1636： The Saxon Uprising ARC - By Eric Flint Page 0,110

Hofburg, Vienna, Austria.’ ”

“As if that’s going to do any good!”

Eddie shrugged. “You never know. He’s the emperor’s friend as well as one of his chief aides. They’d know where to find him, I think.”

She’d still been dubious. “You said you needed to remove every unnecessary ounce. That letter weighs at least an ounce. Maybe two.”

“I was exaggerating. Had to, on account of Denise. I should have said ‘every unnecessary pound.’ ”

“So I can’t sent him a box of chocolates, huh?”

“You’ve got chocolates?”

“I was exaggerating. On account of myself. God, I wish I could fly out of here with you.”

“No.”

“But I’m skinny. I only weigh—”

“No!”

“Especially now, the rations we’ve been on, I probably don’t even weigh—”

“You and Denise both!”

Luebeck, USE naval base

“He’s off,” said Admiral Simpson, as soon as he entered the set of rooms in the naval base that had been transformed into a royal suite of sorts. (Emphasis on “of sorts”—the royal beds were cots. On the other hand, the plumbing was superb.) “We just got word over the radio.”

Kristina and Baldur looked up from the card game they were playing at the mess bench that passed for a royal dining table. For his part, Ulrik took the time to place a bookmark in the text he was reading before doing the same. He was seated on the bench next to the princess.

“How soon will he arrive?” Kristina asked eagerly. The girl adored flying—anywhere, anytime, for any reason.

Simpson waggled his hand in a gesture indicating some uncertainty. “By late afternoon, Your Highness, assuming the weather holds. He needs to fuel up in Magdeburg first. Apparently there wasn’t much petrol left in the plane. So you won’t be able to make the flight back to Magdeburg until tomorrow morning.”

As he had been before, Ulrik was a bit intrigued by the admiral’s use of the term “petrol.” The Danish prince had discovered from his research that the term was English, not American. Most up-timers would have called it “gas” or “fuel.” He had not yet discovered the reason for the admiral’s quirk of terminology. Was it just personal idiosyncrasy? A trace, perhaps, of the Anglophilism that Ulrik thought to detect in upper crust Americans?

Strange, really. In his day and age, England was considered an uncouth backwater. What up-timers would have called “the sticks.”

Ulrik could have simply asked the admiral, of course. But where was the fun in that?

“If he makes it there in the first place,” said Baldur skeptically. “By all accounts I’ve heard, the pilot is a novice.”

“ ‘By all accounts’ would refer to me,” said Simpson, “since I believe I’m the only one you’ve talked to on the subject. I did not say he was a ‘novice.’ What I said was that while Egidius Junker has not been flying for very long, he is apparently good enough that Francisco Nasi—whom no one has ever accused of lacking anything in the brains department—was willing to make him his own personal pilot.”

The admiral’s tone was mild, not reproving. He sounded slightly amused, in fact.

Why? Ulrik decided to chew on that puzzle for a moment. He really did not take well to weeks of idleness. At one point, he’d made a game out of tracing the tile patterns in the floor of the communal toilet in the barracks. Alas, the game had been brief—the pattern was fully evident within two minutes.

“I don’t see why they can’t switch pilots in Magdeburg,” Baldur grumbled. “Surely there has to be some…some…”

“Up-timer available?” Simpson seemed to be fighting down a smile.

Of course! Norddahl was made nervous by the thought of a down-time pilot—and the American was amused by the fact.

Unfortunately, now that he thought about it, Ulrik himself wasn’t entirely pleased at the thought of being flown through the air by a down-timer. But he let none of his anxiety show, lest the admiral transfer that sly little not-smile onto him. Royalty had obligations as well as privileges.

Simpson shook his head. “Even if there were, you wouldn’t want him. Junker’s flying a Dauntless, and Nasi has the only civilian one in service. The military won’t give you a pilot for the same political reasons we’ve talked about at length. So your choice is between a pilot who has experience with that particular plane and one who’d be coming to it cold—and would probably be another down-timer anyway.”

His smile widened and became genial rather than sly. “Besides, if Germans can’t fly airplanes, that would certainly come as news back where we came from. Have you ever