1636:The Kremlin games

Chapter 48

April 1634

“The police want to talk to you,” Gregorii said in his heavy Russian accent.

“Oh, Lord,” Brandy muttered. “What’s gone wrong now?” She picked up the phone receiver and said, “This is Brandy Bates. How can I help you?”

“Is that you, Brandy? I was trying for your Russian,” Angela Baker, the police dispatcher said.

“He’s off doing spy stuff, I bet, Angela. What’s up?”

“Well… we’ve got a caravan of Russians downtown. Lots of them. Are they yours?”

Brandy’s heart sank into her stomach. “Probably. We were expecting them around now. More or less.”

Angela laughed. “I’ll send them out to you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

The dragon ladies didn’t arrive alone. Over a hundred Russians came with them: a priest, his family, students of medicine, engineering, architecture, aeronautics, oil wildcatting and a host of other interests. But the dragon ladies ruled the caravan, three ladies of great houses. All three of them were mothers or grandmothers of boyars. One was a friend of Vladimir’s Aunt Sofia, Madam Lukashenko.

She was, Vladimir insisted, Brandy’s friend at court. Brandy’s enemy at court was Madam Sheremetev, as the old bat made clear with a sniff the day they arrived. The neutral, Madam Streshnyova, was a friend of the czarina’s mother, which Brandy figured was at least marginally a good thing. By now Bernie had been in Moscow for over two years. A Russian had flown not that long after Jesse Wood did. Admittedly, in a lighter-than-air balloon rather than an airplane, but flying was flying. There were plows and Fresno scrapers being made in some place called Murom. And an essential element to it all was Vladimir Gorchakov. Increasingly Brandy Bates was another essential element, doing for Vladimir here in Grantville what Bernie was doing in Russia.

As she did right now, arranging for housing for the flood of new arrivals. A number were allowed to rest from their trip, then sent on to the Wietze oil fields. Some were set up in one of the new subdivisions that had sprung up outside of the Ring of Fire and some were installed in the Residentz. But while Brandy could place most of them, the dragon ladies were unwilling to go where they were told.

“What about suites at the Higgins Hotel?” Brandy asked, feeling a bit desperate. Madam Sheremetev and her kabuki makeup was about the scariest woman she’d ever met.

“Oh, not for me,” Madam Lukashenko said. “I told Sofia that I’d stay with you. Natasha said that you have a fine house, the one your mother left you.”

Great, Brandy thought. A built-in chaperone, what a thrill. She forced a smile. “That will be splendid, Madam Lukashenko. I do have three bedrooms, if another of you would like to stay with me.”

Madam Sheremetev sniffed. Again. That sniff was beginning to make Brandy jump, because it always boded ill. “The, ah, Higgins, you said? A suite there, I think.”

Brandy couldn’t resist. “I’ll call and see if they have one available. They might not have room.”

“Of course, they will make room for me.”

“I’d be very careful of expressing that view at the Higgins,” Brandy said, enjoying the moment. “You wouldn’t be the first great lady to be told that there’s no room for you there, even if the hotel was empty. Delia Higgins does what she wants.”

That sniff again. A big sniff this time.

“And you, Madam Streshnyova? Where would you like to stay? The Residentz is pretty full.”

Madam Streshnyova was Brandy’s favorite so far. It didn’t seem to matter to her that her niece was the czarina. And Brandy could tell that Madam Streshnyova was sick to death of Madam Sheremetev.

“Oh, anywhere is fine for me,” Madam Streshnyova said. “I don’t need the Higgins. Perhaps there’s another hotel? Or a room at the Residentz, if that’s possible.”

Brandy decided to make it possible, one way or another.

Since Brandy had gone and fallen in love with the dashing Russian prince, she buckled in and the Barbies helped. Well, the Barbies helped some, as they had time. They were still going to school, they had their business interests, but they did manage to pop up and save the day more than once.

The wedding had a tentative date sometime in the summer of this year. Meanwhile, the dragon ladies were going over Brandy’s pedigree and tut-tutting all the while because they couldn’t find any nobility at all in Brandy’s recorded ancestry. They were discovering for themselves what any number of western European down-timers had already learned-that Americans just didn’t fit neatly into established lines, pedigrees and social estates. Technically, all up-timers were commoners. In the real world…

It wasn’t that simple. Any number of down-time prominent families had already tacitly decided that for all social purposes up to and including marriage Americans could be considered equivalent to the aristocracy. “Honorary noblemen,” as it were. But the Russian delegation was made of sterner stuff and not yet ready to call it quits.

By May, Brandy was ready to pull a Saint George on all three of the dragon ladies. But letters were still flowing back and forth between her and her Russian pen pals. The czarina was enthusiastic about the dirigible they were building in Bor on the Volga, though it was expected to take over a year to complete. Natasha was enthusiastic about the new industries that were starting up in Russia, especially in Moscow and Natasha’s family seat, a town called Murom on the Oka River. The Oka, Brandy learned, was the river route from Moscow to the Volga and Nizhny Novgorodi. The Volga was developing into the Russian industrial corridor. And, in some ways, it was doing it faster than it was happening in Germany. Russia had farther to go and fewer people to take it there, but it was an autocratic state. If the government decided there would be a dirigible, there darn well will be a dirigible. If Princess Natasha decided that they would build steam engines in Murom, they will darn well build steam engines in Murom.

An open society whose economy was based mostly on free enterprise might be great for innovation and dynamic in the long run. But over the fall of 1633 Brandy had been forced to the realization that when it came to putting innovations into production… well, the expression “shoot the engineer and put it into production” took on a whole new urgency when the authority really could shoot the engineer. It wasn’t nice and it didn’t fit with her image of either Natasha or the czarina, but it did get results. It got results even when neither Natasha or the czarina had any intention of shooting anyone. Just the fact that they could brought results.

Brandy paid attention to these things in part because it was increasingly her job as Vladimir’s primary up-timer consultant, but also because it gave her something to distract her from worrying about what the dragon ladies from the Russian steppes were sending home and whether they would be able to scuttle the wedding.

“That… that… raving bitch!”

“What’s the matter now, my darling?” Vladimir asked. “Which of our dragon ladies has made you angry?

“Madam Sheremetev.”

“Because…”

“She said that if she sends a bad report about me, the czar would change his mind about letting you marry me. And you told me he said yes already. So which is it, dammit?”

“Yes, the czar gave his consent,” Vladimir said, suddenly even more worried. “But a bad report-if it is bad enough- might cause him to reconsider. That is, I agree, what Madam Sheremetev strongly implies at every opportunity.”

“Does the old bat actually have that kind of power over us?”

“Probably not. But she does want you to believe that.”

“What can we do?”

“It’s the way they are, the Sheremetevs. Obviously, she wants something else. Some kind of procedure, some kind of machine, something her family can make money and power off of.”

“Well, do we bribe her? Or just blow her off? We better decide something quick. She said, not quite in so many words, that she’s going to send her report pretty soon.”

Vladimir knew this was pretty standard procedure for the Sheremetev family and confirmed that she was likely to write such a letter. He wasn’t all that worried about it actually convincing the czar to cancel the wedding. After all, Brandy was friends with the czarina, which equated to having a pretty good friend at court. “If there is something you can think of to give her, go ahead.”

After some consideration, Brandy decided to try giving the old bat photography, or at least to point her in that direction. Brandy had a talk with Father Gavril, the Orthodox priest sent to Grantville, and they determined that photographs didn’t count as prohibited drawings any more than icons did, but for a different reason. Photographs were in effect drawn by God-His light painting the image rather than the corrupt hand of man. Brandy put together a packet and gave it to Madam Sheremetev who sent it off to Moscow and was almost nice to Brandy for a week or so before she started asking for something else.

By the time the ice would start forming on the Oka River in the fall of 1634, the Sheremetev family would be making photographs on their estates and arguing that they didn’t owe any duties on them because they had gotten them directly from Grantville not from the Dacha.

By that same time, of course, Natasha already had a steam engine factory, a celluloid/cellophane/rayon factory, a wood pulp-based paper mill, a shop making capacitors and half a dozen other projects up and running. Each managed by a member of the Streltzi class who was becoming effectively a deti boyar of the Gorchakov family.

Brandy would never be more glad to see the back of anyone as she would be to see the backs of the dragon ladies when they headed back to Russia.

Brandy was plenty busy with her correspondence and her work with Vladimir.

As the wedding approached, Brandy got a letter from Natasha describing the Sheremetev’s machinations with the photography.

Having established that because the Sheremetev clan got the photographic process directly from Grantville instead of from us, Natasha wrote, they are now claiming that they got everything from the Fresno scrapers to steam engines directly from Grantville and not from the Dacha.

Cass Lowry is still working in the gun shop, Natasha’s letter continued, and has made friends among Sheremetev’s supporters. I find myself wishing that he was either a little less useful or a lot less obnoxious. He seems to think that he was literally adopted into the clan, not just that he’s become one of their supporters. The idiot. The Sheremetevs are just using him. Apparently, Cass was given a harem and quite a bit of money and lands. For which Sheremetev gets his own Bernie, though not one who seems to work as well as the real Bernie does with us down-timers.