1636 The Kremlin Games (28 page)

*     *     *

“What are we going to do about Cass?” Natasha asked Bernie two days after that meeting. “He managed, just barely, to be polite to the czar. Other than that, he has offended everyone who has met him.”

Bernie grinned. “Give him to the military. Specifically to the
Streltzi
bureau.” The Russia military was a weird mix of feudal duty and bureaucratic confusion. The bureaucratic nobility included the officers in time of war. They were the officer corps and the cavalry. The
Streltzi
were the infantry in time of war and the city guards in time of piece. One of the things that the
Streltzi
had picked up from Bernie was fingerprinting. By now most of the criminals in Moscow had had their fingerprints taken or paid considerable bribes to avoid it. The
Streltzi
hadn’t picked up on the notion of civil rights, though Bernie had offered it up. In the last few years, mercenary companies hired from the west had been added to the mix. The mercenaries who had a different way of fighting weren’t mixing in too well. “We get more requests from them than anyone else. Besides, it might do Cass some good to be surrounded by cops for a while.”

Natasha was nodding. Bernie had been urgently called to various military bureaus over the last few months. Especially the
Streltzi
bureaus. The
Streltzi
preferred to fight behind walls, city walls. When they could not fight defensively behind the walls of a city they wanted to fight behind walking walls. The “stand and take it” philosophy of the western mercenary infantry was not in their traditions. They had no objection to dishing it out and did not lack courage, but standing in the open and taking it just seemed stupid. “Do you think it will work?”

Bernie sighed “Maybe, but I doubt it. But worst case, it gets him out of our hair and gets the military bureaus off my back.”

“So the Gun Shop will have their own up-timer.” Natasha laughed out loud. “Who knows? Maybe General Shein can handle him.”

*     *     *

“I don’t care if he wants to fuck the czarina,” Mikhail Borisovich Shein said. “We have our own up-timer now, and he’s one who can fight.”

His aide took it in stride. General Shein was a volatile man by nature. The calculation hidden by the volatility was harder to see; most people never did. “What should we do with him, sir?”

“We do what Princess Natalia suggested. Assign him to the Gun Shop with Korisov.” The general snorted. “And keep him away from anyone important. Question him extensively, but not harshly. If that doesn’t work, we can use stronger measures. From what I understand, the main reason we got him is that he managed to miss out on, or fail at, the opportunities in Grantville. No one will miss him much.”

The aide made a note and went on to the next item on the agenda. “The
Streltzi
are arguing with the outlander solders about their walking walls again.” The aide was a bureaucratic noble and therefore an officer in the Russian army. He didn’t think all that well of the foreign mercenary companies or the
Streltzi
—who, when not called to active service, made up the merchant class in Russia.

The general gave him a cold look. Mikhail Borisovich Shein had commanded a force made up mostly of
Streltzi
at Smolensk during the last war with Poland. They had held out for twenty months against a force ten times their size. Whatever the traditional animosity between the two classes, General Shein didn’t share it. At the same time, he was fully conversant with the Russian army’s need to modernize. Slowly, he began to smile. “But what is ‘modernize’ in a world where we have people from the future? Find me two men, Georgi Ivanov. One outlander officer and a
Streltzi
. Send them to the Gun Shop. Put them in a room with the up-timer and let them argue about it. Even Korisov might have some thoughts on the matter.”

Part Four

The year 1634

Chapter 45

January 1634

After some initial sparring, Cass and Andrei got along quite well. Each was convinced that he was the only person that mattered and each held the other in none-too-veiled contempt, but they were useful to each other and knew it. Andrei made sure Cass had access to a plentiful supply of young girls, vodka, hunting, and other sport. In return, Cass provided Andrei with a good, and in a way more up-to-date, up-timer knowledge base.

Cass really was bright and his Russian was improving rapidly. He had lived in Grantville for a year and more after the Ring of Fire. A lot of tricks and workarounds had been developed in that time, so Cass was quite a bit more familiar with the how-to of building a modern tech base than most up-timers had been before the Ring of Fire. For instance:

“What you need is a drop forge, Andy,” Cass said a few weeks after he had arrived at the Gun Shop. “Instead of building AK3’s by hand.”

“A drop forge?” Andrei was none too fond of being addressed as “Andy,” but it wasn’t worth it to fight through his current hangover.

“Yep. Take a big-ass weight. Lift it up about ten feet, then drop it. Force is mass times velocity, and by the time it hits, it has some velocity to multiply the big-ass weight.”

“And how do you lift the big weight?”

“It doesn’t matter. Look, a couple of peasants turning a crank will get the job done. Sure, a steam cylinder would do it faster and more efficiently, but you want to wait for those prigs at the Dacha to get around to providing you a steam ram?”

That was a point. Andrei was increasingly upset by the way the Dacha was being corrupted by western notions. So he nodded and they worked on the design of the drop forge. A very hot piece of iron would be placed in the bottom form. Then the weighted top form would be dropped. After which four slaves would crank the weighted top form back up and the part would be removed.

It would take four big, strong, men almost ten minutes to crank the “hammer” up to the top of its arch. During which time, another dollop of iron would be heated white hot. Wham! Another part.

Not a completed part. The chambers had to be finished using a boring machine, also human-powered, this time two men on a stationary bicycle. The chamber locks, which on the AK3 were a lever-action made of several parts, would have the parts stamped out by drop forges, then be finished and assembled. The chambers were all of a standardized size. But Russian gunsmithing, up to this time, hadn’t focused at all on heavily standardized calibers. There just weren’t that many rifles in Russia that had precisely the same caliber of barrel. So the new guns almost had to come out of the Gun Shop, which, when it came down to it, suited both Andrei and Cass just fine.

All this took time and it wasn’t the only thing they were working on. The czar, the patriarch, and Sheremetev wanted cannon. Good cannon. Breech-loading cannon. Cass told them they couldn’t do it, that they didn’t have the quality of steel needed for up-time cannon.

Andrei, a fairly bright guy in his own right, wanted to know why.

“Strength and flexibility,” Cass told him. “Modern metals are produced using precise mixes of elements: just enough carbon, just enough tungsten, just enough chromium, for a weight of steel heated to just the right heat for just the right amount of time.”

After some consideration, Andrei asked, “What has to be strong and what has to be flexible?”

The question brought Cass Lowry up short. The whole damn thing had to be strong and had to have some flexibility which was why you didn’t make cast iron cannons. But he got the point. They had muzzle-loading cannons down-time. They apparently made them strong enough and flexible enough so that they didn’t blow up all that often. What aspect of an up-time cannon had to have fancy modern steel? “I’d say it’s probably the breech mechanism,” he said after a pause. “Modern cannon use an interrupted-screw breech lock.”

“And how does that work?”

Cass described the way the screw had parts of the threading cut out of it so that it could be slid into the breech, which also had parts of its threading cut out and ended with, “You see, the threads of the breech and of the breechblock have to be really strong and take a tremendous amount of force.”

“Yes, I see,” Andrei said. “But you wouldn’t need an interruption if you didn’t have lots of threads. That is right, yes?”

“Well, sure.”

“So why can’t you add more threads to the interrupted screw to compensate for the weaker metals that we have now?”

Cass didn’t know and hated admitting it.

“We will experiment. We will make interrupted-screw breech locks and see how well they withstand the force of firing.”

“Fine, as long as you know I won’t be standing anywhere near them when we do the test firing.”

Andrei shrugged. “That’s what slaves are for.”

Chapter 46

February 1634

Filip and Gregorii looked over the new steam barge design before they sealed the packet.

The more standardized design the Dacha had developed after looking over Vladimir’s notes was two ten-inch-wide cylinders side-by-side, with the stroke of the first setting the second and vice versa, to produce a reciprocating engine. They didn’t bother with a condenser on the ones for the steamboats and steam barges, as there was generally water available in a river. So they released the steam to the same chimney that carried the smoke fire. They used a pot boiler and ceramic tiles for the fire bed. The engines built that way—and especially the boilers—were so inefficient that they were an insult to steam power. However, they would fit on a thirty-foot-long, ten-foot-wide river barge and they would push the thing through the water.

“I think it’s ready,” Filip said. “We’ll send it on to Murom in the next pouch.”

*     *     *

In the Dacha, Sofia’s eyes sparkled like cold black diamonds. “Nevertheless, it cannot be you that goes. You are needed here. Bernie needs you. Boris and Mariya need you. You may not abandon that trust.”

Natasha stopped her pacing. She’d been trying too hard to justify being the person who went to Grantville to determine whether or not Brandy Bates was acceptable to the czar as her brother’s wife. She knew it. “But I so want to see it, Aunt Sofia,” she whined. “So very much.” She threw herself onto a bench. “Vladimir is there. I miss him. And I want to see it.”

“Even so.” Sofia’s eyes softened. “I know, dear.” She patted Natasha’s hand. “I know.” She grinned. “So do I want to go.” Then she straightened her shoulders. “But we must carry on here. Czar Mikhail has said that he will consider this marriage, but there must be a senior female of the family to examine Brandy. And I know just who to send.” She cackled in laughter. “Oh, my. It will do them so much good.”

As it turned out, Aunt Sofia was not entirely in control of who was sent to Grantville. The other great houses wanted their say as well. A friend of Sofia, true enough, would be one of the three dragons sent; the next would come from the Sheremetev clan and an aunt of the czarina would be the other.

All of which would come as a surprise to Vladimir back in Grantville.

*     *     *

“I didn’t really believe it. Not until I saw that.” Vladimir watched the
Las Vegas Belle
until it was out of sight. Even after the months since the first flight, he still wasn’t entirely sure he believed it. And slowly he began to smile. “I believe that turnabout is fair play, Brandy. Perhaps I should write Bernie that I insist that he build me an airplane. And a factory for cars. And an oil refinery.”

“Soda pop.” Brandy looked in the direction where the plane had disappeared. “Real, old-fashioned Coca-Cola. I miss those. New movies, instead of rewatching all the old ones. Xerox machines for quick copies. Um, we can probably think up a bunch of other stuff to demand. They won’t be very realistic, I imagine, but it might be kind of fun to make a demand instead of trying to satisfy them. Besides, they might just do it.”

They walked slowly to Brandy’s house thinking up ever more outrageous things to demand of Bernie and the “brain cases” in Russia and laughing at their demands. No one could be sad on a day like today.

They turned up the walk to Brandy’s house and she hesitated a bit. Vladimir knew that it was because her mother had died there.

He’d been surprised, three days after Donna died, by the attendance at her funeral. It seemed like a large number of people showed up. Most unusual was the cluster of young girls around Brandy. One of them was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. Her hair was a deep auburn and her skin was clear with just a few freckles.

Brandy had, in compliance with Donna’s wishes, arranged a simple graveside service. It was very brief. Afterward, people visited with one another and everyone spoke to Brandy and her father Vernon for a moment or two. Brandy introduced Vladimir to the cluster of young girls. They were . . . quite exceptional, he thought.

Much to Vladimir’s surprise, Vernon was one of the first to leave. “He’s just not good at emotions.” Brandy had noticed Vladimir watching Vernon. “He never has been. He’s closed up, like in a shell or something. It drove Mom crazy. That, I think, is why they got divorced. Mom was too emotional for him, I guess.”

Vladimir looked down at her. “I promise you. I promise you that I will never be so, so . . .”

“Calm and dispassionate?” Her tears started flowing again. “Good. I don’t think I’d like it any better than Mom did.”

*     *     *

The sound of the doorbell jerked Brandy to alertness. She smoothed down her dress and checked her reflection in the mirror before opening the door.
Here goes,
she thought.

Vladimir stood on the porch, smiling at her. Her breath caught a bit. They’d been dating a long time, but this was the first time they’d been alone together. Really alone. No servants. No Mom. Brandy still felt Donna’s loss keenly. But a person had to move on. This dinner was an effort to do that.

“Come in, please.” Brandy smiled as Vladimir brought his left hand from behind his back with a flourish. His eyes twinkled a bit. “A guest should not arrive empty-handed. So, I brought you this.”