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High Road to Venice

Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

Merton Smith rolled his wheel chair over to the phone and called up the weather service. "Hi, Dan. How's it look for a flight to Venice?"

"Not horrible. The reports from the weather stations are mostly in. There is a warm front that was moving in from the west but it seems to have stalled. We don't know why, but we suspect that something is going on in the east. I wish we still had the stations in Saxony and Brandenburg."

"Politics." Merton snorted. "They screw up everything. So what do you figure is out east that Saxony and Brandenburg aren’t reporting?"

"It's a cold front, Merton. We just don't know how big it is."

"Okay. How's it look on the south side of the Alps?"

"That's the good news. Clear and sunny all the way to Rome. Bolzano is reporting light winds through the pass and wants to know when you guys are coming."

"Looks like today's a go," Merton told him.

****

Johan did the walkaround. He was the pilot, Merton the co. Besides, Merton couldn’t walk, at least not all that well. Merton had gotten new fiberglass prosthetics but wasn't all that used to them yet. Honestly, Johan wasn't all that comfortable with Merton. A man who was missing both legs to above the knee shouldn't be piloting an airplane even if he was an up-timer and familiar with the engines. Johan checked the bag for leaks. It was double thick canvas with tar between the layers and oiled leather at the bottom where it contacted the ground, where the greatest wear would occur. He wiggled the flaps and the rudders. Checked for dings in the wings body and tail. Checked the bag fan, then climbed the step ladder and went aboard the plane where Merton was already in the right seat. By tradition, the left seat in a fixed wing was the pilot's seat. Johan headed back and checked the cargo. "So what do we have?"

Merton turned in his seat and read off the passenger list. "Eight passengers plus the cargo has us traveling a bit heavy, Captain. We have two Venetian bigwigs that were in Grantville for shopping and business. Lucco Ricci and Alberto DeLuca. DeLuca is the redhead. There's a little boy that was sent here for surgery on a deviated septum. His dad is some sort of muckety-muck or something in France, so they sent him to Grantville by way of Venice. He's five, and I've been calling him Frankie. His nanny, Mademoiselle Babin, isn't crazy about that, lemme tell you."

Johan caught sight of a really differently dressed stranger. "Who's the guy in the robes?"

"Magdalena said he's a sultan or something from Algiers, or North Africa anyway, who wanted a look at the library in Grantville. Can't pronounce it right. Hafsid Bey Sidi Uthman, that's it. Peter back there is a certified electrician the sultan hired to wire his palace. The blond guy is Matthew Howard, English kid on his grand tour."

"I heard about him," Johan said. "He cut quite a swath through the young women in Grantville. Good thing he didn't stay more than a month."

"Yeah, he's headed to Rome, he said. And the last is David Bartley, who's going to Venice for a week on some business."

"About standard," Johan said. "Half a million in cargo and five million in ransoms." Then he waved to Magdalena that they were ready and the passengers started to board.

****

"Welcome aboard, sir, ma'am." Johan got the passengers settled in then headed up front for the usual speech. "Folks, we're not having box lunches this trip. Nürnberg is only eighty-five miles away and we have to stop to refuel, since the trip is about four hundred miles. TransEuropean Airlines will have a catered lunch waiting for us when we get there. There will be snacks and drinks for the long leg of the trip, which is the one to Bolzano, where we refuel again. Then it's just a hop, skip and jump to Venice. We should be there before sundown."

Sidi Uthman asked, "This lunch? I did explain my dietary requirements . . ."

"I'm sure our office sent word ahead, sir." Johan made his way back up front, resenting a bit that it was him acting as greeter. He wished again that they could afford the weight of a stewardess. But these weren't up-time passenger planes. They were more like an air-going stagecoach in the amount they could carry. They were roomier per pound or passenger they could carry than an up-time aircraft would be, which made them pretty luxurious stage coaches. But that was because they had less lift for their size.

About a quarter hour later, they were in the air and headed south.

****

"Stop that squirming, Francois!" Mme. Babin snapped. "Can't you just look out the window?"

Francois tried but he really had to go. He'd been too excited to visit the restroom before they took off. Then Mr. David Bartley leaned over the seat in front of him and said, "I need to go use the facilities. I'll take him, if you like."

Mme. Babin gave Mr. Bartley a measuring look. Francois knew that she was uncomfortable with airplanes, and the idea of getting up and walking around in them made her even more nervous. He squirmed some more. "I really need to go."

"Very well. But be careful."

The young Englishman stood up and headed to the can, just beating Mr. Bartley and Francois. "Don't push the red button!" Mr. Bartley said and Francois looked up in time to see that Mr. Bartley was grinning.

"No fear," Matthew said. "I've been told all about the red button."

Francois looked up at the two men. He hadn't been told about the red button. He wondered what it did. He knew enough to know that red buttons did bad things.

"Just not till we get out of range of Grantville," Mr. Bartley explained. "You don't want your poop landing on the head of someone who'll complain to the mayor, do you?"

Francois felt his eyes get even wider. Then Matthew came out and agreed. "Yes. The red button opens a hole in the bottom of the plane. Then poof! Everything that's, ah, collected during a flight will fall down out of the sky. Best to do that over a forest or something, so you don't drop it on someone's head."

Francois went in and spent some time looking for the red button but didn't find it. He became convinced that Mr. Bartley and the Englishman were playing with him. Then he spent some time giggling about how it would work. He was still giggling when he got back to his seat. His nanny, after he told her the story, turned around and gave Matthew and David a very stern look. They glanced at each other, trying to hold back the laughs. It wasn't true, of course. The toilet in the Monster was emptied on the ground by much more conventional means. But it made a fun story for Francois.

Shortly after that Francois got to visit the cockpit where they steered the plane. It was big, almost as big as the cabin. There were cabinets and things where they stored stuff for the plane. There were two chairs. At first Francois thought they weren't locked to the floor like the seats in the cabin were. But they showed him the little rails that let the seats be moved then be locked down again. So that the copilot could be navigating when he wasn't copiloting and the pilot could handle the radio and stuff. But the chairs were still attached to the floor.

It was while Francois was down on the floor looking at the rails that he saw the copilot's feet. Now Francois was greatly impressed with the medical know-how of the doctors in Grantville. They had fixed his deviated septum. The idea that they could make legs that were real legs seemed to him quite likely. Besides, these didn't look at all like the peg legs he had seen. They had feet. It also seemed quite a neat thing to have. "Did the doctors fix your legs like they fixed my seppum? Did they hurt after they sewed them on?"

"No, I'm afraid not. The guy who designed the Monster had more to do with my legs than the doctors did. They aren't sewn on; I take them off at night like shoes," the copilot explained. "They are made of a composite, the same as the airplane."

"Why not just use wood?"

"Wood is heavy and artificial legs don't have muscles in them. Well, these have springs in them which help, but they aren’t really the same as muscles. So Georg used composites to keep the weight down. I'm still getting used to them but they are better than sitting in a chair all the time." They didn't explain to him that Merton the copilot had been in an accident at a machine shop a couple of years ago and had lost both legs above the knee. The loss of his legs had been especially hard on Merton and the Ring of Fire had made it harder still, because it had turned back the clock in the field of prosthetics. It had never occurred to Merton before the accident that the switch from "disabled" to "physically-challenged" had been anything but political correctness. The difference between a peg leg and an up-time prosthetic limb was the difference between a disability and a challenge. At least in Merton's case. It was, for all practical purposes, impossible to walk on a couple of peg legs that started above the knee. That was not true with up-time prosthetics.

The composite legs that Georg had made for Merton at Farrell's request fell somewhere in between an up-time prosthetic and a peg leg but rather closer to the up-time product. They allowed Merton to walk with the aid of something to hold on to. He'd been told that once he got a bit more used to them he might even be able to get by with a couple of canes instead of a walker.

Francois spent the rest of the hour and a half flight to Nürnberg looking out the window, mostly at clouds. When that got old he looked at the passengers. Francois was a child of nobility. But for most of his life he had been a hidden-away child. Not that his parents didn't love him. They did. Still, he had been sick most of his life, so he hadn't been able to play much. He had met more people in the hospital than in France. All he really knew of France was Mama, Papa and Mlle. Babin . . . well, and a few doctors that Papa had had look at him. Not being sick was quite a novelty in itself. So was being able to breath through his nose. During his recovery from the surgery he had gone from shy to curious, perhaps even overly curious.

****

"Ah." Sidi Uthman pushed his chair back and burped delicately. "Most interesting, indeed."

The meal had been leg of lamb with mint jelly, not something Merton much cared for at the best of times. But, he figured, whatever it took to make a passenger happy. Gods knew, they paid enough for this treatment. For him there was a large pot of coffee, which he appreciated.

"More please," Frankie said. David Bartley poured himself and the kid another cup of cocoa, while his nanny enjoyed a glass of wine with the Italian merchants. Peter Hartz stuck to beer.

"Merton," Johan called, "time to preflight."

****

Back in the air, Johan pointed the nose a bit west of south. "That cold front must be weaker than they predicted," he said. "We came in a bit farther east than I thought we would."

****

"What is taking you to Venice, Herr Bartley?" Alberto DeLuca asked. He was a portly man in his late thirties or early forties.

David looked at him then smiled. "Ships. OPM has been asked to invest in a shipping concern, so I'll be looking at ships. And talking to people about what it should cost to refit them with some up-time devices which should allow smaller crews."

"What sort of devices?" asked Lucco Ricci.

"Electric winches, batteries and a drag generator."

"What is a drag generator?"

"It's what Brent Partow calls a small generator that you drag behind a sailing ship. It uses the motion of the ship through the water to charge the batteries. The idea is that a ship rigged with the system would be able to use the wind indirectly to raise the sails and a few other things, decreasing the crew size from a third to half. We're not entirely sure it will work or how big the units would be. I'll also be pricing glass and silks."

The conversation went from there. With David talking about silk and glass while DeLuca and Ricci tried in vain to move the discussion back to the availability of the shipboard power system. Every once in a while David would let slip some tidbit about how the initial investment would be significant but the savings in crew cost would probably pay for it in the course of a single journey, then go back to talking about the price of silk. All in all David thought it was going very well.

****

About an hour and a half later, Merton started getting worried. "Shouldn't we have seen Munich by now, Johan?"

"It's the damned clouds," Johan muttered. "Can't see properly half the time."

"Point it a bit further east," Merton said. "It can't be that far."

****

"Still no Munich," Johan whispered.

"Maybe we better land and ask?" Merton suggested.

"Not in Bavaria." Johan shuddered. "You don't want to set down in Bavaria. Not ever."

****

"We can't be that far off course," Merton said.

"Far enough that we don't know exactly where we are," Johan said. "Keep looking."

Merton suppressed the urge to stick his tongue out at Johan, and kept looking. They were passing over the foothills of the Italian Alps. That was clear enough, but where? "Turn right and follow the valley?" Johan had made this trip a lot more often than Merton had.

"Might as well. I don't have a clue where we are, but I wonder where it leads."

"Bolzano, I hope. But at the very least, I hope it's within Duchess Claudia's lands. We should be safe as long as we land in the Tyrol somewhere."

"There's an outpost," Johan said, pointing to a building below. "Might be a customs station."

"And you'd better turn north and follow that pass," Merton grunted. "I'm really not liking this at all. Much more of this and we'll have to land, no matter where we are."

****

"Well, do we take the chance?" Johan's voice was worried.

"It's a lake. We know we can land there," Merton pointed out. "All we have to do is find out where we are, then we can plot a course to Bolzano. We're not hurting for fuel yet, but if we keep flying around like this we will be."

There wasn't much help for it. They had to know where they were. As it was, the passengers were getting restless, probably catching their own tension.

"Going down," Johan said. The clouds were low and spotty over the lakes, more mist than anything else, but they could see enough of the lakes to be sure of their outline and one thing about water landings, the water was flat. "Give me twenty percent flaps. I want time to look around a bit as we come down. We'll turn at the end of the lake and come back for landing."

Merton set the flaps and the Monster slowed.

****

"Folks, make sure your seat belts are fastened," Merton announced. "We're going to land for a bit. Just as soon as we clear up the problem we're having, we'll be on our way again."

"What's the problem?" Matthew said.

"Probably something electrical." Peter grinned. "Luckily, I can help with that."

"Are we lost?" Frankie's face was aflame with curiosity. "Are we stopping to ask directions?"

David Bartley and Sidi Uthman shared a look. "Certainly not."

Nanny snorted. "Men never ask for directions. They'd rather ride—or fly—around in circles all day." Then, as the implications of what she had said occurred to her the joke seemed to lose its humor. If they weren't stopping to ask for directions, what was wrong?

Matthew looked over at their only female companion, who'd gone white around the lips. "It'll be fine, Miss. The engines are running steady. It's probably just a an odd reading on an indicator or something." He started trying to distract her with stories while the rest of the passengers looked out the windows.

Hearing the conversation through the open cockpit door, Johan said, "Time to 'fess up. Hold her steady for a minute." Then he got up and went back to face the music. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid Frankie is right. We've missed a couple of our check points, probably because of the spotty visibility we've had today. So we're going to land at a small village on the edge of the lake and ask for directions. It should be no more than a chance to stretch your legs for a few minutes. Then we'll be on our way."

Frankie crowed. "I was right!" And started giggling.

"Amazing!" Nanny laughed.

"Captain!" Mr. Bartley protested. "You're letting down all mankind," though to Frankie he didn't really sound displeased.

Slightly red-faced because it was always embarrassing to admit they were lost, Johan said, "Our director, Magdalena Van de Passe, made stopping to ask directions airline policy."

"Ah, that explains it," Alberto DeLuca proclaimed jovially. "Our pilot and copilot are true men, self-sufficient in all ways, but like all gentlemen they must yield to the quirks of the ladies." He gave a florid bow to Nanny.

****

Blushing harder, Johan retreated to the cockpit and went back to the controls. By now they had flown over the village and he turned around to take up their landing approach. By they time they had finished the turn they were five hundred feet above the ground and losing about fifty feet a minute.

"Forty percent flaps," Johan told Merton and he throttled back the engines. The Monster slowed as they came back into the mist over the water. It was the wrong order. A mistake no bush pilot would make, nor any pilot with experience landing pontoon planes, but neither Johan or Merton had that sort of experience. Compared to just about any up-time multi-engine pilot they were rank amateurs. What they had seen was the Air Cushion Landing Gear go over bumps and ditches on land and logs floating in water without missing a beat. They had over flown the lake just like they were supposed to and it looked clear. With the patchy mist, shadows from the mountains, and the altitude of their flyover, it wasn't what a bush pilot would consider a proper examination. In fact, for half the flyover Johan had been calming the passengers rather than looking out the windows for debris or boats on the lake.

"Inflate the bag," Johan said and Merton started the motor that would fill the ACLG.

A few seconds later Merton reported, "Bag deployed." They were now a hover craft—or would be in a few seconds. They were almost half a mile from land, down to ten or so feet over the water and sinking slowly on flare effect. "Jesus! Pull up. Pull up! There's a boat!"

Johan jerked the stick back.

****

The last thing Thoman Klein expected was for a monster of any sort to drop on his head. Much less a monster that made those hideous growling noises.

It was the noise that drew his attention. Normally Lake Heiterwanger, especially this far from shore, was dead quiet. All the better for "not really fishing" as far as Thoman was concerned. He just had to get away from his wife, his mother and their constant chatter now and then.

When he turned to see what was making the noise, all the blood drained from the upper part of his body. A massive, rawhide-colored . . . thing was coming right at him. And above the thing, which looked like a lobed bag of some sort, was a bright blue . . . other thing. With wings. Four wings.

Thoman grabbed his oars, but it was too late. He jumped.

****

The Monster did miss Thoman, but just barely. The landing gear, made only of leather and canvas, caught the bow of his boat. The plane was traveling at over thirty miles per hour; the leather balloon—or at least a portion of it—wrapped around the bow of the skiff and flipped it neat as you please, lifting the starboard side up into the undercarriage of the plane. There was a loud bump followed by shouts from the passengers but the air cushion had cushioned the blow. Not without damage. A rip over ten feet long was torn in the bottom of the bag. Then they were down, trailing strips of leather and a shattered skiff. Now the water itself made up the bottom of the bag, plugging the major leak and leaving only the minor ones. The largest of which was a tear about a foot wide in the rear wall of the bag. They weren't going to sink. Heck, they wouldn’t sink even if the bag were removed entirely. They would become, in essence, a flat-bottomed boat. With most of the bag still in place and the bag motor running they were still a hovercraft, just not a very efficient one. The skirt on a hovercraft is supposed to leak; that's what makes it slip over the surface with very little drag. It just wasn't supposed to leak quite as much as it was at the moment.

Johan made a wide circle on the water and headed back to look for survivors. He saw a head bobbing in the water. "Take the stick, Merton, and get us up beside that guy. I'll go out and throw him a rope."

"I have the stick."

Johan got up, opened the emergency locker and grabbed a rope, then went through the opened door into the passenger compartment. "Keep your seats, folks. We had a problem on landing." The door to the cockpit was generally left open in flight. It was there primarily as an extra security measure when the plane was on the ground, making it a bit harder for someone to steal it by climbing aboard and flying off. "Folks, we hit a boat. Apparently someone was doing a bit of fishing. We're going back now to pick up the survivor." Then he opened the door and stepped out onto the bottom wing.

He watched as the plane approached the man in the water. Who was swimming like hell in the other direction. "Hold up there. I'll throw you a rope," Johan shouted over the noise of the engines.

****

Thoman looked over his shoulder to see the thing approaching him and a man standing on it with a rope in his hand. In the blink of an eye he went from being more scared than he had ever been in his life to more angry. They had almost killed him. Thoman didn't have the words for what these up-timers were and he could cuss for half an hour without repeating himself. He was so mad he almost didn't grab the rope that was thrown to him. The man on the machine pulled him toward it and he almost let go. The water around it bubbled and foamed like a witches' brew. But he was a quarter mile out from shore and the water was cold. He wasn't at all sure he could make it back to shore. The man who pulled him up was well-dressed, if in a strange style.

Damned up-timers and their flying machines. "You wrecked my boat," he yelled as soon as he was out of the water. "You lost me my trolling rig and my lunch. You soaked my clothes and almost killed me. I want restitution." There were faces in the doorway by now, watching the show. Then one of them spoke.

"Clearly he doesn’t know his place," the man in the funny hat said. "You ought to throw him back in and be done with it."

The man who had pulled Thoman out of the water gave the fellow in the funny hat a look, then said, "Was there anyone else on the boat?"

Thoman shook his head.

"We can talk about restitution once we get you back to shore. Meanwhile, step inside where it's warm."

It actually was warm inside the thing. And the seat the man showed him to was comfortable, although he didn't much like the seat belt. And he wasn't too impressed with the giggling little boy who kept peering at him from between the seats in front of him. And sticking out his tongue.

Plus, there were too many languages being spoken—particularly by the man in the funny hat. Who kept looking at Thoman and sneering.

Not to mention, he was still angry about the boat. These people were going to pay for that boat. Or else.

In a day of strange happenings, probably the strangest was after they'd gotten this monster machine to shore and unloaded. A man came struggling out of the front of the machine, using a very odd contraption that he called a walker. A man with, of all things, fake feet. Thoman had seen a peg leg before. But never fake feet.

"My name is Merton Smith. What is the lake called?" the man with fake legs asked.

"Heiterwanger See," Thoman told him.

"Where's the nearest large town?"

"Why do you want to know?"

Merton Smith gave Thoman an apologetic look. "We got off course. We were landing here to ask for directions. It's happened before and usually it's no problem, but the mist hid your skiff."

"Well, you'll get nothing more out of me or the rest of the village, either. Not until you've paid for my boat and for nearly killing me."

****

"How much?" Lucco Ricci, one of the businessmen from Venice, squeaked. "For that?" That was what was left of Maximilian I's rustic cabin. Located outside the village of Heiterwang; it was not in good repair.

"This is a small village, milord. There is no inn. And Her Grace's letter of transit doesn't give you the right to just take what you want. You could, if you like, sleep in that contraption you arrived in." It was said with all the proper deference but it translated to: Take it or leave it.

The very scruffy—and quite sharp—headman of the village gave Ricci a look. One that David could understand. It was a small village and you could tell it didn't have an easy time of things in general. Plus, here in the late spring, there wasn't a lot of surplus food to be found in most places. Still, David thought the villagers were making a mistake. He looked around. While not the best time of year, this was a beautiful place. The fact that Maximilian I had liked it for trout fishing suggested that with a little work it would make quite a nice resort, with fishing in summer and skiing in winter. Which would be a really nice source of additional income for the village. Lucco Ricci looked over to Johan.

"They have canvas and leather that we can buy. We can fix the bag with that and the patch kit and a bit of help sewing from the villagers," Johan said. "It'll take some time, though, so you may as well take their offer. We won't be able to leave until tomorrow. If then."

Lucco Ricci nodded and gave over the coins. The village had insisted on silver, not trusting USE dollars. Luckily Lucco had been in Grantville doing a bit of arbitrage. He had brought a couple of hundred thousand USE dollars to Grantville and used them to buy silver which he was taking back to Venice. Most in slugs of ninety-nine percent pure silver electrically separated from copper, but some in silver coins of various denominations and from various mints. It was all destined to make Venetian coins.

Merton and Johan had gone through their books and charts and found what they thought was the right lake. There were two of them connected by a narrow waterway, the Plansee and the Heiterwanger See. "See" apparently designated a mountain lake. The village that the Monster was sitting near was called Heiterwang, which fit. If that was where they were, they were over forty miles west of where they were supposed to be.

"Can I help?" David asked.

"Yeah," Merton said. "You can help me get back to the plane. I'll be spending the night guarding the cargo. These are Claudia de' Medici's lands, but considering the attitude of these people, better safe than sorry."

With a lot of help from the villagers—some of who seemed to really be enjoying the novelty—they'd managed to get the plane up on jacks. Johan and some of the local men who sewed sails were working on repairing the bag.

It was a long, cold night.

No one else but Signore DeLuca had very much in ...