Ring of fire II (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

On the other hand, she'd neglected to mention that Mr.-Whoever-He-Was had been wearing the same outfit when he arrived at her father's storage place to load the wagons. Obviously, just to make sure every idiot in Grantville connected Obvious Dot A to Blatant Dot B. The Grantville police chief and Captain Numbskull had squeezed that information out of her, despite her misgivings about what they'd do with it, but she saw no reason to weaken her case by divulging it to these layabouts.

  Lannie took a swallow from his own beer. "You think?"

  "Sure. What sort of lunatic would make his escape further into the USE?"

  The same down-timer wasn't ready to let it go. "Not so foolish, that. Before he gets to Halle, he can offload the rafts and make his way into Saxony. Probably he's working for John George."

  Denise opened her mouth. Then, decided it wasn't worth the effort to get into an argument with somebody who was obviously not playing with a full deck.

  Right. Sure. That made sense. In six months, the elector of Saxony was staring in the face an all-out invasion by Gustav Adolf. Fat lot of good some tech transfer would do him at this stage of the game. Except give Gustav Adolf another Cassius Belly. Or whatever the name was of that ancient Roman guy who'd caused a war.

  Denise might be willing to concede that John George was that stupid. But none of the up-timer traitors were that dumb, except maybe Jay Barlow and Mickey Simmons. Even Suzi Barclay wasn't that dumb, just nuts. No, wherever the lousy defectors were going, it was someplace they figured could hold off the USE, at least for a while. That meant Austria, probably-that had been Noelle's guess-or maybe Bavaria.

  Lannie finished his beer and stood up. The motion was just a little bit too exaggerated to be that of a completely sober man. Which, given Lannie, was no surprise. He wasn't actually drunk, just in his more-normal-than-not state of a pleasant buzz. Lannie's alcoholism wasn't so bad that he couldn't get by in life, with his rare skills. Jesse Wood hadn't been willing to accept him in the air force, but the Kellys used him for their test pilot.

  "Okay, then," he said. "Give me a ride back to Grantville on your bike, kid. I'll nail the bastards for you."

  Denise frowned. "What are you talking about?"

  He slapped his chest. "When the cavalry falls down on the job, you gotta call in the air force. One of the planes at the facility-that's the Dauntless-is finished and ready to go."

  Denise stopped laughing after a while. Then, shrugged. "Sure, why not? I'll take you there. I'm warning you, though. Those hands of yours better not move around any while you're holding onto me."

  Lannie looked aggrieved. "Hey, there's no call for that. Besides, I ain't crazy enough to piss off your dad."

  Denise squinted at him. "You start groping, and my dad will be the least of your worries."

  The Saale Valley, south of Saalfeld

  "It has to be them," Noelle pronounced.

  Eddie sighed and wiped his face. His whole body ached, from spending three days in the saddle. Especially his thighs. "No, actually, it doesn't. They passed through Saalfeld yesterday evening, in bad lighting, and the guards we talked to didn't recognize anybody. Just three wagons, which they didn't give more than a cursory inspection if they gave them any at all, because they most likely got bribed. Those are not exactly elite troops in that garrison, now that nobody's worried any longer about another raid deep into the Thueringerwald. Even if they weren't been bribed, they probably wouldn't have bothered to check the wagons anyway. You have any idea how many times heavily loaded wagons pass through Saalfeld?"

  "It has to be them," Noelle repeated stubbornly. She swiveled in the saddle, the slight carefulness of the motion making it clear she wasn't feeling any too spry herself. "We should have gotten reinforcements by now. I guess Denise couldn't get anybody to take her seriously. Maybe I should have-"

  "You weren't going to stay behind, since you can't resist the thrill of the chase. I couldn't stay behind, because somebody has to look after you. That left Denise-and we practically had to sit on her to get her to agree."

  He wiped his face again. "And, yes, they probably didn't take her seriously. Given that she would have had to report to Captain Knefler, him now being the commander of the Grantville garrison, and Knefler is a jackass." He smiled. "Probably, after ten seconds or so, Denise started denouncing him. She's a real pip, that one."

  Noelle eyed him suspiciously. "She's only sixteen years old. Not even that."

  "All the more reason they wouldn't take her seriously."

  "That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the possibility of other men taking her too seriously."

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  The Saale Valley, near Hof

  "Stop complaining," Janos said. He gave the wagon a cold, experienced eye. "The likelihood of having an axle break was very high, given the route we've taken and the speed we've made."

  "And that's another thing," complained Billie Jean Mase. "You've been wearing everybody out."

  Janos didn't bother replying to that accusation. In point of fact, while the pace he'd set had been hard by the standards of a commercial caravan, it was nothing compared to the pace Hungarian cavalrymen and their supply trains were accustomed to while on campaign. He was feeling perfectly well rested, himself. Granted, he'd been in a saddle, but Gage and Gardiner had been driving two of the three wagons and they were holding up well also.

  Of the three drivers, the one in the worst shape was Mickey Simmons. He'd gotten the assignment because he'd boasted of the wagoneering skills he'd developed as a result of being the coordinator of training for the transportation department. Naturally, within less than four days he'd broken an axle.

  "There's no time for this," Janos said curtly. He glanced up at the sun. "We'll camp here. We have perhaps three hours of daylight left to sort through the wagons, jettison whatever is least important, and repack the two surviving wagons."

  Needless to say-he didn't think he'd ever met such self-indulgent people; they were even worse than Austrian noblemen-the Americans set up a round of protests and complaint. The gist of which was we need all of it.

  He gave them no more than a minute before cutting the nonsense short.

  "We have no means of repairing the axle. Nor can we seek the assistance of a wainwright in Hof, because there is a USE garrison there. By now, the alert will have reached them. Like most such garrisons, they will not exert themselves to search the surrounding countryside-but if we show up in the town itself, which is quite small, they will be almost certain to spot us."

  He gave the assembled up-timers perhaps five seconds of a stony stare to see if any were stupid enough to argue those points.

  None were, apparently. He revised his estimate of their common sense. Higher than carrots, after all.

  "That leaves two options. The first is that we unload the contents of the broken wagon and pile them onto the two others."

  "Yeah, that's what I was figuring," said Jay Barlow.

  Sadly, the level of common sense did not attain that of rabbits.

  Janos half-turned and pointed southeast toward a low range of mountains. "By tomorrow, we have to be well into the Fichtelgebirge. That terrain is considerably worse than we've been passing through, and the roads are worse yet. We are certain to break another axle, or a wheel, with overloaded wagons-and these are already dangerously burdened as it is. I leave aside the fact that we are now into late autumn. The weather has been good, so far, for which we can be thankful. But who knows when the weather might turn?"

  The Americans squinted at the mountains. "We gotta go up there?" whined Peter Barclay's wife Marina. By now, Janos had come to recognize her as a champion whiner. She almost put his great-aunt Orsolya in the shade. Not quite.

  "Why?" demanded her husband.

  Janos shook his head. "This close to Bayreuth, we can't stay in the lowlands or we run the risk of being spotted by a cavalry troop. Even in the Fichtelgebirge, there may be an occasional patrol. Once we enter it, we can take only a few days-no mor
e-to reach Cheb by following the Eger."

  The Barclays' daughter Suzi frowned. She was a bizarre-looking creature, who would have been an attractive young woman if it hadn't been for the short cropped hair dyed a truly hideous color, five earrings in her left ear and three on the right, two metal studs through her right eyebrow-and, capping it all, a tattoo of flames done in black ink reaching from the wrist of her right arm to the top of the right side of her neck. The woman was so attached to the grotesque decoration that she insisted on wearing a sleeveless vest instead of a coat, despite the November temperatures.

  "That can't be right," she said. "I know somebody from Cheb, one of the girls-well, never mind that, but she's Bohemian."

  "That is hardly surprising, since Cheb is in Bohemia. It's an old fortress town that guards the western approaches. Good for us, in this instance, since the garrison is a mercenary company and its commander has been well bribed. We'll abandon these wagons in Cheb and replace them with several smaller ones, much better designed for travel in the mountains. We'll even have a cavalry escort while we pass down part of the Bohemian Forest until we reenter the USE near Kotzting. There, we will follow the Regen down to Regensburg, where we will exchange the wagons-that has also been arranged-for a barge that will take us down the Danube into Austria."

  He'd already explained this to the leaders of the up-timers, the older Barclays and O'Connor and his son. But it seemed they either hadn't paid attention or hadn't considered all the implications.

  "Hey, wait a minute," said Allan O'Connor. "We're coming back into the USE? What the hell for? I know my geography, dammit. Once we're across into Bohemia, let's just stay there until we get to Austria."

  Janos stared at him. "Indeed. As a geographical proposition, that is certainly feasible. Follow the rivers down to Pizen. From there we could take a good road to Ceske Budejovice, the largest town in southern Bohemia. From there, of course, it is a short distance to Austria-and along a very good road, given the long and constant intercourse between Vienna and Prague."

  O'Connor nodded. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking."

  No rabbit had ever been this stupid, for a certainly. "You have missed the news, then. Of the war between Bohemia and Austria. Which has been going on for a year and a half, now."

  The up-timers frowned at him. They looked like a pack of confused rabbits. All except Suzi Barclay, who just looked like a crazed rabbit.

  Janos grit his teeth, reminding himself that he needed to remain on the best possible terms with these-these-people.

  "Not a good idea," he said thinly. "The reason I could bribe the commander of the Cheb garrison is because no one expects hostilities to erupt between the USE and Bohemia, so that frontier post was given to a man who was competent enough but needed no further qualifications. Such as… what you might call a rigorous sense of duty. At Pizen and Ceske Budejovice, on the other hand, we would be dealing with Pappenheim's Black Cuirassiers."

  The up-timers seemed to draw back a little.

  "Ah. I see you have heard of them. Yes. We do not wish to have dealings with the Black Cuirassiers."

  Enough! Still more time had been wasted. He pointed stiffly to the broken wagon. "So let us begin unloading it. Now. And discard from the other two wagons whatever is not essential."

  Chapter 6. The Mess

  High Street Mansion, Seat of Government for the State of Thuringia-Franconia

  President's Office

  Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

  After Grantville's police chief finished his report, Ed Piazza, president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, half-turned his swivel chair and looked out of the window in his office. That was the first time he'd so much as glanced outside since he showed up for work this morning. His schedule had been jam-packed even before this latest crisis hit.

  The weather was still good, he saw. Clear, with not a cloud in the sky. Very crisp, of course, the way such days in November were, but not yet bitterly cold the way it would become in January and February.

  Well, not "crisis," exactly, he mused. He and Mike Stearns had long known that there was no way to keep the USE's enemies from getting their hands on American technical knowledge-nor from suborning some of the Americans themselves. Among the thirty-five hundred people who'd come from up-time through the Ring of Fire, there was bound to be the usual percentage who were excessively greedy and not burdened with much in the way of a conscience. That was even leaving aside the ones-there were a lot of those, now-who'd accepted legitimate offers to relocate elsewhere. You couldn't keep people from emigrating, after all; not, at least, without building some sort of Godforsaken version of a Berlin Wall, which neither he nor Mike had wanted any part of.

  Some people were surprised, even astonished, at the number of Americans who were leaving Grantville these days. They'd assumed that long familiarity, habits, family ties-not to mention modern indoor plumbing-would keep almost everyone from straying. But that was unrealistic. West Virginians, especially northern West Virginians, had been accustomed to moving around a lot, since the area was economically depressed except when the mines were working full bore. Most families had at least one person, in the past, who'd moved to one of the industrial cities to make a living. Often they came back, when things at home picked up, but sometimes they didn't.

  And those had been relocations just to get decent-paying but usually hard jobs in a steel mill or auto assembly plant. Today, anyone with any skills was being offered salaries that were the down-time equivalent of the kind of money top-drawer technical and business consultants made back up-time. Often enough, with lots of perks and benefits attached. And since the prospective employers were rich-many of them noblemen, sometimes royalty-even the problem of leaving modern plumbing behind wasn't so bad. It wasn't as if the upper classes of the seventeenth century were medieval barons living in stone piles, after all. They already had indoor plumbing, however rudimentary it might be by late twentieth-century American standards. And it would get better quickly, too, since the people offering the jobs had a keen desire themselves to get better facilities. Anyone in Grantville who had significant plumbing skills and experience practically had a carte blanche to go anywhere in Europe.

  To add pressure to pull, most up-timers after the Ring of Fire had lost what they'd had in the way of safety net back up-time. Which, for working class people like most of the town's inhabitants, had never been all that munificent in the first place.

  Social Security was gone. Company pensions were gone, except for a few companies headquartered in Grantville who'd been able to maintain them. Medicare was gone. That might not directly affect young people, right away, but most people in Grantville were part of families, often extended families. They had parents and grandparents and other elderly relatives who were in a tight situation, sometimes a desperate one-and now, Baron Whoozit or Merchant Moneybags or City Patrician Whazzisname was waving a small fortune under their noses, if they'd just relocate to wherever and apply their skills.

  So, since the end of the Baltic war-the decision to move the SoTF's capital to Bamberg had been a prod, too-a great migration was underway. "Great," at least, in per capita terms if not absolute numbers. Some people were even starting to call it the "American Diaspora." What had been a trickle, in the first three years after the Ring of Fire, was now a small flood. By the time it was over, Ed wouldn't be surprised if half of Grantville's residents wound up living somewhere else, at least for a time.

  Most of them were staying in the USE, true enough. But the number who were accepting positions in other countries was not inconsiderable, especially countries that had good relations with the USE like Bohemia, Venice, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian nations now united within the Union of Kalmar. Some had gone to France and Austria. A few, even farther afield, to eastern Europe, Russia, Spain and Portugal, southern Italy-even the New World.

  In fact, Ed was a little puzzled by the fact this batch of emigrants had chosen to break the law by stealing things that
didn't belong to them. Why? There was no legal barrier, as such, to moving to Austria, if that's where they went. The Sanderlins and Sonny Fortney had moved to Vienna not long ago, perfectly openly and aboveboard. They'd even hauled two complete automobiles with them.

  Carol Unruh's suspicion, which she'd voiced two days earlier, was that at least some of them were going to wind up implicated in the legal fall-out from the Bolender arrest. She'd probably turn out to be right. But, whatever the reason, the immediate effect-and the thing that made it a problem for Ed-was that it transformed what would have otherwise have been a simple emigration into "defection" and even "treason."

  What a stupid mess.

  The worst thing about this episode with the Barclays and the O'Connors-assuming for the moment that they got away with it-wasn't actually the tech transfer itself. True, among the whole group of them, they had quite a bit of technical knowledge and skills, not to mention the stuff they'd taken or stolen. But it was hardly as if there was any one "secret" that was equivalent to a magic wand. One of the USE's enemies, probably Austria, would get a major boost to whatever modernization program they'd set underway. That was hardly enough, by itself, to transform them overnight into an industrial powerhouse-which was something of a double-edged sword in any event, for Europe's royal houses and aristocracy.

  No, insofar as the affair constituted a crisis, it was a political one, not a military or technical one. Among the still-murky set of possible outcomes, one outcome was a certainty. Wilhelm Wettin and his Crown Loyalist party would pull out the stops to make as much political hay of it as they could. Wilhelm himself would keep within the limits of using the episode to argue that it showed Americans were nothing special, so what difference did it make if Mike Stearns' party had the support of most of them? A large number of the Crown Loyalists would go a lot farther than that, though, arguing that the whole affair cast suspicion on American loyalty in general.

  And there were some elements within the CLs who'd take it to the hoop. It was well-known that reactionary elements were infiltrating that loosely-defined and none-too-disciplined party, now that nation-wide elections would be taking place within a few months. Some of them were outright extremists. They'd trot out their usual anti-Catholic diatribes, of course, given the high percentage of Catholics in the defecting group-even if most of them were lapsed Catholics. They'd probably also fire up the anti-Semitic propaganda, ignoring the fact that none of the defectors were Jewish or had any connection to Jews beyond purely casual ones. Logic was hardly the strong suit of that particular current within the politics of the Germanies.