everlasting nagging for funds. He snorted. “Tell that to the peasants and the slums in town.”
“That the poor don’t pay taxes?” She raised her eyebrows. “They go through the motions, perhaps, but it’s an optical illusion. The powers that be—such as yourself—would like the poor to think that taxes were a big issue they had to be concerned about. Get them all steamed up worrying about taxes, so that their real troubles will be ignored.”
“You sound like a rabble rouser,” Mike Dean chuckled.
But she went on, doggedly. “Suppose it’s possible for a peasant or unskilled laborer, to get by on fifty crowns a day. Fine, you pay him one hundred crowns, and then tax him fifty. He
Mike Dean said dryly, “Save me your economics, Natalie. The fact of the matter is, Lou and I are in no position to finance a project as big as you’re talking about. We over-expanded, especially in textiles. Introducing the cotton gin was fine but things got steam rolling and before we knew it, we started producing cloth twice as fast as we can sell it. Everybody on this continent, who can afford a wardrobe, has a closet full of clothes.”
Natalie said impatiently, “Introduce fashion.”
“What?” He scowled at her.
She said, “I was joking, I suppose. But I’m surprised you haven’t already. Between you and Amschel Mayer, you’ve introduced just about every other gimmick that…”
“Wait a minute,” Dean said. “How do you mean, introduce fashion?”
“Fashion, fashion. Styles. So every woman on this continent has already got a closet full of clothes your textile products? Fine. Switch styles on them, drop the hemline five inches. Play it up in your publications. Have some of the big name theatrical people wear them. Introduce some fashion magazines. Make them feel as though they’re underprivileged if they can’t get a complete new wardrobe of the new styles.”
Dean was staring at her. “Zen! I think you’re right!”
Natalie muttered, “Forgive me, for I know not what I do.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, coming to her feet. She looked down at him and far in the back of her eyes there was an element of contempt. “Mike, we came here to develop this world, not just to exploit it.”
He looked up at her, defensively. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where one starts and the other ends.”
“In this particular case, it isn’t. My medical universities are at last beginning to turn out competent practitioners. I need those hospitals, Mike.”
“All right, all right, I’ll talk it over with Louis. Listen, Natalie, how about you taking a week or so off and getting this fashion thing going for us? Neither Louis nor I know…”
She snorted in fine disgust. “Some chance, you miserable cloddy. I can just see myself. Already I feel like a traitor to my sex.”
Mike Dean chuckled sourly. “Well, you can’t blame me for trying.”
A secretary entered. “The Honorable Rosetti.”
Dean said, “Oh good. Show him in, Lange.”
“At once, Honorable Dean.” Lange left.
Natalie looked after the underling. “What’s he cringing about?”
Dean shrugged. “It’s an attitude you develop when you’ve got possibly three hundred crowns to your name.”
She frowned at him. “I hope you don’t encourage it. Wasn’t the theory that on Genoa we were going to advance by utilizing man’s freedoms? Plekhanov and Chessman are the advocates of the iron fist.”
He shrugged again, uncomfortably. “You don’t have to encourage it. It comes automatically.” He stood as Louis Rosetti entered the room.
Rosetti, one of the older of the
“Hello, Louis,” she said wanly. “Not much time for social life.”
Dean said, “It’s not as nice as all that to see her. She’s trying to shake us down for enough to pay off this city-state’s national debt.”
Rosetti looked at her. “Why don’t you get after Mayer and Kennedy for a change? Didn’t Mike tell you we were hurting?”
“It wouldn’t be a change, Louis. I’m doing the same on their continent as I am here. If anything, my program is somewhat ahead over there.”
Dean said, “What’s up, Louis? I thought you were working on that series of distilleries.”
“Distilleries!” Natalie said.
Mike Dean looked at her impatiently. “What’s wrong with distilleries? It’s not as though we’re introducing alcohol. They’ve always had wine here.”
She shook her head. “I suppose it’s none of my affair. It seems to me, though, that we could first devote a few factories to medicinal products before getting around to stronger guzzle.”
Louis Rosetti, who was dressed in much the same manner as his colleague, made a motion toward the next room with his head. “Presbyter Doul is out there.”
“Who?”
“Doul, the Temple monk. He’s taking a dim view of our production of rum and vodka.”
“Is there a back way out of here?” Natalie said. “I’m having enough trouble with the Temple without tangling with any of them ranking as high as Presbyter.”
Mike Dean led her to a rear door, then said to Rosetti with a sigh, “Show him in, Louis. We’re going to have to play this carefully. Anybody as high in the hierarchy as this is not flat.”
Louis Rosetti went back to the anteroom to return with a thin-faced, fox-like individual dressed in the dark robes of a Temple monk, but beneath them the rich garb of an upper-class Genoese of the highest income bracket.
Mike Dean went through the motions involved in a visit of such a dignitary, winding up with Presbyter Doul in the room’s most comfortable chair.
The newcomer eyed him thoughtfully, as Dean returned to his desk, and Louis Rosetti found a seat of his own. The two Earthmen were wary.
Doul said, “You adapt quickly and well to our ways, my son.”
Dean said carefully, “But your ways are our ways, Your Holiness.”
The Temple hierarch said, “I wonder. It was first widely thought that you came from Bari, on the eastern continent, but upon inquiry to our associate Temple there, it seems as though on their part they were of the opinion that you and your equal numbers on the eastern continent had come from here.”
“Our equal numbers?” Rosetti said cautiously. The presbyter looked at him. “Yes, such as Honorable Mayer and his associates.”
“Our connections with Amschel Mayer are on a business level,” Dean said.
“So I understand. Very profitably so, but perhaps on other levels as well. Levels not quite clear to myself and my holy brothers of the Temple.”
Dean shook his head, as though lacking understanding. He was on delicate ground now.
The other shrugged thin shoulders. “However, your origins are not of present concern.” He paused. “Perhaps you are aware of the fact that my position involves the holy product of the vine, that I administer the holy production and distribution of this gift of the Supreme.”
Louis Rosetti nodded. “We have been so informed, Your Holiness. In fact, if I understand correctly, your family has had this, ah, monopoly for at least a century. Your position is hereditary.”
The Temple hierarch’s eyes had narrowed again. “Do you see fit to criticize the method by which the Temple administers the holy gift of wine?”
Rosetti held up his hands, as though in horror. “Certainly not, Your Holiness.”
“Very well. Then let this be understood. These new products you have introduced”—he made a face of
