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  "Never mind," responded Rebecca. "I was just reminding myself"—here, a little nod to Gretchen—"that Richelieu is capable of anything."

  She pulled out the chair over which she'd spread the scarf and sat down. "Which brings us directly to the subject at hand. There's no point in remaining in Paris any longer. So the question posed is: by what route do we try to reach Holland?"

  A motion in the doorway drew her eyes. Jeff's young friend Jimmy Andersen had entered from the kitchen. Behind him, Rebecca could see the other five soldiers in Heinrich's detachment.

  She waited until all of them had come into the room and were either perched somewhere or leaning against the walls. Rebecca suspected that her very nondictatorial habits would have astonished most ambassadors of history. She dealt with her entourage as colleagues, not as subordinates. But she didn't care. She was an intellectual herself, by temperament, and enjoyed the process of debate and discussion.

  "Here's the choice," she explained, once all of them were listening. "We can take the land route or try to hire a coastal lugger. If the first, Richelieu has offered to provide us an escort to Spanish territory and assures me he can obtain the agreement of the Spanish to pass us along to the United Provinces."

  Gretchen and Jeff were already shaking their heads. "It's a trap," snarled Gretchen. "He'll set up an ambush along the way."

  Heinrich was also shaking his head, but the gesture was aimed immediately at Gretchen.

  "Not a chance of that," he said firmly. "Richelieu's a statesman, Gretchen, not a street thug." He smiled thinly. "The difference isn't one of morality, you understand—if anything, I'd rather trust a footpad. But there is a difference in methods. If he has us murdered while we're clearly under his official protection, he'd ruin his reputation."

  Gretchen was glaring at him, but Heinrich was unfazed. "Yes, he would. And stop glaring at me, silly girl! Hating your enemies is a fine and splendid thing, but not when it addles your wits."

  "I agree with Heinrich," interjected Rebecca. "Not the least of the reasons for Richelieu's success is that people trust him. His word is his bond, and all that. It's true, Gretchen, don't think it isn't."

  She reached back and pulled the scarf off the seat's backrest. It was dry enough, so she began folding it. "I have no doubt at all that our safety will be assured, if we accept Richelieu's offer. But I also have no doubt at all—"

  Heinrich was chuckling softly. "We'd be 'enjoying' the longest damn trip anyone ever took to Holland from Paris. Not more than a few hundred miles—and I'll wager anything you want to bet it would take us weeks. Probably months."

  Now that Gretchen's animosity had been given a new target, the woman's usual quick intelligence returned. "Yeah, easy enough. Broken axles every five miles. Lamed horses. Unexpected detours due to unexpected floods. Every other bridge washed out—and, how strange, nobody seems to know where the fords are. At least two weeks at the border, squabbling with Spanish officials. You name it, we'll get it."

  Jeff, throughout, had been studying Rebecca. "So what's the problem with the alternative?"

  Rebecca grimaced. "There's something happening in the ports of northern France that Richelieu doesn't want us to see. I don't know what it might be, but it's more than simply this alliance with the Dutch. I'm almost sure of it. That means"—she smiled at Heinrich—"and I'll offer this wager, that we'll never be allowed into Le Havre. Some excuse or other, but Richelieu will see to it."

  "You're right," agreed Heinrich. "We'll have to take ship in one of the smaller and more distant ports."

  The major, clearly enough, was thinking ahead. The man had a good and experienced soldier's instinctive grasp for terrain, to begin with. And, where Rebecca had spent the past two years devouring the books which Grantville had brought with it, Heinrich had been just as passionately devoted to the marvelous maps and atlases which the Americans possessed. By now, his knowledge of Europe's geography was well-nigh encyclopedic.

  "I still don't see the problem," said Jeff. "So what if we add another two or three days to the trip? We'd still be able to make it to Holland within two weeks."

  "Pirates," replied Heinrich and Rebecca, almost simultaneously. Rebecca smiled; then, nodding toward Heinrich, urged him to explain.

  "The English Channel is infested with the bastards," growled the major. "Has been for centuries—and maybe never as badly as now, what with the French and Spanish preoccupied with their affairs on the Continent and that sorry-ass Charles on the throne in England."

  Five of the six soldiers in the kitchen nodded. The sixth, Jimmy Andersen—who, except for Jeff, was the only native-born American in the group—was practically goggling.

  "Pirates? In the English Channel?"

  Rebecca found it hard not to laugh aloud. For all that they had been somewhat acclimatized in the two years since their arrival in 17th-century Europe, she had often found that Americans still tended to unconsciously lapse into old ways of thinking. For Americans, she knew, anything associated with "England" carried with it the connotations of "safe, secure, even stodgy." The idea of pirates in the English Channel . . .

  "Where do they come from?" demanded Jimmy.

  "North Africa is where a lot of them are based," replied Heinrich. With a shrug: "Of course, they're not all Moors, by any means. The Spanish license 'privateers' operating out of Dunkirk and Ostend against Dutch shipping, and the Dunkirkers are none too picky about their targets. And even for the Moors, probably half the crews, at least, are from somewhere in Europe. The world's scavengers."

  Jimmy was still shaking his head with bemusement. But Jeff, always quicker than his friend to adjust to reality, was giving Rebecca a knowing look.

  "So what you're suggesting, in short, is that if we take the sea route . . . how hard would it be for Richelieu to arrange a pirate attack?"

  Rebecca wasn't sure herself. Neither, judging from his expression, was Heinrich.

  Gretchen, of course, was.

  "Of course he will!" she snapped. "The man's a spider. He has his web everywhere."

  With Gretchen, as always, response was as certain as analysis. Sure enough, just as Rebecca had thought, the 9mm was in its place. A moment later, Gretchen had it in hand and was laying it firmly down on the table in front of her.

  "Pirates it is," she pronounced, sweeping the room with a hard gaze. "Let's give them a taste of rate of fire, boys—what do you say?"

  A harsh—and approving—laugh came from the soldiers. Rebecca looked at Heinrich.

  He shrugged. "Seems as good a plan as any."

  Rebecca now looked to Jeff and Jimmy. Jeff, not to her surprise, had a stubborn expression which showed clearly that he was standing with his wife. Jimmy . . .

  This time she did laugh. Befuddled, he might sometimes be, at the nature of his new world. But Jimmy Andersen, a teenager devoted to his games, adored the opportunities.

  "Oh, how cool! We can try out the grenade launchers!"

  Chapter 3

  Dr. James Nichols finished washing off his hands and turned away from the sink, fluttering his hands in the air in order to dry them. Even in the hospital, Mike knew, towels were in such short supply that James had decreed that medical personnel should use them as little as possible.

  He braced himself for the inevitable complaint. But, other than scowling slightly, the doctor simply shook his head and walked over to the door.

  "Let's get out of here and let the poor woman get some sleep."

  Mike opened the door for the doctor, whose hands were still damp, and followed him out into the corridor. Wondering, a bit, how the sick woman was going to get much sleep with her entire family crowded around the bed.

  A bit, not much. Mike himself would never get used to it personally, but he knew that Germans of the 17th century were accustomed to a level of population density in their living arrangements that would drive most Americans half-crazy. A good bed was valuable—why waste it on two people, when four would fit?

  Once the door w
as closed, he cocked an eyebrow at Nichols. Trying, probably with not much success, to keep his worry hidden.

  No success at all, apparently:

  "It's not plague, if that's what you're worrying about." James' voice was more gravelly than usual. Nichols worked long hours as a matter of routine. But Mike knew that since Melissa had left Grantville, he practically lived at the hospital. Insofar as a black man's face could look gray with fatigue, James' did. His hard and rough features seemed a bit softer, not from warmth but simply from weariness.

  "You need to get some sleep yourself," said Mike sternly.

  James gave him a smile which was half-mocking. "Oh, really? And exactly how much sleep have you been getting, since Becky left?"

  As they continued moving down the corridor toward Nichols' office, weaving their way through the packed halls of Grantville's only hospital, James' scowl returned in full force.

  "What in God's name possessed us to send our womenfolk off into that howling wilderness?" he demanded. Indicating, with a sweep of the hand, everything in the world.

  Mike snorted. "Paris and London hardly qualify as 'howling wilderness,' James. I'm sure James Fenimore Cooper would agree with me on that, once he gets born. So would George Armstrong Custer."

  "Bullshit," came the immediate retort. "I'm not an 'injun-fighter,' dammit, I'm a doctor. Cities in this day and age are a microbe's paradise. It's bad enough even here in Grantville, with our—ha! what a joke!—so-called 'sanitary practices.' "

  They'd reached the doctor's office and, once again, Mike opened for James. "Forget 'gay Paree,' Mike. In the year of our Lord 1633, the sophisticated Parisian's idea of 'sanitation' is to look out the window first before emptying the chamber pot."

  The image made Mike grimace a little, but he didn't argue the point. He'd be arguing soon enough, anyway, he knew. James' wisecrack about Grantville's sanitation was bound to be the prelude to another of the doctor's frequent tirades on the subject of the lunacy of political leaders in general, and those of the Confederated Principalities of Europe in particular. Which, of course, included Mike himself.

  Once they'd taken their seats—James behind the desk and Mike in front of it—he decided to intersect the tirade before it even started.

  "Don't bother with the usual rant," he growled. His own voice sounded pretty gravelly itself, and he reminded himself firmly not to take his own grouchiness at Rebecca's absence out on Nichols. For all that the doctor's near-monomania on the subject of epidemics sometimes irritated Mike, he respected and admired Nichols as much as he did anyone he'd ever met. Even leaving aside the fact that James had become one of his best friends since the Ring of Fire, the doctor's skill and energy was all that had kept hundreds of people alive. Probably thousands, when you figured in the indirect effects of his work.

  "What's she got?" he asked gruffly. "Another case of the flu?"

  Nichols nodded. "Most likely. Could be something else—more precisely, and be something else. But I'd say it's just another case—out of God knows how many—where we Typhoid Mary Americans inflicted the helpless locals with our highly evolved strains of influenza." His thick lips twisted in a wry smile. "Of course, I'm sure they'll be getting their revenge soon enough, once smallpox hits us. Which it will, don't think it won't."

  "Any luck with—"

  James shrugged. "Jeff Adams thinks we'll have a vaccine ready to go within a month or so, in large enough quantities to make a difference. I just hope he's right that using cowpox will work. Me, I'm a little skeptical. But . . ."

  Suddenly, he grinned. The expression came more naturally to James Nichols' face than did the scowl which usually graced it these days. "You'd think, wouldn't you, that a boy from the ghetto would be less fastidious than you white folks! But, I ain't. God, Mike, talk about the irony of life. I can remember the days when I used to complain, back in my ghetto clinic, that I was mired in the Dark Ages. And here I am—mired in the real Dark Ages."

  "Don't ever let Melissa hear you say that," responded Mike, grinning himself. "Talk about a tirade!"

  James sniffed. "Fine for her to lecture everybody on the upstanding qualities of people in all times and places. She was brought up a Boston Brahmin. Probably got fed political correctness with her formula. Me, I grew up in the streets of south Chicago, and I know the truth. Some people are just plain rotten, and most people are lazy. Careless, anyway."

  He heaved himself erect from his weary sprawl in the chair, and leaned over the desk, supporting his weight on his arms. "Mike, I'm really not a monomaniac. You just don't have any idea what disease can do to us—the whole damn continent—living under these conditions. We've been lucky, thus far. A few flare-ups, here and there; nothing you could really call an epidemic. But it's just a matter of time."

  He jerked a thumb toward the window. Beyond it lay the town of Grantville.

  "What's the point of lecturing people every night on the TV programs about the need for personal sanitation—when most of them can't afford a change of clothes? What are they supposed to do—in the middle of Germany, in winter—walk around naked while they stand in line at the town's one and only public laundry worth talking about?"

  There wasn't any trace of the grin left, now. "While we devote our precious resources to building more toys for that fucking king, instead of a textile and garment industry, the lice are having a field day. And I will guarantee you that disease and epidemic will kill more people—more of Gustav's own soldiers, the stupid bastard—than all the Habsburg or Bourbon armies in the world."

  Mike sat up himself. The argument was back, and there was no point in trying to evade it. James Nichols was as stubborn and tenacious as he was intelligent and dedicated. The fact that Mike was at least half in agreement with the doctor just made him all the more stubborn in defending Gustavus Adolphus—and, of course, his own policies. The United States of which Mike Stearns was President was, on one level, just another of the many principalities which formed the Confederated Principalities of Europe under the rule of the king of Sweden. Even if, in practice, it enjoyed a status of near-sovereignty.

  "James, you can't reduce this to simple arithmetic. I know disease—and hunger—are the real killers. But one year is not the same as the year after that, or the year after that. If we can stabilize the CPE and put a stop to the Thirty Years War, then we can start seriously planning for the future. But until that happens . . ."

  He leaned back, sighing heavily. "What do you want me to do, James? For all his prejudices and quirks and godawful attitudes on a lot of questions, Gustavus Adolphus is the best ruler of the times. You don't doubt that any more than I do. Nor do you think, any more than I do, that Grantville could make it on its own—without devoting even more of its resources to purely military efforts. Being part of the CPE, whatever its drawbacks—and I think I understand those even better than you do—is our best option. But that means we don't have any choice except to do what we must to keep the CPE afloat."

  He lurched to his feet and took three strides to the window. There, he glowered down at the scene. Nichols' office was on the top floor of the three-story hospital, giving him a good view of the sprawling little city below.

  And "sprawling" it was. Sprawling, and teeming with people. The sleepy little Appalachian town which had come through the Ring of Fire two years earlier was long gone, now. Mike could still see the relics of it, of course. Like most small towns in West Virginia, Grantville had suffered a population loss over the decades before the Ring of Fire. Downtown Grantville had some large and multi-story buildings left over from its salad days as a center of the gas and coal industry. On the day before the mysterious and still-unexplained cosmic disaster which had transplanted the town into 17th-century Europe, those buildings had been half vacant. Today, they were packed with people—and new buildings, well if crudely built, were rising up all over the place.

  The sight caused him to relax some. Whatever else he had done, whatever mistakes he might have made, Mike Stearns and his pol
icies had turned Grantville and the country surrounding it into one of the few areas in central Europe which were economically booming and had a growing population. A rapidly growing one, in fact. If Mike's insistence on supporting Gustav Adolf's armaments campaign would result in the death of many people—which it would; he didn't doubt that any more than Nichols did—it would keep many more alive. Alive, and prospering.

  Such, at least, was his hope.

  "What am I supposed to do, James?" he repeated, softly rather than angrily. "We're caught in a three-way vise—and only have two hands to fend off the jaws."

  Without turning away from the window, he held up a finger.

  "Jaw number one. Whether we like it or not, we're in the middle of one of the worst wars in European history. Worse, in a lot of ways, than either of the world wars of the twentieth century. With no sign that any of the great powers that surround us intend to make peace."

  He heard a little throat-clearing sound behind him, and shook his head. "No, sorry, we haven't heard anything from Rita and Melissa yet. I'd be surprised if we had, since they and Julie and Alex were planning to sail from Hamburg. But I did get a radio message from Becky yesterday. She arrived in Paris a few days ago and is already leaving for Holland."

  He heard James sigh. "Yeah, you got it. Richelieu was polite as could be, but hasn't budged an inch. In fact, Becky thinks he's planning some kind of new campaign. If she's right, knowing that canny son-of-a-bitch, it's going to be a doozy."

  He looked toward the south. "Then, of course, we've still got the charming Austrian Habsburgs to deal with. Not to mention Maximilian of Bavaria. Not to mention that Wallenstein survived his wounds at the Alte Veste and God only knows what that man is really cooking up on his great estates in Bohemia. Not to mention that King Christian of Denmark—Protestant or not—is still determined to bring down the Swedes. Not to mention that most of Gustav's 'loyal princes'—Protestant or not—are the sorriest pack of treacherous scumbags you'll ever hope to meet in your life."