Hence the contour lines here and little trees over there. The map was actually fairly pretty. Which was beside the point. Ivan pointed at a hill, just a little bump drawn on the map. “If it’s high enough,” he said, “we’ll build a temporary fort here . . .”
While Ivan talked, Bernie looked at the map and nodded. He hadn’t seen it till Ivan had pointed it out, but it was clear enough now. If they were going to be attacked, that would be one of the ways that the attack might come. If the map was accurate, the other ways would be easier to reach and see from up there. The kids really were good at the games. But Bernie had no idea how well that would translate into being good at war.
The “lieutenant,” Gorgii Ameroff, came back into the room and nodded to Bernie. Gorgii was an old veteran and had seen war firsthand. He also had his doubts about how well the skills of the gaming room would translate into the field. As best as Bernie could tell, Gorgii was a staff officer looking after the training of young officers under the command of a higher officer.
Bernie wasn’t sure, but from Gorgii’s expression the kids were doing pretty well and Gorgii didn’t quite know how to take that. Totally aside from his youth, the fact that Ivan was from a modest family, more merchant class than nobility, annoyed Gorgii. Bernie knew Gorgii was still trying to work out how he felt about that. It just didn’t seem right that this baker’s son would have such talent or potential. The changes brought on by the Ring of Fire were disturbing.
The question wasn’t just how well the games would translate into real battle, but also how much practice at war could be gained. Stories told around campfires of battles fought a generation ago didn’t necessarily translate all that well to the real world. But they were a real part of teaching the young men the art of war. With the games, a young student might command in a month the same number of battles he would fight in a dozen years of service. Experience, even the sort of pseudo-experience provided by the games, might make the difference between seeing or missing a danger or an opportunity on which a battle might be won or lost.
Bernie waved to Gorgii and quietly left the room. He needed to get back to the Dacha.
Chapter 21
Bernie was going nuts. After all his talk about the joys of decadent civilization, he had failed to provide the decadent civilization. It had taken a while to get the parts to the new bathroom made. Now they were made and installed, but there were still a multitude of problems. And the brain cases wanted to know why. Heck, the brain cases wanted to know why everything. Bernie had tried to explain and run headlong into a massive wall of ignorance and arrogance. Mostly, but not entirely, his own.
“What is a gravity feed?” Filip Pavlovich asked. “How can one make water grave and serious? Water does not flow because it is serious. Water flows because water wants to return to its proper level, just as Aristotle said two thousand years ago. So to make this ‘seriousness feed’ the book speaks of, you would have to make the water serious. How do you do that?” Bernie was pretty sure that Filip Pavlovich was having a bit of fun at his expense, but there was a core of truth in the complaint. He’d run into the philosophers’ faith in Aristotle before. It was akin to their faith in God.
“It didn’t say water falls because it is serious.” Bernie tried clenching his teeth and counting to ten. “It said that the force of gravity causes it to fall. It didn’t say anything about water being serious, for crying out loud. The force of gravity is a force of nature. Oh, hell . . . never mind. Let me think a minute.”
Bernie stormed away from the workshop. He wasn’t completely sure about it, but from the timing and some of the symptoms he’d seen in Moscow, the “slow fever,” whatever its proper name was, seemed likely to be transmitted by bad water. If that was true, then indoor plumbing, septic systems, and getting human waste away from things like drinking water or washing water, might mean the difference between hundreds of people dying of “slow fever” every spring and maybe none dying.
He had never thought himself arrogant. He just figured that among people who thought there were only six planets, he’d do all right. He’d tell them how to make stuff and they would. The problem was, Bernie didn’t really know how to make stuff. He had quite a bit of the knowledge needed, but he had no idea how to put it together into a form that would produce a product.
That should have been all right. There were a number of very bright, very creative, people at the Dacha. They had been arriving a few at a time. However, as yet there was very little crossover between what Bernie knew and what they knew. Their map of the world and his were so different that communicating, even with a good translator, was difficult.