Eric Flint - 1636 - The Viennese Waltz

He rang the bell and had the steward bring in some of the carbonated wine. Then he went back to his paperwork and to his thoughts. Farkas had been a mistake. . and possibly Lamormaini as well.

No , he decided. At least for now, he wouldn’t have Lamormaini killed. Too much risk for not enough gain. Besides, Lamormaini and the Spanish-leaning Jesuits were just the cats’ paws he needed. What was the up-time term? A cutout. The thing about a cutout was that it eventually had to be cut out. After the bomb had gone off. At that point, Lamormaini would be nothing but a liability. He would make arrangements.

He got up and went to see Karl Eusebius.

* * *

“What can I do for you, Uncle?” Karl looked up in surprise as his uncle came in. Uncle Gundaker hadn’t been in any hurry to talk to him for over a month now.

“For now, we still own the Liechtenstein Tower?”

“Yes. The imperial government won’t get it till mid-January.”

“What about contracts for long-term storage?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know that the cost of storage is still quite high, in spite of the new warehouses planned for Race Track City?”

“Yes, I know.” Karl nodded.

“I want to rent one of the basement rooms in the Tower for the next four or five months, till they finish those warehouses. I have acquired a large consignment of apples for a specialty wine. But I need a place to store them that is dry, cool, and secure. And not too expensive.”

“Yes, there is a grandfather clause in the transfer because we had already sold some apartments. But we’re talking about prime real estate. Are you sure you want to store barrels of apples in that?”

“Only if I can get a good deal.”

Karl didn’t push the price very hard. This was the first sign of rapprochement he had gotten from Gundaker.

Debrecen House, Vienna

Jack Pfeifer looked around the room. Marton and Amadeus were at one end of the table, and Sonny Fortney at the other. Jack, Hertel Faust, and Carla Barclay were arranged along the sides. They had all been seated and they all had drinks. There were snacks on the table. Something the up-timers called donuts. Marton had just asked Sonny about the laws against forcing people to give evidence against themselves.

“The girls are right, you know, as far as the laws are concerned,” Sonny Fortney told the group. “There’s a reason Moses didn’t get into the Promised Land.”

Moses Abrabanel looked over at Sonny Fortney in surprise. “And what reason is that?”

“Because sometimes, when your job is leading your people out of bondage, you have to cheat a bit. After all, Moses is the guy who called down the plagues on Egypt.”

“God delivered the plagues,” Moses said.

“Yep, that’s true. But the point is that calling them down had an effect on Moses. Sometimes there are not any good answers and someone has to do something iffy-or even downright evil. It’s never something to be proud of, and there is a moral cost. Also, if you do it enough, you end up one of the bad guys, no matter how noble your motives.

“What about spying?” asked Amadeus.

Sonny Fortney looked over at Amadeus like he had no clue what he was talking about. Then he gave a twitch of a shrug. “Yes, that would be one of the things that leaves a mark on the soul. You’re making friends with people with the full intent to betray them as necessary for your cause.”

“What sort of a cause would justify that sort of betrayal?” Amadeus wondered aloud.

“I’m not sure ‘justify’ is the right word. Necessitate, maybe. ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ There’s also a moral cost to standing around doing nothing while those rights are being denied to your fellow men. Like I said, sometimes there are no good answers, just a choice between evils. The scary bit is how easy it is to convince yourself that those necessary evils aren’t evil because they’re necessary.”

There was something in the up-timer’s face and voice that Jack couldn’t quite identify. A hardness. . or a tiredness.

“Then what do you think we should do?” asked Carla Barclay.

“Break the law,” Sonny said. “But don’t kid yourselves that what you’re doing is good or just.”

After that they got into ways and means. Hertel and Jack were assigned to coordinate the information they gathered and-especially in Jack’s case-give them what legal cover he could. Carla would, in essence, spy on her parents, who had fallen in with the Spanish faction at court. That was a group of conservative nobles and clergy, mostly Dominican, but including about a fourth of the Jesuits.

“Do you think we should include Julian?” Amadeus asked Carla.

“Not yet. I’ll see what I can find out from him.” Then she looked over at Sonny. “Yeah, this really sucks.”

Jack could sympathize with the young woman, but the reason she was here was because they needed an information source into the Spanish faction. As well, Carla’s name had been on the list of people Farkas was going after. Which was another reason to suspect Archduke Leopold.

Liechtenstein Tower Construction Site, Vienna

The concrete arches gave the interior of the tower a forestlike look. It was as though the ceiling was held up by flowers or smooth trees. There were pipes for gas lighting that ran beside channels for wires, once they had enough light bulbs to light the place. And the place had an unfinished look. Bare concrete columns, and bare concrete floors.

The shops around the edge of the building were mostly finished and they were putting a wooden roof over the center plaza. Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein, in a yellow fiberglass and rosin hardhat, was standing at a table with the construction foreman, going over the placement of the load-bearing arches. “The idea is to use as little steel reinforcement as we can get away with.”

“Yes, Your Serene Highness, but I think we should go ahead and use reinforcement in this section. It will let us skip this whole set of supports.” He pointed to the central open arches that honestly looked like a cross between the acropolis of Athens and a forest of almost gothic arches. The arches were slightly different in shape and started about halfway to the two-story ceiling.

“It’s not the money, Heinrich,” Karl said. “It’s just that steel is really hard to come by at the moment. It would probably cause a delay and Sarah has instructed me to have the two floors ready for the wedding by mid-January or she’s going to start looking for a more efficient suitor.” Karl looked over at the foreman, saw his expression, and said, “Oh, go ahead and laugh, Heinrich. But believe me, you’d rather have Judy the Baracudy angry at you than her sister Sarah.”

Heinrich squeezed his legs together in unconscious reaction to that comment and Karl tried not to laugh.

The Hofburg Palace, Vienna

“Are your parents going to be able to attend?” asked Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of Austria-Hungary. The room was cozy by Hofburg standards, but incredibly plush. Aside from the empress, her step-mother and sister-in-law were there, along with Sarah, Judy, Vicky, Hayley, and Millicent. Susan and Gabrielle had both ducked out on the preparations. They would show up at the bridal shower with gifts, and at the wedding.

“Yes,” Sarah let herself smile but continued gravely. “Dad got fired from the treasury when Wettin came in. And considering the guy Wettin put in at treasury, the Austro-Hungarian thaler is liable to become the preferred currency in the next few years.”