1636:The Kremlin games rof-14

by Eric Flint

  “It has been suggested that I would make an excellent candidate for the head of the Grantville section of the embassy bureau.” He shrugged. “That is both the reward and the risk. If it doesn’t work, well, my position in the bureau would become untenable.”

  “Yes, it would.” Another pause while the patriarch’s fingers continued to tap out a strange beat on the desk. “Very well. I will talk to Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, then. I’ll even do what I can to get the appropriate people assigned to your section and loaned to the Gorchakov dacha.”

  He gave Boris a hard look, his eyes seeming to glitter for a moment. “You understand what you’re risking?”

  “I think so, Patriarch.”

  Chapter 8

  Bernie had a private letter from Vladimir to his sister Natasha, whose legal name was Natalia. Vladimir hadn’t made a big deal of it, but Bernie had the impression that Vladimir would prefer that Boris didn’t know about the private letter. So Bernie waited while Boris sent a message to warn the great lady that Boris was bringing a barbarian to be examined and to put mats down on the floor in case the strange creature should decide to take a dump on it. At least that was Bernie’s impression of Boris’ attitude. It was hard to tell what the little guy thought.

  As promised, Boris delivered Bernie the next day. They were ushered in by an armed retainer who looked a warning at Bernie and left them in a warm, well lit room with a great big stonework heater. In the room was a tall, willow-thin woman with long, black hair and snow-white makeup and red-painted lips. Boris went ahead and kissed her on the cheek as was the custom. She had to lean down to accept the kiss and suddenly they looked to Bernie like nothing so much as Boris and Natasha from the Bullwinkle cartoons.

  Boris and Natasha looked like Boris and Natasha. Bernie cracked up. He couldn’t help it. He had been nervous all morning after the lecture Mrs. Petrov had given him on how important the Gorchakov family was. And suddenly it was like he was in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. He cracked up. He almost had himself under control when “Where’s Bullwinkle?” slipped out. He lost it again.

  Things were getting tense by the time Bernie really got himself under control. “I’m sorry. I’m away from home and nervous about the new job. It was just that you two right then happened to look like Boris and Natasha.”

  Now the princess was looking confused again. “But we are,” she said with a distinctly Slavic accent. “He’s Boris and I’m called Natasha.”

  “I know.” Bernie shook his head. “I think that’s what really did it. Not like you, Boris and Natasha; like the cartoon Boris and Natasha. Natasha was tall and slinky, ah, beautiful with a very pale face and red lips, Boris was short and stocky. They were spies.” Another giggle. “Spies who were constantly trying to blow up Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose. I used to watch it on Nickelodeon when I was a kid.”

  “What is a cartoon?” Princess Natasha was apparently much mollified by the notion that this other Natasha was beautiful. Bernie was less confident of her reaction to slinky, though you never knew.

  “It’s a simple drawing,” Bernie tried to explain.

  “Something like an icon but without the religious significance,” Boris clarified.

  “Except the ones with Boris and Natasha moved.”

  “Moved how?” Natasha’s forehead creased under the makeup. “Did they shake the paper?”

  Which led to a discussion of moving pictures in general and how they were made. By the end of this discussion, Natasha was too interested to be offended.

  “Now I see how it works.” Natasha saw something else too. This was why they needed Bernie Zeppi and why they should turn the dacha into a research center. He had not come here to introduce moving icons on a screen. It had just popped out like a chicken laying an egg. He cackled a bit and there it was. How many other eggs were buried in this stranger from the future and how valuable would they be to the family? Natasha had seen mimes and clowns perform. In spite of his comments, she knew that the movies and cartoons didn’t need sound to attract an audience. She was pleased again when, while Boris was talking to her Aunt Sofia, Bernie managed to pass her a letter “from your brother.” Then he had gone on about Rocky and Bullwinkle blundering along and thwarting Boris and Natasha while Bullwinkle at least didn’t have a clue what was going on.

  Over all, Natasha was quite impressed with Vladimir’s up-timer, as were some of the other people Boris introduced him to over the next week.

  Chapter 9

  “I think we can use him,” General Kabanov said. He was in charge of guns and weapons for the Streltzi, the musketeers who served Russian cities as guardsmen as well as providing much of the army’s infantry. “He does seem to know a great deal about guns and their use.”

  Bernie had just finished disassembling and reassembling his up-time rifle and then loading it and emptying it into a set of targets. Boris nodded in response to the general’s assessment. He saw no need to point out that Bernie’s familiarity with the rifle was not particularly unusual among up-timers. Grantville was a town of hunters.

  “Why can’t we make these repeating rifles?” General Kabanov asked Bernie. But he didn’t speak English, much less up-timer English, so questions were funneled through Boris. Which was probably for the best, as it allowed him to edit at need.

  “Primers,” Bernie said. “You can’t make the primers. We went over all this in Grantville.”

  “In the brass cartridges,” Boris translated, “are compounds of a chemical that is difficult and expensive to make in quantity-”

  So it went. It was the third interview that day and there were three more to go and still more tomorrow.

  “Why did you have to bring us an idiot?” Filip Pavlovich Tupikov was pacing back and forth, scratching furiously at a rather weak beard. “They know how to fly. They can make materials we never dreamed of. And you bring us this? Not a doctor, not a… what is the word? Engineer. Not an engineer. Instead you bring us this… this… barely a craftsman. Why, Boris Ivanovich?”

  Boris Ivanovich looked at Filip Pavlovich. The man was a brilliant artisan and a skilled natural philosopher, but had no understanding of how the world worked. Besides, Boris had been getting some version of this from about half the interviewers for the last two weeks. “Ah, how foolish of me.” Boris snorted. “I should, no doubt, have asked their president, Mike Stearns, to give up all he had in Grantville and come be a servant in Russia. Or perhaps the master of machining, Ollie Reardon, would have given up his factory with its machines and the electric to run them. Better yet, I could have tried to persuade Melissa Mailey, a qualified teacher in their high school. Of course, she has been heard to say-more than once, I should point out-that they should start by executing nine out of ten of the nobility of Europe. She then suggests that they go up from there. I’m sure she would have been happy to serve the czar.”

  Filip Pavlovich flinched a bit. Boris felt he’d gotten his point across. “I brought Bernie Zeppi because he was who I could get. He has graduated their high school. He is a qualified auto mechanic with tools. I should know. I had to arrange for their transport. He speaks, reads and writes their up-timer English. English which is not so similar to the English we know as Polish is to Russian. You can get by with practice but the words have changed their meaning and pronunciation as often as not. Believe me, Filip Pavlovich, there are people I could have recruited that you would have liked much less.”

  Bernie sighed. “When is this sh… ah… stuff going to be done with? Let me get to work, will you?” Bernie wasn’t all that anxious to get to work, just to get out of Moscow and away from the interviews.

  “Soon, Bernie, soon,” Boris said. “We have the audience today. Princess Natalia will be down soon and we will leave.”

  “The makeup again?” Bernie chuckled.

  Boris glared at Bernie, remembering the silly business about Boris and Natasha. “I trust you will be able to control your sense of humor.”

  “Wish she’d
hurry up.” Bernie’s complaint brought Boris back to the present. Then Natasha arrived, walked to Boris and said in a deep sultry voice-not her own-but which Bernie claimed was a fairly good imitation of the cartoon Natasha: “Welcome, my little Borisky. This time we will capture that naughty moose, yes?”

  Bernie grinned and Boris turned red.

  Bernie tried to suppress his grin as Boris and Natasha coached him very carefully for his meeting with Mr. Big. Mr. Big, otherwise known as the Czar of All the Russias. Armed with Vladimir’s gifts, as well as his own, Bernie followed their instructions carefully.

  Boris whispered names and positions while they stood in the line of people waiting to be presented. “Patriarch Filaret, the czar’s father, there to the left of Czar Mikhail. On the right, Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, the czar’s cousin; he is in charge of the bureau of records. It is an especially powerful post, because he can cause so much trouble for the other bureaus.” The list of names went on and on. Bernie quit paying that much attention, except for the fact that they all seemed to be related to the czar. Natasha had left them, and gone off to see the czar’s wife. When they got a bit closer, Bernie started looking around a bit. Fortunately, he had good eyesight. The room was huge, at least eighty feet long and broad in proportion.

  Mr. Big-no, that really didn’t seem to fit-was a pretty ordinary guy when you got a look at him. The czar looked to be in his mid-thirties. He also looked like he didn’t want to be here. Sort of bored and sad. He seemed like the kind of guy who got stuffed in his locker in gym class. The patriarch guy, his father, was really old, but looked to be a tough old bird. And all these… boyars, they were called. There was some serious money tied up in their clothes. At the same time there was something a bit tawdry about the whole thing. The cleaning staff hadn’t done that good a job on the great hall and most of the fancy outfits needed cleaning-but not as much as the people wearing them.

  “Dmitri Mamstriukovich Cherakasky.” Boris nodded toward another man. “Not a man to cross, that one.” Well, Bernie wasn’t going to cross anyone if he could help it. This place was to the period movies Bernie had seen as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was to Roy Rogers.

  Finally, they got up to the front of the line. Boris did all the talking, which was just as well. Bernie hadn’t had much luck figuring out the lingo yet. Boris gave the agreed upon signal and Bernie bowed. “Your Majesty.”

  Mikhail Romanov smiled kindly back at Bernie’s attempt to bow. “Welcome to Moscow.”

  Bernie bowed again and Boris made a gesture, so Bernie presented his gifts. Czar Mikhail looked at the watch curiously.

  “It is an up-time ‘watch.’” Boris spoke softly. “If you will press that button there, it will light up.”

  The czar, clearly with some trepidation, pressed the button and managed to say “Very interesting.”

  They finished the interview, so Bernie and company were ready to leave the next day.

  Chapter 10

  Bernie sat in the sleigh and moped. He should be interested and excited, but he couldn’t manage to feel even an echo of such an emotion. It had just hit him again: the Ring of Fire, the people he’d killed at the Battle of the Crapper and his mother’s death. He could quit and go home but it wasn’t home. Home didn’t exist anymore. Bernie wanted a drink. He knew he shouldn’t have one but he wanted one.

  He had been drinking a lot less since they started for Russia. Getting out of Grantville had helped, but sometimes it all came back on him. For some unknown reason, today was one of those times. Midwinter this far north had short frigging days. Maybe that had something to do with it. He’d read something about that somewhere.

  Natasha looked over at him and grinned. “We will reach the dacha soon, Bernie.”

  Bernie grunted without much enthusiasm. God, I wish I had my car. I wish I had some gas. I wish…

  “What is wrong, Bernie?”

  “Nothing you can help with, nothing anyone can help with really. I guess I’m just homesick.”

  “You wish you could go back? But we have only begun to become acquainted.”

  Bernie noted with some amusement that Natasha’s vamp routine needed a bit of work. Still it was nice that she was trying to cheer him up. “No, I don’t wish to go back. Not back to Germany anyway. I wish I could go home, back to the world I came from. This world isn’t home. Even Grantville isn’t home. I used to do all right, you know. I had enough money to do what I wanted, for the most part. I dated, I worked my hours. I had a life.” I hadn’t killed anyone; I had a mother who was still alive. “Now, though, well, it’s just not the same, not even in Grantville.”

  Bernie looked at the girl. She seemed nice enough and she hadn’t gotten pissed at the Boris and Natasha bit. On the other hand, she was Vladimir’s sister and Bernie had finally figured out just how rich and powerful Vladimir was after he had gotten to Moscow. This girl was the daughter of a great house. She was pretty, dark-haired and slim. Slimmer than a lot of the Russian women, with black hair that hung down to her waist. She spoke some English. Funny-sounding English, but English. Mostly, though, she was someone to talk to and Bernie was sick of thinking about his troubles.

  “So,” he said, “tell me about yourself.” Natasha looked taken aback by the question and the old lady, Vladimir’s Aunt Sofia, cackled a bit. Bernie didn’t have a clue why.

  “Ah…” Natasha stopped. “What do you wish to know?”

  “Oh…” Bernie hesitated a moment. “What do you figure on doing with your life? Do you have any plans to become a doctor or lawyer? What’s it like in the summer here? Is there summer here? Do you like parties?” He snorted. “What’s your sign? That’s probably too many questions, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps,” Natasha acknowledged. “In any case, I didn’t understand what all of them meant. I don’t know what my sign is. Unless you mean the family crest.”

  “Never mind,” Bernie scratched his chin. “Why do all the men wear beards?”

  “Men wear beards because the church says that it is a mortal sin to shave them. God did not create men beardless, only cats and dogs.”

  “Not to mention rats and mice,” Bernie said. “Goats, though. Goats have beards.”

  Aunt Sofia was suppressing laughter. Bernie grinned at the old lady. “Of course, goats don’t shave either.”

  “Perhaps so.” Natasha sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “But I’m not sure the church would like hearing that…” She searched for the word. “Ah… compare?”

  “Comparison,” Bernie said. “Yeah. I’ve never met a holy roller yet that liked that sort of comparison. I understand the churches down-time have a lot more power. So maybe I should be more careful about what I say.”

  “What of your faith, Bernie?”

  “Mom was a Methodist, a Protestant I guess you’d call it, and Dad a Catholic, though neither one of them were big church goers. Me, I guess I was an agnostic before the Ring of Fire.”

  “Agnostic?”

  “Someone who doesn’t know,” Bernie said. “Maybe there’s a God or maybe not. If there is a god maybe it cares about people and maybe not. After the Ring of Fire… well, something had to do that. Which still leaves me wondering about what it wants, whatever it is.”

  That statement seemed to set both Natasha and Sofia back on their heels. Which wasn’t an unusual reaction. Bernie had had his face shoved in the fact that most people down-time were members of a church whether they wanted to be or not. There was no Madelyn Nutcase O’Hare down-time screaming about atheist rights. And considering what the holy rollers got up to without such people, maybe O’Hare wasn’t that much of a nut case after all. “Like I say, someone or something took a six-mile diameter chunk of rock, earth, water, and air, animals, people, machines and books and shifted all of us three hundred sixty-nine years into the past and halfway around the world in a flash of light. I know that there’s someone or something that can do that and if it ain’t a god, it’s close enough for me. On the other hand, whate
ver it is didn’t appear to have much concern for what it was doing to my mom by taking her into the past and leaving the medicines that were keeping her alive in the future. So, yes, I’m convinced there’s a god. That God is good and caring, not so much.” Bernie ran down and realized he had probably said way too much. I’m not here to fix their culture or update their religion, he reminded himself. It was time for a change of subject. “So what do you do?”

  “Do?” Natasha asked. “Ah… I take care of the family properties while Vladimir is away. Someone must.”

  As the sleigh carried Bernie, Natasha and Aunt Sofia to the dacha they talked about the roles of women in the future America where Bernie came from and the role of women in Russia. Natasha was clearly shocked at the options open to women in that future. Sofia was more curious and cautious.

  Natasha found herself both shocked and intrigued by the up-timer’s lack of concern for her rank and station. It wasn’t so much that he ignored her rank. Instead, he treated it like some local fantasy that he paid polite lip-service to. In a very real sense, it seemed to Natasha that Bernie did not see himself as outranked by any man. Perhaps not even by God. And that was a truly frightening, and oddly exciting, thought.

  Chapter 11

  February 1632

  Bernie moved in and settled. It took several days to get his stuff and the other gear that Vladimir had sent. They were also putting together a load of goods to go the other way. Boris wanted to make one more trip to Grantville to make sure the path he’d set up was in good working order both for mail and for goods. That had little to do with Bernie, which he was perfectly happy with. He’d already run into one mine field and didn’t want another. It turned out Natasha was very interested in women’s rights, a subject that Bernie had only a vague knowledge about. In order to hold off her questions a bit he had said, “Look, Natasha, I didn’t mean to have you burn your bra in Red Square. It’s just the way things were up-time.”