1636- the China Venture

by Eric Flint

  Mazzare shook his head. “I know where China is, and its general shape, that’s it. But have an atlas in my office, so you can show me what you’re talking about. Once I find the atlas, that is.”

  The office was messy, with books piled on tables and chairs. “One of these days I’ll get this straightened up,” Mazzare muttered. “Now, where is that atlas? It should be there, but it isn’t.… Oh, I know where it is.”

  He pulled it out from the middle of a stack, and paged through it until he came to China. “Okay, I see Macao.… There’s an unnamed river whose mouth is just to its west—”

  “That’s the Pearl.”

  “It divides into two branches, and one branch goes northeast to Qingyuan, Shaoguan, and Nanxiong. That’s right at the border between Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, and I see ‘Nan Ling’ in bold nearby.”

  “The Nan Mountains.”

  “On the Jiangxi side, the town nearest Nanxiong is called Dayu.”

  “Between them is the Plum Pass.”

  “And then I see the headwater for another river not far away—it looks like it’s called the Gan—and that runs north through Guangzhou, Ji’an, and Nanchang into the Yangtze.”

  “And then you take the Yangtze past Nanjing to the Grand Canal, and that north to Beijing.”

  Mazzare raised his eyebrows. “I don’t understand. The Portuguese have plenty of ships. Why not just sail up the coast to Tianjin, which is just a hundred miles from Beijing? There seems to be a river going in the right direction, too. Or if Tianjin doesn’t have a port, sail to the mouth of the Yangtze and then take the Grand Canal.”

  “For more than a century, that coast has been tormented by pirates. The inland route is considered safer. Much safer.”

  Mazzare checked the clock. “We have an hour until the 5:30 p.m. Saturday mass, and half an hour until reconciliations begin. I am going to go change now.”

  Mazzare entered the sacristy, but left the door open so he and Kircher could continue conversing. The sacristy was a bit cramped and so, except in emergencies, it was used by one priest at a time. Mazzare pulled the alb over his head and worked his arms through the sleeves.

  “I can’t help but wonder what will happen to China now,” said Kircher, his voice raised so Mazzare could still hear him. “Will the bandit army of Li Zicheng still take Beijing in 1644? Will the commander of the fort at Shanhaiguan Pass still decide that the Manchu in the north are the lesser evil, and let them across the Great Wall?”

  “Bandit army?” asked Mazzare. “That sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

  Kircher chuckled. “I understand. You West Virginians hear the word ‘bandits,’ and you think of Jesse James or Billy the Kid—some desperado leading a small group of outlaws. The Chinese also use the term to refer to what amounted to mass uprisings, whose rebels—the ‘bandits’—were a mixture of ordinary outlaws, deserters and mutineers from the army, mistreated bondservants, and starving peasants. The ‘bandit armies’ could be tens or even hundreds of thousands of men in strength, and dynasties could be overthrown by them. Indeed, that’s what happened in the old time line in 1644; Li Zicheng’s bandit army took Beijing, ending the Ming Dynasty. And then, a year later, the Manchu overthrew him.”

  Mazzare studied himself in the sacristy mirror, adjusting the stole until the ends hung evenly. “Well, then, in answer to your two questions, I suppose that will in part depend on whether your Jesuit colleagues in Beijing warn the Ming Emperor of the dangers.”

  “The decision as to whether to do that is, what’s that American phrase? ‘Above my pay grade.’ But my personal inclination is to be cautious. Whatever their faults—which I don’t doubt are legion—I suspect the Ming are better than any of the alternatives. Or not as bad, at any rate.”

  Mazzare donned the chasuble. This was not the twentieth-century version, but the kind that had become popular in the early seventeenth century. He emerged from the sacristy, and asked Kircher, “How do I look?”

  “Turn slowly, arms out,” Kircher commanded. Mazzare complied.

  “I see nothing amiss,” said Kircher. He paused. “I would like to learn Chinese. Do you think the Chengs would teach me? Even though I am a different faith?”

  Larry shrugged. “I don’t think that they’d care that you’re Catholic. Whether they would have time is another matter. Adjusting their engineering consulting firm to a seventeenth-century basic infrastructure isn’t trivial. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask them.”

  “I would have to wait, in any event, until your return from Italy. Until then, I will be too busy.”

  “Yes, thank you for agreeing to assume my parochial duties while I am away. It will be interesting to see what the Pope makes of all of the up-time books I sent him by way of Mazarini.

  “Speaking of China, I wonder what he’ll decide about the Chinese Rites Controversy; it’s mentioned in those books. Do you think he’ll follow the lead of Pius XII? If Clement XI hadn’t decided that paying respect to Confucius and to ancestors was forbidden to Christians, and thus provoked the Chinese to ban Christianity until British gunboats forced them to change their mind, the Chengs might be Catholic rather than Evangelical.”

  Chapter 3

  Engineering

  “Excuse me. You’re Mike Song, aren’t you?”

  Mike Song stopped walking and turned to face the speaker, a young man in up-time dress. “Yes, I am. I guess it wasn’t hard to figure out. Only a half dozen Chinese-Americans in Grantville.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said the young man. “Your aunt and uncle, your cousins, and your brother. You’re too old to be confused with your cousin Jason, and Danny has duty with the reserves this week.”

  Mike frowned. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

  The young man offered his hand. “My name’s Eric Garlow.”

  Mike shook hands with him. “Garlow…Garlow…I don’t remember anyone of that name living in Grantville. But you’re obviously an up-timer.”

  “I’m from Charleston, West Virginia. I first met Tom at a Pirates game in Pittsburgh, when I was at U Pitt and he was at WVU. My sister Cynthia was also at WVU, and she was a friend of Rita’s.”

  “Oh! You were with the wedding party! But that means—”

  “Yes, all my relatives except Cynthia were left up-time. My parents, my sister Savannah, and so on.”

  Mike winced. “I know something of how that feels. My parents were left up-time, in North Carolina.”

  “Ouch.”

  “At least I had my aunt and uncle; in fact, I started working for them at Kitt and Cheng Engineering, as a drafting trainee. Which, obviously, you know,” Mike said, waving toward the KCE office behind them. “So what can I do for you?”

  “Well, I work for Don Francisco,” Eric said.

  “Really?” asked Mike, eyes widening. “He’s some kind of advisor to Mike Stearns, isn’t he?”

  Eric smiled. “Our understanding is that you were born in Taiwan in 1980.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And how well do you speak Chinese?”

  “I studied standard Chinese in school. That’s the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.”

  “Putonghua,” Eric interjected. It meant “common speech.”

  “Yes, though we call it Guoyu in Taiwan. But how did you know? And how did you get the tones right?”

  “I majored in Chinese,” Eric admitted.

  “That’s nifty, but…not much use in the here and now,” said Mike.

  “You might be surprised,” said Eric. “Any there other flavors of Chinese that you speak?”

  Mike shrugged. “I also can speak Taiwanese. Given your field of study, I guess you know that it’s also called Hokkien, or Min Nan, and it’s spoken in Fujian on the mainland.”

  “I did know that, but I thought Taiwan barred its public use until after 1987 or so.”

  “I was a little kid back then so I don’t really remember, but I do remember that I spoke Mandarin at school and with my parent
s while I spoke Taiwanese with my friends and my grandparents. Well, my maternal grandmother at least; she was born on Taiwan before the KMT came. For that matter, if you speak Mandarin on Taiwan, you will probably throw in some Hokkien words without even thinking about it; they’ve been absorbed into Taiwanese Mandarin.

  “Other than Mandarin and Hokkien, I guess I know a little Wu. Grandpa Frederick came from Shanghai. That’s where the KMT stronghold was—Nanking, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. He escaped to Taiwan in 1949.

  “Were you trying to find someone to practice Chinese with? My aunt and uncle might be willing, now that KCE is running smoothly.”

  Eric held up his hand, and waited to answer until a stranger walked past them and turned the corner. “I would have approached them earlier if I hadn’t been stationed in Magdeburg until recently. And I’d really like to get in some language practice, too. But it was you that I was looking for today.” Eric accented the “you” with a finger point and furrowed brows, not unlike Uncle Sam on a World War I Army recruiting poster. “The New United States is thinking of sending a diplomatic mission to China. That’s a secret, by the way. And we’re wondering whether you might like to go. Because your country really needs you.”

  Mike whistled. “Sounds a lot more interesting than sitting at a drafting table drawing widgets for forty hours a week. But you know, I don’t have much in the way of technical skills to provide to the mission. I did well in high school, and I had two years at Carnegie Mellon. EE major. But I’m no Greg Ferrara.”

  “You have what we need.”

  “Wait. You said this was Don Francisco’s idea. I’ve heard that he’s not just a financial adviser; he’s some kind of spymaster. He’s Mike’s ‘M’! I bet…I bet it’s not just that I speak Chinese; it’s that I look Chinese. And I am the only young, unmarried Chinese guy in Grantville. You want me to be a spy.”

  “If need be.”

  “Well…I’ll think about it. Can I talk it over with my aunt and uncle?”

  “Sure, go ahead. Chances are that we will recruit them to teach Chinese language on an intensive basis to select members of the mission, even though they can’t be spared to go halfway around the world. So, yes, talk to them, but make it clear they can’t pass it on to anyone else. Think of this, at least for the moment, as top secret.” Eric grinned. “Not that we’ve got any formal security classifications in the oh-so-primitive here and now. There are times I’m really fond of the seventeenth century.”

  * * *

  Later that night, Mike Song studied himself in the mirror. He offered a hand to his reflection. “The name’s Song. Mike Song.”

  * * *

  As they sat in their family room facing their nephew Mike Song, Jason and Jennie Lee Cheng exchanged looks. With a fractional movement of her hand, Jennie Lee made it clear that it was up to Jason to speak. He’s a boy, after all, she seemed to say.

  “Mike, as you know, we’re very proud of the way you’ve carried on despite your parents being left up-time. You’ve grown up a great deal over the last period, but that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t benefit from your parents’ advice, and, with them separated from us by an act of providence, it’s up to us to stand in their stead.”

  Jason glanced at Jennie Lee, who nodded encouragingly. “If you were needed in the Army to defend Grantville from attack, it would be one thing. But we don’t see why you need to go halfway around the world to serve the New United States.”

  Mike reached for the mug of beer on the coffee table in front of him. “Eric Garlow says that China has stuff we’re going to need in a few years. And it’s going to take a few years to get there and convince them to give it to us. And they are a lot more likely to cooperate with someone who, well, looks Chinese than a ‘red-haired barbarian.’” That was what the Chinese called the Dutch.

  “I am sure that Eric Garlow is knowledgeable, in his own way,” Jason conceded, “but he has only limited knowledge of seventeenth-century economics and politics—”

  “Okay, but he is speaking for Don Francisco, and he’s an expert!”

  Jason’s eyes wandered to Jennie Lee, and his eyebrows semaphored “S.O.S.”

  “Of course he is, dear,” said Jennie Lee, “although we must remember that he comes from a society which is much more accustomed to taking risks than we are. Has he spoken about what the chances are of getting to China safely by sea? And what will you do when the Manchu invade in 1644?”

  “What she said,” said Jason, nodding vigorously.

  Mike shrugged. “Well, this ship is going to have the benefit of some up-time technology, I’m sure. So it will be less likely to be wrecked, or sunk by cannon fire, or whatever. And we don’t think the mission will be away for more than five years or so, so who cares about the Manchu?

  “And hey! I don’t think it’s going to be all that safe here in Europe. On the ship, I’ll be isolated, whereas Grantville gets lots of visitors…including bad germs, I bet. And it’s only a matter of time before the French and the Spanish rearm and counterattack.

  “And as for helping to defend Grantville, well, sure I’d want to do that, but a German mercenary could do that as well or better than I could. And don’t I have a special advantage when it comes to getting strategic stuff from the Chinese?”

  Jason Junior, who had been doing homework at the kitchen table one room over, suddenly called out, “And anyway, he’ll meet Chinese girls! Can’t do that in Europe!” Jason Junior had been showing interest in the opposite sex lately.

  “Junior, keep your mind on your homework and stay out of this,” Jason Senior snapped.

  Jennie Lee looked thoughtful.

  “If my country needs me to chat up Chinese girls, who am I to refuse the call of duty?” said Mike, pressing his advantage.

  In the silence that followed, they could hear the scratching of Jason Junior’s pen on paper as he worked on his assignment.

  “I am sure that if you gave Chinese lessons to the other people that are going, it will increase our chances of a successful mission and a safe voyage,” Mike added. “And, Uncle Jason, I just realized, I could take some of the ashes of your mother and father back to the homeland. Maybe even back to their ancestral village. That’s not something you can ask someone else on the mission, someone not a family member, to do. And while I can’t do the same for Aunt Jennie Lee, thanks to the Ring, I can take some kind of token over there for her.”

  “Well.… Maybe we should talk about more another time,” said Jason Senior and Jennie Lee, almost simultaneously. They smiled at each other briefly, in recognition that they had read each other’s mind.

  Jason Junior appeared silently at the doorway between the kitchen and the family room and gave Mike a thumbs-up. “Kids one million, parents zero,” he mouthed silently.

  Chapter 4

  The second examination session began early the morning of the eleventh day. By now, the routine was a familiar one to Yizhi. This time, the questions related to the Five Classics. These were the Book of Odes, the Book of Documents, the Book of Rites, the I Ching, and the Spring and Autumn Annals.

  Candidates were expected to specialize in one of the Five Classics; Yizhi’s choice was the I Ching, the Book of Changes. It was actually a family tradition; his great-grandfather Xuejian, his grandfather Dazhen, and his father Kongzhao had all written commentaries on the I Ching.

  Yizhi also had to quote, from memory, from the beginning of his answer to the question asked in the first session. This was to confirm that he was the same person who had taken the first part, but it made no sense to Yizhi. If a candidate had found someone to take the first exam in his place, wouldn’t the substitute just come the second time, too? But the rules were the rules.…

  * * *

  By the time the third and last session began, on the thirteenth day, Yizhi was feeling like a horse asked to race too soon after its last competition. But this round was the one that Yizhi had looked forward to the most; this was the essay on government policy. Yizhi was an
active member of the Fushe, the Restoration Society, which was a combination of a poetry appreciation club and a political action group.

  Yizhi read the first of the five policy essay topics:

  In the Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian observed that ever since people have existed, their rules have followed the movements of the Sun and the Moon, the planets and the stars. To bring order to the empire, nothing is more important than to promulgate a calendar that explains these movements.

  The orbits in the sky appear to be both regular and irregular. Regular, in that a method of computation may be used reliably for centuries, and irregular, in that the computations eventually stray from what is observed. Of those who have discoursed on the calendar from antiquity to the present, some say that there can be a theory by which the seeming irregularities may be explained, and others that these are irreducibles, and thus that the formulation of the calendar must be empirical.

  Why, Yizhi wondered, had the examiners put this topic on the test? Doubtless, the chief examiner was involved somehow in the calendar controversy, the struggle among the Confucian, Muslim and Jesuit branches of the Astronomical Bureau for primacy. But what answer was the chief examiner looking for? Did he favor theory or empiricism?

  Yizhi mulled over the question further, then started writing.

  “The Sage-King Yao directed his ministers Hsi and Ho to study the movements of the celestial bodies. Let us first assume that we rely on theory alone to predict these movements.

  “If a snowflake be large enough to be seen with the naked eye, it can be seen to have six branches, as the learned Han Ying observed in the Western Han dynasty. But if one studies the branches more closely, it is evident that they differ in detail from one snowflake to the next. Thus, at one level, snowflakes are regular, and at another, they are irregular.

  “The same is true of the Heavens. There are repeating patterns, which is a form of regularity, but the cycles are not identical, which is a form of irregularity. Regularities may combine in a complex manner to produce a seeming of irregularity, and the limitations of man and his instruments may make it impossible to distinguish this seeming from a true, divinely ordained irregularity.