1636 Commander Cantrell in the West Indies: Chapter One

PART I
April, 1635
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

    Lt. Commander Eddie Cantrell looked down at the stump six inches below his left knee as an orderly removed his almost ornate peg-leg. PA Jessica Porter — formerly Nurse Porter — approached with his new fiberglass prosthetic. The jaundiced-grey color of the object was not appealing. “Wow, that’s uglier than I thought it would be,” Eddie confessed as the orderly left.

    Jessica shrugged. “It may look like hell, but it works like a charm. We’ve special-cast more than a hundred of these, now.” She fitted it tentatively onto the stump, looked up at Eddie.

    Who concentrated on how it felt: a little odd — smooth and cool — compared to the wood and leather lashings that had just been removed. He supposed anything else might feel strange now, having spent a year and a half getting used to the cranky, creaky peg-leg that had been specially fashioned for him by King Christian IV of Denmark’s medical artisans. But now that Eddie paid closer attention to the new sensations of this prosthetic — “Actually, that feels much better. No rubbing.”

    Jessica snorted in response. “Yeah, it ought to feel better. It’s custom-made. That’s why we made you stop by when you brought your princess bride with you last fall, to get a wax mold of your –” Jessica missed a beat, floundered. “Of your — your –”

    “My stump,” Eddie supplied for her. “That’s okay; might as well call it what it is.” Which, he reflected, Jessica must do dozens of times a week with other amputees. But it was probably different with him. He was a fellow up-timer, a person she had known before the Ring of Fire had whisked their whole town back through time to Germany of 1631. And so, right in the middle of the Thirty Years War, into which meat-grinder Eddie himself had been thrown.

    He looked down at the stump which had gotten caught in those pitiless gears of a new history-in-the-making. “So, that wax mold you took of my stump –?”

    Jessica nodded as she secured the new leg. “We filled that mold with a mix of fiberglass and pine resin and presto: your new prosthetic.”

    Eddie moved the new false limb tentatively. The weight was negligible. “It’s hard to believe that’s local — uh, down-time — manufacture.”

    “Every bit of it,” nodded Jessica as she stood and stepped back to take a look. “They got the process from us, of course. We made the first few here at the Leahy Medical Center. But after that, there was no stopping all the down-time medical folks, particularly in the new university programs, from dominating the business. Good thing, too: we couldn’t kept up with the demand, here.”

    “I thought fiberglass would be too hard for the local industries to make.”

    Jessica was able to look him in the eye again. “That’s because you’re thinking of the stuff we made speedboats out of, back up-time in the twentieth century. That’s ultra-high strength fiberglass. The individual strands were very thin, and very uniform. I doubt any of us will still be alive when that technology makes its debut in this world. But this,” — she tapped the prosthesis; it made a much duller sound than the wood — “this is made of much cruder fibers. Down-timers can make them with a number of different drip-and-spin processes. Then they just pack it into the mold as tight as they can, pour in the pine resin, and, after a little more processing, out comes the prosthesis.

    “That’s not the end of the process, of course. It needs smoothing and careful finishing where it fits onto the stump. But we didn’t stop there,” she said, her smile finally returning. “We added something special for you.”

    “Oh?” Eddie wondered if maybe it had secret compartments. That would be kind of cool.

    “Yep. Try stepping on it, then stepping off.”

    Eddie shrugged: no secret compartments, then. He took hold of his cane, pushed off the examining table, stood tentatively on both legs, then stepped forward with the prosthesis. Well, that felt just fine. And step two –

    – almost dropped him to the ground. As his real foot came down and he shifted his primary weight onto it, the heel of the prosthetic seemed to start rising up a little, as if it was eager to take its own next step. It wasn’t a particularly strong push, but he hadn’t been expecting it, and he flailed for balance.

    “Wha — what was that?” he asked, not minding one bit that Jessica had jumped over to steady him.

    “That was the spring-loaded heel wedge. Cool, huh? When the sole of the prosthesis is fully compressed, and then you start to shift your weight off it to take the next step, it gives you a little boost. Like your own foot does.”

    Eddie frowned. “Well, yeah, I guess. But I wasn’t ready for it.”

    Jessica shook her head. “Sorry. Should have thought of that. We don’t experience that with the other amputees.”

    “Why?”

    “Well, they’re either recent amputees, so they never adjusted to a regular peg leg. Or they come here because someone has told them that up-timers at Leahy Medical Center make the best prosthetics, ones with springs in them. So naturally, the first thing we have to do is sit them down and explain every detail, including the phases they’re going to go through in getting accustomed to using the new limb. Sorry; I should have observed the same protocol with you, should have warned you.”

    Eddie grinned and shrugged off her apology, then took a few more steps. Now that he knew to expect that little boost from the prosthetic’s heel, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, Jessica was right: this was more like real walking, not the flat footed limp-and-waddle he managed with the peg-leg and a cane. With this, he could feel the potential for walking like a whole person again, like his old self. He could even imagine how he might be able to work in a little swagger, something to show off to Anne Cathrine . . .

    “Eddie, I’m guessing that smug little smile means that the prosthetic is a success?”

    “Uh, yeah. Thank you, Jessica.”

    “Not at all. But tell me something, Eddie.”

    “Sure.” He considered sitting, found he was still comfortable standing, something that rarely happened when he had been wearing the peg. “What do you want to know?”

    “Well…why did you stay in Denmark once you were no longer being held as Christian IV’s own, personal prisoner of war last year? I mean, I know there was the wedding with his daughter, but — “

    Eddie nodded. And reflected that in the past, he might have grinned while he explained. But in the past year, life itself had acquired a new gravity that made him less ready to grin and shrug his way through the living or recounting of it. His high school days, not quite four years behind him, now seemed a life-time away, a collection of memories that rightly belonged to someone else. “Mostly, I stayed up in Denmark because of love, Jessica.”

    “You mean the princess didn’t want to come down here?”

    “Oh, no, she was extremely eager to see Grantville.” Like pretty much every other down-timer who had the means to do so, the number one locale on Anne Cathrine’s list of ‘places to visit’ was the town of miracles that had fallen out of the future into Germany.

    “So why not bring the princess back home, Eddie? You get tired of us?”

    “Jessica, first of all, Anne Cathrine is not a ‘princess.’ She’s a ‘king’s daughter’.”

    “And the difference is –?”

    “The difference is huge. Her Mom — her dad’s second wife — was nobility, but not high enough for anyone to consider her kids potential inheritors of the throne. It’s called a morganatic marriage.”

    “Thank you, I still read trashy historical romances, so I’m familiar with the term.”

    “Oh. Sorry. But princess or not, she’s one of the brightest apples of her father’s eye. He loves all his kids — he’s a really good guy, that way — but he’s especially fond of Anne Cathrine and her younger sister, Leonora.”

    “Another blonde, buxom beauty, I’m assuming?”

    Eddie decided not to point out that Anne Cathrine’s hair was decidedly red-blonde. “Uh, no, not at all. Leonora is a brunette. And…well, she’ll probably be a pretty attractive woman. But she’s already sharp as a tack. Not pushy, but has a real sense of her self, of what’s right. And doesn’t like having her Dad determine her future.”

    One of Jessica’s eyebrows elevated slightly. “She sounds like a handful for King Daddy. Good for her. And good for the Princess Anne Cathrine that she chose you.”

    Eddie shrugged. No reason to add the somewhat embarrassing footnote that Anne Cathrine and he had been surreptitiously ‘pushed together’ by King Daddy, who despite some of his lunatic schemes, understood full well just how advantageous it was to have his daughter married to one of the up-time wizards who had been instrumental in shattering his naval attack on Wismar last year. Happily, Anne Cathrine’s heart had already been moving precipitously in Eddie’s direction, so King Daddy’s stratagems had been, practically speaking, more of an emphatic imprimatur than an imperial order.

    Jessica leaned back, arms crossed. “So if she wanted to stay in Grantville for a few weeks or months, instead of three days last fall, why shouldn’t you and she have done so?”

    “Because of how it would have looked, Jessica. I was the king’s hostage after Lübeck, and his convalescent patient.” He gestured down toward his leg. “But instead of ending up as a diplomatic football, I became part of the whole war’s diplomatic solution.”

    “How’s that?”

    “Well, you know the old story: how ‘young lovers’ from two sides of a conflict become the basis of peace between enemies. Funny how a little intangible ‘feel good’ stuff like that can go a long way to easing tensions, making things a little smoother at the truce, and then the treaty tables. Which rolled right on into the deals that led to Denmark’s entry into a restored Union of Kalmar with Sweden.”

    “Okay, but all that was finished even before you got married. So why not come back sooner?”

    “Well, that whole ‘young love’ angle could also have lost a lot of its fairy-tale glow unless we got married pretty quickly, since, er . . . since — “

    “Since there was no way of knowing how long it would be before the young wife might become a young mother. And how it might embarrass King Daddy if there were fewer than eight months between bridal bed and birthing bed.”

    “Uh…yeah. Pretty much.” Eddie hated that he still — still — blushed so easily. “And once I was officially part of the family, I needed to get introduced all around Denmark. And any noble that did not get to host us for a short stay or a party or some other damned meet-and-greet event was sure to get their nose out of joint. And of course, the order in which we went to all these dinners and dances was how King Christian demonstrated this year’s pecking order amongst his aristocracy.”

    “And he got to show off his own prize-stud, up-timer wizard, bought fair and square at the territorial negotiation table last summer.”

    “Yup.” Although, truth be told, Eddie had found the whole circus of his semi-celebrity more than a bit of an ego-boost. Who would have ever guessed that his marginal nerdiness would one day make him a star? Back up-time, in the twentieth century, his identity as gamer, military-history nut, and educated layman on all the related technologies had made him one of the boys that the hot-looking high school girls had looked straight through — unless they needed help with their homework. But here in the seventeenth century, those same qualities, along with his service and wounding in the recent Baltic War, had made him the veritable crown prince of geek chic.

    Of course, the down-timers didn’t see the geekiness at all. To them, he was simply a young Renaissance Man, a creature all at once unique, and brave, and furnished with powerful reservoirs of knowledge that were surprisingly deep and unthinkably wide. And Anne Cathrine was his first and most ardently smitten admirer. Which suited him just fine since, reciprocally, he was her biggest fan, as well.

    “And so as soon as King Christian was done with you, your prior master, Admiral Simpson, snatched you back to Lübeck?”

    “Well, Admiral Simpson never stopped being my C.O., even when I was a prisoner of war. Afterward, too. So when you get right down to it, all the gallivanting I did in Denmark was really an ‘extended leave to complete diplomatic initiatives’.” Eddie swayed into motion, put his right hand out, used the cane in his left to steady himself. “Jessica, thanks so much. The prosthesis — the leg — feels so natural, I know it’s going to make a huge difference in my life.”

    Jessica smiled. “Well, that was the objective. And you’ve got a lot going on in that life. Seems, in some ways, that the Ring of Fire has been a good change for you.” She glanced down; her smile dimmed. “I mean, I’m not saying that it was worth losing a leg over, but — “

    “I know what you mean, Jessica. Without the Ring of Fire, I’d probably have been working a nowhere job now, trying to figure out a way to pay for college as the weeks and months mounted up, and I had less and less in the bank to show for them. Sure, I’d have both legs — “

    “But you wouldn’t be so alive, wouldn’t have so much to look forward to?” Jessica’s eyes were still not as receptive as they had been before, but they were engaged again, trying to understand.

    “Yeah, I think that’s it. Up-time, I just might be surviving day after dull day in my parents’ basement, but here, I’m living life. For real. And so is she.”

    Jessica frowned, not understanding. “‘She’? Who? The princess?”

    Eddie nodded, released Jessica’s hand, started moving — surprisingly swiftly and surely — for the door. “Yup.”

    Jessica held him with her wondering voice. “How did the Ring of Fire make her — well, more alive?”

    Eddie turned. “It didn’t make her more alive, Jessica. It kept her alive. In the old history, Anne Cathrine died on August 20, 1633. But for some reason, when we arrived here in 1631, our actions sent out waves of change that radiated into her life, as well. Who knows? Maybe a ship carrying plague didn’t make it to Copenhagen, or she missed a dance where she was exposed to typhus, or any one of another million possible rendezvous with death that she was prevented from making. All I know is that she’s here now, and very alive. But back up-time, where she was part of what we called ‘history,’ she was dead ten days after her fifteenth birthday.”

    Jessica’s mouth was slightly open. She seemed to be searching for something to say. And was failing.

    Eddie nodded. “Thanks again, Jessica,” he said. “Say hello to your folks for me.” He swung around the door jamb, tugging the door closed behind him.