Reardon Miller peered through the blinds.
Christine came up behind him. "What are you doing, Mr. Miller?"
"There's a busker out there. He's drawing quite a crowd. Never thought I'd hear someone playing 'Yesterday' while looking like an escapee from the Renaissance Faire. Give a whole new meaning to the word, don't you think?"
He turned to face her. "I am sorry the aluminum idea didn't work out. You're looking cheerful, so I assume that you've come up with something else."
Christine drew herself up, and announced, "Rhubarb."
"Sounds like a password to a speakeasy in a Groucho Marx movie. Why rhubarb?"
"The 1911 encyclopedia said that rhubarb was grown in Iceland. And I asked around and rhubarb is more expensive in the here-and-now than cinnamon, opium or saffron. You're looking at around sixteen shillings a pound." That worked out to more than three hundred USE dollars.
Reardon nodded. "What's the catch?"
"What do you mean?"
"If the price is high, it's for a reason. It's hard to grow, or it comes from far away, or they shoot you if you try to take it from where it grows naturally, or it's illegal. Find out what's the catch."
Christine sighed. "I will."
****
"By the King of the Night," said Cornelis Janszoon van Sallee. "I almost wish I hadn't thought to look up what the American books said about the future of al-Maghrib." In Arabic, the "al-Maghrib" meant the setting sun, and by extension, the western limit of Islamic expansion-the coast of North Africa. Which, Cornelis had learned, had become the twentieth century countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
Cornelis was the son of the Corsair Admiral Jan Janszoon-Murad Reis-and his father had sent him to Grantville to study their military technology. Garbled rumors of their mechanical marvels had come even to Sale in coastal Morocco, the capital of the Pirate Republic of Bou Regreg, and the home of what the English called the "Sallee Rovers."
"Forewarned is forearmed, sir," said Sergio Antonelli. Antonelli, who had visited Grantville before, was captured by Cornelis' father and commandeered to serve as Cornelis' servant, guide and protector during his stay in Christian Europe. Antonelli's son remained in Sale, as a hostage.
Cornelis took another bite from the American apple in his hand. "This is quite good, but I've had enough. Want the rest?"
Sergio accepted it gratefully.
Cornelis returned to his earlier train of thought. "Still, this Thomas Jefferson-may the fleas of a thousand camels infest his armpits-humiliated the Algerines. The Tripolitans, too. I fear that this Michael Stearns would be no kinder to those of the true faith than Jefferson, and that his ships will be more powerful."
"There would be no reason for the Americans to harm your people if you didn't take slaves," said Antonelli. It was something he wouldn't have dared to say a few months ago, when their trip began, but Janszoon even in the beginning had been strict but not cruel, and lately had shown him some small kindnesses. Like the offer of the apple.
"Yes, well, all unbelievers are fair game. Besides, if my father made peace with all countries today, he would lose his head on the morrow. We must have a nation to cruise against, the richer and weaker the better.
"But perhaps my father will make a peace treaty, or even an alliance, with the USE. Are they not at war with the English, the French and the Spanish? Are we not their friends, as the enemies of their enemies?"
Antonelli objected to this reasoning. "Temporarily, at least, there is peace. The members of the League of Ostend have been licking their wounds since June of last year."
"Pah," said Janszoon. "I would have liked to have seen the USE forces at war. Here in Grantville, all I have seen fired are a few small arms. They are excellent weapons, but I need more to impress my father."
Antonelli nodded. "We could visit the airfield and watch the planes take off and land. "
Janszoon clapped his hands. "Excellent idea."
"And we could go up to Magdeburg, see the Swedish troops at drill, and continue on to Hamburg where the ironclads were in action. Perhaps an ironclad will even be in port."
"Even better!"
Antonelli had finished the apple and was about to toss the core away.
"Wait, give it to me," Cornelis ordered.
Antonelli handed it over. Cornelis hefted it, and threw it at a squirrel that was sitting on a stump some yards away, licking its paws. It squawked indignantly when it was struck.
"A hit! A palpable hit!" Cornelis crowed. "I am quite the marksman, am I not? Too bad that military technology has advanced a bit beyond stone throwing."
****
Christine looked disapprovingly at Reardon Miller's desk. "It's a mess, Mr. Miller. I could organize it for you."
"No, please don't," he admonished. "I know where everything is; I have a system. Anyway, what can I do for you?"
"You were right, Mr. Miller."
"It's so nice to have a young lady tell me that. Or a lady of any age, now that I think about it. What was I right about?"
"The price of rhubarb is high because it comes all the way from China. By the time we could get the seeds from the Chinese and have the Icelanders raise a crop, the captives would have died of old age."
"I see. So, what's next?"
"Back to the library, I guess."
"Are you sure?"
Christine paused. Miller suddenly seemed fascinated by the papers on his desk.
"That . . . sounds like a trick question. . . ."
Miller started humming the "waiting for the contestants to answer the big question" music from Jeopardy.
"Please, Mr. Miller, I'm an apprentice researcher. Take pity on me." She batted her eyelashes at him in an exaggerated manner.
"It's a mistake to rely exclusively on books, Miss Onofrio. Never underestimate the value of intelligence collected by talking to human beings."
"Human beings. . . . Oh, like the garden club members?"
Miller nodded. "There are those in town who like rhubarb pie. So perhaps you can find some rhubarb seeds in Grantville. Bit less of a trip than China, don't you think?"
****
"Well, Hannah, for your sake, I hope you've produced an egg today," said Catherine Genucci.
"Come on, girl, let me have a peek." She tried to shoo Hannah out of her nest.
Hannah the Chicken from Hell declined to cooperate.
"Come on, now, be a nice lady, and . . . owww!" Hannah had pecked her.
Catherine licked the wound. "Oh, you nasty b . . . b . . . beast. I hope you're still barren, and I'll take the axe to your neck myself."
This charming pastoral scene was interrupted by a visitor. "Hi, Kathi!"
"Huh . . . Oh, hi, Christine. I thought you were working at the GRC." Christine and Kathi were born the same year, and knew each other from both school and church.
"I am, I'm here on business. So, are you the Queen of Hearts today?"
"The Queen . . . Oh, 'off with her head.' I hope so."
"I don't suppose you grow rhubarb here?"
"Rhubarb, no. But Mom might know who does. You want to talk to her?"
****
"Some more milk and cookies?" asked Fran Genucci.
"No thank you, Mrs. Genucci," said Christine. " But I hope you can answer some questions for me, being a Master Gardener and all."
"Well, I can try."
"Who around here has rhubarb seed? And how easy is it to grow?"
"Well, not me. I am more of a flower gardener, as perhaps you've noticed." She gestured vaguely in the direction of the front yard. "But there's rhubarb in Grantville, that's for sure. I think Mildred has it in her garden." Mildred was Fran's cousin, once removed, and another Garden Club member.
"But before you head over there, Christine, you ought to know, that people usually don't grow rhubarb from seed. It takes too long-two years, I think-and they don't grow true."
****
"Fran's right," said Mildred. "Wait until the plants ar
e four or five years old, then divide the crown. You should be able to get eight or ten divisions from a single parent."
"But would they survive a trip to Iceland?"
"I'm sorry, dear, I am not sure. That's weeks? Months? I suppose they'd have to sit in pots on a ship. Perhaps Fran's nephew Philip, would know? He's the one that stowed away on a ship to Suriname, because he was gooey-eyed over that botanist Maria Vorst, from Leiden. He came back with plant specimens."
Mildred cocked her head. "Why Iceland, if I may ask?"
Christine told her.
"Oh, the poor man. Well, I can explain to you how to grow and propagate rhubarb, and give you some divisions, and a seed pod too, but I can't make any promises that they won't be D.O.A."
****
"I . . . I . . . I'm back," Christine announced. With a pseudo-Austrian accent.
Reardon Miller laughed. If anyone looked less like Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was Christine Onofrio. He motioned for her to sit down.
"It's strange," she said. "According to the 1911 encyclopedia, Prosper Alpinus was growing rhubarb in 1608, in Padua. And he gave seeds to Parkinson, who gave them to a 'Sir Matthew Lister,' supposedly physician to Charles I. I was puzzled, since I heard that William Harvey was Charles' physician, so I spoke to Thomas Hobbes." The philosopher had come to Grantville in 1633, escorting young William Cavendish on his "grand tour," and after learning how the powers-that-be reacted to his writings in the old time line, had decided it would be healthier not to return to England.
"Hobbes says that at least as of when he left London, Lister had not been knighted, but that he had indeed been one of King Charles' physicians, and had served James I and Queen Anne previously.
"So I don't understand. If the Italians and the English both have the plant, why is it still so rare and expensive? The price I told you was from 1656!"
Miller clucked his tongue. "Your generation remembers the internet, so you expect everything to be communicated instantaneously. In the old days-and we are now living in the 'really old days'-information moved slowly, and people were even slower to capitalize on that information. I imagine that both Alpinus and Lister were thinking small. They found a trophy plant for their own herbal gardens, and they used it in their own medical practices, and that was it. Did the encyclopedia say when serious commercial production began in Europe?"
"1777," she admitted, "and then based on seeds a pharmacist got from the Russians in 1762."
"Hah! You see what I mean? Over a century to go from academic curiosity to commercial crop. But I don't doubt it will happen faster in this new time line. Just not in weeks or even months."
Christine pondered this. "Still, it doesn't look likely that there'll be much of an export market for Icelandic rhubarb, even if I can get it there safely. The English are ahead of us. And if they don't move forward with commercial production now, they can do so soon so pretty quickly once they hear what the Icelanders are doing. And the herb will grow pretty much anywhere in northern Europe, even here in Germany."
Reardon reassured her. "It may not be the solution to the ransom problem, but I am sure that the Icelanders would appreciate some more variety in their diet. I wouldn't imagine that fruit trees grow among all that ice and snow, and rhubarb makes a good fruit substitute. So it's progress, of a sort."
Hamburg, Germany
The ex-militiaman gestured toward a large pile of rubble. "That's what used to be the Wallanlagen. The main river fortress of Hamburg."
Cornelis Janszoon studied the ruins. There were multiple overlapping craters. A dozen? Two dozen? Cornelis lost count after a while. And the craters were deep, perhaps one or two fathoms. Some kind of mortar bomb? he wondered.
"How did they get a fleet down the river?"
"Fleet?" The German spat. "Just four ships engaged us. What they call 'ironclads.'"
'What range did they fire at?"
"A bit over a hundred yards." He pointed with the hook he now had in place of a hand. "That's where the lead demon-ship anchored."
Cornelis thought about this. That was point blank range even for a swivel gun. It wouldn't even be necessary to elevate the gun. A twenty-four pounder could shoot straight up to 300 yards, and had a maximum range of perhaps 4,500 yards. The ironclads should have been under fire from the fort for a long time.
"How many did you sink?"
"Sink! We barely scuffed the paint off them." It was an exaggeration, but not much of one; the Constitution , the lead ironclad, had picked up just a few dents. "After shooting at them for half an hour or more."
"Antonelli, when we get into Hamburg proper, I want you to commission some starving artist or another to sketch this scene for me. And another of the ironclads in action. I'll need something to show my father."
"Yes, sir. Interesting that the Swede hasn't rebuilt the Wallanlagen for his own use, now that he controls Hamburg."
The militiaman shrugged. "Perhaps it isn't worth rebuilding. Not if it would have to fend off ironclads, at least."
"I can think of another reason," said Cornelis. "To remind everyone that passes up or down the Elbe of just what his ironclads can do."
Cornelis couldn't help but imagine what those same ironclads would do to his home, the pirate town of Sallee. Or even to the more heavily fortified Algiers or Tunis.
The Barbary pirates had seen punitive fleets come and go. In 1620, Mansel had taken an English fleet massing almost five hundred cannon to Algiers, but all it accomplished was the release of the crews of two recently captured English ships. The same year, six Spanish warships exchanged fire with the Algerian harbor batteries; there was no damage on either side. The French didn't have a Mediterranean fleet that could seriously threaten Algiers until 1636, and its attack of 1637 was completely ineffectual, according to the histories.
The Dutch had better luck. In 1624, a Dutch squadron commanded by Admiral Lambert had appeared before Algiers. Lambert didn't threaten to lay siege to the city; he had captured some corsair vessels en route and threatened to hang the Algerians if the Dutch slaves weren't released. The pasha, agha and divan of Algiers conferred, and declined; Lambert made good his threat and promptly went off to collect more hostages. On his second appearance, the Algerians capitulated to his demand.
The treaty of 1626 provided that the corsairs could stop a Dutch ship and seize "enemy"-typically, Spanish-goods and passengers, but could not molest the crew, or seize other goods and passengers. It also provided that the Dutch were free to come to Algiers to trade, save that they couldn't export certain "forbidden items" of military value. The Dutch brought in herring, cheese, butter, and even beer and gunpowder, and took away wheat, hides, wax, and horses.
Still, in his time studying history and military technology at the Grantville Public Library, Cornelis had seen the handwriting on the wall. The encyclopedias revealed that the Barbary states had been protected as much by rivalry among the European powers-which saw the corsairs as tools to be used against their foes-as by the cannon and scimitars of their corsairs and the walls and batteries of their strongholds.
While for two centuries, most punitive expeditions, even the most successful, had ended with the Europeans paying ransom or tribute, once there was a general European peace, an Anglo-Dutch squadron had mercilessly bombarded Algiers, causing (and experiencing) much damage, and cowed Algiers and Tunis into temporary submission. And eventually the French invaded.
It was clear to Cornelis that military technology was going to develop at an accelerated rate, thanks to the appearance of Grantville, and it was only a matter of time before a single power dominated Europe.
And it was also clear that if that power were the USE, it would then act aggressively to suppress the slave trade, that of the Barbary Coast as well as the New World.
But in al-Maghrib, to make peace with all of the European powers would be suicide. Literally, not just politically.
Grantville
"Watcha' up to?"
Christine Onofrio, sitting on t
he bench eating her bag lunch, looked up. Her boyfriend was smiling down at her.
She smiled in return. "GRC stuff. I may have promised more than I can deliver."
"That Iceland project?"
'That's right. I'm still trying to figure out a way they can pay that ransom money."
"You know what I think? They should use the money to build a fleet and blast the pirates to smithereens!"
"That's your solution for every problem. Blow it up or ignore it. Very male."
He shrugged. "Why make things complicated?"
Christine wiped her mouth with a napkin. "I thought that perhaps, in the last four centuries, the Icelanders found something valuable on their island. I mean, look at Alaska. It used to be called 'Seward's Folly,' but then they found gold and later oil."
She took a deep breath. "Unfortunately, I was wrong. They don't have any minerals. No coal, no iron, and certainly no gold. No exotic animals or plants, either.
"So that leaves, as Iceland's fabulous resources, fish and sheep. And, of course, lava and ice. That's it. This project is 'Christine's Folly', I'm afraid."
"Talking about ice, would you like to go out for ice cream? I think you need cheering up."
Christine rose. "Twist my arm."
****
In-between licks, Christine said, "We're lucky to be in Grantville, you know. Plenty of electricity to run freezers, plenty of freezers to make ice. If we were off in Amsterdam, or Rome, we'd be out of luck. No ice in the summer. Ergo, no ice cream."
"Ugh," her boyfriend commented. "What did they do in the States, before there were refrigerators?"
"Don't know. Why'd you stop eating?"
He gave her a slightly sheepish look. "I was slurping it up too quickly, got an ice cream headache."
Christine snickered. "You weren't slurping it, you were inhaling it. Like a human vacuum cleaner."
****
Egilsson froze. That man. He had seen that man before. Where?
At the library, yes. But that wasn't why his pulse was suddenly racing. By the time he forced the deeper memory to the surface, the man and his companion had left the cafe, and disappeared out of sight.
He called over the waitress. "The man that just left-the swarthy one with the odd hat. I think he dropped this." Egilsson held up the book that he had been reading. "Do you know his name? I should bring it to him."
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