Grantville Gazette Volume 47

  "More problems with expansion," Johan said, "but they are getting better and are usable, though there is some loss of pressure."

  "Sometimes I think the steam heads are right and we never should have switched over to internal combustion," David complained and they went on with the day's work.

  ****

  Darlene missed pregnancy strips as she sat in the waiting room. They were back to the primitive days of rabbits being sacrificed to the gods of pregnancy. She knew that the developing chemical industry was trying to make strips but the specifics of how they worked and where they got the chemical reagents were a bit sketchy.

  In any case, Darlene was almost sure she was pregnant, even without the test. She had been through this before, after all. She wondered how Johan was going to react. At least money wasn't much of an issue. Johan brought in over a hundred thousand a year and Darlene herself made over fifty thousand at Twinlo Park.

  Darlene had so many reasons for joy and so many reasons to fret that she was caught between the two emotions. She was thrilled to be having a new baby and terrified about the lack of up-time obstetrics. She was happy to bring a new life into the world and at the same time afraid of using the baby as a replacement for little Johnny. She never wanted this new life growing inside of her to wonder if it was just a replacement for what she had lost in the Ring of Fire. And she didn't want Johan to feel that way either. At the same time, she was afraid of losing the memory of the husband and son she had left up-time. That fear, she thought, was what more than anything had made adjusting to this new world so hard. As though finding happiness here would be a betrayal of her life before.

  She was distracted all that day at work, and all the next day as well. Finally, she got the news. The rabbit sacrificed in her service had not died in vain. Its ovaries indicated that she was pregnant. Now all she had to do was tell Johan.

  ****

  "You are?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "This . . . this is wonderful, Darlene! I never thought . . ."

  "It's not like you don't have the equipment." Darlene grinned. The buttons on Johan's shirt just might pop off if he swelled with pride just a little more.

  ****

  "Well, congratulations, Papa." David grinned. "I'm sure you're looking forward to the changing of diapers."

  Which Johan thought was a bit mean-spirited. "We will have the staff at the Higgins for that."

  "Have you considered getting a place in the country? I know quite a few folks have." That included several of the newly-rich up-timers and the newly-rich down-timers who had appeared since the Ring of Fire. Having a home built out in the country, mostly ten or twenty miles from the Ring of Fire, where you could go to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city was popular. But there was also the factor that there were a lot of down-timers looking for work. And for a lot of the newly rich, there was increasingly a feeling of guilt about not having servants when you could afford them and they really needed the job.

  If you lived in the Higgins, it wasn't an issue. There was a servant for every four guests in the Higgins. And with the way that labor-saving devices had been worked out, that was more than plenty. But using the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner yourself when there were hungry people looking for work started making you feel like Ebenezer Scrooge.

  ****

  "We should probably start interviewing wet nurses ahead of time," Johan said casually that evening.

  "What?"

  "Not all the time. I know you will want to nurse the little tyke, but are you going to want to get up at three in the morning to do it? And nursing isn't all that a wet nurse does. There is the business at the other end. I wonder, what did you up-timers do to handle that part?"

  "We share the responsibility is what we do! Fathers help with the baby's care, even if they can't nurse. And we had bottles that could be filled with the milk, so that fathers could help feed the baby too."

  Johan started getting a little pale as this recitation of fatherly duties flowed over him. It wasn't that he didn't already love the little thing growing in Darlene and want what was best for it. It was more that he was pretty much convinced an old soldier was anything but what was best for it. "Shouldn't we hire someone who knows something about it? It doesn't seem to me that we should risk our baby in the hands of a rank amateur."

  "To start with, I've done this before."

  "But I haven't!"

  "You're gonna learn, dammit!"

  "Yes, dear." Johan knew when to make a tactical retreat. But just in case, he was going to ask around about available nurses. Meanwhile, he needed to get Darlene talking to some of the other women who had recently given birth. Maybe they could talk some sense into her.

  December, 1634

  "David," Franz Kunze said, "the board has decided that we will be investing more in the rail lines."

  David had been afraid of that. He didn't approve. "Railroads are simply too damned expensive to be a good investment, Herr Kunze, and you know it."

  "Yes, I do. But there are politics involved and you know that. Both the government of the SoTF and the USE are pushing the railroads hard, and if we don't invest in them they have ways of making our lives difficult. Besides, the investment will eventually pay for itself."

  "I'm not convinced of that, not when it's going to be competing with regular roads where the trucking company doesn't have to pay for the road. Not when it's competing with airplanes and balloons of one sort and another, which also don't have to build hundreds of miles of steel track with costs measured in the millions of dollars." This had not been an easy conclusion for David to reach. He was as fond of railroads and the romance of the rails as the next guy. But he ran the numbers, then ran the numbers again. Railroads were good for business in general, but that didn't make them a good business to be in. And David and the board had a responsibility to their investors. The railroad investments were going to be a net loss for the next several years. Eventually they might get most of their money back. They might even make a small profit, on the order of one or two percent a year. That loss would be hidden among the profits from other ventures and the average investor would never realize how much of their investment was being used to buy political favor for the board members of OPM.

  "I could go public," David said, but he knew he wouldn't and so did Herr Kunze.

  "No, David, you won't do that because it would do nothing but damage OPM and make you a great many enemies, both in the government and in the business community. Besides, I can make a case that OPM is invested in enough other businesses that will benefit from the cheaper transport that rails provide so that even the loss we will take on the railroads themselves will be made up for by the extra profits in our other businesses."

  "Maybe," David said. "Eventually. But I can't stand by and let it happen. And it's not just the railroads. Some of the other ventures we have gotten into since I got back from Amsterdam . . ."

  "Have had more to do with protecting or profiting the board than profiting the shareholders. I know. You have talked about it before. But they are profiting the shareholders. Profiting them greatly. The price of a share of OPM will go up by over ten percent this year."

  "But it could have gone up fifteen. Perhaps twenty."

  "Possibly. But you know by now how business gets done."

  David looked at this man who had been one of his mentors since before the founding of OPM. "Yes, I do, sir. But it's getting a bit hard to take."

  "Then don't take it," Franz Kunze said. "Look, David. You are a young man forced by circumstance into your current role. Don't misunderstand me. You fulfill that role admirably. But, for now, it might be best if you took a leave of absence from the job of CEO of OPM. Go do something else. Take the grand tour, as is custom for young men of your station in life."

  "Am I being fired?"

  "No, you are not being fired. If you choose to stay, you will be expected to support and implement the board's decision on the railroads and on many other d
ecisions that you disagree with. David, you need a break. I won't make you take it, but I do recommend it."

  "I'll think about it, sir."

  ****

  "What am I going to do?" David asked his grandmother.

  "What do you want to do?" Delia said. "I'd hire you, but I think you'll be bored silly. Besides, I'd have to make up a job for you. Mary is handing the hotel quite well, and Karl is handling the warehouse. You want to be my investment counselor?"

  "Probably not a good idea, Grandma," David said, remembering the fight over the Higgins Hotel.

  "Go into the army?" Delia offered as a thought. "Your grandpaw served, your father's stationed in Magdeburg right now. Besides you were in JROTC all the way through high school, and I know it's not West Point or anything, but you took the classes and did all right in them. There's a good chance you could get a commission."

  Johan was looking utterly shocked at this suggestion, and David found himself grinning. "What do you think, Johan?"

  "I think it's the craziest thing I have heard Frau Higgins ever say and I've heard her say a lot of crazy things over the last three years."

  "Starting with 'you're hired,'" Delia Higgins said.

  "Yes, that would be the first one," Johan agreed easily. "Hire a former mercenary to guard a fortune in goods. Like I said, crazy. But not as crazy as having young Master David waste his time in the army."

  "Why not?" David asked. "If it was good enough for Don Fernando, the Cardinal-Infante of Spain, why isn't it good enough for a poor West Virginia boy who got a little lucky in the market?"

  "Don Fernando couldn't have started a sewing machine company."

  "I don't think that lack keeps him up nights."

  "Probably not, but the Cardinal-Infante was raised to be a soldier."

  "And I have had four years of JROTC," David said. "I have as good a military education as half the officers serving in the army right now."

  Johan winced visibly. "In a way, you have more military education than ninety percent of them. But in another way, you're as green as any recruit I have ever seen. All your knowledge is book learning. And that's a dangerous mix."

  "I've been in the National Guard for almost six months. More if you include the time that the JROTC spent training with the guard."

  Johan winced again. "Yes. You have done drill and dress ranks. You have learned to march and salute, and even dig a fox hole. But you have never killed a man or stood in line while hundreds of men tried to kill you."

  David felt his mouth firming. He knew that Johan was right, but at the same time Johan was also wrong. He didn't know how he would react in combat, but no one did till they got there. And he did have the book learning. Besides, armies needed support staff. They needed logistics. He had been disappointed when, even before the trip to Amsterdam, the National Guard had accepted him and assigned him to supply. He had been especially upset when he realized it was so they could use his connections to get better gear cheaper. But he had dug in, and the Grantville high school unit of the SoTF National Guard had indeed ended up with good equipment.

  "I think I will look into it," David said.

  "Not without me, you won't, young Master David."

  "I quite agree, assuming the army will allow it," Delia said.

  "Really? How do you think Darlene is going to react?"

  ****

  "You're going to do fucking what? Are you out of your mind?"

  "I have a duty."

  "What duty?"

  "I . . ." Johan stopped and tried to think how he could explain to his up-timer wife in a way she would understand. "When I was hungry, they took me in. I was a stranger, and they took me in. The Bible says that in Matthew . . . or something very like it. But it's really true with David and his grandmother. I was a stranger and they invited me in, gave me a place. David is a good boy, well on his way to being a man. But he has very little experience in military matters. He needs someone to look after him and see that he stays out of trouble. And that's my job. It's been my job since the day Delia Higgins took in a stranger to guard the family and look out for them in dealing with down-timers."

  "But, Johan, what about your responsibility—your duty—to me and the baby I carry? Don't we count at all? You're going to go off to war and leave us behind, to follow someone who doesn't need you the way we do!"

  "Now, don't you be overstating the thing. David's probably going to be stationed right here in Grantville. He's going to see about going full-time in the National Guard of the SoTF, not the USE Army. I'll be home most nights and well . . ." Johan managed to stop before adding, "it means I can avoid changing diapers."

  Darlene wasn't exactly thrilled, but Johan made a good case that one, it was his duty and two, it wasn't going to be that bad.

  January 7, 1635

  Johan, in his entire military career, had never worn a uniform of this quality. Truthfully, most of the time, he hadn't worn a uniform at all. But the SoTF and the USE did things differently, or at least they were starting to.

  Johan hadn't lied to Darlene when he said that David was going into the Guard not the regular army. Not exactly. . . . Partly it was because the way the up-timers managed things like chain of command was an odd mix of up-time, down-time, and new-time procedures. In the case of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, the permanent-duty National Guard were actually in the national army of the USE. They were just assigned to the guard units. On the other hand, Johan was officially a military auxiliary, not in the regular army per se, which was how the USE Army had decided to treat the personnel hired privately by officers as their servants and batmen. To the best of Johan's knowledge, he was the only person of that status who was hired by an up-timer, but he might well be wrong about that. It didn't affect his fancy new uniform, except for the special patch on his right shoulder that indicated his "outside the normal chain of command" status.

  Johan loved his dress blues and he was even pleased with the working greens. Having both dress and undress uniforms was a luxury which affected his first sight of Major Tandy Walker in blue jeans and a shirt and jacket with rank insignia pinned to its collar. Surely the man could do better than that for a uniform!

  Major Tandy Walker was a heavyset man in the prime of life, and the natural question that first occurred to Johan on seeing him was: how did a man who was the son of the head of the USE Federal Reserve end up as a base commander of a minor base in the SoTF National Guard? It wasn't a question in this case though, because Johan knew the answer already. Tandy Walker was as prickly as his father and even more straitlaced. He offended people, important people. He was good at the mechanics of the job but he maintained a belief that all down-timers were thieves and ignorant of civilized behavior. He took offense at the tilt of a hat and gave it back just as quickly.

  Johan stood in the background, a silent witness and also a reminder—if the uniforms weren't enough—of just how wealthy young Master David was. Johan tended to respect up-timers perhaps a little more than he should. But, in a way, people like Tandy Walker were part of the reason why. A down-timer might well be just as much of a prick, but he would be trying to prove how important he was, not how honorable. The major had clearly not used the post of commandant to his advantage.

  ****

  A few hours later Johan had one arm thrown over the shoulder of Sergeant-soon-to-be-Corporal Franz Beckmann, smiling genially as he explained the new circumstances. Johan had known a hundred Beckmanns in his life. Some had had power over him, and a few he had had power over. They were what the army required, but they needed someone sharp to watch them. That would be Johan's job, while young Master David came up with ways to make this little corner of the army work better.

  ****

  "What do you think, Johan?" David asked, after they'd left Beckmann's domain.

  "That depends, sir." Since they were in the army, Johan was calling young Master David "sir," which was military protocol and didn't make the young master quite so uncomfortable. "Do you want to r
uin Major Walker and send Beckmann to prison?"

  "Not particularly," David said. "In fact, I would like to avoid both those outcomes. If we can do so without too much cost."

  "It may cost a bit. Beckmann has been systematically looting the place. I'm sure of that, but it will take a while to figure out just how."

  "What will you need?"

  "A couple of clerks. I'll take care of it."

  ****

  Beckmann spent the first night after Lieutenant Bartley's arrival sweating bullets. Then Johan Kipper returned the next morning and his worst fears proved insufficient to the occasion. Johan had a pair of clerks with him to do a careful item-by-item check of the contents of the warehouse.

  "What happens now, Sergeant Kipper?" Beckmann asked after the clerks got down to it.

  "That mostly depends on what you did with the money," Johan said.

  "I can cut you in, Sergeant," Beckmann offered desperately, and the sergeant actually laughed.

  "Do you know how much I made last year, Franz? Never mind. It's none of your business, anyway. You're small potatoes, as the up-timers would say."

  "Then what?"

  "That will be up to the lieutenant. We are going to put everything back, Franz. And what we're short of will come out of your hide."

  At that point, Franz Beckmann made the biggest mistake of his life. He sighed in relief.

  Johan Kipper laughed.

  ****

  Darlene did like a man in uniform. At least, this man in uniform. Also, in a way, Johan seemed happier. He had been a soldier for a very long time and even if the army was different, it was more the sort of job he was used to. Besides, half Johan's reason for being there was to keep David out of combat and that would entail keeping Johan out of combat too. Every morning Johan got up, got dressed, and joined David as they headed off to the camp. The conversations weren't even all that different; logistics and supply are logistics and supply, whether you're dealing with military or business.

  ****

  "Captain Ponte's company has been released," Johan said one morning. Darlene had given up going to Twinlo for breakfast, instead opting to sleep a little later and have breakfast with Johan and often David.