Wietze Oil Field, near Celle, in the Duchy of Calenberg
Early, 1634
"Hans, dammit! Where's the report on the new mine cars?"
"In a moment, sir." Hans started rummaging through the files, at first calmly, then more frantically. "I am sure it's here somewhere."
"Perhaps it'll be faster for me to just open the window and yell. There's got to be someone down there who knows his ass from his elbow." Quentin Underwood, the Manager of Oil Operations, and former USE Secretary of the Interior, turned and walked over to the window. Looking out, he realized that several of the men were gathered around a stranger. "Who the hell is that? Some fucking labor organizer?" Forgetting, for the moment, that his political bosses were union men. Quentin grabbed his coat and stormed out the door.
***
"Yes, yes, it's working, can you see?" Martin Schmiedechen smiled broadly. His big hands quivered. The long end of the forked stick he held seemed to take on a life of its own. He appeared to be fighting it, as it swerved down and to the left. The oil field workers gaped.
"There's oil there, isn't there?" Martin added.
"Oh, yes," said one of the workers. "How'd you know?"
"Well, as I am sure you realize, petroleum is the oil of rock, and thus partakes of the elemental character of both Water and Earth. Consequently, I have modified a traditional dowsing rod. As you can see, I have wrapped copper wire about it. Copper is a metal, and thus is of Earth, but it is also the metal of Venus, and thus also represents Water, which is a female principle.
"The wires lead to the Harmonium on my back."
They looked with admiration at the black box with silvery alchemical signals painted upon it.
"So what's in the box?" one asked.
"I am sorry, I can't tell you that. It is one of the great philosophical secrets of this age. One possible only by my combining the great Magnetic Science of the uptimers with the secret, almost forgotten alchemical knowledge of the Pharaohs of Egypt." They looked at him blankly.
Martin took pity on them. "But I can tell you that it contains certain objects which have . . . affinities . . . with both the magnetics of the Earth and the alchemical principles of the petroleum."
"You have a bottle of oil inside?"
Martin looked offended. "Nature does not yield its secrets so readily. One must proceed indirectly, and take it by surprise."
Quentin arrived. "What's going on here?"
"This fellow showed us how to find oil," said the foreman. "Isn't that amazing?"
"Can you find your ass in the dark? Of course he can find oil here. You're standing next to a goddamn oil field, remember? And the oil is so close to the surface that half the time we just dig for it!
"This jackass is just a doodlebugger, a dowsing fool with delusions of grandeur. Get back to work!"
Quentin glared at Martin. "What's your name?"
Martin started to answer but Quentin didn't wait. "Never mind, I don't care. You don't work here, you don't have permission to be here, you're out. Security! Where the hell's security when you need it?"
A somewhat red-faced guard answered his call. "Sir?"
"Escort this man out of here. Now. And don't let him back." Underwood stomped back to his office, secure in the knowledge that he had once again triumphed in his never-ending battle against human frailty.
"This Underwood was really most impolite, Cousin Ilse. He wouldn't even allow me to introduce myself. And he completely disregarded the evidence of his own eyes, my definitive demonstration of the Oleic Harmonization to his own workers.
"You, Ilse, are the only other living soul to see the contents of my Harmonium. The fossil plant. The bottle of oil. And the Prime Catalyst—" He lowered his voice, even though he knew they were alone. "—the Sparkplug."
"I feel for you, Martin. I will talk to August, he will make sure you get a proper hearing."
Quentin finished reading a letter, crumpled it, and tossed it into the wastebasket. "For crissake! The screwball's got connections."
"Sir?"
"The doodlebugger. One of his relatives is Ilse Schmiedechen."
"Ah." His secretary still was new to petroleum technology. But he had the genealogies of the noble families down pat. Ilse was the morganatic wife of August von Calenberg, Bishop of Minden. Who was the older brother of Georg, Duke of Calenberg. Who, not so incidentally, owned the Wietze oilfield.
"So he wants a test, eh? Boy, he'll get a test."
"So, Herr Schmuckechen—"
"Schmiedechen. Martin Schmiedechen."
"You think you can find oil?"
"If the harmonic conditions are appropriate."
"Yeah, right. Okay, here's the deal, I have ten identical boxes here. And if you think it was easy to get ten identical boxes in this screwed-up world, well, you're crazy. Every box is filled with sand. However, in one of the boxes, I have buried a bottle of oil. Your job is to do your voodoo dance, or whatever is you do, and pick out the right box."
Martin nodded.
"Oh. My secretary will record whether you got it right or wrong. And after your first pick, we blindfold you, open the boxes, and pick at random which box to put the bottle into for the second time around. And then again for the third time. Ten trials in all."
"Sir, this is hardly a fair test. The amount of oil is small, and you have taken it out of the ground, which means that you have severed the harmonic lines—"
"If you don't like the test, the door is over that way."
"Very well, but I do this under protest. Make sure your secretary writes that down."
Martin picked the correct box two times out of ten.
"That's better than I expected," said Underwood.
"So I am hired?"
"Are you kidding? It's still well within chance variation."
"We'll see whether the Duke's advisers agree."
"His buck, his grief. Out."
"Here?" The crew chief looked skeptical.
Martin closed his eyes, opened them again. "Yes, here. The vibrations were most pronounced, they indicated the presence of a veritable lake beneath our feet."
The crew chief looked at the Duke's representative, who gave him a quick nod. "Alright, lads, let's start assembling the derrick."
He turned to Martin. "This isn't going to be easy. We're on a hillside; we're going to have a devil of a time drilling a straight hole."
"I must go where the lines of magnetic harmony lead me," said Martin loftily.
They looked at the sand that had just been brought up. The crew chief ran his fingers through it. "It feels wet."
"Oil?" asked Martin hopefully.
"More likely water. In which case the hole may be a little off. Water's usually under oil. If we strike water first, that's a bad sign. But we'll give it another ten or twenty feet to be sure." The drilling crew put the drill bit back on the cable, and continued their work.
Some minutes later, the hole started gushing a brown fluid. Not black or clear.
"What's that?" asked Martin.
A crewman reached out a hand, took a taste. "It's beer! We've struck beer." He quickly stood under the fountaining beverage, mouth agape.
"Hey!" He had been pushed aside by one of his fellows.
"So where's the oil?"
"Who's complaining? "I'll take beer over oil any day!"
The duke's representative came over to Martin. "Do you have any idea what has happened here?"
"Beer is made from fermented grain, which is, of course, of the Kingdom Vegetalia," mused Martin. "And the oil, according to the uptimers, that is the result of a natural alchemical change in the character of ancient vegetable remains. The beer and oil both being liquid, as well as vegetable, they exhibit the same magnetic harmonics—"
"No, I meant, where did all the beer come from?"
It was only later that they went downhill, and found the brewery which had been using a cave in the same hillside as an inexpensive storage tank. But by then even the duke's representative was too drunk to care.