1632 Snippets

The Macedonian Hazard - Snippet 03 214 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad March 12, 320BCE The kiln design was mostly out of Wikipedia, but Donald had helped. It turned out that plumbing helps with preheating air to make the fire hotter. Something called reverse flow. The air came in right next to where the burned air went out, so the flue preheated the air. Stella was the one who wrote up the variance request that let them put the kiln behind the house in the fifty foot field that went between the houses and the town wall. Stella had never...

1637 No Peace Beyond The Line - Snippet 43 "But I do not know these things." "Perhaps not, but they will listen and obey what you tell them, Lady Anne Cathrine." He smiled. "You may constantly point out that you are 'only' a king's daughter, but they still refer to you as 'the princess'. Without that voice of authority, they will continue to bicker with each other. You need not be knowledgeable, but even so, you will have far more knowledge than any of them, simply by dint of having been present at such expansive entertainments." An hour. She...

The Macedonian Hazard - Snippet 02 It was hard work, but it paid fifteen bucks an hour in ship credit and Stella was going to need every dime of that. 214 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad December 28, 321BCE Stella climbed the short bamboo ladder to the ground floor that was four feet above the ground. President Wiley promised that they would get plumbing using bamboo as soon as possible, but for now there were composting toilets that amounted to honey buckets that would be picked up by carts that would come around daily. The flooring was...

1637 No Peace Beyond The Line - Snippet 42 Chapter 22 Oranjestad, St. Eustatia Moments after retrieving the already-anxious Cuthbert Pudsey, a familiar voice with a Dutch accent inquired, "Do you approve of the preparations, Lady Anne Cathrine?" She turned after an instant's delay: the time it took for her to be sure that she had successfully pasted a smile over her expression of surprise and fear that, somehow, someone had seen her eavesdropping in the infirmary. Maarten Tromp was standing just to one side, hands folded before him. As he...

The Macedonian Hazard - Snippet 01 The Macedonian Hazard By Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, Paula Goodlett Prologue: Build, Sell, or Die Queen of the Sea, off the coast of Trinidad November 28, 321 BCE Stella Matthews lay on the bed in her cabin on the Queen of the Sea and watched TV. Stella was fifty-two years old, a bit overweight, recently divorced, with two adult children left behind by The Event, and was on the Queen of the Sea to, as the movie said, "get her groove back". Being dropped in the fourth century Before the Common Era was not helping...

1637 No Peace Beyond The Line - Snippet 41 "Seems to me we are here to spy on matters that are manifestly none of our business. And how is it that Sophie's understanding of personal matters might be lacking? She is a widow, she knows --" "Her marriage was arranged for her. Just as Poppa had planned for you and me, until we were saved by the changes wrought by the up-timers. Now be silent or begone!" "This is wrong," Leonora grumbled. But she craned her neck to get a better look through the crack of the door. *   *   * The...

1637 No Peace Beyond The Line - Snippet 40 Chapter 21 Oranjestad, St. Eustatia Anne Cathrine, daughter of King Christian IV by morganatic marriage (and so, not a princess) yawned, stretched, fended off the sunlight that eked in through the slight gap in the hurricane shutters. They were just slightly ajar, held there by an adjustable hook-and-eye that had been set just so. She smiled into the morning light. That had been done by her wonderful, kind, thoughtful, Eddie. Her war-hero, ducal, up-time machine-wizard Eddie. Her adoring, innocent,...

1637 No Peace Beyond The Line - Snippet 39 "So our choice was between standing around while the knowledge from Grantville's library drives a radically new history, or to have a hand in shaping it. And these islands are among the places where those changes will come the fastest and the hardest." Joost Banckert's frown was no longer impatient but somber. "There is much to think about in what you have said, Eddie. But none of it shines a light on how mariners such as us, bred to pursue profit individually and aggressively, can make money when we...