Ring of Fire(44)

"Nope," said Len Tanner sourly. "We're going to take on apprentices. New Americans. And we're going to pretend to like it."





Ellie put her hands to her head.





"And I'll do the negotiation for ye," said Dougal, in the very tone that he'd once used to trick Gypsy horse traders. "If it all works we'll be needing them. And I'll convince yon Underwood and is it . . . Porter?" Len Tanner nodded. "Aye, Porter, that ye'll no succeed and if they agree to the terms, they'll get the trainees they want. They'll think they're getting the better of you. By the time they ken it is the other way around it'll be too late."





Ellie smiled evilly. "Underwood would agree to hiring us three-quarters of the capacity of this board if he thought his dreams of firing me could one day be real."





Dougal smiled just as evilly in return. "And ye ken, if you train yon laddies or lassies well, why, we'll be able to hire them away frae Underwood. Then he'll have to bargain for our company's services."





Ellie Anderson shook her head and laughed. "Cadaver, I can tell that you'll end up owning the company. So my terms are that you call it Anderson, Tanner and whatever your name is, so people will at least remember we existed." Her eyes were suddenly bird-bright. "Your name doesn't begin with a T, does it?"





Dougal shook his head. "Lawrie. Dougal Lawrie."





Ellie sighed. "Oh, well. I guess I won't be one of the directors of AT&T, after all. There goes another ambition."





* * *



They sat in Len's chaotic trailer, surrounded by half a ream's worth of scrawled paper and the four computers that had been his life, once. Len was painfully aware that the place was a mess. Well, it had been a couple of years since anyone but him had been in here. And since the death of the net, he'd spent little enough time here himself.





"We'd need about twenty miles of three-hundred-pound-per-mile wire. Copper is still quite cheap, thank God. Poles every fifty meters. Insulators. Then we'll need some labor to put up the poles, and the wire. Say a team of five. We're talking months of work."





Len tapped the figures into the spreadsheet. His face got longer as they added new items. Eventually he said gloomily: "It doesn't work, guys. We're about a third over budget. And there'll be stuff we haven't even thought about yet."





Dougal tapped the rough map they'd been working out distances on. "Is it needful that we follow the road? And well, can we not get the farmers to put up the poles?"





Len considered it. He'd been a wireman. "They'd probably fall down in three months. And if we go across country we'd have to clear the trees. "





"Three months is all we need," said Ellie. "Look, our aim is one line to Saalfeld. Get tolls coming in and get investors. There's no way we're gonna have enough money to set up a telephone network." She grimaced. "Especially if every instrument we make is gonna take me a month."





Len knew she could do better than that. "We'd get around that. I reckon Ollie could do most of the parts for one in a day. If he did it production-line style, we'd get a lot more. Those phones sure aren't gonna be cheap. It'll work, though. But the poles, and the time and the labor—we can't get away from that."





The Scot looked speculative. "Do we have to put up poles?"





"Unless we can insulate the wire, yes. And then basically we'd have to bury it. Which would cost a whole hell of a lot more. It's got to be up in the air."





"We couldn't just attach it to the trees?" asked Dougal.





Len shook his head. "Trees move. And they grow at different speeds. And . . ."





"Y'know . . . he's right," interrupted Ellie. "We could do that! We're talking about three months, Tanner. We can start replacing, putting up proper poles—even during that time."





Len tugged at moustache. "It won't look professional."





Ellie snorted. "Jeeze, Tanner! We're trying to get it up and running. The Germans won't know it's not professional, and the Americans—well, why should we care?"





Len sat back. Nodded. "Yeah. I guess we could do that. And I guess we can improvise so long on the insulators. They don't have to be glass as we were planning on. I figure a piece of tire should do the job. There's stuff down at the junkyard that is beyond retreading. But even cutting all the corners, me demanding leave . . . we're still going to be way short. Ellie and me aren't much by the way of savers, Doogs."





Dougal took a deep breath. "Ah, weel." He stood up and started undoing his shirt. "As well hung for a sheep . . . This idea had better work." He pulled out a money belt. "A tribute o' my faith. A mercenary trooper does nae earn much, but I've done a small amount o' horse trading."