Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  Not just Ranger Captain Bickford behind the table. Chief Cofflin, and Martha Cofflin, the Secretary of the Council. His eyes flicked back to his own commander. Bickford was smiling, so things couldn’t be too bad.

  “No, son,” Cofflin said. “You’re not in trouble over that fight. As a matter of fact . . .”

  Martha Cofflin slid a paper out of a folder. “Had Judge Gardner expedite the papers a bit. On the deposition of Sue Chau and your own statement, there’s no grounds for any proceedings. Self-defense.”

  “And why don’t you sit down, Ranger?” Cofflin said.

  Girenas juggled the sheaf of papers awkwardly for a second, then brought up a chair and sat with them in his lap.

  Older than I thought, he decided, meeting Cofflin’s level gaze; he’d never happened to see the Chief at close range before. The long, lumpy Yankee face had deep wrinkles around the eyes, and there was a lot of gray in the thinning sandy hair.

  “How did you feel about it?” Cofflin asked.

  Surprised, Girenas paused for a minute to marshal his thoughts. “Well, at the time, there wasn’t time to feel much of anything, sir,” he said. “They started it, so I’m not tearing myself up over it. But I’m sorry it happened. Usually I like the locals, get on well with ’em.”

  Bickford nodded. “Speaks Lekkansu like a tribesman,” he said. “Lived in one of their camps for six months a couple of years back, done useful go-between work. Trade supervision, that sort of thing. About my best scout, and I’m grooming him for a lieutenant.”

  “Sir?” Cofflin looked up. “Speaking of trade, I saw something today you’d better know about.”

  Cofflin’s face took on a frown as Girenas described what he’d seen in the taproom of the Loon, and Bickford’s fist clenched on the table before he spoke.

  “Chief, we need some sort of an executive order about this sort of thing. Better still, we need a law rammed through the Town Meeting.”

  Cofflin leaned back. “That’s one opinion. What’s yours, son?”

  Girenas said, “The Captain’s right, Chief. The Carsons are the worst, but not the only ones. The locals, they just can’t handle hard liquor, even worse than Albans that way. But they know right from wrong well enough, when they sober up and realize they’ve been diddled. Just wrong one, and see what happens! We could stumble into a war if we’re not careful. Already would have, I think, if it weren’t for the plagues. A lot of them, they don’t like us Nantucketers much, sir.”

  “Ayup. Can’t say as I blame ’em.”

  Martha Cofflin spoke. “Problem, though. First—are we entitled to tell the Indians they can’t buy liquor? They’re adults, and not citizens of the Republic, either. Second, could we enforce a law like that if we did pass it?”

  Cofflin smiled; Girenas had rarely seen a more bleak expression. “There was a little thing called Prohibition. Before your time, Ranger; even before mine. Disaster. Showed the costs of passing a law just to make yourself feel righteous.

  Girenas frowned. “Is that a fancy way of saying we can’t do anything, sir?”

  The Cofflins smiled dryly, an eerily similar expression. The man spoke. “Not at all, son. We might have trouble enforcing a law; the Carsons or someone like ’em would find a way to wiggle around it. I can lean on them, though, until they cry uncle. Nobody can get much done businesswise if the Town’s hostile—and that sort of thing operates by more . . . flexible rules.”

  His wife nodded. “We do need to establish a tradition of dealing decently with the locals. It’s going to be more and more of a problem, anyway. Looks like our numbers are going to double every fifteen or twenty years, probably for the next century or two at least, between immigration and this enthusiasm for reproduction that everyone’s showing.”

  Girenas nodded slowly. “Thank you, sir, ma’am,” he said.

  Bickford cleared his throat. Cofflin lifted one knobby paw slightly. “Ayup,” he said. “Time to get to the main business we came for.”

  Martha Cofflin produced a sheaf of papers from a knit carryall lying on the table. Girenas swallowed; it was a copy of the document resting on his knee.

  “I, ah, hadn’t expected it to go so high so fast, Captain.”

  Bickford shrugged. “Advantage of having a small government, Ranger.”

  Chief Cofflin tapped the papers. “Had a tirade all set up,” he said, his mouth quirking slightly. “About reckless young fools, and how we can’t afford to divert effort, and how anyone hankering after adventure—which Marian rightly says is somebody else in deep shit far away—can ship out on a trader or join the Expeditionary Force. Then I realized I was starting to sound like the old farts I hated when I was twenty-one, and I took another look. Ayup, it is about time we got at least a survey knowledge of what’s going on in the interiors of the continents, something like what the Eagle did for the coastlands in ‘02. And it is logical to start with this continent here.”

  Girenas felt a wave run through him, like a wash of warm water from his chest down to knees grown weak. Glad I’m sitting down, he thought.

  “Two problems,” Martha Cofflin’s dry, precise voice went on. “First, are you the man to lead it? No offense, Ranger Girenas, but you’re extremely young. Second, costs.”

  “He may be young, but he’s not reckless,” Bickford said. “Got as much experience as any of us post-Event, too; been in the Rangers since we branched off from the Eagle Scouts. If I were putting together an expedition like this, I’d pick him.”

  Cofflin was glancing through another file, as if to remind himself. “Hmmm. Your family’s working in the mills here . . . immigrants before the Event, eh?”

  Girenas nodded. “Three years before, Chief, from Riga.”

  “Let’s see, a brother and sister, and your parents adopted two. Too young to go with the expeditionary force to Alba, but plenty of time in the woods here. Looks like you prefer camping out, mebbe?”

  Girenas answered slowly, cautiously. “Yes sir. I . . . I’m good at it. Like to stick with what I’m good at, seems more . . . efficient that way.”

  “No argument. You’ve done a good proposal here, too, well organized, everything justified and costed out. I’ve talked with people who know, and they think you’ve got some chance of pulling it off. Let’s see . . . six of you in all.”

  Suddenly he grinned. “Christ, I’d like to go with you myself, if I were twenty and single.”

  “Costs, Jared,” the Secretary of the Council said.

  “Ayup.”

  “I included an itemized list of necessities, sir,” Girenas said.

  Cofflin chuckled. “Son, they say I’m cheap. And I am, with the Republic’s money. I could pay for this out of the discretionary funds, but I won’t.” He held up a hand. “Yes, it’ll be useful, if you pull it off. Not essential, though, and certainly not an emergency. Remember, every penny I give you comes out of someone’s pocket, will they-nill they.”

  “Sir, this expedition will pay for itself and more, and not just with information. The gold—”

  “Would be mighty useful. If you survive. Meantime you’re asking for horses, weapons, trade goods, the services of six strong young people, even a radio. And yes, we do have ships in the Pacific now and then”—trading for cotton textiles with the Chavin peoples of Peru— “but running up to the California coast to pick you up is still a big risk. So, son,” he went on, “it’s up to you.”

  The ranger gaped at him. “Sir?”

  “You’re a free citizen of the Republic of Nantucket. Circulate a petition, then get up on your hind legs at the Town Meeting and persuade the other citizens. I’ll even say I’m in favor . . . personally, not officially.”

  “Sir?” Girenas felt his voice rise almost to a humiliating squeak. “I’m no . . . no speechmaker!”

  Martha Cofflin’s expression mingled sympathy and unyielding resolution. “Then learn. You’ve got until spring.” Then, kindly: “Your age ought to help. Lot of younger people will be glad to see one of theirs
proposing something.”

  “Lord,” Girenas muttered.

  He scarcely noticed his dismissal until he was out in the street again. Hell, I haven’t been in Nantucket more’n once a year, he thought. Then: They didn’t tell me to forget it, either. Resolution firmed. “I can do it, by God!”

  He turned west. Hills rose on the edge of sight, blue and dreaming. Hills and mountains, the rivers like inland seas and the plains full of buffalo, Alder Gulch and its gold . . . grizzlies and Indians and wolves, oh, my!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  September, Year 8 A.E.

  (March, Year 3 A.E.)

  (June, Year 4 A.E.)

  (July, Year 4 A.E.)

  September, Year 8 A.E.

  Reveille, Marian Alston-Kurlelo thought as her eyes opened, waiting for the pitch and roll of a bunk at sea, the creak of cordage and lap of the waves and the way a ship’s timbers spoke as they moved.

  But it wasn’t a noncom bellowing, “lash and stow”; it was roosters, and someone beating on a triangle. “Rise and shine, sugar,” she whispered.

  “I will rise, but I refuse to shine,” Swindapa said, mock-grumpy, yawning and stretching; the corn shucks in the mattress beneath them rustled as she moved to give Alston an embrace and then swing out of the bed.

  The ferry had brought them in late last night; it was a chilly fall morning, and the water in the jug and basin beside the window raised goose bumps on the black woman’s skin as she washed and pulled on her clothes. The coarse blue wool of the uniform was clean by the standards of Year 8—it didn’t have visible dirt and it didn’t smell. Considering something unwearable after one use had gone the way of electric washer-dryer combos.

  Fogarty’s Cove was already bustling. Only an archaeologist would be able to find any trace of the Indians, less than a decade after the Event had crashed into their world; the stones of a heath, a scatter of chipped flint, a tumbled drying rack, gourds gone wild. The Islanders had done considerably more. Steel screeched on wood in the sawmills, while hammers and adzes rang in the boatyard down by the wharves, where a big fishing smack was taking shape. Faint and far in the distance came a soft heavy thudump . . . thudump as stumps were blasted out of newly cleared fields with gunpowder. The streets were full of wagons bringing in grain and meat, raw wool, eggs, pumpkins and apples, peaches and potatoes, wine and butter and cheese—all from the new farms stretching westward from this outpost. Storekeepers and craftsfolk were opening their shutters and doors; livery stable, blacksmith and farrier, doctor, haberdasher.

  The air was full of the strong smells of horses and cattle, woodsmoke, drying fish. Over the rooftops she could see the bright yellows and crimson of autumn trees in woodlots and field verge, the old gold of tasseled corn, copper leaves in a vineyard, a wide-horned bull drowsing beneath an oak as mist drifted over the dew-wet pasture’s faded green.

  Lively, Alston smiled to herself. Crude enough by the standards of the twentieth, but those weren’t the standards anyone with sense used anymore. A lively little kid, growing fast.

  Swindapa came up behind her and wrapped arms around her, resting chin on shoulder. Alston sighed, a sound that mixed a vast content and an anticipation of the day. Words ran through her mind:I rose from dreamless hours and sought the morn

  That beat upon my window: from the sill

  I watched sweet lands, where Autumn light newborn

  Swayed through the trees and lingered on the hill.

  If things so lovely are, why labor still

  to dream of something more than this I see?

  Do I remember tales of Galilee,

  I who have slain my faith and freed my will?

  Let me forget dead faith, dead mystery

  Dead thoughts of things I cannot comprehend.

  Enough the light mysterious in the tree,

  Enough the friendship of my chosen friend.

  They buckled on their webbing; knife, pouches, binoculars, and double-barreled flintlock pistols at their belts, katanas over their backs with the hilt jutting up behind the left ear. Saddlebags held their traveling kit; they carried those downstairs in their arms, slinging them over the benches beside them as they sat at the long trestle tables in the tavern’s taproom.

  Wild Rose Chance was an example of what “log cabin” could mean when the logs were a hundred feet long and a yard thick. The big room was already fairly warm with the fire in the long iron-backed field-stone hearth and busy—a score or more sitting down to a hearty breakfast. Alston nodded to friends and acquaintances as she loaded her own plate and sank her teeth into a slab of hot, coarse whole-wheat bread with butter melting on its steaming surface.

  At least I don’t have to worry about my weight, she thought. Not when things like traveling fifteen miles to Camp Grant meant half a day in the saddle, not fifteen minutes in a car.

  “Hey, there anyone here who speaks Fiernan?” a voice called from the open street door.

  Alston and her partner looked up sharply. A woman stood there, in ordinary bib overalls, but with a shotgun over her back and a star pinned to one strap. Behind her were a young couple, dressed Islander-style except for their near-naked toddler, but obvious immigrants. Behind them was a clamoring pack—she thought she recognized several farmers, a straw boss from one of the timber mills, and the owner of the boatyard among them.

  Swindapa began to rise, then sank back as the proprietor of the inn went over, drying his hands on a corner of his apron.

  “Thought you did, Sarah,” he said.

  “Thought I did too, Ted.”

  Swindapa did rise then, smiling, when mutual bewilderment became too obvious. She returned chuckling.

  “They speak Goldenhill dialect,” she said. “Thicker than honey—I’m not surprised the sheriff couldn’t make hoof or horn of it and the poor couple were frightened out of the seven words of English they had between them. The sheriff will put them up in the Town Hall tonight and find someone to explain about contracts.”

  Alston nodded approval and threw down her napkin. Everyone was short of labor, but that was no excuse for taking advantage of ignorance. Her inner smile grew to a slight curve of full lips. Jared’s seen to that. By the time the immigrant couple had put in five years they’d speak the language and be eligible for citizenship; a few years more, and they’d probably have a farm or boat or shop of their own, and be down at the docks clamoring for a chance at a hired hand themselves. And their kids would be in school.

  There had been times in the Coast Guard when she’d wondered what the hell she was doing—on the Haitian refugee patrol, for instance.

  Or “cooperating” with those cowboy assholes in the DEA and BAFT, she thought. If you had to be hired muscle, it was nice to work for an outfit run by actual human beings.

  They took their saddlebags out; the inn’s groom had horses waiting, four-year-old Alba/Morgan crosses. Alston swung into the saddle, heeling her mount out into the road.

  “Worth fighting for,” Swindapa said, indicating the town with an odd circling motion of her head.

  “Let’s go tell it to the Marines, love,” Alston replied.

  “Yeah, it’s coming along okay, man,” the blacksmith said, his long, sheeplike face neutral.

  William Walker was always a little careful around John Martins. For one thing, the Californian ironworker hadn’t come along to Alba willingly, like the rest of his American supporters. That had taken a knife to the throat of his woman, Barbara. For another, Walker suspected that under his vaguely Buddhisty hippy-dippy exterior, Martins was capable of a really serious dislike.

  “Well, should we go for a converter, or should we do the finery-chafery method?”

  He looked around the raw little settlement. Walker had been to Greece a couple of times up in the Twentieth, once on Coast Guard business and once on holiday. This looked very different from what he remembered. The plain of the Eurotas River stretched away on either hand, about forty miles of it from where it left the northern mountains to where it
reached the sea. More mountains lined it on either side, and they weren’t the bare limestone crags of the twentieth century, either. There hadn’t been nearly as much time for the goats and axes of men to do their work; these uplands were densely forested, pine on the higher elevations, mixed with evergreen oak and chestnut and ilex further down. The glade in which they stood was waist-high grass; the wind down from the heights smelled of fir sap. Not quite like Montana—for a bitter moment he remembered the snow peaks of the Rockies and the wild, clean smell—it was warmer, somehow, in a way that had nothing to do with the air temperature. Spicier, with scents like thyme and lavender.

  “Hey, I’m just a blacksmith, man,” Martins said, hefting the sledge in his hand. “You get me iron, and I can work it.”

  Walker pushed his face closer to Martins’s. The Californian was a tall man, as tall as himself, and ropily muscular. Older, of course—in his late forties now—with a ponytail more gray than brown at the rear of a head mostly bald, and absurd small lens glasses always falling toward the end of his nose.

  “Don’t try to bullshit me, Martins,” Walker said. “I know exactly what you can and can’t do, family man. Now, I think I asked you a question?”

  The sad russet eyes turned away slightly. Besides Barbara, there was an infant now, and Martins knew exactly what Walker was capable of, too.

  “Converter will take six months, maybe a year, if we can do it at all, man—have to, like, talk to Cuddy too. Finery I can do right away, no shit, and blister steel.”

  “Then get started on it. We’ll work on the converter later.”

  Walker turned away and surveyed the work site. Trimmed timbers were piling up fast, with teams of near-naked peasants and yoked oxen hauling them out of the woods. The Achaean architect Augewas and Enkhelyawon the scribe were standing near the stream, drawing with sticks in the dirt. Walker paced over, still feeling a little odd in the Mycenaean tunic and kilt. It was comfortable clothing for this climate, however, at least in the warmer seasons.