Island in the Sea of Time

EPILOGUE

March, Year 3 A.E.

Ian Arnstein stepped off the gangway and slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. Nantucket was its chilly, foggy March self this evening, but they'd learned to make a pretty good turtleneck sweater over in the White Isle.

"Home at last," Doreen said. "Praise God, home at last."

They walked up past Easy Street, keeping to the sidewalk-the horses from Eagle's latest shipment were being led up the cobbles, their new horseshoes casting sparks and an iron clangor that echoed back from houses-turned-warehouse, factor's office, chandler's shop. People bustled about as work shut down for the evening; a long blasting steam whistle echoed from one of the new factories.

"Dirty trick, making us ambassadors plenipotentiary," Doreen said.

"Oh, I don't know. The work was sort of fun, actually," Ian answered. Laying the foundations of a country, and who'd have thought he was flying from California into that when he left LAX, two years ago almost to the day on his personal world-line.

"Making us stay through the English winter-now that was a dirty trick."

Of course, they'd also gotten Walker's mansion as their own in fee simple, and the surviving Iraiina and their new chief had insisted on throwing in a tract of land around it.

"Come on, everyone's waiting-we've got all the gossip since last September to catch up on," Doreen said.

In theory the dinner tonight was supposed to be a surprise anniversary party for them, combined with Event Day and coordinated by radiophone. Doreen wormed it out of Sandy Rapczewicz on the trip back from Fort Pentagon.

He had an uneasy feeling that the chief and Marian had something else in mind, too, like the role he was going to "volunteer" for in this Mediterranean expedition everyone was talking about. Oh, we're off to see the Pharaoh, the wonderful Pharaoh of…

Ian Arnstein began to laugh as they turned onto Broad, looking around and drawing a deep breath of air pungent with whale oil from the street lanterns, woodsmoke from hearths, the delicious scents of cooking and the not so pleasant but infinitely familiar smells of horses and their by-products.

"What's the joke?"

"That time travel forward can bring you back full circle just as surely as time travel backward," he said, and shook his head at her puzzled frown. "Later. I'm hungry."

They hurried up the street past whalers and fishermen, Indians in blankets and Fiernan Bohulugi Moon Priestesses wrapped in dignity, past kilted Sun People warriors gawking about in wonder, past carts and steam carriages and running whooping children. Some things didn't change. They still served a mean seafood dinner in the basement restaurant at the John Cofflin House, even in the Bronze Age.