Redevelopment had hit the area around it. Dumais had seen historical photographs at the museum. Before the Ring of Fire, facing the 250 Club from the road, on the right, there had been a small scrapyard with a few dead cars-not really a wrecking yard, just random accumulation-with a fence made of wired-up pieces of sheet-iron roofing. The Garbage Guys had bought up everything there, also, the owner being too cheap to donate it to recycling. Now there were new buildings and new businesses. On the left, the road curved away from you, and the parking still went around to that side of the building, not that anyone needed a parking lot any more. The next thing in that direction was-once upon a time-a failed gas station, with a rusty brown 1971 Mercury with a torn vinyl top and the right-front wheel missing parked under the portico. The car was long gone for parts. A down-time blacksmith had bought the building and stripped it. Now it was a butcher shop.
After a full evening of Madame Hardesty's conversation, Jacques-Pierre was tempted to give up the trade of espionage for good. He was suffering from la migraine. Getting any sound information out of the woman would be hopeless. She was utterly indifferent to anything that did not affect her directly.
She was stupid. She was spiteful. She was frivolous. She believed in astrology and who knew what other superstitions. She spouted platitudes that she found in her horoscope.
She was also a first cousin of the prime minister of the United States of Europe. True, Mike Stearns avoided claiming the relationship as much as possible-and had, by all accounts, long before he became the prime minister. A prime minister and a waitress in a tavern? Cousins? It would not be possible in a well-ordered world. But Stearns was an upstart and he did acknowledge the relationship in a minimal sort of way. At least, the woman had been invited to his wedding. Jacques-Pierre had confirmed that.
So.
If he could put ideas into that hennaed head? Ideas that she could drop into her normal conversation? It wouldn't work in a larger community, but there were really so few of the up-timers. A comment here. An innuendo there. A veiled criticism here. A barbed jab there. Each of them the kind of thing that people who knew the woman might expect her to say, but with the added little fillip that well, she was , after all, Mike Stearns' first cousin. Even if it was on the Lawler side of the family and they weren't that close.
Jacques-Pierre set out to flatter Madame Hardesty while, at the same time, seeding her mind with comments that would cultivate enough mild dissatisfaction in Grantville about the USE's policy in regard to Louis XIII and Richelieu to persuade Mauger that it was worthwhile to keep employing him. But not so much dissatisfaction as to cause really major problems, since that was not what Henri de Rohan wanted, not at all.
He must encourage her to undertake a self-improvement project. How? What would she understand? Ah, yes-the practice of transcendental meditation. Reduced to words she might at least pretend to understand.
The woman was not only lazy but also not known to be interested in public affairs. So he would be careful. Of the subjects that he gave her, "new insights" she should share with others to impress them, only about one in three, maybe fewer, would have any possible political implications. Most of the positive ones would involve the need for up-timers to harbor warm, fuzzy thoughts about French Huguenots and the Calvinist exiles from the Spanish Netherlands. The negative ones would target Gustavus Adolphus' treaty proposals. The remainder would be platitudes such as A Discontented Heart Breeds a Discontented Life . He could easily plagiarize most of them from Seneca, which the Grantvillers would soon realize, if they read Seneca.
But they didn't. So.
Chapter 12
Grantville
"Hey, Veda Mae. Can I share your table?"
She looked up. The dining room at the Willard Hotel was crowded for lunch and it was Bryant Holloway. She had known him all his life and he was her cousin somehow through the Cunninghams, so she couldn't very well say no. Therefore, she cleared her purse off the other side where it had been staking her claim and said, "Sure. Haven't seen you for a while."
"I've been in Magdeburg since the middle of last winter. I'm just back for a month or so now for a fire prevention training conference."
"What's Magdeburg like?"
"Start with this. The Fire Marshall of our wonderful United States of Europe is that prick from Baltimore, Archie Stannard. One of the Masaniellos' relatives who got caught in the Ring of Fire because of Vince and Carla's fortieth anniversary party over at Pray Your Rosary Catholic Church, or whatever they're calling it these days."
"What's wrong with him?"
"From the minute the Grantville fire department chief Steve Matheny picked him up as assistant chief, Stannard's been trying to make us more 'professional.' Sometimes I thought that if I heard the word 'professional' one more time, I would gag. Steve kept us right up to the mark on equipment and training, but he didn't preach about it. Stannard does. I guess I could have lived with that, though. Since the Ring of Fire, we'd all been on call 24/7 and that wears you out, so I sort of put it down to stress. But then in the fall of '32, Stearns made this agreement with What's His Name, the captain general you know, and Stannard started on this kick of expanding modern fire prevention into the rest of the New United States. It's one thing to work your ass off for Grantville. It's something else when they expect you to do it for a bunch of foreigners."
Sensing a kindred spirit, Veda Mae actually smiled. "You didn't have anyone in Magdeburg back then, did you?"
"No. But they sent me over to Rudolstadt, right off the bat, as soon as Steve insisted that he needed me to go full-time rather than volunteer. Which I agreed to do, even though, with overtime, I was sure making more at Ollie's than the government pays us. The count over there speaks some English, at least, even though he sounds like one of those Shakespeare plays that Lisa Dailey tried to make us read in high school."
"Shakespeare's not so bad. We even read some of his stuff back in my day, and he sounded a lot like the King James Version. Which the Reverends Jones never should have gotten rid of and put in one of these so-called modern translations of the Bible." Veda Mae veered off on a tangent, pursuing one of her favorite grievances. By the time she ran down, Bryant had finished half of his lunch.
"Anyway, you asked what Magdeburg is like. We're trying to prevent all of the wonderful Emperor Gustavus Adolphus' Kraut allies from turning themselves into krispy kritters, which, if you ask me, most of them deserve. They're the ones who messed up and caused the disaster at Underwood's coal gas company. And now Quentin's dead himself, poor guy. None of the Krauts up at Wietze went running to help him, as far as I've ever heard.
"I'm not even at the Navy Yard, which might make some sense. I drew Station Number One. With Bibi Blackwood, of all people, as Captain and Officer in Charge. I never did hold with women 'firefighters' and I still don't. They even had to change the word from 'firemen.' "
"I never heard anyone complain that Bibi couldn't handle it. She's a big woman."
Bryant couldn't argue with that. Bibi was a big woman, all right. He nodded, then said, "At least her boys are grown and Sara stayed back here in Grantville with Dean and his new wife, so she's not distracted by having to find child care and schools. I'll give her that much."
"Kraut woman."
"Bibi?"
"Dean's new wife. Would you believe that her name is Krapp?"
Bryant laughed so loud that people stared at them.
"The whole town is going to pot," Veda Mae said. "You can't believe how many decent Americans are marrying these Kraut whores. There must be a half dozen or so who are actually taking classes at that Kraut church out on what used to be Route 250 on the way to Rudolstadt so they can marry them in Kraut ceremonies. And it won't be any too soon for Ryan Baker and his girlfriend if you know what I mean, believe me. Little slut. She works in Cora Ennis' kitchen at the cafe."