Chapter Fifty (Patreon)

Alexander relaxed as the sun stretched out before him. Even in the depths of winter there was plenty of natural light to be found, golden light falling through cloudless skies. Not even the dull necessity of paperwork could keep him from the pleasant nature of his environment.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

Alexander turned towards his sister, his expression wary. If his wife had asked such a question there would have been nothing to fear. Alexandrine, though intelligent, possessed neither the personality nor desire for even the least of intrigues. Maria, on the other hand, delighted in petty reprisal.

“It is,” Alexander said cautiously.

“Much nicer than Irkutsk,” Maria continued. “Perhaps it should be the capital, at least in winter.”

“What would that say to our people?” Alexander asked, forcibly keeping himself calm. “To those who cannot escape as we do every winter?”

“Can they not?” Maria asked, her lips just shy of a pout. “Whyever not?”

Alexander stared at his sister. How did one begin to explain earthly limitations to someone who had never experienced them before. “We do not have enough train cars for all of them,” he settled on saying.

“Then you should build more.”

“If we build enough train cars to bring everyone this far south, we will be unable to do anything else. There will be no buildings, no farms, no mines. It has already taken a great deal of our industrial capacity to ensure that people can reach the cities of the north during the worst months of winter. To extend that program, to make everyone come thousands of miles to the south? That is impossible.”

“Ah.” The two siblings turned back to their children. The Alexandras were running on the beach, leaving their younger siblings far behind. Maria and Pyotr were trying to build a sand-castle, though the toddlers’ limbs were not always cooperative. Nicholas, the youngest of his sister’s children, lay sleeping in a pram. “They love it here,” Maria noted.

He could hear the longing in her voice. Alexander made a sudden decision. “I am not opposed to them coming here,” he said. “Nor am I opposed to you going with them. I will simply be unable to join you every year.”

“Your people are here as well,” Maria noted. “They are not only in Irkutsk.”

“And they are in Mukden too, though we are not,” Alexander replied. “Do not pretend we are in Busan because there are people here. We are in Busan because you wished to escape the cold. That is what it is. More importantly, that is what it looks like. For one year that is acceptable. For you, that is acceptable for many years. But not for me. A leader cannot flee from something so commonplace as winter.”

*

On 19 June 1843, the SS Great Britain was first floated out. A massive iron-hulled, steam-powered commercial ship, the Great Britain was ninety-eight meters long and capable of carrying 130 officers and crew, 360 passengers, and 1,200 long tons of cargo while travelling at a speed of ten to eleven knots. It was the largest passenger ship in the world by a significant margin, a testament to the brilliance of her engineering team and British naval power.

Naturally, the men Alexander had hired and Admiral Lazarev had forced into a working team at Busan wished to surpass that great feat.

“You are certain this is possible?” Alexander asked as he looked down at the vast dockyard.

“Yes.” The answer was blunt, as Alexander had learned was typical of the Swede. Though he had yet to learn if it was the man’s nature or merely his lack of skill with the Russian language. “Steel is a good material. It bends, but does not break. We have sealed compartments, so that if one does break, it will not sink the others. And the engines–they are good. Very good.”

Alexander turned to Putilov, who grinned. One his the men brought on by Konstantin, the engineer had more than proved his worth.

“The new alloys allow for greater pressure,” Putilov explained. “With greater pressure comes greater efficiency, more power for the same amount of coal. Our valves are improving as well.”

“And they will be able to power this ship?” Alexander was not opposed to monumentality, but even in the 20th century this would have been considered a large vessel.

“Yes.” Putilov hesitated. “Or it won’t, and we will learn to fix it. The ship will succeed. If our current approach is correct, it will take but a year or two. If we are wrong, perhaps a decade. But it will succeed.”

“Progress is inevitable,” Alexander agreed.

“Just so, your Imperial Highness,” Putilov said. “Bread may not have been invented when man first gathered seeds of wheat, but at that moment its creation became inevitable. The repeating firearm has yet to be invented, but that too is inevitable, and has been since the creation of the first arquebus. God has granted we men the ability to create–it is what separates us from animals, and what dooms us to eternal progress.”

“It is a blessing we must fight for as much as it is fate,” Alexander corrected. “That progress will happen is inevitable. That it is good progress is not.”

“How would you define good progress, your Imperial Highness?”

A bold question, but one Alexander saw no harm in answering. “It is that which serves the Collective Purpose of the People of Russia. This ship will do so by bringing more of them.”

“More of them, your Imperial Majesty?”

“Tell me Putilov, Ericsson. What do you know of the Irish?”

“Simple,” Ericsson answered, “poor, and hated. Farmers, mostly.”

“They are Catholic farmers,” Putilov said.

“That they are,” Alexander agreed. “The Irish–the vast majority of them–live as tenants on the great estates of English lords. The difference between the Irish tenant and the Russian serf is that the Irish tenant pays more in rent, and that he and his family can be removed from their land at will. In many parts of Ireland the rent is so high that the tenants must sell the entirety of their crop to pay rent, save for a half-desyatina which they use to grow potatoes, the only crop that grows dense enough to feed their families on so little land.”

“And?” Putilov asked. “That does not mean that they will be willing to leave, nor does it mean that the English will be willing to let them go.”

“English hate the Irish,” Ericsson noted. “Happy to see them go.”

“That they are. As to why the Irish will leave,” Alexander fought a grin. Satisfying as it was for things to fall into place he had learned long ago that it was considered off-putting to smile at tragedy. “There have been reports of a potato blight in France and Belgium.”

“And the English will never lessen the rents,” Putilov noted. “Our nobles are difficult enough when it comes to that subject, and they are not capitalists.”

“Precisely. And if the English are happy to throw away millions of skilled farmers, then why should Russia not be happy to accept them onto our vast lands? There is always more of Siberia to settle, and someday Alaska shall need farmers too. Siberia may not have the legendary appeal of the New World, but I suspect free passage and guaranteed food with make the difference for many.”