Eric Flint's Blog, page 272

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 16

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 16

The priory had a large open courtyard, flanked by four passageways, with solid walls on one side and plain, solid pillars on the other, ending in doors leading to other parts of the complex. Inside was a square area forty or so feet across where the sisters had planted flowers and herbs. There was a single stone bench in the middle; as they approached, she saw a modestly-dressed man patiently sitting and waiting. He was middle-aged, with a carefully trimmed beard and moustache. There was a gray skullcap on his head (as opposed to the pointed, peaked Judenhut that she’d sometimes seen in Marseilles). But from his looks he might have been Estuban Miro’s cousin.

Sister Giovanna settled onto a bench and drew out her rosary. Sherrilyn set her pack beside her friend and walked out into the courtyard.

“Mademoiselle Maddox,” he said, standing up. “I am so pleased to meet you at last.”

“What can I do for you, Monsieur — Monsieur –”

“My name is Seth ben Adret,” he said. “I am a humble soap-maker by trade, but I come as a friend of Doctor Bonnel — and of another mutual friend.”

“I have a lot of friends.”

“The . . . principal,” ben Adret said. “Your former principal.”

Principal, she thought. Did he mean Harry Lefferts? . . . Then she realized what he was trying to say, and practically slapped her forehead. He meant Ed Piazza — the former principal of Grantville High School, who was now President of the State of Thuringia-Franconia.

The Principal. It was like the name of a Batman villain. “I haven’t talked to him for some time.”

“I understand. But please be informed that he is aware of your presence here in Marseilles, and the employment opportunity you have just accepted.”

“Huh. Is he trying to tell me not to take it? Because it’s none of his damn business whether I take a job or not. If this is some sort of loyalty test –”

“No, no, Mademoiselle Maddox,” he said, putting his hand up. “He is not telling you that at all. Indeed, he wishes you the best of luck in the position — there is no enmity between your new employer and . . . your previous one.”

“All right then. But he sent you to talk to me?”

“Yes. He wanted to let you know that he had not had a letter from you for some time and would welcome one. Or more.”

Sherrilyn thought about it for a moment, frowning. Before she could frame an answer, Seth ben Adret stepped forward and took her right hand in both of his. She was surprised enough not to react or pull away immediately.

Sister Giovanna, who had seemed to drift off into a nap, was sitting forward, moving to get up. Out of her sight, though, ben Adret had slipped something into her palm: a small square object, perhaps two by three inches. He withdrew his hands, letting them fall to his sides, and fixed Sherrilyn with a steady gaze.

She didn’t know what to make of it, but tucked the gift — a small, leather-bound book — into her sleeve, and nodded.

“He is sure that you will do well in your new role,” the Jewish soap-maker said. “He knows that it is trite to say so, but wherever an up-timer goes, the United States of Europe goes with him. Or her.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And please thank the Principal when you communicate with him. I’m glad to hear that he hasn’t forgotten me.”

“On that,” ben Adret answered, “you can be sure.”

****

De la Mothe’s troopers went out of their way to respect her person and her privacy as they traveled. She wasn’t sure if they were genuinely intimidated by her, by the cachet of an up-timer, or if the comte had warned them of her statement to him regarding broken limbs . . . or if he’d simply told them to be polite. But she was allowed privacy whenever they stopped to rest.

Late in the afternoon, the first day out from Marseilles, they stopped near a creek to water the horses. She separated herself and went a few dozen yards away to attend to her personal needs, after which she reached into a pocket within her pack and drew out the book that ben Adret had given her.

It was sixteen pages in length and carefully and beautifully printed in tiny type. The first fourteen pages consisted of a long list of common words that she might use in a letter about her assignment, but which were . . . descriptive, possibly sensitive. Rifle. Troop. Attack. March. Reinforce. Siege. There were hundreds of other, non-military terms, but those caught her eye. Next to each one was another reasonably common word: Shovel. Chorus. Invite. Vacation. Draw. Broil. It was a cipher — not an especially clever one, but something she could use to send sensitive information.

God damn it, she thought. Ed — the ‘Principal’ — wants me to be a spy. De la Mothe says that Turenne has no designs on the USE, but Ed Piazza wants to make sure.

The last two pages contained a set of substitution codes, a dozen of them, each keyed to — of all things — TV shows, all seemingly from the 1990s. To indicate which code she used, she’d have to include a reference to a character on the show: Buffy, Mulder, Cooper (that one took her a minute, then she remembered Twin Peaks); Lois; Sipowicz; Munch; and so on. It was a long way from unbreakable, but without any real computing power it would be hard.

It could also get her killed. Even having this little book could get her killed. What the hell did Ed Piazza think he was doing?

But she knew the answer to that question, even as she stowed the little book back in the inner pocket of her pack. He was watching out for the interests of the USE. It was true in a way, what ben Adret had said: wherever an up-timer went, the USE went with it. There were about three thousand up-timers in the world, a tiny little drop in a fairly big ocean, and there weren’t going to be any more of them. In five years, in ten years, that number would be even smaller. . . and not all up-timers felt loyalty to the last vestige of the world where they’d grown up. Some, and she counted Harry Lefferts among them, had really gone native — this was their time not just by circumstance but by inclination.

God damn it.

One of de la Mothe’s troopers called out to her, walking slowly along the river bank, not seeming to want to get too close. Sherrilyn smiled to herself; the guy must be attached to his limbs.

“I’ll be right there,” she answered, stepping back into view with her pack slung over her shoulder. The USE goes with me, she thought.

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 15

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 15

Chapter 8                               

Marseilles

Sherrilyn had come to Marseilles with an introduction arranged by Estuban Miro to a Jewish doctor, Bonnel de Lattès. She’d gotten some nasty looks from some of the men in the Jewish Quarter — imagine, a single woman without escort! — but Bonnel had received her very kindly, and sent her and a bundle of medicines to Pont de Garde. There the priory had welcomed her, quizzed her on up-time — everyone seemed to still do that, even four years after the Ring of Fire — and gave her personal space. Apparently the Jewish doctor was well-regarded among the religious, having practiced some real medicine there over time.

Bonnel had visited her twice there while she rehabbed in the only way she knew how: fresh air and exercise and patience. It had dulled the memories of the Wrecking Crew’s last campaign, and she might have stayed a while longer had Bonnel not introduced her to Cosme de Valbelle, who told her he might have a job for her.

De la Mothe’s offer was interesting. She was a little concerned about whether she was the right person for the job: not that she didn’t know her stuff — she did, that was for sure. And the offer paid well — his messenger later that afternoon had told her exactly how much Turenne was willing to spend to hire an up-timer gym teacher to work for him.

Truly, it came down to the idea of working for Turenne — and, by extension, Cardinal Richelieu. Since Grantville had been dropped into Thuringia more than four years ago, the enemy had consistently been France and the villain had always been Richelieu.

She’d been raised on adventure movies about the Three Musketeers. Richelieu was the fork-bearded red-cloaked devil who controlled the puppet king and manipulated everything and everybody to the advantage of church and country. The reality was different from that, of course. Not only was the cardinal a more complicated figure — Harry had told her that — but there really was a D’Artagnan, and he was supposed to be way different from the books and movies.

Richelieu had done a damn good job of trying to tear apart the USE from the get-go, so his villain status wasn’t exactly fiction either. Wietze . . . that was just part of it. There had been battles on sea and land and in the air, leading to the big fight at Ahrensbök a year and a half ago.

It was all above her pay grade. Treaties and the Union of Kalmar and all of the business of the little princess’ marriage . . . Sherrilyn knew that the world had changed from what it had been even in ’31 and ’32. But Harry would say what she was thinking: that she was a grunt, a regular soldier, not anyone significant. Decisions were made by bigger people on a bigger stage. People like Ed Piazza and Mike Stearns made decisions . . . a high school principal and a coal miner before the Ring of Fire gave them field promotions.

A little destiny, or luck, or freakin’ magic pixie dust, and it could be her instead of Ed or Mike.

All of this introspection led her back to the question: could she really think about working for Turenne and Richelieu?

If they really considered Spain as an enemy — which Sherrilyn certainly did, especially after the Crew’s rescue of Frank and Giovanna on Mallorca — then the answer actually could be yes. And since she really was likely to have to deal with this bum knee for life, and since Philippe de la Mothe wanted to give her a chance to teach — something she understood — and since the pay was damn good — then the answer was probably hell yes.

But she was really going to need a whistle.

****

She took the job. It wasn’t a difficult choice: the pay was good and the opportunity to do something — anything — was compelling. She knew that she could have stayed as long as she liked, but time was marching on.

On the day she prepared to go it was cold and brisk. Her cell, only a few extra blankets more luxurious than the ones the sisters occupied, was filled with sunlight. She packed her gear, which didn’t amount to much. Before leaving the room she turned to look at it one last time. There was really no evidence that she’d been there at all.

“Sherrilyn?”

She turned to find a sister standing in the doorway: Sister Giovanna, a tiny, middle-aged woman who had been exceptionally kind to her — she had arranged the extra blankets. Sherrilyn put down her pack and embraced the nun.

“I’m so glad you came by,” Sherrilyn said. “I didn’t see you in the refectory, and I would have been sad to leave without saying goodbye.”

Giovanna smiled — her secret smile, Sherrilyn thought. “Oh, never fear, daughter. You’d not pass through the gate without my blessing.”

“I appreciate it.”

“And how is your knee?”

“It aches rhythmically, but Doctor Bonnel’s plaster seems to help. I’ll manage.”

“Good, good.” She folded her hands. “I’ve actually come to let you know that you have a visitor.”

“A visitor? Who — did the doctor come up?”

“No. It is a . . . member of his community, I think. He does not wear the hat, but I think . . . well. He is in the courtyard.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“Only to speak with you. If you would prefer not to meet him, I can give your regrets — I can tell him that you have already departed. If you hurry, you can save me prayers at confession by making it true.”

“It doesn’t sound threatening. I’d be happy to meet him.”

“I will accompany you, of course.”

“Of course. But I can take care of myself.”

“I am certain. But I will accompany you. I am curious — so I will face extra prayers at confession after all.”

Now it was Sherrilyn’s turn to smile. She picked up her pack.

“Lead on.”

 

Some comments on the Hugos and other SF awards

This as will become obvious was written by Eric Flint. I just posted it here.

I’ve been doing my best to stay away from the current ruckus over the Hugo Awards, but it’s now spread widely enough that it’s spilled onto my Facebook page, and it’s bound to splatter on me elsewhere as well. It’s also been brought to my attention that Breitbart’s very well-trafficked web site—never famous for the accuracy of its so-called “reporting”—has me listed as one of the supposedly downtrodden conservative and/or libertarian authors oppressed by the SF establishment. Given my lifelong advocacy of socialism—and I was no armchair Marxist either, but committed twenty-five years of my life to being an activist in the industrial trade unions—I find that quite amusing.

So I decided it was time to toss in my two cents worth. Well… if we calculate words as being worth eight cents apiece, my five hundred and eighty dollars worth. (Not quite, but I’m an author so I’m rounding the word count up. To do otherwise would get me drummed out of the Scribbler Corps.)

So, here goes.

First, on the Hugo and Nebula (and all other) awards given out in science fiction. Do they have problems? Yes, they all do. For a variety of reasons, the awards no longer have much connection to the Big Wide World of science fiction and fantasy readers. Thirty and forty years ago, they did. Today, they don’t.

Is this because of political bias, as charged by at least some of the people associated with the Sad Puppies slate? No, it isn’t—or at least not in the way the charge is being leveled. I will discuss this issue later, but for the moment let me address some more general questions.

What I’m going to be dealing with in this essay is a reality that is now at least tacitly recognized by most professional authors—and stated bluntly on occasion by editors and publishers. That’s the growing divergence between the public’s perception of fantasy and science fiction and the perception of the much smaller group of people who vote for literary awards and write literary reviews for the major F&SF magazines. There was a time in fantasy and science fiction when the public’s assessment of the field’s various authors and the assessment of its “inner circles” was, if not identical, very closely related. But that time is far behind us.

There was never an exact correlation, of course. There have always been, in our field as in any field of literary or artistic endeavor, a certain number of authors who, while very popular, never got much in the way of recognition in terms of awards.

Two examples are Murray Leinster and Andre Norton. Both Leinster and Norton had immensely successful literary careers that spanned over half a century. Leinster was once dubbed by Time magazine “the dean of science fiction”—he had the title before Heinlein more or less took it over—and it’s almost impossible to overstate Norton’s central position in the field for decades.

Nonetheless, in his entire career in science fiction, Murray Leinster got almost no recognition when it came to the field’s major awards. Before I go any further, I should specify that by “major awards” I am referring to the Hugo and Nebula; and, in the case of fantasy, the World Fantasy Award. Of these, the Hugo is generally considered to be the pre-eminent award in our field.

The Nebula award ignored Leinster completely. The World Fantasy Award also ignored him, but that award wasn’t established until 1975. Leinster died that year, and his active writing career had ended several years earlier. He probably wouldn’t have ever gotten nominated for the award, anyway, since Leinster was almost exclusively a science fiction author.

He did receive two nominations for the Hugo and won one of them—that was for his novelette “Exploration Team,” in 1956. Still, that’s awfully skimpy recognition, given his overall career.

The situation was, if anything, even more extreme with Andre Norton. She was also nominated twice for the Hugo—for best novel (Witch World) in 1964, and for best novelette (“Wizard’s World”) a few years later, in 1968—but she didn’t win either time. Another way of looking at this is that, for almost the last forty years of her career (she didn’t die until 2005 and was writing actively until the very end), she received no recognition of any kind from the field’s premier award.

And, just as was true of Leinster, she was completely ignored by the Nebula.

She never won a World Fantasy Award for any specific work of hers, either. No best novel, no best novella, no best short fiction. (The WFC doesn’t make the distinction the Hugo and Nebula awards do between short stories and novelettes.)

She did, very late in her career, receive belated recognition from the World Fantasy Award. The third time she was nominated for a life achievement award, she won it.

But that wasn’t until 1998. To put this in perspective, that was:

— 46 years after the publication of Star Man’s Son (aka Daybreak, 2250 A.D.) the first novel in our field that sold over a million copies;

— 45 years after the publication of Star Rangers and 43 years after the publication of Star Guard;

— 35 years after the publication of Witch World, the first volume in what became one of the most successful and long running series in fantasy.

Belated recognition, indeed.

As the example of Andre Norton demonstrates, even at their best, literary awards are a very imperfect reflection of actual achievement. Nor is that peculiar to our field. Just to give one example, James Joyce never got the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neither did Henry James, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost or Jorge Luis Borges.

On the flip side, it was always true—and properly so—that the major awards were given out many times for authors who, other than one or two specific works, never had much overall impact on the field. Perhaps the most obvious example is Daniel Keyes. From the moment his short story “Flowers For Algernon” appeared in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, it has been universally recognized as one of the great stories of our genre.

Of fiction in general, actually, genre distinctions be damned. I first ran across “Flowers For Algernon” a few years later, as one of the assigned readings in an American literature course I took as a junior in high school.

Yet, except for that one brilliant story, Keyes had an otherwise undistinguished career. A total of three novels—one of them a novelization of “Flowers For Algernon” which won the Nebula in 1966—and perhaps a dozen short stories, none of which are considered by most people to be particularly exceptional.

Still, although there was never an identity between the field of fantasy and science fiction as perceived by the mass audience, and that perceived by what for lack of a better term I will call the in-crowds, there was a tremendous overlap. Both fields inhabited the same planet, certainly.

When I was growing up and even as a young man, through the decade of the 1960s and well into the 1970s, the authors I would run across regularly on the shelves of any science fiction section in any bookstore—or on the revolving wire racks in drugstores—were by and large the very same authors who were regularly nominated for major awards and won them at least on occasion.

There were some exceptions like Andre Norton and Murray Leinster, true enough. But, by and large, that was overshadowed by the overlap. To name some specific top-selling authors of the time:

Robert Heinlein: Twelve Hugo nominations and four wins; four Nebula nominations, although he never won the award.

Arthur Clarke: Seven Hugo nominations and three wins; three Nebula nominations and three wins.

Poul Anderson: Fifteen Hugo nominations and seven wins; twelve Nebula nominations and three wins.

Anne McCaffrey: Seven Hugo nominations and one win; three Nebula nominations and one win.

Fritz Leiber: Thirteen Hugo nominations and six wins; eleven Nebula nominations and three wins.

Ursula LeGuin: Twenty-two Hugo nominations and five wins; seventeen Nebula nominations and five wins.

Roger Zelazny: Fourteen Hugo nominations and six wins; fourteen Nebula nominations and three wins

Clifford Simak: Ten Hugo nominations and three wins; four Nebula nominations and one win.

Gordon Dickson: Seven Hugo nominations and three wins; three Nebula nominations and one win.

I’m not including the World Fantasy Award, because it didn’t exist in this time period. And while I could go on, I think the point is obvious.

What has become equally obvious, to anyone willing to look at the situation objectively, is that a third of a century later the situation has become transformed. Today, there are is only one author left who can regularly maintain the bridge between popular appeal and critical acclaim. That author is Neil Gaiman. And there are no more than a handful of others who can manage it on occasion. Perhaps the most prominent in that small group are Lois McMaster Bujold, Ursula LeGuin and George R.R. Martin.

Once you get beyond that very small number of authors, the field diverges rapidly. That handful aside, there is no longer any great overlap between those fantasy and science fiction authors whom the mass audience considers the field’s most important writers—judging by sales, at any rate—and those who are acclaimed by the small groups of people who hand out awards.

And they are very small groups. Not more than a few hundred people in the case of the Hugos and Nebulas, and a panel of judges in the case of the WFC.

****

So what’s going on? Why has a situation developed where for an author to become too popular seems to be effectively the kiss of death as far as awards are concerned? (Again, with a few exceptions like Neil Gaiman.)

Well, let’s see if we can answer the question. And let’s begin by taking up the most obvious solution: The mass audience for F&SF is just plain dumber than it was thirty or forty years ago, that’s all. The reason these authors are popular is because they’re pandering to what is now a very lowbrow and unsophisticated readership.

That explanation is not—quite—as preposterous as it sounds. We do, after all, have the sobering example of the movie industry to consider. There is not much question that, for all the tremendous improvement in technical effects and technical skills, the average popular movie today is just plain a lot dumber than they were a quarter of a century ago.

True enough—but there’s no mystery about the demographics involved, either. For various reasons, the movie-going audience over the past two decades has become dominated by teenagers, mostly male, and the movie industry has adapted its output accordingly. What you’re seeing isn’t so much “dumb” movies for a “dumb” audience—plenty of those teenagers are very bright—as it is movies shaped for a teenage audience. But is there any similar dynamic happening in literary F&SF?

Well, no. In fact, the standard complaint is exactly the opposite—that the field is “graying” because we’re not acquiring enough in the way of new youngsters. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the F&SF mass audience today—speaking of readers, at least—is any less sophisticated than it ever was.

In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the opposite is true. In addition to being an author, I also do a lot of editing of old science fiction stories. I’ve produced by now something like three dozen anthologies of stories written mostly in the fifties, sixties and early seventies. And I can state flatly that the average level of fiction written in our field today is far higher than it was half a century ago. As fond as I am of the fiction I grew up on, the simple fact is that most of those authors couldn’t get published today.

It’s not just a matter of prose, either. Just about everything in those days was crude, compared to the situation today.

The science in “science fiction” was often abysmal, especially the biology. Edgar Rice Burroughs was by no means the only author who told stories in which humans mate with aliens and produce offspring. Thereby demonstrating a grasp of biology stuck somewhere in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.

The settings were typically crude, too, compared to the settings of most stories today. So were the plots. There were exceptions, to be sure—and, not surprisingly, those tended to be the most popular authors.

My point is simply that there is no rational basis for thinking that the literary sophistication of the mass audience for F&SF today is any worse than it was some decades ago, and plenty of reason to think that it’s actually superior.

Scratch that theory, then.

Then, there’s the argument advanced recently by the people around Sad Puppies is that the Hugos (and presumably the other awards) have been warped by politics. Specifically, by a bias against conservative authors like Larry Correia and John Ringo.

My response to this can be either short or very long—very, very, very long—and I’m opting for short. In a nutshell:

Any author—or publisher, or editor—who gets widely associated with a political viewpoint that generates a lot of passion will inevitably suffer a loss of attractiveness when it comes to getting nominated for awards—or just reader reviews. Somebody is bound to get angry at you and denigrate your work, and often enough urge others to do the same.

Does it happen to people who are strongly associated with the right? Yes, it does. But it also happens to people who are strongly associated in the public mind with the left. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is read through Amazon reader reviews of my work and see how many “reviews” are obviously triggered off by someone’s outrage/indignation/umbrage at what they perceive as my political viewpoint and have little if anything to do with the book which is theoretically being “reviewed.”

Nor does it matter very much whether the assessment people have is accurate or not. To give an example which is germane to this issue, there is a wide perception among many people in fandom—the average reader-on-the-street could care less—that Baen Books is a slavering rightwing publisher. And never mind the inconvenient fact that the author who has had more books published through Baen Books than any other over the past twenty years is…

(roll of drums)

Me.

Who is today and has been throughout his adult life an avowed socialist (as well as an atheist), and hasn’t changed his basic opinions one whit. A fact which is well-known to Baen Books and has been well-known ever since my first conversation with Jim Baen almost twenty years ago, which was a two-hour discussion of politics. (The next day we talked about my novel which he was considering buying—and did buy, saying: “Well, I guess if John Campbell could get along with Mack Reynolds, I can get along with you.”)

So why does Baen keep publishing me? For the same reason any sensible commercial publisher keeps publishing a given author. I sell well.

Duh.

This whole argument is just silly, and reflects the habit too many people have of seeing nefarious conspiracies everywhere they look, all of them aimed against them.

Yes, it’s true that Larry Correia and John Ringo are pretty far to the right on the political spectrum and they don’t get nominated for major awards despite being very popular.

You know what else is true?

I’m very popular and further to the left on the political spectrum than they are to the right—and I never get nominated either. Mercedes Lackey isn’t as far left as I am, but she’s pretty damn far to the left and even more popular than I am—or Larry Correia, or John Ringo—and she doesn’t get nominated either.

The popular fantasy author Steven Brust, like me, is what most people call a “Trotskyist.” In a career that has now lasted thirty years, he’s picked up one Nebula nomination. On the other hand, China Miéville—another so-called Trotskyist—has gotten around a dozen nominations and won both a Hugo and a World Fantasy Award.

On the other side of the political spectrum, Mike Resnick has gotten more Hugo nominations than just about any author in the history of science fiction—he’s won five times, too—and he’s a Republican. A sometimes loud and vociferous Republican, as I can attest because he’s a friend of mine and we’ve been known to argue about politics. Loudly and vociferously.

The fact is, there is no correlation I can see between an author’s political views and the frequency (or complete lack thereof) with which he or she gets nominated for SF literary awards. The claim of the Sad Puppies faction that so-called “social justice warriors” are systematically discriminating against them is specious. It can only be advanced by cherry-picking examples and studiously ignoring all the ones that contradict the thesis, of which there are a multitude.

****

All right. Now that I have—to my satisfaction, anyway—disposed of the most common reasons advanced to explain the situation, let me present my own analysis.

I believe there are three major factors involved that account for the ever-widening gap between the judgment of the mass audience and that of the (comparatively tiny) inner circles of SFdom who hand out awards. Of the three, two of them are objective in nature, which is what makes the problem so intractable. And all three of them tend to constantly reinforce each other.

The first objective factor is about as simple as gets. The field is simply too damn BIG, nowadays. For all the constant whining you hear from lots of authors about how tough things are today for working writers—which is true enough, in and of itself—the fact is that the situation is a lot better than it used to be. Half a century ago, I doubt if there were more than a dozen F&SF writers able to make a full-time living at it, and most of them were not making a very good living. Today, with a North American population no more than twice the size it was then, I figure there are somewhere around a hundred F&SF authors able to work at it full time, and at least a third of them are earning more than the median annual income. Even in per capita terms, that’s a big improvement.

I can remember the days, as a teenager and a young man, when the science fiction section of any bookstore amounted to maybe, at most, one bookcase’s worth of titles. Usually it was only a shelf or two—or, more often than not, just a handful of titles on a revolving wire rack in a drugstore. Today, in any major bookstore in the country, the F&SF section is huge in comparison.

Forty or fifty years ago—even thirty years ago, to a degree—it was quite possible for any single reader to keep on top of the entire field. You wouldn’t read every F&SF story, of course. But you could maintain a good general knowledge of the field as a whole and be at least familiar with every significant author.

Today, that’s simply impossible. Leaving aside short fiction, of which there’s still a fair amount being produced, you’d have to be able to read at least two novels a day to keep up with what’s being published—and that’s just in the United States. In reality, nobody can do it, so what happens is that over the past few decades the field has essentially splintered, from a critical standpoint.

Both of the major awards, the Hugo and the Nebula, are simple popularity contests with absolutely no requirement—or even expectation, any longer—that the voters will have read all or even most of the nominees. In the old days, that wasn’t much of a problem because you could expect that most voters were at least reasonably familiar with the authors and works under consideration. But today that’s not true at all. People routinely vote for “best novel” or “best short story” when all they’ve read is one or two of the nominees, and in many cases, have never read anything by many of the other authors nominated—not to mention being completely ignorant of other authors who never got nominated in the first place.

What happens in a situation like this is inevitable. It’s the same thing that happens in the face of any kind of sensory overload. To use a completely mundane example, the same thing that happens when someone—under instructions from a spouse to “buy some cereal”—turns their shopping cart into the aisle where cereals are sold…

And discovers that, today, there are a dozen different brands of muesli.

Whatever the hell muesli is.

Nine times out of ten, the shopper—out of self-defense—will narrow his or her focus and look for the old standby reliables. You can always count on Cheerios and corn flakes.

The same thing happens with the awards. Willy-nilly, the award-voters look for the standby reliables.

You get a de facto division of authors into “award worthy” and “not award worthy,” and the division is often based on completely accidental factors.

The problem isn’t who gets the awards. The problem is the large number of possible nominees and winners who simply get ignored year after year after year—especially when you realize that they include the big majority of the field’s most popular authors.

As time goes by, the Hugo and Nebula contests have become increasingly incestuous. Every year it’s basically the same thing: “round up the usual suspects.” This incestuous situation reached perhaps the height of absurdity with the Hugo award for best artist. For nine years in a row, between 1996 and 2004, that award went to two artists—Bob Eggleton or Mike Whelan. Bob or Mike, Bob or Mike, Bob or Mike, Bob or Mike, year after year after year. Finally—glory be—Jim Burns and Donato Giancola were able to break through. But many other excellent artists are still continually ignored.

To make sure there are no misunderstandings, I have no problem with either Eggleton or Whelan winning the Hugo award for best artist. They are in fact excellent artists, both of them—and Bob’s done a number of the covers for my own novels, including one of my personal favorites. (The cover for Rats, Bats & Vats.) The point is simply that it’s absurd to narrow the field of award-winners down to two artists, year after year after year, when there are so many excellent artists in the field.

By the way—credit where credit is due—Bob himself eventually found the situation so preposterous that he launched a campaign to get someone else the award. Specifically, Darryl Sweet.

He failed. Once again, he won it. (Or Mike Whelan did, I can’t remember.)

What makes this problem still worse is the very unfortunate linking of the major awards to an annual cycle. That annual cycle for handing out literary or artistic awards was always a bad idea. It automatically injected a completely arbitrary element into the awards, since the annual cycle has no intrinsic relationship whatsoever to literary or artistic merit. It was perfectly possible to have some years with a relatively mediocre output of work mixed in with years where there was a super-abundance. But it didn’t matter. The rigid annual structure meant that an award—one and only one, for “best” this or that—had to be given each year.

Still, the fact that most readers were able to stay on top of the field as a whole tended to mitigate that problem. Today, they can’t. Not only do you have a few hundred people each year voting for the “best” whatevers for the Hugo and Nebulas—out of the millions of  people in the United States who regularly buy and read science fiction and fantasy—but those few hundred people have to make their decisions under the gun. They not only can’t stay on top of the field, but they are further constrained by the fact that they have to decide within a year which works that came out were the best. This, despite the fact that almost none of them have the time to even read all of the nominated works.

****

The second objective problem is that due to massive changes in the market for F&SF—changes so massive that they amount to a complete transformation of the field over the past several decades—the structure of the major awards no longer bears any relationship to the real world in which professional authors live and work. That’s especially true for those authors who are able to work on a full-time basis and who depend on their writing income for a living. Award-voters and reviewers and critics can afford to blithely ignore the realities of the market, but they can’t.

Both the Hugo and the Nebula give out four literary awards. (I’m not including here the more recent dramatic awards, just the purely literary categories.) Those awards are given for best short story, best novelette, best novella, and best novel. In other words, three out of four awards—75% of the total—are given for short fiction.

Forty or fifty years ago, that made perfect sense. It was an accurate reflection of the reality of the field for working authors. F&SF in those days was primarily a short form genre, whether you measured that in terms of income generated or number of readers.

But that is no longer true. Today, F&SF is overwhelmingly a novel market. Short fiction doesn’t generate more than 1% or 2% of all income for writers. And even measured in terms of readership, short fiction doesn’t account for more than 5% of the market.

Don’t believe me? Then consider this: I have published at least half a dozen novels each of which has sold more copies than the combined circulation of all science fiction and fantasy magazines in the United States—and I am by no means the most popular author in our field.

To make the situation still worse, the official rules for both the Hugo and Nebula define a “novel” as any story more than 40,000 words long.

Half a century ago, that was reasonable. The average length of an SF novel was between 40,000 and 60,000 words. But today that definition is simply laughable. Every professional author and editor in our field knows perfectly well that no major publisher, outside of the YA market, will accept a “novel” manuscript that’s less than 80,000 words long—and they usually want between 90-120,000 words.

So, because of the rigidity of the award structure and its inability to adapt to changes in the market, an entire category of fiction has literally disappeared from the purview of the awards—despite the fact that this category (stories between 40K and 80K words long) is the type of fiction that routinely won the best novel award, year after year after year, when the awards were first set up.

By the way, fiction of this length—I think of them as “short novels”—does still get written. I’ve written half a dozen myself. But about the only viable market nowadays for these kinds of short novels is in shared universe anthologies—and no story published in such an anthology will ever get considered for a best novel award. (Nor can they be considered for best novella, because they’re too long.)

Still, every year, the award-voters keep pretending that anything more than forty thousand words is a “novel.”

Then, it gets worse. Because the market today isn’t simply a novel market. It’s become predominantly a market that wants long series, not stand-alone novels. And the existing award structure is very poorly designed to handle long series. About the only way it can do it is by—quite artificially, in most cases—cutting one book out of a series and pretending for the moment that it’s a “this year only” quasi-stand alone story.

That can be done with some series, which are designed by their authors to consist of stories that are only somewhat loosely connected. But other series are quite different. To name just one example, the current situation with David Weber’s long-running Honor Harrington series is that no fewer than three novels are running more or less simultaneously with each other, with the action of the various characters penetrating from one story to the other—and, just to put the icing on the cake, a number of the major characters were first developed in short fiction published in one or another of the anthologies that are part of the series, and some of them by authors other than Weber himself. Trying to separate any of these out as “best this or that of Year X” would be an exercise in futility.

And never mind that Weber is doing something well enough that the Honor Harrington series is one of the very few purely SF series that regularly makes the New York Times bestseller list. His narrative structure doesn’t match what the awards are comfortable with, so to hell with him. And to hell with what the mass audience thinks.

What it all comes down to, being objective about it, is that every year a few hundred people—Worldcon attendees, in the case of the Hugo; SFWA members in the case of the Nebula—hand out awards not for what authors are actually doing but for what those few hundred people think authors ought to be doing.

“Well, dammit, you OUGHTA still be writing lots of short stories—sure, sure, you’d starve but that’s your problem—instead of these godawful endless multi-volume series just because that’s what the mass audience wants to read and it pays your mortgage and medical bills.”

****

Put these two objective factors together, and the end result is the ever-growing division you see today between those authors whom the mass audience perceives as the major authors in F&SF and those authors whom the comparatively tiny but socially prestigious award-voting and critical in-crowds consider major authors. It’s a division which is getting worse, not better, as time goes on.

Naturally, objective reality tends to produce subjective reactions that match it. So—this is the one major subjective factor involved—you also get an ever-growing division in peoples’ attitudes about what constitutes “good writing” and what doesn’t.

What’s involved here is essentially a literary analog to genetic drift. Biologists have long known that the role played by pure chance in evolution is greater in a small population than a larger one. The same thing happens in the arts, especially those arts which have a huge mass audience. The attitudes of the much smaller group or groups of in-crowds who hand out awards or do critical reviews are mostly influenced by other members of their in-crowd, not by the tastes of the mass audience. Over time, just by happenstance if nothing else, their views start drifting apart from those of the mass audience.

This is by no means peculiar to F&SF. In just about every field of literary or artistic endeavor—hell, just plain hobbies, when you get down to it—you tend to get a division between the interests and concerns of the mass audience involved in that field and the much smaller inner circles of aficionados.

Forget high-faluting literature, for a moment. Consider…

Dogs.

Hundreds of millions of people own dogs. If you ask those people what constitutes a “good dog,” you will get a range of answers but they will mostly focus on a dog’s behavior toward the humans they deal with.

But now go to a dog show, attended by the comparatively tiny number of people who are hobbyists when it comes to breeding and raising dogs. Most of the criteria by which Dog X or Dog Y gets chosen as “best dog of show” are going to be criteria that the average dog-owner around the world thinks are esoteric at best and often downright silly or even grossly wrong-headed.

So it always is, unless—as with the Oscars—there is so much money at stake in winning an award that the Powers-That-Be in the industry will damn well see to it over time that the award never strays too far from what the world’s multi-billioned mass audience wants. But, of course, there isn’t anything like that kind of money involved in most awards. Certainly not the Hugo and the Nebula.

I think of it as the movie reviewer’s syndrome. I noticed many years ago that almost all movie reviewers will automatically deduct at least one point from their rating of a movie if it contains a car chase. Why? Well, it’s not hard to understand. Seeing three or four or five movies a week the way they do, they get sick and tired of car chases.

But the average movie-goer doesn’t watch new movies four times a week. For them, movies are a relatively occasional experience—and, what the hell, car chases are kinda fun.

What you get with literature, including any and all forms of genre fiction, is the following division:

What the mass audience wants, first and foremost—and this has been true and invariant since the Sumerians and the epic of Gilgamesh—is a good story. Period.

“Tell me a good story.” Thazzit.

But, sooner or later, that stops being sufficient for the in-crowds. At first, they want more than just a good story. Which, in and of itself, is fair enough. The problem is that as time goes by “more than just a good story” often starts sliding into “I really don’t care how good the story is, it’s the other stuff that really matters.”

Eventually, form gets increasingly elevated over content. “Originality” for its own sake, something which the mass audience cares very little about—and neither did Homer or Shakespeare—becomes elevated to a preposterous status. And what withers away, at least to some degree, is a good sense of what skills are involved in forging a story in the first place.

To put it another way, every successful author has to master two skills which, although related, are still quite distinct: they have to be good story-tellers; and they have to be good writers.

Of those two skills, being a terrific story-teller but a journeyman writer will win you a mass audience, and is likely to keep it. On the flip side, being a journeyman story-teller but a terrific wordsmith will win you critical plaudits but won’t usually get you much in the way of an audience.

****

I should add something here, before I close. As a rule, critically-acclaimed authors are not oblivious to this reality at all. The award-voters and reviewers and critics may be oblivious to it, but the authors rarely are. I have now and then run across critically-acclaimed authors who were egotistical jerks, but not often. In my experience, most authors who get nominated a lot and win awards are quite down to earth and no less appreciative of the sort of skills that I have as I am of theirs. Many of them are friends of mine, some of them are good friends, and there are none of them—well… there’s a jackass or two, but never mind—for whom I wish anything but the best in their careers.

Having said that, though, I feel required to add something else. I’m not the one who needs to get awards to stay afloat, as a writer. I’m doing just fine, thank you. The people who are really getting hurt by the modern drift of the awards away from the mass audience are the authors who win them. Why? Because the farther and farther those major awards diverge from any connection to the mass audience and its opinions and attitudes, the more they become devalued as awards that mean anything that isn’t purely self-referential.

Every professional author today who doesn’t have his or her head stuck in the sand knows perfectly well that winning a Nebula or a World Fantasy Award isn’t going to have the slightest positive effect on their career, so far as the publishers are concerned. The Hugo still counts for something, but…

Not much, any longer. And that little is getting eroded, as each year goes by. Within the foreseeable future, even winning a Hugo award will be shrugged off by publishers the same way that winning a Nebula or a WFC is already shrugged off.

(I should mention that there is one exception to what I said above: The awards do matter when it comes to foreign sales. Publishers in foreign languages usually don’t know the U.S. market all that well, but they can easily look at a list of award winners.)

****

Is there any solution to the problem?

I doubt it, to be honest. It’s a tough nut to crack, because most of the problem is objective.

One way to tackle the problem, I suppose, would be to expand the awards still further. Go from four literary awards to…

Well, here’s where the problem comes in. I write in all lengths, and I’ve been professionally published in all lengths, from fifteen hundred word short stories on up. But, mostly, I work in long series. And I can tell you that under the existing category of “novel” there are at least four different types of stories each of which pose as many separate challenges and require as many varied sets of skills as the differences between writing a short story, a novelette and a novella.

Those are:

1) Short novels. Stories from about 40,000 to 80,000 words.

2) Full length stand-alone novels.

3) Mega-novels. These are stories which are actually a single “novel” in the sense that they are based on an integrated story arch, but which are so long that for practical and commercial reasons they have to be published in multiple volumes. Probably the classic instance in our field is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It is usually called a “trilogy,” but it is in fact a single novel.

An example from my own work would be the six-volume Belisarius “series,” which is really just one great big novel.

4) Series, properly speaking. These are stories which share a common setting and usually a common set of characters, but do not possess a single story arch.

Just to make things more complicated, there is really quite a big difference between two kinds of series: the traditional “beads on a string” series, which proceed as Volumes 1, 2, 3, etc., and the more complex kind of series where the stories branch off from each other, often run parallel to each other, and can’t be neatly assigned to any clear and definite chronological sequence.

I’ve worked in both kinds, and they really do require different skill sets, although of course there’s a lot of overlap. (My Trail of Glory series is a “beads on a string” type series. My 1632 series and Joe’s World series are of the more complex “branching bush” type.)

So what are we supposed to do? Scrap the existing best novel award for four or possibly even five different awards?

And if that seems excessive, contemplate this:

As long as we’re considering solving award problems by expanding the number of awards, let us not overlook the still more long-standing problem that comedy is always lumped in with dramatic story-telling even though everybody who knows anything about stories know perfectly well that:

—comedy is really, really hard to do well;

—and it never gets any critical respect.

That’s partly what explains the preposterous fact that Terry Pratchett got so few nominations in his entire career. And it’s also the reason that the Golden Globe movie awards, unlike the Oscars, make a distinction between comedic films and dramatic films.

I can see it already…

We’d have seven different literary awards instead of four, and then duplicate each of them for comedic treatment for a total of fourteen awards handed out every year.

Somehow, that strikes me as more than a little goofy.

Granted, they hold the Golden Globe awards every year with even more categories of awards and people pay attention. On the other hand, they’ve got lots of photogenic actors and actresses on the red carpet–not to mention the beaches at Cannes–and we don’t. The number of F&SF writers or convention-going fans who look good in a skimpy gown or swimsuit is… ah…

Not large.

But I personally think the best solution, if there is one at all, is to scrap the whole existing set-up. Of all the awards handed out for literary merit, the only ones that seems to maintain any sort of ongoing more-or-less objective relationship to the real world are those given out for often broadly-defined achievement. They’re not awards given out for “best XYZ of year ABC.” Instead, they are achievement awards handed out for a body of work, that may be anchored to something specific but takes other considerations into account, and perhaps most importantly is not tied to an annual cycle.

That allows such awards to adapt to changes in the market (or the equivalent in other fields), not to be forced into making snap judgments—and, perhaps most important of all, allows the voters to consider the ongoing and cumulative impact of an author’s work rather than artificially dividing it up between Works 1, 2, 3, etc., etc.

It is simply not the case that every author’s importance to the field can be gauged in terms of this or that specific story, matched up against all other stories in the year it came out. In the case of many authors, even though they may never have written any single work that anyone (including themselves) would consider “the best whatever” of Year ABC, they manage to produce a body of work over many years that, taken as a whole, often outshines—even dwarfs—the overall body of work of authors who might have won annual awards fairly regularly.

Consider the example I gave earlier: Andre Norton. Who will be remembered in our field long after most award-winners are forgotten.

All that said, I think the likelihood that either the Hugo or the Nebula will be scrapped in favor of general achievement awards is probably indistinguishable from zero. These things tend to develop a tremendous institutional inertia. If such an award started with a very large and prestigious body of sponsors, it might have a chance of getting off the ground, I suppose. My problem is that, deep down inside, a little voice is whispering to me….

Oh, great. Just what the world needs. Another goddam award that nobody pays any attention to except the people who voted for it.

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 14

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 14

“Ah,” De la Mothe said. “That is a name I know.” He looked at Valbelle, and then stepped over to the bench and sat near the up-timer. Lefferts was a well-known trouble maker, who had made the acquaintance of the cardinal and had been tied to all kinds of mischief since the Ring of Fire. From what he heard, there were even young bravos in the Italian cities who styled themselves after him — lefferti, they called themselves.

“Everyone knows Harry and his Wrecking Crew,” Sherrilyn said. “Well, that’s pretty much over. The band has broken up, and there’s no plan to get it back together. To be honest, Comte — Philippe — I’m a bit at loose ends right now.”

De la Mothe was struggling with the idiom and looked up at Valbelle — but the older man had walked away along the gallery, leaving him in the company of the up-timer. “I’m . . . not sure what you mean. But if you are presently without a position, I expect that I could find something for someone of your talents to do.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You mentioned the Thuringian Rifles. And the, eh, ‘Wrecking Crew’. I am certain that your weapons expertise would be invaluable to us.”

“And by ‘us’, you mean . . .”

“Myself and my commander. Henri Tour d’Auvergne. General Turenne.”

“Turenne?” She frowned. “The guy who carried out the raid against our oil fields at Wietze? The guy whose troops killed Quentin Underwood?”

De la Mothe took a deep breath. “. . . Yes. He did command the raid on Wietze two years ago.”

“I’m not sure I’m fond of the idea of working for him. Of course, you’re not the enemy anymore, are you? Now we’re friends with the French. And Quentin Underwood was a dick who got caught up in our German vacation. Still, I’d have to consider the merits of the idea.”

“My lord of Turenne has no designs on your USE, Sherrilyn, nor on the armies of your allies. We know who the enemy is.”

“And who might that be?”

“Spain.”

“Huh. And where is Turenne now?”

“His army is encamped outside of Lyon. The — king — has ordered him south to keep watch on the Spanish. We believe that the Count-Duke de Olivares, the Spanish King’s minister, is preparing an invasion of France in cooperation with . . . certain elements.”

“But not the USE.”

“No. Certainly not. Olivares’ chief ally is — may be — the king’s brother. Monsieur Gaston. We do not know his whereabouts. He was most recently in Lorraine and the Franche-Comté, but he has relocated — possibly to Madrid, or even Rome. He has a peculiar skill at making trouble.”

“Sounds like Harry Lefferts.”

“I can see the comparison,” De la Mothe said. “But as versatile as your friend Lefferts might be, Monsieur Gaston is infinitely more devious. And he plays at intrigues with the crown of a kingdom at stake. Our task is to help stop that.”

“How do you expect me to help?”

“Over the past two and a half years, my lord of Turenne has been slowly re-training a body of troops to use the newer weapons that up-time technology has made possible. It has not been an easy task: skills and habits borne of a lifetime cannot be easily discarded.”

“You did well enough at Wietze,” she snapped. “Your General Turenne seemed to know exactly what the hell he was doing there, and he got what he wanted.”

“Yes, that is true, Mademoiselle. Sherrilyn. But a raid is not a military campaign, and a small, fast-moving force is not the same as an army. The Spanish are still exceptionally well-armed and numerous and muskets can kill a soldier just as dead as a Cardinal rifle. We learned a great deal from the Wietze raid, but many of those under arms were not a part of that action.

“We could use someone with your skill and expertise to help train them, to cure their bad habits and teach them good ones. And also to pick out . . . the best of them for particular duties.”

Sherrilyn laughed. “You want me to train down-timer soldiers. That’s rich. You expect a bunch of professional soldiers to listen to me tell them what to do?”

“Monsieur de Valbelle told me that before the Ring of Fire you had been a teacher. Surely there are some aspects of that experience that would be helpful.”

“I taught girls’ P.E. at Grantville High,” Sherrilyn said. “I blew a whistle and got a bunch of girls in line so they could do exercises and play basketball. I hardly think it’s the same.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . because they were teenage girls, Philippe, and they were afraid of me. These men aren’t likely to see me in the same way.”

“You might be surprised.”

Sherrilyn leaned her elbows on her thighs and shook her head so that her hair, tied back in its queue, swung back and forth. “Philippe, I was born in 1965. For the last four years I’ve been in the seventeenth century, and unless the same crazy thing that put me here comes along and puts me back, I’m going to spend the rest of my life here. I get surprised pretty much every day, usually in a bad way, but sometimes . . .”

She gave him an appraising look, from wig to boots. He wasn’t a bad looking man; he was a little younger than she was, and had obviously made an effort to look good for the day — maybe even for this meeting. He smelled less like the average seventeenth-century nobleman than she expected, and other than the Durante nose and a few pox pockmarks — universal, other than for those who had gotten vaccinated in the last few years — he was easy to look at.

“Sometimes,” she said, “the surprise is a good one.”

“So you will accept.”

“I didn’t say that. But I’ll think about it. How much time do I have to decide?”

“I leave Marseilles the day after tomorrow. We can have a spare horse . . . or two, if you require a lady’s maid to travel with you.”

“A lady’s maid? Are you serious?”

He looked serious. In fact, he looked embarrassed at her reaction. “It is a few days’ ride back to Lyon, Mademoiselle Sherrilyn, and you would be in the company of . . . the entourage would be all men, other than you.”

“So?”

“It is only that there is some . . . possible appearance of impropriety.”

“After the Wrecking Crew I don’t think there’s anything more improper that can happen to my appearance. I don’t have a ‘lady’s maid’, Philippe, and don’t know what I’d do with one. And if you’re worried about someone of your troop making, what, an inappropriate advance . . . if they survive the experience, they’ll survive with two broken arms. Or legs. Whichever is more painful, especially on horseback. Maybe one of each.”

De la Mothe couldn’t help but smile. “I think you mean it.”

“Damn straight.”

“Very well.” He stood and sketched a bow. Valbelle, the perfect courtier, seemed to already realize that the interview was over, and was walking slowly back to meet him. “I shall await your reply.”

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 13

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 13

Chapter 7

Marseilles, Provence

“Now that is a view.”

Philippe de la Mothe-Houdancourt, Governor of Bellegarde, leaned on the rampart of Florentine limestone that comprised the sea-facing wall of Notre-Dame de la Garde, basilica and fortress of Marseilles, and took a deep draught of sea air. From up here, a few hundred feet above the sprawl and stink of the city, the air was clear and the sky was deep blue. The sun sparkled on the Mediterranean Sea . . . and somewhere beyond to the west, over the horizon, was Spain.

“It is beautiful. When I think of my city, Philippe, I think of it this way.” Cosme de Valbelle, Seigneur de Brunelles, came up to stand by his young friend. “I’m surprised you’ve never been up here.”

“There are a great many places I have never been. This is quite a remarkable place: a fortress that is also a church.”

“The monks of Saint Victor didn’t want to give it up, but it’s a perfect place to build a fort. Our lord François thought so a century ago, and it’s been defending the city against all comers ever since — outsiders and insiders.”

“Do tell.”

“There have been plenty of intrigues in Marseilles over the years.”

“But none since it has become the firm possession of la Famille Valbelle, or so I understand.”

Valbelle smiled. “That’s more my great-uncle and father’s doing. Nowadays I merely offer good government and fair trade.” He made an adjustment to the lace on one cuff. “Everyone wins, even the Church.”

“I’m sure His Eminence is pleased.”

“You know very well that Cardinal Richelieu is a great friend to my family, and I am loyal to him and to King Louis. I have made certain that he knows that, and that our family is properly represented at court. But . . . you’re not here to question that, are you, Philippe?”

“No. Of course not. I am here on behalf of my lord Tour d’Auvergne, Marshal Turenne. Some of your vaunted commerce –” he waved a hand toward the port below — “provisions and equips our forces.”

“So you think there’ll be war?”

“My dear Cosme,” de la Mothe answered. “There is always war. In the best instance it is possible for men to bring it about on terms of their own choosing.”

“If it were up to me, the terms I would choose would be accommodation. War is bad for business, and we here in Marseilles gain nothing by fighting with Spain or Savoy or Naples or, honestly, anywhere else.” He sighed. “But if the cardinal wills it, then we must needs obey.”

De la Mothe looked back out across the city. Valbelle was a politician: a former conseil of the city, now merely a private citizen. But no one achieved any office in Marseilles without his help or consent. So it had been for decades. Cosme de Valbelle, the second of the name, had been elected for the first time in 1618 when he was in his early forties, and for a second, shorter term a few years ago. Now the first consulship was in the hands of the Sieur d’Aiglun, a bland nonentity. But no one — not de la Mothe, not Turenne, and certainly not the cardinal himself — had any illusions about who really ran the city.

Valbelle loved to perform the stately pavane, the game of bons mots, rather than get to the point. De la Mothe, for his part, had spent too much time in military service — fifteen years, man and boy — to be anything less than direct; but he knew that to achieve anything with Valbelle meant to play the game.

“Your note said that you had someone you wanted me to meet.”

“Yes. It’s part of the reason I invited you to la Garde. She’s up here receiving some sort of medical treatment from the priory’s hospitaller; she didn’t trust the quacks and frauds down in the city.”

“‘She’?”

“Yes, she. The lady is an up-timer, Philippe. And a very fierce example of that unusual race. I’m sure you’ll find her interesting.”

****

Interesting was hardly enough to describe how Philippe de la Mothe-Houdancourt found Sherrilyn Maddox when he first met her that soft early-autumn day in the fortress-priory above Marseilles. She truly was fierce.

When Valbelle led him into the priory, passing beneath the escutcheon of François I and the lamb of the Apostle John bearing the Christian banner, the first thing he heard was the sound of feet on stone. He was on his guard at once, and nearly drew his blade when someone came running along the vaulted gallery. The person was in loose-fitting clothing with a queue of hair neatly tied behind, and came to a halt a few paces away, bent over slightly with hands on thighs, panting as if the exercise had been difficult.

He removed his hand from the hilt of his sword and looked at Valbelle, perplexed.

“Give it a moment,” the older man said quietly.

De la Mothe said nothing and waited. At last the other person stood up straight. Though dressed in a long-sleeved blouse and some sort of pantaloons, he could see at once that it was a woman. Not unattractive, but she had clearly made no particular effort to enhance her appearance. Without saying a word — or asking leave of either Valbelle or himself — she walked somewhat gingerly to a stone bench that ran along the gallery and dropped to a seat.

“Sorry,” she managed. “Still trying to get back in shape.”

De la Mothe understood the words, but wasn’t sure of the meaning. “Allow me to present myself,” he said at last. “I am Philippe, Comte de la Mothe-Houdancourt, Governor of Bellegarde, General of France.” He made a leg.

“Sherrilyn Maddox,” she said. “Thuringian Rifles. Glad to meet you.” She extended her hand, and when he took it with the intent of offering his lips she grabbed his palm and shook it.

When this unusual introduction was over, she let her hand fall to her sides and looked him up and down. De la Mothe was dressed in proper attire that befit a count. He had left off his breastplate and other armor, retaining only his blade — and not the one he used when fighting with the cavalry. He had donned his best wig, and bore a decoration of the chevau-légers that he had earned at Saint Martin-de-Ré a decade before.

“I hope I’ve not offended you, Comte. Monsieur. I’m not sure what title I should use.”

“Do not trouble yourself, Madame — Mademoiselle –”

“Just call me Sherrilyn. My students at Grantville High had to call me ‘Ms. Maddox’, but most people just stick to my first name.”

“Then you may call me Philippe.”

“Suits me fine,” she answered. “Would you sit down, Philippe? Monsieur Valbelle said you had something you wanted to talk to me about. I was just running a few laps — this knee” she slapped one of her legs — “has been giving me problems, and I’m not a damn bit of good to anyone if I don’t get back to form. No less than Harry Lefferts took me off the first team.”

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 12

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 12

“I graciously accept.” He gave his most charming smile, glancing at his loyal follower Francois. “But let me not disturb you. I assume circumstances are fortuitous for us to send a message this evening?”

“I’ll need some information.”

“Ah.” He reached into a sleeve and drew out a small rectangle of paper and handed it to her. “This is the . . . frequency? Yes. And the call sign.”

Terrye Jo nodded approvingly. Francois was leaning very slightly forward to see what was written, showing more curiosity than she would have credited him with. She set the card on the table in front of her and put the headphones back on. She slowly moved the dial to the frequency Gaston had indicated. There was some small amount of background noise, but it was in a relatively clear part of the radio spectrum — a good choice by whoever had picked it.

GJBF, she sent. GJBF, GJBF. She wasn’t sure what the JBF was for — something something France, she supposed — but the G was probably for Gaston. GJBF. CQ CQ. CQ was the signal for anyone listening to respond.

She looked up at Gaston, who was watching intently. There was no immediate response; the frequency was quiet. She looked down at the card, and checked the position of the master dial. It was set correctly. He’d told her nothing about who might be waiting for the message. She imagined some guy, dressed like the prince, waiting by a set somewhere far away.

GBJF GBJF GBJF, she sent again. CQ CQ CQ.

She waited another several seconds and was just about to tell Monsieur Gaston that there was no response — and then she heard something. It was faint and halting, as if being transmitted by someone with little skill on a telegraph key. It certainly wasn’t a “fist” she recognized. To a trained operator, the “fist” was the style and pattern of a sender — not quite as unique as a fingerprint, but like the sound of a human voice, they could be told apart.

GBJF, she heard. SPAR SPAR KN

It repeated once more, and she wrote it down on the pad and showed it to Gaston. SPAR was a call sign, one she didn’t recognize. But Gaston did.

“That is my servant in Paris,” he said, laying a finger on the pad. “SPAR. Well done, Mademoiselle. Are they ready to send?”

“They’re waiting for you, Highness,” she answered. “That’s what the KN means.”

“Ah. Bon. Ask them about the queen.”

“All right . . . anything specific?” He didn’t answer, so she shrugged. She sent GBJF SPAR COMMENT EST LA REINE? KN

There was another long pause, and then slowly, almost painfully, there was a response, beginning with SPAR GBJF. She copied it down, letter by letter, onto the pad.

LA REINE A UN POLICHINELLE DANS LE TIROIR, she wrote. The queen has . . . something in the something, but she wasn’t sure. She sent GBJF SPAR QSM — please send the last message again.

“Is there any — ” Gaston said, and she held up her hand. She was fairly sure that princes weren’t used to having that happen, but she needed to hear what was being transmitted. The message was as before. When it had been fully transmitted again she lifted the pad and showed it to him.

Apparently whatever something was in the something, it meant something to Monsieur Gaston. His expression went pale, and then hardened into a tight-lipped anger.

“You’re sure that this message was sent, Mademoiselle Tillman. This exact message.”

“I had them repeat it. Your servant isn’t a very good telegrapher, but this is what he sent. I have no idea what it means.”

“A polichinelle is . . . a sort of puppet. A marionette. My servant says that the queen has a puppet in the drawer — it is a common expression. It means . . . that the queen is pregnant.”

Terrye Jo smiled. “A bun in the oven,” she said in English. “Un p’tit pain dans le four,” she translated. “I guess it doesn’t make any sense in French.”

“It is not an expression we use, Mademoiselle. But yes, the sense would be the same.” He held the pad tightly, and for just a moment she thought he might slam it down or throw it at something. But instead he placed it on the desk and slowly, carefully adjusted the lace of his cuffs.

She heard QSL in her headphones. Can you acknowledge receipt?

Without looking away from Gaston, she reached her hand to the telegraph key and sent, GBJF SN. ENTENDU. Understood.

“What was that, then?”

“I told them you’d gotten the message. What do you want me to send now?”

“Ask them . . . where is the queen now?”

Terrye Jo nodded, and turned again to face the radio set. GBJF SPAR OU EST LA REINE? KN, she sent.

SPAR GBJF RECLUSION HORS DE PARIS.

“She is away from Paris,” she said. “In . . . seclusion?”

“But where?”

GBJF SPAR OU? She sent, asking where.

SPAR GBJF UN GRAND SECRET SOUS LA ROBE ROUGE.

“I’m not sure what that means, Highness,” she said, showing him the pad again. “The secret is under . . .”

“Beneath the red robe,” Gaston said. “Richelieu. He has sent her somewhere in secret. He knows where she is, but my loyal servant does not. Very well. Send him . . . tell him that as he loves me, it is paramount that he locate her and report to me. At once.”

GBJF SPAR TROUVER LA REINE ET SIGNALER IMMEDIATEMENT, she sent, and then added IMMEDIATEMENT TOUT SUITE PAR ORDRE G. She figured that would be enough for them to get the at once part of his orders.

SPAR GBJF ENTENDU SN.

“They got the message.”

“Good. Excellent.” He turned on his heel and walked to the door, then turned, as if he’d forgotten something.

“Was there anything else?” she asked.

“No. Not tonight. . . ah.” He looked at Francois. “Attend me,” he said. “But by all means pay her.”

Without turning, she reached for the key and sent CL — closing down. In her earphones she heard SN.

Francois reached into an inside pocket of his cloak and took out a small pouch which rattled. He dropped it on to a chair without a word and swept out after his master. Terrye Jo had a moment’s urge to pick it up and throw it at his head. The abrupt end to the conversation and the way he’d left money for her — not by handing it over but by leaving it behind — felt vaguely insulting.

Gaston had worked hard at charming her, but she was very much like a Number 2 pencil: a tool. This was an unequal relationship, and he’d just shown her who was the prince and who was the servant.

SN, she thought. I understand.

 

Sanctuary – Snippet 23

This story appears in Bill Fawcett’s Anthology, By Tooth And Claw, which should be available now. Therefore, this is the last snippet.

Sanctuary – Snippet 23

“Can she move at all?” Njekwa asked, turning her head toward Zuluku but not taking her eyes from the subject of her scrutiny.

To her surprise, the Mrem answered. “I can move a bit. Not far, not quick. But I can move.”

“You speak our language?”

“A bit.” An odd little twist came to her mouth. “Not far. Not quick. But I can speak a bit.”

By then, Zuluku was squatting next to the priestess. “What’s wrong?”

Njekwa issued the little whistling noise from her nostrils that served Liskash as the equivalent of a snort of derision. “What do you think is wrong? Everything is wrong. It is wrong that you sheltered this creature. It is wrong that the Old Faith is ignored. It is wrong that nobles such as Zilikazi lord it over all others. For the moment, though, what is most wrong is that Zilikazi led his army into another trap, the soldiers are angry and upset, he is trying to quell them, and naturally he is resorting to ancient ruses which always seem to work even if they require everyone to be stupid.”

Zuluku stared at her, uncomprehending.

“Zilikazi says treason must have been the cause,” Litunga explained. The old shaman’s jaws snapped twice wide with sarcasm. “Would you believe, it seems some of us are harboring Mrem spies in our midst?”

Now wide-eyed, Zuluku stared down at Nurat Merav. The notion that the badly injured Mrem female was a spy — and what would she have spied upon, anyway? — was ludicrous. But…

They were indeed harboring an Mrem in their midst.

“What do we do?” she asked Njekwa. Her voice didn’t… quite… squeak with fear.

Say what you would about the priestess, she had steady nerves. In times of crisis like this, whatever doubts about her the young females might have, they instinctively looked to Njekwa for guidance and leadership.

The priestess studied Nurat Merav for a moment. “If she can move at all, you need to take her out of the camp. Her and her younglings, all of them.”

“Take them where?” That question came from Raish, who was now squatting by the pile also, along with Selani, the third of the young Liskash females who’d been tending to Nurat Merav.

Litunga jerked her head toward the wall of the yurt facing north. “There is a grove not too far away, and a small gully that leads most of the way to it. Once night falls, you can move them through the gully and hide them in the woods.”

Raish glanced at the entrance flap, as if to reassure herself that it was still closed and no one could see inside the yurt. “Can we wait that long?”

“I think so,” said Njekwa. “The search for supposed spies is starting at the other end of the camp, among the warriors and their yurts. It will take the inspectors half the night before they come this far. They may not even try to search this side of the camp until tomorrow.”

“They might search the grove too, then,” said Zuluku.

“They will almost certainly search the grove,” said Litunga. “We were told they were searching anywhere in the army’s vicinity where spies might be hiding.”

Zuluku looked down at the Mrem. “She might — probably can — make it as far as the grove. But then…”

Njekwa gave her a sidelong look. “And so now you finally realize that recklessness has its own reward? Stupid child. The ‘but then’ is obvious. Once you get to the grove — all of you, not just the mammals — you and Raish and Selani will have to carry her away on a litter.”

The three young females looked at each other. “Carry her away, where?” asked Raish.

Again, Njekwa issued a derisive whistle. “How should I know? The camp is too dangerous. I suggest you try to find her own people, wherever they might be, and hand her back into their care.”

“But –”

Zuluku looked down at Nurat Merav. The Mrem was obviously trying to follow the discussion but having a hard time of it.

“Where your people are,” Zuluku said to her. Then, remembering the lilt at the end of a phrase that the Mrem used to indicate a question, she rephrased the intonation: “Where your people are?”

Nurat Merav’s face got scrunched up the way Zuluku had come to recognize was the Mrem way of indicating puzzlement and uncertainty. “Don’t know. Most were captured. Killed. The rest…”

The mammalian face-scrunch got more pronounced. “Don’t know your word.” She raised her hands and made little fluttering gestures with her fingers. “Like straw in wind.”

“Scattered,” provided Litunga. “You’ll likely never find any of them. Better you try to reach the Kororo. Even carrying a litter through these mountains you’ll be able to move faster than the whole army.”

For the first time, Selani spoke up. “Why would the Kororo take her in?”

“They probably wouldn’t,” replied Litunga. “But they’ll take you in. It’ll be up to you to persuade them to take the Mrem also.”

She shrugged. “Whether they would or not, I have no idea.”

“There’s a fair chance, actually,” said Njekwa. She gave Zuluku an intent gaze. “But you have to do it right. Talk a lot about Morushken — no, don’t do that; you’ll just get a tedious philosophical lecture about the unreality of deities. Just talk about your adherence and devotion to the principle of thrift.”

Yet again, her jaws snapped sarcastically. “You shouldn’t have any trouble with that, since it’s true. You idiots.”

The priestess rose. “Litunga and I will come up with a story to explain your absence — if the inspectors even ask, which I doubt. And now, you’d better get ready to leave. You only have a few hours until nightfall.”

She turned and left the yurt, Litunga following behind.

The three young Liskash females stared at each other. Then, stared at Nurat Merav. Then, went back to staring at each other.

Finally, Zuluku said: “We can make a litter easily enough. Can’t we?”

Having a practical problem at hand steadied them all. “Oh, yes,” said Raish. “We can make the poles out of –”

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 11

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 11

Chapter 6

Turin

If it hadn’t previously been obvious to Terrye Jo, it became quite clear what it was about a few nights later.

It had been a cold, blustery day, rather like late fall in West Virginia. The kind of day that Ms. Maddox, when she was in a particularly cruel mood — which happened a lot — would make the girls in her P.E. class run outside, to be blown around by the wind or be forced to stand and do exercises and wait for the rain to pelt down on them. It was a part of West Virginia she didn’t miss. Ms. Maddox had joined up with Harry Lefferts, Terrye Jo had heard, and instead of operating a radio tower for a duke was off having adventures in Italy or somewhere. But P.E. class was miles and years away, lost forever.

The rain and sleet never quite came. By evening the wind had mostly driven the clouds away to leave it cold and clear, just about perfect weather for radio transmission. She had gone up to the operations room to check on things — and found Francois de Vendôme lounging there, with a few of his attendants standing by, looking bored.

“Mademoiselle Tillman,” he said, standing and sweeping his impressive hat from his head as he bowed. “I have been waiting for you.” For some time went unsaid.

“I’ve just come from dinner. If you needed me, Henri or Sylvie could have sent word.” The brother and sister, a clerk and seamstress in the duke’s staff at the Castello who had shown some aptitude, were on duty this evening. She’d come up to check on them — the weather was too good, so someone should be up here practicing.

“I bid them return to their duties. I beg your indulgence if I have overstepped.”

“Their duty is here, My Lord. So, yes. Overstepped. Now, if you’ll excuse me –” She wanted to move past him into the room, but he didn’t seem inclined toward getting out of the way.

This could become ugly. Terrye Jo knew she could take care of herself, though with four or five of the Frenchmen it wasn’t a sure thing, even if they underestimated her — which they were likely to do. But still.

“As I say,” the nobleman said smoothly, “I beg your indulgence. I am expecting the imminent arrival of His Royal Highness.”

“Monsieur Gaston wants to inspect the premises?”

“That . . . and he wishes to make use of them. And you.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Your professional services,” Francois said, his perfect courtier’s smile twitching downward for a moment, then returning to its place. “He has arranged to communicate at this day and hour.”

Terrye Jo thought about it for at least long enough for the smile to start to disappear again, then she said, “All right. Fine. I assume he has a prepared call sign and frequency?”

“He has . . . whatever he needs. He will clarify all when he arrives.”

It was clear that Francois de Vendôme had no idea what she meant. It was a fair guess that he didn’t truly understand how radio communication worked at all, but that was just as well.

“I’d better fire up the set,” she said, and this time he stepped aside to admit her to the room.

It was cold as usual, but everything was in order and put away except for two freshly-sharpened Number 2 pencils, a block of paper and the small pen-knife that substituted for a pencil sharpener. On the pad, in what looked like Henri’s hand, were the words pardonnez-moi, as if they’d be blamed for abandoning their posts. They were not accustomed to saying no to princes.

The set was an impressive-looking thing, with more decoration than any radio deserved to have, but that was the seventeenth century for you; inside it was really very simple. They’d installed a very sensitive dial with gradations that adjusted a tuning capacitor for the receiver. It was the responsibility of the on-duty operator to carefully note any transmissions and the dial position showing their frequency. The transmitter had a similar adjustment mechanism: the dial and a sliding bar controlled a spark-gap rig based on an old instruction book from the 1920s published by the National Bureau of Standards. They’d found it in Terrye Jo’s dad’s attic, where it had survived water damage and the Ring of Fire. The whole thing was powered by a bank of six Leyden-jar capacitors under the table, set in a wooden frame with a trough below, big enough to hold the contents of a jar if it should ever break. There were two knife switches on the front of the rig to engage or disengage them, and a sturdily-built telegraph key mounted on a heavy wooden block, connected to the box by an insulated wire.

It would have been more impressive to have everything open. The transmitter, when powered, created a blue corona around the spark gap that was too bright to look at when the gain was all the way up — but maybe it was better to keep everything in a carved box to maintain the illusion, Wizard of Oz-like. It was for job security if nothing else. It was best that most folks, especially princes, didn’t realize just how simple it all was . . . in the right hands.

She put on a pair of earphones and plugged them into a jack on the front of the box. There was a little volume control on the earphone cord. She turned it up and slowly moved the dial to a known position to see if she could pick up the transmitter from Bern, just as a baseline.

Thus when Gaston d’Orleans arrived she didn’t notice. She knew that Francois was standing a few paces behind her at the door, as if he didn’t want to get any closer to the wizardry. Gaston, on the other hand, seemed to have no fear — and a childlike curiosity.

She reached for one of the pencils without looking, and instead of the familiar wooden shaft, she touched a smooth, warm hand. She jerked her hand back and stood up, pulling the earphones off her head.

“What remarkable instruments,” Gaston said, holding a Number 2 in his hand. “Tisond . . . Tisonger . . .”

“Ticonderoga,” Terrye Jo said, giving the ‘I’ the proper long sound. “It’s an Indian name. Native North American.” She looked from Gaston to the small shelf that held two boxes of authentic up-timer pencils. When transcribing a telegraph message, a good old Number 2 was much more useful than a quill and ink.

“Ty-son-de. . .”

“Ticonderoga. There’s no cedilla under the c, Highness. I think there’s a small company in Magdeburg that has started to make pencils, but they’re not as good as the genuine article.” She thought about it for a moment and added, “if you’d like one I’d be happy to make you a present of it.”

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 10

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 10

“But he is not France, young lady. What he does places my country in peril and twists the commands and endangers the rule of my royal brother.”

“Didn’t he also exile you?”

Gaston’s face hardened. “His Majesty exiled me at Richelieu’s direction. You are correct . . . but even that cannot stand forever.”

Terrye Jo didn’t answer.

“It is my desire to reconcile with the king,” he said. “I know that if I have a chance I can do so. But Richelieu must go.”

“As you say, Highness.”

“I am sure . . .” Gaston’s voice, which had become harsh and angry, softened and warmed. “I am sure, Madame, that the relations between my country and yours could become much more cordial in the absence of the cardinal.”

“Your Royal Highness,” Terrye Jo said carefully, “That sort of thing is way above my pay grade.”

Gaston frowned for a moment; she thought perhaps she’d messed up the translation into French. Then he smiled again, like the sun breaking through clouds. “Yes. Of course. That is something that would have to be negotiated. I am sure that I could find common ground with your Emperor.”

“I . . . imagine the king and Emperor Gustav could find a way.”

Gaston did not answer for a moment, then said, “Yes, of course. If God wills it I may someday be king of France, but in the meanwhile my royal brother might be able to make progress toward friendship and peace, free of the malign influence of the cardinal.”

“Peace is better than war, for sure.”

“Yes. Of course it is.” The beatific Guy Fawkes smile came back. “Now, I do not wish to keep you much longer from all the young men who wait to dance with you, Mademoiselle. I wish only to confirm for my own satisfaction that your radio equipment has been brought to the standard I require, and that you can personally handle the task.”

“I’ve been able to pick up traffic all the way from Magdeburg and Venice. I expect that if the other station is transmitting, the equipment here can communicate with it.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“I am at your service, Your Royal Highness, with the permission of His Grace the Duke.”

“Excellent.” He made a very formal leg. “I shall call upon you personally when the time comes.”

“I look forward to it, Your Highness.”

“Yes,” he said as he turned away, smiling. “I am sure you do.”

As Monsieur Gaston walked back among the many visitors to the Castello del Valentino, Terrye Jo Tillman wondered to herself just what that had been about.

****

“So.” The duke of Savoy gestured with his wine glass, which caught the firelight and sparkled. “You seem impressed with our resident up-timer.”

They were sitting in the dimly-lit library. Victor Amadeus had dismissed the servant, choosing to serve personally as cupbearer for his brother-in-law.

“What makes you think that?”

“You paid court to her, Highness,” he said.

Gaston leaned back in his armchair and stretched like a hunting cat. “Is that what you call it?”

“You were very charming.”

“I am always very charming. She is a comely one, though to be honest, she knows very little about how to enhance it. A wig might have been in order to cover that man’s haircut, and — I don’t know, some face powder or some such. I can imagine that under her gloves there are a pair of laborer’s hands.”

“She was a soldier, Gaston.”

“Ah. That explains it, I suppose, but it does not excuse it. Still, she is no Helen.”

“My wife rather likes her.”

Gaston shook his head. “My dear sister, the duchess, sees a rose under every thorn. Has she taken this up-timer as a pet?”

“That’s a bit disparaging.”

“Gentle birth — royal birth — has its privileges, Victor.” He patted his stomach. “But in all earnest: doesn’t she have something else more important to think about?”

“I don’t think it’s ever far from her mind.”

“Then she should stick to it,” Gaston said, shrugging off all pretense of conviviality. “Christina is neither qualified to involve herself in ducal — or royal — affairs, nor aware of the pitfalls of befriending these up-timers. She should stick to the affairs of women, Victor, and nothing else.”

The duke of Savoy did not answer. Perhaps Gaston expected him to agree, or object, but Victor Amadeus said nothing.

“I suspect that you have not given much thought to up-timers, brother-in-law,” he continued. “I know what I think of them. Holy Mother Church has been very cautious about the Ring of Fire: what it is, why it happened, and what we should think about it. But as for the up-timers themselves, they are not to be trusted.”

Victor Amadeus drank his wine and set the goblet on a sideboard. “I will vouch for Mademoiselle Tillman. She is trustworthy, honest, hard-working and reliable.”

“And you stand behind her.”

“I do.”

“Then, my dear Victor Amadeus, you are gullible. The up-timers are a tightly-knit society: three thousand men and women who speak the same language.”

“Many people speak English or — what is it they call it? — Amideutsch.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Gaston leaned forward and jabbed the air with his finger toward his brother-in-law. “I’m talking about their common culture, their context. They are all a part of the same world and not our world. They think differently than we do.”

“Of course they do. They’re from the future, Gaston.”

“But not our future.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Oh, don’t you.” Gaston stood up and walked across the library to a table, where a map of Europe was spread. “Look at this, Victor. Our world, from the Pillars of Hercules to the mountains of Russia. And right in the middle of it, squatting like a big, fat toad, is the United States of Europe. For the last four and a half years it has been growing and growing, sending its agents and its . . . ideas in every direction. The future that the up-timers come from, the one in which France becomes the greatest power in the world, is never going to happen.

“Have you read the up-time histories, Victor? Have you? In their world — what do they call it? Time line? In their time line, France allies with the king of Sweden, and he is killed at a battle at Lützen in 1632. It continues in alliance with Sweden against the Imperial forces for years afterward and ultimately wins a great battle.” He poked at the map, at a place in the Netherlands. “A place called Rocroi, about seven years from now — if now hadn’t been destroyed by the Ring. Of. Fire.” The last three words were punctuated by raps of his knuckles.

“But it’s not going to happen. It is never going to happen. Instead, we have the fat toad squatting in the middle of the Germanies, spreading their ideas of democracy and freedom.”

He fell silent for a moment. “I cannot change the past,” Gaston said at last. “But I can help mold the present. The up-timers can help with that task — even this soldier and telegrapher that you favor so much. But they will never be allies. They cannot be trusted, Victor. I trust that you will never, ever forget it.”

“Is that a royal command?”

“I am not your king.”

“No,” the duke said. “You are my brother-in-law, and heir to the French throne.” He walked back to the sideboard and poured another glass of wine. He took a moment to contemplate it, then drank it down like water.

 

Sanctuary – Snippet 22

Sanctuary – Snippet 22

Chapter 10

Zilikazi

In the event, it took Zilikazi quite a while to calm down his troops after the dam burst. The water rushing down the ravine carried not only rocks and logs with it, but specially designed spears as well. The Kororo, exhibiting a fiendish imagination that fit poorly with their philosophical claims, had tied crude blades to both ends of many bundles of reeds. The buoyant reed bundles raced down atop the surging flood, spinning and whirling. The blades added their share of carnage to the damage done by the force of the water and the other debris.

It was a fairly small flood, and brief in duration. But the ravine was steep and because of the difficulty of the terrain the soldiers had been packed too tightly. Their officers had become complacent, certain that the Kororo wouldn’t have had time to prepare any more elaborate traps — or, if they had, wouldn’t be able to stay close enough to set them off at the right time. By now, the troops had gotten adept at spotting and disarming inert triggers left in place. So the deaths and injuries produced were much worse that they should have been.

Zilikazi was quietly furious with those officers, and made a silent vow to punish those most responsible. But he had more pressing concerns at the moment — and, being honest, was at least as angry at himself. He’d consistently underestimated the powers of the Krek’s so-called “tekku.” To make things worse, the Kororo shamans were either getting stronger or he had finally started encountering those among them who were most powerful and adept at their peculiar mind skill.

He still didn’t really understand the nature of that skill. How could harnessing the pitiful brains of animals be of any real use?

In the distance, he heard the screech of a gantrak, but paid it little attention. The mountain predators were ferocious, certainly, but they would never dare attack such a large group of Liskash. The creature was just angry that its hunting territory was being encroached upon.

Sebetwe

Zilikazi was wrong about that. The gantrak’s screech had been one of triumph, not fury. The predator was not an intelligent animal, but she was far smarter than most dumb beasts. She understood, in some way, that the creature she and her mate had mysteriously become partnered with had just scored a great victory — and she shared in that victory herself.

For his part, Sebetwe winced. Whether it derived from anger or elation, the screech of a gantrak up close was hard on the ears and unsettling on the nerves.

He managed not to jump, though.

Achia Pazik

Achia Pazik didn’t jump either. But that was only because Gadi Elkin, tired by the dance, had stumbled over a root and Achia Pazik had barely managed to catch her before she fell. The gantrak’s screech jolted her nerves, but her grip on her fellow dancer kept her steady on her feet.

“I’m starting to hate that thing,” hissed Gadi Elkin, once she regained her balance. “Aren’t you?”

Achia Pazik let go of her grip and shrugged. “Not as much — not nearly as much — as I hate that Liskash noble down there. The worst the gantrak will do is bite your head off, but at least your mind will still be yours right through to the end.”

“That’s a low standard!” the other dancer said, grimacing. “Lose your head or lose your mind.”

“Our choices are pretty limited right now.” Achia Pazik started up the slope, following Sebetwe along what might be called a “trail” if you were in an expansive frame of mind. “Let’s try to keep both.”

Nabliz

The first little group of Mrem they found were of no practical use. There were two females in the group, but it turned out neither of them were dancers. The two warriors also in the group wouldn’t be any help, either. One had suffered injuries which, even if he recovered from them — a process which would take months — would still leave him lame. And the other was really too old to still be serving as an active warrior.

The young male in the group might be of use, eventually. But the Krek’s current circumstances made concepts like “eventually” lame as well.

Still, Nabliz took it as a good omen. If two groups had survived from the catastrophe the Mrem tribe had suffered at the hands of Zilikazi and his army, surely there had to be others.

Two warriors were detached to escort the Mrem to the Krek. The rest, including Nabliz and Chefer Kolkin, continued their search.

Chefer Kolkin

Chefer Kolkin was pretty sure the Liskash would have simply left the small Mrem party they’d found where they were, once they discovered there were no dancers among them, if Chefer Kolkin hadn’t insisted otherwise. The reptiles were sometimes astonishingly callous. Not cruel, no, at least not in the way Mrem understood cruelty. Even at their worst, there was always something a little cold-blooded about Liskash. The sort of hot rage which sometimes led Mrem to commit acts of utter barbarity was just not something that seemed to afflict Liskash. On the other hand, they had much less in the way of simple compassion, either.

It took some getting used to. But so, Chefer Kolkin reminded himself, did many things that turned out in the end to be beneficial. Spices took some getting used to also, when you were a youngling. Yet for an adult, food without them would be horribly bland.

Njekwa

When the priestess came into the yurt, followed closely by the shaman Litunga, she glanced around and then headed unerringly toward the one pile of hides and thrushes which was large enough to conceal a big animal. As she went, she gave Zuluku and her two companions a peremptory summoning gesture.

“Get up,” she said. “We haven’t much time.”

Once she reached the pile, Njekwa crouched and flipped back the two hides on top. Now visible below were an Mrem female and, pressed closely to her side and staring up at the priestess also, two of the mammal younglings. “Kits,” she thought they were called.

There was no expression on the adult Mrem’s face. None that Njekwa could discern, at any rate, but she was not very familiar with the creatures. One of the kits seemed frightened; the other, either less anxious or less intelligent, simply looked curious.