A telephone rang in the seventeenth century.
Nearly three years after his adopted town had changed times and changed a world, James Nichols heard an interruption, not a miracle. He laid aside a handful of Leahy Medical Center charts, reaching past his study's desk-clutter to the phone. "Yes?"
"Good morning, Herr Doctor, it's Margritte. There is a man here, a new arrival, who wishes to see you."
His Thuringian-born receptionist was cheerful, efficient, trilingual, and possessed of a voice that could melt men like taffy. Nichols' own German was serviceable and attractive—perhaps, to crows; he stayed with English. "Margritte, I have rounds this afternoon at the center. I am working on a public health plan for next spring . . ." He suppressed the edge that wanted to creep into his voice. His heart knew that he was sitting in an empty house shuffling paper, while Melissa was a king's prisoner in London. In his own time, that distance meant an hour's flight; here, a month of storms and bandits.
"You know you must not call me—very much not call me at home—for every refugee and, and, carpetbagger that has a speech for me. That is what the bureaucracy is for. You must deal with it just as I do. You deal with it better than I do." He grabbed left-handed at a sliding chart, caught it.
"I apologize, Herr Doctor. But he wears the robes of a Jesuit, and this man . . . well, he looks like you. And so rarely have I seen a man who looks like you."
Nichols stared blankly at the chart he held. The white paper stood out sharply around the creased ebony skin of his thumb, cracked and rough from a surgeon's hygiene; as stark a contrast as his own color within this town, this province—this entire United States of Europe.
So rarely have I seen a man who looks like you.
"Herr Doctor?"
He thought of the half-hour walk to the center, its noisy offices, the urgent to-do lists: Translate appendectomy procedure notes. Find paper clips. Stop bubonic plague.
"Margritte," he said slowly, "you must almost never call me at home. Or bring anyone here to meet with me. I think this is one of the times you should do both." He set the chart down.
"To your house? Like a fine guest? He is only a traveler, Herr Doctor—a lay Jesuit, not a Father. He arrived with no ceremony at all! That coachman with the beard brought him in; Heinrich, that is, the fellow who married my second cousin in the summer, after . . ."
Nichols let his gaze drift across the study—formerly a living room, but the house wasn't large and his workload and cobbled-together library had swamped it. Borrowed books in a borrowed house; all that he'd once owned had been left in twentieth-century Chicago when the world changed. An ember popped in the fireplace, the only sound in silence. His daughter's hand-copied paramedic certificate hung over the mantel; Sharon was in Venice, stagnant lethal Venice, as far away as Melissa in London. Two travelers in foreign lands, with no safe home as he had.
"There's room," he said softly. "Plenty of room."
At the second knock, Nichols cracked the door onto freezing air and two backlit figures.
Margritte nodded. "Herr Doctor." Beside her genial bulk, a taller, thinner man hunched in a tightly-wrapped coarse robe, probably once black but faded now to a scuffed brown lighter than Nichols' own complexion. October sun was not kind to him; that complexion showed chalky highlights where strong features shaped, sharp-cut shadows. The dark, bloodshot eyes seemed calm enough, intently focused, but something in them . . .
Nichols' greatest pride—when he had time for pride—was that Grantville hadn't seen a refugee with that look for a year; they'd done that much good, at least. He'd seen thousands of eyes in 1631 and '32 with what he'd learned to call in his own time, in Vietnam, a thousand-yard stare. Not every wound hurt the body.
The traveler waited with stoic patience, robe ruffled in the wind. Nichols realized something belatedly. "I speak an inferior Latin," he said. "Physician's knowledge."
Hesitating a moment while he clearly parsed the words, the traveler inclined his head towards Nichols; a crucifix glinted in his robe at the motion. "Guten tag, Herr Doctor," he said in a soft-accented rumble. "Matthias Mbandi, via Asuncion. Sprechen sie Deutsch?"
"Ah. Yes. Yes, I do." Nichols blinked. "Is that his?"
Margritte hefted the satchel. "Yes, Herr Doctor. I have checked it, there are only clothes and a bag of spices. Is there anything I may help you with here?"
Nichols knew from experience that Margritte's gifts included a love of gossiping over anyone not actually a patient. He couldn't help taking a harder look at the stranger, at Mbandi, checking shoulders and stance and hands; his own hands were chipped with marks much older than incessant scrubbing, older than his time in the Marines. Ten, fifteen years younger than himself, probably. Longer reach—but worn thinner than his robe. Mbandi returned the gaze without fear or challenge; Nichols eased to a smile, nodded, and glanced over. "No, thank you. I will see you at the center, and I will telephone if I need arrangements."
"Ah." Her eyes cut sideways to the thin stranger. "Well, if you are certain—"
Nichols' smile widened. The seventeenth century was a dangerous place at times, but assassins generally tried to blend in. "Here," he said, and took the satchel. "Now, please, at least one of us should be working. Thank you."
He gestured Mbandi inside and closed the door, plunging the hallway into dimness. "Through to that room," he said, hooking a hand toward the study. "Please, go to the fire, for the warmth. Ah, tea?"
"No, thank you," said Mbandi; but in the study, he stood against the mantel close enough to singe his robe. Another man's face might have dissolved into bliss. His did not.
Nichols dropped the satchel on his desk, then sat behind the cluttered surface, half-amused at doing so. The doctor is IN. He remembered early days as a physician, the occasional doubt or hostility, the whisper to the receptionist—maybe someone else, ma'am, with you know, more experience? He hardly needed to impress himself on a man who'd come—
"How far did you say? Asuncion. Is that in Spain?"
Mbandi looked up from clasped hands—for warmth, Nichols saw, not piety. "No, it is across the great Atlantic. Six days up the river Parana from Buenos Aires."
"Jesus H.—" Mindful of the robe, Nichols bit off the rest. "That is very, very far."
"It is. I crossed that ocean once before." He smiled as sharply as Nichols had earlier. "I liked it better this time. I could see."
In his mind, Nichols shoved aside the charts and papers. "You are a courier, then?"
"No, I carry no letters. Only, something far more important. Ah—" The traveler set himself in a formal stance. "Father Ruiz Montoya of Asuncion sends greetings to the famous Moorish physician of the United States of Europe, the 'medical-doctor' James Nichols. It is his understanding that in your time, it is known what will succeed in ours, and what will fail. The work he has given his life to—" Mbandi hesitated in his clearly memorized speech "—the reducciones, the Jesuit missions, of Guaraya—the security and happiness of so many—this is now known to fail. The communal ways of living he practiced among the Guarani Indians, and that others are said to twist into such misery in later centuries, cannot survive. Their enemies will inevitably destroy them. And so the Company of Jesus has decided, with wise logic, to cease those ways. The Guarani missions will close and the fathers be recalled to where their efforts will bear fruit."
Something twisted in Mbandi's expression. "Father Montoya cannot convince the father general that this is wrong. Or that—that his enemies, the paulistas, raiders of the missions, can be stopped. Can, sometimes, be saved. Or that there is hope and will beyond logic.
"Therefore, he will depart from the Company, and remain with the Guarani to aid them as he might. He has only a few years before his body will fail, but his spirit will not. . . . Others are staying with him, choosing between their oaths and their dreams. His last hope, which failed him, he now wishes to pass freely to you."
Nichols concentrated on following the archaic German, and quashed the flicker of cynicism: No one gives anything for free, in this century or any other.
"Years ago, when word from your books first went through the Company, Father Montoya sent Father Gustav—" Mbandi smiled at that name "—to try to gain something which your time has shown to succeed. In the Apolo region of the Viceroyalty of Peru, near the mines of Potosi, grows a certain tree whose bark has the highest property of curing fevers—"
"Quinine?" said Nichols, jerking upright in his chair. "You, you speaking are—" he floundered a moment "—are speaking of quinine?"
"Yes, what is, will be, called cinchona roja. The bark from which a true febrifuge can be made."
Nichols stared at the fat satchel. "Cinchona bark?" Jesus H. Christ, there must be ten pounds of it.
He looked back to Mbandi in astonishment, and new respect. There'd been solicitors enough before; Grantville, an alien pocket of future lore, drew them like a lodestone. Princes and courtiers, spies and merchants, and never a one of them could offer Nichols what he wanted. Clean your cities, inoculate your people. Stop the plagues and the dying. Even in the midst of what up-time records called the Thirty Years' War, humans couldn't kill each other as fast as pathogens could. And quinine worked, even if it didn't cure. The dose wasn't large, this would be enough to . . .
On the heels of surprise, dull realization settled in, a medical official's mindset trumping a doctor's. Not enough. Not for the coming summer. Malaria was widespread, even through much of Europe; it killed popes in Rome, kings in Spain, merchants in Venice—Sharon!—even Oliver Cromwell, supposedly, although perhaps now they'd never know. The Jesuit's Bark that could treat it traveled in small quantities like this—exotic, expensive, like the contents of the glass jar Balthazar Abrabanel kept under lock in his apothecary.
"No, not the bark," said Mbandi hastily. "Although there is a little. Father Montoya offers, offers . . ." He shrugged aside his recitation and took two hasty steps to the desk and his satchel, opened the buckles and dumped out an oilskin bag. Tugged at the lacings—
"Father Montoya offers seeds."
Nestled in the oilskin was a shifting mass as dark and fine as pepper.
"He has said that there are fifty thousand in this bag, and also in this other. Each seed may grow one tree, to provide bark for years. I am to be giving one bag to you, Herr Doctor, so that you may find your own places to plant them—not here, but in warm countries." He gave a belated shiver.
"Fifty thousand," marveled Nichols. He felt a shiver of his own. "And the other bag?"
"I will take that to Africa," said Mbandi with infinite calm. "I will go wherever I can, and wherever the soil is right, and the slope, the air and the rainfall—I will plant them, five in a cross, as the cascarillos, bark-hunters, learned from the fathers. And I will go on again. This is what Father Montoya has asked of me, and I will do it."
Nichols absorbed this for a few moments. It stunned him with its scope, but . . . He lifted a hand. "Who is this Montoya? You said he was the provincial, the senior Jesuit in the region? What is his interest in quinine—why was he there at all?"
"He is a great man," Mbandi said sincerely. "He founded the mission at Lareto more than twenty years ago. At first it was only to teach Christian ways to the Guarani, the Indians near the Parana River . . ."
Nichols' patient questions—and an atlas from the shelf—pieced together the account. In what would become Uruguay and Argentina in Nichols' own time, a handful of Jesuit missions had themselves become pockets of communal society ever since 1609: Willingly organized, wisely ruled, and humane beyond anything else in this time, it seemed. Thousands of Guarani dwelt there without lords or kings; prospered; learned the catechism in their own tongue. "There was even an orchestra at San Mini," murmured Mbandi with wistful pride.
The coming of the up-timers changed all that in a year's time: both at the missions, and far away in Peru.
"Some books told of cinchona, the bark that cured fevers." Mbandi shrugged. "Who could tell what bark it was exactly? But all who heard came down upon the viceroyalty of Peru, hungry for bark worth a fortune for each quintal's weight." Government agents, adventurers, brigands, men who would be kings; a locust-swarm, seeking their feast. Many bark-cutters would have none of it; they claimed the cinchona as their own. Others fobbed off any bark as cinchona, and laughed at the joke with a pocketful of gold. All was chaos.
"And Father Montoya?"
Ruiz Montoya's great leap was to do what he had always done: to help those about him, and let them make their own choice. After a deadly flurry of attacks on the most vulnerable missions, those closest to Brazil, there was no choice but to retreat to the city of Asuncion; but Montoya spared an effort, and a man, to a new quest. He sent Father Gustav—Mbandi again seemed wistful at the name—to do what he could among the bark-cutters in Apolo. "While Father Montoya organized a desperate retreat of twelve thousand people—hundreds of miles down a river's falls and rapids, with paulista raiders snapping at their heels—Father Gustav befriended a cascarillo in dire straits, promised him sanctuary, and earned the gathered treasure of a secret hillside's cinchona roja. His name was Mamani, his loyalty unswerving, and he accompanied the Jesuit back to Asuncion with his great gift, determined to follow him forever.
"Father Gustav was my own guide to the faith for eleven years," explained Mbandi. "It was he who taught me German, and a little Latin like yours."
Father Montoya, rejoicing, sent this Mamani to look about Asuncion and the missions upriver, find a place where the cinchona might grow. He knew of the up-time texts that condemned the missions, and the debate at Rome as to their fate; his hope was that by offering a valuable crop, he might stave off the inevitable decision, even give the Guarani a prosperity all their own. His hope was soon destroyed. Cinchona would not grow at the missions.
"Too low—the land must be much higher. Too wet a soil, too thick a jungle." Mbandi shook his head slowly. "Upriver, far upriver, perhaps—but that is Brazil highlands, a few days' march from Sao Paulo, where the paulista bandits make their nest. No mission could survive there without guns and aid from Portugal and the Company, and no aid would come. In another time, it did, at Father Montoya's own appeal, and the missions lived another one hundred fifty years—but not in this time."
A lot of things won't happen this time, Nichols wished to say against this gentle accusation. Did they tell you of the dictator with the mustache? Either one? Instead he said, "These paulistas—they seem very . . ." Savage? That was a disturbing word; he fumbled for another. "Angry. Fierce. Why—oh, no matter. You would not know."
"But I do," said Mbandi. "I was one of them myself. That is how I came to know Father Gustav, and was saved."
Nichols sat back carefully. "Okay," he muttered. "Ah . . . Mbandi, you will need to tell me something that I have been wanting to know of, to know, from when I saw you. How did you come to be in a Jesuit mission in—in Uruguay? Were you born in Brazil, or . . ."
"I was born in Ndongo, a kingdom in the Malanje highlands. That is perhaps ten days' march inland from Luanda, the colony town of Portugal. Less by river."
"In Africa? In . . . Hold on," muttered Nichols in distracted English, flipping the atlas' pages from one continent to another. "Ah . . . Luanda's still there . . . will still be there . . . Jesus!" He looked up. "You're Angolan?"
"Ngola means 'ruler' in the Kimbundu tongue." Mbandi smiled thinly. "The Portuguese called us all rulers, then? That is a bad way to treat one's king, how they treated us."
He spoke absently, his eyes on the open atlas, as they hadn't been before. Nichols turned the book about and slid it slightly across the desk. "Show me where?"
"I do not know these names." Mbandi peered down at Central Africa. "But the rivers . . . Here, the Lukala. My father fought a great battle there in his youth, when we gained independence from Kongo and a kingdom of our own. And the Kwanza—there I fought my battle, the year of our Lord 1619, against the Portuguese and their Imbangala mercenaries. He won his battle, and I lost mine."
"You were a warrior?" asked Nichols neutrally.
Mbandi grinned. "A farmer, as he was. Even farmers fight when there is need. . . . My soba called us, and we came, and fought. And lost. He was killed, they say, along with many other sobas, and the city fell the next day; great Kabasa overrun and the kingdom lost with it, the king himself long fled. I was already marching west in a coffle."
Nichols set his face. "To a ship?"
"Yes. They baptized us there, at Luanda port, so that the ones who died aboard ship would find grace. I cannot say if that was a wrong thing . . . but the ship itself was a very wrong place, very hard, and some did die. I lived to see Brazil, and that too was a wrong place." He shivered again, glanced down, relaxed. "There are many strange names here."
"Yes." Nichols pointed. "English, French names for countries. Lines on a map, most of them . . . What happened to your city happened almost everywhere. The Belgians—here. The Germans—here. The French—here, here, and all through here. They brought—will bring—trade goods, and take away human beings, until all this—" He spanned a hand over the subcontinent "—is bled half to death."
"Yes. This is what Father Montoya wishes to stop."
Nichols blinked. "Stop the slave trade? Why does he want that?"
"Why should not any good man? But all things are one, to such a man as he is. He sees the links of them. The great chain of misery." Mbandi set his face in stillness. "I am such a link. In Brazil, I was angry when the work-drivers hurt me, afraid I might be killed. I fled into the jungle, full of my anger and fear, and nearly starved on the journey. To Sao Paolo, the paulistas' kingdom. I joined them. I did . . . many bad things, to prove myself, to survive. I did not care who suffered them."
A Chicago alley surfaced in Nichols' mind, jolt of a pistol butt gripped in his hand as he whipped a weeping juvie's face to blood; a boy no older than he was. Blackstone, baby! You fuckin' well know Rangers own this turf! He drew a breath. "Yes—I understand, I think. You hit back. Anyone will do, sometimes."
"We marched west. To Lareto and San Mini, the strange black-robes and their Guarani cattle. Good wealth to be taken . . ."
"Gold?"
"Guarani," said Mbandi bleakly. "For slaves. They fetched much money in Brazil . . . So many of us were Christian, though, that we did not harm the fathers—only taunted them, sometimes pricked them with our spears. They went on, unafraid. Father Gustav gave a sermon while we raided. I came to mock . . . and stayed, to hear. I could not run away from fear in the deepest jungle, but this man could stand against it, and calm others too. Our loot was nothing next to that . . . The following day I slipped away from the march back to Sao Paolo, and sought out Father Gustav. He blessed me and took me in." Mbandi touched a hand to his crucifix. "This is his own. After eleven years, it is a great gift, but not so great as what he gave me then. A new life, a good life."
"Different boot, same kick up the ass," muttered Nichols in English. He grinned momentarily. "Mine was a Marine high-top, and damn did it hurt . . ."
"But I was only one. There were thousands more taken from my homeland, from elsewhere, each year to Brazil, and each year more ran as I had." Mbandi beat his palm gently on the desktop. "Captive—slave—runaway—paulista. You see, then, the chain? Two years ago the paulistas came in great numbers, drove us downriver, smashed the missions, took many slaves. The Company of Jesus believes that they have defeated us forever. And so my journey here began."
He hesitated. "Father Montoya might have sent Father Gustav. He spoke Spanish and Latin very well, and a little English, and he . . . he had chosen to fight for the Guarani, like Father Montoya. But I am of the Malanje highlands. I know that ground, and the mountains farther east. I speak many Bantu dialects, some Kiswahili, and the Mandinga trade tongue. And . . . it was guessed that I might be of some interest to you, Herr Doctor."
Nichols grinned. "That was true."
"But . . . it was hard, to leave him there. Very hard. Perhaps in a few years more, he might have ordained me as a member of the Company. He was my confessor, my friend."
"And he had already taught you German, you said."
"Yes. Words come easily to me, since boyhood. I learned many dialects to speak with the different kijiko at the capital, when raising crops."
"What are kijiko?"
"King's laborers. We would say 'kinder,' I think."
"You use children to take in harvests?"
"No—not small child. Law-child, dependent. Captives from battle."
"POWs?"
Mbandi shrugged. "I do not know that word."
"I suppose you wouldn't . . ." Nichols tasted the next word, found it bitter, spoke it anyway. "Slaves?"
"No. That is what I was, in Brazil. My father would not treat another man like that, nor would I. Nor even the worst of our kings."
"But he owned men, you are saying. You owned men."
"The king's tendala did. I owned only their work." Mbandi spread his palms on the desktop. "Herr Doctor, you have not farmed? No? The beans do not grow themselves. It needs skill and work. He who has the decisions must have the, the . . ."
"Ownership?"
"The ownership, yes, for a plot larger than I may tend as my own."
"You can own the land, without owning the men!"
"No, we cannot. That is strange to me. Everywhere, here, there are barricades—fences," he said in puzzlement. "Holding in nothing but empty fields . . . Land is land. A man takes what no one else is using, grows what he needs. That, he owns. And what his kijiko grow, he owns through them . . ."
"Okay. Look." Nichols pushed back from the desk, crossed his arms. "Just tell me what you want, Mbandi, what you came here for."
"I have angered you," said the traveler slowly, straightening. "I did not wish to. As I said, I have done bad things, but only when others have hurt me. And it is Father Montoya's wishes I speak of."
"It doesn't matter. Hell, German POWs raised Allied crops during WWII . . ." Nichols realized he was muttering in English again. "So. No matter. Father Montoya wishes to stop the slave trade, you say. But quinine will make it easier for Europeans, Arabs, anyone to go into Africa and take them. In this time, diseases are weapons. You would disarm a continent."
"He has two ways of logic. Firstly . . . of numbers. We speak of young men here. Slave-takers—Portuguese or Imbangala, no matter—may only take whom they defeat. As the coastal states weaken, they will lose more battles like mine, and fight among themselves to survive. More defeats, more captives. More kijiko . . . Yet many more young men die from the fevers than die in fighting—even in Ndongo highlands—and many, many in Brazil, or the sugar islands. Fewer of us from Africa die when taken there, and so we are more of value as slaves. If quinine becomes common, cheap, then the fighters will not die, the workers will not die."
"I see," said Nichols. He rubbed at his chin, reflecting that malaria killed without regard to skin color—thousands of Europeans, but millions of Africans. No good having a guard dog that rips out your own throat. "There are other fevers quinine does not treat . . . but those may be reduced by good water, or proper treatment of wastes. So not the same . . . rate of replacement."
"Secondly, of men. For any man outside of Africa, to go there is a bad risk. Many die of fevers. So—if it is dangerous to go to Africa, then only dangerous men will go. Only the greatest wealth can draw them, and they value no one's life, even their own. If they risk so much, they want much; wealth that walks on its feet. With quinine, better men may go without the bad risk, and trade in kinder ways. We have much to trade: Hausa gold, fine steel from Sudan. Ivory, pepper, Mandinga cloth. In a few years, quinine . . ." He shrugged. "In Kabasa, we too had an orchestra. There will be others. We may trade in ways of life, not the taking of it."
Nichols nodded slowly. "Father Montoya is . . . wise. And what of you? Why do you do this—will you go home, then, to Ndongo? Settle there when you are done with the seeds?"
Mbandi looked away, to the far wall, and far past it. "I cannot go home. There has been word through the Company, from Luanda. A new king in Kabasa palace, set there by Portugal. The true king is long dead. His sister, Nzinga, fought on for years from islands in the Kalandongo River, gained allies, seized another land's throne. Now she is queen of Matamba, kingdom to the east, riding on spears back into Ndongo. There will be more kijiko. The saying is 'the victors eat the country.' No one will talk of seeds there, with killing to do and wealth that walks. I cannot go home." He shifted, looked down to Nichols. "I think it is the same with you, Herr Doctor? We have a Kimbundu word: malungu, a fellow-traveler on a ship that will never return. You and I, we are malungu. It is not the distance. Men may cross any distance. It is the changes . . . the time."
"Yes," said Nichols. He reached out and gently closed the atlas, smoothed the spine.
"I do this for Father Gustav." Mbandi blew out a hard breath. "This is his crucifix. This is his robe. You asked what I wanted. Only what Father Montoya wants—your help.
"I cannot make men grow these cinchonas. It needs years, nearly as many as a man's to grow of age. I cannot keep them growing after I move on, when another man may come and raise another crop; cannot ask a family to squat on a jungle slope and wait. People must live. . . . And it is dangerous in places. If there are Imbangala about, I must hire them as guards or face them as enemies."
"You need gold, then," said Nichols.
"Yes. Beads, if you have fine ones. Good iron nails. Horses."
"A fifteen-year supply of trade goods? That will take time," said Nichols. "Months, perhaps. Governments move slowly. No matter. There will be much to talk about while you wait."
Mbandi blinked. "But—No, Herr Doctor. There is very little time, and I have lost much of it already. Winter is colder each day. The harbors will freeze, the winter storms will close in. I must leave within ten days at most, or I will lose half a year; and I do not know how many years I have."
Nichols nodded slowly, thinking a moment of rats and fleas. "None of us do. . . . But if we cannot decide in that time?"
"Then I must leave without help, and do what I can."
"Very well. You must tell me exactly—" Nichols glanced aside at the thump of the door knocker. "Busy day. Excuse me." He rose, made his way to the front door, opened it.
"Good afternoon, Dr. Nichols."
Nichols recognized the creased face and well-pressed cassock immediately. "Hello, Father, I wasn't expecting you."
Father Kircher pursed his lips and made a whooshing sound. "No one expects the Grantish Inquisition," he cackled.
"Oh, for—" Nichols leaned against the wall for a moment to gather his strength. "Who showed you that?"
"Heinzerling, of course."
"Of course . . . Seriously, how did you know so fast?"
"Of your visitor?" Father Kircher smiled benevolently, shifted to German. "Ah, Herr Doctor, by that darling girl whom I shall one day steal away from your wearying service, and place in my own—that is, the Company's. At a higher wage, too."
"Margritte. Figures." Nichols stayed with stubborn English. "I'll double your offer, Father."
"Generous, but can you afford such?"
"Sure, I'll dock half her pay for gossiping. Come on, he's in here." Nichols gestured the Jesuit past him in the hallway, swung shut the door, and hurried after, brushing past Kircher into the study. "Mbandi! This is Father Kircher, one of our Jesuit priests. If you would . . ."
He checked words and step alike as he caught sight of Mbandi's face: startlement, even fear, and then hardening, a man locking down his emotions. Caught off guard, or just caught? he thought an instant; then—"Father Kircher, this is Matthias Mbandi. He has just arrived from South America." Nichols knew Kircher well enough to afford Mbandi the courtesy of not saying, "claims to have just arrived." The Jesuit would frame the statement as such from logic if nothing else.
Mbandi lifted his chin slightly. "Good day, Father."
Kircher inclined his head. "It's considered an honor to welcome a procurator," he replied, adding with another nod to Nichols: "Ah, a Jesuit provincial representative, sent to report and negotiate in Rome . . . It's never been my privilege before."
"I have not come to report," said Mbandi. "To protest, perhaps. Or to testify . . . There will be no more procurators from Uruguay province. Nor a father-provincial to send them. Father Montoya may perhaps already be dead."
Kircher's smile dissolved. "What has happened?"
"Father Montoya has left the Company. There was a letter I was to have—" He shook his head. "No matter. You must believe me when I say that Father Montoya will have no further dealings with those who have abandoned him and his people. I thank you for the welcome, but I cannot accept it either. I, too, have renounced the Company. I will walk the world alone."
"If what you say—" Kircher paused, visibly shifting his thoughts from Jesuitical strategy to the human scale of a weary, wary man; Nichols warmed to him for it. "Matthias, many who study to become full Jesuits never succeed in their lifetimes, and some who do, fail in a task, and are punished—but there is no casting out. There is room in God's service for all. If you have come so far, in such urgency, then do not fear anything at the end of your journey. I am offering no punishments."
"Again, I thank you. But while I may yet fail in my task, I do not leave because of failure . . . not because of my failure, or Father Montoya's. Because of our abandonment. I will serve man, and God, upon my own, with more loyalty than I have seen offered to him and me. If you had seen—"
"Matthias! This is wrongful!"
"—if you had seen, when San Ignacio fell, when, when the paulistas began herding together their cattle—"
"Mbandi," broke in Nichols. "He does not know. You may tell him what you told me."
The traveler collected himself. "I—Of course. When we received the orders to withdraw . . ." He sketched the events much more bluntly than he had when speaking to Nichols, either from urgency or from no need to convince—or to sway. He finished, leaving three men standing silent in the room for a time, while the fire chuckled to them.
Kircher broke the silence first. "Your letters and your money were stolen. What was not?"
"The burden I will carry now."
"Cinchona seeds," said Nichols. "A large quantity."
"That would require a large effort . . . Did you gather them yourself, Mbandi?"
The traveler set his face. "That was Father Gustav's work, and Father Montoya's gift. To the United States of Europe, in hope of assistance. And to Africa, merely in hope."
Father Kircher visibly weighed his next words before he spoke them. "That is the act of a generous and good man. But it is also that of a provincial of the Company, serving its authority—and subject to it. As you state you were when you took up this burden."
"Do you claim the seeds for the Jesuits, then, Father?" said Nichols, keeping his own voice calm.
"No. That is not my place—and this man is your guest, Doctor. But I must raise the subject. In fact, there is a great deal to decide here, and you will agree that is more than may be judged by a medical official. Nor, thankfully, by myself."
"You intend to refer to the superior? Isn't he attending in Rome?"
"I believe this is a matter not for God, but for Caesar," said Kircher dryly. "President Piazza, in this case . . . Matthias, know that you are welcome at the Company dwelling. Please know that, always."
The traveler bowed silently; Kircher turned away and rustled from the room.
"He will appeal to the ruler here, then?" said Mbandi after the door had closed. "To this president?" At Nichols' nod, he hunched. "We should hurry, if you know a quicker way. The first to speak in a dispute is often the victor."
"With some men, yes." Nichols sighed. "Not this one. It will not be an . . . official meeting. And you are exhausted. You may rest here; I will summon Margritte to keep company with you."
"I should be there," said Mbandi.
"You will truly not speak with Father Kircher?"
"I have renounced the Company," repeated Mbandi, as though stating the obvious.
"Do you realize how this will appear to anyone judging a . . . dispute?"
The traveler shrugged. "Appearances are no concern to me."
"Trust me; it would be a concern to this president." Nichols deliberately sat at his desk again, and reached across it. "We have some little while. Would you like to see the atlas again?"
"Ed, it's phenomenal. There's a whole other Thirty Years' War going on in Angola!" Nichols turned in his pacing as he spoke. "1624 to 1658, civil war, raiding, treaties broken like pie crust. Nzinga becomes queen, eventually, and cuts some deals with the Portuguese. It doesn't end well. Nothing really did there . . ."
He turned again. Seated at the upstairs taproom's single table, Governor Ed Piazza watched him steadily. A mug of small beer rested beside him, untouched; the location had been chosen to make this meeting as unofficial as possible, not for the beverages. His slight slump wasn't inattention; a Croat musket-ball had smashed ribs and a shoulder blade, two years ago, as he defended the high school he'd once been principal of.
"But look what the Dutch did in Java! A pound of seeds that an English botanist got to them, and in a few years they had plantations of cinchona. Hundreds of thousands of trees. And there's places all over Africa with mountain rain forests. Zaire, Cameroon, Tanzania, Rwanda. You remember our Rwanda, Ed? Jesus, what if we could stop that four hundred years in advance? Or keep Leopold's butchers out of the Congo?"
Governor Piazza nodded. "It would be a hell of a thing to be able to do, yes." He was a small thin-faced man; smaller behind a coarse-planked table. Pain had whittled down his features during a convalescence extended by work. His lips were often pinched, as they were now—as they'd been when Nichols dug a flattened chunk of lead out of him, sharing half an ampoule of morphine with another casualty. He'd offered Piazza the bullet as a keepsake. No, Doctor. Trophies are for sports.
"And with our half, maybe we can beat the Dutch to Java. Or trade it to them for something. Who cares, as long as the stuff gets grown cheap enough? Montoya's a goddamn genius."
Piazza glanced to this right, where Father Kircher sat. "Jesuits have a reputation for being . . . thoughtful. No question there. But, James—in this time, a thoughtful man will give his courier a letter, to back him up and confirm the details. Parchment. Seals. Something official. Did this man bring a letter of some kind?"
Nichols' enthusiasm faded. "Well, no. He told me about that—Montoya wrote several letters for him to bring, but he got sick in Lisbon, and some bastard stole his purse. Money, letters, all gone, but they didn't think anything of a bag of seeds."
"I see. And, Father, you aren't yet able to confirm if he's even a Jesuit, that's correct?"
The priest quirked a smile. "You mean, a secret handshake? I'm afraid not. It will take some time to contact Rome and obtain the routine reports from that province."
"More than ten days, I'm guessing."
"Yes." Kircher turned a palm upward. "They might show his name, if nothing else. I am sure that if I spoke to him at length, it would become clear if he had been even a lay brother . . . but he declines."
Nichols shifted on his feet. "We've established why he does. I doubt he'll change his mind, either."
"Well, that's possible. I've known stubborn folk before." Perhaps it was coincidence that Piazza held Nichols' eye at that moment. "If his story is true, he'll need to be stubborn . . . But these letters bother me. He had them long enough to memorize—then at the last stop of the trip, they're gone."
"It is possible," said Kircher, "that—with no offense to you, Doctor—that this man calling himself Mbandi has intercepted a genuine courier, robbed him, and wishes to take a great gamble to gain great wealth."
Nichols frowned. If they risk much, they want much. "But then he would have the letters, the proof, anyway."
"Any such letter would describe the bearer in detail—appearance, scars, and so forth. Would this man have visible scars?"
Nichols nodded grimly. "I'd guarantee it."
"Then an imposter could not use them." Kircher sat back slightly, closing the logical loop.
"It'd be one hell of a coincidence that an imposter would be black, though. Maybe in South America it wouldn't, but to travel all the way here is a long way to go for any payoff."
"True enough . . ." Piazza tented his fingers. "Here's the thing, James. When I was in the State Department, we had one spice trader turn up who claimed he'd spotted Prester John's balloon over Ethiopia. He wanted one of our aircraft to fly there, to force it down so he could interrogate the crew and find the lost kingdom's riches. He'd split it evenly with us, of course—that was only fair, since we would provide the aircraft."
Nichols couldn't help a grin. "You sent Harry to talk to him, right?"
"Yeah. He bounced a few times on his way out."
"Not a real bright sales pitch. No balloons yet."
"Poetry travels, it seems." Piazza cracked a brief smile. "We tend to forget that while at first we only saw down-timers through our history books, now a lot of them only see us through our books, or a garbled version of them . . . James, there's a word I need to use. It's not a nice word."
Nichols tensed. "I've heard 'em all."
"Mountebank."
"Ouch." He tried to smile. "They got some nasty ones here. Yeah, I'll say it too—con man."
"A lot of people want our help, and a lot of them need it; some don't. When I was a principal, it was kids. In State they were princes; now they're traders. But some things never change, and a con man always tells you what he thinks you want to hear. James, by now half the world knows who you are, and has an idea what you want." Ed turned up one palm. "I suppose now's where you suggest that maybe I don't believe him because he's black?"
"I guess so," said Nichols dryly. "And then you say that I'm too eager to believe him because he's black." It was hard to argue with Piazza in some ways; he was too damn calm.
"Glad we got that out of the way, then. I think he's impressed the hell out of you, but not because of that."
"He said some things would have sounded better if he had lied, but with our books, we could check everything, so he didn't bother. Very, ah, Jesuitical."
"Yeah." Piazza sighed. "Were there battles at Kabasa in 1619? Yes, I think we can check that. Was a farmer named Mbandi captured by the Portuguese there? James, even history books about Europe don't name foot soldiers. We can't see that closely. Although, maybe . . ." He looked to Kircher; the priest shook his head.
"Okay, but are you suggesting he knows that? How could he know exactly what information we're missing?"
"Probably not," Piazza conceded. "But he can guess that we can't confirm the seeds either."
"Oh, shit. Why not?" Nichols blinked. "And how would he—"
"It sounds like everyone's blundering around Peru with no idea just what to look for. Therefore, we probably don't know. Because anyone who got the information about cinchona existing at all would not have stopped looking until they got everything of ours that they could."
"Ed, were you a Jesuit?"
"You'd be surprised how smart high school kids can be. Some were bigger than me, I had to outthink them . . . But, no, we can't verify these seeds. I've seen the crop species lists—even Stone's stuff. I'll check with Willie Ray at the Grange to be certain, but you said there's dozens of species even of this one kind of tree, and most are useless for quinine, right? It's just birdseed to us." Piazza added without smiling, "We could set up a greenhouse and plant samples. Might get a testable result in ten years."
"Great. I can be a gardener when I retire. Does it matter? What do we have to lose?"
"Reputation, for one. Mountebanks don't exactly keep low profiles. You've read Kipling? 'And Danny fell, and he fell . . .' If this country of, ah . . ."
"Ndongo."
"Right, Ndongo, if it's in a state of civil war, we could be sending a rogue into it with enough wealth to seriously affect things. He could just be a failed bark-cutter who'd like to be a king, or make one—or break one. We're not about to start busting up Africa ourselves . . . Or he could be perfectly sincere—right now—but change his mind in six months."
"Or he could be straight up, and we could save millions of lives. Ed, I know the hurry looks suspicious, but I understand it. Time costs lives, a lot of them."
Father Kircher cleared his throat. "I agree. While I cannot speak for the father general, I do know that your people and ours share many goals, and I truly believe that if these seeds are to be used in this manner, this beneficence, then it will not divide us. But the risk is serious, and we must be certain. The goals of the long term take precedence."
"As they just did in South America?"
"I have given this some thought, Doctor. From the account, and reports I have seen, the upriver missions in Uruguay have become impossible to defend against slaving raids. In your time, support was given by the king of Portugal that helped to drive off the attacks, make the region safe for more than a century. Here, it will not be given."
"You could have tried," said Nichols.
"We did." Kircher smiled slightly at Nichols' surprise, and turned to the governor. "The will was the same as in your time, although with 'foresight' we moved a little faster . . . King Philip—or, more to the point, the conde de Olivares who 'advises' him—has refused any aid to a society that follows the laws of communism. He has read of this monstrous force of history, and it terrifies him." Kircher met Nichols' eye. "In your time, it was Father Montoya himself who made the successful appeal as procurator to Philip, some years from now. It would be a terrible irony if his own choice to leave the Company has deprived it of such a convincing voice."
"Never mind that. From the sound of it, nobody could persuade him. Was he really that frightened?"
"Every ruler is frightened, James," said Piazza. "But if they lose to us, they retire. If they lose to revolution, they'll get hanged. Or worse. Our histories are their horror stories . . . Father, since you can't get support, what is the Company's intention?"
"If we continue to develop the upriver missions," said Kircher relentlessly, "we will only stock the larder for hungry slave-raiders, by bringing together many Guarani where they may easily be attacked. And God is patient. We must be so as well. If, instead, we make efforts to resist the slave trade from outside—perhaps, in time, with Philip's help, and with that of the USE—we can do far more good in the long term." He folded his hands. "Father Montoya became too entangled in his own situation to understand this larger need."
"I can understand his take on it," rasped Nichols. "Look. I'm not a Jesuit either, and I don't care shit for politics. This is a way to fight disease, and I will be damned if I don't make use—"
Governor Piazza lifted a hand. "Okay, hold it. Didn't one private expedition already go off to another continent last year, looking for rubber and pitching malaria treatments on the side?"
Nichols blew out a hard breath. "Dieter was carrying artemisia. Different drug, different cultivation, different economics—if artemisinin production gears up here, it's not likely people in Africa can afford it, just like in our time. If we had an opportunity to make another cheap antibiotic, would you tell me to just be happy with chloramphenicol?"
"It works," said Pizza neutrally.
"Until something becomes resistant to it, yes. Monocultures are vulnerable. Ask Willie Ray."
Piazza nodded. Willie Ray had been a small farmer through much of the twentieth century—which meant that he'd lost a biological war that Cargill and Monsanto Inc. had won. "Point taken. But that bunch also gave us time to think it over properly. Ten days? I'm responsible to my council; there's no secret budget I can tap. Mike could, or Rebecca, but they're not here."
"No black funds. Huh. Kind of ironic." Nichols tried to match Piazza's coolness. "There's a lot at stake here. You've heard me rant on epidemics before, but this could be a big, big leverage against slavery in the New World—more than making nice with kings and counts. A lethal place means you send disposable people there—it's not cruelty, just, just fucking economics. Hell, we've got German people poor and desperate enough to emigrate to the West Indies and cut sugar cane for pay—if it's not a death sentence."
"I understand Mike's position on the slave trade very well," said Piazza. "It's already under way, but the big numbers aren't happening yet, and we can't project power very far. Yet. When we're ready, we are going to destroy it, though—no question. There aren't many things we could feel good about exterminating, but this is one . . . And I hardly need to ask your position, James."
"Ah. Well. It's not really that simple, for me."
Piazza showed actual surprise. "How can you say that?"
"I'm a complicated man, Ed. Y'know, like Shaft." Nichols grinned emptily as he finally hit a cultural reference that Father Kircher drew a blank upon. "I hate disease. I hate pain and suffering and what human beings do to each other when they're allowed to own people. But who I am, what I am, it isn't going to happen anymore. I'm so glad, some ways, thinking that Sharon will grow up where people who look like us don't get shot forty-one times reaching for our wallets . . . but part of what America was came from Africa. Good parts. Mbandi won't be the first black Jesuit, but an American would've been. Blood typing. Heh—blood, all right. One hell of a lot of Purple Hearts, from Fort Wagner to the Gulf. It meant something.
"The whole civil rights struggle that made Melissa what she is—King, Malcolm X. Won't happen. Sojourner Truth won't happen. Gospel. Jazz. Half the music of the twentieth century won't. Who's gonna inspire Elvis, for God's sake?"
"I could live without rap," offered Piazza.
"Don't dis yo' timeline . . . Hell, even the language won't be the same. We'll all sound like ruddy Englishmen or something." Nichols sobered. "It gets worse. Look where they sent me as a Marine. Like you said, soon we can 'project power.' I got projected into Khe Sanh because we had a medical corps that could keep me from catching the galloping crud. Everyone'll get quinine in a while, and learn how to dig latrines properly. English redcoats in India? Richelieu's musketeers in China? The world won't play nice because we tell it to."
"I understand. But we may not always play nice ourselves. My apologies, Father, if I speak a little bluntly here?" Kircher nodded. "Well, this gift of seeds is . . . Generous isn't the word. It could be worth, what, billions in the long run. And Montoya may be a defecting Jesuit, but he's still thinking like one. That's one hell of a bribe, James, and if I take it, that will oblige Mike to honor it when he gets back—oblige the USE to do something, and you bet Montoya knows it. And that's a long way off to send anyone to do something, not just up some river in Europe . . .
"I'm an honest politician—have to stay bribed. I need to know, James, I need your final word on this."
Nichols swallowed. "How soon?"
"Can you get any information over the next ten days that you don't already have?"
". . . No."
"Then very soon."
"I am sorry that he will not speak to me," said Father Kircher as he wrapped his cloak against the outside chill. "I suppose it is best if I do not accompany you back. You do understand, Doctor—the seeds are yours to make use of."
Nichols huffed out a cloud of breath. "You're sure of that?"
"I am certain of it. Are you certain of what to do with them?"
Kircher's eyes were mild, but it was an effort to meet them, and too great an effort to lie. "No."
"I believe you know your heart in the matter, though."
"I don't practice medicine with my heart, Father. There's no room for that. But to lose a year . . ." He trailed off, looking down the street at a running figure. It waved jerkily.
"Herr Doctor!"
"And to think I was about to run into her arms," murmured Kircher; then he stiffened. "Something is wrong."
Margritte all but staggered up to them. "Herr Doctor, the traveler! He is sick, he is very sick! You must come!"
"Shit." Nichols looked around, but no one was nearby enough to overhear. "Come on, and keep your voice down. Could—"
Father Kircher touched his arm, halting him. "I will come, if I may."
Nichols looked at him, hesitated, nodded. "Yeah, you already know. Hurry, then."
"James!"
He turned. Piazza stood in the doorway. "Don't run. People will see you."
"Ah. Right. Thanks, Ed—I'll call you when I find out what's going on."
Colder now than the air could make him, Nichols marched stiffly back to his house with Kircher and Margritte a step behind, nodding at the few passers-by; waved the others in, slammed the door.
"In here!" cried Margritte from the study. The atlas lay splayed on the desk; Mbandi sprawled in the armchair by the fire, shivering violently enough to see from across the room.
Nichols examined him with hasty care; dry skin, obvious chills. "He has not been sick of the stomach?"
"No, Herr Doctor."
Pulse fast and thready. No blue tinge under the fingernails—Wait. "You said you were ill in Lisbon. On the journey. You were ill again two weeks after that, weren't you?'
Mbandi nodded through the shivering. "It began this way, as well. The cold, such cold—then the heat. Dry, then wet."
Nichols counted backward for incubation. "About a month to cross the Atlantic . . . Buenos Aires, then. You were infected there by an insect bite, a mosquito. God damn it, you already have malaria!"
He choked off self-directed anger at missing the signs. The hell with thousand-yard stares; he'd not noticed the jaundiced yellow of the eyes themselves. "We cannot bring you to Leahy Center. They will see a strange man with a disease, and . . ." Belatedly realizing something, he turned.
Margritte had flattened herself against the wall, her face slumped white with shock. "Malaria," she said. "The air-fever, Jesus God in Heaven. I touched him, I touched his belongings."
Father Kircher gestured toward her. "Calm yourself—"
Nichols overrode him. "Margritte, listen. Listen, please! You have nothing to fear. This disease only moves from one person to another by the, ah, the bite of an insect that cannot live in cold air, or in clothing. It cannot hurt you. Look." He reached and took a fistful of coarse brown robe, gripped it—tried not to think of typhus, or another parasite that any traveler might really be carrying. "He is badly sick, but he cannot make you sick, or anyone else. I promise you this." He stared at Margritte, holding her gaze.
"Very well, Herr Doctor." Margritte straightened, swallowed hard, then nodded. "If you say it is safe, then I know it is so."
Nichols glanced back to Kircher. The Jesuit met his eye, tilted his own head silently. Nichols could read the gesture easily enough: Yes, the reputation works.
"Good," he said absently. "Then you may care for him, here, to help me. Please put at least two pots of water on to boil . . . Father, if you could drag that couch over here." Don't need to quarantine Mbandi, but we sure-hell need to quarantine any gossip.
"Herr Doctor?" said Margritte on a rising note; but she smoothed her dress and strode into the hallway, only slightly veering her step around the traveler; the patient, now. Once her shock wore off and Margritte reclassified him as such, she'd be safe to return to her desk and its telephone.
"Is that necessary?" asked Kircher quietly as he crossed the room.
"No. It never is. Although usually it is the men who need to be kept occupied . . ." He turned to the traveler beside him. "We will make for you in comfort here, until you are again well. Do not be afraid. I do not have any way to treat the malaria itself, but there are powerful medicines to cool your fever, and we can give you water through a small tube, to . . . what is it?"
He followed Mbandi's eyes to the satchel on his desk. "Oh, no. That is not tested—"
"It is my only test left," hissed Mbandi through chattering teeth. "My only proof. No letters, no sig—signet ring, no Father Gustav to, to, to speak for me. Let this speak for me, then. It is the true cinchona roja; it will cure me."
"But if you are wrong, and I do not treat you as I should with my medicines, you could die." Falciparium, by the recurrence period. Twenty percent mortality in healthy adults, let alone in him. Jesus.
"All men die." Mbandi's eyes clenched shut. "Father Gustav will die, in my place, because Father Montoya sent me away instead. I know this. I cannot fail him."
"I took an oath . . ." whispered Nichols. Furniture groaned over the floor behind him, almost silencing his voice.
"All the fathers took oath as well. To the pope himself, in person, to obey his word. Those who saw what must be done, t-they broke it. I ask you, break yours this one time. Let me prove myself and my task. Please."
Nichols rose slowly, walked to his desk. He looked from the telephone to the satchel, and back; from the twentieth century to the seventeenth, aspirin and IVs to unknown quinine. The atlas was crumpled across Central Africa, he saw as he picked it up; sighed, and slammed it shut.
"Help me get him on the couch," he rasped to Kircher. "Then we need to grind up a handful of this bark he has brought, and make an infusion."
The dry chills lasted for five hours; the first infusion, cautiously gauged at thirty grains of an unknown powder's strength, did nothing. As the windows darkened, Mbandi's shudders faded to lassitude—and his temperature began to rise.
"I don't know how long this crap takes to work," muttered Nichols, as Father Kircher poured another cup infused from sixty grains. "Or if it works at all." He slipped the thermometer from Mbandi's slack jaws. "One-oh-three and a bit. God damn it . . ."
"Keep trying," mumbled the traveler. His skin was as glossy and hot as a kettle. "Remember, I have lived through this before."
"Yes, and each time it's been tearing up your liver." Nichols had to steady his head as he drank. He'd doused the study lights long before; firelight and lamplight were gentler.
Two more hours. One-oh-four. Nichols picked up the phone, gripped it tightly; set it down. "Everything I do does harm," he muttered. "Always did. Come on, you fucking lunatic, you better be right or I'll kill you myself."
One-oh-five, and Mbandi began to babble snatches of words, his eyes no longer tracking. German. "Loreto, it's fallen." Spanish. "Paulista, este non hombre—este perro." Fragments of African dialects. His hands fretted at the blanket's edges, as though they could piece the words into sense. Sometimes, when he glimpsed Nichols' face above his own, he cried out in joy, spoke rapid tongues that sounded a continent away. "Malanje—"
Still the fever did not break. For another hour, Nichols sat slump-armed in the armchair, listening to garbled pain and joy and history. Is this how they saw us, these glimpses? Prester John's balloon, all right. But the fever did not break, did not break . . .
"A hundred and twenty grains, Father. This is the last try."
Kircher's thick fingers rasped the bark into powder, timeless in the firelight; steeped it into a glass of hot water. "It is no easy thing to clash with an oath, for some men," he said as the red tinge spread through the liquid. "I still believe—aside from my duty—that Father-Provincial Montoya was wrong in his choice. But I would not wish to have been in his place."
"Do you think I'm breaking mine? Because I'm afraid to decide?"
"I think," said Kircher slowly, "that man is making a very brave choice, and you are the instrument of it . . . and this too requires courage. You will know soon enough. Come, this is ready, is it not?"
Mbandi focused long enough to gulp the liquid, sighed "Cinchona roja, Mamani," and closed his eyes in sunken sockets.
Old in the ways of healing, Nichols took a meal in the kitchen, exchanged quiet words with an equally tired Kircher, and rested a while. He'd matched his strength against disease before, knew to husband it. In a weary predawn hour, he walked back into the dimness, the frail form on the couch; cradled the fire-hot head for the thermometer's test.
One-oh-three.
"Well," said Nichols softly. Beside him, Father Kircher murmured something—not English, not German, but Latin. He laid his own hand upon Mbandi's forehead a moment, and withdrew it. "Go, then," he said more strongly in German. "And may God go with you."
He turned away without another word.
Mbandi's eyes flickered, opened, fixed on Nichols' own. "Malungu. Kamerade," he said in a slur of German and—Kimbundu, was it? "Malungu, there is for us, no home behind. Only ahead. Seeds, across oceans. Malungu seeds."
Thin new-fallen snow crackled under Nichols' steps, frozen grass beneath. The knife-edged arc of the Ring of Fire had eroded to a gentle slope here, a good walk southeast of Grantville, a displaced circle knitting slowly with its surroundings. He looked back over fallow fields and thought of hoof prints leading west, toward Lisbon and a long voyage south. "Do you think it'll work?" he asked.
Ed Piazza shrugged inside his parka—carefully, when cold made the old wound ache. "Don't ask me now. I did this on your word, remember."
"Yeah. I don't doubt him—I might not be able to outthink a Jesuit, but I know he wasn't lying or faking, not half-cooked like that. Another hour and I'd have filled him with aspirin. Winter journeys are a bitch—must have triggered the relapse."
"Ah," said Piazza. "About that. I talked to Margritte for a while—"
"Hang on. I figured something out this morning. Amazing what sleep will do . . . Mbandi said that Father Gustav would 'die in his place.' " Nichols shortened his stride to climb the slope. "Let me play Jesuit for a second. Assume that the Jesuits got everything they could from us about their own history, and that Montoya gets a good part of that relayed to him as a provincial father. He knows he will ordain Mbandi in a few more years . . . but he sees that in our history, no black Jesuit appears until Healy in 1850."
Piazza sighed. "I get it. If Mbandi died fighting at the missions before he was ordained, then he disappeared from history. Down in the grain, just another foot soldier who changed sides."
They both paused at the crest. "Right," said Nichols, trying not to puff. I'm not old, just need four hundred years to catch my breath. "Maybe that got to Montoya after a while. So he sent Mbandi away, broke the timeline—and somehow Mbandi found out, or figured it out. That's hard on a man—because you always feel relief first. Always." He stared at the horizon as he spoke, a thousand yards away; hearing the burr of a mortar fragment flying past his own ear, the impact into another man's flesh, the instant's thought: Thank the Lord it was him and not me.
"No wonder he tried so hard to convince me, then, is it? No letters, no proof. Just the sickness he was carrying himself, and the bark to cure it."
Piazza stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. "Well—as I said, I talked to Margritte, and she mentioned something that seemed peculiar. She was chatting with the coachman who'd driven Mbandi into town, and the coachman said this 'schwartzenjesuit' was riding on the roof the whole last day in; no coat, no robe, just shirtsleeves. In that terrible cold! The guy said he could practically hear the Jesuit's teeth chattering over the noise of the coach wheels. Now, tell me what that was about."
Nichols closed his eyes for a moment, smiled. "Oh, I can tell you. He wanted to make sure." He shook his head ruefully, kicked a clot of frozen earth loose. "Damn! You see? No letters, no backing from the Company—more likely the opposite—and everyone knows Jesuits are tricksy, right? How could we trust him? But nobody lies through a high fever—so he tried to bring one on, kick-start the 'quartan fever.' No logic games, just humanity. Not many'd take that sort of chance, just to save a year." His smile faded. "Of course, he knew that he doesn't have that many years, carrying falciparium. Not many like him around. Not many malungu. One less, now." That leaves just about one.
"I should get back," said Piazza. "You can freeze yourself like him if you want . . . But this 'malungu' thing. It sounded familiar, so I checked. Anyone told you about the Gowens, that family owned a farm a bit north of the Ring?"
"No. What's the point? I sure can't meet 'em now."
"They called themselves Melungeons—mixed-race, bit of everything; Indian, European . . . African. Angolan."
He nodded to Nichols' stare. "Yeah. That was the story, anyway. A lot of folks around here know it. When the Portuguese hit Angola, and started shipping people to Brazil, English privateers hit them along the way. Captured some slavers and took them into the Virginia colony to sell off."
"To sell," said Nichols flatly. "Not just the ships, then. The people got sold too."
"Into indentured labor, just like everyone else without money, white or black. But, James—after a few years, they were free. And no Jim Crow laws yet, no real racism until the eighteenth century. They bought land, married whomever they liked—they settled."
"Do you think it's true?"
"Maybe." Piazza shrugged. "Bob Gowen used to claim he was part Turk, for God's sake. We'll never know. Still . . . I think it was 1620," he added thoughtfully. "Ought to be raising the next generation about now. Sure sounds like African-Americans to me. If not them, it'll be someone else; even oceans don't hold out forever. Maybe some of those kids hear about a famous foreign 'Moorish physician' now and then, hey?"
"Well. That's . . . something." Nichols stared back toward Grantville's steam plumes. Seeds, across oceans.
Piazza shivered, stamped his feet. "C'mon, malungu, let's go home. We've got work to do."