1632 (16 page)
Authors: Eric Flint
Two—four—six—eight!
Who do we appreciate?
Scotsmen! Scotsmen!
The chant was loud enough to be heard through the window. More than loud enough. Rebecca thought the chant was bizarre, although she could not deny its raucous charm.
Then the cheerleaders began leading the crowd in a different chant and she was completely mystified.
Frowning, she turned to James Nichols. The doctor was on his feet, staring out the window, clapping his hands in time to the chant and muttering the same peculiar, meaningless words under his breath.
“Please,” she asked, “explain this to me. What does that mean, exactly?” Her lips formed around unfamiliar words.
“On Wisconsin! On Wisconsin!”
The doctor grinned. “What it means, young lady, is that a bunch of swaggering thugs are about to get a history lesson. In advance, so to speak.”
He turned to her, still grinning. “Let me introduce you to another unfamiliar American expression.” The white teeth, shining in a black face, reminded Rebecca of nothing so much as a shield of heraldry.
“We call it—
D-Day.
”
In the hours that followed, the Roths’ home became a whirlwind of activity. Michael and Alexander Mackay, along with Andrew Lennox and Frank Jackson, spent the entire afternoon at the large table in the kitchen, planning out their coming campaign. American coal miners and Scots soldiers trooped in and out as the hours went by. Bearing commands on their way out, and bringing questions on their way in. The Scots soldiers would come and go quickly, but many of the American miners would stay for awhile, chiming in with their own suggestions and opinions.
Julie Sims even showed up, bouncing into the kitchen to greet her uncle Frank and take advantage of that family connection to sate her eager curiosity. Mackay immediately lost his concentration on military affairs. Entirely. Julie had replaced her cheerleader’s outfit with a blouse and blue jeans, true. But with her figure, and the energy which filled it, the change of clothing was irrelevant.
Then, seeing the smirk lurking in Lennox’s eyes, Mackay flushed and tried to keep his eyes off the girl. But he still did not manage to bring his mind back into focus until several minutes after Frank shooed Julie away.
Mackay thought the extreme looseness of the American command structure—if such it could even be called—was extremely odd. But—
Everything about these Americans was extremely odd, when you came down to it. Yet there was no question that Michael and Frank had the final authority on any decisions. So, after a time, the two Scottish professional soldiers simply relaxed and—to use one of those peculiar American expressions—“went with the flow.”
Others came also, to gather in the living room around Balthazar and Rebecca. The two doctors had remained, along with Morris Roth. Judith, now and again, would sit in on their discussion, but she was generally too busy providing food and drink for the soldiers. Rebecca offered to help in that chore, but Judith wouldn’t permit it.
“Melissa will be coming over, any moment,” she explained. Smiling: “I’ll catch enough hell from her as it is, catering to the men the way I am. If she sees you doing it too—you’re the National Security Adviser, remember?—I’ll
never
hear the end of it. Knowing Melissa, she’d probably start picketing my house.”
Rebecca’s look of incomprehension caused Judith to laugh. “You never heard of women’s lib, I take it?”
Julie Sims was standing nearby, listening to the exchange. Judith smiled at her and said: “Explain it, why don’t you?”
“Sure! Piece of cake!”
Judith went off to the kitchen. Grinning, Julie gave Rebecca a précis on the subject of women’s liberation. And if the eighteen-year-old girl’s version of it would have caused the more doctrinaire advocates of women’s lib to blanch, they certainly couldn’t have complained about the enthusiasm of the presentation. By the time Julie finished, the look of incomprehension was gone from Rebecca’s face. Her expression was now one of pure and simple shock.
“You must be joking.”
“ ’Course not!” was Julie’s reply. A moment later, her eye drawn by someone on the street outside the window, Julie charged out of the house. Haltingly, Rebecca took a seat on the couch and began to listen to the conversation among the doctors.
At first, her mind was elsewhere.
Women’s liberation?
Absurd!
But then, as she caught the drift of the discussion, all other thoughts were driven aside immediately.
And, again, Rebecca’s face must have shown her shock and disbelief.
Her father smiled at her. “Yes, daughter. This is what I was about to tell you when you first arrived. So—what do you think of the proposal?”
She was at a loss for words.
Are they serious?
But a glance at the two American doctors made clear that they were.
It is unheard of! A medical
partnership—
between gentiles and Jews?
The older doctor, the one Rebecca had first thought to be a Moor, cleared his throat. “You understand, Dr. Balthazar, that while you will be entitled to your full share of the proceeds—one third of what the doctors take in, after the salaries of the nurses and other employees are paid—that you will still, in practice, be—uh—” Nichols hesitated. He was obviously trying to be diplomatic. “For a time, that is, not forever—uh—”
Balthazar held up his hand. “Please, Dr. Nichols!” Rebecca’s father leaned over and picked up a book lying on the table beside the couch. “Dr. Adams was so good as to lend this to me yesterday. One of his many volumes on medicine—a textbook, he tells me, from his days as a student.”
Balthazar cradled the heavy tome on his lap, almost caressing it with his fingers. “I have not been able to read much of it yet, I’m afraid. There are so many new words—not to mention new concepts—that each page must be studied carefully.”
Rebecca stared at the cover of the book. The title was not what drew her attention, however. Something to do with introductory principles of medicine. Instead, her eyes were drawn to the names of the authors.
George White, M.D. Harold O’Brien, M.D. Abraham Cohen, M.D.
Cohen?
Her eyes went to Morris Roth. The American Jew seemed to understand the question in her stare. So, at least, she interpreted his little smile and the nod which went with it.
Yes.
Her father was still speaking. “—so I understand fully that I will have to learn everything anew.”
Dr. Adams shook his head. “That’s not true, Balthazar. Not even with regard to theory. Your notions about miasmas being the cause of disease are not that far removed from the truth. And your practical knowledge, in many ways, exceeds our own.” He shrugged. “The truth is, I think you’ll have much to teach us about the medications available in this time and place.”
Nichols chuckled. “I certainly hope so! Just to give one example, our supply of antibiotics will be gone soon, and we can hardly call up the pharmaceutical companies for more.” He made a sour face. “Then what? Eye of newt? Bat’s wings ground up with coriander?”
Balthazar laughed. “Please! I have always found that Avicenna’s great
Canon of Medicine
has remedies for almost every malady. Many of them even seem to work.”
Nichols and Adams were peering at him skeptically. Dr. Abrabanel spread his hands. “Of course, you should examine the text yourself, before we prescribe anything.” Hesitantly: “You
do
read Arabic?” Seeing the expressions on the faces of the two American doctors, Balthazar shrugged. “Well, no matter. I believe I have most of the
Canon
available in a Greek translation.”
Nichols and Adams looked at each other. Adams coughed. Nichols looked like he was choking.
“Dr. Abrabanel,” asked Adams, “just exactly how many languages
can
you read?”
“Fluently?” Rebecca’s father wiggled his fingers. “Not more than eight, I’m afraid. Nine, possibly, depending on how you reckon ’fluency.’ Hebrew, Arabic and Greek, of course, those being the principal languages of medicine. Spanish and Portuguese are native to my family. And English now, naturally. I spent most of my life on the island. German, French.” Again, he wiggled his fingers. “My Dutch is becoming quite good, I think. But it would be boasting to say it was fluent as yet.”
He paused, thinking, running fingers through his well-groomed gray beard. “Beyond that? I can manage Russian and Polish, with nontechnical matters. Italian and Latin, the same. I was concentrating on the Latin, actually, but I was forced to interrupt my studies due to the political state of affairs so that I could learn Swedish.” He frowned. “It’s a charming language, in its own way, but I almost hate to spend the time on it. There is nothing written in Swedish which is not already available in other tongues. Still—” He sighed. “I felt it would be wise, given the role I was asked to play—”
He cut off abruptly and leaned forward, his face filled with concern. “Dr. Nichols? Are you ill?”
“No, no,” gasped Nichols, waving his hand weakly. “I am just—” Cough, cough.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Adams. “Almighty.”
Rebecca leaned back in the couch. She managed—successfully, she thought—to keep the pride and satisfaction from showing on her face. Much as she had come to like and admire these Americans, she could not deny the pleasure it gave her to see them—
for once!
—absent their usual smug complacence.
Perhaps she was not as successful as she thought. Melissa Mailey marched in at that point, took one look at her, and demanded: “What are you looking so pleased about?”
Rebecca smiled. Demurely, she thought. Intended, at least. “Oh, it just seems that my father is a more accomplished linguist than these other doctors. Whatever else he may lack.”
“Well, of course!” Melissa snorted. “Americans are ignorant louts when it comes to language.” The schoolteacher planted her arms akimbo and gave Nichols and Adams the same glare which had cowed thousands of students over the years. “
What?
” she demanded. “Did you think you were actually
smarter
than these people?”
Then, spotting Judith scurrying from the kitchen with a plate of food in her hands, Melissa transferred the glare. “And what’s
this
? Two hundred years of progress gone down the drain?”
The glare settled on Rebecca. “You and I are going to have a talk, young lady.
Soon.
”
The response was inevitable, inescapable. “Yes, ma’am.”
Much later that night, the Roth household was quiet and peaceful. Everyone had gone, except Balthazar, Melissa, and the Roths themselves. Even Rebecca was absent. Michael had insisted that she join the campaign planning effort, which had grown so large that it was being transferred to the high school.
Her father, in the event, was glad of her absence. It allowed him to raise a delicate subject freely, in the company of other Jews. And Melissa, of course. But Balthazar had already made his assessment of her.
“My daughter seems much taken by this Michael Stearns,” he said. His tone was friendly and mild; the words themselves, an open invitation.
Morris and Judith glanced at each other. “He’s a fine young man,” said Judith hesitantly.
“Bullshit,” snapped her husband. He gave the Sephardic doctor a look which combined apology with belligerence. “Pardon my language, Dr. Abrananel. But I’m not going to dance around about this. Mike Stearns is the closest thing you’ll ever find in this world to a genuine goddam
prince
, and that’s all there is to it. Gentile or not.”
Morris leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees. “You read the book I gave you? The one on the Holocaust?”
Balthazar winced, and spread his hand as if to ward off demons. “As much of it as I could bear. Which was not much.”
Morris took a deep breath. “The world we came from was no paradise, Dr. Abrananel. Not for Jews, not for anyone. But if there were devils aplenty, there were also those who dealt with them.”
He rose and stalked over to the mantelpiece. Perched next to the menorah was a small photograph, black-and-white, set in a simple frame. Morris took down the photograph and brought it over to Rebecca’s father.
He pointed to one of the men in the picture. He was a small man, emaciated to the point of skeletonism, wearing a striped uniform.
“That’s my father. The place where the photo was taken is called Buchenwald. It’s not far from here, as it happens.” He pointed to another man in the photograph. Taller, healthy looking despite the obvious weariness and grime—and wearing a uniform.
“That’s Tom Stearns. Michael’s grandfather. He was a sergeant in the American unit that liberated Buchenwald from the Nazis.”
He put the photograph back on the mantelpiece. “Most people don’t know it, but West Virginians—in terms of percentage, of course, not absolute numbers—have provided more soldiers for America’s combat units than any other state in the nation, in every major war we fought in the twentieth century.” He turned back to face Abrabanel. “That’s why my father moved here, when he emigrated to the United States after the war. Even though he was the only Jew in Grantville when he first arrived. Tom Stearns had invited him to come, you see. Many others went to Israel, but my father wanted to live near the man who took him out of Buchenwald. It was the safest place he could imagine.”
Morris stared down at Rebecca’s father. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Balthazar Abrabanel?”
“Oh, yes,” whispered the doctor. “We had that dream, once, in Sepharad.” He closed his eyes, reciting from memory:
