Grantville Gazette, Volume X Read online

  Dina nodded. That sounded safe. She tried to make herself comfortable in the car seat. The seat belt wasn't very comfortable, but Phillip insisted she wear it, so she made the best of it.

  It was a still winter's morning. The moon was high in the sky, moonlight illuminated the countryside. Phillip, she could see, was fiddling with the radio-cassette player. Then he started the car moving forward. He was driving a little faster than normal, but as he had said, the road was clear of other traffic. Dina tried to relax. Suddenly she jerked. Another contraction. She didn't need Phillip's watch to know they were getting closer together.

  Dina noticed Phillip flicking a switch. She thought nothing had happened until she looked up at the road ahead. It was well illuminated for hundreds of paces ahead. She could see the beam hitting the windows of the neighbors. She sighed. She'd have to placate them when she got back from Grantville.

  "We'll soon be out of Jena, Dina. Then I'll be able to go a bit faster."

  "That'll be nice, Phillip." Dina snuggled deeper into her heavy fur coat. Phillip had one just like it. Sable, if she remembered what the furrier said. A special delivery from Russia. Whatever, it was very warm.

  * * *

  Dina jerked awake. She tried to work out where they were, but she wasn't used to seeing the countryside by moonlight. She turned to ask Phillip, but stopped at the sight of him concentrating on the road ahead. She looked out the side window, and rapidly turned back to face the front. Surely the landscape was going past overly fast. She edged over so she could see the speedometer, and immediately wished she hadn't. She sat back firmly in her seat, with both hands gripping it firmly.

  "You're awake, Dina? Don't worry, we'll soon be in Grantville."

  Dina swallowed. Surely Phillip shouldn't be looking at her when he was driving. "Keep your eyes on the road, Phillip."

  "Of course dear, but there's nothing to worry about. I know this road well."

  There was a screeching of tortured tires and Dina felt the car sliding.

  "Whoops! Sorry about that. Went around that curve a little fast. Nothing to worry about. There was nothing coming the other way. We'll soon be there, Dina. Rudolstadt should be just around this next curve."

  Dina could feel her nails digging into the upholstery. When would this nightmare trip end?

  She could hear the muted roar of the car engine reverberating back off the buildings as they sped through Rudolstadt. And Dina was sure they were speeding. Everything was wizzing past so much quicker than when Phillip normally drove through Rudolstadt. Even the sound of tires on cobblestones suggested excessive speed.

  Before she'd realized, they were through Rudolstadt. The hospital was only a few miles away.

  Leahy Medical Center

  Phillip screeched to a halt outside the admissions area at the Leahy Medical Center. He leaped out of the car and ran around to the passenger door. Even before he got to Dina, medical orderlies were approaching with a trolley. "It's my wife. She's about to have a baby. Two of them!"

  The orderlies carefully lifted Dina onto the padded trolley and set off for the medical center. Phillip ran alongside, holding Dina's hand. She was wheeled into a delivery room and transferred to a hospital bed. Dr. Shipley arrived and immediately suggested Phillip might like to wait outside.

  * * *

  Dina looked tired but happy. Dr. Shipley had claimed that it had been a remarkably easy labor. Phillip wasn't so sure. If that had been an easy delivery, he wasn't sure he wanted his Dina going through a difficult one. He'd already talked to Dr. Shipley about that. She had suggested that there was a simple medical procedure that could prevent him fathering another child. She had suggested he talk to Dina about the option. Phillip had been terrified for Dina. The way she screamed and yelled, she must have been in extreme pain. And the blood. He'd almost fainted at the sight of so much blood. But after the nurse had given her the two wrapped bundles, Dina had been all smiles. It was as if the pain had never occurred.

  He looked over at his children. A boy and a girl. He smiled. That meant there was one each. Not that a parent should place a claim on a child. But he was sure his daughter would take after her mother. His son, maybe he would have the look of his mother, too. That was all for the good. They'd have to think of names. Dina had suggested Salome Blandina for a girl, after her mother and step-mother. She had asked Phillip if the boy should be called Theophrastus, but he'd managed to dissuade her. Anyway, there was plenty of time to worry about names. Dina and the children were healthy. That was what was important.

  A Week Later,

  HDG Enterprizes (Jena)

  The car drew to a halt just outside their apartment in Jena. Dina waited for Phillip to open the door and help her out. That was when she saw the two women. One of them was a young American. That was probably Lori Drahuta. She'd indicated interest in finding out more about what the position at HDG entailed, and been invited to visit. The other woman looked much the same age. She had rich black hair and an unlined porcelain white face. Her clothes left little to the imagination. Who was this woman?

  Dina watched silently as the female approached a clearly embarrassed Phillip. She looked over at Frau Mittelhausen. The housekeeper looked embarrassed that the homecoming had been disrupted, but she wasn't looking at Phillip with condemnation. It struck Dina that Frau Mittelhausen's look was more one of pity.

  Dina looked back at the woman. There was something unnatural about her. Dina stepped closer.

  Makeup. That explained it. This female, whoever she was, gave the lie to the American claim that lead-based cosmetics were unhealthy. She had seen the sales records for the new Oxide of Zinken, and there was no indication that anybody was buying it in the quantities this female was using. She must be applying her makeup with a trowel. Dina was sure of one thing now. This female was not someone she wished to associate with. Her friend Ronella had pointed out an American woman dressed up and made up to appear much younger. She would have used the same expression, "mutton dressed as lamb" to describe this female. Obviously she was much older than she appeared. Just how much older was impossible to tell. Dina stepped up beside Phillip. One of his hands shot out and latched onto her hand.

  "Theophrastus. Aren't you pleased to see me?" the female asked.

  Dina felt the tension in Phillip. He gave her a beseeching look before returning his gaze to the female. "Hello, Mother."

  Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part 3:

  Boris, Natasha . . . But Where's Bullwinkle

  By Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

  "Order Kameroff to take his battalion to the west." The barely bearded Russian wearing two stars on his collar moved his finger along the map, over a set of hills then northwest along a river. "He is to take dispatch riders and notify us at the first sign of the enemy."

  "Yes sir," said the grizzled veteran with the graying beard half way down his chest and a single silver bar on his collar. There was probably a bit of amusement in his voice. But if the "general" felt any offense at that amusement, he kept it to himself.

  The "lieutenant" left to deliver the orders. The "general" hid a sigh. This was his first time in the War Room and he was trying hard to keep up a good front. But he was scared. He had been doing fairly well in the standard games. A little too well, it turned out. He looked over at "Captain" Timriovich. At least Boris wasn't looking too happy either. The "general," actually Third Lieutenant Igor Milosevic, had made the mistake of cleaning up at the standard board games sent by Vladimir Petrovich Yaroslavich. They had become all the rage in Muscovite military circles. With serious wagering on the outcomes.

  Igor looked back at the map, then pointed at a hill just north of the map piece that represented his main army. "We'll build the temporary fort here." He then described how he wanted it organized. He really was good at this stuff when he managed to forget for a moment about the real generals breathing down his neck. Before he had finished the "lieutenant" returned. Igor didn't even notice.

  * * *

&nbs
p; The "lieutenant" did notice. Gorgii Ameroff was an old campaigner. His rank was between that of a major and lieutenant colonel. Just at the moment, he was caught between being thoroughly impressed and heartily offended. Impressed because the "general" was mostly doing it right. For too long, the years of campaigning had taught him not to expect "doing it right" from soldiers that young. Offended for mostly the same reason. Gorgii Ameroff was a member of the bureaucratic or service nobility and held, roughly, middle rank. Totally aside from his youth, the "general" was from a modest family, more merchant class than nobility. Gorgii was still trying to work out how he felt about that. It just didn't seem right that this baker's son would have such talent or potential to gain such rank. The changes brought on by the Ring of Fire were disturbing and they would be increasing now that Vladimir had sent not just books and games but a person. A real live up-timer.

  * * *

  Bernie was going nuts. He had been at the dacha for a while now, and was frustrated. He had run headlong into a massive wall of ignorance and arrogance. Mostly, but not entirely, his own.

  "What is a gravity feed?" Filip Pavlovich asked. "How can one make water grave and serious? Water does not flow because it is serious. Water flows because water wants to return to its proper level. Aristotle said it. So to make this 'seriousness feed' the book speaks of, you would have to make the water serious. How do you do that?" Filip Pavlovich was in part having a bit of fun with Bernie, but only in part. The use of the word gravity in describing the system of getting a liquid from one place to another was confusing and a bit irritating. It obviously meant something different than seriousness but he didn't know precisely what. Besides, explaining that new meaning was the up-timer idiot's job. Filip Pavlovich saw no reason not to have a little fun in the process.

  "It didn't say water falls because it is serious." Bernie tried clenching his teeth and counting to ten. "It said that the force of gravity causes it to fall. It didn't say anything about water being serious, for crying out loud. The force of gravity is a force of nature. Oh, hell . . . never mind. Let me think a minute."

  Bernie stormed away from the workshop. He had never thought himself arrogant. He just figured that among people who thought there were only six planets, he'd do all right. He'd tell them how to make stuff and they would. The problem was, Bernie didn't really know how to make stuff. He had quite a bit of the knowledge needed, but he had no idea how to put it together into a form that would produce a product.

  That should have been all right. There were a number of very bright, very creative, people at the Dacha. They had been arriving a few at a time. However, as yet there was very little crossover between what Bernie knew and what they knew. Their map of the world and his were so different that communicating, even with a good translator, was difficult.

  Right at the moment, the problem was with the toilets. The manuals talked about a gravity feed. To the local experts, gravity meant "dignity or sobriety of bearing." In fact, though Bernie didn't know it, the gravity feed was something they already understood quite well. However, the terms were different. They would have called it a "natural flow feed" or something similar. That would have referred to Aristotle's assertion that there were natural and unnatural types of motion. Water flowing down hill was natural motion. There was no force that made things fall. Things fell because things had a natural desire to go where they belonged. Steam went into the air and rocks onto the ground because that's where they belonged. Water, as was the case here, just naturally wanted to travel to the lowest point. Granted, Galileo had chipped around the edges of Aristotle, but just around the edges. Besides, few people here had read Galileo.

  Bernie didn't know it, but an extension of this Aristotelian world view had led to many of the concepts that the up-timers thought of as superstition. After all, if water just naturally wanted to flow down hill, didn't it make sense that a wheel would just naturally want to turn, that a candle would just naturally want to burn? That any device that was made well enough would want to perform its natural function and, given the opportunity, would do so on its own? And if water had a natural desire to flow down hill, what about people? Was it not self evident that people were innately good or innately evil? Innately superior or innately inferior, good blood, bad blood?

  It was a subtle but profound difference in the way people thought about the world. The early modern period, the period the Ring of Fire had thrust the West Virginia mining town into, was when that notion of a world where things did what they did because it was their nature to do so was being replaced. Slowly, one chip at a time, with the notion that things happened because of external forces like gravity and drag. But it hadn't happened yet. It would have been Newton who really shifted the world view and he hadn't been born yet. He probably wouldn't be born in this universe. Here it would be Grantville that the change spun on, and the change would come much faster. Worse, Muscovy, in general, was lagging about two hundred years behind the rest of Europe.

  Bernie didn't know any of that; he didn't even know that Aristotle had gotten it wrong. He knew Newton had some laws—three, he thought. He sort of thought that Einstein had gotten it right and corrected the bits that Newton had gotten wrong with his theory of relativity. That was how the A bomb worked. More importantly, Bernie didn't know that the problems sprung from a difference in world view. Half the time he thought they were playing with him. Half the time he thought they were idiots, and half the time he thought he must be the idiot. There were too many halves of Russia.

  Bernie entered the kitchen of the dacha and sat at the table. "Marpa Pavlovna, may I have a beer, please?" When the cook nodded, Bernie leaned back and tried to figure out how to explain gravity.

  The cook handed him a beer. His "Thanks" was a bit absent minded. At the same time she also put a plate of ham and cheese sandwiches in front of him. He'd had a little trouble explaining to Natasha Petrovna that no, he didn't want to stop work in the middle of the day and have a big meal then take a nap. It was weird. Everybody in Russia took a siesta in the middle of the day. Bernie had thought that only happened in, like, Mexico.

  Bernie rubbed his temples with his fingers, trying to ease the headache he invariably got when he tried to explain a complex concept to Filip Pavlovich. In a few moments a pair of cool feeling hands began rubbing his temples for him. Bernie leaned back against the chair and let one of the maids, Fayina Lukyanovna take over. One of the things Vladimir had not lied about was the availability of willing women. Bernie had been being hit on ever since he had reached the dacha. Boris had told him that it was probably because they wanted to get information from him. That was fine with Bernie. He'd tell them anything they wanted to know.

  "What is now, Bernie?" Her voice was low, gentle. "'Sewer system' again?"

  Gravity was the least of his problems with the sewer system. Bernie had arrived at the dacha with complete designs for a toilet and complete designs for a septic system. But it wasn't working right. The toilet had backed up, the sink had backed up, the bathtub had backed up. Each and every one of them was producing the most awful stinks it had ever been his misfortune to smell. He couldn't use the indoor bathroom anymore. The room had been closed off and some pretty horrible sounds came from it. Bernie was pretty sure that the problem was in the septic system or in the pipes. He had finally remembered the U shaped pipes just below the sinks. He had had those installed and that had seemed to fix it for a little while. But then things got worse.

  "I don't know how to fix it." Bernie groaned. "God, your hands feel good. The bathroom is going to drive me crazy until I figure it out."

  "Natasha Petrovna wishes to speak to you." Fayina stopped rubbing his temples. She was dark haired and short, well padded. He noticed that she was wearing one of those crown-looking headdresses with her hair loose. Customs were different here. Confusing. Single women wore a smaller headdress than married women and left their hair loose. Married women kept their hair covered all the time. "New books have arrived from Grantville."

/>   * * *

  "I have good news for you, at any rate," Natasha said. "Here. You have letters. I have letters from Vladimir as well. And more books. Perhaps the answer will be in the new books."

  Bernie took his stack of letters, wondering who had written him. Dad wasn't much of a letter writer and his sisters, well, they were busy. The handwriting on the top one was vaguely familiar. And the envelopes, some of them, were from up-time. Bernie opened the first one carefully and read:

  Dear Bernie,

  Gosh, it's been a long time, hasn't it?

  I just wanted to let you know that the folks in Grantville haven't forgotten you.

  Also, your Dad and sisters are just fine. The CPE is having an effect on Grantville. Lots of people are moving. To Jena and Suhl and even Magdeburg. There's a contingent off in Franconia and a lot of the folks that got rich since the Ring of Fire have bought estates in the country with servants and the whole bit. But for every one that moves out, two or three down-timers move in. Then there are the tourists. Grantville is more crowded than ever. A lot of people are talking about moving their businesses to Magdeburg. Partly because its gonna be the capital of the CPE but partly because it's on the Elbe and materials will be cheaper there. Not to mention real estate.