De Vries shook his head. "Something much better. A historian. With an interest in their civil war. Wemade a bargain. In return for telling stories in his history class at Grantville High School, he taught me much about the American Civil War. He was obviously a lonely old man with not many friends in Grantville. Apparently he and his wife had spent most of their time in a town called Fairmont, to the east.

At the end he even gave me this."

De Vries carefully unwrapped a musket-like weapon on the floor and handed it to Hermann Otto. "This is called a Sharps rifle. It was used by a military unit called the Berdan sharpshooters."

Hermann Otto admired the rifle and then looked at Jan de Vries. "Can we make these?"

De Vries shrugged. "Probably. But it is a replica, so the parts are actually steel, not iron as most of the original Sharps rifle would be. The hardest part will be making the machinery to make the percussion caps, once we understand how to make the mercury fulminate. And that will take a considerable amount of trial and error. Still, making the minie bullets used in the American Civil War should not be difficult. I have several pages of diagrams with different bullet types. The impression I got from my reading is that forty-five caliber is the most ballistically efficient." De Vries smiled. "But let me tell you about the artillery."

Two hours later Lieutenant General Hermann Otto, Count of Limburg-Styrum, had the biggest smile on his face that De Geer had ever seen. De Vries winked at him. What was the American expression?

Hook, line and sinker. Hermann Otto was on their side.

"Real, effective horse artillery! At last!" Hermann Otto was almost dancing with glee.

August, 1632 The last piece of the Essen puzzle fell into place. It happened in Grantville, ten days after the Croat raid.

"But I don't understand, Axel." Gustavus Adolphus snorted. "Why just the mineral rights? Since I'm Emperor, I can simply declare him Baron of Essen. The man deserves it after all these years."

Axel shook his head. "No. Louis is right. If you start secularizing all the ecclesiastical territories in your new domain it will make a lot of princes nervous. But doling out mineral rights . . ." Axel waved his hand.

"That will be expected."

"Well, then." Gustavus Adolphus grinned. "Let's surprise De Geer for once. We'll add Werden Stift as well."

When word of that decision reached Amsterdam, the Essen Steel Company was formed. Its initial capitalization was 2.8 million guilders.

The celebration of the company's founding took place in the mansion of Balthasar Coymans, one of Amsterdam's richest merchant bankers. It was late in the afternoon when Steven Gerard came across his brother-in-law. Louis was staring out the library window.

"Balthasar's been looking for you, Louis. He wants to discuss setting up a branch of his bank in Essen." Louis de Geer smiled. "I'm coming. I just stopped to watch the butterflies."

"Butterflies?"

De Geer nodded. "Did I every tell you what Colette told me about the 'butterfly effect?'"

Gerard shook his head.

"Apparently, up-time mathematicians theorized that many different parts of the world are very sensitive to initial conditions. So much so, that the flapping of a butterfly's wings could change the weather on the other side of the world."

Gerard laughed. "Absurd!"

"Perhaps." De Geer looked out the window again. "But if it is even partly true, think about what the arrival of Grantville means. Not just a single butterfly. Thousands of people. Dozens of square miles of terrain. Machines, books, and an accumulated knowledge hundreds of years more advanced than our own. The scientific method. Vatican II. Evolution."

For a moment Gerard was silent. "That's a pretty big butterfly, isn't it?"

In Louis de Geer's mind a butterfly the size of the sun began to fold its wings around the earth.

"Indeed."

Butterflies in the Kremlin:

Part 1 A Russian Noble

by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

Spring, 1632 Boris Ivanovich Petrov pulled the horse to a stop and looked around. "This place is almost worth the trip. See the cuts in the earth where the land was changed. Look at these hills. The structure is different from those outside the ring. Everything inside this Ring of Fire is different."

Vladimir Yaroslavich nodded and pulled his horse to a stop beside Boris. Then glanced at Grigorii Ensheevich who was staring his mouth agape. Vladimir hid a smile. A speechless Grigorii was an unusual sight. Perhaps it might shut him up about having left the trading in the hands of Fedor Ivanovich Trotsky.

Grigorii was a family retainer. Specifically, he was Vladimir's man. He had been with Vladimir since Vladimir was six. A huntsman on the family estates,he had had more to do with the raising of Vladimir than his father had. He spoke only Russian and was illiterate. But he had a sure instinct for the ground and spotted things most people missed. He also bargained like a Moscow fishwife and had no respect for thedvoretskii, the bureaucratic nobility. He had been complaining since they had left Jena, about leaving "that bureau man" in charge of trading the rest of their goods. They'd traded furs for the horses and some cash. As usual, they had brought more goods, mostly furs, than money. Muscovy was always short of cash, which didn't make being a diplomat easy.

Most of their entourage was still on its way from Jena, but neither he nor Boris had wanted to delay long enough to sell all their trade goods or drag what was left along with them. They had left the matter in the hands of Fedor Ivanovich and ridden on ahead, with just Grigorii Ensheevich and Makar Labkovich.

"I was convinced it was a fraud of some sort." Makar Labkovich was shaking his head in wonder. "But anyone who could fake this kind of thing would have too much power to need to fake anything."

Vladimir nodded to the bureau man and patted his horse. "I believed it was a preposterous lie right up until we got to Jena. It was the up-timer and that APC that made me start to suspect it might not be.

Once you've seen one of those 'cars,' well, you must believe that something has happened."

"For me it was the view from Rudolstadt." Boris grinned. "But I am a cynic. Cars can be made by men.

Not the 'Ring Wall."

Vladimir remembered his first sight of over a mile of the ring wall. It had been beyond impressive. It was as though God had taken a scoop out of the earth and replaced it with a scoop of something else. He could see Boris' point.

Vladimir looked over at Boris. Boris Ivanovich was an unassuming little man. The sort of man who could blend in anywhere and not be noticed. He didn't look at all impressive. Appearances lied. Boris was a bureaucrat of Muscovy, specifically of thePosol'sky Prikaz , the Embassy Bureau or State Department.

He was an experienced spy and a well traveled agent. He spoke, read, and wrote Russian, Polish, Danish, German, English, and, of course, Latin and Greek. He had been assigned to accompany Vladimir Petrovich on this 'fool errand' by the czar's father in an attempt to keep the czar from looking any more foolish than could be avoided.And probably , Vladimir acknowledged,to keep me out of trouble .

Boris had his own thoughts about the situation. Prince Vladimir Petrovich Yaroslavich had actually been quite easy to babysit. Vladimir spoke English, a result of his sister's being married to an English count-and what a scandal that had been. More important, though, Vladimir listened.

Boris' rank in the bureaucracy that ran Muscovy was higher than Vladimir's, or had been. He had been demoted without prejudice for this mission since Vladimir was aknaiz, a prince. Vladimir, as a princewith almost independent lands-combined with his friendship with the czar-was almost certain to end up as a boyar of the cabinet. It would be totally inappropriate to have him under the orders of someone with Boris' lack of pedigree.

The fact that Grantville wasn't a hoax presented Boris with both problems and opportunities. Powerful people didn't like to be proven wrong and there was more than a little bit of a tendency to kill the messenger in the Russian government. On the other hand, the fact that Grantville was not a hoax meant that keeping the czar from looking foolish in sending the mission just got a whole lot easier. Certain people at court were not going to like that, either.

Still, since Grantville did exist, a network of spies would have to be put in place to watch it. Boris was in an excellent position to head up the Grantville office in Moscow, which would be an important one.

Poland was Russia's great enemy at the moment and Germany was just the other side of it. Now a section of Germany was peaceful and relatively prosperous instead of being torn up by war. The up-timers, as the locals called them, had to be encouraged to take Sweden's side. So far they had friendly relations with the Swedish king but nothing more than that.

"It is not such a large place." Vladimir was still staring at the scenery, patting the horse's neck now and then. "And there are not so many up-timers as I had thought."

"A small place, yes, but it will play a large role." Boris had seen 'cars' or 'APC's,' whatever they were called. He had seen the improvements in the roads outside of the ring as well as a horse drawn device that made those improvements faster and with less work than you could imagine without seeing it. This place would affect the world. "We will need to find any centers of learning they have. Gather quickly the information they give freely. If they really do give it freely."

"I would like some information."

Cecelia Calafano looked up at the man in front of the circulation desk. Not all that far up. He couldn't have been more than five feet four or so. She didn't recognize his accent, it sounded vaguely eastern European. "Your name is?"

"Boris Ivanovich Petrov, of Muscovy."

"Ah." Cecelia smiled. "Russian, then. I wondered about your accent."

The man standing in front of her nodded abruptly. "Yes, Russia. That is what we have called ourselves for some time now. It is the rest of Europe that still calls us Muscovy. That has changed in the future?"

"Yes, it has," Cecelia confirmed. "How can I help you?" He was a fireplug shaped man, short and solid with a thick, heavy beard going gray. He was well dressed with a lot of fur trimming.

The bearded fireplug smiled, she thought. It was a bit hard to tell under the beard and mustache but his eyes smiled. "We've been sent to determine if this place is real."

Cecelia laughed. "I've lived here all my life. Trust me it's real. What did you want to know?"

Herr Swartz, the next in line, was clearing his throat again. Cecelia gave him a look and he settled down.

You don't mess with the librarian. Mr. Petrov handed her a list. Cecelia took a quick look. It was inEnglish carefully written but idiosyncratically spelled. She sighed. Consistent spelling was some time in the future. She could make out most of what he wanted. "How to make telephones. A history of the Romanov family. How to make cars. A history of Muscovy, or Russia. I think you're probably in the wrong place." The bearded fireplug was giving her a doubtful look. "Never mind." She sighed a bit. She had run into this before, though they got it more at the National Library and Research Center at the high school. "Some of this you will be able to find here. Like the history of Russia or part of it. I'll get you some books."

She got her new Russian customer settled and went to help Herr Swartz.

Boris examined the books.Russia Under the Old Regime by someone called Pipes. He looked at the table of contents. Chapter 4: The Anatomy of the Patrimonial Regime. Boris tried to translate the words to Russian. The body parts of the fatherhood rulers? That sounded positively obscene. Boris worked it out. Anatomy meant the structure of a body . . . perhaps it was used here to represent the structure of the government. Patrimonial regime . . . might mean inherited rule or it might mean government by the church.

Was Muscovy going to be ruled by the priesthood? Considering the relative political strengths of the patriarch and the czar, it could happen. This would be monstrously time consuming. He looked at the other book perhaps it would be clearer. What was the USSR? What was the revolution of 1917? For that matter, what was St. Petersburg? At least, that's what he thought it said. There was no St.

Petersburg in his Russia.

He read through the books as well as he could for several hours, making notes. Some things were clear enough. The year of birth and death of the czar and his son and his grandson. Others weren't. The analysis was just weird. It was all there, Boris thought, but looked at as though through a prism. The light split into the spectra and the image was lost. Was this Pipes an idiot? Upon considering the matter,Boris didn't think so. So might a citizen of Caesar's Rome respond to a history of Rome written by a modern scholar who had never seen the Coliseum or been present at a triumph.

The woman stopped by a time or two. Handed him what she called a magazine. "Here," she'd said once.

"You might find something in this."

It was an old, fragile thing, this magazine. And what didperistroika mean? Boris knew what restructuring meant, but the word seemed to be used a bit differently here.

Much befuddled, Boris gave up for now. It was getting late and he needed to get back to the room they had rented. He wasn't going to figure it all out in a day.

It was as he was putting things away that the librarian came and sat down at the table. "Can I give you some advice?"

Boris nodded cautiously.

"If what you wanted was a nice place to come and read an occasional book, this would be the place for you and I encourage you to do that. However, this isn't the place for what you're after. The Grantville public library was never intended to be a center of research. It was designed to be a small town library at the tail end of the twentieth century. We had inter-library loans and the Internet. Before the Ring of Fire, if we didn't have the book someone wanted, we could get it in a few weeks through inter-library loans.

What we had on the shelves were the books most likely to be wanted in a small town. A small town that didn't need to make telephones or automobiles. We could buy them. We have books on how to fix anautomobile. Those books usually tell the reader how to install a new part that they are expected to buy from an automobile parts supply store that got its parts from a manufacturer in another state. What I mean is, they tell you how to fix a car not how to make one from scratch."

Boris nodded politely but he was wondering if this was perhaps how they were hiding the important information. That concern decreased as she continued.

"Shortly after the Ring of Fire it was decided to use the library at the high school as our national library, our Library of Alexandria." The woman gave him a questioning look and he nodded his understanding.

She continued. "In it, we have at least one copy of almost all the books that came though the Ring of Fire. In those books there is enough information to tell you how to make an automobile, at least most of it. Even there, its not all in one book. It's scattered around in books designed to teach children the basics of how things work, in biographies of the people involved in the inventing of the automobile and itsmass production and so on." The woman took a deep breath. "That makes it a treasure hunt. It's hard even for a professional to know which book to look in to find the thing you're after. Trying to do it on your own . .

." She shrugged. "I recommend you hire a professional researcher. If you don't have the money for that, you can put in information requests and the library researchers will get around to it as they have time.

Your other option is to take the library science basic course at the high school and pay the usage fees."

Boris considered. The little talk she had given him was well rehearsed. "How often doyou give that little speech?"

She smiled. "About twice a week."

"About the usage fees you mentioned . . . You don't have them here. Why not?"

"We're funded by the national library. We have been since a few months after the Ring of Fire. There was a minor fight in the emergency committee about that but public libraries being free for public use is a long standing tradition up-time. There was a bigger fight about having fees to use the national library." She laughed. "By the time that fight got going there were already millions of dollars worth of products coming out of the library. People were wondering why the cash-strapped government should pay to make a bunch of people rich. A compromise was worked out. You can get anything you want out of the national library and research center free, if you're willing to wait your turn. And it can be a long wait. You can also pay to get it faster. Quite a lot of people pay either by paying a professional licensed researcher or by taking the course and paying the usage fees."

Boris had a lot to think about as he walked back to the room they had rented.

Master Vladimir was overly generous, Grigorii Ensheevich thought. They sat in a small room. All eight of them, now that the rest of the party had arrived from Jena. Finding room in the over-packed Ring of Fire had been a challenge. Finding enough room had been effectively impossible.

The lodgings were fantastically well appointed but horribly cramped. The eight of them shared a single bedroom with its own 'half bath,' an indoor toilet and sink with 'faucets' that provided hot and cold water.

They had access-from two to four in the afternoon-to the main bath, where they could take hot showers.

For this they were paying more than they would pay for four rooms in a good inn. And that would haveincluded meals and servants. That was beside the point, though. The up-timers, as they were called, were claiming that they would provide most any of the knowledge they brought with them to anyone. Which was an obvious lie. As he'd just said.

But the bureau man Boris Ivanovich Petrov was shaking his head. "I don't think they are lying about it."

He was too clever by half for a bureau man, Grigorii didn't say out loud. "Understanding the information is a problem. The English language . . . it has changed. Very much so. The woman at their 'library' freely gave me books to look at. Books that will need to be looked at again. I've made notes."

The bureau man waved a sheaf of papers in the air. "Pages and pages of notes. But very few of them make sense."

Grigorii watched as his prince read the notes the bureau man handed him. Vladimir looked at them closely. "This is clear." He pointed at a line of the writing that Grigorii couldn't read. "Czar Mikhail will . .

. have only a few more years. The patriarch . . . much less."