Ring of Fire II

by Eric Flint

"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."