The next day’s digging: that deferral to tomorrow had not been merely advisable, but essential. Today’s run had to be called off because too many of the main crew, the veterans, were down with the flu. It was one of those brief but vicious late spring bugs that spreads like wildfire, burns through a body by setting both brow and guts on fire (albeit in different ways), and then burns out just as quickly. Even old tough-as-leather Dave Willcocks, head of the rotary drill development team and liaison to the academics and financiers back at the University of Helmstedt, had fallen victim to the virus. Which was a source of some extra concern at the site and beyond: this was the first sign that Willcocks was anything other than indestructible, and at seventy years of age, there was no knowing if this was just an aberration in his otherwise unexceptioned robust health, or the first sign of impending decline. Ann had seen, all too often and too arrestingly, that people aged more quickly in the seventeenth century, and the transition from good health to decrepitude could, on occasion, be startlingly swift.
Ulrich had reached the rig, seemed to dart around looking for something. Or someone, Ann corrected. He was clearly trying to find who was in charge, who had overridden today’s suspension of operations.
From far behind her private cabin, Ann heard another engine kick into life with a roar. That was an up-time sound, the engine on Dave Willcock’s pick-up truck. Good, so that meant he was on his way. Ann didn’t like that he was up and about, but right now, her strongest sensation was relief. No one back-talked Willcocks. His word was law on site, and that was what was needed to shut down the rig without a moment’s delay. Without Dave or Ulrich or her there to oversee the commencement of operations, there was no telling what errors might be made.
Ulrich had reached the platform upon which the derrick was built. Now only a hundred yards off—but with a wind-stitch suddenly clutching at her left side—Ann could see him engaged in a shouting match with someone up there. Someone very tall and very lean and very blond, almost white blond—
Oh shit, Ann thought, he’s arguing with Otto Bauernfeld. Bauernfeld was the senior overseer for Gerhard Graves, who was the nosiest and most intrusive of all the investors. Imperious and contemptuous both, the Graves family had tried double-crossing David Willcocks and his associates when they undertook their first joint drilling project, a simple cable rig. So this time, Willcocks, his team, and now the university, had unanimously wanted to reject Graves’ money—but they simply couldn’t afford to. The project would not have been possible without Gerhard Graves carrying twenty percent of the upfront costs. And Otto Bauernfeld, as Graves’ visiting factotum, had adopted an attitude to match his master’s: presumptuous, dictatorial, and arrogantly dismissive of the rank-and-file workers. “Shit,” Ann repeated. Aloud, this time.
She sprinted the last thirty yards to the gravel-ringed drill site, earning stares as she went. Pebbles churned underfoot, slowing her down, but she was able to catch the shouted exchange between Ulrich and Otto Bauernfeld as she traversed the last few yards of loose stone.
“You must shut the rig down, Herr Bauernfeld. Mr. Willcocks has ordered us not to drill today, not even to—”
Bauernfeld looked far down his very long nose at the medium-sized but very powerful Ulrich. “Who are you, and why should I care?”
“I am Ulrich Rohrbach, the site foreman and design consultant. I must ask you to—”
“I do not take orders from you, workman. Now, do not obstruct me any further.”
“Herr Bauernfeld, I must insist: on whose authority do you ignore and violate Project Director David Willcocks’ strict prohibition against drilling today?”
“I ignore it based on the only authority that truly matters on this site: that stemming from my patron’s heavy investment in this project. Which you should understand. I am here for one day—one day, and no more—and must see the progress you have made in developing this drill. My superior expects an impartial report, and he shall have it.”
“Herr Bauernfeld, with a little warning, I could have—”
“You are a worker. And an employee of Herr Willcocks. Who will be pleased to tell me whatever he thinks will please my employer. But Herr Graves wants the truth and I know how to get it for him.” Bauernfeld stuck this thumbs into his belt and leaned back, quite pleased with himself. “It was simply a matter of getting the crew to run the drill without your interference. Which they did readily enough, when I told them who my superior was, and the personal consequences they would face if they displeased him. So, now I shall see the operation as it truly is, and with my own eyes.”