Taking him by the hand, she led him through what Eddie quickly realized was some sort of peculiar workshop. Not any sort of workshop he'd ever seen before, though, except…
About halfway through, he finally realized what it was. Greg Ferrara had set up something like this in Grantville, right after the Ring of Fire. Call it the Early Modern Era's version of a Manhattan Project. Two and two came together soon thereafter, and Eddie knew this was the place where Baldur Norddahl-who still had no business, in a sane world, being a cross between Harald the Bloody-Handed and Herr Professor Doktor Doktor Uber-Weaponsgeek-undertook his fiendish experiments in military hardware.
Anne Cathrine was heading toward some sort of very peculiar wooden contraption against the far wall of the workshop. Big contraption, too.
It was the wood that threw Eddie off, until he was almost in front of it. At which point he realized he was looking at a submarine.
A real live, no-kidding, submarine. Not completed, obviously-he could see where the holes for whatever propulsion device would drive it were still empty-but the hull seemed finished.
A wooden submarine? The idea seemed completely outlandish, but…
Now that he was reminded, Eddie had read somewhere-a long time ago, long before the Ring of Fire, when he'd still been in his oceanographer phase-that somebody had built a wooden submarine once, way back in the nineteenth century. A Spaniard, if he remembered right, who'd intended the thing to be used for commercial diving operations. Pearls, or maybe coral, he couldn't remember. The submarine had worked, too, although it had eventually been scrapped because the commercial enterprise hadn't worked out.
There was a small opening on the side, low enough that only a stool was needed to pass through. Anne Cathrine was already doing so, stooping to get in. Once she was inside, her smiling face looked back. "Come in, Eddie! This is where we will hide. No one will think of it."
In for a penny, in for a pound. As he worked his way through the opening, which was a very tight fit-probably something Baldur eventually intended for a ballast mechanism, or possibly a big observation port-Eddie realized with genuine shock that the submarine had been designed with a double hull-exactly the way submarines would wind up being designed, centuries in the future.
"Baldur Norddahl is a freak of nature," he muttered. "A man like that has no business being this smart."
The much bigger shock, though, came after he got inside. He'd gauged the overall size of the submarine at somewhere around forty feet long and ten feet in diameter. With the double-walled design, of course, the interior was much smaller-about twenty-five to thirty feet long, and not much over six feet in diameter in the very center. Eddie could just manage to stand up straight with a bit of clearance, although he'd have to stoop if he moved more than seven or eight feet toward the bow or the stern.
The hull was tapered, too, and even had a streamlined bulb-nose design that was probably a little fatter than it should be but not much. Given that Norddahl had been working from scratch with nothing more than maybe some photos to guide him and having to work with wood instead of metal, the only thing that really registered was how incredibly well designed it was. If Baldur could figure out a workable propulsion system, he'd probably be able to build a truly functional submarine. It was certainly way, way good enough, to move Norddahl to the very top of the shoot-this-mad-genius-now-before-he-goes-any-further list.
But all that Eddie simply half-noted in passing. The real shock came from the interior furnishings, which he could see quite clearly because Anne Cathrine was lighting two lamps inside the submarine.
Whatever propulsive mechanism Baldur might have intended was unknowable, because the interior had been stripped clean-if there had ever been anything to begin with-and replaced with…
With…
The only thing Eddie could think of was a set from a movie. The King and I, maybe. Or…
Anne Cathrine was now lolling back on a pile of very expensive looking cushions and blankets. Lolling, as in lying on one hip and giving him a look that was at least two decades too sultry. Fifteen going on Scheherazade.
Or the set from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, maybe, although he wasn't sure if they'd ever made a movie of that book. He'd read it, though.
She waved her hand, way more languidly than any girl her age ought to be able to, at a small stack of baskets toward the bow. "There is plenty of food. Breads, cheeses, delicacies. Plenty of wine, too. We may have to hide here for days, before we can be sure my father's temper will have subsided."
Some part of Eddie's brain-a tiny little cluster of neurons somewhere in the left cortex making a valiant last stand, but even now being overwhelmed by the thalamic hordes-was trying to gibber something on the subject of fathers and their tempers in general, and royal fathers and royal tempers in particular-but they were soon slaughtered mercilessly.
"Come here, Eddie," she said. "Now."
"Enough," said Christian IV, finally slumping into one of the silver chairs in the Long Hall. He gave his son Ulrik a haggard look. "So, you were right. Those guns are incredible. And our own fire simply bounces from the damned things."
Ulrik placed a hand on his father's big shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "The terms will not be bad, Father. I'm quite sure of that."
"Union of Kalmar," the king muttered. "A Swedish union."
Ulrik started to say something, but closed his mouth. Now was not the time to discuss with his father the opinion that Ulrik had come to develop on the subject. Partly as the simple result of being the vanquished party-but much more as a result of long months of thinking of this possibility ahead of time.
It was odd, really, the way Christian IV loved modern gadgetry and doted on having a splendid library, given that the king himself didn't like to read. But his son did, and Ulrik had spent many hours in the Winter Room studying the up-time encyclopedia.
It hadn't taken him long to come to a simple conclusion. The century they were in, the seventeenth century, was the heyday of Scandinavia, historically speaking. From here-well, perhaps a half century more-it would all be a downward slide. Disunited and divided, Scandinavians were simply too few in number to play a major role in world affairs. They'd only managed it in this century due to happenstance. But starting in the next, Scandinavia would be lucky if it was simply ignored by its more populous and powerful neighbors to the south.
France and Britain would dominate Denmark in the nineteenth century, and Germany would conquer it outright in the next. Norway, too. Sweden only stayed independent by being meek and mild.
To hell with it, as Eddie would say. A re-united Scandinavia seemed like a far better prospect to a young Danish prince, even if its initial master spoke Swedish. Languages evolve also, after all-he had only to look at the new dialect of German that was sweeping over central Europe to see the proof of it.
"Would you take my surrender to Simpson yourself, Ulrik?" asked the king, his tone-for a wonder-mild and meek. "I think that might work best."
"Yes, father, of course."
Chapter 63
The estuary of the Thames, at Sheerness
"This is going to be closer timing than I'd like," Mike Stearns said to Captain Baumgartner. "I just talked to Harry on the radio and he says there's only so much he can do to slow down the barge. The current alone will bring them alongside Sheerness in less than an hour."
The commander of the Achates issued a soft little grunting sound. "Should be enough, Prime Minister. We'll be in sight of whatever warships the English have stationed at the Royal Dockyard within ten or fifteen minutes. Once they see us, I doubt they'll be worrying too much about a mere barge."
The calm words, spoken in a calm and even tone, did much to alleviate Mike's anxiety. Now that action was looming, he was getting a better understanding of Simpson's reasons for selecting Baumgartner as a warship captain. As morose as the wretched fellow might be at other times, the nearer they came to possible conflict the more the captain just seemed to get phlegmatic. It was as if his gloomy expectations were strangely lightened by the prospect of mayhem. Why not? Having predicted disaster at every moment since the crossing of the North Sea began, how could mere hostile enemy activity be any worse?