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By the end of this discussion, Natasha was too interested to be offended.
    *     *     *
    “Now I see how it works.” Natasha saw something else too. This was why they needed Bernie Zeppi and why they should turn the dacha into a research center. He had not come here to introduce moving icons on a screen. It had just popped out like a chicken laying an egg. He cackled a bit and there it was. How many other eggs were buried in this stranger from the future and how valuable would they be to the family? Natasha had seen mimes and clowns perform. In spite of his comments, she knew that the movies and cartoons didn’t need sound to attract an audience. She was pleased again when, while Boris was talking to her Aunt Sofia, Bernie managed to pass her a letter “from your brother.” Then he had gone on about Rocky and Bullwinkle blundering along and thwarting Boris and Natasha while Bullwinkle at least didn’t have a clue what was going on.
    Over all, Natasha was quite impressed with Vladimir’s up-timer, as were some of the other people Boris introduced him to over the next week.

Chapter 9
     
     
    “I think we can use him,” General Kabanov said. He was in charge of guns and weapons for the Streltzi, the musketeers who served Russian cities as guardsmen as well as providing much of the army’s infantry. “He does seem to know a great deal about guns and their use.”
    Bernie had just finished disassembling and reassembling his up-time rifle and then loading it and emptying it into a set of targets. Boris nodded in response to the general’s assessment. He saw no need to point out that Bernie’s familiarity with the rifle was not particularly unusual among up-timers. Grantville was a town of hunters.
    “Why can’t we make these repeating rifles?” General Kabanov asked Bernie. But he didn’t speak English, much less up-timer English, so questions were funneled through Boris. Which was probably for the best, as it allowed him to edit at need.
    “Primers,” Bernie said. “You can’t make the primers. We went over all this in Grantville.”
    “In the brass cartridges,” Boris translated, “are compounds of a chemical that is difficult and expensive to make in quantity—”
    So it went. It was the third interview that day and there were three more to go and still more tomorrow.
    *     *     *
    “Why did you have to bring us an idiot?” Filip Pavlovich Tupikov was pacing back and forth, scratching furiously at a rather weak beard. “They know how to fly. They can make materials we never dreamed of. And you bring us this? Not a doctor, not a . . . what is the word? Engineer. Not an engineer. Instead you bring us this . . . this . . . barely a craftsman. Why, Boris Ivanovich?”
    Boris Ivanovich looked at Filip Pavlovich. The man was a brilliant artisan and a skilled natural philosopher, but had no understanding of how the world worked. Besides, Boris had been getting some version of this from about half the interviewers for the last two weeks. “Ah, how foolish of me.” Boris snorted. “I should, no doubt, have asked their president, Mike Stearns, to give up all he had in Grantville and come be a servant in Russia. Or perhaps the master of machining, Ollie Reardon, would have given up his factory with its machines and the electric to run them. Better yet, I could have tried to persuade Melissa Mailey, a qualified teacher in their high school. Of course, she has been heard to say—more than once, I should point out—that they should start by executing nine out of ten of the nobility of Europe. She then suggests that they go up from there. I’m sure she would have been happy to serve the czar.”
    Filip Pavlovich flinched a bit. Boris felt he’d gotten his point across. “I brought Bernie Zeppi because he was who I could get. He has graduated their high school. He is a qualified auto mechanic with tools. I should know. I had to arrange for their transport. He speaks, reads and writes their