Nichols shrugged. "What the hell, it's a nice trip."
"It's February," countered Melissa. "It's cold in February."
"Not in that heated compartment on the train it wasn't. I admit, the barge kinda sucked, creature-comfort-wise. But I like to look at snow-covered countryside. Dunno why. Must be my African genetic background."
Melissa looked at him sideways. "It's very well-established in the historical records that almost all Africans brought over to the New World to be slaves came from either West Africa or Angola. Not a snow-covered patch to be found anywhere. African genetics, my ass."
James grinned, very toothily. "Well, sure. That's the white man's version of African history. The same rascals who deny that ancient Egypt was African, and that half the Greek pantheon and Jesus himself were black. In point of fact, I'm quite sure my ancestors were born and reared in the very shadows of Kilimanjaro."
Melissa rolled her eyes. James' grin widened still further. "Did I mention that Neal Armstrong was black, too? Yup. First man on the moon was a brother. Naturally they kept it under wraps and never let him out in public 'less he was wearing whiteface. 'Course, the whole moon expedition was actually a media fraud and it all happened in a studio somewhere in either Culver City, California or Roswell, New Mexico, depending on who you ask. So I guess it'd be more accurate to say that the star of history's greatest and most successful fraud was a brother. But, what the hell. Prestige is where you find it. And speaking of which, Mike, how the hell are you doing in this election?"
"Who knows? I can tell you how we're doing in Magdeburg."
"We're winning by a landslide in the city," pronounced Gunther Achterhof, looking up briefly from the table in the corner where he and Spartacus and three young assistants were keeping a running tally of the vote results as runners brought them in. "The party will win by something like eighty percent. Otto Gericke will get over ninety-five percent as city mayor. Of course, he ran unopposed, so it's not really important."
Spartacus looked up also. "So far, we're doing almost as well in Magdeburg province as we are in the city itself. A little over seventy-five percent. Of course, the only precincts reporting in yet are the ones closest to the city."
Nichols shook his head. "Oh, whoopee. What a shocker." Half-scowling: "For Pete's sake, Gunther, the man in the moon knew we were going to win Magdeburg-city and province both-in a landslide. How are we doing everywhere else?"
"Stop pestering the poor man," chided Rebecca. "We have no way of getting results quickly, and you know it. It will be several weeks before we get the final results from all the outlying areas."
"We'll survive," said Mike, although he sounded perhaps just a tad doubtful. "After all, the Founding Fathers of the old USA had to do the same thing. Just wait and wait and wait till you found out who won the election."
"Would anyone like to play cards?" asked Rebecca.
Grantville, February 22, 1635
The Voice of America announced that on the basis of a survey of sample precincts, the Piazza/Ableidinger ticket had won in a landslide in the State of Thuringia-Franconia.
"Not," Arnold Bellamy said, "that it's exactly a big surprise."
Duke Albrecht of Saxe-Weimar went to the studio and conceded in a very gracious manner. Then, with a sigh of relief, he went home to Weimar.
The station once more brought on Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, who had been providing political analysis throughout the evening.
At the national level, the Fourth of July Party did well in some regions. The SoTF of course. Again no surprise. Mike Stearns would be in Parliament again-as the leader of the Loyal Opposition.
On the basis of early returns, sample precincts again, radioed in from about anywhere a newspaper could put a radio, it definitely looked like the new state capital would be Bamberg. The heart and center of the Ram Rebellion. The symbol of popular democracy in Germany south of the Main. The…
Every reporter in Bamberg was having a ball thinking up new headlines.
Magdeburg, late February 1635
"A landslide, as I said." Gunther Achterhof sounded immensely pleased with himself, as if he'd just pronounced some dazzling new scientific theorem. "The Fourth of July Party won Magdeburg province by seventy-six percent."
He looked at Rebecca. "You won by ninety-eight percent, in your district."
"Well, yes. I ran unopposed." She frowned at the cards in her hand. "And now bridge is getting boring also."
"Start losing, for a change," suggested her husband. "That might perk up your interest."
"Do not be ridiculous, Michael," said Rebecca.
"Fat chance," jeered her partner Melissa.
Grantville, late February 1635
"Well, I've got to say," Joe Stull said, "that it's suddenly become a real high priority on everybody's list to push the railroad through Kronach and all the way down to Bamberg. I guess that's the main thing I'll be dealing with personally and it'll keep me more than busy. The rest of the cabinet will have to handle everything else."
"No question that you and Aura Lee are moving with us?"
"Nope. Billy Lee's going to stay here with Chad and Debbie, to finish high school, but we'll take Juliann. There'll be some school there to suit her. I already talked to Constantin Ableidinger when he was up here last week. Or correspondence courses. Or something. We'll deal with it."
George Chehab frowned. "The decision's going to be easier for some than others. A whole bunch of families who work for the SoTF government are starting to agonize about 'do we go or do we stay?' Especially if half the couple's a state employee and the other half isn't."
Ed Piazza spread both of his hands out on the table. "We're not going to be cutting them any slack."
"How so?"
"Every office moves, just as fast as we can find office space in Bamberg. And we're not going to dawdle on that. Ideally, I'd like to get the whole move done in six months. We're already negotiating for leases. New construction, where we can get it. Temporary buildings, if that's all we can get. Vox populi, and all that. The voters said that we go, so we go. Make it clear to the personnel office. So they can make it clear to everyone who comes in and whines."
Tony Adducci leaned back. "Yeesh-that's hard-nosed. We're going, of course. But where's everybody going to find housing?"
"The CoC people are helping with that-locating rental properties and such. Encouraging landlords to rent. Not that a lot of families won't be crowded into a lot less space than they're used to, next winter," Chehab said. "I'll be pushing electrification and telephones. Not the way they're available here in Grantville, but at some sort of minimal level. Not that we can't live without them, if we have to. Vince Marcantonio's staff have been, all along."
"Vince and the others who've been in the regional administration there since the fall of '32 are coming up to give orientation sessions on finding housing and schools. Janie Kacere's going to talk to the career people. Stacey O'Brien, Tom's wife, going to talk to the wives and mothers." Ed laughed. "Do you think that this is the first redistricting I've overseen in my career? This is nothing compared to the grief an administrator gets every time the system redraws the school attendance boundaries."
"What's going to be left?" Vera Hudson asked. "After the government people go? Could someone pass the potatoes this way, please."
"It's not as bad as the doomsayers make it sound," Chad Jenkins answered. "Do you want gravy?
"The town's keeping the state library. It just doesn't make sense to split it off from the other libraries at the schools, or from the research center. So all the foreign visitors who use those will keep coming."
Missy passed the gravy boat, grinning as she thought of Thanksgiving dinner last year.
Chad kept talking. "And we're getting a sort of consolation prize. The Tech Center's being promoted into the SoTF Technical College, with a lot more faculty and an expanded curriculum. It's going to absorb the teacher training program that's been at the middle school. And the first two, maybe three, years of the Jena/Leahy medical training curriculum. Basic science and nursing through the RN, pre-med. That will be drawing a lot more students into town."