Island in the Sea of Time

CHAPTER EIGHT

April, Year 1 A.E.

"Well, people, we have a problem," Jared Cofflin said. He looked out over the crowd. Attendance at Town Meeting was certainly up from the days before the Event; of course, the stakes were a lot higher now. But I don't like the look in their eyes, he thought. They're still scared. Deubel's crazed arson plot had put the fear of death into them, like nothing since the Event. He could smell it in their sweat, and hear the shrill undertone in the murmurs as they adjusted their folding chairs. A few young children cried in their mothers' arms, ignoring the patting and shushing.

"The trial's over," he went on. "Judge Gardner can testify it was fair."

The judge nodded. "However, under the circumstances, sentencing is a problem. Arson generally carries a fairly long term of imprisonment."

"It's time we faced some facts. Look, we want a government of laws, don't we?" There were nods throughout the crowd. Cofflin felt sweat running down his collar, and was extremely glad that Martha Stoddard was sitting next to him at the table on the dais, spare and precise in a gray dress and single string of pearls.

"But let's face it, the laws of the United States don't run here any more. There isn't any United States, no Congress, no president, no Supreme Court. Sure, we want the same sort of laws-"

"Like hell," someone said from the ranks of townspeople. "The IRS can stay lost for all I care."

That brought a gust of laughter; Cofflin joined in for an instant. "Generally speaking, I mean. In the end, though, this-this Town Meeting here-is the source of law on this island. You are. You're the Congress, you're the Senate. You can make peace and declare war; you decide what the penalties for crimes are. You bind and loose."

That brought silence for a long moment, except for the angry hiccupping of a fretful baby. "All right, then. Here we've got eighteen men and women who tried to burn down the town, which would probably have killed us all, one way or another." There had been twenty to start with, but two had managed to follow their ex-pastor into suicide.

"We've given them a fair trial, and they've mostly confessed anyway. The question is, what do we do with them?"

"Hang 'em!" someone shouted, and there was a menacing snarl from the crowd. Together on a bench before the dais the prisoners shrank together.

Cofflin hammered his gavel. "That's one solution," he said calmly. "And you're the ultimate authority here. If you vote for it, it'll be carried out. Now, I just want you to think about that. Eighteen nooses. Eighteen people with broken necks hanging there-if we don't botch it and just strangle them slowly. I'll insist that it be done publicly; people should see the results of what they order. And then I'll resign."

There was an uproar at that. Cofflin gaveled it into silence. He recognized the woman with the crying baby. She stood, anger crackling off her:

"I'm not going to let those… those lunatics loose to threaten my baby again." A growl rose from the crowd.

Cofflin nodded. "Ms. Saunders, I agree completely. I'm not against the death penalty as such in the ordinary course of events. This is a little different. We need to come up with a way to keep ourselves safe from these people here, without killing them. You're also right; they were acting like lunatics. Haven't most of us felt like running mad lately, now and then? Hell, a couple of us have run mad."

With a Glock, in one case.

Saunders blinked. "What do you think we should do?"

"Well, we can't just keep them in jail. For one thing, it'd cost too much-we'd have to feed them. What I had in mind was a productive form of exile."

Martha leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. "You'd better listen carefully," she said. "Jared Cofflin's the best man to head our Council, and you'd be well advised to keep him."

"You're partial, Martha," someone said from the crowd. "You're engaged to him, after all."

Cofflin felt a small glow at the thought, even then. He'd enjoyed the engagement, too; all three days of it, so far.

"John Detterson, if you think I'd flatter a man just because I'm going to be married to him, you're more of a fool than I thought you," Martha said tartly.

The tension he could feel in the air crackled a little lower; there was not quite a laugh, but a relaxation.

"Everyone hates the salt-gathering detail," Cofflin went on. "We've been drawing lots for it. What I'm saying is that we should send these people down there, for a year at least and then further until they're safe to have back among us. We can send a boat down to pick up the salt and drop off supplies every month or so. It's a hard sentence, yes, but we don't have to kill any of our own, and we don't have to waste time and resources we can't spare on them."

More murmurs. Cofflin pointed the gavel. "Winnie McKenzie."

"That's an indefinite sentence, Chief," she said. "How are we going to tell if they're really safe? What's to prevent them lying about it and getting up to the same tricks when they get back?"

"I'll let Father Gomez answer that," Cofflin said.

"These poor people were deluded by a man who was deluded himself," the priest said, rising from his seat in the middle of the meeting. "I have volunteered to go with them to Inagua and help them. Father Connor can run the affairs of the Catholic parish here while I'm gone. With God's help, I think I can bring these unfortunate people back to reason, or at least tell if they haven't changed their thinking."

"And I have full confidence in Father Gomez's judgment," Cofflin said. Since he suggested this whole scheme in the first place, he added to himself. "What's more, I think a year spent shoveling salt and eating flamingo down on Inagua is at least equivalent to ten in a mainland jail. No way to escape, either." No way to escape and live, he amended. If they chose to drown themselves, that was their problem and a solution to his.

"Anyone second the motion?" he asked. A double dozen of hands went up. "Let's put it to the vote. All in favor, raise their hands. Now, all opposed." He swung his head from one end of the crowd to the other. "Joseph?"

"Carried," the town clerk said. Nobody objected; the ayes had outnumbered the nays by at least five to one.

Cofflin looked down at the prisoners; one or two defiant, a woman weeping softly, most of them simply stunned. "By vote of the Town Meeting of the island of Nantucket, you are hereby sentenced to exile on the island of Inagua for a period of not less than one year. Your exile will continue until Father Gomez, as authorized by the Meeting, determines that you are safe to live here again. You'll have one day to say your farewells, and the Yare will leave with the evening tide tomorrow. That's all."

The police officers shepherded the prisoners out. Well, that's a hell of a lot simpler than it used to be, Cofflin thought. Aloud: "All right, let's get on with it." He pointed the gavel. "Sam Macy."

Sam Macy was a house carpenter, and a very good one, island-born. "Chief, it's the way we're running things," he began, setting himself stubbornly. "This telling everyone where they have to work and such. It's too much like communism for my liking."

"Sam, you're one hundred percent right about that," Cofflin said. "The problem is, it had to be done-still will, for a while. Joseph"-he pointed at the town clerk-"and a couple of our potato-planting bankers-"

That did get a laugh, a rueful one.

"-are working on getting a money system going. After we've got the crops planted and the fishing steady, we can start swapping things around more as we please. People will still have to work or contribute stuff to the Town, though- otherwise we just can't pull through. Next year we can loosen up some more, and more still the year after that. Believe me, the last thing I want is to be a tin-pot Mao. If anyone can come up with a better way of doing it, they're welcome to ask the Meeting to give them this job… more than welcome," he added sincerely, running a hand over his hair.

Angelica Brand spoke: "We've been running most of the plantings as a single unit because there wasn't time to do otherwise," she said. "But I'd be just as pleased to split them up into smaller farms. Trouble is, not many of us know how to run a small farm with hand tools and animal traction. One thing I can tell you, it's damned hard work."

There was a general murmur of agreement on that. Cofflin went on: "We can reopen some of the stores pretty soon now, too, as soon as Joseph gets this chit system going. Satisfied, Sam?"

"Not altogether," Macy said. "There's that order collecting up all the guns."

The townsfolk groaned; Macy was a bit of a monomaniac on the subject of the Second Amendment.

"Sam, you know what happened at the Cappuccino Cafe. Everyone thought Don Mansfield was as sane as any of us and he goes and kills three people-one of 'em a kid. Then there was Johnstone-"

"Guns don't-"

"-kill people, people do. Ayup, I agree-but guns make it so much easier. By the way, Sam, if you want a crossbow, you're welcome to one. Once things settle down, all the firearms will be handed back to their owners, unless the Town needs them-we're going to have to handle our own defense, and from what Captain Alston says there are some mighty rough people out there over the water."

"We'd have more if you hadn't-"

Cofflin nodded. "Putting near all of them in one place was a bad mistake; I'll say that myself. But imagine what Deubel would have done with automatic weapons!"

Macy looked around, hesitated, and sat down; he was an opinionated man, but far from stupid.

"And hell, Sam," Cofflin went on, "if you want to make a motion, propose it and we'll vote."

Macy stayed down, unconvinced but aware that the Meeting was moving from boredom to irritation.

"All right, next item. Ron Leaton here needs more people who want to apprentice as metalworkers and machinists. The worst of the clearing is about over, so we can spare some hands. I'd like to suggest…"

When the Meeting was over, Cofflin ran a handkerchief over his face. "I'd rather face a half-dozen drunk coofs on the spree anyday," he grumbled.

"You did very well," Martha said. "Very Athenian, really." Cofflin raised his brows. "Aristotle thought about three thousand citizens was the largest number who could meet in assembly and decide issues," she went on. "Well, we're about the right size for his ideal city-state, aren't we?"

"Greek to me," Cofflin grinned. The librarian slapped his shoulder in mock reproof.

"Come along to supper, then," she said, sliding a hand into his. "And maybe we can do something about that bundling you mentioned."

"Er-" he said, flushing slightly.

Martha smiled. "This is the twentieth century," she said. "Or at least it was."

"You do, what is?" Swindapa asked.

Nearly mash my toes, that's what I do, Doreen thought, wiping her palms and picking up the length of wood she'd dropped.

"Practice," she said aloud, running through another slow form. Trying to get the rhythm back where breath and movement, body and feet and hands, united into a single flowing unity. Instead her thighs and shoulders ached and her eyes stung despite the terry-cloth headband she was wearing.

The deck was stable as the ship ghosted along at a crawl, creeping past the edge of a Sargasso that seemed to be larger in this era. Part of the crew were busy swabbing, painting, and chipping, but the rest were doing unarmed combat drill, under the tutelage of Lieutenant Walker and the captain -Doreen supposed that Alston had ordered it on the principle that the devil made work for idle hands. Ian was infuriatingly reading a book in a deck chair, smugly satisfied with his argument that he was a civilian and far too middle-aged for all this "chucking about." It was hot, too; they were down about the latitude of Bermuda. Doreen panted as she rested on the bo, the T-shirt sticking to her breasts and shoulders. The deck was full of yells and thuds as the fit, limber nineteen-year-old cadets ran through holds and throws or hammered at each other through padding.

"Practice who?" Swindapa said again, handing her water.

Doreen gulped it gratefully. "Practice with what," she said.

Swindapa had a superb memory and a mimic's ear for sound, but too many of the grammatical conventions of the English language seemed to make no sense to her. Her own language was an agglutinative horror that made the complex inflections and declensions of Lithuanian or Iraiina seem straightforward. Three separate forms of the "r" sound, all of which were distinct to her and indistinguishable to the English-speaking ear… Doreen shuddered at the memory.

"Practice with what?" the Fiernan girl repeated agreeably.

"Staff. Bo." They repeated the conversation in Iraiina for practice's sake. That was merely a complicated language, not impossible.

The bo was a piece of polished hardwood, five and a half feet long and about the thickness of her paired thumbs. She'd kept it on half a dozen moves after she stopped going to the dojo, never quite certain that she'd given up the art for good, but never having enough time to actually attend, either.

"For what?"

"To hit," Doreen said. "I'll show you."

She stood in front of the younger woman, the staff held slantwise across her body.

"Spear?" Swindapa said, and made jabbing motions.

"No. Like this."

Very gently, she ran the rounded tip of the 'staff into the weak point of the other's solar plexus, just below the breastbone. Even in the strongest, fittest set of abdominal muscles that was an empty spot, and it was right under the heart and lungs. The other woman folded over with a surprised mild oooof. Doreen followed through with a slow uppercut that would have smashed the jaw if it had been for real. That led naturally into a turn, the bo tossed up and allowed to slide between her hands as she pivoted so that the movement became a two-handed sweep. Step forward, sliding the left hand to the center of the staff, point down, use it to scoop behind the knee…

Swindapa went down realistically, grinning. Doreen smiled back; everyone liked the Fiernan girl, the more so since she'd relaxed-and stopped waking up every night screaming. She play-acted ramming the staff into the other's throat, then gave her a hand up.

"You show?"

Doreen hesitated, then nodded. "That's 'Will you show me?'"

"Will you show me?"

Training a novice might be just what she needed to keep her motivation up. "Stand like this," she began.

"Lesson over," she wheezed twenty minutes later.

Swindapa was just working up a sweat, but she reluctantly handed the bo back to Doreen, rubbing at a few bruises where the wood had gotten away from her.

"We'll get you one of these," the American said. The Fiernan was in good condition, a natural athlete, and she'd seemed to enjoy it. "We'll do more tomorrow." And by the time you know enough, I'll have some endurance back.

They turned to watch Isketerol trying a fall with Lieutenant Walker. Doreen didn't like the too-cheerful junior officer; for one thing, he gave off God's-gift-to-women vibrations. She disliked the Tartessian rather more, so it was a point up whoever got thumped. The Iberian trader moved in cautiously, crouched with hands held high and low, rather like pictures she'd seen on very old pottery in museums. Walker waited until the other man made a grab. She knew what came next.

Thump. The Tartessian landed on his face on the foam mat, winded and stunned. Nobody here seemed to know how to fall. Walker landed astride him-in a real fight the knees would have driven into the fallen man's back, probably crushing his ribs and snapping the spine.

"That's enough," Marian Alston said; she was barefoot, in calf-length cotton gi pants and an armless singlet, dripping wet from the work she'd been doing. Her skin shone like wet coal over long lean muscles, and she was smiling slightly. "Playtime's over, boys and girls. Classwork next."

The sparring circles and drill lines began to break up amid good-natured groans. Walker called out: "Try a few rounds, Skipper?"

Doreen frowned; the words were right, informal to suit the occasion, but there was an overtone. A few cadets paused to watch.

"Surely," Alston said quietly. "Light contact?"

"Sounds good, Skipper," Walker said. "Somebody call it."

They walked onto the mat, faced off, bowed slightly. Walker put his right fist to his left palm as he did; Alston bowed with her fists held before her thighs. An impromptu referee raised a hand between them.

"Assume…"

Get ready. They fell into stance. Then the hand flashed down.

"Kumite!"

Fight.

Doreen could make some sense of what followed. Korean-style kicking attack by the man, heels scything. Block and spinning kick in counterattack, straight-on, by the woman… shotokan, she thought. It was like the captain to have trained in a straightforward power style. Then there was a flurry of movement, fast and fluid. It ended with Walker skidding backward on his backside, clutching his gut, and Alston standing in a straddle-legged horse stance, shaking her head and wiping blood from her upper lip.

"Sorry… Skipper," Walker wheezed.

Wheeze he should, Doreen thought indignantly. That last backfist hadn't been pulled. Lousy control, for all he's fast. Serve him right if the captain hadn't pulled her thrust-kick, and given him a ruptured gut or broken pubic bone instead of just the wind knocked out of him.

"No problem, Mr. Walker," Alston replied. "And now I think we have work to do."

"Scumbag," Swindapa muttered beside Doreen, glaring, her hands clenching. She'd picked up bits and pieces of English from other members of the crew besides her official teachers. "T'row in water one him over side, fuckin' A."

"Ah, Swindapa, that's not a… nice thing to say," Doreen said.

The guileless blue eyes met hers. "Nice?"

"Not… ah, 'fuckin' A' is low." She held her hand down by her knees. " That's right,' or 'A-OK,' are better-are high." She held her hand up.

Swindapa shrugged. "Captain give life me," she said. "Cut one him neck-" she made a violent slitting gesture while she glared at Walker-"A-OK. That's right."

Isketerol picked himself up and rubbed his neck ruefully. And here I thought I was a good wrestler and boxer, he thought, squinting against the sun. He'd practiced at home, as any boy of good family did, learned tricks from Ugarit to Pi-Ramses, and by the time he was a man grown he'd been able to hold his own in a tavern brawl in Memphis with off-duty nakhtuaa of Pharaoh's guard, the well-named strong-arm boys. Those tricks had saved his life more than once, and let him put much bigger men on their backs among savages like the Iraiina. Which had been useful in winning respect, and hence profit. But this…

The challenge to the Eagle's captain caught him by surprise. For the captaincy? he thought wildly, moving back. Then: Surely not. Even the Iraiina weren't quite that primitive. No. Why, then?

Perhaps for face, in a campaign of prestige? He knew an ambitious man when he saw one, even if the nuances must wait. I must learn Inglicks-no, that's Eng-il-ish-faster. He already understood it far better than he spoke, or than anyone suspected, but the "sh" sound was maddening.

The brief fight ended. Isketerol's eyes widened. The Nubian had nothing worse than a nosebleed. Walker wasn't bleeding, but he'd been helpless for a few seconds, and seconds was all it would have taken to kill. He stepped back as the young officer went by. There would be a time later to talk to this Walker. A dissatisfied man could be a useful man, to the Tartessian.

Marian Alston toweled herself down quickly and thoroughly, enjoying the sensation of the rough cloth against clean skin and exercise-warmed muscle. The captain's quarters of the Eagle were spartan enough, but they did rate a private bathroom with a shower.

"That's one problem solved… for now," she said to her reflection in the mirror, feeling at her nose.

Swollen a little, but that would pass-and her nose was wide-arched and set close between high cheekbones, harder to injure than a long thin buckra beak. Lieutenant Walker was good, as well as more than a decade younger. She didn't know why he'd taken up the Art seriously. Going beyond the rudimentary basics taught by the military ate a lot of an officer's sparse spare time. But he had, and not wasted his lessons, either.

Alston herself had decided in her teens that men were bigger and heavier and usually stronger. If she was going to make her way in the world she had to have something in reserve to compensate for it, as much for the confidence-breeding knowledge at the back of her mind as for the extremely rare actual violence. The more so when she decided to enlist as her ticket out of the Carolina low country; she'd picked the Coast Guard at the time because she loved the sea and the Navy had still barred women from operational assignments. Well worth the effort and trouble in different dojos since, although it was easier to make the fourth dan above black belt for people like her with no social life to speak of. Even in the Guard, it still helped to know deep down that you could handle men without the protection of the uniform and the rules when push came to shove.

The only man who'd ever struck her and gotten away with it had been her husband, and that for the sake of the children in the brief while before the divorce. Everyone was entitled to at least one major misjudgment in her life, though.

So Walker got his little lesson, she thought. And I will watch him. Probably he'd just wanted her to lose face, but that indicated some sort of long-term plan. And she was on her own now. No high command to back her up, unless you counted Cofflin on the island-and how could he have enforced orders, if whoever ran the Eagle simply decided to sail away? Walker had had fun in England-you could see the possibilities churning behind his glass-green eyes. Walker wanted power badly, and would use it badly-because his only loyalty was to William Walker.

She dressed quickly in the little white-painted cabin, feeling loose and relaxed except for the slight throb of her nose, a spring in her step as she walked the dozen steps to the wardroom. One of the shoats had broken its fool neck yesterday, climbing out of its pen, and she thought that contributing ribs and crackling was the least it could do to make up for the clutter and stink its kind had made on Eagle's decks. It had dressed out at about a quarter pound per head for the crew, counting chitterlings.

They sat; lunch started when the captain appeared. Walker was his smiling self, cheerful, polite… and you'd better stay that way, buckra boy. The professor and Rosenthal were at the table, along with the two locals, as guests of the ship, which made things a little crowded. A cadet came up to the table as she was shaking out her linen napkin, another of the ship's old-fashioned touches.

"Good morning, Captain. The officer of the deck sends his regards and announces the approach of noon. Chronometers have been wound. Request permission to strike eight bells."

"Make it so," Alston said, with a mild enjoyment of the small ritual.

It was homelike; about as homelike as they could get, now. The whole daily routine was invaluable, from reveille through falling in for quarters after lunch to the clean sweepdown fore and aft. Ordinarily they'd have tested the ship's alarms and whistles, too, but the electrical systems were powered down as far as was possible without actually endangering the ship.

"Excuse," Isketerol said. He was handling knife and fork with some skill and confidence now. "Why is high sun… noon… why is noon big?" She looked at him. "Excuse, why im-por-tant."

"Navigation," she said, taking a mouthful of the pork and swallowing. The crackling was exactly right, and the meat was good too, although stronger-tasting and stringier than the pork she was used to. When Isketerol looked blank she went on: "Finding where the ship is."

"Ahhh. How?"

Isketerol might be loathsome to modern sensibilities- she was never, ever going to find it in her heart to think well of a slave trader-but he was a seaman, in his way. She went on:

"First, the world is round-like a ball. You understand?"

Ian Arnstein looked as if he would like to make shushing noises. Both Isketerol and Swindapa looked at her with shocked surprise.

"Captain knows true?" Swindapa said.

Alston looked at her and smiled back, which was easy enough. Can't say it's unpleasant to be hero-worshiped. Embarrassing, but not unpleasant…

"It is true," she assured her.

"No-I-" She looked frustrated, and then marshaled her thoughts. "People Swindapa… Swindapa's people know round earth. Swindapa… did… not… know… Captain know."

Alston felt her fork pause again. "You know the earth is round?" she said. Jaws had dropped up and down the wardroom table.

"Only…" She spoke a phrase in her own language.

"Star-Moon-Sun Priests," Isketerol translated automatically, through Arnstein. "The Grandmothers."

"Grandmothers know. Watched stars, sun, moon, many many winter-summer. Make-" She pushed salt and pepper shakers into a circle and mimed squinting through them.

"By God," Arnstein said. "I think she's talking about Stonehenge!"

A flurry of questions through the Tartessian settled that.

"Stonehenge," Swindapa repeated, and added the name in her own tongue. "The Great Wisdom. Watch, measure. Long time know. Secret, for Star Priest, families."

"Well I will be dipped in… ah, salt," Alston said, with a rare laugh of delight. "Live and learn." Swindapa beamed back at her. She turned to Isketerol:

"So you see, it is round," she said.

Isketerol nodded. "Tartessian captains know. It is secret of… circle of captains?" he raised a brow at Arnstein.

"Guild," the historian said.

"Guild of captains. Only we teach to sons." He made a curving motion through the air. "If watch you the mast top of a ship, sail aways, hull go, low mast go, top mast go. Same on ship sails away from shore. Tall tree, mountain, tower. Bottom go, middle go, top go, can't see them. How except-" He made the curving motion again, and shrugged. "Others may know, but don't say. Low people… common people don't know."

The officers looked at each other. Arnstein nearly rubbed his hands together. "It makes sense, in a way," he said to Alston. "Sailors and astronomers-"

"Astrologers," Doreen said sharply, giving him a covert nudge with her elbow.

"Astrologers might well figure it out. They just wouldn't tell anybody. The really new thing about the first Ionian Greek natural philosophers was that they wanted other people to know what they'd found out."

"Which made it possible to build on previous discoveries," Alston said thoughtfully.

"Sun?" Isketerol said hopefully.

"Oh. Well, if you measure the height of the sun at noon, you can tell exactly how far east or west you are," she said. I'll leave the bit about chronometers for later. "How do you tell on your voyages, Mr. Isketerol?"

The Tartessian's grip on his fork was bending it, and his expression was like feeding time at the zoo, in the carnivore section. "Birds," he said. "Wind, taste water, throw rope with wax and look at sand, mud, rock, shell-shells-from the bottom. Look at clouds, landmarks. Know in here." He tapped his stomach.

In other words, by guess and by God, Alston thought. No wonder crossing open seas was daring for these people. It wasn't the size of their ships. The Tartessian merchantmen she'd seen drawn up on the beach back in Britain were big enough. Bigger than Columbus's Nina, or some European vessels of the Age of Discovery that had sailed the Atlantic dozens of times, even if not as seaworthy. But they had no way of knowing where they were, unless they'd been that way before. In a way she was sorry for him. He stood at the beginnings of a nautical tradition, and he was meeting the end of it, the culmination of four thousand years of sailing-ship knowledge.

"Stars," Swindapa said. "Dark sun-away… at night… Eagle People look stars. Why?"

"This would go faster if you could read," Ian Arnstein said in frustration.

Isketerol shrugged. "That would take years," he said. "How do I say that in English?"

" 'That would take years.' "

"That would take years." In Greek: "It was hard enough learning our script, and I was a boy then. How the scribe beat me, and how I yelled! Most gentry don't bother."

The phrase still came out Dut wuld tika ye-arrrs, but the Tartessian was making very rapid progress. Even faster than Swindapa, who was across the other side of the cadet mess deck, drilling with Doreen; Isketerol seemed to make her a little uncomfortable. An ewe gave a soft baaaaa from a pen in the corner beyond.

"Why would it take years?" Arnstein asked curiously, falling back into Mycenaean.

Isketerol looked at him, arching black brows over russet-colored eyes. "Why, to learn all the signs, noble Arnstein, and the determinatives, and the… the context that lets you know what the sign means in any written word. Some of them have fifty or sixty alternate meanings, after all."

"Ah!" Arnstein grinned. For someone who was so anxious to learn, Isketerol still gave off know-it-all vibrations; it would be interesting to see his reaction to this. Unpredictable, too; when he'd first realized what a clock did, he'd been so frightened that he'd stayed in his bunk for half a day before he came out.

"There are only twenty-six symbols in our script," Arnstein said. "A man with your memory could learn them quickly."

Isketerol frowned. "Twenty-six? How is that possible? The Achaean one has over ninety, not counting denotative signs, and each can mean several things."

"Well-" A thought struck him. "Doreen, Swindapa, you should sit in on this."

The two women came and joined them. When the explanations were complete, he resumed.

"Each symbol stands for one sound, and that sound is the first one of the name of the symbol." He pulled a piece of paper toward himself and wrote down the letters of the alphabet. Alpha, beta, he remembered. God, the snake's really swallowing its own tail with a vengeance.

"So you take the symbols for, say, 'dog.' That's d… o… g… Put them together." He did. "Dog."

Swindapa frowned, moving her lips; she'd had to get the explanation mostly through Isketerol, and her language seemed to lack some of the words involved. The Tartessian stared. His lips moved as well, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow.

"So… but there are still thousands of words," he said. "This-" he pointed to the word DOG written in block capitals-"is as hard to remember as one of the Egyptian symbols. Harder, for they sometimes look like what they represent. And some of them are for sounds, too."

"No, no, you don't have to remember what the word looks like," Ian said. I'll leave the horrors of English spelling for a little later. "You just have to remember the sounds each of the twenty-six letters represents. They all represent single sounds-not things, and not groups of sounds, and it's always the same sound. Then you put the sounds together to make words, and you can read a word from the sounds-you don't have to have seen it before."

As long as you were taught with phonics, he added mentally.

He blocked out SWINDAPA and ISKETEROL, leaving spaces between the letters. "Here are your names. S… W…

• I… N… D… A… P… A, and I… S… K… E…T…E…R…O… L."

"My name?" the girl said, awed. Her eyes went wide. "You take my name, on paper? Take my name away?"

"No." Oh, God, she's probably afraid of magic. He refrained from giving a reassuring pat; she didn't like to be touched, he'd noticed. "No, just the sound of your name."

And let's hope you can tell the difference between the symbol and the referent. Whole schools of French so-called philosophy couldn't in the twentieth century. On the whole the Event had been a disaster, but at least he'd escaped the deconstructionists and semioticists.

Isketerol closed his eyes and bit a knuckle. "I… think I see," he said, after concentrating for a minute. "So… so you could write any language with this script? And anyone could learn it quickly?"

Arnstein nodded happily. Isketerol slapped the back of his palm to his forehead twice, evidently his people's gesture of amazement.

"Teach me this!" he cried. In English; he'd learned those words quite well.

Alston stopped. "Not quite right," she said.

"Captain?" Doreen said.

"That stance," she said.

Swindapa and her teacher came erect. The Eagle was sailing northeast now, slanting across a warm gentle breeze from the south at eight knots, her deck canted slightly and moving like a tired rocking horse across the long low swells. They were off what would never be the Carolinas; the captain had been standing and staring eastward, musing; crewfolk were at make-and-mend, or lounging about on the forecastle deck; the waist was scattered with cadets studying. A few were scrubbing at the results of a visit by a huge flock of pigeonlike birds with pink breasts. There had been enough of them to blacken the rigging, and they'd been exhausted by the wind that blew them out; it had taken half a day to drive the last of them away. They made good eating.

"More like this," Alston said, demonstrating. "Feet at right angles, back knee bent, and weight on the back leg. Leading hand out in a fist, other hand ready over your solar plexus. You should be able to lift the front foot without shiftin' your point of balance. That's better." She shifted her attention to Swindapa. "You understand?"

"Speak pretty good, okay," Swindapa said. "Too, am I writing, now. Engelits crazy language." She paused. "Captain, Doreen, sound different speak why?"

She has a pretty good ear, Doreen thought. Aloud: "We come from different places. Far apart."

"Ah. I understand," Swindapa replied, evidently familiar with regional dialects. She'd shifted the sound of what she said, too, closer to the broad soft vowels that Alston used: ah unnahstaan.

The captain smiled. "Doreen speaks better English," she said. "And you're learning to write, as well?"

Swindapa pulled a scrap of paper out of her pocket and displayed it proudly. It held a shaky alphabet written in pencil. Her own name, Doreen's, Arnstein's, Alston's, the Eagle's.

"Like birds," she said.

"Birds?"

"Words fly like birds. Write, catch, put in basket. There you there when want them."

Alston laughed, something unusual enough to make a few of the other Coast Guard personnel on deck glance over. "Keep it up-you'll find it very useful," she said, and nodded for them to continue.

"A-OK," Swindapa said, taking up a perfect backstance. "You start, Doreen."

Alston turned back. "I presume Mr. Isketerol is learning to read as well?"

Doreen paused and nodded. "Ian's teaching him. And Lieutenant Walker."

The Eagle's brass bell struck three. Swindapa could tell the time to within half of one of the Eagle People hours, anytime she could see the stars or the sun, but she had to admit that it was convenient to have something tell you exactly. The nights were getting a little chillier as they coasted north, but were still spring-mild; the blue sweatsuit was more than warm enough-much warmer than she'd have been in the normal Earth Folk woman's dress of string skirt and poncho, this time of year at home. She crouched under the bulwark and hugged her knees. Tonight would have been a bad night to sleep, she could tell that, so she'd come on deck instead. The Burning Snake would have taken her back to the time of the Iraiina, and broken her with fear in her sleep when she could not fight it. Awake, she could hum the Warding Song and keep the Snake at bay. Especially under the friendly stars, with Moon Woman casting her silvery light. She talked silently with Moon Woman and played the Constellation Game for a while, tying every visible star into more and more intricate patterns, but the way the sails swayed across the sky distracted her. There weren't many of the crew on deck. The weather was mild, and they could be summoned quickly at need.

Instead she began by naming all the ropes and sails on the ship, stumbling a little over the more difficult ones like main topgallant staysail downhaul. Then she began counting over the list of stars; it would take a while, since there were over three thousand, and the names changed eight times a year according to the season. It had taken her to her twelfth summer to learn them; she'd never been more than an indifferent student.

Swallowflitting, dragonfly-in-amber, moonblood dewdrop, angry fly…

After a while that reminded her too much of home. She ran through a Building Wisdom instead; safely abstract, since nobody had actually done a Great Star-Moon-Sun Wisdom in so long. Her grandmother's voice sounded in her ear: Take a circle of forty Building Rods where you will erect your stones. Align the circle and draw with your cord the southern half. How do you flatten the northern half to keep the curve smooth and avoid splitting the length of the outside of your Work into parts-of-a-whole-length?

She shut her eyes and squeezed out distractions. The problem was to make the length of the outside of the circle come to exactly three of the cross-length, instead of the three-and-a-bit of a natural circle. Well, take your cord, knotted to the right length, then stretch it in a line…

She smiled. Yes, that's it. The forms lay perfect in her mind. Swindapa began to put the numbers into the figures, holding her fingers out before her and tapping them together in the patterns of the Counting Chant. Forty laid out circle means twenty-

Voices sounded on the quarterdeck above her, startling her out of the calculations. She huddled deeper into the shadow where the bulwarks met the rise to the quarterdeck, not wanting to be seen. Only her hair would give her away, so she pulled up the hood of the sweatsuit jacket.

It was the captain. She looked almost invisible, dressed not in her usual garb but in a long black jacket of loose cloth tied with a broad black cloth belt, and baggy trousers that ended just below the knee. She carried something long and curved in her hands; she placed it on the deck, knelt, and bowed her head to the boards.

Should I go? Swindapa thought. These might be private devotions.

Then the captain took up the curved thing, and Swindapa saw that it was a sheathed sword. Her eyes widened, recognizing it from the night of the Iraiina feast, when her captivity ended. Swords were rare even among the Sun People, very rare among hers, and always two-edged. This had a curve like the crescent moon, and it was silvery as it was half-drawn-

A sword from Moon Woman! she thought suddenly, excitement choking her. Moon Woman had sent the captain to rescue her. A silver sword against dark skin, dark like the night sky. She focused to quivering attention. The Eagle People guide themselves by the stars. Not in exactly the way the Earth Folk did. Perhaps a better way?

The black woman tucked the sheathed sword edge-up through her belt and went to one knee, her left hand holding it horizontal, right resting on the hilt. A moment of absolute stillness. Then movement, the blade flashing out and up and down in a blurring arc of brightness… and frozen stillness again, the sword's curved cutting edge not quite touching the deck, arms and shoulders upright, legs crouched. No sound but the chuffing pulse of exhaled breath that had accompanied the motion. Another strike, equally swift, the sword reversing and thrusting backward, the wielder's body swinging to follow it and the sword slicing diagonally with a hiss of cloven air, another turn and a downward cut with the left palm sliding down the back of the sword to add force to the strike. Again the hunh of breath at the moment of impact. Swindapa could almost see the target falling away cloven-Daurthunnicar with his forked beard, down, dying.

She clasped her clenched fists to her heart, feeling its beating. This dancing with the sword was a thing of beauty, deadly and lovely like the Eagle chieftain.

I will study harder, she thought. When I have learned all the others can teach me, I will ask the captain to show me this thing. She raised her hands to the night sky in prayer. Moon Woman, be my friend!