****
"No, Goodman, we aren’t here to raid your village nor to buy your goods with IOUs on the USE government," the sergeant said in a bored tone. He was with the Hangman Regiment, TDY to the Exchange Corps and by now this was old hat to him. He and his squad had done it yesterday and the day before. They came riding into a village, handed out the advertising flyers and the pamphlets explaining what the Exchange Corps was in the market for. That the Superstore was opening in the castle at Tetschen. And that, no, he really didn't care if the villagers went to the opening or not. "Look here, my good man, I'm with the Hangman Regiment. We don't rape or pillage, we hang them that do. All I'm here for is to deliver the pamphlets. But it's going to be one heck of a party at the grand opening. They've a whole big store full of goods from Grantville. And we're letting all the villages in the area know that it's happening, so there ought to be a lot of folks who come just to see the place. Truth to tell, it's worth the seeing."
"But we have no money, Sergeant," the village elder whined.
The sergeant didn't whack the old man upside the head, though he was a bit tempted. This one had a particularly grating whine. "I'm not surprised," the sergeant said instead. "That’s what this little booklet here is for. The Exchange Corps buys grain and cheese and, well, all those goods listed there. It pays in good beckies that you can spend at the superstore."
"What happens if we don't go?" the old man asked.
"You miss a good party." The sergeant shrugged. "It's all the same to me, Gramps."
****
They came! Mostly out of curiosity but they came.
Jeff Higgins, who had seen real super stores up-time was not impressed. David, whose memory of such places was getting pretty vague by now, was not really impressed. Even the old Grantville hands were less than overwhelmed. But to the villagers around Tetschen who were looking at the first vise-grips and bearing sets, canned apples, and freeze-dried mushrooms they'd ever seen? Looking at wood lathes, stamp presses, plows and even a steam tractor? They were impressed.
Not for sale, that steam tractor. It was the showroom model and you could order one. Which would get there when it got there. On the other hand, there was a guy that gave rides on it, showing all and sundry how it would pull a plow better than a team of eight horses. And do the same for a Fresno scraper.
The not-subtle theme of the whole event, even of the superstore itself, was an advertisement for beckies. How much is a becky worth? Well, twenty of them will buy a pair of vise-grips; it's marked on the shelf where the vise-grips are. One becky will buy a package of twenty two-inch nails. A steam tractor will be your village's if you can come up with 20,000 beckies. Eventually. A first quality wood lathe, 300 beckies. A real angora sweater, 200 beckies. For 400 beckies, you can get a Partow washing machine and wash your clothes in comfort while toning your legs, rather than breaking your back. The prices were also marked in USE dollars and the price in beckies was generally a bit better than in USE dollars. That two hundred becky angora sweater, for instance, cost 215 USE dollars. The twenty-pack of nails was one becky or one dollar.
In spite of the fact that the superstore was poorly stocked by up-timer standards, with many of the shelves having only examples-like the steam tractor, not for sale themselves, just display models of things you could order-they didn't sell out in that first grand opening sale.
No one had any money. More precisely, most of the villages didn't have beckies or USE dollars. And didn't have much of the local currency either. But after the grand opening party, they wanted beckies. Wanted them badly.
Not that they didn't get orders. As it happened the old farmer who had whined his village's poverty in such an irritating voice took one look at the steam tractor and knew his village had to have it. While not nearly as poor as he had whined to the sergeant, his village wasn't rich.
"It's a five percent deposit and payment on delivery, Herr . . . ?"
"Krup." The voice would have shocked the sergeant had he happened to hear it. It wasn't whiny at all it was rather abrupt. "I am the Mayor of Markvartice." Which was perhaps a bit pretentious, but he was a pretentious fellow when he wasn't whining. He was, however, a bright fellow and dedicated to the welfare of his little village. "What about credit? I heard the up-timers give credit."
So they talked credit, interest on the loan and amount down. They talked about how long the waiting list for steam tractors was. And how if you didn't have the money or hadn't arranged credit when the tractor arrived they would sell it to the next person on the list and you would go to the back of the line. Herr Krup left looking for ways to raise beckies. He figured that the village had six months to raise 20,000 beckies and that was going to take work. But they would do it or he would know the reason why.
****
"So how much for a hundred weight of wheat?" the farmer asked.
"If it passes inspection . . ." The price was reasonable, even good after what he'd seen in the superstore. The farmer had paid his rent and tithes in kind just after the harvest and had some wheat left. This wasn't the lean time of year, but it would be coming on fairly soon. Still, if they could get the wood lathe for Karl now during the slack time, they'd have chairs and tables to sell come next harvest.
"We'll be bringing in a few hundred weights then." He went on his way.
****
The next guy wanted to know about the price for cabbage and the one after that for flax. Then hemp and . . .
It was winter, moving toward the lean time, but people had been hearing more and more about the wonders of the up-timers in the years since the Ring of Fire. Most of them had either never seen an up-timer product or had only seen one held as a talisman of better days at some nebulous time in the future. Now in Tetschen there was a store that had up-timerish stuff for sale. It used up-timerish money backed by the most famous up-timer of them all, the Prince of Germany, with a noble portrait of his wife, the famous and beautiful Jewess, Rebecca Stearns nee Abrabanel. A trip to Tetschen wasn't exactly a trip to Grantville, but Tetschen was closer. People came and they brought what they could scrape together and they had one great advantage over the looting parties that an army would send out to supply itself. They knew precisely where the stuff was hidden. After all, they were the ones who had hidden it to keep it safe from the looting parties.
It became much easier for the supply officers of the Third Division to buy stuff with beckies. It wasn't instant. At first it was a very short loop. The goods came in, got turned into beckies and the beckies got spent right there in the Exchange Club Superstore. But there were the people that let it be known that they would do work for beckies because the village was saving up for a tractor or plows or because the family or an individual wanted canning jars, a crystal radio set, a record player or whatever. The loop got a little bigger. Taverns and inns started taking them willingly. Finally the local nobility decided they would accept them as rent. They were money.
****
"He doesn't look a thing like Tony Curtis," Jeff Higgins muttered to himself, remembering a movie he'd seen about a pink submarine. And it was true. David Bartley didn't look a thing like Tony Curtis. Nor was it a casino, but David did have one thing in common with the supply officer played by Tony Curtis. They both sat like spiders in their webs while the supplies came to them.
"There's another difference, Colonel Higgins," a voice said from beside him.