"With what money? With the sudden influx of money you'll get from me. From the new company-or subsidiary, if you prefer-that I propose to form here in Prague. Call it AT amp;L Bohemia, if you want. I'll put up all the capital and you give me forty-nine percent of the stock-you can remain in control of it, I don't care-and agree to live here for another, say, five years. If you're still unhappy five years from now, fine. You go back to Grantville, if you want. No hard feelings."
Ellie and Len stared at him. Morris found himself swallowing. "Me and Judith would miss you guys. We really would. Right now, except for the two of you and Jason, we really don't have anybody to talk to here in Prague who… You know. Understands us."
"How long do you plan on being here, Morris?" asked Len.
Morris and Judith looked at each other. Judith shrugged. "Who knows?" she mused. "Either a very short time-if Wallenstein's plans go sour and we wind up having to run for it-or… probably the rest of our lives. Except for trips."
Morris rose from the table and went over to one of the windows. Pushing aside the heavy drapes, he stared out over the city. At night, in the seventeenth century, even a large town like Prague was eerily dark to someone accustomed to American cities at the turn of the twenty-first century. A few lamps in windows, here and there, one or two small bonfires in open areas, not much more than that. The Hradcany, at a distance, was just a formless lump of darkness, with the towers of the cathedral barely visible against the night sky.
"We've got fifteen years to prevent one of the worst massacres ever perpetrated on my people," Morris said quietly. "And I'm just a small-town jeweler who really doesn't have any idea how to do it-except, maybe, do what I can to turn Bohemia into a country that can start drawing those Jews-some of them, anyway-out of the line of fire. And, maybe-most of this is completely out of our control-help built this into a nation that can intervene ahead of time."
"You're talking about Wallenstein, Morris," Ellie pointed out harshly.
Morris' lips twisted into something that was half a grin, half a grimace. "Ah, yes. Wallenstein. Actually, this was his idea in the first place. Trying to get you to stay here and set up a telephone company, I mean. Just like I know when I go talk to him tomorrow about the new university the bishop and I want to establish that he'll agree immediately. That's an idea he's also raised with me, on several occasions."
He turned away from the window. "In fact, I won't be surprised if he provides the land and the building for both projects, free of charge-assuming you agree to stay."
Len and Ellie were back to staring at him. "Look," Morris said abruptly, "Wallenstein wants it all-a modern nation that will give him the power he needs to become the historical figure he thinks he deserves to be. In some ways, he's a raving egotist, sure enough. But he's smart. Bohemia is not big enough for him, unless he modernizes it. That means the whole works. An electrified capital city, one of the world's premier universities, factories, you name it-yes, and toilet paper. Why else do you think he's agreed to remove all religious restrictions, even on Jews? The goodness of his heart? Not hardly. It's because-I'm as sure of this as I am of anything-he plans on grabbing most of the Ukraine and probably a good chunk of Poland and the Balkans. Maybe even part of Russia, who knows? And the only way he can do that, starting with little Bohemia as his power base, is to make Bohemia the Japan of eastern Europe. And he can't do that without stripping away all the medieval customs and traditions that get in the way."
Morris barked a laugh. "He spent a lot of time in Edith Wild's house in Grantville himself, you know. I've heard him complain about the lack of toilet paper here in Prague several times."
"So have I," muttered Len, giving Ellie a glance. "I also heard him pissing and moaning about no electricity, too."
Ellie's face looked pinched. She'd undoubtedly heard the same thing from him. Morris knew that Wallenstein spent a lot of time with Ellie and Len, watching them as they set up a telephone center in his palace. Not so much because he was trying to oversee the work, about which he knew effectively nothing, but simply because he was interested. Wallenstein was a curious man, interested in many things. Except when his shaky health was acting up, or he was distracted by his obsession with astrology, Wallenstein's mind was always alert and active.
The pinched look on Ellie's face went away, replaced by… something else. She cocked her head sideways a bit.
"I'm curious about something. It sounds like-no offense-you're almost planning to set up Bohemia as a counterweight to the CPE. Even a rival. Doesn't that bother you any?"
Morris shrugged. "Some, sure. But I talked to Mike about it before we left Grantville, and he agrees that it's the only way to do it. That's not just because of the Jewish question, either. Mike's thinking about the whole picture."
"What Wallenstein wants is one thing," Judith chipped in. "What he winds up with… well, that's something else. He's not the only player in the game."
Mention of the word game jogged Morris' mind. Like him, Len was a chess enthusiast. "Think of it as a fianchetto, Len. You move up knight's pawn one rank, creating a little pocket for the bishop. Then the bishop sits there, protected, but ready to attack at a diagonal."
"Yeah, I know. I like the maneuver myself. But what's the-oh."
" 'Oh,' is right. And that's just what Wallenstein might be saying, one of these days. Chess is just a game, so it has firm and hard rules. Real life doesn't. A bishop can take out its own queen, in the real world, if that ever proves necessary. Try to, anyway."
While Len chewed on the analogy, Morris returned to the table and sat down again. "It's a race, really. That how Mike puts it. A strange kind of race, because we're trying to beat the same man we're allied with-without ever attacking him directly. He'll try for one thing, but the means he has to use for his ends can turn around and bite him on the ass. In our world, the Japanese wound up being saddled by a military dictatorship as they modernized. But who's to say the same thing has to happen here? Maybe it will. Then, again, maybe it won't."
Honesty forced him to say the next words. "It'll be dangerous, I admit. You'd be a lot safer staying back in Grantville."
Oddly, that did it. Ellie sat up straight. "You think I'm afraid of these assholes? Bullshit. Len, we're staying."
"Yes, dear," he murmured.
"And stop smirking."
"Hey, look, they got the best beer in the world here, just like they did four hundred years from now. You admitted it yourself, just the other day."
"I said, stop smirking."
The last conversation Morris Roth had that day was the one he hadn't foreseen or planned on. After everyone had left and he and Judith were getting ready for bed, his wife said to him:
"There's one last thing, O great Machiavellian prince of the Jewish persuasion."
"Yes?"
"I want you to stop bullying Jason."
Morris stared at her. Judith was busy turning down the covers, but she looked up at him squarely.
"Yes, you are," she said firmly. "He's just a young man who wants to become a rabbi, Morris. That's all. There's at least one of those rabbis in the ghetto whom he likes a lot, and wants to study with. So let him do what he wants, instead of trying to force him to be your Reform champion who'll slay the dragon of Orthodoxy. Let him study and decide for himself what he thinks. And if he winds up becoming an Orthodox rabbi, so be it."
Morris felt his jaws tighten. "You really want to listen to him at prayer, thanking God for not making him a woman?"