Eric Flint's Blog, page 192

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 51

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 51

Chapter 24

Freising, Bavaria

When Mike awoke, he saw that Rebecca had risen before him. She’d already brewed some tea and was sitting at the small table in the corner of the bedroom writing something in her notebook. That would be her manuscript she was working on. The deadline she’d set herself for completing it was approaching and she was becoming increasingly twitchy on the subject. Mike thought that was a little silly, since the deadline was entirely a self-proclaimed one, not something her publisher had established.

Even if the publisher had established a deadline, it wouldn’t have mattered that much. Book publishing in this day and age was quite unlike what it had been in the world Mike had come from. There, an author signed a contract and got an advance against projected royalties, in return for which she or he promised to deliver a complete manuscript by such-and-such a date.

None of that applied in this case. The publishing house they planned to use was simply the largest publisher in Magdeburg — and the distinction between “publishing house” and “print shop” was essentially non-existent. The publisher/printer, a man by the name of Martin Gemberling, was an Alsatian from Strassburg who’d gotten his start working with central Europe’s first newspaper publisher, Johann Carolus. He’d agreed to print Rebecca’s book whenever it got finished, but that was the beginning and end of his commitment. No money had been advanced, no contract had been signed, no publication date or manuscript deadline had been established.

Rebecca had received a lot of money in the form of a loan advanced against her projected royalties from the book. That loan had not come from any publisher, however, it had come from her massive and extended Abrabanel family. Mike wasn’t even sure which specific members of the family had come up with the money. The Sephardic Jews who’d been driven out of Spain at the end of the fifteenth century had their own methods and customs when it came to record-keeping, which were obscure to outsiders because they had been designed that way to make it more difficult for gentile rulers to extort money out of them. It was often unclear which members of the family were wealthy and which were not.

Under normal circumstances, Rebecca was a heavier sleeper than Mike was. He was usually the one who woke first and had the tea or sometimes coffee ready for her when she arose. But between his weariness due to the rigors of the campaign and her own edginess regarding the book, she’d gotten up first both mornings since she arrived in Freising.

It hadn’t taken her quite as long to get here as she’d expected. Once she got to Ingolstadt, she’d found that the Pelican was there and was about to relocate to Freising. By then, the Third Division had taken over the town and set up a protected airship base just north of it. The Bavarian resistance that Mike had expected had never materialized. Apparently, General Piccolomini had decided not to contest the territory north of Munich any further and had withdrawn his forces into the Bavarian capital in preparation for a siege.

Mike was delighted that she’d been able to squeeze in an extra day on her visit. He’d be leaving on the morrow, since he wanted to get the siege underway as soon as possible. If she’d arrived on her original projected schedule, they wouldn’t have had time to do much except deal with pressing political affairs. As it was…

He stretched languorously and began the lengthy and arduous process of getting out of bed. The night before had been eventful in its own way and he was feeling the aftereffects.

His wife, sadly, was not sympathetic to his plight. “You’d think you were the one who was pregnant, the way you’re grunting like a sow and moving about like one.” To pour salt into the wound, she hadn’t even looked up from her notebook. “I somehow managed to perform my wifely duties last night –”

“‘Duties!'” Mike scoffed. “You sure didn’t seem all that –”

Rebecca drove right over him. “Despite being somewhat encumbered from the results of a fairly recent wifely-duty performance — quite an excellent one too, I was told, from someone who ought to know since it was you — and yet I still managed to rise with the sun and get to work while you slumbered half the morning away.”

Mike looked at the one window in the room. Judging from the angle at which the sunlight was entering, it was still shy of eight o’clock. “You’ve got a harsh definition of ‘half the morning,’ my dear.”

Rebecca finished whatever she was writing and finally looked up. There was now a gleaming smile on her face. For perhaps the thousandth time since he’d met her, Mike felt a little stunned by how beautiful she was. Granted, some of that was the bias of a besotted husband. But only some of it.

“There is some tea,” she said softly. “Not too bad, either.”

“What kind is it?”

“Probably best not to ask. Trust me, it is really rather good. Fairly good. Well, not bad. Not actively bad.”

“My hopes are falling by the second,” Mike muttered. But he got up, got dressed, and made himself a cup. He still much preferred coffee to tea, being in this respect an unreconstructed American. But in the years since the Ring of Fire he’d grown accustomed to the hot beverages that generally served the seventeenth century in its stead.

A thin broth was the most common beverage people drank, in the here and now, when they weren’t drinking something alcoholic. Tea was now available, too. Mike was hoping coffee use might keep growing, but he feared the worst. Tea came from the Far East, along routes which the Ottoman Empire couldn’t easily cut. Coffee, on the other hand, was either grown in areas under Ottoman control or areas which the Turks could interdict. He was fairly sure that the availability of coffee in Europe was about to take a nosedive.

“Stupid war,” he muttered, as he took his first sip of tea.

Which was… not actively bad.

“Which one?” Rebecca asked. “War, I mean.”

Mike used the cup to point to the window, which faced to the east rather than the south but would serve the momentary purpose. “This one. Against Maximilian.”

Rebecca closed her notebook and laid down her pen. “He is — and has been for years — a malevolent force in Europe’s affairs.”

“Yeah, he’s a complete asshole, duly certified as such by the Pan-Europe Asshole Registrar’s Office, which — gee, what a surprise — is headquartered in Munich since that city had the highest concentration of assholes per capita in the entire continent.  But he’s still a piker, nowadays. Without its traditional alliance with Austria, Bavaria just isn’t big enough to threaten anyone. Not seriously.”

“The city council of Augsburg — and for certain the commander of the city’s militia — would beg to differ with you,” she pointed out.

Mike drained his cup and set it down on the narrow ledge that served the room for a kitchen counter. “Yeah, sure, but Augsburgers are always twitchy about Bavaria because they’re right on the border. The fact remains that they’re one of the USE’s officially recognized imperial cities, they’re well-fortified and what difference does that make anyway seeing as how the nation they’re a part of is about to lay siege to Bavaria’s own capital?”

For all the banter in their exchange, Rebecca had been listening closely. “I know you are concerned about the Ottomans, Michael. What I do not quite understand is why you are so concerned. They did fail in 1529, after all. And your own history books say they would fail again when they tried to take Vienna a second time –”

He waved his hand as if he were swatting at an insect. “In 1683. If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. But here’s what I also know.”

By then, he’d taken a seat on the bed and was leaning forward with his forearms on his knees. “People get so enamored with those damn up-time history books that they forget the other guy knows how to read too. By all accounts I’ve ever heard, Murad IV is the most capable sultan the Turks have had in a long time. Probably since Suleiman — whom they didn’t call ‘the Magnificent’ for nothing. What are the odds that a man like that won’t have been examining the records and drawing his own conclusions from it?”

Rebecca was no stranger to playing the devil’s advocate, whenever her husband wanted to seriously discuss something. “By those same accounts, Michael — each and every one of them, so far as I am aware — Murad has decreed that the stories of people from the future are malicious fables, a sign of witchcraft, and cause for summary execution should anyone repeat them. That hardly sounds like a man determined to squeeze every drop of knowledge that he can from your history books.”

Mike chuckled heavily. “Yeah, I’ve heard the same reports. But let me ask you something, sweetheart. If you were Murad and you wanted to launch secret weapons projects based on up-time knowledge and you didn’t want your enemies to realize you were doing it, what sort of decrees would you make?”

His wife’s expression remained exactly the same. Calm, still, attentive — and rather detached. “I would decree that the stories of people from the future are malicious fables, a sign of witchcraft, and cause for summary execution should anyone repeat them.”

“Exactly. So would I. Well… if I was a ruthless despot, anyway. Which is exactly what Murad is.”

Mike rose to his feet and went to look out the window. He did that from long habit, not because there was anything to see except the wall of an adjacent building. “I don’t believe it for a minute,” he said softly. “I think the Ottomans have been working around the clock, preparing for this assault on Austria. However authoritarian their government might be, it’s also probably the most efficient one in the world. This side of China, anyway. Their empire is huge and they have enormous resources and manpower.”

Rebecca went back to playing devil’s advocate. “Somewhat cruder technology than Europe’s, though, as a rule. At least, cruder than the best Europe can produce.”

Mike’s shrug was as heavy as his chuckle had been. “I’ve heard that also, and although I’m a bit skeptical I’m willing to accept the assessment. But I’m not all that impressed by it, either. The Russians who fought the Nazis in World War Two also had a cruder technology than their enemy did. But guess who won? That’s because the Russians played to their strengths. Their weapons may have been crude, but they worked and they made a lot of them and they were willing to take the casualties to wear down their enemy.”

He turned away from the window to look at her directly. “And that’s exactly what I think Murad is planning to do. I think he does have airships. Not planes, no. But planes aren’t really that useful in fixed, siege warfare. Not the ones we can build today. For that, airships will do just as well and they can be primitive as all hell — as long as the Turks have plenty of them. Understanding that ‘plenty’ is always a relative term. We’ve got a handful at our disposal. All they need –”

“Is a few handfuls,” she finished for him. “And you think the same will be true with other weapons.”

“Yes. We know they have Hale-design rockets. They used them in massed barrages against the Persians. You can expect plenty more where those came from. By now, I’m as sure as I am of anything that Murad will have equipped thousands of his troops with rifled muskets. Once you understand the principle of a Minié ball, designing a gun that can fire one isn’t hard. I’m sure they’ll be cruder than ours or the French Cardinal, but they’ll do. They’ll do.”

He went back to looking out the window. “I don’t know what else the Ottomans will bring to Vienna, but there’ll be something, you can bet on it. Maximilian of Bavaria is a vicious son-of-a-bitch but he no longer poses any major threat to anybody except people dumb enough or unlucky enough to work for him. Murad IV, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire… he’s something entirely different. He could pose an existential threat to us. Or his successor could, if he succeeds in taking Vienna and keeping it.”

“You think we should close down the war with Bavaria, if we can get some sort of acceptable political settlement,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. “And then move at once to aid Austria.”

“Yes. In a nutshell. That’s what I think we should do.” He shrugged again. “But Gustav Adolf doesn’t agree with me and he’s calling the shots, at least for now.”

Rebecca rose. “Michael, if you are right then you will be proven right within a very short time. Three months, at the latest. We are already in the second half of May. By now, the Ottoman march will be well underway. They have to seize Vienna rather quickly or they will be caught by the coming of winter. Which means that if Murad’s plans are as you suspect, we will see them unfold at some point over the summer.”

He knew his wife very well by now. She was leading him somewhere. Part of the reason Mike loved Rebecca was that he knew she was smarter than he was. At least in terms of what he thought of as raw brainpower. He suspected he was her equal and probably her superior in some aspects of what people called emotional intelligence.

“What are you getting at?” he asked.

“I think it should be obvious. Go around Gustav Adolf’s back. Without directly defying him, lay whatever plans you can that will help you get to Austria as soon as possible, and will keep you from getting any more entangled here in Bavaria than is absolutely necessary.”

“Can you find a reason to go to Prague?” he asked her.

“I am sure I can find one. Why?”

“I want someone close to me — closer than anyone else — to clinch the deal with Maximilian’s brother Albrecht. I’m sure that by now Wallenstein and Morris Roth have raised the matter with him. But they’re not directly involved. I am — which means you are.”

She nodded. “If we are to do this, you will need to construct an airfield outside Munich. Francisco Nasi owns his own plane –”

“With his own pilot and he’s already shown he’s willing to fly royalty around for a good cause.” He grinned, quite cheerfully. “Just ask Princess Kristina and Prince Ulrik. Consider it done. What else?”

“It seems silly to have Major Simpson go to all this trouble to bring four naval rifles to Munich when two would serve the purpose, while the other two remain where they can be brought into Austria quickly. Even ten-inch naval rifles can be floated down the Danube on a barge.”

“Already thought of that. What else?”

“I would devote a lot of thought to the subject of barges. Flat-bottomed boats even more so. Marching an army takes time. Floating them down the Isar and then down the Danube seems much more efficient.”

She had a point. But…

“How many flat-bottom boats and barges can there be in Bavaria?” he wondered.

“I have no idea. But I think the better question is: how many boat-builders are there in Bavaria — the southern Oberpfalz too — who might be available to make more?”

The area had been ravaged by war, lately. That always produced a lot of people who were looking for work. Only some of them needed to be experienced boatwrights, just enough to guide the others.

“You’re right. I’ll get David Bartley working on it right away. I love you.”

Rebecca got a long-suffering look on her face. “I foresee more wifely duties in the near future.”

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 33

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 33

Chapter 18

Magdeburg

October 1, 1634

“Mother Dorothea, did you know uncle Hesse intended to attack Cologne? Is he acting on the emperor’s behalf?” Elisabeth turned her head to look at the abbess and managed to step with both feet into a big puddle of dirty water. The paving was fairly good on the streets around the palace but the drainage could quite handle the recent heavy rain.

“No, I didn’t know. And officially the campaign is entirely Hesse’s own idea, and no one knew his plans. Unofficially?” The abbess waved at the two following footmen to carry her and the two girls across the puddle, and continued on the other side. “Unofficially, somebody might have known or guessed why the Hessian army went west this summer. It is only natural for Hesse and Amalie to be concerned about the future prominence of their new province. Those maps from the American’s future show Kassel as the only major town in a not very important area. At the moment Hesse’s prominence depends on political favors, but to ensure that the prominence continues they need a future important industrial area or trading centre. And Cologne is the only target that is not guaranteed to land them in more trouble than they can handle. Cologne is not a natural expansion of Hessen, but — as a von Hanau — Amalie understands the importance of the Rhine. And that the importance of Cologne will only increase when American ships increase the ocean trade.”

“Huh! I mean: why that? Cologne doesn’t produce that much, and it is not on a coast.” Now it was Johanna’s turn to get her feet wet. “We really should have borrowed the carriage.”

“It’s only three streets, my dear, and we have all been sitting around too much. The Americans are the healthiest people I have ever seen, and all their medical books emphasize the importance of movement and fresh air.” The abbess stopped and sniffed. “Fresher outside towns, of course, but at least the cold keeps the malodor down. And as for your question: small ocean ships may travel up the Rhine as far inland as Cologne, but from there they must reload to boats, barges or wagons. And Cologne gets its share of every load. Here’s Maximiliane’s house now.”

* * *

Much to the annoyance of his brother Wilhelm the Holy, Duke of Bavaria, the late Archbishop Ernst of Cologne had fathered a number of illegitimate children, and legitimized four of them. Maximilienne, his second daughter with his long-time mistress Magdalena Possinger, had married the second son of one of her father’s French advisers, but left him after one too many quarrels with her Spanish mother-in-law. It wasn’t that Maximilienne objected to pray for her father’s salvation, but he had been a grown man who presumably knew what he did. She felt no obligation to spend all her days and half her nights on her knees in the small dank chapel on the family estate. So after an especially acrimonious evening she had packed up her belongings, dowry and children, and left. She took along two highly gifted silversmith brothers from her husband’s estate, and went to Aachen to set up a workshop soon famous for its delicate silver filigree objects. An energetic woman in her late thirties, she had gone first to Grantville to see what new methods the Americans had to teach, and then on to Magdeburg to create jewelry for the nobs in what looked to become the capital of the new leading area in Europe.

Maximilienne had bought a new well-build house in the business district nearest the palace and paid the owner — a cloth merchant — more than market-price to vacate the prime location. Now the shop filled the entire ground floor of the front house, and she lived with her two daughters and youngest son in the spacious rooms above.

Not as opulent as the houses of Wettin and Hessen — Elisabeth looked around while two maids gathered the short, fur-trimmed cloaks from the visitors — but with everything in good taste and quality. Neither Mistress Maximilienne nor Maxie were apparently the kind to sit idly waiting for visitors, but by the time the abbess and the two girls were seated in the inglenook to warm their feet at the fire, their hostess and her cousin arrived from other parts of the house, and conversation took off at full speed immediately.

Once the initial chatter of introductions, inquiries regarding family and friends, and exchange of news and rumors from the war was over, the abbess turned to her old friend, near contemporary and sometimes colleague, and asked, “Dear Maxie, you wrote to me — several times — about Father Johannes the painter, and mentioned a connection to the Simplicissimus Magazine. Litsa here is interested in the who’s and how’s of writing news; can you help her?”

“Father Johannes is here in Magdeburg.” Maxie smirked. “He is heavily involved with the new porcelain manufacturing, but I expect he is also sending news to his nephew, who is the publisher of the magazine.”

“Maxie!” the abbess interrupted, frowning. “I know that smirk of yours. Didn’t you decide to devote yourself to enabling women to enter seclusion and spend their lives in prayer and contemplation? When we last met three years ago you even planned to enter seclusion yourself.”

“I did and I did.” Maxie’s smile turned bitter and her eyes briefly showed her fury. “That my relatives were reluctant to lose my skills as a nurse and hospital leader, and therefore never gave me much support was one thing, but that they sent me to nurse cousin Ferdinand in Cologne and then used my absence to sabotage the support I’d found elsewhere was too much. I’m never going back to Munich! It’ll be years — no, probably decades! — before my temper has cooled enough to let me enter any kind of contemplation.”

“And in the meantime you’re planning to scandalize your family as much as possible? You know, dear Maxie, converting to Lutheranism would probably be more effective — not to mention dignified — than following in the footsteps of your male prelate relatives.”

“I didn’t know either of them ever lived in sin with a Jesuit priest, dear Dotty.” Maxie went back to grinning broadly at the abbess, who gave an irritated wave in answer. “But that’s not really what and why I’m doing it.” Her smile faded a little. “We both know my temper and that my fury is a mortal sin. But when I’m with Father Johannes I’m not angry. I’m just happy, and my family’s betrayal doesn’t really seem so important.”

“Hmpf! I realize you have grown most fond of this priestly painter, and heaven knows I’m not opposed to clerical marriages, but you are both Catholics and your habit of forming the most unsuitable alliances has been an embarrassment to your friends — never mind your family — for far too long. It’s becoming undignified. It really is time you settled down and stopped upsetting everybody.”

“But I am planning to settle down.” Maxie kept smiling. “My archbishop cousin paid me quite handsomely for my nursing, and I’m planning to buy a house and settle down right here with Father Johannes, Lucie von Hatzfeldt and Lucie’s late husband’s bastard children. Father Johannes is quite serious about his faith, and probably isn’t going to abandon it to marry either of us.” She shrugged. “But he isn’t totally opposed to getting seduced, and everybody need something to confess. I’m not likely to get a bastard at my age, and even if I do that wouldn’t be so bad.” She accepted an enameled tankard of warm spiced wine from the maid and raised it in a smiling salute to her hostess before drinking.

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 50

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 50

“Like I said! Hundreds of miles. Then –” Little finger, triumphantly raised above her head. “I’ve got to get on a fucking boat and sail all the way down from Hamburg to the North Sea and all the way around half of Europe — okay, fine, a third of Europe — to get to Amsterdam.”

She lowered her hand. “And all this for what? Buying or leasing a fucking blimp about which I know absolutely squat. That’s why you’re sending Heinz and Bonnie. They know what to look for and what to look out for. About all I know about stupid fucking blimps is that they’re big, they’re clumsy, and they fly. Sort of.”

Not for the first time since they’d gotten married, Tom was grateful that he’d been blessed with a phlegmatic temperament. Rita had not been so blessed. She was extremely affectionate, generally easy-going, and in most respects a delight to be around. But when she got agitated — as her brother Mike had once put it — her hills rose high and her hollers sank low. And she hollered a lot, with a liberal use of the Old Tongue.

It was no use pointing out that by now Rita actually had a lot of experience with dirigibles — more than enough to know perfectly well that they weren’t looking for “blimps.” It was true that Heinz Böcler and Bonnie Weaver knew more than she did, especially about some of the mechanical issues involved. And while none of the three had any experience with hydrogen-filled balloons, both Heinz and Bonnie had studied up on the subject while Rita had pointedly refused to do so.

All that was beside the point — and Rita knew it perfectly well. She’d spent a whole year locked up in the Tower of London because of what she herself sometimes called the Early Modern Era Realities of Fucking Life.

“Nobody is going to sell or lease a brand new hydrogen-lift airship to a pastor’s son and an up-timer with uncertain credentials,” he said. “Not unless they plunked down enough gold or silver to cover the entire cost, which we don’t have. That means we’ll have to use credit, which they don’t have and you do.”

“Are you fucking kidding? I don’t have any income worth talking about and you get paid what that cheapskate emperor scrapes up now and then.”

Actually, by seventeenth century standards the army of the USE paid its officers and enlisted men reasonable wages and paid them reasonably on time. Granted, “by seventeenth century standards” was a bit like saying that by alley cat standards the garbage can behind June’s Diner held gourmet food.

Tom shook his head. “That’s got nothing to do with anything and you know it as well as I do. What matters here is that” — he started counting off his own fingers, also starting with his thumb — “First, you’re Mike Stearns’ sister. Second, you’re Admiral Simpson’s daughter-in-law. Third –”

“Fuck all that! I don’t care!”

He left off finger-counting in order to run said fingers through his hair. “Yeah, but King Fernando will care, and Queen Maria Anna will care, and Archduchess Isabella will care, and while whatever Dutch financier you wind up having to deal with might not care he will care that the Royal Trio care. Half of being a successful businessman in the here and now is staying on good terms with Their Majesticities.”

Rita glared at him. But she didn’t say anything and she’d stopped cussing, so he figured they were making progress.

****

“I don’t know what to wear,” Bonnie Weaver said. Whined, rather. She had her hands planted on her hips and was studying the contents hanging in her closet. Which had seemed adequate enough, the day before, but now seemed like a pauper’s hand-me-downs.

A royal audience, for Pete’s sake. What do you wear to a royal audience? More to the point, how do you get around the fact that you obviously don’t have anything suitable for the purpose?

Johann Böcler looked up from packing his own valise, which he had spread open on the bed. As was often true of the man, he had a frown on his face. If anyone in the world had a temperament that was the exact and diametrical opposite of Alfred E. Neuman’s, it was Johann Böcler. The man could and did worry about everything.

That could have driven Bonnie nuts except that Heinz, unlike most worrywarts, never took it out on the people around him. And he didn’t worry about anything that didn’t have a clear and practical focus — as the very bed his valise was on demonstrated.

Bonnie and Heinz had started sharing that bed as soon as she accepted his betrothal. From the standpoint of seventeenth century German custom, that settled the issues of moral propriety. Whether or not Heinz’s Lutheran deity took the same relaxed and practical attitude toward the matter was unknown, and would presumably remain so until Johann Heinrich Böcler became one with eternity. But that problem was neither practical nor focused so he didn’t worry about it.

So, very pleasant and often delightful nights she’d been having, lately.

“What are you concerning yourself about?” he asked. “All you need — all we need — for the moment is clothing for travel.”

“But… When we get to Amsterdam — Brussels is what I’m actually more worried about — it’s a royal court, Heinz! — then what am I going to wear?”

He squinted at her, as if he were studying a puzzle. “Why are you worrying about that now? When we get to Amsterdam, we’ll buy whatever we need for Amsterdam. When we get to Brussels, the same.”

She transferred her exasperated hands-planted-on-hips glower onto Heinz. “And with what money, pray tell?”

He shook his head. “What does prayer have to do with it? The Lord does not provide such things. But our employers will.”

He dug into the valise and came up with a thick envelope. “In here, I have letters of recommendation from David Bartley, Michael Stearns, Jeffrey Higgins — there’s even one from President Piazza, although it’s just in the form of a telegram. But that should be good enough.”

“Letters of recommendation are one thing. Hard cash is another.”

The squint deepened. A puzzle, indeed. “No one at this level pays for anything with cash, Bonnie. If you tried, in fact, you’d be immediately suspect.”

She stared at him for a moment. Then, pursed her lips. “Do you mean to tell me that I’ve entered a world where if you have to ask what something costs you can’t afford it anyway?”

“I have no idea what that means. And it doesn’t seem to make sense in the first place. If you have to ask what something costs then you are being careless because you should have found out before you asked.” He dug into the valise again and came up with a much, much thicker envelope. “In here I have all the specifications we need to acquire a suitable airship for a suitable price. I don’t expect to ask anything except the projected date of delivery.”

He could take practicality to extremes, sometimes.

Wroclaw (Breslau)

Poland

As Jozef rolled up the antenna he’d run out of their window earlier that night, Lukasz read the message.

Again. He wasn’t really “reading” it any longer, he was just gloating over it.

“To Dresden! A city I’ve always wanted to visit!”

Grand Hetman Koniecpolski must have had his radioman right by him, because he’d given them a response within half an hour.

Lukasz to stay with you. Go back to Dresden. Children will be safe there. Report again when possible.

“And sieges are so boring. You have no idea, Jozef.”

“I’ve been through a siege, thank you. In Dresden, as it happens. I wasn’t bored at all. I was terrified the whole time.”

Lukasz looked up from the radio message in his hand. His lip was already curling into a proper szlachta sneer of disdain.

“Of that Swedish oaf Báner?”

Jozef finished rolling up the antenna. He went to hide it away in his saddlebag, being careful not to wake the two children cuddled together on a cot in the corner.

“Oh, I wasn’t concerned about Báner,” he said. “I was worried about Gretchen Richter.”

“Pfah!” Lukasz’s lip curled still more. “A woman!”

Now finished with the saddlebag, Jozef came back across the room and gazed down upon his friend.

Jozef had spent a lot of time in Grantville, much of it watching the “movies” the Americans had brought across time and space. He liked most of them and adored some.

“Be afraid, Opalinski,” he said darkly. “Be very afraid.”

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 32

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 32

Chapter 17

Bonn, Eigenhaus House

October 1, 1634

“It looks as if he has gotten used to the smell of gun-oil.”

Charlotte looked up from her nursing son and smiled at Frau Benedicte sitting at her table. “Yes, he just wrinkled his nose for a few days if I didn’t wash between taking off my kyras and feeding him, but now he doesn’t seem to notice. I suppose you can get used to just about anything.”

“And how about you, my dear? This is a life quite different from the one you were brought up to live.”

“Yes,” Charlotte looked down at her nursing son, “but not necessarily one that’s worse. I was very young when I married, and not just in years. I had been taught to cope with running a household, and warned against getting too attached to a baby before it had survived those first dangerous years. That I could not keep my distance to my first little baby, and don’t think I’ll ever be able to just leave a child to my servants, is another matter, but Wolfgang’s deterioration …” Charlotte sighed and leaned back against the hard back of the chair. “I still don’t understand what happened. Wolfgang was a good man once.”

“You call it deterioration. Could it be nothing more than old age? He was more than three times your age.”

“It didn’t seem like old age to me. One of my mother’s old friends became more and more odd and forgetful as she grew old, but Wolfgang …” Charlotte sat up and looked at the older woman. “When Maxie — that’s Archbishop Ferdinand’s cousin — visited me in Düsseldorf, she told me about some American theories about too many changes and the kind of pressure they could put on people’s minds. I suppose that could be what happened to Wolfgang. In a way I suppose that was what Felix Gruyard did to me: putting so much pressure on my mind that I went irrational and could not think straight. It was in a different way from Wolfgang, but perhaps it really was the same.”

“Could be, my dear. Women trying to take care of too many children — and especially if one is a baby cutting a tooth and preventing her from sleeping — can certainly do things they would never have done in their right mind.”

“Do you think it’s wrong for me to like guns? Or perhaps a sign of mental disorder?” Charlotte leaned back again and thought about her conversation with General von Hatzfeldt.

“No, I think being able to defend yourself and your baby is very necessary for you if you are to regain your peace of mind. Seeking safety from a protector either in the shape of your brother or a new husband might be the more ordinary solution for a young girl, but you are turning out to be an unusually strong and capable young woman. One might always need the support of God, but there is nothing whatsoever wrong with wanting to be able to do for yourself rather than rely on other people.”

“I suppose not. And I’m not totally opposed to a new marriage, I just …” Charlotte suddenly sat up in anger, causing her baby to let go of her breast and protest. “And I also suppose that was why the archbishop set Gruyard on me — to make me feel so helpless that I would be willing to seek his protection. I want to kill Gruyard — and the archbishop too — and Turning the Other Cheek Be Damned.” Charlotte kept her voice soft and gently rocked the baby.

“Lotti, my dear, I think you’ve gotten into bad company in my militias.”

Charlotte looked at the smiling older woman over the baby dropping off to sleep, and felt her face split into a broad grin. “Yes, and isn’t it nice?”

Bonn, The Guard House

“You have mail,” said Commander Wickradt entering the Guard House.

“Another diatribe from the archbishop?” Melchior looked up from the papers he was reading.

“No, it’s actually a letter from your sister.”

“What?

“Yes, young Jakob Eigenhaus, Frau Benedicte’s youngest son, brought it to me a few moments ago, along with the information he has gathered from their contacts along the river.” Wickradt removed his helmet and sat down. “The cannons you have been expecting from Frankfurt landed at Godesberg this morning. They are on their way here, and even with the soggy ground they should arrive at the Hessian bastions the day after tomorrow. The Hessian cavalry have moved their main camp from Vesseling to Bruhl, and the road to Cologne is now completely closed. The archbishop’s cavalry tried to gather for an attack while the Hessians were moving, but barely got started before they were scattered. There are now small mounted skirmishes all over the areas between Bonn and Cologne. The main Hessian army has come upriver from Düsseldorf — also as you expected. They have set up a camp at Leverkusen, and have encircled Cologne. It sounds as if they have brought along some artillery too, so the cannons from Frankfurt might have been extras borrowed from the Swedes. The new cannons can hit a lot harder and reach a lot further than the walls were built to cope with, so the Council of Cologne expects the casualties to get really bad once the cannons starts. They are trying to negotiate, but the first attempts didn’t turn out well.”

“Hesse is almost certainly seriously annoyed about the attempt to join the USE by treaty, instead of letting him make a conquest.”

“Most royally pissed according to the scuttlebutts.” Wickradt leaned back and tried to stretch his back despite his armor. “One bit of good news is that the Hessians are finding it extremely difficult to blockade a river as wide as the Rhine against those willing to sail at night; so Jakob and his friends expect to be able to get information in and out for quite a while yet. Oh, and both Duke Wilhelm and General von Uslar are around.”

“Please give Jakob Eigenhaus my thanks, and offer rewards for information.” Melchior cut off the seal from the thick letter, and started reading. “Karl Mittlefeld should have been here at least a week ago, so I’ll give ten thalers to those helping the CoC contacts back inside the walls. Hmm! Lucie writes that the Council of Cologne managed to get two delegations for the USE out of Cologne before the Hessians closed them in; the official one going north directly for Magdeburg by way of Hannover with Count Palatine Friedrich von Zweibrücken in nominal charge, the other trying for Mainz with my brother, Hermann, as leader. It is a bit early to expect anything to have come back from Magdeburg, but Hermann might have joined up with Karl.”

“Your brother is a good choice for a negotiator, but Zweibrücken? A Kleve? Should I know him?” Wickradt poured himself a glass of beer, and stretched his legs. The looting had stopped after the first two hangings, and the town was as calm as anyone could expect. Still, the old man obviously worried too much to rest, and had been patrolling the walls and streets almost round the clock. Melchior guessed Wickradt would calm down once the attack actually started, but for now he kept searching for more preparations to make.

“Personally, no. Friedrich is a very young man, only eighteen, and according to Lucie eager to become a hero by saving the rich town of Cologne and bringing it into the United States. What is actually important about him is that his mother is a Simmern, and that his father’s brother is the husband of Princess Katharina of Sweden. This makes him a relative of both Hesse’s wife, Amalie, and of Gustavus Adolphus, not to mention Saxony, Bavaria and just about everybody else of importance.”

“I see. And he’ll be traveling through land he might claim through his grandmother. Especially if he can make a name for himself, and with Bavaria and Brandenburg out of the picture. What was he doing in Cologne?”

“Looking for his sister, Charlotte, who is the missing widow of Jülich-Berg. He started by contacting Maxie, that’s Sister Maximiliane von Wartenberg, who is staying at Hatzfeldt House. I expect she and Hermann put the notion of representing Cologne into his head.” Melchior kept reading. “And Maxie has gone along to Magdeburg too. And listen, this is very interesting: ‘Our dear brother, Franz, along with Maxie’s brother, Bishop Franz Wilhelm of Minden, and Archbishop Anselm von Wambold of Mainz, are all said to have left Archbishop Ferdinand, and returned to their dioceses. I’m not sure how or why, but Archbishop Ferdinand is supposed to have killed Abbot Schweinsberg of Fulda. And Melchior, whatever is behind those rumors of the archbishop having Franz impersonating you? I’ve practically had to sit on Maxie to keep her from hunting down her archbishopal cousin and demand an explanation.’ The rest is just family news.”

“Sounds like the rats are deserting the sinking ship — no offense to your brother — but I think we can just about ignore the archbishop from now on.” Wickradt rubbed his eyes and looked up at the map on the wall. “Mainz may be reached in a week even without a horse, but Magdeburg cannot be reached in less than two weeks no matter how fast you ride. I’m not sure we can hold off Hesse for that long.”

“No, but Father Johannes told me the Americans in Mainz have ways of sending news around very, very fast, and even if Bonn surrender, it’ll take Hesse two more days getting his cannons past Bonn to Cologne. So, let us think about stalling.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 24

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 24

Chapter 24.

Ariane stumbled to a halt, mouth dropping open, eyes wider than they had been since she was a child.

The old man — who didn’t look so old now, to a girl ten years older — smiled broadly at her and held his arms wide. “Hey there, racer girl!”

I thought I was prepared. Boy, was I wrong, a part of her thought. That part, Captain Ariane Austin, Leader, knew perfectly well that this was — had to be — just an unexpected guise of Orphan’s mysterious “Vindatri”.

But the other part of her was starting forward, tears rippling her vision of the man, brown hair sprinkled with gray, smiling lines creasing his face, sharp eyes twinkling like polished wood, wearing the blue jeans and shirt that had been a standard outfit for workers for, literally, centuries. There was even a streak of black oil or grease on one cheek, just as if he’d been working on one of the…

Even as she thought it, she realized that she was no longer in a sterile, dimly-lit room of metal and plastic and glass; the Texas sun shone brilliantly overhead, striking hot highlights from the red-painted metal of the ancient truck that Granddaddy leaned against, hood wide open, tools neatly arranged on his mobile rack nearby.

His hug felt the same, too, and the smell — of oil, a touch of gasoline, a little sweat, citrus soap — was enough to make her actually cry. Don’t let him see that much of you! the Leader snapped, but it was a halfhearted self-scolding.

She let go and stepped back. “You’re dead, Granddaddy.”

“Maybe so, Arrie, or maybe not so dead as you think.” He wiped his eyes, and she could see the glitter of tears.

A thin trickle of anger finally began to seep in. “I know you are. Saw the garage burning, and we’d seen you go in, and they found your body in it. So this, this is all a trick, and a pretty mean trick, too, Vindatri.”

Granddaddy frowned, but it was a sad frown, an apologetic one. “Sorry about that, Arrie. I never wanted to make you sad, you know that. And… well, neither does Vindatri, since you bring him up.”

Ariane swallowed the anger. This is the person we came to see. Whatever he does, he may be the only chance I have to understand the power I’ve got. “So… what is the purpose, Vindatri?”

“Wish you’d just call me Granddaddy, like you always did. Y’see, this, well, everything around you, that’s not actually Vindatri’s doing. Not exactly, anyway. He can give… call ’em hints, guidance, stuff he wants to see or know or talk about, but the way those questions show up, that’s more you than him.”

“So he’s not just reading my mind?”

“Nope. Maybe he can, but that’s not the way this game’s being played. He’s getting to see what you’re seeing, but only touches of what you’re thinking — the stuff you’re focused on, what’s being projected.”

That did make some sense. Obviously she would know exactly what her Granddaddy’s old farm would look and smell like; she suspected that someone just reading her mind and trying to build it from scratch would find it a lot harder. She smiled finally, brushing away the last of the tears and feeling less embarrassed by it than she might have been. “I was actually expecting Mentor.”

“Ha! Be too predictable. Besides, there’s a damn good reason it’s me and not him. Bet you can guess it.”

“Because he’s been… more a friend than anything else. He didn’t raise me, didn’t shape me. He’s named Mentor but he wasn’t my mentor, so to speak.”

“And you’re fast on the answers as you are on the track. Good answer, Arrie, and pretty much spot-on.” He reached up and slammed the hood of the truck down. “C’mon, let’s get inside. Hot out here, a body could use something cold. Want a beer? Or maybe lemonade?”

It’s just like a simgame. Play along. “One of your lemonades?”

“You bet.”

They walked to the somewhat weathered-looking house in silence, puffs of dust kicking up around their feet until their boots rattled across the wooden porch and into the dimmer, cooler interior. Granddaddy opened the refrigerator — startling in its modernity, shining sharp edges in the midst of centuries-old décor — and got out the lemonade. The pitcher was just the way she remembered it, light shining mistily through the glass, slices of lemon swirling in the water, scattered bits of pulp drifting as Granddaddy poured her a big tumbler full. “Here you go.” As usual, Granddaddy had pulled a beer from the back of the fridge and popped the top off easily.

She took a long series of swallows. My god, it tastes just like Granddaddy’s. Tears threatened to well up again, but she forced them back. Once she was sure she had everything under control, she spoke. “So what does Vindatri — you — want?” she asked. It was a huge temptation to just accept what she saw at face value, but that level of escapism wasn’t really in her. It’s an awesome simulation, but it’s still just a trick, and for some purpose I don’t quite know yet.

“Truth? He’s not sure, exactly. To know more about you. Figure out why you came with Orphan. Find out what you want, coming this far with someone you must know didn’t tell you the half of the truth about what he was doing.”

I was afraid of that. “Orphan held something back, yes, but he was, well, up-front about not telling us everything.”

“Was he, now? Good for him. Boy’s spent years learning how to keep his left hand or right hand from knowing what the tail was doing, if you get my drift. Nice to think he’s tryin’ to get over that.” He took a long pull from the bottle. “That hits the spot! Now… Orphan says there’s been two sets of First Emergents?”

So he’s already been talking — probably is right now — with Orphan. Wonder if he plays games like this with him now? “Well, we’re your standard First Emergents, if there is such a thing. The others are natives to the Arena, the Genasi, who just got their first Sphere.”

Granddaddy froze — just a tiny hesitation, but that hesitation was like a glitch in a simulation, suddenly bringing home the fact that this was not real, no matter how much it seemed like it was. “The Genasi? Citizens now? Well, well, well, that’s a surprise and a half. Though I can’t figure there’s anything standard about you and your friends, no how. That DuQuesne’s a firecracker, and Sun Wu Kung’s just a plain hoot. How’d you get your citizenship? Who’d you Challenge?”

She hesitated, but honestly couldn’t think of any reason not to tell him the basics; everyone in Nexus Arena already knew, after all. “We actually got that through a Type Two Challenge. The Molothos landed on our Upper Sphere, and we kicked them off.”

The stare was definitely two-edged; in a way, it looked just like her grandfather’s incredulous gaze, and yet there was something else, much older, alien, behind it. “First Emergents defeated a Molothos scouting force on their own Sphere? As their initial Challenge?” The voice had shifted the tiniest bit, but then warmed back to that of her Granddaddy. “Dang, Arrie, you people know how to make an entrance! Not that I didn’t already know that, having seen you at the races and all. Still, that’s one hell of an introduction. You’ve had other Challenges too?”

“Yes. And some conflicts that weren’t, strictly speaking, Challenges. But like you said, we came here for a reason, so I’d like you to answer a question or two, instead of just me talking.”

“Ask away, Arrie. Can’t absolutely guarantee an answer, but won’t hurt to ask.”

Here goes nothing. “Do you know how to teach someone to use the powers of the Shadeweavers or the Faith?”

The imitation-Granddaddy didn’t answer right away; he gazed at her with a faint smile on his face, taking an occasional sip of his beer as he studied her. Then, just as she was about to speak again, he said “Why would you need anyone to do that? Both of those groups’ll gladly teach anyone who gets the initiation. Hell, they keep the initiation tight so that they’re the only game in town.”

“Usually, yes. But…” She concentrated, and in a flash of silver-gold light swapped her current clothes for the uniform that had been created in the moment of her apotheosis.

The entire simulation flickered, and for a moment she stood again in a shadowed gray room, facing a simulation of her grandfather that stood rigid and blank-eyed. It was a full second or three before the farmhouse reformed around her with its scents of old wood and coffee and barbeque. “Well, dye me pink and call me a pig. You’ve got the power without being either? I will be dipped. Absolutely dipped. That shouldn’t be possible.” Another chuckle, touched with the alien tone. “And that is the second impossible thing I have seen this day. Fearsome indeed.”

I’ll bet he’s talking about DuQuesne. “So are you going to answer my question?”

A slow smile spread across Granddaddy’s face, a smile like the one he’d worn when she first convinced him to take her for a ride in one of his antiques. “Answer it? All right, Arrie. Yes, Vindatri knows how to teach someone about those powers. He’s got the data, archives going back millennia. Maybe not the Encyclopedia Galactica, but good enough. That what you’re here for?”

“Mainly, yes. And paying a debt and a promise we made to Orphan.”

“Well, now, that’s fine. Good to know Orphan managed to make himself a few friends. Lord knows he needs ’em in his line of work.” While the words were very much Granddaddy, the motion was still a little off, and his next words showed that Vindatri must be aware of it. “I have to say, I’m still a little shell-shocked by that trick you pulled. Never happened before. Never heard of it happening before. I… Vindatri… will need to think a bit on this. Your other friends, they’ve had their surprises too, but yours takes the cake. Put your glass in the sink and run along, Arrie — you’ll find your friends waitin’ for you just down the road.”

“Are they all right?”

“Be a poor host who hurt his guests the first hour they were in his house, wouldn’t it? They’re just fine, Arrie. Maybe a bit peeved and confused — like you — but no real harm done. Go talk it over with ’em, and we’ll talk again later, without all the different masks.”

She rose and put the glass into the old stainless-steel sink, then looked over at the illusion of her grandfather. “Vindatri… this was a very well done illusion. And… I guess a part of me really wanted to see Granddaddy again. So… it’s okay. Thank you, even.”

The smile, also, seemed to have two people behind it. “Then you’re very welcome, Ariane Stephanie Austin. Now go meet up with your friends. See, time goes by differently for each of you in these interviews, so they’ve been waiting a bit.”

That makes sense, actually; he probably wanted to devote most of his attention to each person as he interviewed them, so he had to stretch out the perceptions of the others during that time. Which meant she’d been here at least three, maybe four or more times as long as she’d thought. “On my way!”

As she walked, the sun faded, the landscape went ghostly and disappeared, and she found herself striding quickly down a brightly-lit passageway that ended in a trapezoidal door. The door slid open as she approached, and she saw, seated around a table, DuQuesne, Wu Kung, and Orphan. “Good to see all of you!”

The others leapt to their feet, even Orphan. “Captain! Glad to see you’re okay too,” DuQuesne said.

“Indeed!” Orphan’s voice was emphatic. “I did not, of course, expect Vindatri to do anything… extreme, but as you realize I do not know him well, so there was a degree of concern.”

Wu had already made his way over to her and surveyed her, sniffing. “You were upset, but you are not hurt. Good.”

That’s an impressive nose he has. “But you look… a little scuffed up, Wu,” she answered. And it was true; the Hyperion Monkey King’s costume was somewhat askew in areas, and she thought she saw darkening under the fur of one cheek.

“Ha! This Vindatri’s version of Sha Wujing and I had a discussion… sometimes with our fists!”

“Of course you did. Look, can I sit down and we can all talk about what happened?”

“Sure,” DuQuesne said. “Though remember that whether he’s here or not, Vindatri’s probably listening in.”

“Yes, I’d expect he must be,” Ariane said, pulling out a chair at the table and sitting down. There were three platters of various snacks on the table, one obviously for Orphan and the other two apparently meant for human consumption. “This stuff all checks out?”

“One hundred percent,” DuQuesne affirmed, “which tells us one hell of a lot about Vindatri’s abilities. He obviously didn’t know much about us before talking to us, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t know squat before we got to his area of space, otherwise he wouldn’t need Orphan to go playing messenger boy. So he managed to get a read on us and whip up quite a spread in the time he was interviewing us — and I’m pretty sure most of his attention was focused on us, not setting up a snack bar.”

That did emphasize that Vindatri’s powers went considerably beyond making quick sims and having a very impressive and distant secret base. “So he evaluated us, matched biochemistries, and somehow figured out something about our palates in that period of time. That is pretty impressive.” She looked at the others. “So what happened to the rest of you? What was your private conference like? Orphan?”

“Mine? I would suspect the least entertaining of us all. I saw Vindatri again and he asked me a few questions about you — after instructing me to tell him nothing other than the precise and most limited answers to his questions.”

“So he didn’t want you supplying any more information than he asked for?” That actually made some sense. “He wanted to evaluate us as much as possible without having any preconceived notions. So what did he ask you?”

“Hm. First he asked if all of you were part of the same Faction, to which I answered yes. Then he asked if you were part of the same species, to which — after some hesitation — I answered that I believed so, but was unsure.” Orphan paused, then gave one of his decisive handtaps and continued. “He then asked if I was here to fulfill both of my conditions, to which I also answered yes. And that, I am afraid, was the entire substance of my interview.”

DuQuesne studied him. “And you still can’t tell us the second condition or requirement he had on you?”

“Not as of this moment, no. I am hoping that restriction will be eased soon.”

She turned to Wu Kung. “So, did you actually keep your temper?”

“Well…” Wu Kung shifted in his seat. “Mostly. As I told you, I met Sha Wujing, or really an imitation of him. The imitation was… good, but not perfect. At first I could smell it was not him, but then the smell got closer.”

“Hmm. Tells me that Vindatri’s not scent-oriented,” DuQuesne said. “Visually and audibly his illusions or sims were spot-on from the start, and the only bobbles I noticed were when things weren’t going the way Vindatri expected or was used to.”

“Most people like you don’t use your noses much,” Wu pointed out.

“Although there are quite a few species with excellent scent capabilities,” Orphan said, “and I concur with Doctor DuQuesne’s conclusion; Vindatri must not be one of these, or he would have had scent as a focus of your sim from the start.”

“Anyway, after I told him I knew he was a fake, I asked him why he was too much of a coward to show his real face.”

“This was your idea of behaving?” DuQuesne demanded.

“I didn’t even try to punch him then! I was behaving really well!” Wu Kung said defensively. “He laughed and said he just wanted to take a form that I was more comfortable with and that I could understand. So I said that I could understand any form he took well enough, and that all he needed to understand was that I was your bodyguard and I needed to get back to you.”

Wu’s face shifted into a scowl. “But instead he started asking me questions about you and why I wanted to be your bodyguard, and at first I told him about DuQuesne but then I said I liked doing it, and he asked why, and I told him how important you were to Humanity and all that, and then that fake Sha Wujing snorted at me and said that the real reason was that I couldn’t handle myself alone so I’d found a cheap substitute Sanzo! So THEN I hit him!”

Of course we were going to get to the hitting sooner or later. “And did he hit back?”

The scowl turned into a grin. “Oh, yes! We had a fine sparring match, and I got to kick him through some of his simulated trees and he mashed my face in his phony dirt.” His green gaze was suddenly sharp and focused on her. “But I remembered to do it just like when I sparred with Orphan, so neither of us got really hurt.”

That look had a lot more meaning in it than just the words, and in a moment she’d fished it out. He’s not just saying he didn’t fight to kill; he’s saying he held back a lot to hide what he can really do. Orphan might blow that lie out of the water, of course, but it’s still the right move overall. She smiled. “Well, that’s good, Wu,” she said, catching his eye and nodding for emphasis to show she understood. “Wouldn’t want to hurt our host. Go on, though.”

“So we traded a lot of punches — and kicks and throws and all — but finally he admitted he might have sounded a little insulting, and he apologized, so we stopped fighting. He asked me about why I didn’t seem to be quite the same species, and,” another glance at both her and DuQuesne, “I told him I’d been genemodded a lot before I was born.”

He’s saying he kept presence of mind enough to not talk about Hyperion. Good work, Wu. “Well, that’s certainly the truth. Then what?”

“Well, he said he had a lot to think about and was still busy with the rest of you, so he sent me on to this room. That’s it.”

“Suggestive,” DuQuesne said after a moment. “He probably learned a lot about you by getting you fighting mad, but you surprised him with a couple things too.”

Wu looked smug. “I also learned he isn’t a fighter.”

“Really?”

“His simulation kept… what’s the word? Glitching, that’s it. It kept glitching for tiny fractions of a second during the fight.”

“Might be that he’s a fighter, but not your kind of fighter,” DuQuesne said. “Remember, he was trying to simulate Sha Wujing, who’d going to be fighting a damn sight different than Vindatri would, no matter what he’s really like. So the sim had to keep making split-second adjustments to keep things working anything like the way you’d expect.”

“Maybe. But I think he wasn’t used to lots of real combat.”

“Still, either way it’s interesting,” Ariane said. “How about you, Marc?”

DuQuesne nodded. “I’ll sum up in words, but since I recorded mine in headware, I’ll dump the whole thing to you.”

She opened a connection, felt DuQuesne access it and braced herself for the flood.

And then she found herself staring in open-mouthed disbelief at DuQuesne.

He noticed immediately. “Ariane? Ariane, what’s wrong?”

For several long moments, she still couldn’t speak. Finally, she got a grip on herself. Of all the things… This can’t be coincidence… but what else could it be? “Marc… take a look at this.” She sent him a quick clip of her own experiences.

He went pale beneath his olive skin. “Holy Mother of God. What in hell –”

“I don’t know either, Marc,” she said, voice shaking with disbelief. “But your ‘Professor Bryson’… is my grandfather.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 23

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 23

Chapter 23.

DuQuesne stared narrowly at the man before him. He knew the patrician, lined face, the graying hair that had once been brown, the sharp brown eyes looking levelly into his own, the half-smile of the lecturer and scientist so familiar to him.

“I had expected to end up talking with myself,” he said finally. “Not you, Professor Bryson.”

Clearly this couldn’t be the man he looked like; this had to be one of Vindatri’s guises. At the same time, it was almost impossible to think of him as anyone else, when the man lit up a cigarette and took a swift puff, raising one eyebrow. “Indeed, Mr. DuQuesne? And why would you expect to have a conversation with yourself? Admittedly, this would allow you to have a conversation with someone on your intellectual level, but I would expect a rather boring one.”

DuQuesne moved forward a bit closer — warily, because he had no idea what this… manifestation of Vindatri’s was supposed to accomplish or what might trigger a less innocuous reaction. “Oh, I’ve had some pretty interesting arguments with myself, whenever I’ve of two minds on a subject. As for why, Orphan’s story ended up with him facing himself.”

“Ahh, Orphan. It was exactly as appropriate that you meet me as it was for Orphan to confront himself. And I hope you are aware that Orphan neglected to tell you various details of that encounter.”

“Suspected it, yeah. He’s been a stand-up ally in some ways, but I don’t think that guy even tells himself everything that’s going on.”

Bryson, or the image of him, chuckled in the same dry-leaf way DuQuesne remembered. “A particularly apt characterization, I am forced to admit. The question remains, then, why are you speaking to me, in particular?”

“Technically, I’m speaking to Vindatri, and don’t think I’m forgetting that,” DuQuesne said. “And I bet you’re not going to trick either of my companions, either.”

“As another acquaintance of yours might say, do not indulge in such loose and muddy thinking. Tricking is not the point of this interview, not in the sense you mean it.”

“Hm. So it’s an interview, is it? A way for you to… what, examine our reactions to some particular stimulus? Interesting that you’d need to do that when you can obviously read our minds in detail.”

“What is obvious, Mr. DuQuesne, is quite often not the truth — something I believe I mentioned more than once in class, yes?”

Damn, he’s got that “superior professor” attitude down perfect. “That your doppelganger’s doppelganger mentioned, yeah. The Hyperion Bryson never got old enough to go all gray. So, you want me to answer the riddle here? Fine.” He thought a moment. “Okay, I think I’ve got a line on it. Orphan’s more self-defined than just about anyone else you’ll ever meet. He was built to be a weapon against a faction that he then personally converted to; in a pretty short time after that, he was the only member of the Faction, and he’s been defining his Faction as himself, and himself by being his Faction, for so damn long that he’s pretty much the only, let along biggest, influence on his life. So who else was going to be used to play mind games with him, but himself?”

“Full marks, Mr. DuQuesne,” said the fake-Bryson. “And why me?”

“That’s a lot more interesting question,” he muttered, looking at Bryson carefully. I’m impressed. Every detail’s just as I remember it. “You… you were the nexus. You were the point that brought me and Rich Seaton together, the guy who got both of us pissed off about the same thing enough that we clicked and teamed up to humiliate you. And then you helped make us grow up enough to become the people we were supposed to be.”

Bryson nodded slowly.

“Key influences. What made us who we are. And Bryson… you’re the real Bryson. Well, a reflection or image of the real Bryson, the Hyperion researcher that… designed me. So you represent what shaped me on both sides of the glass.”

“Precisely.”

“And,” he said with sudden conviction, “you didn’t even know why, not right off. Because what you — Vindatri — did is to trigger a reaction in us that generates the illusion. That’s why you implied you don’t read minds; you can find the right way to trigger a memory or a reaction, but until we live it, see it, experience it, you don’t get the details; we make those for you.”

“Oh, excellent, Marc,” Bryson said, with the rare, broad smile he remembered well. “Truly, you live up to your designer’s intent, and then some.”

“And from that, you start to get a real, personal handle on who we are, what we think is important, what we’re really like.” DuQuesne nodded, then frowned. “Not that I like it, or approve of the method. I’ve had a bellyful of being manipulated before.”

“Understandable,” Bryson said. “Yet you would, I think, agree that actual mind-reading is much more of an intrusion, and disapprove even more, while I think you would also understand that a being such as Vindatri has good reason to be cautious.”

“Maybe. I don’t need to be cautious around babies, and power-wise you sure seem to have that level of divide on us.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps. Yet in the Arena things are rarely what they seem, Mr. DuQuesne.”

DuQuesne suddenly became aware that his surroundings had slowly, subtly, but completely shifted; he was now in what appeared to be Professor Bryson’s office, complete with stacks of papers waiting to be graded and the same slightly-battered wooden chairs with green leather-cushioned seats for students looking for additional help. “That’s impressive. Don’t know if I like it, but it’s impressive.”

“You don’t find a familiar setting comforting? Interesting, Mr. DuQuesne.” Bryson seated himself in the larger swivel-chair behind the desk, and stubbed out the cigarette which was now burned almost to the filter.

“Okay, that actually counts as evidence you don’t read minds, unless you’re just playing a really deep game. Because if you read minds, you’d know that this stopped being a comforting setting for me about fifty or so years ago.”

“Yet these images are also what you produced under the stimulus you theorized I have created. Even more interesting.”

It was interesting, and DuQuesne found he had to stop and consider the situation. If he was right, this was a sort of self-generated illusion; “Vindatri”, whatever and whoever he really was, just sort of poked your brain and then gave it the tools to generate one hell of a hallucination that Vindatri could participate in — but much of it was provided and directed by DuQuesne’s brain, not Vindatri’s. So why, exactly, was he seeing this particular setting?

He found himself involuntarily glancing over his shoulder, and the answer was obvious. “Blast it. Because seeing you, talking with you… thinking about all of that… I keep thinking Rich is going to walk through that door. Part of me would like nothing more. Except I don’t want a shadow play of him, I’d want the real thing, and he’s gone.”

Bryson nodded slowly, pulling out his cigarette pack again absently and proffering it to DuQuesne in the same gesture DuQuesne had seen a thousand times and more. He saw his arm, almost against his will, reach out and take one of the white cylinders; Bryson lit his first and then handed the shining metal lighter to DuQuesne.

The sharp, warm taste of the smoke was the same, too. DuQuesne felt a sting in his eyes that wasn’t from smoke. My aunt’s cat’s kittens’ pants buttons, as Rich might’ve said, this is just too damn good an illusion.

“Why are you here, DuQuesne?” Bryson-Vindatri finally asked.

“Here-your office, or here-Vindatri’s home?”

“Oh, Vindatri’s home, I meant.”

“Orphan needed someone to help him run his ship; from what he told us later, we’re also sort of exhibits to help him fulfill an obligation to you to tell him about any true newcomers to the Arena.” DuQuesne figured Vindatri would know the details; if he didn’t, his questions might tell DuQuesne something about the things Orphan might be hiding.

“That is… a rather surface explanation, Mr. DuQuesne –”

“If you’re going to keep being all formal, I’ve been Doctor DuQuesne for fifty years and more now.”

“Humph,” Bryson snorted, but then shook his head and smiled. “Old habits, eh, Doctor? You were my students and then adventurers for a while before you ever officially finished that degree. But in any event, Doctor DuQuesne, that was a surface explanation. I asked why you were here, not why Orphan would want you here.”

Interesting question. Let’s see how this dance goes.  “Pain in the ass or not, we owed Orphan a lot, and so we’re fulfilling a debt.” He debated internally for a moment, but realized that holding back the next piece of information would be pointless; it was in fact one of the major reasons they’d come. “And since we know about Orphan’s little toy, we wanted to come here to find out what you know about the powers of the Shadeweavers and the Faith.”

Bryson’s façade cracked for an instant; the brown eyes were suddenly strange, unreadable, and the figure was rigid and motionless. Almost instantly, however, it resumed the more natural motion. “Does that mean that Orphan has had occasion to use my gift? Interesting. I had reached a tentative conclusion that he would likely never use it as he did not know its limits and would always argue with himself that there would be a moment of greater need… later.”

“Used it and maybe burned it out. Might want to give it a maintenance check and replace it if it’s still in warranty.”

The Bryson-illusion smiled. “I may have to do that, yes. Now… somehow it does not seem to me that you have any direct interest in these powers, other than the quite natural curiosity of a scientist trying to understand a power that seems to violate some of the basic principles of science.”

“Ha! That’s the whole of the Arena in a nutshell. But until we’re all together, I don’t think I want to discuss the rest of it. You want to talk about other things, hey, great, but our mission and my purpose or lack thereof? Wait until me and my friends are all together, and you’ve taken off all your masks.”

“An interesting requirement,” he said, and the tone was not quite Bryson’s any more. “How, precisely, would you know I had, as you say, taken off all of my masks, when you do not know the truth of what I am?”

“Trust me, I’d know,” DuQuesne said. “I’m real, real good at telling real from fake. You might say it’s one of my absolute defining characteristics.”

“Still, I would very much like you to tell me a bit more about your interest in the powers of Shadeweaver and Faith.”

DuQuesne had been tense and waiting for it, and so he sensed it instantly; a disturbance in his mind, a sudden awareness that part of him was not thinking in the direction that it should. He shot to his feet and slammed his fist down on the desk so hard that the illusory wood cracked from one side to the other. “Stop it right now. Understand this, Vindatri or whatever your name is, I’m giving you one chance, and one only, to back off. You don’t touch our minds. It’s one thing to do what you did here — and I still don’t like it — but the microsecond I catch you poking around trying to change my mind, or anyone else’s, again, that’s the microsecond I’ll make you regret it.”

The sensation vanished instantaneously, and the figure across from him only looked like Bryson the way a doll of Bryson would have. “You sensed that. You resisted. Extraordinary. Utterly unheard-of. Yet you do not truly think you can threaten me here, do you?”

The last thing DuQuesne wanted to do was trigger a conflict here and now; yes, he had his trump card in the form of the fiction-made-real powers the Arena was granting him… but he had no idea what Vindatri’s real power level was, and even back on Hyperion DuQuesne had known there were people out of his league. Still… You gotta double down on stuff like this. Can’t let him get the complete upper hand, think he can push us around. “Maybe. Maybe not. But sure as God made little green apples you’ll find out if you ever try messing with any of our heads again. Do you follow me?”

Slowly animation returned to the figure; Bryson stood and bowed slowly. “You are a fearsomely interesting arrival, Doctor Marc DuQuesne. So be it. I will refrain from testing your capabilities in so dangerous a fashion.”

He gestured, and the door of the office opened, showing — instead of the brick corridor of the school — a long, well-lit passageway of metal. “I thank you for a most instructive meeting, Doctor. Please proceed.” The smile was neither human nor comforting. “There will be much to talk about… later.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 49

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 49

Chapter 23

Wroclaw (Breslau)

Poland

Because the city had been ravaged by plague a few years earlier, Wroclaw’s population had declined since Jozef Wojtowicz had last visited it as a boy of twelve. The population had been somewhere around forty thousand people then; today he doubted if it still had as many as thirty thousand. There were empty buildings everywhere he looked, many of which had badly deteriorated. Still, the city showed plenty of signs of life. He thought it was probably growing again, in prosperity as well as population.

And, again, he was unhappily aware that little if any of the improvement had been due to King Wladyslaw or the Sejm. The emergence of the United States of Europe as a powerful realm in central Europe had brought most of the chaos unleashed in 1618 to a halt. The economy of the area had started rapidly improving as a result, partly driven by the influx of up-time technologies and financial methods.

Wroclaw was a mostly German city, and had been since the Mongol invasion four centuries earlier had destroyed the original Polish settlement. The ties of language as well as kinship made it easier for the city to absorb and reflect the growth taking place to the west. That had been true even when neighboring Saxony had been ruled by the Albertine branch of the Wettin dynasty, whose last elector had been John George. Now that it was for all practical purposes ruled by Gretchen Richter and her CoC comrades, Jozef expected western influence to expand even more rapidly.

Which was something else he had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, he approved of most of that influence. The thing that bothered him was that very little of it was Polish in origin. Still worse was that, so far at least, he’d seen no indication that Poland’s rulers were receptive to it, other than in some narrowly military applications.

Jozef didn’t consider himself an intellectual — certainly not in the pretentious manner that the hothouse radicals he’d encountered in Mecklenburg used the term. But unlike most members of his szlachta class, he read a great deal. Partly that was due to his own inclination; partly to his responsibilities as the central figure in Koniecpolski’s espionage operations in the USE. Among other things Jozef had made a point of reading were the history books regarding Poland the up-timers had in their possession.

There weren’t many of them, unfortunately. Grantville had been a small town. Although its population had a fair number of residents of Polish origin, none of them had been recent immigrants. Such people had an attachment of sorts to their Polish ancestry, but it was sentimental in nature, not analytical, focused heavily on the Pole who had been the then-in-office pope and a trade union leader named Lech Walesa. They knew little of their homeland’s history prior to then, and much of what they thought they knew was inaccurate or downright wrong.

Still, there had been a few books in Grantville. The one he’d found especially helpful was Norman Davies’ God’s Playground, a two-volume history of Poland. The second volume was not particularly germane, since it covered the period after 1795 — a date in the universe from which the Americans had come, whose ensuing history would now be completely different. But the first volume had been enormously enlightening — so much so that Jozef had paid to have a copy of it made and sent to Stanislaw Koniecpolski.

Had the Grand Hetman read it? Probably not. Jozef loved and admired his uncle, but he was not blind to the man’s limitations. On a battlefield — at any time or place in the course of a military campaign — Koniecpolski’s mind was supple and resourceful. But when it came to political affairs, social customs and economic practices, the Grand Hetman was set in his ways. Nothing Jozef or his friend Lukasz Opalinski said or did seemed to have much effect on the man’s attitudes.

****

Since Jozef hadn’t been able to figure out any way to meet surreptitiously in a city to which both he and Lukasz were foreign, he’d seen no reason to even try. Better to have two obvious strangers who apparently knew each other to meet openly and even volubly in the city’s central square in the middle of the day. The very public nature of the encounter would do more to allay possible suspicion than anything else.

The fact that Jozef had two small children perched on his horse would help as well. Whatever dark and lurid images Wroclaw’s residents might have of what spies and other nefarious persons looked like, a young man accompanied by two children would not be one of them.

Thankfully, when Lukasz appeared in the square he was not wearing anything that indicated he was a hussar. He was armed with both a saber and two wheel-lock pistols in saddle holsters, but that would not arouse any suspicion since he’d obviously been traveling and the countryside could be dangerous. Jozef’s friend was an intelligent man, but he’d spent all his life in the insular surroundings of Polish nobility, an environment that scrambled the brains of most of its denizens. In his more sour moments, Jozef thought the flamboyant wings that hussars liked to attach to their saddles when they rode into combat said more about the contents of their skulls than anything else.

They met in the great market square known as Rynek, in front of the Gothic town hall that the city’s Polish residents called the Stary Ratusz and its German ones called the Breslauer Rathaus. They were not far from the Oder, but the river couldn’t be seen because the square was lined with buildings. The area was busy, as it always was on days with good weather.

Other than some passing glances, however, no one paid them much attention. Just to further allay whatever vague suspicions might arise, Jozef made it a point to dismount not far from the stone pillory positioned southeast of the town hall where miscreants were flogged. Would a criminally-inclined person dawdle in such close proximity to the scene of his own possible mortification? Surely not.

Pawel slid off the horse, allowing Jozef to dismount. Once he’d done so, he reached up and lowered Tekla to the ground. By then, Lukasz had dismounted also.

“So these are the children, eh?” The big hussar leaned over, hands planted on his knees, and gave them both a close inspection. Solemnly, they stared back up at him. “They don’t look much like you, Jozef.”

“Very funny, Lukasz. Just the sort of dry wit one expects from a scion of one of Poland’s most noble families.” He looked down at the children, waved in Lukasz’s direction, and said: “This is Lukasz Opalinski. He’ll be taking care of you from now on.”

“No, Uncle Jozef!” Cried out Pawel.

“Noooooooooooo!” Was Tekla’s contribution.

“This is not going to go well,” Lukasz predicted.

Regensburg

“I don’t care,” Rita said. “I’m staying here with you.” Her voice started rising as she came up on her toes. “I do not want to go to fucking Amsterdam. It’s halfway across Europe, for Chrissake!”

Tom Simpson was better versed in geography than his wife, as you’d expect of a field grade army officer. Measuring Europe in its longest dimension, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Ural Mountains, the distance was a little over three thousand miles — call it an even three grand, for the sake of simplicity. The distance from Regensburg to Amsterdam was…

Somewhere between four hundred and five hundred miles, Tom estimated.

Call it five hundred.

“It’s actually not more than one-sixth of the way across Europe, hon,” he said mildly.

“That’s how the crow fucking flies! I’m not a crow — and you said yourself we don’t have a plane available, which means –”

She began counting off on her fingers. Thumb. “First, I’ve got to ride a fucking horse all the way to Bamberg. Forefinger. Then — if it’s working, which half the time it isn’t because it’s got to cross the whole fucking Thüringer Wald and something’s always breaking down — I’ve got to take a train to Grantville. Middle finger. Then, I’ve got to take another train all the way to Magdeburg.”

“Oh, hell, Rita, that’s not more than –”

“Shut the fuck up! I’m not finished.” Ring finger. “Now I’m stuck on a barge wallowing down the Elbe for hundreds of miles –”

“It’s maybe two hundred, tops.”

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 31

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 31

“No, Ria, Litsa is right.” Johanna scowled at the younger girl. “The very point of this election is that everybody is voting, so correct information is important. And you need extra lessons in geography: Berg is not near Birstein.”

“Well, it’s west from home!”

“So are the Americas!”

“Children!” At the word from the abbess the two girls subsided and sat down again. “Elisabeth and Johanna are right about the importance of correct public information. It used to be a minor matter, but with more and more power moving from the old families to the common people it is a problem — and becoming more so. Litsa, do come with me when I go visit Maxie tomorrow. She did arrive with young Zweibrücken yesterday, and she is staying with one of her cousins. I had a long letter from her less than a month ago and she mentioned that a friend of her was connected to the Simplicissimus Magazine; she can help you find more information about the Origin of News.”

“Anchen, you too should meet Maxie. Maria…” The abbess stopped, sighed and continued in a very patient voice, “the last duke of Jülich-Berg-Kleve died insane and childless, and his lands were divided between his four sisters with the major portions going to the two oldest. The heir to the eldest sister — and thus the lands of Jülich and Berg — is the rumored new-born baby of the late Duke Wolfgang of Neuburg and his second wife, young Zweibrücken’s sister Katharine Charlotte. Charlotte and her baby are presently guests — or prisoners — of Maxie’s uncle, Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne. The Republic of Essen is laying claim on part of Berg by right of conquest after Duke Wolfgang’s attack on them in June, but Jülich and the rest of Berg legally belong to the baby. If the baby dies, the usual heirs would have been Wolfgang’s two brothers, but Johann von Hilpoltstein’s children keep dying within a year, and August von Sulzback’s widow, Countess Hedwig of Holstein-Gottorp, has made it quite clear that she wants nothing to do with this inheritance mess. Hedwig is a very sensible woman, and claiming those torn and disputed lands on behalf of a twelve-year-old sickly boy, would only lead to trouble.”

Maria’s dimpled cheeks had gone very red during the abbess’ careful explanation; as well they should, in Elisabeth’s opinion. That entire problematic heritage had been the centre of any number of conflicts and intrigues for all their lives, and while not everyone needed the political acumen of the abbess — or cousin Amalie — neither could Ria afford to be that ignorant. Still, she was very young for her age, and — to draw the abbess’ attention from her sister — Elisabeth asked: “But how about tante Anna Marie? Could she not make a claim?”

The abbess frowned at the thought of her stepmother, and answered in a softer voice. “Tante Anna Marie, could indeed make a claim on behalf of my half-brother, Johann Philipp von Saxe-Altenburg. But little Elisabeth Sophia is his only child — in fact after the Muensterberg-Oels family was recently killed in Bohemia she is Anna Marie’s only grandchild — so they might choose to stay out of it too.”

“But not wanting land?” Johanna interrupted now frowning and obviously getting interested in the problem. “Countess Hedwig has been to talk with Eleonore and Wettin about this, and since her son is so young and still weak after the pox that killed his father and siblings, I can see the point in preferring to gain the emperor’s favor by leaving the matter in his hands. But Hilpoltstein might still get a living heir, and surely tante Anna Marie would want those lands even if she was the last Neuburg alive — and on her death-bed as well. The inheritance cannot be totally worthless.”

“Yes, Anchen,” said the abbess seriously, “it’s not worthless. Northern Jülich is a fertile area, and Berg’s location by the Rhine makes it important, but both areas are largely Catholic, they are on far from secure USE borders, and they are so drained of everything by Wolfgang’s mismanagement these last few years that you would need to spend a fortune securing and holding them. Also, the changing political structure — with the constitution replacing so many of the old ways — makes the title to more land of much less importance than making what you already have productive and well administrated.” The abbess hesitated a moment. “This subject is extremely sensitive right now. While the emperor was just the king of Sweden, he needed not concern himself overly much about how his allies managed their land. But now those areas have become his direct power-base, and lands in the hands of supporters who cannot manage what they have, are going to be almost as dangerous as lands in the hands of opponents. And so — as Hedwig has already realised — admitting your limits, and leaving the fate of an area in the hands of the emperor is a very sure way to gain you favor with him.” The abbess smiled at Johanna and Eva. “Your brother-in-law, Wettin, is a prime example of the value of political favor over title to land. And while my step-mother might not have realized this, I’m quite certain my half-brother has.”

“Do you think Zweibrücken is here on behalf of his sister and nephew, Mother Dorothea?” asked Elisabeth. “Or on his own behalf? I think I remember that he too is heir to Johann the Insane.”

“He is, dear Litsa.” The abbess nodded approving at Elisabeth. “Young Zweibrücken is heir to the third sister, and the heirs to the second sister are the Brandenburg family.” The abbess turned grim. “And after the recent unpleasantness — I trust you have all heard of that — they are not in a position to lay claim on Berg or anything else.”

“I do not know young Zweibrücken’s plans,” the abbess continued, “and there is said to be a rather odd recent codicil to Charlotte’s marriage contract, but if Charlotte’s baby dies, her brother could put forth a claim on behalf of the Zweibrücken family, not only to Neuburg’s areas of Jülich and Berg, but also to Brandenburg’s areas from the second sister. Hilpoltstein, Hedwig, tante Anna Marie, and my half-brother, could all challenge that claim, but with no young, strong male to build up the land and secure the border, their claims might annoy the emperor. Also, young Zweibrücken’s uncle is married to the emperor’s oldest sister Princess Katharina of Sweden and their son is second in line for the Imperial throne after Princess Kristina. In the American world he became the king of Sweden after she abdicated.”

The abbess frowned and shook her head. “Never mind that. Young Zweibrücken is far from a nobody, but whether or not he can gain the emperor’s support for whatever he wants, will depend entirely upon what kind of man he proves himself to be. He is only eighteen, a year older than you, Maria, but a message last week from the Americans in Mainz, told us that he comes as head of a delegation from Cologne. That town has now broken completely with Archbishop Ferdinand and is seeking membership of the USE. They are probably only applying to stop Hesse from besieging the town, but still: if Zweibrücken brings Cologne into the USE,” the abbess spread her hands and smiled, “with his combination of legal claims, royal connection and political benefits, he could end up with Berg and perhaps other parts of those disputed areas.”

“Especially since his own lands are on the French border.” Eva sat with her back to the window. Like Maria she was the youngest of her family, but rather than being vain and slightly spoiled, Eva was quiet and bookish, and never said very much. When asked, she joked that she never had the chance to speak because Johanna always said it first, but in Elisabeth’s opinion the main reason was that an attack of pox had left Eva’s face badly scarred.  As a result, she was usually reticent, at least in public.

“Ah, I did wonder if any of you would think that far ahead,” the abbess’ eyes twinkled with approval. Elisabeth knew that the abbess considered Eva one of her most intelligent students, and had tried to talk the brainy young hermit into a life as a nun. Eva, however, would not even consider it, claiming that she had no vocation. Still, what other possibilities were there for an intelligent noble woman with no marriage prospects? Elisabeth didn’t have a vocation either, but surely a life like the abbess’ would be better than that mess of a life their sister Katharina was living in Birstein. “Yes, France is a problem that must be watched most carefully,” the abbess continued, “and Zweibrücken as an ally — or even a part of USE — would be a major benefit. Just permission for a garrison to keep an eye on Trier would probably be worth making young Zweibrücken his nephew’s guardian. But enough about politics for now; would anybody care for a game of cards?”

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 30

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 30

Chapter 16

Magdeburg, House of Hessen

September 30, 1634

Magdeburg News, 30 September 1634

Newly Arrived in Our City is a Delegation from the Free City of Cologne. As the Honored Reader Might Know, Rumors of Military Movements and Civil Unrest along the Middle Rhine have Reached Us following the Death of Duke Wolfgang von Neuburg to Jülich-Berg and His Heir. The Leader of the Cologne Delegation is the Late Duke Wolfgang’s Cousin and Brother-in-Law, Count Palatine Friedrich von Zweibrücken, who has newly succeeded His Late Father Johann II, as Head of the Neuburg Family. Also in the Delegation is found Princess Maria Maximiliane of Bavaria, Councilor….

Elisabeth von Schwarzenfels frowned at the newspaper she was reading, and put it aside. There was something important about this, and she wanted to discuss it with Abbess Dorothea of Quedlinburg, when she arrived. Elisabeth looked around the so-called little drawing room and smiled a little. Cousin Amalie — in no way slowed down by her tenth pregnancy — had barely moved into her brand new house, when Elisabeth and Maria arrived, but of course the rooms needed for entertainment and political gatherings had been finished even before the final flooring had been put down in the servant’s quarters. The house was situated between the Governmental Palace and the new House of Wettin build by her equally pregnant friend, Eleonore. Eleonore had moved to Magdeburg with her two youngest sisters, Johanna and Eva, when her husband, Wilhelm Wettin, had decided to abdicate as Duke of Saxe-Weimar and run for prime-minister in the first general democratic election in the USE. Wettin spent most of his time at the palace, but Eleonore enjoyed entertaining in her own house, and when Elisabeth and Maria arrived, the four young girls had quickly formed the core of the abbess’ political school and took turns hosting the afternoon gatherings in either of the two houses.

Today the gathering was to be in the House of Hessen, and Maria had already moved to stand under the chandelier in the middle of the room, so she could greet the visitors with as much light shining on her blond hair as possible. Elisabeth smiled wryly at her sister; Maria was the youngest and prettiest of the five Schwarzenfels daughters, and no one — least of all her one year older sister — believed she had come to Magdeburg to learn about politics. Not that Maria was stupid; she was just spoiled rotten and not really interested in anything except her own desires. If there was something Maria wanted, she could in fact be extremely clever about getting it. And at seventeen what she wanted was a richer and more powerful husband than their oldest sister’s.

At the sound of voices from the entrance hall Elisabeth rose from her seat by the window, and went to stand beside her sister.

“For Heaven’s sake, Litsa, go wash your hands,” Maria hissed as they went forward to greet the abbess.

Elisabeth looked at her dirty fingers, and smiled as the abbess. “If ink from books doesn’t smudge the reader, why does a newspaper?”

“I truly don’t know my dear, but give me a kiss instead.” The abbess offered her cheek to Elisabeth, who kissed the soft skin and enjoyed the familiar fragrance of oranges and spices that always seemed to surround the abbess.

“You always get dirty, Litsa, but at least that dull dress of yours doesn’t show the stains.” Maria cast a superior look at her sister and smoothed the sleeves of her own new pale blue velvet gown.

“Nonsense, Maria, Litsa’s gown is according to the latest fashion in the Simplicissimus Magazine, while all that lace you are wearing makes you look rather old hat.” Johanna, who had entered the room at the abbess’ heels, came quickly to the defence of her friend, while Elisabeth just shrugged. She knew how easily she could get dirty or torn, even while sitting quietly on a chair, and had chosen the plain brown wool just so the wear and tear wouldn’t show easily.

Johanna had been Elisabeth’s best friend, while they were both staying at the abbess’ school in Quedlinburg, and now that they were living next-door to each other, they had soon falling into their old habit of doing everything together. Not that they were all that much alike, Elisabeth thought as she went to get a damp towel from the tea-table. Sure, their circumstances were very much alike; same past as second youngest daughters of families of almost the same class, same present as a younger relative of one of Magdeburg’s most important political hostesses, and same rather limited future of either marriage or the church. But where Elisabeth liked to just sit quietly and think things over, the lively Johanna enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the Magdeburg social-political life to the fullest.

Another difference was that where Elisabeth’s cousin Amalie had played an active role in furthering Hesse’s political goals from the day of their marriage, Johanna’s sister, Eleonore, preferred to support her husband only as a hostess, and by cultivating her very large number of friends and social connections. The two houses of Wettin and Hessen formed the hub around which the social-political life in Magdeburg turned, but where Amalie’s gatherings and conversations were first, last and always centered on politics, Eleonore liked to fill her house with guests likely to be amusing, original and knowledgeable about art and culture. This meant that Johanna met by far the most entertaining people, but Elisabeth had by far the best idea about what was actually going on behind the official political scene. And that was what made her worry about that newspaper!

“Mother Dorothea, do you know who is actually writing the newspapers?” Elisabeth asked while passing the cups of Chinese tea around to the seated ladies.

“Really, Litsa, sometimes you sound as if you have spent your entire life in rural seclusion in Schwarzenfels.” Johanna frowned at her friend sitting in the light from the beveled window. “You must have noticed those men with pens and papers in their hands, hanging around Hans Richter Square, asking questions of the people leaving the palace. They are writing down the news.”

Elisabeth shook her head and smiled at her old friend. Johanna’s quickness rarely gave her the time to look for any deeper meaning, until somebody — usually Elisabeth — made her realise she was missing something. Also, Johanna’s habit of answering questions not directed to her had always irritated the abbess, who now gave a firm rebuke while setting down her cup. “Mind your manners, my dear Anchen. You are correct, but as always a little too hasty. Litsa asked the question to me, and presumably for a reason. Please, elaborate your question, dear Litsa.”

“In Quedlinburg,” Elisabeth spoke carefully, wanting to put her thoughts very precisely into words, “you very strongly emphasized the importance of understanding politics. And aside from shoving family unity behind the new province of Hesse-Kassel, the reason our parents agreed to let Maria and me come here to stay with cousin Amalie this winter, was your argument: that the coming of the Americans had changed politics so much that we needed new lessons to understand what was now going on. But last night tante Anna Marie talked with cousin Amalie about how the Committee of Correspondence was using newspapers to spread propaganda pretending to be factual news. And this paper, I read just before you arrived, called Friedrich von Zweibrücken for ‘the head of the Neuburg family’ and Sister Maximiliane of the Wartenbergs ‘a Bavarian Princess’.”

At her words various giggles and laughter erupted at the table, and even the abbess had to smile; the tante was the abbess’ harridan of a stepmother, Anna Marie von Neuburg. And since the Neuburg family had originally split off from the Zweibrückens, that statement was tantamount to calling the Neuburg family extinct. To make matters worse the death of Anna Marie’s brother, the late and otherwise unlamented Duke Wolfgang of Jülich-Berg, actually had brought their family to the brink of extinction, and the old lady was well known to be like a bear with a sore tooth on the subject. The abbess took a moment to gain control of her visible amusement before answering. “Well, everybody knows that dear Maxie does not hold her Bavarian ducal relatives in the highest of esteem at the moment, but young Zweibrücken might in fact end up with considerably more influence than he has at the moment. Though not — I expect — within the Neuburg family. But you were saying, Litsa?”

“That that’s the point.” Elisabeth became eager. “Everybody does not know. If those men on the Square are the ones writing the news, and they do not know who people are, then the news will end up false even if they want to write them true. And people read the news. Not just those people who do know what is going on, but all people. Does that not mean that newspapers are now a part of politics?”

“Litsa, who cares?” Maria looked up from buffing her nails on her gown and shrugged. “Those who need to know will know. I’m much more interested in this Friedrich von Zweibrücken. Is he in line for Berg? It would be so nice to marry somebody with land near our dear sister Katharina in Birstein.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 22

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 22

Chapter 22.

Wu Kung found himself feeling an incredibly rare tinge of apprehension, as well as awe, staring at the thing that had just become visible through the mists of the Arena’s Deeps.

Silhouetted against a backdrop of dull crimson clouds, it was black as night, an angular shape of incomprehensible vastness. An ebony stitching of criss-cross darkness that looked like monstrous girders, great arching curves with hints of fluted, organic shapes rising about a central assemblage of contours that implied some gargantuan onyx flower of alien and unsettling aspect.

Ariane’s voice echoed Wu Kung’s own nervousness. “Orphan? Is that –“

“– our destination, the home of Vindatri? Indeed, Captain Austin.” Though his voice was relaxed and controlled, Wu could smell a great deal of nervousness from him. He may have a duty to fulfill here, but this Vindatri guy doesn’t make him comfortable.

“And he lives there alone?” DuQuesne asked. The tones and DuQuesne’s posture showed how wary his fellow Hyperion was. “That’s an awful lot of house for one guy.”

“Not alone, entirely. Later in my … stay with Vindatri, I did see and meet others who were apparently his servants. And as I said, there is a Sphere not far away.” He gestured, and Wu could see, through the clouds a faint hint of form, a curve of an artifact larger than Earth. “I believe that Sphere to be inhabited, although I have never actually landed upon it.”

Ariane was studying the huge, shadowy assemblage. “Where exactly am I heading? There’s an awful lot of that thing — if I’m getting the scale right, it’s something like three or four thousand kilometers across!”

“Larger than that, Captain. If I recall correctly, I docked at –”

A quiver ran through Zounin-Ginjou, and Wu tensed, seeing that the position of the distant shadow had shifted slightly in the forward port. “What was that?”

Orphan’s wingcases had compressed, and his stance was rigid; the scent of tension and even fear was suddenly sharper. But he answered in his customary relaxed tones, “Ah. I believe the decision of how to approach and dock has been taken out of our hands. Note that Zounin-Ginjou has already altered its course.”

Wu felt very little other motion, yet the … Castle of Vindatri, as Wu Kung had to think of it, began to swell before them at astounding speed, as though Ariane had set the engines on full power and was driving them towards collision. “Crap,” Ariane muttered. “I sure hope this Vindatri doesn’t fumble the ball at the last minute, or we’re just gonna go splat when we hit.”

The alien structure rushed closer, expanding beyond the width of the forward port. Glints of light — diamond-white and emerald green, shimmering ruby and sapphire, warm amber — became visible, dotting the forbidding megalithic blackness with jewels set on a crown of night; Wu could now pick out hints of detail, of scalloped planes and oval ports and sharp-edged lines of decks or floors.

A cavernous opening yawned before them, six lines of white light guiding their uncontrolled, headlong rush down the center of a landing bay so huge that it seemed to Wu that it could have held a fleet of ships like Zounin-Ginjou. Without more than the tiniest jolt, the massive warship of the Liberated came to a halt, its incredible speed reduced to nothing in less time than needed to draw a breath, and settled into a cradle that rose from the massive deck, a structure of dark metal and glinting crystal that enfolded Zounin-Ginjou as though made for it. Wu heard both his human companions exhale shaky breaths, and Orphan’s spiracles whistled once more.

“It seems,” Orphan said after a moment, even his voice wavering with uncertainty or fear, “Vindatri is very eager to meet with us.”

“Have you ever returned here before, Orphan?” Ariane asked, rising slowly from her pilot’s seat.

“Once, long ago… in part, I must admit, to verify to myself that he and this place truly existed. I had the… item that I used in our confrontation with Amas-Garao, yes, but I had never yet used it — nor had good reason to at that time — and that experience was so unheard-of in the annals of the Arena that I had to remind myself that I had truly experienced it.”

“I get that,” DuQuesne said with a touch of humor. “We felt a little like that about the Arena.”

“Indeed.” A wing-snap of decision and, Wu thought, a touch of bravado. “Well, friends, shall we greet our host?”

Ariane and DuQuesne nodded. “No time like the present,” Ariane agreed.

Wu immediately stepped in front of her. “Bodyguard, remember?”

She smiled. “I remember,” she said. “Do what you have to.”

Orphan led the way. DuQuesne took the rear, which made Wu feel slightly more comfortable; this would let him focus mostly to the front and sides. Ariane made no protest about being in the middle.

The main lock from Zounin-Ginjou opened to reveal a wide platform already in place outside of it. Stairs led down to the dark-polished deck of the massive installation. It is all dark; it feels like a fortress of one of the underworlds. Even the Dragon’s Palace was brighter-lit, and that was at the bottom of the sea! He reached back, touched Ruyi Jingu Bang, reassuring himself that the mighty staff was still there. Though it is not a thousandth as mighty as it was in the real-dream of Hyperion, he thought sadly. Against this Vindatri it may be of less use than the floating drift of a dandelion.

The dim-lit volume was silent save for the echoes of their motion. Orphan stopped a short distance from the bottom of the staircase and looked around, then raised his head and arms. “Vindatri, you have guided us thus far; where must we go?”

The echoes of the question had not even died down when four lines of fire sketched themselves through the air, arrows of brilliance leading across the great landing bay and then splitting to follow separate paths. Each line was a different color, and all four started in the air scarcely three feet in front of Orphan: a line of red, a line of green, a line of blue, and a line of pure white.

“Wonder which is which — or whether it matters,” DuQuesne said.

“I have little doubt that it matters,” Orphan said. “But it may be that the selection is nonetheless up to us.”

“In that case, I’m taking blue,” Ariane said. “Always been one of my colors.”

“I refuse to choose another color,” Wu said. “I am following Ariane. I am responsible for her.”

“I agree with the principle, Wu,” said DuQuesne, “but my guess is that you’re gonna find out it’s not that easy. Me? I’ll take green; has a little resonance for me in the space-exploration context.”

“I see,” said Orphan. “White is, I believe, for me.”

“Still not taking red,” Wu said.

The four of them made their way across the deck, echoes of footsteps chasing themselves around the nearly-empty room. Finally, they reached the point where the paths split, and Wu could see that there were four separate staircases; one turned and went straight off to the right into blackness, the second bent right for a short distance than turned back to go ahead through a dark archway, the third similarly went left for a short distance and then turned back ahead through a different archway, and the last turned left and also faded into darkness. Ariane’s blue took the strong righthand turn; the neglected red line turned to the far left, while green and white took the middle paths.

Wu Kung continued up the blue line, glancing back to make sure that Ariane was following. When he turned his attention back to the glowing line of light before him — a delay that was no more than the blink of an eye — he saw a brilliant scarlet streak leading into distant darkness.

He spun around, to see Ariane and the others staring at him; Ariane stood with one foot in the air, frozen in the act of following.

Wu Kung growled faintly and started for Ariane again —

— to find himself marching with the same angry determination up the red line of fire.

Now the growl was a snarl. “I am her bodyguard and you do not get to take me away!” He whipped Ruyi Jingu Bang off his back and commanded it to extend; DuQuesne and Orphan ducked out of the way as the pole streaked out to place its one end in front of Ariane. “Grab on, Ariane!”

“Wu, I don’t think this is going to work,” Ariane said reluctantly. “But… okay.” She grasped the golden ball at the end of the staff tightly.

“Good!” He retracted the staff slowly, following along until he reached Ariane. “Now keep hold, okay?”

“All right,” she said.

“Now we can go!” he said, confidently stepping forward.

The line of fire was suddenly red, and he felt no other hand supporting the great Staff. His cheeks burned under his fur with embarrassment. “All right, you coward sorcerer! Come out here! You are mocking me? I will beat your face in!”

“Wu!” Ariane’s voice was sharp, although he could hear a note of sympathy too. “We are visiting his stronghold. He seems to want us to play by his rules. Please, try not to antagonize our host, no matter how… peculiar his behavior is.”

He snarled again and stamped his foot, causing an echo like a gunshot to chase its way around the room half a dozen times. Then, seeing DuQuesne’s remonstrative look, Wu swallowed, closed his eyes, and forced his breathing to slow, his meditations to begin. It was not easy; besides his anger, other, unsettling thoughts insisted on intruding. Like Sanzo. So like Sanzo. Even the same commands as Sanzo, sometimes.

Finally, he felt a semblance of balance and calm returning. “As you command, Captain. But I will still be angry with this Vindatri!”

“Be angry all you want, but behave, Son Wu Kung. Do you promise?”

He rolled his eyes. This was all so unreasonable. But it was not the first time he had had to deal with unreasonable people… and this sort of negotiation had been part of the Journey to the West, and he had learned that, often, Sanzo was right about not starting fights. And Ariane probably is too. “Yes, Captain. I promise I will behave myself.”

Decision made, he turned and began loping down the direction indicated by the red fire. The faster I finish whatever is ahead of me, the faster I can go back to guarding Ariane! He gritted his teeth. She had better be all right, or I will somehow teach this “Vindatri” a lesson!

The darkness ahead was not so dark to his own perceptions, and he could see that there was an archway through which the leading line of light passed. The light shrank before him at the exact speed of his own progress, so the line always started just a short distance in front of him. That’s a nice trick. I remember how one of Guyamaoh’s underlings could trace lines of smoke and flame sort of like this. He had to admit it was pretty, a bright crimson shimmer that receded ever before him like a rainbow.

Up another set of stairs and finally the light ended at a door, an oval affair set in the metal wall, with a wheel in the center. He tested the door, found it did not move, and so grasped the wheel and turned. It yielded smoothly, and with a clack he heard a lock or latch disengage. The door swung easily back now, and Wu Kung stepped through into a pitch-black space. He advanced cautiously, on guard, all other senses extended; he heard nothing, smelled nothing but faint traces of oils and metals and old, alien scents of things long gone.

Abruptly the door behind him slammed and the latch engaged. At the same instant, lights blazed on, illuminating the room as brilliantly as day, and in the glare before him was a tall figure. As his eyes adjusted and he could make out the figure before him, Wu Kung felt his jaw dropping and the staff in his hand sagging down.

“Took you long enough,” said the towering gray-skinned form of Sha Wujing.