The new items probably didn't include nitro, or the box would have exploded already. On the other hand, Gerry was inventive, smart, and had a mean streak in him to reckon with. Frank decided it was time to introduce calm and relaxation. "Say," he said, "now we've made out like we're a crew of madmen, where's the Freedom Arches in this town? Any chance of a few beers?"

Giovanna smiled. "No Freedom Arches in Venice! Not with the heel of the Council of Ten on the necks of the populace."

The words were said lightly, though, not with a snarl. Frank had learned enough of Venetian politics to know that the secret police of the Senate's clandestine governing body were nobody to fool with. On the other hand, they seemed to be more concerned with plots among the nobility than with the doings of Venice's working population. Not surprising, that. The artisans of Venice-especially the workers at the Arsenal-had a rather fearsome reputation themselves, and the Venetian powers-that-be had always been careful not to aggravate them.

Giovanna's smile kept widening and Frank found himself no longer thinking of politics at all. For a wonder, the girl even had straight teeth! Dimples!

He was lost, lost.

"We are free of our duties for the day at sunset-and it is Carnevale!" she announced. "We can meet my father and brothers and cousins at one of the taverna. I know which one they will be at, too, because it is right here in the palazzo."

Lost. And didn't care in the least. Even the prospect of meeting Giovanna's father and brothers on their first not-date didn't faze him at all.

"Frank?" said Gerry. "Do you have a problem with that?"

Frank frowned. "Problem?" How could there be any problems on this most sublime of all days?

"Astlay imetay ouyay amecay omehay unkdray, Frank," Ron said in a sing-song voice. "Aren't you going to have to speak with Dad about that?"

"Ah," Frank said. "No biggie. Dad calmed down, and I think you'll notice he didn't mind us staying up on the way down here as long as we were with Father Gus."

"Oh, yeah." Ron nodded. He could see the plan, right enough.

"Guys?" Gerry was looking worried. "If this is going to be anything like-like-" He gave Giovanna a nervous glance. "I mean like a date-"

Now the nervous glance came to Frank. "Okay, dates, I'm not trying to horn in on you but aybemay eshay's otgay riendsfay-I'd like not to bring the priest, okay?"

Giovanna was frowning. "I don't understand some of those words. But if you want me to give you dates, I warn you it is expensive. How much money you have?"

All three Stone brothers stared at her. Frank's heart stopped. The girl he was completely fascinated with-practically the love of his life already-turned out to be a prostitute!

She spread her hands, a bit exasperated. "What you expect? Dates have to be imported into Venice. From the Levant, I think."

Frank's heart started up again.

"Now, Gerry," said Ron, "leave it to your big brothers to be ahead of this situation. If Frank's thinking what I think he's thinking, I think we're thinking of the same plan." To Giovanna, he added: "Uh, the word 'dates' is just a slang expression. We'll explain it later. It's, uh, complicated. But it doesn't mean those fig things."

Gerry stroked his chin theatrically. "Hmmm. I think I think that I'm thinking what I think you're thinking, Frank, I really think so."

"Then you don't exist," said Frank firmly, "on the best authority, Descartes himself-who's still alive, remember-and so your opinion can and should be discarded. Just try and keep up, okay?"

"We are done here, yes?" asked Giovanna. "When can we go to the taverna?"

Frank hesitated. "Well . . . We won't be unpacking any of the stuff for the pharmaceutical lab today. Dad told me he wanted to make sure we had a safe place to set it up first. But I promised Magda we'd go help them get moved in downstairs and we'll probably run into Father Gus while we're down there. Giovanna, I suspect it's where you're going to get sent next anyway. Our stepmom travels with enough stuff for a medium-sized army and it'll take some doing to get them squared away. Sharon's no piker either, widder's weeds or not."

Giovanna tilted her head on one side. "What is a 'piker' and a 'widder' and why would either of them want weeds? Your father is the buon Dottore, yes?"

"Uh, yeah-but he's a chemist, not a doctor."

Giovanna frowned. "We were told that Tomas Stone was a maker of medicine, the Indian Hemp?"

"Well, yes, he makes medicines, and he sets bones and some other simple stuff, but he's not what you'd call a doctor. Sharon Nichols is really the Dottore in our delegation-uh, I think that should be Dottoressa, actually."

That made her eyebrows shoot up. She rattled off something in Italian that Frank couldn't follow at all.

"What? I mean, please say that again, slower?"

Giovanna tried it in English. "You have a lot of doctors-even female ones-that your father seems like nothing special?"

"Uh, I guess," said Frank, unsure where this was leading.

"From what we hear, you see, he makes physics and medicines that are better than anything we have ever known. The mist that kills lice-the diditi, I think it is called-and the specific against all illnesses, the clorfeniculo-"

"Chloramphenicol," Ron said.

"Si-chlorafenico, we hear that your father makes all these."

"He makes some other stuff, too," Frank said. His father would want to be modest, but Frank thought he overdid it. "He makes hash for pain, and some disinfectants and some herbal medicines. He consults for some of the other chemists on the drugs they make. Dad knows a fair bit about making medicines, but it's not what he does for money." He scratched his head a moment. "I guess you could say he's the best . . ." He searched for the word in Italian, but couldn't find it. "-drug-maker in Grantville, but that's practical industrial chemistry. He's one of the two with the theoretical training to understand how it all works, though. Dad's good at research." He grinned. "You won't get what this means, but he made LSD in the sixties."

"No," said Giovanna, looking thoughtful, "I do not know what it means. Do I need to?"

Frank exchanged a look with Gerry and Ron. "On the whole," he said, "I don't think you do. Let's just say it was a hard thing to do, and he did it. Now he makes dye and disinfectant and some other things. Yes, and medicines."

"Anyway," said Gerry, "what were you saying about Dad?"

"Oh," said Giovanna, "only that it is always the way with the natural philosophers that they have a huge amount of baggage. There are many in town, and we have been working in many places that have needed extra chambermaids, and we see a lot."

Frank nodded. "True enough. So let's go see how they're getting on."

Chapter 11.

"Tom?" Mazzare put his head around the door. Within was the kind of controlled chaos that Tom Stone either liked or just seemed to generate by his mere presence. The man still clung firmly to his relaxed sixties-era hippie ethics, principles and aesthetics-although he now owned the biggest and most profitable coal-tar dye works in Europe.

Which was to say, the only one. So far, at least. Years of recreational pharmacology on top of a nearly completed masters' degree in the real thing made Tom Stone-also known as Stoner, for reasons that were not hard to deduce-the leading research, industrial and medical chemist in seventeenth-century Europe, if not the world. Not much in the way of spectacular dyeing chemistry was "scheduled by history" to happen until after the Napoleonic period-which meant that Stoner had better than a two-century lead on his competition. In their old timeline, dyes along with soaps had been the first real make-money-hand-over-fist branches of chemistry. So Stoner had a very profitable business ready-made once circumstances-and Magda and her money-minded father-had rubbed his nose in it.

For that matter, the man could probably be making a second fortune in pharmaceuticals, since he was also the principal manufacturer of the new medicines the Americans had introduced into the world. But on that subject, Tom Stone had drawn the line-quite firmly, too, despite the mild squawks of his wife and the loud splutters of protest from his father-in-law.

Medicines, Tom Stone made at cost-and, even there, tried as much as possible to cover his costs through barter rather than money. Given that the electricity he used that was produced by Grantville's huge power plant was essentially free anyway-the power plant produced far more electricity than Grantville could possibly use-he was in effect subsidizing his own pharmaceutical business.

As Tom Stone put it, he was not about to become a bloodsucker on the misery of others. Just about everyone agreed with Stoner's wife and father-in-law that he was a hopelessly impractical man, to be sure. But it was no accident that he was also becoming one of the most popular people in central Europe, especially with the poor German immigrants who were still flooding into Thuringia. If anything, he was even more highly regarded by the rapidly growing population of Magdeburg, the new capital of the United States of Europe rising out of the ruins on the Elbe.

There was even a rumor that one village in Catholic Franconia was petitioning the pope to declare him a saint. Not even a rumor, really-Father Mazzare knew it was true, although he'd seen fit to keep the knowledge to himself. No point in disappointing the villagers prematurely, he felt, with such picayune details as the fact that canonization was reserved for dead people. And had never been extended to someone who was not only not a Catholic but whose religion-such as it was-revolved largely around mandalas and alternative states of mind.

"Tom?" the priest repeated.

Again, Stone didn't hear him. Mazzare wasn't surprised. Frau Stone was somewhere in the background marshalling Frank, Gerry and Ron, a couple of shanghaied soldiers and what looked like a platoon of chambermaids-where had they come from?-into arranging the medical mission's quarters. Although more of a bluestocking than Hanni, Magda conceded the dreadnought-class hausfrau nothing in haus-pride.