In large letters, the title " Jena-Eisenach Eisenbahngesellschaft" stretched over the whole map. Below this title, the map showed the coat of arms of the five towns and the three Ernestine duchies-now states of the NUS.

"This is our target: We will build a railroad along this line. The towns and people whose coats of arms are shown here have signed the company contract today. All of them bring estates or cash into the company, and there will be a bond to raise at least another ten million dollars from everyone who is willing to invest into the future of Thuringia."

Millions of questions and answers later Marshall threw himself onto the couch in his apartment. The shareholders and prospective investors were still discussing what they had learned during the buffet at the hotel, but he had excused himself. The air had been getting too bad for his allergies.

The itching reminded him how everything had begun. In the early 1970s after returning from Nuremberg where he had worked for the U.S. Army he had started teaching engineering and drafting in Fairmont. There he met the newly divorced Janice O'Keefe, who shortly afterwards became Janice Ambler, and then he moved to Grantville.

They wanted to have children, but it didn't work. And since Janice had two already from her first marriage with Dennis Haygood, she blamed Marshall.

Oh, not openly, but he could see how she more and more kept a distance from him, and more and more dived into her work. With the deterioration of their marriage, began the deterioration of his health.

First came headaches. He had examinations but they couldn't find a cause. Then his skin began to itch at different places. He had more examinations, and allergy tests, with again no results.

When he started coughing every time he entered the school building, he decided to quit his job in Fairmont and teach in Grantville's new tech center.

The next step down came when he noticed that the itching and coughing and the headaches all got worse whenever he met Janice.

Okay, he thought, let's visit a couch doctor. Perhaps all his woes were psychosomatic, derived from an emotional problem.

Some thousands of bucks later, he noticed that nothing got better. One of the other doctors had spoken about "Multiple chemical sensitivity." That meant a kind of super-allergy against everything, but nobody else believed that this disease even existed.

Whether this was true or not, it could only get better when he tried to avoid all possible sources of chemicals. This included scents and bleaches in clothing detergent, tobacco smoke, perfumes, and so on.

In short, Grantville and his wife. He asked Janice to stop smoking, and she did it. He asked her to stop using perfumes, and she did it. He asked her to stop using scented detergent, and Janice exploded.

"You hypochondriac, you idiot, you- Do you think the whole world turns around you? Can't you even consider another person beside yourself? Best you hide in a cave and let the entrance collapse."

Since he also could not prevent cars from driving through the town, he quit his job in the Tech Center, moved into the basement of their house, which already contained his model railroad, installed an air washer and airtight seals at the doors. Fortunately, he had a part-time job writing a regular column for the Industrial Engineer, and there were enough mail-order companies to keep him alive.

The doorbell rang. At first, Marshall didn't want to get up, but then decided otherwise. Only few of the people at the hotel knew where he lived. It was not probable that one of them would appear now.

When he opened the door, Janice was standing there, an embarrassed expression on her face that he hadn't seen for several years.

"Yeah, what do you want?" he asked.

"To talk with you. Can I come in?"

With a big gesture, he invited her. She hadn't been in his apartment since-was that in 1995? Three hundred sixty-two years from now. A long time.

She sat down in an armchair. He sat down on his couch again.

"So what?" he demanded.

"I saw you at the hotel. Not directly, but on tape."

"And?"

"You looked well. You lookwell. And you looked happy. It seems you've found something."

Marshall smiled. "Thanks. Finally, I've found something worth living for and working for. Is that, what you came to say?"

"Marshall, I know we got on poorly the last few years, and we both know that we are both to blame for it."

Then she saw him frowning. "Okay, I admit, I'm to blame for a big part of it. I buried myself too deep in my work, after you buried yourself in your apartment-or your sickness buried you-be that as it may.

"But you should have looked yourself in the face in these years. Even now when you opened the door, you scowled at me. I simply ran out of steam." She laughed ironically when she used that figure of speech in front of the big model railroad.

"And what is your point?"

"My point is that I am happy when you are. Really. You were never happy during the last ten years, and me either, every time I saw you. I'm not saying anything about getting together again; thattrain has definitely left the station."

Now both laughed.

Janice had to have the last word. "I wanted to tell you that from my point of view, you're on the right track."

Marshall laughed, rose, and extended a hand. "Truce?"

Janice rose too, and looked astonished at his hand. "Since when are you shaking hands again?" Then she smiled, took his hand and pumped. "But yes, truce!

"And now tell me about your Don Quixote adventure, your fight against the windmills, and the kids you saved from these bandits, and adopted afterwards."

Marshall grinned. "I had no idea how that would go around.

"I wouldn't call them exactly 'adopted,' and there isn't really that much to tell. I visited them yesterday; they live with a German family and go to school. Since I was constantly traveling, I haven't seen them all that much.

"Now that may change. I'm in charge of the R amp;D facilities of the railroad company in Jena now, so I can come over on weekends."

GrantvilleTechCenter

Next morning

"Yes I know," Marshall admitted. "I should have stayed longer."

Ambrose Salerno scowled at him while nodding.

"Hey," Marshall continued. "It was end of school year when I left. I finished everything I had promised. And in the meantime so many down-timers have arrived here able to substitute for me. You have the real living William Oughtred here. You don't need meto teach the children the usage of slipsticks.

"You know that I didn't feel well. My asthma was getting worse, so please don't scowl on me. Now what about my proposal?"

Ambrose Salerno's furrows got deeper. "The whole senior class, you want to employ them?"

"For one thing, it's not me; it's the railroad company employing them. And for another thing, of course only those who want to work for a railroad company in Jena. But we need as many surveyors, civil engineers, machinists and so on as we can get; people with ideas and people who are not infected with up-timer attitudes."

"Ha!" Ambrose shouted, "As if your attitudes are any different."

"And that's exactly the point. If you, and I, and the West Virginian steam-heads start to build a railroad, we all know too well what can be done, and what can't be done. We know much too much of the history.