"I understand Mike's position on the slave trade very well," said Piazza. "It's already under way, but the big numbers aren't happening yet, and we can't project power very far. Yet. When we're ready, we are going to destroy it, though-no question. There aren't many things we could feel good about exterminating, but this is one… And I hardly need to ask your position, James."
"Ah. Well. It's not really that simple, for me."
Piazza showed actual surprise. "How can you say that?"
"I'm a complicated man, Ed. Y'know, like Shaft." Nichols grinned emptily as he finally hit a cultural reference that Father Kircher drew a blank upon. "I hate disease. I hate pain and suffering and what human beings do to each other when they're allowed to own people. But who I am, what I am, it isn't going to happen anymore. I'm so glad, some ways, thinking that Sharon will grow up where people who look like us don't get shot forty-one times reaching for our wallets… but part of what America was came from Africa. Good parts. Mbandi won't be the first black Jesuit, but an American would've been. Blood typing. Heh-blood, all right. One hell of a lot of Purple Hearts, from Fort Wagner to the Gulf. It meant something.
"The whole civil rights struggle that made Melissa what she is-King, Malcolm X. Won't happen. Sojourner Truth won't happen. Gospel. Jazz. Half the music of the twentieth century won't. Who's gonna inspire Elvis, for God's sake?"
"I could live without rap," offered Piazza.
"Don't dis yo' timeline… Hell, even the language won't be the same. We'll all sound like ruddy Englishmen or something." Nichols sobered. "It gets worse. Look where they sent me as a Marine. Like you said, soon we can 'project power.' I got projected into Khe Sanh because we had a medical corps that could keep me from catching the galloping crud. Everyone'll get quinine in a while, and learn how to dig latrines properly. English redcoats in India? Richelieu's musketeers in China? The world won't play nice because we tell it to."
"I understand. But we may not always play nice ourselves. My apologies, Father, if I speak a little bluntly here?" Kircher nodded. "Well, this gift of seeds is… Generous isn't the word. It could be worth, what, billions in the long run. And Montoya may be a defecting Jesuit, but he's still thinking like one. That's one hell of a bribe, James, and if I take it, that will oblige Mike to honor it when he gets back-oblige the USE to do something, and you bet Montoya knows it. And that's a long way off to send anyone to do something, not just up some river in Europe…
"I'm an honest politician-have to stay bribed. I need to know, James, I need your final word on this."
Nichols swallowed. "How soon?"
"Can you get any information over the next ten days that you don't already have?"
"… No."
"Then very soon."
"I am sorry that he will not speak to me," said Father Kircher as he wrapped his cloak against the outside chill. "I suppose it is best if I do not accompany you back. You do understand, Doctor-the seeds are yours to make use of."
Nichols huffed out a cloud of breath. "You're sure of that?"
"I am certain of it. Are you certain of what to do with them?"
Kircher's eyes were mild, but it was an effort to meet them, and too great an effort to lie. "No."
"I believe you know your heart in the matter, though."
"I don't practice medicine with my heart, Father. There's no room for that. But to lose a year…" He trailed off, looking down the street at a running figure. It waved jerkily.
"Herr Doctor!"
"And to think I was about to run into her arms," murmured Kircher; then he stiffened. "Something is wrong."
Margritte all but staggered up to them. "Herr Doctor, the traveler! He is sick, he is very sick! You must come!"
"Shit." Nichols looked around, but no one was nearby enough to overhear. "Come on, and keep your voice down. Could-"
Father Kircher touched his arm, halting him. "I will come, if I may."
Nichols looked at him, hesitated, nodded. "Yeah, you already know. Hurry, then."
"James!"
He turned. Piazza stood in the doorway. "Don't run. People will see you."
"Ah. Right. Thanks, Ed-I'll call you when I find out what's going on."
Colder now than the air could make him, Nichols marched stiffly back to his house with Kircher and Margritte a step behind, nodding at the few passers-by; waved the others in, slammed the door.
"In here!" cried Margritte from the study. The atlas lay splayed on the desk; Mbandi sprawled in the armchair by the fire, shivering violently enough to see from across the room.
Nichols examined him with hasty care; dry skin, obvious chills. "He has not been sick of the stomach?"
"No, Herr Doctor."
Pulse fast and thready. No blue tinge under the fingernails-Wait. "You said you were ill in Lisbon. On the journey. You were ill again two weeks after that, weren't you?'
Mbandi nodded through the shivering. "It began this way, as well. The cold, such cold-then the heat. Dry, then wet."
Nichols counted backward for incubation. "About a month to cross the Atlantic… Buenos Aires, then. You were infected there by an insect bite, a mosquito. God damn it, you already have malaria!"
He choked off self-directed anger at missing the signs. The hell with thousand-yard stares; he'd not noticed the jaundiced yellow of the eyes themselves. "We cannot bring you to Leahy Center. They will see a strange man with a disease, and…" Belatedly realizing something, he turned.
Margritte had flattened herself against the wall, her face slumped white with shock. "Malaria," she said. "The air-fever, Jesus God in Heaven. I touched him, I touched his belongings."
Father Kircher gestured toward her. "Calm yourself-"
Nichols overrode him. "Margritte, listen. Listen, please! You have nothing to fear. This disease only moves from one person to another by the, ah, the bite of an insect that cannot live in cold air, or in clothing. It cannot hurt you. Look." He reached and took a fistful of coarse brown robe, gripped it-tried not to think of typhus, or another parasite that any traveler might really be carrying. "He is badly sick, but he cannot make you sick, or anyone else. I promise you this." He stared at Margritte, holding her gaze.
"Very well, Herr Doctor." Margritte straightened, swallowed hard, then nodded. "If you say it is safe, then I know it is so."
Nichols glanced back to Kircher. The Jesuit met his eye, tilted his own head silently. Nichols could read the gesture easily enough: Yes, the reputation works.
"Good," he said absently. "Then you may care for him, here, to help me. Please put at least two pots of water on to boil… Father, if you could drag that couch over here." Don't need to quarantine Mbandi, but we sure-hell need to quarantine any gossip.
"Herr Doctor?" said Margritte on a rising note; but she smoothed her dress and strode into the hallway, only slightly veering her step around the traveler; the patient, now. Once her shock wore off and Margritte reclassified him as such, she'd be safe to return to her desk and its telephone.
"Is that necessary?" asked Kircher quietly as he crossed the room.
"No. It never is. Although usually it is the men who need to be kept occupied…" He turned to the traveler beside him. "We will make for you in comfort here, until you are again well. Do not be afraid. I do not have any way to treat the malaria itself, but there are powerful medicines to cool your fever, and we can give you water through a small tube, to… what is it?"
He followed Mbandi's eyes to the satchel on his desk. "Oh, no. That is not tested-"
"It is my only test left," hissed Mbandi through chattering teeth. "My only proof. No letters, no sig-signet ring, no Father Gustav to, to, to speak for me. Let this speak for me, then. It is the true cinchona roja; it will cure me."
"But if you are wrong, and I do not treat you as I should with my medicines, you could die." Falciparium, by the recurrence period. Twenty percent mortality in healthy adults, let alone in him. Jesus.