Grantville Gazette-Volume XIII Read online

  She went back to finger-counting. "Third, get the Brethren involved. Fourth—whatever else you do—make sure Red Sybolt's involved."

  The thumb got wiggled now. "Fifth—maybe this should actually be first—establish contact with some Polish radicals."

  She gave Melissa a querying glance. "I assume there are some in the here and now, yes?"

  Melissa made a face. "Hell, my knowledge of Polish history is only general, it doesn't run to details like that. But . . . I'd say there pretty much have to be. Poland produced almost as many radicals and revolutionaries over the centuries as it did grain and layabout noblemen. For that matter, the nobility itself produced a fair number of them. Remember Count Casimir Pulaski, in the American revolution?"

  James looked startled. "Is that who Pulaski Boulevard in Chicago is named after?"

  "Doctors," scoffed Melissa. "Talk about a self-absorbed class of people. Yes, dear, that is who one of your home town's main streets is named after. But don't get a swelled head about it. There must be a thousand Pulaski streets or avenues or boulevards in the United States, in just about as many towns."

  She looked back at Judith. "So, at a guess, I'd say you're right. Keep going, girl, you're doing fine."

  Judith switched hands and started counting the fingers of the right. "Sixth—"

  "How the hell am I supposed to find Polish revolutionaries?" demanded Morris. "I'm a damn jeweler. Fine, my family came from Krakow. That's ancient history."

  "Stop whining, husband. We're in ancient history." As deftly as you could ask for, Judith switch her hands back and wiggled the ring finger of the left. "Red Sybolt, remember? He's been a labor agitator for years. By now, if he hasn't run across some wild-eyed Polish rebels, I'll be surprised. Plant Red in a desert island in the middle of the Pacific, and he'd somehow manage to rouse a rabble."

  Morris chuckled. "Well, that's true. Of course, first I'd have to track him down. He hasn't been in Prague for months."

  "That's a manageable problem. Somebody will know where he is. Moving right along"—she switched hands again and wiggled a forefinger—"you need to get Uriel Abrabanel—remember him? he works for you already—to start investigating the chances of cutting a deal with the Austrians. Now that that bigoted bastard Ferdinand II died, we're dealing with a new emperor in Vienna. And his son's a lot more capable than his father, by all accounts."

  "Certainly is," said Melissa. "He's not narrow-minded, the way his father was—and his sister Maria Anna just turned half of Europe upside down thinking for herself." She gave James a smile that bordered on being lascivious. "I was in such a hurry to get back to my squeeze after we got out of England that I didn't stick around in Holland long enough for the wedding between Maria Anna and Don Fernando. But I got plenty of details from Rebecca, while I was there. The sister is smart as a whip—and she thinks very highly of her brother the new Austrian emperor. So does her sidekick who pretends to be a feeble old lady, Doña Mencia, and let me tell you that no moss ever grew on that woman's brain."

  Morris scratched his jaw. "'More capable' could be bad as well as good, y'know. Still, it's worth looking into. In fact, if I know Uriel, he's already started." He eyed his wife skeptically. "And how many more rabbits are you going to pull out of your fingers for me?"

  She took a deep breath. "One. See if you can make an accommodation with the Cossacks. You'd have to find a suitable emissary, of course."

  Morris' eyes widened. "Cossacks? For God's sake, Judith! They're the same murderous bastards who led the Chmielnicki Pogrom—which is named after their leader—in the first place! Not to mention such minor accomplishments as the pogroms at Kiev and Kishinev." His face grew hard. "Or the massacres carried out in the Ukraine during the Russian civil war by the counter-revolutionary armies, half of which were made up of Cossacks or their hangers-on. The stinking swine murdered something like a hundred thousand Jews before the Red Army put a stop to it. Fuck the Cossacks. Every one of them can rot in hell, as far as I'm concerned."

  "I'm with Morris," said Nichols stoutly.

  "Stick to doctoring," sniffed Melissa. "See if you can come up with a cure for excess testosterone, while you're at it." To Morris she said: "You're being childish, to be blunt. How is dealing with Cossacks in the here and now any different from what Mike Stearns has been doing dealing with Germans? Compared to what they did to Jews in the Holocaust, the Cossacks are nothing."

  "Well, yeah, but . . ."

  "But what? Since when did you start believing in racial destiny, Morris? Nazi Germany was the product of centuries of history. Change the history, like Mike is doing, and you eliminate them before they even appear. So why can't you do the same with the Cossacks?"

  "Because they're nothing but a bunch of—"

  "Mounted hooligans? Thugs? For Pete's sake, Morris, in this day and age—early seventeenth century, remember?—the 'Cossacks' are barely even 'Cossacks' yet. They're just getting started. A lot of them are former serfs, in fact, who ran away from their masters. We're at least a century away from the time they started serving the Russian tsars as their mailed fist. This is the best time I can think of to stop that in its tracks, too."

  Morris looked mulish. Melissa looked exasperated. "Dammit, you asked. At my age, I'd hardly have come racing to Prague on horseback of my own volition."

  "You rode all the way?" asked Judith.

  James grinned. "She rode on a horse for exactly one day. After that, she put her foot down and insisted we hire a carriage. One of those litter-type carriages, of course, not a wheeled one. Going over the mountains on a wheeled vehicle is best left to mad dogs and Englishmen."

  It was Melissa's turn to look defensive. "I spent my youth waving a placard at demonstrations. I did not attend the kind of ladies' finishing school where Mary Simpson learned to ride."

  "How's she doing, by the way?" asked Morris.

  "Given her recent hair-raising adventures, quite well. It helped a lot, of course, that when she got back to Magdeburg her son was waiting for her along with her husband. It was quite a family reunion, after their long estrangement. I know, because I was there."

  Judith peered at her. "You were there? I thought you detested the Simpsons. Well, except Tom."

  "I did, sure, when John Simpson ran that godawful campaign against Mike three years ago." Melissa waved her hand airily. "But three years is ancient history, as fast as things have been changing since the Ring of Fire. I think quite well of them, these days."

  She pointed an accusatory finger at Morris. "And there's a lesson for you. If I can make friends with Mary Simpson, why can't you do it with Cossacks?"

  He threw up his hands. "They're barbarians, for the love of God!"

  "Again, so what? Yes, they're not far removed from barbarism. What do you expect, from a society being forged out of runaway serfs and bandits on the borderlands? Nobody is simply one thing or another, Morris. It's always more complicated. To go back to Mary Simpson, she's still haughty as all hell—can be, anyway—and I don't think she'll ever really be able to see the world except through her own very upper crust perspective. But that's not all there is to the woman, not by a long shot. The trick is finding a way—which is exactly what Mike did—to match her and her husband properly to the right circumstances. Bring out their best, instead of their worst. So do the same with the Cossacks."

  "They don't have a 'best side,' that I can see," Morris groused.

  "Oh, that's silly," said his wife. "Of course they do, even if it's only courage. If they hadn't been tough bastards, the tsars couldn't have used them in the first place."

  A young servant entered the salon. "Dinner is ready, Lady Judith."

  Judith rose. "Thank you, Rifka. Come along, folks. You must be starving by now."

  * * *

  To be continued in Grantville Gazette, Volume 14, available from Webscriptions on Nov 1, 2007

  Protected Species

  Written by Garrett W. Vance

  Summer of 1634

  "Al
l right everyone, hold real still!" The small group of third graders froze, looks of excitement on their faces. What great kids! There was movement in the tall reeds along the edges of the narrow inlet; once a West Virginia hollow, now an arm of a tree lined lake formed by a Thuringian stream colliding with a Ring of Fire hillside appearing in its path. It was harder to see 'the rim' of the ring these days, time had meshed and melded the North American and European ecologies along its border. From out of the native water grass that had found a home in the formerly West Virginian soil appeared a mother duck and ten brown downed ducklings, much to everyone's delight.

  "That's a 'Wood Duck'!" Pam told the gathered students of the summer nature program she was putting on in conjunction with the middle school. "It's one of the species that came through the Ring of Fire. This new lake has created a perfect habitat for it. I'll bet her nest is in those pine trees over there." Pam pointed to the pines that lined the lake's edge in what had once been a Thuringian stream valley. The ghostly silver tops of less fortunate trees below them poked out of the surface along the wooded shore; they had drowned when the lake formed but their protruding upper branches and sunken trunks provided excellent homes for fish and water insects as well as protective cover for shorebirds. Pam's practiced eyes found a European kingfisher perched on a dead branch waiting for a fat minnow to target. The kingfishers were shy but maybe the kids would be able to get a glimpse later if they stayed quiet—right now there were ducklings in front of them. There was no point in trying to drag their attention away just yet; baby ducks are a hard act to follow!

  "The male of this species was considered to be one of up-time America's most beautiful birds. There are no other ducks like it in Europe, fossil studies told us that it originated in North America and its closest relative is the Mandarin duck of China. I'm really glad they came along with us. If we're lucky we will see this group's poppa before we end the day." The kids oohed and aahed appreciatively. Their accompanying schoolteacher asked the kids to open their sketch books to record their sighting as the family of wood ducks paddled around in the nearby shallows. Pam wandered over to where Gerbald stood careful watch farther up the hollow's steep side. Despite his usual impassive expression Pam could see wrinkles of pleasure had formed around his bright blue eyes. Gerbald was such a softy under that stony exterior, the retired soldier was immensely enjoying playing bodyguard for the children.

  The summer nature program was proving to be a resounding success; everyone involved was having a lot of fun, even stoic Gerbald. Pam felt proud of the program that had been her brainchild. Her interest in birds had grown to include the entire ecology that they were a part of, she had spent long hours in the National Library devouring all the material she could find; she was a well trained researcher and had rapidly absorbed a vast amount of information. She was also making progress on her pet project, writing and illustrating her Birds of the USE -A Field Guide. It was fun to think that she would be the default 'John J Audubon' of this universe, something that would have been impossible to imagine in her old life. She smiled up into the blue skies of seventeenth-century Germany, a place that was finally feeling like home.

  * * *

  The next day, Pam and Gerbald led a group of lively sixth graders up the now well worn trail to the lake. She enjoyed their cheerful banter as they lollygagged along, even though the noise was probably scaring off all the birds within a mile radius. Pam marveled at the adaptability of children, the mixed group of up-time and down-time Americans were yakking away in an untidy mishmash of English and German. Pam's German had progressed to where she could catch most it but apparently an arcane slang vocabulary was already developing, indecipherable to the hopelessly un-hip ears of an adult.

  As she walked through the sun dappled woods listening to the babble around her, Pam reminisced on a long ago dinner party at the home of a work colleague from Morgantown who had spent many years working in Japan and had returned with a Japanese wife. At the table the two of them spoke in perfectly normal English. Of course, his very charming wife barely had an accent; but, when they were alone together in the kitchen bringing out more wine or another course, Pam overheard them both switch to a nearly incomprehensible mix of their respective languages. " Atsui yo, use the oven mitts, neh!" Pam didn't want to embarrass them, but couldn't help but ask them about it; her hosts just laughed. "Forgive our 'Japan-glish', we can't help it!" They explained that some words just "sounded better" in one or the other languages and so when trying to get an idea across they chose freely from both vocabularies. Listening to her junior birdwatchers Pam was sure she was hearing the sound of the future of their hybrid nation. Up-time Americans were going to have to get bilingual fast or they wouldn't be able to understand what their own kids were talking about!

  Pam shushed the exuberant group as they arrived at the inlet. "All right everyone, it's time to be quiet and see which birds are here with us today. Yesterday there was a mother wood duck with her ducklings and they were darn cute!" The kids quieted down more quickly than she would expect. An excellent German influence on our up-time kids—when it's time to be quiet they do it, no argument! Pam was not one who flinched at applying some strictness in a child's upbringing, and rather admired the Germans for their expertise on the subject. She hoped her own Walt didn't resent her too much and she was awfully proud of how he had turned out. I wasn't the easiest mother to have, I know . . . I liked things my way and was damned picky! But maybe the discipline I taught him is making things easier for him as a young adult in this age. I hope so, anyway.

  The kid's school teacher at Fluharty Middle School, Stacey Antoni, a very pleasant lady who had lost a husband to the Ring of Fire, had gathered them by the shore in a semblance of order, ready for Pam to get started. Gerbald had taken his usual watchful place on the hill side, their safety was in good hands. Pam began her introduction.

  "This lake is an excellent example of the adaptation and mixture between North American and European ecologies along the Ring of Fire's rim. These reeds are a native German species that find they like the richness of West Virginia's soil much to their liking. The reeds are providing excellent habitat for a North American duck species, the wood duck, which we will hopefully—" Pam stopped her lecture when she noticed she had completely lost the attention of several schoolgirls nearest the water's edge.

  "Oh, look! The liebchen, they are so cute!"

  Baby ducks. Pam smiled ruefully. There is no competing with baby ducks.

  "—see today. Well everyone, it appears that we have met our American ducks. The mother wood duck has grown accustomed to our visits and is no longer very shy. They like to stay in shallow water where they can find a lot of small insects to eat—"

  "Ms. Miller!" A sweetly gawky-looking boy whose weight hadn't caught up with his latest growth spurt interrupted her. "Ms. Miller, where is the mother duck?"

  Pam stepped closer to the still waters. The ducklings were huddled together beside a clump of marsh grass. They were strangely quiet and weren't engaged in their usual search for food. Pam scanned the shore for the wood duck hen; she was nowhere to be seen.

  "That's odd." Pam looked back at the silent ducklings. There were only eight of them—the day before there had been ten.

  Pam saw Gerbald, who seemed to possess an uncanny sixth sense when it came to trouble, was already coming down the hillside toward the group; a flash of blue as well trained eyes scanned the terrain from the shade of his monstrous hat's floppy brim.

  Pam turned back to her group of students. "Well kids, it is a bit unusual for a mother duck to leave her babies unattended, but not unheard of. She may just be out looking for food and thought they would be safe here. Now is a good chance for you to get out your sketchbooks and get a picture drawn of them while they are sitting still." Pam flashed a quick concerned look to their teacher who returned a subtle nod. Message received, good teachers have an instinct for trouble. The teacher quickly went about getting the notebooks deployed and the students distra
cted with work. Pam walked casually but quickly to Gerbald who had moved quietly along the shore toward the inlet's mouth, his gaze alternating between the muddy ground and the vicinity.

  "Gerbald, the mother duck and some of her ducklings are missing. I have a bad feeling about it. . . . Maybe a fox?"

  "Pam, I am looking for tracks. If they are here I will find." They didn't discuss the subject much but Pam knew that Gerbald had extensive hunting experience. As a former professional soldier there was no doubt a good many of his meals had come from the region's many forests. Gerbald was a very savvy woodsman. Born and raised in West Virginia, Pam was no stranger to the hunter's art. She had even brought down a buck herself on a hunting trip with her uncles and cousins back in her teens. She hadn't burst into tears as so many do, she had established too tough an exterior for that, especially in front of her boy cousins; but she hadn't relished the experience one bit either, and felt some regret at the sight of the death she had made. She accepted her family's praise, ate the venison, enjoyed the taste; but once was enough. Hunting was all right and a fact of life—within reason.