CHAPTER 6
Getting Steam Up
Ufa Kremlin
September 14, 1637
It was midafternoon, but you couldn’t tell that from where they were. They were in the war room where the lights were artificial and constant. The map table depicted the state of Kazakh and the territory northward to Ufa. It bore little markers showing the estimated positions of riverboats, trains, and military units. A clerk came in and handed Czar Mikhail a radio message.
AIRCRAFT AT SHAVGAR WITH SALQAM-JANGIR KHAN.
“He must have made excellent time,” Czar Mikhail said, speaking of the khan, and not realizing that he’d been picked up by the plane en route. He passed the note to General Boris Timofeyevich Lebedev, who nodded and handed the note to a clerk. The clerk took a small wooden square with a crown on it and moved it to the Kazakh capital. The little squares representing the two aircraft were already there, but reversed to indicate an unconfirmed estimate. They were flipped right side up.
General Tim said, “Well, they’ve got Ivan there with them. I just hope they listen.”
“You have a lot of faith in General Maslov.” Czar Mikhail’s voice made it almost a question.
“Ivan has his weaknesses, but he’s the best tactical thinker I know, and the second-best strategic thinker.”
“Who’s the best? Strategic thinker, I mean.”
“You are, Your Majesty.”
Czar Mikhail looked at him for a shocked moment. That was the sort of thing he was used to hearing from toadies, not from Boris Timofeyevich Lebedev. For a moment, he was furious that Tim would turn toady on him, but then slowly, he realized that Tim actually meant it. He changed the subject. “You think the planes are still there?”
“Probably. They will have to wait for the fuel. And the fuel will have to wait for the steam engine to be installed.” There were already riverboats on the Shar Dia River, but the steam engines were made in Ufa, Kazan, and parts in Muscovite Russia. They’d been shipped by train, but even though they were now at the Aral Sea, they hadn’t, at last report, been installed on the riverboat.
Mikhail looked at the map table and considered. That was probably happening right about now.
Alty-Kuduk
September 14, 1637
Fedot Vitsin pulled the pipe wrench, and the nut tightened. Fedot was a big, well-muscled man and working down here in the engine compartment of the Aya, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, displaying the fact that he would rival your average bear for fur. His hair was matted and soaking at the moment, because the nut he was tightening was on the main steam feed pipe and until he got it tightened, steam was leaking into the dark, hot hell that was the engine room of a steamboat.
Fedot grunted with satisfaction and crawled out from under the boiler. “Okay, Aybek. Tell them we’re going to test them again.”
Aybek grinned, stuck his head out the hatch and yelled, “Engine test!”
Fedot shoved the lever and the cylinder rods started to move. He engaged the prop and slowly, carefully, moved his hand over the pipe fitting where the nut had been loose. If there was a leak under stress, he’d feel it.
Nothing.
And the steamboat was pulling against the dock like it was trying to pull it down.
Aybek called down. “Skipper wants to take us out around the bay. Disengage the prop so they can unmoor.”
Fedot pulled the lever back to neutral, and the boat, now a steamboat, stopped shaking.
A couple of minutes passed, then Aybek yelled down, “Skipper says all ahead slow.”
Fedot adjusted the steam to the engine to slow, then reengaged the prop. This boat only had one prop, so the “all ahead” was just silly. You were only supposed to use that when you had two props.
The Aya pulled away from the dock at Alty-Kuduk and steamed out into the bay. And Fedot thought about how his life had changed since his first steam engine almost four years ago. God, what a horror that monster had been. It had had a pot boiler that was literally an iron pot and a steam engine made of wood by the village barrel maker. Then he looked at his present engine and wanted to kiss it. Would have, if it wasn’t hot as a demon from hell. It was a tube boiler with a proper firebox, with steel piping to precision-cut cylinders. It was a thing of beauty and it was all his, now that he’d worked his way up to chief engineer on the Aya. It was also efficient in its use of fuel. Efficient and flexible. It could use oil or coal, charcoal, or even wood.
The skipper stuck his head in the hatch. “How confident are you that that monstrosity of yours will keep working?”
“If anything goes wrong, I can fix it,” Fedot half shouted. The engine room wasn’t quiet.
“Come up here, you crazy Russian,” the skipper more than half shouted.
Fedot waved Aybek over and told him what to do. Aybek nodded. It wasn’t new. They’d been going over what to do since Fedot had arrived two weeks ago. Then Fedot went up onto the deck of the riverboat. The boat was wide and flat bottomed. At the moment it had twenty-two barrels tied down on it, so there were walking paths, but that was it.
“The khan wants the oil in Shavgar as soon as possible. When can we go?”
Fedot shrugged massive shoulders. “Now, Skipper. Like I said, anything goes wrong, I can fix it, and mostly nothing’s going to go wrong. The cylinders were cut in Murom. Ain’t none better, not even from Grantville itself.” Fedot had never been to Grantville. He’d never even seen anything made in Grantville, but Murom had an excellent reputation for top-flight precision steel work. At least, it did in Russia.
The skipper nodded and shrugged his much smaller shoulders, then turned to the pilot and said, “Make for the Shar Dia River.”
Alty-Kuduk wasn’t on the Shar Dia. It was located in a bay at the very top of the Aral Sea. While the Shar Dia entered the Aral Sea on the upper east side, it was a hundred and twenty miles along the coast of the Aral Sea before they would get to the Shar Dia, and after that another three hundred miles to Shavgar.
On the other hand, at full steam the riverboat did about ten knots per hour. At two hundred and forty knots per day, they would reach Shavgar in two to three days, even going up the slow-moving river.
Tsaritsyn, on the Volga
September 14, 1637
In their stateroom on the Ilya M., Bernie read over reports while sipping Turkish coffee.
After several days in Samara accomplishing very little beyond getting to know the situation, Bernie and Natasha had proceeded to Tsaritsyn, where they were accomplishing about the same nothing. Still, getting to know the situation had its own value. Colonel Ivan Greshnev was an older man whose clothing was tightening as his waist expanded. He was of good family but not overly competent, which was why he was posted here in what until recently was something of a backwater.
That wasn’t how Colonel Greshnev saw it. To his way of thinking, he’d been mistreated by fate and Russian politics. He’d supported Ivan Romanov’s bid for the crown as a young man, and his career had never recovered. He’d mentioned the fact several times since they’d arrived.
The situation in Tsaritsyn was complicated by how near it was to the Don River. Kalach, a settlement on the Don River, was only about fifty miles away as the crow flew, but closer to a hundred by a combination of river and trails that was the present route. Boats were actually portaged from a tributary of the Don to the Volga and back. Whole boats, not just their content. A rail line, especially one that was designed to take boats, could connect the Don to the Volga and allow much more efficient trade with the Ottomans and the Mediterranean states. The town was actually run by a group of wealthy streltzi who were making a fortune out of the cross-river trade between the Don and the Volga. That group was headed by Ignat Vitsin.
There was a knock at the door and Natasha opened it. It was Radomir Ivanovich Greshnev, the son of Colonel Greshnev, and at least nominally in charge of the Tsaritsyn militia.
“Good afternoon, Radomir,” Natasha said with a lifted eyebrow. “What brings you to the docks?”
“The Cossacks!” he blurted. “You have to do something about the Cossacks.” The population of Tsaritsyn had increased, but not as much as Samara and not quite the same way. A lot of Don Cossacks had migrated east as the news of the constitutional convention reached them. They now represented an armed minority of the population of the city and surrounding countryside, and were making the local government quite nervous.
“Really? I must?” Princess Natalia Petrovna Gorchakov asked. Radomir’s family had some rank, but not nearly as much as Natasha. Especially now, having served in the constitutional congress. There weren’t a lot of people in Russia who could compel Natasha to do anything. Bernie knew that because he wasn’t one of them.
Radomir turned red under his tan. “They want to make Tsaritsyn part of the Don State.” The Don State was the notional state that covered the Don River, or at least a good chunk of it. And, as Bernie heard the demand, he was mostly impressed by Vladislav Golovin’s astuteness. Golovin was the leader of the Don Cossacks in Tsaritsyn, and he wasn’t fond of the borders that Tsaritsyn’s council were insisting on, since they included that bit of the Don River that was closest to the Volga. The Don Cossacks were looking at their main trade corridor being in another state. And while states weren’t supposed to be able to tax interstate trade, that didn’t necessarily mean that none of them were going to come up with ways to charge people fees that weren’t quite legally taxes.
As of this moment neither the Don Cossacks nor the government of Tsaritsyn had ratified the United Sovereign States of Russia’s constitution. And both sides were trying to get the federal government to come down on their side without actually ratifying the constitution.
“That’s an interesting proposal,” Natasha offered. “Bernie, do you think that the Don Cossacks would ratify if we gave them Tsaritsyn?”
“They might, but I’m not sure that would be a great idea. I mean, the Don State is pretty big as it stands. If we give them this section of the Volga too, they might get arrogant.”
“I assure you, Gospodin Bernard,” Radomir insisted stiffly, “this is no laughing matter.”
“No more than your insistence that part of the Don River should be in your state,” Bernie agreed. “And worse, as the federal government sees it, insisting on that grant of territory you don’t actually control without ratifying the constitution.”
“Are you going to let the Cossacks loot Russians?”
“Are you a part of the United Sovereign States of Russia?”
“Perhaps we should see what Moscow is offering.”
“Perhaps,” Bernie agreed. “I know. Why don’t you send an emissary up the Don River, then across to Moscow? I’m sure the Don Cossacks will give him safe passage. Then you can talk to Sheremetev. No, he’s missing. I guess you can ask Mikhail’s uncle, Ivan. I’m sure he’ll give you the Don’s lands. After all, he has no need for troops.” Bernie’s voice had started out whimsical, but it was hard by the time he finished. “Look, Radomir, the function of the federal government is to keep all the states safe, not just yours. Yes, the portage between the Don and the Volga is vital to Russia. But you, in fact, only hold one end of it. It’s not that vital, and when we take Moscow back, it will become less vital. Also, as the railroads come, it will become still less vital. It may seem to you and your father that you have Czar Mikhail over a barrel, but it only seems that way.”
“For which you should be grateful,” Natasha chimed in. “Mikhail doesn’t care for being coerced. He’s had enough of that. If there was no way around you, we wouldn’t be talking. We’d be shelling.” The Ilya M. had steel breech-loading cannon, and the river here made a smooth, flat gun platform. They probably couldn’t knock down the walls of Hamburg, but Tsaritsyn’s walls were wood and quite thin.
Radomir bowed stiffly and departed.
“We’d better go have a talk with Golovin,” Bernie said.
“Yes, and radio Czar Mikhail about this development. Then I think we should proceed to Astrakhan to complete our survey.”
“Do you think that will help?”
“It might, if the government of Astrakhan is reasonable. We will be in a much better bargaining position if they decide to ratify. It’s good that we have the Ilya M.’s guns, but it will be better if we don’t have to use them.”
“We can hope,” Bernie agreed, but he didn’t sound all that hopeful.
Ufa Kremlin
September 15, 1637
Czar Mikhail looked at the thing on his desk. It was eight inches tall and if it glowed no one could see it because the casing of the tube was ceramic-coated steel and it was made right here in Ufa. A great deal about how to make radio tubes had been learned in Grantville and Magdeburg in the last six years. A lot of the blanks had been filled in and the tools to build the tube had been produced, tried, failed, and new ones produced. And at least one of the companies that was doing that learning was partially owned by Vladimir Gorchakov. So when he’d arrived here last winter, he’d brought with him not just tubes, but the tools to make more. And here before Mikhail was the “more.” At least the first of them. “And how many can you produce?” he asked, looking up at the Dacha-trained streltzi electrical engineer.
“We don’t know yet. We can scale up, but it depends on how many we can have on the assembly line. The biggest bottleneck is still the vacuum and waiting a week after the tubes have been sucked down to vacuum for the oxygen caught in the walls of the tube to be released. And the more tubes you hook up, the more likely you are to have a leak. It’s going to be a balancing act and we’re going to have problems. We just don’t know how many.”
Czar Mikhail nodded at the man. “Do your best. We need radio stations to tie the United Sovereign States of Russia together. And I don’t want to be dependent on the USE for them.”
New Ruzuka
September 15, 1637
The New Ruzuka farms were being harvested and facilitating that was a horse-drawn harvester. And as Vera Andreevich looked out over the fields, she saw a lot of well-fed children following the harvester picking up what it missed. There was a new priest in New Ruzuka who didn’t share Father Julian’s views. He was an older man, happily married, and though literate, he wasn’t the self-educated scholar that Julian had been. So New Ruzuka was looking to hire a new school teacher.
All of which made New Ruzuka not that different from the rest of her district. Mostly farmers, mostly very loyal to the czar, but also mostly about full up on change for now. She was finding being a congressperson a bit of a challenge. “Do you object to the reaper, Father Grigori?”
“No, of course not. But that is not the same as women and children voting. They lack the maturity to understand the issues.” He looked her in the eye. “Women inherently because of their sex, and children because of their lack of experience. It’s God’s will that the man should lead and the woman follow.”
“So you would have New Ruzuka have fewer voters and fewer votes in the House of Representatives?”
“If need be, to have better ones.”
He wasn’t backing down an inch and it wasn’t just him. A lot of the women in New Ruzuka were not going to vote in the upcoming election because they accepted their role as “lesser vessels.”
What amazed Vera was how many of the women of New Ruzuka and the other villages in District Two agreed with him. Enough of them so that if an even slightly viable male candidate showed up, she was likely to lose her seat. The good news was that while there were locally viable male candidates, most of them were not known outside their individual villages. This was why she was making this trip. She was introducing herself to the people of her district. All they knew of her so far was that she’d been in the constitutional convention and that her husband Stefan had killed a man with a single blow of his fist and managed to get made a member of the lower nobility out of it. What she needed was a way to change the discussion. Vera started to smile.
✧ ✧ ✧
That evening as the sun was getting low and the people gathered round in the town square, Vera climbed to the small impromptu stage, shoved her fist into the air, then she looked at it and sighed loudly. “This sure isn’t going to kill anyone with a single blow,” she said, and the villagers laughed. She looked out at them, some of whom she knew and many of whom she didn’t. “The truth is Stefan wasn’t trying to kill the man either. I know. He told me about it, had nightmares about it, if you want to know the truth. He was defending Ufa because someone had to and he was there. Also because, in spite of what he thinks, my husband is a natural leader. He knows what needs to be done and when he sets about to do it other men follow him.
“I know that Father Grigori here would be happier if Stefan was running for the second district seat in the congress instead of his wife. Because Stefan is a leader and we need leaders.”
There was considerable applause for that view.
“But, with all due respect for Father Grigori, that’s not what congress is for. I know. I was in the constitutional congress. In fact, that’s where I was when Stefan was defending Irina Way against the Kazakhs. The Kazakhs who are now on our side because Czar Mikhail knew when to fight and when to deal. And that’s what you do in congress. You don’t lead, you bargain, like wives on market day.
“Now some of you know my husband.” Vera grinned at some of the people who were from old Ruzuka. “A good blacksmith, a generous man but one who doesn’t bargain. Never in his life has Stefan used two words when he could get away with one. You know what Stefan does when someone comes into the foundry to bargain for a load of chambers or a tube boiler?”
She looked around and saw grins on the faces of some of the men and a lot of the women. They remembered from back in old Ruzuka, from the road, even from the last fall before they set up the foundry in Ufa.
“He sends them to Izabella Utkin and lets her bargain. Just like back in old Ruzuka, he had me do the bargaining. Not because he was lazy. He’s not. Or even because he didn’t like bargaining. He doesn’t. But that’s never stopped him from doing something. It’s because, for all his other good traits, Stefan is not a good bargainer.
“So, as much as I love and respect my husband, he shouldn’t be in the congress. What you need in the congress is someone who knows when to stand firm and when to compromise. It doesn’t get you the best laws maybe, but it gets you the laws that everyone can live with, so we don’t have to worry about the Kazakhs attacking, or the nobles from the northern states. You don’t need a leader in congress. You need a bargainer.”
She sat down and Father Grigori was glaring thunderclouds at her. He knew she was right. He wasn’t stupid. But in spite of everything, he didn’t want her to be right.
✧ ✧ ✧
The next morning, Vera and a couple of aides got on their horses and headed north to the next village. Over the next few weeks, she refined the speech, polished it until it shone like a gold coin.
New Ruzuka Foundry, Ufa
September 16, 1637
Stefan missed Vera, but other than that he was content. The explosion at the chemical plant had produced an odd result. At least it was odd to Stefan. As of now, Stefan’s designs for fireboxes were considered the best in Ufa. Well, they were. But why people would think they were because of the blast was beyond Stefan. The thing hadn’t even been in use when the blast and the fire happened. If it had been, they couldn’t have used it.
That didn’t appear to matter. Over the last two months, they’d received orders for ten more of the things. And Izabella had gotten really high prices for them. The New Ruzuka Foundry & Machine Shop was a going concern, with more business than it could handle.
There were a lot of new projects and they were all interesting and challenging. And they were a lot of work. The sort of work that gave a man like Stefan a deep satisfaction. The steam whistle blew, which was the signal for the end of the first shift, and Stefan looked up from the clay model he was working on, and checked the clock to see that it was indeed six in the evening. He looked back at the model and considered putting in another hour, but no. With Vera out of town, the children would expect him. They were both in the Dacha school now. Pavel was nine and Luiza eleven. Their aunt, Nadia, looked after them most of the time, and now there were servants in the house, but they wanted and deserved to see at least one of their parents most days.
Besides, Luiza was taking the junior engineering courses at the Dacha and she usually had interesting homework.
✧ ✧ ✧
Today’s homework was interesting. Luiza’s class was learning about tube design and vacuums. Pavel at nine was taking reading and writing and rhetoric, standard fare for the son of a member of the lower nobility, at least in this part of Russia. But at nine, Pavel was mostly interested in the war games, and General Tim. In all honesty, while Stefan tried to listen, he was more interested in the triode tubes that would be used to amplify a tuned signal for broadcast.
After homework, they had dinner. It was fish from the Caspian Sea, shipped up the Volga in refrigerated steamboats. And expensive. But Nadia insisted that as members of the lower nobility, they had standards to maintain and they could afford it.
They listened to the new broadcast on their crystal set, which required that they all be quiet, because it wasn’t loud even with the horn.
It was still strange to Stefan how they had become a prominent family with friends of great rank. He thought about Bernie and Natasha and wondered where they were now.