Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

He rose slowly, put on his best face, nodded politely. “Frau Hill. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Please sit,” she said, pointing to a tiny wooden chair in front of her desk. “I’m just grading papers here. Yours is somewhere in the pile.” She chuckled. “And I’m sure it’s just fine. Your projects usually are.”

  “Thank you, Frau Hill.”

  “So, what can I do for you today, young man?”

  Her smile was genuine, as it usually was. Arnie squirmed in his seat, trying to find the comfort spot, hoping that her pleasantness would persist once he told her what he needed to say. He sighed deeply, nodded, and held up the papers in his hand so that the teacher could see the black-and-white portrait on the first page.

  “Frau Hill, as you know, my project was about this man. One of the greatest scientists OTL, and certainly fascinating to me.” Arnulf used the term “OTL” without thinking about the conundrum involved. The initials stood for Our Time Line—and referred not to his own, but to that of the American up-timers. But with the passage of time the phrase had simply become part of the lexicon of the seventeenth century.

  He laid the papers in his lap. “As you instructed, I researched his life and then did my assignment. But I did not stop there. I…dug deeper and found out more about him and his family. And, well…I…”

  He paused, and Frau Hill said, “Yes? What is it, Arnie?”

  He sighed again, wishing there was a shot of whiskey in front of him so he could down it like Marlowe, and find his courage at the bottom of the glass. “I think I made a terrible mistake, Frau Hill.”

  “How so?”

  Arnie straightened in his chair. He cleared his throat and said with a half-smile, “I sent a letter to his mother.”

  September 1636

  Market Overton, Rutland

  Hannah Ayscough could hear her mother, father, and brother William arguing over a parcel that had arrived earlier that day. Now it was dark, time for bed, and there was a lot of agitated hand waving and muffled frustration as they sat around the kitchen table in the shadow light of the candle, arguing over…what? Hannah peeked through the crack in her bedroom wall, trying to figure it out.

  In the middle of the table sat a large envelope that William had torn open. Beside it lay a ruffled stack of papers unlike any that she had ever seen, thick white and perfectly rectangular. Occasionally, her brother would pick them up, wave them in the air, then let them fall back to the table. He seemed genuinely delighted by what the papers contained, unlike her mother and father, whose faces, in the faint candle glow, seemed perplexed, confused, and sometimes horrified. Mother especially, who was close to tears on a few occasions. Father’s expression was harder to divine, as his back was turned to Hannah’s door, but he would occasionally look over his shoulder, as if to ensure that his daughter was not eavesdropping. Hannah would pull her eye away from the crack lest he see it, wait for him to turn away, then eavesdrop again. This went on for a long while.

  They concluded their discussion. Father rubbed out the candle, and he and her mother bid William goodbye. Her brother left, and Father folded the papers up and placed them back in the envelope. Then he and Mother went to their room, letting the waning embers from the fireplace cast dark shadows across the floor.

  Hannah loved her father, but he could be careless. There it lay, the parcel still on the table, beside the cold candle. Hannah waited until the house grew still, then she carefully opened her door a margin and slipped into the firelight.

  Quietly, she drew the papers out of the envelope, unfolded them, and tiptoed over to the fireplace. Father must have forgotten that I can read, she thought as she bent the papers toward the light to get a better look. Well, she wasn’t as good as her brother, true, but she could read most anything given time. She took pride in the fact that she was one of the only girls her age in Market Overton who could read better than most boys. So she read, though the words on the paper had been copied so small that it was difficult for her to parse out their meaning. She’d never seen such small and precise script in all her life. More perfect than any print type that she had ever read before. Where had this come from?

  She flipped over the envelope. On the front was scribbled her name and the address of her home. That was all.

  “Who sent me a letter?” she wondered, not realizing that she had said the words out loud.

  “Grantville,” William said. “Well, not the town, but a boy there named Arnulf Langenberg.”

  Hannah jumped. She had been so focused on the papers that she had failed to notice her brother slipping back into the house. For a moment, she was scared, like a cat caught with a mouse, uncertain what to do next, but William put a finger to his lips to shush her. “Shh. Quiet, now. Let’s not wake them up.”

  “William, I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “I didn’t mean to—”

  He waved her off. “Don’t worry about it, little sweet. It is my fault. I should have taken the papers with me.”

  Like he used to do when they were younger, William sat cross-legged on the floor and motioned for her to sit in his lap. She did so, snuggling into his chest and letting his hand rest on her shoulder. Hannah smiled like old times and laid her head back. William rocked a little.

  “Why is someone sending me a letter from Grantville?” she asked.

  She had heard of the place, this town that had come through time to plant itself right in the middle of Germany. The people—the so-called “up-timers”—who had come through the ring looked just like them, or so she had been told by folk in town who had visited London and had seen them first-hand. William claimed to have seen one, in fact. But he had kept quiet about it for the most part, declining to provide any real details about what they looked like, how they spoke, how they sounded, who they were. What did it matter here anyway, he had argued, outside the craziness of London’s dangerous politics? Out here, what mattered was rain water, crops, soil, bread. What mattered here was day-to-day survival.

  “Read it,” William said. “Take your time.”

  She did so, squinting at the bigger words, those that she had not seen before, odd ones like Principia Mathematica and “calculus” and phrases such as “corpuscular theory of light” and “motion and universal gravitation.” Clearly, the papers were describing the life and times of an important person, of his accomplishments and deeds. The man it spoke of was a Christian, it seemed, but he had not always been loyal to the notion of a Holy Trinity.

  “Well, what do you think?” William asked.

  Hannah flipped over the last piece of paper and let it all fall into her lap. “I don’t understand most of it. Who is this person it talks about?”

  William stroked her hair and laid a gentle kiss on her forehead. “He is the greatest scientist the world will ever know. And he is your son.”

  Hannah shook her head. “I don’t have a son.”

  “I know, Hannah. But you will…you will.”

  September 1636

  Grantville High School

  “What in the world possessed you to write her a letter?”

  Arnie wouldn’t say that Frau Hill was mad exactly, but she wasn’t happy either. “Well, at first, my thoughts were to just say ‘Hello,’ you know? I thought it might be nice for her to know that she will be the mother of Isaac Newton. I just think it’s neat that we know who she is—even before she realizes who she is—and what her future will hold. I thought it might be nice for her to know.

  “But then I spoke to a friend in the Committees of Correspondence, and he—”

  “You have friends in the CoCs?”

  Arnie nodded. “Just one. He wants me to join after graduation. Anyway, he was telling me what was going on in London, how the king was rounding people up whom he had learned would be part of the civil war there. He told me how they were being imprisoned, executed, drawn and quartered. He told me about a Frau named Jenny Geddes and how the CoCs got her out of danger. Then I got to thinking about Galileo and all of his troubles. I got scared, you
know, for her life, and for his father’s life. I thought, if they can go after someone simply because she would—or just might—toss a chair at a minister’s head, what would they do to the mother of a man who, by the accounts I’ve read, was devout, but not always loyal to all the precepts of the church? Would these people be afraid of what Newton would stand for and for the accomplishments in his life? I mean, certainly a man of his power and influence matters more than a person tossing chairs. They might go after his mother just to make sure she never meets her future husband. They might even kill her. So…I warned her in the letter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Arnie sighed. “I told her to be careful. I told her who she is, who her husband will be, and sent her copies of these papers so that she would know who her son would become.”

  “Jesus!”

  It was not uncommon for up-timers to blaspheme, but they rarely did it in front of children, and in a school, no less. But Arnie could see that Frau Hill had moved from mild agitation to outright anger. If she could get away with it, she’d probably slap him.

  She rose and walked to the window. She folded her arms. “When did you send this letter?”

  “Three weeks ago,” he said. “Through my CoC friend.”

  Frau Hill shook her head. “Arnie, do you understand what is called ‘The Butterfly Effect’?”

  Arnie nodded. “Some of it, yes. But I was trying to keep that from happening. I want them to meet, I want them to—”

  “This is an entirely new timeline,” Frau Hill interrupted, turning away from the window. “The Ring of Fire created a whole new world, Arnie. And we don’t know what all that means yet, but what we do know is that things have changed…a lot! People are alive today that died OTL. Important people whose deaths up-time affected the way in which history unfolded there. Gustavus Adolphus is a good example of that. He died up-time in 1632. What will his continued existence mean for us all in years to come? We simply don’t know yet.

  “But for Newton…he won’t be born for another six, seven years, Arnie. His mother and father weren’t supposed to meet for another four, five years I’d imagine. It’s possible that in this new timeline, they aren’t supposed to meet at all.”

  “I don’t understand that,” Arnie said. “Why not? If they meet and we ensure that they survive and get married, why wouldn’t Sir Isaac Newton be born?”

  Frau Hill shook her head. “Some people think that an entirely new timeline means changes in our DNA as well. They say that even within a short time after the Ring of Fire the environmental impact would—” She waved her hand. “Never mind. It involves genetics and it’s complicated. But it could be that it is impossible, no matter what happens, for the man ‘Isaac Newton’ to be born.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Frau Hill shrugged. “I don’t know if I do either, but what we do know is that, no matter how well-meaning your intentions were, your letter will have an effect on the lives of those you sent it to, and probably a major one.”

  Arnie felt low. He slunk down in his chair, wishing he could become invisible, wishing he could take back writing the letter. If I hadn’t sent it at all, perhaps things would have played out in the right way. But was that so? If what Frau Hill was saying were true, then Newton wouldn’t be born anyway, and thus, the letter would have no effect at all, other than to just needlessly worry those who had received it. But no, he couldn’t think that way. The stakes were too high. Something had to be said. Newton had to be born.

  “Let me ask you something, Arnie,” Frau Hill said, moving to stand next to his chair. “Why does it matter to you that Newton is born? I mean, our library here already has a fair amount of the knowledge that he gave the world. We don’t have it all, of course, but we know the most important things. We know of his laws of motion; we know of his work with gravity, his work with telescopes. We have calculus. The world already has the gifts that he gave us, and others in time can expand upon it. Why does he need to exist?”

  “Because he does.”

  “Why?”

  Arnie looked into Frau Hill’s eyes and saw that she was in full teacher mode. She was challenging him, pushing him to finally pause a moment and think critically about what he had done, and about what it meant to him.

  “Because…his birth added to the substance of the universe.”

  That paused her. Her expression changed. Arnie couldn’t fully read it, but she stepped back, went to her chair, and took a seat. “You’re a smart boy, Arnie. You’ll do well in life. But, a person lives and dies by the choices he makes. You’re old enough to understand that. The way I see it, there are only three conclusions that can be derived from this situation. One, the letter never reaches her; it’s lost, damaged, whatever. Or two, she gets the letter but can’t read it or understand what she is reading, and throws it away, and it has little or no effect. Or three, she gets the letter, reads it and understands it, and well…,” she smiled, though Arnie could tell that it was not from joy, “…in that case, we’ll have to see how the butterfly flaps its wings.”

  October 1636

  Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire

  William Ayscough stepped aside a pace, lest his shoes and the hem of his coat get spattered by the phlegm spewing from Isaac Newton’s mouth and nose. On his knees, the man seemed ill; there was no “seem” about it. He was ill, and William had a notion to turn right around and walk away. Not worthy of my sister, he thought as he checked his clothing and wriggled his nose against the stench of manure and tilled field grass. Not worthy at all.

  “My apologies,” Isaac said, wiping his face with a dirty cloth. He sniffled, coughed. “Can’t seem to shake this malady.”

  “No apologies necessary, sir,” William said, offering a nicer cloth. Isaac refused it. “I hope you don’t mind me arriving unannounced, but I trust that you received my letter?”

  Isaac stood, turned away from his work, and gave a look of embarrassment. He nodded. “I got it.”

  William was cautious. “But you didn’t read it.”

  Isaac kicked up a clump of dirt, knelt and took it in his hand. He broke it into tiny pieces and let them fall to the ground. “I’m a farmer, priest. Not a scholar.”

  No doubt about that. “To be clear, sir, I’m an Anglican Rector. Had you read the letter, you would have known the reason for my visit. Allow me to explain.”

  William laid everything out. He described the letter and associated papers that the Ayscough family had received from Grantville. When he was done, he said, “So, what do you say to all that?”

  Isaac shrugged, but William could see the man’s eyes widen, his skin turn a damp white. “What am I supposed to say? I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Oh, it’s true. The history has already been written. You will marry my sister, Hannah, and you will father a child with your name. And that child will become the great scientist, Sir Isaac Newton.”

  The farmer bent over and sneezed again into his cloth. He wiped his nose, shook his head. “Whatever children I have will be farmers. I can promise you that.”

  “Not this one. This one will go on to do great things in science and mathematics, make great discoveries, all in the eyes of God. And I will help him achieve those things.”

  Isaac gave a wry smile. “I see what this is.” He stepped closer to William, eyed him carefully. “This isn’t about me or your sister. It’s about you, isn’t it? You have some part to play in this that you aren’t telling me. What is it, sir? Did God tell you to find me? Or was it the king? What is he paying you to bother me in my own home?”

  Almighty, give me strength. “I can assure you, sir, I am not here at the behest of the Crown nor—pray, forgive me—God our Father. I am here to protect my sister. And to protect you.”

  Isaac raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  William looked left, right, to ensure that no one was near. He leaned in closer. “Our king has been busy with the incarceration and execution of tho
se he considers a danger to his rule. He is doing this because of the histories that he has read from the up-timers in Germany, histories that tell him who will turn against him, and when. I do not know if he or anyone else would consider the birth of your son, my nephew, a danger to the state. His birth may very well be a danger to the religious community due to his disbelief in the Holy Trinity; his voice will carry weight because he will be such a prominent scientist and a great thinker. It is hard to say for sure; things are chaotic right now. But the devil is on the move, and you and my sister may very well be in his way.”

  Isaac considered this for a moment, turned away from William and blew his nose. He coughed, tucked away his cloth, then said, “Then she and I will never meet. That settles your problem. If she and I never meet, we’ll never have children. We’ll be a threat to no one.”

  William shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. A son will be born to you and Hannah.”

  Isaac huffed. “You’re Anglican. You don’t believe in predestination.”

  “What I am, sir, is a brother who fears for the safety of his sister. The information that I have just told you will, in time, get out, and when it does, I cannot control who will receive it, or how they will react to it. My sister’s life matters.”

  “Then go and protect her,” Isaac said, flinging an arm in the air as if he were shooing away flies. “Leave me out of it.”

  “That isn’t possible either. Not anymore. We’re all part of this matter now, and we must ensure that your son is born. He matters most of all.”

  “Why? Why does he matter so much?”

  William smiled. “Because he will add to the substance of the universe.”

  On that, he agreed with Arnulf Langenberg, the young German boy who had sent the materials from Grantville. There was no disputing that claim in William’s mind. A boy like his nephew is born to humanity only once in a lifetime.