But no one here was going to believe that. She shrugged it off. They would learn. Just not too soon, she hoped. Instead, she told of her father’s problems after Kipper and Wipper and the arrival of the Ring of Fire. “He sent me to Grantville just after they ratified their constitution. So I attended the Grantville high school.”
“Why would he do that, especially with a daughter?” asked Stephen. He was the senior servant here and seemed to feel it was his responsibility to put into words what the others wanted to ask.
“Well, I have no brothers. They were killed in the war in 1625. We were close enough that we could make the trip and see the Ring of Fire. Father felt that the Ring changed everything. Besides, I had always been interested in books. Anyway, that’s where I met Judy Wendell. I got onto the junior varsity cheerleading squad. A lot of down-timer girls were unwilling to do so because of the short skirts of the cheerleader’s uniform.” Trudi stood up and gestured on her body where the skirt fell, to gasps of disbelief and titillation. There were condemnations, but she defended the practice and pointed out that they weren’t all that much shorter than the dress Vicky Emerson wore to the emperor’s ball. Then she told them about the various financial adventures, including the acquisition of American Equipment Corporation. “After that, the Barbies were very short on cash till Prince Karl got back to Grantville from the Netherlands.” She explained that Judy and Karl had made a deal and the Barbies had been funded since then by Karl, through the American Equipment Corporation, and had made him a lot of money.
* * *
From there, the stories about the “Barbie” company spread through the upper servants and the lower nobility. It was all part of Trudi’s plan. They were going to introduce BarbieCo Preferred as an alternative to reich money, and to do that they needed a whisper campaign, not a proclamation. That was also the reason for the change of the name from AEC to BarbieCo. Barbies were expensive and valuable, so BarbieCo Preferred must be the same.
* * *
Anna, the new maid who was getting more money and getting paid on time, asked about getting some of her pay in stock from the Barbies. The girls said “sure.” The Liechtenstein under-servants asked about the availability of stock as well, apparently having heard about it from Anna.
But mostly the investors were the upper nobility. They had more money to spend. They got the word from Judy and Vicky.
The Hofburg Palace, Vienna
Karl Eusebius looked around the meeting room. It was small for the group, and crowded, and Karl was almost regretting bringing the Barbies. The rectangular room had thick walls with the windows set back to the exterior walls. There were two windows set high on the walls, and two lower. The cloudy day insured that the light was not particularly bright. A polished oak table sat in the center of the room, surrounded by chairs and covered with papers and reports having to do with balance of trade and the proposed railroad.
“We need to stop these imports from the USE,” Moses Abrabanel insisted.
Karl hid a wince.
“Just how do you figure on stopping them?” Sarah Wendell asked. “Are you hiding an industrial complex in your back pocket, by chance?”
Uncle Gundaker slapped a hand on the table. “We need to introduce sumptuary laws to counter the flow of silver to the USE.”
“What are you going to do? Make it illegal to own sewing machine-made trousers?” Susan snorted.
“If everyone will just calm down,” Karl tried.
It didn’t do a lot of good. Duke Leopold was representing the royal family in this meeting and being wisely quiet.
Gundaker, representing the court, and Moses Abrabanel, representing the mercantile interests of Vienna, were both pushing for the mercantilist viewpoint. The proposed railroad was fully mapped-out and construction had started in Silesia, but was being delayed in Vienna because of fear of even more silver flowing from Austria-Hungary to the USE. This time through Bohemia, with still more silver in fees and taxes going to Wallenstein. All in exchange for manufactured goods that the USE seemed to be producing at an ever-increasing rate.
“The Swede is trying to destroy the Holy Roman Empire by bankrupting it with cheap machine-made goods and the railroad will just make it work faster. Trainloads of silver will be going from Vienna, through Bohemia, to Magdeburg as the Swede gets stronger, Wallenstein gets stronger, and we get weaker,” Gundaker complained.
It was all very overblown. Yes, the balance of trade between the USE and Austria-Hungary was more than a bit one-sided, but it was far from the deadly dangerous problem that Moses and Gundaker were making it out to be. Even with the rail line, it wasn’t going to become killing.