Island in the Sea of Time

CHAPTER NINE

April, Year 1 A.E.

God, it'll be good to get my ship clean again, Alston thought. The Eagle had a faint but unmistakable barnyard odor of pigshit, despite all they could do with pumps and swabbing. At least with the breeze on the beam most of it was carried off beyond the forecastle deck, little reaching her here on the bridge over the pilothouse forward of the wheels. The Eagle's bowsprit was swinging around to the east; at noon they'd come up past Muskeget, the little islet off Nantucket's western point.

"I'd better look Cofflin up right away," she said to Sandy Rapczewicz. "See if we can't arrange a barbecue or something for our people."

The XO nodded, a little oddly, she thought. She'd also radioed ahead to have accommodation prepared for Swindapa and Isketerol. I'll have to find a place myself, she noted. Probably not a problem, with so many houses vacant. And some office space. She hoped Cofflin was as competent as he'd seemed in the brief time between the Event and the Eagle's departure.

"We'll have to-" she began, about to order the engines fired up.

"Ma'am, it's the island. Chief Cofflin."

Alston blinked surprise and swung down the stairs. She walked back past the helm-only two sailors on the knee-high platforms beside the wheels, on a fair April day with an eight-knot wind-and into the radio shack.

"Eagle here."

"Chief Cofflin here," the familiar voice said. "We've got a little surprise for you-a tow, so you don't have to waste fuel getting into harbor."

"This ship's a little heavy for rowboats," Alston said. Not that the Eagle couldn't be warped in that way, but it would be extremely labor-intensive.

"Too true, Captain. Take a look." Cofflin's voice held a smile.

"On deck! A… something off the port bow!"

"Eagle out," Alston said dryly. She really didn't much like surprises.

A plume of gray smoke was approaching. She leveled her binoculars.

Well, I will be dipped in shit, she thought. The hull looked to be a medium-sized powerboat, a forty-footer, cut down to a flush deck. Wooden paddle wheels framed within a steel circle churned on either side. Each was driven by a peculiar arrangement that looked a little like a Texas oil derrick, nodding up and down. Rocking-beam engine, she thought; they'd been common on steamships a hundred and fifty years ago. Each rocking beam was moved by a single steam cylinder, mounted with the piston rod upward. Between them was a boiler that looked like welded sheet steel, and a tall chimney of the same material. Crewfolk were throwing split logs into a furnace underneath it; someone pulled on a lanyard, and the unmistakable melancholy hooting of a steam whistle greeted them.

Cadets and crew lined the rail, cheering and waving their hats. Alston let them, for a few minutes; it was a special occasion. Isketerol came up beside her, peering as the tug came closer.

"More diesel magic, Captain?" he asked.

She shook her head absently. "Steam," she said. "Heated water. The fire heats the water, the water becomes steam, the steam is confined in metal pipes and pushes, doing work."

The Tartessian blinked and nodded, moving aside and staring hungrily. Did I do the right thing? she thought with slight unease. Just because he's ignorant doesn't mean he's stupid. Neither of the Bronze Agers was that. But the languages would be so useful…

"Ms. Rapczewicz, strike all sail, if you please," she said aloud. "Rig for tow. We're home."

"… and you've done a good job, one that's important in the survival of thousands of our people," Alston said, finishing the brief speech. It wasn't a part of her role that she enjoyed, but they deserved to hear it. The waist was packed solid, orderly ranks as if for Quarters. "I'm proud of you all."

The crew of the Eagle cheered. "Chief Cofflin tells me that he's declared today and tomorrow public holidays, and I've arranged for everyone to draw some of the Town chits we're using for money these days; they're good for beer, at least. Liberty for everyone but the posted skeleton crew. Behave yourselves-but have fun. You deserve it. Dismissed from quarters!" The cheers grew wilder, and hats flew into the air.

Alston looked grimly at what awaited them on the dock. The noise had alerted her first, as the Eagle came through the harbor entrance. Cofflin had said that the Town Meeting had voted a public holiday; she'd expected the harbor to be quiet. Instead there was a surf-roar of noise, and the quays were crowded with people.

"They did say some people would be on hand to say hello," Tom Hiller said.

"Some people… Cofflin didn't say anything about this, the lying hound," Alston snapped.

A huge banner stretched across the steamship dock, WELCOME EAGLETS, with a big gold-painted wooden eagle above it. The quays and streets were densely packed with people; there was even a high school band, complete with drum majorettes and trombones tootling away.

She stood glowering at the three-ring circus. The crew were hiding smiles. Swindapa looked impressed; she suspected Isketerol had seen ceremonies more grand, traveling about the Mediterranean. Alston turned an accusing eye on her sailing master.

"You knew about this, didn't you?" she said.

"Well, the chief, the XO, and I discussed things a bit," Hiller said, grinning.

"Traitor. You all knew."

"We knew you don't like public occasions, at least in theory, Skipper. Consider it a surprise party."

She snorted and relaxed. No use in fighting the inevitable, she decided. Cofflin and most of the Council were waiting to greet her on the dock. And the crew certainly deserved a rousing public reception and cookout.

That reminded her. "Mr. Isketerol, Ms. Swindapa, we'll arrange quarters for you ashore," she said.

Isketerol bowed silently. Swindapa frowned, an edge of panic in her face. "Not stay captain's with… place?" she said. "Send away?"

The Tartessian had reverted to his native dress for the occasion, saffron tunic with a complex folded belt holding knife and short sword of bronze, and a long blue cloak. Swindapa kept to the Eagle working blues she'd been given, the spare pair of a cadet about her size. The hands that clenched the baseball cap were quivering slightly now, matching the desperate look on her face.

"I'm sure there will be room," Alston said hastily. Damn. I'm a sailor, not a trauma therapist! This is as bad as having a chick imprint on you when it hatches. Swindapa relaxed and put on the cap.

Not much choice in the matter. Have to get her some things, Alston noted. She'd have to organize a good deal, get a regular shore establishment going, if she was going to run Nantucket's maritime endeavors as well as captain the Eagle herself. A number of ideas had occurred to her, along those lines. I need a good long talk with Chief Cofflin.

"Ms. Swindapa." The blue eyes turned to her, pools the color of hyacinth flowers. "I'd like you to see the doctor here," she said.

"Already seen Eagle doctor, ma'am. Feel goods-I mean, better."

"All the same, I'd like you to see the one here, please." The Fiernan girl ducked her head in a shy nod. She had an appealing face, really… Careful, Alston reminded herself.

The gangplank swung out and crunched into place ashore. Alston set her own hat in place and walked down the gangway to the waist, past the rows of sailors and cadets now braced to attention. The boatswain's pipe sang out:

"Eagle departing!" The bells rang. Cofflin shook her hand at the bottom of the gangway and handed her a microphone.

"A few words, Captain," he said.

"Ah-" Alston cleared her throat, and Swindapa and Isketerol jumped and started at the amplified sound. "It's all right," she said, flicking the thing off for a second.

Then: "We're all happy to be back, and back with the food the island needed. The trip was… interesting… and there'll be a report, film, and photographs handed out. We accomplished our mission, and we'll probably be able to trade in Britain again later this year. The crew of the Eagle have worked very hard for the community, and in their name I'm honored to accept your thanks." She paused. "That's all. Thank you again."

"Short but to the point," Cofflin murmured, and took the microphone from her. "Three cheers for Captain Alston and the Eagle!"

At least nobody can see me blush, Alston thought as she endured it.

Cofflin led the way. Trestle tables had been set up on Main Street, and from the looks of it Nantucket's abundant cooks had been at work. Mostly seafood, of course, but well prepared, and a surprising abundance of poultry, roast goose and duck, and big plump birds that looked a little like chickens but weren't. They'd raided the accumulated stores, too; there was even a butter sculpture of the Eagle. Sitting in crisp brown glory with an apple in its mouth was proof of why Cofflin had been so considerate in getting the first load of pigs off the Eagle via the tug; glazed with the honey that had also been a part of the cargo, it waited on a bed of rice. Alston shrugged with a rueful chuckle, sat next to the chief, and poured herself a glass of wine-the island's own vintage, she noticed. Cadets and crew were already pouring ashore and filling the tables below her, interspersed with the townsfolk.

"Thanks-my boys and girls deserve a blowout," she said to Cofflin.

"They and the town," Cofflin said, sharpening a carving knife and falling to.

"What's this?" she added, looking at a bowl surrounded with crackers, full of a jellylike substance. Daubed on a cracker, it had a creamy, salty taste. "Tastes interestin'… some sort of seafood?"

"Caviar," Cofflin said. "It's sturgeon-spawning time over on the mainland. We sent some boats to the mouth of the Connecticut River." He nodded down the table.

Alston looked and gave a silent whistle. "Now, that's a big fish." The section sitting in the middle of one of the trestle tables was three feet thick and ten long, resting on a base of steamed seaweed.

"Half a ton," Cofflin said, smiling a little. "We had to harpoon it, and nearly lost the first boat that tried. Things've been a bit… hairy here at times. It's a good idea to give everyone some time off, throw a party, celebrate-and you've given us a fair bit to celebrate."

"Starting with this most excellent pig," she said, loading her plate; the mashed potatoes were the instant type, but edible. "Pass those drumsticks too, please… Ms. Swindapa, Mr. Isketerol, Mr. Jared Cofflin, our chief executive officer."

Hell, I deserve a holiday, she thought, as the two Bronze Agers leaned across her to shake hands with him. And here's everything necessary. Of attainable things, she thought, looking wistfully at a young man and woman freed of the Eagle's rule on Public Displays of Affection and holding hands as they ate. It would be nice to have someone myself. Or even just to get laid.

Isketerol of Tartessos sipped at the odd-tasting, bubbly beer and watched silently as the feast wound down into the night. He'd left the public square when most of the others did, finding his way to this half-underground tavern in the basement of another of the strange, magnificent houses; he could tell What it was, from the sounds and scents making their way out the door. He sounded out the words written on the wooden sign above.

Brotherhood of Thieves. The sign pictured a man with short bullhorns on his head, holding a small chained woman on one hand and a sack on the other. A god of trade, perhaps? But it was a Brotherhood of Thieves…

His eyebrows rose at the thought. The Amurrukan seemed like far too orderly a folk to have an open thieves' den flaunting itself here in this impossibly clean city… but he was confident enough of what he'd read. His English was as good as his Egyptian now, and he'd spent many months, in visits over the years, to learn that.

"Brotherhood of Thieves," he sounded out aloud, and looked around. This street was one of the ones with the strange smooth dark substance coating it, not the honest cobblestones of Main Street. The buildings were mostly wood, covered in shingles and white or gray paint; some had little courtyard gardens. He could see the spire of a temple… no, they called it a church… not far away. Large trees grew on either side of the street, which was broad-enough for two loaded wagons to pass abreast, at least. The temple tower had another one of the clocks in it. He shuddered. Cutting away your life, second by second, the way the Crone's knife did at the last when she put you in the Cauldron. Seconds, he thought. Only the Amurrukan would divide time up into pieces like that, like a cook dicing onions for soup.

"A name for every street, and a number on every house," he muttered to himself.

Oh, he could see how useful that would be, but it was a bit daunting. What was really useful was the counting system. It had taken him two days of questioning-driving Arnstein and his woman almost insane-before it sank in that there was some use in a symbol for nothing. Humiliating, that the Earth Folk slave girl had grasped it earlier. He scowled slightly. It would be more convenient if the bitch weren't along, or if she'd been too stupid to learn a new language. Scant hope of that; the Star Priest families bred for wit.

He mustered his courage and walked through the door; there was a short corridor, two more doors with the symbols for the wonderful better-than-Cretan interior latrines the Amurrukan had (but why separate ones for men and women?), and a half-door to the left where the taproom was.

Even before William Walker waved him over to a table it was reassuring. After so much that was alien, things so strange that he had to force his eyes to see them, this was only middling unsettling. The lights on the walls came from lamps of wonderful design, glass and bronze, but they burned with honest flame-he recognized the smell of whale oil. So did the candles in more glass holders on the tables. There was a fire of wood in a tiny alcove set into the wall, with an opening above to take away the smoke through a brick tunnel-now, that he could use at once, back home. Wooden tables with benches and chairs, floor of smooth lime mortar, brick walls-different in detail but not in essence from things he'd seen before. The smells were familiar too, fire, cooking fish and meat, wine, beer, a little sweat… and the strange cleaning fat they called soap.

He slid onto the bench across from Walker. The Amurrukan had his arm around the shoulders of a girl, wonderfully and scandalously dressed in nothing but a halter for her breasts and short breeks tight enough to show the shape of her mound. Her jewelry was strange, but would have bought a good-sized farm in Tartessos, although her hands were work-roughened. She had long black hair, skin the color of old ivory, a tiny nose, and eyes that seemed to tilt up at the corners, lovely in an exotic way. The one on his bench was even prettier, nicely plump, dark-haired and colored like an Egyptian herself. Need stirred. It had been a long time since they left the White Isle, and the Amurru-kan had not allowed him to bring a servant.

Careful, careful, he told himself. The easiest way to get yourself into killing trouble in a strange land was over women, if you didn't know the customs. It wasn't enough to know formal laws, you had to understand the ways those were bent or changed by unspoken taboo. These probably weren't harlots and certainly weren't slaves; the Amurru-kan had none, none at all. He decided to think of them as young priestesses of the Grain Goddess, to be courted.

"Greetings, friend," Walker said in mangled Tartessian. Then in English: "Alice, Rosita, here's my friend Isketerol who I told you about-a prince of Tartessos, which is a kingdom in Iberia. Isketerol, Rosita Menendez, and Alice Hong. Dr. Alice Hong."

Isketerol bowed slightly, hand to chest, and flashed his best smile. The women smiled back. He wasn't exactly a prince, if he understood the word rightly, although his family were relatives of the king. There certainly wasn't any need to tell the women the details, though.

"All Tartessos has nothing more beautiful," he said carefully in his best English.

Jared Cofflin smiled as the last of the deck cargo trotted down to Steamboat Wharf. Those waiting with handcarts and a few improvised horse-drawn vehicles managed to raise a cheer as well, although this load was not grain but several dozen loudly argumentative pigs, the last left on the ship.

"I'm surprised they can stand to make any noise, after the homecoming celebration," Captain Alston said. "A few of my cadets and crew still can't, and the aspirin are rationed."

She looked around the dockside. Cofflin tried to see it as she would. Not much had changed in the time away… only six weeks, Christ. The main difference was the absence of motor vehicles. The sailing boats which had ridden at mooring poles in the enclosed basin to her left were mostly out fishing; so were the trawlers and the converted scallop boats. Work went on to turn the cabin cruisers and other motor craft to something useful. Two steam tugs waited over in the Easy Street marina basin, next to an improvised barge they'd towed over from the mainland. Perhaps the smell was the biggest difference, and that had crept up on him so gradually that he hardly noticed anymore. They did their best to scrape up every fragment from the fish landed here, if only because it was needed for the fields everyone else had been laboring to clear. Still, there were scales, and a definite smell.

"The town needed a rest," he said. "And what you brought back, that's going to make a big difference."

"A third of a pound of bread per person per day for a year," she said, and looked around. "Y'all have been busy."

The pigs were being herded into the carts, with barriers of wire netting set up to give them only one route. Enraged squeals sounded, the whack of poles on bristly hides, and the shout of someone whose hand was saved only by the thick glove he left in a pig's mouth.

"If y'all only knew how glad I am to see the last of those things," she muttered; he presumed the remark was directed at the world in general. "I hope we can feed them. Seventy-five sows made it, say three batches of eight piglets per year each, and they start breedin' within a year themselves-"

"We'll manage. Feed 'em alewives, if nothing else," he said. They weren't particularly good eating fish, but they were certainly abundant-no wonder the Pilgrims had used them as fertilizer. "Good thing Steamboat Wharf is deep enough for you to dock," he said.

"It's a menace," she replied absently. "The land around the harbor here isn't really enough to break a first-class storm. We could lose the ship, if she was caught here in a bad norther, and we don't have much warning without a weather service. I'm inclined to park her over on the mainland in the winter. Providence harbor ought to do-it's deep and sheltered up there at the end of Narrangansett Bay. Inconvenient as hell, though."

"Well, we've got a sort of base there," Cofflin said. "The ferry's there now, for one last trip before we lay her up.

We're bringing back timber-you wouldn't believe the quality of the lumber we've been getting. Seems a pity to use so much of it for firewood. We figured it was worth the fuel, and now we've got the tugs on the same run, and some sailboats. They're bringing salt-marsh hay, too, for the livestock."

"You won't regret it come winter," Alston said. Her voice took on a more serious tone: "Look, Chief, that grain will help, but we'll need more."

He nodded. "Farming here never was more than a scramble, and a chancy one at that."

"Damn right," Alston said. "My family were farmers down South; it's a nice hobby and a hell of a way to make a living. I've got some ideas about how we should trade this fall."

"Not with the same crowd?" Cofflin said, one brow arching.

"Not if we can avoid it. I'm not what you'd call squeamish, but…" She shrugged. "Besides, they don't control a big territory as yet, and they're making war. Not the situation to produce good crops."

"Are there any others likely to do better?" he said.

She frowned and clasped her hands behind her back. "I think there may. We could just pick another spot, somewhere else in Europe or even the Mediterranean, but… I told you about Ms. Swindapa?"

"Seems to be a nice girl," Cofflin said cautiously. "Doc Coleman is taking a look at her, as you asked."

"Speak of the devil."

The doctor appeared, wobbling in on a bicycle. He coasted to a halt beside them and dismounted. "Whooo," he panted. "I've known for years that I should get more exercise." Then he looked up at Alston. "Well, I confirmed what your ship's surgeon said. She's in remarkably good condition, for someone who was beaten to within an inch of her life and gang-raped to the point of internal lesions. Anal and vaginal."

Cofflin sucked in his breath. The radiophone report had said "badly abused"; he'd assumed something like this, but…

"I think they make them tough in the here-and-now," Alston said thoughtfully. Only someone who knew her rather well could have interpreted the slight tightening of the skin around her mouth. "The ones that live, anyway."

"And the pelvic inflammation's cleared right up," Cole-man went on. "Nice to see a bug that doesn't sneer at sulfonamides. There's probably fallopian scarring, I'm afraid. I've given her and that Isketerol fellow every vaccine and shot in the armory, just in case, too. Apart from that she's in fine condition. Full set of teeth, not one cavity, twenty-twenty vision…"

"Right," Alston nodded. God, she's a cool one, Cofflin thought. He was angry, himself; policeman's reflex, if you were a good one.

"Ms. Swindapa is connected with a prominent family in the… I don't think it's a kingdom or a country, exactly, but it occupies most of southwestern England in this era," Alston said. "I hope to learn more when she speaks better English, and she's learning remarkably fast."

"Can't Dr. Arnstein translate?"

"Only through Isketerol, and I'd rather not."

Cofflin's eyes narrowed. "You're thinking alliance," he said.

"I'm thinking we should consider it," she said, and held up a pink-palmed hand. "No, I'm not dreaming conquistador dreams. We've only got a couple of dozen real firearms left, with pitiful stores of ammunition. But we could make a difference helping one side or the other… and Ms. Swindapa's people are being attacked without provocation. They also have plenty of what we need: foodstuffs, livestock, linen, wool, and eventually metals. Copper and tin already, and we could show them how to mine and smelt iron. A few simple innovations…"

Cofflin whistled silently. "That's something the whole Council will have to talk about, and the Town Meeting too," he said. "You certainly don't think small or dawdle, Captain."

Alston shrugged again. "The iron's hot. But yes, this is all tentative now. We've got photographs and video footage you should see, too."

He nodded. "Let's take this further. We have your baggage moved into the quarters we found for you-we can go there and talk in privacy."

They turned and walked south along Easy Street, then west along the ankle-turning cobblestones of Main. The shops were mostly shuttered and locked, but there were ladders against many of the cast-iron lampposts, and the glass frames had been taken off their tops.

"Putting in whale-oil lanterns," Cofflin said, to Alston's look of inquiry. "The field clearing and planting's done, most of it; Angelica can get the grainfields sown in a day or two with her machinery-they're ready and waiting. We've got a little leisure for other things."

"Too much," Coleman said grimly. "How many suicides did you have, Captain?"

"One… wait a minute."

Coleman smiled bleakly as he saw the woman blink at the implications. "We've had over a hundred and fifty," he said. "In a population of less than eight thousand, that's… quite a few. Plus a rash of depression. The work was good for that. The suicides have tailed off, thank God, but there's still a few every week. I'm afraid of what might happen if everyone has much time to think."

Cofflin sighed. "It just seems to hit people, particularly when they have a chance to sit down and think," he said. "Did me, for a while."

A whole day when he could not summon the energy to get out of bed or answer the insistent voices, and nothing seemed real. The memory still haunted him, worse than things he'd seen in his naval service, and not just because it was more recent. This had been a failure within himself, a failure of his will. A failure of the thing that kept him going, and if your will could fail you, what could stand?

"I noticed something similar on the Eagle, but we were extremely busy… and a ship's company is a self-contained group anyway," she said. "Hmm. I'd give odds that most of the suicides were adults, and not many of them were Council members."

Coleman looked at her in surprise. "Average age thirty-eight, and no, only one of the selectmen killed himself," he said.

"It makes sense," Alston said. "Upward mobility's great for your self-confidence."

"None of us wanted this catastrophe!" Cofflin said.

"Didn't say that; I'd rather it hadn't happened too. But you, me, the others who've… taken charge, for us the catastrophe has meant scope for our talents."

"Everyone's been stretched to the limit."

"Planting potatoes, fishing; hard labor, for people who aren't used to it, mostly. The whole world lost, even the little things-morning TV, hot water from a tap, hamburgers. We, though, we've been suddenly promoted from lower middle management to president-Cabinet-Joint Chiefs level. Everyone's life depends on us, and that's a burden to crack your back, but you can't put it down."

Cofflin's anger faded. "You may be right," he admitted. "That's what pulled me out of it, I think-knowing that too many people were depending on me."

"I definitely think you're right," Coleman said. "But how should we apply the knowledge?"

"Keep people busy. The Lord knows there's enough to do," Alston said. "Beyond that, I'd try to get them involved in the planning more."

Coleman laughed aloud. "Funny you should say that. People seem to be planning for the future already, in their way. With all those suicides it took a while to notice, but the number of pregnancies is up too, about three times what it should be."

"More mouths," Cofflin grumbled.

"More hands, eventually," the doctor replied. To Alston: "And along the lines you suggested, the Chief's been pushing this Project Night thing…"

"Project Night?"

"Sort of like a suggestion box," Cofflin explained. "I figured there must be a lot of good ideas out there about things we should be doing. Had Martha Stoddard over at the Athenaeum screen out the crazies, and God but there are enough of those. Then, I figure, once a month the serious ones get to do a presentation, and the month after that the Town Meeting votes which projects to tackle. Martha had a good one herself-have Angelica Brand turn part of her greenhouses over to growing orange trees, lemons, that sort of thing. We had the seeds, after all. Even got some coffee plants-ornamentals, but they'll grow coffee beans, right enough."

"Not enough yield to be worth the trouble, surely?"

"Ayup, not here-but we keep sending the Yare down to the Caribbean for salt, anyway. They can plant seedlings, leave 'em, and let them grow wild. Martha tells me explorers used to do that, whenever they touched at a newfound island. In a few years we'll have the fruit."

"Now that is clever," Alston said respectfully.

"Martha's a clever lady," he said. They had come to where Main Street veered to the left, forming a Y-fork with Liberty. "It's along here. Right here, as a matter of fact."

He enjoyed the look of well-hidden surprise on Alston's face. The house was one of the Three Bricks, a big Federal-style mansion with two white pillars on either side of the entrance. There was a flagpole above it, now bearing the Coast Guard's banner, and a square cupola on the roof flanked by two chimneys at either end. Someone had even put up a brass plaque over the entrance, Coast Guard House. It stood four-square and peaceful, two more like it to their left.

"Ah…" she said. "Chief Cofflin, Ah did have thoughts 'bout a big house with white columns as a girl, but isn't this a bit… grand?"

Cofflin laughed. "It's also Town property, since the owner didn't make the voyage with us. Don't worry; we're turning it over to you as your headquarters, as well as someplace to store your toothbrush ashore. Room for some of your officers, as well."

"Thank you kindly," she muttered, craning her head up at the facade and accepting the key ring.

"I'll be off," Coleman said as they opened the door. "While I can still do some good." The humor left his seamed, elderly face as he pushed his bicycle to a start.

"Definitely a little grand," Alston said, looking around the lobby.

There was a curving staircase to the upper floors, rising from an entrance papered in Empire style with gold medallions against cream. Two large sitting rooms flanked it on either side, each with a black marble fireplace and eight-foot windows; the colors were gray and green and beige, picked out with coral and yellow. The furniture was quietly sumptuous, Persian rugs on the wide-plank floors, pictures…

"I'd hate to have to dust all this… Does the doctor have a problem?"

Cofflin nodded somberly. "Things running out. Insulin, specifically."

"I… see."

"He's trying to save some of the diabetics with special diets and exercise," Cofflin said. "Martha dug out an old treatment, a tea made from parsnip leaves, believe it or not-lowers the blood sugar."

"That won't work for most of the Type Ones," Alston said clinically.

Cofflin felt anger flare again, and throttled it down. Make sure he said what you think he said, his father had always told him. Almost as many fools ruined by their ears by as their lips.

"You're a cool one, aren't you?" he said.

Alston caught the tone and faced him. "Chief Cofflin," she said quietly, "practical is what I am. I try to do what I can, and that takes all I've got, so I don't wail and beat my breast over things I can't do an earthly thing about. It's what's kept me sane through this… thing. I hope that's all right with you, because I have no intention of changing. Gave up tryin' to make myself over to other people's patterns when I filed for divorce."

Cofflin spread his hands. "I can't argue with that." A wry smile. "Or with someone who does their job. Too few of 'em."

Alston returned the smile. "Too right," she agreed. "Look, we do have a lot to talk about. Let's get to it. Does this place have a kitchen?"

Blue collar reflexes, he thought-like him. They walked through a dining room under a brass-and-crystal chandelier. The kitchen beyond had been thoroughly modernized, in a meticulous-restoration style. Much of the equipment was of the latest and completely useless with only a thin trickle of rationed electricity available, and that earmarked for the clinic and machine shops, but there was a big black cast-iron wood stove as well. Alston's eyes lit up at the sight of it.

"Now that's going to be fun," she said.

"You cook?" he asked, a little surprised.

"I was a complete failure as a mother and not cut out for a wife," she said, "but yes, my momma did whack one feminine accomplishment into me. It's relaxin'. Splice the mainbrace? Think I saw a liquor cabinet back there."

"One won't hurt."

She came back with two glasses and a bottle. "I see someone told you my tastes, or whoever owned this place knew whiskey."

"It's your local brand?"

"It's Maker's Mark," she said, pouring a finger into both glasses and adding water to hers. She raised an eyebrow; at his nod she splashed a dollop of water into his as well. "Also known as Kentucky Champagne. Where I came from, the local brand went right from the still into pint jars."

They sat across the carefully scrubbed pine boards of the table. "To a long and successful association, Chief," she said.

He sipped; the whiskey went down smoothly. Nothing but the best for the man who'd owned this place. For a moment he smiled at the thought of an enraged stockbroker wandering through the primeval woods of the 1250 B.C. Nantucket that-presumably-was dumped into 1998, looking for his three-point-seven-million-dollar investment. The smile was without much sympathy. In his book financiers were right up there with publicans and sinners among the people only a mother or Jesus could love.

"I'm not sure that I can drink to that," he said. "A long association means I have to keep this miserable job they've pushed off on me." A sudden thought struck him, and he glanced at her speculatively.

"Oh, no. No way this woman-chile goin' fall fo' that, Yankee." Flatly: "Wouldn't work. I'm an outsider here, a woman, and black."

"I'd noticed," he said dryly. "I don't think you'd have much trouble that way here. It's a pretty open-minded place, Nantucket."

"Let me be the judge of that," she said, in the same flat tone.

He shrugged ruefully. "Well, I suppose you would be in a better position to judge."

"Not necessarily, Chief-"

"Jared."

"-Jared. If you're black, there are people out there who are going to do their best to mess you up, and if you're a woman it's twice compounded… and one of the subtle ways they get you is to tempt you into using their prejudice as an excuse every time you screw up, and if you make excuses for failin', you'll do nothing but fail. Huggin' resentments isn't very productive, even if they're justified; gets to be one of those self-fulfillin' prophecies."

She smiled wryly. "Besides, you don't know the half of it… and I'm doing exactly what I'm suited for." Meditatively: "They were going to lay the Eagle up, did you know? I think that's why I got her after Quillman broke his neck in that damn-fool accident, they thought I'd make a good PR choice as last captain. A good thing it was brought back with the island."

"Some useful things came along," Cofflin agreed. "The problem is when they run out. All the makeshifts and replacements we come up with take so much more time. Paper towels," he went on. "Did you ever think how many man-hours of washing up paper towels save?"

"My own thoughts along those lines were a little more personal," she said. "I still remember vividly my first thought when you told me about Rosenthal's notion that we were back in the Bronze Age." Her eyes went wide in mock horror: "What, no more Tampax, ever?"

They shared the chuckle and lifted their glasses to meet with a chink. "Well, let's get down to business."

Isketerol of Tartessos sat in the garden outside the tall white columns of the Athenaeum, with his face in his hands.

"Three thousand years," he whispered to himself.

It was a number-meaningless, not real like three thousand ingots of copper or three thousand sheep or three thousand paces. "Three thousand years. Three thousand years. Three-"

He stopped himself with a wrenching effort of will, shuddering, and the few folk passing by under the cruel brightness of the sunshine gave him only a glance or two.

Why didn't they tell me? he asked, anger bubbling up under eerieness. "Because you didn't have enough command of their tongue, fool!" he snarled to himself.

He probably wouldn't have believed, then. Now it made too much sense, with what he'd seen and heard. This island was only the fragment of a greater realm; that was why there were so many people and so little farmland.

"Hardly even a memory of us survives," he whispered.

He looked down the corridors of the ages, and saw his city and his people and his very gods forgotten, dust and ashes and a few corroded remnants pored over by strangers indulging an idle curiosity. His father's house, that he had hoped to build strong for the years; his wives, his children.

The little crooked lanes where he had run as a boy, the bay where he had learned to handle a boat, the dock where he left on his first real voyage.

Tartessos, and the whole world. He remembered the pictures the Amurrukan woman inside the white building had shown him, the shattered wreck of the Lion Gate of Mycenae, the Egyptian temples stripped of their colors and crumbling away amid the sands. He remembered standing in the crowd and watching Ramses return from his campaign in Canaan, like the graven image of a god in the chariot behind high-stepping horses. The blaze of faience and gold from the temples and palaces, great colored streamers hanging between the pylons. He remembered the sheer awe that had gripped him when he saw the pyramids, those mountains made by men like gods… and the pictures of them stripped of their smooth shining coats of limestone, lying jagged and worn beside the Nile…

Dizziness swept over him, and he moaned. Gradually, fighting as he'd done to bring the Wave Hunter through a storm on the River Ocean, he won back to himself.

Think, he told himself. The Womb Goddess and the Lady of Tartessos had given him wits; he was no brainless savage to cower before the unknown.

Yes, a mighty magic had taken this island, this Nantucket, and set it adrift in the sea of time. The anger of some god, for no sorcerer could do this, could bestride the universe and compel the Powers. The Amurrukan themselves, with all their arts, had no inkling of how or why. Yes, yes… And their arts were deserting them, they said so themselves. Only the simpler ones remained.

He took heart from what the wisewoman in the temple of writings had said. Now the course of the world was turned on a new tack. A new heading, on which anything might happen. Nothing need be as it was shown in those deadly, lying pictures. He was free.

Slowly his breathing slowed. He wiped his face on a linen handkerchief, a gift of Walker, and looked around. He had known he was faring into strangeness, beyond the world he knew-and he had seized the opportunity with both hands. Well, it was still there. He was learning much; already he had learned enough to make his house the greatest in the city. How to make a ship sail against the wind, the secrets of the rudder and the north-pointing needle. Something of the currents and winds of the River Ocean far beyond the coasts, and if they were as reliable as the Eagle captain said, that was much.

You are in no danger here. Not unless the wrath of the gods struck again, and against that he could do nothing. If a curse rode these shores, so be it.

No danger. He had the promise of rich rewards, beyond what he'd sent back home with his cousin. They had quartered him in a house that was not large, but furnished like a king's. He had a friend, of sorts, in Walker. He even had a woman. Isketerol made himself dwell on that, and grinned; a very inventive woman, better than any he'd ever bedded, and a mine of unintentional information. He was a merchant adventurer of Tartessos, who'd dared storm and beasts and wild men in unknown waters. Abide the summer, teach the languages he'd promised, and see what opportunities offered. Snatch them when they came.

Swindapa sat on the soft bed and bounced experimentally. It creaked and the four posts at the corners swayed a little, fluttering the fringe of the canopy all around. She looked around the room, awed. The floor was planks of wood, smoothly fitted together like the wood on Eagle's deck. The walls were smooth too, showing no sign of the potlike baked clay lumps-bi-ri-ks, she told herself-on the outer walls. Patterns of blue and green flowers covered them, so lovely she wanted to kick off her shoes and run dancing barefoot through the spring meadows they showed. There were fitted wooden windows, with panes of the clear icelike glass, and folding shutters. One wall held a hearth, with faint traces of ash and a metal rack for holding wood.

Strange. Where is the smoke-mark? Smoke was useful- it kept vermin out of your thatch as it soaked through, and dried the straw. A hearth like this should leave a broad band of smoke up the wall and on the roof, but that was smooth and white, looking like the gypsum plaster used to coat some Star-Moon-Sun workings. She went over and knelt, looking up. There was a tunnel of bricks leading away upward for the smoke. The room didn't smell of smoke, and the hearth only very faintly.

It smelled like flowers. Swindapa followed her nose. Yes, a bowl of dried petals on the wooden shelf over the hearth. That was homelike; bunches of dried herbs and flowers hung around any Earth Folk dwelling. There were flowers on the rug that warmed the floor, too, somehow drawn in cloth.

A big wooden box on short legs stood by the bed. It had real metal fastenings on it, polished bronze. I wonder if this might be like the thing in the wall on the ship? She tugged on one brass handle, and a sliding box within the larger box came out, filled with things of fine cloth. She pulled one out. It was an Eagle Folk loincloth, the type made from two triangles of cloth and an odd stretchy belt that clung and stayed up by itself. You could put one of the little pads inside it to catch your Mourning blood, too, when your womb wept with Moon Woman. Another wonderful thing of the Eagle People.

"Surely even Tartessos has nothing this fine," she murmured to herself, looking around the room. "Not even Egypt."

It was getting dark, and she remembered something the captain had showed her. This place didn't have the ship-magic that made a little star glow when you touched the wall. The lamp screwed to the wall was almost as delightful. You took off the tall glass bulb-carefully, carefully, the clear stuff was as fragile as a snowflake-and lit a match. That was a pleasure in itself, when you thought of how long and uncertain using a fire drill was; no wonder the Eagle People didn't have to keep a fire going all the time for folk to take splinters from. Then you touched the flame to the flat strip of thick cloth that ran down into the cup of oil below. She put the chimney back on the lamp and turned the brass knob. Warm yellow light filled the room. A fire in the hearth would have been good too, even though the night was warm, but the lantern was pleasant.

She yawned, full and sleepy, remembering to cover her mouth in the way the Eagle People considered polite. A whole bed that size to myself. She'd gotten used to lying so far off the ground, and no longer worried about rolling off the edge in her sleep, but she'd never expected to have so much space to herself. That's good, though. Outside your kin, it was extremely bad manners not to share pleasure with someone sleeping in the same bed if he wanted to, and she didn't think she could stand to have anyone touch her that way right now. Even the gentle old healer's impersonal hands had made her struggle not to weep and scream.

Her teeth ground together in rage. Another thing the Iraiina had stolen from her. She forced herself to relax again. Vengeance was coming. Moon Woman had taken her out of the world to find it; or brought this place into the world, perhaps. She couldn't quite understand what the Eagle People had tried to explain about that yet, but she would.

She padded down the corridor to the washing place, and did the Eagle People ritual of tooth-scrubbing. Many of them seemed to have trouble with their teeth, so chewing a cedar twig wasn't enough for them. Although the captain's are beautiful, shining like pure salt.

Perhaps the Powers which gave the Eagle People so much sent them that trouble to balance things.

"It is fun to have more room," Doreen said.

Ian laughed as he came back to the big four-poster bed with two glasses of sherry. He'd had to turn over all the provisions he'd accumulated on that panic-stricken morning right after the Event, but the Council's regulations had let everyone keep his booze. The island was out of bottled beer, although the local microbrewery was ready to start malting the barley they'd brought back. God knew what it would taste like with the supply of hops so limited, but it ought to be drinkable. That was all you could say about Nantucket's own wine, though. The real surprise was that grapes would grow here at all, probably because the island sat in the middle of the Gulf Stream!

He checked half a step, then climbed back into the bed.

"Penny for them," Doreen said, snuggling close and taking her glass.

Ian propped pillows up against the headboard and leaned back into them. "I was just thinking that when things settle down, it might be an idea to look into a wine-importing business," he said. "That Tartessian wine wasn't half bad- it reminded me of sherry, which is why I thought of it just now-and with a few hints, they could probably do even better."

Doreen tweaked his chest hairs. "It reminded me of Manischewitz," she said.

"Oh, not that bad-well, actually, that was my first thought too."

"You're just looking for an excuse to go do historical research in the first person personal," she said.

"I wouldn't mind seeing a few things," he admitted. Isketerol had let fall a few hints about Egypt that made his scholar's mind drool; and the thought of seeing Agamemnon's Greece… God! To get there with a camera! "But there's still the matter of making a living."

He glanced down. "Making a living for us?" he said tentatively.

Did I really say that? he thought. Yup.

Doreen grinned up at him through the fringe of her abundant, rather coarse black hair. "Trying to make an honest woman of me?" she said. He nodded.

"Thank you, Ian," she said. After a long moment. "Yes."

They clinked the glasses gently together. "Strange," Ian said. "I've only done that once before, and the results weren't all that great."

Doreen knocked her knuckles against one of the posts of the bed. "Avert the omen. I've never said yes before… haven't been asked all that often, either."

"I can't think why," he said sincerely. "Smart, agreeable, good-looking."

She laughed ruefully. "Zaftig," she corrected. "A lot better looking on this enforced diet and exercise program God's sent us on."

She had lost a good twenty pounds, in the right places, although she'd never be the ballerina she'd once wanted to be. He ran a hand down her back to her hip. "I've got no objections at all," he said. "When?"

"Well, Chief Cofflin's getting married… after that?"

He nodded. That would be a town-wide blowout; they could have a quiet ceremony with only a few friends. Odd. I actually have more friends here than in California. A thought struck him. "Should we apply for a house of our own?"

"Why bother?" Doreen said. "There's nobody else in this building. We could convert the other rooms to office and library space, and there's a nice living room and solarium downstairs."

"No kitchen, though," Ian pointed out. The place was part of the John Cofflin, with three suites on each of its upper two floors. Each held a bedroom, bathroom-largely inoperable now-and sitting room, of variable sizes.

"I'm not the hausfrau type, particularly not with wood stoves or whatever we're going to be using. The main building's just across the way for meals. Later on we could put an attached kitchen out back-there's plenty of room."

Ian sighed. Nice to be thinking about something normal… relatively normal. "And it's right downtown," he said. "The location will be convenient while we're working for the government." The term came naturally now.

"You're the head of the State Department," Doreen giggled. Her eyes took on a thoughtful look. "That could be a pretty dangerous job, here. It isn't a nice era, from what Swindapa said. Interesting, in the Chinese sense. We'll be back across the Atlantic in August, maybe September."

Ian nodded uncomfortably. Doreen had spent more time with the Fiernan girl than he. "She's, ah, recovered fairly well, hasn't she?"

"I'm not sure," Doreen said. "She's a nice kid, but weird-well, with that background, you'd expect it. We talked astronomy, did I tell you?"

"You mentioned it. Do they know much?"

"It's all tied up with their religion, but once you strip out the stuff about Moon Woman and her children the stars-and boy, do they believe the stars control your destiny!-they've actually got a pretty good grasp of things. Pre-Copernicus, but very sound. They even know the sun's a star and the planets aren't, although the sun's the bad figure in their mythology."

"The devil?"

"More like a wayward child who needs a lot of discipline," Doreen said. "I'm not sure; the theology's as complicated as the Kabbalah, and I get the feeling this astronomical stuff was overlaid, a long time ago, on an older religion. The thing is, they've got an amazing grasp of stellar motions for people with no instruments to speak of and no way of writing any of it down like the Babylonians did. And their math, geometry in particular. Even something like algebra. No wonder Swindapa's got a good memory-the amount of stuff the poor kid had to memorize! She says some of the mnemonic songs they use are so old the language has changed beyond recognition."

We are made for each other. Make love, lie here with a glass of wine, and talk about anthropology, Ian mused ruefully.

Doreen thought for a second. "It's really odd how much they know, and how little hint of it there is in the history of the field," she said. "Really. They've got a good idea of the size of the earth, for instance, and of the distance to the moon. As good as the Greeks, better in some respects. Yet there's no trace of it in the records at all."

"I don't think that's surprising," Ian said grimly. "Let's put it this way. Imagine everything the same as we saw in Britain, only we didn't arrive. What would have happened to Swindapa?"

"She'd have died, the way they were treating her," Doreen said at once. "Or gone mad. Oh."

Ian nodded. "The Iraiina, or their relatives, are-were- would have-hell, you know what I mean-were scheduled to blot her people out. At least Swindapa's class, the ones who hold their accumulated knowledge. There's no trace of their language in our history, either. All that'll be left is their monuments and burials, which nobody will really understand."

"Poor kid," Doreen said again. "At least that's one thing we improved on." She sighed, then brightened and returned to a more personal subject:

"There's plenty of room here for a nursery, too." Ian stiffened in momentary panic. "No, I'm not pregnant-back a while I got Norplant." She rolled her arm to show the five little tubes under the skin.

"Were you, ah, involved with anyone?" he asked. Odd that I waited until now to ask that. A convention was growing up that you didn't lightly inquire about what links a person had had off-island before the Event. Irrelevant, and often painful.

"Not recently. I was overoptimistic," she sighed. "It'll wear off in another year and a half, and we can decide what we want to do then." Her grin turned wicked. "No reason we can't practice, though, is there?"

"None at all." He finished the sherry and put his glass beside hers on the side table.