On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  Kashtiliash nodded. His wife Kathryn looked up from the other end of the table, making a quick note and handing it to a messenger.

  "I want to get the sewer works functional as soon as possible too," she said. "If we can get the farmers using processed sludge rather than raw night soil, it'll cut dysentery in the villages around here by three-quarters."

  "We need to put in village wells as well," Clemens noted quickly. "Sealed-tube wells with hand pumps."

  "All in good time," Kashtiliash said. "There is work for my lifetime, and my sons'." He looked at his queen and grinned, and she returned the expression.

  A shake of the leonine head. "But that is not what I wish to speak of, best of healers," he said. "Here, come."

  He drew a cloth from a smaller table. The model there was of a complex of buildings, two-story blocks around courtyards; there were even models of tiny palm trees there.

  "You wished to remain in the land of Kar-Duniash, did you not, Justin son of Edgar?"

  Clemens nodded, a little wary. There was more good he could do here, and he thought it would be easier for him to adapt to this than Azzu-ena to Nantucket.

  "Well, here you shall. It shall be called the Clemens Teaching Hospital."

  He stopped, grinning at the younger man. Clemens grew aware that his mouth was hanging open like a carp's. Jesus, I thought we'd have a little clinic, build it up gradually…

  "King of the Four Quarters-I and my wife cannot run such an, an institution by ourselves."

  Kashtiliash rumbled laughter under Kathryn's contralto chuckle.

  "You won't have to," the queen said. "There's all those orderlies that the Coast Guard trained-remember, those slaves Kash's father gave us, and we freed? You did a fair bit of that yourself."

  "And there will be other Nantukhtar doctors who will come," Kashtiliash said. "Even if they come only for a brace of years each, they will not find me niggardly. You yourself, Justin son of Edgar, I will double the wage you receive-and you will have this fine house, and I will add thereunto a thousand iku of well-watered land near the city by kudurru-grant."

  Clemens felt a sharp pain in his ankle, where Azzu-ena had kicked him; outwardly she was the picture of demure modesty, with her shawl drawn over her head and held across her lower face with one hand.

  "Ah," he said, bowing again, "The Bull of Marduk is generous!"

  "And in this hospital you will not only cure the sick, but teach," Kashtiliash said, warming to his thoughts. "I have sent to your Island for copies of the books of healing-soon my own printing press will be at work, with men trained at Ur Base. You will take the sons-

  "And daughters," Azzu-ena and Kathryn said simultaneously.

  "And daughters." Kashtiliash smiled fondly. "Of physicians and scribes and priests-thus their families will object less- as apprentices."

  "And commoners, my Lord King," Clemens said, quietly but firmly.

  "As you wish. And this is only the beginning! Near your hospital will grow over the years a great school of all learning- the lore of my folk, and the New Learning of yours. Such is called a university, is it not? Yes, it will take much gold, as much as many regiments of riflemen, but it will-

  He looked at the queen. "Remember that night on the terrace, beloved of the King's heart?"

  "Yes," she said, smiling.

  "I promised then that I would not leave my people in the dirt. And I will not!"

  The great scarred hand closed unconsciously into a fist, and the dark hawk eyes flashed. Clemens cleared his throat.

  "Ah, King of the Universe, I… my wife and I did plan to visit Nantucket before settling."

  "Excellent," Kashtiliash said, all business once more. "You may arrange much of what we will need there. I will be visiting myself, and the Seg Kallui."

  He laughed at Azzu-ena's start. "Yes, a conference of the Great Kings is to be called, wise lady, in Nantucket Town. Much thought has gone into the arrangements." A snort. "Not least, to ensure that the Great Kings are still Great Kings when they return-we have all agreed to move against any usurper, so there will be none such."

  A boy's eagerness lit the King's face. "And I, I shall see the homeland of wonders myself!"

  "Jesus, that's not going to fly again," Vicki Cofflin said.

  She completed her limping walk around the staked-down dirigible. Or what was left of it. The hull had a perceptible kink in it, where broken frames and stringers creaked. Bits of the doped fabric that covered it fluttered tattered in the cold desert wind; large patches were bare, and she could see inside to the gasbags.

  "Well, no," Alex Stoddard replied.

  He didn't look as beaten-up as she-his right arm wasn't in a cast, for starters-but the bruises on his face had only begun to fade.

  "None of the engines are functional, to start with," he went on, blinking at the sun and the alkaline dust blowing from the bare earth around them. "And going on from there. Still, she kept us alive, the Emancipator."

  "Which is a miracle," she said, looking at the riven rock that speared the sky not far to the north.

  Wherever we are, it's a desert basin with some bloody enormous mountains around it.

  "I thought we were all going to die when we headed for the moon after we dropped the emergency ballast," Stoddard said. "We must have hit twenty-five thousand feet, at least, the way the emergency valves spilled hydrogen. I passed out around twenty, I think."

  Vicki grunted-it was more comfortable than talking, with a mouth bruised and cut inside on the edges of her own teeth- and looked over at the row of five graves not far away. They already looked timeworn, even though they'd only been there a few days. This eternal wind…

  Which is why we stayed aloft so long. With no control, landing was extremely tricky. By the time they'd all become fully conscious again, it hadn't mattered how much further they drifted looking for a good spot.

  "Heads up, ma'am! Delegation coming out from the oasis!"

  The call came from the lookout in the observation post atop the hull. Vicki gave a quick glance around; nothing could hide the scrapes and broken bones, but everyone was as neat as possible… and more to the point, everyone had a rifle or pistol, and there were two functional Gatlings.

  Plus the Shipwreck Kit, she thought-every Islander craft carried that, a set of how-to books and basic tools.

  The locals came closer, a crowd of footmen with bronze-headed spears led by a brace of chariots and followed by a crowd of women and children. Vicki narrowed her eyes as she took them in.

  Well, however far east we came, we aren't into Oriental country yet.

  The man in the lead chariot was six-foot or so, in reddish-brown tunic and trousers and boots, with a falcon-headed bronze ax in one hand, knife and sword at his belt, compound bow and javelins racked in his war-car. His long beak-nosed face was about the same shade as hers, and his shoulder-length hair was a russet brown.

  Ok, these look like Caucasoids, she thought-northern Europeans, at that; blonds, redheads, and brunettes all plentiful. Some were wearing what looked like tartan plaids, at that. She took in that, the plumed and bedizened horses drawing the chariots, the weapons…

  "These bastards get around, don't they?" Alex said, echoing her thought.

  "Get me the Number Three phrasebook from the Shipwreck Kit," she said.

  That was the one titled: Early Indo-European Languages- Useful Phrases. She spoke the Sun People dialect of Alba; that ought to be a help.

  "Hail," she said, when the chiefs charioteer drew rein. "Ekwos?" she added, pointing to the horse…

  "Osu, su-diwom," he said, and turned to take a clay goblet from an attendant. "Poixesoine medhuos?" he went on, holding it out to the strangers.

  It was a long way home, and they'd need the locals' help. The surest way to get that was to make them offers they couldn't refuse.

  They probably have some local enemies. Damn, I wonder what's happening at home?

  The radio had been very thoroughly smashed. Not that news would ma
ke any difference here, but it would be nice to know…

  "So, a new world," Doreen Arnstein said, laying Miriam down in her crib.

  Ian leaned over his daughter, watching the infant-blue eyes blink into sleep. Outside the noise of the festivities was still a dull background roar under a clear autumn sky; the wine beat in his own ears, like his blood, or the sea. Through the window came the pop and multicolored starburst of fireworks. Their housekeeper Denditwara was in a rocking chair by the window, with her own newborn in her lap.

  "It's a new world every time we produce one of these," Ian said, tucking the blanket up around his child.

  "We?" Doreen said, raising a brow. "I seem to recall doing most of the work, myself."

  "Details," he said loftily, as they turned down the stairs and he dodged her poking finger in his ribs.

  They came out onto the little verandah, deep in shadow with only the whale-oil lights of the streetlamps. Up to the north there was a blaze of kerosene light and a sound of song from the old Congregational church, where a midnight service of thanksgiving was under way, Prelate Gomez presiding. Their friends were waiting for them, and David was deep in conversation with the Alston-Kurlelo and Cofflin children; he caught snatches of excited descriptions of Babylon and Hattusas and Mycenae. And a lament over the general uselessness of infant siblings, too…

  "Glad I'm through making those speeches," Jared Cofflin grumbled.

  "Glad we're through with the battles," Marian said. Swindapa squeezed her hand.

  Several other pairs were coming up the road, away from Main Street. King Kashtiliash strode briskly, the embroidered robe of formality swirling around his muscular thighs like a warrior's cloak, the tall flowerpot hat spangled in gold sequins glittering in the lamplight; beside him Kathryn Hollard matched him stride for stride in robes more elaborate and just as gorgeously colored. Her brother followed, Raupasha at his side. Unlike the Babylonian monarch, she was frankly gawking as she peered about, clinging to her husband's arm. Isketerol of Tartessos brought up the rear; he was looking about him with a slight quirk to his lips, remembering, pointing out this or that to his son Sarsental. The boy goggled as openly as Raupasha much of the time, then remembered his dignity.

  Odikweos of Great Achaea walked beside them with a sailor's roll to his stride, shrewd hazel eyes missing nothing.

  "So this is the city that brought all the great kingdoms to their knees," he said, as they halted with the group about the steps of the Councilor for Foreign Affairs' house.

  "Brought them together in peace, Your Majesty," Ian Arnstein said soothingly.

  "Is there a difference?" Odikweos said; but he said it grinning. "Forgive my wayward son," he went on to Marian and Swindapa, bowing in courtly wise with a swirl of his cloak. "He found… ah…"

  "Company more interesting than ours, and much prettier than his father," Alston finished for him. "We'd best be getting on to Guard House. I don't quite trust anyone else to do a moa leg properly-they go dry if n you don't catch them just right. And the wine will have breathed, the steaks are sitting in the garlic marinade ready to go on the grill, and oysters are better chilled."

  Swindapa leaned over to whisper in her ear and she laughed, an easy full-throated sound, as at an old family joke. Then she called: "Heather! Lucy!"

  The children were eventually rounded up, to fall in behind the adults. They took the roundabout route to Guard House, which led them back into the crowds spilling up from Main Street; they dodged a conga line led by a couple of Marines in rumpled uniform, and including a Kassite warrior from the Babylonian Royal Guard, a piratical-looking scarred Achaean, a Tartessian in a saffron cloak followed by a nude redhead who was probably Fiernan and certainly the merrier for the bottle of screech she was waving in a free hand. The crowds about cheered them on, just as polyglot and nearly as carefree, in languages that rang with Semitic gutturals, the rapid-fire sinuosities of Greek, nasal Yankee twangs…

  "Hard to believe it's over," Jared Cofflin said again.

  "Over?" his wife replied. "It's barely beginning!"

  Doreen Arnstein looked upwards. "Did you know," she said thoughtfully, "that time travel is mathematically identical to faster-than light travel? If one's possible, the other must be too. Someday…"

  "Ayup," Jared nodded, in answer to both. "Mebbe." He looked around. "Mebbe this time we'll be able to avoid some of the old mistakes."

  "Yes, we'll make new ones-all our own," Swindapa laughed.

  "Undoubtedly," Ian Arnstein said. "At least they'll be new and interesting blunders. In the meantime… let's eat!"

  Althea Walker, last scion of the House of the Wolf, turned in the saddle and looked behind her. The Carpathians had long since faded from view; all she could see from horseback was an infinity of grass that waved stirrup high on her horse, hissing in the long melancholy wind. Ahead was the line of a great river, marked by the green groves of trees vivid against the brown-tawny summer grass. She turned her mount away from the caravan and spurred it up a slight rise.

  Here she could wave the mounted guards back a little, far enough that none could see the tears drying on her cheeks in the hot dry wind as she stared westward. It whipped strands of her blond hair around her face, sun-faded white against the brown tan.

  Nothing to see except grass rippling like the sea, beneath the huge blue dome of heaven. Wagon after wagon creaked by, wheels jolting on the hard ground and canvas tilts fluttering in the dry hay-scented breeze; they and the herds of cattle and sheep and horses raised dust that hung overhead in a haze. They were important wagons, though; stuffed with machine tools and books, and the skills of those who rode in them or trudged along beside were crucial, too.

  Mounted warriors formed a screen that stretched out to the edge of sight, sun blinking off their metal. Ohotolarix came trotting in from an inspection sweep, his horse taking the slope effortlessly despite a tall warrior's weight. Well, it was a son of Bastard, her father's quarter horse…

  He saw the carved-stone set of her face, and the direction of her eyes.

  "He shall be avenged," her father's handfast man said, laying his own hand on her shoulder for a moment.

  Althea nodded. "But that wasn't what I was thinking of," she said.

  He looked at the girl in surprise. "What, then?"

  "That I won't make my father's mistakes. That I will not strike too soon, nor will I settle by the sea where the Islanders-" she spat to one side, into the tall grass-"can get at me."

  Ohotolarix nodded. "Well, this Ferghanna place we're heading for is about as far from salt water as we could go," he said.

  "Pete!"

  It was Eddie, calling from the space he'd kept open in the basement taproom of the Brotherhood of Thieves. Treaty celebrations meant there was just barely room for three more at the end of the long table, now that the guitar-and-drums band on the tiny corner dais had folded up. A low roar of sound came out to meet them, along with smoke, the smell of roasting meat and frying fish and fresh bread and the smells of massed humanity; Spring Indigo flinched back a little as it died away and a song bellowed out:

  Head the ship to homeward

  Shake out every sail

  Lithe leap the billows-merry sings the gale!

  Captain, work the reckoning

  How many knots a day?

  'Round the world-and home again

  That's the Island way!

  Peter Giernas touched her on one elbow, Sue on the other; she shifted Jared on her hip, smiled and headed in with them. A waiter eeled through the crowd, blinked in recognition, and half-shouted apologetically: "I'm sorry, Captain Giernas-no dogs allowed!" Perks was sticking close to his master's side, pressed against his thigh. At the words he looked up at the waiter, sensed his meaning and fixed him with a yellow-eyed glare, bristling and showing long wet teeth. Giernas made a precautionary grab for his ruff and smiled at the server.

  "Don't worry," he said. "Perks here is fine, as long as I'm with him."

  "Ah… oh, well,
he's a war hero too, I suppose." Heroes dime a dozen, Giernas thought, as they pushed the rest of the distance and squeezed in. He didn't mind the crowding-much. It wasn't as if he had to take it for long, after all. Eddie was grinning, a little the worse for beer but not drunk by any manner of means. The voices in the background went on, as the four of them settled in:

  We've fought pirates from Achaea

  Bought tin 'mid Java seas

  Drunk beer in Anyang taverns

  In the shade of camphor trees!

  Across the Line and Gulf Stream

  'Round by Table Bay

  Everywhere-and home again

  That's the Island way!

  "Here," Eddie said. "Still hot."

  The plates were heaped, with roast pork and crackling, potatoes, steamed new vegetables; there were hunks of good wheat bread hot from the oven dripping with butter, and honey for dipping. Spring Indigo nibbled a piece of the bread cautiously, then bit enthusiastically.

  "This is better than bannock with bear fat!" she said.

  "Hell of a lot better, honey." Giernas laughed and took a pull on the mug. "Well, people, I got through to the man at the Pacific Bank, and the prize's been condemned, right enough." He brought out a folded piece of paper from a pocket of his buckskin hunting shirt. "Here it is!"

  When he read out the figures, Jaditwara's eyes went wide. Eddie let loose with a Zarthani war whoop, which didn't attract as much attention as it might have, not tonight. Giernas laughed long and loud himself; it was good to be young, a well-loved father and husband… and rich. Before the war, before the Expedition, he'd been a bachelor, content enough to rent a room over the Laughing Loon in Providence for the times he wasn't rangering around and camping under a tree. Now…

  Now I'm not rich like Leaton or Brandt, he thought, diving into the roast pork and savoring the longed-for taste of fresh vegetables. But I'm rich enough to be able to do what I want, eat my own mutton with my feet under my own table. And to look after my own folk without asking any man's leave to do it. That's a good feeling.

  "Medals are fine," he said aloud. "But gold is sort of a more tangible mark of the Republic's feelings. Speaking of which, you're going to have to show a little more respect from now on." He took out a pin with two small silver bars on it. "It's Ranger Captain Peter Giernas from now on."