Grantville Gazette-Volume XIV Read online

  Phil wished, really wished, he could just, like, move out. If it hadn't been for the Ring of Fire, he could have solved the problem by going to college some place far away. Like Cleveland.

  * * *

  "How's your report coming along, Maria?" It was Prudentia Gentileschi, the daughter of the famous Artemisia, and an up-and-coming artist in her own right.

  Maria greeted her friend with a kiss on each cheek. "Almost done. It would help if the investors didn't keep changing their mind as to what they wanted to know." Maria, the daughter of the curator of the Leiden Botanical Gardens, had come to Grantville to study botany, and had gotten enmeshed in De Vries' plans to establish a new colony on the Wild Coast of South America. Somewhat grudgingly, he had accepted her as his "science officer," as one of the up-timer investors had titled her.

  Prudentia smiled. "Believe me, painters working on commission have the same problem."

  Maria showed Prudentia the report. "As you see, it covers pretty much everything the colony might grow, for itself or for export. Various kinds of rubber trees, sugarcane, cacao, coffee, cotton, dye plants, rice, pineapples, bananas, manioc, oranges, coconuts—you name it."

  Prudentia gave it a once-over. "Impressive."

  Maria shrugged. "I couldn't have done it without Philip Jenkins' help. He knows so much about trees, and of course he's actually seen, and eaten, pineapples and bananas."

  Prudentia gave Maria a knowing look. "I bet he's been helpful."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Don't pretend to be obtuse. You know what I mean. I think he likes you."

  "Yes, we're friends."

  "That's not what I meant. I think he's courting you."

  "That's ridiculous. I am in my mid-twenties, and he is what? Fifteen?"

  "Sixteen. And a half."

  "That's right. He did say that the first time we met."

  "He has probably been saying it to someone every day since attaining that lofty age."

  "Anyway, he's not the only lad who helped me. There's Lewis Bartolli, the chemistry 'whiz kid,' who did the write-up on aluminum, bauxite and cryolite. And his sister Marina has done a lot of typing for me." She paused. "You know, maybe Phil is interested in Marina, and is using his visits as an excuse to see her. She's pretty, in a dark sort of way, and just a little younger than Philip, so she's the right age for him. And she is the daughter of the Bartolli of Bartolli's Surplus and Outdoor Supplies, while Philip is a hunter and fisherman. Since Lewis Bartolli isn't going into the family business, perhaps Philip sees an opportunity there. That would be sensible."

  "Yes, that would be sensible." Prudentia didn't sound convinced.

  "By the way, who's that kid that's been making googly eyes at you at Dinner and a Movie?" asked Maria.

  Prudentia blushed. "His name's Jabe, and he's not a kid. And he's not making googly eyes. In fact, he can hardly look at me."

  * * *

  Maria was walking down Buffalo Street, on her way to Hough Park. She stopped suddenly. Wasn't that Rahel's friend Greta in front of her? And the guy she was with was, what's his name, Karl? He was handsome, but Maria had heard bad things about him. Should she join them? No, that probably wouldn't work. She could follow them, but what could she do if there was trouble? She was no martial arts expert.

  Then she saw Philip on a side street. The answer to her prayers. "Philip, come join me." Philip was brawny—he played American high school football—and knew how to fight.

  She linked arms with him. "Walk with me," she commanded. "And talk."

  "About what?"

  "Umm. Coconuts. Pineapples. Tropical stuff."

  "Okay." She let him drone on while she kept her eyes on Greta and Karl. At last, Greta and Karl parted—not without some squirming on Greta's part—and Maria breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Did you say something?" asked Philip.

  "Thank you, this was lovely. Sorry, but I have to run. Bye!"

  * * *

  If it wasn't one thing, it was another. The latest problem was a political one. The Company had been chartered under the laws of the New United States, which, at the time was a sovereign state. But now the NUS was merely a part of the United States of Europe. So was the charter still valid? And if the NUS prohibited slavery on its soil, but the USE had yet to speak on the issue, was slavery forbidden in the colony?

  The lawyers whom David consulted gave him an extremely learned, expensive and authoritative "maybe."

  * * *

  When David arrived in Hamburg, where his ship was docked, he discovered a letter waiting for him. He opened it. It read, simply, "Bring back bauxite." The letter was unsigned.

  But he recognized the handwriting. It was that of cousin Jan. Who, last David heard, was in the employ of Louis De Geer. Mister "I-am-sending-ships-to-the-Davis-Strait-to-hunt-whales-and-maybe-mine-a-little-gold-in-Greenland." Even though he was a metals magnate, with no previous interest in whales. And even though the up-time books said nothing about gold in Greenland.

  But they sure said plenty about Greenland being the only source of cryolite. The critical flux for making aluminum from alumina. Which in turn was made from bauxite.

  David decided to buy some more shovels and picks. Right away.

  North Sea, December, 1633

  David and his band of sailors and colonists left Hamburg on a blustery, rainy December day. It was an uncomfortable time of year to venture out on the North Sea. But that was an advantage, too; the Spanish war galleons weren't especially seaworthy and tended to spend the winters in port.

  David was once again captain of the Walvis, a four hundred ton fluyt with eighteen guns. As its name implied, it was a whaler, but it was also a licensed privateer. And, just as on his last journey, the Walvis was accompanied by the Eikhoorn, a twenty ton yacht.

  The Company had doubled his force by adding the Koninck David, a two hundred tonner with fourteen guns, and a second yacht, the Hoop.

  It was the ideal combination of ship types for making the dangerous run south to Africa to pick up the trade winds for the Atlantic crossing. The Barbary corsairs ranged from the English Channel to Cape Verde, always hoping to capture an imprudent European ship. If they did, all aboard, crew and passengers, would be held for ransom, or simply sold as slaves at the marts of Sallee or Algiers.

  The yachts could scout ahead, warning the flotilla of danger, and in turn they could shelter under the big guns of the fluyts if they encountered any formidable foe. They would come in handy in the New World, too, being ideal for inshore work.

  Some investors in the Company had been more intrigued by David's descriptions of the profits to be made from privateering than in the more prosaic plans to tap rubber and mine bauxite. They had prevailed on their fellows to beef up the crews, so that David would have additional manpower for working the cannon, adjusting sail, and boarding enemy ships (or repelling boarders). That was good.

  Unfortunately, David felt a bit betwist and between. He had more men than was truly economical for the operation of a fluyt, but not so many as would be on a true privateer on a short range hunting mission. And his ships were larger, and therefore less handy, than the piratical ideal.

  David was well aware that this uncomfortable compromise was the natural result of decision making by committee.

  "Captain, we have a stowaway."

  David looked at his cousin, Heyndrick. "He must be very ingenious to escape detection this long."

  "I suspect it was more that he was very generous to a sailor or two. He is a young American, and many of them are rich."

  David started swearing. "And no doubt he is on board without parental permission, and his parents will be raising bloody hell with my investors. Bring him to my cabin."

  A defiant young American teenager was brought in a moment later.

  "What's your name, and age?"

  "Phil Jenkins. I'm sixteen. And a half."

  "Sixteen, huh?"

  "And a half," Phil reminded him.

 
"That's young for an American to leave home. Do your parents know that you are here?"

  "I mailed them a letter. From Hamburg. Anyway, I'm old enough to join the army, so why can't I go overseas?"

  "So . . . you stowed away because you want to see the world? Or perhaps you have seen one of those romantic American movies about pirates, and fancy yourself with a black eye patch and a parrot on your shoulder?"

  "I know a lot about trees, and stuff like that. I thought I could help Maria—"

  "Maria, huh? Would you be as keen to look at trees in Suriname if Maria weren't on board?" Phil colored. "I knew having Maria on board was going to mean trouble," David muttered. "I don't suppose you have any nautical skills?"

  "Well, Grantville was located about two hundred miles from Chesapeake Bay. But I know how to hunt and fish, and I can handle a small boat. . . ." Phil paused. David's stern expression was unchanged. Phil's voice trailed off. "On a river or lake."

  David waved toward the porthole window. "Does that look like a lake to you?"

  "No, sir."

  David studied Philip, and decided that he was not entirely unpromising material for a colonist, or a mariner. Still. . . .

  "All right. You're more trouble to me than you're worth. I can't afford to turn around—we waited a long time for a northeast wind—but as soon as we see a friendly ship heading toward Hamburg or Bremen, you're out of here. If you can't pay for the passage, you'll write me a promissory note, and I'll give you the money."

  "But sir—"

  "No buts. This is not your American legislature; there is no debate. Cousin, find a place for him to swing a hammock, and keep him out of my hair."

  * * *

  Maria couldn't believe it. Philip had snuck on board to be with her.

  It made her feel like, like . . . reaching into his throat and pulling out his intestines. Not that his intestines were the root of the problem, anatomically speaking. Teenage boys, arggh!

  She admitted to herself that it made her feel good that he was so interested in her. After all, she was ten years older than him.

  But did he have any idea what sort of position it put her in? The crew and colonists would have had difficulty enough accepting an up-time woman in a position of authority. But the up-timers all acted as if they were nobles. Maria was educated, and of good family, but not of the nobility, nor someone whose past achievements would force them to overlook her gender. The captain had only grudgingly accepted her, after witnessing her kayaking stunt . . . not that the demonstration had the slightest bit to do with her competence as a botanist, a healer, an artist, or a geologist!

  And now the captain would be wondering if this trip to the New World was just her excuse for eloping with Philip. And everyone else on board would be wondering the same thing.

  Well, she was going to have to have a little talk with Philip. Once she had calmed down enough not to throw him overboard and make him swim back to Hamburg.

  But it was nice to know that he thought she was attractive.

  ***

  Carsten Claus sat on a capstan and watch the sailors going about their work. The other colonists had decided that the water was a bit too rough for their taste, and had retired to the zwischendeck. Carsten, however, had once been a sailor himself, and he had quickly recovered both his sea legs and his "sailor's stomach."

  His fellow colonists were mostly Dutch and Germans, displaced by the war. Happy people don't pack their belongings and make a long and difficult journey to a wilderness reportedly populated by cannibals and savage beasts. Even if rumor also had it that there is gold to be found somewhere in that wilderness. The practical Dutch and Germans just didn't put much stock in stories of El Dorado. So the colonists were people with problems back home that they needed to escape, or with more than their fair share of wanderlust.

  Of course, there was a third possibility. A few could be spies, or agents provocateurs. Carsten was an organizer for the Committees of Correspondence (CoC), the revolutionary organization which, with American encouragement, had spread across much of central Europe.

  Andy Yost had briefed Carsten on how important it was to have a colony which could export rubber, bauxite and oil to the New United States. Oops, Carsten meant the United States of Europe. Just before the expedition left, the once-sovereign NUS had become a member state of the USE.

  In Carsten's opinion, some of the CoC members greatly exaggerated the ubiquity of Richelieu's spies. In fact, at a CoC meeting, Carsten had once rapped on a closet door, and yelled, "Cardinal, come out right this minute." That had a gotten a laugh, albeit a somewhat nervous one.

  Carsten had to admit that it was at least conceivable that the colonists had been infiltrated. So one of Carsten's jobs was to check their bona fides. By now, Carsten was sure that they were all okay. Well, reasonably sure.

  He had also made some progress with respect to his long-term business, which was "education." Gently indoctrinating them in democratic principles, and forming a new CoC cell to make sure that the colony didn't venture onto dangerous ground. Like slaveholding.

  When their ship entered the dangerous waters between Cape Finisterre and the Cape Verdes, he had reminded the colonists that these were the haunts of the Barbary Corsairs.

  He acknowledged that they couldn't have a better captain than David de Vries, who was famed for having fought off the Turks when they outnumbered him two-to-one. But he asked them to pray for his fellow sailors who were less fortunate, who had been forced to surrender and whose families could not ransom then from slavery. They did so, and if they added a prayer or two for themselves, he couldn't blame them.

  And then, as they prayed, he asked them to pray for the Africans who had been enslaved in the New World by the wicked Spanish and Portuguese.

  When one of the colonists was bold enough to retort that the Africans couldn't expect better treatment, being pagans, and probably cannibals at that, Philip had hotly complained that putting chains on the blacks wasn't the best way to teach them about the benefits of Christianity.

  ***

  The ship was running before the wind, which meant that the captain's cursing was carried down the length of the ship. The crew was practically tiptoeing.

  Philip gave Heyndrick an anxious look. "What's got the captain upset? It isn't me, again, I hope."

  "No, no, it's not you. The captain got all these newfangled navigation instruments in Grantville. Most of them work fine. The sextant, it beats a cross-staff any day. Maybe ten times as accurate, and you don't go blind trying to sight the sun."

  "So what's the problem?"

  "The clock. It's supposed to keep Nuremburg time, so we can calculate our longitude. It worked just fine . . . on land. And it's supposed to work at sea. Uses springs, not a pendulum."

  "But. . . ."

  "But whoever designed it never tested it at sea. Or at least, not on waters this rough. We know where we are, more or less, from soundings, and either the clock is wrong, or our computations are. And since the captain's figures and mine agree. . . ."

  "How bad an error are you talking about?"

  "Well, the old pendulum clocks, if you took them to sea, accumulated ten or fifteen minutes error a day. This one, oh, a minute or two. But an error of one minute clock time still throws off the longitude by"—he frowned for a moment— "seven and a half degrees. A few hundred miles. And after a month at sea, the clock won't even tell you which ocean you're in."

  "Really. In that case, I have a proposition I want to put before the captain."

  "Pardon me if I wait here. I have no desire to join you on the execution block."

  * * *

  "Captain, you don't want me to leave," Philip said.

  David turned to face him. "Oh? Why the hell not?"

  Philip took a deep breath. "Because of this." He pulled back his sleeve.

  David didn't understand, at first. Then he did. Philip was wearing a wristwatch. A timepiece which worked at sea would let David accurately determine his longitude
each day. If the timepiece kept the correct time for a place of known longitude, like Grantville, then it could be compared with the ship's local time, inferred from the position of the sun, to find the ship's longitude.

  "How accurate is your watch?"

  Philip hesitated. "I'm not sure. I guess it might lose or gain a few minutes a year."

  "A year," repeated David dumbly.

  "Yep," Phillip affirmed, this time more confidently.

  David took a deep breath. "You are offering me your watch in return for the passage, and your maintenance in the colony?"

  "Are you kidding? I bet this watch is worth more than your entire ship."