by Eric Flint
"Where do you intend to get it?" Carolyn raised her eyebrows.
Mary smiled. "From the Wettins; or, at least, through the Wettins, since it appears that we can't get it from parliament. Through the right Wettins. I've been talking to Wilhelm Wettin's uncle, Duke Ludwig of Anhalt-Kothen. He's been very much involved with education reform projects for twenty years or more. Some of them went all the way up to the Reichstag, the Imperial Diet."
"And he," Carolyn pointed out, "couldn't ever get any money appropriated for them, either."
"He says that Wilhelm might be some help, at least with the publicity. The two of them can get the members of their Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft -in spite of 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' why does a name like "Fruit-bearing Society" strike me as hopelessly absurd?-to write letters and poems and such. Newspaper articles. Create a favorable attitude among the intellectual elite." Mary Simpson was not easily swayed.
"Intellectual elites are not noted for having large amounts of excess capital to donate to worthy causes." Carolyn smiled, but it didn't take the sting out of her words.
"They're tutors to the children of people with excess capital; private secretaries to people with excess capital. Atmosphere helps, too. It will contribute to creating the milieu in which the normal school becomes a charity with eye appeal."
"Let's create a milieu in which we have enough money to pay the faculty their first month's wages." Carolyn had a relentless sense of the practical.
Mary pulled another letter out of her purse. "Yes, let's. I just heard from Veronica Dreeson. This summer, she is going to the Upper Palatinate to try to retrieve anything that she can from her first husband's estate. The regent there, Duke Ernst, is Wilhelm Wettin's brother. Everything that I've been able to find out about him says pretty much one thing. For all his life long, the slightest whiff of chalk dust acted on him like the aroma of Chanel No. 5. He was attracted to proposals for educational reform the way moths are attracted by mating pheromones."
"Let me guess," Carolyn said. "Ronnie Dreeson is afraid that if she goes on this trip by herself, Duke Ernst will want to keep her in Amberg to discuss early childhood education rather than letting her get on with the project of getting her money back. She has invited you to come along and talk schools."
"Precisely. And I'm going. I told my husband John that there's absolutely no reason to expect any problems. Everybody says that the action this year will be to the north, against the League of Ostend."
****
Grantville
There wasn't any more chaos or racket than was customary in a grade school, but it was seven o'clock in the evening rather than the middle of the day. Keith Pilcher paused in the corridor. There were tutoring sessions in the library; after-care in the gym, and some group was holding a meeting in the cafeteria. There were third-quarter parent-teacher conferences going on in some of the classrooms; in the art room, there were high school girls conducting craft projects for the children whose parents had to bring them along to the conferences because they couldn't find, or couldn't afford, sitters. There were no pipe cleaners; no one was manufacturing crayons yet; but the paper mill in Badenburg now collected the water with which the Stones' dye works cleaned out its pots. Colored construction paper had made a comeback and there was plenty of glue.
Maxine's classroom was at the far end. She had left for school before dawn this morning; he had dropped the kids off on his way to work an hour later. Now she was leading a whole squadron of middle-aged German women in… "You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in and then you shake it all about." Traditional methods of teaching foreign languages had been sacrificed to Grantville's acute need. People learned to speak English painfully slowly when presented with books and rules; they learned English, at least enough to function on a daily basis, remarkably fast when put through nursery rhymes, simple songs, children's games, and other group activities in which any one person's occasional mistakes were neither apparent nor humiliating. "And that's what it's all about ." Maxine finished dancing the hokey-pokey, saw Keith at the door, tossed her shocking pink plastic whistle to Dionne Huffman, and said, "take it from here."
Dionne looked like she still had enough energy to keep going for a couple more hours. She washed the whistle with soap and water at the sink, shook off the excess, said, "All right, everybody," and popped it into her mouth. Its shriek quieted the room. "I'm a little teapot
…" The class was back into shape in less than five minutes.
Keith shook his head as he draped his arm around Maxine's shoulder. Unlike Dionne, he thought, his wife looked worn out. They passed through after-care, collected Megan and Joshua, and headed for home. He had stopped at Cora's to pick up something for supper; starting to cook a meal "from scratch" at eight in the evening was not a bright idea when people had to be up by five or six the next morning. Cora was into creative cooking again, but at least it wasn't zucchini quesadillas. It was some kind of whole-grain barley salad with bits and pieces of vegetables in it, marinaded in oil and vinegar. Weird; not bad, though, with the rye bread from the bakery. Cora's results varied.
The kids went to bed right after supper. They got their homework done in after-care, these days. Keith cleared off the dishes; there were rarely any leftovers to worry about. Maxine was still sitting at the table; he walked up behind her and she lifted her head, resting it against the buckle of his belt. He looked down. Maxine had hated it when her favorite "autumn copper" hair coloring had run out and she had discovered that the hair under it wasn't just the plain mousy brown that it had been when she started using the tint back in high school, but had gone at least half gray. Keith didn't mind; he thought that Max looked fine this way. Thelma had given it a cut that was sort of short and perky. That was the best that he could describe it. She was too skinny, though. She'd always been thin, but now she was way too thin. Probably because she danced the hokey-pokey with German housewives for three hours after school every day. She didn't need what was coming next.
"Max," he said. "Ollie's sending me on that trip."
She turned, buried her face in his stomach, and moaned.
"Hey, honey, it's to your credit, 'cause you made me go and sing German nursery rhymes night after night."
Maxine moaned again.
"We've got to have more iron. We've got to. For guns; for rail; for all the other stuff that will help us hold against the League of Ostend. Every machine shop, up-time and down-time, needs more steel than it's getting, and it doesn't matter how much steel-producing capacity we build up unless we have the raw material for the mills. The mines around here are producing just about as much ore as they can, as fast as they can, with the technology we've been able to give them so far. We've got to get some of the old mines that were destroyed in the war back into production, and that means the Upper Palatinate. That's where the next nearest chance to get our hands on more iron is. At least, the nearest that's pretty securely inside the
USE."
Maxine squeezed her arms around his substantial waistline.
"Come on, honey. It's just a business trip. We have a lot of stuff to offer them. Pumps and stationary steam engines to run the pumps. A bit of explosive to open the closed shafts. Improved rail design for the carts, to bring it out faster. I won't be running into any trouble."
****
Ed Piazza started for home, saw who was on the bench outside his office, and grinned. "Leopold. I didn't know that you were in town."
"I wasn't until this afternoon," Leopold Cavriani answered, leaping up to shake hands. "Be flattered; this is my second stop. The first was to entrust my oldest daughter to the Reverend Wiley and his wife. Idelette is almost seventeen, now. This spring and summer, she will learn your language and ways; the next two years, she will go to school. Then, if all is well, she will train in the office of a businessman. Probably with Count August von Sommersburg's factor. The count has a permanent office here in Grantville, now. His factor has been am
ong you Grantvillers long enough that he is willing to have a daughter of a business partner as one of his apprentices. At least, he says so now. If he does not say so then, why, we shall be flexible." He grinned himself.
Flexible. Flexible could be the Cavriani motto, Ed mused. Aloud, he asked, "So what is our friend the noble concrete bandit up to now?" Sommersburg was not only making a mint from the slate quarries that he owned on the Schwarza river above Grantville, but was also up to his neck in cement, concrete, and related construction projects in Magdeburg.
"Diversification," said Cavriani happily. "Quite a lovely word. I like it almost as much as 'facilitator.'"
"Diversification into…?"
"Mining," said Cavriani. "Mines involve moving so much rock, you know. The count is financing one of your entrepreneurs in an effort to obtain more iron supplies from the Upper Palatinate. That will involve a lot of rock, of course. The count hopes to develop ways in which to make a profit from the by-products of a mining enterprise. By-products that the miners themselves find uninteresting. Waste products."
"'Waste' products that down-time miners find uninteresting, but that might, just possibly, find a market in up-time technology."
"Possibly, just possibly."
"Well," Ed said, "come on home with me for dinner. I'm sure Annabelle can find something extra to put on the table."
As they went down the stairs, Ed asked casually, "Which entrepreneur"?
"Ollie Reardon. He is far too busy to go to the Upper Palatinate himself, of course. He will be sending one of his trusted co-workers. A man named Keith Pilcher. I haven't met him yet. I'm looking forward to the trip. We will be stopping in Nurnberg to pick up my son Marc. He is coming with us. This should be an excellent chance to give him his first real experience in negotiations. A routine matter, to be sure, but he will have a chance to meet some influential people, both up-time and down-time. And the Upper Palatinate seems to be settling down very nicely under Duke Ernst. He can get a first-hand view of how rapidly we can hope for economic reconstruction to proceed once a region is no longer a war zone."
****
"Bernadette," Maxine Pilcher asked, cornering the juvenile officer in a booth at Cora's during lunch. "What is this all about?"
Bernadette looked at the newspaper. Maxine's attention was fixed on a legal notice which stated that Mrs. Veronica Dreeson had appeared before Judge Maurice Tito with a petition for the legal emancipation of her granddaughter, Miss Anna Elisabetha Richter.
"What is that woman up to now?"
"Don't hope for scandal," Bernadette answered. Grantville had been considerably enlivened for the past three years by occasional flare-ups when the divergent educational philosophies of Ronnie Dreeson and Maxine Pilcher came into conflict. "It's no Hardesty-type case. I'd call it a bit risky, but it's perfectly prosaic and she probably knows the girl better than anyone else does. Annalise is going to be running the St. Veronica's schools this spring and summer."
"Annalise is what? Seventeen?"
"She just had her seventeenth birthday. Last week, in fact. Ronnie petitioned to have her emancipated so that she can make binding contracts. And she's providing Annalise with a full power-of-attorney to handle all of her affairs while she's gone."
"Gone where? And why not Henry?"
"As they headed out of the courtroom after Maurice granted the petition, I heard Ronnie say, 'ask Henry if you have any questions, but remember that he's a very busy man, so don't bother him unless you have to.' Which is, I presume, why Henry isn't being stuck with the schools. On top of everything else that he has to do."
"But," Maxine asked, "where is Ronnie going? For so long, anyway? I know that she travels around to visit her 'schools.' They're springing up all over the place, like mushrooms." She grimaced. "Or toadstools." She grinned. "Toad-schools. But she could visit them all and still come back to town, in between. Magdeburg is the farthest away."
"She'll be gone much longer this time. Not day trips, not week trips. She's heading off to the Upper Palatinate to see whether she can get anything from her first husband's estate. There are a whole batch of Grantville people with business there this spring, plus the Voice of America is sending back a batch of newly trained down-time radio operators to Duke Ernst and Mary Simpson is going. There's no reason to expect any trouble, of course, but Admiral Simpson and Mayor Dreeson apparently thought that it would be better for the ladies to travel with some military escort. And, of course, Ollie was just as happy to include…"
Bernadette had been about to add, "Keith and Mr. Cavriani." And to ask, "hasn't Keith mentioned it to you."
Clearly, he hadn't. Bernadette realized why.
"Ooooooh, nooooooo," Maxine howled. "Keith is not traveling with that woman."
Chapter 10
Bella Gerant Alii
Magdeburg
"What we need, Prime Minister," Landgrave Hermann of Hesse-Rotenberg began the morning briefing, "is to send someone to Basel. Margrave Georg of Baden-Durlach's son Friedrich is running the government-in-exile there. He requests an envoy from the USE."
"Surely," said Mike Stearns, "this didn't need to come to me. Send him an envoy."
"He specifically requests that the envoy be an up-timer. His father saw, for himself, some of the up-timers at the Rudolstadt Colloquy. The son now wants to see an up-timer, or more than one, perhaps, for himself."
"Remind me why this is worth our while. We don't really have enough up-timers, or at least not enough who can find their way through the protocol of a down-time court, to waste them on the vanity of every minor princeling in Europe."
Hermann gestured at Philipp Sattler, their expert on Germany south of the Main. Which was not quite the same world as Germany north of the Main.
"The location of Baden-Durlach is strategically important for General Horn's campaigns in Swabia. Basel itself is important because…"
Sattler's lengthy, accurate, important, and dull assessment of the importance of Baden-Durlach and Basel droned on for quite some time. Finally it ended.
"Let me think about it," Mike said. "What else?"
"There is little else of significance that I see in today's pouch" Landgrave Hermann said. "There is an official announcement of the planned Austro-Bavarian marriage; that was expected enough, and should not change any alignments."
****
"Frank," Mike said at dinner that evening. "It's driving me nuts. We absolutely do not have a single up-timer we can spare to soothe the vanity of this guy. But we have to find someone. Someone whose rank won't insult him."
"Yes," said Diane Jackson. "Yes, you have someone. Like you sent Becky, like you sent Rita. Because these dinosaurs see them as related to someone important. I don't need to be here. When do I see Frank? While he is awake? One hour of the day, perhaps twice in the week? French I do speak. The man expects something strange, probably. How is he to know that the rest of you aren't Vietnamese?"
"Diane!" Frank exploded.
"It is true," she answered stubbornly. "You do not need me. In Grantville, I was helping. Here, there are plenty of secretaries to read the letters you get in French. I am," she said firmly, "a fifth wheel. Use me. All you have to do is write out what I should say. I can say it for you."
"Diane," Mike started. "It's just that we don't want to send you into that mess down in Swabia. The front between Horn and Bernhard has been awfully fluid; for nearly two years now, between them, they've been turning the countryside into a wasteland. It's a sideshow, I suppose, to the Baltic, but for somebody in it, it's a damned dangerous sideshow."
"You think," Diane asked, "that I have not seen dangerous?"
Mike and Frank looked at one another. Finally, "Who could we send with her?" Mike asked.
"Tony Adducci-young Tony, that is. That will be another appeasement to their damned rank-consciousness, considering that his father is secretary of the treasury for the State of Thuringia-Franconia. With an up-time radio, since that's his MOS. No radio, no go," Frank said
firmly. "And a full company of down-time bodyguards, at least. If things blow up in Swabia, we're pulling you out of there, Diane." Frank reached across the table and took her hand. "I need you more than Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar or Turenne does. Even if you have only been seeing me a couple of hours a week while I'm awake."
Diane blushed.
****
Officially, Ed Piazza was in Magdeburg for a meeting of Parliament. As a head of one of the component states of the USE, he had a seat in the upper house, and would until they got around to adopting a constitution that provided some other form of representation. He could hardly wait for the elections.
Even though Mike might lose them. Wilhelm Wettin wouldn't be all that bad. Though, of course, Ed thought, grinning as he looked at the decor in the prime minister's office, it would require some redecoration. The incredible paintings of Stearns with Gustavus would be shipped to some outer corridor if Wettin moved into this room.
Mike, who had no qualms whatsoever about maintaining a "kitchen cabinet" with which he felt comfortable alongside his official set of appointees, had set apart two hours.
After providing Mike with a rundown on everything that he had heard from Venice, a lot of it along backchannels, Ed paused. Then, "There's a lot of the Italian peninsula beyond Venice, you know."
Mike nodded.
"Some of it's Spanish."
Mike nodded.
Ed continued. "I don't want to pry, but the general rumor is that you have something bubbling away that involves the Cardinal-Infante in the Spanish Netherlands. Nothing specific, of course."
