Ring of Fire(41)

"Stop calling me walrus-face!" he snapped.





Ellie snorted. "I'll call you any goddamned thing I please. But it's time I showed you something I've been working on. I figured out that they were going to run out of instruments PDQ. I guess I ain't the most diplomatic person around because when I tried to tell Underwood, he said it wasn't an immediate priority. Fucking jerk."





"Yeah. I tried to tell Bill Porter. He wasn't listening either. People take phones for granted. They don't even think of an existence without 'em."





She pointed at a metal cupboard. "Open that."





Inside stood what Dougal decided could be a fiendish new torture device for the Inquisition.





Ellie pointed proudly to the contraption. "We've got to reverse engineer. Downgrade. They've had to go back to blasting in the mine instead of using the continuous miners, right. Well, we can't make electret sets. So I've been workin' on this."





Dougal didn't understand it, but it certainly impressed Len. "Holy smoke! Edison would have been proud of you! Does it work?"





"Yeah, well . . . The carbon granule part was tricky at first, but I got it licked once I got Ollie Reardon to make me some decent diaphragms. I'm having a bit of trouble with the antisidetone network. But it works."





Len Tanner took a deep breath. "Okay. So I guess I made a fool of myself again, huh."





He didn't sound unhappy about it. He rubbed his hands together. "Heh. We're going to see an increase in subscribers again. Work our way up. Lines all over the new United States . . . Who knows? One of these days we may even have the net itself again. I kinda thought everything I knew about was heading for being history. Makes you feel so damned useless."





Ellie Anderson scowled. "It's not so simple. If I could get the fucks to listen to me. But when everything breaks down they'll want to listen. Maybe three years from now."





Len shrugged. "We can't talk to the bosses. It's not my line and it sure isn't yours. But I'm gonna put in some time up here. Refresh myself on this stuff. The instrument fixing is going to take a back seat for a while." He smiled evilly.





Dougal shook his head. "Weel. My head is starting to hurt. An' you understand this stuff, Len. I understand my way home tae my billet."





* * *



The next day Dougal awoke—as was his lifetime's habit—at first light, with something of a headache, and an idea eating away like a maggot at his mind. Three separate facts he'd picked up last night were connecting in his head.





Firstly, up at the mine was a device which was capable of carrying many more of these telephones than it did now. Secondly, the woman technician had made a telephone itself. It was large and clumsy compared to the phones the Americans had brought with them. But compared to a letter, a messenger and a horse, it was a grand thing indeed. The Americans might not see it as such, but in Jena or Saalfeld—any city in Germany—there'd be a stream of wealthy merchants and notables who would pay very, very well indeed, for such a device. And they'd be happy to take it right now, never mind waiting the three years that Old Americans would accept.





Never mind Jena, for that matter. Just among the new American families there'd soon be a demand if they knew that they could have such a thing. Of course New Americans would want the wonderful light phones that the Old Americans had. It might be a lot easier in one of the nearby towns.





It was however the third point that really was gnawing at him though: Neither Tanner nor the woman at the mine—Anderson—was any good at dealing with Germans. If you came down to it: neither of them was any good at dealing with people. As Mackay's dispatch rider, he understood how vital communications were. But neither of those two could have explained this. And neither of them had the business sense of a rabbit. And neither could deal with authority.





Dougal put his hands behind his head and let his breath hiss between his teeth. He spoke, to varying degrees of fluency, five languages. He could explain things. He'd had to—especially to men in positions of authority. And he did have the canniness to bargain and deal. This, if he could pull it together, had the smell of the deal of a lifetime.





He stood up. First Mackay. If the colonel had left his warm bed next to that pretty and deadly wife of his, he'd be in Staff HQ.





* * *



He was, along with Lennox. Dougal Lawrie saluted. "Sir. Would you be having me return to Halle today?"





Mackay shook his head. "It's already too late to do anything about it, unfortunately."





Lennox twirled his mustachios. Dougal reckoned he had the length on Tanner, if not the breadth. "Nae purpose, t'whole thing. T'would o' done some guid if we'd had word two weeks ago. But th' barges are already on th' way to Naumberg. Now th' guns'll have tae go by road instead. Through Saalfeld, Kronach, and so on."