Part 35 (1/2)

All the things he didn't know meant Bernie had to study. It was worse than being in school, as far as he was concerned. All the stuff that he had been sure that he would never need once he graduated high school, he needed now. He was having to interpret words he'd never heard and in contexts he'd never dreamed of. What the h.e.l.l was calcareous gra.s.sland? Calcareous turned out to be to do with chalk or calcium, at least that's what the dictionary said. But calcareous gra.s.sland? How could there be chalk gra.s.s? He had to go to the dictionary all the time to find the weird stuff that the Russian nerds wanted.

Then there was Bernoulli's Law. Pter Nickovich had found a description of how wings worked in one of the books. The explanation described a wing's dependence on Bernoulli's Law. Then they had looked up Bernoulli's Law, done the math and come to the conclusion that it couldn't work that way. Bernoulli's Law, Bernie was a.s.sured, would require a small plane to be traveling at over three hundred miles an hour to fly. They wanted to know if powered flight was really possible and if so how.

Bernie knew it was possible; he had flown twice and seen planes flying more times than he could count.

But he didn't know how they worked. He built paper airplanes and wooden airplanes that flew, based on the rubber band powered airplanes he had played with as a kid, but he couldn't explain how they worked.

What Bernie didn't know, and for that matter most people in the Ring of Fire didn't know, was that planes flew through a complex mix of Bernoulli's Law,Newton 's Laws and the complexities of air flow.

The mathematicians and natural philosophers who surrounded Bernie now would have understood the complex explanation but Bernie didn't have it. He had seen the drawings of air flow over a wing and a.s.sumed that they were accurate. They weren't. This didn't mean the shape of the wing was wrong. They weren't really inaccurate either, just simplified. Using the drawing out of those books for the cross-section of the wing would produce a wing that would fly quite well. a.s.suming, of course, that you added the ailerons and the rest of the plane.

Every day he had people asking him questions that he didn't have the answers to. They weren't meaningless questions that didn't really matter, like how many planets there are in the solar system. Well, most of them weren't. The astrologers were nuts to know the locations of Neptune, Ura.n.u.s and Pluto.

Mostly, though, the questions were about how things worked and how to treat injuries and diseases.

”I just don't know enough. I don't know if anyone does.” The candles were half burnt and the girl was dozing in the chair. She jerked awake at the sound of his voice. He looked over and saw how tired she looked. ”Oh, Lord. I've kept you up when you need to sleep. I'm sorry. I lost track of the time. I'll get out of your way and let you get some sleep. I'm really sorry.”

The outlander grabbed up a candle and hustled away. Anya watched him go in amazement. He was strange this, this Bernie from the future. That strangeness was giving Anya pause.What was his game?

What was he up to? It hadn't occurred to her that Bernie might simply be a nice guy. She hadn't met many nice guys in her life. She worried about him possibly being onto her, but there wasn't really any evidence for that.This is just too easy. Anya didn't trust easy; easy usually meant a trap.

Anya had never seen the man her reports went to and didn't know his name. He was simply referred to as ”the prince.” The Dacha was filled with experts, but it was also increasingly filled with spies. She thought half the servants in the place, and more than a few of the craftsmen, must report to someone. This didn't in any way diminish the quality of the service. It was just as important for agents to provide good service as it was for a normal servant. In fact, most of them were normal servants just making a bit of extra money on the side.

For the ones, like Anya, who were agents, quality was even more important. The people who had trained and placed the agents had a pretty unforgiving att.i.tude. If an agent got fired for spilling the soup, the result could be a tragedy for that agent and his or her family.

Filaret's forehead was creased with concentration. He was writing something, as he usually was. Mikhail sat quietly and waited for his father to lift his head. Filaret eventually did. He smiled when he realized that Mikhail had come in the room.

”Listen to this.” Filaret picked up the sheets of paper. ”I'll be reading it at the services next Sunday. I'll have copies printed. A lot of fair copies.”

Filaret read:

Patriarch Filaret's Advisory On the Ring of Fire

It is clear through multiple sources that G.o.d, in his infinite wisdom, has chosen to take a hand in the conflict among the German States. He provides through this example clear evidence of both His infinite power and His will, that the Roman Church and the Protestants, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, or other peculiar sects, are wrong. G.o.d has endeavored to make clear to them that which of their errors is most wrong is not a matter worth fighting over.

That is clearly G.o.d's message to them. But what is G.o.d's message to us? It is obvious that we are not in need of the sort of correction the German States required, else surely G.o.d would have placed the Ring of Fire here inMuscovy . While His admonishment, gentle as it is, is for the Germans, the gifts which He sent with it are clearly for all the world. Willingly or not, the knowledge the up-timers bring is spreading to all the world. To their credit, the up-timers themselves seem willing enough to share most of the knowledge that G.o.d gifted their ancestors and our descendants with. This is an especially gracious gift to Holy Rus.

For, while we have been strong in our adherence to scripture and the true faith, circ.u.mstances have left us behind the more western nations in some of the more mundane and earthly matters. We have been blocked byPoland from sharing in the technical advances made in the west.

The czar, in his wisdom, has long had a policy of trying to correct that problem so that we, the true heirs of Christianity and the Roman empire, could maintain the faith in relative safety, while at the same time limiting the corrupting influences from the west. G.o.d has smiled on Czar Mikhail's endeavor by providing new skills developed over time; many of them developed right here in Holy Rus. Yet like greedy children we complain ”Why an American village? Why not a Russian village?” We know, after all, that in the twentieth-century Holy Rus was one of the two great powers. After studying the history, it is obvious that G.o.d chose an American village to protect Holy Rus, especially the church. TheRussia of that time had fallen into corruption. For most of the twentieth century the Russian Orthodox Church, in fact all Christianity, had actually been banned. It was to protect us from this corruption that G.o.d chose an American village.

He placed it inGermany to remind us that He sees the whole world and cares about even those who have fallen away from the true church. More than that, He placed it inGermany to remind us that we have to work at it. To remind us not to be too proud to listen and learn from others and to protect us from too much of their direct influence, so that we might learn from them without becoming them. To protect our great Russian culture and still allow us the benefits of the good things they brought with them. As to the German culture, well, they don't really have one so it doesn't really matter.

”Well?” Mikhail raised an eyebrow. ”Is that really why G.o.d did it the way he did it?”

Filaret looked at his son severely for a moment. Then shrugged. ”I have no idea.”

”Not exactly what one wants to hear from the patriarch of the church.” Mikhail's grin was full of mischief.

”It wasn't my idea to become patriarch,” Filaret complained. ”It wasn't my idea to become a monk, for that matter. I'd much rather have been left out of G.o.donov's revenge.”

”Wouldn't we all?” Boris G.o.donov had done his level best to exterminate the Romanov family. He hadn't been that far from succeeding, either.

Filaret shook his head. ”G.o.d remains mysterious and beyond human understanding. He could have placed the Ring of Fire anywhere from anytime and the same questions would arise: why there, why not here?” Filaret shook his head again. ”I'm not by nature a theologian. I have never much cared how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But G.o.d chose to do this while I was patriarch, so I had to come up with something. It had to be something the people could mostly accept. Which was not that easy to do.”

”If it only helps us modernize,” Mikhail murmured.

”It should, I think. The idea is that G.o.d was correcting the Germans but giving the gift of knowledge to the whole world. Hopefully, it lets people feel that we aren't barbarians taking German sc.r.a.ps.” Filaret grinned. ”Besides, to go with it will be the design for the turning plow. A gracious gift from Czar Mikhail.

Complete instructions on how to make them and the czar's permission to use them as needed-a gift to all the people.”

Filaret read about the so called ”Old Believers” in the up-timer histories and was disgusted. It would rip the church apart the way that idiot Nikon handled it. There were some arguments about minor matters of ceremony, true. Mostly among scholars-people who probably had too much time on their hands. He couldn't understand why anyone would fight over it. Nikon's scholars were probably technically correct, but it was a ”how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” question. Who cared?

”Have you read this, Ivan Fedorovich?” He motioned toward the book.

”Yes, Patriarch.”

”Do you have any idea what they were fighting about?”

”No, Patriarch.”

”Tell me about the small village churches.” Filaret needed to know this. He had been in them and authorized them but they were from a different cla.s.s. Ivan Fedorovich's cla.s.s.

”They are the centers of the villages.” Ivan Fedorovich was a priest, a fairly new one. ”The priest is chosen by the villagers and often helps them with writing letters and such. When villagers get together to celebrate or to mourn, to rejoice or complain, it is the village church where they gather.”

Filaret considered what Ivan Fedorovich was saying as he considered the article on Nikon from the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 . He seriously considered having the young man, who according to the article was twenty-seven years old and might or might not be in a monastery, murdered. ”I don't understand. What do the peasants care about whether the priest uses two fingers or three when he blesses them?”

Ivan Fedorovich snorted and Filaret looked at him with a raised eyebrow. ”Won't make any difference.”

Ivan Fedorovich shook his head and fell unconsciously back into the accent of his peasant village. ”Parish priests work for the villages; they're the ones that pay 'em. Whatever this Nikon says, they'll do it the way the villagers want.”

”Oh . . .” Filaret paused, struck by a thought. ”That's why.” The house-to-house searches mentioned in the article on Nikon. ”He took away their priests. He must have. Had them appointed from outside, not hired by the villages.” It was starting to fit together. ”It wasn't about ritual. It was about control. He would have had the same fight if he had insisted they use two fingers instead of three. The leaders would have changed but not the fight.”

Ivan Fedorovich was nodding. ”It must be. It's the one thing that really belongs to the peasants; their faith. The one thing that they control.”

”I'll have to think about this.” Filaret thought a moment. ”In the meantime, have this Nikon or Nikoles located. Just in case.”

Anya watched the balloon with the multi-wicked candles suspended below it as lifted into the air. Pter Nickovich was doing ”a preliminary experiment into the lifting power of hot air.” In other words, he was playing. It was his third balloon so far; each larger than the last. This one was a tall as a man and as wide as it was tall. And it trailed a series of lead weights. Lifting first one then the next into the air below it. It lifted five of them, then stopped rising, proving that hot air is lighter than cold air. Which any five year old in any peasant village inRussia could have told him. The balloon was pretty enough, she guessed. Pter Nickovich's was holding his ”experiment” in a corner behind the main building of the dacha where it would be out of the wind. Which also meant out of the sun. It might have been prettier if his balloon was in the sunlight.