Grantville Gazette 43 Read online

  George looked up, and smothered a curse. They had an audience. Well, he hoped they'd enjoyed the floor show. He finished dressing, muttering about the limited imagination of headline writers the world over.

  Lübeck (12 miles upriver from Travemünde)

  Derek Modi heard the knocking at the door and cursed. He'd just started inking in the lines of his latest design. He paused with the ruling pen held above the inkpot. Maybe if I ignore them they'll go away.

  He'd just dipped the pen in the ink when the knocking returned, except it was more urgent, and more of a hammering than knocking. Resigned, Derek laid down the ruling pen and made his way to the door. If it's another door-to-door salesman . . .

  He strode past his assistant's vacant desk—I really need to do something about finding a new one. "Yes?" he demanded as he hauled open the door.

  "We have perhaps come at a bad time, Herr Modi?"

  Derek could feel his face glowing as he gazed down into the steel-grey eyes of Inger Mogensdotter. "My apologies, Inger. I thought you were another door-to-door salesman."

  Inger stared blankly at Derek. "You are being bothered by what?" She shook her head. "No, never mind. Why isn't your assistant answering the door?"

  Derek pointed to the empty desk where Bartholomäus Buchwald used to sit. "He's quit and headed to Magdeburg, where the streets are paved with gold."

  "He'll soon learn otherwise," Inger said.

  "Sure, but until then I'm missing an assistant cum receptionist cum gate-keeper, and it's slowing down my work." He turned his attention to the young man who had accompanied Inger and held out his hand. "Hello, I'm Derek Modi, and you'll be?"

  Inger spoke for the young man. "He is Kristjan Magnusson, one of my nephews."

  "A pleasure to meet you, Kristjan." Derek shook the young man's hand. "What brings you to Lübeck, Inger? I told you the drawings wouldn't be ready before the twentieth of May."

  "We have struck a problem," Inger said as she preceded Derek and Kristjan into Derek's office.

  "What sort of problem?" Derek asked as he followed, shepherding Kristjan ahead of him. "The generator production schedule has been confirmed, and I've contacted Stockholm about their floating crane. They've confirmed that it will lift over ten tons, and they have agreed to sell it to us for the price we agreed."

  Inger lowered herself into a chair. "We have a money problem."

  That sounds bad. Derek sank into his chair. "What sort of money problem? I thought you'd arranged financing."

  "I had promises of financing. Most of it is still available. However, Jürgen von Neustadt drained the coffers of many of my less committed investors by offering a more immediate return. This is what happens when you put your faith in people who are not family. We are now short the eight million dollars he borrowed."

  The number eight million excited a few brain cells. It was familiar number, but why, Derek couldn't quite put his finger on. While he let his brain try to retrieve why it seemed familiar he concentrated on the more immediate problem. He'd made commitments in his own name on Inger's behalf, and if she couldn't pay in time . . . he shuddered at the vision of potential financial disaster. "How long will it take you to make up the shortfall?" He hoped it wasn't long.

  "It will be the end of February next year at the earliest."

  "That's way too long." He sank heavily deeper into his chair and stared into the distance.

  "You've signed the contract for the generators?" Inger asked.

  There aren't any flies on Inger. She homed right onto the problem. Derek nodded. "They've already started work, on my promise that I'd have the money before the end of the month."

  "Twenty-five percent?" Inger asked.

  Derek nodded before burying his head in his hands. "Yes, and then there are the progress payments due in July and October."

  Inger raised a thumb to her mouth and started chewing on the nail. "If we delay work on the canal, and the high dam, we should be able to manage the first payment, but after that . . . "

  "What about asking the person who sold the boat to Jürgen?" Kristjan asked, breaking the silence. "He has the eight million dollars now. Surely he couldn't have spent it already."

  "The boat Jürgen bought was being sold on behalf of the USE, and I don't want any government involved in Glomfjord," Inger said.

  "Boat? Your Jürgen spent eight million on a boat?" Derek shook his head in disbelief. Eight million dollars was serious money. You could buy and fully fit out a Batavia-class Dutch East Indiaman for a trading mission to the Far East for that kind of money.

  "He is not my Jürgen, but yes, he did, the fool," Inger muttered.

  "But it is a one of a kind boat, Tante Inger," Kristjan said. "It is the fastest boat in the world. It can do over seventy miles per hour."

  "It is a silly toy," Inger said.

  Derek had a light-bulb moment. Inger was talking about that boat. "The Outlaw II? I think I read somewhere that the money the government got for the boat went straight to the former owner of the Outlaw as compensation for losing it. Just a minute, I need to check something."

  Inger and Kristjan followed Derek as he hurried back to reception and started hunting through a pile of old newspapers dumped in a pile under the desk. Eventually he surfaced waving an old issue of the Lübeck Informer. "I never thought I'd be happy Bartholomäus walked out like that. He'd have thrown out the papers by now."

  "What do you have?" Inger demanded.

  "The Eight Million Dollar Man—Travemünde's Most Eligible Bachelor." Derek pointed out the headline as he quickly scanned the story. "I was right. The payment went directly to George Watson."

  Inger stared at the headline. "The man, George Watson, lives in Travemünde?"

  "Apparently," Derek said.

  "Then we must catch him immediately, before he does anything foolish with my money."

  Travemünde

  George stood on the pier and gazed into the distance. Safety seemed a long way away. To get to Köppe's Boatyard he was going to have to walk a couple of hundred yards past people hopeful of talking him in to giving them some of his money. "It's at times like this I wish Ernst had built his boatyard closer to the estuary."

  "We could have started from his jetty. It would have meant a shorter walk."

  "Don't be silly, Matt. It would have been a shorter walk, but a longer swim, against the current, to get into the estuary."

  "So?"

  George glared at Matt. "Swimming against the current might be a minor inconvenience to you, mister ex-state champion, but I'm barely faster than the current."

  "Ex-age group state champion," Matt muttered. "Still, you're improved a lot from when I first saw you. Next time we'll have to have a race."

  "Yeah, right!" George snorted. "There's no way I can beat you."

  Matt shook his head in mock disappointment. "You'll never get anywhere in life with a defeatist attitude like that."

  "It's not a defeatist attitude. It's a simple fact of life. I'm thirty years older than you. I'd need a healthy head start."

  "A ten minute head start over half a mile?" Matt offered.

  Trapped! One look at the smug smile on Matt's face told George that by saying he'd need a head start he'd sort of committed himself to a race. He could always refuse to race, but that would lower Matt's opinion of him. Which was something he was loath to do. Although why that was so, he didn't know. Maybe he was turning over a new leaf? "How about I only swim a quarter-mile?" he counter-offered.

  "Done!"

  "I certainly have been," George muttered under his breath. Even with Matt swimming twice the distance he was still going to be hard to beat.

  "You'll never get better if you don't push yourself," Matt said. "That's quoting Ms. Maddox by the way."

  George could just about hear her saying it too. He met Matt's grinning face with a discreet silence and gestured for Matt to walk on. "Shall we brave the gauntlet?"

  Matt cast an eye over the route from the landing to Köppe's
Boatyard. "I'm sure not all of them are fathers with daughters they would like you to marry."

  "Of course they aren't. Most of them just want to touch me for a small loan . . . that they'll never pay back. I should know, I've been here before."

  "Back when you won the lottery?"

  "Yeah, a guy never has so many friends than when everyone knows you've suddenly got a lot of cash."

  They started walking, George with his hands stuck firmly in his pockets, and Matt casually waving to everyone as they passed. "You're not helping," George muttered when he noticed some of the women waving back.

  "I'm just being friendly."

  "Friendly is something I don't need. When I won a million in the state lottery people treated me as if I was rich. Heck, for a while back then, I thought I was rich. Right up until the moment the money ran out. But now, here and now, I've got more money than I could spend in a dozen lifetimes. When that auctioneer's hammer came down I went from being just another poor working stiff to being one of Europe's most eligible bachelors." George shook his head in disgust. He liked his single state. He liked the fact that he didn't answer to a wife. He liked the fact he didn't have any children taking up his time. He was a bachelor because he wanted to be, and he was happy to . . . no, he was more than just happy . . . he was committed to staying a bachelor as long as he lived. "If only the rest of the world would just accept I like being single."

  "A wife and family would help you spend it," Matt suggested.

  George's head whipped round. Matt had that big broad toothpaste-ad smile of his pasted on his face again. "There is no way I'm getting married, let alone having kids. I've finally got my life just like I want it, and I'm not changing it for anyone."

  "For a share of your income, I'm sure there are a lot of women who'd be only too happy to fit their lives around yours."

  "No doubt, but I'm not interested."

  "So who gets everything when you die?"

  "I don't intend dying any time soon, and maybe by then I'll have spent it all. If not, I've got plenty of family. Let them fight it out amongst themselves."

  "The only people who get rich in those cases are the lawyers."

  George sniggered. That wouldn't really bother him either. "It won't be my problem though, will it? Besides, you shouldn't knock lawyers. They have their good points."

  "The only reason you're in favor of lawyers is because your lot got you a fortune, but I bet they made sure it was worth their while. How much did they soak you for?"

  "One million, three hundred and seventy-three thousand, two hundred and eighty-three dollars and sixty-three cents. And I don't begrudge them a cent of it."

  "Much," Matt snorted. "If you were really happy to have paid them that much you wouldn't remember the cents."

  "Maybe," George admitted, "but what I ended up with was a heck of a lot more than the sixty grand I had been hoping to get. Anyway, enough about me, how's the world been treating you? Were those your Marines that rescued the vice president?"

  ****

  George entered the offices of Köppe's Boatyard deep in thought. Matt had set him a problem, and he already had a few ideas.

  "Did you have a good swim?" Ernst's wife called out just before he left the entry hall.

  Jerked back to the present George grinned. "It was a bit more vigorous than usual. I bumped into Matt Tisdel and he offered to join me."

  Anna Kierstead smiled. "Matt's such a nice boy. Did he say how he was doing?"

  "I don't think Melvin Sutter would agree with Matt being nice. But Matt's now the commanding officer of the navy's dive team."

  "Your friend is wrong. Matt's a perfectly nice young man, and he's an officer now?" Her eyes lit up as she asked that question.

  George recognized the signs. It seemed he might have competition in the local marriage stakes. He added fuel to the fire. "They've made him a Lieutenant Commander. Apparently, because the dive team is an independent command made up of more than a single vessel, that's the absolutely lowest rank he can hold."

  If anything Anna's eyes gleamed even brighter. It was such a pity Matt wouldn't be here long enough for it to matter. "Next month the dive team is going to North Friesland to help with salvage operations in the areas that were submerged when last year's big storm broke through the dikes."

  Anna looked crestfallen for a moment, but then she turned her eyes onto George. He backed away shaking his head. "Don't look at me like that, Anna. I've told you before, I have no intention of marrying."

  "You don't really mean that."

  George had backed into the door to the office. He pulled it open. "Yes I do. I'm a bachelor, and I'm perfectly happy to stay one."

  "You just haven't met the right woman," Anna called out as he shut the door.

  "Anna still pestering you about your single state?" Ernst Köppe asked as George entered, not quite slamming the door behind him.

  "Yes. You need to do something. Let her know who's boss," George said as he dropped his wet towel over a radiator and started searching through a box of up-time magazines.

  "She knows who's the boss, George, and so do I."

  George looked across to his friend and partner. Ernst gave him a wry smile. "And people wonder why I don't want to get married," George muttered before returning to his search.

  "What are you looking for?"

  "I was chatting to Matt Tisdel, and he asked if it was possible to build a fast boat that doesn't draw much water, and that is quieter than Claus' hovercraft."

  "This'll be for the Marine unit he worked with last year?"

  George nodded. "Yep. Found it!" He rose to his feet with the magazine in his hands, leafing through it in search of the cover article.

  "Found what?" Ernst asked, closing to look over George's shoulder.

  "An article about a jetboat race in New Zealand. Look at how shallow that water is," George said, pointing to a photograph of a boat speeding along in water where you could see the ripples as the water flowed over the stones below.

  "It can't be much more than a hand deep. Surely their propeller will hit the bottom?"

  A hand, as George had discovered when he hired a horse once upon a time, was a unit of measurement of approximately four inches. "They don't use propellers, they use water-jets. The water is sucked up through an intake in the hull and thrust out the rear."

  "Like Admiral Simpson's ironclads?" Ernst looked closer. "How do they reverse? There is nothing like the big pipes the ironclads use to direct the water under the hull."

  George flicked through the magazine until he came to an advertisement for a HamiltonJet propulsion system. "See that bit at the end? That's a 'spoon'. If you want to reverse you lower that behind the jet nozzle and the water is redirected. And . . . " George paused to emphasize his next point, "you can also steer while reversing." To further help, or maybe hinder Ernst's understanding, George grabbed the teaspoon that was sitting in yesterday's dirty coffee mug and using a finger to indicate the flow of water, demonstrated how the spoon deflected the water.

  Ernst plucked the spoon from George's fingers. He then played with it, including blowing into the bowl. Finally he gave the spoon back. "That seems remarkably easy and straightforward. Why didn't the navy adopt it?"

  George shrugged. "No idea. Another interesting thing about these water-jets is that they are direct drive."

  "You mean they don't need a gearbox?"

  "That's right, and if we don't have a gearbox, that's one less drain on engine power."

  "It is also a considerable weight saving," Ernst suggested. "But it sounds too good to be true. What's the catch?"

  "From what I've read, they're less efficient than straight propellers at low speeds, and they don't work well in aerated water."

  George sat and waited while Ernst digested what he'd been told. Eventually Ernst looked straight at George.

  "At what speed do they beat propellers for efficiency?"

  "About twenty knots."

  "The Argo is capable o
f over thirty knots. Are you suggesting that a water jet-propelled Argo could go faster?" Ernst asked.

  The Argo was a plywood replica of his old Outlaw Ernst had built, but with two down-time one hundred and twenty-five horse-power aero engines in place of the original Outlaw's twin three hundred and seventy-five horse-power V8s. "I don't know. It probably depends on whether or not you can keep the water intake in the water or not. Remember, even with none of the hull in the water, the Argo usually still has her propellers in the water producing thrust."

  "Whereas with the hull out of the water, the jetboat has no thrust? I think I understand. Still, could we build one?"

  "Well . . . " George chewed on his lip as he thought. "There's no doubt we could build a jetboat, but using steel or iron would make for a heavy unit. Ideally, I'd prefer aluminum, but I haven't heard that anybody is making any yet. We can build a test model in iron or steel, but we'll need someone with a bit more technical ability than we have to turn a few photographs and line drawings from magazines into a working water-jet."

  "There's that up-time engineer who was responsible for setting up the rolling mill in Lübeck." Ernst gazed up at the ceiling as he scratched his head. "Derek Modi! That's his name. Do you know him?"

  "Not to talk to. How come you know him?"

  "I met him at a chamber of commerce function last year. You don't know what you're missing by refusing all those invitations you receive, you know."

  George shuddered. He'd been to precisely one such function up-time, soon after he won the lottery, and he'd felt that everyone was after his money. Here and now, it could only be worse. "No thanks. I'll leave the glad-handing to you."