At which point Lazar wrote to Vladimir about the potential for profit if they could determine what muscovite mica was.
Having written his letter and had his man put it in the pouch to be sent to Grantville, Lazar went back to trying to improve the tuning of his tuned-circuit spark gap transmitter. That evening he went on to trying to figure out how to make an alternator so that he could produce inductance and an inductance furnace for the melting of metal.
Chapter 30
February 1633
Natasha alighted from the sleigh at her family’s dacha outside of Moscow, along with her aunt, Sofia Petrovna. Both were wearing full regalia. And they were attending this function almost against their will. Over a year ago the Dacha had been converted into a research and development shop. For a while there had been very little notice taken of what was going on at the Gorchakov dacha, but for months now there had been increasing pressure to provide demonstrations of what rumor said the Gorchakov family was keeping secret. Natasha had resisted for several reasons. But resistance had proved futile. Well, not entirely futile. She had gained time and, though the Dacha leaked like a sieve, there was a difference between hearing about something and seeing it. Meanwhile, through some mystical combination of personalities and mutual support, the Dacha produced magic. Magic which had allowed the family to gain support and favors from several of the most important bureaus and great families.
The Dacha was still not profitable in terms of money and it would be some time before it would even start to pay back the money invested in it, at least to the family. But politically it was a gold mine. Natasha, with Aunt Sofia’s guidance, had been selectively generous. Rewarding friends for friendship and strengthening the more liberal factions at court.
Aunt Sofia served as her chaperone, necessary in Muscovy’s culture. While her brother, Vladimir Petrovich, was away in Grantville, someone had to assume responsibility for the lands. That responsibility fell on Natasha. Young for it she might be, but she and Vladimir were the last of their branch of the family. It was a wealthy branch. Thankfully, she and Vladimir had been raised by a free-thinking father who had been rather enamored of the west. She had been educated alongside Vladimir. Fashionable or not, someone had to take care of things.
Aunt Sofia turned to Natasha. “Well, girl, what do you suppose Bernie has done this time? I thought the stinks and noises from his bathroom were quite enough. And the hundred ways he has discovered not to make a light bulb was rather less than impressive.”
Natasha looked at her diminutive aunt and raised an eyebrow.
“Fine, he and the electric nerds have made working light bulbs now.” Aunt Sofia admitted. “And their light is much better for reading than candlelight. But it took them long enough, considering the information Vladimir sent.”
“It’s not Bernie we need to worry about. It’s the nerds,” Natasha corrected.
What she was worried about wasn’t Bernie. It was Russian culture. In the Dacha they had developed their own little world of cooperation. But in the bureaus, among the service nobility and great families, there was a culture of back-stabbing and credit-stealing that had been all that Natasha had known, as unnoticed as the sea to a fish. Until the Dacha—and now she was very afraid that with the presence of the guests the nerds would revert to bureaucrats.
But it was unavoidable. After spending too long informing their superiors and themselves that the Dacha was an unimportant flash in the pan, that the items that were pouring out of it were all there were or were ever going to be, and besides, they were all really coming from Grantville anyway—the bureaus, the monasteries and the great families had suddenly noticed that the Dacha was changing the political equation. Now the members of the Boyar Duma and the high and the mighty in general wanted to see what was going on and how much things were going to change. There was also a faction that was anxious to shut the place down and set the clock back.
* * *
The czar and czarina, Patriarch Filaret, several members of the Boyar Duma and some of their wives, and three of the highest-ranking prelates representing three of the most powerful monasteries in Russia, arrived over the next few hours and had to be provided quarters in the Dacha for their stay. The normal inhabitants of those rooms had been moved into outbuildings, and some of them even into a large, heavy, double-walled tent. Natasha greeted each guest as they arrived.
* * *
Natasha listened to the lecture on soil chemistry with half an ear. It wasn’t that it was unimportant. In the long run, it might turn out to be drastically important. But Natasha had already read the reports on fertilizer and had other things on her mind.