Free 1636: Seas of Fortune by Iver P. Cooper Page B

weak.
    “In which regard, to be blunt, they aren’t very different from us.”

    Grantville, Winter Break, 1632

    Maria had actually welcomed the coming of winter. It gave her the chance to catch up on her pleasure reading. In particular, she was finally able to tackle Elva’s book on woman artists.
    Her friend Prudentia’s mother, Artemisia, was in it, of course. And Maria was pleased to see that the book mentioned the work of Clara Peeters, a Flemish still-life specialist, and Judith Leyster, the portraitist and genre painter from Haarlem.
    But what truly caught Maria’s attention was the description of two other artists. One was Rachel Ruysch of Amsterdam. Her father was Anthony Frederick Ruysch, a professor of anatomy and botany. Much like Maria’s father. And apparently, he passed on some of his scientific knowledge to her, because the book said, “Ruysch brought a thorough knowledge of botany and zoology to her work.”
    Maria also thought much about Maria Sibylla Merian. She had come to art by the more usual path, being the daughter of an engraver and the step-daughter of a flower painter. Merian had published her first book, a collection of flower engravings, when she was only twenty-three—younger than Maria. But Merian’s great passion was to understand and depict the life cycles of insects, especially moths and butterflies.
    In 1699, Merian actually traveled to fabulous Suriname, in South America, on what the Americans would call a “government grant.” The result was her masterpiece, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium .
    “Lolly, about the Ring of Fire. I know that it has already changed history. Gustavus Adolphus doesn’t die at the battle of Lützen, and all that. What happens to the people who would have been born after the Ring of Fire? Are they still destined to come into the world?”
    “It depends on when and where they were born,” Lolly replied. “The effect of the Ring of Fire diffuses out from Grantville. We think it would change the weather around the world in a matter of weeks, even though actual news would travel more slowly.
    “And it doesn’t take much to change who is born. A soldier leaves his mistress a day earlier than in the old time line. A couple fails to meet, and the two marry other people. A person’s father or mother dies earlier than in the old time line, because an army takes a different path, or a plague ship comes to a different port.”
    “The people I am thinking of, one was born in 1664, and the other in 1647.”
    “Not a chance, then. Even if their parents were alive in 1631, and married to each other, they will have different children.”
    After Lolly left, Maria thought further about the question she had raised. Neither Rachel Ruysch nor Maria Sibylla Merian would ever brighten the world. Their contributions would be limited to the fragments imported from the old time line.
    The more Maria thought about it, the more it seemed that, though born in an earlier age, she was their intellectual heir, and that it was her duty to posterity to make a similar contribution. And, with her father and husband both dead, she had a degree of independence that was unusual for women her age.
    Suriname. Also known as Guiana. The Wild Coast of South America, between the Maracaibo and the Amazon. There was a Dutch settlement there, she was sure. Her ex-husband, a merchant, had mentioned it more than once. And Catarina, Adolph’s wife, was from a commercial family; she and her kin might know more.
    Perhaps it was worth consulting one of the Abrabanels, too. Maria could do more than just draw nature, she could collect it. Was there something in Suriname that the up-timers wanted badly enough that they might pay to send Maria there to look for it? The Abrabanels would know, she was sure. And, as the daughter of a Dutch doctor, she didn’t have the usual Christian prejudice against Jews. Well, some, she admitted, but after more than a year in Grantville, she had been forced to