The Viennese Waltz(5)

“Yes, we do, so to speak, cover all the bets and the kings and emperors know it. But we are expected to be as discreet about it as we can. More importantly, we are expected to pay our taxes. By each side.”

“How unreasonable!” Judy the Younger said. Then laughed.

“My thoughts exactly,” Karl agreed. “Ferdinand is bringing considerable pressure on my family to support the government. And the family, in turn, are asking me to send them the money to do it with. It would be very convenient for me to not have that money available.

“It has always been my intention to invest in the family lands in Bohemia and Silesia. However, my plan was to do it gradually, in a systematic way, once the armies were out of the area. Now I need to rush things a bit and I am in need of advice.”

“What sort of advice?” Judy the Elder asked.

“What should I buy? Who should I buy it from? Understand, it’s not necessary that everything I buy be shipped immediately. In fact, it would be better in some ways if it were delayed. It will be more likely to get there if it waits till some of the armies have moved out of the area. At the same time, I have no desire to spend a great deal of money and then have the company I’m buying these products from go broke.”

“Part of that includes areas where it would be illegal for me to help you,” Mrs. Wendell said. “I can tell you what you need to buy but not which company to buy it from. It’s simply too easy for a conflict of interest to rear its ugly head if I recommend specific companies. This is a case where public officials have to be like Caesar’s wife, because any suspicion that we were endorsing a company for personal gain, or even for the general gain of Grantville, would endanger the whole industrialization project.

“The Grantville Better Business Bureau maintains a list of companies and their reputation. Beyond that, Sarah and Judy can probably tell you quite a bit about the economic health of most of the companies that are likely providers.

“As to what you will need, to a great extent that depends on the situation in Bohemia and Silesia, and that’s getting a bit far afield for my expertise. But, in general, the first issue is transport because good transport makes everything else easier and its lack makes everything else almost impossible. Whether that means Fresno scrapers for improving roads, small steam engines for barges, light rail, even wooden rail to get you through the next few years till you can replace it with steel, depends on your terrain and situation. There are also issues of where the roads should go, which depends on your relations with the neighboring landlords. It’s not going to do you that much good to put in a road if the goods are going to be stopped at the border anyway.”

“I’ve been corresponding with King Albrecht and he is supportive of the idea of improvements and so are the Roths,” Karl said. “Silesia is a little more complicated. Well . . . difficult. I will have to convince Aunt Beth that I am not building roads to help my uncle invade.”

“Is your uncle really likely to invade?”

“Not really, but it was a political marriage and was never a happy one,” Karl admitted. He suspected—but didn’t say—that the Wendell women would see what had happened back then as church-sanctioned rape. He was starting to look at it that way himself. In any case, it had left Aunt Beth with a distrust of the church and of men. At this point, after her duchy had been overrun by Protestant Danes, Aunt Beth had little faith in any confession and still less faith in men. But that wasn’t something he wanted to get into with the Wendell women. Instead he continued. “The goal of both families was to unite the lands in Silesia, or at least most of them, under one rule.” Actually, at this point Karl was pretty sure that the whole thing was a put-up job and an attempted land grab on the part of his family. But he wasn’t going to say that either. “But my Uncle Gundaker is very dedicated to the Catholic faith, and interpreted the marriage to mean that Aunt Beth’s lands were now his.”

“What about you?” Sarah asked. “About the church, I mean.”

“I was much as my uncle,” Karl admitted. “And in a way I still am. But the Ring of Fire is its own holy writ. God—” Karl looked at Judy the Younger and grinned. “—or little green men if you insist, brought a town from the future and didn’t choose a Catholic town. Anyway, Aunt Beth was always . . . ah . . . iffy . . . about her Catholicism and the enforcement. Besides, she figures she is the ruling duchess and Uncle Gundaker figures he is the man and therefore the head of the woman.”

Sarah and both Judys snorted and made various comments about that.