“I doubt anyone cares what happens in Trotsky’s bed, even his wife,” Boris said. “Still he knows his business.”
“Oh, there are spies enough.” Vladimir agreed. “However for the most part they don’t seem to care about us.” He shook his head, caught between laughter and embarrassment. “What few attempts we’ve had to penetrate our network have been clumsy. Almost as though they didn’t really care what we were doing but were too polite to simply ignore us. The Spanish and the Austrians want to know what the Swedes are doing here and the Swedes want to know what the Hapsburgs are doing here. The French want to know what the Catholics, and, well, everyone is doing here. The Italians want to know what the other Italians and the Spanish are doing here. The closest thing to a real attempt to subvert me has been an offer by a group of merchants and agents to go in together in the copying of the Encyclopedia Americana 1963 and such other books and periodicals as we can agree on. I accepted, of course. They were already doing it and were simply looking for more subscribers to defray expenses.”
When Brandy Bates received the letter from Natasha Gorchakova she was on her day off and getting ready to go to a play with her mom at the high school.
Her mom answered the door and the first thing Brandy heard was, “You have a letter for Brandy from who?”
“Who is it, Mom?” Brandy asked as she came into the living room to see a tall, dark-haired man with deep blue eyes and a neatly trimmed black beard.
“I’m Kniaz Vladimir Gorchakov,” he said. “The letter is from my sister.”
Brandy wasn’t a true adherent of the philosophy of Club 250, but she had taken in enough of the attitude while working there that she wasn’t the least bit awed by the title or the fancy clothes. Well, maybe the least bit. But she responded by being just a bit snooty herself. “And why is your sister writing to me?”
“Apparently Bernie Zeppi recommended you as a correspondent,” the guy said.
Bernie had gotten a job in Poland or Russia or someplace like that. The pay was supposed to have been pretty good and Mom was giving her the “you behave” look. Oh, what the hell. She could at least read the letter. “Well, if Bernie suggested it at least it’s not out of the blue.” Brandy held out her hand and with clear reluctance the guy handed her the letter.
Mom asked him to have a seat as Brandy examined the letter. It was folded over with a wax blob holding it closed and the wax had been imprinted with a crest.
Brandy shrugged, popped the seal and looked at the letter. The handwriting was good but with way too many flourishes. Working through the letter she got to the part about burning bras in the market square and burst into laughter.
Both Mom and the guy were looking at her with curiosity clear on their faces. Brandy handed the letter to her mother and smiled. “For once Bernie did the right thing. This is not a matter for men of any rank.”
The guy turned a little pink and her mom, who was struggling though the letter, started laughing too.
All in all, though she wouldn’t know it for months, Brandy had managed by accident to make a fairly good first impression on Vladimir.
In the meantime, after they had said goodbye to Kniaz Vladimir Gorchakov and seen the play, Brandy was left with the letter. Its very sparseness made it clear that this Natalia Whosis didn’t know what or how much she could ask without giving offense. So Brandy put together a female care package. 1995 Victoria’s Secret, a 1993 Glamour, 1997 Vogue, a Better Homes and Gardens plus cold cream, nail polish, eye shadow, and a pair of the stretchy one- size-fits-all pantyhose, with instructions. Brandy considered sending an actual bra, but she didn’t have Natasha’s sizes. So instead they sent a tape measure and more instructions.
Chapter 14
Ivan Nikitich Odoevskii didn’t look like a book worm. He was tall and as richly dressed as a prince and a member of the Boyar Duma ought to be. He rode, he was a skilled falconer, but he did love to read. He read anything. Account books. Treatises. Stories. Anything he could get his hands on. His fierce black beard was twitching and his blue eyes squinted as he thought. “It’s complicated, Patriarch. Yes, the up-timers use paper money, but their system is a tortured mix of the government and… well, anarchy.”
“Anarchy?”
“They have something called federal reserve banks…” Vladimir had sent several tracts on economics-not very detailed or all that complete-back to Moscow, which had arrived about the time Boris had gotten back to Grantville. Along with them had come a very rough outline of what Vladimir thought might work for a banking system in Russia. That outline would have the great families issue money, having bought the right from the Czar’s Bank or the Gorchakov Bank. With some vague limitations based on how much their property was worth. Going from those tracts on up-time economics, Ivan Nikitich explained his understanding of how the future economic system worked.
Patriarch Filaret was a man of no mean intellect, but his eyes were glazing over within a paragraph. He tried to follow the salient points for a while, but finally gave up. “Enough. Can we use it, Ivan Nikitich? Can we use it?”
Ivan Nikitich sighed like the wind gusting from the north. “Yes. But it is dangerous. The tracts made that clear, even if I could only understand one word in three without talking to that idiot Bernie.” Ivan Nikitich snorted. “And only one word in two after talking to him. The danger is more than the simple temptation to print ever more and more as it loses its value. That’s a danger, true enough. It is made worse by the fact that failing to print enough can hurt the nation even more. That is one thing the excerpts young Vladimir sent taught me. Half of Russia’s troubles are caused by not enough cash.”
“You needed a tract from the future to tell you Russia is not a wealthy nation?” Filaret snorted in exasperation.
“No!” Ivan Nikitich almost shouted, then visibly got hold of himself. “Patriarch, what I needed the writings from the future to tell me was that Russia is a wealthy nation. A wealthy nation with what the up-timers call a ‘cash flow problem.’ That Russia has everything it needs to have a booming economy, except the economy.”
Filaret glared a bit. “Speak sense!”
Ivan Nikitich sighed. “We have grain. We have timber. We have pitch, not to mention furs of all sorts. We have rivers that in summer give us clear roads from China and India to the Baltic Sea. In hard winter, the sleighs are more efficient than wagons are. What we lack is a means of tying all those things together. Much of our trade is just that. A peasant trades a bushel of grain to another peasant for bit of cloth. It happens that way because neither peasant has any money. Did you know that over ninety percent of the up-timers’ purchases were made with money? Everything from their homes to a piece of candy for their children. Everyone had money, even the very poor. That-along with their transportation system-made the manufacturing of goods in one place to be sold in another much more practical.”
Ivan Nikitich spoke with passion. He even stood and began pacing the room. “The raw materials are here. The trade routes are here, mostly. Even the skills are here. Every peasant in Holy Rus spends half the year at some craft because you can’t farm ice.” Ivan Nikitich shook his head. “The only thing really missing is some practical means of letting the people in one place buy the products from the people in another place. Buy them, Patriarch, not trade for them. Because barter simply won’t work for what we need. The things we must have are: money, ways of transferring money from one place to another without bandits robbing the caravan, banks where bureau men and even peasants can save money or get loans. As I said-everything we need for an economic boom except an economy.”
“What you’re saying is we’re rich in goods but not in money?”
Ivan Nikitich nodded. “What we need is money and the writings of the up-timers explain how to do that without silver or gold. The idea, as I understand it, is to have just a little more money available than there is product for it to buy. That encourages the peasants to work harder to get the last bit. It’s like hanging a carrot in front of a mule. Too close and he eats it. Too far and he gives up. Russia’s carrot is hanging off the mule’s ass.”
