"TITLE: Grantville Gazette.Volume XVIII" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part Seven, The Bureaucrats are Revolting
Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

July 17, 1634

"Oh!" Judy the Younger Wendell heaved a great sigh. "She's beautiful."

The bride was beautiful. Brandy Bates wore a flowing white angora/wool gown with a Chinese silk veil. The veil was attached to a wreath of white roses mixed with baby's breath and myrtle leaves. The leaves were said to bring good luck to the marriage. Brandy carried a bouquet of more white roses, baby's breath, ivy and pale pink carnations.

"She's probably melting in that wool," Vicky Emerson muttered. "God knows, I am."

The Barbie Consortium were bridesmaids at the wedding of the season. Wedding of the year, more like. And in spite of Vicky's every effort, the skirts were long and the dresses modest. Not her favorite look.

"Shh!" Millicent hissed. "She's almost here."

The wedding was being held in the formal garden of the Residentz, the home and offices of Vladimir Yaroslav's Russian delegation. Father Kotov had pushed for the wedding to be held at St. Vasili's Russian Orthodox Church, but there were just too many people who needed to be invited. And most of them had shown up.

"Brandy is just gorgeous," Tate Garrett said, then wiped her eyes.

"The groom isn't bad, either," Kseniya said. Vladimir had suffered the indignity of Grantville's eclectic fashion mix-with Russian tradition thrown in-but somehow, magically, it had all come together in a cohesive whole. He wore a Russian style fur hat and cape and trousers that were so tight they might almost have been hosiery. The ceremony was nice, too… if a bit long and convoluted with the greater part of it in Russian. The reception was more interesting.

The wedding cake Tate had worked on decorating for two days stood tall and gleaming in the center of a table, flanked by molded Russian Creams on each side. Every kitchen maid at the Residentz had learned to make mints whether she wanted to or not, because there were literally thousands of them. Tate blessed Vladimir several times for choosing an afternoon reception. She might have had a nervous breakdown if she'd had to do a formal dinner for all these dignitaries. Instead, they'd set up an informal buffet. People were circulating freely, murmuring to one another about various things.

Tate began to relax. It was going well.

"No, it's not that simple," Kseniya Kotova said. "The czar can't make laws, not without the consent of the Assembly of the Land or at least the Duma. It's not just that it would be unadvisable; he literally doesn't have the authority to change the law on his own."

"So if he wanted to end serfdom, for instance," Reverend Green asked, "the Duma would stop him?"

Kseniya gave him a look then glanced over at Colonel Leontii Shuvalov. She was by now fully aware of the up-timer's attitude toward serfdom but this was not the place. While she was still trying to figure out how to guide the conversation to a safer topic, Colonel Shuvalov spoke up. "It probably wouldn't be the Duma, royal council, that stopped him but the Assembly of the Land. The ah, middle class I believe you call it. The great families have never been the ones pushing to limit the rights of departure."

"I would have thought they would want it most."

"Yes, I know you would. You up-timers tend to simplify things." Kseniya was a bit annoyed at Reverend Green. "It isn't a conflict between the evil lords and their suffering serfs. It's K-mart versus the mom-and-pop grocery on the corner. The great families can afford to… what is it you call it up-time… go head-hunting? Though in the case of serfs it's more back-hunting."

Reverend Green snorted.

"I'm not sure that Prince Sheremetev would agree with you," Colonel Shuvalov said.

"Of course not. He's K-mart." Kseniya regretted saying it as soon as it came out but the truth was she despised Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev though she had never met him. From all reports he was ill-tempered and not very good at dealing with the bureaus. Still, the news that the Smolensk war would have been a disaster had brought him back into politics. So she explained a bit more. "Russia lacks labor and the weather conditions that make it the next thing to impossible to work the land for half the year don't help. If the serfs were released from the land, the only people in Russia who could afford to hire the labor needed to run a farm would be the great families and the big monasteries.

"Don't forget the new innovations," Colonel Shuvalov pointed out. "While there is truth in what you're saying, there is less of that truth now than there was before the Ring of Fire."

Kseniya hesitated. What she wanted to say was unsafe, more for her family than for her. But spending time in Grantville had made it harder to keep her mouth shut. "It takes time to put those innovations into production, Colonel. Can you afford to lower your-" A quick glance at Reverend Green. "-tenants' rent?"

Colonel Shuvalov grinned at her. It was a surprisingly friendly grin. "Actually, yes. Though I will admit that it's only because Prince Sheremetev has been quite generous with my family." Then the colonel turned back to Reverend Green. "Kseniya's father in-law and I aren't really in the same boat, not quite. We are both Russian officers. He a captain, I a colonel, but the larger difference is that aside from the lands granted me by the czar, Prince Sheremetev provides additional support. So while my financial boat is hardly a yacht, it is a bit bigger than his and less likely to be swamped by changing economic tides."

"Speaking of the army, how are the negotiations with the PLC going?" Kseniya asked.

"Negotiations?" Reverend Green asked. "What are you negotiating with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth?"

Now Colonel Shuvalov did look shocked. "Surely you knew! Poland and Russia are at war! We have been since the Truce of Deulino expired over a year ago. The negotiations are an attempt to prevent the shooting war from resuming." Then he looked back at Kseniya. "Not well, when I left Russia. King Wladyslaw is insisting that he is the rightful czar." He snorted. "And I believe the rightful king of Sweden, as well. Prince Sheremetev is convinced that he, like we, has read the history of the other time Smolensk war. So he knows, probably, that it is unlikely that he can actually gain the throne. But considering the degree to which he trounced us in that other time, he seems to expect to receive the war indemnity without actually having to fight the war."

"How likely is he to trounce you this time if it comes to a shooting war?" Reverend Green wanted to know.

"I wish I knew," the colonel said. "The Patriarch was sure that we would win before Prince Yaroslav sent his letter, and we might have been in a shooting war before now if Sigismund III had died this time around when he did in that other history. But he lasted six months more. Prince Sheremetev was less convinced of our chances in a shooting war and remains so. At the same time, we have learned a lot from the Dacha and the Gun Shop. Even from those silly board games they are playing in the Moscow Kremlin now. Still, it will be better for all if we can reach a negotiated settlement." Which was, Kseniya knew, the Sheremetev party line. None of them had any way of knowing it but just then a young lieutenant named Timrovich was reporting to his general in a place called Rzhev.

"So how was the wedding, Colonel?" Prince Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev asked.

"I found it quite interesting, sir." said Colonel Leontii Shuvalov. "Though I will admit I was a bit disappointed to find that the Poles had held a war while I was gone and I wasn't invited."

"Rzhev made things much more difficult," Prince Sheremetev said. "Filaret is back on his invade Poland hobby horse. And without Shein we probably couldn't hold him back. Shein figures we are getting stronger faster so time is on our side for now. But he will switch back as soon as he figures we're ready." Prince Sheremetev shook his head in disgust. "None of them can see that Poland is not the real enemy. The real enemy is Gustav and his new USE. So tell me about the USE, Leontii?"

Leontii made his report. That the USE was rich and powerful and becoming more so every day was beyond question. He had seen several different kinds of airplanes. The largest of which was dwarfed by the Test Bed but the slowest of which made it seem a snail by comparison. Dirigibles were not a viable weapon of war when airplanes flew. But the real danger was the factories which turned out hundreds of items in the time it would take a craftsman to make just one. Yet Russia had factories too. "While we are behind, we aren't that far behind. A year maybe two. I took a steamer from Rybinsk, one of the ones that they were using to resupply Rzhev. I was amazed by the factories along the Volga." He acknowledged the corrupting influence of the up-timers but pointed out that Vladimir and the Dacha were proving incredibly valuable and were probably essential. "I understand that King Wladyslaw and some of the magnates have recruited up-timers of their own. By the way, how are they taking the events at Rzhev?"

"The Sejm seems deeply offended at the outcome. More offended than cautioned, unfortunately. It must be our fault and we must have somehow cheated. Made a deal with the devil something, anything, other than that they attacked us and we outfought them. They seem especially offended that we uncultured eastern barbarians had such things as breach-loading cannon and that the walking forts proved so effective.

"It hasn't made things any easier on the diplomatic front. About the only thing keeping them from a full scale invasion is Gustav on their western border. The Truce of Altmark expires next year and the way that Sweden and the USE have been going, Poland simply can't afford to be involved in a war with us when Gustav gets around to them. What concerns me is I don't see any particular reason for Gustav to stop at the Russian border."

Through the fall and winter of 1634 the Duma debated. And talks with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth went nowhere. In the winter of 1634 Patriarch Filaret became ill and much of the heart went out of the "invade Poland" faction. Meanwhile more factories came on line. most of them using forced peasant labor. This upset the peasants because winter was their traditional light time. It also upset the Great Families because they couldn't hire the peasants without their landlords' permission.

Since the Ring of Fire, the anti-serfdom movement in Russia had slowly grown from two directions, top down and bottom up. With the service nobility caught in the middle. The top down part was a mix of morality and self interest. It was fairly small because the top of the Russian pyramid was small. There were fourteen to twenty great families depending on how you counted and a similar number of really large monasteries. A few hundred people in the great families and no more than a few thousand in the monasteries.

On the other hand, there were over thirty thousand members of the service, or bureaucratic, nobility-people whose livelihood depended on serf labor. And they were the people holding down the vital mid-level military and civilian posts. They were the tax collectors, the construction supervisors and the managers. In the Russian army they were the captains and the colonels, but rarely the generals. It was the service nobility, bureaucrats and soldiers alike, that had kept Russia from collapsing into chaos during the time of troubles. They had stayed on the job and mostly out of politics, serving whichever czar was in power, and kept the wheels from coming completely off. They were generally non-political, but threatening to take away their serfs would change that in a hurry. As had been shown in 1605, the last year when peasants leaving the land hadn't been forbidden.

Then there were the serfs themselves, the largest proportion of the Russian population. While many, perhaps most, resented their status as serfs, darned few of them objected to the institution. It wasn't that they found the social order objectionable-just their place in it. They ran to the wild east, they ran south to the Cossack lands, they even ran west into Poland, hoping for a better deal. What they didn't do was stand where they were and say "This is wrong!"

It was a subtle but important distinction. There was no Harriet Tubman sneaking back into the Moscow province to smuggle other serfs out to the Cossack territories where they could be free. No Russian Frederick Douglass standing proudly and articulately to decry not just his serfdom but all serfdom. At least, they hadn't done that before the Ring of Fire.

The Ring of Fire changed all that, though it took a while for the change to take root. It took a while… but not that long a while. Rumors fly on the wings of eagles, they say. They fly even faster on wings made of mimeographed paper, and the more radically inclined of the boyar class could afford lots of paper. Russia might not have had its own Frederick Douglass, at least at first. But the writings of the original made their way into Russia and into Russian, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin and other such works. And they resonated. Resonated like jungle drums, like liberty bells. Soon enough, there were Russian serfs putting those thoughts in their own words. By 1635 Russia was starting to look like a powder keg.

But only starting to. And if it was a powder keg, it was milled powder not corned powder. And a poor mix at that.

No one wanted a return to the Time of Troubles. No one wanted Polish troops flooding into Moscow again. Then there was Rzhev. In military terms, Rzhev wasn't very significant at all. But in emotional terms it was. In Rzhev Russia defeated the Poles. And the army that did it had a good number of serfs in it, with a lot of them involved in the fighting. In Rzhev, the Russians showed themselves to be technologically superior to the Poles. Rzhev brought a new feeling of confidence to Russia, and a great deal of political capital to the czar.

Patriarch Filaret wanted to spend that capital invading Poland and retaking Smolensk. But Czar Mikhail Fedorovich had a different idea. He lit a match…

In an unprecedented move, today Czar Mikhail decreed that "Forbidden Years" are now limited, with some qualifications. Anyone who wants to buy out and leave his current lord may do so, provided he is willing to move to Siberia and look for gold or other metals and resources that are now known to exist.

Treasure Maps For Sale Here! Up-time sources used! Mine for GOLD, SILVER, COPPER! Find OIL!

Fedor shoved the paper at Igor. "And what are we going to use for labor now, Igor? The czar has betrayed us!"

"Shhh!" Igor hissed. "You want to get us killed!"

"I'm as loyal as any man," Fedor insisted, though more quietly. "But that doesn't get the crops in. Without our serfs my family will starve… and so will yours."

Which, Igor thought, was overstating the case, probably. It was true that members of the "service nobility" like himself and Fedor needed their serfs. There was never enough labor. "They claim that the new machines will take care of the labor problem," Igor said, still trying to calm his friend.

"They claim! If we could get them. You know how long the waiting list is and you know the boyars will all have them before we even see one. Which is probably a good thing, because who knows if they will work?"

Igor considered bringing up the increase in pay, but he was very much afraid that Fedor would start yelling again. Fedor had already made his opinions on the new paper money quite clear, many times. And honestly, Igor tended to agree with him. How could a piece of paper with printing on it have value? It just didn't make sense. Whenever he could Igor spent the paper as quickly as he could and saved the silver. He wasn't the only one. By this time a silver ruble-which nominally had the same value as a paper ruble-was buying three times as much. It didn't occur to Igor that the new paper rubles were worth three-quarters as much as the silver rubles had been before the paper rubles were introduced. Silver rubles were disappearing into holes and hidden compartments all over Russia, in a classic example of Gresham's Law.

Igor and Fedor had recently been transferred to Moscow to appointments within the Bureau of Roads, because the Bureau of Roads was expanding with the introduction of the Dacha Scrapers. They had both gotten raises but those raises hadn't been in the form of more lands as had been usual. The raise had been more of the new paper money. They didn't see Pavel Borisovich sitting in the next cubical with a friend.

"Papa, have you heard about the new proclamation?" Pavel asked Boris. "I was having lunch with Peter Ivanovich over at the Bureau of Roads and a couple of the new hires were talking. They seemed pretty upset."

"Yes. I imagine they were."

"How bad is it?" Pavel asked.

"It probably won't be too bad for us. We have new plows, a seeder, a reaper and a thresher. But it will ruin a lot of the lower nobility. How many are ruined depends on how many of the serfs can buy out and how many decide now is a good time to run." Serfs running away had been a major problem for years. Often aided and abetted by the upper boyars and the church, who always needed more labor.

Whatever Gustav Adolph thought, Americans didn't have a lock on bureaucracy. Russia had had a well-developed bureaucracy for many years. What Russia hadn't had when it was developing that bureaucracy, was the money to pay the bureaucrats. So whether it was a clerk in Novgorod, a manager in the Bureau of Roads, the Konyushenny Prikaz, or a cavalry trooper, most of the pay for his service was in the form of land granted on a semi-permanent basis by the czar.

Even at this late date the knots of law and custom that turned a free man into a serf weren't quite absolute. If you could escape and stay gone for five years, you were free. And the government wouldn't hunt you; that was up to the person that held the land you were tied to. Also, in theory, there were times when you could buy your way out of your chains. In theory. The last thirty or so years had been "Forbidden Years." Years during which even if you could come up with the cash you weren't allowed to change your status.

Boris continued. "Politically, it's hard to say. The czar may gain enough from the high families and with the general population to offset what he's going to lose with the dvoryane and deti boyars. " Czar Mikhail had been, at least on the surface, quite clever in how he had implemented the new "Limited Year," but Boris wasn't at all sure he had been clever enough.

"It's a big step forward," Bernie Zeppi said. "A really big step."

"It's a disaster," Filip Pavlovich, Bernie's sometime tutor said. "Labor, Bernie. There's not enough. There's never been enough."

"Freedom, Filip." Bernie said back. "Why don't people get that people will work harder and produce more if they're doing it for themselves?"

"Because it isn't true," Filip told him bluntly. "Oh. People probably will work harder if they're paid. But not enough harder to make up for the cost of paying them."

Natasha felt like burying her head in her hands. Or possibly screaming at the top of her lungs. Instead, she took a deep breath, and said, "Gentlemen, this isn't a productive conversation. Can we get back on topic, please?"

"It will make Czar Mikhail even more popular than the win at Rzhev," Anya pointed out.

Bernie grinned his sloppy grin at the girl who'd apparently captured his heart. Anya's presence at the meeting-or, rather, her speaking in the meeting-was an indication of just how much Bernie's presence had affected the Dacha. Bernie was blind to class and it was rubbing off. Anya had started off as a cook's assistant and with help from Bernie had become the Dacha's household accountant. In the process she had become involved in the development of the EMCM, Electro-Mechanical Calculating Machine.

Natasha didn't really understand why or how the little tart had done it, but Bernie admitted to a "fondness for the underdog." Natasha would just as soon have sent the baggage packing. There was something wrong about Anya. Natasha just couldn't put her finger on what. Still

… a happy Bernie was a productive Bernie, so she put up with Anya. Besides the girl did the work, as much as Natasha hated to admit it.

"Popular with who?" Filip asked. "Serfs don't have weapons. The service nobility does. And so does the strelzi. And it's they who will be most affected. When your Czar Lincoln talked about limiting slavery, not abolishing it, it caused a revolution and that was in a country where only a third of it had slavery in the first place. In Russia, serfs are everywhere." Then apparently remembering who he was talking to. "I'm not saying serfdom is a good thing, Bernie. But it's too soon to do this."

"More money for Vlad," Bernie said. "Reapers and threshers are going like hotcakes. What's weird to me is that you-" He pointed at Natasha. "-aren't freaking out about losing serfs. You've got all these lands to take care of."

"I," Natasha said, "can afford to hire help. And people want to work for us, because we can afford to take a smaller cut because we have more people. Most of the truly wealthy are the same way, you know. As is the church. We can make a deal, attract more of the labor force. It's the, lesser nobility, people like Boris and Filip, who need the serfs tied to the land. That's what concerns Patriarch Filaret. Ill as he is, he counseled the czar against this move. And Czarina Evdokia is very, very worried. But the boyars and Duma men are all for it. It will make it much easier for us to poach serfs from the lower nobility. There's a lot of nervousness in Moscow right now."

"And it won't take much to start a firestorm," Filip said. "It's not like we haven't had them before. Or wouldn't have them in the future. Remember Peter the Great. For that matter, remember 1917. That's why I said it's too soon, Bernie. There aren't enough plows and reapers yet to make much of a difference in overall production. And members of the service nobility like me mostly don't have them yet."

Anya sighed. "I understand your point, but already serfs are being put to work in factories. Rented out, or close enough to make no difference, to make their lord extra money. It will never be the right time! Slavery and serfdom don't just fade away. No oppression does. It takes people standing up and saying enough, no more! And making it stick."

Natasha knew that was true. Evdokia had discussed it with Mikhail. Bernie was wrong. It was probably true enough that people worked harder when they were working for themselves. And the evidence was pretty clear that societies without serfs were over all more productive than those with serfs. But that extra productivity didn't go into the pockets of the lord. It went to buy the former serf a new suit of clothes or an extra room of the house, maybe some toys for their kids. Which worked just fine for society as a whole, but sucked so far as the lord was concerned since he now had to pay for labor that he used to get for nothing or at least a lot less.

Grantville

"What's up, dude?" Brandy asked. Calling Vlad dude in her empty-headed surfer girl voice usually got a laugh and sometimes led to other things.

"Huh? What?"

But not this time apparently. "What's wrong, Vladimir?

Vald sat down heavily. "I'm worried. There's bad news from Moscow, but I'm not sure how bad it really is. Boris is being reticent. It could just be that he's busy I guess… but it could also be that he's distancing himself from the family. Father Gavril showed me some letters from his family which indicate that the dvoriane in the military are badly upset with Czar Mikhail and increasingly concerned with foreign influences on him."

"Ksenyia, could you puh-leeze explain all this to me?" Brandy ruffled her hair, looking like she was about to start tearing it out at the roots. "What's going on in Moscow? Vlad's worried sick about Natasha, and Natasha is worried sick about, well, everything. But at the same time, Natasha says that the income from the lands is fine, higher than ever. And from sales of the farm equipment. That's got to be helping."

Home, Ksenyia thought, was difficult to explain to an up-timer. They were so rich. They just had their brains in the wrong… no, that wasn't right… they had their brains in a different place.

She held back the sigh, then said, "In the last years… so many changes. It's hard to adjust to so many changes. You know, my father is streltzi, right?"

Brandy nodded.

" Streltzi means shooter, like musketeer. Mostly we are city guards, but we also guard caravans and when war comes the streltzi are the infantry. But it is usually not war and being the city guards doesn't take up all of our time. So most streltzi have another job: merchant, baker, leatherworker or silversmith, something. My father is

… like a sergeant major, but my family also owns a tannery. We're streltzi, but upper streltzi. My father-in-law is dvoriane. The dvoriane are court nobles and army officers, sometimes bureaucrats, depending on what job is assigned. In fact, my father-in-law is an officer in my father's regiment. But my father-in-law's family is not as wealthy as my family. They receive thirty-five rubles a year and a.

… I don't know a German word that fits pomestie. Pomestie is land given, or perhaps loaned, to the dvoriane as part, usually the larger part, of the payment for their service to the crown. The dvoriane get to collect the rent on the pomestie. But while my father-in-law receives pomestie lands enough to make him richer than my father, he doesn't have enough tenants ah serfs for more than half the lands and you can't collect rent from serfs who aren't there because they ran off to work for a monastery or high boyar."

"Why do the serfs do that?" Brandy asked "It seems it would just be trading one master for another. You would think that the small holders would be, ah, the good guys, here. That they would be the allies of other men, those who have even less."

"They can't afford to be," Kseniya insisted. "Remember the expenses. They don't have labor-saving devices. They need the serfs."

"I bet there are a lot more of these small holders than there are high boyars and churchmen, aren't there?" Brandy thanked Kseniya and went off to do some thinking.

She remembered things said about the dvoriane in other conversations. And a quote from somewhere: "Never trust a banker." There was more to that quote, but she couldn't remember it. The thing was, the dvoriane sort of felt like the bankers from the quote. People who would cover themselves first, last and always. Who wouldn't take sides or would change sides as the wind shifted. Yes, she understood the predicament of the bureau men and soldiers of the service nobility. But that didn't make serfdom right. She also remembered that Boris was dvoriane. And that letters written to Natasha went through the Grantville Section.

Brandy realized that Vladimir needed a way to get messages to Natasha that the Grantville Section wouldn't see. A file baked in a cake. Brandy giggled. Everything old is new again.

Some months later a serf named Yuri laid a bar of white-hot steel in the slot of a drop forge and waved. Another serf from his village pulled the lever and the hammer came down. The bar weighed fifteen pounds and the hammer, which had to be lifted by means of a crank, weighed over a ton. The force of the blow transmitted through the bar and the tongs hammered his arms. It was hard work. Not the sort of work Yuri enjoyed. It was hot and it was bloody dangerous. It wasn't the sort of job that Yuri would have chosen. But Yuri was a serf. He wasn't given a choice.

It was also, in Yuri's opinion, stupid. There were a lot of things that needed doing in the village before harvest, things that couldn't be done over the winter because the ground was frozen. Instead, he was here making extra money for the lord and he knew darn well that neither he nor anyone in the village would see a kopek's worth of the money. No. The money would go to the lord to pay the village's debt and there would be more fees to make sure that the village never got out of debt. He wasn't going to be able to buy off his ties to the land. Heck, he wasn't even working in his home village. The foundry was fifteen miles away from home and he was being charged rent as well as everything else. There are limits to all things and Yuri had just about reached his.

Since he couldn't hope to buy out, he'd just have to run. He didn't want to, because it would stick the rest of the village with his debt. But he'd had it. Yuri began to plan. He couldn't tell his fellow villagers what he was planning; they would report him rather than being stuck with his debt. He'd need food, an extra set of clothing, one of those gold mining maps. Not that he particularly wanted to mine gold, but it would give him a direction to run and even a reason for being on the road. Yuri pulled another bar from the fire and continued to plan.

Early Fall, 1635

"We need more reapers," Anya said.

"Well, we don't have them," Natasha told her. "And we aren't going to have them before the harvest is in."

"What about renting yours out after you have your crops in? With the serfs that have headed for the gold fields there are a lot of people, even some of the boyars, who still won't have their crops in by that time. We could probably rent them for near the cost of buying one and still not have enough to supply the demand."

It was a good plan. It probably would have worked except…

It was mid-afternoon when Peter Boglonovich plotted his measurements. The thermometer was dropping and the barometer was rising; the winds were from the north west and strong. The front had passed through and was on its way south. And Peter couldn't tell anyone. Peter had an excellent clock and real up-timer made equipment, a small wind-powered generator to power his equipment and provide some creature comforts. What he didn't have was a radio. He had maps-good ones-and he knew how to use them, having been trained at the Dacha. He received weather data to plot on those maps from other stations once a week and sent his data off with the same messenger. The messenger was due in two days and Peter figured that the cold front would be halfway to Moscow by then.

"What's the use of a weather station if it doesn't have a radio?" Peter muttered. He knew the answer. He was up here to provide a plot, a record of weather conditions, that could be used to make the predictions more accurate when they got the radios installed and could do real-time prediction. Establishing a baseline was all well and good, but if Peter's calculations were right, real-time weather prediction was going to come too late. This storm was going to sweep over Muscovy, depositing sleet on fields and those crops that hadn't been harvested were going to get pounded.

Five days later

Ivan looked out at his fields and saw death. Death for crops under a sheet of ice and sleet. Death for his family this winter as they ran out of food. Ivan lived on a farm forty miles northeast of Moscow and the storm still raged, beating down the stalks and turning the ripe grain to mush. He wasn't the only one by any means. The storm ripped through Russia's heart, trashing a full quarter of the expected grain crop for the year and it could have been much worse.

On a farm thirty miles to the east of Ivan's, Misha went to the family altar, knelt down in front of the icons and thanked God and his ancestors that he had spent the money to use the reaper, in spite of his wife's complaint of his spendthrift ways. His crop was in the barn. All of the village crops were in the barn, safe from the storm.

For Misha the storm was good news. Amazingly good news. It meant that the price he could get for his crop would be considerably higher. Even after the taxes and tithes were paid, which would take more than half his crop, he would have grain to sell for the new paper rubles. Perhaps enough to pay off his debt, which would allow him to leave. At least if he promised to go to the gold fields.

Other farms had been missed by the storm or hit only by the edges. Then there were the potato fields. It wasn't just the potatoes from the Ring of Fire. The patriarch and czar had both read the histories and put in a large order for potatoes with English merchants. It had taken a while, but the merchants had delivered. Half a ship load of potatoes had arrived in the spring of 1635. According to the captains, the potatoes were harvested from Chiloe Island in South America. The captains also reported that they weren't the only people sent after them. But they might have just said that because they had only delivered half a ship load when two full ship loads had been ordered.

The peasants who had been assigned to grow them had not been pleased. But with the government promising to buy the potatoes as a fixed price per pound, and threats about what would happen if they failed to follow instructions, they had grown them. The peasants were going to be displeased again. Fixed prices worked both ways.

Still it wasn't enough. Not with the number of peasants who had managed to buy out or simply run off. That move had delayed the harvest in a number of places and that delay had been crucial. It had destroyed millions of rubles worth of crops. The bureaucratic service nobility placed the blame for the disaster at the feet of the czar. And though they were unlikely to actually starve because of it, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them had been ruined.

"Natasha, you see Czarina Evdokia often, do you not?" Boris asked.

Natasha, hearing the tone of his voice, took a long look at him. Boris was always a bit pasty-faced, but these days he was dreadfully pale. And had dark circles under his eyes. Which, oddly for the current situation, almost made her laugh. He looked so much like Bernie's cartoon. "Yes, I do, Boris. Why?"

"I'm worried," Boris said. "I know there's something going on. Something bad. But I'm excluded. The word is out that I'm too close to the Dacha to trust." He sighed. "It's to be expected, of course. Nevertheless, I do hear rumors. One is that the strelzi are angry, and are making alliances with a number of men in Moscow."

"What do you want me to tell Evdokia?" Natasha asked.

"To be careful. Very careful. Even to get out of Moscow, if they can."

"Back," Boris hissed. "Get back."

Pavel pulled his head away from the alley's mouth. "We can't go that way, Papa."

"Then we'll turn back and try another. We've got to get home to your mother and get her out of here."

Boris and Pavel rushed home, taking as many back ways as possible. There was danger on the major streets of Moscow, and it wasn't just the burning buildings. Gun shots were frequent.

When they reached the house, Daromila had already packed. An old Moscow hand, she'd smelled the smoke and heard the shots. Fire was never a good thing in wooden Moscow, which had burned and arose from its own ashes numerous times.

"What started it this time?" Daromila asked.

"The new price controls," Boris said. "Too high for too many, or at least that's their claim."

"Where are we going, Papa?"

"You and your mother are going home to the village. On your way, stop by the Dacha and pick up Ivan."

"You think it's that bad?" Daromila asked.

"Yes. This isn't just a riot. This is politics." Boris said.

"I don't understand," Pavel said, somewhat apologetically.

"That's because you don't remember the Time of Troubles," his mother explained. " Dvoriane serve Russia and stay out of politics. Especially at times like these."

"But surely not this time. This time the dvoriane are involved and the boyar's sons as well. This is about the serfs and the limited year. Our friends and our neighbors are involved. Many of them have lost everything when their serfs ran off looking for gol-"

Suddenly Pavel found himself against the wall with his father's hand around his throat. Pavel was a fairly tall young man, taking more after his mother than his father. He was also fairly quick, but he had been looking right at Papa and hadn't even seen him move.

"Yes!" Boris hissed. "And whoever wins, a lot of them are going to die in the next few days and weeks. The ones who have made too much noise. Someone is giving the dvoriane enough rope to hang ourselves. The bureaus are going to be purged. That includes friends of ours, people we have known for years. But it's not going to include your mother or your brothers or you. Not if I can help it. We don't stay out of politics because we don't care, boy. We stay out of politics to stay alive. And I'll tell you something else. Whoever wins, it won't be the serfs and it won't be the dvoriane, the boyar's sons or the streltzi. It will be a faction of the high families. And any dvoriane who gets involved will lose… even if they are on the wining side this time."

Pavel looked at his mother but she was looking back at him just as hard-eyed as his father. "You don't remember what it was like when we had three czars in as many weeks, Pavel. But I do and your papa does."

"Now, are you going to do what I tell you to?" Boris asked and Pavel felt his father's fingers tighten around his throat. Pavel nodded.

Then his father released him and went on as though nothing had happened. "On the way, you pick up Ivan. Thank God that two of your brothers are in Germany already. If Natasha asks what's happening, tell her but don't dally to do it. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dacha is targeted in the next few days."

Boris' estimate was off. When Pavel and Daromila passed the Dacha there were troops already there. In fact, there were troops at the Dacha before the riot was well started.

After seeing his wife and son off, Boris went back to the office. This was a time to be precisely where you were supposed to be and easy to find-so people wouldn't think you were somewhere you weren't supposed to be, doing something you shouldn't.

By the time he got to the office, several of his more experienced people were already there. "Gregory, I need you to sanitize our records."

"You think we're going to get inspected?" Gregory asked, then blushed for such a silly question.

"Of course we will. Every bureau in Russia is going to get inspected after this. Oh… and Gregory… not too sanitized."

Gregory smiled. It was still a rather nervous smile, but at least it was the smile of a man who knew what he had to do. The way these things went, the inspectors would keep looking until they found something. It was best to leave them something minor to find.

"I'm sorry," Colonel Shuvalov said politely. "But I have my orders from the Duma."

From the Duma, Natasha noted. Not from the czar or from the Assembly of the Land. Just the Duma. The troops, she was told, were there for the protection of the Dacha. Natasha also noted that the colonel was a member of the Sheremetev faction at court. Which wasn't good news. The takeover of the Dacha was amazingly anticlimactic, certainly for most of the people living and working there. From the start, the majority of the workers and researchers had been from the dvoriane and the deti boyars. Including a couple of, literal, boyar's sons. Oh, there were a few peasants who had, through talent and work, made a place for themselves among the researchers. Anya and a few others. And more streltzi, especially where craftsmanship was needed. But the cultural outlook of the Dacha was that of the dvoriane: do your job and stay away from politics. At least court politics… the bureaus had their own.

Unfortunately, that option wasn't really available to Natasha. What protected her was the value of the Dacha itself. That, and keeping her lip buttoned.

Anya waited for her meeting with Colonel Shuvalov with some trepidation. He was interviewing the senior staff individually. The danger was that he would be upset that someone of her birth would be among them. And in her case a demotion, deserved or not, could potentially be fatal. Her other employer wouldn't care whose fault it was. But Colonel Shuvalov was friendly, asking her about her work, what they were accomplishing with the EMCM and its use in accounting.

"It uses punched cards for input," Anya explained "Not because we can't make magnetic tape. We can't make magnetic tape that stops and starts without tearing. People type one number at a time and the pauses aren't all the same length. It also lets us print out the figures and the codes before running them through the machine. That let's us catch errors."

"Yes. I understand the exchequer has been asking for one. Or rather, for possession of this one."

"Yes, Colonel. We'll be sending this one to them as soon as the next one is ready."

"I'm sure they will be happy to hear it. Now, though… the prince has some instructions for you. A red report, please."

Anya froze. "The prince" was the code name for her employer. That, combined with the phrase "a red report," meant that she was to give Colonel Shuvalov a full report. But the colonel wasn't a spy, not her sort. She couldn't be absolutely sure of course. It was possible that he was simply a better spy than she was… but Anya didn't think so. And if the colonel wasn't a spy, he was what he appeared to be: Sheremetev's man. Which meant that Sheremetev was the prince. Anya had never tried to identify the prince. Quite the opposite, in fact. Not knowing who the prince was meant she couldn't tell. Which meant, in turn, that he was much less likely to have her killed. Now she had effectively been told who he was. That didn't bode well for her long term survival.

All that flashed through her mind in seconds and she came back to herself. "The new EMCM will have additional capabilities. An expanded command set. But the real key is less the machine than the input and output devices…" She finished a more complete description of what the new EMCM could do that the Dacha staff didn't really want known outside the Dacha. Then she started identifying the other spies that worked in the Dacha.

"Yuri the smith is selling drawings of parts to a man in the Bureau of Mines. Efim is actually employed by Prince Kaminsky, though he doesn't know it… " The list went on. Anya had been working at the Dacha for years and knew, for the most part, who the other spies were. Most of it wasn't new information. She discussed the way information and other things were flowing in and out of the Dacha. She didn't mention Great Aunt Georgia's Special Apple Onion Pecan Cakes. The cakes that had recently started arriving from Princess Brandy's Great Aunt Georgia in Grantville-by way of Brandy. And she didn't mention the little packets hidden within them. She went into the interpersonal relationships of the staff.

Anya wasn't altogether sure why she didn't tell the colonel about Natasha's cakes. It certainly wasn't out of any great love for Natasha. Natasha was what Bernie would call a "California Liberal." Self-righteous in her condescension, the noble Lady Bountiful, stooping to lift up the poor, downtrodden serfs. She was also one of those jealous-but-not-interested women. The ones who don't want a guy for themselves, but don't want anyone else to have him either. Not mentioning the cakes was a risky move, even though Anya thought she was the only one who knew about the little packages.

For several weeks things went along pretty much as they had before. The Dacha's contacts with the outside world were a bit more limited than they had been. They had always been limited; now they were the next best thing to nonexistent. Even contact with associated projects like the Czarina Evdokia, the large dirigible being built in Bor just across the Volga from Novgorod, or the foundry and gun shop located in Podol just a few miles away from the Dacha, were difficult and sporadic.

"I'd kind of like to know what Cass is up to," Bernie said. "He's not a great friend or anything, but I'd still like to know. And do we know anything about that nurse and her family who came to Moscow?"

"Nothing, Bernie. Not yet, anyway."

Bernie thought Natasha was pale enough that she wouldn't need that god-awful makeup women wore in Russia. "That Shuvalov dude seems like a pretty good guy. Do you think he'd let me send a message?"

He hadn't thought it was possible, but Natasha went even whiter.

"Don't try it right now, Bernie," she said. "Just leave it for a bit."

"You gonna tell me what's wrong, Natasha? I know there's something I'm missing here. Besides the armed soldiers, of course. And not seeing Boris for weeks. And the fact that everyone is tiptoeing around like ghosts."

Bernie was not going to understand this. Natasha knew that down to her toes. "Colonel Shuvalov is a deti boyar, a retainer of the Sheremetev family, Bernie. Rather like Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky is to my family."

"Yeah. He's pretty polite. Nice guy," Bernie said. Not getting what she was saying at all.

"He goes out of his way to be cordial," Natasha admitted. "But stop and think, Bernie. Colonel Shuvalov doesn't push it, as you would say. But… he's here for more than one purpose. My family, the Yaroslav family, were once independent princes. We retain the titles and are very wealthy. We're just not as politically well-connected as some of the other great families. At least we hadn't been. With the Dacha we were starting to become so. So Colonel Shuvalov has been selected…"

"He's after you?"

"Shh, shh. Not so loud, you idiot!"

"That's fucking slavery… or something. Like something out of a goddamn book! One of my sister's stupid romance novels."

Natasha laughed bitterly. "Romance has very little to do with it. Through me, my family and its fortune will serve Shuvalov's ambitions. Our… sons… will be boyars, great family boyars."

"That stinks!"

"Keep quiet, Bernie. Stop shouting," Natasha hissed. "As long as we're quiet and don't make a fuss, Colonel Shuvalov will remain polite. He would much prefer to have a… mutually supportive relationship. But the relationship itself is in no way optional."

Not on her part and not really on his. The basic motivation behind the match was to move Natasha's family's wealth into the Sheremetev family's control. They weren't going to take the wealth away-just control of it. This was necessary, since while the Yaroslav's weren't really one of the great families-they were one of the twenty but not one of the fourteen-they had acquired a degree of wealth and a set of connections that made the family potentially disruptive if not brought to heel. Reined in, as it were.

"It could be a lot worse, Bernie," Natasha pointed out. "Colonel Shuvalov is bright, charming, and a decent sort. He's not… one of the worst. Not old. Not gross. More modern than some."

Bernie thought for a while. Shuvalov was also, unfortunately, as Bernie already knew, completely loyal to his patron. He was aware of Sheremetev's ambitions but didn't feel that those ambitions absolved him of his duty. "He's like… I dunno… some kind of fucking samurai about duty and honor," Bernie said. "And I kind of like him. And I don't see how we could get out of this mess. We don't have enough men to do anything, and not enough weapons, either."

"So we keep our mouths shut," Natasha said. "We wait and we don't cause trouble. For now, Sheremetev is busy making sure his position is consolidated. Shuvalov isn't the worst. Let's hope he's left in charge here."

The worst, as Anya well knew, certainly wasn't Colonel Shuvalov. In her opinion, the worst was Sheremetev. Shuvalov had the code phrase, so she now knew that the man who had her family-and the man she'd been reporting to for these last few years-was Sheremetev.

And what would Sheremetev do, once he was fully in power? What would he do to Anya?

Worse, what would Bernie and Natasha do once they found out she'd been spying?

As coldhearted as Anya had been when she started spying on the Dacha, as much as she had tried to remain coldhearted… it hadn't worked. She loved Bernie. Truly, from the bottom of her heart. He was so different, so gentle. And he loved her, had since almost the beginning.

Anya tossed and turned through another night.

"He's not the worst," Aunt Sofia pointed out.

"He's not the worst, he's not the worst, he's not the worst," Natasha chanted and threw her hands in the air. "I know perfect well that he's not the worst, dammit."

"You've been around Bernie too long," Sofia said. "Stop using that word, even in English."

Natasha turned a stone face to her. "He's not the worst. But he's not what I want."

"What do you want, child?"

"I don't know yet. I haven't had a chance to learn what I want." She paused a moment. "I want Vlad. I wish I could talk to my brother."

"Damn their eyes!"

For a moment, Brandy thought Vlad was quoting another book. Then she realized that he was angrier than she'd ever seen him.

They were in the salon. She was reading a book and Vlad was trying to catch up on the endless paperwork. He'd just opened the latest dispatch bag from Moscow. "What's wrong?"

"You know that delayed mica shipment?" Vlad leaped out of his chair and began pacing. "It wasn't delayed because of weather or bandits. Well, not real bandits. The Duma delayed it. On purpose. They've also taken Czar Mikhail and his family hostage, along with that nurse and her family." He thrust the letter toward her. "Look at this! Just look at it!"

Brandy was forced to push the papers away from her face. "Calm down, Vlad. And talk sensibly. What else has happened?"

He pulled the papers back, then read from them. "Because of it's vital importance to the state, the Dacha has been placed under guard." Vlad threw the paper across the room. "That means they've got Natasha. And Bernie."

Over the next few days, after Vlad had calmed down a bit more, Brandy was able to read a translation of the offending papers.

Czar Mikhail and his family were safe, if being held hostage was safe. Not that they were officially being held hostage they had "been moved out of Moscow to ensure the Czar's safety". The up-time nurse and her family were being held in the same place as the czar, so, again, they were safe. The manager at the mica mine, while nothing had yet been done to him, was being held under suspicion of "involvement in the recent unpleasantness." Accusations of corruption had been laid against the manager… and against Vlad himself.

No shipments of anything would be sent from Moscow or from Vlad's own lands. He was, effectively, broke.

Bernie and Natasha along with the rest of the Dacha staff were in "protective custody."

Somehow, Brandy just didn't like that term.

The Dacha

Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev rode his horse up to the gates of the Dacha compound at the head of a troop of personal cavalry. He had still not made up his mind what to do about the Dacha. His cousin, Ivan Petrovich, wanted it. Wanted it badly. And Ivan Petrovich, corrupt as he was, had support within the family and the Duma. Also, Fedor could rely on Ivan to crack down on the Dacha staff.

Which was, in a way, the problem. Ivan Petrovich would squeeze the golden goose all right-but he just might choke it to death. And the Dacha had been laying right well over the last couple of years Among other things, it had laid the logistics for the dust up with Poland. Which had put Russia in a better position than it had been in for twenty years.

A lot depended on how well Leontii Shuvalov's suit was progressing. If the Yaroslav girl, Natasha, was proving difficult, Fedor might have to go with Ivan Petrovich because he could not afford to have the Dacha or the Gun Shop running loose. He got down from his horse with difficulty and shook Leontii's hand. "How goes your suit?"

"Reasonably well, My Prince," Leontii said. "Natasha understands the situation. I won't say she is thrilled, but I doubt she will fight it."

"And how do…" Fedor paused as the lady in question arrived. "We'll talk later."

Later, in the main office

"The letters have gone out to Poland, what's left of the Holy Roman Empire and the Turks," Sheremetev said. "I'm not sure of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, mostly because Wladyslaw can't seem to get over the notion that he should be czar of Russia, but who knows? I expect to have better luck with Murad. He's a pragmatic mad man. Who will be happy enough to get up-timer tech as long as the up-timers aren't mentioned. I don't know which way Ferdinand will jump."

"And the riots?" Leontii asked.

"Worked quite well at distracting Mikhail's adherents and added enough between him and the bureau men to cut off most of his information flow. They have also provided more than ample justification for cracking down on the bureaus. I think we have them put in their place for now." Sheremetev snorted "Button clerks, the lot of them. Self-important button clerks who have been getting above themselves since the Time of Troubles. They needed to be shown the stick. We'll wait a few more weeks before we show them the carrot." Sheremetev was talking about a plan to put enforcement of the ties to the land in the hands of the government.

"Anyway, you will have heard the reports by now. So what do you think of Anya?"

"Ah. She is, ah… very informed on the workings of the Dacha, My Prince," Shuvalov said.

"But you don't think I ought to be depending on a peasant whore for information?" Sheremetev laughed at the colonel. "Leontii, my boy, the up-timers would call you a boy scout. The up-timers aren't entirely wrong about peasants. You can sometimes find a good tool even at the bottom of a dung heap."

"Perhaps so. But it's not that, or not entirely. Perhaps not directly."

"Oh? Something real then?"

"She is no longer a kitchen maid. At Bernie's instigation she was promoted and promoted again. Then promoted a third time, apparently on her own merits."

"I know that. She reported each promotion."

"Yes… but it had to have an affect on her loyalty."

"I have means of keeping her loyal." Sheremetev paused. "Was she holding something back?"

"Not that I could tell. I think she may care for Bernie-at least a little. Though she denies it. She truly doesn't like Natasha. That's clear enough. She offered me her condolences about the possibility of a union and I believe she was sincere. What bothers me is why she doesn't like Natasha."

"So why doesn't she like Natasha?"

"She says it's because Natasha is a phony liberal. But I think it's about Bernie."

"Is Natasha interested in the up-timer?" Sheremetev gave Leontii a sharp look.

"No." Leontii laughed. "Even Anya doesn't think that. But Natasha thinks of Bernie as sort of a younger brother, though I believe he is actually older than she is. And she is protective of him." He paused thinking. "I suspect that Anya is probably right in her assessment of Natasha's character. What Natasha thinks with her head is dangerously liberal. But what she feels in her gut much less so. She disapproves of Anya's relationship with Bernie because Anya is a peasant and she sees Bernie as a deti boyar. My point is that I don't think Anya would be nearly as upset with Natasha if she didn't actually care about Bernie."

"And that could be dangerous." Shermetev nodded. "I'll look into it."

Prince Sheremetev did indeed look into it. He interviewed Anya and came away from that interview uncertain. She really was too valuable an asset to dispose of casually. She hadn't been at first, but by now she understood what was being built in the Dacha better than anyone else he had. That very knowledge made her more dangerous, should she betray him. And her temptation to betray him was rooted in her attachment, if there really was one, to Bernie, and to a lesser extent to the staff of the Dacha. Shermetev began to smile.

That night at dinner Natasha asked the question that they had all been wondering about. "What is the situation in Moscow?"

Sheremetev looked at her then turned to Bernie. "Are you familiar with the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan?"

Anya knew that before Bernie had come to the Dacha he would have been, at best, vaguely familiar with the history of Japan or the rule of the shoguns. However, while most of his education as a consultant at the Dacha was technical, some of it was historical, especially for what was now current history. And Bernie had ended up translating or helping to translate quite a bit of history.

"Yes, a bit, Prince Sheremetev. Tokugawa Iemitsu is the current shogun. His younger brother Tadanaga has gone missing in this timeline. In the original he was ordered to commit suicide in 1633 or 1634. Whether he got word of his older brother's orders and escaped this time around or he was executed, I have no idea."

"I was speaking more generally," Sheremetev said. "In Japan the emperor reigns but the shogun rules. Russia needs a strong hand at the reins, but doesn't need-can't afford-the sort of, ah, disruption that a dynastic squabble would produce. To provide the first while avoiding the second, I have taken on a role similar to that of shogun. Mikhail never really wanted the power of the throne anyway. This way Mikhail will remain safe, comfortable and secure as long as there is no trouble." He smiled.

It was, Anya thought, an extremely cold smile. The sort of smile a shark might smile.

Then he continued. "Mikhail's limited year was a good plan poorly executed. We do need more gold and silver to augment the paper money and to use in foreign trade. However, the way he did it without properly preparing the ground almost led to a revolution."

Anya didn't snort, not even under her breath, but she wanted to. Yes, the dvoriane were upset but they never would have rioted not without believing that they had support in the Duma.

"He had no means in place to ensure the loyalty of the service nobility," Sheremetev continued. "That is why I have created the post of political officer. Russia had them up-time under Stalin's rule. They watched the service nobility, even if they called it something else in the twentieth century. Political officers will be, ah, ideologically sound individuals. Mostly, but not entirely, deti boyar whose job is to make sure that their charges don't do anything stupid. I thought of using the church, but people get really upset about things like that."

Suddenly everyone was looking at Colonel Leontii Shuvalov.

Prince Sheremetev noticed and laughed. "Oh, not at all. Leontii is a fine man, but not nearly subtle enough for this. The new political officer for the Dacha is… Anya."