Ring of fire II (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  It might even be best to retire the count formally. Janos would raise that possibility with the emperor in private, at some later time. It would have to be done carefully, making sure that Johann Jakob was genuinely willing and did not resent being forced into retirement. Given the situation, there was probably no single individual who could do more damage to the dynasty, should his allegiances sour. Khiesel knew… almost everything.

  Having made his decision, however, Janos was immediately confronted by his major and immediate quarrel with the proposal.

  "So," Ferdinand III stated, clapping his hands together. "We're agreed on the basic points, then? First-which I've already had done-repudiate the Edict of Restitution, to as to restore peace in our relations with our Protestant subjects. Second, retake Bohemia. Third-simultaneously, I should say-press forward with the technology transfer from the USE so we can begin the modernization of our economy and our army. Fourth, prepare for an inevitable war with the Turks. Finally, and most important of all, begin the process of drawing all of our peoples and classes into support for our cause. That will necessarily require the introduction of a great deal of popular participation in the empire's political affairs, although we will strive to keep it under control."

  That was at least one too many tasks, Janos thought. And he knew, for a certainty, the one that he thought should be eliminated.

  For a moment, he hesitated. Then, bracing himself, spoke it aloud. "Your Majesty, I strongly advise you to seek peace with Wallenstein and a stabilization of the northern frontier, rather than trying to retake Bohemia. I believe Wallenstein has no further designs on our remaining territory, and would agree to such an offer."

  He was fudging a little, there. Janos was fairly certain that Wallenstein's ambitions lay to the east, not the south, true enough. But those same ambitions would almost require obtaining at least a part of Royal Hungary, or Wallenstein would have no way to reach the east. Not unless he was prepared to launch a war of conquest on the Polish heartland, at any rate, which Drugeth thought unlikely.

  He was willing to make the fudge, nonetheless, if he could keep the emperor from such a rash and unwise policy. The truth was, so long as Wallenstein satisfied himself with seizing only the northern portions of Royal Hungary, Janos didn't care. Those lands were mostly inhabited by Slavs, not Hungarians. From a military standpoint, they were more of a nuisance than anything else.

  True, there was an awkward personal matter involved. His own family's estates were mostly located in that very area. It would be a pity to lose the lovely Renaissance-style residence that his father had built in Hommona. It was only twenty-five years old and had all the modern conveniences a man could wish for. But ceding a small portion of Austria's northernmost lands, even ones that included Hommona, was a small price to pay to get a stabilization of the northern borders.

  The emperor would most likely find a way to compensate the Drugeth family for the loss, and what one architect had built another could build as well. But even if the emperor didn't, Janos would still argue in favor of ceding the northern portions of Royal Hungary. Being of the aristocracy, the way Janos viewed human relations, bound a man to his duties far more than to his privileges. What overrode all other considerations, certainly mere personal ones, was that fighting the immensely powerful Ottoman Empire over control of the Balkans was going to be a mighty challenge in itself. The last thing Austria needed was to be embroiled simultaneously in a war with Bohemia. Especially since Bohemia was allied to the USE, and they needed to make peace with the Swede also.

  A heavy frown had formed on the emperor's brow. "Surely you're not serious, Janos? Wallenstein is a usurper and a traitor, whose claims to Bohemia are specious. Preposterous, rather!"

  "Yes, they are, Your Majesty. But I feel compelled to point out that any war with the Turks will strain us to the utmost. I think it most unwise to get entangled with Bohemia also."

  "Oh, that's nonsense, Janos. I don't propose to fight the Turks any time soon. We need Bohemia's resources. Surely, we can have it back in our hands within a year or two."

  Surely we can't, Janos felt like snarling. He hadn't been present himself at the second battle of the White Mountain, since he'd been assigned to the Turkish border at the time. But he'd heard many accounts of it from his fellow officers who had been present. Granted, they were junior officers, who, as usual, were quick to criticize the failings of the top commanders in that battle. But the fact remained that while Austria might have won the battle with more capable commanders, it would still have been a savage affair. Nobody in their right mind dismissed Pappenheim lightly-not to mention that Wallenstein had proved himself to be one of Europe's most capable organizers of armies over a period of years. Any war with Bohemia, even a victorious war that resulted in a reconquest, would surely bleed Austria's armies badly. And that was the last thing they needed, if they intended to confront the Ottomans.

  It was true that Bohemia had great resources, many of which were absent or scanty in the rest of the Austrian realm. But what good were resources that couldn't be obtained? By force, at any rate. If they established a stable peace with Wallenstein, Janos was fairly sure the Bohemians would be glad to provide those resources by way of trade-at a far smaller cost than the hideously expensive business of waging war.

  Alas, one of the things those American future histories had contained was a clear record that Ferdinand III-still merely the king of Hungary, in that universe, since his father had lived a bit longer-had been, along with the cardinal-infante, the co-commander of the Habsburg army that had inflicted a massive defeat on the Swedes at Nordlingen in 1634.

  That battle had not happened, in this universe, and never would. But the record had been enough to infuse Ferdinand with self-confidence in his abilities as a military leader which were simply premature in this universe. Janos didn't doubt that his new monarch indeed possessed a talent for military affairs. He was talented in many things. But "talent" and "experience" were not the same thing, in war perhaps more than in any sphere of human affairs.

  "A year or two," the emperor repeated forcefully. "Watch and see if I'm not right."

  Janos exchanged a glance with Zwickl. Some subtlety in Georg Bartholomaeus' expression made his attitude clear. Let it go, Janos, at least for the moment. You're probably right, but you can't restrain him now.

  Drugeth decided he was right. As foolish and costly as it might be, Austria's new ruler would simply have to learn some things for himself.

  And probably more than once, too. The thought would have been a gloomy one, perhaps, had Janos not been a soldier. He'd seen very few officers-and certainly not himself-who'd learned their brutal trade without making mistakes. It was just the way things were.

  "I simply felt it necessary to advance my opinion, Your Majesty," he said, trying to sound obedient but not submissive. "That said, in this as in all things, you have my allegiance and support."

  Ferdinand beamed. "Well, good. In any event, Janos, it's not something you're likely to be worrying about. Not directly, at least." Here, the emperor exchanged a meaningful look with Count von Gottschee. "Since you've done so well in Grantville, I propose to hand the entire operation to you. Which Johann Jakob tells me is on the eve of coming to fruition."

  Janos wondered what the emperor meant by "coming to fruition." The work that Janos had set underway in Grantville some months earlier was intended to produce a slow and steady stream of technology transfer-including some personnel-from the USE to Austria. It was not the sort of project that ever "came to fruition," as such.

  Ferdinand rose from his chair and waved his hand airily. "I have an audience I need to attend. The count will explain it to you. But you'd best start packing, Janos. You'll need to head out for Grantville on the morrow."

  ***

  After Johann Jakob Khiesel explained what had been happening in Grantville over the months since Janos had left for his inspection tour of the fortresses in the Balkans, Drugeth had to restrain himself from snar
ling again.

  "In other words, in my absence, Henry Gage and Lion Gardiner-the benighted fools-allowed themselves to become cat's paws for a pack of American thieves."

  Both Khiesel and his stepson looked startled. "But…" the count began.

  "Don't you understand, Janos?" said Georg Bartholomaeus. "At one swoop, we will get a far greater transfer than anything we'd envisioned."

  "And then what?" demanded Drugeth. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that neither the count nor his stepson had any personal acquaintance with Grantville or its up-time inhabitants. For them, as for most people in Europe, the Americans were a mysterious band of wizards. Drugeth had had the same impression himself, until the weeks he'd spent there had made the truth clear to him.

  Grantville was a town, that's all. A town of people with knowledge and technical skills far advanced from any other in the world, true enough. But still simply a town-not of wizards, but of craftsmen. Simple folk, really, who understood in their bones something that most people who viewed them from a distance did not really understand at all. Their technical wizardry was the product of generations of skills compiled and passed on. Hard work lay at its root, not some sort of preposterous sorcery. There were no "secrets" in Grantville. No compendium of ultimate wisdom. No magic recipes, no magic spells, no magic wands-most of all, no sorcerer's grimoire that, once seized, opened all technical secrets to the possessor.

  "What then?" he repeated. "By the very manner in which this escapade will take place-there is no way to avoid this-the Americans will surely put in place measures that make any further transfers ten times more difficult."

  Finally, he did snarl. "Not to mention that we will have done the Americans the great favor of draining the worst sort of people from their midst, and planting them amongst us. For the love of God, these people are traitors and criminals. Who is to say they will not betray us in turn?"

  For a moment, the memory of the three up-time mechanics whom he'd met at the race track earlier that day came to him. Janos was sure they knew far more than they were admitting, about matters that would be of direct benefit to Austria's power, not simply an emperor's whimsy. He knew, for instance, that while the three men insisted they were quite ignorant of all "aeronautical matters" that at least one of them, Ronald Sanderlin, had served for months as a mechanic at the USE's air force base in Wismar. He had to know how to construct at least the engine for a warplane, if not the plane itself.

  But Sanderlin would keep that knowledge to himself, until and unless he became convinced that he could pass it on to Austrians without damaging his own nation. He was neither a traitor nor a thief.

  Damnation! This was insane. They needed to make peace with the Swede and his Americans, not infuriate them. Just as they needed to forget the past and make peace with Wallenstein. The great foe of Austria was the Ottoman Empire-and would have been, even leaving aside the new emperor's determination to take the Balkans from them.

  The two spymasters were still staring at him, obviously not understanding his concern. Spies and spymasters had their own limitations, he realized, produced by the very nature of their work. They dealt with criminals and traitors as a matter of course-which made sense, from the standpoint of spying, but made no sense at all from the standpoint of forging a new nation.

  Janos made a note to remember that in the future. Always.

  "Never mind," he said. "What's done is done. I'll be off to Grantville at first light."

  Chapter 3. The Elf

  Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

  November 1634

  Noelle Murphy-Noelle Stull, now, having just changed her name legally-finished her report, and leaned back in her chair. Sitting at the desk in his office, Tony Adducci did the same. He looked to Carol Unruh, sitting in another chair facing the desk, at a diagonal from Noelle.

  "Seems pretty complete to me, Carol. I'm not a lawyer, of course."

  Noelle had to keep herself from smiling. "Not a lawyer" was putting it mildly. In point of fact, Tony Adducci's formal education extended to a high school diploma and two years at Fairmont State, from which he'd left to get a job in the mines without even picking up an AA degree. The main reason he'd been selected to be the secretary of the treasury for the New United States, not long after the Ring of Fire, was because he'd helped Frank Jackson keep the books for Mike Stearns' UMWA local. In those days-as was still the case, more often than not-Mike selected his administrators primarily because he thought they were solid men he could rely on, pedigrees and credentials be damned. And, in the case of posts like Tony's, knew that they were honest.

  Noelle's suppressed smile would have been simply one of amusement, however, not derision. When all was said and done, Mike's crude method had worked pretty well. It had given the new government he'd been forced to set up in the midst of crisis and chaos a great deal of solidity and unity, however rough the edges might have been, and he'd simply shrugged off charges of "UMWA favoritism."

  As the years had passed since the Ring of Fire, a number of those initial appointees had been gently eased out, when it turned out they simply weren't up to the job. But Tony had kept his post through all of the transformations-from the NUS as an independent principality, to its later status as a semi-independent principality within the Confederated Principalities of Europe, to its current (and hopefully final) manifestation as one of the provinces within the federal United States of Europe. Ed Piazza, who'd replaced Mike as the president of the SoTF after Mike became the prime minister of the USE and moved to Magdeburg, was no more inclined to replace Adducci than Stearns had been. He was capable, honest, and made up for his own lack of training by knowing how to use the skills of subordinates or associates who did have it.

  Such as Carol Unruh, in fact, Ron Koch's wife although she'd kept her own name. Carol was the assistant director of the Department of Economic Resources, one of the branches of the Treasury Department. Her academic background might have been on the skimpy side for an equivalent position in the universe they'd come from. But by post-RoF Grantville standards, she was highly educated. She had a BA in mathematics and statistics and had taken graduate courses in the same subjects. She'd squeezed in the graduate courses on a part-time basis while she was bringing up her two children, but she'd always planned to go back full-time and finish her doctoral program once the kids were out of the house and she could really concentrate. Nobody much doubted she would have, either, except that the Ring of Fire had put paid to those plans as well as many others. Still, she was qualified enough to have been accepted as the University of Jena's instructor in statistics, whose male faculty was normally hostile to the idea of women teaching at the university level, outside of medicine and a few other special subjects.

  "Oh, it's plenty good enough to put Horace Bolender behind bars," she said.

  "Keep him behind bars," Tony growled. "Noelle and Eddie already got that much accomplished. The fucking bastard."

  "He hasn't been convicted yet, Tony," Carol pointed out. "In fact, I think he's even going to manage to raise the bail money."

  Again, Noelle had to fight to keep from smiling. Not at Tony's praise but at Carol's reaction. Unruh had the sort of prissy sense of duty that compelled her to add the caution-given that, in cold-blooded personal terms, she stood to benefit the most if Horace Bolender got convicted. Her title of "assistant" director was something of a formality these days. Bolender had been the director of the Department of Economic Resources, until Carol's suspicions and the investigative work by Noelle and Eddie Junker that those suspicions engendered had turned up plenty of evidence that the man had been using his post to feather his own nest.

  Now, Carol was actually running the department, and everyone expected that it wouldn't be long before President Piazza made her the official director. Where a different sort of person in her position might have been pushing for a conviction, Unruh was being meticulously fair-minded and scrupulous.

  That spoke well of her, of course, but Noelle sti
ll thought it was silly. She and Eddie had nailed the bastard, sure enough. It hadn't even been all that hard, once they started digging. Like untold thousands of officials before him, Bolender had been sloppy about his demands for kickbacks before he assigned contracts. That was due more to arrogance than actual stupidity, probably, but the end result was no different. It was easy for an up-time official to get careless on the subject of bribes, since most down-timers took bribing officials to be a routine cost of business.

  He'd get a long, hard sentence, too. Bolender was not the first up-timer to have been caught breaking the law, but he was far and away the most prominent. Judge Tito was well known for his lack of leniency toward up-timers, because he was bound and determined to prove to the citizens of the SoTF-which had one million people in it all told-that the tiny percentage of them who were of American origin weren't going to be getting any special treatment or favors from the law.

  Tony looked back at Noelle. "What else looks to be turning up? Besides Bolender and the Cunninghams and Norman Bell, I mean."

  "Nothing definite, yet. But Eddie and I are still digging. We don't think we rooted it all out, by any means. We're almost certain that Stan Myers' tip regarding Mickey Simmons is a good one."

  "How about Myers himself?" asked Carol. "It wouldn't be the first time a crook tried to deflect suspicion by fingering somebody else."

  Noelle shook her head. "Eddie and I don't think Stan's dirty. For one thing, because we just don't. Beyond that, Stan's in charge of the fire department's training program. He simply doesn't have access to the kind of temptation to ask for kickbacks that somebody like Bolender did. He's got a hard enough time, as it is, getting volunteers for the fire department, given all the other economic opportunities around."