Who will — physics experiments into liquid metal cooled fast reactors (page 17)
Cinderella and her Moravian prince were currently living at Castle Moritzburg, fifteen kilometers or an hour on horseback north of Dresden. Known as Aschenbrödel in these parts, or Aschenputtel as the Brothers Grimm recorded her, Cinderella of the Bohemian Forest was longing for home. Not home as in Švihov Manor, the moated manor house she grew up in with her stepmother and stepsisters, but home as in the Bohemian Forest surrounding it. The wild forest and streams, the cascades of rocks and views.
The Renaissance castle Moritzburg was splendidly proportioned, with turrets and towers galore, surrounded by as fine a moated pond as one could wish and well-stocked hunting grounds. But it was just a rental. Cinderella was waiting for an audience with the Saxon King, and now she has it, and was on her way to The King’s Stone.
A fine horsewoman and an even finer archer, Cinderella preferred to ride alone instead of being driven in a coach. She cantered easily and with pleasure through the Saxon countryside, her crossbow slung across her back, and a green cap with feathers over her beautiful long strawberry blond hair. The rest of Cinderella was beautiful as well, as she needed to be to catch the eye of the handsome Prince of Moravia. But within her big, pretty, doe-like eyes sparked wit, intelligence, and ability, as she needed to be to represent the interests of the ambitious King of Bohemia. The King of Bohemia himself could not come for the meeting with the King of Saxony, because he was in Londinium on urgent personal business (with the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, to prevent a scandal in Bohemia). And he could not entrust the delicate matter of discussions on uranium, atomic energy, and modern physics with August the Cold to anyone else but Cinderella.
Not only did The King’s Stone have an imposing view over the mighty Elbe River, even more strategically, it looked over the Ore Mountains, out of which came uranium so precious and (relatively) abundant that all of Europa (even and especially Imperial Russia) negotiated with August the Cold. The hereditary king of Bohemia will not be out of atom-craft and atom-power, and Cinderella, loyal to her king, is here to make sure of it.