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Stretching Out, Part Five: Riding the Tiger

Written by Iver P. Cooper

Marshall's Creek, Suriname River

Long Dry Season, 1634 (July-November 1634)

Maria Vorst sniffed the wound, and grimaced. "It's infected." Her patient shrugged stoically.

"How did it happen?"

Captain Marshall answered for her charge. "Not sure, but probably just a cut from razorgrass, or a spiny vine."

Maria shook her head. "The men have got to get into the habit of inspecting themselves from head to toe, every day. We're in a rainforest, for heaven's sake; any break in the skin is bad news. If it doesn't get infected, then maybe some fly decides it's a dandy place to lay eggs."

"I'll need to clean the wound, and put some antiseptic on it," continued Maria.

"Antiseptic?"

"Yes, from the Latin, 'against rottenness.' You remember my lecture don't you? The one on the Germ Theory?"

"Indeed. I had bad dreams several nights in a row. Little armored critters with sharp fangs and claws, hunting us in great packs."

"Back in Grantville, Lolly showed me what they look like under a microscope. Pretty dull actually. Little balls or rods, mostly." Maria, an artist whose family ran the Leiden botanical gardens, had received botanical and medical training in Grantville.

"Well, in my nightmare, they had fangs and claws."

Maria had come upriver on the yacht Eikhoorn to visit Captain Marshall and his little tobacco growing colony of English Puritans. And the nearby Indian tribe, who were tapping rubber for Maria's people.

Despite earlier tensions, the colonists at Marshall's Creek had welcomed the latest visit by the crew of the Eikhoorn. Especially by Maria. Not just because she was the first white woman most of them had seen since leaving England, but also because of her medical training in Grantville. She had made the rounds, treating the illnesses and injuries of Marshall's people.

"All right, you're going to need to hold still now," she told her patient. She cleaned the wound with a warm decoction of bark. She took out a little rubber pouch—it was easy to come by, now that the Indians near Marshall's Creek were tapping the local rubber trees—and squeezed out an ointment. It was the thickened sap of another tree. Maria had learned about both the bark and the sap from Indians down river, near the new Swedish colony of Gustavus.

Of course, the Marshall Creek Indians had their own remedies. As the Gustavan's "Science Officer," Maria spent quite a bit of time learning native medicine, everywhere she traveled.

Maria wrapped cotton around the man's leg, to protect the wound while still allowing it to breathe. Even though the local cotton was gray, it still stood out against the black of his skin.

For the first time, she had met Marshall's other people . . . his African "servants." There weren't many of them, but their existence had been concealed from her and Heyndrick de Liefde on their previous visits. She wasn't surprised. Even if Marshall had not been told, when friendly relations were first established, that slavery was illegal in the Gustavus colony, he might have feared that the interlopers might try to incite the slaves as a cheap means of wiping out their upriver rivals.

Heyndrick, the cousin and agent of the founder of the Gustavus colony, had told Marshall that the Gustavus colony would not, for the moment, insist that Marshall free his slaves, and wouldn't encourage the slaves to flee, but he also warned Marshall that it would not return any fugitive slaves who made it downriver.

But that didn't mean that Maria couldn't attack the institution in subtler ways. "I have tended to this man's physical needs, but what have you done for his spiritual ones? Has he been instructed in the Christian faith?"

Marshall shook his head. "Of course not. He is only an ignorant savage."

"His ignorance can hardly be surprising, if you refuse to instruct him." Maria knew that this was a sensitive point with English slave owners. Since one of the justifications they gave for enslaving the Africans was that they weren't Christian, they feared that if they converted their slaves, they might be forced to free them.

Marshall temporized. "We don't have a minister of our own."

"I understand. I wish I could do something about that. But, I know that as a captain, you have read aloud from a prayer book. Surely your African servants can be allowed to listen and to learn what they can."

"Very well."

"And have you tried to teach any of them to read and write?"

Marshall laughed. "Mevrouw Vorst, few of my Englishmen have their letters."

"That is most unfortunate. In this new world, illuminated by the books of Grantville, being literate is going to be of great importance. Is that not true?"

Marshall nodded slowly.

"Well, I will see what primers we can spare, and all I ask in return is that at least one be dedicated to the edification of the Africans among you."

Based on the reading she had done in Grantville, Maria was fairly confident that there would be trouble over slavery, sooner or later. But for the moment, the colonists in Gustavus had more immediate issues to worry about. Like survival. And she agreed with Heyndrick that it would be better if the confrontation came after Gustavus was bigger and stronger.

****

The music faltered. The dozen or so Surinamese Indians, resplendent in body paint and not much else, stirred uneasily. Until then, they had been an excellent audience.

"Don't stop!" Maria whispered sharply to her assistant, and made a circular motion with her hands.

The English settler who had been given the honor of turning the crank on her mechanical phonograph nodded sheepishly, and brought the player back up to speed.

The violins, viola and cello played by the musicians of another universe went back to work, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik once again overrode the clicking and chirping of the insects of the rainforest.

Later that night, Maria tried putting on a Louis Armstrong record. Louis Armstrong had given the world such titles as "Alligator Crawl," "Trees," and "Rain, Rain." Despite this evidence of affinity, the Indians of Marshall's Creek were unimpressed, indeed, a little agitated. It appeared that the rainforest was not yet ready for jazz.

Maria salvaged the situation by hurriedly putting on Mozart's piano sonata no. 11 in A, Rondo Alla Turca. Tempers were appropriately soothed.

****

Ceremoniously, the chief's wife handed Maria a cup of piwari. Maria took a carefully metered sip, and bowed her head in acknowledgment, hoping she had drunk enough to satisfy propriety. Piwari was a brew made with fermented cassava bread. Which wouldn't sound so bad, except the old biddies of the tribe chewed the bread and then spat it into the pot to ferment.

She couldn't help but remember a story Lolly had told her, about a practical joke played on a British diplomat. At some sort of exotic reception, a covered plate was put before him. When he lifted the lid, all that he saw was a spider. He stared at it, as his so-called friends watched him out of the corners of their eyes. A moment later, he grabbed it by the leg, announced, 'For the Queen,' and dropped it into its mouth."

So it could be worse.

After the meal, presents were exchanged. "And this is for you," Maria said, and handed the chief a strange ornament.

"It is like a piece of the rainbow," marveled the chief.

During her sojourn in Grantville, Maria had listened to CDs on her friend Lolly's player. She had also been introduced to the curious concept of the "coaster", a CD which was no longer functional, and hence suitable for nothing better than protecting the table from water marks. Maria asked if she could have a few of these specimens, and Lolly said, "Sure, why not."

Maria had them cut into quarters, and hole-punched. Maria gave one only to a chief, or his favored wife. They could be hung from the neck, so all tribesmen and visitors could envy how well, in one light, they acted as mirrors, and in another, they iridesced.

Though tensions had been reduced, there was still a certain amount of casual one-upmanship between the English and the Gustavans, as they both sought to win over the Indians of the Suriname River.

Maria was confident that the Gustavans had won this round. There was no way that Captain Marshall was going to be able to compete with the "rainbow."

Fort Kykoveral (modern Bartica), EssequiboRiver, Guiana

November 1634

Henriques Pereira da Costa, formerly of the Portuguese-Brazilian frontier town of Belem do Para, watched as a small cayman emerged from the Essequibo River and rubbed its belly on the river bank. It didn't have much time left to enjoy the afternoon sun.

"Henrique, would you believe that they only have six books, besides the bible, in the whole fort?" said his servant Mauricio. Mauricio had been trained by Henrique's father as a scribe and linguist.

"That many?" Henrique asked rhetorically. "I am surprised." Not that Henrique was much of a reader himself. He was more woodsman than scholar. He looked off to the west, toward the setting sun. Any moment now, he thought to himself.

"Five of them," Mauricio continued, "owned by the Commander."

The sun at last disappeared below the horizon. The skies darkened rapidly, that was typical of the tropics.

"As for the sixth—"

"Enough, Mauricio." Henrique took a deep breath, kneeled, and closed his eyes. "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one." Henrique was a marrano, a secret Jew, who had, when exposed as a "Judaizer," escaped into the Amazon with his servant and childhood companion, Mauricio.

Mauricio watched silently as Henrique prayed. Henrique had picked a location some distance from the fort, and out of its direct sight, so as not to give offense to their Calvinist hosts.

At last, Henrique completed the evening shema. He rose and looked at Mauricio. "There are some serious matters we need to discuss. Like what we do next."

"They don't seem to like us here much, do they?"

"Well, they're Dutch. Mostly Calvinists, too. They hate Catholics and they aren't too keen about Jews, either."

"Or free Africans, of any religion." Mauricio patted his pocket. "I keep my letter of manumission with me wherever I go, even in the jungle." Henrique's father, in his will, had instructed Henrique to make Mauricio a curtado, a slave who had the right to earn his freedom by paying a set price. Henrique instead freed Mauricio outright. But it was not until the two had made their way to Dutch-held Kykoveral that Henrique had acknowledged that they had the same father, and called him "brother."

"So, let me review our options." Henrique held up a finger. "First, we can make our home somewhere in the back country."

"Well, Kasiri and Coqui will be happy enough with that idea." In the course of their escape, Henrique and Mauricio had met the lovely Kasiri, and her brother Coqui. Kasiri and Coqui were Manao indians, from the distant Amazon.

Against all odds, they found their way to Fort Kykoveral, on the Essequibo river, and were welcomed by the Dutch commander. Only the welcome which Henrique received as a great explorer, had gotten a bit tattered once the Dutch realized he was Jewish. The Dutch were the least prejudiced of all the Christian peoples, but "least" wasn't the same as "not." And anyway, the Dutch didn't know quite what to make of Mauricio, Kasiri and Coqui.

"But I confess that while I am comfortable in the wilderness, I don't want to cut myself from civilization indefinitely." Henrique held up a second finger. "So the second possibility is that I can return to Europe."

"Right," agreed Mauricio, "we need to find you a nice Jewish girl."

Henrique gave him a quelling look. It had no discernible effect on Mauricio's smirk.

"We?"

At that, Mauricio lost his smile. Henrique, logically, should board the next Dutch ship, and return to Europe. His family had longstanding plans to help them make a quick getaway if they had to, and Amsterdam was the preferred rendezvous point. And it was uncertain that the Dutch in Kykoveral would tolerate the permanent presence of a Portuguese Jew.

But that would mean Mauricio would have to decide between crossing the Atlantic with Henrique or remaining on the Wild Coast with Kasiri.

****

Kasiri frowned. "What's troubling you, Mauricio?"

"Nothing."

"Right. My darling Mauricio barely speaks. He answers every question with a single word. It as commonplace as dolphins climbing trees."

Kasiri and Mauricio, of course, didn't talk to each other precisely like that. They communicated in a weird mixture of Manau, Portuguese and sign language, with many circumlocutions.

"Henrique doesn't think he can make his home here. He wants to cross the Great Sea to join his family."

Kasiri had never seen the ocean. To her the Great Sea was some sort of extension of the Amazon. And her people, the Manao, were traders, who made their home near the confluence of the Upper Amazon and the Rio Negro, but who traveled a great deal. So she just shrugged. A young man of her tribe, like Coqui, might travel hundreds of miles to visit, and perhaps take a bride home from, another tribe.

"And I am his brother and servant. I feel honor-bound to accompany him." Mauricio sighed. "Besides, if I don't, then I risk being re-enslaved by the Dutch. They are at war with the Portuguese, so they needn't honor my letter of manumission."

Kasiri smiled. "Fine, I will go with you across the Great Sea." Her frown reappeared. "Unless perhaps you have tired of me?"

"Of course not! It would be wonderful to have you with me. It's just . . . customs are different in Europe . . . For one thing, you'll have to wear more clothes."

"Hah! I am already wearing too much. Do I not see how you, and your brother, and these crazy Dutchmen suffer every day? You all need to wear less and bathe more."

"Be that as it may, in Europe, in winter, it is too cold to dress lightly."

"What is cold? And what is winter?"

Mauricio abruptly gave Kasiri a hug. "Until a ship comes, we don't have to make a decision. And perhaps we should take a canoe up to the mouth of the Essequibo, so you can see what the ocean looks like, before we decide anything. For now, let's go swimming together."

Clearly satisfied that she had restored Mauricio's spirits, Kasiri walked with him to the river. But she didn't know that Mauricio was, beneath his surface good humor, still in doubt. Kasiri would suffer in Europe, unless she was willing to wholly adopt the language and manners of a European, like a Amazonian Pocahontas. And even then, as an Indian married to an African, she could expect to suffer all sorts of slights.

Mauricio wasn't eager to see white sails billowing over the dark waters of the Essequibo.

Gustavus (Paramaribo), Suriname

Maria returned to Gustavus with rubber, cotton and tobacco from Marshall's Creek, and Heyndrick told the colonists that it was time to do some trading with other Europeans on the Wild Coast. At the town meeting, they announced, "We are taking the Eikhoorn to Fort Kykoveral, on the Essequibo." It was the principal Dutch colony in the Guianas, perhaps two hundred forty miles to the west. "We need samples of everyone's products that might find a market there, whether among the traders, the Indians, or visiting ships. And we need your 'wish list' of what to try to get there which we don't have here."

It would, of course, be more than a mere trading voyage. This would be their first chance to explore the coast, and Maria looked forward to seeing and drawing new plants and animals. And perhaps, just perhaps, some of them would be of economic value to the Gustavus colony.

At any rate, it was a chance to escape the ennui of helping to administer the colony. Maria now understood why David de Vries, their nominal leader, spent most of his time at sea.

On the coast of Guiana

They had made camp on a sandy beach, between the Berbice and Demerara rivers. They were now perhaps fifty miles from the mouth of the Essequibo. The next day's sail would be easy, with the trade winds broad on their starboard quarter. As, in fact, they had been every day on their trip westward. Getting back home to the Gustavus would be more arduous, of course.

As the tide went out, it became apparent that a little ways down the coast, there was some large object sticking out of the exposed bottom. Maria, Heyndrick and two sailors went out to investigate.

The object was the ravaged remains of the hull of a pinnace, its blackened framing timbers looking like the ribs of a sea monster. It didn't seem particularly likely that any useful artifacts would still be left, but they were now so close that it seemed reasonable to look and see.

"That's odd," said Maria. While Heyndrick and the sailors looked for stray coins, and the like, in the sand, she had been studying the hull.

"What's odd?" asked Heyndrick, who, out of the corner of his eye, had been studying her.

"Look how most of the wood is heavily holed."

"Sure, that's because of the teredo, the ship worm. They're a real plague in these tropical waters."

"Yes, but there is one piece that's barely pitted. You see? I think it's a different type of wood than the rest of the hull."

Heyndrick studied the mystery futtock more closely. He felt and sniffed it, and did the same to the nearby wood. "I think you're right. It couldn't have been part of the original hull, it must have been cut to make a repair."

"Can we take it out, please?" pleaded Maria. "I think it might be greenheart. It's a tree mentioned in the encyclopedias; it's resistant to marine borers. The crew of this hulk must have cut a greenheart tree and used it to make repairs, without realizing their good fortune. Might be a fine export product if we can find a grove to harvest. We can ask the local Indians . . . once we find them."

Heyndrick scratched his chin. "Even if you're right, the Indians are going to have a hard time figuring out what tree you are looking for, if all they have to go on is a bit of cut wood. They don't cut their trees into lumber, they just hollow them out."

"We can shave off the outer layers of the piece, then they might recognize it as being the same wood as one of their dugouts."

Heyndrick shrugged, and ordered a sailor to cut out the wood of interest. Once he had done so, Maria asked him to chop off a small piece and give it to her. She took it down the beach, to where the waters of the South Atlantic played with the sand, and dropped it in. It sank.

Maria nodded thoughtfully, and turned her head to look at Heyndrick, who was standing a few feet behind her. "It's denser than water. That's true of greenheart, too. One of the reasons it's a strong wood."

"Then you might be right that it's greenheart, Maria, but please don't get your hopes too high. Even a wood that normally floats can sink if it gets waterlogged."

Maria shrugged. "When we find some Indians, we'll get some answers. I hope."

Fort Kykoveral (modern Bartica), EssequiboRiver, Guiana

Short Wet Season (December 1634-January 1635)

"Well, there it is. A sail," thought Henrique. "Kykoveral" meant, in Dutch, "looks over all," and he had an excellent view of the river from his position on the parapet.

It made him think of the legend of Theseus. Theseus had gone to Crete to slay the Minotaur. He sailed, with the other sacrifices, on a ship with a black sail, but he promised that when he returned victorious, he would hoist a white sail so his father Aegeus would know he had succeeded. Unfortunately, he forgot, and Aegeus threw himself into the sea.

This time, it didn't matter whether the sail Henrique saw was black or white. Either way, it would bring both joy and sorrow.

****

To Henrique's surprise, the ship, although Dutch-built, wasn't from Europe. Nor was it en route to the Caribbean, or America. Rather, it was from another colony on the Wild Coast, paying its respect to the traders at Kykoveral.

Which meant that perhaps, just perhaps, there was no need for the foursome to separate.

****

Commander Jan van der Goes of the Zeeland Chamber of the Dutch West India Company cleared his throat. "Mevroux Maria Vorst, permit me to introduce Henrique Pereira da Costa, formerly of Belem do Para, the intrepid discoverer of a river route between the Amazon and the Essequibo."

Henrique bowed.

"Senior da Costa, I introduce to you Mevroux Maria Vorst. She is the daughter of a physician, and sister of the curator of the Leiden Botanical Gardens. She has received training in natural philosophy at Grantville, the town of the future that you have surely heard of by now. She is attached to the new Swedish colony to our east, Gustavus." She curtseyed.

"And her companion, Captain Heyndrick de Liefde, is of a good merchant family in Hoorn, and has been to the Caribees, Zwaanandael, Virginia and New Netherlands." Zwaanandael was the ill-fated Dutch colony in Delaware. "His cousin, David Pieterszoon de Vries," founded Gustavus, and Captain de Liefde has given us the great pleasure of transporting Mevroux Vorst to our company."

"Yours must have been quite a dangerous journey, Senor da Costa," Maria murmured. In the meantime, she was trying to visualize the up-time maps, and guess at its length. Twelve hundred miles? Sixteen hundred?

"Indeed it was, my lady. Giant crocodiles. Poisonous snakes. Deadly rapids. A thousand times, I thought myself at death's door, and took solace in the thought that I would be taken into Heaven. And then I made it here. And now I must wonder whether I died after all, and have come to Heaven, for surely you are an angel."

Heyndrick rolled his eyes.

Maria smiled at Henrique. "Surely it is too warm here to be Heaven."

Heyndrick saw the smile. "I am surprised that you speak so blithely of Heaven, Herr da Costa. The guards told me that you are a Marrano, a secret Jew, wanted by the Inquisition for heresy." Having been baptized, however insincerely, Henrique could not avow Judaism without being considered a heretic.

"I am a heretic only in the eyes of the Catholic Church, not in the eyes of the Lord," Henrique retorted. "And I daresay that the Catholics would consider you, too, to be a heretic, Captain." Heyndrick was indeed Protestant.

Commander van der Goes winced slightly. "Tell me more about your colony, Mevrouw Vorst."

"We have both a sawmill and a glassworks, the first on the Wild Coast, I believe. So we have manufactures which we can sell here and to other colonies. We have shipped home a kind of clay called bauxite. We have planted, as cash crops, cotton, tobacco, and the dye tree orlean. And we are collecting the sap of a strange tree which I doubt you would have heard of, since, until the coming of the up-timers, the only Europeans who knew of it were a few Spanish, and they had no use for it."

"Oh, what tree is that?"

"It is called the rubber tree, the up-timers know much about it. Its sap hardens into a material which is waterproof, and is elastic, an—"

"I know what rubber is!" Henrique interjected. " That is what I was collecting, in Brazil!"

Maria spilled her drink. "In Brazil? How did you learn of it? Have you shipped any to Europe? Who is buying it? I would have heard if, before I left, someone was selling Brazilian rubber in Grantville. And that's the only market for it."

"Dear lady, I suspect that my family knows about it the same way you do, we have some connection who has studied the books of Grantville. In 1632 I was given a map, and a description of the tree. We started tapping the trees in the summer of 1633, and the first shipment went out soon thereafter, on one of the sugar ships out of Bahia. When rubber first reached Lisbon, I know not." He was too polite to mention that, beside storms, the likeliest reason for the rubber not reaching Lisbon was interception by privateers. Dutch, French or English.

"And I don't know what my family would have done with the rubber. It might have been some time before they sent samples to business associates outside of Portugal or Spain, and in these troubled times it could have taken many weeks to reach Grantville. It is somewhere near Magdeburg, is that right?"

"Hmm . . . we left Hamburg in December 1633. That would explain why we heard nothing about it. Is Belem still shipping rubber to Portugal, you think?"

"It is hard to say. Mauricio and I were the only Europeans involved in the tapping operation. We are both here now. The same . . . incident . . . which led me to leave Belem, would also have had unpleasant repercussions for my family. I hope they were warned, and fled in time. The Inquisition seizes the properties of heretics. It is possible that they will read the private papers, decide that rubber trees are worth exploiting, and send an agent to Belem to take over the business. More likely, they will decide it is too much trouble, or tainted by its association with Grantville, and the Indian seringueiros I recruited will just return to hunting and fishing."

****

"We will have to ask Henrique and his friends to join us at Gustavus," said Maria.

Heyndrick snorted. "I think that would be a mistake, Maria. Henrique's allegiance is to Portugal, and, so long as Philip rules Portugal, the Portuguese are our enemies."

"But now that they know he is Jewish, he cannot return to Portugal. He must find a new home. He was born and bred in the New World. What would he do in ...