Part 17 (2/2)

In the course of the winter, they'd each built several ood as those done by modem boys, despite their lack of balsa wood, silk paper, and quick-setting glues In the spring, they were back at kites again, and getting innovative about it The winner of one co, with three strings controlling it

But toward su a little bored, so I told theliders, and they built a dozen of the his body to shi+ft the center of gravity of the craft, rather than by the more conventional use of control surfaces What can make them deadly is that in a downdraft, the plane and pilot can experience zero G At this point, the pilot has absolutely no control over his plane

shi+fting the center of gravity has no effect when there is no gravity! Colider can be in any orientation, even upside down or backward, and a fatal crash is likely

Downdrafts can't happen close to the ground, and for this reason I forbade theo rounded for a rounded at least once I even caught Count Lah, but I couldn't dowas too much for him

We had our first fatality that year One of the boys broke a dozen regulations by taking a glider to the top of the big conical hill alone during a windstorm A shepherd tried to stop hiot there They say he was high out of sight before he got into trouble

His body was sent back to his parents and three other boys were pulled from the school

But teeks after that, the new class arrived, twice as large as the first one, and things went on, twelve dozen boys strong

Krystyana had a fine healthy boy that summer, and pretended that she didn't notice what anybody said about her lack of a husband I got to sleeping with her occasionally, mostly because I felt sorry for her, and by Christood that year, and the new crops were starting to be plentiful enough to rain towers built at all our installations, each with a windrain is just left to sit there, it soon becoularly pump it to the top with an Archis and rats are killed and the grain stays dry enough to retard fungus, This is still the method used in the twentieth century

We had tons and tons of sugar beets at Okoitz, and I had to figure out how to convert thear is a ar refineries are regularly sold to other countries

But the more important an industry is, the ineers who spend their entire lives working on nothing but sugar refineries, with the result that a generalist like et involved I didn't even know the basic process!

Zoltan caar beet, but he had heard about the process for refining sugar cane, which grew on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea This onderful, because bylime, the caustic stuff that mortar is made out of, to the beet juice to make it crystallize But between Zoltan's che plant installed at Okoitz before Christmas Itto keep the

Free popcorn becaon Inns We had twenty-two of thenacy at the Franciscan monastery in Cracow He was my confessor, my confidant, the one person in this world that I could be honest and comfortable with

This tinacy had been elected to take his place

”Congratulations on your pronacy,” I said

”Thank you,than my own”

”Mine? What do youwheels of your design that did it I encouraged , and the project has been a huge success Somehow, I received ht that Friar Roman did most of the work there ”

”He did, but there is very little justice in the world However, I'm sure that you would rather talk about the inquisition that the Church is conducting on you At least you always ask about it,” Abbot Ignacy said

”I take it that there is news?”

The Church was holding that inquisition to determine whether I was an instrument of God, to be eventually sainted, I suppose, or if I was an instrument of the devil, to be burned at the stake Yes, I was most interested in what they decided!

”There is You will recall that I wrote up my report promptly within months of your arrival in this century

My abbot acted briskly, and within a few months sent the report, with annotations, to the bishop here in Cracow, but his excellency felt that perhaps this sort of report should go through the regular branch of the Church, rather than the secular one That is to say, through the hoh his office, so that summer the report was sent to the home monastery in Italy But the home monastery felt that no, this was a proper matter for the secular branch to handle, and sent it back here”

”The report was therefore sent, with further annotations, to the Bishop of Cracow again However, by this time you had established yourself in the Diocese of Wroclaw, so the Bishop of Cracow found a traveler going to Wroclaw and sent the report to the bishop there”

”Wait a minute, father I was there when that report came in It was at my Trial by Combat, and both bishops were in attendance So were you, for that matter Why didn't the Bishop of Cracow just hand your report to the Bishop of Wroclaw?”

”How should I know that, my son? Perhaps he hadn't had the opportunity to annotate it properly”

”In any event, the report was sent to the Archbishop of Gniezno, in northern Poland, who in turn sent it on to Roh the proper channels, with a request that the Abbot of the Franciscan hly, and report back It happens that I ae, so I have written a cooing to Wroclaw Actually, writing it was an easy ertips, having written the original reportsmoothly, and as fast as can be expected”

All I could see was that after three years all that had happened was that Father Ignacy had written a letter in reply to his own letter! I became convinced that the bureaucracy of the medieval Church was as screwed up as that of the stupid Russians!

”Father,have a postal service that covers every major city in Poland Why don't you just mail the report to the archbishop?”

”And bypass his excellency the Bishop of Wroclaw? Heaven forbid! You wouldn't happen to be going to Wroclaould you?”

”Not directly Just mail it to him It only costs a penny, and it will be there in less than a week”

”An interesting suggestion, Conrad I'll have to h channels, of course”

”Of course!”

The Great Hunt went off very well, and our new killing ground was ready in ti through what had become a substantial city There were many feild boars and wolves than before, at least locally, anda rake-off froiance to the duke ' the total nue

I had a proble all of them But the price stayed up and it was vastly profitable My aurochs herd was up to eight dozen ani

The wilderness was being pushed back, the land converted to far up On Laave an edible fruit or nut should be left standing, and except for certain areas preserved as forests-about thirty percent of the total-all else should be cut for more pasture area

And so 1234 wound around

Chapter Seventeen