Chapter Text
He has ever been a poor nation. Huge, and tenacious, but poor and half-frozen and weak. Russia does not dance in the ever-changing theatres of Europe; no wondrous inventions emerge from his house; he is ever-present but insignificant.
Insignificant ... but not so long ago one of his people was held above the ground by only a cloth balloon filled with hot air. One of Russia's people flew.
Grantville's people flew a month before his, but Grantville is a nation of wizards. She has many skilled men, brought with her from a future so full of genius and astounding invention that it seems much like magic to Russia, and the house that was fired into the middle of the Germanies, like the ball from a cannon, was filled with fantastic engines and mechanisms from the father she never met. Grantville flew using gifts that she inherited. Russia's people flew only with his cloth, and his woven basket, and his bellows and ropes.
Russia's people, poor and backward as they are, were the first people who truly belong to this world to fly. They flew with Grantville's knowledge, but the works of Russia's hands.
Russia likes the knowledge that came out of Grantville's house more than her gadgets, anyway.
"What did you call it?" he asks the man his czar sent to explain to him, swinging his feet -- his legs are still too short to reach the floor. But oh, oh, in those books...
"A 'cash-flow problem'," the man repeats. "You see ... an economy is created when things are bought and sold. It is not enough merely to have things of great value. Gold in the ground is worth nothing. Those things have to be traded. You have great wealth. You have forests and furs, trading routes that span the continent, many skilled craftsmen." Russia knows that; he is proud of his craftsmen, but he has them only because his summers are short and you can't grow crops in ice. He knows his rivers, too; he's been on the barges that travel slowly up and down, waved to India from the decks and traded for silk with China. "There just isn't enough money to take advantage of that wealth. People trade, but ..."
Russia stops listening. He is a rich nation, in potential if not in reality yet. His czar will know how to turn that wealth into true riches; he's already taking the first steps. But Russia is a wealthy nation ... that knowledge came out of Grantville, and there's more...
In the world-that-will-be, that was in that other time or place, there was a war, or something like a war. Russia has already read the books; he doesn't like reading of himself as the enemy, but it's drowned out by excitement every time he thinks of it, because the America of that other world was the strongest nation around, and he was afraid of Russia.
Russia was powerful. The Russia of that world conquered Poland and Lithuania, and for the Russia whose muscles still ache from the Time of Troubles, the thought is unbearably exciting. The Russia of that world built something called the USSR, a house that held land all the way to the Baltic Sea, and extended into the Germanies. That Russia changed people's lives in countries halfway around the world, in places that he's never heard of. That Russia could have destroyed the world, if he'd wanted to. And that Russia started out as him.
Russia ... Russia can be powerful.
He doesn't have to huddle on the edges of European intrigue, intimidated and ignored. He can build his own wonders and masterpieces. He can tie China and India to Europe and grow tall and solid on the trade. He can push away the Commonwealth. He can fly.
Russia's people were the first into space, up-time. He wonders if they can be first to the Moon, in this one.