Part IV
A tattered coat upon a stick
Chapter 26
“Goddamit, Mike, we’ve got to put a stop to this! We’re too sloppy, I tell you. We might as well be handing out all our technical secrets on street corners.”
Mike leaned back in his chair and studied Quentin Underwood for a moment, before he replied. He was trying to gauge exactly how much he would be forced to let Quentin know, in order to head off another one of the man’s typical bull-in-a-china-shop rampages. There was a part of Mike—no small part, either—that wished Underwood would finally sever his connection with the July Fourth Party and go it on his own politically. Granted, the immediate damage would be significant. But, in the long run—
At least I’d be spared these constant clashes with him, Mike thought sourly. Quentin may be one of the best industrial managers the world’s ever seen, but what he understands about how a society works could be inscribed on the head of a . . .
For a moment, Mike indulged himself in a little fantasy where he set all the world’s scientists to find a pin small enough to fit Quentin Underwood’s “social consciousness” on its head.
Can’t be done, he decided. We left all the electron microscopes behind in that other universe.
He realized he couldn’t stall any longer. Underwood’s flushed face showed the man was working himself up to another explosion.
“Oh, calm down,” he growled. What the hell, let’s try it one last time. “Quentin, I’ve told you this before, but you never even listen to me. Whatever short-term damage might be done to us because of our ‘open books’ policy isn’t a pittance compared to the long-term damage that clamping down would do. I don’t have a problem with locking up a few books, and I’ve done it. But that only applies to stuff that involves immediate and specific details about weapons-making that really can be kept a secret, at least for a while. An example is that old 1910 book on guns by Greener that Paul Santee owned and all the gunmakers slobber over. Or Chapelle’s books, with the building drafts for all those 19th-century frigates and ships-of-the-line.”
Underwood, from his sullen expression, wasn’t moved in the least. Mike decided to match Quentin’s temper with his own. He slammed the palm of his hand down on the desk. He was a very strong man, with a large hand. The sound bore a reasonable resemblance to a thunderclap.
“Damnation! Do you even listen to the reports Dr. Nichols gives the cabinet?”
That jarred Quentin. A bit, at least. Underwood leaned back in his own chair, his hands braced on the armrests, and said defensively: “Hey, c’mon! I’ve been up in the Wietze oil field for the last stretch. Just got back a few days ago.”
“James has been giving us the same message for a year,” growled Mike in return. He wasn’t going to let Quentin off the hook that easily. “Longer than that—and you’ve never paid any attention.”
He levered himself out of his chair and took two steps to the window. Jabbing a forefinger at the teeming little city of Grantville below, he said:
“Thirty percent, Quentin. That’s probably the lowest fatality rate we can expect, if we get hit with a really good dose of the plague. Or typhus. Or smallpox. Or—hell, you name it.” Frowning: “And it could be worse than that, especially if it’s plague. Some of the Italian cities have suffered a death rate in excess of sixty percent, from what we’ve heard. Every city in Europe in this era is a mortality sink. People die in them faster than they get born. The only reason urban areas exist at all is because paupers and poor peasants keep drifting into them hoping for a better chance. And most of them are young, too—which gives you some idea of how badly disease hits the cities.”
He heard Underwood shifting in his chair. “I thought . . . I mean, dammit, I still don’t like the idea of relying on a hippie drug-dealer, but he does seem to know what he’s doing. I thought you were pretty sure we’d have some of this—what do you call?—cloram-something or other. Ready by now. Supposed to be some kind of wonder drug, even if”—his voice was a bit skeptical now—”I never heard of it.”