"What? Oh, I didn't see you there, Herr Kipper," Jeff said to the older man.
"The other difference is that Master Bartley isn't cheating anyone," said Johan Kipper, the old Grantville hand who had seen the movie and had been David Bartley's man since the Battle of the Crapper. "The tables, if we had them, wouldn't be rigged and those people are going to get their money's worth and more."
"Beckies?" Jeff asked. "I know it's necessary but they are still company scrip whatever we call them."
"You're wrong, Colonel Higgins," Kipper said, not so much with heat but with a sort of cold certainty. "The beckies are as real as American dollars. Never doubt it."
The next morning the Third Division headed for Dresden. But the Exchange Corps store stayed and so did the beckies.
****
Fire and Ice
Grantville
Reardon Miller liked to joke that he had six jobs: his real job, and the five that certain clients of the Grantville Research Center thought he was doing. As the token male at the GRC, he was the researcher nominally assigned to those clients who were obviously very uncomfortable with the idea of working with a female researcher, but who were trying to be polite and not say so.
The would-be clients who weren't polite about it were just shown the door.
Reardon had a plan of action for, as he put it, "weaning the clients away from himself." (He said this with full recognition of the incongruity of applying the word "weaning" to the process of switching a client from male to female support. ) The first step was to introduce the female researcher as his assistant. The next was to let her deliver progress reports. Hopefully, the client would notice how knowledgeable and articulate she was. And finally, she would deliver the final presentation, with Reardon beaming benevolently in the background. Once the client expressed his thanks for the work, Reardon would lower the boom: "I'm just the pretty face here, this lady did all the research."
"Okay, Christine, we've got another client, name's Olafur Egilsson, a Lutheran minister from Iceland of all places. Something of a hardship case; he and his family-in fact, his whole congregation-got captured by the Barbary pirates.
"Wow. How did he escape?"
"He didn't. They released him to ask their friends and relatives, and the king of Denmark, for ransom."
Christine raised her eyebrows. "But-"
"But Denmark had just gotten its ass kicked by Count Tilly, so the royal cupboard was bare. And the Icelanders are rather like hillbillies with fishing boats. . . . They don't have much in the way of resources, other than fish.
"So your job is to find goods that they can trade to the pirates, or sell somewhere for lots of cash.
"He's pushing seventy, we think, so we are going to reduce the shock to his system of how we do things in Grantville. I will be introducing you as my assistant."
"Great, I have three strikes against me; I'm young, I'm Catholic, and I'm female."
"So don't talk religion. "
****
Hendrick Trip steepled his fingers. "Well, you certainly did your homework, Miss Onofrio."
Christine smiled at him. "Thank you. I am just an apprentice researcher, but I try to be thorough."
The two of them were sitting in one of the conference rooms at the Higgins Hotel. Trip had rented it, and had been conducting meetings there all day.
"As my agent told you, my uncle Elias is a former partner of Louis de Geer. Our families still cooperate, and since I was coming to Grantville on my own business, Count Louis asked me to meet with you.
"He was quite interested in what you had to say about the aluminum industry in late-twentieth century Iceland. That aluminum was more than ten percent of its exports, and that it made it from imported alumina very cheaply, thanks to its vast energy resources, both hydroelectric and geothermal.
"You are of course correct that Louis de Geer is interested in aluminum production. It is not a secret anymore that he has been acquiring bauxite and cryolite toward that end.
"And it's also true that the availability of electricity is one of the bottlenecks in producing aluminum anywhere outside Grantville. Magdeburg or Essen.
"Alas, Herr de Geer has asked me to inform you that it would be premature to invest in a hydroelectric plant in Iceland at this time. While the coal-fired plants we have access to now are certainly less efficient than hydro, they are adequate for our current production level and we can still charge a high price for aluminum. More than enough to cover the cost of the coal.
Perhaps in a decade, he will reconsider the issue."
Christine caught herself nervously chewing on a pencil. "What about the advantage of the proximity of Iceland to Greenland, where the cryolite is mined?"
"I am no technical expert, but I have been told that the cryolite is just a flux, it is not consumed in the reaction. So De Geer didn't need a lot of cryolite to start, and only needs enough in a future to replace that which is lost by evaporation, or when the dross is removed from the smelter. "
"The cryolite can also be used to make soda ash."
"Indeed it can, and I believe that was the back-up plan if aluminum smelting proved impractical. But Iceland doesn't have significant wood or coal, and so-barring those hydroelectric or geothermal power plants-it's hardly the place to base a chemical plant."
"Well, I'm sorry for wasting your time." Christine began collecting her papers and stuffing them into the portfolio case her mother had given her.
"It wasn't a waste of time. I wanted to meet you."
Christine's eyes widened. "Me?"
"My family is always on the lookout for bright young people. Your teachers wrote to me that you are in the advanced track. When you graduate high school-next year, is it?"
She nodded, looking slightly dazed .
"Think about coming to work for Trip Enterprises. We even have a branch office in Grantville now, although your star may rise faster if you're in Amsterdam."
****
"German Sugar, Not Made by Slaves," Reverend Egilsson read. "Each ton of New World Sugar costs two human lives."
He handed the can back to the storekeeper. "Is it true?"
"Which part? The German sugar is real enough. There's a kind of sugar-rich grass which was grown in Grantville, called 'sorghum corn.' They used it as a fodder before the Ring of Fire. When the Americans discovered how expensive sugar was in this day and age, they decided to extract sorghum sugar. The sorghum is fast-growing and produces lots of seeds, so more and more acres are planted every year."
"What about the cost in lives?" Egilsson asked.
The shopkeeper stepped off the ladder he had climbed to reshelve the can. "Well, that's what the Anti-Slavery League pamphlets say. I've never met a slaver myself."
Lucky you, Egilsson thought.
"The pamphlet said that in the African slave trade, there are many deaths at sea, of crew as well as of slaves," said the storekeeper. "And the life expectancy in the sugarcane fields is only ten years."
"You seem to have studied the pamphlet carefully," said Egilsson.
The storekeeper smiled sheepishly. "I see it often enough.. When I run out of sugar from sugarcane, I set the German sugar out front, and leave a stack of those pamphlets nearby."
"Does the pamphlet say anything of the Turkish slave trade?"
"The Barbary pirates, you mean?" The storekeeper frowned. "I don't think so. But then, they don't grow sugarcane on the Barbary coast, do they?"
"Not on the coast, but in Sous, in the Berber kingdom of Tazerwalt to the south, they do."
"You know, the Anti-Slavery Society has an office in town. It's over by the Golden Arches; you can take the senior citizens bus there."