Free 1636 The Kremlin Games by Paula Goodlett, Eric Flint, Gorg Huff Page B

than he’d thought he would. Bernie had discovered that he really didn’t like serfdom. Somewhere deep down inside of him was a belief in the basic rights of people and seeing those rights ignored angered him.
    The whole issue of serfdom was more complicated than he would have thought, too. He himself was off to the side of the class system somewhere around the upper end of the service nobility and the lower end of the upper nobility. He was a hired foreigner, which would normally put him in or just below the service nobility. But Bernie was special. He had actually and demonstrably experienced a miracle. He was here in this time because God had personally put him here. Of more practical importance, what he could do was absolutely unique in Russia.
    Bernie wasn’t sure how it had happened. Maybe Boris, maybe one of the letters that Vladimir had sent, in any case the word had been given. Anya had told him about it. The majordomo of the Dacha had picked servant girls for attractiveness and had made clear that keeping Bernie happy was a job requirement. Anya also told him that there was some real competition to get the jobs.
    That job requirement bothered Bernie. At the same time, he was a young man with hormones flooding his system. If a pretty girl found opportunity in his bed, that was fine with him. His attitude was hypocritical as hell and he knew it. He was suddenly a bit more understanding of the whole Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings thing. There’s a profound truth there somewhere, Bernie thought as he watched the sway of Anya’s breasts. If it’s be honest and don’t get laid or be a hypocrite and get laid, then a hypocrite most guys will be.
    Bernie had spent the first months at the Dacha getting to know the staff and learning Russian through total immersion. He was getting better at Russian and beginning to know the players there.
    There were the philosophers/scientists, mostly the low end of the upper nobility because they were the ones who could afford an education, but with a fair number of the service nobility and more than a few monks and priests. Then there were the craftsmen; they were mostly of the Streltzi class. The Streltzi’s duty to the czar was to guard the cities, so, unlike the service nobility, they weren’t granted much in the way of lands but got the right to engage in crafts and trade. Then there were the servants. These were mostly serfs from the Gorchakov estates. About half of them had been at the Dacha before the Ring of Fire. The rest were shipped in to support the additional staff. A few servants had been hired from Moscow and were at the low end of the Streltzi class, basically peasants not tied to the land.
    At the center of it all was Bernie and the books. Mostly Bernie so far, because Vladimir was still setting up the processes to get the books copied and sent to Russia. While a number of books were sent with Bernie and Boris, there were none that were Russia-focused. They were books and parts of books that had been copied because others wanted them.
    “You know what’s planned for today?” Bernie asked Anya as he washed his face then headed for the chamber pot.
    “It’s the scraper,” Anya said. “It’s a clear day and they want to see how it works.”
    *     *     *
    The Fresno scrapers left Filip Pavlovich Tupikov wondering what they really needed Bernie for. It wasn’t that he was unhelpful. “Yes, da ,” Bernie said. “The handles let you control the depth of the cut. Push down for a shallower cut, let them rise just a bit for a deeper cut.”
    Filip translated.
    “How deep can you cut?” Petr Stefanovich asked.
    Filip translated the question.
    “It depends on the ground,” Bernie explained. “If you loosen the earth with a drag board, you can usually cut a couple of inches. You get a feel for it with practice. You start to notice when the scraper is pushing up hard. Then you have to push down and shallow the cut.”
    Filip translated. Bernie had indeed