"What are you suggesting then?" *
"Let's go the whole route and build aircraft! An airplane can be piloted up or down at will. You can fly them in any direction you want and you can outrace the wind!"
"But you said that aircraft were too complicated for us to build!"
"They will certainly not be easy. It will take us years, but think of the prize to be won. To fly like a bird!"
"If men can do it, Sir Conrad, we will! How do we start?"
"I think we will need to build a whole town dedicated to flight. We will need some of the best carpenters and seamstresses in Poland. And for our future pilots and designers, we should start with young boys. We will start with boys ten or twelve years old and have them build small model aircraft at first. We'll have to try a lot of things, and we can save time by building models first ' As the boys grow, so will their models, and in a few years they'll be making full-sized aircraft."
"But why boys? Why not adults?"
The truth was that keeping tabs on a hundred boys would keep Count Lambert busy and safe, but I couldn't tell him that. "Young people have free minds, my lord. There's more work to be done than you and I can do in our lifetimes. We'll need help. But from where? Can you imagine a bunch of peasants trying to learn how to fly? The merchants? The priests? It's ludicrous! And the nobles are too involved with their own affairs to give it their full energies."
"But boys would, especially if we took them to a new town away from their parents and other distractions. It might be best if we restricted them to the sons of the nobility, because we'll need adults around to do the carpentry and so on, not to mention cooking and cleaning. It would be best if the boys had some authority over the common workers."
"You're right, Sir Conrad! What boy wouldn't jump at the chance to come?"
"I'll worry about designing the facilities. You should pick the land. We'll need about a square mile of it, most of it dead flat, but with one big hill on it. Do you have such a place on your lands?"
"Several. But I'm minded of the old tomb. At least they say it was a tomb, but it could be just a hill for all I know. You know Krak's tomb near Cracow? It's about the same, only it's bigger. It's also covered with trees, but we can make short work of that!"
"Excellent, my lord. Is it far from here?"
"About three miles. Have one of the other knights show it to you. Have your plans ready for just after the spring planting. I can get you a thousand workers then."
"A thousand, my lord?"
"Two thousand, if you can use them. I'll have each of my knights send me a dozen peasants for two months. I can pay them in cloth. That should be enough to get us started, anyway. We'll call the town Eagle Nest!"
"Yes, my lord."
Going back to Three Walls, the more I thought about the project, the more I liked it. Of course we wouldn't get decent aircraft in the foreseeable future, but having a bunch of bright kids in what amounted to an engineering school could be great! Those were my future engineers!
Furthermore, it would give Lambert something to spend all his spare energy on. Keeping up with a few dozen youngsters will wear down any man!
On the other hand, it meant one hell of a busy spring and summer. I had two major installations to put together at the same time, when peasant manpower was available between the planting and the first hay harvest.
When things get hairy, the magic word is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Do what you've done before. Actually, the structures needed first were housing, just as at Three Walls.
I'd start by ordering the same tools I'd had made last summer, with only minor changes where experience had shown a better way. Only now I'd order two sets, one in Count Lambert's name and one in the duke's. I'd go to the same craftsmen as before and demand the same prices.
The apartment buildings would be the same as at Three Walls, except I'd bend them into hollow squares instead of a straight line as at Three Walls, because they would stand in the open instead of closing off a box canyon. But the hard parts, the kitchen and bathrooms, had all been designed. What's more, my people already had experience making and installing them.
I would put together two teams of experienced carpenters and masons and have them be my leaders during the construction phase, with peasants hired temporarily to do the grunt work.
I was tempted to go straight to Cieszyn and start ordering stuff, but all my drawings and notes were back at Three Walls. My head was bubbling with my new plans and I didn't stay long. At dawn the next day I was on the road again and in an hour I was talking to the Krakowski brothers.
A year had made quite a difference in both them and the brass works. Twelve months earlier they had been literally starving to death, and each had lost a child during the winter. Now they were solid, prosperous citizens. They and their families were healthy and each had added a new member, with more already on the way.
Their factory was booming, with over fifty workers and twelve pouring ovens. They had back orders for the brass parts for twenty-three windmills as well as a lot of other things.
I told them that they now had four more windmills on order, and these took precedence over other work.- Also, I needed all the plumbing we'd used at Three Walls duplicated twice, and had some other things besides.
They got upset at having to delay their other customers, but when I told them that half of the stuff was for Count Lambert and the rest was for Duke Henryk himself, they quieted down. Nobody was going to object strongly about being bumped by the duke. It wasn't healthy!
Finally, I told them about the copper mine I'd discovered. That got their interest! They were all angry about the prices they'd been paying and the idea of digging and smelting their own copper appealed to them.
Thom said that when he was a journeyman he worked at a smelter for a year, so I asked him to supervise the works the next summer. It meant leaving his wife behind for a few months until the housing was up, but that didn't bother anyone. It wasn't as though they were newlyweds. And I hinted that if the Legnica installation worked out well, we'd move the brass works from Cieszyn to there to cut down on transportation costs.
We talked a bit about having an entire city devoted to the mining, smelting, casting, and machining of brass and copper and I could see the lights going on in their eyes.
I gave Thom half of the ore I'd brought back, and he was suddenly depressed. It wasn't any kind of copper ore he'd ever seen. The ore he was used to was red-colored, and a little heavier. I told him that it had to be roasted over an open fire before it could be smelted, and he said that he would try it. But I could see that he had grave doubts about the project.
I'd make a believer of him. I hoped.
I was lucky in that Tadeusz was back in Cieszyn from successfully starting a Pink Dragon Inn in Cracow. It had already paid for its construction cost and was generating healthy profits.
He was absolutely delighted that the duke himself had requested a Pink Dragon Inn in Wroclaw, and vowed that within the week he would leave for that city no matter what the weather was like. I gave him a letter of introduction to the duke, sealing it with my big seal ring. I also told him about needing another small inn at the copper mine near Legnica by the end of the summer.
Then I spent two days haggling with blacksmiths and carpenters to get the tools I needed. The duke's name impressed everybody, and I got done in two days what had taken me two months last summer.
I also looked up the cloth merchant that I'd contracted with last summer. We made arrangements for delivering the two thousand yards of cloth agreed upon. He wasn't happy about the deal, because the price of cloth had dropped since we had agreed on the price, and he would loose money by honoring the agreement. I wouldn't let him off, though. I never told him to be a capitalist!