Chapter 5: News from Home
Russia House
Grantville
July 1636
Fedor Ivanovich Trotsky handed over the bundle. It was from Moscow, and the news from there had been chaotic, at best, for the past week and more.
"Is it as crazy as the rumors?" Vladimir Gorchakov asked.
"The messages to me were, Your Highness." Fedor Ivanovich had been in Magdeburg to meet the message boat. Vladimir had sent him there as soon as the first rumors began filtering over the USE radio-telegraph system. "Boris Ivanovich Petrov had nothing but the first reports when he prepared the messages. He sent one to his son in Magdeburg, one to me, and one to you. I suspect that they all say basically the same thing."
Vladimir doubted that. He was pretty sure that Boris had sent his sons additional information and instructions. But he didn't correct Fedor Ivanovich. Instead, he took the packet of letters to his desk and sat down to read.
Two hours later, he was still confused. But it was now more a question of why than what. He was also cursing himself for ever having sent Cass Lowry to Moscow. He should have sent the car by itself.
He got up and called in his staff, and his wife Brandy. Especially Brandy. He had come to rely on her advice even before he married the up-timer girl. And now that he and all the Russians he brought to the USE were facing their own political Ring of Fire, cutting them off from all they knew and depended on, her advice would be all the more important.
Iosif Borisovich Petrov brought his own letters to the meeting. He was nineteen, a squat, solidly built young man whose placid, even bovine, expression hid a solid and surprisingly creative brain. For the past year and more, he had been coordinating the information from the Dacha and was responsible for several industrial patents based on work done there.
"Father says I should stay here for now," Iosif said placidly. "He doesn't exactly think that this will blow over, but he does want me and Viktor out of the line of fire for now." He placed a sheet of paper face down on the table and passed it over to Vladimir.
Vladimir took a quick look and nodded. The sheet said what Iosif just said, but it also instructed him to change to the third code set and to arrange a new pad to be sent to Moscow. Vladimir put the sheet back on the table, still face down, and passed it back.
"I never should have…" That was as far as Vladimir got before Brandy interrupted.
"Don't be silly. It wasn't Cass. It was Sheremetev, and you had no say in putting him in Russia. All that bastard Lowry did was bring things to a head, and get shot for it." Brandy paused a moment then continued. "I'll need to tell his dad, and we'll need to write to his brother. There are a couple of the guys who were on the football team with him that we'll need to talk to. I don't want this to turn into a feud, and it's going to get out that he got himself shot while trying to attack your sister."
"I will be willing to pay reparations within reason," Vladimir said, "but we will not take the blame for what happened. Not me, you, or Russia. From what we know so far, his killing was a fully justified act."
"That is, I think, a minor issue compared to the financial situation this puts us in and the political ramifications," Iosif Borisovich said. "Father would prefer it if we were to keep our relations with Moscow as cordial as we can manage."
"In other words we should let Sheremetev screw us with our pants on," Brandy Bates said. Sometimes, in moments of stress, her habits from Club 250 and similar places came out. It was rather less upsetting to the down-timers, who had little difficulty with profanity but were deeply uncomfortable with taking the Lord's name in vain.
"Well, we should at least let him think we will," offered Iosif, placatingly.
"Frankly, at this point I'm more concerned about Ron Stone than I am about Sheremetev. Ron had every expectation that we would be getting supplies from Russia eventually. Now it looks like that's not going to happen. And totally aside from the fact that Sheremetev is in Russia and can't hurt us nearly as much as the Lothlorien Farbenwerke could if they wanted to, Ron has dealt fairly with us and we have an obligation to deal fairly with him."
"You're going to have to go have a talk with him," Brandy said, "and see what we can work out."
Vladimir sighed. That would mean another trip to Hesse-Kassel. But there wasn’t the same rush, this time, so he wouldn’t need to pay a small fortune to the airship company. Even on horseback, Kassel could be reached from Grantville in a few days, at least in mid-summer.
* * *
Iosif left, and Vladimir started reading the personal letter from Natasha. All the packets of letters had arrived on the same ship from Nyen. The rumors had come from the sailors of that ship talking before the letters could make their way upriver. They had received Boris' version of events at the same time they received Natasha's and Czar Mikhail's. Suddenly, Vladimir stopped reading. "Bernie Zeppi?"
"What about Bernie?" Brandy asked. She had been reading a long letter from Czarina Evdokia.
"Natasha wants to marry him!"
"Bernie?" Brandy shook her head. "Well, from all reports, he's changed a lot. He's probably not the same failed football jerk I remember from before the Ring of Fire. After all, look at me."
"Yes, perhaps. But the political consequences…Bernie's a peasant, even if he is an up-timer."
"You do remember I used to be a barmaid, right?" Brandy's voice carried a chill.
"That's different. You're a woman."
Brandy blinked. For the moment, her anger was drowned in confusion. Why on Earth would it be worse if a princess married a peasant than if a prince did? It made no sense.
That slight pause gave Prince Vladimir time to realize that his foot was lodged in his mouth with the leg poised to follow it down his throat unless he started extracting right now. "I'm just concerned about the political consequences."
"What political consequences? Czar Mikhail is in Ufa, which is so far east that I had never heard of it. And Sheremetev is probably raising an army right now to go fetch him back, dead or alive. And you're worrying over the political consequences of your sister marrying a peasant?"
"It could affect how some of the other great houses respond.…Besides, it's Bernie Zeppi we're talking about. I don't think that I ever remember seeing him when he didn't have at least a light buzz on."
That stopped Brandy again. Because after the Ring of Fire and the battle of the Crapper, Bernie had spent most of the rest of the time before he went off to Moscow drunk.
"I remember. But he changed after he got to Moscow. You know that. Especially after he ran into the annual typhoid outbreak and saw all those people die."
"Maybe, but he'd have to have changed a lot."
"Well, it's not your choice. Or it shouldn't be. It's up to Natasha."
Vladimir wasn't convinced but wisely kept his mouth shut and for now, at least, Brandy let him. "So what happens now? About Russia, I mean."
That was a good question. Within a few months of his arrival in Grantville back in 1631, Vladimir Petrovich Gorchakov had realized that Russia had to change. But he had imagined that change as a gradual thing, a tweak here, and then an adjustment there. He hadn't expected to see the end of serfdom in his lifetime. And at first he had assumed that the up-timer experts were right, that serfdom and a technological society couldn't coexist. That the machines themselves and the skills needed to run them would preclude it.
The problem was, it didn't seem to be working that way. Oh, here in the United States of Europe with the Committees of Correspondence ready to introduce guillotines to the back of the neck of any recidivist noble, the United Mine Workers of America and Europe unionizing—not just mine workers but steel workers and factory workers of all sorts—and the Fourth of July Party and the Rams giving them all political cover, it was working out that way. But not in Russia, or the Ottoman Empire. The same serfs who had been putting in fourteen hour days getting in the crop before the Ring of Fire were now putting in fourteen hours a day all winter in Russian factories. The Ottomans were using slaves in their factories, according to Boris Petrov, and it seemed to be working just fine.
That information had caused him to take a closer look at the assumptions about slavery that the up-timers held, and even in the up-timer history they just didn't hold up. In the up-time USA the antebellum south used slaves in factories and they worked just fine. The Germans used concentration camp inmates to make their V2 rockets. Again, it worked fine.
Vladimir understood slavery and the attitudes that it engendered in a way that no up-timer could, because Vladimir owned, or had owned, hundreds of serfs. He understood the level of codependency, and institutional syndrome, in the serf communities. Masters came to believe that the serfs lacked the capability of living free of bondage because after being born and raised a serf or a slave, a lot of them did lack that ability. And, even more, had grown comfortable with their lot in life. Put to work in factories, they worked in factories. Some were treated well, some treated poorly, but, so far at least, the serfs and slaves in Russia were adapting to factory life as well or better than the free labor. Perhaps because they had no choice but to do so.
It was all quite depressing and had provided both Vladimir and Brandy with many sleepless nights, along with the goal of building an abolitionist movement in Russia. But now Czar Mikhail was in Ufa and trying to build a new structure of government for Russia. That was much of what Vladimir had received in his packet of letters from Ufa. The question was: how do we design the constitution for a constitutional monarchy in Russia…no…longer…how do we evolve one?
"I don't know. I know that Alexander Hamilton showed up at your constitutional convention with a draft constitution already made up, but didn't get most of what he wanted. And I have studied your three branch government system, both the up-time version and the USE constitution. But I don't think that approach will work for Russia. More importantly, I don't think it will garner the support needed to win the civil war that now seems inevitable in Russia."
"Why not?"
"Because we have to have the bureaus with us to win," Vladimir said. "It wasn't true in Ivan the Terrible's time, but during the Time of Troubles, the bureaus were the only things holding the nation together. They gained a great deal of power, even if it was a sort of under-the-table type of power. The limitations on Czar Mikhail that were imposed when he was crowned made them even stronger. For Mikhail to do much of anything he had to get the approval of the duma and the zemsky sobor, but the bureaus could implement regulations on their own. They skirted the restriction and that gave them additional clout."
"Well, come on. It's not like we didn't have bureaucrats up-time or like we don't have them in the USE," Brandy said.
They had talked about this before, but Brandy hadn't lived there and didn't really understand. The term “zemsky sobor” translated as “assembly of the land”. Representatives of Russia’s different social classes could be summoned by the Tsar orders to discuss important political and economic issues. It could be considered the first Russian parliament—allowing for very constipated values of “parliament.” It didn’t really have any independent authority. The duma was a much smaller assembly of high-ranking noblemen, which had a lot more authority than the zemsky sobor but didn’t effectively wield much power on a day-to-day basis. In practice, Russia was run by deals made between the bureaus and the bureaus weren't going to give that up.
"It's different," was all he could come up with. "They have a lot more power than they officially have, and no government that doesn't bring in the bureau men will survive."
Brandy shrugged, not so much in agreement as in acceptance. "So how do we bring them in?"
"I don't know."
"From what we heard before the escape, Sheremetev hadn't been treating the bureaus well. That has to help us, right?"
"Some, yes. But bureaucrats tend to like stability. I suspect that a lot will depend on what he does next."
Petrov House, Moscow
The servant took the sheets of typewritten paper. He didn't read the address because he couldn't read. The address read: "From Mariya Petrova, to Boris Petrov, Moscow."
Some hours later, when Boris Ivanovich Petrov got home, he could read the address. Inside the letter was a section in the family code. After he decoded it, it read:
Boris, I received this from Sofia Gorchakovna.
Dear Mariya, the ladies of Goritsky Monastery have been following events over the radio. Several messages have been sent and it is the consensus of the sisters that Archangelsk will attempt to revolt if Director-General Sheremetev gives them into the care of his cousin.
There followed a fairly detailed description of the politics of Archangelsk, who was being bribed by who and who was getting a rake off from what shipments. Most especially, the realization that with the Swedes controlling access to the Baltic, they controlled all the trade from the rest of the world. It wasn't a new situation, but the fractures in Russia were being seen as an opportunity to break free, or at least get a better deal.
The consensus is that Sheremetev will be so busy with Mikhail that he will cut any deal he has to with Archangelsk in order to keep it from being a distraction, the letter finished.
Then Mariya continued.
I have sent Sofia a pad for encoding messages to me. I think that it would be best if we use me as the conduit. That way messages from her will be chatty letters from one old woman to another, while the letters from me to you will be chatty letters from a wife to her husband.
Boris smiled and nodded. The news about Archangelsk was important if it was true, but even more important was the news about the monastery. It would give him a whole section of analysts that no one would know about. Boris considered and wrote several other letters. He would send one off to a friend of his in Nizhny Novgorod and see if it could be put on a steamboat heading for Ufa. Ivan needed to know about this.
Moscow Kremlin
July 1636
Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev looked up into the sky with rage and hate in his heart. There, above Moscow, very high, though it was impossible for him to tell just how high, was the dirigible Czarina Evdokia, floating above Moscow and raining pamphlets. Sheets of paper poison, encouraging rebellion and sedition in the name of the deposed and possessed Czar Mikhail. Safe in Ufa, Mikhail and his traitors were trying to return Russia to the Time of Troubles. For a brief instant, Sheremetev was ready to turn and order it fired upon. He might have done it, except that it would have just underscored his helplessness in the face of the airship.
It was a still day here on the ground, but there must be a light breeze to the southwest at the airship's height. The airship was pointing to the northeast and maintaining a position a bit northeast of Moscow. And the fluttering pamphlets were drifting down as a sparse snowfall covering the city. Finally, after several minutes of glaring, Sheremetev turned and went back into the building. Then he sent for Colonel Leontii Shuvalov.
* * *
"Director-General." Colonel Shuvalov bowed.
"Colonel, I want that beast out of the sky." Sheremetev still felt the rage.
The colonel nodded, a thoughtful look on his face. "I remember that Cass Lowry was always saying that balloons were useless for war in the up-time world because they were so easily brought down. Something about a 'fifty cal with tracer rounds and that's all she wrote.' A fifty cal is a type of gun and a tracer round is one that somehow burns on its track. While I can put some people on it at the Dacha, I doubt we can do a tracer round or even a fifty cal. But something that burns and can be flung or shot at it…that we should be able to do. Still, unless it comes down close to the ground, it will be a difficult target to hit."
"Fine, Colonel. You put someone on it and tell me who, but you will not be staying to oversee the work." Listening to Leontii's cold analysis had cooled Sheremetev's temper enough to let him start to think again. "I have another mission for you. Mikhail Romanov is the danger. The dirigible too, but from what you said it may be best attacked at its base in Ufa."
Leontii started to shake his head in demurral, but Sheremetev held up a hand. "I understand the politics perfectly well, Leontii." Mikhail had great personal popularity among the people of Russia and Sheremetev knew very well that his hold on the armies of Russia was less firm than his hold on the bureaus. And even that was none too secure. An army sent from Moscow to arrest Mikhail might change sides before it reached Ufa. "That's why I am sending you to contact the khanates in the east. I want you to bribe them to attack Ufa."
"Wouldn't the Cossacks be better? At least more dependable than the Tatar tribes?"
"Perhaps, and I will send trusted men to negotiate with them. But Mikhail Romanov is already in Ufa and I doubt we can get to Kazan before they do. That limits us to the Don Cossacks. I will see who I can recruit, but for the same reasons, it would be difficult to sent an army to arrest Mikhail. Having it known that I hired mercenaries to arrest him could have dire consequences."
"What about General Shein?"
Sheremetev, for the first time that day, almost snorted a laugh. "Shein? He would turn his coat the moment he got the order. For all I know, he's already on his way to Ufa."
Leontii considered. "I doubt he's gotten the word yet. Or, if he has, it had to be recently."
Tobolsk, 517 miles northeast of Ufa
July 1636
General Artemi Vasilievich Izmailov stopped the courier rider's babble with a wave. "Not here, Lieutenant." Here was the steps of the main fort of the Tobolsk Kremlin, which was a very large and complex log cabin. "The news has waited at least a week while you rode here, and probably more." He turned and led the lieutenant inside. He had a certain amount of sympathy for the boy, who obviously had ridden hard. But discipline needed to be maintained. If the news was as urgent as the state of the courier rider made it seem, he doubted General Shein would want it bandied about the town without hearing about it first.
They reached his office, and Artemi finally received the pouch of messages. He waved the courier to a chair and started to read. By the time he had read the first sheet, he wanted to jump up and rush the news to General Shein, but the same thing he said to the courier applied to him. So he forced himself to stay seated till he had read through the entire set of messages. Finally, he looked up. "Do you know what's in these?"
"Yes, sir. It was all over the place after the riverboat got to Solikamsk. Governor Saltykov took a day and a half before he sent me."
Artemi snorted. He couldn't help it. Dimitri Mikhailovich Saltykov was, as Bernie Zeppi would say, crooked as a dog's hind leg and had hated Patriarch Filaret with a passion, so wasn't that fond of General Shein. Or Artemi, for that matter. But none of that was the reason for the delay. Dimitri had spent those two days trying to gage the wind and choose a side. The Saltykov family was at least as corrupt as the Sheremetev family, but that didn't make them allies. Dimitri Saltykov would be trying to figure out who would offer the biggest bribe for his support. Artemi waved the courier to silence and went back to his reading.
By the time he had finished he knew which way the governor had jumped. He was going to support Sheremetev, at least to the extent of not letting General Shein through Solikamsk to join Czar Mikhail. He stared at the last sheets for a few moments, then looked up and said, "Go get yourself some food. I'll need to talk to the general about this."
* * *
General Izmailov went over the messages with General Shein. Despite his other accomplishments, Shein was not a good reader. He preferred to have reports read to him. That was one of Artemi's functions. When they had gone through the messages and the governor's orders, Shein looked at him. Then looked at the map. It was a combination map, drawn based in part on maps from Grantville and in part on information collected in this time. Shein had a grand total of one Dacha-trained surveying team, and he had only gotten them on the promise that they would look for gold and silver deposits while doing their surveys.
"I don't think he can do it," General Shein said. "Never mind whether it's a good idea. I just don't see how Czar Mikhail can win."
"So we go to Sheremetev? Crawl on our bellies?" Artemi noted that his voice carried more resignation than defiance.
"I would if I thought it would work," Shein said, with even more resignation in his voice and not a little bitterness mixed in. "But Sheremetev wants my head. He has since I came back from Poland with the patriarch."
"He's afraid of you, General."
"Yes, which is worse," Shein said, looking at the map again. "Mikhail can't win and we can't make peace with Sheremetev. So what do we do?" General Shein's finger was tracing along the Tobol River as it made its way to the Irtysh and the Ob rivers, and finally to Ob Bay on the Arctic Sea. He looked back up and said, "Russia is coming apart. I see no way of keeping it together. And if we are to survive, that leaves us but one option."
"What, General? I don't see any options at all."
"We must take a piece of Rus and make our own nation. The rivers between Tobolsk and the Gulf of Ob…and the town of Mangazeya. It can be our gateway to Europe. The rivers go on south and east into northern China. We have the AKs and craftsmen who can make more, and more chambers as well. Granted, we can't make percussion caps yet, but we might be able to learn."
"That would be trea…" Artemi let his voice trail off.
"You know, there is a story I heard from, of all people, Cass Lowry," General Shein said. "It seems that in the last days of the Ming Dynasty, there was a group of workers on the Great Wall who were walking to work. One of them looked to the others and said, 'Guys, what's the penalty for high treason?'
"Another workman said, 'Execution. You know that.'
"Then the first man asked, 'What's the penalty for being late to work?'
"Again the second man said, 'Execution.'
"The first man looked around at the rest of his work crew and said, 'Fellows, we're late for work.' So started the revolution that brought down the Ming Dynasty. Now, I'm pretty sure that Cass was full of shit in that story, as well as in most of the other things he said. But the ultimate point is still valid. We, Artemi, you and I, as well as many of our friends, face the penalty for treason already…and we aren't even late for work. I think we have a better chance on our own. I think our families will be better off if we declare independence. Not today, mind. First we need to appear good little lapdogs for a while. And we need to get our families, or as many of them as we can, out of Moscow, out of Sheremetev's grasp. But after we have done that, well, consider yourself late for work."