Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  The crew of the Eagle cheered. “Chief Cofflin tells me that he’s declared today and tomorrow public holidays, and I’ve arranged for everyone to draw some of the Town chits we’re using for money these days; they’re good for beer, at least. Liberty for everyone but the posted skeleton crew. Behave yourselves-but have fun. You deserve it. Dismissed from quarters!” The cheers grew wilder, and hats flew into the air.

  Alston looked grimly at what awaited them on the dock. The noise had alerted her first, as the Eagle came through the harbor entrance. Cofflin had said that the Town Meeting had voted a public holiday; she’d expected the harbor to be quiet. Instead there was a surf-roar of noise, and the quays were crowded with people.

  “They did say some people would be on hand to say hello,” Tom Hiller said.

  “Some people��� Cofflin didn’t say anything about this, the lying hound,” Alston snapped.

  A huge banner stretched across the steamship dock, WELCOME EAGLETS, with a big gold-painted wooden eagle above it. The quays and streets were densely packed with people; there was even a high school band, complete with drum majorettes and trombones tootling away.

  She stood glowering at the three-ring circus. The crew were hiding smiles. Swindapa looked impressed; she suspected Isketerol had seen ceremonies more grand, traveling about the Mediterranean. Alston turned an accusing eye on her sailing master.

  “You knew about this, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Well, the chief, the XO, and I discussed things a bit,” Hiller said, grinning.

  “Traitor. You all knew.”

  “We knew you don’t like public occasions, at least in theory, Skipper. Consider it a surprise party.”

  She snorted and relaxed. No use in fighting the inevitable, she decided. Cofflin and most of the Council were waiting to greet her on the dock. And the crew certainly deserved a rousing public reception and cookout.

  That reminded her. “Mr. Isketerol, Ms. Swindapa, we’ll arrange quarters for you ashore,” she said.

  Isketerol bowed silently. Swindapa frowned, an edge of panic in her face. “Not stay captain’s with��� place?” she said. “Send away?”

  The Tartessian had reverted to his native dress for the occasion, saffron tunic with a complex folded belt holding knife and short sword of bronze, and a long blue cloak. Swindapa kept to the Eagle working blues she’d been given, the spare pair of a cadet about her size. The hands that clenched the baseball cap were quivering slightly now, matching the desperate look on her face.

  “I’m sure there will be room,” Alston said hastily. Damn. I’m a sailor, not a trauma therapist! This is as bad as having a chick imprint on you when it hatches. Swindapa relaxed and put on the cap.

  Not much choice in the matter. Have to get her some things, Alston noted. She’d have to organize a good deal, get a regular shore establishment going, if she was going to run Nantucket’s maritime endeavors as well as captain the Eagle herself. A number of ideas had occurred to her, along those lines. I need a good long talk with Chief Cofflin.

  “Ms. Swindapa.” The blue eyes turned to her, pools the color of hyacinth flowers. “I’d like you to see the doctor here,” she said.

  “Already seen Eagle doctor, ma’am. Feel goods-I mean, better.”

  “All the same, I’d like you to see the one here, please.” The Fiernan girl ducked her head in a shy nod. She had an appealing face, really��� Careful, Alston reminded herself.

  The gangplank swung out and crunched into place ashore. Alston set her own hat in place and walked down the gangway to the waist, past the rows of sailors and cadets now braced to attention. The boatswain’s pipe sang out:

  “Eagle departing!” The bells rang. Cofflin shook her hand at the bottom of the gangway and handed her a microphone.

  “A few words, Captain,” he said.

  “Ah-” Alston cleared her throat, and Swindapa and Isketerol jumped and started at the amplified sound. “It’s all right,” she said, flicking the thing off for a second.

  Then: “We’re all happy to be back, and back with the food the island needed. The trip was��� interesting��� and there’ll be a report, film, and photographs handed out. We accomplished our mission, and we’ll probably be able to trade in Britain again later this year. The crew of the Eagle have worked very hard for the community, and in their name I’m honored to accept your thanks.” She paused. “That’s all. Thank you again.”

  “Short but to the point,” Cofflin murmured, and took the microphone from her. “Three cheers for Captain Alston and the Eagle!”

  At least nobody can see me blush, Alston thought as she endured it.

  Cofflin led the way. Trestle tables had been set up on Main Street, and from the looks of it Nantucket’s abundant cooks had been at work. Mostly seafood, of course, but well prepared, and a surprising abundance of poultry, roast goose and duck, and big plump birds that looked a little like chickens but weren’t. They’d raided the accumulated stores, too; there was even a butter sculpture of the Eagle. Sitting in crisp brown glory with an apple in its mouth was proof of why Cofflin had been so considerate in getting the first load of pigs off the Eagle via the tug; glazed with the honey that had also been a part of the cargo, it waited on a bed of rice. Alston shrugged with a rueful chuckle, sat next to the chief, and poured herself a glass of wine-the island’s own vintage, she noticed. Cadets and crew were already pouring ashore and filling the tables below her, interspersed with the townsfolk.

  “Thanks-my boys and girls deserve a blowout,” she said to Cofflin.

  “They and the town,” Cofflin said, sharpening a carving knife and falling to.

  “What’s this?” she added, looking at a bowl surrounded with crackers, full of a jellylike substance. Daubed on a cracker, it had a creamy, salty taste. “Tastes interestin’��� some sort of seafood?”

  “Caviar,” Cofflin said. “It’s sturgeon-spawning time over on the mainland. We sent some boats to the mouth of the Connecticut River.” He nodded down the table.

  Alston looked and gave a silent whistle. “Now, that’s a big fish.” The section sitting in the middle of one of the trestle tables was three feet thick and ten long, resting on a base of steamed seaweed.

  “Half a ton,” Cofflin said, smiling a little. “We had to harpoon it, and nearly lost the first boat that tried. Things’ve been a bit��� hairy here at times. It’s a good idea to give everyone some time off, throw a party, celebrate-and you’ve given us a fair bit to celebrate.”

  “Starting with this most excellent pig,” she said, loading her plate; the mashed potatoes were the instant type, but edible. “Pass those drumsticks too, please��� Ms. Swindapa, Mr. Isketerol, Mr. Jared Cofflin, our chief executive officer.”

  Hell, I deserve a holiday, she thought, as the two Bronze Agers leaned across her to shake hands with him. And here’s everything necessary. Of attainable things, she thought, looking wistfully at a young man and woman freed of the Eagle’s rule on Public Displays of Affection and holding hands as they ate. It would be nice to have someone myself. Or even just to get laid.

  Isketerol of Tartessos sipped at the odd-tasting, bubbly beer and watched silently as the feast wound down into the night. He’d left the public square when most of the others did, finding his way to this half-underground tavern in the basement of another of the strange, magnificent houses; he could tell What it was, from the sounds and scents making their way out the door. He sounded out the words written on the wooden sign above.

  Brotherhood of Thieves. The sign pictured a man with short bullhorns on his head, holding a small chained woman on one hand and a sack on the other. A god of trade, perhaps? But it was a Brotherhood of Thieves���

  His eyebrows rose at the thought. The Amurrukan seemed like far too orderly a folk to have an open thieves’ den flaunting itself here in this impossibly clean city��� but he was confident enough of what he’d read. His English was as good as his Egyptian now, and he’d spent
many months, in visits over the years, to learn that.

  “Brotherhood of Thieves,” he sounded out aloud, and looked around. This street was one of the ones with the strange smooth dark substance coating it, not the honest cobblestones of Main Street. The buildings were mostly wood, covered in shingles and white or gray paint; some had little courtyard gardens. He could see the spire of a temple��� no, they called it a church��� not far away. Large trees grew on either side of the street, which was broad-enough for two loaded wagons to pass abreast, at least. The temple tower had another one of the clocks in it. He shuddered. Cutting away your life, second by second, the way the Crone’s knife did at the last when she put you in the Cauldron. Seconds, he thought. Only the Amurrukan would divide time up into pieces like that, like a cook dicing onions for soup.

  “A name for every street, and a number on every house,” he muttered to himself.

  Oh, he could see how useful that would be, but it was a bit daunting. What was really useful was the counting system. It had taken him two days of questioning-driving Arnstein and his woman almost insane-before it sank in that there was some use in a symbol for nothing. Humiliating, that the Earth Folk slave girl had grasped it earlier. He scowled slightly. It would be more convenient if the bitch weren’t along, or if she’d been too stupid to learn a new language. Scant hope of that; the Star Priest families bred for wit.

  He mustered his courage and walked through the door; there was a short corridor, two more doors with the symbols for the wonderful better-than-Cretan interior latrines the Amurrukan had (but why separate ones for men and women?), and a half-door to the left where the taproom was.

  Even before William Walker waved him over to a table it was reassuring. After so much that was alien, things so strange that he had to force his eyes to see them, this was only middling unsettling. The lights on the walls came from lamps of wonderful design, glass and bronze, but they burned with honest flame-he recognized the smell of whale oil. So did the candles in more glass holders on the tables. There was a fire of wood in a tiny alcove set into the wall, with an opening above to take away the smoke through a brick tunnel-now, that he could use at once, back home. Wooden tables with benches and chairs, floor of smooth lime mortar, brick walls-different in detail but not in essence from things he’d seen before. The smells were familiar too, fire, cooking fish and meat, wine, beer, a little sweat��� and the strange cleaning fat they called soap.

  He slid onto the bench across from Walker. The Amurrukan had his arm around the shoulders of a girl, wonderfully and scandalously dressed in nothing but a halter for her breasts and short breeks tight enough to show the shape of her mound. Her jewelry was strange, but would have bought a good-sized farm in Tartessos, although her hands were work-roughened. She had long black hair, skin the color of old ivory, a tiny nose, and eyes that seemed to tilt up at the corners, lovely in an exotic way. The one on his bench was even prettier, nicely plump, dark-haired and colored like an Egyptian herself. Need stirred. It had been a long time since they left the White Isle, and the Amurrukan had not allowed him to bring a servant.

  Careful, careful, he told himself. The easiest way to get yourself into killing trouble in a strange land was over women, if you didn’t know the customs. It wasn’t enough to know formal laws, you had to understand the ways those were bent or changed by unspoken taboo. These probably weren’t harlots and certainly weren’t slaves; the Amurrukan had none, none at all. He decided to think of them as young priestesses of the Grain Goddess, to be courted.

  “Greetings, friend,” Walker said in mangled Tartessian. Then in English: “Alice, Rosita, here’s my friend Isketerol who I told you about-a prince of Tartessos, which is a kingdom in Iberia. Isketerol, Rosita Menendez, and Alice Hong. Dr. Alice Hong.”

  Isketerol bowed slightly, hand to chest, and flashed his best smile. The women smiled back. He wasn’t exactly a prince, if he understood the word rightly, although his family were relatives of the king. There certainly wasn’t any need to tell the women the details, though.

  “All Tartessos has nothing more beautiful,” he said carefully in his best English.

  Jared Cofflin smiled as the last of the deck cargo trotted down to Steamboat Wharf. Those waiting with handcarts and a few improvised horse-drawn vehicles managed to raise a cheer as well, although this load was not grain but several dozen loudly argumentative pigs, the last left on the ship.

  “I’m surprised they can stand to make any noise, after the homecoming celebration,” Captain Alston said. “A few of my cadets and crew still can’t, and the aspirin are rationed.”

  She looked around the dockside. Cofflin tried to see it as she would. Not much had changed in the time away��� only six weeks, Christ. The main difference was the absence of motor vehicles. The sailing boats which had ridden at mooring poles in the enclosed basin to her left were mostly out fishing; so were the trawlers and the converted scallop boats. Work went on to turn the cabin cruisers and other motor craft to something useful. Two steam tugs waited over in the Easy Street marina basin, next to an improvised barge they’d towed over from the mainland. Perhaps the smell was the biggest difference, and that had crept up on him so gradually that he hardly noticed anymore. They did their best to scrape up every fragment from the fish landed here, if only because it was needed for the fields everyone else had been laboring to clear. Still, there were scales, and a definite smell.

  “The town needed a rest,” he said. “And what you brought back, that’s going to make a big difference.”

  “A third of a pound of bread per person per day for a year,” she said, and looked around. “Y’all have been busy.”

  The pigs were being herded into the carts, with barriers of wire netting set up to give them only one route. Enraged squeals sounded, the whack of poles on bristly hides, and the shout of someone whose hand was saved only by the thick glove he left in a pig’s mouth.

  “If y’all only knew how glad I am to see the last of those things,” she muttered; he presumed the remark was directed at the world in general. “I hope we can feed them. Seventy-five sows made it, say three batches of eight piglets per year each, and they start breedin’ within a year themselves-”

  “We’ll manage. Feed ‘em alewives, if nothing else,” he said. They weren’t particularly good eating fish, but they were certainly abundant-no wonder the Pilgrims had used them as fertilizer. “Good thing Steamboat Wharf is deep enough for you to dock,” he said.

  “It’s a menace,” she replied absently. “The land around the harbor here isn’t really enough to break a first-class storm. We could lose the ship, if she was caught here in a bad norther, and we don’t have much warning without a weather service. I’m inclined to park her over on the mainland in the winter. Providence harbor ought to do-it’s deep and sheltered up there at the end of Narrangansett Bay. Inconvenient as hell, though.”

  “Well, we’ve got a sort of base there,” Cofflin said. “The ferry’s there now, for one last trip before we lay her up.

  We’re bringing back timber-you wouldn’t believe the quality of the lumber we’ve been getting. Seems a pity to use so much of it for firewood. We figured it was worth the fuel, and now we’ve got the tugs on the same run, and some sailboats. They’re bringing salt-marsh hay, too, for the livestock.”

  “You won’t regret it come winter,” Alston said. Her voice took on a more serious tone: “Look, Chief, that grain will help, but we’ll need more.”

  He nodded. “Farming here never was more than a scramble, and a chancy one at that.”

  “Damn right,” Alston said. “My family were farmers down South; it’s a nice hobby and a hell of a way to make a living. I’ve got some ideas about how we should trade this fall.”

  “Not with the same crowd?” Cofflin said, one brow arching.

  “Not if we can avoid it. I’m not what you’d call squeamish, but���” She shrugged. “Besides, they don’t control a big territory as yet, and they’re making w
ar. Not the situation to produce good crops.”

  “Are there any others likely to do better?” he said.

  She frowned and clasped her hands behind her back. “I think there may. We could just pick another spot, somewhere else in Europe or even the Mediterranean, but��� I told you about Ms. Swindapa?”

  “Seems to be a nice girl,” Cofflin said cautiously. “Doc Coleman is taking a look at her, as you asked.”

  “Speak of the devil.”

  The doctor appeared, wobbling in on a bicycle. He coasted to a halt beside them and dismounted. “Whooo,” he panted. “I’ve known for years that I should get more exercise.” Then he looked up at Alston. “Well, I confirmed what your ship’s surgeon said. She’s in remarkably good condition, for someone who was beaten to within an inch of her life and gang-raped to the point of internal lesions. Anal and vaginal.”

  Cofflin sucked in his breath. The radiophone report had said “badly abused”; he’d assumed something like this, but���

  “I think they make them tough in the here-and-now,” Alston said thoughtfully. Only someone who knew her rather well could have interpreted the slight tightening of the skin around her mouth. “The ones that live, anyway.”

  “And the pelvic inflammation’s cleared right up,” Coleman went on. “Nice to see a bug that doesn’t sneer at sulfonamides. There’s probably fallopian scarring, I’m afraid. I’ve given her and that Isketerol fellow every vaccine and shot in the armory, just in case, too. Apart from that she’s in fine condition. Full set of teeth, not one cavity, twenty-twenty vision���”

  “Right,” Alston nodded. God, she’s a cool one, Cofflin thought. He was angry, himself; policeman’s reflex, if you were a good one.

  “Ms. Swindapa is connected with a prominent family in the��� I don’t think it’s a kingdom or a country, exactly, but it occupies most of southwestern England in this era,” Alston said. “I hope to learn more when she speaks better English, and she’s learning remarkably fast.”