1635: The Eastern Front Read online

Jeff laughed. "So you finally sent one as the imperial count of Narnia. Don't tell me. I bet you got a response the next day."

  Thorsten finally smiled. "The same day, actually. I sent it early this morning."

  Higgins took a seat next to Linn and folded his big hands on the table. "I'm lucky that way. The radio operators I deal with are CoC on the other end. You think you got problems, Engler? Where do you think my wife is?"

  He didn't wait for their guesses. "Dresden. Guess how she got there?"

  He didn't wait for their guesses. "Plane crash. Never a dull moment, being married to Gretchen."

  Berlin, capital of Brandenburg Province

  "So what's the verdict, James?" Mike handed Dr. Nichols a short glass filled halfway with some sort of clear liquid. Liquor, from the smell.

  "It's what passes for Korn in Brandenburg," Mike explained. "The wine's marginally better, but I figured you'd want something stronger."

  "You got that right." Nichols drank half of it in one gulp, then made a little face. "The stuff in Thuringia is way better. And it's not very good."

  Mike smiled thinly. "Welcome to Brandenburg. And I repeat: what's the verdict?"

  "Can I sit down first?"

  "Oh, sorry. Sure." Mike waved to one of the chairs in his suite. That was one advantage to being billeted in a palace. There was usually plenty of room.

  Nichols sagged into the chair. He looked pretty exhausted. He'd been at the king of Sweden's bedside all day, since early in the morning.

  Some of the doctor's weariness, though, was probably still due to the rigors of his journey here. That had ended two days ago, but Nichols was about sixty.

  The weather had made any sort of plane travel impossible to Berlin. Impossible, at least, for any aircraft with standard landing gear. There had been some days when the weather would have permitted flying, but there was nowhere to land.

  The elector of Brandenburg, George William, had refused let an airstrip be built anywhere in Brandenburg. He claimed that was to protect his subjects from aircraft falling on top of them, but the real reason was simply that he resented all of the side effects of the Ring of Fire. If he couldn't make the cursed Americans vanish, at least he didn't have to let them foul his sky with their cursed machines.

  As bad as the weather had been—and still was, half the time—there'd been no way to construct an airfield in time. And as it turned out, they couldn't use one of the planes with air-cushioned landing gear. There was only one ACLG plane in regular operation yet, because of a shortage of suitable engines, and it was undergoing major maintenance. Even if the airline had raced to put it back together, Mike would have gotten Gustav Adolf to Berlin by then.

  There'd also been a hovercraft used to ferry people and supplies on the Saale that might have managed the job, that Mike had forgotten about. But it wasn't available either. A few months ago, a minerals exploration company had chartered it for use somewhere in the far north.

  So, a horse-litter it had been, at a forced pace across rough terrain and with new rainstorms coming every second or third day. Mike had been exhausted when they finally reached Berlin. James' trip hadn't been as rough, but it had been rough enough for a man his age.

  The doctor stared moodily into his glass. "It's the head trauma that's really got me worried, Mike."

  Mike's eyes widened. "That's . . . ​saying something, given how deadly peritonitis can be."

  "Yeah, but I can help that—some, anyway—with surgery. And the antibiotics we've got should help a lot too. Whereas the head trauma . . ."

  Nichols shook his head. "Honestly? There's probably nothing at all I can do. Or anybody can do. We'll just have to wait and hope for the best."

  "He's not in a coma, though." That was a statement, not a question. Mike had been with the king throughout the journey from Zbąszyń, and there had been times Gustav Adolf had been . . .

  Well. Not in a coma. You could hardly say "conscious," though. He'd seemed very delirious.

  "No, he's not in a coma. But there are lots of ways the brain can be badly affected that don't manifest themselves in a coma, Mike. He's suffered a serious traumatic brain injury from being clubbed half to death, essentially. The skull wasn't broken, but parts of the brain where he was struck were certainly damaged. Possibly other parts, too."

  Nichols set down his glass and held up his hands as if he were cupping something the size of . . . ​Well, a skull, actually.

  "A live brain has about the same consistency as Jello. It sits inside the skull, which shields it, and it's also sheltered by layers of membranes that are called meninges. It's pretty well protected from most shocks you'd normally encounter day to day. But if your skull gets hammered really hard, then what happens—"

  The doctor suddenly jiggled his hands around, very violently. "—your Jello-y brain is essentially being bounced around against your own skull. The worst damage usually happens to the brain tissue nearest the source of the trauma but you can have damage almost anywhere. Call it ricochet damage, if you will."

  "All right. Assuming for the moment, though, that the damage is restricted to where he got hit, what's your diagnosis?"

  " ‘Diagnosis' is way too strong a term, Mike. With this sort of brain injury, there's a lot of guessing at first—and would be, even if we were in the intensive care unit of a major up-time hospital. A lot of the diagnosis of brain injuries has to develop over time, since many of the symptoms are behavioral and—"

  "James. Please. This is not a time for all the complexities and all the details and all the maybes and the we-don't-know-yets and all the caveats or any of that stuff. I need whatever you've got right now, down and dirty. Give me your best guess, if you don't like the word ‘diagnosis.' What is wrong with Gustav Adolf's brain?"

  Nichols sighed. "I think his right temporal lobe is damaged."

  "And that results in . . . ?"

  "Assuming Gustav Adolf survives the next few weeks, he might make a complete and quick recovery." He took a deep breath. "What's more likely, though, is that it will take him months to recover, possibly years, and he may never recover completely. Probably won't, in fact, with that bad of an injury."

  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."

&n
bsp; "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 naïve, 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 clipped. "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 drive
l 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."