Displaying better manners than Janos had seen displayed by most Americans in Grantville, two of the up-time mechanics opened the doors for the vehicle's occupants. Ron Sanderlin, on the emperor's side, and his uncle on Drugeth's.
"Nice recovery on that last turn, Your Majesty," said Ron, as he helped Ferdinand out of the seat.
"It worked splendidly! Just as you said!"
The older Sanderlin said nothing, as usual, and other than opening the door he made no effort to assist Janos out of the vehicle. Which was a bit unfortunate, since the contraption's bizarrely low construction made getting out of the seat a lot more difficult than clambering down from a carriage or dismounting from a horse. It didn't help any that Janos felt shaky and stiff at the same time.
Hungarian cavalry officer, he reminded himself. He decided that a straightforward lunge was probably the best way to do the business.
Somewhat to his surprise, that worked rather well. And now that he was on his feet, the properly stiff-legged stance of an officer in the presence of his monarch served nicely to keep his knees from wobbling.
Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Austria, King of Hungary, and now Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, planted his hands on his hips and gave the newly constructed race track a gaze of approval.
"You were right, Ron," he announced. "We need to build up the banks of the track on the curves."
"Yup. Even at only sixty miles an hour, which is nothing for a 240Z, you almost spun out. Of course, it'll help a lot once we can replace that packed dirt with a solid surface. Tarmac, at least, although concrete would be better."
Ferdinand nodded. "We can manage that, I think, given a bit of time. We'll need to build spectator stands also."
He turned to Janos, smiling widely. "We'll call it the Vienna 500, I'm thinking. You watch! One of these days, it'll draw enough tourists to flood the city's coffers."
Janos Drugeth, Hungarian cavalry officer in the service of the Austrian emperor—a bold and daring breed, no one denied it—wondered what the "five hundred" part of that title meant.
But he kept silent. He was afraid to ask.
Chapter 2. The Emperor
A few hours later, in one of the emperor's private salons, Janos felt a similar terror. A greater one than he'd felt on the racetrack, in truth, albeit not one that was immediately perilous.
In the long run, though, what the new emperor was contemplating was likely to be far riskier than what he'd been doing a few hours earlier at the controls of an up-time vehicle.
"Driving," Janos recalled, was the term Ferdinand III and his American mechanics used to refer to that activity. They did not use the English term, just a derivative from the stout German equivalent verb fahren. In both languages, the verb had the additional connotation of half-forcing, half-cajoling someone or some animal to go somewhere they would not otherwise go.
In the afternoon, a young, portly, physically quite unprepossessing monarch had driven an automobile with flair. Tonight, he was proposing to drive an empire with the same flair. Indeed, in the full scope of his half-made plans, perhaps a fourth of an entire continent.
Slowly, Janos lowered the letter the emperor had asked him to read. The letter was a long one, and had been jointly signed by Ferdinand's oldest sister Maria Anna and her new husband. Don Fernando, that was—had been, rather, since he seemed to have dropped the honorific "Don" along with his former title of cardinal-infante. He was the younger brother of the king of Spain and a member of the Spanish branch of the far-flung and powerful Habsburg family.
Fernando I, King in the Netherlands, as he now styled himself, judging from the signature on the letter.
"Are you seriously considering this, Your Majesty?" Drugeth asked quietly. He resisted the temptation to glance at the two other men in the room. Whatever else, Janos knew, he had to be able to react to his monarch in this situation without being influenced by the attitude of others.
"Quite seriously, Janos. Be assured of that. Not that I feel bound by any of my sister and new brother-in-law's specific suggestions. They face a very different situation than I do, over there in the Low Countries. And while my sister is an exceptionally well-educated and intelligent woman, and was raised here, in the nature of things her knowledge of the Austrian empire was limited in many respects. Quite limited, in some. She has no close knowledge of military affairs, for instance." The new emperor chuckled, a bit heavily. "Of course, the same cannot be said of her new husband, who could legitimately lay claim to being the most accomplished military leader produced by the family in generations."