Sarah was talking about her dad's new job at the finance subcommittee, and its importance to all things military. "Dad says that we're going to be in trouble if we don't come up with stuff to trade with the Germans."

Trent argued almost by reflex. "We have plenty to trade, TV and radio, cars and microwaves. All sorts of stuff." It was, after all, obvious that people from the end of the twentieth century must be rich in comparison to people of the first half of the seventeenth.

Sarah was not impressed. "Can you build a TV? What about a TV station? My Dad says 'We have to buy food, and we are gonna keep right on needing food.' We're not gonna keep having TVs and so on to sell. Once they're sold, they're gone."

Sarah, an astute observer might note, was a bit pedantic on the subject of My Dad Said. She might have a crush on Brent, but she loved and respected her father. That last part, had he known it, would have come as quite a shock to Fletcher Wendell. He was convinced that his daughter's youthful admiration had gone the way of the dodo a year and a half hence.

Before the Ring of Fire, that youthful admiration had indeed been on the decline. When his job disappeared with the Ring of Fire, Sarah was naturally concerned with how that would affect her. This entailed a certain amount of resentment; youthful admiration had gone almost comatose. What use after all, is an insurance salesman in the Dark Ages? Then, with his new job with the finance subcommittee, Fletcher Wendell suddenly had an important role in the survival of Grantville. His older daughter's admiration for Dad had popped right out of its sickbed as if it had never even been asleep. Which fact she had gone to some length to hide-admiration for one's dad being damaging to fourteen-year-old dignity.

"There're things we can build," David said, "We have the machine shops." This comment had less to do with defending Trent, than the fact that David, for all intents and purposes, didn't have a dad and sort of resented Sarah's harping on hers.

"What?" Sarah asked.

Alas, David had no ready answer, So he had to make do with a disgruntled shrug and a vague "Lots of stuff." Not nearly impressive enough. Shortly after that the gathering broke up and the kids went home.

David was bothered by that shrug, and the lack of knowledge it represented, much more than anyone else in the group. Partly that was because it's always less pleasant to taste your foot than to see someone put theirs in their mouth. But mostly it was because the grim reality of Sarah's comments. .h.i.t a bit closer to home for him than for the others. He remembered some bad times from before they moved back to Grantville after "Uncle" Donovan left. David's world had come apart before, and it showed all the signs of doing so again. There was a sort of directionless tension in the air. As if the grownups around him knew something had to be done, but didn't really know what. And there were major money concerns, always a bad sign. Worse, unlike last time, it seemed to cover the whole town, not just his family.

David started actively looking for something to make. Something for people to spend their energy on. Something that would bring in money. Something, anything, to make the uncertainty go away.

Brent Partow spent the night thinking about what Sarah had said as well. He wasn't worried, he was interested. Brent spent his life in search of the next interesting thing to do. To Brent, Sarah's concerns about saleable products simply meant a fun game of what can we build? By the next day he had a plan. He talked it over with Trent, who only had minor objections. Trent was afraid that if the grownups found out they might like the idea. Which, of course, meant they would take the thing over, put it in a cla.s.s, suck all the fun out of it, and turn it into work. Trent was also afraid that if the grownups found out they might be displeased. Which, of course, meant they would forbid the kids the game, and just to make sure, a.s.sign them something boring to do. So his sole restriction was: no grownups.

June 14, 1631: A Creek Inside the Ring of Fire

David was the first to arrive. Then Brent and Trent arrived together. By the time Sarah got there, the issue was decided.

Sarah, feeling somewhat left out, initially scoffed at the plan. But then David pointed out that, if what her father said was true, it was their duty to Grantville to do something. That ended that. David was a dedicated and marginally astute observer of Sarah Wendell.

So the four began their search for the right thing to make. First they compiled lists of things. Guns, airplanes hovercraft, cars, electric engines, nails, pliers...

The lists got very long because Brent had declared that the first winner would be the person who came up with the most possibilities, whether they turned out to be possible or not. So the first list included such practical and easy to make things as phasers, s.p.a.ce shuttles, nuclear submarines, and cruise missiles. Each of which was greeted with raspberries and giggles, but each of which gained the originator a point marked down by Trent. A number of the suggestions that were to eventually be made by one or another group of up-timers were greeted with the above accolade. After about an hour the kids were starting to get a little bored. Trent's suggestion that they adjourn, and each make a separate list over the next couple of days, met with general approval.

June 16, 1631: The Grantville High School Library

Sarah won by fifteen entries. There was some debate as to whether all her entries were indeed separate items. In a number of cases she had included the final item along with several component parts. Among the four lists there were close to a thousand separate items. If you eliminated duplicates, there were still over five hundred. When you eliminated the utterly impossible, matter transmitters and the like, there were still over three hundred.

Then they tried to eliminate the impractical. But what makes the difference between practical and impractical? That is not so easy a thing to determine, and each kid came at the question from a different angle. To Brent and Trent it was still very much a game, so their version of practical had more to do with interesting than anything else. Sarah imagined presenting her parents with a list of things that could be sold and gaining their respect, so her version paid much attention to what would be saleable. David was the only one who was actually looking for something that would make a good investment for his family. His problem was, he really wasn't sure what that meant.

All in all, the whole thing was a lot of fun. Some things-nails, for example-were eliminated when Sarah informed them someone else was already working on them. The finance subcommittee was apparently keeping track of that sort of thing. Other things, such as airplanes, were marked as practical but not for them. A number of things were marked as practical for them; but they didn't stop at the first of these, since they had agreed to go through the whole list.

Then they reached the sewing machine. Brent, who had little interest in sewing, proclaimed that it was impractical because it needed an electric motor-and they had already determined that for them, the electric motor was impractical.

David remembered his grandmother's old Singer and that it had been converted from treadle power. This was not actually true, merely a family rumor, but David didn't know that. So he pointed out that a sewing machine did not need an electric motor, which was true.

Sarah, who recognized the root motive of Brent's rejection of the sewing machine-s.e.xism, pure and simple-naturally took a firm position in favor of the sewing machine.

Poor Trent didn't know which way to turn. Arguing with Brent was dear to his heart, as was tearing down impossible schemes, but sewing machines were for girls.

"They're too complicated," he claimed, "we could never make one from an encyclopedia entry. We would need a design or a model or something."

"We have one!" David was well pleased to be on Sarah's side against Brent. "At least my grandma has one, and it's old. It was converted from treadle or pedal power to electric sometime, but all they did was put on an electric motor to replace the pedals."

What are you going to do when faced with such intransigence? You just have to show them. Trent and Brent were going to show that it could not be done. David and Sarah, that it could.

June 16, 1631: Delia Higgins' House

Delia was sewing when the kids arrived. She had been sewing quite a bit lately. She had worked out a deal with the Valuemart, and she had been patching, hemming, and seaming ever since. It was now providing a fair chunk of the family income. Still, she was pleased enough to hear the pounding hooves of a herd of teens to take a break. Such herds had been in short supply since the Ring of Fire.

She was a bit surprised when the kids wanted to look at her old Singer. Kids took an interest in the oddest things. She showed it off readily enough. She was rather proud of it; almost a hundred years old, and still worked well.

Brent was converted. There were all sorts of gadgets and doohickeys, and neat ways of doing things. Figuring out what did what and why, and what they could make, and what they could replace with something else would be loads of fun.

Trent resisted for a while, but not long. A sewing machine really is a neat piece of equipment.

June 16, 1631: Evening, Delia Higgins' House

As Delia watched David at the dining room table, his dark eyes studying some papers with an intensity rarely lavished on schoolwork, she thought about the incursion of the small herd of teens. David was up to something, she could tell.

She remembered a phone call she had gotten four years ago, from a ten-year-old David, explaining the hitherto unknown facts that Ramona had lost her job two months before, that they were about to be thrown out of their apartment, and there was no food in it anyway.

"Could we come live with you Grandma? Mom can help you out with the storage lot."

"Where is your mother?" Delia has asked.

"She's out looking for work. 'Cept she ain't. She goes to the park and sits." David hastened to add: "She looked at first, she really did. But Mom don't like it when things don't work. After a while she just quits."

They had worked it out between them. It was mostly David's plan. She had called that night and asked if Ramona could come home and work at the storage lot, to give her a bit more time with her garden.

It had been a while after they got back to Grantville before David had gone back to being just a kid. There had been a certain watchfulness about him. A waiting for the other shoe to drop, so he could catch it before things got even more busted. The watchfulness had slowly faded. Ramona had never been aware of it. Any more than she had ever known about the plot to bring them home. But Delia remembered that watchfulness, and it was back. Subtler than before, more calculating, but there. David had decided that he needed to save his world again, and was trying to figure out how.

This time Delia would not wait for a phone call.

She finished dressing the Barbie in her version of a 1630s' peasant outfit. "David, come give me hand in the garden. I just remembered some lifting I need you to do for me."

Delia kept a compost heap for her garden. This occasionally involved David, Donny or Ramona with a wheelbarrow. In this instance, it made a good excuse to get David alone for a quiet talk.

David, deep in the process of determining which parts of a sewing machine might best be made by a 1630s' blacksmith, grumbled a bit; but did as he was told.

It took all of five minutes, and more importantly a promise not to interfere without good reason, to get David talking. This didn't reflect a lack of honor on David's part, but trust in his grandmother. Once he started talking it took a couple of hours for him to run down. During those two hours, Delia was again reminded that kids understand more and listen more than people generally gave them credit for. Or than they want credit for, mostly.

The economics of the Ring of Fire were made clear. Well, a little clearer. She learned about Brent and Trent's talent for making things, how they worked off one another. She learned about Sarah's understanding of money, and the financial situation of Grantville as a whole, and how Delia's family's situation was a smaller version of the same thing. That they had lots of capital in the form of goods, but nothing to invest it in. That what were needed were products that they could make the machines to make. David had to explain that part twice to make it clear. He used the sewing machine as an example.

"It works like this, Grandma. We have a sewing machine. If we sell it, it's gone. Mr. Marcantonio's machine shop could make sewing machines if we didn't need it to make other stuff, but eventually it's going to have breakdowns, and it won't be able to make sewing machines any more. Especially if all it's making is sewing machine parts and not machine shop parts to keep the machine shop running. But if Mr. Marcantonio's shop makes some machines that make sewing machine parts, then when those machines break down we have some place to go to get more of them. Every step away from just taking what we have and selling it costs more, but means it takes longer for us to run out of stuff to sell. The machines that make the sewing machine parts don't have to be as complicated as those in Mr. Marcantonio's shop, because they don't need to be as flexible. 'Almost tools,' Brent says."

Sarah Wendell and the Partow twins made a new friend that evening; their parents, even more so. Delia was impressed by the kids and the parents who had given them the knowledge they had.

She was also impressed with David. She promised not to interfere unless asked, but made him promise to ask for her help if needed. She added her vote to the sewing machine because it was a machine itself, so in a way it added yet another level to the levels he had talked about. She gave permission to disa.s.semble her Singer if it was needed. She also promised backing if the kids came up with a plan that they convinced her could work.

"We'll find the money to do it, David. You and your friends come up with a plan that has a good shot of working and I'll find the money."

David Bartley went to bed that night at peace with the world. For the first time since the town meeting after the Ring of Fire, his stomach didn't bother him at all.