At first, Eddie had been inclined to sulk when Simpson modified his basic design. To his credit, he'd recognized that the alterations were genuine improvements, and that was the reason Simpson (although he doubted that the young man was aware of it) had specifically requested that he be assigned to the Navy. Stearns had already sent him to Magdeburg to help oversee the project, after all, which meant Simpson couldn't have gotten rid of him, anyway. And the Navy was going to need officers who could actually think. Those were rarer than one might have thought, and from his own experience, Simpson recognized the mental flexibility involved in acknowledging that someone else had actually made one of your own brainchildren better. So he'd decided to make a virtue out of necessity… which was how both Eddie and his friend Larry Wild had abruptly become junior-grade lieutenants in John Simpson's Navy.
And if it had also let Simpson get the last laugh on Mike Stearns, so much the better.
"Fortunately," he went on after a moment, "convincing the freiherr to go along with our plans isn't really our concern. If Mr. Schaubach feels that he's unlikely to be able to get von Bleckede to see reason, refer him to Mr. Piazza." He smiled again, more blandly than ever, as Eddie frowned. Ed Piazza, the secretary of state, had been Stearns' choice to serve as his personal representative to all the various minor local potentates not worthy of the personal attention of the head of state.
"That will take time," Eddie began, "and-"
"That may be true," Simpson interrupted. "But it's the secretary of state's job to deal with things like this. Or let Gustav's chancellor Oxenstierna deal with it. We've got more to worry about than convincing one minor nobleman to see things our way. Besides, whether we like it or not, we've got time before we'll actually need to get that far down-river, now don't we?"
Eddie looked rebellious, but Simpson was accustomed to that. What mattered more to him was the fact that the youngster actually thought his way through it, then subsided with nothing more than one last grimace.
"Now," Simpson went on, "was there anything else you needed, Lieutenant?"
"No, I guess not… sir."
"Good." Simpson turned to Davis. "And what can I do for you, Mr. Davis?" he asked.
"Actually," Davis replied, "I just wanted to let you know that Ollie says he should have the first half dozen gun tubes ready to ship to us by the end of the week."
"Good!"
Simpson was unaware of the way in which his genuine enthusiasm transfigured his own expression. The change was brief, but Davis recognized it. It was a pity, he often thought, that Simpson had such a completely tone deaf "ear" where minor things like interpersonal relations were concerned. Personally, Davis still thought the man was a prick, especially as far as politics went, and he didn't much care for the "admiral's" obsession with matters of rank-social, as well as military-and the perquisites which went with it. But he'd come to recognize that however unpleasant Simpson's personality might be, the man undeniably had a brain. Quite a good one, as a matter of fact, when it could be pried away from things like his political disagreements with Mike Stearns.
However much Davis hated to admit it (and, as it happened, he hated it quite a bit), Simpson's experience as an officer in the up-time United States Navy really did show in the organization he was building here in Magdeburg. The up-timers under his command might carp and complain about "Mickey Mouse bullshit" and mutter balefully about "front office management pricks," but Davis had come to realize that there genuinely was a method to his madness. Of course, sometimes the machinist wondered how much of that method was due to the fact that Simpson had a clearer appreciation of what was needed than his fellow up-timers did and how much resulted from his own innate propensity for empire building. But whatever his reasoning, Simpson's Navy was much better disciplined and shaping up as a considerably more professional organization than Frank Jackson's Army.
Too many of Jackson's senior officers were still up-timers themselves, with a casual attitude toward him and toward each other which remained essentially civilian. That was fine as far as they themselves were concerned. They knew one another, and their relationships, however casual, worked. But the core of the Army had been the United Mine Workers of America. Davis wasn't certain how well the example of that attitude would serve as those from outside the original UMWA membership began attaining senior rank. And whatever might have been the case for the Army, Simpson didn't have that existing structure to build upon. He was creating the Navy out of whole cloth. Almost a hundred percent of its personnel were 17 th -century Germans and Swedes, leavened with just enough up-timers to provide the technical skills the newly made Americans had not yet acquired. And that was another kettle of fish entirely.
It didn't make Davis like Simpson any more, but it had permitted him to at least appreciate that the man did have some worthwhile qualities. Which was why he thought it was such a pity that Simpson was so persistently unwilling-or unable-to demonstrate the enthusiasm Davis had come to realize he felt for his present task. Instead, Simpson was prone to giving the impression that he had taken on the "chore" as a matter of noblesse oblige, to save the uncouth Appalachian yokels from the results of their own ignorance. That, more than any real policy differences, explained the antagonism that Simpson had a positive genius for stirring up among the people in the U.S. government he dealt with.
Thank God we're in Magdeburg, Nat thought to himself wryly. If we'd been based in Grantville, Simpson would be getting challenged to a duel every other Tuesday-the law be damned.
"Are we going to use the wire-built design or bronze casting?" Cantrell asked. Simpson gave him a sharp glance for interrupting, but said nothing. Simpson, Davis had noticed, was prepared to cut the youngster a much greater degree of slack than he did for anyone else. He wondered if Eddie realized that?
"Wire-built, for the first half dozen, at least," Nat replied. "The power plant has more than enough Schedule 160 twelve-inch pipe for the liners for all sixteen of the rifled guns, and we've unlaid enough steel cable to provide plenty of wire."
Simpson and Eddie both nodded. Twelve-inch Schedule 160 pipe had an inside diameter of just over ten inches and a wall thickness of about one and a quarter inches. That was ample to provide the liner for a ten-inch artillery piece, and Grantville's machining capability was more than adequate for the task of providing it with rifling grooves. But that left the task of reinforcing it. The original Grantville power plant had run to relatively high steam pressures, but there was a world of difference between that and the pressures which would be exerted in the bore of a black-powder cannon!