by Eric Flint
Litsa ignored that also. Reaching an intersection, she hesitated only a split-second before charging down the corridor to the left. “It’s probably this way,” she said, apparently guided by mystical insight.
Eventually, Eva had had enough of her friend’s headstrong charging about. She more-or-less seized Litsa by the scruff of the neck and marched her into the nearest office in the corridor they were now found in. The sign on the door read Sanitation and Sewage Department. She figured they’d have a practical view of the world if anyone did.
When she and Litsa entered they found themselves in a small chamber whose walls were covered with shelves holding very official-looking cartons of documents. There were two desks in the room, both occupied by young men.
The men stared up at them as if they were apparitions. Eva suspected the department didn’t get much in the way of passers-by.
“We are looking for Representative Rebecca Abrabanel,” she said. “We believe she has an office somewhere in Government House.”
The two men looked at each other. Then, back at Eva.
“She did have an office here a while back,” said the one on the left. “Well…she shared one with two other delegates. But all the members of the House of Commons have moved their offices over to the new parliament building.”
The other young man added: “Only people working for the executive branches are still located here.” He seemed pleased by that fact.
“The federal offices are upstairs,” said Young Man Number One. He pointed with his finger above his head to confirm that “upstairs” meant what everyone thought it meant. Then, pointed to the south with the same finger. “Offices of the province of Magdeburg are that way, on this floor.” The finger went to the north. “For the municipality, that way.”
“It used to be quite chaotic,” said Young Man Number Two. “But no longer.” He seemed immensely pleased by that fact.
Eva knew where the new parliament building was located, of course. It had been under construction for quite some time. She went back out into the corridor but Litsa was ahead of her almost at once, rushing toward the entrance onto Hans Richter Square.
Once in the square they turned to the north. Litsa would have been trotting by now if Eva hadn’t physically restrained her with a hand on her arm. As it was they were moving at a very fast walk.
“What’s the hurry?” she complained.
“She might leave at any moment.”
They went past the royal palace, shortly after which they turned into the entrance to the parliament building. There followed some frustrating minutes while Litsa tried to bully her way past the guards to no avail and Eva eventually sweet-talked them into letting them enter, playing heavily on her sister-in-law relationship to the prime minister.
Eventually, they found their way to the office assigned to Abrabanel in her capacity as a member of the House of Commons from Magdeburg Province. At which point they were informed by Abrabanel’s secretary, a very formidable-looking middle-aged woman, that the delegate was actually in the very same Government House they had just come from. It seemed she was in a meeting with Ed Piazza, the president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia.
“In his capacity as the head of state of one of the USE’s provinces,” the woman explained, “Ed Piazza is also a member of the House of Lords. He is thus entitled to an office in Government House which is”—here she sniffed disdainfully—“considerably larger than the one assigned to Delegate Abrabanel, even though everyone with half a brain knows that it is the House of Commons which does all the real work for the nation.” She sniffed again. “The House of Lords is just a preposterous holdover from the darkness of the past.”
Clearly an adherent to the CoC view of things.
“I will say that at least President Piazza uses his office,” the woman added. “He’s here more often than not, these past months. Most of the so-called ‘lords’ never show their faces except on formal state occasions.”
Eva thanked her politely and off they went. Right back to where they’d come from.
“Why would Piazza be here more often than he’s in Bamberg?” Eva wondered along the way. “He governs a whole province—and probably the most populous and richest one in the USE, at that. You’d think that would keep him busy enough.”
“I told you something was up,” Litsa replied. “Lots of somethings! Clearly Piazza is here to help organize a counter-revolution against your brother-in-law.”
Eva pondered the matter as they went back onto the street and hurried south. She thought Litsa was probably right in her broad assessment, but also reflected the unthinking bias of her class—well, their class, since Eva belonged to the German nobility also. But she tried not to let her position influence her thinking; or at least, no more than was probably inevitable.
It would be more accurate, she thought, to say that Piazza was defending the revolution against the counter-revolution that was obviously being organized in Berlin—and mostly by Oxenstierna, not Wilhelm Wettin. Eva was by now quite sure that her brother-in-law, once a duke of Saxe-Weimar, had let his own unthinking class prejudices lead him into a foolish alliance with the Swedish chancellor. Everyone knew—well, everyone in the Hochadel who was politically aware, at any rate—that Oxenstierna had never liked his monarch’s acquiescence to the radical attitudes of Mike Stearns and his followers toward the privileges of aristocracy. Now that Gustav Adolf was incapacitated by the terrible injuries he’d received in the Polish campaign, his chancellor was taking advantage of the situation to carry through what was in fact a counter-revolution.
Or try to. Eva was skeptical that Oxenstierna and his followers would succeed.
She rarely expressed any opinions of her own on political issues, but that was not because she didn’t have any. She was just reticent by nature. Unusually among her class of people, Eva actually was a “crown loyalist” in the precise sense of the term. She firmly believed that Gustav Adolf was the best monarch in Europe—and the best by what Americans called “a country mile.” (An expression she found both charming and quite accurate, having grown up as a girl in the countryside.) That being the case, why would anyone in their right mind think that a chancellor would have a better sense of what was good for the realm than his king did?
If Gustav Adolf had decided an alliance with the Americans and a willingness to accept at least many of their principles as the basis for forging a unified Germany were good ideas, Eva was inclined to trust his judgment. One thing she knew for sure. Say what you would about the former prime minister Mike Stearns—and the people around her usually had the harshest things possible to say about him—the chaos that had ravaged the Germanies for a decade and a half before his arrival had subsided a great deal once he held the reins of power. Eva understood why most of the members of her class detested the American. But she also understood why so many of the lower classes supported the man. Stearns had kept them safe.
Would Oxenstierna—and her brother-in-law Wilhelm Wettin—do the same? Possibly. But she thought it was more likely they’d plunge Germany back into chaos.
A sudden thought caused her to laugh. Litsa looked at her. “What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking…” She waved her hand. “Never mind. Too hard to explain.”
It was hard to explain. The two of them had just been accosted in the street by a gang of ruffians who, one could argue, had been created by the Americans. And on one level, the argument was true enough. Without the Americans, the Committees of Correspondence would probably never have arisen. But it was ridiculous to think that the Americans had created the anger which produced those committees in the first place. No, for that Eva’s own class had only themselves to blame.
However they came to be, the CoCs now existed and could sometimes pose a threat. Eva thought it was significant—certainly ironic!—that when she and Litsa had themselves been threatened, it had not been one of the nobility who came to their assistance but an American.
And not
just any American! (That was the part that had made her laugh.) No, it was the legendary Captain Lefferts. The one man in the world, even more than Stearns himself, who embodied everything the Hochadel detested about the up-timers.
Disrespectful toward them, even derisive. Brash. Bold. A state-sanctioned criminal, in all that mattered! Alas, a very successful one. A man who was reputed to have slain a nobleman in a duel and seduced his wife in the bargain! (Several other wives too, according to folklore.)
She had no trouble, now that she’d met the man, believing either side of that charge. He was quite charming. Good-looking, too. Eva knew plenty of noblewomen, married or not, who’d be susceptible to the captain, whatever they thought of his political beliefs.
Not her, of course.
She laughed again, but this time too softly for her friend to hear. By now, Litsa was half a dozen paces ahead of her.
Eva could hardly claim any great virtue in that, of course. Scarred the way she was, she’d never had much difficulty fending off the advances of would-be seducers. Not any difficulty, being honest about it, since there had never been any, and she didn’t imagine there ever would be.
* * *
After they returned to Government House, Litsa charged up the nearest flight of stairs she could find. Being a provincial leader of the nation, not the province of Magdeburg, Piazza would surely have his offices on the upper floor.
But which upper floor? There were three, in all. Litsa would have ferreted out the truth by direct examination, but Eva opted for the dull-witted but energy-efficient let’s ask somebody who’d know approach.
Third floor, as it turned out. She also got directions as to where the office was on the third floor, which turned out to be useful as well because otherwise Litsa would surely have explored every one of the wrong corridors before they found the right one. There turned out to be quite a few.
Finally, they reached their target—just in time to see the door to Piazza’s office open and four people emerge.
She recognized the one in the lead immediately, of course. So this—whatever it might be—was the business Captain Lefferts had in Government House.
She was quite delighted to see him again. And then, in the way she had, immediately examined the cause of that delight.
Eva had learned the Americans had a term for her state of mind. Not surprising, really, since they seemed to have a term for everything.
Introspection, they called it. The term fit her perfectly.
So, she suspected, did another up-time expression: introvert. She wasn’t sure about the terms geek and nerd. She was sufficiently thoughtful, perhaps, but she didn’t think she had enough in the way of obsessive interest in any one thing to properly qualify. Eva was interested in almost everything.
She’d ask the captain, she decided. He would probably know, since he seemed to be the exact opposite of whatever a geek or a nerd was. Certainly an introspective introvert!
Not here and now, of course. She was much too shy to ask him anything personal in public.
Or in private, now that she thought about it. So why had she been so quick to ask him why he didn’t seem to be bothered by her pox scars? She’d never asked anyone that question before.
By now, Litsa was well into introducing herself to the young couple who accompanied Captain Lefferts and the Spanish soldier, and explaining her mission. Which more-or-less came down to: tell me everything you know that Simplicissimus magazine would want to publish. She was speaking in English rather than Amideutsch because Litsa—as was true of Eva herself—had deduced that the young couple were also Americans from hard-to-define subtleties of posture and dress.
Fortunately, Litsa’s English was quite good, if not as good as Eva’s own. But as gracious approaches to an interview went, Litsa’s reminded Eva of yet another American expression she’d heard: a bull in a China shop. She’d had to have the term “China shop” clarified, of course. In her day and age, no one thought of China as the source of fine tableware.
The young couple were frowning at Litsa. They were obviously having some trouble finding the sense in Litsa’s torrent of words.
Captain Lefferts suddenly grinned and nodded toward Eva. “Have her explain it,” he said. “You’ll get a coherent answer. Reasonably short, too.”
Litsa abruptly fell silent. She stared at Lefferts, then at Eva.
“Well, tell them, Eva!” She sounded a bit cross.
Eva was mute. Literally struck dumb.
Lefferts shook his head. “This will go much easier over lunch. There’s a pretty good restaurant in the basement. Ron and Missy can use the time to continue to lecture me on the subject of prudence and common sense while we’re at it.”
He stepped alongside Eva and extended his arm again, crooked at the elbow.
“If I may, Your Serene Highness.”
Not knowing what else to do, Eva took his arm. Not knowing else to say, she said: “Is that actually my correct title in English?”
“Well…More or less. I had to be a little creative because there’s no direct equivalent in English for your title. Your father’s rank is between that of a graf and a herzog—what in English would be called a ‘count’ and a ‘duke.’ It’s usually translated into English as a ‘prince’—the same term that sometimes gets applied these days to Mike Stearns—but that’s not really accurate.”
Lefferts’ inimitable grin reappeared. “The exact translation of your title Eure Durchlaucht would be ‘Your Transparency.’ But I thought that would be improper, under the circumstances.”
“Oh,” she said. For once, thanking her pox scars. Without them, she was sure her face would be bright pink.
Chapter 4
“Okay, Harry,” said Ron Stone, after the waiter in the rathskeller had taken their orders. “Why do you want to work as our security guy in Lorraine? That’s pretty much the opposite of what you’ve gotten famous for—and can you do it legally in the first place? Last I heard you were still a soldier in the USE army.”
Missy Stone put a hand on her husband’s arm by way of a restraining gesture. “Hey, we got company.” She looked at Eva and Litsa. “What’s happening here is that Ron and I are going to help Hesse-Kassel set up a pharmaceutical industry and we’re also going to be visiting Lorraine. For that we’ll need a security team and Rebecca proposed that we hire Captain Lefferts for the purpose. Before we go any further, though, would it be easier for you if we spoke Amideutsch?”
“Somewhat,” replied Eva. “But I would prefer to improve my English, so please continue.”
“Let me work my way backward, on your questions,” said Lefferts. “I talked to my boss—that’s Mike Stearns, in the real world, screw the formalities—and he gave me the go-ahead to do whatever I wanted to do. As long as I cleared it with Becky first.”
Missy frowned. “When did you talk to Mike?”
“A few weeks ago. I went up to see him in Berlin when he brought Gustav Adolf in from Lake Bledno. I then came back to Magdeburg to see what Becky might want me to do.”
Eva had a brief moment of disorientation until she figured out that “Becky” was a reference to Rebecca Abrabanel. American nicknames were sometimes peculiar.
“And what did Becky want you to do?”
Harry shrugged. “She didn’t really have much. She’s already got a security force with those Yeoman Warders who came over from England after they helped us spring everybody from the Tower of London. Being honest about it, they’re better at that kind of work than I am.” He nodded toward his Spanish companion. “Probably better than Vincente, too.”
The Spaniard was frowning slightly. Eva was fairly sure that was simply because he was concentrating on following a discussion in a language he was not very familiar with, not because he was offended by the captain’s remark.
“She’s actually the one who came up with this idea,” Lefferts continued, “after I explained my situation to her.”
“Which is what?” asked Ron Stone.
&
nbsp; “I need to make as much money as I can, as fast as I can. Given my somewhat limited skill range”—his grin appeared—“superb for what it is, but it’s not what you’d call a real money-maker unless I start robbing banks, which I’d just as soon avoid.”
Stone was frowning, now. “And just how much do you expect me to pay you?”
Lefferts shrugged. “Whatever you can afford. It’s bound to be more than I get from a USE captain’s salary. Which I wouldn’t have to give up anyway, because I’m still on the army’s payroll. Just assigned to ‘detached special duty,’ like I have been for the last—what is it now?—better’n four years.”
“Becky doesn’t have the authority to do that,” protested Missy.
“No, she doesn’t—but Frank Jackson does. And he’s cool with it.”
Eva puzzled for a moment over the idiomatic term “cool.” It meant agreeable, apparently.
Missy barked a little laugh. “You UMWA guys! Talk about a mafia.”
Lefferts just smiled in response. Eva wasn’t sure what “UMWA” or “mafia” meant either. But she’d ask someone later. The comment was obviously a side remark, not germane to the discussion itself.
“You still haven’t explained why you need a lot of money,” said Ron.
“It’s my niece, Julie.”
Missy made a little face. “I was sorry to hear about that, Harry.”
Ron was looking back and forth from his wife to the captain. He was obviously puzzled. “What am I missing?”
His wife nodded toward Lefferts. “You remember I told you Julie Miller had something wrong with her but nobody knew what it was?”
“Ah…vaguely. She’s what, now? Three years old?”
“A little over,” said Lefferts. “She was born on August 23, 1632.”
“Anyway,” Missy Stone continued, “she was finally diagnosed a few weeks ago. The poor kid’s got cerebral palsy.”
Her husband winced. “Jesus,” he said, in the casual way Americans blasphemed. “There’s no cure for that. I mean, even up-time there wasn’t.”