Ring of fire II (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  "Hey, even the Times doesn't get every story." Nina laughed.

  "We can try," he told his wife.

  Mirari picked up a small glass vase from the coffee table and began to turn it over and over in her hand. "I've not been able to find anyone who might have seen Pappenheim the night of the Christmas party. Of course, there are the usual sorts of rumors about what he is doing, but none of them put him anywhere near Grantville.

  "One thing I did put together; it may be related to this, it may not, but some of Harry Leffert's men have been hanging around at all hours of the day and night near Edith Wild's house."

  "You're stumbling over Harry Lefferts' men, Yuri was sure they were after him. I am beginning to wonder if Lefferts might be the story, not Pappenheim," muttered Paul, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. "And what does Edith Wild have to do with it?"

  Edith Wild was a nurse, and a force of nature in the minds of many Grantville residents. She was a volunteer on the Red Cross Sanitation Squad, a job that required that type of personality to get the job done. She definitely took her duties seriously and would brook no interference in performing them.

  "I hadn't heard anything about Harry seeing Edith, and I'm not sure if even he could stand up to her should the situation arise," Nina said as she came back from the kitchen with a plate of cookies. "But I suppose it's possible."

  "I wouldn't lay odds on his surviving." Paul chuckled.

  "Are you sure you know the way?"

  Paul didn't bother answering the question, as he hadn't the last four times that Yuri had asked it. His companion did seem to have sense enough to keep his voice down to a whisper, though.

  They had been walking for the better part of two hours, gradually working their way through the forest toward the far end of Grantville. Edith Wild's house was less than a half hour's walk from the Times offices, but just walking over and knocking on her door was not going to get the answers that Paul and Yuri wanted. Paul still wasn't sure that he believed Yuri's story, but he had the definite feeling that something might just be going on.

  Paul had made a point of not going anywhere near Edith's house during the day, not that he normally did anyway. There wasn't that much to see anyway, beyond the home that Wild had occupied for more than half her life.

  There were enough other matters on his plate concerning the Times and several other business projects that his family had in the works to take up Paul's time as he waited at the office for Yuri. A note to Yuri had told him to show up at midnight. The Russian was there at 10 p.m., champing at the bit to get on with it. Paul had considered taking Mirari along, but she had made it clear that she was not interested. Besides, Yuri and she usually ended up arguing about some damn thing or another and they didn't need that tonight.

  "I still think that we should have gone this morning to the President's office and confronted him, in front of everyone. That way he couldn't have squirmed out of it," said Yuri.

  "That isn't the way the Times does things. We need proof, Yuri Andreovich. There may be something going on, there may not; it may just be a lot of things taken out of context. If you don't like it, you can take your story somewhere else," Paul said.

  Yuri muttered something, but it was in Russian and Paul couldn't be sure of exactly what he said.

  In the just over twenty-four hours since Yuri had come sneaking in the back of the Times, the weather had not changed, beyond adding a fresh layer of snow. It was still bitterly cold. The two men's breaths hung in the air, and the ground was frozen, grass crackling under their feet with every step.

  In spite of the weather, Paul did not feel safe in taking a direct route to Edith Wild's house. There was a chance that Yuri could be right, so they doubled back, crossing and recrossing their own trail, watching for any signs that they were not alone in the darkness.

  At one point, Yuri almost tripped over a pair of foxes who were prowling the bushes, looking for food and, no doubt, a warm place to spend the night. It was a sentiment that Paul had come to identify with in the last few hours.

  "We're alone," said Yuri. "Let's get on with it."

  As they neared the house there was a movement a dozen yards ahead of them. Paul tried to focus on it. Before he could say anything or point out the guard to Yuri, half a dozen figures came on them from three different directions. Voices and fists flew and chaos drew Paul in. There were no faces, just colors and shapes and sound.

  Yuri kept moving, dodging the attackers, until he reached the house. He boosted himself up toward a window, using a snow-covered box, hanging on the sill for only a matter of a heartbeat or two.

  Paul had little time to watch Yuri. He managed to land several good punches, his fists connecting with bare flesh and clothing. As he turned, Paul felt a sharp pain in the lower part of his back and then a matching one at the base of his neck that sent him crashing to the ground and into darkness.

  Paul opened blurry eyes and found himself staring at the business end of a double-barreled shotgun about eight inches from his face. A million miles away, at the other end of the weapon, Paul could just make out the face of a man he did not recognize.

  "Can I interest you in a subscription to the Times? Makes a great after Christmas gift for yourself." He gulped. In the back of his mind he was envisioning what the shotgun would do to his face. Of course, he also knew that he would not be alive to see it. He figured flippancy could be the only way to go right now; it wasn't as if he had a whole lot of options right then.

  Mike Stearns stepped out of the shadows. He looked at Paul for a moment, shook his head, softly chuckled and waved the shotgun wielding man back.

  "On your feet." Mike extended his hand to help Paul get to his feet. "What the hell are you doing prowling around in the woods tonight? And before you ask, I already am a Times subscriber."

  "I would say that shows your good taste, but I happen to know you subscribe to the Daily News and the Street as well," said Paul.

  Another man came up to Mike. It took Paul a moment to recognize Harry Lefferts. "There were two of them," he told Mike. "We lost the trail of the other one, down by the creek. I'm fairly certain that it was a pain-in-the-butt reporter named Kuryakin. My men have been watching him for the last couple of days."

  "Bloody great," muttered Mike. "So, Paul, you never answered my question."

  Paul struggled to his feet, wiped himself off and pulled his notebook and a pencil out. "I'm doing my job, reporting. I've come to interview your visitor."

  "Visitor? Visitor? I'm not sure what you're talking about," said Mike.

  "Mike, let's cut the crap. You and those playmates of yours wouldn't be prowling around the woods at three in the morning any more than I would, unless something important was going on. You can deny it, but I'd know you were lying." This wasn't the first time Paul had run a bluff to get a story, though in the pit of his stomach he felt it wasn't a bluff. "The Times is going to run a story, speculating on just who that visitor might be and why you're going to all this trouble to hide him. Now, you can help me make this story as accurate as possible, or live with the consequences of not bringing me in on it."

  Mike went immobile for a moment. The only sound, beyond those drifting in from the woods, was their breathing. It was almost two full minutes before he spoke.

  "All right, come inside. There's someone that you need to meet."

  The "visitor" was awake. It was not who Paul had expected.

  Wallenstein was sitting up in bed, with several pillows behind him. He looked pale, even in the light from the single candle next to his bed. The man's lower jaw was wrapped in bandages. There was a bulge under the blanket that Paul suspected might be a loaded pistol.

  Harry Lefferts stood in one corner of the room, an unhappy expression on his face.

  "You, sir, present me with a moral dilemma," Paul said after Mike had introduced him. "You know I came here to get a story for my newspaper. But if I write it, I cause major problems not only for my government, which I
don't mind doing, but possibly for all of Grantville."

  Wallenstein picked up a pad and wrote quickly:

  MORALS ARE FOR CHURCHMEN;

  STATESMEN CANNOT AFFORD THEM.

  "Thank you, Senor Machiavelli."

  Wallenstein looked at Paul oddly but wrote nothing.

  "We got word that he had survived Alte Veste through General Pappenheim, who came to us with a most unusual offer of alliance."

  "Ah yes, Pappenheim. Or should we also be calling him Santa Claus?"

  Mike smiled. "Not bad, not bad at all. He offered an alliance to help stir up a revolt in Bohemia plus a few other little political actions that could work to our advantage. The deal was he wanted our dentists to reconstruct the damage that Julie's bullet did. Then there is also the matter of Chmielnicki."

  Paul didn't recognize the name, but then he had never been good with European history. He waited for an explanation.

  "It's a massacre of ten thousand Polish Jews in 1648. Wallenstein says that if we help him he may be able to stop it."

  Wallenstein handed a hastily scribbled note to Mike, who in turn offered it to Paul.

  NO MAY. I WILL STOP IT.

  BUT ONLY IF YOU HELP ME.

  "You want me to sit on the story," Paul said. "That much is obvious."

  His first impulse was to say to hell with this, publish the story and expose the whole deal. He wasn't fond of secret government plots, but he could see the logic implicit in what Mike seemed to be doing. It still didn't feel right to him.

  "If I was to agree with what you're doing, and I am not saying I will, there is one other problem. Yuri may or may not have seen Wallenstein, but he knows that you were involved with Pappenheim. That can cause a lot of problems in and of itself."

  "Then he has to be dealt with," said Lefferts, his voice quiet and without emotion.

  "I hope you're not going to try to arrange an accident for him," said Paul.

  "Paul, please. There are certain levels I won't stoop to," said Mike. "You know he's going to want to get that story published and he can do it. It's just a matter of time." There were newspapers outside of Grantville, some good, some bad. "We both know there are more than a few places that would be willing to publish it."

  "If I agree to go along with you on keeping this quiet, I want an exclusive on it when you do go public," said Paul.

  "Provided we haven't been exposed and strung up over this whole thing, you've got a deal," Mike said. "Seriously, I wish I were handing you an easy story to deal with, like a secret squad of ninjas setting up operations in Grantville, but I can't."

  "Ninjas, yeah, I've heard those rumors, as well as the ones about aliens. You're sounding like you think I run the Weekly World News rather than the Grantville Times. Not that a fine upstanding gentleman like yourself would know anything about the Weekly World News."

  "At least with Playboy you could claim that you were reading it for the articles." Mike laughed.

  Paul nodded, only half listening. Later he could not say when the idea had hit him. It was just suddenly there.

  "I know exactly what I'm going to do. I think you will like the idea."

  "And that is?" said Mike.

  "I'm going to do what I always do. I'm going to write the story about Wallenstein being alive and see it published." Paul grinned.

  "Now, stop me if I've got this wrong, but isn't that exactly what we don't want to have happen?"

  "Trust me."

  Paul slid into a booth in the far corner of the inn's greatroom. The place was virtually empty at just after three in the afternoon. That was just fine with him; he could use a little down time. The beer and sandwich that sat in front of him looked very good.

  From a chair near the booth he had picked up a copy of the latest sensation to sweep Grantville, the National Inquisitor. The paper had made its appearance five days earlier, turning up in bundles at taverns, stores and any place else that a crowd could gather. There was nothing in it to indicate who had published it; the only bylines on stories were obvious pseudonyms such as Sarah Bellum and Noah Ward.

  With its glaring headlines and outrageous woodcuts, it was definitely distinguishable from the Times, the Daily News and, most certainly, the Street. The seventy-five point headline WALLENSTEIN ALIVE, LIVING IN SECRET WITH BIGFOOT said it all. A second story announced PAPPENHEIM BUYS CONDO IN GRANTVILLE.

  Paul's experienced eye slid over the pages, checking the text, the layout and the content. Not that he needed to; he was quite familiar with every column inch of it. He had written most of it; and what he hadn't done had been penned by Mirari and a few others they had enlisted. The entire matter had been done in a dozen intense hours after his return from Edith Wild's house.

  That this had been done without anyone apparently being the wiser still astonished Paul. In the back of his mind he had been convinced that someone would spot them and put two and two together, especially when they were distributing the papers.

  But that didn't happen.

  The lead story told how Wallenstein had survived the battle of Alte Veste with help from that legendary humanoid creature. There were not going to be many people who would put any stock in stories published in other papers that the man was alive, or that Pappenheim was anywhere near Grantville, at least for the next few months.

  "Checking out the competition, now are we? Or is it just admiring your own work?" said Mirari as she came up and sat down across the table from him.

  "I just hope a few other people are 'admiring' it," said Paul.

  "That is something you don't have to worry about." Mirari laughed and motioned for a beer. "I've been keeping my ears open, and it is fairly obvious that you've got yourself a runaway hit. The up-timers are laughing their heads off about it. I heard some of them saying it reminds them of something called the National Enquirer, whatever that is. Down-timers aren't quite sure what to make of the Inquisitor, but they like it. I even saw a couple of priests reading it and giggling."

  That was a relief. Mike Stearns had expressed considerable doubts when Paul had suggested the idea. Hell, even Paul hadn't been that sure it would work.

  Short of sending killers after Yuri, it was the only idea they could come up with in a hurry that had even a glimmer of a chance of succeeding. Revealing the truth was out of the question; Wallenstein still needed weeks of recuperation and the political repercussions would have been devastating.

  "I heard some talk that Yuri has been kicked out of three newspaper offices in other towns. He can't seem to give his story away," said Mirari.

  "Good." Paul reached down and tapped the copy of the Inquisitor. "It was kind of fun, but I am glad it's over."

  Mirari leaned her head back, letting her eyes roll toward the ceiling. "Lord, please help me. The man is as slow and unthinking as a churchman who hasn't been bribed!"

  "Woman, what in the hell are you talking about?"

  "Okay, let's put this in simple terms. The Inquisitor is a success. Everyone wants to know when the second issue will be coming out."

  Second issue? Second issue? That was something that had never even been discussed, that he had never even thought of. The whole concept seemed utterly ridiculous. There wasn't going to be a second issue!

  "I know what you are going to say," said Mirari. "There was never supposed to be a second issue. But this thing is popular; people are eating it up and demanding more."

  "Yeah, what does that do to the Times' credibility with me editing the Inquisitor?"

  "You don't have to." Mirari smiled in a way that warned Paul that the woman had some ideas of her own.

  "I suppose you know someone who could become the editor." He already knew the answer.

  "Of course. Me. I'll have a second issue out in no time."

  There was that phrase, second issue. Mirari would make a good editor; that much he had learned during their marathon session putting the Inquisitor together.

  As he mulled it over he kept remembering a lot of the more outrageous
rumors that had escaped into the world since the Ring of Fire; a hidden battalion of twenty-first century Marines who just happened to be passing through town when it was transported back in time was only one of many.

  "A second issue," Paul muttered. "I suppose it might be fun."

  Diving Belle

  Gunnar Dahlin and Dave Freer

  Stockholm

  "Where to, sweetling?" the old woman at the oars asked with a cheerful grin. "For a copper I'll row you anywhere in Stockholm."

  Ginny Cochran hesitated for a moment, then flung her duffel bag across her shoulder and clambered down the ship's side. "American Consulate please," she said. "I'm told it's in the city."

  "You are American?" The old woman beamed and said in broken English, "I thought you didn't look German." She grinned again. "Besides, I never saw a German woman travel alone."

  "My company was diverted elsewhere. But yes, I am American. I'm Ginny, by the way," she said, impulsively holding out her hand.

  "Later, sweetling," The woman shook her head. "You'll make me miss my stroke. I'm Toke-Karin. Best rower in these here waters."

  Ginny looked around. The boat was small and worn but lovingly maintained, and the old woman rowed with sure and certain ease. Suddenly something touched Ginny's foot, and she pulled it up with startled exclamation. From the recess under her seat, a small boy clutching a piglet looked up at her.

  "Gustav!" the old woman's voice was suddenly sharp, and although Ginny spoke next to no Swedish it was clear that the boy had become the recipient of a ferocious scolding.

  "He didn't hurt me," Ginny said. "I was just startled."

  "Bad for business," Toke-Karin grumbled. "He's named after His Majesty, but barring God's hand, he'll come to a bad end." She huffed noisily. "Frighten the customers like that and they'll never come back." Then she threw a glance over her shoulder and slewed the small craft around to alight against a wooden pier.

  "Here you are, sweetling. Kopmangatan. Just walk up the street and turn right at the first crossing." She grinned. "You can't miss the flag."