1635: THE EASTERN FRONT
Eric Flint

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. 

Copyright © 2010 by Eric Flint

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com

ISBN10: 1-4391-3389-1
ISBN13: 978-1-4391-3389-7

Cover art by Tom Kidd

First printing, October 2010

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data t/k

Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America
 
The Ring of Fire series:
1632 by Eric Flint
1633 by Eric Flint & David Weber
1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint & David Weber
Ring of Fire ed. by Eric Flint
1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis
1634: The Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint with Virginia DeMarce et al.
1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce
1635: The Cannon Law by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis
Ring of Fire II ed. by Eric Flint 
1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce
Grantville Gazette ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette II ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette III ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette IV ed. by Eric Flint 
Grantville Gazette V ed. by Eric Flint 

Time Spike by Eric Flint & Marilyn Kosmatka

PART I
June, 1635
The fever of the world
Chapter 1
After they'd completed the grand tour—Michael's phrase; and a disturbingly appropriate one—of their new home, and had returned to the entrance foyer, Rebecca looked around. Her gaze was simultaneously uncertain, dubious, apprehensive, wary, skittish . . .
She tried to avoid the term "covetous." Not . . . entirely successfully. Compared to the modest working-class house owned by the Stearns family in Grantville, much less the rather cramped apartments Rebecca and Michael had been occupying since they moved to Magdeburg, this house was both immense and luxurious. In truth, it was more in the way of a mansion than a house, if not a manor as such. The building was immediately adjacent to its neighbors and had almost no yard; what the up-timers called a townhouse. But by the inner city standards of Magdeburg it was as close to a mansion as you could get, short of an outright palace. 
The very foyer she was standing in exemplified her mixed feelings. The "foyer" in Mike's house in Grantville had been a simple entry vestibule, just large enough to provide the house with a heat trap in winter and hang some coats. The foyer in this house bore a closer resemblance to the hall of an auditorium. You could hold a fairly large party in this space. 
Andrew Short came into the foyer from a side door that led to the rooms in the back of the house. "Splendid field of fire," he announced, giving the area a sweeping gaze that had none of Rebecca's doubts and anxieties. He was actually rubbing his hands! 
"There's no way in except through that door"—he jabbed a forefinger at the main entrance—"and the service entrance in the rear. And anyone who tries to come through here, we'll slaughter the bastards. Assuming they get in at all."
Rebecca studied the entrance in question. For all its ornate decorations, the "door" looked like it belonged in a castle. It was a double door, huge, made of solid oak further braced with iron, and seemed to have enough in the way of locks and latches to sink a rowboat—not to mention the heavy crossbar resting nearby, that could be added in a pinch. The "service entrance" in the back was similar in design and construction, if smaller and completely utilitarian. 
There were no other entrances on the ground floor of the mansion. Rebecca had been struck by that: not so much as a single window. Not even a barred one, or an old-style arrow slit. Anyone attempting to assault the house would either have to smash down the heavy doors, blow a hole in the thick stonework of the walls, or scale the second floor using ladders. And those windows were barred. True, the bars were tastefully designed. They were also thick and too closely spaced for a human body to pass through.
For all practical purposes, their new home was an urban fortress. That was hardly surprising, since it had been planned and built with that purpose in mind. As a possibility, if nothing else. Michael Stearns had known for more than a year that he'd eventually be leaving Magdeburg for long stretches of time, and he was bound and determined to keep his wife and children as well protected as possible in his absence. By now, more than four years after the Ring of Fire, he had lots of enemies. Many of them were bitter and some of them were prone to violence.
Rebecca had plenty of enemies herself, for that matter. If she wasn't as prominent as her husband in the political affairs of the new United States of Europe, she wasn't that far behind him, either—and had the added distinction of being a Jewess.
Andrew spoke again, now jabbing his finger at the ceiling. "And look there! Murder holes! Ha! They'll be surprised to run into that, should the bastards made the attempt."
He didn't specify the names or even the nature of "the bastards." For someone like Andrew Short, it hardly mattered. He and his small clan had transferred their allegiance from the king of England to the person many people called the prince of Germany. Princes had enemies, it was a given; and such enemies were bastards. Also a given. 
Rebecca stared up at the ceiling. Murder holes. She knew what they were, abstractly, but such devices were something she associated with medieval castles. Here, in a modern town house built as much as possible along up-time lines . . .
Finally, she spotted them. They were cleverly disguised as further decorations in a heavily decorated ceiling. Wood inlays, to a casual observer. But she had no doubt the wood inlays were slats which could be easily slid aside, exposing any attackers below to fire from above. 
She shook her head, and looked away. The headshake was simply rueful, not a gesture of denial or criticism. She knew all too well the risks she and her husband—and their children—were taking and had been taking for years. If any reminder were needed, the mayor of Grantville and one of the town's ministers had been assassinated just three months earlier. By fanatic reactionary anti-Semites, it was presumed—exactly the sort of people who hated Rebecca with a passion and had been writing and spreading vicious propaganda about her for at least two years now. 
True, the savage response of the Committees of Correspondence to those murders had resulted in the effective destruction of organized anti-Semitism in the Germanies. For a time, at least. But that made it perhaps even more likely that a fanatic or small group of fanatics might seek vengeance by assassinating the most famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) Jew in the United States of Europe. Who was now Rebecca herself, without any doubt, much to her surprise. 
Her dark thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of her daughter Sepharad, who barreled into the foyer from another of the side doors. "Barreled," at least, insofar as the term could be applied to a toddler still some months shy of her third birthday.
Sepharad also had dark deeds on her mind. "Mommy! Mommy! Barry's messing in the cupboards like he shouldn't!"
Rebecca winced, just a bit. Not at the reported crime itself—two and a half year old boys were given to rummaging in nooks and crannies; girls too, at that age—but at the name.
Barry. Rebecca detested that nickname and refused to use it herself.
The child's real name was Baruch. Baruch de Spinoza, originally. He'd been orphaned in the siege of Amsterdam and then adopted by Rebecca and Michael.
Yes, that Spinoza. The Spinoza. Still some years short of his certain future as a great philosopher, of course. But Rebecca had high hopes. Surely his current investigations were a harbinger of things to come.
Alas, hers was an uphill struggle against doughty antagonists. On this subject, even her husband and daughter were ranked among Rebecca's enemies. 
Barry, when it should be Baruch. And Rebecca knew full well that Michael was conspiring with Jeff Higgins to have the innocent boy fitted with a Harley-Davidson jacket and a Cat hat as soon as possible. They'd take him fishing, too, and teach him to ride a motorcycle. They'd already sworn they would. 
Before Rebecca could intervene, though, Neddie Hayes appeared in the foyer, holding the selfsame philosopher/young miscreant in her arms. Judging from the smile on the young woman's face, whatever Baruch might have encountered in his adventures had been harmless enough.
"You shouldn't be spreading alarms, Sepharad," she chided the girl. Cheerfully, not harshly. "Baruch couldn't have come to no grief. T'aren't nothing in those cupboards yet anyway, since we've just started unpacking."
Rebecca returned the smile. She considered the addition of the very large Short-Hayes family to their household a great and unmitigated good. 
This, for several reasons. Some of them were obvious. The men were former Yeoman Warders in the Tower of London and would provide the household with the finest security force you could ask for. The women were generally pleasant and invariably hard-working, and would be a great help in managing such a huge establishment. The children were numerous, ranged widely in age, and would make good companions and playmates for her own children.
Best of all, though, was that the family's unquestioned matron was Patricia Hayes, and Patricia was of the old school. Whatever the mistress of the house wanted, she got—and Patricia had figured out very quickly that Rebecca's attitude when it came to nicknames was quite unlike her husband's. 
But who cared what the husband thought? Michael Stearns was now a general in the army, about to go gallivanting off to some foreign war. The mistress of the house mattered. He didn't.
So, it would be "Baruch," not "Barry." "Sepharad," not the grotesque "Sephie" favored by most up-timers including—
Michael came into the foyer, followed by Anthony Leebrick and Patrick Welch. He looked down at his daughter and smiled.
And what are you carrying on about, Sephie?"
Her husband. 
* * *
Later that morning, Michael made his farewells. By then, their younger daughter Kathleen was energetically crawling about the foyer and doing her own investigations. So, she participated in the leave-taking ceremonies along with her mother and siblings. Whether or not the nine-month-old infant understood the nature of the occasion was perhaps doubtful. Although, the way she clutched her father's shoulders when he picked her up for a good-bye kiss would seem to indicate some apprehension on her part at his coming absence. 
But maybe she just found the epaulets fascinating. They were the one feature of the uniform of an officer in the USE army that was unabashedly flamboyant. These were not the subdued shoulder straps of the up-time American military, but the sort of golden-tasseled insignia that were used by Napoleonic-era armies. On the otherwise rather subdued field-gray uniform, they quite stood out.
Eventually, Kathleen released her grip and Michael handed her back to her current nursemaid, Mary Hayes. He then gave Rebecca a final kiss—nothing perfunctory, either, she made sure of that—and off he went, with his two new staff officers trailing in his wake.
Some part of Rebecca wondered if she would ever see her husband again, but she squelched that quickly enough.
He's a general, she told herself firmly. Ignoring, just as firmly, her knowledge that in the seventeenth century army generals often led from the front and were quite prone to being killed in battle. 
* * *
She spent some time thereafter restlessly moving about the house, doing her own investigations. She spent a fair amount of that time in the several toilets and bathrooms scattered through the huge dwelling, testing their various devices and taking what comfort she could from them.
Which was considerable, actually. Newly designed and built, the house had modern plumbing. Rebecca had grown up with seventeenth century sanitation facilities, and was certainly capable of managing with such. She'd been doing so again for the past two years, after all. But her stay in Grantville had spoiled her in that regard. 
Fortunately, it had done the same thing for every down-timer who passed through the up-time American town. By now, there was a flourishing new industry in central Europe and the Low Countries producing the wherewithal for modern plumbing. The same industries were beginning to appear in France, Italy and Poland, if not yet in Spain and England.
The adoption of those new techniques was especially rapid in the Germanies and Bohemia. That was partly because the industries involved were further developed there. But another important factor was the stance of the Committees of Correspondence, who were more prominent in those areas than they were elsewhere in Europe. The CoCs were firmly convinced—adamant, it would be better to say—that proper sanitation ran a very close second to godliness, and they matched deed to word. The rapidly spreading network of credit unions which was fostered by the CoCs in lower class communities always extended low-interest loans for any sanitation project. And in cities like Magdeburg where they were powerful, the CoCs maintained patrols which were quite prepared to use forceful means to put a stop to unsanitary practices.
There were still towns in the Germanies where people emptied their chamber pots in street gutters as a matter of course. Magdeburg was not one of them. Doing so would certainly result in a public harangue; persisting in the practice would just as certainly lead to a beating. 
There were people who denounced the CoCs for that practice, but Rebecca was not one of them. Such people were usually either down-time reactionaries or up-time liberals. The reactionaries were against anything connected to the Ring of Fire. Their objection was not to beatings—they were generally all in favor of that practice, applied to lower class folk—but to the cause involved and the persons engaged in it. 
As for the up-time liberals, Rebecca understood their qualms. But they'd never lived through a major episode of disease, except the few who'd been in the western Germanies during the recent epidemic. That had been simply diphtheria, not cholera or typhus or plague, but it had been bad enough. It was quite noticeable that those up-timers who'd survived the experience were not given to wincing at the CoC methods of sanitation enforcement. Better some bruised feelings and even bruised flesh to bodies being carted off by the hundreds, or sometimes thousands.
* * *
She then spend some time watching the small horde of children playing with electricity. Within limits, of course. She let them switch the lights on and off in the various rooms, as long as they were reasonably gentle in the process and didn't overdo it. Like most technology patterned on up-time design and theory but constructed using down-time methods and materials, the switches were sturdy things. Still, they could be broken if they were over-stressed, and—again, like almost everything of that nature—they were rather costly. The light bulbs were even more expensive.
She kept them away from the computer. In fact, she kept the door to that room locked. But she allowed them to plug in and operate Michael's battered old up-time toaster in the kitchen. Every child present—there were no fewer than nine participating in the project—got to make and eat his or her own slices of toast.
The toast was on the crumbly side. Down-time bread was much tastier than the up-time varieties which were by now long gone, to no one's regret other than some up-timers themselves. But it didn't slice as cleanly or evenly, probably because it lacked what the up-timers called "additives" and sane down-timers called low-grade poisons.
But the children didn't care. They'd never had toast before, leaving aside some baked flatbreads. They were quite taken by the stuff.
Their interest faded soon enough, though. There were greater thrills in store. It wasn't long before the children were racing down to the basement to start up the mansion's sure and certain center of attraction. For them, anyway.
The toy electric train set. Michael had brought it home just two days ago and finished setting it up last night. 
It was one of the very first models produced by the recently launched Fassbinder-Lionel company, from the firm's factory right here in Magdeburg. Completely down-time in construction, albeit obviously based on up-time models. The toy train sets were still fiendishly expensive. As yet, the market was purely a luxury one whose clientele consisted of noblemen and wealthy merchants, manufacturers and bankers. 
The only reason Rebecca's husband had been able to afford it was because he'd gotten it for free. The company could just as easily have been named Fassbinder-Stearns, given that Michael was one of the company's two partners, along with Heinrich Fassbinder. He'd insisted on the name Lionel instead of his own, though. For the sake of tradition, he claimed. Rebecca suspected it was more because Michael saw no reason to stir up charges of conflict of interest any more than was necessary.
In truth, there wasn't any in this instance. An army general—even a prime minister, as he'd once been—would have precious little occasion to favor the fortunes of a toy train company. But there were other areas in which Michael's financial dealings were grayer in nature.
This very mansion, for one. They'd only been able to buy the house because of a loan extended to them by some wealthy members of the far-flung Abrabanel family to which Rebecca herself belonged. True, the loan was secured—but the collateral was the royalties that were expected to come in a couple of years from the sales of Rebecca's book on current political developments.
Which, she hadn't started writing yet. And whose royalties would depend on enforcement of the copyright legislation passed by the USE's parliament so recently the ink was barely dry on the bill sent up to the new prime minister for his signature. 
Wilhelm Wettin had signed it readily enough, to be sure. Whatever other disputes his Crown Loyalists had with Michael and Rebecca's party, they'd agreed that establishing up-time style copyright was a good idea. Still, no one really knew yet how well or easily the new laws could be enforced. There might be wholesale piracy, in which case those royalties would be mostly a chimera.
Not that the Abrabanels who'd extended the loan would care that much. The reason they'd made the loan was political, not economic. Whether or not they ever saw the money paid back, they had a keen interest in seeing to it that the leaders of the July Fourth party stayed alive and well. Their own prosperity, even possibly their very survival, might depend on it. 
To be sure, no one thought the new prime minister was himself an anti-Semite, much less a rabid one. Wettin was an eminently civilized man. But it remained to be seen how well he controlled the political forces he'd help to set in motion. The Abrabanels, like many people, were pretty sure his control was shaky—and there were people and groups under the umbrella called "the Crown Loyalist party" who were quite certainly harsh anti-Semites. 
Rebecca hadn't hesitated at accepting the loan. She understood the political logic quite well. But she also knew—so did Michael—that there would inevitably be charges of conflict of interest. Especially if it became known that the man who'd arranged the loan was none other than Francisco Nasi, himself a member of the Abrabanel clan and Michael's former head of security and espionage.
Fortunately, Francisco was superbly adept at keeping his doings out of the limelight. And, who was to say? If the copyright laws held up, there might in fact be a large income derived from her book. There would be keen interest in it, certainly. Even if the market was restricted to CoC members and sympathizers, that would be a lot of books sold.
* * *
Rebecca let the children play with the train set for a full hour. Her magnanimity had a cold purpose to it. The toy train sets, Michael had told her, were much like the train sets his father and grandfather had played with. That was to say, not very concerned with the fussbudget latter-day up-time obsession with child safety. 
"There's no way in hell to play with these trains," he'd said, "without getting an electric shock from time to time. No real harm done—and it teaches kids to respect electricity."
So it proved. Only two of the children got shocked, as it turned out—one of them being her own daughter Sepharad, who promptly wailed as loudly as you could ask for. But within an hour, all of the children were being much more careful than they'd been with the toaster or the light switches.
The mission was accomplished. And now she had no further reason to procrastinate. It was time to start writing the book.
* * *
Fortunately, she wouldn't have to put up with the troubles and travails of quill pens and ink bottles. Rebecca loved her computer.
The title came easily and readily:
 
An Examination of the Current Political Situation in the Germanies and Europe
 
She stared at the title. She had no trouble imagining the caustic remarks her husband would have made, had he seen it.
"Why don't you just put a damn footnote in the title while you're at it?" he'd jeer. "Just to make sure and certain everyone understands this is an eye-glazing tract of no conceivable interest to anyone except scholars like you."
After a while, she sighed and firmly suppressed her natural instincts. In this, as in many if not all things, Michael Stearns was correct. So, she deleted the title and, after a few more seconds of consideration, came up with another and more suitable one. 
 
The Road Forward: A Call to Action
. 
 
Chapter 2
Gretchen Richter's eyes were riveted on the sheet of paper in her hands, her brow creased by a truly magnificent frown. Her husband, Jeff Higgins, was leaning over the back of her chair in order to study the figures himself. 
"How much?" Gretchen asked again.
Seated across from her in the large couch in the living room of the Dreeson house, David Bartley shrugged his shoulders. "That depends on a lot of variables. But if you sold all your stocks right now—which I don't recommend, since the market's really antsy with another war looming; well, if you had a lot of military industry stocks, I suppose it might be different—they're doing really well, not surprisingly—but you don't so—"
"David," Gretchen said, half-growling. "Keep it simple. If. You. Would. Please."
Bartley looked slightly nonplussed. "But . . . Look, Gretchen, I'm really not trying to be confusing. It's just that it really isn't all that simple. Like, where would you want to sell it? I wouldn't actually recommend the Grantville or Magdeburg stock exchanges for most of your stocks. They're the ones affected the worst by the war jitters. You'd probably do better in Amsterdam, or in some cases even Venice."
"David!" The "half" left the growl.
Jeff grunted. "Just assume we're morons, David. So, not knowing our asses from our elbows, we go right now to the exchange in downtown Grantville and sell everything—every single stock on this list—for whatever we can get."
Bartley looked at his watch. "Well, you couldn't get there in time today—"
"David!" Gretchen's tone left "growl" behind altogether, and began approaching "shriek of fury."
"Calm down, hon," said Jeff soothingly, his big hand caressing her shoulder. "You can't kill him without producing a political crisis. He's way too popular with the CoCs. All over the country, too, not just here."
Gretchen said nothing. She just glared at Bartley.
"Fine," Jeff continued. "So we sell it all tomorrow. How much would we get?" 
David's eyes got that slightly-unfocussed look that Jeff had come to be familiar with this afternoon. The one that signified well-gee-it's-really-complicated-depending-on-this-that-and-the-other.
"Forget playing with currencies," Jeff added quickly. "Just figure we sell it for USE dollars. Whatever we can get. Soon as the stock exchange opens tomorrow morning."
Bartley looked down at the list of figures in his own hand, which was identical to the one Gretchen and Jeff were looking at. He pursed his lips, an expression that Jeff thought made him look like a young Ichabod Crane. If Bartley had been standing, the likeness would have been even better. David was tall and thin, his gangly frame still not having caught up to his height. He was nineteen years old, and the best-known if not perhaps the richest of the teenage millionaires produced by the Ring of Fire. 
"Well . . . Figure you'd wind up with about two million dollars. Give or take."
Gretchen swallowed. "Two . . . million?"
"About. But like I said, if you waited and sold the stocks on the Amsterdam market—and Venetian market, for that matter—and took your time about it—I think you'd wind up getting closer to two and a half million. But the truth is I don't recommend you sell most of these stocks. It's a good portfolio, Gretchen." His slender shoulders became a bit more square. "We did right by you guys, if I say so myself."
"That seems clear enough," Jeff said dryly. He moved from behind Gretchen's chair and pulled up a chair for himself from a nearby side table. The chair was on the rickety side. Gretchen's grandmother Veronica, Henry Dreeson's widow, used that table for her records and correspondence. She was not a large woman and the chair did fine for her. Under Jeff's weight, it creaked alarmingly. Most of the fat that Higgins had carried as a teenager was gone now. But, if anything, the twenty-three-year old man who'd replaced that teenager was even bigger—and Jeff had been a big kid to start with.
He ignored the creaks. Whatever else, they could obviously afford to replace the chair now, even if it did collapse under him. And he needed to sit down. He was feeling a bit light-headed.
Two million dollars. Two and a half, if you wait.
The only numbers like that he'd ever dealt with, at least when it came to money, were associated with the role-playing games he and his friends had played in high school. So, trying to get a handle on them and turn the abstract into the concrete, he focused on the chair swaying beneath him.
Go ahead, sucker. Break. See if I care. You're kindling in the fireplace and I go out and buy something sturdier to replace you. Out of pocket change.
That thought steadied him some. He glanced at Gretchen, but saw that his wife was in a rare state of paralysis—an almost unheard of state, in her case. She was normally as uncertain as a calving glacier.
"Whether it's a smart move or not, we will need some cash pretty soon, David. I think you call it liquidity or something like that." Jeff nodded toward his sister-in-law, who was sitting next to David on the couch. The eighteen-year-old girl was studying the figures Bartley held in his hand as intently as a cat watching a mousehole. "Annalise needs to start college in the fall, and that scholarship she got won't be enough to cover the cost."
He lifted his hand and spun the forefinger in a little circle. "Not to mention this gaggle of kids we've got to support. Except for Baldy, anyway. He likes his apprenticeship at KSI, and he's even making enough to support himself."
"That's not a problem. What I recommend is that you sell your shares of Kelly Aviation. They're selling like hotcakes right now on account of the war coming, but I don't personally think that's going to last so you may as well get out while the getting's good."
Feeling under some sort of vague compulsion to demonstrate his masculine mastery of financial matters in front of the womenfolk, Jeff took off his glasses and started cleaning them with a handkerchief. "You sure? I heard those are pretty good planes they make."
"Technically, yes. Bob Kelly knows his stuff when it comes to designing aircraft. The problem's on the other end. He's got the business sense of a jackrabbit and while Kay makes up for it some, she's also, well . . ." He looked uncomfortable. For all his financial acumen, Bartley wasn't a cut-throat by temperament. He was quite a nice guy, actually, and not given to bad-mouthing others.
"Well," he repeated.
Jeff was less reticent. He'd run into Bob Kelly's wife on several occasions. All of them had been unpleasant. "Yeah. If pissing people off was an Olympic event, she'd take the gold every time."
David nodded. "I figure you could get three hundred thousand dollars from those stocks. You could set aside twenty-five percent of that as a fund for Annalise, which ought to be plenty even as expensive as Quedlinburg's gotten to be."
Annalise spoke up, her tone a mix of defensiveness and belligerence. "It's the only really good college for women yet. In the USE, anyway. I wouldn't mind going to Prague but Gramma'd pitch a fit."
Jeff put his glasses back on. "That'd leave us with about two hundred and twenty-five thousand. Gretchen wants to move to Magdeburg as soon as possible, now that Ronnie's leaving town, and we'd need to get a house big enough for all the kids. We'd figured on renting, but . . ." He started doing the needed calculations.
Not surprisingly, David did the figuring faster than he did. "You could buy the kind of house you need for . . . I figure about seventy-five thousand dollars. But then you'd own it free and clear and still have a hundred and fifty thousand to live on. Even with all your kids, that's way more than enough."
Gretchen frowned. "Seventy-five thousand? That seems much too high. We're not going to be looking for a home in the best districts, you know."
"Yeah, sure. You pretty much have to stay in one of the working class areas where the CoCs are strong and can provide you with some protection. You've got a lot of enemies. But for the same reason, you'll need a really solid place. My own advice would be to buy a whole apartment building. Plenty of room for the kids—Ronnie, too, if she wants to move in with you—"
Jeff chuckled. "Not likely. She says she's had enough of babysitting our kids and we can damn well do it on our own from now on. I think she's planning to move in with the Simpsons. She and Mary get along real well, and with the admiral likely to be gone most of the time, Mary'd probably like the company."
Gretchen looked like she was on the verge of choking. "An apartment building? We don't have that many kids. Baldy will be staying here and so will Martha, who wants to finish school. That leaves us with only half a dozen who'll be coming to Magdeburg. And I can assure you that I have no intention of becoming a landlady!"
David made a face. Again, the youngster's nature made it hard for him to state the truth bluntly.
Jeff, on the other hand, had no such compunctions left. Being married to Gretchen for four years had pretty well rubbed off whatever delicate sensibilities he'd ever possessed. "Hon, we've got a lot of enemies. Well, you do, anyway. Most of them don't have much against me except they've got to get past me to put you in the ground."
Gretchen looked at him, a bit crossly. "So?"
"So figure it out for yourself. If we buy an apartment building—depending on the size, of course, but let's figure twelve units which is pretty standard in the quarters we'd be looking in—then we can set aside half the space for CoC people."
"What do you mean, 'CoC' people—oh."
He grinned. "Yeah. Oh. As in 'CoC people handpicked by Gunther Achterhof.' Good luck, any of the people got it in for you getting through that crowd."
"Oh," she repeated.
David nodded. "That's about what I was figuring."
She shook her head, more by way of confusion than anything else, and looked back down at the sheet. "I still don't really understand how it happened. And without us even knowing about it!"
Bartley looked a bit defensive. "Hey, we told your grandmother what was happening."
Jeff barked a jeering laugh. "Oh, right! And I'm sure you used simple and straight-forward language that made lots of sense to Ronnie."
"Well . . ."
Gretchen shook her head again. The gesture, this time, was to clear away the confusion. "Explain it to us again. In simple and straight-forward language, this time."
"Well . . . Okay. This is simplifying a lot, you understand?"
"I can live with that," said Gretchen. "Whereas you may not, if you do otherwise."
Now, Bartley looked alarmed as well as defensive. "Hey, Gretchen! There's no call for that."
"Relax, David. She's joking." Jeff glanced at his wife. "I . . . think. Do your best."
The young financier cleared his throat. "The gist of it is that, way back when, my grandmother gave you guys some stock in the sewing machine company by way of a belated wedding gift. On account of Jeff's father and my mother were first cousins which makes me and Jeff second cousins." He rattled off the precise family relationships with the ease of any person raised in a small town. "You remember?"
Jeff and Gretchen nodded simultaneously.
"Well, after that I guess you forgot about it."
"We were . . . ah, busy," said Gretchen.
"Holed up in Amsterdam under Spanish siege, to be precise," added Jeff. "So, yeah. Sewing machine company stocks were not something we thought about much. At all."
"Sure. But as you may have heard, Higgins Sewing Machine Company did really well. And when it went public, you wound up owning five thousand shares—which was two and half percent of the stock."
"The sewing machine company did that well?"
David tugged at his ear. "It did really well, yeah. But it wasn't just the sewing machine company. Since you weren't around we talked to Ronnie and your grandmother told us to handle it however we wanted to." He looked defensive again. "She didn't seem interested when we tried to explain the ins and outs of it."
Jeff wasn't surprised. Depending on who did the explaining—Bartley was actually better at this than most of his partners—Gretchen's grandmother would have probably had as much luck with a short lecture on quantum mechanics. It wasn't that she was dim-witted. She wasn't at all; in fact, in her own way she had a very shrewd grasp of practical finance. But Veronica's idea of practical finance focused on tangibles like property and hard cash. The sort of stock speculations and manipulations that David specialized in wouldn't have meant much to her. 
David went on. "So Sarah and I diversified your holdings. You've still got the five thousand shares in HSMC, but we invested all the earnings in other stuff. By now, you own sizeable amounts of stock in OPM—"
That was Bartley's own finance company: Other People's Money.
"—as well as several of the Stone chemical and pharmaceutical companies, Casein Buttons, Kelly Aviation, a little chunk of the Roth jewelry operations, a pretty hefty chunk of the new petroleum operations near Hamburg and an even bigger chunk of the port expansion projects—Hamburg's going to turn into a real boom town—and some railroad stocks. There are some other odds and ends, but that's the heart. Sarah and I didn't want to take too many risks with your money, so we invested most of it in stuff that was safe but reasonably profitable."
It was Jeff's turn to shake his head. "If these are the kinds of returns you get on 'safe' investments, I'd hate to see what you get on something risky that pays off."
Bartley shrugged. "You've got to remember that 'safe' is a relative term. The Ring of Fire triggered off one of the great economic booms in history. At least, that's what Melissa says. Almost any intelligent investment will pay off well, if you know what you're doing."
Jeff didn't think it was really that straight-forward. David Bartley was like most people with a genius streak at something. Doing that something seemed a lot easier to him than it did to most anyone else. 
Be that as it may, the end result seemed clear enough. Much to his surprise—and Gretchen's even more so—they'd wound up very well off. So, what had seemed like the sure prospect of several years of hard near-poverty while they finished raising Gretchen's little horde of adopted children had vanished. 
He could live with that. Quite easily.
* * *
An hour later, after David got up to leave, Jeff escorted him to the front door. "When will we see you again?" he asked.
"I don't know about Gretchen. But you'll be seeing me tomorrow, since your leave's up. We'll be on the same train."
"Huh?"
Bartley got a sly look on his face. "Didn't you notice that I was wearing my uniform?"
Jeff had noticed, in fact, but hadn't thought much of it. David was a member of the State of Thuringia-Franconia's National Guard. In Jeff's experience—although he'd allow this might just be the sneer of a real soldier—weekend warriors wore their uniforms every chance they got. He himself was lounging around in jeans and a sweatshirt. He had no intention of donning his own uniform until he was ready to leave the next morning. 
"Yeah. So what?"
"So I'm reporting to the army base in Magdeburg along with you. Mike Stearns asked me to come. He sent me a personal letter, even. Well, I doubt if he actually wrote it. But he signed it, sure enough."
Jeff chuckled again. "Leave it to Mike. He wants you to run his quartermaster operations, doesn't he?"
"Not exactly. He says he wants me as a 'logistics consultant.'" 
Jeff grinned. "You may be a financial wizard, but you're a babe in the woods when it comes to the army. Mike's just saying that 'cause he doesn't want to piss off a lot of old-timers. But he'll have you running the show soon enough, in fact if not in name. You watch."
He said it all quite cheerfully. And why not? Logistics was always an officer's biggest headache. But with David Bartley running the supply operations . . . Jeff figured anybody who could parlay not much of anything into stocks worth over two million dollars could probably also manage to keep food and spare socks and ammunition coming. 
 
Chapter 3
Caroline Platzer rolled her eyes. "She's still insisting that I have to come with her. I swear, that kid is more stubborn than any mule who ever lived."
Her boss, Maureen Grady, didn't seem noticeably sympathetic. "What do you expect? Not too many mules are in line to inherit a throne—and Kristina's in line to inherit three. Queen of Sweden, Empress of the United States of Europe, and—hum. I wonder what the female equivalent would be for High King of the Union of Kalmar? High Queen? Sounds silly."
"It's not funny, Maureen! She's been pestering Thorsten too, and now he's starting to make noises that I should go."
"Then why don't you? For Pete's sake, Caroline, it's just a trip across the Baltic to Stockholm. Even in this day and age, that's not considered an adventure. At least, not when you've got royal resources to draw on."
Caroline felt stubborn herself. She had an uneasy feeling she probably looked stubborn, too—in that child-mulish sort of way that drove her crazy when Kristina did it to her. "Because."
Now, Maureen rolled her eyes. "Oh, how adult! Caroline, you just don't want to go because you're afraid Thorsten'll get killed when the war starts and you think you ought to be here in case that happens for reasons that defy comprehension, since it's not as if you could do anything about it. Hell, you couldn't even gloom around in widow's weeds since you wouldn't legally be a widow. Unless you marry him just before he ships off which would be pointless romanticism, seeing as how there isn't any Social Security for spouses in this day and age on account of there's no Social Security for anybody." 
Even more astringently, she added: "I suppose you might qualify for a regimental pension, but probably not. Since we administer those funds—that means me, kiddo—and I'm damned if I see why a healthy young woman like you would need to be supported when there are plenty of Deserving Widows around."
Somehow, she verbalized the capital letters. Caroline had never been able to figure out how Maureen managed that.
Still not knowing what to say—beyond another "because," which would just subject her to more ridicule—she satisfied herself with glaring at Maureen. Which brought down more ridicule anyway.
"Oh, stop trying to glare at me. You look like another eight year old—except Kristina's one hell of a lot better at it. Which you'd expect, given that she's a genu-ine princess."
There really wasn't much point in trying to outglare or out-ridicule or out-anything Maureen Grady. Caroline's boss was a very experienced and successful middle-aged psychiatric social worker, which meant she had the hide of a rhinoceros. It didn't help that she was married to a cop. 
"He might get killed!" she half-wailed.
"Yeah, he might," Maureen responded. "He's an officer in command of a flying artillery unit. Maybe in another life Thorsten will choose to do something safer, like being a skydiver or a demolitions expert or a NASCAR driver. But in the here and now—damn fool got himself promoted again, too—he chose to do this instead. My husband chose to be a cop. Did I tell you he turned down an offer to become the manager of the auto parts store he was working in, before he enrolled in the police academy? So there's another damn fool."
Caroline got up and went to the window in Maureen's office. Then, she pushed the curtain aside so she could have the pleasure of gazing out onto Magdeburg from the vantage point of the third floor window. 
As visual pleasures went, this was akin to sight-seeing Pittsburgh—not the modern and quite attractive city that Caroline had known in the late twentieth century, but Pittsburgh as it had been a century earlier in its industrial heyday. Granted, the steel mills and foundries lining the Elbe weren't as huge as the ones that had lined the Monongahela. Not yet. But they were getting there. There were a lot of good things about living in a city which was the center of booming industry as well as the new capital of a new nation. Jobs were plentiful, and they generally paid well. But "looks pretty" was not one of them, and "smells nice" even less so.
Still, staring at Magdeburg's factories was better than dwelling morosely on what might happen to her fiancé, once the war started. Or resumed, depending on how you looked at it. Thorsten's friend Eric Krenz had told her that the historians at the new college he'd been taking classes at were already arguing about it. Should Emperor Gustav Adolf's soon-to-be-launched campaign against Brandenburg and Saxony be considered a new war? And if so, what to call it? The "Eastern War" was advocated by some, but most seem to feel that was excessively expansive. The "East" was a large place, after all, and nobody thought this would be the last war thereabouts.
Still others, Eric said, argued that the looming hostilities should simply be considered another campaign in the Ostend League War—as some called it; other historians preferred "the Baltic War" and there was at least one diehard who was holding out for "the Richelieu War"—seeing as how the cause of it was the emperor's fury that Brandenburg and Saxony had betrayed him after the League of Ostend launched its attack.
Caroline didn't give a damn what they called it. What difference did it make? No matter what name was given to the upcoming war, Thorsten would be doing the same thing—either leading a charge against well-armed enemies or holding off a charge of theirs. To make things still worse, the "flying" part of "flying artillery" meant Thorsten would be mounted. She couldn't think of anything dumber or more dangerous than perching a man on top of a horse on a battlefield, with about fifty gazillion chunks of metal flying every whichaway. 
"So you think I should go," she said.
"Yes. I do. For one thing—if you can tear yourself away from your personal situation for a moment—you'll help keep the trip from becoming a minor disaster. I'm sure and certain Prince Ulrik will jump for joy. Kristina's a handful at the best of times, and visiting her mother will not be one of them. By all accounts I've heard, the woman's a loon."
Caroline couldn't help but smile. "I don't think 'loon' is one of the approved terms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Maureen."
"No, it isn't. Not even in DSM-IV. Who cares? That damn thing was only good for hustling medical insurance companies—and there aren't any of them in the here and now, either. By all accounts, the queen of Sweden is a loon. Or if you prefer, a nut case."
Caroline wasn't inclined to argue the point. She knew that a good part of the reason the young princess was so determined to get Caroline to accompany her to Stockholm was because her mother always upset her. That would be even more true this time, Kristina said, because she'd be introducing a future husband in the bargain. 
Interestingly, Kristina now seemed more worried that her mother wouldn't approve of Ulrik, rather than being worried about what Ulrik might do. In the short time since she'd been introduced to her spouse-to-be, the girl had taken a liking to him. What was perhaps even more important—given the cold realities of royal marriages—was that she was starting to trust Ulrik as well. 
That was fine with Caroline. She thought Ulrik was quite trustworthy herself. And that certainly boded well for the future. Unhappy royal marriages usually caused grief that extended far beyond palaces. One of them had even caused the most famous war in history, assuming Homer hadn't made the whole thing up.
"Okay. You said, 'for one thing.' That implies a second reason. What is it?"
Maureen shook her head. "I can't believe how dense you are, sometimes. Caroline, we're trying to introduce modern and enlightened attitudes toward mental problems and diseases into a century where they still burn witches. Has it occurred to you that having the future—take your pick, or pick all three—queen of Sweden, empress of the USE and high queen or whatever the hell they call her of the Union of Kalmar being someone friendly to us and to our endeavors might be just a tad helpful?"
"Oh." She thought about that, for a while. "All right," she said eventually. "I'll go."
* * *
When he got the news that Caroline Platzer would be accompanying them on their voyage to Stockholm, Ulrik did jump for joy. Not very high, true; and he didn't even think of clicking his heels. But jump he did, grinning from ear to ear.
"Baldur," he announced, "a hopeless task just became a merely difficult one."
The Danish prince's sidekick, technical expert and close friend Baldur Norddahl—take your pick or pick all three—was less sanguine. "The girl's still who and what she is, and the mother's still no more than half-sane. And that's a long way to go, and the Baltic can be treacherous. And I don't like Stockholm to begin with. Never did."
Ulrik's grin stayed in place. "That's because you were accused of crimes there. Falsely, you say."
"The charges were preposterous in every particular," Baldur said stoutly. "Either I was confused for another—that's the charitable explanation—or the authorities harbored animosity toward me." He cleared his throat. "For reasons unknown."
"Ha! But have no fear. I will vouch for you myself. Perhaps more to the point, so will the princess. She's taken a liking to you, I think."
Norddahl winced. He thought the same himself. It was not always easy to decide, whether being Kristina's friend or her foe carried more in the way of risk and excitement. 
* * *
Thorsten Engler reacted to the news very calmly. Equanimity was something the young German ex-farmer did very well. Normally, that was one of her fiancé's traits that Caroline cherished. But less so, of late, once it dawned on her that he probably exhibited that same equanimity in the middle of a battle. She'd be a lot happier if he shared more of his friend Eric's healthy respect for peril. No one would ever accuse Eric Krenz of being a coward, certainly. But the young German ex-gunsmith was the first to say that war was a silly way to settle disputes and that his own happiness and serenity improved in direct measure as he distanced himself from mayhem. 
On the other hand, he'd also managed to get himself promoted, so apparently he had some share of damn-fooledness as well. What was it about men, Caroline wondered grumpily, that made them so resistant to common sense? With their skills and personality traits—they were both quite charming men, each in his own way—Thorsten and Eric could easily manage to get themselves transferred to much safer assignments, without leaving themselves open to charges of pusillanimity. 
They wouldn't even have to leave the army. Caroline was no expert on military matters, but even she knew that most soldiers never got very close to combat. Any army had a bigger tail than it did teeth, as they put it. For every damn fool leading a flying artillery charge, there were at least three soldiers way back in the rear hauling up the wherewithal that allowed him to be a damn fool in the first place. 
"Better to haul a wagon than be hauled away in a hearse," she muttered. 
"What was that, dearest?" asked Thorsten.
Krenz, whose hearing bordered on the supernatural, grinned widely and leaned back in his chair at the table in Caroline's kitchen. "She fears your imminent demise, on account of your recklessness at the front. Always waving a saber where I—an intelligent man—wield a shovel. That's why she's sniffling, too."
"I'm sniffling because I'm cutting onions," Caroline said. Wondering if it were true. 
* * *
Thorsten and Eric left the next morning. General Torstensson had summoned all officers to their posts. The emperor was arriving with his Swedish forces and the USE army was mobilizing to join him. The war against Brandenburg and Saxony was imminent, and everyone expected the Austrians and the Poles to come to their aid. That would turn what might otherwise be labeled a mere suppression of rebellion into an all-out war. 
To Thorsten's surprise, Princess Kristina came to see him off too. He knew she was fond of him—the "Count of Narnia" title bestowed upon him after the battle of Ahrensbök had been at her insistence—but he hadn't thought she'd go to the trouble. One doesn't expect headstrong eight-year-old princesses to think of such things. 
"Caroline must have put her up to it," Krenz insisted, after they rode. "It never ceases to amaze me, the way that woman dotes on you."
Engler smiled. "When are you going to get your own woman, Eric, so you can stop fussing at me about mine?"
* * *
To be continued
October 2010