Ring of fire II (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  Maybe the bishop of Bamberg? Then, again, probably not, with Dornheim dead in Carinthia and the cathedral chapter not yet having elected a successor. It would be Hatzfeld, probably, but no telling how long it would take the pope to confirm him. It wasn't likely that a suffragan would be willing to authorize large, unexpected, expenditures.

  The Health Board had given the fresh pallets to households that had already been cleaned and whitewashed, in return for a promise by the housewife that she would continue to use DDT.

  It cost a lot. Probably less than burning corpses, though. Because of the siege, it was not feasible to establish a plague cemetery without continuing to reinfect the city. No way to make burials outside the walls. The church frowned on cremation except in the direst emergency. However… Surely the up-time understanding of atoms would lead to a change in policy. Logically, it should not be any more difficult for God to reassemble atoms dispersed in the air than those dispersed in the earth. So… Corpses were remarkably hard to burn, even if one saved on fuel by using old pallets and the rags and furnishings taken from infected houses as much as possible. One could regard the new pallets as a good use of limited funds. One would certainly interpret the new pallets as such a good use when reporting the condition of one's budget to one's employer.

  There were other savings to be attributed to the siege, also. He did not have to deal with preventive quarantine of possibly infected individuals coming into the town from elsewhere. That tended to be expensive because of the need for posting guards outside the quarantine barracks. Merchants and other travelers often resented having their journeys interrupted, not to mention taking exception to being charged a reasonable amount for board and room during their period of isolation.

  Of course, the siege also meant that the Health Board had not been able, thus far, to expel all transients, vagrants, mountebanks, and other undesirable elements who had been in the city when the plague broke out. So the authorities were having to feed them.

  He would have to talk to Herr Trelli about that. Expulsion was pretty standard procedure. It was Herr Trelli who had forbidden the council to follow that procedure, on the grounds that they would starve to death between the city walls and the siege lines, or attempt to escape through the siege lines and possibly spread the plague into the countryside.

  If Kronach offered to surrender in return for the SoTF's absorbing all the costs of coping with the plague as a starting point for negotiations… At the very least, by the time the negotiations ended, Herr Marcantonio in Bamberg should certainly reimburse de Melon for feeding those noncitizens all summer. That was only reasonable. This epidemic was eating up about forty percent of his budget and he wasn't really in the best position to float loans at the moment. No banker worth his salt was going to finance a military entrepreneur who was probably unemployed. Or if employed, employed by the wrong side.

  He wonder how much ransom the USE would ask for him if he surrendered.

  He was pretty sure that Duke Maximilian would not be in a mood to pay it.

  Matt wasn't sure just how much he was in a position to promise, but de Melon was in a mood to dicker.

  "Let me draw up a proposal. Everything we've talked about. I think that this is even way beyond Steve Salatto's pay grade, though."

  They paused for an explanation of pay grades.

  "Vince can radio it to him. He can radio it to the prime minister and emperor."

  De Melon nodded agreement.

  ***

  Matt spent the whole evening writing. He figured that he had an ace up his sleeve. Now he needed to finish up what he'd leave for Bachhausen at the drop-off point tomorrow morning-well, later this morning, given the time-in a thoroughly sealed envelope.

  "So de Melon is worried about Duke Maximilian and pretty sure the Bavarians won't ransom him if he surrenders the city. We can open the gates. The plague has tapered off and the doctors from Padua did pretty good. They're congratulating themselves pretty hard that only a fifth of the people died instead of two thirds."

  Which really was something for them to be proud of, all things considered. But anyway…

  "Now what we know, and what de Melon doesn't, is this stuff about Don Fernando and what de Melon did later in the Netherlands."

  He started a new page. "So I was sort of thinking, and I know it's no business of mine to be suggesting foreign policy, but still, I've been stuck here at Kronach a long time and I'd really like to see the end of the siege."

  He crossed that out. Nobody up at the level of Stearns was going to care that one up-time lieutenant was to the point that he'd be happy to cast himself down on a sword if that would just finish up the siege of Kronach.

  "My recommendation, based on the current local situation, is that the State Department ought to make a copy of what the Research Center found out about de Melon and send it to Don Fernando. It makes de Melon look like a good enough catch that maybe he'll reimburse him for his expenses here. I don't know whether the USE is doing ransoms or not. If it is, Don Fernando might even ransom him and ask to have him come to Belgium."

  Matt crossed that out. Damn. I know it isn't Belgium down-time. I'm up way too late.

  "… to the Spanish Netherlands, which would get him out of Franconia."

  Matt crossed that out, too.

  "… which would…" Well, what would it?

  "… to the Spanish Netherlands, where he might find a useful and constructive outlet for his undeniable talents."

  Bingo! Mr. Piazza and Ms. Mailey would be proud of him. Mr. Piazza and Ms. Mailey had spent a lot of time talking to him about useful and constructive outlets back in his high school days.

  He pulled out another sheet of paper and started on the clean copy.

  Kronach, Franconia

  September 1634

  "There's not going to be any real fall-out from the Ram Rebellion for Kronach, one way or the other, directly," Matt pointed out to Cliff Priest. "Since the whole city was closed up by the quarantine for the crucial months, they weren't really involved on either side. Except…".

  "Except?" Scott Blackwell raised his eyebrows. His expression said that the worst was yet to come. Just because it always was.

  "They've come out to find out that their peasant 'subjects' in the hinterland have taken severe exception to being 'subjects' and have acted upon their convictions. Never mind. They'll just have to learn to live with it. I've told Bachhausen that if they try to use their militia to restore the old order, it's his job to stand up for the citizens of the State of Thuringia-Franconia."

  "One could say that the Kronacher are SoTF citizens, too."

  Matt grinned. "Not till they take the oath of allegiance, they aren't. Which they missed last winter because of the siege and this summer because of the quarantine. Which I somehow just haven't gotten around to administering yet. The farmers, on the other hand…"

  "You didn't used to be like this," Stew Hawker said.

  The grin turned a little bleak. "Let's just say that Kronach's been an educational experience and leave it at that. Okay?"

  Cliff looked at his former high school student and said, "Okay."

  Bamberg, Franconia

  September 1634

  Matt was sitting on the floor of the Real Estate Titles office. "So that's the plan. I'm going to Padua as soon as I finish up here in Franconia. Marcie and me…"

  Janie winced.

  "-okay, Marcie and I-are getting married in December. She's coming down to Wurzburg and we'll leave from there."

  "Padua? Why on earth?"

  "First of all, Stoner's there. Stoner's what I'm looking for. I've got to learn everything the man knows. If Kronach taught me anything, it taught me that. I'm no boy genius or anything, but I did have basic chemistry and stuff at Fairmont State before I had to quit to save up some more money. I'd have gone back and finished up-time, so why not here?"

  "There's always Jena. And the new med school. It's a lot closer to home."

  "Well, yeah." Matt looke
d a little uncomfortable. "But it's still just a start-up, really. As the doctors put it to me, the only reason that Beulah MacDonald and her people have had any success at all getting their ideas across in Jena is that the med school dean, Rolfinck his name is, is a Padua man himself. Guarinoni said that if the dean there had been the product of a university like Wittenberg or Paris, the folks from Leahy would have been dead in the water. And Gatterer asked why should I get Padua second-hand when I can have the real thing. In a lot more words, but that's what it boiled down to."

  Janie looked at him. She'd heard all about Steve Salatto's explosion at Johnnie F. Haun-that the point of Hearts and Minds was for Us to convert Them rather than vice versa. "It sounds sort of like you've swallowed their viewpoint."

  Matt wriggled. "Well, I figure things this way. They have a lot more experience living in the seventeenth century than we do. It seems a little silly not to take advantage of it."

  "I hate to be crass, but how are you planning to pay for it? Living in Padua and sitting at the foot of the master and all that?" Janie waved her hand vaguely. "That could be years. Do they take transfer credits? Universities in this day and age, I mean?"

  "Our three doctors will write recommendations, since they're all alumni. And, yeah, they do accept transfer credits in a way. You can take your exams as soon as you're up to them. Nobody really cares where you took the courses as long as you can pass the exams. The Latin will be the big thing, but Weinhart has been tutoring me while we were in Kronach."

  "Well, you show up at our place in the evenings and I'll keep on tutoring you here. Nothing like a head start, especially when it comes for free."

  "We talked about it, Marcie and me. Well, we wrote letters about it. We haven't really talked much for two years. I've only gotten up to Grantville that one time since we came down here after the Gustavus/Stearns detente in '32. Her folks were so sure that talking wasn't what we had on our minds that we scarcely got to see each other at all. If you've ever got a job here that requires privacy minimization, consider hiring Rosemary."

  "People have been reacting to the Ring of Fire in all sorts of ways. We have Father Mazzare-Cardinal Mazzare, now-pulling and tugging to bring the Church into a post-Vatican II frame of mind, and Catholics in Grantville like Rosemary who would just as soon sink back into a comfortable pre-Vatican II world." She tapped her toe on the footstool that she used to boost herself up to the pedestal desk. "Rosemary's close to five years older than I am. She probably was confirmed before Vatican II had any effect on the catechism or anything."

  Matt leaned forward, his hand on his chin. "What the hell does Rosemary think we did back when we were dating in college? Or after we got engaged, before I got sent down to Franconia? Not that Marcie was in a mood to push it. We were almost like strangers again. We thought about putting off getting married indefinitely. Partly because of the money thing, but that's not most of it. We think we can make it, that way. She's a fully qualified engineer, now. She had three years of college before the Ring of Fire-one more than me because she didn't have to work so many hours-and she's trained at USE Steel ever since it started up. Stoner has the clout to get her a good job, even in the Most Serene Republic of Venice, where female engineers aren't exactly a dime a dozen. So she can support me. As long as she doesn't get pregnant. Which, as far as we're concerned, she won't."

  "She's going to Padua with you?"

  "Not much point in getting married and then having me in Padua and her in Grantville. That wouldn't be any different from the last couple of years. Why bother to get married at all, if we did it that way? Joe and Rosemary are having kittens, of course. She's their baby girl. Leaving home for foreign parts. Rosemary's being a drama queen."

  Janie winced. "Your folks?"

  "Well, Mom would just like me to come home, of course. Even after so many changes, she's not that crazy about the idea of my hanging around Stoner. She hoped that we'd settle down right in Grantville after I got out of the army. That Marcie would come be an engineer in town and I'd find a job of some kind and we'd provide grandchildren. It's hard for her, especially. Dad just ignored the church and got married again even before the Ring of Fire, so he has Abby and the little kids. But Mom's stuck in limbo, there at the Curl and Tan. She's sort of given up. First she was sure I'd get killed on this posting to Bamberg and now she's sure that I'll die of some awful disease in Italy."

  Janie snorted. "If Rosemary's five years older than I am, then Amy's ten years younger. She doesn't have any excuse. It's a gumption issue with her, if you ask me. Pardon my French, since she's your mother and all."

  "Herr Matewski, you do have it all?"

  Joe Matewski looked up. "Yes, I have it all."

  "The addresses of the professors in Padua, and the others who have been hearing the lectures of Professor Stone?"

  "Yeah."

  "The glassblowers whom we are recommending?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Our new addresses?"

  "Yeah."

  "Our letters to Dr. Sims and Dr. McDonnell."

  "Yeah."

  "I am most anxious to enter into correspondence with both of them."

  "I'm sure."

  "It is the gold that is important. Remember that. It is the gold. If indeed they can draw brass fine enough to make these hypodermic needles for drawing blood to make this 'serum-based antitoxin' and one of the main problems is that blood corrodes the needles so quickly, it is the gold that is important. They must coat these brass needles with gold."

  "Yeah," Joe Matewski said. "I've got it. Really I do. I figure that this is really important to you. The medical types in Grantville and Jena will get the short version over the radio tonight and this"-he held up several hundred pages of closely written paper-"just as soon as I can get it there. A couple of weeks, at most."

  Gatterer expressed profuse gratitude.

  "I'll radio the short version to Venice for Stoner, too. Express-courier the second copy to him."

  Gatterer grasped his head and kissed him on both cheeks.

  Matewski thought that a friendly handshake would have been just plenty, but he managed to keep from backing off.

  He didn't enjoy going to those Hearts and Minds lectures, but maybe they did some good, after all.

  Bamberg, Franconia

  October 1634

  "What do you think, Vince?" Janie Kacere turned a couple of pieces of paper over and then turned them back again. "Were they a Trojan horse that we sent into Kronach? Successfully, I have to admit, the way Matt"-she waved toward him down at the end of the table-"pulled things off. Or…"

  "… were they a Trojan horse that the Duchess Claudia de Medici planted on us?" Cliff Priest finished her sentence. "And if she did, why?"

  Vince Marcantonio shook his head. "I don't know which one. Not yet. Maybe we won't know for years." He grinned suddenly. "But she's damned determined that they're going to see Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar next, whether they want to or not, so I've gotten the better of Guarinoni's complaints that their 'old bones' wouldn't stand a trip over to Swabia at his age."

  "Vince." Stewart Hawker looked apprehensive. "What have you done? They are over sixty, after all. Guarinoni and Weinhart both. And Gatterer's no spring chicken, either. He got his M.D. more than thirty years ago. They were pretty wiped out when they came in from Innsbruck last March, even though the duchess paid for a carriage so they didn't have to ride out in the weather. The trip from here up to Kronach wasn't easy for them, either. And the summer didn't exactly count as a vacation, either."

  "I asked him if he was open to new experiences. Of course he's so full of himself that he had to say 'yes.' And what with the fact that there's a landing field at Rheinfelden now…"

  "You got hold of a plane?" Stew spilled his coffee on the flagstone floor.

  "Yep. A Gustav is coming to drop a couple of high-ranking diplomats off in Bayreuth. The pilot will transport the good doctors and deposit them right on Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's doorstep. Bernhard isn't going to
let our medical people from Fulda into his territory, I don't think. We have to live with that. But he seems to be willing to take these men from the Duchess Claudia. Don't know why. Maybe parts of the Catholic and Austrian territories that he's scooped up aren't as docile as he had hoped."

  "Nobody's ever as docile as a person hopes." Bennett Norris spoke in the world-weary voice of anyone who has ever parented a teenager. Vince ignored him. Bennett was starting to succumb to short-timer-itis. As soon as the national election was over and done with, in February, Ed Piazza was transferring him and Marian to Mainz.

  "They're the best that this time and place has to offer, and they can take some of our tricks with them. Maybe they can contain the plague that's scheduled to sweep up through Swabia and Wuerttemberg into the USE in the next couple of years. Maybe Bernhard's just self-interested enough not to want half the population of his new sandbox dead. God, I hope so. And even if they can't pull it off…"

  It didn't look like Vince was going to finish the sentence.

  Janie looked up at the cherubs on the ceiling. "… there's always the possibility that we've sent a secret weapon."

  "What?"

  "Guarinoni may bore Duke Bernhard to death with extended lectures on a healthful lifestyle. Replete with mnemonic tricks and pompous admonitions."

  Together, most of the SoTF administrative staff in Bamberg chanted, "Let's all be gesondt."

  Bozen, Tirol

  October 1634

  "God rest his soul," Duchess Claudia said. She was referring to her late brother-in-law Ferdinand, the Holy Roman Emperor.

  Dr. Bienner crossed himself.

  "Ferdinand was never seriously interested in the Austrian holdings in Swabia."

  Bienner nodded cautiously.

  "Our nephew Ferdinand is not likely to make them his primary concern, either. He worries about Hungary. And the Turks."

  "As well he should."

  "The Austro-Hungarian Empire?"

  "Premature, perhaps. But not unreasonable, given the situation in the Germanies."