Ed got a wry smile. "What's this? Am I actually hearing praise from Mike Stearns being ladled—okay, spooned—onto a bunch of suits?"
Mike smiled back. "I don't recommend calling Anita Masaniello a `suit.' The sneer at her class wouldn't piss her off, but the implied sexism would. With that caveat, I never said they were incompetent suits, Ed. They're very good at what they do, from what I can tell. But, as you said yourself, they're civil servants—whose qualifications have never once in the history of the world included `talent at fomenting revolution and unrest' as part of the job description. Still—"
He sat up straight, unlaced his fingers and planted his big hands on the desk in front of him. "If somebody or something else blows it all up, I'm pretty confident they can put the pieces back together properly. Better still, they might even manage to control the explosion and channel it constructively from the getgo. That's what I'm hoping, anyway."
Piazza winced. "Let me see if I've got this straight. You basically sent Steve Salatto and Vince Marcantonio and all the rest of them down there in order to act as a shaped charge—once somebody else sets off the explosion?" His eyes got a vacant look, as if he was dredging his memory. "Odd, though. I don't recall you ever putting it that way to them, in the briefings they got before you sent them off."
"Well, of course not. If I'd warned a bunch of suits ahead of time that their suits would most likely be blown off, they'd have spent all their time since then designing explosion-proof suits instead of getting on with the job of setting themselves up for the charge." He grinned. "Which, I've got to say—damn good people, did I mention that?—they seem to have done extremely well."
Ed's humor faded. "That's awfully cold-blooded. You're gambling with people's lives here, you know that."
"Sure, it's cold-blooded. And so what?" Mike's own expression got very grim, for a moment. "I've been gambling with everybody's lives—my own included, if that matters—ever since we arrived in this benighted century. I don't see where I've got much choice."
Piazza sighed. "Well, neither do I. But . . . what are you going to do if it all blows the wrong way?"
"Tell Gustavus Adolphus that in the middle of a war he's got to peel off a good chunk of his army and send them down to Franconia to suppress anarchy—that we sorta fostered but couldn't control." Mike matched the sigh with a heavier one of his own. "Have you noticed that our beloved captain general has one hell of a ferocious temper, when he gets riled?"
"He hollers right good," Ed allowed. After a moment, he added:
"So. Who's this `something or someone else' you're counting on to blow everything up?"
"Hell, how should I know? That's a real nice start, what those people in Bamberg did. The core of it, though, will be a farmers' rebellion. Got to be, with that setup in Franconia. But there's no way of telling what or who might set it off. Or—more properly—what combination of someones or somethings might do the trick."
Once again, he leaned back in the chair and laced his fingers together. "There's only one thing I can tell you for sure, Ed. Whoever it is, or whatever it's about, you won't find a suit anywhere in sight."
Part IV: The Ram Rebellion
Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce
Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Ezekiel 37:8-10
Chapter 1: "Not the Three Graces"
Würzburg, Late August, 1633
Johann Matthaeus Meyfarth had, somehow, managed to appoint himself as office dragon. He wasn't officially Steve Salatto's chief of staff, but he had his desk in the outer office in Würzburg's episcopal palace and fiercely defended the time of the New United States' chief administrator in Franconia from those who would waste it. Or even might do so.
He looked at the latest arrivals with some surprise. Three uptime women. They scarcely qualified as the Three Graces. Not one of them had ever been as attractive as—say—Fräulein Murphy, who was no more than moderately pretty herself. They were accompanied by a down-time man about thirty. He had to be a down-timer, Meyfarth thought, because no uptimer would ever look quite so at ease in a bureaucrat's formal robe. The man's forehead was practically inscribed with the words: treasury official. Each of the four was trailed by a quite young man, in his late teens or early twenties, all of whom appeared to be down-timers, even though two of them were dressed in uptime style clothing. Each of them was carrying a load of ledgers and papers.