The slender woman sorting folders at the table's head looked up. "Yes?"
"How'd that Prussian guy get his peasants to grow potatoes?" Sounds like a joke, Larry thought.
Melissa Mailey sniffed. "Frederick the Great? He cut off their noses if they refused to. Inspired leadership." She resumed her work.
Typical seventeenth-century punchline, though. Or was he eighteenth . . . never mind. "Maybe we could persuade them instead?" offered Larry.
"We're trying to stop people from killin' each other over which Bible they thump," said Hudson wearily. "Vegetable tastes aren't exactly top priority."
"Well, I don't need a lot of potatoes. A couple of bushels at most. And maybe if they eat something that tastes better than boiled turnip, they'll change their minds . . ." But Hudson was shaking his head.
"Nobody here I know of has any potato seed, Larry. We need to keep the potatoes we have to plant 'em as cuttings, so we can grow more potato plants. Otherwise, the only potatoes around are somewhere in the Andes, and we aren't goin' there anytime soon. Hearts and minds is all very well, but when . . ."
Melissa stopped next to them as though the phrase had physically hooked her. She had a parka slung over her arm and a scarf already wrapped around her neck. "Willie Ray, you're going to freeze like that," she said sharply.
"Aw, it's not cold," said the farmer, looking down.
"There might be influenza this winter. Don't wear yourself down when you don't have to." She looked at Larry. "Men. Have you been fighting, young man?"
Damn you, Jimmy. "Just a scuffle, ma'am. I was asking Mister Hudson about potatoes. My friends and I want to make potato chips for the Christmas feast."
"Sounds great! What's the problem?"
"No potatoes," said Larry. "I asked Gretchen's grandmother, but she just yelled at me."
She frowned. "Well, what was she yelling?"
"It was all German. Teufels-wurzel, I remember that . . ."
Melissa turned and waved vigorously. "Becky! Hey! I need some translating."
Larry bowed instinctively as Rebecca Abrabanel joined them. She just did that to him somehow. "Larry here's running into some language problems," Melissa added. "Larry, you know Rebecca, right? Everybody does."
"Hi," he managed. I just wanted to ask about potatoes . . .
"You have been fighting, I see. What is the language?" The National Security Advisor had donned a woolen shawl; now she slipped it free again with a graceful tilt of her neck.
"German, what else? Teufel . . . something. Larry?"
"Uh . . . Teufels-wurzel, I think."
"Devil's root," said Rebecca. She glanced to Willie Ray, then back to Larry. "You are discussing agriculture? Devil's Root is a common term for what you'd call potato. It is used by apothecaries, and even eaten in England and Holland, but I do not recall that it grows here."
"C'mon, Larry," urged Melissa. "Think. What else did she say?"
"Ah . . . Verke . . . her, ter . . . then Knave or something like that."
Rebecca lifted an eyebrow. "Verkehrter knabe would be 'perverted boy.' Just what sort of conversation were you having, Larry?"
Larry knew the school floor couldn't open beneath him and swallow him; he just wished that it could. "I asked Gretchen's grandmother about potatoes. That's all! And she went Jeet Kune Do on me!"
"Went . . . ?"
"Hit me with her broom. A lot."
"Ah." Rebecca nodded. "You are . . . off the hook, as Michael says. Potatoes are very exotic here. They are believed to be Aphrodisiakum—an aphrodisiac, a sexual stimulant, like rhinoceros horn—but that is superstition. My father says that rhinoceros horn is much more effective."
Larry opened his mouth, thought, and closed it again.
Hudson grinned sympathetically. "You should have heard what they called me when I tried to suggest planting 'em in gardens."
"This is rather interesting," mused Rebecca. "Missgebildete Schmutzknolle? Ugly dirt-tuber object? That's a common one as well. Do you recall it?"
"It was hard to hear, uh . . . with the broom and all."
"Jeez, you must have gotten her riled up," muttered Hudson. "Look, son, I appreciate your stopping by, but there's a rationing system for a reason. I'm not breaking it just for some snack foods. Go shoot yourself a deer."
Rebecca looked back to Hudson. "I am distracting you, I'm sorry. Good night, gentlemen."
As Hudson and Larry made replies, Melissa jumped into the gap. "Now just hang on, Willie Ray. Potatoes could be a useful crop, right?"
"Well, yes, but—"
"And if people eat tasty snacks made from potatoes, they'll like potatoes, right?"
"Melissa," said Hudson with heavy patience, "you're not runnin' rings around me on this one, okay? We got to have some priorities. Snack foods just aren't in there."
"Mister Hudson . . ." Larry gestured at his own face. "I got this from fighting over a bag of cheese curls. She's right—people really like junk food."
Hudson's face tightened stubbornly. "It's a seed crop. You don't eat that."
"If we don't get people to plant the seed potatoes by this spring, won't they just rot anyway?" said Melissa. "It took Frederick the Great years to make them do it. Better the carrot than the stick—even better carrot sticks, of course . . ." Melissa still hadn't quite made the mental adjustment from calories make people fat to calories allow people to survive. "But junk food's powerful stuff—it conquered the world in our time, and they won't have any built-up immunity to it. Now, we can't spare sugar for anything nonessential—"
"Now that's right," put in Hudson. "Salt we can get, but I can't grow sugarcane in central Europe without a greenhouse." He shook his head ruefully. "Got me agreeing with you already, don't you?"
"No sugar?" blurted Larry. Sure, it was being rationed, but—none?
"There's only a few plantations nowadays," explained Melissa. "Refined sugar's still about as expensive as cocaine was in our time. Pretty much the same kind of people running things, too—the world's first drug lords. But just wait until we get some sugar beets growing here!" She bit off the rant. "Sorry. Long day. Anyway, salt we do have. If you can make the chips, and get people to change their minds about potatoes by tickling their taste buds instead of cutting off their noses, it's worth doing. Come on, Willie Ray! He only needs a bushel or two."
"All right," muttered the farm czar. "I'll give you a slip for one bushel. But it isn't gonna work."
Melissa looked at the door; figures could been seen milling behind the reinforced glass pane. She reached up to lay her hand solemnly on Larry's head, then grinned. "Gotta go. Larry, you are now officially in charge of . . . Project Quayle. May you do better at it than he did."
A few minutes later a pleased but puzzled Larry slowly pushed his way through the crowd, clutching the precious authorization slip. Quail? Why would she name a potato chip project after a bird?
* * *
It took all three of them to carry a bushel of potatoes back home from town; then Larry discovered they'd forgotten to give the storeowner the ration slip, and had to ride back with it, then meet the others in town again. Two different stores had no cooking oil at all. Night had fallen before they started peeling, and the moon was up before they managed to get an even slice.
And it was one-fifteen in the morning when Larry stumbled, choking, out of the trailer, Jimmy and Eddie treading on his heels with Hans slung between them. The half-moon barely threw enough light to show the clouds of smoke billowing from the open trailer door. Larry wiped his eyes, coughed rackingly until nothing seemed to be shaking loose anymore, and turned back to the others.
"Okay," he wheezed, "so that's what they meant about smoke point."
"I guess that oil's no good," said Eddie. They'd had to settle for olive oil at the store; the high-temperature oils had all been requisitioned for emergency diesel fuel. Eddie's hopes for "Italian flavor" chips had clearly been a little optimistic.
"Jimmy, go back and open all the doors
and windows," said Larry. "Hans, you okay?"
"Okay, okay," said Hans. He sat on the ground with his legs stretched out, still blinking in surprise, while Eddie braced him upright. They'd bundled him outside wrapped in the blanket he was sleeping in—Larry was relieved to see he wasn't coughing hard. That wouldn't be good for someone with a wound still healing.
"Why me?" grumbled Jimmy, but he pulled his shirt over his face and darted inside.
"Fire? Is fire out?" asked Hans anxiously. "The other trailers—"
"It wasn't a fire," said Larry. "I don't know why Jimmy wasted that extinguisher—crap, those things are priceless now! The oil just started to smoke. A lot. The stove's turned off, and the oil's cooling down now. It's okay, Hans. We'll go back inside in a minute." The windows were rattling open one by one.
"Okay," Hans repeated. He wrapped the blanket closer and settled down to wait. At least he had a blanket; Larry was freezing already after the boiling confines of the trailer's kitchenette. In a minute or two, though, they could go back in, close up, and crank the heat.
Jimmy trotted down the steps, coughing pointedly. "All done, Darth Tater. Got any holes to dig—bales to tote?"
"Kicking of butt are you seeking, young Jedi," singsonged Larry. "I think there's another extinguisher in the shed; go get it."
"What, so we can eat smoke again instead of chips?"
Larry bunched his fists. "Jimmy, do you remember the last time we had an argumen—" He stopped in midword as a smoke detector started keening. "Shit!"
"Didn't you turn it off?" said Eddie.
"I took out the damn battery myself!" Larry followed the sound with his eyes. The second trailer.
"Jimmy," he said carefully, "did you open all the doors?"
"Sure, like you said."
"The connecting door?"
"But you said all—"
"You moron!" howled Eddie. He stood up abruptly; Hans wobbled, but braced himself on the ground with one palm. "They're gonna be out here any second! Jeff's gonna kick—"
"Jeff's off doing a courier run," snapped Larry. "Gretchen's gonna kick our butts." He walked grimly towards the noise and the second set of steps, framing an apology in his mind. Behind him, Eddie and Jimmy railed at one another, voices rising like baseball players grabbing the bat before a game; but he was starting to feel concerned.
Something's wrong. There's no lights going on in there. They can't sleep through that! God, there can't be enough smoke to—
It hit him as he set one foot on the steps. Night. Smoke in the house. A wailing noise. Jeff's away. Loud voices outside. The memory of a stone-faced Gretchen, standing with folded arms as she waited for the mercenaries to come, flashed into his head. Oh, shit!
"Hans!" he shouted—just as Gretchen slammed out of the darkened door with a blanket wrapped over one shoulder and a pistol gripped in both hands.
Larry recoiled a pace, skidding in the snowpath. There wasn't enough light scattering from his own trailer to show him or the figures behind him very clearly—but there was damn well enough moonlight to shoot by. She'll see Hans on the ground, surrounded by figures—targets, just like me! He was already raising both hands palm-out. "Gretchen!" he shouted, his voice breaking as it hadn't for two years. "It's me, Larry! Gretchen, it's okay!"
She was down on one knee on the front stoop; her arms foreshortened as she swung the pistol onto Larry below. The faint light that caught her face showed as much expression on it as a steel lathe spindle might have. This close, the nine-millimeter slugs would blow clean through his chest, splintering bone like balsa wood. Gretchen was a crack shot, too; once Jeff had shown her how to use the pistol, she'd taken to it with a passion.
Hans called out in English behind him. "Gretchen, is okay! Me, friends, all okay!"
Larry was frozen from his guts outward, much colder than the air accounted for. Instinct screamed at him to turn and run, but that would be the worst thing he could do—and even more importantly, he wouldn't let himself die like a coward in front of his friends. That had kept him from running on a battlefield before; now it kept him alive. Gretchen blinked hard once, twice, and suddenly became just an angry human being. She lifted the pistol's muzzle, and Larry took a long and shaky breath.
"It's okay," he husked, and swallowed. "Just a cooking mistake." Shit, what a stupid way to get killed.
Feet thumped to the ground on the third trailer's opposite side. Larry glimpsed motion between the foundation blocks. The kids? They went out a back window? Oh, God, that's why she went out the front. While she's being killed by the men who set her house on fire, they might get away. It's a German fire drill. He rubbed at his face. I'll never complain about my childhood again, ever.
"Was?" snarled Gretchen. "Cookink?" Her brother called out something in German. Presumably he'd shouted first in English because that was less of a threat. Her eyes scanned along the treeline while she sorted out what he'd said; then she safed the weapon and got to her feet. Larry turned away sharply. Part of him wanted very much to stare at places the blanket didn't cover—but the rest was still thinking about survival, not reproduction.
At least the threat of gunshot wounds had stopped Jimmy and Eddie's arguing, although the smoke alarm continued to wail. Hans looked startled, but unharmed. The trailer door banged shut, and Larry turned back again as Gretchen yelled out the opposite window at the kids. He crouched to look through the blocks; they'd popped up in the snow-dusted underbrush just short of the trees, their faces pale blobs lifted to her voice. They'd been low-crawling, and he'd wager that they hadn't looked back once until she called. That's one damn scary fire drill.
A thud came faintly from the trailer, then another. The electronic wail stopped abruptly. Gretchen opened the door and flung a handful of plastic shards onto the plowed driveway. She'd wrapped the blanket properly this time; Larry rose from his crouch and stepped forward. Blame Jimmy? No. Jimmy could be a jerk sometimes, but he was still Larry's friend.
"I'm really, really sorry. It was an accident. I—" He twisted aside as the kids pounded up the steps and glued themselves to Gretchen like limpets. One of them was carrying Gretchen's baby, who seemed to have slept through the whole adventure. Now that the emergency was over, two of them were crying, and guilt gnawed at Larry as he looked at them. You must have been scared half to death. Arson's part of warfare for you.
He'd seen far worse in battles, but for all its crowding and irritations, this was his home—and they were his family now. "I'm sorry," he repeated softly. "It shouldn't be like that here."
Eddie and Jimmy took up the chant behind him. "Sorry, sorry . . ."
"Sorry doesn't cut it around here!" shouted Gretchen. "Look at zem!"
Larry nodded, although his mind muttered Does everyone in town say that when I screw up? "There's no fire. No fire. Just some oil that got too hot and made a lot of smoke. We'll clean up anything we have to."
"Uh, maybe the kids would like some Italian chips?"
"Shut up, Jimmy."
Gretchen sniffed. "You all say sorry to Jeff, ven he gets back in mornink! Maybe he just hit you with hand, not hit you with motorbike!" She ushered the kids inside with her left hand. She still held the pistol in her right; the edge of her palm was bleeding from a small cut. Larry was very glad that the smoke alarm's housing had taken the worst of her anger. "Cooking always makes fires. If kitchen burns, houze burns—you must watch, always! You are all stupid!" She slammed the door behind her.
"I guess we are," said Larry to the door. He turned and sat down hard on the steps; his legs were a little shaky. What a Goddamned stupid way to get killed that would have been, all right. He rested his head in his hands. "Okay. Eddie, you help Hans back inside and close the windows. I'm gonna sit here until I decide not to rolf; then we figure out how to get some real oil before Jeff gets back, because about the only thing that's gonna stop him from killing all of us slowly and painfully is a handful of fresh potato chips."
"What do you mean all of us?" said Jimmy.
"It was your idea—"
Larry glanced to the end trailer as its door opened. Gramma stood in the opening, holding her broom at high port. At least she hadn't tried to go out through the windows . . . Between the wisps of smoke still eddying around and the light silhouetting her, she looked like a bad remake of The Terminator. "Yeah, you're right, Jimmy," he said slowly. "Go help Gramma sweep up the smoke alarm bits, and maybe you can stay in her trailer overnight."
"Sounds good to me," grumbled Jimmy. "You guys are bad news to be around." He trotted down the trailers. "Hi, Gramma! Give me the broom."
Larry settled his head again and closed his eyes. Whiskery thuds and yelps and guttural curses sounded to his left; he found it kind of soothing while he thought. No stores open this time of night. Grantville wasn't quite the sleepy town it had once been; merchants locked up their stores now, and the gas station—where the diesel substitute oils were kept—was actually guarded. Larry wasn't going to run a risk of getting shot again for the damn potato chips.
Jimmy slammed their trailer door in a delayed echo of Gramma slamming hers. Larry looked up and realized he was shivering with cold. Time to go in and admit it; I haven't got a clue. Sorry, guys, we'll draw straws to see who Jeff gets to beat up in the morning. . . .
"Sorry doesn't cut it around here," Larry said aloud, and snorted. Nat Davis would laugh his head off at this scene . . . His jaw sagged open. Hang on. We use lube oil to cut gears. And the lathes need oil. What if Mister Davis grabbed some of that stuff in case he needed it later?
Larry didn't have keys to the shop. But there was that window at the side alley, the one that Mister Davis always cursed because it wouldn't shut properly . . . and that he never had time to fix. It wouldn't be stealing—we'd just borrow it for a while. It's not like we'll use it up.
He jumped down from the steps and hurried to his trailer. The doorknob wouldn't turn; he rattled it with increasing force. "Hey!"
"Go away," said Eddie's muffled voice. "No one's home. We've cashed in our chips."
"If you—" shouted Larry; then he lowered his voice. "If you guys want something better to do than a D & D game, I need a couple of Level Four Fighter-Thieves for a quest."