The Price of Flight 36
Hanna in Love V0.02. Typos and odd bits.
Getting back to the other ongoing tale after Strandpiel and Alexandra, and rescuing Hanna von Strafenburg from her highly uncharacteristic moment of emotional incontinence. She's been stranded there for a while, after all. I don't want her coming up to me and telling me this is slack, unsatisfactory and highly inefficient.
Olga had cleared the office of inessential people after Hanna had broken down into tears. She kept back the ones she regarded as the key people, Nadezhda Popova, Gertrude Schilling, and sent Irena and Yelena out to manage the situation with regard to the wider Air Watch. Yelena was a Sergeant, after all; and Irena had passed through Sergeant on her way to Lieutenant. Between the two of them they would manage any speculation and gossip going on among the ranks, and do so firmly and effectively.
Angua von Überwald had managed to give a reassuring shoulder-squeeze to Hanna on the way out to report back to Mr Vimes, and had said, in a gap in the tears, "Believe me, it got me this way too, mainly over Carrot. It does get better."
Olga sighed and composed herself. A stray thought reminded her that she had yet to ask Nadezhda if she too had been having bad dreams lately. But that could wait. The immediate business was Hanna. A friend of long standing was clearly going through turmoil, and this was now, clearly, Witch Business.
Olga reminded herself that Hanna must be on the cusp of thirty, maybe around twenty-eight at the very youngest. She sighed, and wondered why she'd never bothered to ask before. Hanna just dressed and acted older. Even when they'd been in the Lancre War together nearly nine years previously.
But in some respects, my very capable Senior Sergeant, who in any other military would be the Regimental Sergeant-Major, is as naïve and as innocent as a girl of thirteen. For instance, she simply didn't notice some of the younger pilots were expressing an interest, shall we say, in some of the more presentable Air Auxiliaries, when we began to recruit men. Nadezhda and I had to gently and tactfully point this out to her. It is possible this entire aspect of human experience has passed her by, in its entirety. And now she is getting it all at once.
Nadezhda had enclosed Hanna completely in a big motherly hug. Gertrude sat close by, making encouraging soothing noises. Eventually the tears stopped and tissues were provided.
"Shall we talk about it?" Olga said, kindly. On the cusp of thirty is significant for a woman, she reminded herself. It's a pretty strong reminder you aren't that young any more. Time marches on. You get… and she shuddered slightly, …the biological imperative. My two children happened around then. Maybe a little earlier. And it's worse if you aren't even married. It reminds you. Irena's been having those little moments of crankiness for a few years now, after she turned thirty. Again, Olga considered The Other Thing. Irena Politek was a dutiful and caring Godsmother to several children. She had a knack for it, in fact. A combination of big sister, benevolent auntie, on occasion best friend, and somebody who more than one child could turn to for help and advice and guidance. She was good at it. But Olga had recognised for quite a while now that her lifelong best friend, unmarried and childless, was using this to mask something else that was growing in her, the archetypical itch she could not scratch. And it had been making her moody and cranky.
And within the last couple of months, after the Syrrit business was sorted out, she's been contriving reasons to fly out to Nobinovgorod and this nearby place called Pskov. Something's going on there. It all began when she flew that Pegasus mission with Skripka…. Olga sighed. It had to be Skripka. Yulia Viszhinsky. A mischief-maker. Yulia's from Nobinovgorod. Where people are odd. And she has family in Pskov. Where people are extremely odd.
Olga sighed the sigh of a best friend who senses that, for the moment, she is being shut out of an aspect of her best friend's life. Even though she could guess at a Reason, it was for Irena to come out with it and tell her. Clear the air.
But for now, she reminded herself, it had to be Hanna. Hanna mattered. Hanna needed friends.
Olga considered, then went to a usually locked drawer of her desk. She brought out one of the sparingly used weapons in her armoury, a bottle of Schmertnoff vodka, and four glasses.
"I know this isn't schnapps." she said. "But it's as good as. Probably better than."
She smiled at the two non-Rodinians.
"And right now, we need a calming drink and time for reflection."
Little by little, the story was told. Olga, Nadezhda and Gertrude listened together. It all figured and made sense.
Eventually, Hanna was offered the option of taking the rest of the day off, with Olga making a point of emphasising the spill-words We'll manage. You need a little time away. She was pleasantly surprised that Hanna went without complaint, with Gertrude offering to see her home. That in itself was testament to there being a problem. Hanna had only ever once before taken sick leave, and that had been because she had almost killed herself in Air Watch service.(1) She had been in no position to argue about it, and her recuperation had been supervised by Lancre witches who knew what they were dealing with, and by a Kelda who had diagnosed the underlying issues and was prepared to assist.
With a guilty start, Olga realised she didn't even know where Hanna lived. She reflected that as Commanding Officer, she should know these things.
"There is an apartment on Park Lane." Nadezhda said. Olga whistled through her teeth.
"There? The rent must be astronomical." she remarked.
Nadezhda smiled.
"I have been there. Hanna lives frugally. As you might expect. Like those old Ephebians, the hairshirt people."
Nadezhda frowned.
"An apartment bigger than her needs. Too many rooms. Largely empty, although the rooms she uses most often are comfortable and well-furnished, in the Prussican ideal of what makes for good internal decoration. I have said to her she might feel more normally human in something that does not evoke the manor house where she was born, but she won't have it."
Olga accepted this and tried to visualise Hanna growing up in a large, overscale, cold, and chilly place and carrying this into adulthood. She almost spoke, but then bit back, Park Lane, on a Watch senior sergeant's salary? Even with augmented flying pay and bonuses?
"She is from a noble family, Olga Anastacia. You should know all too well such families have resources available to augment pay. After all, we have just established that as Countess von Strafenburg, she has large estates, rents, and tenants."
Olga nodded. She had only recently been fully accepted back into her own family. All of a sudden, Romanoff family money, that she had spent nearly twenty years learning to do without, was available to her. Her father had Insisted she live on a scale appropriate for one of her social standing, and family money had bought her the sort of house in the sort of area that her Assassin near-neighbour had only just been able to afford, even after banking a few contract fees. It was, for Olga, taking some adjusting to.
"And Hanna, as you say, lives frugally."
"Da. The rent on a Park Lane apartment considered appropriate for a Grafin is, probably, paid for from petty cash."
Olga considered this. Patient and caring questioning had established that while she had become the senior member of the von Strafenburg family following the passing of her father and stepmother, the family estates were being administered by her younger stepbrother, who as an adoptive von Strafenburg was responsible for Estate management on her behalf.
Olga had met him, at least: a typical younger Prussican nobleman, who appeared to have genuine respect and brotherly concern for his older sister, and who had privately confided in Olga he worried for her, that she was too intense, too private, too closed-in, and how could she live a more normal life, Lady Romanoff?
"We know the half-brother is honest and is not cheating her." Olga reflected. "He's too boring and staid to be devious. A stuffed shirt."
"He takes an agreed stipend and lives in comfort." Nadezhda agreed. "Well, as the Prussicans define "comfort", anyway. There's something not right with those people."
Olga, realising her friend was vocalising perfectly understandable Rodinian prejudices about a near-neighbour who had been the Traditional Enemy for at least a thousand years, smiled.
"Let us focus on Hanna, perhaps, and not on our troubled history as nations?" she suggested. "We know Hanna is rich, not that she seems to care. A general estimate suggests the family monies, which are tied up in banks and investments partly in this city, run into tens of millions in dollars. She is a wealthy woman with money piling up and very little apparent spending of that money."
"Da. The only area where she seemed keen in actually spending some lies in investment into the Air Watch. Mr Vimes, and the good Lady Sybil, asked her to refrain from this, as it could be viewed as a conflict of interests. Lady Sybil is ultimately the source of our research funding, and as she is married to the Watch Commander, there are no issues. A relatively junior rank funding the Service from her own pocket could be seen, perhaps, as buying influence and a career."
"I agree. For that reason, no Romanoff money, except perhaps for my own legitimate out-of-pocket expenses, should go to the Service. Imagine if the papers found out? A foreign power, buying the Air Watch? The Inquirer already deplores there being too many foreigners in ranking positions here, and asks if people like you and me can be trusted."
Olga and Nadezhda shared a wry smile.
"And in the days of Prussican expansionism, they have also been to war with Ankh-Morpork." Nadezhda remarked. "Successfully, too. While they besieged the City, they largely bypassed Ankh-Morporkian territory in their rush to deal with the Quirmians. Within living memory, just about. People remember."
They considered the Lightning War together, with Prussica, uniquely, having sent a Wehrmacht into the Turnwise rather than the Widdershins. This had escalated, as wars tended to. Lady Margalotta, who had been taking a few years out dead at the time, had been awoken from repose by her faithful Igor and had not been happy to be raised from her nice quiet coffin to news of a Disc-wide war.(2) She had then had a few sharp words with various people and imposed a peace.
"And we don't want that happening again." Olga agreed. "Which brings us back to Prussica getting these working airships, suddenly realising they have an Air Force, and what they could do with it."
They contemplated this too. It was not a comforting thought.
"This Graf von Bleiballoon." Olga said. "He was introduced by Hanna's honest-but-dull brother, was he not?"
"Da. Count Leopold, the brother, has expressed his concern about his older sister remaining unmarried, and has suggested a husband might ground her in normality."
Olga sighed.
"Her family are brokering a marriage for her, then. Or at least, making introductions."
"As is common in the nobility." Nadezhda agreed.
"And with the best and most honest of intentions. And there must be something about this man, something over and above a sense of duty, which is giving Hanna cause for conflict."
Olga frowned.
"Nadezhda. Hanna is worth millions. Can we use Watch privilege here and suborn the Royal Bank into telling us how much, where the investments are, and how quickly they could, in theory, be released as actual cash?"
"It would need a warrant. Legitimate cause. Although I understand Inspector Pessimal has contacts and means of his own to obtain such information. And this is about one of our friends in the Watch."
Olga got the spill words of reproach. She dropped this track quickly.
"I am thinking, Hanna. This Graf von Bleiballoon. The research he is doing into heavier-than-air, non-magical flight. This inevitably costs money. Lots of money. We know the Quirmian Bongolfier is running out of capital to fund his research and has, in all probability, taken his work overseas, to get funding from a foreign government…"
Olga paused. They didn't know where. Yet.
"It occurs to me that if this дворянин Свинцового Воздушного Шара is running out of money and needs some, then marriage to a woman who has that money, who has signalled she is willing to privately fund research, would be the answer to his problems."
Nadezhda smiled amusedly.
"Dvoryanin svintsovogo vozdushnogo shara." she repeated. "Is that really what his name means? That is funny. Such a balloon will never get off the ground."
"Da. In Überwaldean. Exactly that. But these things are getting off the ground, Nadezhda. This concerns me."
Nadezhda considered.
"Then I think, Olga Anastacia, we have legitimate cause to consult Inspector Pessimal, to ask him to conduct a discreet search into the financial standing of this Count of the Bleiballoon. As part of our investigation, which we should notify to the Patrician."
Nadezhda Popova suddenly scowled. It was the scowl of the protective Mother Hen, who has seen a chick in trouble. It meant, Olga realised, application of a sharp beak and clawed talons, or whatever hens had on their feet.
"And if he is taking advantage of Hanna's inexperience and that she is utterly naïve about men, in order to abuse her regard for him and to prey on her for money, then this angers me." she added.
Olga grinned. Nadezhda's promotion to Lieutenant had worked out beautifully. She now had another deputy officer who had just proven she could think and function at the level where Watch responsibilities overlapped the need to think politically. And best of all, she was the same Nadezhda.
Olga turned her mind to other aspects of the current little situation. She wondered how this could be turned to advantage and how the Air Watch could gain a controlling interest in both research projects, rather than to shut them down completely. And how to gain advantage. She frowned. She realised a little of Lord Vetinari had rubbed off on her.
In the Air Watch Crew Room, the accepted Mess for the rank-and-file pilots, conversation had turned to what exactly it was with Hanna von Strafenburg. As Olga Romanoff would discover later, to her pleasure and gratification, there was a lot of sympathy and concern there.
"I hear there's a guy involved, you guys." Amelia Cronkhart said, pouring herself a mug of good honest coffee. Being as she was from the Untied States of Aceria, she found it baffling that the Morporkians had a thing about tea. She could take it or leave it and she'd drink it if there was no coffee, but, really. And that thing called a samovar looked like the sort of nightmare apparatus a wizard might have in his workroom.
Serafima Dospanova shrugged, fatalistically.
"She is not ugly woman. I am surprised it took so long. Perhaps men are not inclined to approach?"
There was general agreement with this.
"Another Überwaldean, I heard." Yulia Vizhinsky said. "Only another Prussican would dare."
She grinned.
"I wonder if there is a section on courtship in the Drill Manual." she remarked. "Frau! Vorvarts marsch! By the Bed! Stillgestanden! On my vord of command – wait for it – you will remove your dress!"
"I know it's horrible." Tillie Glossop said. "We shouldn't be thinking this way. But imagine an Überwaldean marriage proposal? The chap clicks his heels, salutes, goes down on one knee and says I haf vays of making you marry me."
"Let us now unite our Armies into a Corps and show our undying devotion by invading the Fistulans together, my love."
There was general amusement. It died down into general contemplation.
"But seriously, though." Tillie said. "We all know how men can mess up your head. This has got to be the first time for her – for Hanna. And she's one of us."
There was a chorus of "yes, that's true enough." and "What sort of a bastard is he, anyway?" as the Crew Room moved from humour to solidarity. Most of the girls in the room had been there at least once.
"Do you reckon Syren knows about it by now? We've dropped enough hints." Tillie said.
"If I were you, Pilot Officer Glossop, I should focus more about getting into in the air on patrol." Lieutenant Irena Politek said, walking in. "You're due."
Irena's eyes scanned the room.
"For your information, Senior Sergeant von Strafenburg is currently on leave, at least for the rest of the day. I'd be grateful if there was no gossip or speculation. Got that?"
Irena eyeballed the room again. She glowered at Tillie.
"And yes, Syren does know about it. And the reasons why. But what I'd like you all to take into consideration is that this means we at the command level are one person down. Which means we're all going to have to work harder to make up for it. Which means there could be short tempers. Got that?"
Irena eyeballed the room again. She throttled back to informal, having made her point.
"Fortunately it's a fairly quiet day out there. So you'll be taking a Fledgling up on a ride-along, Tillie. Just to give her a taster for a couple of hours. You know how it works. She can't make arrests, she can't participate in the full range of Watch activities as she isn't sworn in, she does have the right to self-defence if attacked, but don't let her get into a position where you'll be answering to Mother Hen later. Got that? You've drawn Dipstick, by the way. Where is she?"
A quick search discovered Air Cadet Alexandra Mumorovka was curled up, deeply asleep in a high-backed chair.(3)
Irena looked down on her.
"She was on her break after that morning training, ma'am." Tillie said, quietly. "She looked deadbeat, as if she hadn't had enough sleep. We thought we'd leave her to it and wake her up when she was needed. Errr."
Irena nodded. The Fledglings were only here for part of their week and were otherwise employed as trainee Witches in the urban steadings. She recalled Alexandra Mumorovka was currently apprenticed to an older Witch, whose steading covered urban Dimwell. So there could be any number of reasons why she was technically asleep on duty. A birth, a death, perhaps a farrowing sow.(4) Witchcraft did not work office hours.
Irena decided to be gentle. She was, after all, only thirteen. Besides, she sensed discomfort in the girl's sleep. She wondered if it was The Other Thing…
Lexi Mumorovka had indeed had a disturbed night's sleep. Her dream had been long, detailed, and had gone on for far longer than she felt a dream had a right to. It had felt like she had been trapped in the dream for weeks. And most of it had involved being stuck, with others, in a grim cold landscape where she had been tired, cold and hungry. All the time. Alexandra had not realised you could feel cold and hungry and tired in a dream, but, nevertheless, she had.
And she knew she was somewhere in Rodinia, as she, and the people who were her family in this dream, fled as refugees, seeking the safety and shelter of the great city of Leningrad. Soldiers, sailors and airmen without aircraft were mixed up in the throng as people raced to leave Vyborg before the Germans and the Finns got there.
Dream-Alexandra had sighed philosophically. After the Finns had been defeated and surrendered the city, they had evacuated it of their own people. Comrade Stalin had resettled it with good Russians. Her family had moved all the way from Baikal to settle there. And fifteen months later, they were fleeing again, with only what they could carry.
She had put up with the discomfort and the tiredness and the tedium. When the tedium had been interrupted by a kolbasnik aircraft, flying low and strafing the refugee column, she had learnt that tedium and discomfort were actually preferable.
She had awoken suddenly in the horror of seeing people murdered in her dream. Half an hour or so later, she had fallen asleep again, hoping for a different and a better dream this time.
To her annoyance, her consciousness returned to her, in the body of that different girl from a different family, on the highway from Vyborg to Leningrad. The bad dream was simply picking up where it had left off.
She had noticed the different aircraft, the ones that had swastikas painted on the wings and the bodies as well as on the tails, flew low to study the refugee column. But the planes with the blue swastikas didn't actually shoot at them. She asked one of the retreating airmen.
"Finns." he said. "Fought them in the winter of thirty-nine. They're okay. Hard bas… tough to fight. But they've seen most people down here are civilians. They're being decent. Not shooting."
The airman, who Alexandra had learnt didn't actually fly the planes, he was a ground mechanic, grinned at her.
"Watch for the ones with the black crosses on the wings. Those will shoot at us. Germans. Kolbasniks. Faschistoy."
Alexandra had awoken in Ankh-Morpork, then fallen asleep into the border of the USSR and Finland, several more times that night, encountering dream-Alexandra at several more stages of her life, the story advancing in episodes.
She fell in with some retreating soldiers, who treated her kindly and showed her the multiple machine-gun battery on its pedestal, on the back of a creaking old GAZ lorry. Those four machine-guns, mounted in parallel, could be swung around and raised and lowered with less strenuous effort than Alexandra thought was possible. Apparently, the pedestal mount absorbed a lot of the recoil. A simple ring sight was meant to provide an aiming mark against aircraft.
Having been separated from her family, and hoping to see them again in Leningrad, Alexandra worked for the gun-crew in return for food and transport. They found her a Red Army tunic and helmet to wear and treated her like a favourite little sister, or, in the case of the older men, as a surrogate daughter.
On waking again, Alexandra vaguely recalled snatches of song and that her alternate self clearly had not been brought up in a military barracks, as the swear words had been completely new to her. She smiled, and fell asleep again, remembering the pleasing shape of the steel helmets the men had worn. So practical.
She found herself learning how to load and maintain the guns, under old Klimenti's paternal eye. He taught her how to load them, how to make safe, how to unload them, and how – with nothing actually loaded – to aim and fire.
This came in very useful on the day that Gunner Mikhail was wounded by the low-flying German plane.
Sensing her chance, Alexandra leapt to the gunner's position. Something of her Air Watch training had crossed the worlds with her and into the mind that was otherwise riding tandem in a host body, and she swung the weapon round, so well balanced on its mount, to lead ahead of the German plane that was banking and turning for a repeat pass. She waited for the moment, tracking ahead of it, so that the aircraft would fly into her bullet stream… and them she fired. She felt the shuddering jolt of the four heavy machine-guns, grouped to fire together. She opened her mouth in surprise at the ear-battering noise of the weapon firing, so close to her ears.
And she saw the German aircraft run right into the bullet stream. Nothing happened for an overlong instant, then pieces began to separate from its body. Fire flickered and became smoke. Then the blazing wreck tipped on its side and crashed into the forest. A plume of smoke arose.
People getting up from cover around her looked at the anti-aircraft gun and the girl who had been manning it. Then at the smoke plume. And cheering began.
Alexandra awoke, this time feeling good. She lit a lamp, reached for pen and paper, and began to write down what she could remember, sensing that she might forget, otherwise. She wondered if Syren or Red Star might find this interesting, her account of a different world with strange and powerful weapons and oddly-configured broomsticks used to rain death from the skies. She thought again, knowing the wide-awake would not last and she'd soon want to sleep again. Maybe Penguin. Definitely Penguin. Some of the mechanisms she'd seen, and could clearly remember… yes, the pleasant and, what was the Morporkian word, nerdy, Gertrude Schilling. She had a mind for mechanisms like this.
And later she slept again. She got up to go to her duty day at the Air Watch, feeling tired and lethargic. She yawned through morning briefing, with Serafima Dospanava gently squeezing her arm to keep her alert.
"Bad dreams, devyuschka?" Serafima asked. She looked tired and drawn too. "You aren't the only one."
Lexi got through the training – it concerned how to mount a drone flying carpet to a Pegasus for safe towing – and gratefully settled down in a big comfy chair in the crew-room.
To her irritation, the latest episode of her serial dream took her to Leningrad. Here, her alternate self had reunited with her family, only to realise the city was also a trap. Shelled and bombed by the Germans, living in a cold underheated room, and on rations that were not even subsistence. In Russia. In winter.
At least after her exploit with the machine-guns, she had been assigned to an anti-aircraft unit as an auxiliary. The military got better rations, but not by very much. Training here involved endless hours of watching the skies with binoculars, looking for raiders, alerting the guns. She was learning about bigger anti-aircraft weapons here.
But it was cold, so cold… Lexi felt her consciousness ebbing away and an overwhelming desire just to close her eyes and to go to sleep.
Irena Politek reached down to touch Alexandra's face and hands. She frowned. The girl felt very cold, with slightly clammy skin.
"If she's ill, we need to do something about it…"
Irena frowned. The hand she was holding was warming, returning to everyday normal, colour returning to the girl's face as she awoke from wherever the Hells she'd been…
And Alexandra Mumorovka returned from frozen and half-starved Leningrad in January 1942, back to the Discworld, into a warm and well-nourished body.…
"What were you dreaming of, devyuschka?" Irena asked. "No, I'm not being sarcastic. No blame on you for being tired. We all seem to be having strange dreams lately, and we think they're linked."
Lexi quickly explained. Irena expressed understanding and squeezed her hand.
"Mine may have been from the same war. A people like ours, against the same enemy. Only in the dream, I was killed. So far, you're still alive." Irena said. She signalled for tea. With lots of sugar in it. "However, you may have chapters yet to come."
"All in a place like Rodinia." Lexi said. "Irena Yannesovna, is there a place called Leningrad?"
"Olga Anastacia intends to find out, to ask the University. It may all be tied into a place called Roundworld, which is a distorted mirror of our reality. Wizards study the place."
"And there is a Rodinia, on this Roundworld." Lexi said.
Called Russia, I believe." Irena replied. "Our best guess is that this Russia is going through a period of trial and disruption. As we are Rodinian and also Witches, it's emerging in us as vivid bad dreams where we visit this Russia in times of stress and fear. It is resonating. Through us. And a common theme in all our dreams is the air, and fighting in the air, and in your case, fighting things that come out of the air."
Irena looked grave.
"I hope it will pass."
She patted Lexi on the shoulder.
"Rested now?" she asked, kindly, reverting to Morporkian. "Finish your tea, report to Death of Broomsticks, who will command your patrol, and do as she tells you. Being in the air might clear your head. No hurry. It's a trying time."
For the rest of the day, the routine work of the Air Watch carried on as normal. They even investigated, and resolved, a Code Twenty-Three involving a suspected poltergeist. (5)
In the late afternoon, Olga convened another meeting.
"I've been having a few ideas." she said. "Let me run a plan past you."
Irena, Gertrude, Nadezhda and Yelena listened, attentively.
"Firstly, Hanna." Olga said. "We need to help her resolve this thing. She's one of us. We owe her."
The others agreed to this.
"We also need to answer the question of how far the Prussicans have got with flight. The Bleiballoon Devices. The two things are closely linked."
Olga hoped nobody would bring up the other question mark yet, about where Bongolfier research was taking place. She rather hoped to be able to get that answer before anyone else did, so as to present it to Vetinari.
"I want Hanna happy and healthy. Even if it means she resigns from the Air Watch. She'll be hard to replace, if she goes. She could even be trouble, if she starts an Air Force of her own somewhere else. It's not as if she can't do it. But she's our friend. Just at this moment, that's most important."
"Is it possible that she will leave?" Yelena Garianova asked. "I have not known her for as long as any of you. But when she says her home and friends are here, in the Air Watch, I believe her. I do not read her as one who will transfer her loyalties easily. Mein Ihre ist Treue, and all that."
"You know Prussicans?" Nadezhda asked.
"Da. One of the teaching jobs I did before coming to Ankh-Morpork was as governess to a noble family. Followed by a year in an exclusive girls' school in Angstburg-Badenschwein." (6)
Yelena smiled.
"It improved my spoken Überwaldean and gave me opportunity to study them in some depth. An interesting people."
Olga studied her. Yelena was an Asset. She'd lived and worked among Prussicans, and was as near as Olga had to an Expert. She could use this. Otherwise, even having known Hanna for some time, she felt she was dealing with a completely alien race. She sighed inwardly at the old barriers still being there, Rodinians versus Überwaldeans.
"Good. Thank you, Yelena."
Olga composed herself and took a deep breath.
"I want to run an idea past you, to resolve both situations in one go. Senior Sergeant Hanna von Strafenburg is, at the moment, deeply conflicted and resolving serious personal issues. I am going to give her two weeks of emergency fully paid leave to allow her to seek resolution of a conflict of interests. Absolutely no blame applies. This can be seen as compassionate leave, perhaps."
Olga noted the others were listening attentively.
"I am going to tell her, as firmly as I can without making it an order, that she accepts the Count von Bleiballoon's generous offer of hospitality for the period. And I know – I am from a noble family myself, I do not need to be told this – that this is a courtship ritual. Between people of status and nobility. Govno, and Bly'at, thank the Gods I escaped all that."
Olga smiled.
"Courtship between noble families not only asks for, it demands, certain protocols. Therefore, the Grafin Hannelore von Strafenburg will be taking at least one chaperone with her. A Lady's Friend, to witness that all matters of propriety and decent conduct are adhered to."
She paused for a moment.
"That will be you, Gertrude. You're her friend. And I wouldn't complain. Two weeks' fully paid leave, in the comfort of a Prussican nobleman's chateau, with full expenses. I think the Watch will be generous. Besides, you've not taken any leave since you signed on."
She watched Gertrude Schilling working this out.
"That means I get to see the flying Devices? The Luftschiffs? Everything? Oh… wow…"
Olga smiled benevolently.
"Look on it as industrial espionage." she advised Gertrude. "You're spying for me. Don't make it a secret as to who you are or what you do. But don't bring it up unless you're asked, either. It might help if you come up with a few valid improvements to what he's doing. Make suggestions. I know you will. That way, you get trust. Hint that if Hanna goes over to him, he might get you too, as part of the deal. But only hint. Got that? Khoroscho."
Olga grinned again.
"Olga. You said at least one." Irena prompted her.
"I've got an idea as to the other chaperone." Olga said. "But I need to ask her first. My guess is that she'll want the job."
Olga frowned.
"Blast, that might mean clearing it with the Assassins. But this woman's a Special Constable, so we could get away with saying we're recalling her for special duties."
Irena Politek worked this out first.
"You want Johanna Smith-Rhodes?" she asked. "What's in it for Johanna, except a possible Assassin fee?"
"Covering all the angles." Olga said, mildly. "And no, Gertrude, I do not want this man dead. Mr Vimes wouldn't be happy if I did that. Hanna might not be happy. Think about it, Irena. These days Johanna could be described as a sort of merchant venturer. She's got the same stuff her great-great grandfather, Sir Cecil Smith-Rhodes, had. A good eye for investments. Ideas that make money. She even founded a company that does this for other people. Looks after their ideas, their visions, helps them make money out of it. She invests money in good ideas. It makes her rich. Now do you see where I'm going?"
Olga paused, then added a few prompts.
"This airship thing could be genuinely a good one." she said. "But it needs to be steered. And not just with a rudder on the back. People who have the ideas tend not to worry or concern themselves too much with making money from them. Only the idea is important. And I'm just betting – and this is where you come in, Gertrude – that to make a good idea work, a new idea, they've had to come up with whole new industrial processes that have never existed before. Ones that can other uses. This idea of freezing and distilling the very air to refine certain gases, like this Helium stuff. I'm just betting that's not been copyrighted, and hardly anyone knows about it yet."
Olga looked directly at Gertrude.
You to advise on the science and the tech. You to explain to Johanna what she's looking at and why it's significant. After that, I'm just betting Johanna slaps the Count on the back and says "Let me be your best friend here. How much investment capital do you need for research, and have you thought of starting a joint-stock investment company, legally? I know people in Ankh-Morpork, including me."
Yelena grinned first. Irena and Nadezhda followed.
"And thus, without their knowing the implications of what they're signing, the Count gets his investment capital. Without needing to plunder it from Hanna. He will also realise – much later – that while he is likely to become an even richer man for his efforts, Ankh-Morpork will own over fifty per cent of the shares, and will have right of veto. He will not control the enterprise. Nor will Prussica." Yelena said.
Olga smiled. She reached to the bottom desk drawer, where she kept vodka and glasses. Some little triumphs deserved an end-of-day drink.
"Thus, we get airships." Olga said. "And control over them. And as a bonus, if Johanna goes on a working holiday, she is married and a mother of three children. I just know she will also take Hanna to one side to thoroughly instruct her in certain facts of life. Which, with respect, Gertrude, you are not yet equipped to do."
Vodkas were poured and passed around.
"Yelena, please can we discuss another duty for you?"
Olga explained more about the Bad Dreams and her intention to ask Professor Stibbons, and indeed her own husband, about them. She had heard others in the Air Watch had been afflicted too and it was widespread. Therefore, could Yelena interview all Rodinian pilots and get what they could recall down on paper, before everything faded? Spassibo.
To be continued…
Next time: Olga discovers where the Bongolfier research went. She contrives a reason to go out there to take a look herself. And other stuff.
(1) see the Lancre War arc of this story: Hanna channelled so much potent magic to attack the Elves that the effort nearly killed her. She remained in Lancre to recover when the rest of the Air Watch came back to Ankh-Morpork.
(2) Nobody is at their best when they first wake up in the evening.
(3) furniture in the Crew room had been scrounged up from various places with an eye to crew comfort. Lexi was asleep in one of those high wing-backed leather-upholstered chairs that looked like it had previously belonged to a gentleman's club somewhere, or in an upmarket library.
(4) Urban pigs were not un-known. The neighbours tended to complain.
(5) For some time now, a ghostly Presence had been plaguing a shop in Dolly Sisters. The female shop staff had been spooked by an unseen hand, or hands, that had been felt touching them, with nobody else in the vicinity, Officer." 'Cept for Mr Scroggins the storeman and he's as worried by this as anyone, and anyway he's harmless. Every time it's happened, he's always been nearby, and he rescues us!" Got to be a ghost, Officer! The haunting had caused the women to become highly-strung and hysterical, to the point where Olga had received the reports, had sighed fatalistically, and sent Officers Dospanava and Vizhinsky to investigate more fully on the ground. Suspicions had been raised firstly when neither witch could pick up even the slightest residual trace of any sort of paranormal activity. Then they'd spoken to the frightened women and discerned that the spirit only touched on the upper thighs, buttocks and breasts if its victims. No men working in the premises had reported any problems, and Mrs Collins the cleaner, who was seventy, had peevishly reported that it ain't happened to ME, Officer. Never. Serafima and Yulia, investigating more deeply, had discovered the poltergeist only attacked in dark and ill-lit places, usually the further recesses of the big store-room. Investigating the strore-room, which had long aisles of racking with relatively shallow shelving and narrow walkways between them, Serafima, on her own in one dark aisle, had yelped when she felt a light slap on her bottom, coming from seemingly nowhere. Being a Witch, she had carefully evaluated her surroundings and peered suspiciously through a gap between two boxes on a shelf. She saw Yulia's grinning face looking at her from the next aisle. And Yulia's right hand, which easily reached through a carefully constructed gap, at waist-height. "Just making the point." Yulia had said.
The two Air Witches had promptly arrested Mr Scroggins the storeman, on suspicion. When Mr Vimes heard the report, he extended a "well done." To both. And the poltergeist of Slump Street had been successfully exorcised.
(6) Another reason why she taught part-time at the Assassins' School, despite the little matter of her not being an Assassin. The Guild wanted people with this sort of teaching experience. It was good for the Prospectus, for one thing, to demonstrate that our Staff know the specific requirements necessary for dealing with young people from Quality families.
Notes Dump
In the first draft of this story, I speculated on what form a disc-wide war might have taken on the Disc, but after reflection, decided I shouldn't be specific about it and leave the details open and unspoken of.
My original draft for the "Lightning War" between the Überwaldean Reich and everybody else read like this – this is just here for entertainment purposes. Speculation.
They considered the Lightning War together, with Prussica, uniquely, having sent a Wehrmacht into the Turnwise rather than the Widdershins. Quirm and the Sto States had been defeated and Occupied for a few years. The Prussicans had even got as far as Nothingfjord, but to get there, they'd had to cross the Vortex Plains. The local Rodinians had been annoyed and suddenly Prussica was fighting the Old Enemy again. Skirmishes with the Swommi had happened; as a sort of chain-reaction, another Winter War had been sparked off, Ankh-Morpork had raised an Army, and had made a point of liberating Quirm and the Stos as the Prussican Reich was forced back to Überwald. Lady Margalotta, who had been taking a few years out dead at the time, had been awoken from repose by her faithful Igor and had not been happy to be raised from her nice quiet coffin to news of a Disc-wide war. She had then had a few sharp words with various people, and imposed a peace.