Eric Flint: 1636:The Kremlin games

Grantville

October 1631

Vladimir Gorchakov pulled his horse up as he saw Boris Ivanovich Petrov stopping to look around. “Apparently Tilly’s tercio commander wasn’t the liar we thought he was.”

“This place is worth the trip,” Boris said. “See the cuts in the earth where the land was changed? Look at these hills. The structure is different from those outside the ring. Everything inside this Ring of Fire is different.”

Most of their entourage was still on its way from Jena, but neither he nor Boris had wanted to delay long enough to sell all their trade goods or drag what was left along with them. They had left the matter in the hands of Fedor Ivanovich and ridden on ahead, with just two attendants.

“I was convinced it was a fraud of some sort.” Boris was shaking his head in wonder. “But anyone who could fake this kind of thing would have too much power to need to fake anything.”

Vladimir nodded to the bureau man and patted his horse. “I believed it was a preposterous lie right up until we got to Jena. It was the up-timer and that APC that made me start to suspect it might not be. Once you’ve seen one of those ‘cars,’ well, you must believe that something has happened.”

“For me it was the view from Rudolstadt.” Boris grinned. “But I am a cynic. Cars can be made by men. Not this!” He waved at the circle of inward- and outward-facing cliffs.

Vladimir remembered his first sight of over a mile of mirror-smooth cliffs. It had been beyond impressive. It was as though God had taken a scoop out of the earth and replaced it with a scoop of something else. He could see Boris’ point.

Vladimir looked over at Boris. Boris Ivanovich was an unassuming little man, the sort of man who could blend in anywhere and not be noticed. He didn’t look at all impressive. Appearances lied. Boris was a bureaucrat of Russia, specifically of the Posol’sky Prikaz, the Embassy Bureau or State Department. He was an experienced spy and a well-traveled agent. He spoke, read, and wrote Russian, Polish, Danish, German, English, and, of course, Latin and Greek. He had been assigned to accompany Vladimir Petrovich on this “fool’s errand” by the czar’s father in an attempt to keep the czar from looking any more foolish than could be avoided. And probably, Vladimir acknowledged, to keep me out of trouble.

Vladimir was sure Boris had his own thoughts about the situation. He could even make a good guess about what Boris was thinking. Not that any of it showed on Boris’ face. Boris, at the moment, was wearing his I’m-too-dumb-to-pound-sand look. No, it was the situation; any bureau man would be thinking the same thing. Boris’ rank in the bureaucracy that ran Russia was higher than Vladimir’s, or had been. He had been demoted without prejudice for this mission since Vladimir was a kniaz, a prince. Vladimir, as a prince with almost independent lands-combined with his friendship with the czar-was almost certain to end up as a boyar of the cabinet. It would be totally inappropriate to have him under the orders of someone with Boris’ lack of pedigree. But without prejudice or not, it was still a demotion. And if things went wrong it would be really easy to leave Boris demoted. That had been a major concern on their way here, Vladimir knew.

The fact that Grantville wasn’t a hoax presented Boris with both problems and opportunities. Powerful people didn’t like to be proven wrong, and there was more than a little bit of a tendency to kill the messenger in the Russian government. On the other hand, the fact that Grantville was not a hoax meant that keeping the czar from looking foolish in sending the mission became much easier. Certain people at court were not going to like that, either.

Moreover, since Grantville did exist, a network of spies would have to be put in place to watch it. Boris was in an excellent position to end up an important figure in that network. And the politics of the situation meant the Grantville Office in Moscow would be an important one. Poland was Russia’s great enemy at the moment and Germany was just the other side of it. Now a section of Germany was peaceful and relatively prosperous instead of being torn up by war. The up-timers, as the locals called them, had to be encouraged to take Sweden’s side. So far they had friendly relations with the Swedish king but nothing more than that.

“It is not such a large place,” Vladimir said, looking around as they rode, and patting the horse’s neck now and then. “And there are not so many up-timers as I had thought.”

“A small place, yes, but it will play a large role,” Boris said. “The cars, APC’s-or whatever their proper name-the improved roads, that device we saw in the fields outside Rudolstadt…” Vladimir knew what Boris was talking about though he didn’t know the name either. Whatever they called it, it did the work of a village of serfs faster and possibly cheaper.

“In a way, more important is that scraping bucket that was pulled by a team of horse,” Boris continued. “I would imagine that the cars and that thing in the field are hard to make but the scraping bucket.. that any Russian smith could build given the idea and a bit of time. This place will change the world. We will need to find any centers of learning they have. Gather quickly the information they give freely. If they really do give it freely.”

“Yes, Boris. Look into that as soon as we find a place to stay,” Vladimir said.

“I would like some information,” Boris said to the woman behind the desk.

“Your name is?”

“Boris Ivanovich Petrov, of Muscovy.”

“Ah.” The woman smiled. “Russian, then. I wondered about your accent. All I could really tell was eastern European. I’m Cecelia Calafano.”

“ Da, Russia. That is what we have called the motherland for some time now. It is the rest of Europe that still calls us Muscovy. That has changed in the future?”

“Yes, it has,” the woman Cecelia confirmed. “How can I help you?”

Boris smiled at her. “We’ve been sent to determine if this place is real.”

Cecelia laughed. “I’ve lived here all my life. Trust me, it’s real. What did you want to know?”

The man behind Boris was clearing his throat, as though Boris were taking too much time. Boris was much too much of a professional to turn and pound the oaf into the floor. Not too much to want to, though.

It was a moot point. Cecelia gave the oaf a look that melted him on the spot. Apparently, librarian was a post of some importance here. Boris gave her a list he had written in consultation with young Vladimir. Cecelia took a quick look. It was in English, carefully written. She sighed and Boris wondered why. Consistent spelling was some time in the future; it wasn’t something that Boris had ever known so wasn’t something he missed. It was, to Boris’ eye, a perfectly legible list.

She began to read aloud carefully. “How to make telephones. A history of the Romanov family. How to make cars. A history of Muscovy, or Russia. I think you’re probably in the wrong place.”

Boris looked at the woman. Here it came the runaround. Yes, we give such knowledge away, but not here was what he was expecting to hear.

What heard instead was, “Never mind,” followed by another sigh. The meaning of this one was clear. She had seen his response before. “Some of this you will be able to find here. Like the history of Russia or part of it. I’ll get you some books.”

Boris examined the books. Russia Under the Old Regime by someone with the very non-Russian name of Pipes. He looked at the table of contents. Chapter 4: The Anatomy of the Patrimonial Regime. Boris tried to translate the words to Russian. The body parts of the fatherhood rulers? That sounded positively obscene. Boris worked it out. Anatomy meant the structure of a body… perhaps it was used here to represent the structure of the government. Patrimonial regime