But there was an alternative, one which the up-timers themselves had never developed very far because by the time they began creating computers their electronic capacilities had been quite advanced. The alternative was called "fluidics," and was based on using the flow of liquids instead of electrons—typically water, but it could be air, and apparently the ideal fluid would be mercury or something similar.
That technology was well within existing seventeenth-century techniques. Already, in fact, there was a little boom developing in Venetian glass manufacturing to provide some of the components needed for fluidics-based computers.
What Thorsten's friend had found most fascinating was that there was no telling where these developments would lead in the long run. Any industry, once established and widely spread, creates an automatic inertia in favor of continuing it. That same inertia handicaps its potential rivals. In the world the up-timers came from, that dynamic had entrenched internal combustion engines and electronic computers. But in this one, that might not be true. There were advantages to steam and fluidics, after all, that had never really been exploited in the universe across the Ring of Fire—but might be in this one.
Across the field, Thorsten could see Saxon cavalry coming forward. It looked as if Torstensson's ploy was going to work.
It occurred to him that this was not the best time to ruminate on possible alternative technologies. For the here and now, cavalry was still the principal offensive arm in a battle, as the Saxons were about to try to demonstrate again—and it was Thorsten's job to stop them.
"Here we go," said Lukasz Opalinski. He and his Polish hussars had been ordered to join the Saxon cavalry in their charge against the overextended right wing of the enemy's army. That would be the Third Division, commanded by the USE's former prime minister.
"The Saxons claim he doesn't know what he's doing," said Lubomir Adamczyk. He sounded more doubtful than hopeful. "Stearns, I mean."
But there was no time to talk any further. The charge was starting. Slightly more than four thousand Saxon horsemen would be hammering that enemy right wing within not much more than a minute. Along with two hundred Polish hussars.
Lukacz wasn't all that hopeful himself. It might well be true that the enemy general didn't know what to do. But he didn't really need to know. Stearns just needed to listen to his staff officers, because they would know.
Apparently, he was doing so. To Opalinski, the speed and precision with which the infantry units of the Third Division were moving to anchor themselves on the Pleisse didn't look like the result of confused and amateur orders. Not in the least.
So be it. What remained was simple. As dangerous as it might be, there was nothing in the world quite as exhilarating—to a Polish hussar, anyway—as a cavalry charge.
They were into a canter now. Next to him, Adamczyk started whooping.
Chapter 18
The single thing that Mike Stearns would always remember most clearly about his first battle was the noise, the sheer volume of sound. And the second thing he would always remember clearly was the smell; the way the huge clouds of gunsmoke would roll over everything like an acrid fog.
Not the sights of the battle, so much, although he remembered those too. In fact, his whole memory of the battle was actually pretty good. At no point did he feel that his mind had gotten overwhelmed. That was because he expected the sights he saw. Mike had a good imagination and he'd been able to prepare himself for those shocks. Insofar, at least, as anyone can be prepared for such things in the abstract.
But what he hadn't considered—just hadn't thought about, ahead of time—was the incredible effect that firing tens of thousands of gunpowder weapons within a relatively small space would have on the other human senses. Especially the cannon fire. It didn't help, of course, that everyone was still using black powder.
He soon gained an appreciation of the way that same black powder almost immediately shaped control of the battle; what he thought of as its command structure. Within less than five minutes he was fervently wishing a strong wind would spring up—which was not likely, on such a clear and sunny day. He couldn't see anything, most of the time. The huge clouds of gunsmoke impeded vision, except when odd and unpredictable eddies would suddenly—and usually all too briefly—clear them away.
Until that moment, Mike had always assumed that Gustav Adolf's recklessness in charging forward into the fog at the battle of Lützen—that's what had gotten the king of Sweden killed in that other universe, in 1632—was because of the man's personal impetuousness. A childish inability to control his emotions, essentially.
No doubt some of that was involved. But Mike could also now understand how much the driving power of pure frustration must have compelled Gustav Adolf. A commanding general was supposed to be in charge of this mayhem, damnation—and he couldn't see anything. On at least four occasions, Mike had to restrain himself from riding into the smoke clouds, just so he could find out what the hell was actually happening. On two of those occasions, he might not have managed if Leebrick, Long and Ulbrecht Duerr hadn't been right there to urge him to stay put. Quite forcefully. Indeed, you might almost say impolitely, and in a manner that bordered on disrespect and insubordination.