1635: The Eastern Front

Chapter 41

Zielona Gora

"It happened weeks ago!" Thorsten Engler was a very even-tempered man, but he was feeling decidedly peevish at the moment. You could even say, angry.

"Weeks," he repeated.

The radio operator who'd handed him the message was looking simultaneously apprehensive and indignant, the way a man will when he can see he's about to get blamed for something that was no fault of his own.

Jason Linn put a hand on Engler's shoulder. Not to restrain him, simply to remind him that there was an external world that had an objective reality outside of the swirling furies of his mind.

"Captain, there's no sense in yelling at Corporal Schwab. He's just the one the message passed through."

Schwab gave Linn a quick, thankful glance. For his part, Thorsten took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and then let it out slowly. He'd first discovered that technique for controlling his temper at the age of six.

"Indeed," he said stiffly. Just as stiffly, he gave the corporal a nod. "Thank you for bringing me this message, Schwab. You may go."

After Schwab left, Thorsten lifted the message sheet above his head, as if to slam it down somewhere. But, again, he took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and let it out slowly. Then, quite gently, he set the message down on a table in the officers' mess. The table was one of several that had been brought into the large main room of a house very close to the city's center. It was called the "officers' mess," but it was open to what you might call established sergeants like Jason.

Shaking his head, Thorsten pulled out a chair and sat down.

"I can't believe they didn't tell me right away. That was weeks ago."

Jeff Higgins came into the mess. "What was weeks ago?"

"Caroline was there-in Stockholm. When the queen was assassinated and Kristina almost was."

Higgins frowned. "I thought you knew that already."

"Of course I knew. But I didn't know what had happened to her. She was often at Kristina's side. Was she hurt? Killed? There was no news! And with those people in Stockholm, I could hardly assume that no news was good news." The term those people could have been milked for venom.

Jeff pursed his lips. "Um…?Yeah, I see what you mean. They're still pretty traditional up there. That's a polite way of saying 'medieval.' If you're not royalty, nobility or at the very least some sort of official, nobody will think to mention that 'oh, yeah, and Joe the Butcher got killed too.' I take it she is okay? Caroline?"

"Yes, she's fine. As it happens-thank God-she wasn't at the site of the crime when it happened. She was still in her room, packing."

Like many down-timers who associated with Americans a lot, Thorsten was more relaxed about blasphemy than most. Eric Krenz had practically turned it into a art form.

"So how'd you finally find out?" asked Jeff.

Engler looked a bit embarrassed. He nodded at Linn, who had taken a seat at an adjoining table. "It was his idea."

Jason grinned. "He was having the radio guys send queries every other day. Waste of time, of course, because he was sending them as 'Thorsten Engler.'?" Linn jeered. "Who the hell is that? Sounds like a peasant."

Jeff laughed. "So you finally sent one as the imperial count of Narnia. Don't tell me. I bet you got a response the next day."

Thorsten finally smiled. "The same day, actually. I sent it early this morning."

Higgins took a seat next to Linn and folded his big hands on the table. "I'm lucky that way. The radio operators I deal with are CoC on the other end. You think you got problems, Engler? Where do you think my wife is?"

He didn't wait for their guesses. "Dresden. Guess how she got there?"

He didn't wait for their guesses. "Plane crash. Never a dull moment, being married to Gretchen."

Berlin, capital of Brandenburg Province

"So what's the verdict, James?" Mike handed Dr. Nichols a short glass filled halfway with some sort of clear liquid. Liquor, from the smell.

"It's what passes for Korn in Brandenburg," Mike explained. "The wine's marginally better, but I figured you'd want something stronger."

"You got that right." Nichols drank half of it in one gulp, then made a little face. "The stuff in Thuringia is way better. And it's not very good."

Mike smiled thinly. "Welcome to Brandenburg. And I repeat: what's the verdict?"

"Can I sit down first?"

"Oh, sorry. Sure." Mike waved to one of the chairs in his suite. That was one advantage to being billeted in a palace. There was usually plenty of room.

Nichols sagged into the chair. He looked pretty exhausted. He'd been at the king of Sweden's bedside all day, since early in the morning.

Some of the doctor's weariness, though, was probably still due to the rigors of his journey here. That had ended two days ago, but Nichols was about sixty.

The weather had made any sort of plane travel impossible to Berlin. Impossible, at least, for any aircraft with standard landing gear. There had been some days when the weather would have permitted flying, but there was nowhere to land.

The elector of Brandenburg, George William, had refused let an airstrip be built anywhere in Brandenburg. He claimed that was to protect his subjects from aircraft falling on top of them, but the real reason was simply that he resented all of the side effects of the Ring of Fire. If he couldn't make the cursed Americans vanish, at least he didn't have to let them foul his sky with their cursed machines.

As bad as the weather had been-and still was, half the time-there'd been no way to construct an airfield in time. And as it turned out, they couldn't use one of the planes with air-cushioned landing gear. There was only one ACLG plane in regular operation yet, because of a shortage of suitable engines, and it was undergoing major maintenance. Even if the airline had raced to put it back together, Mike would have gotten Gustav Adolf to Berlin by then.

There'd also been a hovercraft used to ferry people and supplies on the Saale that might have managed the job, that Mike had forgotten about. But it wasn't available either. A few months ago, a minerals exploration company had chartered it for use somewhere in the far north.

So, a horse-litter it had been, at a forced pace across rough terrain and with new rainstorms coming every second or third day. Mike had been exhausted when they finally reached Berlin. James' trip hadn't been as rough, but it had been rough enough for a man his age.

The doctor stared moodily into his glass. "It's the head trauma that's really got me worried, Mike."

Mike's eyes widened. "That's…?saying something, given how deadly peritonitis can be."

"Yeah, but I can help that-some, anyway-with surgery. And the antibiotics we've got should help a lot too. Whereas the head trauma…"

Nichols shook his head. "Honestly? There's probably nothing at all I can do. Or anybody can do. We'll just have to wait and hope for the best."

"He's not in a coma, though." That was a statement, not a question. Mike had been with the king throughout the journey from Zbaszyn, and there had been times Gustav Adolf had been…

Well. Not in a coma. You could hardly say "conscious," though. He'd seemed very delirious.

"No, he's not in a coma. But there are lots of ways the brain can be badly affected that don't manifest themselves in a coma, Mike. He's suffered a serious traumatic brain injury from being clubbed half to death, essentially. The skull wasn't broken, but parts of the brain where he was struck were certainly damaged. Possibly other parts, too."

Nichols set down his glass and held up his hands as if he were cupping something the size of…?Well, a skull, actually.

"A live brain has about the same consistency as Jello. It sits inside the skull, which shields it, and it's also sheltered by layers of membranes that are called meninges. It's pretty well protected from most shocks you'd normally encounter day to day. But if your skull gets hammered really hard, then what happens-"

The doctor suddenly jiggled his hands around, very violently. "-your Jello-y brain is essentially being bounced around against your own skull. The worst damage usually happens to the brain tissue nearest the source of the trauma but you can have damage almost anywhere. Call it ricochet damage, if you will."

"All right. Assuming for the moment, though, that the damage is restricted to where he got hit, what's your diagnosis?"

"?'Diagnosis' is way too strong a term, Mike. With this sort of brain injury, there's a lot of guessing at first-and would be, even if we were in the intensive care unit of a major up-time hospital. A lot of the diagnosis of brain injuries has to develop over time, since many of the symptoms are behavioral and-"

"James. Please. This is not a time for all the complexities and all the details and all the maybes and the we-don't-know-yets and all the caveats or any of that stuff. I need whatever you've got right now, down and dirty. Give me your best guess, if you don't like the word 'diagnosis.' What is wrong with Gustav Adolf's brain?"

Nichols sighed. "I think his right temporal lobe is damaged."

"And that results in…?"

"Assuming Gustav Adolf survives the next few weeks, he might make a complete and quick recovery." He took a deep breath. "What's more likely, though, is that it will take him months to recover, possibly years, and he may never recover completely. Probably won't, in fact, with that bad of an injury."

Mike sagged a little in his chair. "That's…?about what I was afraid of. Would one of the symptoms be that he says things that make no sense at all?"

"Gibberish?"

"No, not gibberish. They sound like complete sentences, but it's as if all the words are scrambled. I'll give you an example. At one point when I looked in on him in the litter, he was awake and stared at me as if he had no idea who I was. Then he said-I think I'm remembering this right: 'I ate my tree but the horse will not open the stirrup.'?"

James ran fingers through his short, kinky hair. "Yes, that's a symptom of temporal lobe injury. One of the major functions of the temporal lobes is handling speech. What you're describing is a form of aphasia, which can manifest itself in many ways. People suffering from aphasia might be able to speak but not write, or write but not speak. Or they might be able to sing, but can't speak or write. Gustav Adolf's failure to recognize you is because the right temporal lobe is also involved in the visual content processed by the brain. Sound, too. Even if he recovers-this is just one example of what can happen-Gustav Adolf may have so much trouble with tonal recognition that music means nothing to him any longer."

Mike winced. The king of Sweden adored music.

"What else?" he asked.

James spread his hands. "There could be a lot of things, Mike. He might start having seizures."

"He hasn't had any so far," Mike protested. "I'm sure I'd have noticed or been told by one of his attendants if I wasn't there at the time."

"Doesn't matter. Seizures don't have to develop right away, with something like this. He might start having them a week from now, a month from now, a year from now-or never at all. And if he does start having them, they might last for a short while or the rest of his life. The brain's still a very mysterious organ, Mike."

"What else?"

"He's almost certainly going to have problems with memory retrieval. The problems may be mild, moderate or severe, and it's impossible to know ahead of time how long they might last. His behavior might become childish and/or irritable. He might have sudden unprovoked rages. He might sink into depression. He might find it difficult to concentrate on anything for very long. He might completely lose any sense of humor. His language skills could be chaotic. He might be able to speak but have no understanding of what he is saying. Or he might-for Christ's sake, Mike, how long do you want me to go on? Don't you get the picture yet? I repeat: the brain is still mostly a mystery. There's usually not much you can do with an injury like this except take care of the patient's bodily needs and wait and hope for the best. You want to know my diagnosis? Ask me in six months. Better yet, ask me five years from now."

He drained the rest of his liquor and extended the glass to Mike. "Now why don't you do something useful and pour me some more of this godawful stuff? Did I tell you some sainted soul in Bamberg is trying to distill sourmash whiskey? Of all the things I miss about Ye Olde Up-time, Jack Daniels is right at the top of the list."