1636- the China Venture Read online

  “I would like to see this,” said Xu Xiake.

  “Judith Leyster has some pencils; we have them for sale. But you may have some as a gift, of course.”

  They walked to the exhibition hall gift shop, and Eva signed for a half-dozen pencils. These weren’t like twentieth-century pencils; they had a square tip when sharpened.

  Xu Xiake asked for some writing paper and tried one out.

  Judith Leyster was on duty in the gift shop that day. “I use them for drawing. But you should know, they smudge easily, and they are easier to erase than ink. In fact, that’s why Eric’s people use them—when they are doing calculations, so they can erase a mistake.”

  “Fascinating,” said Xu Xiake. “Oh, Eva, I know that the possible wolframite specimens go to SEAC, but my little graphite-and-quartz rock, I want you to have it. As a memento.”

  “Thank you,” said Eva. “But I don’t think you have completed your story.”

  “Although I did not find any wolframite myself, a servant of one of the landowners told me that he had seen such specimens on his master’s land. Which indeed lay to the north of Dayu. I went to the landowner’s town house, and presented my credentials, but I was given short shrift.” Xu Xiake gave an indignant sniff. “I am afraid that this person was not a cultured individual; he had not heard of me or any of my friends. He refused to give me permission to prospect on his property, or to have his servants find and bring me any matching rock.

  “On the way back from Dayu to Ganzhou, I was fortunate to catch the blossoming of the plum trees—a magnificent sight. But I suppose that is not much consolation to you, since I failed to definitively find your wolframite.”

  “Please don’t think so!” Eva protested. “We are very grateful for your efforts. And we have made more friends, and hopefully we can all go back there together, and perhaps persuade the landowner to look further. If letters of recommendation don’t work, perhaps money will—or an exotic gift from the Uttermost West.”

  * * *

  Eva woke up in the middle of the night. She had suddenly remembered that there was another mineral that greatly resembled graphite: molybdenite. And Lolly Aossey had told Eva and her brother that molybdenite as well as graphite was found in China, according to the encyclopedias, although the locales were not known.

  So how did one distinguish molybdenite from graphite? It should be in her notes somewhere. But she couldn’t look up anything without disturbing her roommate, Judith Leyster.

  As soon as Judith showed signs of waking, Eva got up. “Judith, where do you keep your pencils?”

  “Huh?”

  “I need a pencil.”

  Judith told her where to look, then turned over.

  In the meantime, Eva had reviewed her notes on molybdenite, and grabbed her streak plate and Xu Xiake’s gift. She collected the pencil, and used it to make a mark on the streak plate. Then, next to it, she made a mark with the black mineral “X,” as she now thought of it.

  Both streaks were a dark grey, but that made by “X” was bluer than that of the known graphite. That was a good sign. But was there a more definitive test?

  According to her notes, molybdenite was molybdenum disulfide. Whereas graphite was just carbon. The molybdenite should react with strong acid to form hydrogen sulfide—rotten eggs. Whereas the graphite would be inert.

  Eva had nitric acid in her test kit. As she rummaged for it, Judith sat up in bed. “What are you doing so early in the morning?”

  Eva explained.

  “That makes sense,” said Judith. “What will happen to the molybdenum? Will the air be able to oxidize it?” Judith had studied enough chemistry while in Grantville to be aware of the possibility.

  “Well, it oxidizes iron, to make rust. Which is essentially the mineral hematite.”

  Eva turned over the specimen in her hands. She hated to impair its beauty but, she had to know.… She finally decided that a particular small chunk could be spared, and pried it out. Since it was scratchable with her fingernail, that wasn’t difficult.

  She put it on a watch glass and added a few drops of nitric acid. The chunk dissolved. Not only that, a white residue appeared. That, she assumed, was molybdenum oxide.

  Xu Xiake had found molybdenite, the main ore of molybdenum. It was something in the way of a consolation prize for not having found wolframite.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Chapter 54

  USE mission office

  “Molybdenite?” asked Eric Garlow. “You’re sure?”

  “It met the acid test,” said Eva.

  “That’s wonderful! Molybdenum, like tungsten, is used to strengthen steel. In fact, it was used as a replacement for tungsten during World War I. And we really need one or the other for making tool steels.”

  Eva beamed.

  “Of course, we’ll have to break up this specimen. We’ll send a piece back with the Rode Draak to impress the investors, and send other pieces out with our prospectors—yourself included, of course—when they go to Dayu to find the source.”

  “But Xu Xiake gave me this specimen as a present,” Eva protested. “Can’t you just have Judith Leyster paint some pictures of it? Or even take photographs?”

  “It’s not the same as holding a specimen,” said Eric patiently. “You can only see a picture, but the rock you can heft, run your finger over, and so on.”

  Eva crossed her arms. “I think that breaking up the specimen will offend Xu Xiake. And we can’t afford to do that, can we?”

  “Is that your real reason, or is it that you just don’t want to give it up?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. I think I know how to persuade Xu Xiake. But it will require a little white lie, and you need to be agreeable to that.”

  Her expression was troubled. “No, I don’t want to give it up—it was a thoughtful present after all—but I recognize its value now that we know it contains molybdenite. What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, I think we can limit ourselves to splitting it into two pieces. One will go back to Europe, and the other you can keep here to serve as a reference. Hopefully, Xu Xiake will be willing to go back to Dayu with whatever new, more persuasive team we send out.”

  “And what’s your explanation for why it has to go back?”

  “Filial piety!” Eric declared.

  “How is that possible? My father and mother are both dead, and Xu Xiake knows it.”

  “The Confucian concept of filial piety isn’t actually limited to respect for parents. You also owe respect to your aunts and uncles, your grandparents, and so on. In fact, to all the elders of your extended family.”

  “And why would filial piety for my uncle warrant sending a piece of molybdenite back to Europe?”

  “Because your uncle is a rock collector, and having an exotic stone from China would please him.”

  “My uncle is a petty criminal, and his only use for rocks is to throw them at someone or something. That’s why my brother and I came to Grantville, rather than going to live with Uncle Wilhelm. Wherever he is hiding.”

  “Well, consider that the ‘little white lie’ part.”

  Eva shook her head. “I think associating with Zheng Zhilong and his brother Yan is rubbing off on you. Why don’t you just say that scholars in the Uttermost West, forty thousand li away, would want to see the rock he gave me, but we also need it here, and the only solution is to split it. And why don’t you ask him to decide how to best split it and still preserve its aesthetic qualities.”

  She forbore to point out that it wasn’t easy to split a rock at a specific spot, unless there was an obvious structural weakness there.

  Eric sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Zhoushan

  The wood of the deck of the Rode Draak creaked under Eric Garlow’s feet. While Eric had only recently been on board a Yangtze River junk, sailing back from Wuhan, the movement of the Rode Draak, here at anchor in Hangzhou Bay, felt different. Different, yet familiar.
r />   He first walked up to the quarterdeck, where Captain Lyell was waiting for him, with the rest of the ships’ officers.

  “It is good to see you again, Ambassador Garlow.”

  “And you, too, Captain. The Chinese have treated you well?”

  “No complaints.”

  “Have the others arrived yet?”

  “They have.”

  “We had best join them, then.”

  Captain Lyell, Captain Hamilton and Eric Garlow proceeded to the Great Cabin. Peter Minuit, Aratun the Armenian, and Maarten Gerritszoon Vries were standing outside the door, waiting for their arrival.

  “Gentlemen,” Captain Lyell said, as he unlocked the door, “let us begin.”

  They seated themselves at the great table, with Eric at the head.

  “So, when are we going to Beijing?” asked Minuit.

  “It is good to see you, too, Peter,” said Eric drily.

  “I thought you Americans liked to get to the point,” Minuit grumbled.

  “We have made progress,” said Eric. “We have some more friends in high places and Colonel von Siegroth has sold some cannon and volley guns—”

  “About time,” Minuit interjected.

  Eric ignored him. “—and the Saluzzos think that the Jesuits are no longer united in opposition to us.”

  “Speaking of time,” said Captain Lyell, “I am sure you all know the saying, ‘The winds wait for no man.’ I have confirmed with Zheng Zhilong’s people that if we want to get our cargo home this year, we need to leave Hangzhou Bay in early March at the latest. We want to make it to Batavia by the end of March, while the northeast monsoon is still blowing.”

  “There’s enough silk and other goods in the warehouses to fill the Rode Draak,” said Minuit. “So it should definitely go back, and without further delay. The point of a trading company is to turn a profit, after all!

  “As to the Groen Feniks, it has only a partial cargo. We can hold it back but if we waited past March, the earliest it could head home would be…” He looked at Captain Lyell.

  “November.”

  “We could send it to Japan,” said Eric. “You could check out what’s going on there, sell them Chinese silk for Japanese copper and silver, and come back here in November for more silk, then head home.”

  “He’s right,” said Maarten Gerritszoon Vries. “The VOC probably earns more from the ‘country trade,’ frequent short hops back and forth between China and Japan, than from the long Europe–Asia run. In part, because the Chinese aren’t that interested in European goods, and the Japanese aren’t much better. The trouble is, making the China–Japan run puts you in direct competition with the VOC and with Zheng Zhilong. Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Minuit. “As Captain Lyell pointed out, it’s getting close to the end of the northeast monsoon season. Chances are that all of the VOC and Zheng family ships have already left Japan. My fear is that for the same reasons, the pickings will be slim. Still, I am willing to take the chance, since we need to establish relations with the shogun if we want a trade relationship in the future.”

  “I have no objections to sailing to Japan,” said Captain Hamilton. “However, you should consider that it is safer for ships to sail together rather than separately, especially for a journey as long as the one to Europe. Are you sure you don’t want me to just escort the Rode Draak back to Texel?”

  “It is safer for the embassy if we have a ship of our own in the harbor to run to if need be,” said Eric doubtfully. “I wonder whether we shouldn’t just keep the Groen Feniks here—”

  “You promised me that I could serve as the USE envoy to Japan!” Minuit protested.

  “I have had some interesting conversations with Zheng Zhilong and his brother Yan. I think that Zheng Zhilong would like to send a delegation of his own to the USE. While he could travel on the Rode Draak, it might be advantageous to have him send a ship of his own, as it can then be the escort for the Rode Draak in lieu of the Groen Feniks. He has been building ships of hybrid European-Chinese design that should be capable of making the voyage.

  “As for your trip to Japan, I can arrange for you to go on another Zheng ship. We can expect that the VOC will do its best to interfere with your establishing a trading post in Japan, but if we have Zheng backing, we will have an easier time of it.”

  “That will mean sharing the fruits of the Japan trade with the Zhengs,” complained Minuit.

  “Not a high price to pay, considering how helpful he has been in China—which is the greater market by far!”

  Eric understood Minuit’s attitude, but didn’t share it himself. It would always be necessary to keep a watchful eye on Zheng Zhilong, of course—he was a tricky fellow, no doubt about it—but Eric saw no reason to view the admiral as an antagonist. He’d behaved more like an ally of sorts. If it hadn’t been for him, they would have been turned away at whatever coastal ports they visited, as the Dutch were on several occasions.

  Liu Rushi’s houseboat

  By the Hangzhou Dock

  “Big Ears,” Liu Rushi’s servant, gave Mike a casual wave as he came on board. “Hello, Mike. How’s the arm?”

  “Better every day,” Mike assured him.

  “Oh. That’s good and bad,” said Big Ears.

  “I understand the good part. What’s bad about it?”

  “Hey, it’s a heroically earned wound. The gals swoon over those. If the scar is fading, so will their enthusiasm. You need to apply some makeup to it. Bring out the contrast.…”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Mike assured him.

  “It’s your life.” He gave a patterned rap on the cabin door, and Liu Rushi’s maid, Peach, opened it and peered out at him.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I’ll tell the mistress.”

  “Peach doesn’t sound very enthusiastic to see me,” Mike remarked to Big Ears.

  “What do you expect? If you were a wealthy client, hoping to secure the mistress’s sexual favors, you’d pay lots of cash to her, so she would pass on your invitations to the mistress in a timely manner, speak well of your deportment, and inform you about your rivals.”

  “I tip her!” Mike complained plaintively.

  “But not as you would if you were desperate to win Liu Rushi over. And remember, she just got over a year of drought, while Liu Rushi was in love with the scholar Chen Zhilong. What maids like Peach want is a bidding war between suitors.”

  “What about you?”

  “The suitors don’t pay much attention to the male servants; they figure we don’t enjoy the mistress’s confidence. And I liked the gift you gave me when you got back from Tongcheng.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by Liu Rushi, who came to the door herself. “Mike, welcome! Come in, please!” She embraced him as soon as the door closed behind him.

  “Take off your gown, I want to see how your arm is healing.” Mike was wearing a scholar’s gown, rather than western dress.

  “I can just pull back the sleeve…”

  “I am going to undress you sooner or later anyway,” said Liu Rushi, “so why start with a half-measure?”

  Mike laughed. “You make a good point,” he said, and threw off the gown. “I’ll even take off the cap and boots.” He did so, and added, “You seem overdressed by comparison.”

  “I’ll let you remedy that in just a moment.” Liu Rushi studied the scar. “You are healing well. How is the movement?”

  He did an arm circle for her.

  “Good, you have full movement. That increases the possibilities.…”

  * * *

  Some very pleasant time later, Liu Rushi said, “Wait here, let me fetch us some tea.”

  Mike propped himself up on his elbows and admired her figure as she exited the bedchamber.

  She returned with the tea set on a tray and placed it on a side table.

  “How go things at the Glorious Exhibition? Are you going to resume balloon ascents? Remember, y
ou promised me that we would go free ballooning if I could arrange the necessary permissions. Now that I can—”

  “I can buy you out,” Mike said abruptly, “so we can marry. And I can bring you back to Grantville with me.”

  Liu Rushi hurriedly set down the cup she was holding. “I know you’ve been selling ginseng, but that can hardly have garnered you that much money. And you owe most of your profits on it to your family and friends, from what you told me.”

  “It’s not ginseng money.”

  “What, then?”

  “I own a share in a gold field. And it has started producing.”

  “How is that possible?” Liu Rushi frowned. “Is it back in Grantville? Here in China, gold mines are a government monopoly. Silver mines, too.”

  “It is not in China. This China, that is. It’s in Taiwan, where I grew up. I am in partnership with Zheng Zhilong.”

  “So, you have already earned enough from this gold field, in a year, to pay off my contract? I fear that ‘mother’ won’t let me go for less than a thousand taels.”

  Her “mother” was the traditional in-house euphemism for the brothel house madam. A tael was about thirty-eight grams of silver, and bought one or two shoulder loads of grain.

  “Well, not exactly. Enough to pay off half of it, but I was told that I can get an advance against royalties from Zheng Zhilong if I needed it.”

  “An advance? You mean he is loaning you the money. But when will the loan come due? On the Double Five?” She was referring to the fifth day of the fifth month, the second of the three traditional deadlines for repaying debts.

  “No, he will give me until next New Year’s to repay him, with a one-tenth markup. Is that high?”

  “It’s not high, but what other income do you have coming in over the next year, so you can pay the principal and interest then?”