1635: The Eastern Front (assiti shards) Read online

  Mike sagged a little in his chair. "That's…?about what I was afraid of. Would one of the symptoms be that he says things that make no sense at all?"

  "Gibberish?"

  "No, not gibberish. They sound like complete sentences, but it's as if all the words are scrambled. I'll give you an example. At one point when I looked in on him in the litter, he was awake and stared at me as if he had no idea who I was. Then he said-I think I'm remembering this right: 'I ate my tree but the horse will not open the stirrup.'?"

  James ran fingers through his short, kinky hair. "Yes, that's a symptom of temporal lobe injury. One of the major functions of the temporal lobes is handling speech. What you're describing is a form of aphasia, which can manifest itself in many ways. People suffering from aphasia might be able to speak but not write, or write but not speak. Or they might be able to sing, but can't speak or write. Gustav Adolf's failure to recognize you is because the right temporal lobe is also involved in the visual content processed by the brain. Sound, too. Even if he recovers-this is just one example of what can happen-Gustav Adolf may have so much trouble with tonal recognition that music means nothing to him any longer."

  Mike winced. The king of Sweden adored music.

  "What else?" he asked.

  James spread his hands. "There could be a lot of things, Mike. He might start having seizures."

  "He hasn't had any so far," Mike protested. "I'm sure I'd have noticed or been told by one of his attendants if I wasn't there at the time."

  "Doesn't matter. Seizures don't have to develop right away, with something like this. He might start having them a week from now, a month from now, a year from now-or never at all. And if he does start having them, they might last for a short while or the rest of his life. The brain's still a very mysterious organ, Mike."

  "What else?"

  "He's almost certainly going to have problems with memory retrieval. The problems may be mild, moderate or severe, and it's impossible to know ahead of time how long they might last. His behavior might become childish and/or irritable. He might have sudden unprovoked rages. He might sink into depression. He might find it difficult to concentrate on anything for very long. He might completely lose any sense of humor. His language skills could be chaotic. He might be able to speak but have no understanding of what he is saying. Or he might-for Christ's sake, Mike, how long do you want me to go on? Don't you get the picture yet? I repeat: the brain is still mostly a mystery. There's usually not much you can do with an injury like this except take care of the patient's bodily needs and wait and hope for the best. You want to know my diagnosis? Ask me in six months. Better yet, ask me five years from now."

  He drained the rest of his liquor and extended the glass to Mike. "Now why don't you do something useful and pour me some more of this godawful stuff? Did I tell you some sainted soul in Bamberg is trying to distill sourmash whiskey? Of all the things I miss about Ye Olde Up-time, Jack Daniels is right at the top of the list."

  Chapter 42

  Magdeburg, central Germany

  Capital of the United States of Europe

  When Rebecca finished her analysis, there was silence around the table for a moment. Then, Anselm Keller cleared his throat.

  "Are you sure you are not…?ah…"

  Rebecca smiled. "Overinterpreting my husband's radio messages?"

  The member of Parliament from the Province of the Main made a face. "Ah, yes. You did give us the exact working of the messages, after all. Most of it seemed…?well…"

  "Personal? Innocuous?"

  "Well, yes."

  Constantin Ableidinger had been slouched in his chair. Now, he sat erect. "Don't be naive, Anselm. How else should we interpret phrases such as 'Axel seems extraordinarily vigorous despite the king's condition,' and 'I've noticed the prime minister and the chancellor are spending a lot of time together'?"

  Matthias Strigel grunted. "Not to mention: 'Lennart seems to share some of my misgivings, but the council feels we are obliged to respect Gustav Adolf's last wishes. So it's off to Bohemia I go. As soon as possible, the prime minister has instructed me.'?"

  Melissa Mailey spoke. "You're all missing the key phrase. Even Becky."

  Everyone looked at her. "Which is?" asked Rebecca. She was simply curious, not offended.

  Melissa looked down at the sheets of paper in her hand and shuffled through them. "It's…?this one. On page four." Her voice got that little singsong pitch people often fall into when they quote something. "Wilhelm seems in quite good health. But I can't help notice how much he's starting to look like my uncle Billy Conn as he gets older."

  Rebecca nodded. "Yes, I did wonder about that. He's never mentioned this relative to me before. Or any relative with that surname, in fact."

  Melissa chuckled. "Mike Stearns doesn't have an uncle by that name. It's an allusion he must have figured would escape any down-timer's notice-even yours-but I guess he figured I'd be able to decipher it. Although why"-she drew herself up a little-"he would imagine for one moment that I would be familiar with the sordid details of the history of such a brutal so-called sport is quite beyond me."

  Rebecca smiled. "Perhaps he assumed Ed Piazza would be here. He has quite low tastes, you know." Her smile widened. "But since you apparently do know these sordid details-this particular one, at least-why don't you share it with us?"

  Melissa looked slightly embarrassed. "Well…?It happened back up-time at some point during the 1930s or 1940s, I don't remember the exact date, and, yes, I realize how preposterous it seems to refer 'back' to a year that won't come for another three centuries, but there it is. Anyway, the heavyweight champion boxer at the time was a man by the name of Joe Louis. He was, among other things, a tremendously powerful man who ended most of his fights by knocking out his opponents. Ah, that means punching them so hard that they are knocked down for a while, and sometimes unconscious.'?"

  She took a breath. "Billy Conn, on the other hand, was a smaller boxer-what they called a 'light heavyweight'-and one whose great skill was boxing itself. He would often win bouts by outscoring his opponents rather than knocking them out."

  Ableidinger frowned. "How do you score something like that?"

  "Never mind. Just take my word for it. Billy Conn challenged Joe Louis for the heavyweight title. To everyone's surprise, he won the first twelve rounds-there are fifteen rounds to a championship match, by the way-by outmaneuvering Louis, avoiding his powerful punches and scoring many points with his own much lighter punches. Coming into the thirteenth round, he was far ahead on points and on the verge of winning the match."

  She took another breath. "But then Billy Conn got overconfident. He decided he could win the match with a knockout-always the more prestigious method. So he started mixing it up with Louis, as the expression goes. Trading punch for punch, blow for blow."

  "Ha!" boomed Ableidinger. "And thereby lost the match, because the Louis ogre knocked him out."

  Melissa scowled at him. "Joe Louis was not an ogre. He was…?Well. A very important man in the history of the United States, for reasons I'm not going to get into here. But, yes, that is what happened. Billy Conn didn't even make it to the end of the thirteenth round."

  Everyone at the table sat back in their chairs, contemplating this new data.

  "Do you still think Rebecca is 'overinterpreting' her husband's radio messages, Anselm?" asked Matthias Strigel.

  "Uh, no," he replied.

  Constantin was examining Rebecca. "Your husband was one of these American pugilists, wasn't he?"

  "He was very young then," she replied, a bit defensively. "Foolish. He says it himself."

  Ableidinger waved his hand. "Yes, yes. Still, he was a pugilist. So I'm curious. Was he also one of these superb boxers like this Billy Conn?"

  Rebecca seemed at a loss for words. Quite unusual that was, for her. Her mouth opened, closed. Opened again. Closed.

  "Ah…" she said.

  Melissa spoke up. Her voice was firm, her words a bit clipp
ed. "Mike Stearns had eight professional fights. All of them were fought at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. He won seven of them by knock-out, all within the first four rounds."

  She cleared her throat. "So, no. He bears very little resemblance to his not-uncle Billy Conn." She gave Constantin an unfriendly glance. "Some might even call him an ogre."

  "Not I," said Ableidinger, smiling like a cherub. "Not I."

  "How do you know all this about boxing?" asked Rebecca. "I did not even know those details concerning Michael's career."

  "Just picked it up here and there," Melissa said. "By accident."

  "Oh, surely not," said Rebecca.

  "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

  Stockholm

  The first thing Princess Kristina said when she came into Prince Ulrik's salon was: "Uncle Axel says I have to come to Berlin. Right away. To be with Papa."

  Ulrik set down the newspaper he was reading on the low table in front of his chair. Americans would have called it a "coffee table," except no American with a net worth less than fifty million dollars would have dared place a coffee cup on it in the first place.

  He was glad enough to put down the newspaper. It was a five-day-old copy of the Leubecker Zeitung, a journal that was just marginally tolerable. Unfortunately, none of the Hamburg or Magdeburg newspapers arrived in Stockholm regularly.

  Still, anything from the continent was better than what passed for news in Swedish journals. The combination of being isolated and victorious-not to mention the chancellor's heavy hand when it came to censorship-made Stockholm quite a provincial place, despite its objective political importance. Ulrik had been in small town taverns in the Germanies where the political analysis was superior to the drivel you heard here, even in the palace.

  Especially in the palace, now that he thought about it.

  Caroline Platzer had followed the princess into the salon. From the expression on her face, it was obvious she was worried.

  As well she might be, thought Ulrik.

  "Do you wish to go?" he asked the girl.

  Kristina frowned. "Well…?yes, I suppose. I'd very much like to see Papa."

  Ulrik volunteered the unspoken word at the end of that sentence. "But…?"

  Kristina stamped her foot. "I don't like Berlin! I was there once, with Mama, visiting her brother. He was stupid and everybody in the palace was stupid and the whole city was stupid. I've never been so bored in my life."

  "That's not a good enough reason not to go, Kristina." He smiled. "Mind you, I don't disagree. I've been to Berlin twice. It's quite boring, yes."

  He waited. Ulrik was fairly certain they had come to a critical point. He was also fairly certain that he knew the right course of action. But it was not something that could be done-or should be done-against Kristina's will.

  She was pouting a little, staring down at her shoes.

  "Is there any other reason not to go, Kristina?"

  The princess glanced at Caroline. The American woman made a little gesture with her head, a nod in Ulrik's direction. Combined with the rather stern expression on her face, Ulrik interpreted it to mean: Tell him. But you have to do it yourself. I can't do it for you.

  Kristina looked back at Ulrik. "I don't know that I should. It doesn't seem right to me."

  That was enough, Ulrik thought. To start, at least.

  "It's certainly not right from a legal standpoint," he said firmly.

  "I don't have to obey Uncle Axel?" There was a little lift in the girl's voice. Hope, you might call it, if you were the sort of person who saw oak trees in acorns.

  Which Ulrik did, as it happened. He fancied himself something of a botanist.

  "No, of course you don't have to obey him. To begin with, he's not your uncle. Secondly, no one has appointed him regent. He's simply the chancellor of Sweden. Someone whose opinion you should listen to, of course, but he has no authority over you."

  Shrewd as always, Baldur played the devil's advocate. "Not yet. But he can summon the council and the riksdag and have himself declared regent."

  Ulrik shrugged. "So? The riksdag's authority extends only to the kingdom of Sweden. Not to the United States of Europe, not to the Union of Kalmar. Never forget that Gustav II Adolf wears three crowns, not one."

  He nodded at Kristina. "And so will she."

  "Ah!" said Baldur, as if he has just been enlightened. "I hadn't thought of that. And the equivalent authority of the riksdag when it comes to the Union of Kalmar is…?"

  The Americans had a term for it that Ulrik had learned from Eddie Cochrane. Throwing soft pitches. Or was it softball pitches? Easy pitches?

  Whatever it was called, Baldur did it superbly.

  "Well, that's a very interesting question," said Ulrik. "The final structure of the Union of Kalmar hasn't been settled yet. A union council was created, but its authority remains unclear. There's certainly nothing in the laws established thus far to give the council the right to create a regent."

  He cleared his throat. "To the contrary. The only hard and fast rule when it comes to determining the source of final authority in the Union-which was enshrined by law, right there at the Congress of Copenhagen-is that until such time as what they chose to call the 'organic royal line' of the Union comes to the throne-"

  He pointed a forefinger at Kristina; a thumb at himself. "That's us, and then our children, and so on. But until that time, the Congress clearly stipulated that the king of Sweden was the premier political figure in the Union, followed by-"

  He cleared his throat again. "My father, Christian IV, the king of Denmark. So the authority to create a regent for the Union of Kalmar clearly lies with him, given that Gustav II Adolf is incapacitated. Not Axel Oxenstierna, who has no formal standing at all in the government of the Union."

  Kristina was looking brighter by the moment. "What about the United States?"

  "Aye, that's the question," said Baldur. "Isn't it?"

  "Well, yes, I think so."

  Kristina was standing very close to him, now. Ulrik reached out and took her little hands in his. "What you are faced with, my betrothed, is something that no child should have to deal with. But it happens. It has happened before, it will happen again. It's called a succession crisis."

  Kristina looked up at Caroline. "Have you heard of that?"

  At the time of the Ring of Fire, Caroline Platzer had had the same knowledge of history that most Americans had. Not too bad when it came to American history itself, allowing for big gaps of knowledge between the Revolution and the Civil War and the Civil War and the Great Depression. Abysmal when it came to everything else.

  The Greeks invented democracy and were the smartest people who ever lived even if they couldn't run anything bigger than a city. The Romans were very powerful and sometimes majestic but they had a lot of nasty personal habits and killed a lot of Christians. The Dark Ages came next and…?Moving right along, the Middle Ages were in the middle and there were knights and stuff. Then the English were mean to the Puritans which is why most people in England came to America, and the French had a revolution that went sour and somewhere around that time Napoleon was really big and then you got to modern times and there were two big world wars. And then history ended and current affairs started. That was fourth period class, taught by Mrs. Abrams.

  But after the Ring of Fire, she'd taken the study of history much more seriously. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, being plunged into the Thirty Years' War concentrates the mind wonderfully.

  So, today, she knew the answer.

  "Yes, and Ulrik's right. It seems like half the wars you Europeans fought were because of succession crises. War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, War of the Polish Succession. You name the war, and if you dig a little you'll find out it usually got triggered off because King Whatsisname keeled over without leaving any heirs or-this is often worse-did leave an heir but the heir was just a kid."

  She was almost glaring, now. "You've heard of Alexan
der the Great?"

  Kristina nodded.

  "Well, that was probably the great-grand-daddy succession crisis of them all. He died leaving as his only heir a still unborn son. Guess what happened to his empire?"

  Kristina was wide-eyed, mute.

  "It got carved into pieces by his generals. Guess what happened to his wife and son?"

  Still wide-eyed, still mute.

  "They got carved up, too."

  Kristina turned the wide eyes onto Ulrik. Her hand had never left his grip. "Would Uncle Axel really cut me up?"

  Ulrik shook his head. "No. Oxenstierna has been your father's friend and close adviser for many years. He wouldn't harm your father or you, of that I am quite sure." He paused a moment. "Not himself. But succession crises have a dynamic of their own. They're like wild horses. Set them loose-which is exactly what I fear Oxenstierna is doing-and you're likely to get trampled."

  He gave the girl's hands a reassuring little squeeze. "So, no. I don't think Uncle Axel means you any harm. But he does believe-with great certainty-that he knows what is best for you. And for your incapacitated father. And for Sweden. And for the Germanies." His jaws tightened. "And probably for Denmark, when it comes to it. Which it will."

  Kristina made a valiant last stand. She'd been told many times-including by Ulrik-that she needed to think for herself and especially to consider all sides of a question instead of just jumping onto the conclusion that pleased her the most. Caroline could get downright tedious on the subject.

  "But what about Papa? I really would like to be with him. And Uncle Axel says that maybe just by being there I might help Papa get back his wits."

  Ulrik's jaws got tighter still. He'd just bent over backward not to blacken Oxenstierna's name. In fact, he had come to a much darker assessment of the man. Oxenstierna might not wish any harm on Gustav Adolf and his only child. But Ulrik was now certain that the man wouldn't let their well-being restrain him, either, if the situation came to what he considered a critical juncture.

  "And he may be right, Kristina," he said. "But I would like the answer to a different question. Several questions, actually."