1636: The Viennese Waltz

CHAPTER 12

November 1634

Liechtenstein House, Vienna

Gundaker von Liechtenstein was not overly distressed by the emperor’s interest in the cars. Quite the contrary. The more time Ferdinand III spent playing with his new toy, the less time he would spend on interfering with older, wiser heads in the managing of the government. With the Edict of Restitution revoked, a whole new round of lawsuits had been issued. Protestant churches were demanding their buildings back. Protestant nobles and burghers were demanding their property back. As often as not, those properties had changed hands again after being returned to the Catholic church. Sometimes the same day. As it happened, Gundaker von Liechtenstein owned a number of them.

“It’s vitally important that the revocation of the Edict not be interpreted to mean that those properties already returned to the church must be given back to heretics,” Gundaker told one of the family’s lawyers.

“Unfortunately, that seems to be the way Ferdinand III is leaning.”

“Then the cases need to be decided below the imperial level, and appeals to the crown need to be delayed in the courts long enough so that there is time to persuade the headstrong boy that such a policy would be an unholy and impious act.”

After the lawyer had left, Maximillian cautioned his brother. “Be careful how you refer to his majesty, even with our own people. I’m not overly thrilled with the effect the revocation of the Edict will have on our family’s property either, but he is the emperor.”

* * *

In the cathedral of St. Stephens, Father Lamormaini was discussing the Sphere of Fire with his fellow Jesuits, and not getting very far.

“First of all, it’s not exactly six miles across,” said Father Fuhrmann. “It’s a little over six miles across, or maybe a little less depending on whose miles you’re using. I think that from Ring Wall to Ring Wall, it’s six miles, two hundred seventeen feet, six and a half inches.”

“It’s six miles within any reasonable measure,” Lamormaini insisted. “You said yourself ‘depending on whose miles you’re using.’ It might be more or less than six miles.”

“Second, it’s not a sphere. Even if there was a sphere in the moment it occurred-and not all the accounts agree on that point-it’s not one now. A half-sphere at best. That would make it six broad, six long, and only three high. Not the number of the beast. I grant it’s a clever conceit, Father, but not evidence of a message from God.”

Lamormaini stood, his face red. He had seen the truth as God had revealed it, and now Fuhrmann was splitting hairs to avoid the truth. “Father Fuhrmann. .”

“No, Father. While His Holiness has not ruled on the matter, it would be worse than premature to attempt to preempt his decision. I will make note of your observations and send them to the father general, but don’t expect any action till His Holiness has had a chance to consider all the ramifications of his decision.”

Lamormaini sat back down. He would write the father general as well but-much as he hated to admit it-Fuhrmann was right, at least about the likely response of the Holy See. Still, he couldn’t sit around and do nothing till His Holiness got around to noticing that Satan had arrived and the end days were upon them.

Inn in Vienna

“I need you to go to Grantville,” Father Lamormaini said once they were seated and the tavern girl had left them their beers.

Friedrich Babbel didn’t blink or let his surprise show in any way. “It will be expensive, Father.” He wondered how much Lamormaini was willing to pay. The change in administration hadn’t done Friedrich’s prospects any good at all. Janos Drugeth was a sanctimonious prick who didn’t want the reports adjusted to suit the listener, and that wasn’t a practical attitude. Friedrich took another drink of beer while Father Lamormaini pondered his purse.

“Don’t try to hold me up.” Lamormaini’s voice was laced with distrust, but there was a hint of desperation there, too.

“I’m not, Father. The simple truth is that the area around the Ring of Fire, and especially inside it, is the most expensive place to live and work in Europe. Rents are outrageous, food expensive, and the cost of labor is insane. A housemaid in Grantville earns what a master smith makes in the Viennese countryside.”

“Their famous library is free.”

“Yes and no, Father.” Friedrich would have continued but Lamormaini waved him to silence. The old crook had enough money that he shouldn’t have been arguing in the first place. Not that Lamormaini would ever admit that any of the money was for him. It was all for the church.

Lamormaini had used his position as confessor to Ferdinand II to acquire quite a bit of wealth. All for the church. Friedrich suppressed a laugh. Lamormaini hadn’t taken bribes; he had accepted donations. “What is it you want me to find, Father?”

“It will be in their records somewhere. Probably hidden in plain sight. Find references to the devil!”

Friedrich felt his face, twitch. But he didn’t say anything as Lamormaini explained his theory about the true origin of the Ring of Fire.

Babbel left a few days later. He would find or create what the priest wanted.

Sanderlin House, Race Track City

“I would be happy to provide you with concrete for the race track, Herr Sanderlin,” Baron Johannes Hass said. “Unfortunately, we are lacking in the equipment. When the crown granted me the patent on concrete, it wasn’t yet known how difficult it would be to produce the stuff. I have had experts go to your libraries and it turns out that they need massive rotating kilns to make the Portland cement efficiently.”

Ron was confused. Even after the Ring of Fire he hadn’t been much interested in how concrete was made. Well, how Portland cement was made. He had poured a patio back in 1998 before the Ring of Fire, and he knew how to mix quicklime and aggregate in a wheelbarrow. The way you got the Portland cement was by going to Clarksburg and buying it at the Home Depot. He knew that after the Ring of Fire there had been a program to make concrete. It had worked, too. Portland cement was available in Grantville and Magdeburg. Expensive compared to up-time, but available. He hadn’t learned how it was done but he knew they could do it. “Well, they make it in the USE. What about shipping in the Portland cement from there?”

“That would be very expensive. Also illegal, because the old emperor granted me the sole patent.”

They talked some more but didn’t get anywhere. Even though they were both speaking German, it seemed like they were talking a different language.

After his unsuccessful attempt to get concrete from Baron Hass, Ron looked into the possibility of blacktop. Asphalt, it turned out, was a petroleum byproduct. But Ron knew that they could use coal tar and there had to be coal around here somewhere. Didn’t there?

Yes, there was coal, Ron discovered. But it was as yet mostly not found. The one bit of good news was the Danube. Shipping cost would be much less over a pretty long stretch, because of the Danube. The bad news was the patents that Ferdinand II had been issuing to anyone with the money to purchase one. Patents had been sold on most inventions and industrial processes brought back by the Ring of Fire. At least, on the ones that Austrians had found out about.

The Liechtenstein family owned a bunch of them, and so did lots of other wealthy nobles. Including the Abrabanels. Often enough, it wasn’t even because they wanted them. More a case of the emperor saying, “Yes, I know that I owe you a fortune, but take this patent on helicopters and we’ll call it even.”

It was apparently pretty hard to say no to an emperor.

* * *

“It’s almost tempting to buy some of these patents.” Hayley nibbled on one of Frau Mayr’s honey nut rolls. The woman was doing her best to make Hayley fat. “A bunch of people are offering to sell patents at a loss, and no one knows what they are worth.”

“Are they worth anything?” Ron Sanderlin asked.

“Not in Grantville or the USE. But here? Maybe.” Then Hayley shook her head. “No. At some point they are going to have to make peace and regularize the patent laws, and then almost all of these patents are going to be worthless. In the meantime, though, there are a bunch of relatively powerful people trying to get their money back on patents that they were forced to buy. It’s going to make it hard to do much.”

“What concerns me,” Dana Fortney said, “is that any business we start is going to run into one of these patents. I wonder who owns the patent on casein and when we are going to get sued.”

“That’s a good point, Mom,” Hayley said. “I think we need to have a talk with Jack. And maybe a talk with the emperor about his race track. Meanwhile, Mom, can you get an appointment with Moses Abrabanel? I am probably going to have to get some sort of money transfer from Grantville.”

Abrabanel House, outside Vienna

Dana Fortney managed to get an appointment with Moses Abrabanel, but it took a week. She was simply the wife of the second assistant mechanic of the emperor’s car. Sonny was out of town at the moment, working with a team of down-time surveyors to get started on the route for the railroad.

“Have a seat, Frau Fortney. What can I do for you?” Moses was a young man. About thirty, Dana guessed. Down-time thirty, which looked older to up-time eyes. He looked about her age. He wasn’t balding, but his hairline was definitely in retreat. He wasn’t fat, but was developing a bit of a paunch. He was well-dressed and bearded. The dress included the special feature that Jews were required to wear, but was of very good quality. The room was small like most down-time offices but there were file cabinets along one wall. They were wood, probably oak, she thought, and inlayed with a lighter wood, but definitely file cabinets. He also had an up-time style desk and chairs.

“Well, we’re going to have to send home for some money,” Dana said. “I understand that you have contacts with the Grantville national bank.”

“Yes, I do. But I must admit to some surprise,” Moses told her. “I am involved in the court payroll, and as per contract your family has been paid every month, as have the Sanderlins?”

Dana could hear the implied question. Not that it was any of his business. On the other hand, she knew perfectly well that a lot of people in Vienna resented the fact that the Sanderlins and Sonny were getting paid every month. She had learned after they got here that actually being paid by the crown was unusual. Also he might be able to help. “It’s the patents. We have been putting people to work and a few days ago, on the emperor’s instructions, Ron Sanderlin started looking into the possibility of getting concrete to pave the race track. It was then that we learned that the Holy Roman Empire had issued patents on the devices and techniques brought back in the Ring of Fire.” Dana could hear her own resentment and tried to modify her tone. “There are no such restrictions in the USE and we were, until then, unaware of the restrictions here.”

The youngish man winced a little. “It was necessary,” he explained. “The tax base of the empire has been badly stressed by the military reverses we have suffered in the last few years, and yet the demands on the royal purse have only increased.”

“In any case, it is an unexpected expense and we don’t know how much it’s going to cost.”

“Perhaps I can help with that. I know a clerk in the office of patents who can probably tell who, if anyone, holds the patent on a specific product or process. And then I should be able to point you in the direction of the patent holder.”

They talked some more and Moses agreed to make the necessary inquiries to establish a credit line from Grantville. A few days later, Dana sent him a list of products and processes that they were interested in. It turned out that no one owned the process of making casein. Someone did own the patent on sewing machines, but it was on making them, not using them.

They managed to buy the patent on the manufacture of plastic for the area around Vienna. The assumption had been that plastic was beyond the present ability of the up-timers, and the realization that casein was plastic hadn’t penetrated the court. So the patent on plastic was not considered of any great value, at least not yet.

Sanderlin House, Race Track City

“This includes a lot of guesswork,” Dana Fortney told Gayleen and Hayley. Then she took a sip of coffee and didn’t grimace. She liked sugar in her coffee, but sugar was much more expensive than coffee here in Vienna. “What seems to have happened is some of the old emperor’s agents sent back long lists of products and processes. Some of them very general, like plastics, and some very specific, like injection molding of toy soldiers. What they didn’t send was much information about how any of it worked. That was left up to the people who bought the patents.”

“They must have sold them to the very rich,” Gayleen said. “Most people can’t afford to send an agent to Grantville to figure out how to make. .”

Dana was shaking her head. “You’re right about most of the people not being able to send agents to Grantville. But that’s not how they did it. Instead, people were encouraged to attend auctions and bid on something. The old emperor apparently didn’t didn’t care much what they bid on or how many patents they got as long as they spent enough money in total to fit their status at court. Some people bid the required amount on whatever came up and wasn’t being bid up by other people.”

“Why didn’t anyone get plastic?” Hayley asked.

“Because it wasn’t all that long after Delia Higgins’ dolls hit Vienna and among the notes on the dolls was that they were made of plastic, a material that could be made up-time but not down-time. So everyone knew that plastic couldn’t be made down-time.”

“So it was all about the rumors of what could be done coming out of Grantville back in 1631?” Hayley more said than asked.

“Early 1632, but basically yes. The patent on the Bessemer steel process went for a pretty penny and the patent on the integrated circuit is still sitting there waiting for a buyer. So is the electric motor, by the way.”

That added another job once the word got around. Patent consultant. Actually working on the car didn’t take much time at all. Mostly it was keeping it clean-well, supervising the down-timers who kept it clean. It would be four more months at the earliest before it needed another oil change. And there was only so much time that they could spend on it. When the emperor came out, Ron and Bob had to be on hand just to show that they were doing something. But a car is not a horse. It doesn’t need to be fed every day and its stall doesn’t need to be mucked out. Nor does it need rubdowns every day. Every week is more than sufficient, and up-time the 240Z would have gotten a wax job every six months or so.

Sonny was busy enough working on surveying a railroad and designing steam engines to pull trains along it. But Ron and Bob found that good pay for little work was frustrating. Now they were constantly being called in to look over patents and try to tell the patent holder how to build whatever the patent was for.

Not the big ones like concrete or steam engines, but the little things that the lower-level courtier and the mid-level Them of Vienna had gotten stuck with. Clothespins and clipboards, eggbeaters and egg separators, safety pins and spatulas, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, the owner of the coking patent wanted Ron to go over the notes on how coking worked to help get him into production.

Sanderlin’s bedroom, Race Track City

“I hate this,” Ron complained to Gayleen in late November. “I was never into books and you know the trouble I had in my senior year of high school.” He waved the papers at her.

Gayleen did know. Ron was good with his hands, but he wasn’t much for book learning. He never had been, which was why she was the one who handled the family finances. Ron had to sell the car to get the money to get his mom a place in one of the villages outside the Ring of Fire. And to sell the car, he had to provide a mechanic. That worked for Ron because he was a mechanic, and was one of the main reasons that they had beat out the other people who were interested in selling their cars.

Uncle Bob had never gotten along with Vera May, Ron’s mom. In fact, Bob didn’t want to stay in the same state as Ron’s mom-an attitude Gayleen couldn’t help but agree with. Nothing really wrong with Ron’s mom, except she ruled whatever house she was in. In Gayleen’s case, there was also the issue that Mother Teresa and Miss America combined wouldn’t be good enough for her little Ronny. She looked over at her husband and tried not to grin. “Sorry, dear, but they are paying pretty good.”

“They’re paying damn good. I just wish Sonny was here to look at this stuff.”

Ron had never told Gayleen outright, but she was pretty sure that Sonny Fortney was some sort of spy the government wanted to put in Vienna. It made her a bit nervous sometimes. “Why?”

“Because he was involved in the coking works that they set up in Saalfeld after the Ring of Fire.”

“It seems like he was involved in everything after the Ring of Fire.”

“He was. He was the go-to guy for the Mechanical Support division after the Ring of Fire. He worked on the natural gas conversion and the coking ovens. Then they moved him over to the surveying corp, and I don’t know what all else. But he knew Treasury Secretary Wendell, Quentin Underwood and Chad Jenkins, that whole banking bunch, before the Ring of Fire. He could have been one of the financial movers and shakers.”

“So why wasn’t he?” Gayleen asked. Ron rarely talked about Sonny Fortney.

“He went to work for Mike Stearns and Frank Jackson,” Ron told her. “There were some rumors when he got put in the mechanical support division. And it turns out, they were true.”

“He’s a spy,” Gayleen said.

“Not exactly. He’s more of a general fixer, I think.” Ron looked over at her and Gayleen was surprised at how serious his expression was. “You remember what Mike said at the town meeting three days after the Ring? The part about starting the American Revolution early?”

Gayleen nodded.

“I think Sonny’s been doing that ever since the Ring of Fire. That’s why I agreed to let him come. ’Cause I believe in America. Up-time or down-time, it’s still America. It’s still the same truths that Jefferson talked about. And it’s still the same stakes.”

Gayleen nodded again. Though, if she was entirely honest, she really wished that it wasn’t her and her babies risking their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. She had no desire at all to see the inside of an Inquisition torture chamber.

The New Church at Race Track City

“They should be brought before the Inquisition,” Father Lamormaini said, though not, Father Degrassi thought, with any great heat. “They are heretics, after all. And from what I understand, that woman Dana Fortney is something called a New Age spiritualist. They say she practices yoga. . whatever that is.”

That much was true, Father Degrassi knew. They were sitting in his apartments in the new church that had been built along with the other new buildings at Race Track City. He was in a delicate situation. He was a parish priest as well as a Jesuit, and in his parish the only people who weren’t Catholic were the patricians of Race Track City. “I talked to Dana Fortney and she showed me her books on yoga. It’s an interesting exercise, but hardly the work of the devil. Besides, they are under the protection of the emperor, and he knew that they were not Catholics before they were hired. And I think there is a real possibility of converting some of them.”

“Secret up-timers.” Lamormaini snorted.

“Cardinal Mazzare!” Father Degrassi shot back, even though he appreciated the wit of Lamormaini’s play on “secret Jews.”

“Politics. Mazzare is as much a political cardinal as is the cardinal-infante. Politics, not faith.”

“We are Jesuits, Father, and Pope Urban has spoken.”

“Not definitively.”

Degrassi wasn’t sure that Father Lamormaini was wrong, but he wasn’t willing to push things. The truth was that the Ring of Fire had challenged his faith in way that he never would have expected, and he didn’t know how to handle it. He was a cautious man by nature and his focus was on scholarship, so he was not going to be rushed into any position. As well, he rather liked Dana Fortney and was considering taking her yoga classes.