by Scott McKay
That left Mark, who at ten years old hadn’t yet shown any marketable skill. Abigail expected he would be the child the family would have to carry for a while. But she was wrong, because within a week after moving into the rent-house, Mark returned from a day out exploring the neighborhood and securing employment as a mechanic at a repair shop down the street.
The owner of the shop, a Mr. Tuttle, had been dealing with an especially vexing problem of water adumbration through the radiator of a Crossland Type 1 motorcar, and as young Mark was wandering past the shop, he found himself fascinated with the vehicle. As the shop owner worked on the radiator, he caught the child gawking at him, and tried to shoo him away.
“Whatcha workin’ on, Mister?” came the unfazed response.
As Tuttle was at loggerheads with his vehicular conundrum, he gave in and supplied the youngster with a nickel tour of the Crossland Type 1 engine.
And in less than five minutes Mark had suggested a potential source of the problem with the radiator which was one, dead-on accurate in solving it, and two, something Tuttle would never have thought of.
“Where’s your mother?” Tuttle said, wiping the grease from his hands.
Mark took him home to Abigail, who was busying herself with household chores. She hadn’t yet found a job, wanting to insure that her children were occupied and looked after during their first days in a new world. When her young son introduced Tuttle to her, she scolded him for troubling the shop owner. In response, Tuttle assured her that it was more than fine, and then inquired whether she would permit Mark to help around the shop if he offered to pay him a small wage.
That brightened Abigail’s mood considerably, obviously, as it was the final piece of her plan for the family’s financial security.
Two weeks later, she secured a position in inside sales for a distributor of industrial equipment in Willow Falls, and the Bradburys finally entered the Ardenian middle class. One year later Abigail, then thirty-three, married the widowed owner of that company, and began living a life of relative comfort compared to the hardscrabble existence of her youth.
Abigail’s new prosperity didn’t affect the employment of her children in the least, however. She insisted they make their own way, telling each that their talents far outstripped her own, and that their advancement was best attained detached from her apron strings. Yes, they would enjoy more comfortable accommodations, now a stylish five-bedroom lodge-style in the Underwood section, rather than a slummy rent house, but the bottom line was they still had to work for their own good.
Consequently, the Bradbury children all managed well in their various apprenticeships and entry-level positions. Over the course of the next decade, James would parlay his experience at the stables into an enlistment in the Ardenian cavalry; he’d made the rank of sergeant by the age of twenty-five when he completed his service and settled in Port Adler as a driver on the Sunset Coast Stagecoach Company’s Azuria line. By the age of twenty-four Horace would make partner in the Smith, Tawrance & Jameson accountancy firm and would marry a lovely local girl from a well-to-do family. By twenty-two Esther would also marry well, tying the knot with Christopher Varleigh, the handsome son of Willow Falls’ leading real estate baron, and would bear him two children with a third on the way. And twenty-one-year-old Timothy would graduate from the prestigious Divinate Academy in faraway Bluemont to the east; he would move to Principia for a position within the Faith Directorate, making him a rising star among the Faith Supernal’s clergy and the pride of the whole family.
As for Mark, he shortly progressed from fixing cars to driving them. So well, in fact, that Tuttle, whose business had evolved into a Crossland motorcar dealership, entered a seventeen-year-old Mark into the Willow Falls-to-Alvedorne rally as a long-shot contender. Tuttle was to be pleasantly shocked that the youngster and his Crossland Type 2 would complete the four hundred-mile journey in just twelve hours--a runaway victory and a record for the ten years the contest had been in existence. Two months later Tuttle entered his young driver in the Perseverance-to-Belgarden rally, and Mark broke the race record with another win. That set the stage for the granddaddy of them all, the Principia-to-Winterstead rally, and though Mark covered the seven hundred fifty miles in just nineteen hours, which broke the former race record, he came in second to the famous driver Stanley Stone and his aerodynamic Paladin roadster.
Still, Mark’s career as a race car driver and hometown hero in Willow Falls was off and running, and he was suddenly one of the city’s most eligible young bachelors and a sought-after guest at parties among its local elite. His pleasant and humble demeanor, coupled with a quick wit and handsome appearance, made him a star. For the next three years he entered one dozen road rallies around the country, winning eight and finishing no worse than third in each one, which earned him a yearly sponsorship of five thousand decirans from the Crossland company and another sixteen thousand decirans in prize money. After taxes and costs, including the purchase of an apartment in a building overlooking the Morgan nearby to downtown, Mark still had twenty thousand decirans in an interest-bearing account at the Overland Bank of Willow Falls at the age of twenty.
But things came crashing down on Mark’s future as a race car driver when Fred Tuttle died of consumption and his partner in the Willow Falls Crossland dealership announced he’d no longer be able to sponsor Mark as a driver in the road rallies, having looked at the books and concluding, wrongly, as Mark’s brother Horace judged, they weren’t a profitable expense to promote sales of the Type 2. Shortly after that, Crossland itself filed for bankruptcy, the Type 2 design having been found in violation of commercial motorcar regulations by the Ardenian Roadways Commission and forced off the market.
He knew it was a matter of time before he’d be able to catch on with another race team and continue his career, but before that happened Mark was presented with a different opportunity which eventually struck his fancy even more than the idea of racing cars over long distances.
Mark received a hand-delivered letter from a Mr. Samuel Thorne, who was the president of the Thorne Technology Group of Alvedorne. The letter invited him to the much larger and far more prosperous city to the southwest to discuss a job opportunity involving aviation and travel at speeds he had little opportunity to attain by motorcar. Enclosed in the envelope with the letter was a ticket to ride in the VIP car of the Thorne Great Mountain Line from Willow Falls to Alvedorne, with a departure on the locomotive set for the following day.
Mark figured he couldn’t pass up a chance to at least listen to what Mr. Thorne, a prominent member of Ardenia’s richest family, had to offer to him, so he packed a bag and boarded the locomotive the next morning. The VIP car was empty save for his escort, a comely, stylish late-twenties female who introduced herself as Mrs. Veronica Fletcher.
Mark had spent more than his share of time with the swells of Willow Falls, and had been around some of the finer folks, at least the sporting variety, of larger cities like Perseverance, Belgarden and Winterstead. He’d even spent a little time with the high-end denizens of Principia as part of his budding career as a celebrity racer. But he still found himself unprepared for Veronica and had to struggle not to embarrass himself with his enthusiasm to be in her presence for that six-hour train ride.
She was rather petite, likely no more than five-foot-three, with alabaster skin and luxurious blonde hair tied up in an elaborate bun atop her head. Veronica’s rich red velvet frock was low-cut, but not vulgar; it rather tastefully showed off a pair of breasts he figured most women would die to have, and as the frock went to just above the ankle, he spied a view of a shapely pair of calves encased in silk sheer stockings. A pair of stylish heeled court shoes covered her feet. Her wrists were ringed in gold bangles, and from her ears dangled a pair of amethyst earrings that matched a pendant draped on a thick gold chain around her neck.
They made pleasant conversation for the trip, dining on special service from the train’s dining car: roast duck in a garlic-and-wine sa
uce, with fresh asparagus and sautéed Vinland tomatoes, finished off with a dessert of blackberry tortes with whipped cream and Spotted Lake liqueur as an aperitif. Mark’s head was spinning as the train passed through Walsh Junction on the final leg of its journey to Alvedorne, and not from the booze. Veronica had him wrapped around her little finger after spending the day en route.
She’d grown up in Alvedorne, she told him, the daughter of Alan and Roberta Thorne and the heiress to a share of the Thorne conglomerate of businesses. That included the locomotive line they were currently riding upon, but there was a lot more to the family fortune.
There was Thorne Underground, the mining concern which supplied some forty percent of Ardenia’s gold production and more than half of its bauxite, there was Thorne Motor Fuels, which drew upon vast timberlands to the north of Alvedorne all the way to the city of Mountainside to process wood into enough methanol to meet about a quarter of the national demand at a large refinery in Walsh Junction. There was also Thorne Riverside, which operated steamboats along the river Tweade from the Great Mountain Lake all the way to Dunnansport. And there was Thorne Construction, which had built most of the railways and bridges on the west side of the country.
Not to mention the Thorne Motorway Company, which was pioneering the construction and maintenance of a network of highways between major cities throughout Ardenia on a for-profit basis. This was somewhat controversial, as the Peace Party government was attempting to nationalize the motorways the Thornes owned, but so far unsuccessfully. Just a few weeks earlier President Greene had come to Alvedorne to press her case for “roads free of encumbrance” at the Alvedorne Provincial Assembly. The audience was unfriendly, dominated as it was by Territorialist delegates and Thorne allies; applause was polite but unmistakably limited. In response, Alan Thorne took out a full-page ad in the Peace Party press organ The Conciliator announcing that Thorne Motorways would from now on be free of tolls, and Thorne fueling station locations would be tripled along those motorways to service the needs of their travelers.
If you were the only provider of fuel for the motorcars along your roads, Mark knew, you’d be able to charge more than enough to offset the loss of toll revenue.
Mark knew less about Thorne Technology Group, as to date he hadn’t seen any products bearing that company’s trademark. What he knew was that Veronica’s family quickly dominated every industry they made forays into, so superior was their management formula and so innovative was their business modeling.
The letter had mentioned aviation and high-speed travel, something Mark was quite unfamiliar with. That said, he’d known all about the famous airship pilot Sebastian Cross and his around-the-world journey in a hot air balloon, and he was also familiar with Cross’ follow-on venture, the Airbound Corporation. It operated daily travel between the four largest cities in the country, with runs from Principia out to Alvedorne, Port Excelsior and Belgarden. Mark even rode aboard one of its airships, Justice, the previous year on a flight from Principia to Alvedorne before catching a train home to Willow Falls.
Mark surmised the Thornes might have constructed a better airship than the ones Airbound was using and perhaps they would enter the air transport business. He wasn’t particularly keen on trading in his status as a race car driver for a ho-hum job as an airship pilot transporting rich people to resort towns or business meetings, at least not just yet, but he was definitely at least willing to listen and make contacts.
Most of this he kept quiet about to Veronica, largely because he didn’t want to hear himself saying no to her, but also because she had told such a fascinating story about how the Thornes ran their businesses that he had a suspicion they were bringing him in for something a little better than his imagination had conjured so far.
What she told him about Samuel, her brother who ran Thorne Technology Group, was very interesting indeed. Samuel was the oldest of four Thorne siblings, and he had been in line to inherit the leadership of the entire empire from his father. But after spending ten years in the Marines, stationed along the Sunset Coast in various posts from Fort Murtaugh to Azuria to Port Adler and even to the north in Brenwick, Samuel told his father he didn’t have the stomach for life as a corporate executive, and what really fascinated him was research and development. Samuel had been around a few tinkerers among his Marine buddies and noticed that there were amazing opportunities to use technology to enhance performance, not just in the military sphere, but in maritime commerce and all facets of civilian life as well, and when he completed his military service as a captain, he announced to the family he wanted to start up a company which would invent devices, gadgets, equipment, and weapons it could license to other Thorne enterprises and across the marketplace.
Alan was perfectly fine with that idea and fronted Samuel five million decirans as an initial capitalization. Samuel hired three of his Marine pals and put them to work developing ideas they’d sketched out on napkins and base stationery while in the service. Within a year Thorne Technology Group had developed a portable cook-stove it produced and sold to the army, and licensed a civilian model to the Firegate Corporation of Aldingham to be sold as camping gear. That was followed by a lightweight steam-powered electric generator marketable to middle-class Ardenians, not to mention the agricultural community, at a reasonable price, licensed to Welvary Electric Works.
With some revenue coming in and the company turning a profit, Samuel then turned to what Veronica joked was the “dark side.” Namely, Thorne Technology Group was beginning to develop innovations applying to industries which were tightly controlled by the Ardenian Parliament and the Peace Party regulatory state, meaning that bringing those innovations to market would require a change in the laws. In some cases, even working on the inventions would involve skirting, if not breaking, existing statutes and regulations.
She’d called it laboratory work, and said it wasn’t profitable…yet. But the family was fully behind everything Samuel was working on, because “someday soon,” she said, “what comes out of that laboratory will revolutionize everything about life here in Ardenia and all over the world.”
She said Thorne Technology Group currently had three thousand employees working in twenty-four separate lines of product development across eight major industry categories, and in each line, they had working prototypes of products superior to anything currently on the market.
Mark was fascinated with the story, not to mention in love with his interlocutor.
“Just so I get this straight, though,” he interrupted her, “you’re a Fletcher now rather than a Thorne?”
She smiled. “Oh, I’m a Thorne,” she said. “My husband is Stephen Fletcher. He’s the vice president and chief operating officer of Thorne Enterprises. He’ll take over the company when Daddy finally retires, if he ever does.”
“I see,” said Mark. “Where’d he come from?”
“Stephen’s father was the head of Thorne Underground’s gold operation at the Great Mountain West mining complex,” Veronica said. “He died in a mine implosion when Stephen was six, and his mother had a little problem with spirits of the vine. So, Daddy and Mommy adopted Stephen and he grew up with us. He’s three years older than I am, so when he was twenty and I was seventeen we got married. We’ve been sweethearts as long as I can remember.”
That made Mark slightly sick, but he wasn’t going to let on. Maybe there were other Thorne daughters who looked as good and spoke as well as Veronica.
Finally, the locomotive made its way through the huge city of Alvedorne and pulled into the palatial St. Thomas railway station in the city’s gleaming downtown area. Mark stepped out of the VIP car to a blast of chilly air coming off the Great Mountain Lake, the shore of which was just a quarter mile to the west; he could see the lake through the colossal plate-glass window built into the west wall of the station.
A man met them at the platform and directed them to a waiting motor sedan, a Centennial Model D Mark had heard about and seen photos of but never laid eyes on
in person, and after porters had deposited his bag in the boot, a driver then took the wheel and veered onto Lake Road heading north. From the rear seat Mark could see the lakeshore on his left, with little activity along the shore other than the occasional fisherman on the boardwalk attempting to reel in a trout or two. It was winter, after all, and barely above freezing. On his right, brick-and-mortar office buildings began giving way to the tree-lined boulevards and sizable mansions of the famous Blood Oak Quarter, where Alvedorne’s elite made their homes. That gave way to the fashionable shops, restaurants and nightclubs of the St. Vincent district, which was just coming to life in the late afternoon, and beyond, as the road carried them northward, the tidy middle-class residences of the Hearthstone district.
They continued, crossing the picturesque Taylor Bridge over the River Tweade, which flowed out of the Great Mountain Lake as barely more than a stream compared to its massive width further downriver. On the north bank of the nascent river the city gave way to what looked more like an exclusive exurban landscape. Mark gazed at a forested area broken every few miles by driveways leading off the road into what he could tell, by fleeting glimpses, were huge manor estates.
“These are Thorne family holdings?” he asked Veronica.
“Most are, yes,” she said. “Lots of cousins, nephews, nieces, a few in-laws here and there. Not to mention a lot of upper-level employees.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “That’s one hell of a family,” he sighed.
“We do get that a lot,” Veronica said. “It’s actually a source of concern. We’ve done so much for the city and region around Alvedorne and brought so many jobs and so much prosperity here. My great-grandfather Arthur Thorne built this city, after all. But somehow, we’re always fighting a political battle because there are people who don’t live as well, and that’s our responsibility, they say.”
“That’s a Peace Party line, no?” Mark asked.