1636: The Viennese Waltz

CHAPTER 18

June 1635

Liechtenstein House, Vienna

“Careful with that!” Trudi von Bachmerin’s voice wasn’t exactly a shout, but it was authoritative. “That is one of less than thirty bottles of up-time bottled wine that still has its original contents. It’s worth more than you’ll make in a year.” It was, in fact, a bottle of $6.95 red table wine named Frog’s Seat with a picture of an inebriated cartoon frog toppling off a lily pad. When Gabrielle Ugolini’s mother had started to open it to celebrate something two months after the Ring of Fire, Gabrielle had thrown a fit, which was not at all like her. To keep the peace, Mrs. Ugolini put the bottle away. Two years later, after the Barbies had made a name for themselves, Mrs. Ugolini found the bottle in the cupboard and asked about it. Vicky Emerson bought it at auction for twelve hundred dollars and expressed her intent to drink it. That’s when Susan Logsden had a fit. “You don’t drink an investment!” Vicky had almost drunk it on the spot just to piss Susan off, but calmer heads had prevailed. Susan conceded that it was Vicky’s and Vicky had agreed that at twelve hundred bucks a bottle she probably ought to save it for a special occasion. The bottle, still unopened, now resided in a padded teakwood case. The last offer Vicky had turned down was five thousand dollars and the wine aficionado’s firstborn son. The boy had pimples. Vicky still planned to drink it someday-in front of Susan.

Meantime, Vicky had become something of a wine snob. The truth was that Vicky had had exactly one glass of up-time wine since the Ring of Fire but between that and more liberal experience with down-time wines, she was fully aware that the vintners’ art had improved over the centuries. The very best down-time wines were way better than the wine in her teak case, but ninety percent of the wines of the seventeenth century weren’t nearly as good. Trudi had never had so much as a sip of up-time wine and frankly preferred beer. The comment, while probably true, was mostly to get the attention of one of the upper servants. Ah. Here he comes now.

“And you are?” in that snotty Viennese Austrian accent.

“Gertrude von Bachmerin.” With this sort, so her mother had always told her, it was best to establish authority right from the start. “Administrative Assistant to Millicent Anne Barnes von Up-time.”

And so it proved. The guy’s accent lost some of it’s snootiness. “Ah. . what is an Administrative Assistant?”

So Trudi went into her spiel on up-time socioeconomic ranks. It was guaranteed to leave a down-timer at least as confused as most up-timers were in dealing with German ranks of nobility. It also left the impression that the girls had quite a lot of rank in the up-timer system and so, by extension, did Trudi. She mentioned that Judy had been a junior varsity cheer leader just like “Baroness Julie Sims Mackay, yes, the one with the rifle.”

* * *

A few hours later, Trudi hid a grin as Vicky started to complain.

“I’m going to raise some serious hell when we get back to Magdeburg.” Vicky kicked off her high heels. “That shoemaker didn’t get these right yet.”

Millicent sniffed. “Maybe if you weren’t trying to wear four-inch heels, your feet wouldn’t hurt so much. It’s not like you aren’t five seven in your stocking feet, anyway. You and Judy, both.”

“You’re just jealous, Shorty.”

Before the conversation could degenerate any further Susan apparently decided to step in. “I’d expected Vienna to be a lot more. . well, more. It’s tiny. And crowded. Did you see all those shacks built up against the walls? I wonder who lives there?”

“Everybody without any money,” Hayley put in. “And that’s almost everyone who isn’t a noble, as near as I can tell.”

“When the maid came in, I got her to talking about the place,” Trudi said. “She is quite proud of being in the Liechtenstein service. People must be desperate for work here.”

“They are,” Hayley said. “You would not believe the things I’ve seen here, Trudi.”

Since Millicent was the chief administrative officer of the Barbie Consortium, that made Trudi the Barbie Consortium’s administrative assistant. It also meant she won the contest to see who would fly to Vienna and who would ride. More servants and assistants were following by less expensive transport, but what they would need in the first days here was an office manager. It also helped that she was the daughter of an imperial knight. Susan, as usual, put it bluntly. “Rank matters to down-timers.”

The reason that the daughter of an imperial knight was acting as servant to the Barbie Consortium had to do with the fact that not all imperial knights were idiots and most of them weren’t all that wealthy. Trudi’s dad had seen the writing on the wall fairly quickly and put Trudi in Grantville High, where she had met the Barbies. Grantville was a whole other power structure, one that depended a lot less on what your parents were. It was a power structure that the members of the Barbie Consortium were totally plugged into. That had allowed the Consortium to help her family out of what amounted to penury, while making a nice profit on the deal.

Papa, who was already interested in up-timers, became a firm supporter of up-timers in general and the Barbie Consortium in particular. While ranks in the up-timer social structure were less clearly defined, they were still quite real. With the full support of her father, Trudi had attached her wagon to the BC’s rising star. She insisted on becoming what she called their “lady in waiting.” Meanwhile, she’d also learned English, learned typing, and the basics of bookkeeping. As well, she’d taken up calligraphy and answered any invitations in various elegant scripts.

“What I’m worried about right now is Sarah,” Judy said. “I mean, I’m just as glad not to have to attend a formal dinner after that plane ride, but you guys know Sarah. If anybody can open mouth and insert foot, it’ll be her.”

“I don’t think the Ken Doll’s uncle liked any of us much,” Gabrielle said. “He didn’t give me any dirty looks, but the one he laid on Millicent was a lulu.”

Judy giggled. “Sarah hates it when we call Karl that.”

“Which is why we do it,” Vicky said. “Sarah needs to lighten up.”

“Not as much as she hates the whole ‘von Up-time’ thing,” Millicent added. “And Mike Stearns hates it even worse.”

“Well, you can’t drop it,” Trudy said. “Von Liechtenstein, remember? Von Habsburg.” They had been all through this and it wasn’t the up-timers who had started it anyway. It was down-timers, specifically the Daily News and it was on a par with the “Prince of Germany” title that Germany had given Mike Stearns, whether he wanted it or not. Some of the up-timers got all offended by it and others reveled in it, but for the girls of the Barbie Consortium it was a convenience that let von-conscious down-timers deal with them without feeling like they were being forced to demean themselves.

“At least von Up-time is accurate, which is more than most of the vons running around have going for them. You are from the future.”

They all hushed at the knock on the door and kept quiet while Trudi directed the townhouse servants in laying their private dinner. There was some surprise when Trudi had them set it up as a buffet and informed them that she would handle the service alone.

* * *

The girls were in a suite of four rooms, none very large, in one wing of the von Liechtenstein townhouse. Judy wondered just who had been bumped out of the rooms to give them this much space. As it was, the six of them, including Sarah, shared three bedrooms, and this salon would be used for any meals they took away from the family and as an office.

“You know,” Susan said, after she’d filled her own plate and sat down, “I don’t know how anybody stands never having any privacy. From what we’ve learned over the last few years, I don’t know why everyone isn’t stark raving mad from being surrounded all the time. And Vienna is more crowded than anyplace I’ve ever seen.”

“You don’t miss what you’ve never had,” Trudi pointed out. “Even during the worst years, I always had a maid in my room at night.”

“You lived alone after your grandfather died for too long, Susan,” Judy said. In truth, Judy worried about Susan quite a bit. Her experiences in Grantville, due to the gossip about her tramp of a mother, had soured Susan on a lot of things. Men, for instance. While Susan was perfectly happy to deal with anyone in a business sense, she kept any male at arm’s length in a personal sense. Everything Susan did was directed at business and making more and more money.

It ticked Vicky off for anyone to worry about her but that didn’t stop Judy. Vicky was a steam roller. All push and no finesse. She was a gun-toting steam roller these days, too, as well as being in mourning for Bill Magen. “Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, ’cause I’m the meanest bitch in the valley” used to be Vicky’s motto. After Bill’s death during the Dreeson assassination, Vicky hadn’t said it as much. But that worried Judy even more. And now, with the Catholic church seeming to disintegrate before their eyes in the last few weeks, Judy was really worried about how Vicky was going to handle it.

And Gabrielle was here, planning to attend a down-time medical university. Which Judy thought wasn’t going to be a lot of fun.

“When will all our stuff get here, again?” Judy asked. “Is it next week, or the week after?”

“Two weeks from tomorrow,” Millicent said. “If they don’t have too much trouble on the road or with the barges. Though I have no idea where we’re going to put it all.”

“You can put a bunch of it out by the race track,” Hayley offered. “We’ve got more space out there and it’s turning into a decent little town on its own. And we’ve got houses built out there, too.”

“So what’s the situation, Hayley?” Susan asked. “I’ve been reading your reports, and it looks like you’re spending more than you’re making.”

“If you don’t count the IOUs,” Hayley said. “We’ve got a whole bunch of them.”

“Are they any good?” Susan asked. “A pile of IOUs means nothing if they don’t get paid off.”

“I really don’t know what’s wrong,” Hayley admitted. “We make good products, we’re selling them at a fair price, but if we weren’t giving credit we’d be out of business.”

“I may know what’s going on,” Judy said. “Sarah’s been talking about it. Austria-Hungary is broke. Not just the emperor. The whole frigging country.”

“What do you mean?” Hayley asked.

“You’ll have to ask Sarah.” Judy shrugged. “I don’t really understand it.”

“Hayley, other than that little problem, how’s the situation?” Millicent asked.

“Dire, but if Sarah can fix the broke problem and if the Catholic church doesn’t implode and take Austria-Hungary with it, there could be some major opportunities. Another problem is that corruption isn’t just common, it’s institutionalized. The local bureaucrats aren’t paid at all. They work for tips.”

“That’s true in Germany, too,” Millicent said. “At least sometimes.”

“Yes, but Germany was enjoying the benefits of fifteen years of war.” Hayley gave the group a sardonic look.

“Benefits?” Trudi asked. There hadn’t been much in the way of benefits in her experience of war.

“Sorry, Trudi. But aside from-or perhaps because of-the rape and pillage, war tends to loosen things up.”

“I’m willing to forgo my traditional bribe for allowing you to do business in exchange for your not shooting me.” Trudi nodded. “Or not taking your troops out of the way so someone else can burn down your town. Which was the subtle stick you up-timers used.”

“I don’t mind tipping for good service,” Judy said.

“Neither do I,” said Hayley. “But no one is offering to burn down Vienna, so we can’t tip them by stopping it. Besides, a lot of the power structure here in Vienna seems intent on receiving bribes for screwing us over. And that I do mind. But unless the Ottomans decide to attack, I don’t see what’s going to get the burghers and the Hofbefreiten to forgo their traditional kickbacks. And there is enough resentment of up-timers and enough just plain old fear of competition that they are being completely unreasonable anywhere they can.”

“The Hofbefreiten?” Vicky asked.

“The upper crust, the Nob Hill crowd, ‘They of Vienna’. . you get the idea. The Liechtenstein family are members of the nobility, sort of the Hofbefreiten, because they are part of the court. The city council and the guild masters are a competing but intermixed power structure and they both want bribes to get anything done. Partly it’s who gets invited to which parties. At the same time, if you’re not on the right party list, it’s really hard to do business above a pretty meager level.

“Rob Sanderlin and Dad’s position as a master craftsmen in unique crafts puts us in the Hofbefreiten branch and since Race Track City is outside Vienna, effectively the whole town is Hofbefreiten in a way. Which doesn’t make the burghers love us. There are some things I could have done on my own in town but with the burghers locking everyone not a member of the club out, it would have caused a fuss. Mostly SFIC has worked out of town.”

“So how do we break it open?” Vicky asked.

“I’m not sure we can. There’s another problem.”

“What’s that?” Judy asked.

“There is a real possibility of government seizures of anything we do. We have some political clout because the emperor really likes the cars. . but it only goes so far. The Hofbefreiten and the burghers are holding a lot of royal debt, most of it overdue. And even the Hofbefreiten proper, the ones in Vienna, aren’t all that thrilled with Race Track City. Unless Sarah’s Karl can come through with some counter pressure, His Imperial Majesty might keep the lenders happy by shutting us down.”

“So where’d they get the money to loan the emperor?” Millicent asked.

“Vienna has the only bridge over the Danube for a good distance in either direction. It has been able to siphon off a fair chunk of the Danube trade and the cross-river traffic as well. Locally, it’s wine country.”

“Is the wine any good?” Vicky asked.

“It’s white.” Hayley shrugged. “Other than that, I couldn’t say.”

“Barbarians!” Vicky complained. “I’m surrounded by barbarians.”

“Do you still have ‘The Bottle’?” Hayley asked.

“She does,” Trudi said. “I saw to its unpacking this afternoon.”

“That may just be a criminal offense,” Hayley told them, apparently trying to sound worried but not making a very good job of it. “There is a law against importing wine. It’s mainly aimed at the Hungarian wine trade but. .” Then she continued with the lecture. “Look, Vienna grew up taxing a cut of all the traffic on or crossing the Danube. They have lots of practice at figuring just how much they can skim. That provided them excellent training for becoming a city of government functionaries who know just how much they can charge in kickbacks without making the project obviously unprofitable. They’ll charge just enough so that the merchant doesn’t go the eighty miles out of his way to get to the next crossing. Or so that the petitioner to the emperor doesn’t complain about the bribes he had to pay to get in. Except they are afraid of the up-timer innovations and they don’t have any good measuring stick to figure how much the bribe should be. Put the two together and you get an entrenched bureaucracy that consistently overcharges.

“In a way, the crisis over the church has been helpful. People have sort of forgotten about us out at Race Track City while the priests and monks have been fighting each other over whether Urban is still the pope or if he is an outlaw heretic. We got a priest out there late last year and, of course, just about everybody here is Catholic. Father Degrassi is a Jesuit but not a fanatic about it. He’s mostly just a parish priest, and he’s a pretty reasonable guy. Oh, he tells Mom she’s going to burn in hell, but he’s mostly just joking and in no hurry to start the process early. So anyway, since the pope booked out of Rome, everyone has been crazy. The issue of whether Race Track City should be forcibly incorporated into Vienna has been put on the back burner. We haven’t had any riots out there and the three fights were broken up by our guards.”

They continued to talk about the situation in Vienna while they ate.