Ring of Fire II Read online

  "David, I'm glad you're back," Sarah bubbled. This was kind of unusual for Sarah. She wasn't a bubbly girl, normally. The train station was packed with a welcoming crowd.

  Brent and Trent enthusiastically agreed. "Nice to have you back," Trent said. "You've got to tell us all about it."

  "I will," David said. "I will. We've got a couple of months before graduation, so there's plenty of time to talk. After that, we're probably not going to have much time."

  "Why not?" Brent asked. "We get out of school; we'll have more time to work together."

  "That's something we need to think about, you guys. What are we going to do once we get out of school? Sarah's Dad and I talked about this a lot, and Karl joined in those conversations. We really need to think about plans."

  "What sort of plans?" Sarah asked.

  "The army, for one. We'll be in the reserves, I imagine. And business, for another. Karl thinks Grantville is going to stay the financial center of the USE but your dad isn't so sure, Sarah," David said. "It's certainly going to stay the intellectual and research capital for a while. Brent and Trent will mostly be here, probably, but we need to think about OPM. Is staying in Grantville the right thing for OPM?"

  "I hadn't really thought about it," Sarah said. "We're doing okay."

  "OPM will do all right this year," David said. "Herr Kunze and I were able to spend the guilders in Amsterdam and Antwerp and made a nice profit. But we may be missing a bet, trying to stay in Grantville when the Fed is probably going to move to Magdeburg. We'll probably need to think about that."

  "Large fortunes to be made there?" Trent guessed.

  "Seriously large fortunes," David agreed. "Look, we made a lot of money. But Karl made even more; and it's all his."

  Sarah thought for a moment. "We probably ought to think about it. I'm not sure I want to, but you're right. We have a responsibility to the shareholders to do the best we can."

  "David," Coleman Walker said, "I need to talk to you about paying back that loan. I've been trying to for three days now."

  "Well, I've been busy," David answered. "But you're right. We need to talk about a lot of things. You'll be glad to know we won't be exercising our sales option on the guilders."

  "I know that. I'm mostly concerned about that loan, David," Coleman said. "The bank would like you to pay it back just as soon as you can."

  "Why?"

  "Because I had to loan Fed money to the bank of Grantville to issue it."

  David thought for a moment. Coleman meant that the Fed had created the money to make the loan and it would disappear again as soon as it was paid back.

  "As a citizen of Grantville, one who is now more than ever concerned over the overvaluation of the American dollar in the USE, I really can't see any benefit to that loan being paid off early," David pointed out. "OPM accepted that loan and the condition that it would be used to prevent a dangerous monetary fluctuation. It was used for that."

  "Why, you . . ." Coleman began.

  "Do you realize how overpriced American dollars are becoming?" David interrupted before Coleman could work up a head of steam. "I'm convinced that the dollar needs to drop against the Dutch guilder, the HRE guilder and the ducat. The reason they're so overpriced is the artificial shortage you've insisted on. You're stifling industrial growth, Mr. Walker. I'm not going to help you do that. OPM has the best part of a year to pay the money back, and we're going to use every minute of it.

  "That twenty-seven million is in the economy, Mr. Walker," David insisted. "And that's where it's going to stay. It's barely a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed. Besides, we need the liquidity."

  * * *

  "Hello, Leonhard," David said as he walked into his office. "How have things been going?"

  "Rather slowly," Leonhard admitted. "With most of the officers away in Amsterdam, there was no one to make some of the decisions that needed to be made."

  "I figured that." David sighed. With his hand on the door knob to his office, he turned to Leonhard and asked, "Just how high is the stack of paper in my inbox?"

  "Quite high," Leonhard answered with an evil gleam in his eyes. "Quite high."

  "You enjoyed that, didn't you?" David asked.

  "Me? Oh, no, Master David." Leonhard smirked. "I couldn't possibly."

  "Right," David said. "I'm sure. Before I get started on it, I've got a little project for you. Herr Kunze says Don Fernando wants to buy a lot of stuff from the USE. We'll need to check with the government on some of it. Here's his wish list. Look into it, will you?"

  David felt his own smirk beginning as he watched Leonhard gape at Don Fernando's wish list. David decided to let Leonhard deal with the government's response to Don Fernando's desire for long distance radios. It would keep him busy.

  Overloaded inbox or not, David was happy to be back in his office. Even the tower of paper was going to be easier to deal with than the last few months of high school. Latin was giving him fits. Calculus was even worse. He'd managed to stay caught up in his other classes, but those two were a torment. With finals no farther away than they were, it was going to take a lot of work.

  David sat down and began to go through all the proposals that had been forwarded to his desk. "Brent, have a look at this," he wrote on one, then reached for the next.

  David read through it then read through it again. "Leonhard! What the hell is this?"

  Leonhard didn't look up. "Mrs. Simpson has invited OPM to become a corporate sponsor of the Magdeburg Opera House. She points out that corporate sponsorship is a tax deductible charitable contribution. According to our attorney, we may actually save more in taxes than we contribute. Something about corporate tax brackets, he said. We are in the highest one at the moment."

  David continued to read while Leonhard spoke and noted the details of the sponsorship request. In addition to the Opera House there were plans to sponsor a library, a museum, a theater and a college. All good causes he thought, and began to calculate the totals.

  All together the bill would come to something close to thirty million dollars over the next three years. From the proposal's details, OPM was not the only corporate sponsor being solicited. Several other businesses were already listed as sponsors.

  David checked the approved box and tossed the request into his outbox. Business as usual, he thought, and began to smile.

  This'll Be the Day . . .

  Walt Boyes

  "I'm looking for Father Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld," the well-dressed man said as he crowded the doorway. "I'm told he has his office here." The man was dressed in black, mostly velvet, with white at the neck and the cuffs.

  He was clearly a down-timer, thought Josef, the Jesuit brother who served as doorman for the Spee household. Up-timers habitually referred to Father Friedrich as "von Spee" because that was the way their up-time histories listed him. Down-timers usually called him by his correct territorial name, "von Langenfeld."

  "May I say who is asking?"

  "I am Father Goswin Nickel."

  "Father Provincial!" Josef's eyes grew very wide. "We weren't expecting you . . . I didn't recognize you . . . Please come in! Come in, come in!"

  "Cease your babbling, my son," Father Nickel said, smiling, as he entered the house. "Please tell me if Father Friedrich is within."

  "He is not, Father," Brother Josef said, "He is at the cathedral rehearsing the choir. He has some new Kirchenlieder, some hymns, that he has written for them to sing."

  "Please have someone send for him, then, and also, if you would be so kind, have someone see to my horse."

  "At once, Father."

  The Jesuit provincial allowed himself to be led to the sitting room, where he sat down to wait for Spee. "Spes fuerat, spes Fridericus erat," he recited to himself softly. "In Spee they placed hope, Friedrich was their hope." Perhaps yet again, he thought.

  The drum set looked incongruous in the apse of the cathedral, thought Friedrich Spee, even though he'd written the music that required it.
The young man who played it was dressed in the style known as lefferto after the up-timer, Harry Lefferts, and he even sported a patch over one eye. The patch, as Friedrich knew, was entirely for show. The young man, whose name was Franz, had told him so, and that he only wore it because he thought it made him look "bad." It appeared that "bad" was somehow good in the new cant of these up-timer-aping youth. Friedrich smiled, and shook his head, ruefully.

  Up-timer-aping, indeed. For was not what he had written for the cathedral choir here in Magdeburg up-timer-aping as well? A work for rock band and choir. At least, since he was now on the staff of the up-timer Cardinal Mazzare, he'd had no problem with the nihil obstat and the imprimatur necessary to be able to print the work and get it performed by the cathedral choir. He'd had more problems trying to figure out how to work around the "electric guitar" and the "electric piano" he'd heard in the recording that Cardinal Larry's friend the Methodist minister in Grantville had let him listen to, something called Godspell. He had substituted a massed section of Spanish guittarrones, all played in the up-timer style by a band of surly lefferti, and the cathedral organ. He was sure it was not rock and roll, but it sounded good to him.

  What do they say in Grantville, "It's not rock and roll, but I like it?" He laughed out loud at the thought, causing the nearer members of the choir to stare at him strangely.

  "All right, then," Friedrich said, tapping his baton on the lectern. "From the start, if you will, please."

  Just as the band and choir swung into the first part of the chorale, Friedrich heard a commotion at the back of the cathedral. He swung around, to see several people running up the aisle. They were armed, and one had a huge wheel-lock pistole. The man with the pistole stopped and aimed it at Friedrich. It went off with a thunderous boom, but the ball, thankfully, missed and lodged itself with a great spray of splinters into the pulpit in front of which Friedrich had placed his conductor's lectern.

  "Ow, scheiss!" One of the splinters had found a target in the lead guittarrone player. Friedrich turned, but the young lefferto waved him off. "I'm fine, Father. I'm fine."

  The cathedral guards had by now caught up with the assassins, if that's what they were, and they were clubbing them down in the narthex of the cathedral. Friedrich strode quickly up to them in a half-run hampered by his cassock.

  "Stop it, you!" he shouted. "They are down! Stop it!"

  He began to pull the cathedral guards off the small group of intruders, and managed to get the beatings to stop.

  "Who are you?" he asked the quondam shooter.

  "You are a witch! And a helper of witches!" the man shouted, and was whacked by the end of one of the guards' staves for his pains. "Father del Rio says you are no true Jesuit! He says you are demon-inspired. He says you and your demon friends from the future will deliver us all to the Devil!"

  One of the others pulled a knife from his doublet but a guard was faster, and knocked it out of his hand before he could throw.

  "Father Friedrich," the chief of the guard detachment began, "I think it would be better—"

  "If I were not so close to them until you see who else has weapons?" Friedrich finished for him.

  "Yes, Father."

  "Fine, take them to the prison, but no more beatings!"

  "Yes, Father."

  Friedrich turned, and slowly walked back to the altar. He was not surprised to find himself shaking. "I think we've practiced enough for one day," he said. "Let us get back together in the morning after Mass."

  Friedrich was just coming down the steps of the cathedral, his unbuttoned cassock skirts flapping behind him when his secretary, Pieter van Donck, rushed up to him. Van Donck was a Flemish seminarian from the Jesuit college and seminary at Douai. He was short and stout where Spee was tall and slender. "Mutt und Jeff," Cardinal Mazzare had called them when he first met van Donck in Spee's company. Of course he had had to explain the up-timer reference, Spee thought wryly.

  "Father Friedrich," the young Jesuit scholastic began, panting.

  "Slowly, friend Pieter," Spee said, as the young man hyperventilated. "Take a moment, and then tell me what has you all out of breath." Spee ran his fingers through his unruly mop of hair, then put his hand down. A nervous tic, he thought. Mustn't do that. He stroked his short, curly black beard instead, then put his hands down at his sides.

  The seminarian gathered himself together. "The provincial, Father. The provincial is in your rooms, waiting for you! He sent me to find you right away!"

  Friedrich was still, thinking of all the things that the provincial's unannounced arrival could mean, most of them bad.

  "Well, Pieter," Friedrich said, smiling, and holding in all his fears, "we must go to him then, and see what has brought him all this way in such a hurry. Did he bring an entourage?"

  "No, Father, he came himself alone."

  Friedrich stopped in mid step. "He what?"

  "He is by himself, so Brother Josef said, and he arrived on horseback."

  Friedrich turned and began to quickly stride up the street to his lodgings. As van Donck tried to keep up with him, Spee broke into a jog. The little fat youth tried valiantly to keep step, but fell steadily behind. Friedrich didn't seem to notice and quickly outdistanced his secretary.

  When he reached his door, Spee pushed it open.

  "Brother Josef," he said to the doorman, "please tell me where Father Provincial is."

  "He is in your sitting room, Father," the Jesuit brother replied, "I provided him with bread and some beer."

  "Fine," Spee said. "Now when Pieter comes, please send him along to us there."

  "Yes, Father." The brother said it to Spee's back, as the Jesuit swept quickly along the hallway to the sitting room, opened the door and passed inside.

  "Father Provincial," he began, going to one knee.

  "No need, Friedrich," Nickel said, rising to greet him. "Please, sit down. We have to talk, and there may not be much time."

  "Does this have to do with the people who just tried to kill me in the cathedral?"

  "Thank God! I was not in time to warn you, but it seems you were able to foil their aim anyway," the provincial said, sinking back into his chair.

  "I think that it was not I but the Lord who foiled their aim, or at least made their pistoleer a bad shot," Spee said, smiling and taking a chair. "This has happened before, as you know, and I was spared then as well."

  "For this we can thank God, then," Nickel said.

  "I came straightaway, Father," Spee said, "so I have no idea who they were. They are under guard at the cathedral prison now."

  "I know who they are. Or at least who sent them," Nickel said.

  "They shouted the name of del Rio," Spee said quietly, hands in his lap.

  "I rather thought they might," the Provincial said. "For three years now, you have been very publicly identified as the author of the Cautio Criminalis. Not only do you not deny it, most have seen the up-timer history books that say it as well."

  "You know that I wrote it."

  "Yes, and you have done the penance I and Father General Vitelleschi deemed appropriate for writing it contrary to the directions we gave you," Nickel said. "It is done, and it is, for the most part, well done. I agree with you that witchcraft may or may not be real, but these witch trials are hideous perversions of justice and God's law." The provincial's jaw worked.

  "Unfortunately," he said, "there are those, both within the Society and without, who do not agree with us."

  Spee was silent.

  "It has not helped that the general has given you to Cardinal Mazzare to be 'his' Jesuit, along with Heinzerling," Nickel continued. "For those opposed to your view on witchcraft, this only further compounds your sin. You are in league with the Grantville demons who are perverting our Society, so they are saying."

  "I see the fine hand of some of our Spanish brothers in this," Spee said, neutrally.

  "Of course," Nickel said. "Since the pontiff has allied himself with Grantville, the Spanish crown a
nd those of the church under its control have begun a whispering campaign, not only among the laity but among the religious as well. It seems that the pope has perhaps made league with the devil, and among the most active of his Satan-inspired associates is always the Father General Vitelleschi. Even some of our brethren in the Society have taken this point of view."

  "Let me guess," Friedrich responded. "Our brother del Rio."

  "Of course. Not only del Rio, but also your old friend and my predecessor as provincial, Hermann Baving. Baving appears to be the center of the campaign. Hermann still hates you, believes in witch trials as a way to rout out Protestants and unbelievers, and has many friends in our order."