1635:The Dreeson Incident (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  Her.

  Missy didn't have anything against Ron, but she had sooooo not wanted to respond like that to a kiss from any guy in the world for another five years. Ten years. Until she got herself organized and had real life down pat.

  "Yeah," she said. "Maybe."

  "I figure it this way," Ron said. "We performed the deed that upset the equilibrium in front of my place. So we ought to be able to reverse the process if we kiss again in front of your house. That will put everything right back where it always was."

  She looked around. "Interesting hypothesis. Nice persuasive tone of voice, too. You're talking to the daughter of a car salesman, though. If you think I'm going to add another chapter to Nani's story by standing here on the porch and kissing you again-rethink the program."

  "Hmmn. We did it in the daylight, there, and it's still barely dusk. In order to achieve karmic balance, let's figure that the reverse process will work better if we do it in front of your house after dark. I'll accept the sidewalk if you have a quibble about the porch. Library now, kiss me again later."

  In spite of herself, Missy laughed.

  They weren't walking very fast. For one thing, the public library wasn't far from her house.

  "What do you mean, you're studying to be a librarian?"

  That really startled Ron. He'd figured that Missy had picked "library" as a place to spend what amounted to their first non-date on the theory that it was safe. Neutral. Noncommittal. A part-time job, since she had said she had to work.

  Not that it was her own personal turf.

  If it was, though, it sort of made sense. She was trying to put herself in charge of whatever was going on. Playing on the home field.

  That kiss this afternoon had been weird.

  "There weren't that many options when I graduated. Well, when you graduated, too. You knew that it was either the army or pharmaceuticals, though, and everyone knew that even Frank Jackson wanted you to work with your dad, like your brother Frank was doing-not waste the preparation you already had. What was there for me? I didn't want to join the army. Definitely not nursing or medicine. I didn't really want to devote my life to manufacturing steel or dealing with methanol or being a radio operator. Dad could use me as an assistant for his office work, but… So Mom stuck me into teacher training, which wasn't bad. And being an ESOL aide at the same time was fine. I'd had the experience, in a way, with Gertrude living with us. I did that until this spring. You were off in Venice with the embassy by then. That's when Marietta talked to me."

  "Marietta?"

  "Ms. Fielder to you."

  "The Sherman tank of Grantville Public Library."

  Missy gave him a sour look. "She's Dad's first cousin and what you've been undressing with your eyes is my version of the 'Newton body.' My half-sister Anne Jefferson got Mom's shape, with her father's height. Elegant. I got this. Before the Ring of Fire, Dad was headed in an expansive direction, too. Gran doesn't have it, herself. She's paper thin, like most of the Williamses were, but she passed it on to Dad and Chip and me. It's one of my annual New Year's resolutions-never to let myself blossom to the extent that Marietta and Great-aunt Elizabeth have. It's what I've inherited, but at least I'll keep it pared down. In order to do that, though, I have to exercise regularly. Which I do, even though it's boring. I'm actually in very good shape."

  Ron eyed her again, from head to toe. He repeated the scan focusing on neck to knee. The sweatshirt was not a lot of help. "Way to go."

  She gave him a shove and started to talk about data and information gathering. How important they were becoming to Grantville; the role of the different libraries and the research center. That her real apprenticeship, if that was what you wanted to call it, was out at the high school under Elaine Bolender, but that she spent time in every library inside the Ring of Fire, from the grade school to the power plant. That was the first year. By third year, she would need to be learning about down-time libraries. The University of Jena, for example. By then, there would be an exchange system set up, Elaine expected, sort of like the one the medical school would have between Leahy Medical Center here in Grantville and Jena. There were down-time librarians coming to Grantville fairly regularly now, especially to study cataloging.

  By the time they got there, she had given him a virtual tour of how the configuration of the town's various libraries had changed while he was in Italy, with special attention to the way their resources, as they were being developed, would be of use to an enterprise like Tom Stone's.

  In turn, Ron had taken her on the same kind of procession through what Lothlorien Farbenwerke was turning into under the management of Magda's father, which no longer bore much resemblance to a decrepit hippie commune. Aside from the manufacturing areas, which dwarfed the greenhouses, the original geodesic dome was now only an annex to a quite respectable house. The Stones hadn't wanted to get rid of the dome. Sentiment, Ron said.

  Then they spent three hours talking to Marietta Fielder about cross-indexing and information retrieval systems, specifically as they applied to facilitation of pharmaceutical research.

  Missy gave an extra special smile of thanks to the other student assistant on evening shift, who had ended up carrying a very heavy load of circulation and reference questions.

  A monk in full habit? Ron shrugged to himself. Grantville sure wasn't what it had been when he and Missy were growing up. But if there had to be some guy working one-to-one with Missy on evening shift, Ron thought a monk was a really good choice. He smiled warmly also, trying to project a few thoughts at the guy while he did it. Thoughts about a really enthusiastic embrace of lifelong celibacy.

  On the way home, they talked about what had happened in Venice and Rome during the so-called Galileo Affair. The CoC printing press and the Phillips screwdriver. Joe Buckley, murdered by the French Protestant fanatic, Michel Ducos-the same guy who'd almost engineered the Pope's assassination. Sharon Nichols and Feelthy Sanchez. Father Mazzare. Cardinal Mazzare, now.

  Ron was pleased to discover that Missy had no sympathy for Billy Trumble. He'd been a year ahead of her in school and had once tried out the "lordly senior jock" approach. Ron found her frankly expressed wish that some day Trumble would make an even worse fool of himself satisfying. At some level, Ron was still holding a grudge against him in regard to the escape of Ducos.

  Shortly thereafter, they tested the Stone Hypothesis. By then, on the way back from the library, they had refined the proposed procedural rules. In front of her house, on the sidewalk, in the dark, clasping the opposite hands to the ones they had been holding that afternoon, and, upon Ron's strong urging, without six inches of air separating them.

  "I don't think that worked quite the way we intended," Ron said. "As far as restoring karmic balance and getting things back to the status quo ante, all I can say is that it was a real bummer. Otherwise, it was a great success."

  "This is strange." Strange didn't even begin to cover it, Missy thought. Little impish electrons seemed to have taken up residence in both of her kneecaps and both of her hip sockets, from which locations they kept shooting sparks at one another. Diagonally.

  "Yeah. It is, sort of."

  "I wonder why we never kissed each other earlier? All those years going through middle school or high school together? Almost everyone kisses everyone else, somewhere along the line."

  "The forces that manage Dad's beloved cosmic rhythm knew we weren't old enough to handle it? Maybe I ought to toss them a bit of incense for that."

  Missy stood there thinking that she sooooo did not want this kind of complication in her life right now. Maybe never. Definitely not right now.

  She hadn't really given a thought to religion since she got old enough to tell her mother that she wasn't going to Sunday School at First Methodist any more and made it stick. Her name was still on the rolls, she supposed, if only because she had never had any incentive to have it removed. But if Ron's cosmic forces existed and they had kept this from happening four or five years ago,
she owed them. A lot.

  "Give them an extra handful, while you're at it. Pat Bonnaro down at the gift shop still carries the stuff. I'll pay for my share."

  PART FOUR

  November 1634

  Sublimed with mineral fury

  Chapter 20

  Magdeburg

  "When you agreed to delay the national election, Prime Minister," said Francisco Nasi, "I think you played into Wilhelm Wettin's hands. We would have done better to insist on the earliest election possible."

  Frank Jackson, sitting in another chair in Mike Stearns' office, nodded his head. "He's right, Mike. I told you at the time that coming right off our victory at Ahrensbok would be the best time to have the election. Instead, you gave Wettin months to start working on peoples' fears and insecurities again. Months, dammit. Now, Ahrensbok is half a year in the past. These days, that's not much different from a decade. Nobody remembers."

  Being one of Mike's oldest and closest friends, Frank was blunter and cruder than Francisco would have been. But everything he said was true, in Nasi's opinion.

  Stearns simply looked patient. Almost serene, even.

  "And I told both of you at the time-I was right then, and I'm right now-that you were missing the forest for the trees. Sure, I know that a lot of people straddling the fence, and even some of Wettin's supporters, think I make a better war president that he will. Who knows? If I'd pushed it, and insisted on a quick election, we might even have won. Gotten a big enough plurality, anyway, and then we could have formed a coalition government with one or another of the smaller parties." Mike smiled thinly. "Now that would've been a barrel of laughs, wouldn't it? Spend half our waking hours squabbling over crossing t's and dotting i's."

  Nasi couldn't help but wince. None of the small political parties in the USE was inclined in the least toward political practicality and they all viewed the term "compromise" as being a synonym for "treason."

  That was one of the reasons they were small, of course.

  He looked out the window. Since he wasn't sitting near it and the Prime Minister's office was in the palace's top floor, there was nothing to see but sky.

  Gray sky. What you'd expect, of course, in November. That dull, sullen, somber month. The battle of Ahrensbok, where the USE army under Torstensson's command had won its great victory over the French, had taken place in May.

  Bright, sunny, cheerful May. As Frank Jackson said, though, that might as well have been a decade in the past. In the six months since, Wilhelm Wettin and his Crown Loyalist party-coalition, rather; as a "party" the CLs were ramshackle-had spent every waking hour working on every fear and doubt and insecurity that any German might have concerning Mike Stearns and his Fourth of July Party-which was also a coalition, being honest, if not as ramshackle-and their supposed "radicalism."

  Well. His actual radicalism, in the case of Stearns himself if not every member of his party. By the standards of the seventeenth century, certainly.

  The end result…

  Stearns said it aloud. "Look, guys, face it. We're going to lose the election. I've always known we would"-here he leaned forward in his chair and his tone hardened-"just as I knew at the time that winning the election by taking advantage of Ahrensbok would be a fool's paradise. Once the glow wore off, the fact is that the majority of people in the United States of Europe simply aren't ready-not yet-for my political program. And a politician who tries to obtain office for any reason other than carrying through his program is either a scoundrel or a fool. Often enough, both."

  He leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands over his belly. It was a belly which was perhaps a bit larger than the one he'd carried into the office of Prime Minister a little over a year ago, but not much. Even with his incredibly heavy work load, Stearns always managed to exercise for at least a half hour each day.

  "Here's what would have happened," he continued. "At best. We might have won, although we'd almost certainly not have won an outright majority. That means a government that can't rule very effectively. Then, squabbling and bickering all the while, we'd have tried to shove a program down the throats of a nation that really wasn't ready for it. Not enough of its people, at any rate. The result? Sooner or later, Wilhelm forces a vote of confidence, there's another election, and we're out and he's in anyway. Only, this time, after having discredited ourselves."

  He unclasped his hands and sat up straight again. "No, gentlemen, there are times when taking the high road is not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. So we lose an election. Big deal. In the meantime-swords have two edges, don't forget-we've been able to take advantage of this long election campaign to solidify our own political base and clarify our own political program. You both know as well as I do what the realities are in the seventeenth century, when it comes to political activity. Most people are farmers and they work like dogs nine months out of the year. They have very little time for politics, and when they do they just want to get something done, not sit around and jabber. That means that winter is the only time of year you can talk to most people about politics-not to mention listen to them-and really hammer out a solid program that your electorate understands. Politics is education, before it's anything else."

  Frank Jackson's scowl had never left his face. By temperament, Jackson was simply not given to patient explanation and elucidation.

  Nasi looked at the window again. Neither was he, really. But at least he could understand clearly what Stearns was saying.

  And… the man might very well be right, after all. If there was one thing Francisco Nasi had learned very thoroughly in the many months since he'd become the head of USE intelligence and one of the Prime Minister's closest advisers, it was not to underestimate the political acumen and shrewdness of Mike Stearns. A "radical," the man might be-well, surely was-but he did not have trace of the airy impracticality of so many political radicals.

  "I did not bring up the matter to thrash a dead horse, Michael," Francisco said mildly. "Whether you were right or not, we may never know. What we do know-can be almost certain about, anyway-is that come February 22nd the Crown Loyalists will win the election. On a national level. Not in every province, of course."

  Frank shook his head. "Christ, that's not much more than two months from now."

  "Well, that's the day the election happens," said Nasi, shrugging. "But in a country as big as the USE, and with the facilities we have available, it will take several weeks for the results to come in and be tabulated. We're not living in your old United States of America up-time where the winner of a national election was usually known by the following day. I don't expect a winner in our upcoming election to be definitely announced until mid-March. Then, given the realities of travel in the here and now, I can't see any realistic way the change in government can happen before June."

  "True enough," said Mike. "Even in the late twentieth century, it took us two and a half months to go from a presidential election to inauguration day. When the republic was first founded, the time between election and inauguration was four months. We'll actually be doing quite well if we can inaugurate a new government less than four months after an election on February 22nd."

  "How sure are you, Francisco?" asked Frank. "It's not as if we have the kind of polling capabilities that we Americans had up-time."

  "No. But the methods and techniques we do have available are not so bad. Not when the results are going to be so lopsided."

  "What's your estimate?" Mike asked.

  "We will win no more than forty percent of the vote. Perhaps as little as one-third, although not any less. Wettin's party will win a majority. Not much of a majority-somewhere in the low fifty percentile range-but a clear majority. All the small parties put together will get somewhere between five and ten percent of the vote. Most of those votes, however, will be concentrated in a few provinces."

  Mike simply nodded. "That's about what I figure, too, just using my own stick-my-thumb-in-the-wind hunches. How about our strongholds?"
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  "Well, that's the good news. The same strident campaign being waged by the Crown Loyalists that is stirring up fears and uncertainties in most of the provinces is having the opposite effect in regions where we are solidly rooted. It's just making our supporters angry."

  Nasi glanced down at his notes. That was just ingrained reflex. By now, he could have recited all of that material in his sleep.

  "The State of Thuringia-Franconia is solid as the proverbial rock. Whatever shakiness might have existed in Thuringia is being offset-more than offset-by the continuing political ramifications of the Ram Rebellion in Franconia."

  "Ableidinger?" asked Mike, referring to the man generally considered to have been the Ram Rebellion's principal leader. Even its "mastermind," according to those hostilely inclined.

  "He'll run for a seat in the USE Congress from the SoTF. There's not much doubt in my mind or anyone else's that he'll win by a landslide."

  "About what I figured. And Magdeburg province is probably even more solid than the SoTF. It doesn't have as big a population, of course, but it's still one of the bigger provinces in the USE. So we'll have very solid bases in at least two of the major provinces. And three imperial cities, at least: Magdeburg itself, of course, along with Hamburg and Luebeck."

  Jackson looked a bit skeptical. "Are you sure about Magdeburg? The city, I mean. Otto Gericke's the mayor, which means he'll be sitting in the Senate for it, thanks to these idiot rules we set up. He's always struck me as pretty stodgy."

  "We didn't 'set up' those idiot rules, Frank," Mike said mildly. "We grudgingly agreed to them in the course of a three-way compromise between us and Wettin and the emperor- with the understanding that if we won the election one of the things we'd be pushing for was broadening the Senate and making it more democratic."

  The USE's Senate was a peculiar institution, as things presently stood. Something of a cross between a "senate" as normally understood-by Americans, at any rate-and a House of Lords. Each province and imperial city got one seat in the Senate, but the seat had to be taken by whoever was that province or city's "head of state." That meant, for instance, that Ed Piazza sat in the national Senate by virtue of having been elected president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia. But, of course, since most of the provincial heads of state in the USE were hereditary positions, that meant the Senate was a heavily aristocratic institution.