t'grand tradition o' West Virginians an' how they seceded from a sorry lot o' aristocratic secessionists when t'slave-owning bastids attempted to undermine t'will o' America's 'onest an' stalwart yeomanry-'
His summary made no more sense to the Jewish diplomats at the table than what they could grasp of Mike's own speech. But if they missed the specifics of the thing, they did not fail to grasp the essence of it.
'The man is
'Mennonites,' whispered Balthazar. 'A few hundred of them arrived just two weeks ago. The Americans gave them a grant of unused land in the foothills. Those are their elders.'
'Deadly serious,' stated Lennox. He wiped beer from his lips. The gesture carried an unmistakable aura of satisfaction. 'T'man's daft, lads, but make no mistake 'boot one t'ing. He is a faery, right an' true.'
'Will he win this contest?' asked Samuel.
Lennox gave him a cold gaze. 'Didna ye hear me? A
At the same moment, if in a different way, Underwood and Henry Dreeson had come to the same conclusion.
Leaving the Chamber of Commerce meeting, Underwood remarked: 'That went better than I'd expected.'
Dreeson smiled. 'Not me, Quentin.'
The former-and-still mine manager eyed him skeptically. 'I know that bunch, Henry. They're about as conservative as dinosaurs. Hell, they even make me look like a wild-eyed radical.'
The town's mayor shook his head. 'That's not fair, Quentin. Dinosaurs are extinct, and that's one thing those boys don't intend to be.'
They came out onto the street, and took a moment to button up their jackets. November had come in chillier than they were accustomed to.
Dreeson looked up and down the street. 'Look at it, Quentin. Notice anything different?'
'Sure! The street's packed with people. Business is booming.' Underwood glanced up at the row of old, multistory brick buildings lining both sides of Grantville's small downtown 'main drag.'
'I can remember when half of those buildings were vacant,' he mused. But the statement was accompanied by a scowl. 'Still-the place is a lot rowdier, too. Dan and his deputies are really earning their keep now. He told me the other day he's starting to feel like Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson, trying to keep a Wild West boom town under control.'
But Dreeson's eyes were elsewhere. He was watching a small mob of children romping through the street. With only an occasional bus coming through, Grantville's streets had become pedestrian avenues.
'I was thinking about the kids,' he said softly. 'It broke my heart, Quentin. All those years, in this town I was born in, grew up in, and love so much. Plan to die in. Seeing so many of the young people leave, like they do-did-all over Appalachia.'
The elderly mayor drew in a deep breath. The cold autumn air seemed to invigorate him. 'Damn and blast Simpson and all his Cassandra screeching.' Dreeson nodded back toward the building they had just emerged from. 'Sure, they're nervous. Nervous as hell. But they'll back us up. Business is booming, even if it is crude. And the kids are back. In droves.'
Two other people, walking down a different street, were also finding the chill air invigorating. Or, perhaps, it was simply their own company.
'It won't be easy, Alex,' said Julie. She stopped at a corner and turned to him. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of the jacket she had put on as they left the tavern. Julie's expression was severe, in the excessive manner of a girl trying to be a mature woman. 'I don't need another twitchy boyfriend.'
The Scotsman's freckled face was twisted by a wry smile. 'I trust you'll allow me the occasional lapse?'
Taking Julie's chuckle for an affirmative, the smile became much less wry. 'I'm not a boy, Julie, despite my looks. I've seen more ruin and destruction in my life than I care to think about. I think it gives a man-me, at least-a certain perspective.'
The smile vanished, replaced by his own excessively severe expression. 'For my part, you must understand that I am sworn to the service of the king of Sweden. No matter what you may have heard about mercenaries, I take that oath seriously. So-'
Julie took her right hand out of the pocket and placed fingertips on his lips. ' 'Nough. I understand. You don't need a fretting female. You'll be gone a lot, and may never come back.'
He took her hand in his own and kissed the fingertips. Then, taking them gently away: 'Not willingly. But mine is a risky profession. No way around that.'
They set off again, now walking hand in hand. Julie's steps, as always, had a certain bounce to them. More than usual, perhaps.
'You'll allow me the occasional lapse?' she asked.
Her first lapse came less than two minutes later.
Mackay shook his head. The expression combined regret, apology-and stubbornness.
'I must, Julie. I was in Jena when the king passed through Thuringia, so I was unable to report. I can delay no longer. Gustav Adolf has established a temporary headquarters in Wьrzburg. But I don't know how long he'll be there. He's moving very fast, while the imperialists are still off balance. So I must be off-'
'Tomorrow!' she wailed.
If the horde of children who burst around the corner and swarmed past them some time later thought there was anything odd about two people embracing in public, they gave no sign of it.
Probably not. They saw a lot of that, these days.
Chapter 43
November was a whirlwind.
The first storm of winter, when it hit, seemed but a minor distraction. No one in Grantville or the surrounding area was worried about surviving the winter. Not any longer. Even with the influx of new prisoners-turned-immigrants from the battle at Jena, there was more than enough food and shelter.
'Shelter,' of course, was often crude. The area surrounding the power plant had become a small town in its own right. The power plant's steam provided a ready source of heat, which was piped through a crazy quilt of hastily erected log cabins so closely packed together that they constituted a seventeenth-century version of a housing project. But, for all its primitive nature, the housing would keep people alive during the winter. And the crowded conditions provided another incentive-not that Germans of the time needed one-to quickly seek work which could provide the wherewithal to move into better quarters.
The problem, actually, was more a shortage of good housing than the wages to pay for it. Grantville had become a classic boom town. The coal mine was running full blast by now, using hordes of pick-and-shovel miners in place of the absent modern equipment. So were all the established industries, especially the machine shops. Even the school's technical training center had become a production facility-and the students, most of whom were now German youngsters, learned their trades all the quicker for it.
New businesses and industries were springing up like mushrooms. Most of them were of a traditional nature. Construction, of course, occupied pride of place. But the Thuringen Gardens soon had competitors, and lots of them, even if it was still the largest tavern in town.
Food, in the end, turned out to be much less of a problem than Mike and his people had feared. In addition to the grain stocked up during the fall, two new sources of provender had turned up.
The first was trade. In the mysterious way that these things happen, coursing through the consciousness of a nation's masses far below the notice of its political and military overlords, word had spread throughout Germany. There was a place…
A market for food, textiles, metal, minerals. Almost anything, it seemed. Paid for with hard currency-gold and silver-if you so desired. Or, if you were smarter, with wondrous new products. Fine metalwork; strange, silky garments; most of all, ingenious toys and dolls and devices made of some substance called 'plastic.' Luxury goods! Grantville's pharmacies and knicknack stores, oddly enough, proved to be the town's biggest trade asset. In weeks, they unloaded half-useless toys and gadgets which had cluttered the shelves for months.
Some of the German traders-the smartest ones-moved their base of operations to Grantville. And found, soon enough, that investing in manufacture was even more profitable than trade. The way was led by Georg Kleinschmidt, the merchant who brought in the first shipment of nails and spikes. Seeing the massive amount of wood construction going up, he cheerfully abandoned trade and sank his new small fortune into building a nail factory. His partner was Keith Trumble, an American car dealer. The American, realizing that his former business was a lost cause, provided his offices and small showroom as the facilities. While his fellow car dealers moaned and groaned, and flocked-small flock-to Simpson's campaign rallies, Trumble greeted the new reality with good cheer. Making nails was harder work, true; and dirtier. But at least he didn't have to tell lies anymore, or dicker with his customers. There was a line at the door every morning.
