And we needed radios. Integrated circuits, transistors, and even tubes were well beyond us, and would be for years. I'd been able to muddle my way through a lot of things because I was too ignorant to know what I was getting into. With electronics, I knew what the problems would be, and they frightened me! Where would I get the rare-earth oxides needed to make a decent cathode? How would I develop alloys with the same temperature coefficients as our glass to take wires into the tube without shattering it? How could I possibly get a good enough vacuum?
But working radios were invented long before there were tubes. They used spark-gap transmitters and coherers to pick up the signals, and with enough work, I thought I could get one going. With radios, I could effectively double our speed, since I wouldn't have to send a runner to convey every order. Speed was the one area where the Mongols would be our undoubted superiors. Those shaggy ponies could move!
Radios were an absolute first priority.
The mass ended and we all walked over to the reception area. I stood in line to kiss the bride, even though I had done it all-too-many times before. Cilicia kissed the groom full on the mouth and warmly, probably because she too was glad to see Krystyana married off. As we went to the sideboard to get a couple of glasses of mead, my liege lord came up.
'Ah, Baron Conrad! You seem to be enjoying yourself!' Count Lambert said. Cilicia remained silent around my lord. They didn't get along.
'I might as well, my lord, seeing as how I'm footing the bill for the wedding feast,' I said.
'And the dowry as well, I suppose?'
'Of course, my lord. After all, I've had three children by Krystyana and it seems the least I could do. I'm just glad that the kids will have a proper father.'
'Indeed. I'm surprised that the Church hasn't come down on you for it.'
'I'm sure that they are keeping careful notes, my lord. The inquisition concerning me is still up in the air.'
'That's not all that's up there! I trust you've looked up sometime in the last hour?'
I hadn't, but I did so now. There was this thirteenth century sailplane circling overhead.
'I guess I must have been thinking about something else, my lord. There must be quite a thermal above the town.'
'Quite. It's doubtless helped by the way every fire in the town is burning bright on a warm, calm day. You don't think that's cheating, do you?'
'I guess not, my lord. We never qualified what it had to do to stay up, only that it had to fly for two hours. It looks like it's climbing. The wager is yours.'
'Good! Then where is my aircraft engine?'
'Still in my head, my lord, but I'll get working on it as soon as I get back to Three Walls. Perhaps I can deliver something to you in a few months.'
'It will take that long? The boys were hoping to get started immediately!'
'It will take at least that long, my lord. Do you realize what you're asking? It's not just designing and building the mechanical parts, though that's going to be hard enough! I have no idea how we'll go about machining a crankshaft on one of our lathes! There's a lubrication system to worry about and a carburetion system. And how am I to make a spark coil with nothing but beeswax and paper for insulators? And spark plugs! Thermal expansion problems alone could kill us right there! And-'
'You will solve it, Baron Conrad. You always have before. Shall we say by the Harvest Festival, then?'
'My lord, I will work on it diligently, but I cannot promise results by any fixed date. There's the problem with fuel. I think we can use wood alcohol, but--'
'We'll discuss it again on the Feast of Our Lady of the Harvest. Oh, yes. There was another thing I wanted to talk over with you. When first you came here, you showed us the zipper things that fastened your clothes and equipage together. You distinctly said that you could show my workmen the way of making them. Well, almost six years have gone by and you still haven't done it. I want you to start on that as well.'
'My lord, don't we have more important things to worry about than zippers? In less than four years, the Mongols will be arriving. There are all sorts of things that need doing if we are to survive that.'
'Indeed? Like what? You are training some very good infantry, and you should have plenty of them in time. As to the cavalry, well, our Polish knights are always ready. All the more so once you have them in plate armor. But I've seen your stamping presses work, and they'll have no difficulty getting the job done. As to the air force, if you can build the engines you promised, the boys and I can do the rest. What more remains to be done?'
'Plenty, my lord. Remember the binoculars I gave you on the first day we met?'
'Of course! Marvelous things! I keep them in my chambers.'
'Well, I think we may be able to produce something similar called a telescope. It will be bulkier and will be used over only one eye, but it should do the job. What if I could have enough of them made so that you could give one to every Polish baron, count, and duke before the battle? What would that do for your fame?'
'I like it, Baron Conrad, and I would even pay the cost of it all, in cloth of course.'
'Then I'll put a team to working at it, my lord. It would help if I could borrow those binoculars back for a week or two.'
'Take them for as long as you need them. But what does that have to do with zippers and Mongols?'
'I'm just trying to say that we have a lot more to do. Now let me tell you about railroads ......'
The conversation went on for hours while the party went on around us. The upshot of it was that Lambert would provide the land to run a line from Coaltown to the Vistula, and from Three Walls north to the., line, along with two square miles of land along the Vistula where I would build a fort and a riverboat assembly factory. The fort would be at Count Lambert's expense, in cloth, and he would be in nominal command, but I would see to the manning of it, since the people there would be working at the riverboat factory and the railyard. I would build the track at my expense, and all my goods, and the duke's, would travel on the line free. Others could use it by paying a toll to Lambert, but they'd have to rent railroad cars from me. After that, we'd run a line from the east end of the line to Silver City, and that part of it on Count Lambert's land would be managed on the same basis as the rest.
Medieval business deals were always complicated, especially when Count Lambert was in something like his current mood. Actually, I didn't care who owned what, so long as the job got done. As to the division of the profits, well, I'd have to keep my liege lord happy in any event. After that, the accountants all worked for me so he would be rewarded as I saw fit!
'Done, Baron Conrad! This has been a good day's work! I feel right about it. But I still think that when the Mongols arrive, we should be dressed in our best, so do get to work on that zipper machine, won't you? At your own expense, of course.'
With that, he got up and walked away and I started thinking about how one would go about building a zipper- making machine.
Interlude One
I hit the STOP button.
'Tom, something's been bothering me since you mentioned it a few days ago.'
'And what is troubling you, my son?'
'Well, you said that you found out about Conrad's trip to the Middle Ages when you went to the Battle of Chmielnick during the Mongol invasion. You said that the battle you saw had a different outcome than what's written up in the history books. And you said that the investigation teams you sent out came back duplicated. Why weren't you duplicated as well?'
'Well, I was! It was strange, meeting myself. Not because running into yourself is all that odd. With time travel, we do that all the time. But protocol is that the senior self always talks first, and the two of us just stood there, each waiting for the other to speak first, since neither of us remembered being there before. It was quite a while before I asked him why he didn't say something. Eventually, we figured out what happened. Being a sensible
