Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  Ian nodded. This was a cockleshell compared to an aircraft carrier or an oil tanker back up in the twentieth, but close up it felt big. His eyes followed the long, graceful cure of the keelson and the sharp bow, and the way the ribs flowed up from them. She was right about it being like the inside of a whale, too—there was an organic feel to the ship, as if it were something that had grown naturally.

  “What surprises me,” he said to Alston, as she stood with legs braced and a roll of plans tapping on her palm, “is that this one is taking so much less time. Lincoln took more than a year—eighteen months.”

  Swindapa said something in her own language, then translated, “We have danced the play of numbers into wood.”

  Ian blinked. Well, every once in a while you remember she’s not an American, he thought. Then she went on:

  “I think you would say . . . learning curve?”

  Alston nodded. “Everyone knows what to do. Besides that, we’ve got the jigs and such—we’re buildin’ these like cars with identical parts.”

  “That does give us an advantage,” Ian said a little smugly. “Twentieth-century concept.”

  “Not really,” Alston said, half turning, her eyes sardonic. “The Venetian Republic’s navy did it with their war-galleys in Renaissance times.”

  “That’s taken you down a peg, mate,” Doreen whispered in his ear. “Clapped a stopper over your capers—brought you by the lee.”

  “You’ve been reading those damned historical novels she likes again, haven’t you?” Ian said, grinning. Actually they’re not bad. And they’d helped him understand Alston better.

  One of the overhead trolleys that had once shifted sailboats lowered a great oak beam through the open space over their head and into the interior. An ironic cheer went up when it was found to fit exactly into the slot prepared, and a man with an adze stepped ostentatiously back. Figures in overalls and hard hats moved forward and there was a rhythmic slamming as the big deck beam was fastened home, spanning the whole width of the ship where her main deck would be.

  “Heavy scantlings so she can bear a gun deck, but she’s not really a specialist warship,” Alston noted. “Good deep hold under there . . . had to modify the design a little, of course, because the Sark was a composite ship. We could do that, but maintenance far abroad would be too difficult, and besides, we’ve got more good timber than metal. Altered the sail plan, too; all those stuns’ls and studding sails took a lot of crew to work them, and we don’t have the sort of competition they had, no need to squeeze out every half knot. And clippers have too little reserve buoyancy for my taste, so we—”

  “Commodore,” Ian interrupted—this was a semiformal occasion, in public—“as long as it gets us where we’re going, I should care?”

  “Councilor, you’re a philistine,” she said, with a tilt of eyebrow and a quirk of full lips.

  “Hebrew, actually.”

  “Is either of them around yet?”

  “Not the Philistines; they were probably mostly Greeks, with odds and sods from everywhere, part of the Sea Peoples—due to invade Egypt and get thrown back in the next couple of generations. Hebrews . . .” He shrugged and flung up his hands. “If Exodus records any real events, the Pharaoh that Moses dealt with could be either Ramses II, who’s ruling Egypt now, or somebody a century either way. I doubt that real Judaism—Yahwehistic monotheism—exists right now.”

  “Yahweh probably still has that embarrassing female consort they discovered in those early inscriptions,” Doreen said. “Good for her.”

  “Another month,” Alston said, looking around the ship again. “Finish up, launch her, step her masts and rigging, get her guns aboard—and the Lincoln’s, too—then we load up Lincoln and Chamberlain, plus Eagle, of course, and at least one of the schooners, and we’re on our way.”

  “You’re going to be commanding personally?” Ian said, relieved.

  “As far as the Gulf. I talked Jared into it. I need cadre who’re used to these ships, we’ll have four at least by the time we run the Straits, and a good long voyage is the way to train them.”

  Marian looked up at the ship and began to speak softly, under her breath. Ian recognized the words; he wasn’t surprised anymore, either—there was more to Marian than she let on. In Alba he’d heard her recite from the same poet on a field where dead men lay in windrows. This time it was happier words as her eyes caressed the hull. He caught the surge and hiss of the sea in it, and the longing for places new and strange that he’d always suspected lurked under Alston’s iron pragmatism:A ship, an isle, a sickle moon—

  With few but with how splendid stars

  The mirrors of the sea are strewn

  Between their silver bars!

  An isle beside an isle she lay,

  The pale ship anchored in the bay,

  While in the young moon’s port of gold

  A star-ship—as the mirrors told—

  Put forth its great and lonely light

  To the unreflecting Ocean, Night.

  And still, a ship upon her seas,

  The isle and island cypresses

  Went sailing on without the gale:

  And still there moved the moon so pale,

  A crescent ship without a sail!

  CHAPTER SIX

  November, Year 8 A.E.

  (November, Year 6 A.E.)

  (June, Year 7 A.E.)

  December, Year 8 A.E.

  (June, Year 7 A.E.)

  “Lordy, but I hate giving speeches,” Alston muttered under her breath as she stepped down from the podium on the steps of the Pacific National Bank at the head of Main Street.

  “Tell me about it,” Jared said.

  “Maybe that’s why you always give the same one, Marian,” Ian said out of the side of his mouth, grinning as he applauded with the crowd. “Thank you for your support. We’ll get the job done. Good-bye.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Doreen said. “back in Alba, she threatened defaulters with having their ice cream ration reduced.”

  “To hell with the lot of you,” Marian said, seating herself and looking suitably grave. She cocked an eye at the sky; it was a bright, chilly morning, but there was a hint of mare’s tail cloud in the northwest, and the wind was about seven knots, brisk up from the harbor.

  Prelate Gomez rose to conduct the blessing service. Hats went off among the dense crowd that packed Main Street Square and the streets leading off it; expeditionary regiment Marines and townsfolk mingled. Alston kept her hat on her knees and listened respectfully. Gomez bore the red robes with dignity, despite looking to be exactly what he was, the stocky middle-aged son of a Portuguese fisherman from New Bedford. The Sun People among the regiment and ships’ crews had had their ritual yesterday, sacrificing a couple of sheep to Sky Father and the Horned Man and the Lady of the Horses . . . and at least you get to eat the sheep, she thought.

  Swindapa had led the Fiernan Bohulugi service last night, she being the senior of the Star Blood on the island at present. Which makes her, technically, a Grandmother. And wasn’t that an odd thought. Alston had attended that, it being in the family and she being an adoptive Fiernan of sorts—nobody cared if she actually believed in it, they didn’t think that way.

  “War is an evil,” Gomez was saying. “But in this fallen world, we are often forced to a choice between a lesser evil and a greater. Our citizens and their Meeting have determined that the interests of our Republic demand that Walker be brought down before his power grows too great, and that is a just decision. He has shown himself to be utterly without scruple.

  “To protect our people, our children, our nation, from such a threat justifies this war. But there is another and greater reason for it. Walker is one of ours. When he spreads death, suffering, slavery, among the peoples here in our exile home, we bear part of the responsibility.”

  Alston winced inwardly. She’d suspected Walker had something up his sleeve, but there hadn’t been any proof . . . and he’d struck without warning, tak
ing the Yare and heading out. Cunningly, too, using Pamela Lisketter as a decoy to give himself time.

  “And since Walker is at least partially our sin, so we must pay the price of his suppression. Let us pray to Almighty God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, that He does not require a payment more than we can bear. For whatever the price may be, bear it we must.”

  And on that cheerful note, she thought, bowing her head. Alston hadn’t prayed since she was about fourteen, but whatever your opinion of his beliefs, Gomez was a man to respect. They weren’t exactly friends—several reasons for that—but they worked together well enough.

  The silent moment ended with a trumpet and bugle call. The crowds cleared the street, and the men and women of the Marines and the crews formed up to march down to the docks.

  Alston picked up her cap and drew a deep breath. “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Yeah, boss, this is more like it,” Bill Cuddy said, holding out his wine cup for a refill.

  A slave girl in a filmy kilt of Egyptian linen knelt gracefully and poured from a long-stemmed glass jar.

  William Walker leaned back in the great terra-cotta hot tub set in the floor of the bathing suite and smiled at his machinist, enjoying the sensation of steaming water soaking the knots out of his muscles.

  “What did I promise you back in Nantucket, Cuddy-my-main-man?” he chuckled. Master of Engineers, technically. “Gold, girls, all the comforts of home, within reason.”

  The new house—palace, in fact—was almost finished. He’d built it not far from the site of classical Sparta, on a rise overlooking the Eurotas valley. The basic materials were the ones the locals were used to working in, but he’d made some modifications. Pitched roofs of baked-clay tile, for instance; the local flattops leaked like a bastard in the winter. Floors of glazed tile, the way he had this area set up, or polished marble; he looked around with satisfaction at the mural frescoes, mostly battle scenes from the conquest of Sicily last year. Running water wasn’t a completely unknown concept here, but the sort of full-suite setup he’d put in was, and that went double for the flush toilets with S-curve pipes. Central heating, too, with underfloor ducts, and furnaces and tanks for hot water on tap in the master’s quarters.

  “Yeah, you came through, all right, boss,” Cuddy said. “Funny how much easier this was than Alba.”

  “Lot more organization to start with,” Walker pointed out.

  Although that has its drawbacks, he thought. His glance went to the tall French doors. He couldn’t see much out of them, the best they could do for window glass still being sort of wavy and opaque, and it was raining outside on the terrace anyway. If it had been clear and he’d gone outside, he could have seen down the valley to the palace of the underking of Sparta, whose sons had all conveniently died in the Sicilian campaign.

  He really shouldn’t have tried to have me offed back in Mycenae, he thought. Of course, the guy was sick these days himself . . . courtesy of dear, dear Alice Hong. God, but it pays to have a doctor on your staff. And once Wannax Menelaos was gone, Walker knew exactly who the high king was going to appoint in his place. Odd. I expected them to be brothers. More like third cousins once removed.

  But on the whole, operating in civilization of a sort was a hell of a lot easier than cobbling together a kingdom out of the tribes up in Alba. There was a lot the Achaeans didn’t know, but at least he didn’t have to teach them everything. He smiled at the vista beyond the windows; he’d left plenty of room for expansion later.

  Something imposing, but not ostentatious, he thought. Something along the lines of San Simeon.

  “Easy to get used to this sort of thing,” Cuddy said, raising his cup in toast. He looked aside at the girl, who was kneeling, sitting back on her heels with eyes cast down. “Like, getting laid whenever you want, for example.”

  Walker nodded, although he wasn’t the sort of three-ball man that some of his American followers were. Rodriguez, for instance, and even he’d slowed down a bit now that it was not longer a big deal.

  “You deserve it,” Walker said sincerely. “You’ve got the machine shops working fine now.”

  Cuddy shrugged and beckoned. The girl came over and knelt behind him, kneading his shoulders.

  “The first part was the hardest,” he said, tilting his head back against her breasts. “Like, one makes two, two makes four, you know? Lathes make lathes. Look though, boss—these guys I’ve trained, they don’t really understand any of this stuff. Well, maybe one or two. It’s all monkey-see, monkey-do for the rest.”

  “It’s the results that matter.”

  “Surprised you sent Danny Rodriguez off to Sicily all on his lonesome,” Cuddy went on.

  “Oh, I put the fear of God into him well enough,” Walker said. “Besides, Odikweos will keep him in line . . . and I can rely on Odikweos to see that our great good friend and liege-lord Agamemnon doesn’t hear about exactly how many musketeers we’re training over there. Christ, but these people don’t have much idea of spook-work. Odikweos, he’s the exception.”

  “Yeah, well, you got Odi the viceroy’s job,” Cuddy said. “He owes you—it’s a fucking gold mine.”

  “Gratitude is strong; the bottom line’s even stronger.” Walker chuckled and finished his own wine. “He’s raising a regiment of musketeers himself—most of these wog VIPs, you’d think getting out of their chariots was like cutting off their own balls. Odikweos doesn’t think that way.”

  “He’s keeping the sulfur and asphalt coming, too,” Cuddy said with satisfaction. “And the other stuff.”

  Sulfur for gunpowder, of course. Sicily was rich in brimstone ores. The asphalt wells near Ragusa-that-wasn’t were extremely handy too; you could distill something roughly like kerosene out of it without much trouble, and the residue had a dozen uses, like waterproofing these baths so the adobe brick didn’t turn to mudpie. They were even paving some crucial stretches of road with it. Plus the slaves, timber, and grain that kept other projects going.

  “Yeah, that’s going pretty well,” Walker said. “Pretty soon we’ll be ready to start whipping on the neighbors again.”

  Cuddy looked at him. “Why bother, boss? Shit, we’re practically running this place—will be, in a couple of years. Why bust our ass taking over more territory?”

  “Two reasons, Cuddy. First, because I say so.” He met the other man’s eyes until they dropped. “Second,” he went on more genially, “we’ve got to hit while the hitting’s easy. We’re not exactly building tanks and helicopter gunships here. Anything we’re doing, the locals can learn, and we give them time, they will start picking up tricks—my buddy Isketerol already has, of course. So we’ve got to conquer as much as we can while we’re ahead. That way, we’ll have numbers on our side too. Quantity has a quality all its own.”

  Cuddy nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, when you put it that way . . .”

  “Besides, it’s fun. Booze and cooze are all right, but you can only party so long.”

  “Ah, try me on that one, boss!” They laughed. “Yeah, I see what you mean, though. Sort of a challenge.”

  Walker went on: “Anyway, I’m off. Alice has something really special planned for those two that came in with the last shipment, and I’ve got a starring role.”

  Cuddy made a slight face. “Whatever, boss.”

  Walker laughed again as he heaved himself out of the tub. Water hissed over the indigo and white of the tiles, and the girls hastened over to rub him down with linen towels and dress him in a long embroidered robe imported from the Hittite country.

  “Oh, she’s a complete nutcase, I know,” Walker said. “But it can be sort of diverting, for a change. Hasta la vista.”

  And the screams and bodies keep the staff really on their toes, he thought, glancing back over his shoulder as he left. Two of the serving-maids were sliding into the tub, minus kilts, giggling and squealing.

  Guards brought their muskets to present arms with a slap of hands on wood and crash of hobnaile
d heels on stone. Walker nodded back with lordly politeness.

  “Philowergos, Eumenes,” he said.

  He’d seen a movie once, when he was young—Battleship Potemkin, that was it, about a mutiny in the Russian navy, sailors given rotten food and such. He still remembered his own reaction of contempt; what sort of doink shorted the hired muscle? He knew enough to spread around the vig generously, and that included knowing names. The thought warmed him as he walked past into the main body of the mansion.

  Glass windows kept it reasonably bright even on an overcast winter’s day, and fires boomed in proper fireplaces at either end; the floor was honeycomb yellow marble from a nearby quarry. He’d kept the traditional high seat on the southern wall, but added tables and chairs to make it more like a formal dining room. A curving staircase led to the second floor and Hong’s quarters—Ekhnonpa and the children he’d had by her were over in the other wing, and glad to be there.

  No mistaking Hong’s door, dark oiled beechwood with silver bolts through it, and the mask of a skull in a golden setting above it with a candle burning behind the empty eyes. He walked through, past a sitting room with couches and a couple of beautiful locally woven rugs in front of the cheerful fireplace, and into the bedroom.

  “You’re late,” Hong said. “But I haven’t really started. Just sort of establishing the scenario.”

  Despotnia Algeos, the locals were calling her: the Lady of Pain, avatar of Hekate, with power over life and death. Some of the noble Achaean ladies were incorporating her suggestions in their rites. She was dressed in black gold-stamped sandals, a silver domino skull-mask, and an ivory-hilted riding crop thonged to one wrist, with a few straps and buckles elsewhere. He had to admit it all looked quite dramatic.

  He didn’t think the subjects today were concerned with niceties like that at the moment. One was a thirtysomething Sophia Loren type, spread eagled naked to the wall and bound with built-in ties at wrists, ankles, and waist. Her mouth was gagged with a leather ball tied with a strap around her head, and tears and spittle ran down her face and heavy breasts. There were thin silver needles through her earlobes, the webs between finger and thumb, and a few other parts of her body, and ivory alligator clips on her nipples. Thread-thin trickles of blood crept over her skin, disturbed by shuddering twitches.