Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

by Eric Flint

  "I wouldn't think a scion of the Wisniowiecki family would have direct contact with such adventurers," said Jozef.

  Opalinski's lip curled a little. "Most wouldn't. But young Jeremy is said to fancy himself as a terrifying figure on the battlefield. A veritable Achilles, reborn."

  "Based on what? If I recall correctly, his military experience is limited to the recent campaign to relieve the Russian siege of Smolensk. In which he did nothing of any note."

  "He claims unspecified exploits in the Netherlands, as well."

  By now, Jozef's lip was curled as well. "Not bashful, is he?"

  "No more than Lucifer. The point being, that it seems Jeremy Wisniowiecki believes that being associated with the Lisowczycy enhances his martial stature."

  "In short, he's engaged in what the Americans call 'slumming.'"

  At Lukasz's raised eyebrow, Jozef explained the term. He concluded by saying: "But I still don't see what in this news was so urgent that you needed me to come here immediately from Poznan."

  Lukasz's eyebrow rose higher still. "No? I would think it was obvious. We must be off, my good and sturdy confederate. Or should I say, 'fellow cabalist'? Perhaps 'companion in conspiracy'?"

  "Friend will do just fine," said Jozef, a bit stiffly. "Off where? And when?"

  "On the morrow. To Prague, of course, where else?"

  Seeing Wojtowicz's frown, Opalinski clapped his hand to his forehead. "Oh, I forgot. The other news." He reached into a pocket of his coat and drew forth some more sheets of paper.

  "I have a spy in Prague, as well. Even more expensive, this one. And he tells me that Don Morris Roth has already begun the creation of an armaments industry in the city."

  Jozef's frown became a glare. "Prague is two hundred miles away. A week's travel even in good weather-which this is certainly not. There is snow on the ground, Lukasz. It's cold. "

  "Oh, nonsense. It's not that cold. It's almost April. We'll probably see flowers blooming along the way."

  Some subtlety in his friend's expression alerted Jozef. He reviewed in his mind all of Lukasz Opalinski's tendencies, traits and characteristics. And his history.

  "There's a woman in Prague," he said accusingly.

  Opalinski rose and went to the side table. "It's time for a drink, I think. Surely, afternoon has arrived by now."

  "Isn't there? Answer me."

  "Well, of course there are women in Prague. It's a big city. One of the biggest in Europe. There must be thousands upon thousands of women residing in the place. Hundreds more, simply there on a visit."

  "Lukasz!"

  Opalinski turned away from the side table with a drink in each hand. He offered one of them to Jozef. "Oh, stop fussing at me. As it happens, one of those-must be hundreds and hundreds-of women on a visit is Izabela Teczynska. You remember her, I'm sure."

  Jozef's glare might have matched Lucifer's, by now. "Of course I remember her. How could I not? Given that you made such a fool of yourself over her, when she and her family came to visit your family last year."

  "Stop exaggerating. Perhaps I was a bit over-enthusiastic in my praises of her charms. I can see where that might have bored you."

  "I was not bored in the least. How could I have been? When I had to prevent you from precipitating a duel with the Teczynska family's retainers."

  "I said, stop exaggerating."

  Jozef actually had to control himself from gobbling. " Exaggerating? You were as drunk as the proverbial lord and determined to smuggle your way into the private quarters of the lady in question."

  "Would have succeeded, too, if it hadn't been for your interference." Smugly: "She was rather taken by me, you know? Told me she'd leave the window unlatched."

  "Yes, I know! A duel, as I said. Insofar as a naked man running down the streets with nothing more than a candlestick for a weapon can be said to 'duel' armed retainers of a magnate family. Each and every one of whom was selected for his martial prowess. No better than Lisowczycy themselves, really."

  Lukasz's hand was still outstretched, holding the drink. Jozef seized the goblet and drained half the contents in one long swallow.

  "Pfah. At least promise me you won't try to smuggle yourself into her quarters, this time."

  Lukacs reached back to the table and seized the liquor bottle. "Hold out your goblet," he said. "Have some more. You need it, in this foul weather."

  ***

  Some hours later, over dinner, Jozef returned to the question that had puzzled him earlier in the day.

  "But what do you really think, Lukasz? It's hard to imagine Janusz Tyszkiewicz being involved in the plot to assassinate Chmielnicki, unless the plot had the tacit approval of the king."

  "Which it might well have had, of course." Opalinski shrugged. "There's simply no way to know yet. Keep in mind that there are certain to be several conspiracies underway, by now, most of which-probably all of which-are still fuzzy at the edges and unclear of their precise goals."

  "As is our own," muttered Wojtowicz.

  "Don't always be so gloomy. The point is that, at this stage, it's perfectly possible that what is eventually bound to become two conspiracies at odds with each other-with knives at each other's throats, more precisely-is still mushed together in a singly very sloppy cabal."

  "Those two sharply-defined conspiracies being…"

  "I'd think it was obvious. There is bound to develop a royalist conspiracy, first of all, determined to abase the pretensions of the nobility and give the crown the same authority it would have in most realms."

  Wojtowicz thought about it. "Yes… and it'll be strongly pro-Catholic, as well."

  That was inevitable, given the Polish Vasa dynasty's allegiance to the church. The rest…

  Followed just as inevitably. The commitment of Polish and Lithuanian magnates to freedom of religion was more an issue of power than religion, as such. Most of the magnates were Catholic themselves, after all. But some were Protestant-and what was of paramount importance to all magnates, regardless of creed, was their own unquestioned supremacy on their own lands. For that reason alone, they would not accept any state religion that encompassed the whole Commonwealth.

  So there would be another faction formed, championing the interests of the great magnates. And it was sure to be at least as rabid as any royalist faction. Probably more so. As a rule, the great magnates of Poland and Lithuania had all of the vices of monarchy and none of its virtues. They demanded, on their own lands, what amounted to the privileges of royalty-but refused, in return, to accept any responsibility for the realm as a whole.

  There were some exceptions, of course. Josef's uncle Stanislaw Koniecpolski was one of them. But not many.

  "A real mess, isn't it?" said Lukacs.

  "And the worst of it," replied Wojtowicz, "is that our own course of action is still so unclear."

  "I said. Stop being so gloomy. Some prospects are clear enough, I think."

  Jozef scowled. "Yes. Your lust. My maledictions and misericorde."

  "Stop it, I say! It's springtime, Jozef."

  ***

  To be continued…

  The Anaconda Project, Episode Ten

  Eric Flint

  Chapter 10

  "You're not asking for much, are you, Morris?" said Bernard Fodor. The older of the two Fodor brothers was doing his best to grumble, but the effort was being undercut by the other members of his family. Not only was his brother Cyril smiling, but his wife was almost laughing.

  Not to mention his two kids, Amy and David, both of whom were smiling as broadly as his brother.

  "What d'you all think is so damn funny, anyway?" he groused. "We're talking about completely disrupting our lives. Giving up everything. You'd think there'd be at least one solemn face in the crowd, besides mine."

  "Oh, come off it, Dad," said his daughter Amy. The teenager's smile was now an outright grin. "Giving up what? A house you've never liked much and never quit griping about? A job you like even less and gripe about even more
?"

  "Job pays good," he said stoutly.

  "Not half as good as Mr. Roth is offering," countered his wife Joanna. "Even leaving aside the fact that you'll have part ownership in the business, which is more'n you got with the rail shop back in Grantville."

  Bernard was nothing if not stubborn. "Already got part-ownership in my business with Cyril. Half -ownership, in fact, which is more than I'll have in this new outfit Morris wants to set up."

  "Oh, for Pete's sake!" said his brother Cyril. "Yeah, sure. You and me each own half of an auto repair and body shop business-which ain't enough to keep either one of us working at it full-time, since the Ring of Fire. Seeing as how your automobile maintenance industry kind of shriveled up and died on the vine, seeing as how there ain't hardly no functioning cars any more."

  He nodded toward Morris. "Whereas what he's offering is to set up a major manufacturing facility. With a steady and reliable business."

  "For at least two years, anyway," said Morris. "After that…"

  "After that, we're on our own, maybe." Cyril didn't sound disturbed by the possibility. "But even if your war wagon orders dry up completely, so what? By then, if we don't screw up, we'll have by far the biggest and best equipped metal fabrication company in Bohemia. More business is bound to turn up."

  General Pappenheim, who'd been silent up till now, cleared his throat. "That's almost a certainty." He gave Roth a thin smile. "Don Morris is too cautious to speak of it directly. But the fact is that the king is bound and determined to develop a munitions and armament industry here in Prague. Even assuming that Don Morris' requirements come to an end-not likely, ha!-there would be other work coming from Wallenstein. Probably even before then, in fact."

  He gave the two Fodor brothers a look that could have been described as "hawk-like" without insulting any raptors. "Especially if you can persuade him that there is any future in steam engine vehicles beyond locomotives."

  "Sure there is," said Cyril. "It's just blind luck that internal combustion engines back up-time-"

  "Lay off, will you?" said Bernard. "Now's not the time for that." He looked at Morris, while rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully. "One-fourth of the business, right? Shared evenly between me and Cyril."

  Morris shrugged. "You and your brother get twenty-five percent of the stock. How you divvy that up between the two of you is your business."

  Bernard nodded, still rubbing his neck. "And Larry Monroe gets another twenty-five percent. And you keep half of it."

  "That's it. I put up all the capital except for some of the equipment you'll bring here from Grantville. And I handle the wages of the employees for the first two years. You and Cyril and Larry don't have to worry about meeting the payroll for that critical first stretch."

  Bernard and Cyril exchanged a glance. That feature of the deal eliminated the single biggest strain on a new business, of course. But the flip side of it was that…

  "But you do all the hiring, too."

  Morris shook his head. "Not all of it, no. The two of you and Larry will do most of hiring of the skilled labor. I'm just handling the unskilled and semi-skilled applicants."

  The two Fodor brothers studied him for a moment.

  "Which is gonna be about ninety percent of the workforce," pointed out Cyril mildly.

  Morris shrugged again. "Look, guys. I made no bones about this at the beginning, and I'm making no bones about it now." He got up from his chair in the big salon and moved toward one of the windows. "Come here. I want to show you something."

  As the two brothers got up to follow him, Morris glanced over his shoulder and said: "All of you come over and look. You may as well see what you're getting yourselves into."

  The two wives got up also. Those were Joanna, married to Bernard; and Willa, married to Cyril. So did Bernard and Joanna's teenage children, Amy and David.

  Cyril and Willa's daughter Lynelle wasn't with them. She and her husband Paul Calagna might wind up moving to Prague also, but they hadn't decided yet. Leaving aside the fact that Paul had a good job with the government, he and Lynelle had five young children to deal with.

  The window Morris led them to was just short of enormous. More precisely, since each pane was fairly small, the window was part of what amounted to the seventeenth century equivalent of a bay window looking down from the second floor of the Roth mansion. There was room for everyone to gather around.

  "There it is," Morris said. His finger pointed to a mass of buildings just across the street. The buildings were narrow and pressed right against each other. Perhaps most striking of all was the fact that a wall separated them from the rest of the city.

  "The Prague ghetto," Morris said. He sounded rather gloomy. "They still have the wall up along this stretch here. Not because the authorities require it any longer, which they don't, but because a lot of the Jewish inhabitants prefer having the wall."

  Young David Fodor was peering at the wall with interest. "I thought Dunash Abrabanel and his guys tore it down."

  Morris made a face. "Well, they did-partway. But then a lot of the ghetto's residents raised a fuss and… Well, I wound up persuading Dunash that he couldn't just do whatever he wanted high-handedly. So now the whole thing's being wrangled out." His tone got gloomier. "That means involving each and every rabbi in the ghetto. And once you do that, 'wrangling' really means wrangling."

  He stepped back from the window. "And that's the issue, from my point of view. One of them, anyway." The gloomy tone left his voice, replaced by something a lot more determined. Even grim. "I am bound and determined to smash up those crusted-over ghetto habits and customs and traditions. And the best way I know of to do that-it's worked everywhere in the world, with every race and creed and color-is to give youngsters the opportunity to earn a good wage while learning some valuable skills. And not the same very tightly circumscribed skills that Jews are usually restricted to, in this day and age. I want those kids learning how to make things, dammit."

  "Especially things that go 'boom,'" said David, grinning again.

  Morris smiled back at him. "Well. Yes. That too."

  Bernard was back to rubbing his neck. "You want only Jewish employees?"

  "No. In fact, I'd much prefer to have an integrated workforce. But

  …" He winced, slightly. "We'll have to see. I'm not sure how many Christian kids will be willing to work for an establishment that has a lot of Jewish employees and refuses to allow any religious discrimination."

  Cyril grunted. "I'd say that'll depend mostly on the wages. You pay well enough, there'll be plenty of youngsters willing to thumb their noses at the establishment."

  "Well, that's what I'm hoping. We'll see. In the meantime, though, I know for sure I can get as many employees as we need just from the ghetto. If need be."

  Seeing Bernard's skeptical look, Morris seemed a bit uncomfortable. "Look. Just 'cause I don't like a lot of those rabbis out there, doesn't mean I dislike all of them. There's a few I get along with, and I've already talked this over with them. They're willing to run interference for me, if I need it."

  Cyril spread his hands. "That's your business, the way I figure it." He cocked his head at his brother. "Bernard, are you ready, willing and able to quit dilly-dallying around? Me, I'm for it."

  His brother scowled at him. But then, after perhaps three seconds, he nodded. "Yeah, I'm in. What the hell. We'd be crazy not to."

  "What I been saying for weeks now." Cyril turned to Pappenheim, who'd remained sitting in his comfortable chair. "I suppose we should get started on the specific requirements you have."

  The very tough-looking general's eyes widened. " Me? My requirements are a good horse, a good sword and a pair of good pistols. No, no, no. I am simply here out of curiosity. That, and the curiosity of my employer, even more. You need to talk to those two fellows who came here from Vienna with von Mercy."

  The count's Bavarian accent was as pronounced as ever, making him just a bit hard to understand. By now, four years after t
he Ring of Fire, Cyril's German was quite good. But he'd learned that the German language in this day and age was almost more in the way of a cluster of very closely related languages than what you'd call a single and unitary language with various dialects. He was accustomed to the speech of people from Thuringia and Franconia, mostly. He found Germans from other regions often hard to understand, and sometimes downright impossible.

  Pappenheim rose from his seat with the fluid grace you'd expect from a man who was not only a famed general but a famed warrior as well. The thought crossed Cyril Fodor's mind-as it had the minds of hundreds of others before him-that Count Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim was a very dangerous man indeed. The vivid scar on his forehead added to the image, of course.

  "And now, I am off." He gave the Fodor brothers a grin that had very little humor in it. "We may say that I am about the king's business, I think."

  Cyril wasn't sure what to make of that rather cryptic remark. Probably nothing. He was pretty sure that Pappenheim made cryptic remarks simply as a way of keeping the people around him slightly off-balance. Everything the man did had that flavor about it.

  ***

  He commented to that effect, after Pappenheim was gone. "He's a little scary, isn't he?"

  Morris smiled. "Oddly enough, he's become something in the way of a friend of mine."

  All the members of the Fodor family stared at him. Much the way people might stare at a man who claimed to have formed a friendship with a lion. Or a dragon.

  Judith Roth chuckled. "It's true, actually. But it doesn't make Pappenheim any less scary. And now, folks, you must all be hungry. Dinner is about to be served."