Island in the Sea of Time

CHAPTER ELEVEN

July-August, Year 1 A.E.

"I say the last thing we need is foreign entanglements!" Sam Macy said.

There was a rumble of agreement from here and there in the Town Meeting. Cofflin sighed inwardly. He could understand Sam's position only too well; the problem was that while that sentiment felt right, the balance of facts was against it. Macy was a nice guy to sit down and have a beer with, he did his job well-hell, he'd turned out to be a genius at logging, sawmilling, anything to do with wood- and he kept his people over at Providence Base happy with their boss. The problem was that when Macy got onto politics, he had certain fixed opinions that couldn't be shifted with plastique and bulldozers.

"We're just getting things going right," Macy went on, flushing as eyes turned to him all across the big room. The microphones were long gone, and his voice came out in an untrained foghorn roar. "We've got plenty to eat, it looks like the harvest will be good-" he knocked on wood- "and we've got plenty to keep us warm this winter-"

"Good job, Sam!" someone said. Macy stuttered and then went on:

"-and we're learning how to do lots of stuff. We all saw the pictures and video Captain Alston brought back. I'm not saying we shouldn't have sent the Eagle over to Britain, but those aren't the sort of people we want to get involved with. Why should we risk the lives of good American boys and girls for those dirty savages? It's worse than Bosnia."

Another mutter of agreement, louder this time. Swindapa's hand went up. She stood as Cofflin pointed the gavel.

"My people are not savages like the Iraiina," she said simply. "They come to take our land for no better reason than they want it, and to make us slaves because they would rather take our crops than work to grow their own." Her face was flushed, but she spoke firmly under the lilting singsong accent her birth tongue gave to her English. "We don't ask them to walk the stars with Moon Woman. All we want is that the Sun People leave us alone."

Silence fell after she sat, crossing her arms on the dark-blue sweater with Nantucket woven on it in yellow cord.

Poor kid, Cofflin thought. Still comes up and bites her when she thinks about it. Post-traumatic stress disorder, a fancy name for very bad memories that wouldn't leave you alone.

"Pamela Lisketter," Cofflin said.

"That's all very well," the thin woman said. On most people the results of hard work and a fish diet were an improvement, but she'd started out gaunt; that made her yellow-green eyes seem enormous by contrast. "But isn't it true that the real reason you want to interfere in the affairs of these people is to exploit them?"

"Nope," Cofflin said. "Fair exchange is what we've got in mind. Professor?"

Arnstein stood and stroked his bushy reddish-brown beard. "This island can't produce enough to do more than keep us alive," he said. "It doesn't even have much timber, much less metals or fuel. Seven thousand-odd people-call it five thousand working adults and teenagers-that just isn't enough to keep civilization going, if most of us have to spend all our time producing food. We can't have teachers and engineers and clerks and, oh, silversmiths and everything else, all the specialists, because there won't be enough food or enough raw materials or enough markets. But if we can trade widely, we can have those specialists, and exchange what they make for what we need. The question is, do you want your grandchildren to have something like a decent life, or do you want them to be illiterate peasants?"

A thoughtful silence fell. "Ms. Lisketter."

"There's nothing wrong with a simple life! We should all learn to lower our expectations and walk lightly on the earth, not kill its whales and cut down its trees and… We've got an opportunity to escape from a culture dominated by machines, and cultivate our skills and the spiritual-"

A chorus of whistles, catcalls, and boos shouted her down. "I've had all the fucking simple-life blisters I want or need!" someone shouted, and there was a roar of approval.

Cofflin kept his face impassive as he hammered for order. Inwardly he was grinning; Lisketter had a hard core of supporters, but the numbers had dropped off drastically. Imagining a world without internal combustion engines and electricity and actually living in one were two entirely different things.

"Let's keep it polite here. This is a Town Meeting, not a football game. Ms. Lisketter has a right to say what she believes whether anyone else likes it or not."

Lisketter was quivering, but the tears in her eyes were rage, not chagrin. "You're making exactly the same mistakes that people back home did, wrecking the earth and any chance of living in peace with each other!" she said. "Please, please don't be so blind! There aren't very many of us now, but if you start the same cycle all over again that won't matter. The real frontier isn't out there." She waved at the world beyond the darkened windows. "It's in ourselves. If we're not at peace with ourselves and the earth, what does it matter if we have material wealth?"

"Dane Sweet?"

The manager of the bicycle shop-nowadays he was more like assistant secretary for transportation-stood. "Pamela, you and I go back a long way. We agree on a lot of things. But can't you understand that we're not back home any more?"

"This isn't Kansas anymore, Toto," someone said.

Sweet waved them to silence and went on: "If you want to preserve the environment and the Native Americans, and I do too, you're not going to do it by making the people here want to lynch you. It's one thing to tell people who've got too much to cut back, but you may not have noticed we're not exactly living in the lap of postindustrial luxury here."

"Anything more to say, Ms. Lisketter? Then I suggest you sit down." She sat. "Joseph?"

Starbuck stood. The town clerk was as near to a minister of finance as they had. "And we're not doing as well as Mr. Macy thinks, either. We're living off our capital-off what we had before the Event. Yes, we're growing and catching our own food, but we're not building our own houses, making our own clothing, or shoes, or even tools for the most part-and what we are making, we're largely making out of accumulated raw materials that were here before the Event. Consider the effort needed to find and smelt metals, for example. Or to find fiber and leather to replace what we've used, or glass. What Dr. Arnstein said is quite correct."

That brought a thoughtful silence. He's got a point, Cofflin mused. He pointed his gavel into the midst of the crowd. "Professor?"

"We do have an opportunity to do things better," Arnstein said. "That doesn't mean sitting on our behinds and finding infinite Mandelbrot sets in our navels. Let me tell you, people have never lived in harmony with nature. Goats and axes and wooden plows can ruin countries every bit as surely as bulldozers and chemical plants; it just takes a little longer. We've got three thousand years of knowledge to apply to a fresh world. Let's do it right this time."

There was a smattering of applause, growing louder and then dying away. Cofflin saw another hand raised. Surprise held him for a moment, and then he pointed the gavel. Can't let Swindapa speak and can him, he thought.

"My hosts," Isketerol said, bowing in several directions. His guttural English flowed, as fluent as a native speaker's apart from the accent and an occasional choice of words. "I, a poor foreigner, cannot advise you… except that if you wish to trade, why deal with the poor and warlike savages of the White Isle, the island you call Britain? Instead, send your wonderful ships to the Middle Sea, where men dwell in cities obedient to law, not like bears in the forests. In Tartessos, my home, or Mycenae rich in gold, or splendid Egypt. Grateful for your many favors, I will be ready to advise and guide in whatever small way I can. You will find rich return, I promise you."

That is one smart son of a bitch, Cofflin thought. Yes, he was a slave trader and probably a pirate when occasion offered, but this was the thirteenth century before Christ- you couldn't expect him to act any other way. He'd lived up to every bargain he made with the islanders, that was for sure. Nobody had any complaints about the way he'd behaved since he arrived, either. But that proposition has its own risks.

"I think Captain Alston has something to say to that," he said aloud.

Alston stood, her face the usual impassive mask she wore in public. "Once we're in regular contact with the more… advanced peoples of this era," she said, "they're going to be able to sail here; that's why we've been drilling our new militia. We have a military edge, but not a very large one, frankly. Consider the numbers, as well. And this island is a glittering prize, by local standards. If we wave that relative wealth in front of the locals who can come and make a try for it, I won't answer for the consequences. It's my opinion that we should limit our contact with the higher civilizations for the next few years at least. The British peoples of this era are no such threat."

That caused an uproar; Macy was on his feet demanding to know why they couldn't seal off the island from all outside contact.

"Because the ocean is a very big place," Alston replied. "And we have only one large ship to date. Buildin' others means we have fewer people growing food." She indicated Arnstein with a jerk of her chin. "It's the professor's point again. Everyone we have do anything but produce essentials means fewer essentials, unless we can get resources from elsewhere."

Cofflin tapped the gavel again, "We need trade," he said. "We need to trade somewhere where the locals won't be a menace to us. We could use allies, and extra hands, as well. Ms. Swindapa tells us, and our own experience in Britain bears out, that her people are basically peaceful- not saints, mind you-and they can produce most of what we need. Especially if we give them some help. That'll include some military help, but not much; more a matter of showing them how to do things."

Advisers and military aid, he thought with a wince. Well, by God, we can do better than LBJ and McNamara. At least I hope so. Aloud: "Ms. Swindapa."

The Fiernan girl rose again. "My people don't have a, a government," she said. "There is nobody who can order everyone to do things. But there are families and Spear Chosen who many will listen to. My family, the line of Kurlelo, is a family like that. We welcome peaceful traders, and we need strong friends. Please, be the friends we need."

Another hand shot up. Cofflin sighed and pointed the gavel. This was bad enough, and they were only discussing a hypothetical situation. Wait until they got the report about the Indians approaching Providence Base and offering to trade. That was going to send Lisketter and her crowd completely ballistic.

The core of the Nantucket Council stood and watched the new militia at practice.

"Big turnout," Jared Cofflin said, surprised. Wouldn't have thought so many people would volunteer for more sweat, he thought. Of course, with harvest still some time off and the fishing going so well, people weren't nearly as hard pressed as they had been in the spring. And this was a novelty.

Alston nodded, her armor rustling and clanking slightly as she moved. "It'll thin out when it sinks in how much work it is, I expect," she replied cynically.

"I'm surprised we have the time," Martha Cofflin said thoughtfully. "I assumed that without machinery, we'd be working every hour of the day and night."

Cofflin the fisherman-turned-policeman chuckled; so did Angelica Brand the farmer, and Marian Alston the farmer's daughter.

"I said something funny?" Martha inquired tartly.

"My daddy used to say that farming is two kinds of butt work," Alston said. "Bust your butt working fit to kill yourself, then sit on your butt 'cause there's nothing to do."

"Fishing's a lot like that, too," Cofflin added.

"Seasonal," Martha said. "So there's time for this."

The big sandy field held several hundred men and women. All the Eagle's cadets and off-duty crew, of course, for whom it was compulsory, and nearly as many volunteers. The islanders present were a mixed bag, mostly younger; a good many were friends the cadets and crew had made in the months since the Event. There were enough crossbows for practice, and shields with foam rubber bound around their rims, spears with blunt cloth-bound tips, extra-weight wooden short swords. A few worked with bokken, wooden replicas of the katana. Nearly half the Eagle's complement were in the new armor Leaton was turning out, getting accustomed to the weight and heat. Trainees attacked wooden posts and practiced simple formations.

Grunts, Rebel yells, and the thump and clatter of wood on wood and metal sounded across the dust raised by so many feet. The Eagle's instructors were busy hammering home the basics of close-order drill. Cofflin watched with interest as a column of about thirty countermarched, each pair's spears crossing in an X as they turned. A little farther off two rows with crossbows faced a hastily-erected wooden wall backed by earth.

"Front rank!" the officer drilling them shouted. "Ready!" crossbows came to port-arms position, held across the chest. "Aim!" The weapons came up to their shoulders with a unified jerk. "Fire!"

WHUNNGGGG! The strings released in near-unison.

"Reload! Second rank, fire!"

The first rank braced the butts of their weapons on their hips and pumped the levers built into the forestocks. The second rank took half a step forward and fired in their turn. By the time they stepped back, the first rank were clipping bolts into the firing grooves of their weapons.

"Think that'll do much good?" Cofflin asked.

"I think so," Alston said; she'd been looking at her watch, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. "It's what Maurice of Wassau originally developed drill for. Few of us can match"-she pointed eastward-"for individual ferocity and skill at arms just yet, but the Iraiina aren't much at coordination, which can be more important. From what I saw and can get out of our guests, battles are a series of individual brawls here."

Cofflin nodded. "They're having a lot of fun, too," he said. "Working off some energy."

Martha chuckled. "Human energy we seem to have enough of. Amateur theatricals, people giving lessons in the guitar and piano, quilting bees, glee clubs, learn-how-to-make-it groups, debating societies, mushroom-collecting circles…" She shook her head. "We're going to have to move the notice board out of the Athenaeum and put a few more in down by the Hub convenience store. Getting in the way, it's so crowded." She looked' thoughtful. "Blackboards and chalk, perhaps?"

"No more mass media, it isn't surprising people've turned back to making their own pastimes. We've got a lot of Internet junkies going through withdrawal pains, as well," Dr. Coleman said. He smiled, a not altogether pleas-ant expression. "Not to mention real junkies. Suicides are down, though. I guess most of those inclined that way are gone." His smile turned rueful. "The rest of us are getting disgustingly healthy. Lots of exercise, low-fat diet, no cigarettes, and not much alcohol. Did you know that the average islander has lost ten pounds?"

"If you could sell it back up in the twentieth, you'd be set for life, Doctor," Cofflin said.

That brought a chuckle from the rest of them. The group began to split apart, only Cofflin and Martha accompanying Alston toward the circles where individuals sparred. Alston looks quite natural in that stuff, Cofflin thought. There was a sort of archaic handsomeness to her face above the enameled metal, and she swung along as if oblivious of the weight and the hot summer sun, which must make the inside under the padding like a solar oven. Her long sword was slung across her back in a special baldric tight-cinched to the armor, and it rattled slightly as she walked, clinking occasionally against the neck guard of her flared helmet.

He grinned mentally. In fact, he knew she still felt hideously self-conscious in the armor, even though she'd issued an order, backed by the Council, making it the equivalent of working and walking-out dress for Guard and militia members.

As they reached the chalk circles for individual sparring, Swindapa fell backward out of one, winded, armor clattering. She lay stunned by the impact for a moment, blond hair leaking out from under her helmet brim. The islander she'd been fighting advanced his practice spear and tapped her on the chest; then he looked up and saw Alston. He came to rigid attention, blanching a little under the flush of exercise.

"Sorry, ma'am, I, ah, got carried away, and-"

Alston frowned. "Middleton, you were doing what you're supposed to be doing. If you ever have to use that pigsticker, it'll be for real. And Ms. Swindapa wouldn't thank you fo' playin' patty-cake." She turned and hauled the blond Fiernan girl up with a forearm-to-forearm grip. "Here, let me show you."

She took the bokken, the oakwood practice katana that some of the advanced students were using rather than shield and short sword. In shape and weight it was exactly the same as the real weapon, although the aerodynamics were different, since the wood was thicker.

"Slow-time, Middleton. Here's what you did, 'dapa." She stood with the hilt at waist level and the point slanted up toward her opponent's eyes. "Chudan no kame, for starters."

The young man advanced, thrusting the spear with both hands. Alston brought the wooden sword up under the cloth-bound point, hands braced widely on the long hilt.

"So far, so good." The wooden shaft rose as it slid across the sword until the breastplates met with a cling sound. "Here's where you went wrong. Come on, Middleton, push."

"You were tryin' to stop his impetus like a wall. Bad idea. If you fight, you'll be fighting men, and they'll likely be bigger and stronger, and weigh more. Don't try to oppose strength with strength."

"I was trying to get into a place… a position to cut strong," Swindapa said, a frown of concentration on her face.

"It isn't cutting strongly or weakly that's the point, 'dapa. 'One is totally involved with getting the opponent to die,' " she quoted. "Watch. Middleton, we'll go through this again. Slow-time, please."

They set themselves. The spear came forward, and the sword rose to meet it. This time it circled from left to right, pushing the spear slightly aside and down. "Don't stop the thrust, redirect it." Her right foot skimmed forward. "Now turn yo' hips at a forty-five-degree angle. Turn the edge of the sword to face your opponent-it's just a motion of the wrists. You're inside his guard and he can't stop moving toward you, or not quickly enough. From here you can strike at the upper arms, at the throat, or at the face, snapping your hips into the movement for added force, then follow through."

Her bokken tapped the areas indicated. "Again."

"If you can't step aside, redirect the spear, not the man." She faced the thrust directly, snapping the bokken up from right to left.

"That puts you in position for a diagonal cut. His spear is over your left shoulder, and so is your blade. Let it fall back until the point is almost touching your back. Now quickly, elbows out, hands light on the hilt, you bring it down. At the same time, your legs go down, your arms come around as your hips pivot, elbows moving together, wrists clench, breathe out, and the blade strikes so." It tapped at the young man's right shoulder and slid down across his torso. "Drawing the cut."

And opening him like a can of sardines, Cofflin thought with a shudder. He'd seen men blown open by flying shards of steel, and a lot of accidents with heavy machinery. It didn't take much imagination to fit those memories to what he'd just watched.

Swindapa nodded. "But what if he has armor?" she asked. "Or a shield?"

"Good point. Then you redirect here-" she turned the blade back to its starting position and swung it higher, across throat level-"or down at the thighs, or you use his thrust to turn yourself three-quarters 'round." The circling motion of the sword pushed the spear aside, and Alston's feet landed in a cramped-looking position that moved her eighty degrees with a fluid speed he could see even in the slow-motion mime. "And that puts you in position to strike here, here, here." The sword tapped at the armpit, the back of the knee, stabbed toward the inner thigh and groin. "Again, use speed and precision against his weight."

Swindapa frowned. "What if he's just as fast and skilled, and still stronger and heavier?" she said.

Alston met her eyes. "Then you probably die," she said quietly. To the young man: "Full-speed, please."

The spear came punching forward. Crack. The bokken snapped up and met it with a sound like a gunshot. There was a whirling and a clang as Alston pivoted on her bent front leg, the knee half-collapsing as she went, her left leg coming around like a scythe. It struck the man behind his knees, and he flipped backward to land on his back. That left him looking up at Alston as she came down in a wide-footed straddle stance. The point of the bokken came down and stopped precisely over the hollow of his throat.

"Well, that's your lesson, Middleton," Alston said, smiling slightly. "Don't focus on the weapon. There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people. Fight the whole enemy." She gave him a hand up. "See you later, 'dapa." She tossed the wooden sword back to her.

"Does that work as well as it looks?" Cofflin asked as they walked away. "It looks as impressive as hell, but then so does Olympic fencing, and that's got damn-all to do with real fighting, I understand."

"Well, that's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question," Alston said. "I think so. The unarmed parts do work; I've used them in real-life situations a few times, back before the Event and here too."

She reached over her shoulder and touched the hilt of the katana. "The Japanese were in their equivalent of the Middle Ages until one long lifetime ago, and men fought to the death with these almost within livin' memory. My sensei learned in a school that's been-would have been- in operation continuously in the same place since the year 1447, at a shrine to the Shinto sword god. It teaches bu-jutsu, the war arts, not the sport or spiritual-learning versions. So, chances are it'll work in practice."

She held up crossed fingers. "Best we can do. I'd rather win by intimidation than fighting any day, but you have to calculate on the worst possible case."

She turned her head slightly. "I wonder why Middleton looked like I was going to cut out his liver for a moment there, though?" she added.

Cofflin coughed and looked away. Martha touched Alston's elbow and said gently: "Ah, Captain, there have been, well, certain rumors about you and Ms. Swindapa."

"Oh." She paused for a moment. "He thought I was going to annihilate him for beating up on my girlfriend? Oh. Hell, and here I thought I'd kept everyone in the dark by avoiding the softball team and not leavin' old copies of Deneuve around."

Her mouth quirked at his expression. "Sorry, in-joke." She shook her head. "What really annoys me is the idea that anyone would suppose I'd be unfair like that."

"Umm-" Cofflin began. He could see Alston's face take on a set calmness, like a mask carved from obsidian. By now he knew her well enough to realize what that meant: total determination. When she went on, it might have been a machine speaking.

"If you're asking, the rumors are wrong in particular- she's, ah, not suitable-but true in general. Yes, I'm gay. You might even use the dreaded 1-word." The eyes met his, dark within dark, seemingly all pupil in the smoky whites. "Do you have a problem with that, Chief Cofflin?"

"Myself? Absolutely not," Cofflin said.

I think, he added to himself. You met the occasional queer in the Navy, of course, and while he had no objection in principle he didn't like the reality. On the other hand, those were men. Women just didn't bother him like that, which was illogical and probably unenlightened, but what the hell… And Alston was simply too valuable to alienate, besides being damn likable in her chilly way. The thought of trying to handle this mess without her was enough to give him the cold willies.

"But some other people might, eh?" she said, relentless.

"If they do, that's their problem," Cofflin said. "I'm behind you. You're doing your goddam job, lady, and as long as you do I don't give a flying… curse whether you sleep with men, women, or sheep."

"Mostly by myself, actually, worse luck," Alston said, with a slow grin. She offered her hand. "Here's to the league of people who do their jobs, then." He took it in his, and Martha laid hers on top.

"Amen," she said.

"More?" Alston said politely, indicating the venison ragout and the single remaining new potato; they'd fallen on those pretty ravenously.

The cadets shook their heads. "Great, Captain," one of them said. "But I'm stuffed."

"Clear up, then, please," she said, turning and pulling a roll of mapping paper from a sideboard.

The three young men and two women made short work of cleaning the table. She'd made a regular thing of these off-duty meetings, to keep in touch with the cadets. Dining-in on Eagle was a little too formal, considering the gap in rank, not to mention the cramped quarters. For that matter, cruises on the Eagle had been a small part of a cadet's education, just enough to familiarize them. The Academy at New London was a very long way away, now.

A whale-oil lamp in the center of the table gave a glow good enough for reading, quite passable if you made yourself forget what electric light was like.

"Take a look at this," Alston said, leaning over the table and unrolling the plans.

She weighted the corners down with saltshakers and candlesticks. The upperclassman cadets picked up their cups of sassafras tea and leaned over it.

"It's the Bluenose, isn't it, Captain?" one of them said, interested.

The plans showed a two-masted schooner with a long sleek hull curving up to a prow like the point of a laurel-leaf spearhead. The design breathed speed, but not the fragile swiftness of a racing yacht-there was hard work in every line of her.

"Not quite, though it's based on it," Alston said. She nodded to the ship model. "That's the Bluenose. This here-" she tapped the plans-"is a little smaller, two hundred tons displacement; she's shallower-draft, with a longer straight run below, and doesn't carry as much mast. Probably not quite so fast, but even better suited for inshore work. Look at it well, ladies and gentlemen, because you'll be officers on something like this in the not-too-distant future."

The cadets sat down slowly. Alston smiled at them. "I'm not deaf. Now that we've a little leisure to think, you're all afraid that you'll spend the rest of your lives hauling ropes and reefing sails on the Eagle… and you signed up at the Academy to be officer-trainees, not deckhands."

"Yes, some of us have been thinking about that, ma'am," one of the cadets said slowly. McAndrews, a big soft-spoken black kid from Memphis. "We didn't like to complain, though. Not your fault, after all."

"That's appreciated."

Another half-raised her hand. "Won't we be building more steamboats?"

"Certainly, for tugs, whale-catchers, 'longshore work generally. But it'll be a long time before we can make deep-sea steamers. For long-distance work we need ships that don't need fuel or machine shops and that can be repaired with local resources where they make landfall, at a pinch. The Eagle's a fine open-ocean ship, but she wasn't built to haul cargo, and she's too deep in the keel for inshore work in this era, without made harbors.

"This"-she nodded her head at the drawings-"is just right. Wood-built, and we're not short of good timber and masts. Big enough to go anywhere on earth and haul a useful amount of cargo, fore-and-aft-rigged, nimble, and not requirin' a heavy crew. Eventually we'll have a dozen or more, in the carrying trade, exploring, swapping our manufactures for food and raw materials. Guarding the island, too, and whatever settlements we make elsewhere. I've talked it over with the chief, and we'll be putting a proposal to start building to the Town Meeting, fairly soon. There's enough seasoned timber on hand now."

Alston saw enthusiasm kindle. "Since we're stuck here, it's better to think of it as an opportunity, not exile."

"Sort of like Francis Drake and those guys, ma'am?" one of the cadets asked.

"Mmmm, not quite, I hope. But lots of exploration, yes."

The conversation broke up some time later. "Stay for a moment, McAndrews," she said. "You had something you wanted to say?" She leaned back, watching the young man twist a little. "I won't bite y'head off for speaking your mind."

"It's… we're going back to England, right, ma'am?"

She nodded.

"What I was wondering was, why England, ma'am?"

"Trade," she said. "We need to develop a secure base for it."

"Yes, ma'am, but why England?"

"Oh," Alston said. "Ah, I see what you're driving at. You'd rather we try, say, Africa?"

"Yes, ma'am!" McAndrews beamed.

"You're thinking that instead of giving the buckra a leg up, we should sail to Africa and get in contact with the great kingdoms and empires there? Ghana, Mali, Dahomey, the Ashante? And with our technology, they'll grow to dominate the world?"

"Yes ma'am!"

Alston sighed. She reached up and removed an invisible hat. "All right, Cadet, for just this once I'm going to take off my captain's cap and speak to you as sister to brother." She leaned forward. "You ever heard the saying 'Free your head and your ass will follow'?" He nodded.

She went on: "Well, I'm afraid your head's gotten stuffed with something that'd fit in better down below, boy. None of those empires and kingdoms exist now, and they won't for a long long time. Thousands of years. South of the deserts it's mostly still hunters, with a few farming villages in the grasslands. Sail to West Africa and all you'll find is jungle and pygmies. And maybe malaria and yellow fever."

McAndrews's face fell. Alston sighed internally. I won't ask him who he thinks sold our ancestors to the white slavers, she thought. That had been one of her more disillusioning personal discoveries. At least, the West African kings and merchant princes were the ones who'd sold her personal ancestors, seeing as she was black as tar. McAndrews was a sort of rye-bread-toast color; more than a few buckra in his own personal woodpile. Let him down easy. He's probably stuffed with shit about ancient Tanzanian jets and the black Cleopatra and suchlike.

"North Africa is mostly filled with people who look like Isketerol, only they're savages," Alston went on. "The only place in Africa that isn't full of savages is Egypt." At his look, she continued: "Have you ever been to Egypt, Cadet?"

"No, ma'am."

"I have. Up in the twentieth, the Egyptian slang for a black person is abdeed, which means slave, in case you hadn't guessed. Look, when Isketerol first saw me, he thought I was a Medjay. Ever hear of them?" He shook his head. "Neither had I. They're mercenary soldiers from Nubia at Pharaoh's court. The only other black folk there are black slaves."

At his look of shock, she pushed on ruthlessly: "Who do you think started the slave trade, Cadet? You go to Egypt as of 1250 B.C., you're just another nigger barbarian, as far as they're concerned, and so am I. Of course, they'd consider Isketerol a nigger too, or Lieutenant Hendriksson. Anyone who isn't an Egyptian is a nigger to them."

"I… suppose I see," he said after a long minute's thought.

"Don't take it so hard, Cadet," she said kindly. "If things work out well here, there'll never be a Middle Passage. And we've got plenty of real heroes. Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth is worth a dozen imaginary African princes any day."

He frowned. "Then what's going to happen to us, here, ma'am? I mean, as a people."

The island had less than two hundred black residents, and fewer still of other minorities; she'd checked the figures, discreetly. The population was 96 percent white. She'd always regarded white people as sort of like the weather; they were there, sometimes pleasant, often not, and you had to deal with them as best you could. Here-and-now they were pretty well the whole damn climate, and that was just that, whether she liked it or not.

Alston shrugged. "What happens when you squeeze a drop of ink into a glass of milk and shake, Cadet? It mixes in and pretty soon it's gone." Alston spread her hands. "From now on, you'd do best to think of this island as home and everyone who lives here as your people. We really don't have much choice."

Seahaven Engineering was getting more crowded by the day, even though Martins and his forge had been moved out to their own quarters, and the sound of metal on metal was deafening.

Ronald Leaton and Cofflin stood in one corner, looking at the latest development, and occasionally moving aside as someone went through with a handcart of materials or parts. Sweat ran down their faces; the sun was bad enough, beating down on the sheet-metal roof, and the steam engines turning shafts and pumping compressors added to the heat and noise. The machine shop stank of hot metal, hot whale oil, sweat, and smoke. The big doors to the water were open, giving an occasional draft of welcome cool air, and you could see smudges of black woodsmoke drifting out over the smaragdine brightness of the harbor. Sails speckled it, and the ocean beyond; closer too a Guard officer was overseeing the loading of a large handcart, yelling out his checklist to the Seahaven clerk:

"Breastplates, twenty-five, size All"

"Check!"

"Helmets, twenty-five, size All"

"Check!"

Cofflin shook his hea'd. Busy as bees, he thought. There was just so much to do, before winter set in-and never enough time or hands.

"It's a blow-drier for fish," Leaton explained, kicking the frame and handing over a sample. "Desiccator, if you want to get technical. I figure it'll cut down the spoilage rate to nearly nothing."

Cofflin nodded, turning the slab of dusty-white, rock-hard cod in his hands and looking at the wood-and-iron… thingumabob, he decided. The rack for the fish wasn't much different from the improvised ones they'd been using, looking a little like a giant bedstead, except that it had a mesh cover over the top to keep the flies off… and they'd lost far more cod than he liked to think about to maggots.

Off to one side of it was a contraption of sheet metal and wood, with a flat covered steel pan, a round metal chimney, and a shaft running down from that into a wooden box that underlay one edge of the drying rack. Leaton took pieces off the sides of each.

"See, you light the fire in the pan here-ordinary wood fire, and there's this grating underneath for the ashes."

Cofflin nodded solemnly. Wood ash was prime fertilizer, and it had half a dozen other major uses-you needed it to make soap, for instance, which wasn't something he'd suspected before. There was a Town ordinance now that everyone had to keep ashes for collection.

"Then some of the hot air goes up the chimney and turns this fan. That turns this metal shaft running down here, which turns this wooden fan, and that blows more of the hot dry air…"

A ton of fish sounded like a lot, until you remembered how much seventy-two hundred people ate in a day. Every pound counted, and this would save a lot of spoilage.

"Good work," he said sincerely. "How many, how fast, and what do you need?"

"Well, we can make up the metal parts here. Thornton's can do the carpentry"-another new industry, working with the hand and simple power tools Seahaven turned out, and Macy's shipments of timber from the mainland-"and I thought we'd take over another boathouse or something for the assembly work. It gets in the way here."

"Say another forty, maybe sixty people all up," Cofflin said. "Damn, we're running short-particularly of people who know which end of a hammer to pick up."

"It'll save in the long run," Leaton said earnestly. "You don't need nearly so many watching the drying racks."

"A lot of those are kids," Cofflin mused. "But yeah, I think so. Okay, go for it."

"And you can use it to make jerky, any kind, and dried sausage as well, or dry vegetables for keeping-"

"Ayup. You've struck oil, Ron, you can stop drilling," Cofflin said dryly.

The problem with being the one who can bind or loose is that everyone keeps trying to convince you of things, he thought wryly.

"Ah… thanks, Chief."

"Thank you, Ron. What's next?"

"Well, the barrel-stave machine is working now, and the one for the hoops." Cofflin grunted satisfaction; barrels for storage were a big bottleneck. "And we've got something here that'll make us all a lot more comfortable," the engineer went on.

He led Cofflin over to where two more samples rested against the wall. One was a simple steel box with a hinged front door and a section of sheet-metal piping coming out the back.

"Heating stove," Leaton said, taking a rag out of the back pocket of his overalls and wiping his hands-futile, since grease and dirt were ground into the knuckles. "An outer box, an inner box, the intervals filled with sand- retains heat, the way thick cast iron would if we could cast iron, which we can't yet-ashpan, grate, door for feeding wood, and an adjustable flue. It's about airtight, and the thermal efficiency is seven, eight times the best fireplace. You just stick it in a fireplace, and the pipe here goes up the chimney a bit."

"Excellent," Cofflin said. They'd all been chilly in the tag end of early spring. "We can start on these later in the year, though-after harvest."

Leaton nodded. "And there's this." The other stove was much larger, standing on legs. The top held what looked like solid-metal equivalents of heating elements on a normal stove, and there was a big oval tank welded to one side.

"Wood-fired cooking stove," he went on proudly. "We modeled it on the old style, with some improvements. That thing on the side is a hot-water tank-the exhaust flue goes right through it."

"Oh, that's going to be popular!" Cofflin said.

Not least with those who had to do dishes. People who couldn't do anything else had taken to filling in with housework, for those who were otherwise occupied. It let them earn Town chits of their own, and freed up the able-bodied for essential tasks.

"Wait a minute-you should put in a heating tray at the back. That done, you can put those into production right away, say twenty a week to start with?" he said.

"Can do, but I'll need more assembly space. They bolt together, and the parts are standardized."

"I'll get you the people, at least until the harvest," Cofflin said. "The Council will go along with it. Speaking of which, is the reaper working yet?"

"Ah-" Leaton's eyes shifted. "Well, we're still getting some of the bugs out, Chief."

"Goddammit, Ron, we were counting on that…"

"God," Ian Arnstein wheezed, straightening up and rubbing at his back. "Now I know what 'stoop labor' really means."

Everyone had toughened up considerably since the spring, but reaping grain with a sickle and bagging hook evidently took muscles and degrees of flexibility they'd never called on before. Swindapa was proof positive, two people down from him in the row. She moved with an economical rhythm: stoop with leg advanced, sweep the wooden hook with the left hand to gather in a swatch of grain, bring the sickle up sharply head-high and slice downward and back, tip the hook to spill the cut rye in a neat row, step forward, stoop… despite the T-shirt and cutoff jeans, moving like that she didn't look at all American. She was well ahead of Alston and Doreen, and stopped occasionally to let them catch up, putting a better edge on her sickle now and then with a pull-through sharpener. Others were doing the same, punctuated with the odd yelp or curse as someone cut a hand. Ian had already, twice, and sweat stung like fire as it ran into the superficial gashes.

The rye stretched before him, waving in the sun with an evil brown-gold beauty, starred here and there with wild-flowers; he'd have admired those more if he hadn't learned by painful, personal experience how much harder weeds made the work. It was a hot August day, sunny except for some high haze and a few puffy white clouds. The field was fairly large, about twenty acres, part of Brand Farms' winter cover crop let ripen. A hundred islanders were advancing across it in a staggered row, sickles flashing. As many more followed behind, gathering the ragged rows of grain into sheaves and tying them with a twist of straw. There was a buzz of crickets in the air, and a dusty smell of earth, cut stems, and sweat, mingled with the wilder scent of the weeds cut along with the stalks. According to the books they ought to be able to reap a third of an acre or so per day per worker. It was an hour past noon, and fairly obvious they'd be lucky to do a quarter of that.

If we had a hundred Swindapas cutting this stuff, maybe, Ian thought, bending again with a groan. A bell rang behind him, and he felt like weeping with relief. The second shift.

They were rotating people through the harvesting gangs, so as many as possible would have experience before the much larger fields of spring-planted grain came ripe. A thousand acres of barley alone, Christ on a crutch, I'll never make it. He looked at the sky again. When the time came, they'd have to go all-out. You couldn't count on the weather here, and rain at the wrong time could be a disaster-literally a disaster; it would mean the difference between eating well and going hungry. With the planting so late it would be touch and go, first to harvest, and then to get all the grain under cover.

Then we get to pull the flax and dig up the potatoes. And harvest and shuck the corn. And cut the buckwheat. And cut the last hay and turn it and dig the Jerusalem artichokes and harvest the sunflowers and… Oh, joy, oh, my aching back.

"And I thought 'bust your ass' was a metaphor," he said.

"Come and get it!" the cook at the wagon over by the pines shouted.

"About time," Doreen said.

She was wearing a T-shirt around her head like a headdress, with strands of her long black hair escaping, and a bikini top and shorts. Her skin was tanned to a deep olive brown, flesh firmed up and trimmed down and turned to something more like the opulent shape of a Levantine fertility goddess; even the sweat on neck and breasts and the bits of straw stuck in it merely completed the picture. At the moment he was too tired to really appreciate the sight, except in an abstract way. He trudged over to the wagon and the blessed shade of the trees, dropping his sickle and hook into the racks. Plastic trash barrels full of water stood there. He drank four mugfuls one after the other, almost shuddering with ecstasy as the cool water cut through the gummy saliva and dust in his mouth and throat. Then he poured more over his head; it felt icy as it cut runnels through the sweat. The towel he used to wipe his face and hands was limp and damp, but afterward he felt halfway human-as if he'd been dead for days, rather than months. Human enough that the smell of the stew penetrated and set his stomach rumbling like a wolf trying to claw its way out.

"Surf 'n' Swine, folks! Come and get it!" the cook said again. "Surf 'n' Swine! Come and get it!"

He got in line and took a big red plastic bowl of thick brown pork and lobster stew. The helper added half a loaf of rough dark bread, and Ian filled his mug again. The shade beneath the stubby pines where he and Doreen spread their blanket was infinitely welcome, but he could feel his muscles stiffen further as they cooled. He sank down with a groan.

"The chief is carrying this egalitarianism to extremes," he grumbled. "I notice he's not here."

"He's out harpooning bluefin tuna," Alston said from a few feet farther along the line of shade. "Those things go up to a ton weight; it's hard, dangerous work." She raised herself on one elbow; she wasn't looking particularly tired, although the singlet was plastered to her torso with sweat.

But then, she's an athlete and younger than I am, he thought.

"I know, I know, I'm being unfair," Ian said ruefully. "I'm also being a middle-aged man with blisters and a crick in my back."

"Easy work," Swindapa said, laying down her food and stretching on tiptoe with her fingers pointed at the sky.

Woof, woof, Ian thought. Even gaunt and terrified, the Fiernan had been pretty. Filled out, glowing with health and youth, tanned a light toast-brown that made even more vivid her blue eyes and the sun-bleached hair falling down her bare back… He looked back at his wife. Damn, the view is good here all 'round. Then: I must be recovering. He looked down at himself; he'd never been anything but lanky, but the middle-aged pot he'd added had about vanished. He was fitter than he'd been. He just wished it didn't hurt so much.

"Not what I'd call easy," he said.

"Try doing it with a wooden sickle with flint blades, Ian, or even a bronze one," Swindapa said. She frowned when he moved and then winced. "Lie down on your front."

Curious, he obeyed. The blond woman walked over and knelt beside him. "You Eagle People do some wonderful things, but you aren't much as farmers," she said, beginning to knead along his spine with strong skilled fingers. She sang under her breath in her own language as she worked, timing the motions of her hands to the slow chant.

He gave a small whimper of mixed pain and pleasure. "We had machines to do this sort of thing," he said. "With any luck, we will again-next year."

Leaton's attempt at a horse-drawn reaping machine had been a spectacular failure, jamming itself every second step. He swore that he could perfect it now that he had fields to test adjustments on, but the crop wouldn't wait. Cradle scythes would have been more efficient than the sickles and easier to make than the McCormick-style reaper, but it turned out that they required both unusual strength and a lot of practice to use. They'd have to solve the grain problem this first year by simple brute force and massive ignorance, throwing every pair of hands not catching fish into the fields for a brace of weeks. At least the threshing machine looked like it would work, so they wouldn't have to spend the winter beating this stuff with flails in the intervals between digging potatoes.

Swindapa finished the massage on the muscles of his neck, then drummed the heels of her hands down from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine. The knots loosened, and he gave a groaning sigh of relief. She moved over to Doreen and began to repeat the process; Ian sat up and spooned down the stew. He was beginning to understand why farmers usually ate their main meal at midday; it seemed like a long time since breakfast. A few dozen feet away another bunch of resting harvesters was singing to a flute and guitar:

Corn ricks and barley sheaves-

And garlands of holly;

No, I'll ne're forget the nights I spent

Among the sheaves, with Mollie…

He wasn't surprised at the plaintive-cheerful Old English tune. Nantucket was just the sort of place for acoustic-guitar folkie enthusiasts who drank home-brewed beer and did Morris dancing.

Come gather golden honey

Come reap the tender corn;

And with me lay in new-mown hay

Before the winter's bourne…

It was the fact that they had the energy to sing that astonished him.

He mopped the bowl with a heel of the bread, and belched with something approaching contentment.

Swindapa shook out her hands and moved back to Alston's blanket. "You next, Captain," she said cheerfully.

There was a moment's silence; Ian looked over at the sudden tension in the air. After a long instant Alston nodded and laid her head face-down in her folded arms. Swindapa moved beside her and crooned the same minor-key chant under her breath; she was smiling as she began to work, a slow dreamy expression.

"No rest for the wicked," he said to the air, rising and helping Doreen fold the blanket. As they walked toward their bicycles he inclined his head slightly back and raised an eyebrow.

"No, I don't think so," Doreen said. "The captain has a… highly developed sense of scruples. Almost as hyper-thyroid as her sense of duty."

They picked up their cycles and began walking them down the dirt road out toward the pavement. Nantucket had had a system of bicycle trails before the Event, but the whole road system belonged to it now. The thickets along the path were mostly uncleared, and they had a wild sweet smell of feral roses. The blossoms starred the green undergrowth with red, with a few clusters of blushing-pink phlox for contrast. The main road had a narrow strip of brush and trees along it, and on the far side of that was a broad field of flax already eight feet tall, its blue flowers only a memory. Ian looked at it and winced in prospect. You harvested flax by pulling it up by the roots.

"Positively superhuman self-control," Ian said dryly. "And Swindapa has a powerful crush."

Doreen frowned. "I wouldn't exactly put it that way. She's not a kid, you know, not by the standards of her own culture."

Ian shrugged. "I don't want to let this sweat dry," he said, changing the subject. He liked them both as well, they were good people, but there were certain things that individuals just had to work out for themselves.

"Smith's?" she said.

"How about Quigley's?" he asked.

"You're not as tired as you looked," Doreen laughed. Quigley's was a new place, giving Smith fierce competition; it had individual cubicles for soaking after you scrubbed down.

"Let's see when we get there," he grinned.

They reached the pavement and swung into the seats of their cycles. I may not have the captain's nobility of character, he thought, looking at Doreen's hair flying in the wind. On the other hand, my life's a good deal less complicated, and there's something to be said for that.