"That can't be right," she said. "I know somebody from Cheb, one of the girls-well, never mind that, but she's Bohemian."
"That is hardly surprising, since Cheb is in Bohemia. It's an old fortress town that guards the western approaches. Good for us, in this instance, since the garrison is a mercenary company and its commander has been well bribed. We'll abandon these wagons in Cheb and replace them with several smaller ones, much better designed for travel in the mountains. We'll even have a cavalry escort while we pass down part of the Bohemian Forest until we reenter the USE near Kotzting. There, we will follow the Regen down to Regensburg, where we will exchange the wagons-that has also been arranged-for a barge that will take us down the Danube into Austria."
He'd already explained this to the leaders of the up-timers, the older Barclays and O'Connor and his son. But it seemed they either hadn't paid attention or hadn't considered all the implications.
"Hey, wait a minute," said Allan O'Connor. "We're coming back into the USE? What the hell for? I know my geography, dammit. Once we're across into Bohemia, let's just stay there until we get to Austria."
Janos stared at him. "Indeed. As a geographical proposition, that is certainly feasible. Follow the rivers down to Pizen. From there we could take a good road to Ceske Budejovice, the largest town in southern Bohemia. From there, of course, it is a short distance to Austria-and along a very good road, given the long and constant intercourse between Vienna and Prague."
O'Connor nodded. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking."
No rabbit had ever been this stupid, for a certainly. "You have missed the news, then. Of the war between Bohemia and Austria. Which has been going on for a year and a half, now."
The up-timers frowned at him. They looked like a pack of confused rabbits. All except Suzi Barclay, who just looked like a crazed rabbit.
Janos grit his teeth, reminding himself that he needed to remain on the best possible terms with these-these-people.
"Not a good idea," he said thinly. "The reason I could bribe the commander of the Cheb garrison is because no one expects hostilities to erupt between the USE and Bohemia, so that frontier post was given to a man who was competent enough but needed no further qualifications. Such as… what you might call a rigorous sense of duty. At Pizen and Ceske Budejovice, on the other hand, we would be dealing with Pappenheim's Black Cuirassiers."
The up-timers seemed to draw back a little.
"Ah. I see you have heard of them. Yes. We do not wish to have dealings with the Black Cuirassiers."
Enough! Still more time had been wasted. He pointed stiffly to the broken wagon. "So let us begin unloading it. Now. And discard from the other two wagons whatever is not essential."
Chapter 6. The Mess
High Street Mansion, Seat of Government for the State of Thuringia-Franconia
President's Office
Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia
After Grantville's police chief finished his report, Ed Piazza, president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, half-turned his swivel chair and looked out of the window in his office. That was the first time he'd so much as glanced outside since he showed up for work this morning. His schedule had been jam-packed even before this latest crisis hit.
The weather was still good, he saw. Clear, with not a cloud in the sky. Very crisp, of course, the way such days in November were, but not yet bitterly cold the way it would become in January and February.
Well, not "crisis," exactly, he mused. He and Mike Stearns had long known that there was no way to keep the USE's enemies from getting their hands on American technical knowledge-nor from suborning some of the Americans themselves. Among the thirty-five hundred people who'd come from up-time through the Ring of Fire, there was bound to be the usual percentage who were excessively greedy and not burdened with much in the way of a conscience. That was even leaving aside the ones-there were a lot of those, now-who'd accepted legitimate offers to relocate elsewhere. You couldn't keep people from emigrating, after all; not, at least, without building some sort of Godforsaken version of a Berlin Wall, which neither he nor Mike had wanted any part of.
Some people were surprised, even astonished, at the number of Americans who were leaving Grantville these days. They'd assumed that long familiarity, habits, family ties-not to mention modern indoor plumbing-would keep almost everyone from straying. But that was unrealistic. West Virginians, especially northern West Virginians, had been accustomed to moving around a lot, since the area was economically depressed except when the mines were working full bore. Most families had at least one person, in the past, who'd moved to one of the industrial cities to make a living. Often they came back, when things at home picked up, but sometimes they didn't.
And those had been relocations just to get decent-paying but usually hard jobs in a steel mill or auto assembly plant. Today, anyone with any skills was being offered salaries that were the down-time equivalent of the kind of money top-drawer technical and business consultants made back up-time. Often enough, with lots of perks and benefits attached. And since the prospective employers were rich-many of them noblemen, sometimes royalty-even the problem of leaving modern plumbing behind wasn't so bad. It wasn't as if the upper classes of the seventeenth century were medieval barons living in stone piles, after all. They already had indoor plumbing, however rudimentary it might be by late twentieth-century American standards. And it would get better quickly, too, since the people offering the jobs had a keen desire themselves to get better facilities. Anyone in Grantville who had significant plumbing skills and experience practically had a carte blanche to go anywhere in Europe.
To add pressure to pull, most up-timers after the Ring of Fire had lost what they'd had in the way of safety net back up-time. Which, for working class people like most of the town's inhabitants, had never been all that munificent in the first place.
Social Security was gone. Company pensions were gone, except for a few companies headquartered in Grantville who'd been able to maintain them. Medicare was gone. That might not directly affect young people, right away, but most people in Grantville were part of families, often extended families. They had parents and grandparents and other elderly relatives who were in a tight situation, sometimes a desperate one-and now, Baron Whoozit or Merchant Moneybags or City Patrician Whazzisname was waving a small fortune under their noses, if they'd just relocate to wherever and apply their skills.
So, since the end of the Baltic war-the decision to move the SoTF's capital to Bamberg had been a prod, too-a great migration was underway. "Great," at least, in per capita terms if not absolute numbers. Some people were even starting to call it the "American Diaspora." What had been a trickle, in the first three years after the Ring of Fire, was now a small flood. By the time it was over, Ed wouldn't be surprised if half of Grantville's residents wound up living somewhere else, at least for a time.
Most of them were staying in the USE, true enough. But the number who were accepting positions in other countries was not inconsiderable, especially countries that had good relations with the USE like Bohemia, Venice, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian nations now united within the Union of Kalmar. Some had gone to France and Austria. A few, even farther afield, to eastern Europe, Russia, Spain and Portugal, southern Italy-even the New World.