Worlds

by Eric Flint

  "Yes." The cardinal-infante was smiling, now. "I suspected as much. Very well. When the time comes, send me word and I will see you—and your men—safely through our lines. To wherever else you might go—and do note that I neither ask nor make any conditions. Except a promise that you are not going to Spain."

  "Nowhere near Spain. Ah, Your Highness. My word on it."

  "That's done, then." Turning to Anne and Olearus, the cardinal-infante smiled still wider. "You look splendid in that gown, Mademoiselle Jefferson. May I hope to see you in it again, someday?"

  The long hours of sitting seemed to have fixed serenity upon the young woman's face. She simply inclined her head toward Olearius and said, "Ask him."

  "Ah . . ." said Adam.

  Diplomacy was called for, here. An intricate dance, with steps of its own.

  "I certainly hope so," he said.

  Anne nodded, as serenely as ever. "Apparently, yes, then."

  "Jesus," grumbled Harry. "Can't anybody around here do anything straight-up?"

  As one person, a nurse from America and a diplomat from Holstein and a prince from Spain gave Harry Lefferts an identical look.

  What a barbarian.

  Postage Due

  "You've got to be kidding."

  Anne Jefferson looked around the table in the big dining room of the USE's embassy in Amsterdam, at each of the other people sitting there. Immediately to her left sat Rebecca Abrabanel, the ambassador of the United States of Europe to the United Provinces. Sitting next to her, at the end of the table, was her husband Mike Stearns. Mike was the prime minister of the USE, and had arrived in besieged Amsterdam only two days earlier, in a daring airlift that still had the entire city talking—as it did the Spanish army camped in the siege lines beyond.

  He and Rebecca were holding hands, clasped on the table. To Mike's left sat Jeff Higgins and right next to him—directly across the table from Anne—sat Jeff's wife Gretchen Richter.

  Finally, at the other end of the table facing Mike Stearns and just to Anne's right, sat Adam Olearius. As of the day before, Anne Jefferson's new fiancé. He'd finally proposed, and she'd taken all of two seconds to accept.

  "This is a joke, right?"

  That was more in the way of a firm statement than a question.

  Silence.

  "This is a joke, right?" she repeated. Her voice rose with the last word, a firm statement transmuting into a real question.

  "A joke. It's got to be."

  Desperation was creeping into her voice.

  Anne now glared at Mike Stearns, her glare almost instantly being transferred to the handclasp.

  "Stop holding hands with your wife!" she snapped. "It's disgusting."

  Mike's eyebrows went up a little. Rebecca's went up quite a bit more.

  Anne's jaws tightened. "Fine," she said, through gritted teeth. "It's not disgusting, it's aggravating. But that expression on Mike's face is disgusting. We all know you're getting laid since you flew into Amsterdam in that reckless flying stunt of yours, Mike. You don't have to be so infuriatingly smug about it."

  Rebecca's eyebrows came back down, and a very serene expression came to her face.

  "You!" snarled Anne. "That expression is even worse!"

  Rebecca smiled—very serenely—and replied:

  "I will point out that I have also sat for a portrait, in the interests of the nation."

  "Baloney! You just sat for that stupid portrait Mike keeps in his office in Magdeburg so he'd be able to keep admiring you after you left for Amsterdam. Don't give me any crap about 'the national interest.' And—"

  Her voice was rising again, as desperation returned. "—you didn't pose half-naked."

  Across the table from her, Gretchen Richter sniffed. "Half-naked, nonsense. The proposal was clearly explained. By the time the portraits are finished, you will be modestly garbed in various banners. To be sure, Rubens and Rembrandt and the Hals brothers will see you half-naked while you pose, but so what? They're artists. They don't count. Besides, Rubens has already seen you half-naked, plenty of times. Half, did I say? Nine-tenths naked."

  Anne's glare at Gretchen made the one she'd bestowed on Mike and Rebecca seem like a fleeting glance of mild disapproval.

  "So why don't you do it, then? The whole damn world has seen you half-naked!"

  Gretchen sniffed again. "Don't be ridiculous. Only the Spanish army camped outside in the siege works and maybe half of Amsterdam's residents."

  "Pretty much all of the city's residents, sweetheart," said her husband mildly. "It was a very popular, ah, tourist attraction while it lasted. I think the only ones who didn't come for a look-see were some old crones, and some of the preachers. Well, a few of the preachers."

  Jeff didn't seem aggrieved any, though, at the thought of tens of thousands of people having gazed upon his wife's naked breasts. Actually, he seemed a little smug about it himself. Given Gretchen's bosom, that was perhaps understandable.

  "You didn't answer my question!"

  Gretchen shrugged. "I offered. They turned me down." She gave Mike and Rebecca a dismissive glance. "They said I wouldn't be the appropriate model for the purpose."

  "Not hardly," drawled Mike. "The Spanish would have had conniptions. So would the prince of Orange, for that matter."

  His eyes grew a little unfocused, as if he were contemplating something in the distance. "Now that I think about, I doubt Gustav Adolf would have been any too pleased, either."

  "Kings." Gretchen's tone was icy. "Wretches, all of them. That fat Swedish bastard is depending on the Committees of Correspondence to keep his new little empire for him when the fighting starts up again next spring. But God forbid he should admit it."

  Rebecca cleared her throat. "As it happens, Gretchen, I did pass your offer on to the cardinal-infante. The reports I've received indicate that Don Fernando was rather intrigued by the idea. But, not surprisingly, his advisers were adamantly opposed."

  Her eyes moved back to Anne Jefferson. "You, on the other hand, are most acceptable to all parties involved. Especially with Gretchen as the alternative. You are a nurse, after all, a healer. Not a revolutionary agitator with a reputation for being distressingly quick with her revolver."

  "Nine millimeter automatic," corrected Gretchen. "I don't like revolvers. Rate of fire is too slow."

  "It's a conspiracy!" wailed Anne.

  "Well, sure," said Mike. "How else would you pull off a stunt like this?"

  In a tavern not far away, four men sat around a small table in the corner, hunching their upper bodies forward in the way men will when they conspire.

  "So he's agreed, then?" asked Harry Lefferts, the leader of the little group.

  The man to his left nodded. Donald Ohde, that was, the Scot-born German who served as the financier for Harry's special team. Or the "dog robber," as Harry called him.

  "Oh, sure. He's always short of money, and his brother Frans even more so."

  "It'll take everything we've got in the way of specie," cautioned the man across the table from Harry. That was Paul Maczka. Like most of the men in Harry's team, he was of hybrid origin: in his case, part-Swede, part-Saxon. And, like every single one of them, an adrenaline junkie addicted to adventures. But he tended to be very conservative whenever financial matters arose.

  Harry waved his hand. "It's only money. We're not giving up any of the essentials."

  Ohde nodded. "I told Hals. No up-time guns, no dynamite, nothing. Just money." He sneered, slightly. "Artist. Didn't even know what dynamite was, I think."

  But Paul was not one to give up easily. "You can't get food, shelter and transport with weapons," he pointed out. "Not unless we're going to rob our way across to England, which would be stupid. We need some money."

  The fourth man at the table spoke up. "We'll have lots of money once the deal closes. Ten times what we've got now. More than that. Enough to turn this shoestring operation into something out of a James Bond movie. Too bad they haven't invented jet skis yet. We co
uld afford enough for all of us."

  Gerd beamed. "Imagine the sight we'd make! Blowing our way up the Thames thumbing our noses at King Charles' soldiers."

  Gerd went all the way back to the formation of Harry's special team. So, of all the down-timers there, he more than any of them could claim to be an "old Grantville hand." But it hardly mattered. By now, all of Harry's commandos had seen plenty of up-time films.

  James Bond movies were very popular with them. Almost as popular as The Terminator.

  Maczka was still skeptical. "That stuff is hardly what you can call liquid assets."

  Ohde shook his head. "I've already got the buyer. Three of them, in fact, but it'll be the Frenchman who outbids the others. Stop fretting, Paul. Two days after it's all over, we'll be rich and on our way to the Tower."

  He paused a moment. "Well, we won't be rich. But the cause will."

  * * *

  He even meant it, and quite sincerely. Of all the odd things about Harry Lefferts' special unit, perhaps the oddest was their code of honor. Very flexible and fuzzy at the edges, but hard as iron at the center.

  Mike Stearns had once remarked that it was all that kept them from being the most frightening pack of bandits in Europe. He'd made the remark to his wife Rebecca after one of his meetings with Harry, where he'd given Lefferts another "special assignment."

  Mike had shaken his head ruefully, his hands cradling a cup of coffee. "Harry Lefferts. I swear. I told him to be a little careful about the way he raised funds for the operation. I didn't want any CIA drug-dealing scandals."

  Rebecca sipped from her own coffee cup. "What did he say in response?"

  Mike chuckled. "Harry Lefferts. What do you think? 'Can't, Mike,' he said. 'Drugs ain't illegal in this day and age.' "

  Rebecca nodded. "True. That must have been a bit of a relief for you."

  Mike shook his head. "No, not really. Not when the next words out of Harry's mouth were: 'More's the pity. We'll have to figure out something else.' "

  "Oh."

  On their way back to Anne's residence, her hand tucked into the crook of Adam's elbow, she gave her brand-new fiancé an uncertain look.

  "You sure you won't mind?"

  "Oh, no," he said, smiling. "Leaving aside her indelicate phrasing, Gretchen was quite right. You'll be wearing a pair of shorts and a halter in this pose. Which is considerably more than you wore for Rubens in your previous sessions."

  Anne's mouth twisted into a grimace. " 'Pair of shorts.' Pair of hot pants, is what they actually are. And that so-called halter they want me to wear is what plenty of people would call a bikini top."

  After a moment: "Okay. Not on the Riviera, I guess. But they sure would have called it that back in West Virginia."

  Her expression grew a bit grumpy. "The real West Virginia, I mean. Not this screwy wild-ass version of it we've somehow turned into since the Ring of Fire."

  After a few more seconds, she said: "Well, okay. I'll do it, then."

  The sessions started two days later. As agreed, in a house in Amsterdam, this time, instead of the Spanish camp where Anne had posed for Rubens on previous occasions. Three out of the four artists were Dutch, after all. Easier for Rubens to join them, than the other way around.

  Rubens didn't mind. He was a very experienced diplomat as well as an artist, who'd often served the Habsburgs in their foreign affairs.

  He'd always liked Amsterdam, in any event. And, who was to say? If this latest of many complicated steps in the dance of state affairs advanced matters still further, he might someday be able to buy a house of his own in the city.

  "Let's begin," he said. Without there having been any discussion, Rubens had assumed leadership of the little project. It seemed natural enough. Not only was he slightly older than the two Hals brothers, he was considerably better known and more successful. The chaotic habits of the Hals family left them usually just two steps ahead of the debt-collectors.

  Rembrandt might have challenged the matter. By now, they all knew that in the future world Grantville came from, Rembrandt would be an even more famous artist than Rubens. In many peculiar and subtle little ways, knowledge of what would have happened was modifying social status all across Europe. Rembrandt was still very young—only twenty-eight—and had not yet created the masterpieces that would, three and half centuries later, rank him among the greatest artists of all time. But everyone knew he would be—or had been, at least, in another world, since there was no telling what would happen in this one. So, he already had most of the prestige of a master.

  He'd confided to Rebecca once that it made him very uncomfortable. And he handled the problem by maintaining a stance of modesty that was sometimes almost comical.

  So, he made no objection. In this day and age, Rubens was preeminent among them.

  "Let's begin," Rubens repeated. "Anne, if you would be so good as to remain still and steady."

  "Still and steady ain't the problem," replied Anne, somehow managing to talk clearly while barely moving her lips. "It's keeping this stupid fucking bimbo smile plastered on my face that's the problem."

  There had been a time when the thought of using foul language in front of great artists would have appalled Anne Jefferson. But now that she'd come to know them, in their own time and place, she didn't think much of the matter. All things considered, West Virginians and seventeenth-century Europeans got along quite well. It was an earthy age, whose people were at least as rowdy and raucous as Appalachian hillbillies.

  Standing at his easel, Rembrandt smiled and went to work. The Hals brothers had already started.

  Not a word was spoken in the salon for over an hour. Then Dirck Hals paused at his labor, frowned, and muttered to his older brother.

  "It's slipped my mind. Which banner am I supposed to be portraying?"

  "You idiot," came the toneless response. Frans Hals lifted the brush from his canvas and pointed at one of the flags hanging from the far wall. "That one."

  Three days later, it was done. The salon of the house was now crowded with people gazing admiringly at the four portraits displayed to one side.

  Anne Jefferson was the model for all of them, a fact which was obvious at a glance. The American was most attractive, in the way that young women who are pretty but not beautiful are. Pleasing to the eye, but not threatening or intimidating, and with just enough in the way of irregularity of features to make her face distinctive and easily remembered.

  "Perfect," murmured the cardinal-infante. The commander of the Spanish army and his aides had been given a safe-conduct for the day, so they could cross the lines and come into Amsterdam to see the portraits. By now, after the long weeks of what had become a very peculiar siege, not even his advisers had raised much of a protest.

  A bit, of course. Don Fernando was, after all, the younger brother of the king of Spain as well as a cardinal and an army commander. From the standpoint of a hostage, as good as you could ask for.

  But the man across the room had given his word, and he was the prince of Orange. Enemies they might be, but by this point in time there was also a great deal in the way of trust between Don Fernando and Fredrik Hendrik.

  There had been many negotiations and diplomatic advances, after all, of which this was only the latest. More to the point, the days of the duke of Alva and his massacres and the equally bloody Dutch responses to them were thankfully many decades in the past. Even the sturdiest Calvinist in Amsterdam, except for diehard Counter-Remonstrants, would allow that Don Fernando was a good enough sort, for a papist and a Spaniard. And most of the soldiers in the cardinal-infante's army would reciprocate the sentiment, with regard to the House of Orange. It had been a hard-fought war, but not a savage one.

  Don Fernando's eyes lifted from the canvas he was particularly interested in, and met Fredrik Hendrik's gaze. "I might need a bit of help with the printing," he said, "once we're ready to begin producing large quantities. I fear that siege lines tend to be short of printing presses."

&nb
sp; "Not a problem," said the prince of Orange. "I shall see to it you have the services of some of the printers in the city."

  Graciously, he left unsaid the fact that only Spanish siege lines would be short of printing presses. Dutchmen would have plenty, anywhere they went, not being semiliterate jumped-up sheepherders who called themselves "hidalgos."

  Don Fernando nodded and made a little gesture to his aides. Two of them stepped forward and took up one of the portraits.

  "We'll be off, then. I think we can safely expect the service to begin . . . in a month?"

  Fredrik Hendrik pursed his lips, considering. "In the United Provinces, certainly." A bit wryly: "There's not much left of them, after all, since you arrived. I imagine you'll be able to do the same in the Spanish Netherlands. For the rest—"