Grantville Gazette 35 gg-35 Read online

  Grantville Gazette 35

  ( Grantville Gazette - 35 )

  Paula Goodlett (Ed)

  Paula Goodlett (ed)

  Grantville Gazette 35

  What is this? About the Grantville Gazette

  Written by Grantville Gazette Staff

  The Grantville Gazette originated as a by-product of the ongoing and very active discussions which take place concerning the 1632 universe Eric Flint created in the novels 1632, 1633 and 1634: The Galileo Affair (the latter two books co-authored by David Weber and Andrew Dennis, respectively). More books have been written and co-written in this series, including 1634: The Baltic War, 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, 1635: The Cannon Law, and 1635: The Dreeson Incident. 1635: The Eastern Front is forthcoming, and the book Time Spike is also set in the Assiti Shards universe. This discussion is centered in three of the conferences in Baen's Bar, the discussion area of Baen Books' web site. The conferences are entitled "1632 Slush," "1632 Slush Comments" and "1632 Tech Manual." They have been in operation for almost seven years now, during which time nearly two hundred thousand posts have been made by hundreds of participants.

  Soon enough, the discussion began generating so-called "fanfic," stories written in the setting by fans of the series. A number of those were good enough to be published professionally. And, indeed, a number of them were-as part of the anthology Ring of Fire , which was published by Baen Books in January, 2004. ( Ring of Fire also includes stories written by established authors such as Eric Flint himself, as well as David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, Dave Freer, K.D. Wentworth and S.L. Viehl.)

  The decision to publish the Ring of Fire anthology triggered the writing of still more fanfic, even after submissions to the anthology were closed. Ring of Fire has been selling quite well since it came out, and a second anthology similar to it was published late in 2007. Another, Ring of Fire III, is forthcoming. It will also contain stories written by new writers, as well as professionals. But, in the meantime . . . the fanfic kept getting written, and people kept nudging Eric-well, pestering Eric-to give them feedback on their stories.

  Hence . . . the Grantville Gazette. Once he realized how many stories were being written-a number of them of publishable quality-he raised with Jim Baen the idea of producing an online magazine which would pay for fiction and nonfiction articles set in the 1632 universe and would be sold through Baen Books' Webscriptions service. Jim was willing to try it, to see what happened.

  As it turned out, the first issue of the electronic magazine sold well enough to make continuing the magazine a financially self-sustaining operation. Since then, even more volumes have been electronically published through the Baen Webscriptions site. As well, Grantville Gazette, Volume One was published in paperback in November of 2004. That has since been followed by hardcover editions of Grantville Gazette, Volumes Two, Three, Four and Five.

  Then, two big steps:

  First: The magazine had been paying semi-pro rates for the electronic edition, increasing to pro rates upon transition to paper, but one of Eric's goals had long been to increase payments to the authors. Grantville Gazette, Volume Eleven is the first volume to pay the authors professional rates.

  Second: This on-line version you're reading. The site here at http://www.grantvillegazette.com is the electronic version of an ARC, an advance readers copy where you can read the issues as we assemble them. There are stories posted here which won't be coming out in the magazine for more than a year.

  How will it work out? Will we be able to continue at this rate? Well, we don't know. That's up to the readers. But we'll be here, continuing the saga, the soap opera, the drama and the comedy just as long as people are willing to read them.

  – The Grantville Gazette Staff

  The Beckies

  Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

  "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 grai
n 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 Beckman 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.