Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XIII

Boris listened to the lecture on soil chemistry with half an ear. It wasn't that it was unimportant. In the long run, it might turn out to be drastically important. But Boris had other things on his mind.

Boris Ivanovich Petrov was a spy. He was not the least bit ashamed of either the title or the meaning that it encompassed. He had been a field agent in Poland, England, and, most recently, Grantville. He had, on occasion, found it necessary to kill quietly from behind in defense of his czar and his mission. He took no joy in doing so, but didn't hesitate to, either. His new job as head of the Grantville Section of the Embassy Bureau was supposed to be a job in which that sort of thing was no longer necessary. That, unfortunately, hadn't proved to be the case.

Starting about three months after his return to Moscow, several of the other bureaus wanted the up-timer reassigned to them to focus on their projects. The pressure had been increasing ever since, with only limited relief when he had given Cass Lowry to the military. The roads bureau wanted Bernie to spend all his time on road-making equipment. The farming bureau wanted him making farming machinery. He was also wanted to make medicines, concrete, steel, plastics, and who knew what else.

There had been time for some of the effects to be felt since Bernie had arrived in Muscovy. Some road crews had the equipment he introduced and had been building and repairing roads much faster. A new quick-loading rifle was in limited production. Bernie insisted on calling it the AK3. This time Boris somewhat approved of the joke. Andrei Korisovich was head of the team that was developing the new rifle, but that wasn't the only reason he approved. Boris had seen up-timer movies that mentioned the AK47.

Both the Swedish and Polish sections of the Embassy Bureau wanted Bernie transferred to them, and the Grantville Section shut down. The Swedish Section claimed jurisdiction because Bernie had become a subject, sort of, of the king of Sweden since he had left Grantville. The Polish Section claimed jurisdiction because Bernie was teaching what he knew about firearms.

The knives were out, all over Moscow. Some of them were political and some made of steel. The political ones were by far the more dangerous.

"By introducing nitrates into the soil." For a moment Boris was distracted from his thoughts. Nitrates and the nitric acid that could be produced from them, played an important role in the production of smokeless gun powder. No, the lecturer was talking about using clover and beans to enrich the soil on the Yaroslavich family estates this coming spring.

Somehow, and Boris wasn't entirely sure how, he had gotten involved with the financial workings of the Yaroslavich family. It had seemed so innocent at the time. Vladimir Petrovich had merely offered letters of introduction to his sister, as well as several letters for her. In the letters to her, he had suggested that the Yaroslavich family should pay the czar a phenomenal amount for the Bernie/Grantville franchise and offered his dacha as a good place to put Bernie. By long-standing tradition, great houses and merchants of the empire paid the czar for the right to run commercial enterprises, like the import or export of goods, mining, or whatever.

So the Yaroslavich family owned the Bernie/Grantville franchise. Bernie was a big part of the Grantville, or American, Section's turf. The American Section, along with the Yaroslavich family, controlled access to Bernie and, through Bernie, controlled access to the experts who had been brought to the Dacha to work with him. The Yaroslavich clan had the patent on everything that came out of the Dacha.

It didn't seem like a large sum now, aside from the direct income to the Yaroslavich clan, which wasn't all that great. Yet.

But the favors flowed like rivers. And favors were the currency of political power in Muscovy. If the mining bureau wanted a road to a new mine, it would not have to come just to the roads bureau, not now. Now it would have to come to the Grantville Section and the Yaroslavich clan. Boris had collected more favors since being made head of the Grantville Section than in all the rest of his career. On the downside, when people came to him for favors he couldn't grant, he made enemies.

With Bernie placed in their dacha, it became clear that the Yaroslavich family were backing the Grantville Section. So far, no one had had enough influence to change that. Which also meant that the Yaroslavich family was passing out favors. Natasha was picking up more and more IOU's from the high nobility. They weren't being stingy in a monetary sense, but there was a degree of political selectivity in their choices.

But this was Moscow. Alliances could change at a moments notice. Or not. Now the patriarch was nervous, Boris heard. There were rumors that the Yaroslavich clan would try for the throne. Boris was confident that they had no such goal, but power carries its own implications.

A more realistic concern was that they would gain influence with the czar. Mikhail was loved, but not that well respected. Not considered… particularly strong. Of course, his hands were tied. The Assembly of the Land had seen to that when he was elected. Those limitations might well explain why he was so popular. When the government got blamed for something it was usually his advisors, not the czar, who got the blame. It was known that Mikhail had cried when told he had been elected czar. As well, it was known that he had refused the crown. He had continued to refuse until told that if he didn't accept, the blood of the next "time of troubles" would be on his hands.

Natasha knew the czarina, Evdokia. Before Bernie, that acquaintance would have given her family protection, but not much influence. Now that acquaintance was a way for up-time ideas to reach the czar without going through his father, who was also the patriarch of the Orthodox Church. And the ideas had gotten to Mikhail, some of them, anyway. Hence this little event.

Ivan Ivanovich had read the reports. That was one of the reasons that he had pushed for this general demonstration of the products of the Dacha. One of the reasons. The other being his increasing concern about the influence of the Grantville Section. Increasingly, he had been forced, almost against his will, to realize the importance that the Ring of Fire was going to have on the rest of the world, including Russia.

He watched Pter Nickovich pace about in a dither, getting in the way of the workmen handling the ropes. And found himself tempted to do the same thing. He knew what was about to happen he'd read about it in the reports. Then as the ropes were let out, it began to rise. Two poles, about five feet apart with ropes going from them to a basket below and balloons above. He had thought that he knew what was going to happen, but he hadn't realized what it would feel like. Twenty feet into the air, then twenty five, thirty, supported by nothing but air. It's only connection to the earth the ropes that held it down. And in the basket that hung below the dirigible testbed, Nikita Slavenitsky smiled and waved to the crowd of dignitaries.

Ivan Ivanovich waved back, it was absolutely the least he could do. What he wanted to do was jump up and down and shout. A Russian was flying in the air, held aloft by the knowledge and craftsmanship of his fellow Russians. He had read that the up-timers had already flown. But knowing about it from a report was one thing, seeing it was something altogether different. The up-timers with their machines doing it was one thing. Russians making a flying device out of wood, rope and cow guts-that was something altogether different. Even in his excitement about the flight, Ivan realized that it meant that one of his goals in forcing this demonstration had backfired. If anything it would increase the influence wielded by the Grantville Section. He looked over at the czar's pet up-timer, in time to see as Bernie, looking bored, snorted a laugh.