Eric Flint's Blog, page 295

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 33

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 33

Chapter 33: Who’s Your Daddy?

The man sitting across from me was small. Oriental, handsome (at least that’s what Syl told me later; I’m not much of a judge), average-length hair just a bit shaggy. He was dressed in fairly casual style, but that wasn’t much indication of his job or resources; people come to WIS in different guises than their coworkers usually see.

“Okay, Mr., um, Xiang — that right? — okay, what can I help you with?”

Tai Lee Xiang shifted uncomfortably in his chair, obviously ill at ease. “I’m trying to locate someone.”

Locate someone? That didn’t sound particularly promising. There’s some kinds of work I might do once in a while, but don’t consider worth much. Finding old girlfriends, enemies, and so on was one of those. “What kind of a someone?”

“My father.”

Okay, that was more interesting, maybe. “Your father? Okay. How’d you come to not know where he is? A family argument?”

He squirmed again, then stood up, pacing in the short distance available. “It’s… hard to explain. I didn’t have any argument with him. It’s… I’ve just not seen him in a long time.” His voice was heavily accented — Vietnamese, if what he told me was right — but the word “long” was clearly emphasized.

“What do you need to find him for? Just a family reunion?”

“Why do you need to know?” he countered, slightly annoyed.

“I don’t necessarily need to know, as long as there’s nothing illegal involved, but any information can sometimes help.” I had to put in that clause about “illegal” somewhere — it wasn’t at all unusual for people to try to use Wood’s Information Service to get info they had no business getting.

He frowned at me, then shrugged. “I am new in this country, and he is my only living relative, aside from my children.”

“Fair enough.” This actually sounded interesting. Finding a man can be a relatively easy thing, or almost impossible, depending on how much information you had to go on. “I’ll need everything you can possibly tell me about your father. The more I know, the easier it will be to find him.”

He looked somewhat embarrassed and uncomfortable again. “I… I can’t tell you too much. I have… memory trouble.”

“Amnesia?” I was surprised by this little twist.

“Um, yes, I think that’s what they called it. I remember some things well, not other things.”

Interesting case. “Okay. Can I ask why you chose WIS for this job?”

“I saw the reports on the werewolves …” he began. I already knew the rest; the “Morgantown Incident” was a great piece of advertisement. I was wrong.

“… and of all the investigators out there, only you seemed the sort to be ready to search for someone… unusual.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me there’s something out of the ordinary about your father?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

Tai Lee looked at me. “I can’t tell you any more unless you agree to do the job. You… feel like an honorable man to me, which means if you agree to do the job, you won’t talk about it to other people if I don’t want you to.”

He had me pegged right. I thought a moment. “Nothing illegal involved in this job?”

“I know of nothing that would be illegal in finding my father, no.”

“Very well, then. I agree. I’ll find your father, if it’s at all possible.”

His nervous fidgeting quieted almost instantly; he relaxed visibly. “Thank you.”

“So what can you tell me about your father? Skip the description for now — I’ve got a computer program we’ll use later to construct the best picture. Tell me any facts his appearance wouldn’t tell me.”

“That is where my memory is weak. I can only tell you five things about Father.”

“Shoot.”

“Excuse me?”

“That means, go ahead, let me have them.”

“First, he was not my natural father. I was adopted. He was not of Oriental blood, but I think Westerner instead.”

Well, that weakened one approach. Obviously there’d be no link in appearance between father and son, and not necessarily one of immigration, either. “Next?”

“Father was a priest. Priest of… um… nature? I’m not sure the term…?”

That was interesting. “You mean of the earth itself? Not Shinto or something of that nature?”

“Yes. The world’s spirit?”

“Our word for that is generally ‘Gaia.’ ”

“Yes! That is it.” He nodded, apparently recognizing the word. “Father also had a ring that he wore, which he would never remove.”

“Kind of ring?”

“A big, wide, heavy gold ring, with a very large red stone — I think a ruby — set in it.”

I blinked for a moment. “O… kay.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, nothing. Go on.”

He hesitated. “This is the… weird part.”

“I’m ready.”

“No, I mean, really strange. Please believe me when I tell you this is not a joke?”

I studied him carefully. “I believe you’re not playing a joke on me. You seem too serious to be able to joke about it at all.”

“Thank you.” He had tensed up again; my assurance made him relax. “All right… my father didn’t eat; instead, he drank blood.”

I stopped dead in mid-keystroke. No. This was ridiculous. What were the odds? But drinking blood? A red-stone ring that never came off?

Tai could tell something had happened to me. “Mr. Wood?”

“What was the fifth thing?”

“What?”

“That’s four facts about your father. What’s the fifth?”

“His name… the name he was using then. His name was V’ierna Dhomienkha a Atla’a Alandar.”

It was impossible. But it had to be. I stood up. “Excuse me for a minute; I’m going to check something.”

“What? Mr. Wood, what is it?”

“I’ll be back in a moment.”

I stepped into the back office, grabbed the phone off the hook, and punched in Verne’s number.

“Domingo Residence, Morgan speaking.”

“Morgan, this is Jason. I need to speak with Verne.”

Morgan’s voice was puzzled. “But, Jason, you know that Master Verne is never awake at this time. Why, it’s barely two o’ clock.”

“Then wake him. I know he can move about in the day, if he wants. This is important!”

There was a long pause — even longer to me, sitting on the other end doing nothing. But finally I heard the familiar voice pick up at the other end. “Jason? What is the emergency?” Tired though he was, what I heard most in his voice was worry. “It isn’t the Wolf, is it?”

Jesus, I should have realized that was the first thing he’d think of. “No, no. Nothing that bad. Maybe not bad, really, at all. I have a guy here looking for his father.”

His tone was slightly nettled. “And how does this concern me?”

“Because of what he told me about his father: that he wore a ruby-colored crystal in a gold-setting ring that he never took off, and that he drank blood.”

There was dead silence on the other end for several moments. “Interesting coincidence to say the least, Jason. But I have no children.”

“He said he wasn’t a natural child of this man — adopted. He also said that his father was some kind of priest of nature, and he gave his father’s name. I’m not sure quite how to spell it, but it sounded awfully like yours …”

In a whisper almost inaudible, I heard, “V’ierna Dhomienkha a Atla’a Alandar i Sh’ekatha …”

“Holy crap,” I heard my own whisper. I still couldn’t believe it.

“That name? He spoke that name? But… that is impossible.” Verne’s voice was at the edge of anger, laughter, or tears, I couldn’t tell which, and hearing that strain in his voice was more upsetting than I’d imagined. “I am on my way, sun or no sun.”

I hung up and stepped back out into the office. Tai Lee Xiang looked up at me. “Mr. Wood?”

“If what you’ve told me is accurate, Mr. Xiang… I think I’ve located him already.”

As his jaw dropped, a chill wind blew through the closed office, and from my back room stepped Verne Domingo, dark eyes fixed on my visitor.

There was no recognition in Verne’s eyes, but there was no doubt about Tai Lee’s reaction. He leapt to his feet, eyes wide. “Father!”

Verne fixed him with a cold glare. “Who are you? Who, that you know that name unspoken for generations unnumbered, that you would claim to be son to me?” That alien accent was back and emphasized by his anger.

There was no mistaking the shocked, wounded look in Tai Lee Xiang’s eyes. “Father? Don’t you recognize me? The boy in the temple?”

Verne’s mouth opened for a bitter retort, but at the last words his mouth slowly closed. He stared at the young man intensely, as though he would burn a hole through him by gaze alone. I felt a faint power stir in the room. Then Verne’s face went even paler than usual, and he stepped forward, reaching out slowly to touch the Oriental’s face. “The scent is wrong… but the soul. I know that soul. Is it really you, Raiakafan?”

Tai jerked as Verne spoke the name, as though slapped in the face, then nodded. “Y… yes. Yes. That was my name.”

For the first time since I’d known him, Verne was too overcome to speak. He simply stepped forward, around the desk, and stared straight into the young man’s eyes. “Even with what I feel… I must have proof. For you disappeared …”

Tai — Raiakafan? — studied me, and suddenly I had a completely different impression of him. The uncertain, nervous young man was gone; instead I was seeing a black, polished-stone gaze as cold as black ice. I found myself stepping backward involuntarily; only once before had I gotten an impression of such total lethality, and that had been when I had stood in a hospital hallway and watched Virigar himself assume his true form. That feeling carried the utter conviction that Tai was not merely trained in the arts of killing, but a killer to his very core. “In front of him?” he asked coldly.

I could see that Verne was slightly surprised by the tone, but not apparently by the question. “It may be necessary later… but you are quite correct. We shall speak in private. But I would appreciate it if you moderate your tone of address to one who is not only my friend, but the one who has reunited us.”

The cold gaze softened abruptly, replaced by an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Father. You are right. Mr. Wood, forgive me. It has been a difficult time for me. But I am very grateful… and amazed.”

I shrugged. “Don’t mention it. Not as much a coincidence as I thought at first; anyone who was Verne’s friend would have been around during the last dust-up. The only real coincidence was that one of those friends happened to be an info specialist. No,” I said as I saw him reaching for a wallet, “no charge. Not only is Verne a friend, I hardly had to do any work on this one.”

“Still, I thank you, Jason,” Verne said.

His hand on Tai’s arm, Verne and the mysterious visitor disappeared into thin air. I jumped a bit at that, but my mind was distracted by the fact that I’d seen a new and different sparkle in Verne’s eyes as they vanished.

Vampire tears are just like ours.

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 25

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 25

Hayley didn’t know what to say. Vienna was supposed to be civilized, at least by down-time standards. People ought to know better than that. It made her wish she had convinced her parents she should stay in Grantville like Nat. It made her want to correct the boys, explain that horsepower was just a measurement. That there was no magic involved.

Then she heard the giggle. Then all the boys were laughing and Hayley felt like an idiot when she noticed the smaller boys, maybe Brandon’s age. It wasn’t down-timer ignorance but down-timers playing at ignorance in order to entertain little boys. Hayley hadn’t been in Vienna long enough to recognize that the three young men she saw were all wearing the seventeenth-century Vienna equivalent of “college casual.” As it turned out, there were three students from the college of natural philosophy, teasing younger brothers and cousins, while watching the car being put through its paces.

University of Vienna

At the university, Hayley and her mother met with Professor Lorenz, who became very cooperative as soon as he saw the letter from Emperor Ferdinand. Not surprising. He was the king, after all.

Not that Professor Lorenz was particularly uncooperative before that. It was just that before the note he was more interested in picking their brains than helping them find a tutor. The little note from Emperor Ferdinand had given them a good example of their status, both good and bad. Emperor Ferdinand had talked past them the way a German noble would talk past a merchant or a servant. It wasn’t, Hayley thought, intentional cruelty or arrogance. Emperor Ferdinand had simply never learned to talk to people of their rank as people. He asked questions of the air and was interested in the cars and how they worked, and clearly intended that his auto mechanics would have everything they needed to do their jobs well and be happy in their work. But it was almost as though they were extra equipment, accessories to the cars. When Hayley’s father had pointed out that he was going to need a tutor for his daughter and son to continue their education, the king simply had one of the clerks that followed him around make a note of it, as though it were five thousand pounds of gravel for the track or ventilation ducts for the shop. That was the bad, and in all honesty, Hayley wasn’t at all sure how much of that was simply because he was new at the job of king. The good was that by that afternoon they had a note over his seal, instructing the university to see to their needs, i.e. give them whatever they wanted. Emperor Ferdinand wasn’t uncaring, just busy and dealing with the changes since his father’s death.

“Hm,” Doctor Lorenz mused, “Professor Himmler is available but unlikely to be willing to instruct young ladies. Besides he is convinced that Copernicus was a dangerous radical.”

“I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon when I was a child and we’ve all seen the images from probes to the outer planets and, of course, the Hubble space telescope,” Dana Fortney said. “Might he be persuaded by eyewitness accounts?”

“Not even if he was the eyewitness.” Doctor Lorenz smiled. “He’s not stupid, you understand. Just incredibly stubborn. He would find a way to explain it all away. Aristotle said there were crystal spheres, so there are crystal spheres.” Doctor Lorenz looked at Hayley and Brandon. “But if what you’re after is a stern disciplinarian, he might just be prevailed upon.”

Brandon started to speak, but Hayley stepped on his foot. Let Mom handle it was the clear message.

“Tempting as that thought sometimes is,” Dana said with a grin at her kids, “I think we would all be happier with someone more open to new concepts. After all, Brandon and Hayley will both be working from correspondence courses from Grantville.” Dana Fortney left unsaid the fact that much of what the tutor would be expected to teach was going to be concepts utterly new to the seventeenth century, so he was likely as not going to be struggling along only a day or so ahead of his students.

“In that case, I think your best option would be a recent doctor of natural philosophy. He is quite good with boys and interested in the knowledge brought by the Ring of Fire.” Doctor Lorenz hesitated a moment, looking at Hayley. “He is rather young, only twenty-four. He was going to have to leave Vienna to look for work, which would have been a shame because he is working on several experiments with magnets and coils of copper wire. Continuing those experiments would have been more difficult without the facilities of the university.”

For the first time since they’d been introduced, Hayley spoke up. “Are a lot of people leaving Vienna to look for work?”

“Those who can,” Doctor Lorenz said. “Those who have someplace to go.”

Village of Simmering, Austria

Count Amadeus von Eisenberg, Baron Julian von Meklau and several of their friends rode up to the village two days after the cars had made their procession through Vienna. They found a muddy field and a barn that had been roughly converted into housing for the emperor’s car. There was a canvas tent tied to the side of the converted barn that presumably held the other up-time vehicles, the ones owned by the mechanics.

“Show us the 240,” Julian commanded.

“Can’t do it, boys,” said one of the mechanics.

“What? I am Baron Julian von Meklau.”

“Howdy.” The first word was new to Julian, who had some English, but not a great deal. Then the man continued in badly accented German. “I’m Bob Sanderlin. And the 240Z belongs to Emperor Ferdinand III, so you need his permission to drive it, or fiddle with it or even look at it. Shouldn’t be a problem, though. All you gotta do is go back to Vienna and tell the emperor to let you see it, just the way you told me. I’m sure he’ll be in a right hurry to do what you tell him to, you being a baron and all.”

Julian was suddenly quite uncomfortable. He couldn’t back down in front of his friends. At the same time, if he whipped the dog the way he deserved, Julian would certainly incur the emperor’s displeasure.

“Julian,” said Amadeus von Eisenberg, “leave off.”

Julian looked over at Amadeus, but the count wasn’t looking at him or Ron Sanderlin. Instead he was looking at a small window in the barn and at the gun barrel that protruded from it. It was an interesting gun barrel, very well made and colored a sort of dark blue gray. It was a small bore, which was easy to tell because it was pointed right at him.

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 24

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 24

Chapter 10: Outside Vienna

September, 1634

Village of Simmering, Austria

“You know anything about oil wells, Sonny?” Ron Sanderlin passed the well-worn book over and took a seat in the sitting room of the large house that they had been situated in. The house was in the village of Simmering, about three miles from the walls of Vienna and it was where Prince Ferdinand had decided to set up his race track. It was near an imperial hunting lodge established by Maximilian II and there were extensive gardens nearby.

“I know I wish I’d owned one up-time,” Sonny Fortney told him. “But other than that, nada.” One single sentence in the book mentioned that the Matzen oil field was about twelve miles northeast of Vienna and was the largest in Austria. But it didn’t say another thing about it. It was a book on sights to see in and around Vienna and that line was in the vital statistics portion of the book. It didn’t even say whether “largest” referred to land area or barrels of oil.

Ron’s Uncle Bob was shaking his head, indicating he didn’t know either. They had just gotten to Vienna and hadn’t even started Ron’s 240Z. Well, Emperor Ferdinand’s 240Z now. And Janos Drugeth’s uncle, Pal Nadasdy, wanted them to tell him how to get the oil in the Matzen field out of the ground.

“Look, oil drilling is a pretty specialized business,” Sonny said. “And there hasn’t been much along those lines in Grantville since the twenties. Uh . . . the nineteen twenties, I mean. There are a couple of older folks that were kids way back then and a few old books tucked away. But I’m pretty sure there is not a single petroleum geologist in Grantville and that means in the world. The wildcatters, ah, the people who are doing the drilling, are mostly up at the oil fields near Wietze.

“Ron here can get the car up and running, and I can build you a track for it. For that matter, with the help of your local smiths and Bob, I can build you a steam boiler and between us we can build you some steam engines and locomotives. I can survey rail lines for you. But none of us know jack about drilling an oil well. And you’re probably going to need to drill a bunch of them. We’ll ask our families if they know anything about it, but I doubt they do. Failing that, we can probably get a geology cheat sheet to at least give you guys a notion of what to look for.”

Count Nadasdy nodded almost as if he had expected the answer. “Please send your letters to get the . . . geology cheat sheet, was it? In the meantime, it has been proposed that a wooden rail railroad could be built between here and Teschen. Would that be a good idea?”

“Yep. Prince Karl mentioned something about that before we left. Well, more than mentioned. He sent along a bunch of maps. So he got permission, did he? But I don’t remember anything about Teschen. Where is Teschen?”

“It’s in Silesia on the Oder River. The Poles call it Cieszyn. The notion, as it has been proposed, was to form a rail link between the Danube and the Oder and hence between the Baltic and the Black Sea.”

“Yep. That’s the place. I think he called it Cieszyn. Prague would be closer, though,” Sonny said. Not that he really expected Nadasdy to support a railroad from Emperor Ferdinand’s capital to King Al’s. But just to get the reaction.

Count Nadasdy looked like he had just gotten a good whiff of skunk. “Perhaps at some time in the future. For the moment, however, it would not be feasible.”

Sonny nodded. “But Teschen is?”

“Yes. It turns out that Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein, despite his other faults, is prepared to invest a considerable amount in its construction.”

“Well, he’d have the money for it.”

****

The next day, while Ron was getting ready to start the 240Z, Hayley Fortney went with her mother and little brother to the University of Vienna. They were looking for a tutor, mostly for Brandon, but partly for Hayley. It was a warm summer day with white puffy clouds dotting a blue sky and none of it made any impression on Hayley. She still wasn’t happy about ending up in Vienna. She had friends in Grantville and work that interested her. She was the closest thing to a real techie that the Barbies had. She was a steam head and was becoming a tube geek. In Grantville, the new down-time in Grantville, that was perfectly acceptable for a young lady.

In Vienna… She had a dark suspicion that wouldn’t be true. The fact that the city had the oldest university in the German-speaking world, established in 1365, didn’t impress her at all. There was no engineering school anywhere in Vienna, including at the university. The closest thing to it was the college of natural philosophy at the University of Vienna.

She was going to miss her last year at Grantville High and have to make do with correspondence courses and a down-time tutor. It was worse for Brandon. He was doomed to the tutor and correspondence courses for as long as their parents decided to stay here.

Hayley’s mother was interviewing tutors. Her mother, not her, in spite of the fact that Hayley was paying, because Hayley was more than a little tired of being the rich up-timer member of the Barbie Consortium. She was ready to be a teenager again. Sure, the teenage daughter of wealthy parents, but not the wheeler dealer that she had been seen as in Grantville. At the same time, she was finding authority a hard habit to break. She kept wanting to interrupt her mother.

She was following along, listening to her mom talk about the history and beauty of Vienna when Ron Sanderlin started the 240Z. There were three young men and a gaggle of little boys hanging around the track. And Hayley couldn’t help but overhear what they were saying.

“It’s evil spirits that are making the noise.”

“Nay. It’s the herd of horses is doing it.”

“Horses? It can’t be. You can’t see no horses.”

“They have a whole bunch of them, though. Hidden under a magical hood. Makes them invisible, it does.”

“So it’s evil spirits, after all. But they use them to hide the horses.”

 

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 32

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 32

Chapter 32: Upgrades and Relationships

“I must thank you, Jason,” Verne said, surveying the mound of equipment assembled in his dining room. “The advice of an expert is always appreciated.”

Verne had decided to fully enter the fast-approaching twenty-first century, adding telecommunications and computers to his formidable range of resources. I grinned. “No thanks needed. Advising someone on what to buy is always fun, especially when you know that the person in question doesn’t have a limited budget.” One of the workmen looked at me with a question in his eyes. “Oh, yeah. Verne, how many places are you going to want to be able to plug in a computer? I mean to the Ethernet lines.” Extra jacks were a good idea; cable didn’t yet run out to Verne’s house, so at the moment we were going with a dedicated satellite hookup and a LAN on Ethernet through the house.

“Ah, yes. I would say… Hmm. Morgan?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Are any of the staff likely to need such access?”

Morgan smiled slightly. “I would say most of them, sir.” While Verne was modernizing, he was still not quite grasping how much of a change it was going to bring to his household.

Verne sighed theatrically. “Very well, then.” He turned to the workman. “You might as well rewire the entire house, first, second, and third floors, and put two of these Ethernet jacks in every bedroom and study, as well as one here in the living room,” he pointed, “and another three in my office, marked there. Make sure there are also enough phone connections for everyone; several of my staff would like their own private lines.”

Ed Sommer, the head contractor, smiled broadly, obviously thinking of the money involved, and glanced at the plans. “We’ll write up a work order. What about the basement?”

“No need for anything there.”

“Gotcha.”

Sommer cut the work order quickly — I’d recommended his company because of their efficiency, despite the fact that they were the new kids on the block — Verne signed it, and we left the rest of the work in Morgan’s hands. “Coming, Verne? Syl’s out of town on a convention and I’m up for a game of chess if you’re interested.”

He hesitated, the light glinting off the ruby ring he never removed. “Perhaps tomorrow, Jason. All these strangers in the house are upsetting.”

“Then get away from them for a while. Morgan can handle things here. Besides, how could anything upset you?” This was partly a reference to his vampire nature — I’d kinda expect a man who’s umpteen thousands of years old to be comfortable everywhere — but also to his constant old-world calm approach, which was rarely disturbed by anything except major disasters.

“You may be right. Very well, Jason, let us go.”

The night was still fairly young as we got into my new Infiniti. Verne nodded appreciatively. “Moving a bit up in the world, my friend?”

“The only advantage of being attacked by ancient werewolves is that the interview fees alone become impressive. And the publicity for WIS has made sure I’ve got more work than I can handle, even if I do have to turn down about a thousand screwballs a day wanting me to investigate their alien abduction cases. Not to mention that the government groups involved in the ‘Morgantown Incident’ investigation would rather use me as a researcher than an outsider.” I gave a slightly sad smile. “And age, plus being hacked at by werewolves, finally caught up with old Mjolnir.”

“He served you well. Have you named this one yet?”

“Nope. I was thinking of Hugin or Munin — it’s black and shiny like raven feathers.” We pulled out of his driveway and onto the main road into town. We drove for a couple minutes in silence.

“I was not deliberately changing the subject,” Verne said finally. “I understand how you would find it hard to imagine me being disturbed by anything. I was thinking on how to answer you.”

I was momentarily confused, then remembered my earlier comment. It was sometimes disconcerting talking to Verne; his long life made time compress from his point of view, so that a conversation that seemed quite distant to me was still extremely recent for him, and he sometimes forgot that the rest of us didn’t have his manner of thinking.

“You have to remember that one with my… peculiarities rarely can have an actual long-lasting home.” Verne continued. “So instead, one attempts to bring one’s life with one in each move. Rather like a hermit crab, we move from one shell to another, none of them actually being our own, yet being for that time a place of safety. Anything that enters your house, then, may be encroaching on all those things you bring with you — both physical and spiritual. Workmen and such are things beyond my direct control, especially in a society such as this one.”

“Are you afraid they’ll find out about you?”

Verne shrugged, then smiled slightly, his large dark eyes twinkling momentarily in the lights of a passing car. “Not really. Besides the fact that Morgan would be unlikely to miss anyone trying to enter the basement, the basement itself contains little of value for those seeking the unusual; the entrance to the vault and my true sanctum sanctorum is hidden very carefully indeed, and it’s quite difficult to open even if found. And my personal refrigerator in my upstairs room is secured very carefully, as you know well.” Verne referred to the fact that I’d installed the security there myself. “No, Jason. It is simply that my home is the last fading remnant of my own world, even if all that remains there is my memory and a few truly ancient relics. The mass entry of so many people of this world… somehow it once more reminds me how alone I am.”

I pulled into my new garage, built after werewolves nearly whacked me on the way to my car, and shut off the engine. “I understand. But now you’re reaching out to this world, Verne. You’re not alone. If something in your house concerns you, come to mine. I mean it; you were willing to die to protect me and Syl.”

“And you revived my spirit, Jason. I had let myself die in a sense a long time ago; only now am I becoming what I once was.”

The kitchen was warm and well-lighted — I like leaving those lights on — and the aroma of baking Ten Spice Chicken filled the room. I was slightly embarrassed by Verne’s words, but at the same time I knew he meant them. Our first meeting had struck a long-dead chord in him; during our apocalyptic confrontation with Virigar I’d discovered just how much he valued friendship… and how much I valued him. “I’d offer you some, but it’s not quite to your taste.”

“Indeed, though I assure you I appreciate both the thought and the scent; I may be unable to eat ordinary food without pain, but my sense of smell is undiminished…. You still have some of my stock here?”

“Yep.” I reached into the fridge and pitched him a bottle which he caught easily. “I never thought I’d get to the point that I wouldn’t notice a bottle of blood in the fridge any more than I would a can of beer.” Yanking on a potholder, I reached into the oven and pulled out the chicken, coated in honey with a touch of Inner Beauty and Worcestershire sauce and garlic, cilantro, pepper, cardamom, cumin, red pepper, oregano, basil, turmeric, and a pinch of saffron. I put that on the stovetop, pulled out two baked potatoes (crunchy the way I like ‘em) and set the microwave to heat up the formerly frozen vegetables I’d put in there before leaving for Verne’s.

By the time I had my place set, my water glass filled, and the chicken and potatoes on the plate, the veggies were done and I sat down to eat. Verne had poured his scarlet meal into the crystal glass reserved for him and he sat across from me, dressed as usual in the manner one expected a genteel vampire to dress: evening clothes, immaculately pressed, with a sharp contrast between the midnight black of his hair and jacket and the blinding white of his teeth and shirt.

“I haven’t asked you lately — how’s the art business going?”

Verne smiled. “Very well indeed. Expect an invitation from our friend Mr. Hashima in the mail soon, in fact; young Star is recovering nicely, and he will be having an exhibition in New York in a month or so.”

“Great!” I said. “I’m looking forward to it. I was a bit concerned, to be honest — it seemed that he was hemming and hawing about doing anything with you for a while.”

Verne nodded, momentarily pensive. “True. There were some oddities, some reluctance which I do not entirely understand… but it is none of our business, really. What is important is that he and I are now enjoying working together.” He leaned back. “In other related areas, I’m sure you saw the news about Akhenaten being returned to Egypt, but thus far the archaeological world is keeping the other treasures quiet while they’re examining them. Most of the truly unique artworks are already elsewhere, and I confess to feeling quite some relief. As their custodian, it was something of a strain, I came to realize, to have to be concerned about their preservation along with my own whenever I was forced to move.”

“You can’t tell me you’ve emptied that vault?” I asked in surprise.

He laughed. “Hardly, my friend. There are pieces there I keep for beauty’s sake alone, others for historical value, ones which are personally important, and so on. And even of those I would consider selling or donating there remain quite some number; it would be unwise for me to either flood the market, or to risk eliminating one of my major reserves of wealth in case some disaster occurs.”

I couldn’t argue that. “But let’s hope there aren’t any more disasters. I’ve had enough of ‘em.”

“To that I can wholeheartedly agree.”

We finished dinner and went to my living room, where I set up the chessboard. Playing chess was fun, but for us it was more an excuse for staying and talking. Neither Verne nor I tended to feel comfortable “just talking”; we had to be doing something.

“So,” I said after we began, “what did you mean about ‘letting yourself die’ a while back?”

Verne took a deep breath and moved his pawn. As I considered that position, he answered. “Perhaps the first thing I need to do to answer you is to clarify something which I should have done some time ago. I am not a vampire.”

“Huh?”

“Or perhaps I should say, not a vampire in any ordinary sense of the term. True, I drink blood and have a number of supernatural abilities and weaknesses. But these are not the result of being infected by a vampire of any sort. To me, my abilities were a blessing, a gift, not a curse. I am not driven by those impulses that other, more ‘normal’ vampires must follow.”

“So why didn’t you tell me this before?” I decided to continue with the standard opening strategy. Getting fancy with Verne usually resulted in my getting roundly trounced in fifteen or twenty moves. “It does explain a few things — I remember thinking that you seemed to hesitate at times when talking about vampires. But why dance around the subject?”

Verne smiled. “It was much easier to just go with the obvious assumptions, Jason. And by doing so, I minimized the chance of anything being learned that I wished kept secret. And it was much simpler. The word ‘vampire’ can be applied to any one of several sorts of beings, not merely one, and – for the most basic purposes – calling me a ‘vampire’ was and, to some extent still is, sufficient to the moment.” His smile faded. “Your friend Elias… he was of a type which, typically, go mad as they gain their power, until they have grown used to it. They were made in mockery of what I am.”

“And what is that?”

He hesitated, not even seeming to see the board. When he finally answered, his voice was softer, and touched with a faint musical accent unlike any I had ever heard. “A remnant of the greatest days of this world, my friend. In the ending of that time, I was wounded unto death; but I refused to die. I would not die, for there were those who needed me and I would not betray them by failing to reach them, even if that failure was through death itself.

“Perhaps there was something different about me even then, or it was something about the difference between the world that was and the world that is now, for certainly I cannot have been the only man to ever attempt to hold Death at bay with pure will; because I did not die. I rose and staggered onward, to find that my solitary triumph had been in vain.” I heard echoes of pain and rage in his voice, tears he’d shed long ago still bringing a phantom stinging to the eye, a hoarseness to his words.

“Of those who had been my charges, none remained; and all was ruins. But in the moment I would have despaired… She came.” He moved again.

I could hear the capital letter in “She” when he spoke. “She?”

“The Lady Herself.” The accent was stronger now, and I was certain I’d never heard anything quite like it. Not even really close to it. The accent was of a language whose very echoes were gone from this world. Then it was as though a door suddenly closed in his mind, for he glanced up quickly. When he spoke again, the accent was gone, replaced by the faint trace of Central European I was used to. “I’m sorry, Jason. No more.”

“Too painful?”

He looked at me narrowly, his eyes unfathomable. “Too dangerous.”

“To you?”

“No. To you.”

 

Polychrome – Chapter 12

Polychrome – Chapter 12

Chapter 12.

“A True Mortal! That little conniving snip of a Faerie and her father have brought over a True Mortal!” The sky darkened above the Gray Castle as Queen Amanita clenched her fist and muttered a phrase in a language so dark that even Ugu winced. He could understand Amanita’s fear; as a Giantess in her origin, she was vastly more bound to Faerie than even he, for the Herkus were mostly mortal, merely using a magical supplement to gain their supernal strength.

But that was not the only thing driving her current anger. “And read this — THIS! A Prophecy of our defeat!” She whipped out a black blade and drew back her arm for a strike that would have taken the head from the armored figure cowering before her.

Ugu caught her wrist and held it effortlessly, concealing his own trepidation as Amanita’s rage transferred itself to him. “Unhand me, you second-rate sorcerer, or –”

“Peace, Queen Amanita. You allow your anger and, yes, fear, to blind you to the advantages of our position.”

Her other hand had been curling in preparation for casting a transformation — which would have revealed his own protections and possibly precipitated a final conflict that he was very loath to pursue — when his words penetrated. The icy green eyes thawed slightly and she tilted her head in curiosity; he slowly loosed his grip and watched as she sheathed the three-foot ebony blade. “Advantages, my lord? If you see any advantages to their gaining an ally who can ignore even the mightiest sorceries, I am astounded and filled with curiosity, for it seems to me that this is a disaster.”

“Indeed, it could be. But first, let us not punish our best servants for bringing us news we would rather not hear. Instead let us reward Cirrus Dawnglory for his long and perilous service.”

The bowed figure raised his head cautiously. “Thank you, your Majesty. Though I no longer have need of that name.”

“As you will; yet you took his name and identity three centuries agone, and in many ways you have become him.” Ugu had spent many years studying his people — the enslaved of Oz, the collaborators, the elemental spirits forged from his magic and Amanita’s and the souls of particular natives of the Four Countries and the City. He had gained much understanding of the thoughts and feelings behind their actions — enough that he would on occasion privately admit to himself that it was his lack of such understanding which had led to his original defeat, in an almost inevitable manner. Amanita, he suspected, was incapable of such understanding in any but the most superficial and mechanical manner. This might — he hoped — prove one of his advantages, in the end.

He applied this knowledge carefully now. “I am sure that it was not easy to return to us with all you have brought.”

The eyes that met his were wary, fearful, and he could see the shift of glance towards the expectant green-haired Queen. “H…how do you mean, your Majesty?”

“It would be a great wonder, Cirrus, if you could pass centuries at the side of a man so capable and loyal, live in a realm of such beauty, speak words of comfort and advice and friendship, and not have part of the lie become truth. Indeed, I would doubt you could have succeeded in your mission if your entire time in Iris’ realm were naught but pure deception.”

Amanita’s eyes narrowed and her hand twitched again towards her black sword, but his hand stilled her. Part of her still remembers it was I who freed her. For now.

After a moment, the false Cirrus nodded. “I… I did like him, Majesty. It… pained me to betray him in the end.”

“I know it felt like a betrayal, Cirrus. Yet you entered there under our orders, following the imperatives of our kingdom. His own Cirrus did not betray him, but died fighting to the last — a noble death.” He kept his face solemn and respectful; and, in truth, he felt respectful, even if Amanita did not. “You, then, have carried out a terrible and perilous mission for your true sovereigns, despite many temptations. Even Nimbus would understand this difference. You have done well. We will have much need of your counsel in the months ahead; go, rest. Refresh yourself. We shall send for you later.”

Clearly amazed at his good fortune, the false Cirrus — once merely one of the twisted Tempests he had forged from a Gillikin soul — rose, bowed, and departed.

Once the doors had closed and they were alone, Amanita turned a slit-eyed gaze to him. “If you ever interfere with me like that again, I will seriously consider… re-negotiating our bargain, King Ugu. Now explain to me these so-called advantages.”

He prevented himself from either an acid retort or a too-condescending smile. He was coming to realize that Amanita was more volatile and possibly even less sane than he had previously believed. I am tied to her, perhaps by destiny… and I had best be cautious until I have found a way to sever those ties. “The advantages are three, my Queen. Of primary and most overwhelming importance is that — unless our plans have gone terribly awry — not even Iris Mirabilis himself suspects that Cirrus Dawnglory has been an impostor, a creature of ours since almost the day that Oz fell. Had any suspicions of him existed, they would have acted long before now. And the attack and destruction of his patrol was complete; none survived to report back that Cirrus had turned on them, and no other Faerie were within any possible range of perception.

“Thus, what we have learned from him is our secret and ours alone.”

She nodded, slowly. “But a minor advantage unless there is much more gained from this knowledge.”

“And there is.” He smiled coldly. “We have the Prophecy — which prophesies our possible defeat, but also victory, and they do not know this. Can you not see how well this is for us?”

Whether as the isolated Mrs. Yoop or as Queen Amanita, the Yookoohoo had never been said to be stupid. She paused and considered, and her red-lipped smile was as a shard of poisoned ice. “Oh… Oh, my, yes, my King. My sincere apologies. We have here in our grasp the way to our defeat… and if we take care, we can guide our enemies to follow that course until it ends in theirs.”

“Precisely. We must take care that none recognize that we know how our end is foreseen. We must not interfere in any way that would reveal our foreknowledge. React, never act, but prepare, here, for the grand finale that will dash their hopes, shatter their belief in their protection from our powers and their futile hope that the Above shall one day rescue them.” He slowly seated himself in the Gray Throne. “And this very Prophecy also shows that — by describing how it may be used against us — the final ritual we have often discussed would, in fact, give us final and total control over all the power of Oz.”

She laughed, that delighted yet chilling glissando echoing through the throneroom. “And they will be delivering to us that vital ingredient which we were lacking!” She settled back in her own throne, looking much more relaxed, and then glanced back up at him. “You mentioned three advantages, your Majesty. What is the third?”

“The third, my Queen, is the major reason that I not only prevented you from killing Cirrus, but have rewarded him, and intend to continue doing so — and I hope you shall join me in this. Even if we succeed in this grand final ritual, you know full well that it is Iris Mirabilis and his Legions — and the connections that it is said he has to the Above — who will pose the final and greatest threat to our eternal power over Faerie and Mortal lands.

“And here, in Cirrus Dawnglory, we have one who knows every detail of that sky-fortress’ defenses — every door, every wall, every passage obvious and hidden, the tactics and strategies discussed by the Lord of Rainbow and his Head of Hosts, every single aspect of their ways of offense and defense… and they suspect not a bit of this. With his help, we may find that we can send our own warriors into the Rainbow Fortress without even sounding an alarm.”

Her laugh rang out again, and a moment later his own chuckle joined hers.

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 23

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 23

“The emperor!” the royal flunky said haughtily, and Hayley suppressed a grin.

“Where does His Imperial Majesty want us to set up?” her dad asked.

What followed was confusion and irritation for all concerned, till His Majesty, Emperor Ferdinand III, turned up and put matters right. The new emperor was there to meet them. Well, he was there to meet his new car. It was pretty clear that in his mind the mechanics were secondary. He swept in, asked lots of questions and swept out, leaving them in the care of the same official who now had a different attitude and clear directions.

Cars and wagons were unloaded and made a parade through Vienna.

****

Father Wilhelm Germain Lamormaini watched the parade through Vienna and knew that Prince Ferdinand had betrayed both his father and church by hiding his pet up-timers till his father died. Even the father’s death was the fault of the Ring of Fire. It had to be. The histories in the Ring of Fire had Ferdinand II living to 1637.

The Ring of Fire must be an act of great evil, not of the Good Lord, because if God had been a party to it the church would have been warned. No, the very fact that it was a surprise to faith was evidence of its evil nature. The Ring of Fire was an act of the great deceiver. Poison coated in honey to distract the poor and weak-willed from eternal salvation. Satan walked the world as he always had, but his agents — knowing or unknowing — were the up-timers.

Yet everyone was being drawn in by Satan’s trap. Even Pope Urban had elevated the up-time priest Mazzare, making him a prince of the church.

Lamormaini turned back to the Hofburg. He still had his rooms there, but who knew how long that would last? He was no longer the emperor’s confessor and his influence at court was greatly diminished. What was the pope thinking to elevate that up-timer who was no true Catholic? Not if he followed the unholy strictures of Vatican II. There must be something he could do. There must be.

Liechtenstein House, Vienna

“Prince Gundaker, it is good of you to see me.” Father Lamormaini bowed as was the due to a person of Gundaker von Liechtenstein’s status, and perhaps a little more.

“You always gave the old emperor good counsel, Father. And I, for one, miss it.” The prince gestured Father Lamormaini to a chair with fine condescension.

“Thank you, Your Serene Highness. It is always good to hear that one’s counsel is appreciated and it’s something I have heard little of late. All I wish is that I didn’t feel that the restoration of Europe to the true faith hadn’t suffered a severe blow when the Ring of Fire happened. It has cast doubt on all our goals as I am increasingly convinced was its intent.”

“You do not believe that it was an act of God?”

“No. I can’t convince myself that God would force us into such a state of doubt. The effect of that event was to separate the wheat from the chaff. There will be an answer in Jerusalem. I think that the six mile circle is the beast itself. Six miles across in height, six miles across in width, and six miles across in length. A perfect sphere of evil to counter the celestial spheres of which it denies the existence.”

Father Lamormaini stopped in sudden realization. He had not thought of that before. He had had a feeling of evil from the place and what it stood for from the moment that he had heard of it. The notion of Catholic and heretic living together in peace was a betrayal of faith so basic as to demand abhorrence from any person who truly sought God’s grace. But until just now, he had never realized that the Bible actually spoke of the place, recorded its evil for those with eyes to see. But there it was.

Prince Gundaker was staring at him in horror. “How could you fail to report this to the Holy See? How could you fail to report it to the old emperor?”

“I failed to see it, Your Serene Highness. I failed to see it till just this moment. The words came out of my mouth before their meaning reached me. They came out of my knowledge of mathematics and they were so simple, so straightforward, that I am shocked that we didn’t see it from the beginning. All of us should have seen it from the very first. The radius of the sphere was three miles, the diameter six. But it was called the Ring of Fire, not the Sphere of Fire. So the terms were wrong. A ring with a radius of three miles. What of six six six is in that? The devil was subtle, but God was more subtle still, and gave us a warning . . . if we had the native wit to see it.

“The American dollar. It rapidly comes to pass that you cannot buy or sell without possession of American dollars. Yet what are they? They are not gold or silver, not even copper or iron. No. They are just marks on paper. As Revelations warned us, it has come to pass that to buy or sell you must be possessed of those marks on paper.”

****

Gundaker wasn’t convinced that Father Lamormaini was correct . . . but it was a worrying thought. He decided that he would put a watch on the up-timers.

 

The Savior – Snippet 35

This book should be available now, so this is the last snippet.

The Savior – Snippet 35

Abel could hear the sound of men screaming above. It seemed burst metal cannons made their own deadly shrapnel.

The remainder of his companies passed without incident. But now that the enemy knew they were headed up the Manahatet Valley, he had to hurry. He knew there must be wigwag between Sentinel and Tamarak. The other fort would be on the lookout for them, training their guns down into the narrow valley. Which is what he wanted.

Abel had no intention of continuing along the valley floor to make a target for them, but he needed a diversion to occupy the other fort’s attention.

“Timon, get Landry over here.”

* * *

“I first heard about it from an old Scout,” Landry Hoster told Abel. “They found it out when they were making those nishterlaub lucifers they love to carry around with them in the Redlands.”

Abel’s hand strayed down to the pack of lucifers in his tunic pocket. Old Scout habits never died.

“Then, as you know, the damn thing nearly got me kicked out of the Academy.”

Abel remembered: the entire level of student quarters had been enveloped that day by thick smoke streaming from Cadet Hoster’s rooms.

“I was worried they were going to hang you for heresy,” Abel said.

“Nah, but the priests tried to expel me. Got called up to the Tabernacle review court, all that mess.”

“And yet you walked out of there a free man, and whistling that annoying Delta jig you like.”

“‘Veronica’s Barrel.’ Twice-damn right I was.” Landry stood a moment as if remembering the song, then spoke. “They found me innocent of incitement to immorality. Case closed.”

“You were guilty by every Thursday school lesson I’ve ever sat through.”

Landry nodded. “It was Goldfrank.”

“The Abbot?”

“The very same,” Landry replied, shaking his head in disbelief still.

This was something Abel had not known.

“The Chief Priest of Zentrum? He let you off?”

“He said no particular part of what I’d done involved nishterlaub. The fact that I’d made a stink and a spectacle wasn’t the matter at hand. He said it was up to him to decide if what my ingredients made when I put them together was nishterlaub. That was the only call the court could make.” Landry nodded. “And the guy let me off.”

“On a technicality.”

“Hey, I was glad to take what I could get.” Landry unconsciously fingered his unhung neck and shuffled to a more comfortable position in his saddle. “Anyway, I saved up my barter chits and made an even bigger one. Then you and I and Timon took it out to those wastelands you like to wander around in.”

“The Giants.”

“Hate that place. Creepy. But good for the purpose.”

It was a region north of Lindron of enormous stone blocks cut through with a crazed grid of gullies, and rock lying on rock.

The largest original settlement on Duisberg. A city of five hundred thousand people in its day, Center had told Abel. Transformed by the nano-plague of the Collapse into solid rock. The towers, no longer supported by concretized steel, toppled over, giving the area the appearance of an enormous battlefield filled with fallen warriors, each a colossus. This is likely where the name originated.

The perfect place to conduct a secret pyrotechnic experiment and not get caught.

“Timon said he was coming along to make sure we kept Edict, but I know he wanted to see something go boom.”

“Yes. He was disappointed it didn’t make more sound.”

“This one’s going to be bigger.” Landry’s grin became a smile of happiness. “This will be the biggest ever.”

* * *

The wagon floor was layered with percussion caps. Over this, Landry’s engineers sprinkled soda ash, a product otherwise brought along for gun cleaning. Then another layer of caps was laid down, each soldier in the brigade contributing half of the caps from his own cartridge box. This would, of course, cut in half the number of shots available for each soldier on the campaign. Couldn’t be helped.

Over this material, Lowry sprinkled several sacks of granulated Delta cane sugar. It was precious stuff, and the few nonengineer soldiers whom Landry ordered to help were agog at the seeming waste. Landry’s engineers, however, knew exactly what they were doing, and they poured the sugar with a cheerfully unconcerned attitude.

A final layer of soda about a thumb’s-length deep was poured over the second layer of caps. Then, from openings he’d careful drilled in the bottom of the wagon, Landry ignited his “infernal device,” as he called it. He took sticks as small as kindling wood from a prepared fire and slowly worked them into the bottom of the wagon through his access points. He’d laid a layer of ground moss on the very bottom to elevate the lower layer of caps enough to have some — but not much — air flow under them. The kindling ignited the moss, which smoldered rather than burned. The kindling coals and smoldering moss slowly heated the caps, setting off a slow burn in the powder inside them. They expanded, crackled open, spewing their innards into the soda ash. The tiny, slow fires in each cap produced smoke that must travel upward and escape. As it did so, the vapors combined with the soda ash and grew many times thicker. The vapors finally emerged on the top of the layers as a dense gray smoke, and lots of it.

Potassium chloride, bicarbonate of soda, sucrose. The recipe for an effective smoke maker, Center said.

“Get on!” said Landry to the team of daks harnessed to the wagon. They leaned into their traces, snorted dak snot from their blowholes, and lumbered forward, pulling the smoking wagon north along the Ferry Road. He and his command staff sergeant rode the seatboard and, if all went well, would be the only ones fully exposed to enemy fire.

Abel gazed up at the fortifications of Tamarak on the peak behind Sentinel. He detected the glint of two large guns, brighter even than the gleam from the assembled musketry.

More cannons?

Yes.

This will be interesting.

The smoke from the wagon was pleasingly thick — thicker than any River fog Abel had ever seen. The contraption trundled along at the speed of the lumbering daks. The company sergeants ordered their troops up and, company by company, the Third made a quick march behind the smoke wagon.

The wind was light. The wagon’s smoke hung over roadbed. There should be no way anyone above would be able to see through it to locate individual men or even bunched units.

It didn’t take the commanders at Fort Tamarak long to realize this. The only choice was indiscriminate fire. This they laid down in volley after volley. The smoke wagon continued down the road.

Now the cannons above — there appeared to be two — were levered downward, lined up with where the Road would usually be had it not be covered by smoke, and fired. Ball after ball smashed into the roadway. Some balls were hollowed out, filled with gunpowder, and had fuses set within them. When these exploded, they might take out dozens of men at a time if they landed in an unlucky spot.

Fortunately, every spot was lucky, for there were no men in the smoke. For the Third was marching into the miasma, and then, after the distance of a fieldmarch, they moved off the road and sat tight. Rank after rank marched in — and sat down.

Farther along the road, minié balls, cannons, and fused balls flew into the smoke like a swarm of biting insectoids. Explosion after explosion lit up the thick billows with flashes of fire. But the explosions did not disperse it.

And they did not reveal that the enemy was shooting at absolutely nothing.

Under the smoke, the road was empty.

Tamarak, of course, took potshots at the smoke wagon. One lucky shot passed over the smoke wagon and almost hit Landry’s staff sergeant, but the man happened to be bending down to recover a dropped rein at the time, and it flew past.

While Landry was preparing his device, Abel had sent his mounted scouts — about ten in all — up the flank of the ridge that connected Sentinel with Tamarak peak, and now they’d returned.

He and Rigga, his Scout commander, conferred on the road at the base of the ridge as the last of the Third disappeared into the smoke.

“You were right, Colonel,” said Rigga — he was another of the Cascade reserve Goldies serving in the Third. Rigga was gasping from the hard-riding dash up the hill and back again. His dont, too, was wheezing through its breathing hole. Abel stayed far enough back to avoid the mucus. Dont snot was acidic and could burn flesh — not badly, but enough to hurt. Rigga gathered his breath and continued.

“There’s a good path along the ridge top, all right. Wide enough for two wagons. It connects the two forts.”

“Good,” said Abel. “Anything else?”

“Well, the whole place is a graveyard.”

“Say again.”

“All along the ridge saddle, and up the two slopes it connects, pretty far up. Gravestones. Hundreds of them, all facing south I guess toward Zentrum. Some high as a man. Maybe thousands of them, now that I consider it. Looks like the whole of Progar gets themselves buried there.”

“Interesting,” Abel said. He turned to Timon. “Major Athanaskew, get the men roused and moving up the ridge. And let them know they’re to take cover when they get to the top.”

“Take cover where, Colonel?” said Timon.

“You deliver the message and I’ll provide the cover,” Abel answered.

A sea of gravestones, some high as a man. Perfect.

 

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 31

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 31

Part IV: Viewed in a Harsh Light

June, 2000

Chapter 31: Presentations in High Places

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “Considering that werewolves weren’t even seriously considered to exist until a few weeks ago, how exactly would it be ‘obvious for anyone skilled in the art’ to combine these elements to detect a werewolf?”

“Hey, I’m on your side, remember?” my patent attorney, John Huffman, said. “The examiner’s pointing to prior art that involves combining infrared and visible to detect living creatures and discriminate them from non-living objects. The argument is that anyone presented with the existence of werewolves and who was skilled in the art would have tried the same thing.”

I snorted. “So what are our options?”

“Well, we can try to modify the claims slightly to include some of the dependent claims; he indicates some of the other work might be innovative.”

“I’m not weakening this basic patent. What’s the other options?”

“We have to file a formal challenge of his evaluation, specifically obviousness. That’s going to be an uphill battle, though.”

“I’ve fought uphill battles before; I’m not backing up on this one. It was not obvious. This took me getting information about them–from sources most people wouldn’t have–and making either shrewd deductions or a couple wild-ass guesses, depending on how you look at it, to come up with that design. Either way means it’s not obvious.”

He grinned. “I agree. And to be honest, I don’t get to try this kind of fight very often.”

I saw a blinking light on my desktop monitor. “Okay, John, thanks. Sorry to cut you off, but I’ve got to go catch a plane.”

I wasn’t unfamiliar with flying, but the VIP treatment–and the fact that someone else was footing the bill–made this flight a little more pleasant. I was disconcerted, however, by seeing a mob of reporters waiting at the gate when I deplaned. I was able to dodge them in Albany–I know the right people–but no chance here.

I ignored the barrage of questions–ranging from the inanely obvious “Are you here for the Werewolf Hearings?” to one guy from one of the fringe outlets asking if I’d heard anything from the Vampire Council–and made my way past them.

Three men in suits seemed to materialize from the crowd; two of them flanked me and slowed the pursuit by the press as the third nodded to me and said “Mr. Wood? Please follow me. We’ve got a car waiting.”

“I kinda assumed you would. Good coordination with your friends there, Mr…?”

“Special Agent Colin Marsh,” he said, guiding me through the maze of the airport. “Thanks. I approve of the free press, I just wish they’d be free somewhere it didn’t hold up traffic.” He glanced at me. “Of course, if you kept a lower profile…”

I shrugged. “I guess I could turn down very large sums of money for television appearances to tell people about something that’s totally blown their minds, but while I wasn’t ever broke I wasn’t rich before, either.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” he conceded.

The waiting vehicle was a classic black limousine–though not quite as posh as one of Verne’s–and pulled away from the curb smoothly with only a purring hum of the engine. “So we’re headed to the Capitol?”

“Not really,” said one of the others. “Agent Jake Finn, Mr. Wood.”

“Glad to meet you, Agent Finn. But I thought –”

“Oh, the public info says that’s where the meeting is, and we’re sure letting it look that way, but completely securing the Capitol Building the way it is? That’s a bitch and a half–sorry for the language–and it’d really interfere with other operations. So we’re actually meeting somewhere else.”

That made sense. “So we’ll seem to drive to the Capitol, but then, what, switch cars?”

He grinned. “Not that complicated. We can go into an underground garage, then take an exit to a different street and continue on.”

It was, in fact, that easy, and about fifteen minutes after that maneuver we pulled into a different underground parking area that was across the river in the Crystal City area near Alexandria. We then walked across to one of several relatively nondescript looking buildings and entered.

A security and guardpost was set up just past the main entrance, completely preventing anyone from getting into the building proper without going through it. A familiar face was waiting there. “Hey, Jeri.”

Agent Jeri Winthrope nodded. “Mr. Wood, glad you made it. You’ll have to go through the security screening before you go any farther, though.”

I went towards the little archway they had set up, which looked something like a metal detector. “Okay, what do I do?”

Three MPs stepped forward. Two aimed rifles directly at my head, one on either side; I noticed my escorts clearing the line of fire. The third man stepped up. “Hold up your hands, Mr. Wood.”

I blinked, but did so. Having rifles ready to blow your brains out encourages compliance with simple instructions. The MP took each hand, examined it carefully front and back and scraped it with something that looked like an emery board–probably was an emery board — and then stepped back. “On your left and right you will see a metal cylinder. Please pick up each cylinder and hold it tightly. It is very important that you make good contact with both cylinders, sir.”

The way he said very, and the way he now raised his weapon and his companions took a breath and steadied their stances, made me suspect that I was the one it was most important to.

The silver cylinders were each attached to a retractable cable that went into the booth walls. I grinned suddenly. “Oh, I get it. Very clever.” I squeezed both tightly. “That should work, and pretty hard to get around.”

After about ten seconds someone off to the side gestured and the MP’s went to “at ease” stance. “All clear, sir. Welcome to the conference, Mr. Wood.”

“Thanks,” I said, not without some considerable relief. “So why that particular test, Jeri? I mean, you could’ve used some silver-based drops or something.”

She gestured for me to follow. “Yes, we could, but if you add other materials to the mix there’s a chance of reacting to those materials; the chemical mess you hit Virigar with would poison a human being anyway, and some people would break out in a rash if exposed. We wanted pure silver, since there’s no documented cases of actual silver (as opposed to silver alloy) allergies; that way if the person holding it reacted at all funny, we could be pretty sure we had a Wolf.”

I nodded. “And the cables there mean you’ve got it hooked to something–resistivity, capacitance, something–that tells you whether the person’s actually making contact with the metal. Emery board takes a sample, scratches any coatings on the hands. Nice.” I glanced back, made out the logo above the rear side of the booth. “Oh, of course. Shadowgard Tech. Smart outfit. It’s a good stopgap, though you need something better in the long run. I can figure ways to scam this.”

She grimaced. “You’re kidding. That fast?”

“I’ve been thinking about this problem longer than anyone else. Maybe I’ll give Shadowgard a call; I’ll need someone with experience in the security industry to market my solution, and if we improve their design there a bit it’ll be a good supporting solution for mine.” I looked at her. “Now, everyone who comes into the building goes through that procedure?”

“Including the people manning that barricade, yes.”

I whistled. “And some of the people coming in here are awfully… high up, I’d bet. Caught any?”

She grimaced. “Three so far. Fortunately, looks like after Morgantown they’re trying to be at least a little circumspect; all of the human beings they were duplicating turned out to be alive. A couple of the guards present when they were unmasked… weren’t so lucky.” She nodded to the guards at a set of double doors and ushered me in. “Still, it provided a lot of urgency to the meeting –”

“Especially,” said a very familiar voice with a Texan twang, “since one of them was my friend Sal Battaglia, the Speaker of the House.”

I stared for a moment. I’m not normally prone to anything approaching stage fright, and I’d been interviewed a lot in the last couple of weeks, but this was something way out of my normal league. At the head of the meeting table was the President of the United States, Rexford Aisley Ash the Second, and seated near him was most of his cabinet–plus enough military men–some from other countries–that the room had, as a friend of mine might have put it, “More stars than Hollywood and more scrambled eggs than a truckstop diner.”

Not being a military man myself I didn’t salute, but I did immediately walk up to the President. “A great honor to meet you, Mr. President.”

His grip was firm but not too tight–a classic politician’s handclasp. “Oh, much more my honor, Mr. Wood. You’ve managed to turn this country upside down more than I’ve managed yet. Please, take your seat–it’s down at the far end, opposite me.”

As I did so, I realized everyone was continuing to look at me, and the President stood again. “Well, everyone, our guest of honor’s here, and I’m sure we’re all ready to hear what he has to say. Mr. Wood, you read the briefing materials?”

I swallowed and took a breath. I thought I’d just be one person they were talking to, not the only star of the darn show. “Yes, sir. You’re working on just how we respond to a threat we never realized existed, and so you want me to give my views on the situation. I’ve prepared a presentation, and you can ask questions afterwards.”

He nodded. “All right, then–let’s get started.”

I gave a quick summary of who I was–before all this mess, at least–and then went over the events that led to what the papers and newscasts were now calling “the Morgantown Incident”. This was a careful blend of fact and fiction, but I was reasonably confident it would hold up because Jeri Winthrope had worked with me and Verne to make the story hold water a lot better than the old vampire coverup.

“So,” one of the military types–a General Jean Bravaias, a woman with gray-sprinkled sandy hair–said after some questioning, “you were able to see these creatures–sort them out from regular people–by using this viewer you built, right? What’s the range?”

I waggled my hand from side to side. “Hard to say, General. What little field experience I got showed that my jury-rigged gadget gave me maybe fifteen, twenty feet, but the real limit’s a combination of imager resolution and sensitivity through atmosphere. I’d already gotten that particular infrared camera heavily customized for absolute minimum noise, so I don’t know if you could really improve on that all that much; you’re looking for patterns of heat that are very, very small scale and intensity, combined with some emissions on the UV band, but those are really small. Maybe thirty, thirty-five feet at the outside.”

“Still,” she said, “that’s one hell of a lot better than what we’ve got now, which is somehow getting the target to be in contact with silver directly, then observing the reaction. If we don’t have people right there, watching, a smart man–or…” she hesitated, as many did, “… werewolf, could figure out ways to look like they were carrying out the instructions and actually avoid it. But with people that close… well, they get killed.”

“Well,” said another person–someone from the CIA, I thought, “couldn’t we just give the guards better armor? I’d think –”

“Mr…” I squinted, “… Rosedale, have you ever actually seen a Werewolf?”

“Well, I’ve seen the pictures, but… no.”

I looked around. “How many people here have actually seen one?”

Besides my own hand, Jeri’s went up. Out of fifty other people in the room, only one went up; I guessed that was someone who’d been there when they caught one of the three trying to get into this building. “Then you–all of you–need to really get into your heads what you’re dealing with.” I reached into my bag and found the slender sheath, grasped what was inside carefully. “The average Wolf–when not pretending to be human–stands eight feet high and weighs over five hundred pounds. As my own experience shows, they are capable of sprinting speeds in excess of sixty miles per hour–as fast as the fastest land animal known.

“As for armor,” I continued, and with a practiced flick of my hand I sent something sparkling through the air, to land with a chunk! in the conference table. “Take a look at that.”

Standing up at an angle from the shining wood of the table, vibrating slightly with a faint, chiming hum that was fading away, was a sparkling transparent curved object measuring almost nine inches long. “That is one claw–a hand claw, I think–from an average werewolf. As you can see, I threw that thing very gently, just a flick of my wrist, and it’s buried itself about two inches into the hardwood of the table. I mentioned that my car happens to be armored; when I checked it after my encounter with Virigar, I found that the one that had tried to grab onto my car had cut nearly through the armor in four separate places. And this was with almost no chance to grab and establish purchase.”

I clicked my presentation back to the sketch of a werewolf. “Unfortunately I don’t have any good photos of these things. But I want you to look at that claw, then realize that these,” I pointed to the claws on the sketch, “are what you’re looking at. This is a creature that can outrace a car on anything except a straightaway, that has claws that can cut through anything we have like butter, that’s strong enough to lift one end of an armored car clear from the ground, and that probably has other tricks they didn’t show us this time around, because they’re kinda rusty at this kind of thing.

“And they can look and act exactly like anyone on Earth.”

Faces were noticeably paler around the table. General Bravaias reached out and very carefully pulled the claw free, studying it. “What is this thing made of?”

“We don’t really know, exactly. It’s something like diamond–it’s mostly carbon, anyway–but it doesn’t shatter anything like diamond; it’s almost unbreakable, whether we’re talking impacts, compression, tension, or torque. Right now the guess it’s some form of carbon with an unknown microstructure, but exactly what that microstructure is we won’t know until we get a detailed X-ray crystallographic scan on it–if that works.”

She nodded, then passed the claw back down to me. “In any case, this just makes it clearer that we really need your sensing devices. Yes, I know that’s slightly outside of this meeting’s purpose –”

“Don’t you worry about that, Jean,” said the President. “This is definitely a high priority. Mr. Wood, I’d like to make sure our major installations are protected by these, er…”

“Cry Wolf sensors,” I said with a grin. “That’s the name I want to call them, anyway.”

He laughed. “Let’s hope they don’t “cry wolf” too often, huh? Anyway, I’d like to make sure that happens as soon as possible.”

Hm. That gives me an idea. “Well, sir, I’d be glad to give the government a license on the technology and all, like you get for things like SBIR contracts, but right now I’m getting held up in the patent office…”

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 22

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 22

“But they couldn’t buy it,” Mrs. Sanderlin said. “They didn’t have the money.”

“But they could buy shirts easier than they could buy shirt factories. They could buy cars easier than they could buy car factories.”

Hayley’s memories of up-time were starting to get more than a little vague. Three and a half years is a much higher percentage of a teenager’s life than the life of her parents. But here, experience in down-time business was fresh. “Competition?” she asked doubtfully. “Competition isn’t that much of a problem, Dad. There is always more market than product to fill it.”

“Selling up-time products down-time, sure,” Sonny told her. “But up-time the competition of established industries was a real problem for start-ups.”

They continued to talk about the meaning of opportunity and the effect of the Ring of Fire.

****

“Here you go, Mrs. Simpson,” Brandon Fortney said as he poured some grain into the bird’s food dish. Mrs. Simpson was his favorite Rhode Island Red and was normally a good layer, but she was upset by the move. Brandon had four dozen fertilized eggs in a Rosin Foam incubator, a Rhode Island Red rooster, Captain Jack, and another hen, Eliza, also a Rhodie. He hoped that would be enough to establish a good up-time laying flock in Vienna. Meanwhile, the hens weren’t laying, and though he knew it was probably just the trip, it still worried him.

Well, that, and the whole business of heating water for the hot water bottles that had to be in the incubator. That was really a hassle on the road, but he had managed.

Once he was done with the chickens, he moved to the rabbit hutches. He had a pair of Satins, which had a good growth rate and a good meat to bone ratio. Some girls might make those silly Angora rabbits into pets, but in Brandon’s mind, you took care of the animals you intended to eat, only it didn’t pay to get sentimental about them. Besides, his big sister Hayley was rich and it was embarrassing not to have a business of his own. Animal husbandry was all he had been able to come up with, since there didn’t appear to be a lot of money in entomology.

Brandon sighed over that. He had a great bug collection and it was utterly unfair that Hayley’s Barbies had been worth so much more than his bugs. He’d been afraid that Mom and Dad might make him leave it in Grantville, since they were so concerned over weight. And honestly, on the overland trip before they got to the Danube, he had almost regretted bringing the bugs. They had a whole wagon train just of their stuff, not including the cars for the Austrian prince guy. But now that they were on the river, it was a lot easier. He had more time to take care of the chickens and rabbits, which was a good thing because it was getting real close to time for the eggs to hatch. It had taken them longer to get to the river than they expected, and then they had sat in Regensburg for a week, waiting for word that it was all right to come ahead. He was pretty sure the eggs were going to hatch before they got to Vienna. They were moving a lot faster now that they were on the river, but it was still only about nine miles an hour. They would still be on the river when they hatched, not situated in Vienna, according to plan. That was going to be another problem. The chicks would have to be kept warm, fed, and watered.

****

The next day Brandon’s concern became fact as the eggs started hatching. Before they reached Vienna, he had thirty-eight chicks. There were chicken sexers in Grantville now, but Brandon wasn’t one of them. The chicks would have to wait till they got older before he would know how many of each sort he had. He hoped for more hens than roosters, but it would probably be about even. Meanwhile he had all those chicks to take care of in circumstances that were hardly ideal.

“Brandon! When is that chicken pen going to be ready?” Dana Fortney was trying to sound severe, but it was hard. First, the chicks were cute as buttons. Chicks usually are. Second, it was hardly Brandon’s fault that the trip had taken longer than expected. He had expected to be in Vienna when they hatched. Meanwhile, he had hired one of the boatmen to help him weave a fence out of tree branches and currently had boxes containing the chicks. Well, almost containing the chicks.

Docks, Vienna, Austria

The barges pulled up to Vienna carrying two cars and several tons of up-time or up-time designed goods. They were met at the docks by a royal factotum. Who set about organizing the transport of the cars through Vienna and out to what would become the race track. Oh, and the rest of them too.

“Chicks?” the official said, in slightly offended tones. “Why on Earth did you people bring chickens? We have chickens. What do we need with up-time chickens?”

“Not like my chickens, you don’t,” Brandon said stoutly. “My chickens lay bigger eggs and more of them. They are also bigger than your chickens, more meat. And they are my chickens, not yours. We just need a coop to hold them.”

“We have the cars, the prince’s 240Z,” Bob Sanderlin said. “And ours as well, but there isn’t a lot of room for them here in the city. I doubt the 240Z could get through a lot of your streets. They ain’t wide enough.”

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 21

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 21

Chapter 9: Rollin’ on the River

September, 1634

Regensburg

“Emperor Ferdinand II has died and Vienna mourns, but it is time for us to move,” Istvan Janoszi said.

“It’s weird,” Hayley whispered to her father as Janoszi turned away. “He was . . . I don’t know . . . the bad guy. Ferdinand II signed the Edict of Restitution that has been the justification for so much war and out and out banditry that it had, halfway trashed central Germany before the Ring of Fire.”

“I know what you mean, Hayley, but go light on the bad guy part of that thought once we get to Vienna. For that matter, go light on it here. Because he was their emperor and whatever their politics, there will be a hole in the heart of most of Austria for a while.”

Hayley nodded. After that, everything went smoothly for the rest of the trip to Vienna. Sonny’s little steam engine barely produced enough way for steering. On the other hand, they were going downriver, so the current was with them.

On the Danube

“Honestly, Hayley, I don’t understand how you girls managed to get rich,” Mrs. Sanderlin said as they were steaming down the Danube the first evening out of Regensburg. Hayley looked at the shore going by, muddy banks and green grass with a small herd of cattle coming down to the river’s edge to drink. The chug-chug of the steam engine made a background to the conversation. The question had come up before and there were standard answers that Hayley and the rest of the Barbies had put together.

“We didn’t have anything else to do,” was the one that Hayley used this time, but Mrs. Sanderlin’s look suggested that she wasn’t going to let it go at that.

“Well, it’s true,” Hayley insisted. “Right after the Ring of Fire, everyone was busy and no one had much money. Then Judy found out about Mrs. Higgins’ doll collection selling for so much. We didn’t have anything like that many dolls, but we had some. And . . . well, everyone — and I do mean everyone — in Grantville was really busy. There was a lot of ‘just take care of yourself, kids’ right around then. As long as we weren’t getting in trouble, our parents had other stuff on their minds. Some of the kids in Grantville got in trouble just for the attention, but most were trying to pitch in in some way. Our way was to take our doll money and invest it. We didn’t know all that much about investing, but we got some good advice from Mrs. Gundelfinger and from Judy’s parents and sister.”

“So you had the advice of Helene Gundelfinger, the Secretary of the Treasury for the USE and a renowned scholar of economics who works for the USE Federal Reserve Bank? No wonder you got rich.”

“Not to mention Karl Schmidt, David Bartley, Franz Kuntz, and half a dozen other members of what has become the financial elite of the State of Thuringia-Franconia and the USE,” Hayley admitted with a grin. “The real question is: with all that good advice why aren’t we richer?”

Mrs. Sanderlin looked at Hayley for a minute, then shook her head. “No, it’s not, Hayley. The real question is: how did a small West Virginia coal-mining town have Mike Stearns and Ed Piazza. How did it have Fletcher Wendell and Tony Adducci, not to mention David Bartley, the Stone family, Doctor Nichols and all the rest? One or two, sure. But dozens, even hundreds?”

“I’ve asked myself that question every day for the last year and a half or more,” Sonny Fortney interrupted their conversation.

“Any answers, Dad?” Hayley asked.

“The best I can come up with is ‘people rise to the occasion.’ Or, put another way, ‘talent is a lot more common and opportunity to express it a lot less common than we tend to think.’”

“I’m not sure it’s just opportunity,” Hayley said. “I think it’s need too.”

“Maybe, darlin’, but you and your young friends argue for it just being opportunity. You didn’t need to become investors. You could have just sold your dolls and bought dresses. A lot of kids did. Which, I guess, argues against my point.”

“It doesn’t matter, Sonny.” Mrs. Sanderlin bit her lip in concentration. “Even if only ten percent took advantage of the opportunity when it happened, that’s still a lot more talent than we expect. Or at least than we expected, up-time. How many inventors, statesmen, businessmen and entrepreneurs were washing dishes and sweeping floors up-time? Because there wasn’t an opportunity for them to shine.”

“Down-time was no different. Even worse, probably,” Hayley said. “Look at Karl Schmidt. Without the Ring of Fire he would never have been anything but the owner of a minor foundry in a small town. Anna Baum would still be spinning thread at starvation wages if she hadn’t actually starved by now. Or Mrs. Gundelfinger. Well, she might have owned her shop, but never much more than that, I think.”

“So how did the Ring of Fire change things?” Mrs. Sanderlin asked. When Hayley and Sonny Fortney looked at her in confusion, she tried to explain. “Look, up-time America and Europe had all this stuff and Africa and South America didn’t. So it can’t be just the know-how, otherwise Peru would be building super jets and Zambia or wherever would be building rocket ships and computers. I mean, they could even order the parts that they couldn’t make themselves.”

“I think that may be the key,” Sonny said after a little thought. Looking out over the Danube as the sun slowly set. “They could buy it. They didn’t need to build it.”