Once he was done with the chickens, he moved to the rabbit hutches. He had a pair of Satins, which had a good growth rate and a good meat-to-bone ratio. Some girls might make those silly Angora rabbits into pets, but in Brandon’s mind, you took care of the animals you intended to eat, only it didn’t pay to get sentimental about them. Besides, his big sister Hayley was rich and it was embarrassing not to have a business of his own. Animal husbandry was all he had been able to come up with, since there didn’t appear to be a lot of money in entomology.
Brandon sighed over that. He had a great bug collection and it was utterly unfair that Hayley’s Barbies had been worth so much more than his bugs. He’d been afraid that Mom and Dad might make him leave it in Grantville, since they were so concerned over weight. And honestly, on the overland trip before they got to the Danube, he had almost regretted bringing the bugs. They had a whole wagon train just of their stuff, not including the cars for the Austrian prince guy. But now that they were on the river, it was a lot easier. He had more time to take care of the chickens and rabbits, which was a good thing because it was getting real close to time for the eggs to hatch. It had taken them longer to get to the river than they expected, and then they had sat in Regensburg for a week, waiting for word that it was all right to come ahead. He was pretty sure the eggs were going to hatch before they got to Vienna. They were moving a lot faster now that they were on the river, but it was still only about nine miles an hour. They would still be on the river when they hatched, not situated in Vienna, according to plan. That was going to be another problem. The chicks would have to be kept warm, fed, and watered.
* * *
The next day Brandon’s concern became fact as the eggs started hatching. Before they reached Vienna, he had thirty-eight chicks. There were chicken sexers in Grantville now, but Brandon wasn’t one of them. The chicks would have to wait till they got older before he would know how many of each sort he had. He hoped for more hens than roosters, but it would probably be about even. Meanwhile he had all those chicks to take care of in circumstances that were hardly ideal.
“Brandon! When is that chicken pen going to be ready?” Dana Fortney was trying to sound severe, but it was hard. First, the chicks were cute as buttons. Chicks usually are. Second, it was hardly Brandon’s fault that the trip had taken longer than expected. He had expected to be in Vienna when they hatched. Meanwhile, he had hired one of the boatmen to help him weave a fence out of tree branches and currently had boxes containing the chicks. Well, almost containing the chicks.
Docks, Vienna, Austria
The barges pulled up to Vienna carrying two cars and several tons of up-time or up-time-designed goods. They were met at the docks by a royal factotum, who set about organizing the transport of the cars through Vienna and out to what would become the race track. Oh, and the rest of them, too.
“Chicks?” the official said, in slightly offended tones. “Why on Earth did you people bring chickens? We have chickens. What do we need with up-time chickens?”
“Not like my chickens, you don’t,” Brandon said stoutly. “My chickens lay bigger eggs and more of them. They are also bigger than your chickens, more meat. And they are my chickens, not yours. We just need a coop to hold them.”
“We have the cars, the prince’s 240Z,” Bob Sanderlin said. “And ours as well, but there isn’t a lot of room for them here in the city. I doubt the 240Z could get through a lot of your streets. They ain’t wide enough.”
“The emperor!” the royal flunky said haughtily, and Hayley suppressed a grin.
“Where does His Imperial Majesty want us to set up?” her dad asked.
What followed was confusion and irritation for all concerned, till His Majesty, Emperor Ferdinand III, turned up and put matters right. The new emperor was there to meet them. Well, he was there to meet his new car. It was pretty clear that in his mind the mechanics were secondary. He swept in, asked lots of questions and swept out, leaving them in the care of the same official who now had a different attitude and clear directions.
Cars and wagons were unloaded and made a parade through Vienna.
* * *
Father Wilhelm Germain Lamormaini watched the parade through Vienna and knew that Prince Ferdinand had betrayed both his father and church by hiding his pet up-timers till his father died. Even the father’s death was the fault of the Ring of Fire. It had to be. The histories in the Ring of Fire had Ferdinand II living to 1637.
The Ring of Fire must be an act of great evil, not of the Good Lord, because if God had been a party to it the church would have been warned. No, the very fact that it was a surprise to faith was evidence of its evil nature. The Ring of Fire was an act of the great deceiver: poison coated in honey to distract the poor and weak-willed from eternal salvation. Satan walked the world as he always had, but his agents—knowing or unknowing—were the up-timers.