Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  “The problem is,” he said to himself, “I couldn’t lead three sailors into a whorehouse. Somebody else will have to do it.”

  “The moderator’s not��� available,” the town clerk said.

  “What do you mean, not available!” Jared Cofflin answered, frantic. “Look, Joseph, we’ve got to get this Town Meeting under way.”

  The old man nodded somberly. “But Alan Scinters isn’t going to moderate it,” he said.

  The sound from the crowd out in the auditorium of the high school was growing louder, more insistent. To Cofflin’s ears it was beginning to sound uncomfortably like the mob on Main Street last night.

  There was supposed to be room for seven hundred and fifty, plus another hundred and fifty in the little annex where nonvoters sat. From the noise, there were more than a thousand heads crammed in, and more milling around in the corridors outside. The auditorium was named after a former principal of the old Nantucket High School; it was big, a broad blunt wedge with concrete steps that were upholstered in blue where people sat and left bare in the strips they were supposed to use for stairs. The whole idea had been sold to the Town Meeting as a civic center and place for amateur theatricals as well as a school facility.

  The principal had been a fearsome old biddy, by all accounts, and she’d ruled with an iron hand for the best part of two generations. He tried to imagine how she’d have handled this.

  “Why isn’t Scinters going to do it?”

  “Because he and the chairman of the board of selectmen have been in Boston since Friday last!” Joseph Starbuck snapped. “Of the other four selectmen, Vida��� Dr. Coleman has her under sedation.” The town clerk’s mouth shut like a steel trap. “Along with about a hundred others right now. Four suicides, he says, and a dozen attempted. Jane’s babbling, and that leaves Tom and Clarice.”

  Cofflin blinked: those two weren’t the brightest of the lot. “Well, somebody’s got to do it. Listen to them out there! They need someone who sounds like he knows what he’s doing. You’re the town clerk.”

  “I’m not up to it. Too old, getting set in m’ways. Afraid you’ll have to do it, Cofflin.”

  “Me? I’m the police chief, not an elected official!”

  “You’re also the only one who seems to be doing anything much. You know what’s going on. Get out there, man, or we’ll have a riot on our hands.”

  For a moment Jared Cofflin felt his mind stutter. I wanted someone to take over! The reality of what he’d found on the mainland still sat in his mind like a lump of stodgy food, refusing to split up and move through the rest of his brain. If he couldn’t come to terms with this��� event, how on earth was he going to help everyone else do it? They all want someone to take over, and they want it now.

  Jared Cofflin took a deep breath and walked out onto the stage. The acoustics were superb, enough to bring across the rasp of fear and building rage in the crowd’s undertone. These people were in fear of their lives, and if the man who spoke didn’t give them something to calm their terror they might well rip him into quite literal pieces. And then go on to destroy the town and any chance of saving their lives in a surge of blind ferocity.

  He walked out to the podium and stood in front of the meeting, shoulders slightly hunched as if he was facing into a winter storm. “All right,” he began. “You know we’re still not in contact with anyone on the mainland. Some of you have probably heard why. Now I’ll tell you all. The whole-” he suppressed the word that came to mind- “damned island is back in, well, in the past.”

  The noise burst over him like surf. He quieted it-somehow, eventually-and went on: “Over at the observatory, Ms. Rosenthal-” he nodded to where she sat not far from him-“used the computer and telescope there to figure it out.”

  “What if they’re wrong? Computers-” someone shouted.

  “You may not have noticed,” Cofflin said, stung into heavy sarcasm, “but we’re still cut off from the mainland. Because there isn’t any mainland, at least, no buildings or roads. Just wilderness. I went and took a look personally. Nothing but trees and Indians with spears.

  “Quiet! We’re not going to get anything done by shouting!” Cofflin bellowed, angry at last and somehow no longer in the least afraid. “George, Matt, Susan, get those people there out of here!”

  Most of those who’d broken down let themselves be led away quietly. One had to be put in a hammerlock and handcuffed. “Put him in the cells-he can cool off overnight,” Cofflin said. Unfortunately, that was one of the town selectmen. There goes half of what’s left of our elected government.

  The babble subsided. “All right, now you know. Andy Toffler and me and Ms. Rosenthal here, and Lieutenant Walker from the Eagle, flew over to the mainland this morning. There’s no Hyannis, and there’s no Boston, no roads and no buildings. The Indians threw spears at us. We took some pictures-Andy, could you get that projector working?”

  The wounded pilot wheeled his chair about on the dais, slipping the pictures they’d taken under an overhead projector that threw them enlarged onto a pull-down screen.

  The pictures flicked on, sharp close-ups of the Indian camp. Then a blurred one as Doreen dove for cover, and then another series done with steady clarity. She may have been on the verge of a breakdown, but she kept doing her share of the work, he thought with respect. Good pictures too: an Indian winding up, running forward, the streak of the spear, then the weapon standing in the ground. At last two of each of the wounded Indians, close-ups of their faces and gear.

  “Captain Alston of the Coast Guard ship Eagle-the Eagle was just offshore last night and ended up here with us, for those of you who didn’t know-has something to say. Let’s let Captain Alston talk, people,” he said.

  His own voice was hoarse, his head ringing with too little sleep and too much coffee. Captain Alston cleared her throat. Hard weathered hands turned the uniform cap as she stood, then stopped as if she was forcing herself not to fidget. Otherwise she stood calm as a statue, a welcome contrast to how most people were acting.

  “We were near the edge of the, ah, phenomenon,” she said.

  Her Southern accent made her voice soft, but the diction was oddly precise, almost finicky, as if every word was carefully chosen. The voice of an autodidact, self-educated.

  “It evidently, ah, transposed an ellipse of ocean as well as the island, reachin’ several miles offshore; we’ve seen evidence of that-dead fish caught at the rim, and so fo’th. The only thing we could tell about it was that it was electrical in nature-there were static discharges and effects on our electronic equipment. My observations of the stars confirm Ms. Rosenthal’s. The stars have moved, and the shift’s��� the same sort that would be produced by bein’��� thrown back in time. How long did you say, Ms. Rosenthal?” She pronounced the title miz.

  “The spring of 1250 B.C.,” Rosenthal said. “Three thousand two hundred and forty-eight years before the present. Before what was��� before the��� transition event.”

  “All right, now,” Cofflin said when order had been restored. “Doc Coleman?”

  Coleman, a lean, bony man in his sixties who headed the island’s hospital-clinic, stood up. “I’m treating the��� Indian. His leg wound’s stabilized. He’s never been vaccinated, he’s got no fillings or other dental work on his teeth-remarkably good teeth, by the way-and from the X-rays, he’s had several broken bones that healed without benefit of casts.”

  “All right,” Cofflin said. “We’ve obviously got an emergency here. We’re���” It was hard to go on. “We’re back in the past, somehow-the whole island is. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  Someone raised his hand. Cofflin recognized him vaguely, as much because of the way he looked as for a few brief exchanges of words; some sort of professor who spent part of his summers here. A Californian; tall, balding, with a brown bush of beard and beak-nosed. He looked a lot calmer than most of the people here. Maybe he’d keep people paying atten
tion until things quieted down.

  “You, sir.”

  “Ian Arnstein-Dr. Ian Arnstein. I’m a professor of classical history at the University of San Diego. I was wondering if anyone had considered the implications of what’s happened to us.”

  The Westerner looked around. “Look, either��� whatever happened will reverse itself, or it won’t. If it goes into reverse, we don’t have to worry. We do have to worry if it doesn’t. We’re all in danger of death if it doesn’t.”

  “How so, professor?” Cofflin asked. We’re in danger of complete chaos, sure enough. That had been his main worry.

  “Chief Cofflin, there’s no United States out there. There are no oil refineries, no farms to ship us produce, no A amp;P to deliver vegetables and canned food. No factories. Once we use anything up, it’s gone unless we replace it ourselves. What are we going to eat? Winter’s coming in another seven months; what are we going to heat houses with? Banks, money-it’s all worthless now.”

  That brought complete silence. The sheer weirdness of what had happened had overwhelmed most, to the exclusion of practical matters. Cofflin was impressed. This one is a thinker, he decided. Then the thought struck home.

  “You have any ideas, Professor Arnstein?” he said calmly, while he scribbled a note: Get the guards back on the stores SOONEST. He handed the note to his assistant. The man nodded and hurried out.

  “Well, yes. I’ve, ah, I’ve read a lot of speculative fiction about things like this, and I’m a historian. We need to get organized. Supplies will have to be rationed. We have to get working on inventory so we know what it is we’ve got, and then we have to conserve everything that can’t be replaced. We need to start building up our food supplies. It ought to be possible to fish-the fishing grounds around here should be fantastically rich-and we should see what can be grown. There will be whales. We could get firewood and so forth from the mainland-and maybe we could trade, as well.”

  “Indians!” someone shouted. “We could get corn from the Indians, like the Pilgrims.”

  “If you hadn’t shot at them,” Pamela Lisketter said.

  Cofflin recognized her too, a member of the flake-and-nut contingent, a weaver who sold fantastically expensive handmade blankets to support a “simple” lifestyle. She was a tall thin woman, her only noticeable features large green-gold eyes and an air of intense conviction; she was involved in every good cause, and a great many marginal ones as well.

  “Ms. Lisketter,” Cofflin said, “I assure you we acted strictly in self-defense. Now please let Professor Arnstein finish.”

  Arnstein shook his head. “We can trade for hides and game, maybe, but not corn. If this is the thirteenth century B.C., the local paleo-Indians will still be pure hunter-gatherers. Maize hasn’t gotten far out of Mexico yet. There were farming villages��� ah, there are farming villages away down in Mexico and Central America, but even the Olmecs haven’t happened yet, or maybe they’re just starting. I’d have to look it up.”

  A hand went up, and Cofflin nodded. The chief librarian of the Athenaeum rose, Martha Stoddard, a spinster lady of about forty, dry and spare; archaeology was her hobby.

  “The Olmecs built��� are building���” For a moment uncharacteristic puzzlement showed on her slightly horse-like Yankee face. “Well, the first Olmec ceremonial centers were started about the thirteenth century B.C. at San Lorenzo, yes, and the first Chavin temples in Peru. Dr. Arnstein is right about the local Indians, I’m afraid. Not paleo-Indians, late Archaic phase. No farming to speak of. Possibly some gardens with squash and gourds, but no corn. You said that there was forest down to the water’s edge near Boston?”

  “Ayup, Ms. Stoddard.”

  “There you are, then. When the Puritans arrived, that was all open land around there-cleared by Indians for cornfields and fuel. That hasn’t happened yet.”

  She sat down again, and Arnstein continued: “Europe, though, Europe is in the Bronze Age. We could get grain there. We do have a ship.”

  Everyone looked at Captain Alston. “I’m willing to help,” she said. “But Dr. Arnstein is right-we need to get organized.”

  Arnstein nodded vigorously. “We need an executive-a president, a coordinator, something like that. And a council. I don’t exactly know the procedures for your Town Meetings, but I’d like to propose-”

  “Hey, he’s not a registered voter in this town!” Lisketter exclaimed. “He’s an off-islander!”

  You’re one to talk, Pamela Lisketter, Cofflin thought.

  Granted she’d been on the island ten years, and was quite popular with her own crowd, but she was a coof nonetheless.

  Cofflin knocked his empty water glass on the podium as a makeshift gavel. “We’re all locals now,” he said sharply. “Think about it for a moment, people.”

  Arnstein had stopped, uncertain. He cleared his throat and went on: “I’d like to propose Chief Cofflin as��� ah, as chief executive officer for the duration of the emergency or until we come up with something better.”

  The town clerk shot to his feet. “Seconded!”

  “Now, wait a-” Cofflin began. Hands shot up all over the room.

  “Carried by acclamation,” the man said.

  You’re going to regret this, Joseph Starbuck, Cofflin thought with a glower.

  Arnstein spoke again. “I’d also like to propose that the chief executive officer appoint a council to propose measures to get us through this emergency. We can elect a��� a legislature later, but we need to do things right now if we’re going to pull through.”

  “Seconded!” Joseph Starbuck said again.

  The hands shot up again. Cofflin’s neck bristled slightly; he could feel the mood of the meeting shifting, turning from unfocused rage to an equally unbalanced hope. It could turn again as quickly, if he disappointed it.

  “All right,” Cofflin said. “And you’re one, Joseph. Captain Alston, you’re another; Professor Arnstein, Ms. Rosenthal, Ms. Lisketter, Ms. Brand”-who owned Brand Farms, the island’s main nursery and truck-garden operation- “and the rest of the selectmen.”

  “Chief,” Dr. Coleman said, touching his sleeve as the last of the townsfolk straggled out. “A word.”

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “The Indian’s dying,” he said.

  Cofflin blinked surprise. “You said his leg was stable?” he said mildly.

  “It is,” Coleman nodded. “That’s not it. As far as I can tell, he’s dying of the common cold. Possibly the flu, but it looks more like a monster cold on steroids, and that’s what Ms. Rosenthal has. I thought it might be better to tell you quietly.”

  “Nobody dies of a cold, Doc.”

  “I know that, but he’s managing it somehow. Progressive congestion of the nasal and bronchial passages, faster than I can drain, fever over a hundred and seven. Nothing I’ve got works.” He shook his head. “It came on like wildfire. It’s as if his immune system had no resistance at all, as if he were a petri dish full of a growth solution.”

  Arnstein had come up while they were speaking. “Virgin field,” he murmured.

  Cofflin’s eyes flew open. He remembered Rosenthal sneezing. Coleman was nodding somberly.

  “It’s what they call it when a disease hits a population with no previous exposure,” he said quietly. “The results can be��� unpleasant. Minor diseases, childhood diseases, they become killers.”

  Arnstein bobbed his head; he was six-six, and seemed accustomed to directing his body language downward. “Ninety percent of the Indians in the Americas died within a century of Columbus,” he said. “Never been exposed to the Afro-Eurasian disease environment. It might be even worse here.”

  “Why?” Cofflin whispered.

  “Well, we don’t have smallpox, thank God, but these Indians-they’re a lot more thinly scattered, less numerous than the ones the European discoverers met, would have met, three thousand years from now. There probably aren’t any epidemic diseases at all, and not many endemic ones. But
now���” he shrugged. “Measles��� I wonder if anyone here has measles? We’d better check. That could be very bad. Even in Europe and Asia, it didn’t arrive in the Roman Empire until the second century, but when it did a quarter of the population died of it. Hmmm���” He trailed off, mumbling.

  “Jesus,” Cofflin said.

  Coleman’s face had turned pale. “I’ll��� we’ll have to be very careful, very careful, with anyone who touches shore off this island. I’m going to start checking to see if anyone has measles.”

  “Measles, syphilis, anything like that,” Arnstein said. “Otherwise, we could exterminate whole groups just by breathing on them.”

  “Jesus.” Cofflin kneaded his eyes in a vain attempt to dislodge what felt like hot sand.

  “I should test,” Coleman said. “For everything. AIDS, too��� of course, I can’t test the entire���” Suddenly a grim smile lit his face. “Wait a minute. I can do that. Can’t I?”

  “Doctor, you can do anything you please for the public good right now. Anything you can get past me and the Town Meeting, that is.”

  “And that’s the situation, people,” Captain Alston said.

  She was speaking from the quarterdeck bridge above the pilothouse, with the ship’s officers around her. The crew covered the main deck, standing by divisions as if for an inspection at Quarters, all within easy hearing distance. They murmured, the sound growing louder and louder, until the petty officers and boatswain shouted for quiet.

  Easier to deal with than civilians, she thought. The town meeting ashore had been the next thing to a riot, and it had lasted most of the day. At least you could tell people in uniform to shut up and listen. She glanced over at Nantucket; they’d dropped anchor in the dredged channel that led to the steamer dock, there being no room to tie up with the big ferry at its moorings. For the moment she was just as glad not to be at quayside. The situation on board would be easier to handle if it could be kept isolated from the rest of the island for a little while.

  This anchorage is going to be a bitch in rough weather, she thought, her mind distracted for a moment. Sheltered enough for ordinary storms, but in a really stiff norther��� When full quiet had been restored, she went on: