The Viennese Waltz(37)
The maid laid down the coffee service and Mrs. Sanderlin thanked her.
Dana Fortney smiled. “You know all those stories grandparents tell, Hayley? The ones about walking two miles in the snow to get to school.”
“Yes,” Hayley muttered, not really paying attention, “uphill in both directions.”
“I’m starting to think that at some point, maybe in my grandparent’s day, there was some truth to them.”
“Um.” Hayley still wasn’t paying that much attention, Herr Pfeifer noticed. He looked at Frau Fortney, then at Hayley. Frau Fortney grinned a bit and touched a finger to her lips. Hayley was oblivious to it all.
“The workers, to come from Vienna to the track each day and go back each night, have to walk four miles, sometimes more. It’s shorter from the banks of the Danube and if we were to use the Fresno scrapers to dig a canal and put in a dock next to the track, it would change a two-hour walk each way to a comfortable half-hour boat ride. That would be worth paying for.”
“It would also make it easy for people to come see the cars race around the track,” Dana agreed. “Maybe it’s something that Ron ought to talk to Emperor Ferdinand about.”
“Yes,” Hayley said. “As soon as he can get an appointment.”
“It’s too expensive,” Herr Pfeifer said. “How many people working on the track can afford even a pfennig a day for just a ride to work, much less two?”
“More than you might think, but we’ll give them a bargain anyway,” Hayley said. “Sell boat passes that are good for a month for twenty-five pfennig each, or even twenty.”
“Or you could do it like some of the bus companies did up-time,” Frau Fortney said. “Sell tickets and give your boatman a paper punch. The ticket has however many circles or boxes printed on it. Each time they ride, the captain or someone punches out a circle or box on the pass. When they’re all used up, they have to buy a new ticket.”
Herr Pfeifer wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but decided to let it ride for now. “However they pay, it costs money to run a barge on the river.”
“Sure, but not that much,” said the young girl. “Put in seats and maybe an awning to keep people dry when it rains. There are around a hundred people who come out here every day, working on the track. Fifty people per trip and four trips a day—two here, two back. That’s two hundred tickets at a half pfennig per head . . . a hundred pfennig a day, every day. A bit over a reichsthaler every three days, gross. Your boatman will get a couple of groschen a day and there will be docking fees . . . but even with the cost of the boat and steam engine amortized in, you should make a decent regular profit. Not a great big profit, but a steady one.” Two groschen a day was fair pay for a worker. It was what the day laborers at the race track were getting. But the surprising thing for Hayley—all of the girls, for that matter—was what a groschen would buy. There were twelve pfennig to a groschen. In Grantville or Magdeburg a pfennig was about equal to a quarter, but you could buy a small loaf of bread, about half a pound, for a pfennig in Vienna. Gayleen Sanderlin had said several times that it was like the prices in Mexico, back up-time.
* * *
By the end of their conversation, several things had happened. One was that Jakusch Pfeifer got his name shortened to Jack. He also figured out that Hayley Fortney was actually running things, not Frau Fortney acting for her husband. Perhaps more importantly, he was smart enough to guess some of the reasons for the subterfuge and to keep the secret. Jack became the lawyer for the Sanderlin-Fortney Investment Company and Jack’s family got in on the ground floor of the Vienna ferry business.
* * *
Annemarie reported two days later, when she had her contact, that the Sanderlins were going to try to build a canal to the race track. She didn’t report that it was the women arranging it. She just assumed that they were acting on instructions from their husbands.
It took Bernhard Moser an extra couple of days to report the development. Not because of any incompetence on his part, but simply because he was working out at the shop and it had taken a couple of days for the news to come up in conversation.
Vienna, Austria
“They seem harmless enough,” Bernhard told his contact. “Even the canal they want to build seems to mostly be about giving people work.”
“And who’s going to pay for the work?” his contact asked. “That money’s got to come from somewhere and I don’t see where.”
“Neither do I,” Bernhard acknowledged. “Then again, I’m not an up-timer.”