Eric Flint: 1636:The Kremlin games

… might mean inherited rule or it might mean government by the church. Was Russia going to be ruled by the priesthood? Considering the relative political strengths of the patriarch and the czar, it could happen. This would be monstrously time-consuming. He looked at the other book. Perhaps it would be clearer. What was the USSR? What was the revolution of 1917? For that matter, what was St. Petersburg? At least, that’s what he thought it said. There was no St. Petersburg in his Russia.

He read through the books as well as he could for several hours, making notes. Some things were clear enough. The year of birth and death of the czar and his son and his grandson. Others weren’t. The analysis was just weird. It was all there, Boris thought, but looked at as though through a prism. The light split into the spectra and the image was lost. Was this Pipes an idiot? Upon considering the matter, Boris didn’t think so. So might a citizen of Caesar’s Rome respond to a history of Rome written by a modern scholar who had never seen the Coliseum or been present at a triumph.

The woman stopped by a time or two. Handed him what she called a magazine. “Here,” she’d said. “You might find something in this.”

It was an old, fragile thing, this magazine. And what did perestroika mean? Boris knew what “restructuring” meant, but the word seemed to be used a bit differently here.

Much befuddled, Boris gave up for now. It was getting late and he needed to get back to the room they had rented. He wasn’t going to figure it all out in a day.

It was as he was putting things away that the librarian came and sat down at the table. “Can I give you some advice?”

Boris nodded cautiously.

“If what you wanted was a nice place to come and read an occasional book, this would be the place for you and I encourage you to do that. However, this isn’t the place for what you’re after. The Grantville Public Library was never intended to be a center of research. It was designed to be a small-town library at the tail end of the twentieth century. We had interlibrary loans and the Internet. Before the Ring of Fire, if we didn’t have the book someone wanted, we could get it in a few weeks through interlibrary loans. What we had on the shelves were the books most likely to be wanted in a small town. A small town that didn’t need to make telephones or automobiles. We could buy them. We have books on how to fix an automobile. Those books usually tell the reader how to install a new part that they are expected to buy from an automobile parts supply store that got its parts from a manufacturer in another state. What I mean is, they tell you how to fix a car, not how to make one from scratch.”

Boris nodded politely, but he was wondering if this was perhaps how they were hiding the important information. That concern decreased as she continued.

“Shortly after the Ring of Fire, it was decided to use the library at the high school as our national library, our Library of Alexandria.” The woman gave him a questioning look and he nodded his understanding.

She continued. “In it, we have at least one copy of almost all the books that came through the Ring of Fire. In those books there is enough information to tell you how to make an automobile, at least most of it. Even there, it’s not all in one book. It’s scattered around in books designed to teach children the basics of how things work, in biographies of the people involved in the inventing of the automobile and its mass production and so on.” The woman took a deep breath. “That makes it a treasure hunt. It’s hard even for a professional to know which book to look in to find the thing you’re after. Trying to do it on your own…” She shrugged. “I recommend you hire a professional researcher. If you don’t have the money for that, you can put in information requests and the library researchers will get around to it as they have time. Your other option is to take the library science basic course at the high school and pay the usage fees.”

Boris considered. The little talk she had given him was well-rehearsed. “How often do you give that little speech?”

She smiled. “About twice a week.”

“About the usage fees you mentioned… you don’t have them here. Why not?”

“We’re funded by the national library. We have been since a few months after the Ring of Fire. There was a minor fight in the emergency committee about that, but public libraries being free for public use is a long standing tradition up-time. There was a bigger fight about having fees to use the national library.” She laughed. “By the time that fight got going there were already millions of dollars worth of products coming out of the library. People were wondering why the cash-strapped government should pay to make a bunch of people rich. A compromise was worked out. You can get anything you want out of the national library and research center free, if you’re willing to wait your turn. And it can be a long wait. You can also pay to get it faster. Quite a lot of people pay either by paying a professional licensed researcher or by taking the course and paying the usage fees.”

Boris had a lot to think about as he walked back to the room they had rented.

“So, Boris how did it go?” Vladimir asked as Boris looked for a place to sit. The difficulty had to do with the size of the room. Grantville’s population growth had far outstripped new construction. Even their small room was expensive.

The lodgings were fantastically well appointed but horribly cramped. The four of them shared a single bedroom with its own “half bath,” an indoor toilet and sink with “faucets” that provided hot and cold water. They had access-from two to four in the afternoon-to the main bath, where they could take hot showers.

“Confusingly, Prince Vladimir,” Boris said as he sat on the bed. He shook his head. “It’s early yet to tell, but I don’t think they are lying about it. Understanding the information is a problem. The English language… it has changed. Very much. The woman at their public library freely gave me books to look at. Books that will need to be looked at again. I’ve made notes.” Boris waved a sheaf of papers in the air. “Pages and pages of notes, but very few of them make sense.”

Vladimir started going through the notes. “This is clear.” Vladimir pointed at a line. “Czar Mikhail will… have only a few more years. The patriarch… much less.”

“Perhaps not.” Boris’ face showed very little. “I asked about that. These up-timers… they do not understand what has happened. But their arrival changed many things. The librarian said that those changes will-already have-changed history. In ways not imagined. When I saw that place in the book, I, too, was shocked. The woman was very kind. She asked what was wrong, and then saw the page I looked at. She said that there were things we could do. ‘Send the aspirin,’ which they have here. It might help or it might not.”

Vladimir nodded. “We shall, with the first courier.”

Boris waved the notes aside. “That is not what I wished to discuss. We can use the public library with no trouble but the real wealth of knowledge is in the national library. From what the woman said, using the national library will entail some cost…” He shrugged. “… or unacceptable delay. I am not that concerned about the fees to hire a researcher.

“I am concerned about two things,” Boris continued. “First that the researcher might edit the reports and second that he might sell reports on what we were looking into to agents from other lands. I think we need someone to take the library science course and, at the very least, watch any researcher we hire. For some questions we will want to do the research ourselves.”