“Your Grace,” the vision said. “So pleased to meet you. Call me Judy, please. Everyone does.”
Beauty incarnate, Leo thought. It was strange, really. She wasn’t that attractive by the artistic standards of the seventeenth century. Too thin by half, he would have said if he were looking at a painting. But this wasn’t a painting. She flowed, she floated, she waved to the crowd. She smiled and you were welcomed into heaven.
Leo went through the rest of the greeting in a haze. He performed his function in a daze, which proved the value of years of training in protocol. Judy had a soft, furry voice. Leo felt like everything she said was a secret shared with him, and him alone.
The rest of the young ladies came forward. Karl pointed at each. “Victoria Maureen Emerson von Up-time, Susan Elizabeth Logsden von Up-time, Gabrielle Carlina Ugolini von Up-time, Millicent Anne Barnes von Up-time.” Leo worked at remembering all the strange names. Then Gundaker von Liechtenstein arrived, and brought Leo back to the present. It was Prince Karl who was important here. More important than the plane, even.
Gundaker had made it all quite clear. The empire was broke. Worse than broke. Without the taxes provided by Bohemia and Moravia, Austria-Hungary didn’t have the assets to cover the loans already outstanding. Almost as bad, many of their potential loan sources had instead invested money in the new businesses in the USE. Including the Liechtensteins, in the person of Karl. In spite of which the Liechtenstein family in Austria had, under considerable pressure, made further loans to the royal purse. And that money was now mostly spent to keep the Austrian government from appearing as broke as it was. When asked for more, they had pointed out that there wasn’t any more, at least not in Austria-Hungary. They had lost a lot of their income to Wallenstein at the same time the Austro-Hungarian empire had. Karl, however, safe in Grantville in the USE had investments of considerable worth.
“My lord of the Exchequer.” Leo bowed precisely the right amount for a younger brother of the emperor to a member of the highest nobility who was many years his senior. Gundaker was a stickler for protocol. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
“Your Grace,” Gundaker answered, even more precisely than usual. Leo wondered what had him upset. Then he realized it was the up-timer girls. Sarah Wendell von Up-Time to be precise. Gundaker was not one of those who subscribed to the notions of up-timer nobility. Gundaker was a bit of a prick even if he was a highly efficient organizer and quite bright. He had long since appointed himself the job of seeing that no one show the Liechtenstein family lese majeste. Gundaker was happy enough that Karl was making a morganatic marriage. It opened up the inheritance of the Liechtenstein lands to his branch of the family, after all. On the other hand, Gundaker didn’t approve of jumped-up peasants. He didn’t approve of Sarah Wendell and was only willing to put up with the marriage at all because it removed any potential children from the succession. That, and the fact that most of Prince Karl’s money was sitting comfortably in the USE, where the rest of the family couldn’t get hold of it, at least not without Karl’s acquiescence. The Liechtenstein family and the Austro-Hungarian Empire needed that money. It was a weak bargaining position for Gundaker, a position he found less than comforting.
This was something that Leo had already talked to his older brother Ferdinand III about. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had no particular objection to recognizing the title “von Up-time.” Marriages, after all, were significantly cheaper than wars. Ah. Here it came. Karl was introducing his harem, ah, the young ladies, to his uncle. “Sarah Wendell von Up-time, Judith Elaine Wendell von Up-time, Victoria Maureen Emerson von Up-time. .” With each introduction Gundaker’s face got a little bit stiffer.
“Hi, guys!” came from out of the crowd.
“Hayley!” Judy shouted back. “Let her through!”
Leo nodded, though it wasn’t really necessary. Whether it was Judy’s voice, which carried a natural assumption of obedience or the obvious fact that several of the nobles gathered around the plane knew Hayley Alma Fortney or some other reason, Hayley was already through the guards. Hayley Fortney, the daughter of one of his brother’s mechanics, joined them next to the plane.
“So!” Victoria Maureen Emerson von Up-time asked in English, “how is life in the sticks?”
Leo felt his face stiffen up. Gundaker’s was already stone, now it turned to iron. The plays and even movies had spread rapidly-not all of them, but some. Granted, the remark was in English and up-timer English to boot, but sticks and hicks had been translated as slang expressions for villages and villains/villagers.
“It’s a translation issue,” Judy said.
Leo looked at her, wondering what she was talking about, and she continued, looking back and forth between Leo and Gundaker. “It’s one of the most difficult issues we’ve run into since the Ring of Fire brought us here. It’s not the direct meaning of words, though that has been a problem. But the indirect unconscious meanings that people attach. The implications can be quite different than we expect.”
“And what was mistranslated?” Gundaker asked.
“I have no idea, but from your expression something was.” Then she grinned like an imp and winked at Gundaker. And Leo found himself trying not to laugh.
“Sticks, perhaps?” Leo asked.
“How would you translate it?”
“Out among the villagers, probably.”
“And why would that be so very insulting?” Judy asked.
Now Leo was caught. What exactly was so insulting about being called a villager? Were they not as much children of God as the citizens of Vienna? Yet Leo knew that he did feel insulted and he knew why. He was the younger son of the last Holy Roman Emperor, and whatever the Bible might say, he was no peasant and didn’t appreciate being thought of as one.
“Perhaps you don’t see the insult because you were born in a village yourself,” Gundaker offered. “Uncultured, without the benefit of civilization.”
“In a way you’re absolutely right.” Judy grinned. “But not in the way you mean. I was never a ‘villain’ in the sense it is so often used here and now. I was always a citizen. A citizen of the United States of America. I never met a ‘villain’ till after the Ring of Fire.” Her voice put quotes around villain. “As to the uncultured part. . Well, the truth is we have nearly four hundred years more civilization than you do. Great art, great music, great generals, engineering, medicine, mathematics, economics, all sorts of stuff. Things that are available in and near the Ring of Fire, even to an extent in Magdeburg. That part was sort of valid, I guess. But we don’t hold their lack against you.” Judy smiled again, a thoroughly condescending smile. “At least, we try not to. It would be uncivilized to do so.”
Leo had never seen Gundaker von Liechtenstein so thoroughly put in his place.
Hayley Fortney had apparently been explaining to the young ladies what it was like in the sticks. There was quite a bit of giggling going on. Leo suddenly wondered how she knew the other girls. “How is it that the daughter of one of my brother’s auto mechanics knows you and your friends, Judy?”
“Because the daughter of your brother’s auto mechanic is,”-and now Judy’s voice became quite cultured, almost a parody of cultured-“Hayley Alma Fortney von Up-time. A member in good standing of the Barbie Consortium.” Then Judy’s voice returned to its normal friendly, welcoming tones. “And a friend of all of ours since before the Ring of Fire.” Then in a whisper, “She’s loaded!”
“‘Loaded’?”
“Rich.”
“If her family is,” Leo grinned and whispered back, “‘loaded!’ why is her father working as my brother’s mechanic?”
“Oh, her family’s not rich. Comfortable, even well off, okay. Quite well off, what with the family money she’s been investing for them. But Hayley is the one who’s rich. Besides, her dad likes cars.”