Klaus nodded and brought the plane out of its long banking turn, nose pointed north toward the low, rambling wharves of Mestre. As soon as the level indicators settled, he checked the slight leftward drift and started easing the four-engined biplane down toward the blue-green water scudding past below.
Although Tom was the one who had asked for the meeting, he arrived twenty minutes late. Miro rose to greet him.
“Hey, Estuban; you’re here early. Or am I late?”
“I don’t really know,” Miro lied.
“Oh, damn. So I am late. Sorry. Seems I’m always running behind now.” Tom looked out over the Laguna Veneta, which seemed to gather itself to the foot of the belvedere-crested villa upon which they stood. His eyes got dreamy, the way Miro noticed they did when he hovered on the edge of an up-time reminiscence.
“Y’know,” Stone drawled, turning his whole body toward the water, almost as if he were addressing it, “I used to hate wearing watches. Seemed that everywhere you looked, up-time, there was a clock. Telling you how many minutes you have left before you have to do this, or do that, or wake up, or go to sleep. No freedom, man; slaves to the clock. But when we got here-”
He raised his wrist; the up-time watch upon it looked like a strange bracelet with a cheap inset stone of grayed onyx. “This thing used to tell the time, do simple math like a computer, record notes: everything. Funny. I hated it, only wore it occasionally. Mostly to please my boys, since they were the ones who gave it to me. But when I got here-it was like a treasure.” He looked at the face of the watch, which Miro knew was made of the unusual up-timer material known as plastic. “But now it’s dead. No batteries for it. Never will be, either. And still I wear it. Like a gift from the ancient astronauts; like I’m a cargo-cultist of my own making.” He realized even before seeing the carefully blank and patient expression on Miro’s face, that he had lost the down-timer in the dense verbal thicket of his own esoteric references. “Sorry. But look, here’s lunch”-cheese, loaves, and sausages were arrayed on the table-“and we’ve got the best seat in the house.” He pointed out over the lagoon. “Have you ever seen one of these Monsters land?”
“No.”
“Quite a sight, even from this distance. There it is now.” Tom pointed to the south, where a cruciform speck was easing from a long sweeping turn into level flight.
They were both silent for a time. Tom looked at his shorter companion and smiled, a bit crookedly. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”
“About what?”
“About the balloon project we were talking about.”
Miro shrugged. “I presumed that if you wished to discuss the matter, you would bring it up. There is no reason to rush.”
“See, Estuban, that’s what I like about you. One of the things I like, anyway. You’re not like other businessmen. Here in Venice business is all very cordial, all very careful, and always in play. You never talk about anything without talking about business, too. ‘And your family, are they well?’ sounds like someone just being friendly and concerned, but it’s also a way of finding out if you’re distracted, if your focus on some upcoming deals is wavering, if you’re contemplating pulling back from commerce for a while. But with you, it’s different.”
Miro shrugged. “I am not Venetian. And I am not here as a businessman. Except opportunistically, peripherally.”
“See, they don’t have any ‘peripheral’ business, here. In Venice, you may not even be in business-but you still are. You’re a soldier, a judge, a scribe, a navigator? Fine, but that’s not just your profession; that’s also your basis of barter. Everybody is looking for a little fee if you want access to what or who they know. Seems to be the Venetian way.”
Miro smiled. “It does indeed.”
“Guess you’ve dealt with it a lot over the years, huh?”
“Some,” Miro understated mightily.
“So about the balloons…”
Klaus watched the airspeed indicator fall slowly, felt the slight increase in leftward drift even before Arne reported: “Wind rising a little; now at three knots. And coming about. More from due south.”
Of course. Intermittent sciroccos and the Adriatic’s own peculiar weather and currents were adding to the fun. Nothing stayed very steady very long over the springtime waters of Venice.
The drift diminished, but the right-rear tailwind was now starting to boost the Monster’s airspeed, even as her leftward drift decreased. Just what you want during a landing: shifting winds.
He throttled back the engines a tiny bit, brought the nose up a degree-a little earlier than he’d intended, but he had to counteract the accelerating effects of the tailwind…
Miro watched the speck wobble a little as it seemed to settle itself into a straight run, growing slowly larger as it drew closer to the surface of the water.
“First I had to find out which people might be interested in balloons here in Venice. Turns out there are a lot of them, and all with different reasons for wanting to get involved. It also seems there have been foreign agents here, nosing around.”
Miro nodded. “There’s a great deal of foreign interest in balloons. Hardly surprising since nations without up- time engines can start a blimp-building program and still hope for a reasonable chance of success.”
Tom nodded. “From what I hear, you even helped the authorities in Grantville nab an informant. An industrial spy, as we used to call them.”
Miro raised an eyebrow. “And where did you hear that?”
“Oh, the Venetians are pretty well informed. And there were some follow-up inquiries made down here. The authorities thought it was pretty strange that although the spy you found in Grantville was Venetian, and was returning here, he was not working for any local factors. That worries them.”
“As it should. If either the Mughals or Ottomans were seeking access to balloon technology, they would move it through the Mediterranean. Given the disruption in the rest of Italy, Venice is the most likely conduit. Particularly given its unofficial, arm’s-length trade relations with Istanbul.”
“Yeah, I think that’s what they were fretting over. That, and having too much competition in building the balloons. Although a lot of the locals aren’t envisioning airships for transportation, but for coast-watching and mapping.”
Miro nodded. “Logical.”
“So you saw this coming?”
“It was a distinct possibility. And those activities don’t require large, or even powered, dirigibles. Just a stationary one-man rig, tethered to the ground.”
“Yeah, that’s what they were saying. Given the piracy problems all along the Adriatic, they’ve already got potential interest and permissions from Ravenna, Rimini, and Ancona and are talking with communities on the Dalmatian coast. I suspect they’d send some out to their island possessions in the Aegean, as well.”
Miro nodded. “And I’m glad to see that someone obviously read the letter I wrote them about mapping.”
“ You wrote?”
Miro smiled. “I just sent along some observations. Specifically, that given the low cost of its operation, and its stationary position, a balloon is vastly superior to a plane when serving as a cartographic platform. This is not the case when one has much ground to cover, of course. And given your photography, perhaps this was not so true in your up-time world. However, here, and in terms of constructing a detailed map of a limited region, a man in a balloon will be far more accurate and can easily recheck his measurements.”
Tom rubbed his chin. “You know, I was talking to some of my advisers-”
— Which, Miro knew, probably meant his very business-savvy down-time wife, Magda “-and they say there could be a lot of money in this cartography business. A very lot of money.”
Miro nodded. “Naturally. The Venetians I corresponded with already understood the military advantages of having precise maps with topographic renderings. And it only took a little extrapolation for them to foresee the balloon’s wider benefits in regard to surveying, prospecting, land and water management, road development, and engineering. And the uses to which they put the balloons will not only prove their utility, but whet the similar appetites of other nations.”
Stone watched the Monster growing larger. “Yeah, before long, everyone is going to want high-quality maps. Of course, the big countries will only buy a few balloons each, with one held back as a prototype for copying. But by
