Ring of Fire II(209)

The Barclays' daughter Suzi frowned. She was a bizarre-looking creature, who would have been an attractive young woman if it hadn't been for the short cropped hair dyed a truly hideous color, five earrings in her left ear and three on the right, two metal studs through her right eyebrow—and, capping it all, a tattoo of flames done in black ink reaching from the wrist of her right arm to the top of the right side of her neck. The woman was so attached to the grotesque decoration that she insisted on wearing a sleeveless vest instead of a coat, despite the November temperatures.



"That can't be right," she said. "I know somebody from Cheb, one of the girls—well, never mind that, but she's Bohemian."



"That is hardly surprising, since Cheb is in Bohemia. It's an old fortress town that guards the western approaches. Good for us, in this instance, since the garrison is a mercenary company and its commander has been well bribed. We'll abandon these wagons in Cheb and replace them with several smaller ones, much better designed for travel in the mountains. We'll even have a cavalry escort while we pass down part of the Bohemian Forest until we reenter the USE near Kötzting. There, we will follow the Regen down to Regensburg, where we will exchange the wagons—that has also been arranged—for a barge that will take us down the Danube into Austria."



He'd already explained this to the leaders of the up-timers, the older Barclays and O'Connor and his son. But it seemed they either hadn't paid attention or hadn't considered all the implications.



"Hey, wait a minute," said Allan O'Connor. "We're coming back into the USE? What the hell for? I know my geography, dammit. Once we're across into Bohemia, let's just stay there until we get to Austria."



Janos stared at him. "Indeed. As a geographical proposition, that is certainly feasible. Follow the rivers down to Pizen. From there we could take a good road to Ceské Budejovice, the largest town in southern Bohemia. From there, of course, it is a short distance to Austria—and along a very good road, given the long and constant intercourse between Vienna and Prague."



O'Connor nodded. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking."



No rabbit had ever been this stupid, for a certainly. "You have missed the news, then. Of the war between Bohemia and Austria. Which has been going on for a year and a half, now."



The up-timers frowned at him. They looked like a pack of confused rabbits. All except Suzi Barclay, who just looked like a crazed rabbit.



Janos grit his teeth, reminding himself that he needed to remain on the best possible terms with these—these—people.



"Not a good idea," he said thinly. "The reason I could bribe the commander of the Cheb garrison is because no one expects hostilities to erupt between the USE and Bohemia, so that frontier post was given to a man who was competent enough but needed no further qualifications. Such as . . . what you might call a rigorous sense of duty. At Pizen and Ceské Budejovice, on the other hand, we would be dealing with Pappenheim's Black Cuirassiers."



The up-timers seemed to draw back a little.



"Ah. I see you have heard of them. Yes. We do not wish to have dealings with the Black Cuirassiers."



Enough! Still more time had been wasted. He pointed stiffly to the broken wagon. "So let us begin unloading it. Now. And discard from the other two wagons whatever is not essential."





Chapter 6. The Mess





High Street Mansion, Seat of Government for the State of Thuringia-Franconia

President's Office

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia



After Grantville's police chief finished his report, Ed Piazza, president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, half-turned his swivel chair and looked out of the window in his office. That was the first time he'd so much as glanced outside since he showed up for work this morning. His schedule had been jam-packed even before this latest crisis hit.



The weather was still good, he saw. Clear, with not a cloud in the sky. Very crisp, of course, the way such days in November were, but not yet bitterly cold the way it would become in January and February.



Well, not "crisis," exactly, he mused. He and Mike Stearns had long known that there was no way to keep the USE's enemies from getting their hands on American technical knowledge—nor from suborning some of the Americans themselves. Among the thirty-five hundred people who'd come from up-time through the Ring of Fire, there was bound to be the usual percentage who were excessively greedy and not burdened with much in the way of a conscience. That was even leaving aside the ones—there were a lot of those, now—who'd accepted legitimate offers to relocate elsewhere. You couldn't keep people from emigrating, after all; not, at least, without building some sort of Godforsaken version of a Berlin Wall, which neither he nor Mike had wanted any part of.