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Chapter 17: Plans and Progress

Queen of the Sea, Arabian Sea

July 20, 319 BCE

Joshua Varner, sitting in the radio room on the Queen of the Sea, didn’t jerk this time. He was ready for it. Everyone was expecting a report from Erica Mirzadeh. What got him was the lead.


Eurydice and Philip have had sex. Don’t blame me. Eurydice insisted that I report that. Apparently, it’s even more important than the fact that Eumenes took Amphipolis yesterday. Locals are weird.


In fact, Joshua was pretty sure that Eurydice was entirely correct about the relative importance of the two events. The improvement in Philip III was the talk of the Mediterranean and went a long way toward cementing the ship people’s reputation as magi of the highest order. Plus, as Philip got better, it improved the legitimacy claims of the USSE, suggesting that the gods favored it.

That was something that still freaked Joshua out. He had never given it any thought before The Event, but somewhere down in the depths of his soul he’d assumed that before the advent of Christianity, people hadn’t been religious. That no one had really believed in Zeus and Apollo, Athena, Bacchus, and the rest. They were just superstitions, cults, not real religions. Like believing in astrology or fortune tellers, the province of crystal-worshiping nut jobs, not decent, ordinary people. But it wasn’t that way. Most of the people on the Queen, responsible people, diplomats and scholars, merchants and as close as this century had to scientists, believed in the pantheons. And they believed in them just as firmly and with just as steady a faith as any good Christian from Georgia back before The Event. And since Joshua was a good Christian, that real faith called his into question. Somehow, Christianity was supposed to be different. Better, more real. And it wasn’t, not to Gaius Pontius of Rome or Capot of Carthage.

As Joshua thought about that for the hundredth time, he was making copies of Erica’s report for Roxane, the captain, and Dr. Easley.

Queen of the Sea, captain’s conference room

July 23, 319 BCE

Lars Floden looked around the conference room. Jane Carruthers nodded, then gave a sidelong glance at Roxane. Marie Easley smiled at Jane’s look, but the smile died quickly. Dag and Roxane were both smiling as they took their seats, and so was Anders. Eleanor Kinney sat next to Jane and started whispering in her ear. Lars took his seat at the head of the oval table and looked over at Roxane.

“Well, Roxane, how do you feel about the news?” Lars asked. He was really curious too. Roxane had claimed from the beginning to be in favor of Philip and Eurydice’s role in the government. But this meant that there was at least the potential of a child to compete with Alexander IV for the crown. A whole line of alternate monarchs.

Roxane’s smile wasn’t half, or twisted, or sardonic. It was closer to beaming than anything else. “I am thrilled and I’ll be even more thrilled if Eurydice has a child.”

“What about your dynasty?” asked Staff Captain Anders Dahl.

“I think I would like my dynasty to be doctors and engineers. Maybe ship’s captains or wealthy playboys. People who don’t get their heads chopped off because of a family squabble.”

Dag was grinning. “Alexander IV, on the other hand, disapproves of the idea because he’s the emperor of his daddy’s empire and Dorothy Miller is threatening to throw him over for Philip’s son. Of course, they’re only children, so that might change over time.”

“I am more concerned with the strategic position that Eumenes seems to have left himself in,” said Marie Easley. “I don’t see what advantage he’s gained from taking Amphipolis. Aside from the psychological effects, that is.”

“Good,” said Roxane. “If you don’t see it, maybe Cassander and Lysimachus won’t either.”

“Don’t count on that,” Marie said. “I’m a historian, not a general. But what is the advantage?”

“I’m curious too,” Lars said.

“Excuse me, Captain, but this is one of those situations where the Queen of the Sea’s neutrality means you lack a need to know. It would be a bit like the Allies telling Switzerland where the D-Day invasion was taking place,” Dag said.

“I see.” Lars leaned back in his swivel chair and considered. Dag was learning to be a diplomat, and getting pretty good at it too. He was offering to let Lars in on the secret, but implying a price. “The Queen is, of course, officially neutral. But we all know that our neutrality occasionally favors the USSE in practice. What are you looking for, Dag?”

It was Roxane who answered. “I would like to visit the Persian Gulf, Captain. This is our third trip around the Cape. There is plenty of oil on Dioscorides.”

“It’s still two thousand miles, Your Majesty. What is there in the Persian Gulf that is worth the cost involved either to the Queen or to the overwhelming majority of our passengers? A trip to Sri Lanka would use less fuel and probably offer more in the way of business opportunities.”

“Oil, Captain Floden. Oil. There are functional wells at the mouth of the Euphrates. What I want to do is encourage their expansion so that there will be an adequate source of fuel on this side of the Atlantic. That will increase the Queen’s effective range and make trips farther east easier for the Queen, for the Reliance, and for the steamships that are being built both in New America and in the empire.”

“What does President Wiley say?”

“Oil is, of course, the major export of New America. In fact, the oil sold to the Queen, and to the empire and Ptolemy, represented almost thirty percent of New America’s income last year. And thirty percent is a major part of the income of the government of New America—more than taxes, if not as much as the tariffs on trade goods. Naturally, President Wiley is concerned about the introduction of major competition . . . ”

“In other words, Big Al is opposed to the idea,” Staff Captain Dahl said. “That’s a point in its favor right there, Skipper.”

“President Wiley has done an excellent job, Staff Captain,” Lars Floden said repressively. “Anders, I wasn’t a fan of his politics before The Event either, but given what he had to start with, I don’t think Gustavus Adolphus could have done as well. Not Washington or Lincoln, either. New America has no slavery. It has free elections and a growing population. It is the industrial center of the world . . . ”

Roxane coughed.

Marie Easley laughed.

Anders Dahl snorted.

What the captain had just said was both true and not true. New America at this point had more ship people than the Queen of the Sea. On a per capita basis, it produced more than any place on Earth, except for the Queen of the Sea. However, that was on a per capita basis. The USSE had a lot more capita than New America, and was industrializing just as fast as it could. That was also true of Carthage, and Carthage was starting out ahead of the USSE in terms of tech base. And on that per capita basis, even including the diplomats, merchants, students, and rich, indolent passengers, the Queen of the Sea, with its massive electrical generators and built-in infrastructure, produced more per capita than any place on the Earth.

Lars looked around the table and the comments stopped. “All right. You all know what I meant. But back to the point. President Wiley doesn’t want it. What about the passengers?” He looked at Jane.

“Believe it or not, Arrhidaeus is in favor of it,” Jane Carruthers said. Then, at Lars’ expression, continued. “Officially, he is opposed and will claim to be opposed in his messages to Antigonus. But remember, Arrhidaeus was a general in his own right under Alexander, and had enough rank so that he got command of the army after Perdiccas was killed. He knows half the satraps of the eastern empire, and he wants access to them other than through Antigonus.”

“Also,” said Eleanor Kinney, “he is working on a deal with Capot Barca on advancing the India trade.”

“There is no India trade,” Marie said.

“Not yet, Professor. But many of the merchants are confident that there will be. Without the income from Phrygia, the stipend that Antigonus is providing his diplomatic mission is barely enough to pay Arrhidaeus’ fare on the Queen. So he is trying to work his way into a deal. Any deal. He isn’t stupid. He’s looking to his retirement.”

“I’m not sure how that does us any good, Eleanor. Antigonus is still opposed to the trip up the Persian Gulf, and Arrhidaeus will be screaming just as loudly that we are violating our neutrality.”

“I don’t think that’s going to matter. We will have enough plausible reasons to make the trip that we can argue it was justified on purely financial grounds,” Eleanor said.

“And Arrhidaeus assures us that we will have at least one official request from a satrap that both sides have endorsed,” Jane said. “Probably Tlepolemus, satrap of Carmania. And that will give us all the political cover we need.”

“You’re in favor?” Lars asked.

“Yes, for two reasons,” Jane said. “Well, more than two, but two really major reasons and they are both named oil. The main oil producer is New America. The main oil transporter is the Reliance, now owned by New America. The only other oil transporter is Ptolemy’s Egypt.” She glanced over at Roxane. “Sorry, but the degree of control you have over Ptolemy’s actions is very slight.” She looked back to Lars. “Ptolemy’s Egypt, which gets most of its oil from New America, but some from the Persian Gulf. Between them, they represent the fourth century BCE version of the Standard Oil Trust. Without any desire to impugn anyone’s motives, we need to develop and maintain alternative sources of oil.”

“She’s right, Skipper,” Anders said. “And I don’t mind impugning their motives. The only reason Wiley isn’t on the comm daily, threatening our fuel supply, is because he doesn’t have to say it out loud. We already know it. Ptolemy is worse. We have to buy our fuel from New America, and we have to get it from fueling stations that are owned by New America and Ptolemy.” He turned, not to Jane, but to Roxane. “Do you really think that you can get us an oil supply in the Persian Gulf?”

“I think so, yes,” Roxane said. “Especially with Arrhidaeus’ help.”

Lars looked around the table, collecting nods from Marie, Jane, Eleanor, Anders, Dag and Roxane.

“Very well then. Jane, announce the proposed schedule change to the ship’s passengers and ask for comment. The Queen isn’t a democracy, but we do want to keep our passengers reasonably happy.”

“Who knows, Captain. We might pick up some more passengers,” Jane said.

Lars leaned back in his chair again. “Okay, Dag, you got the trip to the Persian Gulf for your girlfriend. Now give. Just what does Eumenes have up his sleeve?”

“It’s all about Thrace,” Dag said.

“Thrace?” Anders asked in surprise.

“Anders, let him explain. Dag, explain.”

“There is a group of military historians and science fiction buffs in Fort Plymouth. It’s not a big group, half a dozen of them, including a guy named Paul Howard. Eumenes has been consulting with them, looking for ideas and knowledge about how wars will be fought in the future. Anyway, Paul Howard told him about a strategic doctrine in a science fiction book. It’s called . . . ” Dag went on to describe The Tactics of Mistake and how Eumenes was planning to use it.

Kazanlak, Thrace

July 23, 319 BCE

Seuthes III listened to the report in surprise bordering on shock. Why would he do it? Eumenes was smart, that much was obvious from a single meeting. And he was a Thracian, even if he was the son of a wagoneer. Making a mistake like this seemed very much out of character.

“Eumenes is an idiot, Sire,” said Seluca, “but I see a possibility here. Lysimachus will rush east to attack Eumenes in coordination with Cassander. He will want to be in on the kill to cement his reputation . . . ”

Seuthes listened with only half an ear after that. He had met Eumenes and Eumenes most certainly was not an idiot. Overly careful, perhaps, but never an idiot. There had to be a reason, a good reason, for Eumenes to take Amphipolis. But what?

Seluca’s “possibility” penetrated his thoughts.

Could it be? Would Eumenes make such a move to give me an opportunity?

Seuthes felt a pang of guilt. After Cotys fell, Seuthes had retreated to his stronghold and sulked. Blamed Eumenes and Eurydice for the death of his son. He contributed nothing to freeing Thrace after that. Eumenes had every reason to be angry with him. Every reason to abandon him as he’d abandoned them.

“With Lysimachus pulling everything out of Thrace to concentrate on Amphipolis, we can sally. Move down the Black Sea coast to the Bosphorus, link up with the troops that Eumenes left there, and then move east. If Eumenes holds out long enough, we might even be able to hit Lysimachus from the rear,” Seluca was saying.

It had to be, Seuthes thought. Eumenes did it on purpose to give me an opportunity, like a swordsman shifting his position in a battle so his mate could get a shot at the enemy’s back. It might not be the stuff of legends, but it won wars. Seuthes felt his lips twitch in a smile. “You’ve convinced me, Seluca. But what makes you . . . ” Seuthes stopped. Eumenes hadn’t said that was what he was doing. No courier had arrived. Why not? Perhaps it was best not to voice his guesses. “Why do you think that Cassander and Lysimachus will be able to crush him?”

“They will have better than two-to-one odds, Sire.”

“And Eumenes will have walls, and rockets to defend his walls.” Seuthes waved a hand. “Never mind. Time will tell. Prepare the army. I want to be moving as soon as we can.”

En route to Amphipolis from Pella

July 26, 319 BCE

Cassander pulled up his horse, stood in his stirrups and rubbed his butt. Four days on the march, and we are still less than halfway there. With the Companion Cavalry spending more time arguing precedence than riding. He hated this. The new saddles were a great improvement and he was using one, if half his cavalry refused them. Carefully, he lowered back into the saddle and winced. As good as the new saddles were, he needed more padding. Maybe a sheep skin? he wondered. But no. The Companion Cavalry followed him, but they laughed behind their hands at his use of the new design for a saddle.

His mind wandered back to the real question. Why had Eumenes fucked the goat again? First the loss of his whole supply of rockets because he didn’t take the time to put out scouts. Now this? It made no sense to take Amphipolis. Amphipolis was the wrong place.

He turned, wincing a little as his bum rubbed on the saddle, and looked at his army. It was a strung-out mess with little cohesion even within the units. The infantry was better than the cavalry, but not much. The rocketeers were a bunch of scholars he had collected, and half of them were slaves. They walked along beside their carts. And the rest of the army had taken to calling them “the Eumenes brigade” or “the carter’s brigade.”

* * *

Paulus was from southern Italy. He’d gone to Athens to study and been drafted into a levy sent to fight Antipater, where he was captured and sold. He could read and write in Greek and Latin. That had gotten him sold to Cassander for use in the rocket company, and he really didn’t want to be here. Paulus remembered what happened when the black powder in the warhead ignited early, and didn’t want to be anywhere near a rocket.

One of the Greeks rode by and spat on him. Paulus didn’t do anything or say anything. He was afraid. He looked down at the ground and tried not to breathe any more than he had to. The air was full of dust raised by hooves, wagons, and marching feet. He wondered what they would see when they finally got to Amphipolis.

Amphipolis

July 26, 319 BCE

Everywhere Philip looked, people smiled at him. The men and a lot of the women made gestures and laughed. He sort of liked it, even if he didn’t know how to respond. He just nodded and went on. He climbed up onto the wall and looked along it. In his mind’s eye he saw its shape and how the shape fit with the shape of the earth around it. It was a curtain wall, or it had been six days ago. Now wheelbarrows full of earth were being dumped along its outer surface to give it some depth, in case Cassander had cannon. Rockets weren’t that much threat to the walls, but even a small cannon would take down the sort of thin curtain walls that Amphipolis had.

Cassander could have cannon. The bellmaker’s art already existed, and the same process used to make a bell could make a cannon. The issue was the expense. At least, that was what Eurydice and Eumenes said. It didn’t make sense to Philip. He still wasn’t good at guessing what things were worth. He looked over at the gate and saw a weakness. He turned to the stairs that led down the wall and went quickly down, then made his way to Dymnos, Eumenes’ chief engineer.

Dymnos didn’t smile at him. He rolled his eyes. Which Philip saw out of the corner of his eye as he looked at the wall. “There is a weakness . . . ” Philip went on to explain why the posts of a join would likely fail if a rocket hit that spot and how the earthen ramp made it even more likely.

“You’re right, but only if the rocket or cannon ball hits just the right place. We don’t have time to fix everything. Cassander will be here any day now, and Lysimachus will be here almost as soon.”

“No. Lysimachus is still concentrating his forces. He hasn’t even started the march yet.”

Dymnos moved around so he was in front of Philip’s eyes. Philip looked away. He couldn’t help it.

“How do you know?” Dymnos asked.

“Ships left Abdera yesterday and arrived this morning,” Philip said to the wall. “Briarus says that Lysimachus had fifteen thousand men and is waiting for another five thousand.”

Dymnos whistled. “How many men does Briarus have?”

“Seven thousand, mostly militia, but he has a good store of rockets and he has three cannons.”

“Why does Abdera get cannon?” Dymnos complained.

“Because they only have seven thousand men. If Lysimachus decides to attack, he has to be broken before he reaches the walls. This is where we are concentrating the enemy.”

“Why? That’s what I don’t understand,” Dymnos said. “Why here, where we are going to have to face both Cassander and Lysimachus?”

Philip looked at the wall, then he looked at the joist in the ramp that went up to the top of the wall, then he looked at the paving stones. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t know, and not knowing made Philip intensely uncomfortable.

Amphipolis, Royal Residence

“I hate not telling him,” Eurydice said.

Eumenes looked up at the sad expression on the young woman’s face. Usually the eighteen-year-old wore an expression that wandered between certain and belligerent. Now it was pensive. “You know that Philip doesn’t understand about secrets.”

“I know, but he hates not knowing things.”

It was true. Certainly, Philip knew a very great deal, but his understanding was often lacking, especially in matters of human interaction. Philip knew quite well that there were almost certainly spies for Cassander in their ranks. But he would fail to make the connection between spy and “don’t talk to them about secrets.”

Still, that look on Eurydice’s face worried him. Eurydice had always cared for Philip. Even come to love him in a way, like you might love a horse or a dog. But with the change in their relationship, she had changed the way she thought of Philip. “Philip has made a great deal of progress, Eurydice. But he still has a long way to go before he can be trusted with state secrets. Now come over here and look at these plot lines. I want to be sure the rockets are properly placed.”

“I don’t know why you’re fussing,” Eurydice complained. “Philip approved them and the fire plan has been vetted by experts in Fort Plymouth.”

Fort Plymouth, New America

July 26, 319 BCE

Paul Howard sipped the cocoamat and read the sheet. He couldn’t bring food or drink into the computer room of the Fort Plymouth Library and Bookstore. No one could, and there were armed guards at the door who checked people to make sure they didn’t have anything to eat, drink, or smoke when they went in. So Paul sat out here in the dining/reading room where you could eat, drink, smoke, and read through the printouts and make notes. Never in his life had Paul imagined he would find himself as a military adviser to generals in two nations.

Paul set the cocoamat down and scratched his beard. What he was looking at was the design for a fort that would be the main defensive center of Caracas. They were using the modern name. The local tribe had joined New America only a few months ago and not everyone had agreed.

In general, the tensions between not so much the ship people and the locals, but between the locals supporting the ship people and the locals opposing the ship people, were getting more intense as the legal sovereignty shifted from this or that tribe to New America. And those disagreements were getting more and more belligerent as the locals learned about smelting iron and steel and making gunpowder. The “ship people magic” was becoming less magical, and some of the locals were intent on regaining their god-given right to cut each other’s hearts out and eat them. Hence Fort Caracas, with earthwork defenses and rocket carts, an underground powder magazine, and a two-hundred-man militia.

Paul wasn’t the designer. He was a consultant, using his memory of forts and cities real and imagined to help inform the choices. He didn’t have the final say about how the fort would be built, but he was making a decent living making notes and suggestions that would be acted on higher up the political food chain.

Fort Plymouth, Capitol Building Plaza

General Leo Holland, Jr. stood on the steps of the capitol building and watched as the sergeants ordered the men through their paces. Leo was a Marine master sergeant fallen on hard times. After twenty years in the Corps, he was reduced to being an army puke and—worse—an officer.

He wasn’t the only one from the military who had been on the cruise. There were officers, even, and quite a few army pukes. But in the organization of New America’s military after The Event, he’d ended up with the job, mostly because the real officers had all—as a unit—taken one step back.

“Attention!”

The men snapped to attention, their rifles on their shoulders. The rifles were new and of a new design. Leo thought of them as rifled slug-throwing shotguns. They broke open to load like a shotgun but they had a narrower bore, forty-five caliber. They fired a copper-coated lead slug using black powder in a waxed-paper cartridge with a brass cap. Basically a shotgun shell, because paper shells were way easier to make than brass, and cost a lot less. Brass was expensive in the here and now.

“Ground arms!” A hundred and twenty steel buttplates hit the flagstone plaza.

Leo started down the steps as the sergeant, a Silver Shield who had done twenty years with Alexander the Great, shouted, “Parade rest!”

His army had many of the structures of the USMC, but it was also influenced by such diverse services as Greek Silver Shields and Native American warriors. It was Leo’s job to integrate those traditions to form the core of the military tradition of New America. Drill and ceremony was an important part of the new tradition.

The shotguns were long barreled, about as long as a Kentucky longrifle, and they had three-foot bayonets on the ends. In part because a Silver Shield felt naked without a long stick with a point on the end.

Leo reached the bottom step and started his inspection. His men wore boots, like it or not, and a lot of them didn’t. They wore long pants in camouflage colors whether the brass liked it or not, and a lot of them didn’t. Tie-dyed green and brown was expensive. They were an elite professional service. One that had started out with rank inflation.

“Well, Kepko,” Leo said to the Native American third in line, “I see you got your stripe back.” Kepko had a strong preference for whisky and a tendency to become belligerent on drinking it.

“Sir, yes, sir,” Kepko said, keeping his face straight and his eyes straight ahead. The left one was a little swollen, but it was still steady. Kepko was a corporal, not a lance corporal. In normal circumstances he would act as a private, but in an emergency, when the citizen soldiers swelled the army’s ranks, he became a squad leader. It could be hard on a man to be bounced up and down in effective rank depending on circumstance. But President Wiley was intent that the army be both a professional service and an army of citizen soldiers, “so that the citizens would know what was on the line in war.” Personally, Leo thought it was really because the idea of a citizen soldier was part of the American tradition. Well, it was part of Leo’s tradition too. So the New America Army was both an army and a cadre for a much larger army that could be called up quickly.

Next came an exception. A ship person, Nathan Corbier’s family had served in the US military for every generation since the first buffalo soldier right after the Civil War. He’d turned eighteen since The Event and if he couldn’t be in the US Army, he would be in the New American Army. Out of over four thousand passengers and crew on the Queen of the Sea there were less than one hundred in the military, and a total of seven who were not officers or senior NCOs. Not because they were lacking in courage or patriotism to the new nation they were building here, but because there were too many more important jobs that they could be doing. The same was true of Nathan Corbier. He had a 3.2 GPA at Roosevelt High back in the world. What he ought to be doing was reading Wiki articles in the computer center of the library and helping to design machines or chemical processes. Not grunting on the confidence course or standing in formation.

And that was what the kid was going to be doing, like it or not. As soon as he finished Advanced Infantry Training, he was going to be transferred to the weapons development board. It might be a very good thing to have a man who’d been trained with locals adding his input to the geegaws those old fogies were coming up with.

* * *

John Little, the leader of those old fogies, was at that very moment cursing the input from locals. John was a practical man and an experienced businessman. Back in the world, he had run a restaurant in Philly, a bar in San Antonio, a shoe store in Atlanta, and a clothing factory in Yonkers. In New America, he had a factory that made gardening and farming supplies. He knew how to run a business and a production line. So did the damn Greeks, or at least they thought they did. Unfortunately, their notion of how to increase production had a lot to do with more hands and almost nothing to do with better equipment. Better equipment, which they insisted would cost a lot of money, take time to build, and more time to train the operators. Better equipment that they insisted they didn’t have either the time or the money for.

“All I want is an electric boring machine,” he muttered to himself as he went over the notes on yet another proposal to hire more people and use the hand-powered boring tool and guide that were well-established innovations that worked. The most irritating thing about it was that they weren’t entirely wrong. A power borer was an expensive piece of equipment that would take months to build and could be easily broken by misuse. As any number of mid-twentieth-century devices they had built already had been. It had lots of power and trying to drive the boring tool in too quickly could burn out the handmade electrical motor before an inexperienced operator knew there was a problem. But using hand tools was a dead end. It meant that a rifle would take at least a hundred hours to bore. And just using more workers would, in the long run, be more expensive even if the new minimum wage law didn’t pass over Al Wiley’s veto, which it very well might.

Fort Plymouth, President’s Office

“Damn it, Yolanda. I thought I would have your support on this,” Al Wiley said.

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but the deals some of these companies are getting people to sign amount to slavery.” Yolanda held up a hand to stop the President from interrupting. “I know it’s only a band-aid, and I know that minimum wage laws are an invitation to cooking the books. I honestly don’t like them much more than you do. But there is a bleeding wound in our economy and if a band-aid is all I’ve got, I’m going to use it.”

“All you’re going to accomplish is to start an inflationary cycle,” Al said, but he didn’t say it with much heat. That argument had raged back and forth for decades in the universe they’d come from, and while he’d always faithfully expounded the Republican Party line, he’d privately had his doubts. After all, the minimum wage had been raised plenty of times and he’d never seen where any great disaster had ensued.

The real issue in the here and now was slavery. Not slavery in New America—not even the indentured servitude they had been forced to accept to get the needed workers from Europe. The threat was the slavery in Greece, Carthage, Rome, and the rest of the Med. Also slavery from Mexico to Brazil among the native tribes. Slavery that produced goods that competed with the goods produced by paid workers in New America. And, in New America, even the indentured servants got some salary.

So far the advantage of New America in industrialization had kept the balance of productive capability tilted on the New America side, but the Carthaginians were copying the advanced tools and machines, then using slaves to operate them. Al was worried this new minimum wage law was going to make it easier for places like Carthage to undersell them. Especially in Europe, where they had lower transport costs.

He’d like to believe the arguments advanced by the proponents of establishing a minimum wage that it would boost productivity rapidly enough to keep offsetting the cost advantage of using slave labor. They pointed to the experience in the old USA where the northern states had kept industrially outpacing the southern ones—in large part because the higher wages in the north kept drawing immigrants. But . . . 

If they were wrong, things were going to get problematic.

Sometimes Al wondered why he had ever taken this job, but the truth was that he didn’t know anyone else who could do it half as well as he could. And Al Wiley had a very strong sense of duty.

214–216 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad

Stella Matthews listened to Marigene Morgan bitch about the new minimum wage bill that was probably going to pass over Al Wiley’s veto. “The damn locals don’t stay on the job long enough to learn the job anyway. If we have to pay them four dollars an hour, they’ll be quitting at the end of the first day. And don’t you look at me that way, Stella Matthews,” she added. “Carthalo is an indentured. He can’t quit and run off to hunt super turkeys or go fishing.”

“Why would I want to?” Carthalo asked. “I can get a super turkey sandwich at the community center for a buck and a half anytime I want one. And I have an account in the bank.”

“See? That’s what I mean,” Marigene said. “I have Stone Age hunter-gatherers who spend just enough time sewing hems to buy a knife or a file, and then run off into the jungle. I can’t afford to pay trainees four bucks an hour. You have a craftsman from a civilized nation. Of course you can afford to pay him more. And you take half his salary back to pay off his indenture anyway.”

That was true. At least sort of. Carthalo was salaried, not hourly. But there were rules about how many hours you could work an indentured in a day or a week, or you had to give them comp time or overtime. And figuring it that way, Carthalo made about six bucks an hour and kept three. Well, two fifty an hour, after taxes. But Stella had very little sympathy for Marigene, especially not after Stella had to pay Marigene two hundred and eighty bucks for a pair of hemp overalls for Carthalo. Which Marigene justified by repeating “hand-sewn” ad nauseum. True or not, it was ridiculous how much clothing cost in the here and now compared to back in the world.

Stella decided to change the subject before the temptation to smack Frieda overcame her. “So, what’s all the excitement about Philip III and Eurydice about? They’re married. Why so much noise about them having sex? And why did it take them so long?”

Two minutes later she knew she had made a mistake. Marigene was as enamored of the USSE royal house as any Princess Di worshipper back in the world. Stella got chapter and verse on Philip’s spectrum disorder, while Carthalo, his break over, escaped back to the kiln, where this batch of glass was about ready.


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