"You're not asking for much, are you, Morris?" said Bernard Fodor. The older of the two Fodor brothers was doing his best to grumble, but the effort was being undercut by the other members of his family. Not only was his brother Cyril smiling, but his wife was almost laughing.
Not to mention his two kids, Amy and David, both of whom were smiling as broadly as his brother.
"What d'you all think is so damn funny, anyway?" he groused. "We're talking about completely disrupting our lives. Giving up everything. You'd think there'd be at least one solemn face in the crowd, besides mine."
"Oh, come off it, Dad," said his daughter Amy. The teenager's smile was now an outright grin. "Giving up what? A house you've never liked much and never quit griping about? A job you like even less and gripe about even more?"
"Job pays good," he said stoutly.
"Not half as good as Mr. Roth is offering," countered his wife Joanna. "Even leaving aside the fact that you'll have part ownership in the business, which is more'n you got with the rail shop back in Grantville."
Bernard was nothing if not stubborn. "Already got part-ownership in my business with Cyril. Half-ownership, in fact, which is more than I'll have in this new outfit Morris wants to set up."
"Oh, for Pete's sake!" said his brother Cyril. "Yeah, sure. You and me each own half of an auto repair and body shop business—which ain't enough to keep either one of us working at it full-time, since the Ring of Fire. Seeing as how your automobile maintenance industry kind of shriveled up and died on the vine, seeing as how there ain't hardly no functioning cars any more."
He nodded toward Morris. "Whereas what he's offering is to set up a major manufacturing facility. With a steady and reliable business."
"For at least two years, anyway," said Morris. "After that . . ."
"After that, we're on our own, maybe." Cyril didn't sound disturbed by the possibility. "But even if your war wagon orders dry up completely, so what? By then, if we don't screw up, we'll have by far the biggest and best equipped metal fabrication company in Bohemia. More business is bound to turn up."
General Pappenheim, who'd been silent up till now, cleared his throat. "That's almost a certainty." He gave Roth a thin smile. "Don Morris is too cautious to speak of it directly. But the fact is that the king is bound and determined to develop a munitions and armament industry here in Prague. Even assuming that Don Morris' requirements come to an end—not likely, ha!—there would be other work coming from Wallenstein. Probably even before then, in fact."
He gave the two Fodor brothers a look that could have been described as "hawk-like" without insulting any raptors. "Especially if you can persuade him that there is any future in steam engine vehicles beyond locomotives."
"Sure there is," said Cyril. "It's just blind luck that internal combustion engines back up-time—"
"Lay off, will you?" said Bernard. "Now's not the time for that." He looked at Morris, while rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully. "One-fourth of the business, right? Shared evenly between me and Cyril."
Morris shrugged. "You and your brother get twenty-five percent of the stock. How you divvy that up between the two of you is your business."
Bernard nodded, still rubbing his neck. "And Larry Monroe gets another twenty-five percent. And you keep half of it."
"That's it. I put up all the capital except for some of the equipment you'll bring here from Grantville. And I handle the wages of the employees for the first two years. You and Cyril and Larry don't have to worry about meeting the payroll for that critical first stretch."
Bernard and Cyril exchanged a glance. That feature of the deal eliminated the single biggest strain on a new business, of course. But the flip side of it was that . . .
"But you do all the hiring, too."
Morris shook his head. "Not all of it, no. The two of you and Larry will do most of hiring of the skilled labor. I'm just handling the unskilled and semi-skilled applicants."
The two Fodor brothers studied him for a moment.
"Which is gonna be about ninety percent of the workforce," pointed out Cyril mildly.
Morris shrugged again. "Look, guys. I made no bones about this at the beginning, and I'm making no bones about it now." He got up from his chair in the big salon and moved toward one of the windows. "Come here. I want to show you something."
As the two brothers got up to follow him, Morris glanced over his shoulder and said: "All of you come over and look. You may as well see what you're getting yourselves into."
The two wives got up also. Those were Joanna, married to Bernard; and Willa, married to Cyril. So did Bernard and Joanna's teenage children, Amy and David.
Cyril and Willa's daughter Lynelle wasn't with them. She and her husband Paul Calagna might wind up moving to Prague also, but they hadn't decided yet. Leaving aside the fact that Paul had a good job with the government, he and Lynelle had five young children to deal with.
The window Morris led them to was just short of enormous. More precisely, since each pane was fairly small, the window was part of what amounted to the seventeenth century equivalent of a bay window looking down from the second floor of the Roth mansion. There was room for everyone to gather around.
"There it is," Morris said. His finger pointed to a mass of buildings just across the street. The buildings were narrow and pressed right against each other. Perhaps most striking of all was the fact that a wall separated them from the rest of the city.
"The Prague ghetto," Morris said. He sounded rather gloomy. "They still have the wall up along this stretch here. Not because the authorities require it any longer, which they don't, but because a lot of the Jewish inhabitants prefer having the wall."
Young David Fodor was peering at the wall with interest. "I thought Dunash Abrabanel and his guys tore it down."
Morris made a face. "Well, they did—partway. But then a lot of the ghetto's residents raised a fuss and . . . Well, I wound up persuading Dunash that he couldn't just do whatever he wanted high-handedly. So now the whole thing's being wrangled out." His tone got gloomier. "That means involving each and every rabbi in the ghetto. And once you do that, 'wrangling' really means wrangling."
He stepped back from the window. "And that's the issue, from my point of view. One of them, anyway." The gloomy tone left his voice, replaced by something a lot more determined. Even grim. "I am bound and determined to smash up those crusted-over ghetto habits and customs and traditions. And the best way I know of to do that—it's worked everywhere in the world, with every race and creed and color—is to give youngsters the opportunity to earn a good wage while learning some valuable skills. And not the same very tightly circumscribed skills that Jews are usually restricted to, in this day and age. I want those kids learning how to make things, dammit."
"Especially things that go 'boom,'" said David, grinning again.
Morris smiled back at him. "Well. Yes. That too."
Bernard was back to rubbing his neck. "You want only Jewish employees?"
"No. In fact, I'd much prefer to have an integrated workforce. But . . ." He winced, slightly. "We'll have to see. I'm not sure how many Christian kids will be willing to work for an establishment that has a lot of Jewish employees and refuses to allow any religious discrimination."
Cyril grunted. "I'd say that'll depend mostly on the wages. You pay well enough, there'll be plenty of youngsters willing to thumb their noses at the establishment."
"Well, that's what I'm hoping. We'll see. In the meantime, though, I know for sure I can get as many employees as we need just from the ghetto. If need be."
Seeing Bernard's skeptical look, Morris seemed a bit uncomfortable. "Look. Just 'cause I don't like a lot of those rabbis out there, doesn't mean I dislike all of them. There's a few I get along with, and I've already talked this over with them. They're willing to run interference for me, if I need it."
Cyril spread his hands. "That's your business, the way I figure it." He cocked his head at his brother. "Bernard, are you ready, willing and able to quit dilly-dallying around? Me, I'm for it."
His brother scowled at him. But then, after perhaps three seconds, he nodded. "Yeah, I'm in. What the hell. We'd be crazy not to."
"What I been saying for weeks now." Cyril turned to Pappenheim, who'd remained sitting in his comfortable chair. "I suppose we should get started on the specific requirements you have."
The very tough-looking general's eyes widened. "Me? My requirements are a good horse, a good sword and a pair of good pistols. No, no, no. I am simply here out of curiosity. That, and the curiosity of my employer, even more. You need to talk to those two fellows who came here from Vienna with von Mercy."
The count's Bavarian accent was as pronounced as ever, making him just a bit hard to understand. By now, four years after the Ring of Fire, Cyril's German was quite good. But he'd learned that the German language in this day and age was almost more in the way of a cluster of very closely related languages than what you'd call a single and unitary language with various dialects. He was accustomed to the speech of people from Thuringia and Franconia, mostly. He found Germans from other regions often hard to understand, and sometimes downright impossible.
Pappenheim rose from his seat with the fluid grace you'd expect from a man who was not only a famed general but a famed warrior as well. The thought crossed Cyril Fodor's mind—as it had the minds of hundreds of others before him—that Count Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim was a very dangerous man indeed. The vivid scar on his forehead added to the image, of course.
"And now, I am off." He gave the Fodor brothers a grin that had very little humor in it. "We may say that I am about the king's business, I think."
Cyril wasn't sure what to make of that rather cryptic remark. Probably nothing. He was pretty sure that Pappenheim made cryptic remarks simply as a way of keeping the people around him slightly off-balance. Everything the man did had that flavor about it.
* * *
He commented to that effect, after Pappenheim was gone. "He's a little scary, isn't he?"
Morris smiled. "Oddly enough, he's become something in the way of a friend of mine."
All the members of the Fodor family stared at him. Much the way people might stare at a man who claimed to have formed a friendship with a lion. Or a dragon.
Judith Roth chuckled. "It's true, actually. But it doesn't make Pappenheim any less scary. And now, folks, you must all be hungry. Dinner is about to be served."
* * *
"I guess we'll have to get used to eating kosher, huh?" asked Joanna Fodor, about halfway through the meal.
Judith glanced at her husband—who was now looking about as grumpy as Bernard Fodor had, earlier in the day—and chuckled. "Depends."
"On what?"
"Where you decide to live, first and foremost," said Judith. "You'll want to live on this side of the river, of course, given where the factory will be located. But you can find a place in Old Town; you don't need to move into the Jewish quarter. After that, on whether you decide to do your own cooking or hire a cook. I'd strongly recommend hiring a cook, myself—given that you're pretty much going to have to home school your kids for the first year or so."
"Can we get a good cook?" Joanna asked. "At rates we can afford?"
"The cook is likely to be better than you are," said Morris Roth, "given the use of local ingredients. And the rates won't be a problem, with what Bernard'll be making. The key thing is that you have to be strong-willed enough to force a local cook and servants to accept up-time sanitary habits."
Morris was still scowling, but he seemed perhaps a bit less grumpy. "I'll say this much for hiring Jews. The only way they know how to cook is kosher, but in the here and now they're likely to have a lot better sanitary habits than Christians. Meaning no offense."
Joanna shook her head ruefully. Her husband chuckled. "No offense taken," Bernard said. "It can get pretty damn gruesome, I admit."
Cyril's wife Willa spoke up. "Will that be a problem for us, Judith? Hiring Jews, I mean."
"No, not with me setting it up for you. By now, I'm . . . ah . . . well-established in the community."
Morris burst into laughter. "'Well-established!' Yeah, no kidding. She's the wife of the richest Jew in the city—far and away the richest—and, unlike me, she doesn't have a reputation for being grouchy about religious matters."
David Fodor studied Morris, for a moment, with an intent scrutiny you didn't normally expect to see coming from a boy still shy of his sixteenth birthday. "You're a lot more than just the richest Jew around, Mr. Roth. You're pretty much a hero to these people."
"And what do you know about that?"
David shrugged, uncomfortably. "A fair amount, sir. I studied up on it, back in Grantville, before we made the trip."
"'Studied up'? With who or what?"
"I'm friends with one of the Abrabanel kids, sir. He's in my grade in school." A little shyly, he added: "You're a big hero to him too, you know. 'Cause of the Battle of the Bridge and all."
Morris looked uncomfortable. His wife gazed upon him with an expression that was an odd cross of proud and aggravated at the same time. "I'm afraid my blessed husband still can't wrap his head around all that." She looked at Willa. "But to get back to the point—no, you won't have a problem getting good help, as long as you let me handle it for you. But—to get further back to your question, Joanna—that would mean that, yes, you'd have to be willing to eat kosher. My contacts are mostly in the ghetto, so far."
"That's not true," protested her husband. "You know—we both do—lots of people in the Christian community."
"Sure we do. Each and every one of whom is a noble or an officer or a courtier or a bureaucrat or at the very least an educated person. Usually a clergyman. Or their wives. And just who among them d'you think Joanna and Willa could hire as a cook or a maid?"
"Well . . ."
"Don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs. Or your wife."
Willa and Joanna both laughed. Then, peered at their husbands.
"Kosher sounds okay to me," said Joanna.
"Beats the alternative," said Willa. "Trichinosis. Cholera. Nothing else, a near constant case of the runs."
"Oh, it isn't that bad," protested Bernard.
"No?" His wife made a face. "The last time I was in church—which was the Sunday before we left, remember?—I saw a man—"
"Joanna!" protested her sister-in-law.
"You saw it too, huh? Talk about gross." She shook her head. "Bernard, stay out of this. You don't come to church but two or three times a year anyway, so what do you care? We'll leave our souls in the care of the priests. But I'd just as soon leave our stomachs and livers in the hands of whoever Judith can turn up."
"Not to mention our gall bladders, colons . . ." said Willa.
"Speaking of which," continued Joanna, "what's the condition of the Catholic church here in Prague? For me, that's probably going to be the worst of it. I really like our church in Grantville, even now that Larry Mazzare's no longer the priest."
Morris grinned at her. "Lemme get this straight. You're asking me—the Jew, remember, and none too observant at that—to give you the lowdown on the state of the Catholic church here?"
Joanna grinned right back at him. "Cut it out, Morris. You know perfectly well that it's the political lowdown I'm interested in. I'm not asking you about the theological fine points—or even about the personalities of the priests in town. I can handle that myself."
Morris paused for a few seconds, before answering. "That's kind of a tricky issue, actually. The Jesuits pretty much run the show here in Prague, and . . . well . . ."
"They're having a nervous breakdown all over Europe," Willa filled in for him. "What with the Pope himself and the Father-General being so friendly to us lately, whereas a lot of the Jesuits are pretty much still in full Counter-Reformation mode."
"Yup," said Morris. "By all accounts, the Jesuits in Poland are in what amounts to an almost open rebellion. Pledge of allegiance to the Pope be damned."
"What about here?"
"They're dancing back and forth, from what I can tell. Most of them, that is. But I can introduce you to one of the fathers who's on the side of the angels. So to speak."
"Okay." Joanna heaved a sigh. "That's a relief. I was really not looking forward to having to attend a church where I felt like an enemy walking in."
Her daughter Amy, who'd been silent throughout the meal, suddenly spoke up. "That's all fine and dandy. But now let's get down to the real nitty-gritty. I broke up with my worthless bum of an ex-boyfriend almost three months ago. Long enough. My heart bled buckets but my wounds heal very quickly. So what are my prospects going to look like here in Prague?"
All the adults at the table stared at her. The seventeen year old girl seemed quite unfazed. "I got no problems with down-time boys. Well. Leaving aside the worthless bum I broke up with. In some ways I like 'em better than American guys, being honest, though you usually do have to educate 'em some on hygienic matters. But how do I go about meeting anybody here? Seeing as how you said earlier, Mr. Roth, that I can't get accepted into your new college until I get my high school diploma—and that might take a bit of doing, seeing as how we're going to be moving here pretty soon. I still got more'n a year left at the high school in Grantville, and that's going to be sayonara."
She gazed at Morris. Then at Judith.
"So how's it work?" she asked.
Morris cleared his throat, preparatory to speaking. And then . . .
Said nothing.
"Men," muttered his wife. Judith gave Amy Fodor her most winning smile.
And why not? Judith foresaw no problems. The teenager was rather attractive, allowing for a certain amount of pudginess. But her appearance didn't really matter anyway. She could be downright ugly, and it wouldn't matter. Within a year, with her father established as one of the most prosperous burghers in town—and with the glamorous aura that usually surrounded up-timers, even when they weren't wealthy—Amy Fodor's biggest problem would be beating off unwanted suitors with a stick.
That was especially so, since the girl obviously didn't have any issues concerning down-timers. There were still some American girls and boys whose romantic interests were restricted to other up-timers. But given Amy's attitudes—
"There were a couple of Jewish kids I saw on our way here," Amy continued cheerfully. "About my age. Both of 'em were cute as hell, too, allowing for the silly hairdos."
Oh, boy.
Her husband cleared his throat again.
And, of course, said nothing.
"Men," Judith muttered.