Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 (17 page)

"Do you know if Herr Spengler would be willing to show my cousin around his mill?"

"Gottfried will be only too happy to show you his mill," Catrin assured them. She could say this with absolute confidence, having been the victim of Gottfried's enthusiasm after a simple polite query had been interpreted as real interest. Anybody displaying a real interest in his mill was unlikely to escape without the full tour.

Mikkel passed this information to Magnus, and there was a short discussion. Finally Mikkel turned back to Catrin. "Thank you for your assistance, Fräulein."

Catrin watched the two men leave. She even craned her neck at the counter to keep the cute hunk in view for as long as possible. It was a pity they seemed in such a hurry, as it meant she'd probably never see the hunk again. She returned to her typewriter and inserted another blank form.

Two hours later—at the end of her working day—Catrin left the office in a hurry. Her destination was Spengler's Mill, where she was ever hopeful that the hunk had been trapped by Gottfried and needed to be rescued.

She arrived to an unnatural state of disorder. Gottfried was hurrying around like a headless chicken while her friend stood carefully to one side and watched. Catrin hurried over to Veronika and gave her a greeting hug before she too stood to one side to watch Gottfried. "What's going on?"

"A couple of men from a place in Norway dropped by, and have persuaded Gottfried that he should return with them to investigate the possibility of setting up a paper mill in their home town. Right now he's trying to organize everything so he can join them."

"Why would Gottfried want to go to someplace in Norway?"

"They have a lot of wood, and it would be economically viable for Gottfried to make sulfide-process paper."

Catrin was momentarily stunned by the implications of what Veronika had just said. Gottfried had wanted to make fine white paper in his mill on the SaaleRiver, but he hadn't been able to access enough timber for it to be economically viable for him to install the waste treatment facilities the local authority said he needed if he wanted to make sulfide process paper. Instead, he'd been forced to settle for making ground-wood pulp paper, which wasn't good for much more than newspapers. It also offended his professional sensitivities. Catrin knew Gottfried still dreamed of making good white writing paper from wood pulp, and she was sure he was quite capable of packing up and moving to anywhere he might be able to do so. "Will you be going with him?"

Veronika reached out a gentle hand around Catrin's shoulder and hugged her. "If Gottfried decides to move, then I'll follow him."

It was no more than Catrin had expected, but she still felt down. Veronika was her best friend, and it seemed she was going to be leaving. "What will you do with this mill?" she asked, waving her free arm around to encompass the mill.

"We'll have to sell. There's no way we can afford to keep this mill and build the mill of Gottfried's dreams."

Again, it was pretty much what she'd expected to hear, but it did mean Veronika was likely to never come back to the area. "So you'll be leaving?"

Veronika must have seen the hint of tears in Catrin's eyes, for she immediately enveloped her in a hug. "When we're established, there'll be a job there for you."

October, Saalfeld

Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
The phrase might have been written just for Catrin. Yes, she had a new boyfriend, and yes, unlike Andreas, he had not only read the instruction manual, he referred to it constantly. However, when she vowed that her next boyfriend would be someone who saw the instruction manual as the first port of call and not the option of last resort, she hadn't been thinking of someone quite like Valentin Rhost.

She'd first met Valentin in a math class he'd been teaching for external students doing their GED. He'd recently bought himself an obsolete Wetmore Aqualator—the Mark I version, without the square root function—and Catrin had been one of the students who gave up their time to help him upgrade it to Mark IA standard with an after-market add-on square root block. She had been impressed that Valentin had followed the instruction manual to the letter. And of course the up-graded aqualator had worked correctly first time.

That had been six weeks ago. Since then she'd learned that Valentin was obsessive about following the instruction manual. If the manual said the water should be triple distilled, then Valentin insisted on triple distilling the water himself.
Anybody like to spend hours watching water drip out of a still?
Catrin certainly didn't. Fortunately, she'd only had to endure that once, so far. What she hadn't been able to avoid had been the weekly tear-down of the system for complete cleaning of the channels Valentin insisted on, just because the manual recommended weekly preventative maintenance.

Catrin had just waved off her friend Veronika and her new baby as they took the train out of Grantville on the first leg of her trip to join her husband in Arendal, Norway. Her best friend was gone for good, and she'd desperately hoped for a shoulder to cry on. Instead she got Valentin, just as he was about to tear-down his Wetmore for cleaning.

Valentin set down the manual on the right page and started to close off the water valves—in the specified order, of course. Catrin, who'd done a couple of tear-downs before, grabbed some tools and got on with helping.

"What are you doing?" Valentin demanded.

The hand holding the screwdriver stilled in the air. "Just loosening the . . ."

"No!" Valentin said. "That's step six. We need to complete steps four and then step five before we do that."

"But . . ." Catrin wanted to protest that step six didn't have anything to do with the other steps. As long as the water was turned off (step one) it wouldn't spray everywhere when you opened up the block. However, Valentin was watching to make sure she didn't get ahead of the manual. There and then Catrin realized she had to get out of the relationship. She put down the screwdriver and got to her feet.

"Where are you going?" Valentin demanded. "You have to help me tear-down and reassemble my aqualator."

"I don't have to help you do anything, Valentin. You have your instruction manual. Use that." With those scathing last words Catrin walked out the door. There was a cacophony of noise that sounded suspiciously like someone had upset the table on which Valentin had arranged the dismantled components of his aqualator. She couldn't resist a quick glance over her shoulder to see what kind of carnage Valentin had wreaked. She wasn't disappointed. She couldn't have done half as well if she'd tried. There was a renewed bounce to her step as she hurried down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight.

Catrin hurried down the road until she came to the first intersection, and there she stopped.
Where to go now?
Normally, after dumping a boyfriend, she'd run to Veronika, but Veronika left to join her husband in Norway. For all his lack of sympathy, even Friedrich would have served as a port in a storm, but he was no doubt busy moving himself and his betrothed into the master's lodgings at Spengler's mill—although they'd probably have to change the name as Gottfried had sold it to his old workforce.

Veronika was gone, Friedrich was going to be married soon, and she wasn't meeting any suitable young men. It was time to ask her supervisor at work for help.

Next day

She managed to corral Stephan Wachter in his office before he left at the end of the next day. "Stephan, you're invited to the Chamber of Commerce parties, aren't you?"

Stephan paused in the collating of the papers on his desk and looked up slowly. "
Yeeessss
," he agreed cautiously.

"Can I go as your partner next time?" Catrin hastened on. "I'm not meeting any interesting guys, and I was thinking that a Chamber of Commerce event might help me meet someone interesting."

"I'm sorry, Catrin, but there is no way I can take you to one of those events. They are by invitation only."

"But surely I could go as your guest?" Stephan slowly shook his head. "But Gottfried could have taken Veronika to one."

"Only after they were officially betrothed."

That didn't sound right. "But Nikolaus said Gottfried could have invited Veronika to a Chamber of Commerce party when they were first walking out together."

"Nikolaus knows very well that invitations to Chamber of Commerce events are by invitation only, and that means named on the invitation. You don't think the members of the Chamber of Commerce want to encourage just any female to socialize with the up and coming young men?"

That meant Nikolaus had lied. Big surprise, not. "So what am I going to do? I'm not meeting anybody interesting."

"Then, I'm afraid you're going to have to broaden your horizons and move out of Saalfeld."

"I can't afford to live in Grantville or Magdeburg, not on the salary they pay typists."

"Then don't look for work in those cities. There are plenty of places out there. Don't limit yourself to the usual suspects." Stephan reached out and tugged Catrin by the hand. "Let's have a look at what is available in the newspaper."

November, Schönebeck (10 miles south of Magdeburg)

Catrin stood at the door to Köppe's Boatyard, the advertisement held tightly in her hand.
Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
Stephan had been a little too convincing, and had even loaned her the money for the train fare, but now she was standing by the office door she wasn't so sure. It was one thing to look for work around guys, but some of the guys who worked here had walked passed her and she hadn't been impressed. Also, it didn't look as if there were any females working here. Not that that could be right. There had to at least be the wife and maybe daughters of the owner around, it was just that she couldn't see any just now.

"Who are you, and what do you want?" a voice demanded from behind Catrin.

She spun around, and tried to smile at the man she now faced. He was old enough to be the master, and he was well enough dressed to be the master—if one took into account he was in working clothes without any of the wood shavings that had littered the clothes of the other men—so she took a chance. "Master Köppe?"

The man shook his head. "Claus Delp, senior journeyman at Köppe's. Master Köppe is in Travemünde just now."

"Oh!" Catrin was at a loss how to continue. She opened the advertisement and reread it.

"You've come about the 'Girl Friday' position? Sorry, but it's already been filled."

She sighed. This was the forth job in as many weeks she'd been told was already filled when she turned up. "Thank you," she said as she turned to leave.

"That monstrosity you insisted on buying is broken again," a young woman screamed out at Claus as she stomped towards him. "It's now insisting the square root of two is three, which I'm sure can't be right."

The words halted Catrin's retreat. Simple curiosity had her moving closer to listen in.

"It'll cost a hundred dollars for the call out just to get a technician from Magdeburg, and who knows how much at the hourly rate to fix whatever you've done wrong this time," Claus muttered.

"I've done wrong?" the woman roared. "Your machine doesn't work, and it's not my fault. You can take your job and stuff it. I don't have to put up with this kind of treatment. My father is on the council you know."

Catrin stood silently while the woman stalked off. Claus, she noticed, watched her stalk off as well. She had to admit the woman moved in a way to attract the male eye, maybe she needed lessons on how to sway her hips like that. Catrin knew she wasn't going to get a job based on her womanly wiles, but maybe those hours helping Valentin with his aqualator hadn't been totally wasted. "Do you have a Wetmore Aqualator?"

Claus swung round. "What makes you ask?"

"The fact that you can get a technician to fix something capable of calculating a square root from Magdeburg rather than Grantville. If you like, I could have a look at it. I know a thing or two about Wetmores. Is it a Mark I with the after-market square root package, or a Mark II, where it came as a standard feature?"

"A Mark II, and if you know enough to ask that question you know more than most people I've met. Do you think you can fix it? I'll pay you a hundred dollars if you can."

"I can't say until I look at it, but I've had a fair bit of experience with Wetmores, and there's not a lot that can go wrong that I can't fix—if I have the tools and parts."

Claus held out a hand and gently guided Catrin towards the room where the Wetmore was installed.

The first thing Catrin checked was the water level in the reservoir. Rubbing her thumb and fingers together told her a lot more than she really wanted to know about the probable cause of the failure. "When did you last replace the water?"

"Replace it? We don't. We just keep it topped up."

Catrin winced. Not that she was surprised. It took a while for water to get that slimy feel to it. "You're supposed to replace the water on a regular basis, because over time algae can start to grow. When did you last flush the system with chlorine solution?"

"Chlorine solution? Nobody told us anything about flushing the system with chlorine solution."

"Let me guess, you've never done a complete tear-down to clean the channels either?"

"Tear-down? You need a technician for that, and getting a technician to come out from Magdeburg is expensive."

"You can do it yourself if you follow the manual . . ."

"Manual?"

Catrin sighed. "The booklet that came with the Wetmore," she suggested without too much hope.

"Oh, that! I've never bothered with that. The technician who installed the Wetmore showed me all I needed to know to operate it."

"Obviously he didn't, otherwise you wouldn't have problems like the square root of two being three. Do you have the manual and the rest of the things that came in the original packaging?"

Claus looked guilty. "Well, I think I know where everything is. Why? Is it important?"

There were a lot of useful tools in the Wetmore tool kit, and it appeared some of them might have been borrowed for other jobs. Right now she was almost missing Valentin. He'd never have split up his Wetmore tool kit. "If you want me to get your Wetmore working again, I'm going to need the complete tool kit, and I'll need some triple distilled water to refill it after I do a complete tear-down."