by Eric Flint
“Perhaps that is how it happens in most cases, but my family has known the czar since before he was the czar. And my father was with the delegation that went to him. Mikhail was a teenager, old enough to know that being declared czar was a short step away from being declared dead. His mother and father each had more than their share of ambition, but they passed none on to Mikhail. He was precisely what the Boyar Duma and the Assembly of the Land wanted, a figurehead to move the battle for control of Russia back out of sight. Even so, the Boyar Duma and Assembly tied his hands with a set of restrictions.”
Bernie held up his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t there,” he said, “and I don’t doubt you. It’s just that the king that doesn’t want the throne is a stock item in fairytales, but pretty darn rare in a world of elected officials, where if you don’t want the office you don’t have to run.”
“In any case, the czar is generally quite impressed with your accomplishments and so are the patriarch and Prince Cherkasski.”
Bernie knew that Cherkasski was the czar’s cousin and was the boss of three of the bureaus that ran Russia.
“With their support,” Natasha continued, “Sheremetev won’t be able to do anything.”
“What bugs this Sheremetev about the Dacha?” Bernie asked.
“Primarily that he doesn’t own it,” Natasha said. “The Sheremetev family are famous for their corruption, but also very good at politics. They know all about bribery and blackmail, having accepted more bribes than any other great family in Russia. But we’ll be all right here, as long as Patriarch Filaret can keep a leash on Sheremetev. The brain cases will be fine.”
Mikhail and his father were already consulting with the “brain cases.” Mikhail wanted a way out of the trap the up-time history had put him in. Since the history of that other future had leaked, people with power were not happy. He and his father, as czar and patriarch, had been carefully dancing in the mine field of Russian politics, focusing on the danger of a return to the Time of Troubles to keep the various factions in check. Even so, power was shifting between the factions. The one led by Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, for instance. Their cousin or not, Sheremetev felt that the information from the up-timers and the actions of Peter the Great really destroyed the Romanov credentials as arch-conservatives.
“Interesting, perhaps.” Sheremetev set his glass on the table. They had been discussing the history of the United States of America and its Constitution. “Interesting, but not that impressive. It was their day in the sun, that’s all. The Mongols had theirs and this United States had theirs. They were only two hundred years old. Barely a youth, as nations go.”
Mikhail looked across the table at him. There were only three men at dinner tonight. Filaret, Mikhail and Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev. Mikhail wanted Sheremetev’s support. “I am more concerned with something else,” he said “The general agreement-and I read this over and over again-was that Russia continued to lag behind much of the rest of the world. We can change that, and I believe we should. Right now, we should start. Because right now, everyone is four hundred years behind Grantville. We have Bernie here and Vladimir in Grantville. We can modernize.”
Sheremetev nodded, but Mikhail didn’t think he was listening. Not properly at any rate. “The army, most assuredly. Right away. That I agree with. But this other? This constitution? Why? A firm hand on the reins. That is all that is needed, Mikhail. A firm hand on the reins of Rus.”
Mikhail shook his head. No, Sheremetev wasn’t listening.
Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev left the dinner and considered the evening most of the way home. He understood what Mikhail and Filaret were contemplating. Let every peasant vote. Introduce a constitutional monarchy, then gradually give away the power, not only of the monarchy, but of the great families as well.
He would not, he could not, let that happen. They said it was to prevent the revolution that had come in three hundred years hence in that other history, which they thought would probably happen even sooner in this one if they didn’t act to forestall the causes for it. But to Sheremetev, such reasoning bordered on sheer insanity. Who could predict what might happen in three centuries? In any event, if preventing a revolution was the issue, surely a policy of more severe and consistent maintenance of order would work far more reliably than introducing chaos.
But Sheremetev suspected that the real reason for their schemes, at least for the czar himself, was that Mikhail was afraid of power. When they had offered him the crown he had cried like a babe.
Sheremetev had a lot more sympathy for Joseph Stalin than he had for Nicholas Romanov. And more for Nicholas than for Mikhail. It was God’s whimsy to sometimes put a peasant in the blood line of kings, or a let a king be born in a peasant’s hovel.
Stalin was a king born of base blood. And Mikhail was a peasant borne of some of the noblest blood in Russia. But that whimsy of God’s didn’t invalidate the concept of royalty, any more than the occasional sport in a fine bloodline of hounds or horses invalidated breeding.
Filaret would have made a better czar, except for his fanatical hatred of Poland. Couldn’t they see that the Swede was the danger now?
Chapter 31
Grantville
March 1633
Vladimir was running late. He had just about given up on doing his own research. There wasn’t time. There wasn’t really even enough time to provide supervision of the researchers. Not with the sources Francisco Nasi pointed out to him. Yet here he was, because someone in Russia had found something about mica capacitors and wanted to know more because apparently Russia had the best mica in the world. At least, so he was told. He was looking around trying to decide where to start, when he heard a voice.
“Well, hello, Prince Vladimir. What brings you here?”
Vladimir looked around and saw a vaguely familiar young woman. He couldn’t quite place her though she was clearly an up-timer.
While he was trying to figure out what to say to the young woman, she spoke again. “I thought you master-spy types had minions to do this sort of thing.”
Her knowing that he was a spy wasn’t much help, but it did offer something to say. “I think you must be thinking of Boris, who has gone back to Russia. I’m just a journeyman spy. Besides it’s amazingly hard to find minions for this sort of work. Do you know some of them actually insist on having their eyes open when reading the books?”
“How horrible for you,” the young woman said. “Why, someone might actually find out what they were learning about for you. Now I understand why you hired Bernie for your Dacha. He can read the entire encyclopedia without learning anything.”
Bernie? Yes. This was Natasha’s correspondent that Bernie had recommended to her, the one that wrote to her about bras and things. Brandy… yes, that was it. This was Brandy Bates. “Regretfully, Miss Bates, you do Bernie an injustice. From all reports he has proven to be both hard-working and capable.”
“So Natasha keeps saying in her letters. But I’ve known Bernie all my life and it’s a bit hard to believe that he’s taking anything seriously for more than a couple of months.” Brandy shrugged “Maybe he’s grown up.”
Actually Brandy’s assessment of Bernie would have fit Vladimir’s perfectly, when he’d sent Bernie off to Moscow. He’d thought they’d have had to use much more stick to keep him at his work. “Apparently things changed this spring in Moscow.”
“Yes, Bernie wrote me about that. I hope you can get plumbing in before it happens again next year.”
Vladimir felt his head shaking before she had finished her sentence. “It’s most unlikely. Frozen ground is almost as hard to dig as stone. I do understand that there will be some rather draconian punishments for emptying chamber pots in the street and they are going to have barrels and workmen to move those barrels out of town.”
“Barrels?”
“To empty the chamber pots into.”
“It might work as a stopgap measure. Is that what you’re doing here, looking for new kinds of barr
els or ways of carting them off?”
“No, the Streltzi of Moscow, who have apparently taken Bernie to their bosom after last spring, are taking care of that. I am in search of information on mica, muscovite, or Muscovy-glass. It’s sometimes used as glass in Moscow windows and someone at the Dacha seems to have discovered that it is an unusually good insulator. It’s a potentially high profit export for Russia.”
“So, why don’t you have your minions doing it, Prince Vladimir? Surely a prince has minions?”
“It’s that same problem again. The minions insist on reading with their eyes open. Plus the fact that my main researcher just got hired away by a French marquis who may be working for Cardinal Richelieu or the king of France’s little brother Gaston. But what are you doing here? Surely no one could hire away your minions. Besides, you’re an up-timer. Probably you already know all of this.” Vladimir waved at the thousands of books casually.
“No minions, I’m afraid. I’m a researcher. Have card catalog, will cross-reference.”
“Ah!” Perhaps I can get back to work. Vladimir felt himself grinning. “A minion for hire. I pay standard rates.”
“Yes, but you see I read with my eyes opened,” Brandy said, grinning back.
“Well, in this case it doesn’t matter. Poor spy that I am, I’ve already let you discover that I’m seeking information on mica. Are you sure you’re not a spy?”
Brandy giggled. Then quickly regained her composure and asked what he wanted to know about mica. He told her and they discussed hourly wages, the cost of copying and other fees involved. They reached an agreement and Vladimir was free to get back to his organizational duties.
Brandy went to work on the mica research, but her tummy was jumping a bit. Well, maybe not her tummy. But something inside her was jumping a bit about something.
The last thing she’d ever expected was to feel this way about a down-timer. Down-timers were… well, down-timers. They didn’t quite get civilization.
Over the next few days, she saw Vladimir quite a bit. And that jumping feeling became rather more intense.
Prince Vladimir had his own sensations. And the more he saw Brandy Bates, the more interesting those feelings got.
It was hard to know what to do about them. Up-timer women were.. different. Not suitable for a casual dalliance. And, by Russian standards, not suitable for anything else. Still, he couldn’t help wanting to see her.
He kept finding jobs for her. And then, when he’d worked up the courage, he suggested they have lunch. And lunch led to dinner. And without really realizing it, he had become involved.
“Vladimir.” Brandy waved the letter. “What precisely is a clan?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your sister is talking about clans. I’m not sure what she means.” She handed him the letter and waited impatiently as he read it.
“Clan seems a fairly good word.” He pursed his lips like he wasn’t quite sure. “I think I would say family connections, but I am not sure. From what I understand, your government frowns on what you call nepotism, right?”
Brandy nodded, wondering where this was going.
“Russia is different. Nepotism is an institution of government.”
Brandy giggled, thinking he must be exaggerating to make his point. But Vladimir was looking serious, even concerned. “You don’t mean literally?”
Vladimir nodded. “Yes. If a person whose extended family is of lower rank is placed over a person whose family is more highly ranked
…” Vladimir hesitated.
Brandy had seen it before, both in Vladimir and other down-timers. She had even done it herself, trying to explain things like the Goth style of dress. It wasn’t just that the concept was missing; it was that there were half a dozen interrelated concepts that were all a bit different from the down-time concepts.
“A person’s rank in Russia is determined by three things,” Vladimir finally continued. “His personal rank in the bureaucracy, his family’s rank and his inherited rank. However, they are all at least somewhat mixed together. My family is small but descended from independent princes. Because it is small and doesn’t have a lot of connections to other great families, it’s fairly weak. In my case, that is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that I am the prince. But a cousin of mine, if I had one, would be of significantly lower rank than a cousin of Ivan Borisovich Cherkasski, because the Cherkasski family has connections by marriage to many other great families. Also, because the Cherkasski family has served in the government of Russia for many generations and counts several boyars among its ancestors.
“So, say my cousin and Ivan Borisovich’s cousin both get jobs in the bureaus. My cousin, through talent or luck, advances more quickly. So my cousin is placed as section chief over a section in which Ivan Borisovich’s cousin serves.”
“Makes sense.”
But Vladimir was shaking his head. “Because the Cherkasski clan is higher ranked than the Gorchakov clan, it would be against the law for my cousin to be placed in authority over Ivan Borisovich’s. He could have higher personal rank, but still could not be put above Ivan Borisovich’s cousin in the same chain of command.”
“Like, say, he’s a prince?” Brandy tilted her head to the side.
“No.” Prince Vladimir got a bit red in the face. “I was talking about his rank in the bureaus or the army. Say a colonel in command of a battalion… a captain with the higher family rank could not be placed in command of one of the companies of that battalion because that would put him under the orders of the colonel. If the colonel was also a prince, it would be all right because his personal rank would trump the family rank, sort of. It gets a bit complicated. It’s the rank of the family as much as that of the individual. The family’s situation must be considered first. Before individual wants. Which is one of the things that has made it so hard for our people to accept your innovations. It’s common knowledge that you’re a ‘peasant village’ from the future.”
“We’re not, you know,” Brandy said. “I know that’s the way we have been portrayed and even how we tend to present ourselves. A village from a nation that didn’t have nobility. In a way, it’s true, but it would be just as true to say we were a nation of nothing but nobility. What we really don’t have, Vladimir, is the distinction.”
“And that, Brandy, is even harder for my people to accept,” Vladimir said, though in his heart he had accepted it. Accepted it because he had to. The proof was here before his eyes and before his heart. In the person of Brandy Bates who was as noble as anyone he had ever met and as common as the barmaid she had been before the Ring of Fire. All classes, all in one beautiful young woman.
Chapter 32
The Kremlin
April 1633
“Death and taxes,” Bernie muttered as he fell into the chair. “I’d really prefer a visit from the tax man.” It was April 15 and Bernie was in the Kremlin. Not because he was really needed but because he was the up-timer and the Muscovites believed that his presence was a shield against the slow fever. Typhoid, that was, in up-timer English. So he went through the hospices where the people who had gotten typhoid fever this spring were being treated with down-time made Gatorade. At least this year they had real instructions on how to make the stuff, not just what Bernie could suck out of his thumb. And they were making their own aspirin for the fever even if they couldn’t make chloramphenicol yet.
“It really does help, Bernie,” said Father Kiril. “You up-timers even tested it and gave it a name. Not that they were telling any down-time doctor anything they didn’t already know. Or any priest, either, when you come down to it. The placebo effect, they called in your future, and you, Bernie, are a very effective placebo.”
“Yes, everything’s great,” Bernie said sourly. “Natasha, Anya, Filip the whole staff of the Dacha, the mayor of Moscow, the rich and powerful, and the poor and huddled all agree. It’s likely that this spring’s outbreak of the slow plague will kill fewer than a hundred people. Which is gre
at, if you don’t happen to be one of those hundred people. Sorry, Padre. It’s just that I know that we could cure this if we had the right antibiotic and we knew how to make them up-time. We even had the knowledge in the Ring of Fire, but we haven’t been able to make it. And ‘sorry, kid, maybe next year… oh yeah, you’ll be dead next year’ just doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“All we can do is the best we can do,” Father Kiril said. “The Ring of Fire didn’t change that. I suspect that nothing ever will.”
Guba Ivashka Kalachnikov was very interested in the knowledge from the future. He hadn’t been last year, much to his regret. He had found the up-timer uncultured and rude to people who had practiced the healing craft for decades. It wasn’t that Guba had any profound objection to washing his hands. True, it wasn’t a lot of fun in icy water and heating water was expensive. Boiling it, as the up-timer wanted, was even more so. But he had seen the results. He had seen patients that he would have said would die, live. If the Gatorade had that effect, what about the hand-washing? Since spring of last year Guba had been trying to learn more of the up-timer knowledge so that he might determine how much of what the up-timer said was knowledge and how much ignorance.
“Quicksilver, mercury,” he whispered, “is a poison?” He wasn’t that concerned about the lead that the ladies used in their makeup. There were other things that would work as well for that. He was busily trying to integrate the things that were coming from the Ring of Fire with his experience. He had a lot of the latter; he had been a healer for over forty years.
He listened to the rest of the list. It was something called a cheat sheet and was being read to him by a clerk from the Grantville Section of the embassy bureau. The clerk was a lad of fifteen and, even though he was Guba’s social superior, worked for him doing reading and writing. He paid the boy and thanked him for the service. Guba had never bothered to learn reading and writing. At least not what most people would think of as reading and writing. He used a set of symbols that was partly inherited from his teacher and partly made up by himself to keep track of what drug, prepared in what way, was in each container.