Bernie winced as he felt the thump of car striking flesh. The guard was knocked aside and slid into the canal that flowed past the gate where he came to rest, his lower body in the water. Hopefully he was just injured. Bernie didn’t have anything against the man personally. He was just doing his job.
Then they were speeding through the village that provided support for the Dacha. The peasant inhabitants were just starting to wake up. Once through the village they were on one of the roads built by the scrapers over the last three years. Roads that led to Moscow to the west, to Murom and the Gorchakov estates to the east, to Ivanovo to the north and many other places. The road they were taking, as it happened, was the road to Murom and the Gorchakov estates. They could have carried more if they had taken a steam barge, but a steam barge would have had to travel either to Moscow or to Murom, which would have told Sheremetev where they were simply by knowing where they weren’t.
Bernie, of course, was in the driver’s seat, Natasha in the front passenger seat. Father Kiril and Gregorii were squeezed into the back seat along with Filip, and Anya was seated on Filip’s lap. Given Natasha’s slenderness, that probably wasn’t the most efficient placement. But even in the Dacha community, squeezing the princess into the back seat just because Father Kiril had a fatter ass wasn’t going to happen.
By four hours later, they’d gotten a hundred miles away. So the speedometer said, anyway. That was far enough to stop and rest for a bit, while they considered their plans. Up till now, their “plan” could pretty much be summed up as get the hell out of Dodge.
In a Dodge. Bernie started laughing.
“What is so funny?” Natasha demanded, a bit crossly. There were disadvantages to having a slim build while riding in a car crossing bumpy roads and driven by a lunatic up-timer. Less padding.
Bernie shook his head. “Ah… never mind.” Even for Natasha, the cultural references were too complicated to explain under the circumstances. “What do we do now? You realize we can’t pass any guard checks.”
While their artist, Gregorii, had made himself a set of papers for travel when Anya requested a set for herself and Natasha, none of them had considered that Bernie, Filip, or especially Father Kiril, would have to run.
“Where do we ditch the car?” Bernie asked. “It’s the only one in Russia, so there’s no way it’s not going to get noticed.”
“The car will get us to my estates faster than any other possibility,” Natasha said. “Certainly faster than any pursuit. We’ll pick up armsmen and decide where to go and what to do from there.”
“You know what I’d really like?” Bernie asked.
“No. What?”
“I’d like to break out the czar.”
“Impossible!”
“We can’t!”
“Are you mad?”
The uproar that caused just about caved Bernie’s head in.
“Stop and think. Why is it impossible?”
“It is.”
“Too many armsmen.”
“We don’t even know where they are.”
“ Stop! ” Bernie shouted. “Think, dammit. One at a time.”
Natasha, being the person who outranked everyone else, said, “We don’t know where they are.”
“How many places can they be?” Bernie asked.
“Hm. Not all that many,” Father Kiril said.
“So we get to your place,” Bernie said, “we call around on the radio and try to figure out where the czar is likely to be.”
“Are we sure the czar wants to be rescued?” Father Kiril asked. “At the very least, he and his family are safe where they are.”
“Are they really?” Anya asked. “Does Sheremetev really need them? Remember the Time of Troubles. No one worried about the various czars then, did they?”
They spent the rest of the trip talking about how and whether they should attempt to rescue the czar.
Bernie had been to Natasha’s home before. It was more a palace than a castle, though some of the older parts had a significant castle influence. It was a large, walled compound on the south side of Murom. And it was quite improved over the last four years. It had indoor plumbing of a sort, at least in a few places. It had a water- wheel generator that kept charged a fairly large room full of lead-acid batteries. There were a few light bulbs, though they were neither all that bright nor all that long-lasting. Mostly the electricity was used for heating elements. Heating elements that could be turned off and on quickly and efficiently, for cooking and the heating of rooms while using little wood and producing less smoke. Still, it was an example of conspicuous consumption but about the least that a princess who was also the head of the Dacha could get away with.
Even the Dodge had been there before. Once. To show off its existence to the citizens of Murom, with weeks of preparation and hoopla leading up to the visit. Now, about two-thirty in the late fall afternoon, the Dodge came roaring up the road, raising enough dust for a company of horse. If a company of horse could possibly move that fast, which it couldn’t.
Chapter 76
Lieutenant Boris Timofeyevich Lebedev, as it happened, was on the city wall inspecting the guard when he saw the dust cloud in the distance. One of the city Streltzi whom he was inspecting told him what it was.
“It’s a dodge,” the man said. Then, seeing Tim’s confusion continued, “The magic vehicles that come from the future and eat burning naptha, they’re called dodges. That must the princess’ dodge. Well, it’s officially owned by the outlander from the future, but he works at the Dacha, so I figure it’s hers anyway.”
Whatever it was and whoever it belonged to, it was raising a lot of dust and coming awfully fast. Besides, they had received no word that Princess Natasha was coming and they should have. “Inform Captain Lebedev that we have a dodge approaching Royal Gate.”
As fast as it moved, Captain Ivan Borisovich Lebedev reached the gate before the dodge did. But it didn’t give the captain all that much time to consider what to do. In Tim’s experience if the thing approaching was something other than a drink or a young girl, his cousin took considerable time deciding what to do about it. But woe be to the subordinate who acted in advance of those decisions. This time, as it had so many others, the thing approaching passed before the captain made up his mind. It slowed. Two people in the front seats waved at the gate guard and it kept right on going, just as if it had every right to be here, not at the Dacha where it was supposed to be.
The captain, having failed to act in time to stop it, now followed after it, Tim following in his turn. By the time they got down off the walls, it was turning into the Gorchakov palace-again just as if it had every right to. As it happened, the Murom radio was located in the Gorchakov palace. Why not? It was provided by the Dacha and the batteries to run it were in the palace. Until quite recently all the operators of it had been Gorchakov retainers. Where else would it be?
In the city hall seemed a good place to Tim, but moving it there was another thing his cousin Ivan Borisovich hadn’t decided on yet. So it had stayed in the palace. They had put their own radioman in charge of all the other radiomen in the radio room.
Tim wondered if that worthy happened to be on duty at the moment as he followed his cousin toward the palace gates.
The palace gates that had opened so easily to admit the dodge failed, for the first time, to admit Tim and his cousin. They were informed that the princess was now in residence and they could not be admitted without her consent. That was especially inconvenient since they had been living there since they had arrived in Murom. By
