thought that part of the problem was that Kurt and David, like Lorie Lee Carstairs in the back of the room and close to a half-dozen other of this year's up-time kids, had been left behind in Grantville to finish out the semester, parked with uncles and aunts or family friends, when their parents went off to do other things. Kurt's and Lorie Lee's folks were inMagdeburg ; Dave's inBamberg . In some ways, this year's cla.s.s was having its growing-up even more disrupted by Grantville people starting to fission off into the rest of the United States of Europe than their older brothers and sisters had been by the Ring of Fire itself three years before.

None of which solved the problem. "Mich.e.l.le, please take it again from the beginning."

The next try wasn't any better.

"Want a little help, Mistress Higham?"

She looked over at the open door. A couple of boys stood there. Fifteen or sixteen, maybe? She raised her eyebrows and beckoned them in. "You know me, but I don't think that I know you."

The taller boy nodded. "We just came from Master Saluzzo. Your headmaster. We are traveling with an English playwright who greatly admired our grandfather. We have been on the continent for some months-he is with the King's Men company, but concluded quite some time ago to travel and see what might be found. Since in the very nature of things, traveling players must earn their keep by playing, it took our little company some time to get this far."

The other boy picked up the narrative. "He has come to use the libraries here. After experiencing those 'some months' of our company, Master Ma.s.singer has decided that for as long as we remain here, we shall go to school, so he will not need to fret about what we may be doing while he pursues his studies.

Particularly since many of the cla.s.ses are taught in English. Particularly since the National Library is in this building, so he can escort us to it in the morning and ensure that we leave with him in the evening."

With immaculate timing, they traded off again. "Since our grandfather was an actor, Signor Saluzzo thought we might well enjoy the drama cla.s.s. Most particularly since it has no 'prerequisites.' While he has found us to be far from lackwits, it appears that we are most sadly deficient in 'prerequisites,' at least as far as mathematics and natural philosophy are concerned. Nor does Master Ma.s.singer know how long we will be remaining, so the headmaster doubts the wisdom of trying to remedy the situation. So, mistress, aside from some more Latin, of course, which one's mentors always find to be an excellent thing, and the literature ofFrance with Mistress Hawkins, since our French is already tolerable, we are at your service. In your service, indeed. Should you need a set painted, a costume created . . ."

The shorter boy broke in. ". . . a ditty sung, a few words smithed to fit a new scene, a female part played . . ." He stopped, looked over the cla.s.s, grinned. "Not, it would appear, that you will be in need of that particular talent of mine, although unlike my brother I can still squeak a fine falsetto. Nonetheless, on our way down the 'corridor,' we heard your song." He sighed deeply. "Now, I am Tom. That one next to me is d.i.c.k. Had our parents produced yet another son, methinks that he likely would have been Harry, but I fear that we must borrow someone else."

Amber looked at them. Down-time English, obviously, from their accents. Slightly built, both of them.

The taller couldn't be any more than five feet six. The other stood shorter by a couple of inches, but he also appeared to be younger, so he might still have a growth spurt. Straight hair, barely a couple of shades apart. For the taller, it was light brown; for the shorter, dark blond. Faces with small, neat, features. There was no sign of any incipient jutting jaw. Neither would ever model as Conan the Barbarian. They should have looked like a couple of budding bank tellers, but . . . they didn't. With the c.o.c.ky angle of their heads, the little banty rooster strut with which they walked, they looked more like budding . . . buccaneers? She could imagine them on the deck of one of Drake's ships, laughing as they chased a Spanish galleon.

Boys from a troop of traveling actors? Boys unafraid of the stage? Amber motioned them to the center of the room. "We have quite a few Harrys in this town, but not of an age to take soph.o.m.ore drama."

A solemn nod. "Ah, yes. Harry Lefferts. We have heard of him."

Amber wished that they hadn't. "So . . ." She looked at the three couples who were still standing in the middle of the cla.s.sroom.

Kurt and David sat down, leaving a down-time boy named Zacharias Schaupp to sing as "Harry." Lorie Lee shoved sheets of paper with the lyrics into the hands of the two new kids. They took a hasty look.

Mich.e.l.le played through the tune a single time. Juliana Ostertag started out on Cole Porter's interpretation of Bianca's dilemma, with Mikayla t.i.to backing her. Tom cut in with the line containing his own name.

d.i.c.k did the same. One light-still very light-tenor. But Grantville's high school, thank goodness, was still in a position to put lapel mikes on its student performers at need. One fairly strong baritone. Good timing. The result wasn't a polished performance, but it was a performance rather than a struggle. A performance delivered with a glee that pulled the other students along. Amber grinned. The semester's prospects were looking up. These two boys, Zacharias . . . if she could just talk Lisa Beattie into letting Wolfgang Fischer off farm ch.o.r.es long enough to rehea.r.s.e . . . Plans bubbled up in her mind.

"So there they are. Tom and d.i.c.k."

"The Smothers Brothers?" Lady Beth Sawyer laughed.

"The Quiney brothers, if you want to be prosaic. But they do have that same glint of irreverent mischief in their eyes. Every teacher who gets one of them, let alone both together, is going to have to scramble to stay on top of things. Would you believe that they've actually performed inThe Taming of the Shrew ?"

As Kate and Bianca. They likeKiss Me, Kate better, they say. They've really taken to the concept of the musical play. The play with music woven into the action rather than just performed on the side or during interludes."

"You sound positively invigorated."

"I wasn't even going to try to put onOklahoma! this spring. There just weren't any boys who could carry the roles. But now. I have Curly and Jud. Just you wait the end of until April."

"By April, I'll probably be inMagdeburg ."

"Oh, gosh, Lady Beth. That's right. I'm going to miss you like crazy."

Grantville, March 1634 "So you think it's odd?" Mich.e.l.le Matowski frowned.

"Not odd here, so much." Tom Quiney shook his head. "You're lucky, you fair young maidens, that you landed in the Germanies and not in the comparably fair Isle of Albion."

"Why?"

"Our grandfather, we've said, was an actor."

"It shows."

"A man of many words as well. He was a scribbler like Master Ma.s.singer. But although he made his living from words-a good living from words-he left our aunt and mother unlettered. Illiterate, as you have Latinized it in your American English."

"You mean that your mom can't read or write?" Mich.e.l.le waved the rye roll withBratwurst that the high school cafeteria was offering for this day's lunch right under his nose, only to find it plucked out of her hand from behind."

"Hi, d.i.c.k," she said without even turning around. "Give me that. Give it back. Now. Don't you dare take a bite."

"There are more where it came from."

"I don't have any more lunch money and they don't take credit cards. Give me thatBratwurst !" She lunged up just as he started to run, managing to grab the back of his belt.

Tom leaned back and started to whistle a theme which reminded them both that the farmer and the cowboy should be friends.

Mich.e.l.le hadn't given up. During rehearsal after school, she cornered Tom again. "Did you really mean that your own mom can't read or write?"

"Yea. Forsooth. All that sort of Elizabethan English stuff."

She frowned. Tom and d.i.c.k had picked up American English really fast, but Tom had the mannerism of retreating to something that sounded like the King James Version of the Bible when he was uneasy and then pretending that he hadn't done it by making fun of himself.

"Well, why not?"

"At home . . ." He paused. "Back inEngland , that is . . ." He shrugged. "Princesses are tutored, of course, as are the daughters of many of the great and powerful n.o.bles. But among the merchants, among the artisans . . ." He stopped again.

d.i.c.k, Lorie Lee trailing after him, plopped himself down on the other side of Mich.e.l.le. "One thing I have learned, here in Grantville, is that the middle cla.s.s is rising." His left hand waved through the air in an upward direction. "According to Mr. Edgerton, the middle cla.s.s is floating through history almost like one of your balloons, ever following an updraft."

"So?" Lorie Lee focused her eyes on his nose to the point that they crossed.

"The members of the German middle cla.s.s, while thus rising, school their daughters. Aside from a few peculiar Puritans, the English middle cla.s.s does not. Our aunt married a physician, very upright and prosperous. He finds it neither strange nor undesirable that she is unlettered."

Tom nodded. "Nor can we truly endorse the endeavors of the Puritans, given that they only wish their daughters to read pious literature and have done their best to extirpate our very calling."

"What he means is that most true-born Englishmen cherish an ignorant damsel." d.i.c.k winked. "They are more like to be horrified than pleased by the schooling of females. More like to be scandalized than enchanted by those who are both fair and learn'd. It is far from all English men who share the admiration that Browne expressed for the late lamented dowager countess of Pembroke."

Mich.e.l.le opened her mouth.

"We, of course, share it to the full," d.i.c.k continued quickly. "Don't we, Tom?"

"Oh, verily. Without the slightest shadow of a doubt."

Mich.e.l.le twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "Youcould sound a little more convinced. Are we stopping at the Freedom Arches once the rehearsal is over? I'm starved."

"Mistress Higham . . ."

The woman perched on the edge of the orchestra pit in the high school auditorium looked up.

The man moved back a little. "Mistress. My most humble apologies. I had expected Mistress Higham."

"Mary Simpson's in town for a few days, on her way to theUpper Palatinate . Amber's extremely busy meeting with her, meeting with the other arts people, taking notes about what everyone is saying. I told her that I'd supervise the rehearsals this week." She extended her hand. "I'm Annabelle Piazza. Pleased to meet you."

He backed up even farther, startled that the wife of the president of the State ofThuringia-Franconia , the new name proclaimed only a couple of weeks earlier, would have accepted such a task.

"No, stay. You must be Master Ma.s.singer. Amber told me that you would be coming."

A couple of hours later, she asked, "What do you think?"

"The style of the acting is much different from that customary inEngland . The acoustics in your theatre are excellent. Much of the humour is truly mordant."

"But . . . Master Ma.s.singer?" Annabelle raised her eyebrows. "I hear 'but' . . ."

"I do not care for the music. That is the truth. Although Tom and d.i.c.k like it very well, I find it dissonant.

Discordant. Perhaps it is suitable to the message of the piece, though. The play itself is most certainly relevant to the current situation inFranconia . According to the information in regard to the probability of a peasant revolt that we are receiving by way of the newspapers, of course. They certainly comment very freely, compared to the censorship that is imposed inEngland ."

"Censorship?"

"Why, of course." He smiled. "It is a rare man among us actors and playwrights, who has not spent at least some brief time in His Majesty's gaols for something he has written or spoken. It was not, as you say, 'politically correct' of me to write a play in which the protagonist was a Jesuit. One worthy of admiration. It led to accusations that I was a recusant. A decade ago-nay, eleven years ago, now-my play about a slave revolt in the ancient Greek city of Syracuse, although safely situated in antiquity and thus detached from modern politics, was found displeasing by some persons in authority. This . . . who knows? Perhaps I shall pen something inspired by it. Yet anotherNew Way to Pay Old Debts . Perhaps Sir Giles Overreach may have some parallels among the imperial knights." He gestured: Now, for those other piddling complaints, Breathed out in bitterness; as, when they call me Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder On my poor neighbour's right, or grand encloser Of what was common to my private use ; Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries, And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold; I only think what 'tis to have my daughter Right honourable ; and 'tis a powerful charm, Makes me insensible of remorse, or pity, Or the least sting of conscience.

Annabelle shook her head. "It never occurred to me thatOklahoma! had anything to say about what's going on inFranconia . It's way older than I am. I just thought of it as one of the standard musicals that Amber has put on regularly ever since she started teaching. About every four or five years, depending on whether or not the student body has enough dancers available to carry it. It needs more than something likeGuys and Dolls . Maybe that would make an a.s.signment. I'll suggest to her that she could have the kids do essays on the topic."

"Essays," Amber said. "Essays. Annabelle, you would not believe what d.i.c.k Quiney has done."

"After a week of supervising 'rehearsals with d.i.c.k,' I'd believe almost anything. But I hope it wasn't caused by the topic I recommended."

"No, no. That went fairly smoothly. But then we moved on to this year's take on Arthur Miller'sThe Crucible . We always taught that, anyway. It's more relevant than ever, now, since I can tie it right into the theme of connections between up-time and down-time. Going fromKiss Me, Kate! as an up-time version of a down-time play toThe Crucible as an up-time take on a down-time historical phenomenon.

This year, I got Veronica Junius to come and give them a talk. That ties it even closer to 'real life' for these kids, since she was caught up in one of those persecutions five or six years ago. Before she came to Grantville, anyway. But . . ."

"What did d.i.c.k do?"