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The Anaconda Project, Episode Ten

Written by Eric Flint

Chapter 10

“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, ...