Ring of Fire III Read online

  RING OF FIRE III

  EDITED BY ERIC FLINT

  Baen

  Baen Books by Eric Flint

  The Ring of Fire series:

  1632 by Eric Flint

  1633 by Eric Flint & David Weber

  1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint & David Weber

  1634: The Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint with Virginia DeMarce

  1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

  1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

  1635: The Cannon Law by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

  1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

  1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint

  1636: The Saxon Uprising by Eric Flint

  Ring of Fire ed. by Eric Flint

  Ring of Fire II ed. by Eric Flint

  Ring of Fire III ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette II ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette III ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette IV ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette V ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette VI ed. by Eric Flint (forthcoming January 2012)

  1635: The Tangled Web by Virginia DeMarce

  Time Spike by Eric Flint & Marilyn Kosmatka

  For a complete list of Baen Books by Eric Flint,

  please go to www.baen.com

  Ring of Fire III

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Eric Flint

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-3448-1

  Cover art by Tom Kidd

  Map by Gorg Huff

  First printing, July 2011

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ring of fire III / edited by Eric Flint.

  p. cm. — (The ring of fire series)

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3448-1 (hc)

  1. Fantasy fiction, American. 2. Alternative histories (Fiction), American. 3. Europe—History—17th century—Fiction. 4. Americans—Europe—Fiction. 5. West Virginia—Fiction. I. Flint, Eric. II. Title: Ring of fire 3. III. Title: Ring of fire three.

  PS648.F3R554 2011

  813’.0876608—dc22

  2011015813

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  To the memory of

  Jim DeMarce and Betsy Boyes

  Preface

  Eric Flint

  Short fiction has always been an integral part of the 1632 series. The third volume in the series was an anthology of short fiction: Ring of Fire, which came out after 1632 and 1633. More than a decade has gone by since 1632 was published in February of 2000, and seven years since the first Ring of Fire anthology was published in 2004. Over the course of that time, to date, nine novels have appeared in the series and the same number of anthologies.

  The anthologies fall into three categories: the Ring of Fire volumes; the paper editions of the Grantville Gazette, whose stories are taken from the electronic magazine by that name; and braided-story anthologies. Only one volume has so far appeared in that last category, 1634: The Ram Rebellion. The second one, 1636: The Wars on the Rhine, is being put together at the moment.

  Roughly, the distinction between the three types of anthologies is as follows:

  The Gazette volumes represent the traditional type of anthologies connected with popular series. The stories are all set in the 1632 universe, but have no particular relationship to each other and may or may not have much impact on the series as a whole. Some do, but they are not chosen for that reason. They are included simply because Paula Goodlett and I think they’re good stories. (Paula is the editor of the magazine from which the stories are selected.)

  The braided-story anthologies like 1634:The Ram Rebellion are collections of short fiction that share a common story arc. The “short” fiction involved always includes at least one short novel.

  The Ring of Fire anthologies are more loosely organized. But, with a few exceptions, every story in the anthology is either closely connected to existing story lines in the series or opens up new story lines for later development. And each volume ends with a short novel written by me.

  In this third Ring of Fire volume, my short novel (“Four Days on the Danube”) provides the sub-plot hinted at in 1636: The Saxon Uprising and serves as a bridge to the next novel in the series centered on Mike Stearns.

  Chuck Gannon’s story “Upward Mobility” comes just before mine because it provides some of the background for my story.

  Mercedes Lackey’s story “Dye Another Day” lays some of the basis for a novel she and I will be writing later in the series.

  Walter Hunt’s story “Les Ailes du Papillon” is connected to a novel that he and I are working on at the moment. And, as with Chuck Gannon’s other story, “Birds of a Feather,” it starts to bring the New World into the series.

  Panteleimon Roberts’ “Mir Arash Khan” and Kim Mackey’s “Salonica” do the same thing for the Ottoman Empire, which will also come to play a prominent role in the series as time goes on.

  The Far East has so far been almost completely absent in the 1632 series. Garrett Vance’s “All God’s Children in the Burning East” begins to change that situation. Other stories develop the series in still different ways. Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett’s “Royal Dutch Airlines” illustrates the ongoing development of air travel—as does Gannon’s “Upward Mobility.” David Carrico’s “Sweet Strings” continues his exploration of the impact of the Ring of Fire on music—and, at least indirectly, helps lay some of the basis for a novel he and I are writing entitled 1636: Symphony for the Devil. Aspects of Jewish history have been an important part of the series since the very beginning. Tim Roesch’s “Falser Messiah” continues in that tradition.

  In one way or another, all of the stories in this volume open up or further develop various themes in the 1632 series. And, at least in my opinion, all of them are good stories in their own right.

  I hope you enjoy them.

  Dye Another Day

  Mercedes Lackey

  Prague was remarkably pleasant for a city that had been the subject of a Defenestration slightly less than twenty years ago. Tom Stone had not retained a lot of facts from his old college classes at Purdue, especially not the History electives he’d taken, but that one—“The Defenestration of Prague,” had stuck with him all these years. He loved that phrase—of course, all that it meant was that three people had been thrown out of a window and had lived because they had landed in a manure pile, but it sounded as if some great catastrophe had taken place. Not so amusing was the fact that the act had been central to the start of the Thirty Years’ War that the up-timers had landed right smack in the middle of.

  At any rate, Wallenstein had been a good steward of the place. He’d done a damn fine job of keeping most of the mayhem out of the city.

  Morris and Judith Roth, who had moved there to expand their very profitable jewelry business, were hosting Tom and his down-time wife Magda—which meant a certain amount of up-timer comfort amidst the down-timer “ambience.” Upholstered furniture, for instance. Backless wooden benches, hard wooden c
hairs, these were the norm down-time. There was some upholstered furniture, but it wasn’t what he would have called “padded,” and the older he got, the more he appreciated cushioning. The heavily cushioned chair he was sitting in now was luring him into a discussion he ordinarily would have steered clear of. It was almost political. Tom didn’t like politics at all, and he especially didn’t like down-timer politics.

  The subject at hand was the king of Bohemia himself, Wallenstein, who was an ally of the United States of Europe. He was very clearly sick and his nurse, a former hardscrabble Grantville native, was afraid he was dying. The problem was that Wallenstein had some very decided notions about physicians and what they could and could not do with, to, or around him, and that was making diagnosis...difficult. To say the least. Of course, when you lived in a time when you didn’t surrender as much as a hair off your head because someone might use it to curse you with, you could understand his point. A sick king would not want to disrobe in front of a crowd, because someone in that crowd would surely pass on information about his condition to his enemies—but he also would not want to disrobe in front of a physician, alone, because that would be the ideal time for an assassin, perhaps even in the person of that physician, to strike.

  And as for up-time medical instruments being used on him—well, how was he to be sure they would do what the up-timers said they would do?

  “On the one hand, Wallenstein should have been dead already,” Tom Stone mused to his wife and youngest son. “He should have been assassinated over a year ago. I mean, you could say, like, I dunno, karma? Or maybe the timeline trying to correct itself or...something?” He wished his son hadn’t dragged him into this. All he’d wanted to do was to get back to Grantville for a while and forget about parading around Italy as if he was some sort of genius, like Galileo, when he wasn’t. He was just an up-time dope farmer with most of a pharmacy degree and a knack for the sort of herbal-slash-pioneering style of medicine that the hippies of his commune had used instead of the real doctors none of them could afford.

  Gerry Stone sighed. “You read too many science fiction books,” he replied.

  Tom raised a bushy eyebrow. “We’re living in a science fiction book,” he pointed out. “Just in case you hadn’t noticed.” He pondered the situation with Wallenstein a little more. “On the other hand, I haven’t seen a lot of evidence of other people dropping dead that should have been dead already, so it’s probably not that. What’s Edith say?”

  Morris snorted. “That she’s not a doctor.”

  “Well neither am I!” Tom protested, feeling extremely uneasy.

  “But Tomas, you are ein Doktor,” Magda corrected him. “Universitat of Padua makes you vun.”

  She insisted on speaking English in the presence of notable up-timers like the Roths, instead of the Amideutsch she was more comfortable with. Her speech was comprehensible enough, though, if a bit garbled and heavily accented.

  “I am Frau Doktor now,” she added proudly. “I haf married a Doktor! Papa is so pleased!”

  Tom groaned. Although being granted the title of “Doctor” by the university in Padua had added considerably to his social status, by his own estimation, given the general level of knowledge among the down-timers, it was pretty much the equivalent of buying your doctorate from a diploma mill, or being ordained as a High Priest of Zen Druidism.

  “All hail the tree that is not there,” he muttered. Magda looked puzzled, but Gerry jumped on what he’d said.

  “See, now that is exactly why you’re what Edith needs right now!” he exclaimed. “You know all that New Age crap! Shoot, I think Lothlorien Commune probably had one of every crackpot out there, given some of the stories you’ve told me!”

  “But I don’t believe that New Age crap!” Tom protested feebly.

  Gerry merely fixed him with a stern gaze that looked remarkably like the one his father used to nail him with when he didn’t want to mow the lawn. “You can come up with some mystical sounding garbage that will let you do some kind of tests, and if you can do that, you can probably figure out what’s wrong with him. And then you can figure out how to wrap the treatment in more mumbo-jumbo that will ensure he actually follows what’s been prescribed.”

  Gerry wasn’t backing down, but neither was Tom. “I’d have to go back to Grantville. I’d need to dig into the stuff in the commune library. All the way back to Grantville, then dig through all those boxes of books in storage.” He nailed Gerry with the same look. “I’d take months.”

  “No, you don’t,” Gerry replied, just as stubbornly. “You don’t have to convince another believer that you know what you’re talking about. You just have to convince Wallenstein enough that he’ll take whatever meds he’s advised to take—or whatever it is Edith and Doc think he needs to do. You just have to give him something that sounds plausible so he’ll stop listening to the astrologers. And now he’s listening to Gribbleflotz too, since he showed up in Prague.”

  “But why me?” That was what he didn’t get.

  “Because you’re the only living hippy in Grantville,” said Roth. “Logic and science aren’t going to work on Wallenstein. We need something as kooky as Kirlian auras, and you’re our expert on crazy religions.”

  What made him the expert? He was almost agnostic, for crying out loud! He’d seen so many flakes with religion come and go at Lothlorien that—well, he was only sure of one thing. God was probably laughing Her socks off at humankind. “Did you see what they came up with this week? Holy Me!”

  “I spent the Harmonic Convergence in bed,” he reminded them, sinking a little into the chair and hoping that Magda would not ask “and with whom?” “I didn’t do Channeling. I refused to have my Chak—”

  He stopped.

  “You haf thought of something!” Magda exclaimed. “I am being know that face you are being make!” She clasped her hands together gleefully.

  Tom groaned. “It’s quackery,” he said.

  “Ja, und?” Magda dismissed that with a wave of her graceful little hand.

  “It’s—I don’t remember a lot of it—”

  “So you make it up. Or you borrow from other stuff.” Gerry was just as dismissive. Judith and Morris leaned forward.

  Tom sighed. “Chakras,” he said, reluctantly. “I’m going to go to hell for this, I just know it.”

  Judith and Morris looked at each other. “I vaguely recollect something about chakras—isn’t that some acupuncture thing?” she asked, worriedly. “Wallenstein will believe in a lot of nonsense, but I am fairly sure he won’t sit there and be made into a pincushion.”

  Tom shook his head. “No, I mean, some acupuncturists used the whole chakra thing as another explanation for their stuff, but, no, acupuncture is Chinese and chakra healing is Indian. There’s supposed to be seven energy vortices up your spine, each one a different color. And that’s why I’m going to hell.”

  Gerry tilted his head to the side. “I don’t get it—”

  “Colors. Energy colors, aura colors. It works with the Kirlian aura nonsense. Which is why I’m going to hell. I’m not going to convince him to stop listening to Gribbleflotz. Edith tells me the Kirlian stuff is actually an improvement over the crap the astrologers were feeding Wallenstein. I’m just going to convince him that Gribbleflotz is right. In fact, I am probably going to end up giving Gribbleflotz even more ideas.”

  “Does it matter?” Morris demanded. “For God’s sake, Tom, even if we were only talking about extending a man’s life, here, I’d put up with Gribbleflotz! But it’s not just that, we need to keep Wallenstein alive to protect his son for as long as possible, we’re extending the stability of the region and the relationship we have with—”

  “I know, I know,” Tom interrupted, rubbing his temples. “Dammit, I hate politics. I really hate down-timer politics. They can get you killed.”

  “Not dis time, Tomas,” Magda said, reaching out and patting his hand comfortingly. “Dis time ve make life, not var.”

  *
* *

  Tom might be “Doctor Thomas Stone of the University of Padua,” but if he was going to convince Wallenstein to talk to him—and get diagnosed and treated by him—he was going to have to look the part. The part being—he was going to have to look the way a seventeenth-century Bohemian thought a Tibetan guru would look.

  Which was to say...colorful. As if he was his own best customer at the dye works. It started with a turban the size of a small country house, moved down through a caftan and floor-length vest with a wide sash, and ended with bright red felt boots.

  “I look ridiculous,” he grumbled, adjusting his turban. It was huge, and centered with an enormous brooch. He had the feeling that he looked just like Johnny Carson playing the phony fortuneteller, Carnac the Magnificent.

  “Nein, nein, you look ausgezeichnet!” Magda replied, her eyes dancing. “So impressive!”

  “Your mouth says ‘no’ but your face says ‘yes,’ ” he muttered.

  At least he could take comfort in the fact that if he looked ludicrous, his assistant looked worse.

  He’d decided early on that if he was going to be able to pull this off, he was going to need some help, and it wasn’t going to be Edith, devoted to the royal family though she might be. It had taken his assistant five days on fast horses to get here, and he hadn’t been happy about his costume, but—well, he was a reservist in the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s National Guard, and he was under orders. The orders had come from Ed Piazza himself, the SoTF’s president.

  “Are you ready yet?” Tom called into the next room.

  “I hate you, Stoner,” came the growled reply.

  Tom sighed. “Look, I’m doing the best that I can. It could be worse.”

  “I’d like to know how.” George Mundell shuffled into the room, glowering. “First off, I am never going to get this crap off my skin. It’s gonna have to wear off.”