Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette Volume XI

The servant was placing a plate of Bernie's sandwiches in front of him along with a mug of beer. "You want a beer?" Bernie asked. "You're up anyway. Have a seat."

Filip nodded. "Why not? The older I get the less I sleep, anyway. Tell me about up-time. Did no one sleep the night through in your up-time?"

Bernie took a sip of his beer as the girl placed another mug in front of Filip. He shook his head. "Hardly anyone. Kids, maybe, and people who had to get up real early for work. Back there, all you had to do was flip a switch and you had lights. You could read all night if you wanted to and it would be just like daytime." Bernie grinned a bit. "There was a story they told. All about a man who became president way back when. The story said that he stayed up, reading by firelight, and educated himself that way. He was a really great president, too. And I've got a lot more respect for him, now that I know just how hard it is to read by candlelight. Not that I ever did that much reading."

Filip Pavlovich was gradually reconsidering things. Filip was a very smart man. He was also of reasonably good family and had an excellent education for his time. He was familiar with much of the work of the great minds of his era. He had worked quietly in the Embassy Bureau most for of his adult life, coordinating the reports of the agents around Europe on matters of natural philosophy, what the up-timers called science. His position and the nature of his work made it unlikely that he would ever be recorded in a history book. This didn't mean Filip wasn't as bright and capable as the more famous western scholars. It just meant that his work rarely bore his name.

Bernie had been sort of an insult. It was amazingly unfair that this up-timer should, by no other virtue than the accident of his birth in the future, know so much that Filip Pavlovich didn't. That was bad enough. Worse, though, Bernie Janovich couldn't explain it to him in a coherent way. At first he had occasionally wondered if Bernie was pretending ignorance just to frustrate him. Or, perhaps, Bernie didn't want the czar and people of Muscovy to have the benefit of the knowledge that he was being paid to provide. By now Filip knew that was not the case. He had seen Bernie's frustration and knew it was real.

Filip knew Bernie wanted to help. Bernie had seen little of the grinding poverty of the Muscovy peasants and the town poor, but even that little bit was apparently too much for him. It was the kind of poverty that made taking out someone's chamber pot a position to be sought after. Filip had seen this poverty anew, through Bernie's eyes. He didn't like seeing it, not at all, and he knew Bernie hated it. Filip was beginning to wonder if being smart was the best thing a man could be.

Bernie was good. Good in a way that almost no one outside of a saint was good in the here and now. Not that Bernie was a saint, exactly. He liked girls and beer too much for that. And, Filip was saddened to note, Bernie didn't really care for church.

Somehow, over the time that Bernie had been here, Filip had come to like the young man. He liked that Bernie was willing to admit when he didn't know something and try to learn it. And, Bernie had made it clear that he respected Filip for his knowledge and ability to understand Bernie's bits and pieces of information. He even liked that Bernie some how saw people as equal and felt that all of them were deserving of respect.

Without even realizing it, Filip had decided he would teach this man from the future to understand the knowledge he carried in his head. Enough, at least, so that Bernie would not be discarded as a used up receptacle in a few years. The fact that Bernie would probably look at the prospect of such an education with dread didn't bother him in the least. In fact, he rather enjoyed it. There was a touch of sadism in Filip's soul. Not a lot, but enough so that the prospect of making Bernie's life miserable for a while – in a good cause, of course – was kind of pleasant.

"So." Filip grinned. "What do you study tonight, Bernie? And what noisy, smelly experiment will it lead to this time?"

It was nice of Filip to help him out, Bernie thought, but it would be okay if he went to bed soon, too. He'd been teaching Anya stuff for a little while most nights. And Anya was too shy to sit down at the table with Filip there.

Finally, after about an hour, Filip gave it up for the night.

"Yeah." Bernie stretched a bit and yawned. "I'll be crashing pretty quick. One more chapter, though."

Filip's eyes were getting bleary. "Without me, I think." He yawned. "I don't have the stamina of youth." He stood and yawned again. "In the morning, then."

Bernie watched him leave, then grinned at Anya. "Finally," he whispered. "Alone at last."

Her blue eyes were merry. "Oh, yes, my dahlink. Fearless Leader has left the building and now we may play." She retrieved the papers of their latest project and sat down beside him. "Now, check my homework, please."

"It would be a lot quicker if I'd thought to bring a calculator," Bernie grumbled. He added up the columns of figures and checked that she'd posted the imaginary expenses to their correct imaginary accounts. "You got it, babe. Everything is in the right spot."

Anya clapped her hands, quietly. "Good." She checked the accounting textbook. "Trial balances and closing entries are next."

Bernie groaned and reached out to grab her by the shoulders. "Come, my little babuska." He used his Boris voice. "We will attend to the moose later. Right now, I merely wish to enjoy myself. No more studying tonight."

"Alexei?" Bernie had begun to wonder about this. "What about taxes? Do you deduct it from my income or what? Like the man says, there's two things certain in this world, death and taxes."

Alexei Alexandrovich stared at Bernie. "You want to pay taxes, Bernie? Why?"

"No, I don't want to pay taxes. No one wants to pay taxes. But, I don't want to go to jail for not paying my income tax, either."

"What's income tax? Is this yet another moose?"

Bernie grinned. Moose had come to mean a lot of things at the Dacha. Anytime anyone was hunting for an answer they were "looking for the silly moose."

"Kinda sorta. Income tax is how you support the government. You have a job, you get paid every month and your employer takes out a part and gives it to the government to pay for roads and the army and stuff like that. And, there's also property tax but you don't pay that unless you own property. It usually supports local government and schools and stuff."

Alexei, as Alexei often did, doodled with his pen. "What if you are not paid a salary? What if you're a craftsman?"

"I'm no expert." Bernie thought it must have been the thousandth time he'd said that since he had gotten to Moscow. "I think you pay income tax anyway, but it's a percentage of your net income."

"And what is net income?"

"Well, you figure all the money you took in that year. That's your gross income. Then you subtract the deductible stuff. What's left after that is your net income."

"And what… " God, it's like pulling teeth, thought Alexei… "is the deductible stuff?"

"Uh, well… your kids, for one thing. The more you have, the bigger the deduction. And, I guess if you're a smith and renting your shop, that would be a deductible expense and the iron you use to make the horseshoes or whatever. Stuff like that." It was dawning on Bernie that they did it differently here. "How do you do taxes here?"

That was a dangerous question. There were a number of subjects that they had all been informed they were not to discuss with Bernie. Both Boris Ivanovich and Natasha Petrovna had been very, even painfully, clear on that. "Well, Bernie, as far as you're concerned, the best way to figure it is your taxes are taken out of your monthly pay. That's not exactly how it works but close enough."