“Licensing fees?”
“Never mind,” Hayley said. “It’s silly, but it’s the rules. We could afford a few individual licenses, but the owner wants a fortune for the licences for mass production of engines.”
“What about steel?” Carla knew that the price of iron had gone through the roof in the USE since they got started on the railroads.
“Yes, it’s gone up even here, but they import up the Danube from Hungary and points south. They also have iron mines near Linz and just north of Judenburg. Plus, it’s both hard and expensive to ship anything heavy from Vienna—or just about anywhere in Austria-Hungary—to the USE. You either have to go around Europe by way of the Black Sea and Mediterranean, up the Spanish and French coasts, past England and around to the Baltic. Or you go over really bad land routes, through lots of little lordling’s territories. Either way, the price goes up a lot. So iron, copper, and a lot of stuff is cheaper here than in the USE.”
Hayley blathered on about the price of this and the shipping cost of that, and Carla finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Can I talk to you?” she blurted out.
Hayley didn’t wince, but Carla could tell she had to work at it. And Carla, a bright and fairly well-educated girl, knew why. Last year in Grantville, Hayley was always being hit on by people who wanted the Barbies to invest in something, or wanted Hayley to tell them what the Barbies were doing, or just loan them—better, give them—money. In a way, that was what Carla was here for and she hoped that them being the only up-timers would help.
Hayley gestured Carla to a bench and came over to sit down next to her. Hayley’s dark brown hair was held back with a scrunchy and there was a grease smudge on her forehead that Carla wanted to wipe away.
“What can I do here to make money?” Carla didn’t mean to say it that way, but it just spilled out of her mouth as soon as she opened it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that, but I don’t know how things work here. And . . . well, Mom and Dad didn’t exactly ask my opinion before they brought me here.” Though she didn’t know it, that was the right thing to say.
“I’ll try to help,” Hayley said. “What do you know about?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I was in theater arts at Grantville High, stage setting, some acting. I’ve learned German, of course, and some French and Latin. From before the Ring of Fire, I know tap dancing, though I’m out of practice. Mom and Dad had me taking lessons since I was six, and I didn’t like ballet as much as tap. And I can play the piano. Not real well, but I can play it. They made me take a gymnastics class on Saturdays. I’ve sort of kept that up since the Ring of Fire. Wednesdays were Japanese classes, ’cause Dad said the Japanese are really big in electronics.”
“I doubt Japanese is going to be much use, but maybe the piano.” Hayley paused a minute. “Do you know how a piano is made?”
“Sort of. I know the basics.”
“See if you can find out if anyone owns the patent on pianos. And if someone does, they probably don’t know how to build them. You can probably make some money working with whoever they have trying to build them. I don’t know about the tap dancing or gymnastics. Would the English Ladies think it was a good idea? Maybe you could teach tap or gymnastics at the English Ladies’ school.”
Carla grimaced at that.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, it’s the school. The students aren’t the children of the washer woman. They’re pretty status conscious and I’m not sure how comfortable they would be with going to school with someone who is being paid by their parents to teach them something.”
“I’m glad we have the tutor,” Hayley said. “Are you doing the correspondence course?”
“No. No one knew we were leaving. I didn’t know we were leaving. We have some course work in the baggage we brought, but not enough. And it’s been turned over to the English Ladies as my tuition to the school.”
“Well, that’s good,” Hayley said. “At least some of it will get to the people here. What courses?”
“We have the textbooks I was using in Grantville, both a copy of the English version and new German version. Biology, comparative history and German lit, also stage dressing and blocking, and studio management. It’s the senior year stuff for theater arts behind-the-scenes program. Before this happened I was going to be the down-time Frank Capra or Busby Berkeley.
“But it’s just the textbooks, not the course notes and like I said, my parents gave them to the English Ladies, so I have to share them with the whole school. And it’s not like I can write back to Grantville and get another copy. I think the books are hot.”