“In a way, the crisis over the church has been helpful. People have sort of forgotten about us out at Race Track City while the priests and monks have been fighting each other over whether Urban is still the pope or if he is an outlaw heretic. We got a priest out there late last year and, of course, just about everybody here is Catholic. Father Degrassi is a Jesuit but not a fanatic about it. He’s mostly just a parish priest, and he’s a pretty reasonable guy. Oh, he tells Mom she’s going to burn in hell, but he’s mostly just joking and in no hurry to start the process early. So anyway, since the pope booked out of Rome, everyone has been crazy. The issue of whether Race Track City should be forcibly incorporated into Vienna has been put on the back burner. We haven’t had any riots out there and the three fights were broken up by our guards.”
They continued to talk about the situation in Vienna while they ate.
CHAPTER 19
June 1635
Liechtenstein House, Vienna
Dinner was going fine, Karl thought. They were using the gold-electroplated flatware from the Wish Book, which Karl found amusing. The tableware was Viennese-made china-style porcelain. The tablecloth was linen, with lace doilies for the place settings. It was surprising how much of the Liechtenstein dinner setting was out of Grantville, in style if not in fact. Conversation was light, mostly about Karl’s investments in Grantville and Amsterdam.
Having met Fernando, King in the Low Countries, before he became king, Karl expressed the belief that Maria Anna had made on her own a better match than her father had provided. “Especially since I doubt Maximilian of Bavaria will survive much longer.”
“And suppose Gustav oversteps? Perhaps is killed?” Maximillian von Liechtenstein asked, suddenly serious.
“It’s possible, I suppose, but I doubt it. And even if he does, it won’t make that much difference. The duke of Bavaria has cut himself off from most of his support. He has the USE to the north and Austria-Hungary to the south and east, Bernard’s territory to the southwest and no one much cares for him. The USE is the real problem for him. They are both too strong and too rich for him to do more than annoy. . and he annoys them at his peril.”
“On that subject, how is it that the USE let you take one of their airplanes?”
“Actually, the plane we arrived in is owned by King Fernando,” Karl said.
“He bought TEA and converted it to Royal Dutch Airlines this spring,” Sarah said.
“The USE doesn’t object?” Maximillian asked.
“Not really. About half the ownership is from the Netherlands and always was. People who got out of Amsterdam just before the siege closed in. With the settlement, several of them have gone back to Amsterdam. TEA now has several Jupiters, although they have trouble keeping more than one or two in the air at any one time. Otherwise, it would have been difficult to get the charter flight when we came here, even considering that Karl owns about five percent and the Barbies own another three.”
“The Barbies?” asked Maximillian’s wife, Katharina, as a maid served soup from her left, just as the up-time manuals said she should. “I thought those were dolls? One of my friends has a Barbie doll that was bought in Venice for seventy-five guilders. It came with a certificate of authenticity, confirming that it was a real up-time produced Barbie doll owned by Delia Higgins.”
“Delia’s dolls have certainly traveled.” Sarah smiled. The serving maid placed a bowl of soup before her. Sarah turned to the young woman and said, “Thank you. It smells delicious,” before turning back to answer Karl’s Aunt Katharina, not noticing the sudden stiffness in the postures of Gundaker and Countess Aldringer. Uncle Max didn’t seem all that upset, but Sarah was still talking. “The Barbies I was referring to are my younger sister and her friends. Like Delia Higgins and some others in town, they had a collection of dolls, mostly Barbie dolls. The girls sold them and used the money to go into investing, starting with a good number of shares of HSMC.”
“How is it your parents allowed that?” Gundaker asked.
“Allowed what?”
“Allowed investment in business.”
Sarah looked at Gundaker in confusion. “Isn’t that what your family does? I mean, Kipper and Wipper and, well, some looting of Protestant lands, is where most of your family’s wealth came from, but wasn’t it mostly business? Granted, your brother, Karl’s father, wasn’t very good at it, but that was at least in part because you didn’t have the theory to understand what you were doing.”
Karl cringed. Gundaker was looking for reasons not to like Sarah and she had just given him two. Karl had seen his automatic distaste for Sarah from the greetings when they had landed. But if there was one thing that Gundaker cared about more than any other, it was the family’s reputation as nobility, not mere merchants or tradesmen.
* * *
“Are you out of your mind?” Gundaker poured himself a brandy from the table of drinks set out in the library. “The girl is little more than a servant. Cunning and low. And don’t give me that crap about up-timers’ nobility. The Barclays have been riding that to death. No one believes it, less now than when they arrived.”
Karl had been planning on bringing up the miraculous nature of the Ring of Fire, but now didn’t seem to be the right time. Opinions about the class into which the up-timers fell varied quite a bit. He walked over and sat in one of the leather-upholstered chairs.
“Calm down, Brother.” Maximillian sipped his brandy and leaned back in his chair. “Granted, the Barclays haven’t produced that much in the way of results. Yet. But it’s been less than a year. And honestly, they have a point about the lack of funding.”
“I know and that’s not what I’m talking about,” Gundaker said. “It’s their attitude. They act as though we were some primitive tribesmen. Then they turn around and act like some obsequious tailor, whining about the cost of cloth.”
Karl couldn’t resist a snort. If that was what Uncle Gundaker was used to from the Barclays and their associates, he was in for a rude awakening. Not that Sarah was all that socially astute, but she was aware of her lack of social skills. And Judy the Barracudy was about as socially skilled as anyone Karl had met short of Dowager Empress Eleonora. Gundaker was looking at him waiting for an explanation of his snort.
“There’s an expression I got from David Bartley, Uncle,” Karl tried to explain. “‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ Grantville, the Ring of Fire, the whole area, is experiencing a rapidly rising economic tide. And while it hasn’t lifted all the fortunes of all the up-timers, it’s done a pretty decent job. In that environment, the Barclays felt themselves so unsuccessful that they were willing to move to Vienna, where there would be less competition. The Barclays have skills, serious skills even by the standards of the up-timers. So why, Uncle? Why were they available? Why weren’t they busy getting rich in Grantville or Magdeburg?”
“Why?” Maximillian leaned forward, looking at Karl.
“Understand, I had met only two members of the Barclay group, and that only once or twice in passing. After they left there was quite a bit of discussion as to why, but most of it second- or third-hand. Just rumors really.” Karl shrugged away any personal knowledge of the Barclays or their companions. “The word in Grantville was that they were ‘Never Workers.’ With almost every project or company that has been started since the Ring of Fire there has been someone, usually more than one, explaining why it would ‘never work.’ The right tools aren’t available. The down-time craftsmen aren’t up to the challenge. That’s not the way they did it before the Ring of Fire. Sometimes the ‘Never Workers’ are right and sometimes not.