David continued to read while Leonhard spoke and noted the details of the sponsorship request. In addition to the Opera House there were plans to sponsor a library, a museum, a theater and a college. All good causes he thought, and began to calculate the totals.
All together the bill would come to something close to thirty million dollars over the next three years. From the proposal's details, OPM was not the only corporate sponsor being solicited. Several other businesses were already listed as sponsors.
David checked the approved box and tossed the request into his outbox. Business as usual, he thought, and began to smile.
This'll Be the Day . . .
Walt Boyes
"I'm looking for Father Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld," the well-dressed man said as he crowded the doorway. "I'm told he has his office here." The man was dressed in black, mostly velvet, with white at the neck and the cuffs.
He was clearly a down-timer, thought Josef, the Jesuit brother who served as doorman for the Spee household. Up-timers habitually referred to Father Friedrich as "von Spee" because that was the way their up-time histories listed him. Down-timers usually called him by his correct territorial name, "von Langenfeld."
"May I say who is asking?"
"I am Father Goswin Nickel."
"Father Provincial!" Josef's eyes grew very wide. "We weren't expecting you . . . I didn't recognize you . . . Please come in! Come in, come in!"
"Cease your babbling, my son," Father Nickel said, smiling, as he entered the house. "Please tell me if Father Friedrich is within."
"He is not, Father," Brother Josef said, "He is at the cathedral rehearsing the choir. He has some new Kirchenlieder, some hymns, that he has written for them to sing."
"Please have someone send for him, then, and also, if you would be so kind, have someone see to my horse."
"At once, Father."
The Jesuit provincial allowed himself to be led to the sitting room, where he sat down to wait for Spee. "Spes fuerat, spes Fridericus erat," he recited to himself softly. "In Spee they placed hope, Friedrich was their hope." Perhaps yet again, he thought.
The drum set looked incongruous in the apse of the cathedral, thought Friedrich Spee, even though he'd written the music that required it. The young man who played it was dressed in the style known as lefferto after the up-timer, Harry Lefferts, and he even sported a patch over one eye. The patch, as Friedrich knew, was entirely for show. The young man, whose name was Franz, had told him so, and that he only wore it because he thought it made him look "bad." It appeared that "bad" was somehow good in the new cant of these up-timer-aping youth. Friedrich smiled, and shook his head, ruefully.
Up-timer-aping, indeed. For was not what he had written for the cathedral choir here in Magdeburg up-timer-aping as well? A work for rock band and choir. At least, since he was now on the staff of the up-timer Cardinal Mazzare, he'd had no problem with the nihil obstat and the imprimatur necessary to be able to print the work and get it performed by the cathedral choir. He'd had more problems trying to figure out how to work around the "electric guitar" and the "electric piano" he'd heard in the recording that Cardinal Larry's friend the Methodist minister in Grantville had let him listen to, something called Godspell. He had substituted a massed section of Spanish guittarrones, all played in the up-timer style by a band of surly lefferti, and the cathedral organ. He was sure it was not rock and roll, but it sounded good to him.
What do they say in Grantville, "It's not rock and roll, but I like it?" He laughed out loud at the thought, causing the nearer members of the choir to stare at him strangely.
"All right, then," Friedrich said, tapping his baton on the lectern. "From the start, if you will, please."
Just as the band and choir swung into the first part of the chorale, Friedrich heard a commotion at the back of the cathedral. He swung around, to see several people running up the aisle. They were armed, and one had a huge wheel-lock pistole. The man with the pistole stopped and aimed it at Friedrich. It went off with a thunderous boom, but the ball, thankfully, missed and lodged itself with a great spray of splinters into the pulpit in front of which Friedrich had placed his conductor's lectern.
"Ow, scheiss!" One of the splinters had found a target in the lead guittarrone player. Friedrich turned, but the young lefferto waved him off. "I'm fine, Father. I'm fine."
The cathedral guards had by now caught up with the assassins, if that's what they were, and they were clubbing them down in the narthex of the cathedral. Friedrich strode quickly up to them in a half-run hampered by his cassock.