The Viennese Waltz(46)

Sanderlin House, Race Track City

“This includes a lot of guesswork,” Dana Fortney told Gayleen and Hayley. Then she took a sip of coffee and didn’t grimace. She liked sugar in her coffee, but sugar was much more expensive than coffee here in Vienna. “What seems to have happened is some of the old emperor’s agents sent back long lists of products and processes. Some of them very general, like plastics, and some very specific, like injection molding of toy soldiers. What they didn’t send was much information about how any of it worked. That was left up to the people who bought the patents.”

“They must have sold them to the very rich,” Gayleen said. “Most people can’t afford to send an agent to Grantville to figure out how to make . . .”

Dana was shaking her head. “You’re right about most of the people not being able to send agents to Grantville. But that’s not how they did it. Instead, people were encouraged to attend auctions and bid on something. The old emperor apparently didn’t didn’t care much what they bid on or how many patents they got as long as they spent enough money in total to fit their status at court. Some people bid the required amount on whatever came up and wasn’t being bid up by other people.”

“Why didn’t anyone get plastic?” Hayley asked.

“Because it wasn’t all that long after Delia Higgins’ dolls hit Vienna and among the notes on the dolls was that they were made of plastic, a material that could be made up-time but not down-time. So everyone knew that plastic couldn’t be made down-time.”

“So it was all about the rumors of what could be done coming out of Grantville back in 1631?” Hayley more said than asked.

“Early 1632, but basically yes. The patent on the Bessemer steel process went for a pretty penny and the patent on the integrated circuit is still sitting there waiting for a buyer. So is the electric motor, by the way.”

That added another job once the word got around. Patent consultant. Actually working on the car didn’t take much time at all. Mostly it was keeping it clean—well, supervising the down-timers who kept it clean. It would be four more months at the earliest before it needed another oil change. And there was only so much time that they could spend on it. When the emperor came out, Ron and Bob had to be on hand just to show that they were doing something. But a car is not a horse. It doesn’t need to be fed every day and its stall doesn’t need to be mucked out. Nor does it need rubdowns every day. Every week is more than sufficient, and up-time the 240Z would have gotten a wax job every six months or so.

Sonny was busy enough working on surveying a railroad and designing steam engines to pull trains along it. But Ron and Bob found that good pay for little work was frustrating. Now they were constantly being called in to look over patents and try to tell the patent holder how to build whatever the patent was for.

Not the big ones like concrete or steam engines, but the little things that the lower-level courtier and the mid-level Them of Vienna had gotten stuck with. Clothespins and clipboards, eggbeaters and egg separators, safety pins and spatulas, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, the owner of the coking patent wanted Ron to go over the notes on how coking worked to help get him into production.

Sanderlin’s bedroom, Race Track City

“I hate this,” Ron complained to Gayleen in late November. “I was never into books and you know the trouble I had in my senior year of high school.” He waved the papers at her.

Gayleen did know. Ron was good with his hands, but he wasn’t much for book learning. He never had been, which was why she was the one who handled the family finances. Ron had to sell the car to get the money to get his mom a place in one of the villages outside the Ring of Fire. And to sell the car, he had to provide a mechanic. That worked for Ron because he was a mechanic, and was one of the main reasons that they had beat out the other people who were interested in selling their cars.

Uncle Bob had never gotten along with Vera May, Ron’s mom. In fact, Bob didn’t want to stay in the same state as Ron’s mom—an attitude Gayleen couldn’t help but agree with. Nothing really wrong with Ron’s mom, except she ruled whatever house she was in. In Gayleen’s case, there was also the issue that Mother Teresa and Miss America combined wouldn’t be good enough for her little Ronny. She looked over at her husband and tried not to grin. “Sorry, dear, but they are paying pretty good.”

“They’re paying damn good. I just wish Sonny was here to look at this stuff.”

Ron had never told Gayleen outright, but she was pretty sure that Sonny Fortney was some sort of spy the government wanted to put in Vienna. It made her a bit nervous sometimes. “Why?”