* * *
Spring planting was a little different. Birdie had never really gotten to know Tom Stone. He hadn’t really wanted to get to know him. There was a very basic difference between them: Birdie was a solid upstanding hillbilly and Stoner was a hippie freak. Now, Birdie was consulting with Tom Stone on the planting of a new crop.
“This is not a crop I’d ever have dreamed I’d be planting,” Birdie remarked. “Never in a million years.”
Stoner grinned. “Don’t feel lonesome, man. It’s the last thing I’d have dreamed of, too. Ten full acres of prime Columbian, and it’s planted right out in the open. Man, what a sight that’s going to be.”
Stoner, in his laid back way, explained the details of planting to get the best, meaning the most powerful, product. His knowledge of agriculture in general and marijuana in particular was pretty impressive. Aside from breeding for the active ingredient, you also had to plant the marijuana farther apart to get a potent plant. So the number of plants per acre went down when you were planting for dope instead of hemp.
“We’re going to need it,” Stoner explained. “It’s the best locally grown painkiller we have. I’d grow it all, myself, if I could. Just so I could donate it to the hospital.”
“Man’s gotta make a living, Stoner. I’m growing it for the lowest price I can manage,” Birdie explained. “Best I can do.”
* * *
After much argument, the Sundremda Gemeinde had decided that most of this year’s crop would be beans and wheat. It would be down-time beans and wheat, at that. Birdie had wanted to plant sweet corn but there wasn’t enough seed to go around.
The population of Grantville was getting up to around fifteen thousand and Badenburg had over seven thousand. The population was going up. Consequently Sundremda was switching from growing flax to producing food.
Neither Birdie nor the other farmers in Sundremda were sure that this was the best plan. As the population increased, the need for both food and flax was going up. Flax might have brought in more profit.
“Ernst, the real problem with growing flax is the spinning,” Birdie argued. “We can send wheat to Grantville, get it milled real quick, and then the flour can be made into bread when it’s needed. Flax will have to be spun into thread and no one has come up with a spinning machine yet. That’s the bottleneck.”
The down-timers had spinning wheels, but even with spinning wheels turning flax into thread was a lot of work. Birdie wasn’t sure how long re-inventing a spinning machine was going to take, but from what the newspapers said, it wasn’t going to happen this year.
“The price for flax in the field is going to go down, I think,” Birdie continued. “It will have to be shipped to towns and villages all over the place, spun into thread, and then the thread will have to be shipped somewhere else to be woven into cloth.”
Spinning was the seventeenth century version of flipping burgers at McDonald’s, except it didn’t pay as well, was harder work, and had less opportunity for advancement.
Grantville was the land of opportunity. The spinners would be looking for better ways to make a living and a lot of them would find those better ways. The way Birdie figured it the increase in demand for cloth was not going to be reflected in an increased price of flax until the spinning bottleneck was fixed.
“Some one will build a spinning machine,” Ernst disagreed. “So many people who can build so many things, surely someone will figure out a way to get more flax spun.”
“Yep, but it ain’t gonna happen soon. And until it does, all it means is more spinners. Spinners who are going to demand, and get, better pay. That’s going to mean less money per acre for the raw flax.”
Ah, the simple farmer’s life. Birdie thought Predicting market trends a year in advance, and then hoping like hell the weather doesn’t screw you over.
* * *
“LaDonna, have you finished all those tax assessments?” Deborah Trout asked, as she breezed into the office. “We need to get the notices sent, even though I dread the reactions we’re going to get from the public.”
“It’s not going to be pretty, that’s for sure,” LaDonna agreed. “Strange, isn’t it? All those years back up-time, and everyone complained about their taxes. Wait until everyone sees the new valuations. We’re going to be in hot water with everyone we know. They’re going to completely flip out.”
“We did tell everyone,” Cary Marshall pointed out. “It’s been on television, and there have been articles in the newspapers.”
“True, absolutely true,” Deborah agreed. “And you know as well as I do that the new rate is still going to come as a shock to half the town. People just don’t really pay attention until they get the bill. Anyway, we’ve got about a week of peace and quiet before the frenzy starts, so let’s get some work done while we can.”
Deborah turned to head back to her own office, but stopped when Noelle Murphy cleared her throat. Noelle always made that sound when she had a question. It was usually a good question, but Deborah had begun to dread that sound. Noelle tended to complicate things unnecessarily, to Deborah’s way of thinking.
“Umm, Deborah, I don’t know where to send these notices,” Noelle began. “There’s no owner of record for these properties.”
“What properties, Noelle?”
“It’s that village, what’s its name, Sundremda, I think. The people don’t own the property, they just rent it. The guy who has the Lehen, well, near as I can tell, holding the Lehen isn’t the same as owning the property. And, I don’t really think that Ferdinand II is going to pay taxes on it, either, since we sort of took it away from him. So, who pays the property taxes on Sundremda?”
Deborah worked through Noelle’s logic and sighed. “That’s all we need, another complication. I guess Marion County owns Sundremda now that we’ve annexed it. And the county doesn’t pay taxes to itself, does it? So, the county is responsible for yet another piece of property that doesn’t bring in any revenue. Crap!”
* * *
“Claus, what has happened?” Clara asked. “What is it?”
Claus Junker sat in his home office, devastated. “Pomeroy is dead. The only one of these up-timers I could tolerate, and he is dead in an accident.”
It looked to Clara like the news of Guffy Pomeroy’s death had hit Claus hard. Claus didn’t know that many up-timers, and mostly didn’t like the ones he did know. He’d been opposed to joining the New US and believed that his was the single voice of sanity on the council. Now, the one up-timer that he had liked and trusted was dead.
“The microwave project, it is dead, also. The paper says that Pomeroy was a charlatan and there is no hope for a microwave projector, not for years!” Claus stormed. “And I used funds… funds from the town to finance this project, and it will not happen.”
Clara felt her stomach clench with fear. “Town funds, Claus? How could you? You never should have trusted that man with so much. Can we pay it back? Before we are disgraced?”
Claus rose from his desk in a rage. He stomped around the room, shouting and swearing. “No, Clara, no, we can’t pay it back! This Ring of Fire, it is the work of the devil! Act of God, people say, therefore the rents due me are void. Even the pastor, that Pastor Schultheiss, is preaching that this Ring of Fire was an act of God!” Claus shouted. “The only good thing that came out of the Ring of Fire was Pomeroy. And now, now, I am told that he was a thief, and he has ruined us! There is no hope, they claim, no possible way to create a microwave projector, not for years!”
Claus was becoming incoherent. He continued to rant and shout, at times towering over Clara, at other times stamping around the room. He shouted that all around him people were getting rich from the up-timer’s knowledge, and getting above themselves. The riffraff were thrilled with the Ring of Fire, the up-timers, their inventions and their committees of correspondence. Even people that should know better were fawning on the up-timers.
Then the real reason for his rage began to come out. Clara knew as well as Claus that Endres Ritter was just waiting for an excuse to go over the books and accuse Claus of theft. Before the Ring of Fire, a member of the council would have been protected from such an accusation. It wasn’t all that unusual, after all. Using city funds for personal advantage was standard practice. As long as the city got its money back it was no problem. Even when something went wrong, there was a slap on the wrist and a lot of looking the other way. Back then, the council wanted to avoid the scandal. But now there was the Ring of Fire and new rules.
The Ritter and Junker families had been feuding so long that most people didn’t remember why. Ritter would raise the accusation no matter the scandal to the council. He would raise the up-time cry “freedom of information". Never mind the fact that the Ritter family had done the same thing a few years ago and made a small fortune at the city’s expense. That was then, this was now.
Clara Junker was terrified. She left the office as soon as she could get away. Claus had been ready to actually hit her. She was sure of it. Claus had never threatened her with violence before. He was gruff and often sarcastic but not violent, not to those of his own class.
Clara was less involved than she would have preferred in the financial decision making for the Junker family. Her upbringing had prepared her to be a good bit more involved in financial decisions. She knew that Claus had mostly done a good job. He’d been willing to listen if she was careful how she approached him, at least until the Ring of Fire.
After the Ring of Fire, things at home had gone downhill. Every change the up-timers proposed caused Claus to become more insistent on keeping things the way they were before. Claus became less inclined to listen to her and more insistent that she had no business interfering.
Clara knew that they weren’t really worse off than before the Ring of Fire, depending on how much Claus had spent on that microwave business. Clara was beginning to suspect that he had spent much more than she had thought. Still, as everyone around them seemed to be getting richer, it felt like they were worse off. She wished her son Egidius would get home. She didn’t want to have to turn to her brother, Franz.
* * *
Egidius came into Claus’ office while he was going over the books looking desperately for any readily convertible assets.
“Father, what is this I hear?” he asked, insisting on becoming part of the disaster. “What has happened?”
Claus had always tried to keep his son away from the darker aspects of doing business. Yes, everyone did things like using town funds in backing private ventures, and his heir would eventually have to learn that, but not yet.
“It is only a temporary problem,” Claus blustered, still trying to protect the boy. “I have only to raise some money and it will be overcome. We have assets, after all.” The Junker family owned several townhouses in Badenburg, and owned the rents on the village of Sundremda, along with the rents on two other villages that were farther from the Ring of Fire. The family had interests in several trading ventures. Together these things brought in quite a bit of money annually. Unfortunately, most of them were tied up in ways that made it hard to get quick cash out of them.
Egidius didn’t seem to want to be protected, though. Claus finally gave in to his son’s persistent questions and dogged determination to get to the heart of the problem. When Claus disclosed the amount of money he had invested in the microwave project, Egidius’ was clearly appalled. That was the hardest thing to take, the disappointment in his son’s eyes. Claus gave up and waved Egidius to the accounts and retreated. He felt driven to run from his office by the look in his son’s eyes.