Leopold Cavriani inclined his head. "I believe that you also know a young man named Johann Heinrich Bocler?"
Buxtorf thought a little longer. "Yes, or I have heard of him, at least, from Matthaeus Bernegger. Bocler was one of Bernegger's students. Very promising, he said. Bocler is now, umm, the secretary of Duke Ernst of Saxe-Weimar in the Upper Palatinate. I believe that the duke is in Ingolstadt, isn't he, arranging for a new city government?"
Cavriani nodded. "With quite a few soldiers, to the best of my knowledge, although the newspapers predict that General Baner will be moving his main forces now that the siege has been successfully completed. And with a radio."
Buxtorf's mind was going off on an apparent tangent. "Of course, Bernegger is a good friend of Schickard, also. Bernegger translated Galileo's work from the Italian vernacular into Latin, so it would be accessible to scholars, and published it at his own expense. Thus frustrating simultaneously both Galileo's effort at one-upmanship and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It was a great service to the scientific community."
"Why is it important that Bernegger is a friend of Schickard?" Wettstein sounded a trifle impatient.
"Your pardon, Councilor Wettstein. I am thinking like a teacher, I am afraid," Buxtorf said. "Bernegger has more former students than just Bocler, you know. Many of them will know of the friendship between the two men. Since Schickard is now in the service of the USE, that might predispose them to cooperate with requests they receive from him. Bernegger maintains close touch with the alumni of his department, you know. Almost, as with young Freinsheim, in a fatherly manner." He smiled. "I believe he has some reason to assume in that particular instance that he may well become the young man's father. Or, at least, his father-in-law. But that is a digression. Although Strassburg is an imperial city, it is, still, in the midst of Alsace. There must be some concern there, in the city council and at the university, about what would happen-just how long it could maintain its independence-if someone with the temperament of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar governed all the lands surrounding it and if…"
"If what?" Wettstein asked.
"If there were no longer a Holy Roman Empire to be at least the symbol to which it owed its allegiance. If there were no longer a Holy Roman Emperor, which likely there will not be after Ferdinand II dies. Strassburg must be concerned, just as Nurnberg worries whether the city can maintain sovereignty against the State of Thuringia-Franconia and the USE."
"So if the Strassburg council is more alert than that of Basel, you are thinking, they may be taking measures?" Cavriani interjected.
"If not taking measures, at least gathering information." Buxtorf rested the tips of his fingers against one another. "Bernegger's students have been placed in chanceries all over the German states. There is at least one, Freinsheim himself, in the French service."
"The future son-in-law? That," Wettstein said, "I did not know. But it is all to the good. Can you give me a list of these students, and where they are?"
"I don't want to know precisely what you plan to do with it," Buxtorf said. "My position, like that of my father, is delicate enough because our academic specialty more or less requires us to stand as intermediaries between Basel's Jewish community and the council. That introduces a certain element of, shall we say, precariousness into our lives. I was certainly old enough to know what was going on when the council jailed my father for attending the circumcision of the son of one of his linguistic assistants. I do not want to provide it with any more reasons to look at me with doubt, although things have been better these last three years."
"I am sure," Wettstein agreed, "that having the head pastor of the Reformed churches of Basel as your brother-in-law does provide great spiritual support."
Cavriani smiled again. "Though it might have a rather damping effect on the conversations at the family dinner table."
"Oh," Buxtorf said, "Theodor Zwinger is not a difficult man. No older than I am. He came into his office very young after several older pastors died of the plague, one after another. And quite well-traveled you know, Leopold, should you ever need to consult him."
"Need to consult him?"
"In connection with these up-timers," Buxtorf said. "During his student years, he did not just spend time in Heidelberg, Leiden, and Geneva. He went to England."
"Herr Wettstein," Mary Simpson said. "How kind of you to pass through the barricades out there to come calling upon us here." She looked out the window. "But was it wise?"
"Probably not," Wettstein admitted. "But I do need to speak with Her Excellency if I may. I consider the matter to be rather urgent."
Mary took him to Diane's office.
"Tony can't sent your messages now," Diane Jackson said. "It is technical. Very complicated. It is about bouncing sound off the sky. Tony says it works like this."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny ball. "Here, I am a radio. The ball is the sound. The ceiling is the sky. I throw the ball to the ceiling. It bounces down to you. At least, if you are in the right place to catch it." She gave the little ball a toss toward the ceiling; Wettstein caught it.
"Me, I do not understand radio. But I believe what they tell me about it, just as religious people have faith in things they do not see. Can you come back just before the sun has set? Will set?"
Wettstein shook his head. "I have to attend a special meeting of the small council." He was examining the little ball carefully and bounced it once or twice on the floor. "Can I just leave the messages here? Can this 'radio' send them without my presence, if I write them down? Or must I be with them, just as I must be in a room to sign a letter?"
"Tony can send them and say that they are from you. But I will ask him questions. Who do they go to? What do they say? And he will tell me. See, I tell you the truth."
Wettstein nodded absentmindedly. "What," he asked, "is this ball made of?"
"Oh," Diane said. "That is rubber. It is not just for toys. Very useful. Lots of things are made of rubber. You can borrow it, if you want. Bounce it at your city council to impress them."
"Wettstein sent what?" Mary Simpson asked.
"A half-dozen messages," Tony Adducci said. "The main one was to a guy named Bocler. I put out that to two locations, Duke Ernst's radio in Amberg and General Baner's, if he's still around Ingolstadt. No way to tell which one will reach him first. Just a short message, no outgoing information, so to speak. It was a couple of questions with a list of a dozen or so more men to whom he was to send them on. Same message to Grantville, to be forwarded to Professor Schickard. Him I met before we left Magdeburg this year. Another half-dozen names to send the questions on to. A couple to Amsterdam, to be sent on to guys at the university in Leiden. A couple more to Mainz, to go to the university of Heidelberg. They're to get the answers back here, somehow, preferably by way of any radio set-up they can reach, with copies of everything to General Horn and a plea for him to get himself down to Rheinfelden just as fast as he can scamper. Plus, anybody who can is supposed to notify a guy named Freinsheim-I never heard of him-to get out of France."
"I can't go into the USE embassy now," Wettstein said a couple of days later. "Given the position the council is taking, if I went in, it would be interpreted as a declaration that I am changing my allegiance from Basel to Gustav Adolf. I can't do that. I have to stay to organize the defense of Riehen. That is where my duty lies. I have done all that I can to assist the ambassadress."