On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  "This bunch won't be spooked the first time they see guns go off," Barnes said thoughtfully. "Mother."

  "This won't be the first time," O'Rourke said. "We managed to get a fair number of firearms into Troy, one way and another, and these lads have been on the receiving end."

  Hantilis nodded. "I, too, was put in fear, the first time I saw the fire-weapons work their slaying," he said. "After that, I saw also that the men they killed were no more dead than those fallen to a bow or spear. Guns are better than any spear or bow, yes. They kill further, faster, more surely, yes. Still, these guns are not the thunder-club borne by Teshub of the Weather. They are only weapons. And a man with a knife or even a rock from the fields may slay a man with sword, spear, and armor, if he be brave and very lucky. A score of men with knives or rocks against one with a sword…"

  Barnes and O'Rourke glanced at each other and nodded very slightly. You didn't have to have a modern education to be able to put two and two together, if the native cleverness was there.

  The Hittite confirmed their thought a moment later: "That little ravine-it is a highway toward us. Only a little more than long bowshot, and the… Gatling… does not bear on it…"

  Damn, I do wish we had a mortar, O'Rourke thought. Dropping shells right into dead ground like that was what they were made for. Then: If wishes were horses, we wouldn't need the Town Meeting to produce horseshit, would we, then?

  "Here they come!" someone shouted from the walls.

  "People can get used to anything," Kathryn Hollard said, looking down from one of the slanting windows in the airship's passenger compartment.

  They'd come down the Euphrates, endless miles of irrigation canals lined with date palms, long narrow fields-about half of them flooded to soften the earth for the fall plowing, half fallow-and villages of dun mud-brick shacks. Now the shadow of the Emancipator passed over Babylon, slipping over square miles of flat roofs and courtyards and narrow twisty streets, cut here and there by the broader processional ways.

  The sight of the dirigible overhead no longer made men scream in Babylon, or women cast themselves down in prayer. Even the donkeys had stopped bolting. Usually the craft came into a field by the river outside the northern wall; the engineers of the expeditionary force had put in basic support facilities, tanks of fuel-the engines burned a mixture of kerosene and hydrogen from the gasbag-a small steam-powered generator to crack lifting gas from water, stores of spare parts. Today the airship was coming into land at the square that surrounded the great ziggurat Etemenanki, the House That Is the Foundation of Heaven and Earth, near the northern gate of the city. That was the only open space in Babylon that could accommodate the Emancipator's more than five hundred feet of length; it was also convenient to the main palace-administrative complex just inside the Ishtar Gate.

  "Kash is not happy at all, and this is one way of showing it," Kathryn went on.

  "I'm not happy either," her brother replied. "To put it mildly."

  "I'm not happy-the thermals here are a stone bitch," Vicki Cofflin said.

  They all glared for a second at the Princess Raupasha. That young woman folded her arms and glared back. Seventeen going on eighteen, she was tall by contemporary standards, which made her average among Americans born in the twentieth; the Marine khakis she wore showed smooth curves. Fine raven-dark hair fell to her shoulders, framing an oval straight-nosed face and dark gray eyes rimmed with green; her skin was a natural pale olive tanned to honey-brown. It wasn't quite the physical type common in Kar-Duniash, but she had been born further north, under the Taurus range, in what would be Kurdish country in the twentieth. Some of her ancestors had come from much further than that, outflung spindrift of a migration that had begun in the foothills of the Ural Mountains a thousand years before. The main stream of it had driven their chariots and horse-herds over the Hindu Kush and down into the Land of Five Rivers, where her distant Aryan cousins were compiling the Rig-Veda in these very decades. Raupasha's ancestors had drifted westward, to become kings at the headwaters of the Khabur and lose themselves among their Human subjects.

  "I did wrong," she said, in English thickly accented with the clotted sounds of her Hurrian mother tongue. "It- ' For a moment a flicker of uncertainty made her seem her age. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. You had told me, Lord Kenn'et, that in your country women often take the lead in such things…"

  "Not without warning, not in public, not in front of an army, not in a language the man doesn't speak so it looks like he's agreeing with it, and not when it buggers up years of work!" Kenneth Hollard barked.

  My, what an interesting shade of red you turn when you're angry, big brother, Kathryn thought irreverently. She and her brother both tanned fairly well for blonds, but she could see the dark blood rising over his collar.

  "I did wrong," Raupasha said again, quietly. Tears welled in the great gray eyes, but she blinked them away. "I have wronged you, to whom I owe so much. Let King Kashtiliash have my head, then, to appease the anger of his heart and bring his favor back to you."

  Kenneth Hollard sighed in exasperation. His sister answered for him: "No, we won't do that. You're under the Republic's protection, and we don't withdraw that. But that's protection for you, as an individual, not for your people or their former kingdom. You may have to leave these lands altogether."

  "And we all have to strap in," Vicki Cofflin said. "Sir, ma'am, we're coming in for a landing."

  Everyone sat, in a stony silence. Kathryn Hollard swallowed a bubble of anxiety. God, I want to see Hash again. God, I'm nervous.

  Neither of them was exactly afraid of the other but they'd both found occasion enough for irritation, differences of custom and outlook and belief that made a word or action sweet reasonableness to one and intolerable to the other. And neither of them was meek by nature.

  I suppose we'd both find sweetness-and-light boring; that's probably one reason why Kash fell for me in the first place, the change from all these I-am-your-handmaiden-great-lord-please-wipe-your-feet-on-me local bimbos. This time he's got every reason to be furious with the lot of us, though.

  The marriage contract specified she could leave anytime she wanted to. The problem is, I don't want to.

  "Prepare for landing," Vicki Cofflin said. "Alex, I'm going to take her in heavy, on prop-lift. Landing crew ready on the ground?"

  The XO was peering through heavy pintle-mounted binoculars. "Looks like it, Skipper… there's the signal."

  "Helm, right thirty. Engines, all ahead one quarter."

  The long orca shape of the Emancipator turned into the wind blowing out of the deserts to the west. "Altitude one thousand thirty. Off superheat!"

  A hissing in the background cut off, only noticeable when it was gone. The shadow of the airship passed over the flat rooftops of Babylon, a maze of tenement and courtyard, dun-colored mud-and-timber roofs above adobe buildings. The monstrous step-pyramid shape of the ziggurat loomed ahead of them, its cladding of colored brick, glazing, and paint a blaze three hundred feet high, an artificial mountain looming against the westering sun.

  "Vent hot air! All vents full."

  Crewfolk spun cranks. High above, rectangular portlids in the hull swung up, allowing the heated air in the central gasbag to escape. The airship's smooth gliding passage shifted to a downward vector, and the ground swelled below them. The nose of the great craft dipped, and the uppermost level of the ziggurat Etemenanki rose above the gondola windows, gleaming in gold leaf. That was the House of the God, where the priestess called the Bride of Marduk awaited the pleasure of the Lord of the Countries.

  "Negative buoyancy! Ship is heavy!" came the crisp call from the altitude controller. "Seven hundred pounds at ground level."

  "Ballast, stand by," Vicki said. They could vent water from tanks along the keel at need and come around again. "Engines at ninety degrees."

  Hands spun wheels, and outside the six converted Cessna engines on the sections of wing turned until their propellers were pointing
at the ground. They were nearly over the courtyard now, coasting slower and slower as the gentle west wind pushed at the blunt prow of the vessel. Dust billowed up, and the robes of the spectators fluttered. The ground crew were from the First Kar-Duniash, the cadre unit Kathryn and a few other Islander officers and noncoms had trained as part of the alliance between the Republic and Babylon. They'd played this part before.

  Emancipator's descent slowed. "Release ropes!"

  Crewfolk opened ports along the keel. Dozens of ropes fell loose, to be snatched up by the soldiers acting as ground crew. They broke into teams as if for a tug-of-war, and pulled.

  "All engines off!" Silence roared into the great vessel, the first since the motors were started in Hattusas twelve hours before. "Brace for contact."

  The ground swelled beneath them, and a wailing chant went up as three hundred men hauled the dirigible down hand over hand and into the wind. More waited, and grabbed the oak railing that ran along the gondola on either side of the keel as it came within reach. Those ran the airship forward until it was aligned with massive forged eyebolts whose six-foot shanks had been pounded into the brick pavement of the square. Lashings secured the Emancipator in place; this was as safe a mooring site as any, with the bulk of the ziggurat and the enclosure walls to break any sudden winds.

  "Feather props all," Vicki Cofflin said. "Ramp down! Brigadier Hollard, Lieutenant-Colonel, Princess Raupasha, you may disembark."

  The main entryway to the gondola was a ramp at the rear of the hundred-foot room. It lowered with a creak of wicker and wood. A chariot stood there, the horses sweating and rolling their eyes as they shifted from hoof to hoof with a clatter of iron against brick. Around it waited mounted guards, riding with saddles and stirrups of Islander pattern, rifles in scabbards at their right knees.

  "The King awaits the Seg Kallui," their officer said, dismounting and saluting, then going to one knee.

  Kathryn nodded. "The queen hears the words of the King," she said.

  "So, bet you I can make five pat hands from half a deck," Private Hook said, shuffling easily.

  They might be under attack at any minute; that was no reason not to pick up a little extra cash. The best time for it, in fact, with people nervous and wrought-up. The cards poured from side to side temptingly on the gray blanket of the hospital bunk, but there wasn't time to start a poker game.

  "Twenty-five cards, no more."

  "By the Horned Man, I think you can do it too-with your deck," someone said sardonically.

  "No, no," Hook said smoothly. "With your deck, and you get to shuffle."

  "Aw, and you'll fly to the moon by flapping your arms," a Marine said.

  Several who'd been recruited from the Earth Folk hissed at the blasphemy, which the scoffer answered with a jerk of his middle finger. Hook frowned carefully.

  "Well, if you're not afraid of bad luck after dissing Moon Woman like that, why not put some money on it?" he asked. "Say, five dollars at five-to-one in your favor."

  "I'll do that," the other man said brashly. "If you don't need beer and girls when we get back to Hattusas, I do."

  "And you'll never get laid without paying a local for it, Haudicar," a female voice said.

  The challenger scowled and pulled a Pacific Bank five-dollar note out of his pocket; that took a little work, with his right arm in a cast. Then he went over to his haversack and fished out a pack of cards. Hook waited patiently while the mark shuffled; the Fiernan woman who'd spoken caught his eye and winked behind the victim's back, moving her fingers and lips silently in the Counting Chant.

  "Put up your twenty-five, Hook. Better than three weeks' pay, a gift from the Gods."

  A belligerent blue-eyed stare from Haudicar, as innocent of mathematics as he was of molecular biology. Hook took the greasy, limp pack and set it on the gray blanket that covered the foot of his bunk, then split it evenly. A fair selection who were mobile enough gathered around; not many went two months in the pungent gloom of a troopship's hold outbound from Nantucket Town without learning poker.

  "Which one?" he said, and the mark tapped the pile of cards on his left.

  "Here we go-

  Haudicar stared as the five pat hands flowed out beneath Hook's nimble features. The onlookers yelped and hooted laughter, and a slow flush went up from the collar of his T-shirt to prominent pink ears.

  "Care to try again, double or nothing?" Hook said casually, scooping up the five-dollar bill. He winked back at the Fiernan girl; he usually didn't need to pay a local when he wanted a tumble-stupid to pay, when charm could get you better sex for free-but even in the Corps it never hurt to set the mood with some beer and fancy eats on the civilian economy. With two men for every woman in most units, the competition could get a little fierce at times. Besides that, he was saving for the end of his hitch. Haudicar swore and pulled out another five-dollar bill.

  "Anyone else want to go with the odds?" Hook said brightly.

  A few bystanders did, but one insisted on using her pack, and dealing out twenty-five cards at random. Hook grinned like a shark as he arranged another five hands, ignoring the curses and stacking the bills and coins.

  "Now, who'll match this pile one last time?" he said.

  It looked as if Haudicar would, until he looked around and saw that all the Fiernan-born in the room were standing back, most of them grinning. Then he made the sign of the horns.

  "Magic!" he spat.

  The girl who'd winked at Hook laughed aloud. "Arithmetic, you dumb swan-eating sheep-shagger," she said. "The odds were fifty to one in his favor!"

  The roar of laughter that followed that was cut short when a corporal looked through the door.

  "You lot are pretty healthy, then," he said. A working party behind him carried in rifles, bandoliers, and a thousand-round ammunition box. Several entrenching tools were piled rattling atop it. "Get busy-knock some more loopholes in the wall there, it's only mud brick two stacks thick."

  Those not too ill to work got to work, except for Hook. "Nobody want one last bet?" he asked, riffling the cards.

  "At a time like this?" someone said, digging at the wall with the pick-spike on the back of the blade of the entrenching tool.

  "Why not? No loss if we lose, we'll all be dead… oh, all right then," Hook grumbled, and picked up a rifle, wincing a bit at the pull of his lanced boil as he went to the slit window. "Holy shit!"

  "So," Kashtiliash said, shaking back the sleeve of his robe and holding out his cup. A servant slid forward silently and poured, each movement as graceful as a reed. "You will not plead your brother's case?"

  "Nope," Kathryn Hollard said, reaching for a date. "He can do that himself. You're the King here, Kash, and he's the commander of allied forces. It'd be a good idea to hear him out, but you decide, and I'll back you up whatever your decision is. It's going on for God-damned November; it'll be the Year 11 before we get to Walker, if we keep dicking around with this stuff."

  The Kassite's thick-muscled shoulders relaxed slightly as he sipped.

  Kathryn gave him a slow smile, and went on: "Actually, I had a different sort of discussion in mind for this evening."

  Her eyes traveled to the arched doorway that led into the bedchamber. Kashtiliash grinned back at her.

  They were dining in one of the smaller chambers in the King's private rooms-or as private as anything could be, in this ant farm of a palace. One wall was carved cedar screen-work, giving out onto a section of flat roof that in turn overlooked a courtyard planted with palms and flowers. It was still warm but not uncomfortable, especially with the overhead fan that swept back and forth above, to the pull of a cord in the hand of someone sitting in the corridor outside-she'd gotten the idea from rereading a book of Kipling's short stories. A punkah, they'd called it in the days of the Raj.

  She and the King reclined on couches of carved boxwood, cushioned in something remarkably like Moroccan leather, and ate from a low table set between them with lion's-paw feet done in ivory, its oval E
gyptian-ebony top inlaid with lapis, ivory, and semiprecious stones. The platters bore the remains of roast chicken, a dish of beef and lentils with apricots, skewers of grilled lamb, salads, breads, pastries, spiced steamed vegetables. The palace artisans had learned to produce creditable bronze-and-gold imitations of the plain metal fork in a Marine field kit, too, which made eating a lot less messy.

  "Makes a nice change from tents and dog biscuit," she said, stretching and nibbling on the fruit.

  They had been down to hardtack for a while, when the supply lines up from the navigable Euphrates got shaky. Not to mention the grit and dirt; nothing like a couple of weeks in the field in the deserts of Mitanni-northern Syria, in the twentieth-to really work up an appreciation for a good bath and a soft linen robe. Gentle music tweetled from a corner, vivid tapestries billowed slightly along the walls, curious beasts and flowers and scenes from myths she hadn't had time to learn; the ceiling was smooth plaster set with rosettes of burnished copper. The Islander kerosene lamps made the room brighter than it would have been a year ago, but the yellow light suited the room, turning it into a fantasy of soft color amid the scents of cedarwood and incense.

  "A king's wealth is some small compensation for being nibbled to death by ducks," Kashtiliash said. "I would ten times rather be in the field with my troops myself." He extended his hands. "Yesterday the ashipu-diviners of Nabu said that my armpits should be plucked with tweezers because a two-headed lamb was born near Nippur."

  Kathryn held out her hands likewise. Servants glided in, one to pour scented water, another to wipe her hands with a towel, a third to hold the basin beneath.

  Still feels a little creepy having everything done for you like this, she thought with a corner of her mind.