Island in the Sea of Time

CHAPTER TEN

May, Year 1 A.E.

"Ahhh," Swindapa sighed under her breath.

Everyone in the huge building was sitting on padded chairs of stone, like steps ringing the wooden platform ahead of her. Hundreds of people; she did a quick count. Nine hundred eighty-six, with a dozen children carried in their mothers' arms, almost as many as a Midwinter Moon ceremony at the Great Wisdom. The chairs had been enough for wonder, that and the building itself-like a Star-Moon-Sun work, only more vast and stately. Now the banner of white cloth up at the head of it was showing nickering images, colored, with sounds. The sounds of an Iraiina chant, of their magic.

Shivering, she huddled a little closer to the captain sitting beside her, reached down and seized her hand. She and the others were watching the moving shapes of light as if they were…

Something went click inside her head. She remembered the shadows of dancers thrown against the walls of a hut as they leaped and whirled around the fire. Ahhhhhh! The images were shadows of things past, like a memory taken out and put on the banner of white cloth! She relaxed a little. This was a seeming, and the captain wouldn't let the magic hurt her.

Figures walked through a meadow at dawn. Iraiina figures, stalking between two high-leaping bonfires and a double line of warriors. One was huge, heavy-bodied, scarred and hairy, swag belly above pillar legs, barrel chest and bear-thick arms above. Daurthunnicar. Naked save for the kilt and the mask over his face and shoulders, the head and neck of a horse, skillfully tanned and mounted on wicker. Equally naked in his hand was the long sword of silvery metal that he'd been given by the Eagle People. The younger man had designs painted over his body in blue and ocher-red.

The Iraiina priest came forward, with two acolytes leading a chariot; they unyoked the right-hand pony of the team and brought it to the magus, who raised his staff and began to chant. The words were strange, like Iraiina but longer and twisted. Old speech, she decided. The Grandmothers used an old speech for some of the most ancient Star Working Songs; Moon Woman might not like it if any of those were changed. Maybe the Iraiina sky god felt the same way.

Behind the priest and the horse a hole gaped in the earth, with dirt piled up on either side of it. The Iraiina warriors began to dance in a great circle around it, stopping now and then to drink deeply from skins of mead, tossing their heads and neighing; it was the hepkwos-midho, the horse-drunk.

Daurthunnicar danced too; the Dance of the King Stallion, knees flashing high as he pranced. The chant filled the hall, and she could hear the Eagle People murmuring beneath it. Then the Iraiina chieftain stopped, standing straddle-legged. The horse was led forward, and the holders urged it to its knees. The young man in the kilt came forward, and took up a stone-headed maul. With a shout he swept it up and then down into the forehead of the horse, stunning it.

Daurthunnicar struck as well, two-handed. The sword severed the horse's spine; five more strokes cut through its neck, until the head rolled free. Blood splashed the rahax from head to foot, until scarlet dripped from his beard and from the mane of the horse mask. The younger man stooped, then stood with the horse's head held stiffly over his own, corded arms straining at the weight. Both men danced again, younger following older, the muzzles of the horses jerking and swooping in unison.

At last they halted. The young man laid his burden down beneath his feet and faced the rising sun, singing in a strong clear voice with both palms raised. Gradually the arms lowered, but the song went on. It was still ringing out when Daurthunnicar's sword blurred in a horizontal circle.

Very sharp sword, Swindapa thought. Cutting through a neck like that was hard, even for a man of Daurthunnicar's huge strength. She gritted her teeth and wished it were the chieftain's head falling.

The images showed men laying the body of the horse in the grave. Dirt went over it, then the body of the man-sacrifice, with the horse's head in place of its own. Lights came up, and Swindapa breathed out a long sigh of wonder.

The captain gently disengaged her hand, putting Swindapa's firmly back on her own side of the gap between the chairs. She rose and went to the front of the room, with the Spear Chosen of the Eagle People beside her; he was very tall, with thinning blond hair cut short like a mourner's. They began to speak; Swindapa strained to hear the language. She could follow it pretty well now, and make herself understood on all ordinary matters.

Strange people, the Americans, the Eagle People. Strange but wonderful.

Pamela Lisketter spat to clear her mouth, then rinsed it with water from the bucket by the sink. The image of the horse, falling, falling, blood spurting over the man with the sword, and then the sword flashing again and interrupting the song… her stomach nearly rose again, but she pushed the scene away until it was distant-words, images on TV, not so real.

She walked back out into her living room. The house was mostly that single long space, furnished with futons and her own creations, smelling faintly of incense… and now of whale oil. The loom stood by one wall, the windows next to it flooding it with light. Her friends were scattered about. She'd been planning to have a few over for dinner, and ready to sacrifice the last of the tofu, until the revelations tonight. They'd hit some of the others even harder; Cindy Ganger was still sitting silent, with her face crumpled in behind her thick glasses, but then, she was a Wiccan and really believed that her religion went back to ancient times. The only ones who looked at all collected were the Coast Guardsman, Walker, and his friend from Europe, Isketerol. They were sitting with Alice and Rosita. Lisketter frowned a little. The two young women were dilettantes, in her opinion; Hong dabbled in pagan circles for the sexual aspects. Also feckless, as witness who they'd taken up with-but that could be useful now.

"Shocking," she said at last. "Obviously sexist, patriardial in the worst way, abusive of animals. And we did business with them."

"The Iraiina are savages," Isketerol agreed.

Lisketter felt her lips thin, then forced herself to remember that the… indigenous person, she decided… had learned his English in the wrong place, among people no better than police. "Savages" was a Eurocentric term. Or Nantucket-centric, I suppose, she thought with an attempt at gallows humor.

"They are the ancestors of the technolators," her brother David said. "Remember, oh, what was the book, The Chalice and the Blade?"

"Yeah, they're pretty hard-assed, the Iraiina," Walker nodded, sipping at his bottle of homemade beer. He looked down at it and grimaced slightly, then continued: "We shouldn't be selling them weapons."

"I should hope not," Lisketter said. "Or anyone else, for that matter." Thoughtfully: "Perhaps we should talk to Ms. Swindapa about her people. They seem more… more harmonic. If we could get her away from Captain Alston."

"You couldn't separate those two with a crowbar," Walker said. At her raised eyebrows: "You do know the captain's a dyke, don't you?"

"That is a homophobic term in this context," Lisketter said stiffly, flushing with anger.

Walker smiled charmingly. "Sorry. Force of habit. I haven't been around the right sort of people much, I'm afraid."

"That's all right," Lisketter said, brushing a lock of her long straight hair back. "She does seem male-identified, obsessed with patriarchal rules, and logocentric."

"Damned right," Walker said. "Saluting, heel-clicking… did you know she had a crewm… crewperson dragged behind the ship on a rope? He nearly died."

There was a shocked murmur in the big brick-floored room. Lisketter tried to remember what she'd heard of the incident, but it did seem the sort of thing a power-oriented person would do.

"I'm certainly not going to spend the rest of my life working for her," Walker said. "It was bad enough, a temporary assignment-but here and now, she's set to run the Eagle and everything else that floats for life. An empire-builder."

"The imperialism has already begun," David said. "All those Native Americans dead of our diseases, and Chief Cofflin has a settlement over on the mainland already, stripping the forests of trees and butchering the animals."

Pamela nodded somberly. It had begun, and if they didn't do something it would be worse than the Conquest of Paradise that her ancestors had wrought.

"We have to do something," she said.

"Well, yeah," Walker said smoothly. He and the Iberian exchanged glances. "We're ready to help, of course. Alice and Rosita have opened our eyes."

"It is… what is your word, reassuring," Isketerol said to William Walker.

They had halted their bicycles under a stand of pines, with a few last daffodils still nodding yellow beneath. No one was near; the road was empty, and only heath and fields stretched away on either side, potato vines already bushy and rows of grain just showing like a faint green fuzz on the gray-brown soil. The loudest noise was the sough of the wind in the trees, the buzz of insects. Hot resin scented the air, baked out of the trunks behind them. The noon sun was warm, full of the sound of bees and sleepiness.

"Reassuring?" Walker said.

"That you Amurrukan can also produce your share of fools," Isketerol said. "That is what they are, isn't it, Lisketter and the others? I didn't understand much of what they said, but I haven't been a trader for this long without recognizing an… easy mark, you say."

Walker laughed, a loud rich sound. "Oh, they're fools, all right," he said. "But for you and me, they're useful fools. Useful idiots."

"We should cultivate them, then," Isketerol said.

"Like a garden ripe for the harvest," Walker replied, slapping him on the shoulder. They both laughed as they pedaled on, back toward the town.

"The woman become one the man's thing only? Like among the Sun People?" Swindapa whispered.

Marian Alston moved aside a little as the breath tickled at her ear.

"No," she whispered back. There was still a hum of conversation in the big church, as they waited for the bride to appear at the foot of the aisle. "They can leave each other if they please. I did."

"You had a man of your own?" Swindapa asked eagerly. She knew that questions were impolite, but she'd been trying to learn Alston's background.

"Such as he was. A mistake."

"So this is like the… the, you say, party, as have we, when a woman's man goes to live with her kin?"

"Yes… more or less. The ceremony calls the blessings of God, and settles things like who inherits property and children."

"Oh," the Fiernan girl said, frowning a little in puzzlement.

Evidently her people didn't have anything closely resembling marriage. A man went to the woman's family grouping, and the relationship could be broken by mutual consent at any time. What Alston thought of as the father's role in a child's life fell more to the mother's brothers or other male kin, since they'd always be there. Property passed through the female line. Not exactly a matriarchy, though; nothing she could easily understand. She pushed the thought aside, concentrating on the ceremony.

The church on the hill was crowded, every seat full; the chiefs marriage to the head of the Athenaeum was an event. Royal wedding, Alston thought wryly. She'd gotten a pew for herself and the Eagle's wardroom, plus Swindapa… who is a very nice girl, but clings like a burr. Not intrusively, just refusing to go away for long; it was like trying to push the wind. Isketerol was there too, observing with his usual cool detachment.

All were in their best; she sat stiffly in her dress uniform, thinking wryly of the last time she'd worn it at Daurthunnicar's feast. Although this time it was with the regulation skirt. Swindapa couldn't have looked more different, in a white dress with lace panels, a broad-brimmed hat beside her on the pew, her hair fastened up with pearl-headed pins. Certainly an improvement on a collar and leash. Fancy clothes were going cheap on-island these days; overalls were harder to get. Still, it looked wonderful.

The organ started, thundering in the high vaulted white spaces of the church. She'd attended Baptist churches in her childhood, of course-mostly built out of weathered pine, down sandy tracks and surrounded by rattletrap cars.

Not much like this Congregational one, three-storied snowy spire and stately white walls on what passed for a hill on this sandspit island. We had better singing, though. Everyone stood. The sound was like a subdued slither under the trembling of the instrument, a rustle of cloth as people looked back toward the entrance.

Martha Stoddard stood there. She held a bouquet of flowers; otherwise she wore only another of her subdued but elegant gray suits.

"Silly to pretend I'm a girl," she'd said. Alston's lips quirked slightly. No side on that woman. Good-looking, too. In a spare sort of way; excellent bones, and those eyes would be full of mind and will when she was ninety. Now why don't I ever meet anyone like that? That wasn't quite the problem, of course, but…

Cofflin was waiting at the head of the aisle, sweating under the collar of his formal suit, looking pale. Looking rather like a bull waiting for the second blow from the slaughterhouse sledgehammer, in fact, or a man wondering desperately if he'd done the right thing.

The minister stood at the altar as the bride and her party walked down the isle. "Dearly beloved," she began.

"Well, there's one superstition disposed of," Alston said.

"Hmmm?" Cofflin asked.

He'd recovered most of his color by the time the outdoor reception began to wind down, and he was wandering about with his wife, talking to people and nibbling at the cake on his plate. Irreplaceable nuts and sugar and candied fruit had gone into the wedding cake, as well as flour made from grain the Eagle had brought back from Britain.

Alston looked over at him, and when she glanced back the remains of the piece on her own plate were gone. Swindapa was licking her fingers, grinning unrepentantly. Sometimes you can remember that she's still a teenager. Just turned eighteen, to be precise.

"What superstition?" Cofflin asked.

"About catching the bouquet," the captain said. It had been pure accident; the thing came flying at her face and she grabbed by instinct.

"It might come true," Martha observed.

"When pigs fly," Alston said.

"Congratulations again," a voice said; Ian Arnstein, with Doreen. They were holding hands.

Damned mating frenzy, Alston thought, smiling slightly. Maybe there's something in the air here in 1250 B.C. Or maybe it was just that people felt the loneliness pressing in on them and sought comfort where they could find it.

The ex-professor went on: "Have you mentioned what we discussed to the chief yet?"

"I didn't want to impose," Alston said dryly. "It is his wedding day, you know."

"Oh… sorry… bit of an obsessive-compulsive…" Arnstein floundered in embarrassment., "Always was socially challenged…"

"What did you discuss?" Martha Cofflin asked sharply.

"Well, the captain and I had this appalling thought."

Best get it over with, Alston decided. "We were talking about Isketerol's ships, and I mentioned that they could sail the same course to the Americas that we did, if Isketerol was keepin' his eyes open. Which he was."

Cofflin seemed to choke on a piece of the cake. "They could!" he wheezed, looking around.

"Easy. It's followin' winds most of the year, on the southern course. Ships no bigger did it routinely back in the early days after Columbus. Damnation, people have taken rowboats across the Atlantic. It's all a matter of knowing what's where, and how far, and the wind and current patterns. I may have made a mistake persuading him to come here, but he's so damned useful."

"Tartessians are sneaky," Swindapa said. "And greedy. They don't liked we trade our own bronzework to anyone. At sea they sink boats coming from, ah, you call it Ireland? Yes, the Summer Isle, we say. And amber traders from the mainland they sink, toos." Her features thinned to rage for a moment: "Theys help the Sun People invade our land."

Doreen nodded. "They want a monopoly," she said. "Tin's scarce here. Britain and northwestern Spain are the only sources these people know west of Bohemia and the Caucasus."

"The Tartessians are sort of upstarts, who've been getting quasi-civilized over the past century or so," Arnstein added. "They've copied the eastern civilizations somewhat, adapting them to their own patterns-rather like the Japanese with us. They're not as set in their ways as most people here-and-now."

Cofflin brushed a few crumbs off his jacket. "Well, so the locals could sail here. That's a bit startling, but why's it appalling?"

"Because piracy's hot, here," Alston said. "Down in the Mediterranean, from what Isketerol's let drop, anyone will attack anyone, if they think they can get away with it- ships, and 'longshore raids, that's where pirates make most of their loot anyway. And this island is the richest prize on earth. We underestimated the value of our goods. Badly. One small shipload would make a successful pirate the richest man in the world."

"Oh." Cofflin thought. "They couldn't do much against guns, could they?"

"Not the first time. After that we'd be out of ammunition. What's more, we're so short now that we can't even train people to use the few guns we do have. I saw the locals in operation in Britain. These people-peoples-are warriors; they don't scare easy."

"You're right," Cofflin said, wincing. "Those Indians we met the first day, a couple of them kept right on coming. Guess they realized all a gun can do is kill you, and they just weren't that scared of dying."

"We'd better start training a militia to use weapons we can manufacture," Alston said.

"We'll have gunpowder eventually," Martha observed.

"That's then, this is now. Even when we do, the locals are going to pick up tricks fast. Possibly not democracy or women's rights, but weapons? You bet. And we can't stay out of contact with the locals, not if we want to do more than decay into a bunch of illiterate potato farmers in a couple of generations. This island's too barren." She paused, frowning. "It might be better if Mr. Isketerol stayed here, rather than returning to Tartessos…"

"Thank you for that delightful end to the day," Cofflin said, turning on Arnstein. "Sorry, Professor, but I was just beginning to think we could relax a little."

"No, no, no, man, it ain't a sick cat, you can't tell its temperature by running a thermometer up its ass. You've got to, like, look at the color. Really look."

Marian Alston stopped a moment at the anguished cry, watching the group around the forge. Always a pleasure to watch someone who really knows what he's doing, she thought.

The blacksmith was a tall man, lean but with ropy muscle all along his bare sweat-slick arms and running under the thick canvas apron he was wearing. He was mostly bald on top, but a long ponytail of brown-streaked gray hair fell down his back, and a walrus mustache of the same color hung under sad sherry-colored eyes, like those of a basset hound hoping for a pat and expecting a kick. He held a rod of metal in a pair of pincers, turning it to show how it went from black to cherry-red to a fierce white at the tip.

"That's welding color, the white. Okay, get me the other piece."

More clumsily, the apprentice-an ex-office worker in a veterinary clinic-took up his own pincers in his gloved hands and wrestled another piece of steel out of the charcoal.

"Now down on the anvil," the smith said. "Okay, this stuff is mild steel. It won't weld as easy as wrought iron, so you have to dust it with a little flux-" he added a sprinkling of powder to where the two strips of metal overlapped each other-"and shed some righteous sweat. Here goes."

The big shed was noisy with a dozen metalworking benches, but the steady clang… clang… clang of the smith's hammer was the loudest. The metal flowed under it, merging. "Here's where we reheat and hammer some more," the smith said happily, putting the joined pieces of strapping back in the coals. "Meantime, drink some water. Important to drink water, man, keep your natural fluids in balance."

He dipped a cup into a bucket hanging on the wall, drank, then poured another over his head, holding his wire-rimmed glasses with their tiny round lenses out as he did so.

"Hey, Captain! What's happening?" he said cheerfully, peering at her.

Well, at least it isn't "How're they hanging," Alston thought resignedly. John Martins had been up in the hills of northern California since 1970, and stayed when the commune dissolved around him. A quarter century of lonely effort lay behind the skills he was trying to impart to a dozen apprentices.

"I warned you," the smith said. "I can't make anything like that Nip beauty y'showed me. No way, man. That's some excellent smith's work in that sword, truly righteous."

"Those take too long to make," she said, inhaling the scent of hot charcoal and scorched metal. It wasn't unpleasant, in its way, although the heat in here was fierce. "If it'll work, I'm satisfied."

He went over to the wall and took down a sword. She drew it from the plain leather-bound wooden sheath, raised it in both hands and tried a simple downward cut in slow-time, the pear-splitter. It followed the shape of her katana exactly, and the weight and balance were much the same. Not quite the living feel hers had, but much better than the cheap copies you got in most martial arts stores. The hilt was bound with cord, and the guard was a plain brass disk.

"I welded a sandwich of mild steel around a strip of 5160 for the cutting edge-y'know, the moroha way. Lotta fun, rilly."

This moroha blade wasn't quite the marvel that you got from the ori awasi san mat or shihozume methods, but it didn't take a year to produce, either. Alston turned the blade cutting-edge-up, admiring the wavy yakiba line in the steel that marked the hardened edge; she smiled, imagining Swindapa's face lighting up when she saw the sword. The Fiernan girl was a natural, too; teaching her was a real pleasure. So you couldn't really say it was favoritism to let her have this…

Ron Leaton came up wiping his hands on an oily rag. "Our anachronism doing right by you, Captain Alston?"

"Peace. I love you too, man." the smith said, and turned back to his work.

"I have a horrible feeling he's the wave of the future and the machinery is an anachronism," Alston said, snapping the sword back into the sheath.

"Well, we're fitting out a whole building just for him and his apprentices," Leaton said; she suspected it would be a relief to both of them to part company. "Meanwhile, things are going pretty well. I found another three Bridgeport milling machines, eight engine lathes larger than twelve-inch, three larger than fourteen-inch, and one eighteen-inch-that was a pile of rusting parts down at the Electric Company, but it's restorable. What we're really short of is tool steel for drills and working edges, and stuff like Teflon lagging tape, hacksaw blades, files, sandpaper… we've swept every basement on the island and it still isn't enough."

She looked around. The boat-storage-cum-engineering-shop had changed, beyond the appearance of the big charcoal hearth and its surroundings in one corner. Dozens of people were laboring with hand tools at workbenches scattered through the cavernous interior; many of them were assembling crossbows from parts turned out on the lathes and cutters. The five machine tools they'd moved here from Seahaven Engineering's original basement setting and the ones Leaton had scavenged out of attics and forgotten storerooms were all set up, and they'd… spawned was the best word, she decided. There were another four lathes, and heavy six-foot-by-three platforms were being built to house more. Metal shapes and curves lay scattered about, with men and women working on them, assembling a gear-cutter. The new lathes had been converted to work from leather belts taking off a power shaft rigged near the ceiling, and she could hear the chuffing of one of Leaton's prize steam engines. A big flywheel was going up against one wall, and beside it a bulky clumsy thing like a miniature stripped-down locomotive, the old choo-choo kind.

"Where did you find that?" she asked.

"Oh, Martha and Jared dug it up. Steam traction engine. Someone imported it years ago for the tourists, then stuck it in a storage shed and forgot it. Nearly got it working again; it eats wood, and by God we've got wood. We're going to hook it up to a generator, for times when the wind's down, and then we're going to duplicate it, maybe modify it a little. I'm doing some plans for a steam road hauler, too."

She nodded. That will be useful, she thought, and continued aloud: "How's that project I started you on going?"

"Better than we expected," Leaton said. "No shortage of sheet metal and bar."

He sighed, halfway between pleased and sad, and she knew why. The Steamship Authority's big motor ferry had been laid up for good. Useless, with no fuel oil available, and the thousands of tons of steel in the hull would last the islanders for many years. For that matter, the Eagle had nearly four hundred tons of pig-iron ballast in her, now being laboriously brought out and replaced with granite from the mainland. Then there was the fuel barge, another fifteen hundred tons of metal, and the old lightship, as much again, and structures like the oil storage tanks.

"The first set's ready, the first we're really satisfied with. Over here. Made to your measurements, by the way, Captain."

It rested on a workbench. The first part was a jacket of tough quilted canvas. The elbow-length sleeves were chain mail, rustling and clinking as she touched them; so was the collar, and a patch below the waistline at front and rear. Two workers nearby were winding sanded coathanger wire around wooden rods and cutting off links for more.

"Might as well try it on," she said. It pulled over her head. Not too bad. Not comfortable, of course, but you couldn't expect that.

"Not bad," she went on, "but you ought to make the mail inserts, removable-lacing, or somethin' like that, so the padding can be cleaned without getting the metal wet."

The breastplate was a smooth shallow curve, basically Japanese in design like the rest of the armor but somewhat simplified; the backplate hinged to it at the shoulder, and clasps fastened at the flanks. She'd drawn the plans from what she was familiar with, and what Martha could find in her references, modified to make it possible for one person to put on by herself. She lifted the set, ducked her head through and pressed it closed, then fastened the brass clips under her left arm and pulled the loose mail collar out to rest on the surface of the armor. The metal extended to waist level, and hinged to it were jointed skirts of sliding curved plates to protect the thighs. Fitted armguards for the forearms went on next, and greaves for the shins.

She hadn't told the metalworkers to enamel everything green with yellow trim, and put a golden eagle copied from her ship's figurehead across the chest. "Bit bold, isn't it?" she said, jerking her chin toward a mirror that leaned against the wall.

I feel like an actor in a pageant. Against people armed with flint-tipped arrows and bronze spearheads, though, this was high-tech weaponry.

"We had the paint on hand, and it wasn't any great effort to bake on the enamel," Leaton said virtuously. "And it'll keep it from rusting, too."

Alston grunted noncommittally. She bent, twisted, squatted, rose, did a few long low stances to test the equipment. Heavy, of course, but she'd carried far more weight less well distributed on camping trips, and it was no more awkward than practice armor for a kenjutsu bout-very similar to that, in fact. This was flexible enough not to impede movement much, too. She did a slow forward roll and came to her feet with a grunt, clattering a little. Have to wear this a lot to get used to it. Then she settled on the helmet and snapped the chin strap.

"Cool!" someone said. "Just like the ones in Star Wars!"

Alston gritted her teeth, and bit back Lucas and I both copied from the same source.

"It'll do," she said. "But plain green for the rest, if you don't mind. How many, how quickly?"

"Thirty a week, given the priorities the Council's set," the engineer said. "Scaling up to a hundred."

"You, sir, snore," Martha said, sipping at a cup of hot herb tea.

"Well, a man can't tell his fiancee everything," Jared said reasonably. "Or his bride. Not before the end of the honeymoon, at least. Where's the romance and mystery in that?" They'd anticipated the parson, of course, but not by all that much-and never actually slept together before moving in after the wedding.

She gave a dry chuckle. "Unsuspected depths; even a sense of irony. What will it be next?"

They looked at each other and smiled. Well, we're neither of us nineteen, he thought with satisfaction. Forty and fifty-plus-six-months, in fact. She set her cup down on the kitchen table and sat on his lap; not what you'd call well upholstered, but damned pleasant nonetheless. We suit, that's the best way to put it, he decided, and grinned.

"A penny for them. Or a pound of dulse, in our barter economy."

"Thinking of how different I felt about a woman on my lap in the morning thirty years ago. Not," he added hastily, "that it doesn't-"

She put an arm around his neck. "Jared, from puberty to their thirties men aren't human beings. They're hormones with feet. I prefer one with enough functioning mind to be interesting… which you are."

A few minutes later: "But the hormones still seem to be functioning, too. Not on the kitchen table, dear, and not before breakfast. The griddle cakes, I think," she went on, slightly breathless, sliding away to her own seat. "You didn't tell me you could cook, either."

Functioning indeed, Jared thought, with a slight trace of smugness. "I was a widower for five years, and a hunter for twenty-three. Breakfasts I can do," he said, getting up and going to the counter.

"Have to look into making baking powder-we'll be out soon," he added, as he got out the jar of oil and the frying pan and wound a cloth around his hand to open the wire-handled oven door to check the coals.

"Mmm," she said, watching him.

He poured a little oil into the iron frying pan and set it to heat, mixed the dry ingredients and beat the wholewheat flour into the water and eggs, and added some of the syrup to make up for the lack of richening milk. The oil was ready when a drop of water flicked off the end of a finger hopped and sputtered. One big spoonful three times, and you could do three at a time.

"Baking soda…" she said thoughtfully, straightening her bathrobe and hair. "Sodium bicarbonate and an acid. Cynthia at the high school might know. I'll look into it."

"These'll be better when the blueberries ripen in July," he said mildly. "Here we go."

He edged the spatula under the crackly, lacy brown-rim of the griddle cake; the top surface was just browning a little, and spotted with bubbles. He slid the first three onto a plate, covered it with a dishtowel, and put it on the warming tray at the rear of the cast-iron stove. When there were enough for two he took the lot back to the table with the crock of maple syrup. Now, all we lack is-no, by God, we don't. There was a little bit left of the wedding present from Angelica.

"Here you are," he said cheerfully, putting a tray with a lump of butter the size of a peach pit down beside the pancakes and removing the cover with a flourish. "Luxuries of the island elite; welcome to the ruling class."

Martha looked cheerful herself, in her subdued way, as she loaded her plate. Right up to the moment she raised the first forkful to her mouth.

"Oh, dear," she said then, swallowing and staring at the syrup-laden pancake. "Oh, my. Oh shit."

Her fork clattered to the plate and she bolted from the kitchen. He sat frozen for an instant, fear tasting of acid at the back of his mouth. Then he levered himself to his feet and followed her; she'd made it as far as the small downstairs bathroom, and he could see her kneeling in front of the toilet. A hand waved him away.

All right, then, he thought, a little of the fist that was squeezing under his breastbone relaxing. Bad fish? They'd had problems with that. He padded back into the kitchen, his slippers scuffing on the floorboards, and got a dry towel, a damp one, and a glass of water-there were a couple of large buckets sitting on the counter, filled during the hour the town mains were running. He carried the glass and cloth back into the small washroom after a discreet pause, and found Martha sitting on the closed seat lid of the toilet, breathing deeply.

"Here," he said. She rinsed, spat into the sink, and wiped her face gratefully. "Shall I go get Doc Coleman?"

His wife shook her head. There was a little color back in her face again. "Later. It's not urgent."

"It isn't?" he said, puzzled. "Food poisoning can-"

"It isn't that… I think. We'll check with Coleman, but I think the bunny just died."

"The… oh, sh-, ah, oh dear."

Her smile flickered wan; she stood, bracing herself with one arm against the wall. He gathered her to him, lips shaping a silent whistle over her shoulder.

"What was that saying on the tombstone?" she asked. "I expected this, but not so soon? At our ages..'. and on this diet, I've been irregular anyway, thought it might be early menopause coming on…"

He nodded into her graying brown hair. They'd discussed the possibility, but only in an abstract sort of way. This…

"Sort of risky," he said after a moment.

"At my age, you mean?" she replied. "Jared, we're in the year 1250 B.C. Risk…" She sighed and shrugged. "Risk has assumed a whole new meaning. Let's go talk about this. There's still some RU-486 if that's what we decide, but let's go talk." A moment. "I'm even hungry again."

"Turnabout's fair play," Alice Hong said, pouting.

"Nope," William Walker said, pulling on his trousers.

"Well, untie me then. I've got roomies, remember."

"I believe in spreading the joy of life."

He looked around the room. A little untidy for his tastes-he was a man of fastidious neatness-but not bad. A series of Escher prints, and others he didn't recognize, heavy-metal varieties with a lot of skulls, candle flames behind their eyes, and people tied up with barbed wire, pentagrams, bat wings, real symbolism. A good modern bed, not the four-posters so common in this antique-happy town. Alice Hong was lying on her stomach in the middle of that bed, ankles lashed to wrists behind her back with padded ties. A number of her other toys were scattered about. She squirmed over, which left her arched like a bow and spread-eagled. He admired the view; she was deeply into this stuff, and it had its points. Probably tedious as a full-time diet, but not bad as a change. There was a full-length mirror opposite the bed; he admired the view in that, too. In even better shape than I was, he decided smugly. Washboard stomach carrying a full six-pack, broad shoulders, narrow waist, every muscle moving just so under tanned skin. A heavy investment there, but worth it. William Walker had to live in that temple, after all. He smiled at himself.

"Yeah, you're gorgeous," Alice said, collapsing onto her side. "Sure you don't want to try it from this side? It can be fun."

He stepped over to the bed and jerked her head back by her hair. She gave a gasp, smiling at him. The sweat running into the marks the cane had made across her back had to sting too, but she didn't look any the worse for it.

"I'm strictly a pitcher S amp;M-wise, darling," he said. "Not a catcher, and you shouldn't have been quite so honest on why you got blacklisted in every pain club on the East Coast. Besides, I'm on duty in a while. The captain has an uncivilized attitude toward unpunctuality."

"Mmm," Alice said, the tip of her tongue touching her lips. "You're a workaholic too…"

"It's how you get places, babe." He pulled her head back a little farther; she shivered and clenched her teeth. "How'd you get that medical degree?"

"Took a five-year holiday from life," she said. "Everyone needs holidays. What's the captain like, anyway? Everyone talks about her. Real mysterious. Cute, too."

"I don't think you're her type, Alice," he said. "She's surprisingly straitlaced, if you know what I mean." They both laughed.

"And you get to go back to those fascinating places with her," Alice said enviously. "That sacrifice, that was wild. Sure looks like more fun than dancing around in nightgowns with a bunch of middle-aged hausfrau geeks who think they're witches. All the stupid bitches ever want to do is bless the crops, anyway. Dull."

"Why, I don't think Pamela Lisketter would like to hear you talking that way," Walker chuckled.

"Fuck Lisketter-on second thought, no thanks."

"You know, Alice, I really like you. You're my kind of lady. How'd you like to travel to beautiful Bronze Age Europe yourself?"

"Oh, yeah," she said, skeptical.

"I mean it. Can't you see yourself as the Great White Queen-Great Asian-American Queen-of a tribe of adoring barbarians? Stone palaces, silk blowing in the wind, some really kinky stuff. Sacrifices. Flames in the dark. Screams. No more make-believe, no taking turns…"

She gave a complex shudder. "Tease. Now let me loose, c'mon. Rosita's coming back any minute, and Isketerol will be with her."

He buttoned his shirt and tucked it in, tying his tie and picking up the uniform cap from a dresser. "I'm sure all three of you will enjoy that thoroughly," he said. "Hasta la vista, and call me when you're not all tied up."

"Asshole!" she cried after him.

He stopped, turned, and stuck his head back around the doorjamb.

"Yes," he said, with a brilliant grin. "I am. But I am no ordinary asshole."

Walker went down the stairs two at a time, chuckling, with the woman's curses ringing in his ears. She is my kind of girl, he thought. And maybe… A doctor could be very useful, in a number of different ways.

"Hunff!"

The katana flashed in the evening sunlight, halting just above the ragged surface of the grass. Marian Alston looked critically out of the kitchen window; Swindapa was still hard at it, doing the kata long after Alston had gone in to oversee dinner. Saturday afternoons were supposed to be free time; she'd been doing paperwork until noon herself. Doreen was running through staff forms doggedly. She'd never be really good, no natural talent, but she'd improved considerably. Ian was watching from a deck chair, his thumb keeping place in his book.

The Fiernan flicked the sword aside to shed imaginary blood, sheathed it, and went to one knee. A long quiet moment and then she drew and thrust straight back without turning, flicked the blade up for a straight cut, blocked, blocked, backing… Alston looked at her feet and the set of her shoulders.

"You're forcing it," she called through the open kitchen window. "Relax. No tension until the end of the stroke. Let the sword do it."

"Do," Swindapa panted. "I that."

She stood, relaxing and shaking out one wrist and then the other, then began the kata again.

Still hasn't got English syntax quite down, Alston thought, smiling. She caught her own expression in the slanted glass of the window. Uh-oh, she thought. Watch it, woman. There was enough grief in life without courting it.

Instead she looked down at the loaves, tapping them out of the sheet-metal pans with a cloth to protect her hands. The bottom of the bread was light honey-brown; she tapped it with a fingernail. Just the right sound, slightly hollow.

The kitchen door opened. "Damn, but that smells great, Skipper," Sandy Rapczewicz said. "What is it?"

Rapczewicz and Lieutenant Victor Ortiz went over to one of the sinks and washed their hands, using economical dippers of water from the buckets beside it. Both the Coast Guard officers looked worn-everyone did-and their working blues were stained with engine oil.

"Duck," Alston said. "Bread-and-sage stuffing." That didn't get the groans that seafood would have. "Sea lettuce and pickerelweed salad, courtesy of the Guides. Cattail stalks and dock. And fresh bread, of course."

"Good," Rapczewicz said, sitting down at the kitchen table and slumping wearily. "Max is up and running, Skipper," she went on. "But God alone knows for how long. Those bearings…"

"We're almost out of diesel oil anyway," Ortiz said.

"Worth it, to keep the trawlers running as long as we could," Alston said, wrapping a corner of her apron around her hand and opening the oven door, blinking through a cloud of fragrant steam. She prodded a serving fork into the birds and looked at the color of the juice. "Ah, just about-"

Swindapa bounced up the steps into the kitchen, ducking into the sunroom for a second to rack her sheathed sword.

"I help can I?" she said. The two scholars followed her, Doreen still panting.

"That's can I help, 'dapa. Toss me those potholders, and get those cattail stalks ready, would you?"

They worked in companionable silence for a few moments as Alston finished the gravy and began to dismember the ducks.

"Shouldn't-" Alston began. Then: "Speak of the devil."

Dr. Coleman came through the door; Sandy had invited him again. Hmmm. Seeing a lot of each other, Alston thought.

"Not exactly the devil," he said. "Been mistaken for Daniel Webster, though." His long nose quivered. "Smells wonderful."

"All the more dishes to wash," she said. "And it's served."

Everyone carried plates to the pinewood table, and for a few minutes there was no sound but concentrated eating. Long days of hard physical labor had taught them all exactly what hungry was, and it wasn't much like just being ready for dinner. The duck was good if she said so herself, and the boiled dock tasted hauntingly like spinach, or like spinach with a squeeze of lemon; cattail turned out to have a flavor a little like sweet corn. Alston sat next to the Fiernan girl, conscious of a slight summery odor of clean sweat; more agreeable than a lot of islanders, with soap and hot water both difficult to get.

Coleman plied his fork with a will. "Wouldn't have thought you were a chef, on top of everything else," he said to the Coast Guard officer.

"I'm not fancy enough to be a chef," she said. "I'm a cook… it's, mmm, relaxin'. Everyone should have a hobby."

"Better this butter-" Swindapa stopped and frowned.

"This would be better with butter," she went on carefully, dipping a piece of the bread into the fat.

"So it would," Alston said. "We don't have enough cows yet."

Swindapa frowned. "Why not?" she said. "Understand that the island Nantucket is-and-was only part of-United States, here, but every part of the White Isle has always cows-how could not? Everyone needs butter, and cheese and milk and hides and meat."

"We had ways of keeping those from spoiling, and of sending them a long way very quickly," Alston said.

"Ah," Swindapa nodded. "Steam engines." She tapped a book at the end of the table: The Great Inventions. "Reading is fun," she added. "Especially at night."

When she's given to nightmares, Alston thought, nodding. Not surprising. Aloud:

"We might think about a steam auxiliary for Eagle, when the last diesel's gone," she said thoughtfully.

"Bulky, though," Rapczewicz said.

Swindapa sneezed and raised a hand. Alston made an admonitory clucking noise. "Sorry," the girl said, pulling out a handkerchief and using that instead of her fingers.

"Useful for short distances," Alston said. "She couldn't carry any great amount of wood, but wood's not scarce, either. Victor, why don't you look into it? Have a talk with Leaton, see what you can come up with. It's a long-term project, though."

The Cuban-American officer made an inarticulate sound of agreement around a mouthful of drumstick. "I'll get Will… Lieutenant Walker in on it, Skipper," he said. "He's got an eye for machinery, and he's a good draftsman, too."

"By all means, Victor," Alston said.

She thought she heard Swindapa mutter scumbag under her breath. I can't completely disagree, she thought. On the other hand, I can't completely agree, either. You had to be fair; a gut feeling wasn't enough to justify coming down on a capable, hardworking officer. On the other hand, there's that administrative reprimand over the junk that went missing from the evidence locker. Nothing proved, not even enough evidence for a decent suspicion. Still…

"I understand he's found permanent quarters ashore," she said.

"Moved in with Dr. Hong-Alice Hong," Ortiz said.

Coleman cleared his throat. "She's a very capable physician," he said, with a neutral tone that spoke volumes. Alston raised an eyebrow. These Yankees can say more with the words they don't speak…

"Well, we can hardly insist that everyone live in barracks," Alston said, after swallowing a mouthful of duck. "One thing we can do…" She turned her eyes to the Arnsteins, at the foot of the table. "And I'd like your help on this. We've got to get a classroom schedule going again for the cadets. Academics may not be as important here as back up in the twentieth, but I want those young people to have something approachin' a liberal education, as well as specialized things."

Ian nodded. "Well, I'll be glad to teach a history course… God, maybe 'current affairs' would be a better description? Will we have time?"

Alston nodded firmly. "We'll make time."

Doreen pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I should talk to Martha about this too. She's been worrying that we don't have anything past high school on the island."

Alston's eyebrows went up. "Hadn't thought of that," she admitted. There's a certain comfort to having a limited sphere of responsibilities, she thought. All she really had to do was oversee matters military and maritime, including the Guard… which was a hell of a job, but not nearly as nerve-racking as Jared's. He had to be responsible for everything, and she didn't envy him in the slightest.

The site of Providence that would never be was beautiful in the summer sun. Water glimmered broad across Narragansett Bay, like a field of hammered metal under the sunlight. Water purled back from the steamboat's prow, churned foam-white from its thrashing paddles; the steady whunk-chuff of its engine echoed back from the great trees that lined the shore as they headed northwest up the bay. On the hills above the bay, green waves receded into blue distance, the edge of a climax forest that stretched from Florida nearly to Hudson Bay and inland to the Mississippi, rustling mystery ten stories high.

It was thicker, ranker, the trees growing straighter and taller than those which had greeted the first of Cofflin's English ancestors. Birds flocked thickly, gulls, pelicans, duck, geese, and the hawks and eagles and falcons that preyed on them. He saw a bald eagle swoop by within a hundred yards of the noisy steamboat and snatch a two-foot fish from the surface of the bright water. Its wingtips dimpled the wave once, twice as it flogged the air, and then it was a dark soaring shape heading back toward the shore with its quarry in its talons.

He winced a little at the thought of the Indians. The islanders had come, very cautiously, and found abandoned huts. The ones near Boston had been full of the dead- whole families lying rotting. Perhaps the worst had been the children who hadn't died of the virus out of time, who'd starved or died of thirst as they lay beside dying parents…

We didn't know! he cried out inside himself. At least all the local tribes seemed to have fled inland, plenty of coastal campsites but no people. Nobody since had reported any contacts, and overflights hadn't seen any fires that weren't natural. He pushed the matter out of his mind; no help for it, and too much else to consider.

Cofflin stood and watched as the shore drew nearer. A piledriver mounted between two rafts went thunk… thunk… thunk over and over as rope and pulley and hand-powered crank drew the stone-weighted oak pole up and released it with a downward rush. It was driving seventy-foot logs into the mud of the bay, in a row four trunks broad and already twenty long. As he watched another log came slithering down a steep trail, pulled by a brace of hairy-footed horses, with cursing humans steadying the great bulk of timber with ropes snubbed around stumps and trunks to keep it at least mostly under control. The bottom of it had already been shaped into a rough point. Other logs were being pegged and mortised into the vertical piles, webbing them together. Near it a barge-shaped raft of rough-cut timbers held a cargo of charcoal in wooden tubs, piled firewood, and slatted wooden cages full of captured wild turkeys gobbling in indignation.

He stepped out onto a floating pier of smaller logs as the teams pushed the big timber into the water. Rowboats hitched on and began hauling it toward the end of the growing wharf; he walked carefully shoreward, feeling the surface bob a little beneath his feet.

"Making progress, Sam," he said to the man who waited for him. They shook hands.

"More to be done," the burly carpenter turned lumber boss said. "Wharf'll be ready come July." He shook his head. "Feels odd, having timber cheap and nails scarce like this. But she'll be ready."

Cofflin felt a glow of satisfaction. That would give the Eagle a secure, protected deepwater anchorage for the winter. In the meantime, it meant cargo from here could be loaded directly onto her decks, at an enormous saving in time and effort. They were all becoming fanatics for the labor-saving device; there was simply so much to do.

Sam Macy waved him toward the shelters, and they fell into step. Half a hundred yards away stood a row of log buildings. The timbers had been roughly squared on top and bottom, then notched at the ends and pushed up sloping poles into position; Martha had done up an instruction pamphlet on the technique, culled from history books and more recent hobbyist magazines. Stable and barn with hayloft, smokehouse for the venison, bear, and duck the crews hunted in their spare time. Hides were tacked to its outer wall, stretching and drying. Bunkhouses, another divided into apartments for the married couples; storehouse, cookhouse, mess hall. Last but not least was the one beside the stream, a framework of upright timbers instead of horizontal logs. A flume guided water to the top of an overshot wheel on its side, and from within came the ruhhhh… ruhhhh… ruhhhh of a vertical saw ripping its way through the tough wood.

"We're getting beam and plank in some quantity now, as well as the firewood and charcoal," Sam Macy said. "But Jared, it burns my butt to use trees like this for fuel, it really does. Planks four feet across and twenty yards long, and not a single knot!"

"No choice, Sam."

The logging boss nodded gloomily. "At least we've managed to get some wood alcohol out of the sawdust and chips," he said.

"Doc Coleman'll be glad. Needs it for disinfectant." Someday they might get enough to use as motor fuel.

"We could do more if Leaton could send us someone who could do real repairs on the metalwork," Macy said. "That's one of the big things holding us up, sending broken parts back to the island. That and the fact that only a few of us have even a faint idea of what we're doing. God, some of these people, they can't lift a sandwich without putting their backs out-and making charcoal is dangerous. Get airing the pile just a little wrong, and it can explode, not just spoil the load."

Cofflin chuckled. "You think you've got problems that way," he said. "You should hear Leaton." His face grew serious. "Now let's settle this little matter."

They stepped into one of the big cabins. The floor and the fireplace at one end were local rock, hastily shaped and then cemented together. Light came from windows cut through the logs, but it was a little gloomy inside nonetheless. The pothooks and andirons that held a black iron cauldron over the low flames were a hundred and eighty years old, and had spent the last couple of generations in a museum, but they were still functional. Two figures sat at a table made of a single great plank, holding hands. They stood defiantly as Chief Cofflin walked in. He peered.

"Why, I thought… Sam, you can build a house, you can run a lumber camp, but you can't send a message to save your life. I thought you said it was Ed Smith who'd gotten her pregnant."

"That's Fred Smith. I swear, Jared, I said Fred."

Edward Smith was this boy's father, in his fifties, married with three children. Jared Cofflin had come over from Nantucket ready to kick some molesting butt, full of righteous anger.

Cofflin sighed. Another thing that was hard to get used to, not being able to call up and settle details over the phone. Radios were precious, used for emergencies, batteries even more so-though Sam was talking about hooking a car alternator up to the waterwheel here once they had time to get the necessary gearing done back at Seahaven.

"Let's sit down and talk this over, why don't we?" Cofflin said.

Nice girl, he thought. Black hair in a ponytail, blue eyes, scrubbed outdoors look. The kid had a scraggly beginning brown fuzz of beard; a lot of the male islanders were sprouting chin fungus these days. Muscle swelled at the sleeves of the young man's T-shirt and stretched it across his shoulders, probably a lot of it added since the Event, like the hard callus on the palm of the hand he offered.

"Fred Smith, Tiffany Penderton?" Cofflin asked.

The camp cook brought them four mugs of hot liquid from a smaller pot over the fire. It was sassafras tea, deep red and a little astringent despite the honey added to sweeten it. Sure as hell isn't coffee. Still, having a cup of something in your hand helped to break the ice.

"Son, there's been a misunderstanding here," Cofflin said. The boy's hand tightened on the girl's. "The report reached me secondhand, and I heard it as Ed Smith being the man responsible."

Tiffany giggled, looking much younger. Her companion went blank for a second, and then said: "Dad?" After a moment he went on: "Sir, when I heard you were coming, and we were supposed to drop everything and meet you, I thought that Tiffany's parents had, um…"

"Got to me, yes, I know, son."

The tension around the table dissolved into laughter. "All right. Now, I understand you two are willing to do the right thing?"

They nodded. "Yeah. We've been planning on it for, oh, months now."

"That long?" Cofflin said dryly. "Well, it's breaking out all over, isn't it?" They looked at him as if he were an alien being, or a different order of creature at least. "Mrs. Cofflin is expecting as well."

Polite bafflement this time, and perhaps slight horror. Well, it must seem unnatural, people our age, he thought charitably.

"Remember, taking care of a baby is a lot of work-on top of everything else you have to do."

"I'm not afraid of work," the boy said.

"Isn't, at that," Macy amplified. "Good hand, learned as fast as any of us. Tiffany's a dab eye for edible greenery, too."

As if on cue, the cook came back with four bowls and a platter of thick-cut bread. There wasn't any butter, but the bread was still hot from the oven, and there were mushrooms and some sort of chunky root in the venison stew. "Pity you don't have much time to hunt," he said. "Some people back on the island would kill for this." Wild mustard leaves and chives, too, he decided.

He went on: "Well, do you want a church wedding back in town, or what?"

"No, sir," Smith said earnestly. "We really like it here, and our parents, well, ah, actually Tiffany's parents, well…"

"I understand," he said. The Pendertons were coofs, and pretty well-to-do at that. Ed Smith had been a garage mechanic, before the Event. "When do you want the ceremony?"

He certainly rated as better than a justice of the peace, all things considered. As long as it was performed in public and duly witnessed, they weren't being technical about weddings.

"Tonight, Chief?" Tiffany Penderton said quietly.

"Why not?"

He ate another spoonful of the venison stew. You could probably get sick of this-he'd gotten tired of lobster lately- but it was a very pleasant change. The deer on Nantucket would be killed out soon. When they had time, maybe they could send some more hunting parties ashore…

Time, he thought, smiling at the youngsters. Time was he'd have thought the pregnancy a sign of trouble to come, and the kids far too young; plus they'd probably never have been thrown together enough to meet. Not everything about the Event had been a disaster.

"I wish Ms. Stoddard-I mean, Ms. Cofflin-could be here," Tiffany said wistfully. "It was a lot of fun, being in the Scouts with her teaching us things."

Not everything, by any manner of means. " A man pelted in. "Boss!" he called. "Chief!"

Cofflin looked around at the tone in his voice, and waited while he controlled his breathing.

"Chief, there's an Indian up the track-just where we were cutting those black walnut. He's just standing there, keeps putting his hand up empty and talking Indian at us."

Cofflin and Sam Macy looked at each other. "Solve one problem…" Macy began.

"… get another," Cofflin replied. "I'd better go take a look."

"There!" Swindapa whispered close to her ear. "There, see?"

Marian Alston bent slowly and peered through the thorny scrub, squinting. It was a gray day, low cloud scudding by overhead like cavalry of the sky, with an occasional spatter of rain; the air was so moist it would have been fog, if the wind hadn't been at twenty knots from the south. A flicker of brown ears… a deer, its lips and tongue cropping delicately at the new growth.

No harm there… but beyond this thicket was the rolling surface of one of Angelica Brand's new grainfields. Shoots of wheat ran bluish-green over what had been thicket and moorland a few short months ago, rippling nearly calf-high in the wind. Except for some near the edge of the cleared zone, eaten down to the roots. There were a thousand deer on Nantucket, or had been when the island was covered in scrub and moorland. They had to go, now that it was to be farmland once more. Fencing was out of the question this year at least, and couldn't be deer-proof anyway.

Besides, I crave red meat, Alston thought. Hunting was useful recreation, in the intervals between taking the Eagle out, training, overseeing the militia, getting the fishing fleet built and maintained. She enjoyed it; Swindapa gloried in it.

The deer bent its head again. The crossbow came up to her shoulder with studied slowness. Snuggle your cheek into the stock. Curl finger on the trigger, stroking it. Altogether too much like making out, she gibed in some recess of her mind. Now. Bring the foresight down until it settled in the notch at the back. Distance… about thirty yards. Raise the angle a little, then. The crossbow bolt didn't go anything like as fast a bullet. Exhale. Squeeze.

Whunnnng. The butt kicked back against her shoulder. The short heavy arrow whipped out through the thin-branched scrub. And…

The deer leaped convulsively. Alston cursed and leaped up herself; the worst possible result, a wounded deer careering off. Swindapa drew her knife and bounced forward, eeling through the spiny growth. Alston followed more slowly, sharp thorns snagging at her jeans and denim jacket, wondering at the young woman's skill. She'd said that she was an indifferent hunter, that being mainly men's business among her people. Blood spattered the trail, drops and then thick gobbets of it, smelling of copper, salt, and iron. The deer was lying on its side a hundred steps farther in under a dwarf pine, with the crossbow bolt sunk past the fletching behind its shoulder. Its hind legs kicked a final time as she came up; the graceful shape laid itself limp. Swindapa trimmed a branch and dipped it in the blood. She stood and flicked it north, south, east, west, murmuring in her own language as she did so. Then she crouched by the deer and began breaking it, butchering with easy skill.

"Bad that we can't hang it up," she said, red to the elbows.

Her English still held a strange lilt and roll, but it was fully fluent.

"Easier that way… unHUojx, look, the liver." The girl sliced off a bit and popped it in her mouth, chewing with relish. "Best part. Want to start a fire and grill it?"

"Nnno, I don't think so," Alston said. For a number of reasons. She squatted as well to help with the messy task; not unfamiliar, she'd helped butcher animals as a child. "I prefer it with onions, and we've got some back home. Besides, we don't have much water here. Dried blood is sticky."

Vegetables were more precious than gold-those Brand had planted back in the spring were watched like ailing firstborn children, or perhaps the ailing firstborn children of hungry cannibals-but red meat had scarcity value too. For an occasional haunch of venison, you could do wonders trading on the quiet. She didn't feel that was cheating, not like using her official position; after all, she did kill the deer herself.

They occupied themselves in companionable silence for a moment. "I've been meaning to ask you," she said. "What's that mark?"

Swindapa was wearing a shirt, unbuttoned partway down in the warm weather with the tails tied off under her bosom. Just between the upper curve of her breasts was a small tattoo, shaped like an arrowhead.

"That?" she said, peering down. "That's the…" She considered for a moment, her lips shaping words. "The Spear Mark. When I was fifteen… years, I think, we count by thirteens of the moon… I took the Spear Mark, nearly three years ago when I was young. I stalked a deer close enough to kill it with my spear, and came back with the antlers on my head and the hide wrapped around me, and jumped the fire trench, and they put the Spear Mark on my chest."

"Everyone does that?" Alston said.

"Oh, no. Some-many boys every year, and some-few girls sometimes. My-the one I did the Moon Spring Rites with, you'd say, my boyfriend?"

" 'Lover' might be more appropriate, I think."

"My lover was a big-no, a great-hunter, didn't study the stars even though he was part of the Egurnecio family. A warrior, too, a… Spear Chosen, someone who leads warriors. I wanted to be with him." She looked bleak for a moment, then sighed and shook it off. "The Sun People hurt him, smashed his leg, he couldn't run or hunt or fight anymore. He got angry all the time, got sick with too much mead, then he died."

And I know the rest, Alston thought.

They'd finished gralloching the deer; they left the entrails for the ants and birds, packed heart, liver, tongue, and kidneys back in the stomach hollow, and removed the head. Then they ran a pole between the bound legs, brushed the blood off their hands and arms with sand as best they could, and lifted it with an end of the carrying pole on each shoulder.

"Do some more sword work tonight?" Swindapa wheedled.

"If you don't mind the others," Alston replied. She'd started classes for some of her cadets and a few islanders who showed promise. In our copious spare time.

They came out onto the road and dumped the deer carcass into the wire baggage holder at the rear of the two-seater tricycle; it was a fairly robust thing, one of many worked up since the Event by Leaton. Alston looked at the sky; not long to dinner. Deer liver and onions sounded more wonderful all the time.

"No problem, more fun with lots of people," Swindapa said. She went on, "Good hunt today," giving Alston a quick hug before jumping onto her seat.

I wish she wouldn't do that, the captain thought. Evidently Swindapa's people embraced and touched at the slightest provocation, and she was gradually starting to do that again as her memories healed over a little. She has no idea how… difficult that makes things.

Well, life was difficult. They began pedaling in unison, enjoying the cooling effect of the breeze.

"We'll stop at Smith's," Swindapa said happily.

Smith was an enterprising soul who'd put the hot-water shortage to work and opened an Oriental-style scrub-and-soak bathhouse; much more economical of fuel than trying to heat water and pour it into a tub in a single house, now that the electrical and gas heaters were useless. The Council had approved, since it was just the sort of thing that was needed to jump-start the island away from the emergency-collective setup that necessity had forced on them. Unfortunately, Smith didn't run to individual tubs yet, just one big one for men and another for women.

Oh, well. Life is difficult.

"No, I'll sponge down at home," she replied. And avoid all temptation. My own virtue sickens me at times.