"Sir, Lieutenant Bartley reporting as ordered."

Lieutenant David Bartley reported to the quartermaster of the Third Division in Magdeburg with an apprehension that, had he known it, was completely matched by the apprehension the quartermaster was feeling. Colonel Paul McAdam was a Scottish mercenary in Gustav Adolph's service. Or he had been before he was transferred to Third Division. By now he was used to dealing with up-timers but Bartley had a reputation and up-timers were not, for the most part, all that comfortable with the way things were done in the seventeenth century.

"Ah. Lieutenant Bartley. I've heard about you."

"Good things, I hope, sir."

"Well, then. I suppose that would depend . . ." Colonel McAdam began, then petered off ominously. As it happened both of them were somewhat overanxious. David had been working with down-timer men of affairs since he was fourteen and was quite familiar with the way things got done in the here and now. He was more than half down-timer by this time. Well, maybe only a third, but it was an important third. He realized that palms got greased to get things done and, unlike most of the older up-timers, didn't resent it. It just was a part of the world he lived in. He got things done and he had been making money getting things done since he was fourteen.

"Have a seat, Lieutenant Bartley." Colonel McAdam gestured to a chair and continued as David sat. "What do you know about the supply situation?"

"Not as much as I would like, sir."

"Well, it's not that bad here in Magdeburg. We have the river and we're in the center of the, well, everything."

David nodded. In Magdeburg you could get almost anything you could get in Grantville and more of it.

The colonel nodded back, a single, quick jerk of his head and continued. "But it's not going to be that easy once the campaign starts. Even the best army in the world can't carry enough food and fodder to keep it fed very long in the field. The canning and freeze-drying would help, but there is very little of it so far when you're talking about feeding an army instead of a few rich people. What will help some, I hope, is the Elbe as we move into Saxony. But if we end up more than a few miles from the Elbe, we're going to have to do what we've always done. Buy from the locals. And if the rumors are right about Poland, that's going to be even worse."

"Buy?" David asked.

The colonel gave David a careful look then another quick jerk of a nod. "That's the best we can hope for, Lieutenant. Before the Ring of Fire we would have gone through the land like locusts. But we're not supposed to do that anymore and your job is going to be arranging to have us meet with merchants willing to sell the army food."

They discussed Third Division's discretionary funds and the logistics of the coming campaign. David asked about what the army would be taking, where it would get it, and how it would be transported. How, in other words, he could help. "I, ah, do have some connections in the business community, sir. I can see what sort of bargains I can find?"

"I know up-time APCs are out of the question for transport, but can you get us steam wagons?"

"Not a chance!" David shook his head with more than a little regret. "Adolph Schmidt builds what I think are the best steam engines, for the price, in Magdeburg but he's at least six months behind on orders and the other two Magdeburg companies making steam engines are almost as far behind. The companies up in Grantville are even farther behind on orders. People are patriotic enough, but business is business and they have contracts with people who have already paid for their steam engines.

"Between you, me and every drover or muleskinner in Germany, a steam engine is worth at least three times the price of the equivalent number of horses—good horses, not nags half way to the glue factory. And that's mostly what they sell for. If I go to Adolph on bended knee, I may get him to bump us up on the order list to the tune of half a dozen steam engines or so. I'm a major stockholder, after all. But even if I do, using them to power wagons would mostly be a waste since they can power factories or river boats where you get more bang for your buck."

"Even half a dozen might help," Colonel McAdam pointed out. "As I said, we're likely to be using barges to ferry supplies up river to Saxony. At least at first."

"I'll see what I can do, sir."

The colonel nodded. "Good. But you're right, half a dozen steam wagons wouldn't be enough to make much difference. Do you know how much it takes to feed, clothe and house an army?"

"I know what the books say it takes, sir," David said. "I don't know how well the books agree with the reality."

They talked requirements then, in food and equipage. The answerer to how much supplies an army consumed came out to various values of "a hell of a lot" and "even more than that," now that they wouldn't be looting the country side as they marched.

That was something that Colonel McAdam agreed was very fine and noble but also something he wasn't convinced was practical. "I mean, if the other side is living in large part off the land and we're trailing along this monstrous logistic tail . . . it's a weak point the enemy can take advantage of." It was a problem that neither of them, nor anyone else in the Third Division's S4 section, had a solution for. Not then anyway.

****

David did beg steam engines off of Adolph Schmidt, but he only got four of the things. Then he spent his days till the Third Division headed for Saxony calculating tonnages, finding barges, working with drovers and merchants to arrange for food, powder and shot. And while he was making those arrangements, he noticed that many of the people who had goods for sale also had goods they wanted to buy. Value-added manufactured goods: plow blades, steel pots and pans, nuts, bolts, bearings, screws and screwdrivers, all sorts of stuff.

This wasn't all that surprising; the factories in Magdeburg and all along the lower Elbe where it continued navigable through most of the year, were producing at a phenomenal rate . . . but it wasn't enough. The full output of all the factories in all of the Germanies weren't enough to make a dent in demand. David was thought of as someone who could get stuff. Just as McAdam had asked him about steam engines, most of the people he dealt with were hoping he could use his influence to get something.

"You don't know what it’s like, Herr Bartley," Steffan Vogel complained bitterly. "I've got lands in pasture that could be producing wheat if I had the plows—new plows. I ask about the plows and I'm told there is a nine-month wait. Nine months, Herr Bartley. And meanwhile all the peasants are running off to Magdeburg to get manufacturing jobs."

And I don't blame them a bit, David thought, not greatly impressed with Vogel. Still, the man had grain for sale in Saxony. So David was polite.

After several such interviews where people like Vogel wanted stuff instead of money, David started to think. An army carried some of its supplies with it and it carried money to buy supplies as well. Before the Ring of Fire that money was silver coins. And even now it was partly silver. Oh, they would carry American dollars, the latest incarnation of them, USE Federal Reserve Bank Notes. They would carry American dollars to pay the troops, but not everyone was convinced that American dollars were good currency. So the army would also be carrying silver coins, minted by the USE Treasury Department, of a given weight and purity. The official name for such coins was silver slugs. Because they weren’t tied to the American dollar in any way, the exchange rate between them and American dollars was whatever the precious metals market in Magdeburg said it was. Third Division would receive them as part of their contingency funds.

All of which was perfectly standard and ordinary, except people like Vogel didn't want to be paid in silver slugs any more than in American dollars. They wanted plows and nuts and bolts and, well, stuff. What if, aside from American dollars and silver slugs, the Third Division were to take plows and nuts and bolts and . . . so on, to pay for the wheat and sausage and cheese . . . and so on, the division needed?

****

"The Third Division could make a profit on the deal, sir," David told Colonel McAdam. "We would be buying the stuff at golden corridor prices, then transporting it with the division, so no tolls or duties—no bandits for that matter—then selling at outland prices."

"Golden corridor?"

"Yes, sir. The Elbe up to the rail head and the rail line up to the Ring of Fire. The prices for most finished goods are lower in the corridor than just about anywhere else in the world. Still high by up-time standards, but . . ." David shrugged. For the most part, he didn't remember up-time that well any more, certainly not up-time prices. Prices for finished goods were low in the corridor and the price of labor was high, relative to the rest of the world. That wasn't constant, just an average. And people that didn't have the production machines tended to have real trouble competing. But that was another reason why the merchants and want-to-be manufactures in places like Saxony were so desperate for nuts and bolts. "If the Third Division can bring pots and pans, nails and screws and so forth with us, the local merchants will show up begging to sell us their grain so that they can buy our pots and pans."

But Colonel McAdam clearly wasn't impressed with David's notion. He gave one of those short sharp shakes of his head. "Pots and pans weigh a lot more than silver coins and paper money weighs even less than silver. If they will come for pots and pans, they'll come for silver."

The short sharp head shake had told David that the colonel had made up his mind. So he didn't point out that they would be "buying" the silver for precisely the same price they would be "selling" it for, but the pots and pans would sell for considerably more in Saxony than they would cost in the corridor.

Colonel McAdam wouldn't sign off on the division buying trade goods to cart with them on campaign. He did agree to let David do it on his own and let David's cargo travel with the army. David rented barges and hired troops who marched into Saxony, pulling hand carts and pushing wheelbarrows full of goods.

Summer Campaign Season, 1635, Saxony

"Damn and blast it!"

"Beg pardon, sir?" David said.

"He means it, doesn't he?" Colonel McAdam snorted. "How are we going to feed the troops if the local farmers won't take their own money? And your General Stearns is . . . most insistent that we be . . . polite . . . about it all."

The local money was worthless. The American dollars were acceptable, but only barely, just at the moment. Radio informs whether the news is good or bad. The American dollar, which had started out as the New US dollar, then become the SoTF dollar, was now transmuting into the USE dollar. They were all American dollars. At least, the government in Magdeburg said they were all "American dollars." However, the process of expansion had diluted the cachet of the original American dollar sent by God with the up-timers. Silver was preferred in Saxony at the moment and Third Division, the whole army in fact, hadn't brought enough.

"It's not helping that the USE dollar has been losing ground against the Dutch guilder for the last few months," David muttered. "Not all that badly, true, but it's got the Fed worried. Sarah said Coleman Walker is pitching a fit."

"Well, the locals aren't exactly snapping up our new American dollars with gay abandon," Colonel McAdam sneered. "They took the old well enough, but not the new. And don't even talk to them about the government chits, not without a sword in your hand. In the whole squad's hands, rather. I tried to talk to the general about this. Tried to tell him. But still!"

General Stearns had almost, but not quite completely, forbidden the use of sword point to persuade the locals to take the chits.

David went back to his office, frustrated. Colonel McAdam wasn't the world's best listener. David had actual material goods, real stuff that could be put to use. Sewing machines, the parts to make drop forges, batteries, rayon thread, all sorts of stuff. All in his own little supply train that Colonel McAdam didn't want to hear about, much less discuss. So the same merchants and farmers who were hiding their goods from the supply corps in general, were seeking David out and selling their grain and anything else they could think of before the rest of the army's supply division caught them with it and forced them to sell it for government chits which might or might not ever be worth anything.

All David really needed was . . . well, for his boss to get out of his way.

Meanwhile, the troops had to be fed. And there was only one way David could think of to get that done. Sell, sell, sell.

So he did.

****

Soon David had a reputation and almost didn't need the goods. Just catalogs.

"You're that Bartley fellow?"

"Yes, Herr . . ."

"Baum. Adolph Baum. I have some cattle to sell."

Indeed he did, David saw. Herr Baum must be representing an entire village, because he had quite a few cattle. "You know, Herr Baum, you can get more money if you take the cattle a bit up the road, to the main supply tent."

Herr Baum laughed. "I can get more of what they call money, young fellow. No offense to the Prince of Germany, but I'd just as soon not have those worthless chits."

"They're not worthless, sir."

Baum smirked. "You take them then."

It was hard to turn down an invitation like that, so David didn't.

David sent Johan Kipper out to look over the goods and come up with an offering price. And aside from smiling politely, stayed out of it. Sergeant Beckmann did the negations. Both Johan and the sergeant were much better negotiators than David was. Besides, many of the people they were dealing with would have been really uncomfortable negotiating with an up-timer. Way too much like negotiating with a cardinal or a baron or something. So David sat back and smiled benevolently . . . some would say condescendingly. But, damn it, they expected condescension, the next best thing to demanded it. David could at least make it kindly condescension, rather than sneering condescension.

Then David would pull out his catalogs, they would go over what the farmers or the merchants needed and what was available at what price. Here David would talk. He would make suggestions about who had the best products for the best price, ask questions about what they were going to use it for, and make suggestions about possible alternatives. Once they had everything worked out, David's secretary would write out the agreement, and David and the customer would sign it.

And more often than not the customer would leave muttering about how "the up-timer was a proper noble, kind and understanding, not like the sort we have around here."

Next David would walk over to the main supply tent, transfer to the goods to the Third Division and receive the government chit that the merchant or farmer didn't want. That the customer was right not to want, because, as it turns out, there is a real difference between some farmer off in Saxony sending in a chit and an army officer with his own lawyer turning in the selfsame chit. The difference isn't so much of a question of will it get paid at all, though there is some of that. Mostly it's a question of when it gets paid.

David had access to the military radio, he had a lawyer in Magdeburg and knew several people in the Treasury. From the supply tent he went to the radio room and sent the codes on the chits to Magdeburg and the funds were transferred from the government account to David's account. Then David sent off another radio message to his agent in Magdeburg, specifying the purchases to be made and where they were to be sent. It would arrive in a few weeks or a couple of months, depending on the waiting list for that product. There was always a waiting list and the customers were told that as well. Still, they were happy with the deal for the most part.

Since David had set this up on his own hook and using his own credit, primarily as a way of helping to make sure that the army had the supplies it needed, he didn't feel the least bit guilty about the profit he made.

After all, it wasn't like they could buy such goods with Saxon thalers. John George's paper thalers were supposed to be exchangeable for one ounce of silver on demand in Dresden. Demanding that silver was a threat to the duke's realm and a palpable insult to the duke, both of which were criminal acts in Saxony. "Here's your silver, you're under arrest for treason against the duke" is not the sort of response that makes one want to run down to the treasury for some hard currency. To date, no one had actually received any silver in exchange for a Saxon thaler with a picture of John George on the front and now no one ever would. On the Grantville currency market the Saxon thaler was valued at about two cents American money. Well, it had been. When the first of Gustav Adolph's troops crossed the border, it dropped off the exchange all together. But they still circulated in Saxony because they were, mostly, all there was. Any silver currency in Saxony had obeyed Gresham's law and retreated to under someone's mattress.

****

"Don't you Americans have a term for this? Profiteering, isn't it?" Colonel McAdam's sneer wasn't quite as confident as he apparently thought it was.

About the time they hit Dresden, Colonel McAdam noticed the profit David was making and was pissed. Both because he hadn't gotten in on it and because it wasn't anything the Third Division couldn't have been doing right along. David's initial proposal had been close enough to what he had ended up doing on his own that the evolution was obvious in hindsight. All of which made the colonel look and feel more than a little foolish.

"Sir, you gave me permission, and, no, I'm not profiteering. I also resent the suggestion that I am." It might be taking a bit of a chance, David thought, but he wasn't letting this blowhard start any rumors that might damage his reputation. If Colonel McAdam resented David's success, that was fine. Even so, David himself was out of reach because McAdam had specifically given David permission to do what he was doing.

"Humph. Your Sergeant Beckmann, however . . ."

David glanced over at Beckmann, then glared a furious glare at him. The sergeant wilted. "Sergeant Beckmann was not authorized for that transaction, sir, as he will admit."

Sergeant Beckmann's unauthorized trading of army supplies would probably have brought him up on much more serious charges if it had happened back up-time. Here in Saxony in the year of our Lord 1635, he might reasonably expect it to be ignored. Except, of course, that the colonel was pissed at his CO. He got busted to corporal.

The army's departure from Saxony was met with more regret than relief by the Saxon merchant class. Not only were all those solders leaving, taking with them their monthly pay, but Third Division took with it the best access to the new goods they'd had since, well, ever.

Near Zielona Góra

David listened as General Stearns asked him to develop a way to magically supply the Third Division with even less of a logistics train than they had had in Saxony. He stared at the table, not seeing it at all. Instead he was seeing a spread sheet of consumables that they didn't have and what his business contacts had told him might be bought in the area around Zielona Góra

"Pretty tricky, sir," he said after he'd gone over the charts in his head. "There's no chance of using TacRail like we did in the Luebeck campaign?"

The general shook his head. "We're not fighting French and Danes here, Lieutenant Bartley. Leaving aside his own cavalry, Koniecpolski's got several thousand Cossacks under his command. They're probably the best mounted raiders in Eurasia, except for possibly the Tatars. TacRail units would get eaten alive before they'd laid more than a few miles of track, unless we detailed half our battalions to guard them. Which we can't afford to do."

David nodded. He'd been expecting the answer. And he knew darn well that the locals wouldn't be taking chits. Not here, not even at sword point. It would take guns, lots of them, and dead bodies for demonstrations. Not something the general would sanction, thank God. And not something that David would do even under direct orders. This would require thinking outside the box. "That leaves what you might call creative financing."

"That's what I figured—and it's why I called you in."

Yep, that was just going to thrill the shit out of Colonel McAdam. "The regular quartermasters are already kinda mad at me, sir. If I—"

"Don't worry about it. To begin with, I'm pulling you out of the quartermaster corps altogether. You'll be in charge of a new unit which I'm calling the Exchange Corps."

"Exchange? Exchange what, exactly?" David looked at the general carefully and got back a grin that was more than a little scary. Suddenly David remembered that the general used to be a prizefighter.

"That's for you to figure out," the general said, still with that "I'm going to enjoy ripping your arms off" grin. "Whatever you can come up with that'll enable us to obtain supplies from the locals without completely pissing them off. No way not to piss them off at all, of course. But the Poles have had as much experience with war over the last thirty years as the Germans. They'll take things philosophically enough as long we aren't killing and raping and burning and taking so much that people die over the winter."

David went back to starring at the charts in his head. Personally, he doubted that the locals were quite as sanguine about having their crops stolen for pieces of worthless paper as the Prince of Germany thought they were. He was going to have to come up with some way of getting goods, manufactured goods, through. Enough to create the belief that the pieces of paper weren't worthless. Maybe steam barges up the Oder. "Okay," he said eventually. "I've got some ideas. But I'll need a staff, General. Not too big. Just maybe three or four clerks and, ah, one sort of specialist. His name's Sergeant Beckmann. Well, Corporal Beckmann, now. I got him his stripe back but then he ran afoul of—well, never mind the details—and got busted back to corporal."

"Where is he now? And what sort of specialist is he?"

"He's right here in the Third Division, sir. One of the quartermasters in von Taupadel's brigade. As for his specialty . . . Well, basically he's a really talented swindler."

"Okay, you got him—and we'll give the man back his sergeant's stripe. May as well, since I'm promoting you to captain."

David felt himself smiling. It was silly and he knew it, but little nerd boy was going to be a captain in the army. Yes, he was a millionaire, but that wasn't the sort of status that had mattered before the Ring of Fire. Before the Ring of Fire, his world had been a world of tough kids and kids who got picked on. David had been among the kids that got picked on. His world hadn't had millionaires in it, but it had had army people and an army captain wasn't in the picked on category.

Zielona Góra

He was less happy a few days later after Zielona Góra had been taken. David Bartley hated sitting on his ass. It was a discovery he had made recently, not having had much opportunity to do so since he was fourteen and the Ring of Fire happened. But of the "hurry up and wait" of the army, it was the "wait" part that bothered him more than the "hurry up" part.

Luckily, there were things to do. David headed for the radio shack. He needed some help figuring out how to create a market out of nothing. And he needed to set up some kind of legal framework for the Exchange Corps.

There was suddenly a lot to do.

The sprinkling rain on the way to the radio shack didn't bother him at all.

Yet.

He sent messages off to Magdeburg, Grantville and Badenburg. He had cleared the structure of the Exchange Corps as a stock corporation with the general and rumors about it had started almost immediately. That was probably Johan's work. Troopers in the division wanted to buy in. So he had investors before he had a company or any but the most basic notion of what sort of company to build. He sought advice from older, wiser heads in the business community that had migrated to the Ring of Fire area in the last few years. He sent more messages to Magdeburg, instructing his agents to set up the Third Division Exchange Corps as a corporation.

****

"All right, Captain Bartley, tell me about the Third Division Exchange Corps Corporation," Colonel McAdam said.

"General Stearns ordered me to set up an Exchange Corps before we took Zielona Góra, sir," David said. The colonel just looked at him. David continued, "Forming it up as a corporation gives people confidence in it. It's listed on the Magdeburg and Grantville Exchanges. The price of its stock is reported with the stock reports on the radio and in the newspapers. It's not going to march through, steal your stuff, and be gone. So people will be willing to wait a bit for the goods to arrive. We can buy grain and wine . . . they make a decent white here, sir . . . or they will, once they get in some equipment. And pay them in contracts for the equipment they need to set up industries."

"Like you did in Saxony but with less equipment to start with? And you're doing this on your own like you did in Saxony, too?"

"No, sir. That's another reason for the corporation. The troops in Third Division will be able to buy in to the Third Division Exchange Corps by filling out a form and having a percentage of their monthly pay set aside for it, just like they can buy insurance. That's so that the men will have an interest, but also because we need the money. And a few bucks a month from four thousand men is a lot of money."

"Four thousand?"

"I was being a bit conservative. I figure we have a good chance of getting half the men to put up ten to twenty bucks a month, depending on their personal circumstances and attitudes. Call it four thousand men and ten bucks apiece, that’s forty thousand bucks a month to buy goods manufactured along the Elbe and ship them here. Zielona Góra is a mostly a trade town, a bit of wine, like I said, but mostly trade. So far the Thirty Years' War hasn't treated it very kindly. But now that it's back in the USE, heck, even if it was in Poland it would be near the border, so it makes a pretty good conduit for trade between the USE and Poland."

"We're unlikely to be here long enough to do that."

"Yes, sir, but we can set it in motion. And Third Division has wounded who need new employment. Especially in the Hangman. They took a beating."

Colonel McAdam and the Division's S4 bought several thousand shares and Brigadier Schuster and the 2^nd Brigade bought even more.

****

"You told me three weeks ago that it would be here in ten days!"

David looked up from his work and wished he hadn't. "Come now, mein Herr. You know as well as I do that rain, this kind of rain anyway, causes delays,"

"Ten days! This is twenty-one! I want my parts or I want my money!"

"Fine. I will instruct the cashier to return your money, including the membership fee. When the goods arrive, they will be sold to someone else. Someone not quite so discomforted by the standard delays involved in shipping goods through a war zone in the middle of winter."

"I didn't say . . ." Herr Kopenskii ran out of steam as he realized that yes he had said. "I didn't mean . . ." Again the pause. David knew what he'd meant. Partly it was just the standard "let's see what I can get out of the delay" that David suspected would be going on in any time and place where people did business. But in this case, that was only part of it. Everyone knew by now that the king and been injured and that for now Wettin and Oxenstierna were running things. What would happen to his investment if the USE abandoned Zielona Góra and he was left with a receipt for goods that would never arrive. Herr Kopenskii had taken a considerable chance on Mike Stearns reputation and, for that matter, David's.

The Prince of Germany and David Bartley had said there would be a permanent Third Division Exchange Club Store in Zielona Góra, and that goods ordered would be delivered, but what if Third Division was ordered out of Zielona Góra? What if Zielona Góra was given back to Poland?

"The Exchange Club will remain even if Zielona Góra is yielded back to Poland," David said with confidence he wished he felt more strongly. The store was a golden-egg-laying goose for whoever owned Zielona Góra, because it provided a way to get industrial goods to the western edge of Poland or the eastern edge of Germany at something approaching a reasonable price. But David had seen too many golden-egg-laying geese turned into pâté de foie gras by stupid nobles, and if Poland hadn't cornered the market on stupid nobles, it was certainly a major supplier. Still, the odds were that the USE would keep Zielona Góra, at least for a while. "Captain von Baruth will be staying on to manage the store, even if the division is transferred."

Captain Eric von Baruth was a member of the Hangman Regiment who was wounded in the taking of Zielona Góra. He also was a college-educated son of the lower nobility who spoke German, Polish, French, English, Latin and Amideutsch. Which made him acceptable to the local merchant community. He was a member of the CoC, which made him acceptable to the Third Division 's more radical elements. He was very good with figures and a competent organizer. Which made him acceptable to David. He was also missing one leg from the calf down, which was why he was quite pleased to be offered the job of managing the Exchange Corps Superstore in Zielona Góra.

It took some more cajoling but David sent Herr Kopenskii on his way, if not happy at least not hollering fraud.

****

Sergeant—at least for now—Beckmann snorted as he watched Herr Kopenskii leave. Beckmann would have taken his money back if he'd been in Kopenskii's shoes. The risk was too great for the gain. Then he looked at Captain Bartley. Well, maybe not. Bartley had what Beckmann thought of as an impractical streak. Still, the lad made it work for him and his man Johan Kipper was pragmatic enough to give you nightmares if it came down to it. Beckmann cleared his throat. "Radio messages, sir."

The captain gave Beckmann a half smile and started reading through them. Beckmann had already read them, of course. The Third Division Exchange Corps Corporation was now an officially registered corporation on the Magdeburg and Grantville exchanges. Ownership was two million shares, a half million of which were held as reserve by the Third Division. A million of which were available to sell to members of the Third Division. And half a million of which would be sold on the various stock exchanges to raise capital. The prospectus listed it as a wholesaler of manufactured goods with outlets to be established. The outlet in Zielona Góra had been established in advance of actual establishment of the corporation.

All of which was beside the point because the next radio message was a "for your information" that Third Division had been ordered to Prague to support "our ally, King Venceslas V Adalbertus of Bohemia."

Beckmann knew this news was not that bad. Not in and of itself. They would have to do some setting up but they could handle it. But moving meant more set-up expenses and the Division was broke. Captain Bartley called it a cash flow problem and insisted that nothing the size of a division was ever really broke. But to Beckmann the Division was broke. Oh, the men would still get their pay and ammunition, and other goods would still arrive.

Beckmann shook his head at the weirdness of up-timers. How the same hard-ass officer who had men shot for getting a bit rowdy could turn around and pay for the rebuilding of Zielona Góra, a town that had gotten itself shot up fighting his division, made no sense to Beckmann

Meanwhile, the Division's discretionary funds were pretty much tapped out and start-up funds for the Exchange Corps weren't there.

****

Adolph looked at the note that had been hand-delivered to him. It was from Herr Krupt, who was David Bartley's agent in Magdeburg. "Herr Bartley would be most grateful if you could see your way clear to providing him with six eight-horse power steam engines for the use of Third Division Exchange Corps."

"I won't do it. I don't care if he did back me." Adolph's face was a bit more florid than usual, he could feel it.

"Ah, the Bartley kid strikes again." Heidi Partow grinned. "He's a sneaky little shit, I grant you. I figured he was a waste of space up till the Ring of Fire. Even after it. I still can't figure out what he does. If he actually does anything. It was my little brothers who designed the sewing machine making machines, you know." Heidi crossed her eyes like she was looking at the sentence she'd just said and not liking what she saw.

Adolph couldn't help but grin at her expression. Then his smile faded. "He manages," Adolph said. "And he's darned good at it. And, yes, I do know that your brothers developed the machines to make the parts of the sewing machines. I know because David told me so every time the subject came up. And if you think he was irritating as your little brother's friend, how do you think you would have liked having him as your stepbrother?" Adolph sighed. "Still, I'd like to help him out because, well, when I needed the money to start this place, he's where I got it. And because it's the Prince's Division."

"Mike Stearns is not a prince," Heidi said in a firm, almost belligerent, voice. "He's just a politician. He works for us, not the other way around." Then she relented. "Still Third Division is our division in a way. It's got lots of CoC, even more than the others. And Jeff Higgins and . . . well, it's sort of ours. I'd like to help. But we're already running three shifts and we can't expand production till we get the new machines."

"And we have customers that paid in advance and expect their steam engines on time. I know."

"Look, we have a lot of the booklets on making steam engines out of wood and leather. Granted, they aren't as good as our real steam engines but they're something."

"Yes, they are. But it's as much the boilers as the engines and a pot boiler is orders of magnitude less efficient." Adolph held up his hand. "I know, and we will send him a crate of the booklets. And I'll talk to the staff and see if we can squeeze out a couple of extra boilers for the Third."

"And as much of a CoC shop as this is, they'll try. But we're already squeezing as hard as we can."

Which wasn't true. Adolph's shops ran three overlapping nine-hour shifts a day and his crews worked alternating three- and four-day weeks. Giving them plenty of time for goofing off or, more commonly, agitating for the CoC.

"It's not the people. It's the machines that are the holdup. We just don't have enough of them." And that was true.

Still, they tried and managed to squeeze out a few extra engines. They weren't the only ones.

****

State Senator Karl Schmidt of the State of Thuringia Franconia glanced over the radio message and made a quick note on it, telling his eldest daughter to handle the matter. The senator was a busy man. Busy with the people's business certainly, but, truthfully, more busy with his own. Being state senator was more a position of status than of work. His work was the running of the Higgins Sewing Machine Corporation and its various subsidiaries. Business was good. Like his son, of whom he was increasingly—if still secretly—proud, he was running three shifts. Of course, he'd been doing that almost since he'd bought out the company back in '31.

The radio message was from his stepson David. A request for goods to be sold to the Third Division Exchange Corps. Karl was better positioned and by now had a bit more slack. He could send more sewing machines and more electroplated flatware and, well, generally more. Not that he handled that himself. He turned it over to his eldest daughter, who had taken over for Adolph after the boy had run off to start his own business. Gertrude would handle the matter.

The second radio message was more serious. He wished Uriel Abrabanel still lived here. He would know what to do. Karl didn't. Karl was among the most conservative of the Fourth of July Party and had considerable sympathy for William Wettin's positions. To be honest, Mike Stearns scared him and he had almost followed Quentin Underwood to the Crown Loyalists; would have if it hadn't looked like he would lose his senate seat if he did. Not that any of that mattered. The important point to Karl Schmidt was that his stepson was in the Third Division and in charge of the Third Division Exchange Corps. Which meant that Third Division's financial problems would reflect badly on the family and there were blood ties involved. He didn't have any answers for David, but he sent back that he would help if he could.

****

There were other messages; to the Board of Directors of OPM, to the presidents and owners of companies financed by OPM. Generators, power tools, nuts, bolts, plow blades, knives, ax heads, and more got diverted to the Third Division Exchange Corps warehouses while they were still not sure where they would be shipped. All while David Bartley didn't know where he would get the money to pay for them.

Then there were the requests for help from the finance community. Because, though David didn't have any real idea what the answer might be, he did think it would be in the area of finance and economics.

"So, how do you finance an army when the government isn't going to pay it?" someone  asked.

"Well, the obvious answer is to borrow the money. And the government may eventually pay the bills, though I would disallow some of the expenses General Stearns has claimed," said Fredric Brum.

The questioner just looked at him. "You think Mike Stearns is cooking the books?"

"No, of course not. I simply think he is being over-generous with the ...