Part VI
Those dying generations
Chapter 38
The last few miles were the worst.
Eddie Cantrell was quite certain he’d never been so exhausted in his entire life. He stood watching as the long, worn-out column reached more or less level ground south of Wismar at last and rubbed his eyes wearily.
Thank God Gustavus’ canal-building crews had begun their efforts by hacking out a roadway (of sorts) to parallel the channel’s course from Lake Schwerin to Wismar Bay! Without that, the entire trip would have been impossible . . . or, at least, so difficult trying to make it wouldn’t have been worth the effort. He’d been this way once before already since Becky’s warning had reached Grantville, but this time was different. Very different.
Louie Tillman’s Chris Craft groaned past him on its improvised cart, fiberglass hull lurching as the clumsy wooden wheels found every uneven spot in the muddy, crudely graded roadbed. A long line of horses stretched out in front of it—thirty or forty of them, he couldn’t really remember which in his exhausted state—and harness creaked as they leaned into it. Nor were they the only source of motive power. Scores of men, virtually all of them civilians from Wismar, conscripted for the task by the small garrison of Swedish troops Gustavus had left in the city, heaved and grunted right alongside the draft animals.
That launch had a dry weight of just over three tons. Intellectually, Eddie had known all along that 17th-century Europeans were accustomed to moving such weights by brute muscle strength. After all, some of their heavier artillery pieces weighed at least half again as much. But that knowledge had been dry and theoretical, harvested from histories of events long past. Even now, after two years here, he hadn’t been prepared to see something the sheer size of Tillman’s launch moving, however slowly and clumsily, under nothing but the power of straining muscle and sinew.
“How much longer, do you think?” a weary voice asked beside him, and he turned to look at the speaker.
“I’d guess another six to ten hours,” he replied, and Jack Clements shook his head.
“Have to say I thought you were out of your mind to try it,” he admitted. “Of course, I’d already decided you and Mike were both out of your minds to even contemplate something this crazy. I never thought we’d make it as far as the lake, much less cross-country from this end of it.” His thick thatch of white hair gleamed in the gradually strengthening light of a very early dawn, and his face was etched with deep lines of fatigue as he shook his head again.
“Never thought you’d make it as far as the lake?” Eddie snorted. “Hey, you had the easy part! At least you got to use internal combustion engines! Best I could do was steam. And not very good steam, either!”
“If you think getting those monsters down the Saale was ‘easy,’ internal combustion or not, you’re out of your frigging mind, whippersnapper,” Clements riposted with a tired chuckle.
Eddie grinned back at him. He hadn’t known Clements very well before the Ring of Fire, but all of Grantville’s younger people had been fond of him. Despite his own age, rapidly approaching that of mandatory retirement, Clements had spoken up for their interests before several meetings of the Grantville town council. He’d also been a member of the local school board, where he’d done his best to ensure that the board considered how the students might feel about the various issues which came before it.
“Damn,” Clements continued, kneading the sore muscles of his back, “but that river is one shallow son-of-a-bitch. Couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times we grounded. Even as slow as we were taking it, there was a time or two when I thought we’d never get Watson’s Folly to float off again. Good thing Frank sent the zodiacs along. At least I could send them out ahead with Al’s fishing fathometer to look for the really shallow spots.” He shook his head. “Even then . . .”
His voice trailed off as Watson’s Outlaw came creaking and groaning along in the Chris Craft’s wake. The huge, angular slab of fiberglass loomed above the men and horses straining to move it, and Clements grunted.