Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

His hands caressed the weapon. Much better than the first crude batches. In a few years they would have breechloaders, but this was well enough.

  “How many?” he asked his Chief of Makers.

  “Lord of the city and the Land, Bridegroom of the Corn Goddess, Favored Son of Arucuttag of the Sea and the Lady of Tartessos . . . fifty now, and ten more each seven days, to begin with. Each with bayonet and ramrod.” The man’s tongue stumbled slightly over the English words.

  That was not such pleasant hearing. The man hurried on: “Lord King, if you did not insist on the, the measuring with screws of each part—”

  “Then the guns could not be repaired at need with ready-made parts,” Isketerol snapped.

  And if many had to be taught to repair the parts, they would start making them for themselves. William had left him a set of duplicate micrometer gauges along with the spare lathe, and he intended to keep the manufacture of guns his own monopoly just as long as he could.

  “I do not understand this making of each thing so like another thing,” the artisan said.

  “It is not necessary that you understand, only that you obey!” Isketerol shouted in exasperation.

  “You are the king, lord,” the man said, bowing, turning pale beneath his natural olive.

  Not only the king, but a king more powerful than the one who had fallen to iron-armored warriors and fire-powder bombs and William’s deadly Garand rifle. The old king had done nothing without consulting the heads of the great families.

  Today many of those heads hung on iron hooks from the walls of the palace. Now when the king of Tartessos commanded, men fell on their faces and obeyed—men in the whole southern half of Iberia, and in the lands south across the Pillars, as well. He and Will had spoken much, those months in the White Isle, and his share of the Yare’s cargo included books to supplement what he’d learned in Nantucket itself. The history of the years that might-have-been was full of hints on the manner of ruling and how a king might gather all the reins of power to himself, on the keeping of records and maps and registers, on police and bu-reau-cra-cy and armies, on the coining of money and the building of roads. The problem was that he had so few others who understood. Most of them were young men he’d raised up from nothing, but that was good too—such men knew that all they had depended on his favor, not on their birth.

  He reined in his temper as the chief of makers trembled before him; it had taken Isketerol long enough to understand the Amurrukan words interchangeable parts and mass production himself.

  In that false history the Eagle People recorded, nothing remained of Tartessos three thousand years from now. No trace of the city or her people, of her gods or tongue or customs. If he was to build a house that would last forever, the foundations must be laid deep. His voice was stern but not angry when he went on.

  “Work harder on the machines for the cutting of metal! Then you will make many, many more muskets, and everything else that the kingdom needs.”

  “Lord King, we hear and we obey,” the man said, backing away.

  Isketerol relaxed back onto the lounger and considered the list written on the paper before him, written in his language but using the Eagle People’s alphabet. He frowned slightly; paper the Islanders would sell, glassware, tools, luxuries. But not lathes or milling machines. Well, Tartessians might not have the arts from out of time, but they were no fools . . . and he had the drawings, the books, the men Will had helped train in Alba.

  Already they had done much; oddly, the most useful of all had been the machine with lead seals for the making of books—moveable type, in the Amurrukan tongue. He intended to see every free child in Tartessos schooled in it, even the girls.

  All the common people of Tartessos called down blessings on his name; he’d given them wealth, made captains of fishermen and lords of farmers, brought in foreign slaves to do the rough work. Even the new customs, the burying-of-excrement and washing-with-soap rituals, no longer brought complaints. Not when so few died of fever or flux.

  Hmmm. And now that I have an embassy there, we can—very slowly, very secretly—see if any of the Amurrukan with useful knowledge can be brought here and join me.

  The Eagle People had godlike powers, but they were men with the needs and weaknesses of men. He could offer land, slaves, silver, wealth, power as nobles under him. It was a great pity Will hadn’t accepted his offer, but William Walker was not a man to take second place, no matter how rich the rewards.

  Rosita Menendez walked in, her robe of gold-shot crimson silk brushing the tiled floor. Isketerol winced slightly; silk was another thing the Islanders would sell in Tartessos, but the price was enough to draw your testicles up into your gut. And, of course, what one of his wives had, all the others demanded, leaving him no peace until he bought it for them.

  “Hi,” she said in the Amurrukan tongue, sitting on a stool by his feet. He replied in the same, to keep fluency.

  “Hello, Rosita. How does your school go?”

  “Fine, Iskie,” she said.

  Has she been drinking again? he wondered, but then he relaxed. No, it was just Eagle People gaucherie; they had no sense of ceremony or manners. Well, she’s far from her people, lonely sometimes. Most of the time being a queen in Tartessos was enough compensation for her . . . although to be sure, he hadn’t mentioned his other two wives when he’d courted her back on Nantucket.

  “Actually, Iskie, some of the students could take over more of the basics, the way they do the ABC stuff now,” she said. “Plus Miskelefol and a couple of others are good enough to do most of the routine translations of the books, if I help them a little with the dictionary,” she went on.

  “Good. You will have more time for teaching the mathematics and bookkeeping and medicine.”

  She rolled her eyes but kept her sigh silent. Even a queen wasn’t immune from the knotted cords of her husband’s belt. Especially a foreigner queen with no kindred in the city.

  Well, she’s pretty enough—and she’d given him one child, a son—but her knowledge is more important than her loins. She’d been a healer’s helper back on Nantucket, a registered nurse in Eng-il-ish. Invaluable here.

  Walker’s woman, Alice Hong, would have been even more useful. A full doctor, a mistress of some of the Islanders’ most powerful arts.

  “Then again, no,” Isketerol said to himself, shuddering slightly. “I am very glad the Lady of Pain is far, far away.”

  Far enough away that the thought of her was stirring. He drew aside the loincloth that was his only covering on this warm day and motioned Rosita closer. She knelt on a pillow beside the lounger.

  “Use some of that Amurrukan knowledge,” he said, grinning and guiding her head with a hand on the back of her neck. This was another thing he’d learned on the Island, and it was catching on fast here.

  CHAPTER THREE

  August, Year 8 A.E.

  The scream was high and shrill, a wail of agony and helpless rage. Marian Alston-Kurlelo sat bolt upright in bed, then turned to shake the figure beside her gently on the shoulder.

  “Wake up,” she said firmly. “Wake up, ’dapa.”

  The Fiernan woman tossed, opened her eyes. They were blank for a moment, before awareness returned; then she seized Alston in a grip of bruising strength.

  “I was—the Burning Snake had me, the Dream Eater,” she gasped. “I was the Sun People’s prisoner again, but you didn’t come . . .”

  Alston returned the embrace, crooning comfort and stroking the long blond hair. Had my own nightmares about that, she thought. Presumably in the original history—if “original” meant anything—Swindapa had died among the Iraiina. Her whole people had vanished, overrun and swallowed up. And I went on alone, back up in the twentieth. The room was very dark; an internal clock developed by a lifetime at sea told her it was the end of the midnight watch, around three in the morning.

  She felt tears dropping on her shoulder and tenderly wiped them away. “There, there, sugar,” she whispered. “I did come.�
��

  Rescuing Swindapa had been sort of a side effect; they were there to trade for stock and seed-grain, that first month after the Event. She certainly hadn’t expected them to end up together. In fact, ’dapa had to pretty well drag me into bed, after months of my dithering—all those years in the closet made me timid. Christ, was I stupid.

  The rest of the Guard House was quiet; evidently the children hadn’t woken. Alston waited until her companion’s shuddering died down into quiet sobbing, then turned up the lamp on the bedside table. The period-piece splendors of the house were a bit faded now, eight years after the Event, but with a squared-away neatness that was solely hers.

  Swindapa wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a handkerchief from the dresser. Marian smiled a little, remembering teaching her to do that with something besides her fingers. The blue eyes were clear now, with the mercurial mood shifts she’d come to know since the Event. The only thing reliable about ’dapa is ’dapa, she thought with a rush of tenderness. Odd that they got on so well.

  “What were you thinking?” the Fiernan said. “I could feel your eyes touch me.”

  “That you’re my other half,” Marian said. “And about that night down in the Olmec country.”

  She remembered that; one hand went to her left thigh, touching the dusty-white scar. Remembering the darkness and the wet heat, mud under her boots, the light of the flares and the burning temples of San Lorenzo breaking in shatters of brightness off the obsidian edges of the Olmec warriors’ spears and club-swords. The quetzal feathers of their harnesses, the paint and precious stones and snarling faces. The cold sting of the spearhead in her leg; at the time all she felt was an enormous frustration that her body wouldn’t obey her; that they might not get out with Martha Cofflin after all. And then Swindapa, sword flashing as she stood screaming over her fallen lover.

  The Fiernan nodded. “Moon Woman has woven the light of our souls together,” she said.

  “And I was thinking that you’re cute as hell,” Marian added, grinning.

  That’s God’s truth as well, the black woman thought. Swindapa was her own five-foot-nine almost to an inch, slender and long-limbed. There had still been a bit of adolescent gangliness when they first met, but it had gone with the years between. The oval straight-nosed face looked firmer now too, tanned to a honey color and framed by the long fall of wheat-colored hair.

  “Woof!” Alson said, as the Fiernan’s leap and embrace took the air out of her lungs.

  “And you are as beautiful as the night sky with stars,” Swindapa murmured down at her; that was as strong as compliments came, in the Fiernan Bohulugi tongue. It sounded pretty good in English, too. “Let’s share pleasure. I want—”

  Marian stopped her with another kiss; loving someone didn’t make them more like you, and she was still embarrassed by Fiernan bluntness at times.

  “Thanks,” Vicki Cofflin said, taking the thick mug of sassafras tea. The warmth was welcome in her hands; the early morning was chill enough to make her wool-and-leather flight uniform only a little too heavy.

  “Well, this is it,” Alex Stoddard said, looking up at the huge structure that creaked above them, secured by a dozen mooring ropes along either side. Its blunt head was pointed into the southwest wind, and it surged occasionally against the restraining lines, as if eager to be gone.

  She nodded, feeling the excitement hit her gut with a chill that counterbalanced the warm, astringent taste of the tea. Scary, too, she thought. She’d had her share of risky business over the past eight years, with the expeditionary force in Alba—she’d carried a crossbow to the Battle of the Downs—and bad weather at sea. This was a little different. The design studies said the Emancipator would work; she’d helped crank up one of the mothballed computer workstations to run the stress calculations for the frame and worked on the design phase as well as the construction. She knew it should work, but trusting yourself to this flying whale made out of birch plywood and cloth was still a bit nerve-racking.

  “Especially when I was going to fly shuttles,” she muttered wryly, then shook her head when Alex looked up from his checklist. “Let’s get on with it,” she said aloud.

  The Emancipator did look a little like a whale, like an orca; some wag had wanted her named Free Willy, but the Commodore had stomped on that good and hard. Vicki did one more careful walk-around; checking everything one last time was something that was drilled into you at Fort Brandt OCS very thoroughly, and even more as a middie on a Guard ship. The strong smell of the doping compound on the fabric skin filled the air about her, and the scents of glue and birchwood.

  The immense presence of the airship was a bit intimidating too. She knew objectively that it was light and fragile, but it felt formidably solid looming above her like this. And it was big, bigger than the Eagle, which was the largest mobile object in the world, this Year 8 After the Event.

  “I hope you get the command,” Alex said behind her. She concealed a slight start. He was a tall young man—six gangling feet—but he moved quietly. “You deserve it.”

  “The Commodore will appoint whoever she thinks can do the job best,” Vicki said, then grinned. “Thanks for the thought, though, Ensign Stoddard. I’m supposed to have dinner with the Chief and the Commodore on Harvest Night, so we’ll see.”

  The Emancipator’s gondola was a hundred feet long, a narrow swelling built into the airship’s frame. When it was grounded, the craft rested on outriggers, wooden skis much like a helicopter’s skids. The rear ramp flexed and creased a little beneath their rubber-soled boots as they walked up; everything on board was built as light as possible. Beneath their feet were the tanks for water ballast and liquid fuel and the compartments for cargo—or, under other circumstances, Leaton’s hundred-pounder cast-iron bombs. Three tall wheels stood along each side, with a member of the crew at each. Another came climbing down a ladder that stretched up into the hull above, access to the gasbags.

  “Captain on deck!”

  “As you were,” she said, feeling a spurt of pride.

  Captain for at least a day. The crew relaxed and went back to the preflight checkpoint. The Commodore’s idea of discipline was strictly functional; ceremony had its place, but that wasn’t getting in the way. Another good thing about working for her was that if she thought you were competent enough to do a job, she didn’t stand over you or joggle your elbow.

  Just deal with it competently, quickly and without unnecessary fuss, Vicki thought. So let’s get on with it.

  She walked forward, past the engine stations, the folded-up bunks, the tiny galley with its electric hot plate—no exposed flames on this craft, by God!—the map boards and the big, clunky spark-gap radio and smaller, smoother-looking pre-Event shortwave set. There was a swivel chair at the point where the decking came to an end, with the sloping windows that filled the curved nose of the gondola surrounding it on three sides. Low consoles surrounded it as well, mostly pre-Event instruments adapted to their new tasks; air speed, pressure, fuel, temperature gauges. The windows looked down on a shadowed section of the Nantucket Airport runway, mostly deserted in the predawn light. The whole project wasn’t exactly clandestine, but it had been kept on the QT.

  And I’m supposed to leave by dawn and come back by sunset, barring emergencies, she reminded herself, running an eye over the instruments. Everything still nominal.

  “All hands to stations,” she said. “Raise the ramp.”

  “All hands,” Alex echoed. “Ramp up!”

  Vicki Cofflin turned and looked down the long space. Engine crew, buoyancy control, ballast control, radio, navigation—that was Alex’s department, as well as being XO; and vertical and lateral helms just behind her. Good crew, she thought. Fourteen in all, enough for watch-and-watch. Only the radioman was older than she, a ham operator back before the Event. Only five Albans, and they’d all come to the island as teenagers, Alex’s age or younger, enough to get the basic education required.

  “All right, people,” she said.
“We’ve all worked long and hard getting the boat ready. Now we’re going to take her up and see what she can do.”

  Nobody on Nantucket had any lighter-than-air experience, if you discounted people who’d been up on rides in Goodyear blimps, which included Ian Arnstein, oddly enough. They’d all read everything they could find, but there was no substitute for hands-on experience.

  She slapped the back of the chair. “Emancipator’s going to give us some surprises, unless she’s completely unlike any vehicle human beings have ever made. So stay alert.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am!”

  Vicki nodded, took off her peaked cap, and sat. “Let’s go.”

  “Sleepin’ like babies,” Marian whispered in the predawn darkness, moving carefully so that the armor wouldn’t rattle.

  “They are babies,” Swindapa answered softly, giving her hand a squeeze.

  The nursery down the corridor from their room held two beds, each with a girl and a stuffed animal—Lucy had a blue snake, and Heather a koala bear. The redhead was lying on her back, snoring almost daintily; the dark girl curled on her side, as if protecting her goggle-eyed serpent. More stuffed toys stood on shelves, along with dolls, blocks, puzzles, picture books, a dollhouse Jared Cofflin had made and Martha painted for a birthday last year, wooden horses carved in Alba, a fanciful model ship on wheels from Alston’s own hands. The girls were seven almost to a day; they’d both been newborns, orphaned by the Alban War.

  Well, Lucy’s father is probably still alive, Alston thought meticulously. He’d been the only black with Walker, and they hadn’t found his body. Her mother had died in childbirth and been left behind when Walker and his gang ran for it. Alive until I catch him. The big black ex-cadet from Tennessee hadn’t gone over to Walker for wealth or power; it had been his damned fetish about the imaginary Black Egyptians, and Walker’s promise to send him there with the secret of gunpowder and whatnot to protect them against the Ice People White Devils. That didn’t make him any less of a traitor in her eyes. It was actions that mattered, not intentions.