Conquistador (book)
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Conquistador is a 2003 alternate history novel by S. M. Stirling.
[edit] Plot summary
John Rolfe VI comes back from World War II with a war wound and few prospects. But when a radio he is fiddling with malfunctions and creates a gateway to a parallel universe--one in which Alexander the Great lived a full lifespan and white men are unknown in North America--a whole world literally lies before him.
The action flips back and forth between 2009--in which two California fish and game officers, Tom Christiansen and Roy Tully, are trying to solve a mystery of how large number of pelts from endangered species are showing up--and flashbacks to episodes in the history of this "new world"--dubbed the "Commonwealth of New Virginia" by the antebellum-minded Rolfe.
By the time Christiansen and Tully solve the mystery, and are promptly permanently transported to New Virginia by Rolfe's tough granddaughter, Gate Security Agent Adrienne Rolfe (with whom Christiansen falls in love), the reader has been pretty much clued on in New Virginia's history through the flashbacks. Rolfe quickly brought his war buddies and a few others to New Virginia. They got starting capital by panning gold-laden creeks and bought up the area in Oakland around the radio and the Gate, converting it into an industrial complex. Rolfe and his buddies, plus some other late arrivals, form the ruling Thirty Families, with settlers drawn from those who desperately need a hole in which to climb--among others, fugitive Nazis, pieds-noirs (French Algerians}, Rhodesians, and Russian Communists come over when they lose power. Only members of the Thirty Families--and not all of them!--may travel between the worlds. Everyone else must stay in New Virginia for life. The society evolves, under the control of the Families, into a highly conservative society.
Once the two rangers get over their resentment, Adrienne enlists them in a scheme to sabotage a coming revolution in New Virginia. Giovanni Colletta has resented Rolfe's control, and is trying, with some allies, to take over by force and violence. The rangers decide that Rolfe and his allies are the lesser of two evils--they at least play by the rules once they make them. There is little surface evidence that a coup is being planned, though, and Colletta has given no excuse for the Commonwealth's forces to crush him. Adrienne and the rangers are able to deduce where Colletta's forces (primarily, post-Aztec and post-Mayan military trainees) are grouping.
Colletta duly strikes, giving the other families the grounds to oppose him militarily. The revolt is put down--but at a price, the radio is destroyed, and with it, the connection to the other world. What little talent the Commonwealth has (on both sides) in physics works together feverishly to rebuild the radio and re-establish the Gate. They are successful--but when they look through the gate, a sabertooth tiger is seen, not 21st century Oakland. They have failed to re-establish contact, establishing contact with an even more primitive world . . .
An afterword reveals that even the world that Christiansen and Tully came from is not our world. This would have been apparent to a careful reader, as John Rolfe VI is supposedly a descendent of Pocahantas--whose line dies out quickly in our world. In addition, one flashback is dated September 15, 2001, with no comment on the events that, in our world, took place four days previously. In his novels that involve cross-dimensional travel Stirling always uses worlds which are slightly different from our own--though this generally has little bearing on the story. He has stated that he does this simply because 'it is simpler that way'.
