“My what?”
Natasha looked at Brandy’s letter again. “Brandy says ‘tell Bernie that Cass is traveling with Precious because Cass is the only guy we could find who wasn’t doing something else.’”
Bernie’s face was a study. Part outrage, part pout. “The car is not named Precious. Are you sure she didn’t say ‘your precious car’ or something?”
Natasha shook her head. “No. It even has the capital P. I assumed it was the name for it. At any rate, your Cass will be arriving in a month or so. We should probably arrange for you to meet him. He, according to Brandy, wants to visit us for a while. And you never know, he might help.”
Bernie slumped into a chair. “I doubt it. Don’t get me wrong. Cass is smart, smarter than me, I always thought. It’s just . . . I don’t know . . . he has a knack for screwing things up. You’re probably not going to care for him one little bit. Neither will Boris or Filip.” Bernie shook his head in disgust. “Why did Brandy have to send him?”
Brandy had not sent him, Vladimir had. He had been fully aware of Cass’ drawbacks and had stressed the need to put up with them while he was milked for information, especially on weapons and tactics used by the up-timers. “Mr. Lowry,” Vladimir had written, “is not a person we would want in our home. But he does have knowledge that could be useful to Russia. Try to keep anyone from killing him for the insults he will surely give.” Natasha had wondered if Bernie’s view would agree with Vladimir’s. While there were subtle differences, for the most part it did.
Chapter 40
On the road to the Swedish Border
November 1633
Bernie shivered. Theatrically, Natasha thought. She exchanged an amused glance with Anya. Anya rolled her eyes and Natasha had to struggle not to giggle.
Oblivious to the byplay, Bernie went on, “Well, at least it’s not a horse. It may be colder than a witch’s . . . ah, never mind. It may be really cold, but at least we aren’t riding horses.”
“Indeed, we aren’t.” Natasha smiled. “And you must admit that it’s a very nice sleigh, Bernie, very nice.”
And it was, in fact, a very nice sleigh. It had special springs for the skis. Outside it was bitterly cold and the snow was still pretty deep, but the streamlined sleigh had double-walled construction and a lacquer polish job that acted as sealant, as well as making the whole thing shiny. It was relatively warm inside, even if it did look a bit peculiar. The sleigh needed high road clearance because even the improved roads weren’t exactly highways in the up-timer sense of the word. They were reasonably well-graded dirt roads with a bit of crushed rock spread over them. Plus, at the moment, a layer of snow.
Only a relatively small part of the design for the coach was from up-timer information. More of it came from a Russian coach maker who had joined the team after the czar had seen some up-time car magazines. Czar Mikhail had liked the idea of cars and smooth rides. He’d decided that if he couldn’t have an engine, he at least wanted a streamlined design and shock absorbers.
The coach maker, Ivan Egorovich Shirshov, had taken note of that desire. The czar had seen to that. Ivan Egorovich had arrived at the Dacha with a medium-sized chip on his shoulder over the whole mess. Then he talked to Bernie and found that Bernie agreed with him. But it was no more up to Bernie than it was to him. They had gone over Bernie’s car magazines, then over sleigh designs and coach designs, trying to figure out what they could do. Ivan Egorovich now had a permanent dent in his forehead from pounding it against the wall in frustration. And Czar Mikhail had a new coach. So did Bernie.
Bernie grabbed the edge of the seat. “Hang on. We’re about to hit another rutted bit. And I still can’t figure out why you wanted to come on this trip, ladies. You’re probably going to get frostbite on your noses.”
“The ‘advance team,’ as you call it, has made arrangements, Bernie. We will be comfortable. And I like traveling. Vladimir and I did quite a bit of it, you know, back when our father was alive.”
Aunt Sofia grinned widely. “The weather, it is not so bad.”
Bernie shuddered. If it hadn’t been for the long johns, he’d have had frozen b . . . ah . . . parts by now.
The trip to the Swedish border had several purposes. One was to investigate the road work. Road work had been continuing apace since a few months or so after Bernie’s arrival. Since he had worked on the road gangs around Grantville and had a mechanical turn of mind, he had a good knowledge of the horse-drawn grader and other horse-drawn road improvement equipment. The equipment he had helped design for Russia had been used extensively for more than a year now and was showing real effect. The czar’s highways mostly went south and east, roughly toward China. One, however, went north and west toward the coast of the Baltic Sea.