Filip did, stumbling a bit but clearly showing he was impressed by Anya. He explained about his finding Bernie and Anya studying accounting and the ensuing discussion. Filip impressed by Anya? Filip, who couldn’t see past the edge of the book he was reading and didn’t care about breast size, just brain size? Anya had a brain? Well, yes, apparently she did. That was a pretty astute observation about chamber pots and the safe emptying of same.
After Filip ran down she thanked him for his help, asked a few questions and let him get back to work. Then she thought about it a bit and had Anya fetched.
“You called for me, Princess?” Anya entered the princess’ office with more than simple trepidation. She was scared to death. She remembered the conversation of the night before and she was very much afraid that in spite of Filip’s assurances that it was all right here at the Dacha, it wasn’t. At least it wasn’t when a great lady was looking for a reason to discipline a maid who was having a bit of fun with a guy the great lady was interested in. Women in power were dangerous to girls like her.
“I understand you’re having Bernie teach you accounting?” Princess Natasha said.
Anya thought this was a set up to punish her for getting above herself. “Yes, Princess. Of course, if you feel it’s interfering with my duties…”
“Not at all.” The princess actually smiled a bit. Much to Anya’s surprise.
“Ma’am?”
“I said, not at all,” the princess repeated. “I’m a bit, um, startled by it, but why would you want to learn accounting… considering your other assets?”
The princess was blushing a little bit as she said that. There was an edge. Natasha didn’t like what Anya was doing with Bernie. Or no. Anya realized Natasha didn’t like that she was doing it with Bernie. The princess really was jealous of the serving girl, though she probably didn’t realize it.
They talked about Anya’s observation about chamber pots. Which led to questions about what else Anya had observed. They talked books. Bernie had taught Anya to read and she had picked it up well. Anya had gotten the job in part because she had a bit of English from a previous employer who had been all hands. “Why did he teach you to read?”
“Because I asked.”
“Why did you ask? I don’t mean, why did you want to know how to read, I mean why did you think Bernie would teach you?” The princess’ blush was even brighter now. “When men are, ah, with girls like you, that’s not what they’re interested in.”
“Not all men are the same, Princess, not even about that. The English merchant who was all hands never would have taught me to read.” Anya shrugged. “Bernie likes smart women. That’s why he likes you. Besides, he’s a nice man and wanted someone to talk to in his up-timer English and teaching me to read helped with that.”
They ended up talking girl talk for quite a while that afternoon and the beginnings of a friendship were put in place. After that, Anya became Natasha’s personal maid and confidant.
Lazar Smirnov barely noticed that Anya’s status had changed. Lazar had his own companionship and wasn’t any more interested in politics than he could avoid. The gradual change in attitude of Filip Pavlovich Tupikov that had been crystallized by conversation over accounting books a few nights back had passed him by completely.
Lazar had his own problems. Granted, none of them were all that severe taken on their own but they couldn’t really be taken on their own. Lazar was trying to build an entire infrastructure. Storage batteries required lead plates and sulfuric acid. Enough batteries to power a spark gap transmitter of good range required lots of lead plates and lots of sulfuric acid. Not that much of a problem. Lead, after all, was not gold, and improved processes for the production of sulfuric acid had been forwarded to him by Vladimir and his friend Lady Brandy Bates, G.E.D. So there was a factory on the Muskova River that producing the stuff by the gallon. Which was good, because he needed gallons for each spark gap transmitter.
He had serfs on his estates making clay battery jars to hold the acid and the lead plates. Or at least they were till a few weeks ago. Now they were planting, sowing the seeds of the fall harvest. But once that was done, many of them would go back to making the parts he needed to create an electronics industry.
Like copper wire to make the generators to charge the batteries, to use to make the permanent magnets to make more generators. And it wasn’t just radios Russia needed, whatever the Boyar Duma said. What Russia needed was the whole infrastructure. Even if they had only needed radios, the number of parts in a radio network was significant. The transmitter tuning coil, the transmitter spark capacitor, the transmitter spark coil, the transmitter spark generating buzzer, a telegraph key, a switch to switch between the receiver and the transmitter for the antenna, an earphone, a receiver tuning coil, a receiver capacitor-which was not the same thing as a transmitter capacitor-a grounding rod, wire going to the grounding rod. None of these things were really hard to do, not by themselves. It was just that there were so many.
There were four radios in Russia. Two that Lazar had made and two that had been imported. Of the two that he had made, one was here at the Dacha and one was in the Kremlin. But Lazar was also building, a bit at a time, the infrastructure to build more radios, faster. They would have one for the Gun Shop by month after next, and by then-if all went well-they would be turning out about one spark gap transmitter a month. It would be a while before the government got the network it desired.
In a vague way Lazar Smirnov knew that he was making central control in Russia much easier, but he didn’t give it much thought. That the increasing awareness of the rights of people in other parts of time and space were making the ties to the land insufferable to some and others were increasingly threatened by the notion of freedom? That, he didn’t notice at all.
Chapter 36
July 1633
A Dissertation on the Value of Freedom and Security
“Those who give up their freedom for a little temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security and ultimately will lose both.” So goes an up-time quote. This humble writer doesn’t know whether that is true or not, but it is demonstrably true that the nation it comes from-founded on principles of freedom-grew to be one of the richest and most powerful in the world. That nation had no greater resources than the Russia of its time. But it had a great deal more wealth. Why is that, I wonder? The question troubles my sleep at night. The Time of Troubles is a weak name for what Russia went though at the beginning of this century. It has perhaps made us a bit timid, afraid of freedom. It’s so much easier when everyone knows their place and no one is allowed to argue or try something new. So much safer it seems. But I wonder, safe for how long? Bandits are mostly gone from our roads and villages now. Surely that is a good thing. It seems worth a bit of freedom. What use, after all, is freedom to a man murdered by bandits? Is it worth, perhaps, the right of a serf to leave the lands of his lord? Some of those serfs might become bandits and make our roads unsafe yet again. Yet, why was this America, with its freedom, so rich? Where did its great wealth come from? Much of it came from people leaving their work and striking out on their own. From people who left their homes and tried to do something that they had never done before. A man named Bell tried to find a way to make the deaf hear. Instead he found a way to send his voice and thousands of other voices thousands of miles along a wire. Another man, named Edison, hated transcribing the messages he received to send on. So he made a machine that did the job. This type of event happened again and again and made the land that the up-timers came from the richest in their world. Was it the freedom that did it? I think it may have been. For the same rule that prevents a serf from becoming a bandit also prevents him from becoming an inventor, or a merchant. As I think of these things I can’t help but wonder if we are beggaring our children to buy a bit of security for ourselves. The history of Holy Mother Russia that was written in that other time saw the fading away of the Zemsky Sobor. It is barely even mentioned in their records. How did we allow that to happen? Are we, perhaps, afraid of the responsibilities of voting for representatives we trust? How will Mother Russia compete with nations that have spent a bit of their security to buy a little freedom for themselves and their posterity? The Flying Squirrel