Grantville Gazette-Volume XIII Read online

  "What are we making?" Karl asked, after he'd taken a turn at the sledge.

  "Tongs," Thomas said. "They want twenty pairs for lifting iron rails." He finished mounding the coals around the iron on the hearth and then picked up a finished pair of tongs. "Joseph, help me."

  Yossie took one handle while Thomas took the other and then used them to lift a yard-long chunk of rail. "The Americans say this weighs a hundred pounds. The rails they want to move are more than ten times as long."

  "So much iron?" Karl asked.

  "Yes, and it's not just iron, it's fine steel," Thomas said, going back to the fire and poking at the coals. "There is an iron road to the electricity mill, and they want to connect it with this mine.

  "Yossie, Karl," he said, pulling the glowing iron bar from the fire. "Now we will try something. Both of you take hammers, and each of you strike in turn. The work will go much faster."

  Yossie had only learned to follow Thomas's hammer signals the week before and Karl was a complete newcomer. They made many mistakes, but by noon, they'd forged another pair of tongs. When the three of them did manage to work together smoothly, it seemed that the rain of hammer blows on hot iron was almost musical.

  Yossie had experienced something similar during long press runs in the print shop in Hanau. When the printer, the pressman and the ink boy got into perfect rhythm, the work became like a dance. When that happened, they seemed to get far more done without working any harder than usual.

  As they ate their noon meal, Yossie noticed that Fritz was eating very slowly and with extreme care. "You must have really hurt yourself," Yossie said.

  Fritz nodded. "I was in the front ranks," he said, carefully.

  "Everyone round him was shot down," Karl added.

  "Man beside me exploded," Fritz went on. "Bit my tongue to stop scream." He shook his head ruefully. "American guns are horrible. Don't know why I'm alive."

  Thomas had been silent, but now he spoke, in a low angry voice. "Were you at Magdeburg?"

  "Yes," Fritz said, looking glum.

  "The American guns were worse than what you did in Magdeburg? At least the Americans had the mercy to stop shooting when you were defeated."

  "I wasn't there when the city fell," Karl said. "I was out foraging."

  "And did you show any mercy to the villagers whose food you took?"

  A tense silence fell over the group while they finished their meals. The two Bavarians sat apart from Yossie and Thomas, and several times. it seemed that Thomas was about to say something more to them.

  When Yossie finished saying the grace after meals, he wanted to take a few minutes at the forge to work on a project of his own. He had a broken knife blade in his pocket, good steel, and he wanted to re-forge it into a punch. He'd helped cut type in Hanau, and in his spare time, he was slowly working on cutting his own Hebrew alphabet, a project that had begun when he'd complained about the letter shin in the Hanau type face.

  When he got to the forge, he found Thomas stirring the coals with his back to the two Bavarians, pointedly ignoring them.

  "So," Thomas said, turning abruptly. The look on his face was grim. "After Magdeburg, where did you go?"

  "South to Halberstadt," Karl said, "We stuck it to the Jews there, then followed Father Tilly to Eisleben."

  Yossie froze.

  "Thale?" Thomas said. "Did you go through Thale?"

  "I don't remember the names of the places we visited. Why do you care?"

  "Because I come from Thale," Thomas barked. "I lived my whole life there, my smithy was there, until your accursed army drove me out."

  Yossie hardly heard a word after the words "we stuck it to the Jews." Karl had said it in passing, as if it had hardly been important. Yossie knew Jews from Halberstadt. Two families had arrived in Hanau's Jewish quarter a decade earlier, bringing stories of mob violence to rival the horrors Yossie had survived as a small child in Frankfurt.

  Yossie wanted to confront the Bavarian, but for a Jew to confront a Christian was to invite disaster. Just the day before, Yossie and Rabbi Yakov had spoken at length about whether it was time to tell people that they were Jews. The Americans of Grantville were proud that they didn't ask about a man's religion. Yossie and his companions hadn't set out to live like Spanish Marranos, hiding their Jewishness in fear of the Christian world. That is what they were becoming, and they didn't like it.

  They were fairly certain that it was safe to tell the Adduccis that they were Jews. Shortly before the two Bavarians had arrived, Yossie had even begun to think that it might be safe to tell Thomas. Now though, the arrival of the Bavarians made it clear that there was no safety.

  While Yossie's recovered his composure, Thomas was losing his.

  "Why d'you care 'bout this place, this Magdala?" Karl asked.

  "Because I was there!" Thomas choked out. "For a month, I thought I'd found a new home on the road between Jena and Weimar, and then your damned foragers burned me out."

  "I was just a pikeman!" Karl said. "Not a general."

  Thomas grabbed Karl by the throat and shoved him hard against the chimney of the forge. "It was pikemen like you that killed my daughter!"

  "Stop," Yossie shouted. "Karl didn't kill your daughter."

  "No," Thomas said, slowly loosening his grip. As he let go and backed away, he looked almost as beaten as Karl.

  Yossie found that he was shaking. As he offered a hand to Karl, he wondered what had come over him. From childhood, he'd been taught not to interfere in disputes between Christians, and he was fairly certain that Karl would be among the last to come to the aid of a Jew.

  "We didn't go east of Weimar," Fritz said, in Karl's defense. "We were in Erfurt, then south to Ilmenau and Badenburg."

  Thomas' anger at the Bavarians was a shock. Yossie had known that Thomas was avoiding talking about his family, but he had always seemed to be a very calm man.

  "Come on, folks. We have tongs to make," Thomas said, with a sigh. "Work is easier than yelling at each other."

  Shortly after they set to work, Bob Eckerlin stopped outside the forge to watch them. He stepped inside when they put the iron back in the fire to reheat. "Thomas, Joe, I need you to make something."

  "Was?" Thomas asked.

  "Can you come take a look?"

  Thomas looked at the iron in the fire and then at Yossie. He hesitated for a moment, and then handed him the small hammer. "Joseph, see what you can do."

  As Thomas walked away with Bob, Yossie realized that he'd just been promoted. He wasn't entirely sure he was ready to direct the work of the two Bavarians, but he had to try.

  He took hold of the cold end of the bar they'd only begun to forge and pulled it from the fire, setting the hot end on the anvil and tapping it with the small hammer. They'd begun work beating the handle to shape, but it was still far from the long graceful taper that was their goal.

  Even with the heavy leather glove he wore on his left hand, each hammer blow sent a shock up his arm. Only when he held the work-piece at exactly the right angle against the anvil was it bearable. The iron cooled quickly. After five blows of the heavy sledge, it was already time to put the work-piece back in the fire.

  "How long you been with these foreigners, these Grantvillers?" Karl asked.

  "I came here," he said, and then paused while using a piece of rebar to mound the burning coals over the iron. "It was a month ago, just before Pentecost," he finally said, remembering the conversation with Pastor Green that Sabbath afternoon.

  "What d'you make of these Grantvillers? Do you believe their story about the Ring of Fire?"

  "I have no reason to doubt it," Yossie said. "The first rumors I heard called it the pit of Hell, but that's because I came from the south-west." He pointed out the open side of the smithy toward the dark cliff of the ring wall. "To the folks living up there, one moment there was a high hill here, and then bang, they were looking down at Grantville."

  "You believe that story, that it just happened with a bang?"r />
  "I was on a hill outside Kissingen that Sunday afternoon. That's a town three or four days west of here. I saw something." He paused. He'd never told anyone this story. "It was a flash to the east, as bright as the sun, and as brief as a lightning bolt, but perfectly round, the size of an Imperial thaler sitting on the horizon. The iron is hot, let's get to work."

  Thomas came back into the smithy as they were finishing forging the taper of the handle. He watched them until they finished hammering, and then took the cold end of the bar from Yossie and inspected their work.

  "Not bad," he said. "Start forging the handle on another bar while I make what they need."

  "What do they need?" Yossie asked.

  "This broke," Thomas said, holding out two pieces of iron. "It was a brace for part of the coal-washing machine, and it broke because there was only one where there should have been two."

  As Thomas went into the shop building to look for an iron bar, Fritz picked up a piece of coal from the bin beside the hearth. "They wash this?" he asked puzzled.

  "That building is all for coal washing," Yossie said, pointing to a large building that seemed to be made entirely of rippled metal. "I don't understand how coal can be washed, but they are having some trouble making those machines work."

  When Thomas came out of the shop building, Yossie, Karl and Fritz were hard at work. As soon as Yossie put his work-piece in the fire, Thomas took over the anvil, and for some time after that, Yossie and Thomas alternated at the anvil while Karl swung the hammer for both of them.

  When they finally took a break, Yossie spoke. "Thomas. You never told me about your daughter." The question on his mind was an innocent one, but by the end of the day, he would regret speaking.

  * * *

  To be continued in Volume 14

  Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part Five,

  The Dog and Pony Show

  Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

  Natasha alighted from the carriage at her family's dacha outside of Moscow, along with her aunt, Sofia Petrovna. Both were wearing full regalia, "dressed to the nines," as Bernie put it. Aunt Sofia served as her chaperone, necessary in Moscovy's culture. While her brother, Vladimir Petrovich, was away in Grantville, someone had to assume responsibility for the lands. That responsibility fell on her. Young for it she might be, but she and Vlad were the last of their branch of the family. It was a wealthy branch. Thankfully, she and Vladimir had been raised by a free-thinking father who had been rather enamored of the west. She had been educated alongside Vlad. Fashionable or not, someone had to take care of things.

  Aunt Sofia turned to Boris. "Well, Boris Ivanovich, what do you suppose Bernie has done this time? I thought the stinks and noises from his bathroom were quite enough. What now?"

  Boris smiled. "One never knows, not with Bernie Janovich Zeppi, my lady. We shall just have to see. I am most concerned that he be well-behaved for the visit. And, Bernie being Bernie . . . one never knows."

  "It's not Bernie we need to worry about. It's the nerds," Natasha corrected. Boris knew she was right. What he was worried about wasn't really Bernie. After a good bit of pressure and growing interest in the Dacha, the Grantville Section of the Embassy Bureau, and the new products that were coming out, Boris and Natasha had arranged a tour of the Dacha for several people who had been pushing to see and know more about it. On the one hand, Boris had no objections. On the other, some of the spectators were very opposed to the changes that were happening in their society. He feared they might use this visit as an excuse to protest more. The problem wasn't just Bernie or just the nerds or even just the information coming from Vladimir. It was a combination of all of them.

  * * *

  The czar and czarina, Patriarch Filaret, several members of the cabinet and some of their wives, arrived over the next few hours and had to be provided quarters in the Dacha for their stay. The normal inhabitants of those rooms had been moved into outbuildings, and even into a large, heavy, double-walled tent. Natasha greeted each guest as they arrived.

  * * *

  Boris listened to the lecture on soil chemistry with half an ear. It wasn't that it was unimportant. In the long run, it might turn out to be drastically important. But Boris had other things on his mind.

  Boris Ivanovich Petrov was a spy. He was not the least bit ashamed of either the title or the meaning that it encompassed. He had been a field agent in Poland, England, and, most recently, Grantville. He had, on occasion, found it necessary to kill quietly from behind in defense of his czar and his mission. He took no joy in doing so, but didn't hesitate to, either. His new job as head of the Grantville Section of the Embassy Bureau was supposed to be a job in which that sort of thing was no longer necessary. That, unfortunately, hadn't proved to be the case.

  Starting about three months after his return to Moscow, several of the other bureaus wanted the up-timer reassigned to them to focus on their projects. The pressure had been increasing ever since, with only limited relief when he had given Cass Lowry to the military. The roads bureau wanted Bernie to spend all his time on road-making equipment. The farming bureau wanted him making farming machinery. He was also wanted to make medicines, concrete, steel, plastics, and who knew what else.

  There had been time for some of the effects to be felt since Bernie had arrived in Muscovy. Some road crews had the equipment he introduced and had been building and repairing roads much faster. A new quick-loading rifle was in limited production. Bernie insisted on calling it the AK3. This time Boris somewhat approved of the joke. Andrei Korisovich was head of the team that was developing the new rifle, but that wasn't the only reason he approved. Boris had seen up-timer movies that mentioned the AK47.

  Both the Swedish and Polish sections of the Embassy Bureau wanted Bernie transferred to them, and the Grantville Section shut down. The Swedish Section claimed jurisdiction because Bernie had become a subject, sort of, of the king of Sweden since he had left Grantville. The Polish Section claimed jurisdiction because Bernie was teaching what he knew about firearms.

  The knives were out, all over Moscow. Some of them were political and some made of steel. The political ones were by far the more dangerous.

  "By introducing nitrates into the soil." For a moment Boris was distracted from his thoughts. Nitrates and the nitric acid that could be produced from them, played an important role in the production of smokeless gun powder. No, the lecturer was talking about using clover and beans to enrich the soil on the Yaroslavich family estates this coming spring.

  Somehow, and Boris wasn't entirely sure how, he had gotten involved with the financial workings of the Yaroslavich family. It had seemed so innocent at the time. Vladimir Petrovich had merely offered letters of introduction to his sister, as well as several letters for her. In the letters to her, he had suggested that the Yaroslavich family should pay the czar a phenomenal amount for the Bernie/Grantville franchise and offered his dacha as a good place to put Bernie. By long-standing tradition, great houses and merchants of the empire paid the czar for the right to run commercial enterprises, like the import or export of goods, mining, or whatever.

  So the Yaroslavich family owned the Bernie/Grantville franchise. Bernie was a big part of the Grantville, or American, Section's turf. The American Section, along with the Yaroslavich family, controlled access to Bernie and, through Bernie, controlled access to the experts who had been brought to the Dacha to work with him. The Yaroslavich clan had the patent on everything that came out of the Dacha.

  It didn't seem like a large sum now, aside from the direct income to the Yaroslavich clan, which wasn't all that great. Yet.

  But the favors flowed like rivers. And favors were the currency of political power in Muscovy. If the mining bureau wanted a road to a new mine, it would not have to come just to the roads bureau, not now. Now it would have to come to the Grantville Section and the Yaroslavich clan. Boris had collected more favors since being made head of the Grantville Section than in all the rest of his career. On the
downside, when people came to him for favors he couldn't grant, he made enemies.

  With Bernie placed in their dacha, it became clear that the Yaroslavich family were backing the Grantville Section. So far, no one had had enough influence to change that. Which also meant that the Yaroslavich family was passing out favors. Natasha was picking up more and more IOU's from the high nobility. They weren't being stingy in a monetary sense, but there was a degree of political selectivity in their choices.

  But this was Moscow. Alliances could change at a moments notice. Or not. Now the patriarch was nervous, Boris heard. There were rumors that the Yaroslavich clan would try for the throne. Boris was confident that they had no such goal, but power carries its own implications.