How to Save on R&D Budget
Lavoisier and Terray had left, leaving only Jenner and me in the office.
"Well then, Doctor Jenner."
"Just Jenner, please. I'm a physician, not a doctor of philosophy."
Oops.
"I see. Then may I simply call you Jenner?"
"Call me whatever suits Your Majesty."
I had no feel for British etiquette—what title to use? Leaving off a title felt awkward. I needed to get him that medical doctorate hat on his head pronto.
"Jenner, you mentioned an interest in cowpox. Could you tell me more about it?"
A doctor interested in cowpox? Might fit within acceptable bounds... though even animal lovers wouldn't touch cows.
"Ahem, to be precise, it's the pustules from cowpox."
That sounded even stranger.
"As Your Majesty knows, smallpox is a fearsome disease."
"Plain enough truth. My grandfather met his end from it."
He was my grandfather, sure, but honestly, it stirred no emotion. A stranger to me... and the man who drove France to ruin? Personally, I didn't count fools as human. A king needed resolve by definition. Incompetent but resolute made a tyrant; competent and resolute made a sage ruler. Hand power to parliament if you knew your limits—that could make a sage too. But fools were different. Incompetent yet craving power, they were contradiction incarnate. If he'd had the wit to appoint talent where it fit, he'd have been a sage already. And dying at sixty-four... in this era, that was practically natural causes, wasn't it? While the French people starved, he'd reveled long enough—good riddance.
No wonder revolution brewed.
"His Majesty met a most unfortunate end."
"My condolences."
Jenner bowed with a bewildered look. Normal, really—facial control would fail expressing sympathy to an enemy king's kin.
"No matter. Sixty-four is practically a full lifespan."
In a modern world with advanced medicine and cheap drugs, maybe. But here, where mortality rates hit 300% even for swordmasters under top physicians, it was different. Infections were routine, wounds got amputated, bloodletting commonplace. Disinfection? The word didn't exist. Small wonder epidemics raged. People called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages for good reason. Technically Renaissance now, but to me, it all looked the same.
"Jenner, what connection do cowpox pustules have to smallpox?"
"Allow me to recount my observations. This was when I studied under Mr. John Hunter—I began medicine at thirteen and met him at twenty-one. Back then, I was arrogant, shoulders high from eight years of study. I thought that enough... until I met Mr. Hunter. He shook my hand right away. I hadn't expected hands so callused, thicker than a carpenter's. Mr. Hunter valued life itself above all."
Oh no. Wrong catch. But interrupting mid-story was rude; I'd wait like a gentleman.
"...That first night with Mr. Hunter ended thus. Afterward, my shoulders dropped—not in despair, but because I'd found my conviction. From then on, I pondered deeply before acting."
Hm. Better this way. Felt like listening to radio; time to sort papers.
"...Then Mr. Hunter said, 'Be prudent, but attempt it.' He must have seen my frustration. Remembering my old fire, he even taught me how to try."
Taxes... yes, tax reform was due. With no nobles or clergy, curb the new rich before rot set in—let dragons rise from mud, or revolution would follow. France had lopped off the king's head, then the bourgeois too, after all.
"Ah, this happened at St. George's Hospital too—makes me shudder thinking back."
Wasteful for war? Poll tax needed scrapping. It shredded public will; without abolition, revolution loomed in my twilight years or the next reign. Income tax was ideal, but... the eighteenth-century gap with modernity was the issue. Taxes and private industry had evolved so far that even 48% corporate rates got dodged down to 30% effective. Tax brackets too. No e-government here. Unstandardized measures, imprecise land surveys—evasion everywhere. Rampant tax dodging bred corruption. 'If they're cheating, why not me?' Then the state hiked rates assuming evasion, sparking more dodging, until boom—revolution. Tax justice was social justice. Lavoisier had been nabbed for it too.
"Hm, I see..."
"Your Majesty thinks so too? An honor."
"Continue."
"Yes. So I returned to my village home, seeking fortune and fame."
Maybe attach a tax office to Finance? But bureaucrats corrupt easy. Fine under me, but weak crown? Straight to tax-farmers. Mutual oversight powers...
"I see. So that's the method."
"Precisely. Catch a mild disease first, and the severe one never strikes again."
Story over, it seemed.
"Very well, Jenner. I appoint you full professor at the new French Royal Academy. Research that 'cowpox,' eradicate smallpox from this land."
"Cowpox, you say? Hm, intuitive and apt. Yes. Henceforth, I'll call bovine smallpox vacca."
Ah, hadn't named it yet.
"Good. Work with Lavoisier."
"Um. With that tax-farmer...?"
"Objection?"
"No, sire."
Lied through his teeth.
"Dislike tax-farmers?"
"Well, aren't they tax-farmers?"
What? A pledge? Were tax-farmers villains by default here? No clue, but I nodded along.
"Back in my village, a tax-farmer once collected my taxes and forgot."
Aw, here we go again. Rude to cut in; wait it out.
*
Versailles, old Louis Philippe's villa. The French Royal Academy now? Common as dirt in modern times, but in the eighteenth century, even basic academies were scarce. Innovation? Noble patronage. Private-led? Not in this world. A noble saw it, thought 'Fun,' invested—or it rotted in a drawer. James Watt, Gutenberg—they'd suffered it. Gutenberg lost his press and fell. Noble cash meant flashy uselessness; usurers took it all later. Medieval as ever.
"Lavoisier, so this is water?"
"Yes, sire. Fill the cast-iron tube with water—it becomes oxygen. Hydrogen from sulfuric acid on iron descends, meets in this flask: water. Impressive?"
Lavoisier showed a middle-school science demo, demanding judgment. I gladly stamped it rejected.
"Wh-why rejected?"
I poured water into the cast-iron tube wordlessly.
"Heard you made water—expected something grand."
It was grand.
"Pour water to make water? Mocking me?"
"But sire! Pure water, to cleanse our bodies!"
Pure water? Good talker. But pure water made people puke—lacked minerals. Too pure, body rejected the burden.
"Worse, this hydrogen—edible? Iron and sulfuric acid? Meant water, got poison."
"Sire! It's drinkable—I prove it!"
Lavoisier gulped the 'pure' water, spat: "Puha!"
"Poison! Assassination!"
National Intelligence Agency agents watching rushed out, binding Lavoisier.
"Lavoisier, sneeze away from people—it's manners."
I wiped pure water from my face with a handkerchief. Good he wasn't Japanese.
I asked the immobilized—not foreigner, Lavoisier: "How'd pure water taste?"
"Smooth going down."
Agents dragged him off at that.
"Wait—this as a weapon."
At my halt, they unveiled his head sack.
"Colorless, odorless, induces vomiting—perfect to ruin enemy supplies."
"But honor... mph!"
Classic French honor objection to dishonorable kill. But Lavoisier couldn't finish. That 'dishonorable tool' was his last use.
"Lavoisier. Make this 'poison.' Try others too. Full support."
"Y-yes... sire..."
R&D budgets weren't for skimping. But labor costs? Why not?