Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  Vegetables were more precious than gold-those Brand had planted back in the spring were watched like ailing firstborn children, or perhaps the ailing firstborn children of hungry cannibals-but red meat had scarcity value too. For an occasional haunch of venison, you could do wonders trading on the quiet. She didn’t feel that was cheating, not like using her official position; after all, she did kill the deer herself.

  They occupied themselves in companionable silence for a moment. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “What’s that mark?”

  Swindapa was wearing a shirt, unbuttoned partway down in the warm weather with the tails tied off under her bosom. Just between the upper curve of her breasts was a small tattoo, shaped like an arrowhead.

  “That?” she said, peering down. “That’s the���” She considered for a moment, her lips shaping words. “The Spear Mark. When I was fifteen��� years, I think, we count by thirteens of the moon��� I took the Spear Mark, nearly three years ago when I was young. I stalked a deer close enough to kill it with my spear, and came back with the antlers on my head and the hide wrapped around me, and jumped the fire trench, and they put the Spear Mark on my chest.”

  “Everyone does that?” Alston said.

  “Oh, no. Some-many boys every year, and some-few girls sometimes. My-the one I did the Moon Spring Rites with, you’d say, my boyfriend?”

  ” ‘Lover’ might be more appropriate, I think.”

  “My lover was a big-no, a great-hunter, didn’t study the stars even though he was part of the Egurnecio family. A warrior, too, a��� Spear Chosen, someone who leads warriors. I wanted to be with him.” She looked bleak for a moment, then sighed and shook it off. “The Sun People hurt him, smashed his leg, he couldn’t run or hunt or fight anymore. He got angry all the time, got sick with too much mead, then he died.”

  And I know the rest, Alston thought.

  They’d finished gralloching the deer; they left the entrails for the ants and birds, packed heart, liver, tongue, and kidneys back in the stomach hollow, and removed the head. Then they ran a pole between the bound legs, brushed the blood off their hands and arms with sand as best they could, and lifted it with an end of the carrying pole on each shoulder.

  “Do some more sword work tonight?” Swindapa wheedled.

  “If you don’t mind the others,” Alston replied. She’d started classes for some of her cadets and a few islanders who showed promise. In our copious spare time.

  They came out onto the road and dumped the deer carcass into the wire baggage holder at the rear of the two-seater tricycle; it was a fairly robust thing, one of many worked up since the Event by Leaton. Alston looked at the sky; not long to dinner. Deer liver and onions sounded more wonderful all the time.

  “No problem, more fun with lots of people,” Swindapa said. She went on, “Good hunt today,” giving Alston a quick hug before jumping onto her seat.

  I wish she wouldn’t do that, the captain thought. Evidently Swindapa’s people embraced and touched at the slightest provocation, and she was gradually starting to do that again as her memories healed over a little. She has no idea how��� difficult that makes things.

  Well, life was difficult. They began pedaling in unison, enjoying the cooling effect of the breeze.

  “We’ll stop at Smith’s,” Swindapa said happily.

  Smith was an enterprising soul who’d put the hot-water shortage to work and opened an Oriental-style scrub-and-soak bathhouse; much more economical of fuel than trying to heat water and pour it into a tub in a single house, now that the electrical and gas heaters were useless. The Council had approved, since it was just the sort of thing that was needed to jump-start the island away from the emergency-collective setup that necessity had forced on them. Unfortunately, Smith didn’t run to individual tubs yet, just one big one for men and another for women.

  Oh, well. Life is difficult.

  “No, I’ll sponge down at home,” she replied. And avoid all temptation. My own virtue sickens me at times.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  July-August, Year 1 A.E.

  “I say the last thing we need is foreign entanglements!” Sam Macy said.

  There was a rumble of agreement from here and there in the Town Meeting. Cofflin sighed inwardly. He could understand Sam’s position only too well; the problem was that while that sentiment felt right, the balance of facts was against it. Macy was a nice guy to sit down and have a beer with, he did his job well-hell, he’d turned out to be a genius at logging, sawmilling, anything to do with wood-and he kept his people over at Providence Base happy with their boss. The problem was that when Macy got onto politics, he had certain fixed opinions that couldn’t be shifted with plastique and bulldozers.

  “We’re just getting things going right,” Macy went on, flushing as eyes turned to him all across the big room. The microphones were long gone, and his voice came out in an untrained foghorn roar. “We’ve got plenty to eat, it looks like the harvest will be good-” he knocked on wood- “and we’ve got plenty to keep us warm this winter-”

  “Good job, Sam!” someone said. Macy stuttered and then went on:

  “-and we’re learning how to do lots of stuff. We all saw the pictures and video Captain Alston brought back. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have sent the Eagle over to Britain, but those aren’t the sort of people we want to get involved with. Why should we risk the lives of good American boys and girls for those dirty savages? It’s worse than Bosnia.”

  Another mutter of agreement, louder this time. Swindapa’s hand went up. She stood as Cofflin pointed the gavel.

  “My people are not savages like the Iraiina,” she said simply. “They come to take our land for no better reason than they want it, and to make us slaves because they would rather take our crops than work to grow their own.” Her face was flushed, but she spoke firmly under the lilting singsong accent her birth tongue gave to her English. “We don’t ask them to walk the stars with Moon Woman. All we want is that the Sun People leave us alone.”

  Silence fell after she sat, crossing her arms on the dark-blue sweater with Nantucket woven on it in yellow cord.

  Poor kid, Cofflin thought. Still comes up and bites her when she thinks about it. Post-traumatic stress disorder, a fancy name for very bad memories that wouldn’t leave you alone.

  “Pamela Lisketter,” Cofflin said.

  “That’s all very well,” the thin woman said. On most people the results of hard work and a fish diet were an improvement, but she’d started out gaunt; that made her yellow-green eyes seem enormous by contrast. “But isn’t it true that the real reason you want to interfere in the affairs of these people is to exploit them?”

  “Nope,” Cofflin said. “Fair exchange is what we’ve got in mind. Professor?”

  Arnstein stood and stroked his bushy reddish-brown beard. “This island can’t produce enough to do more than keep us alive,” he said. “It doesn’t even have much timber, much less metals or fuel. Seven thousand-odd people-call it five thousand working adults and teenagers-that just isn’t enough to keep civilization going, if most of us have to spend all our time producing food. We can’t have teachers and engineers and clerks and, oh, silversmiths and everything else, all the specialists, because there won’t be enough food or enough raw materials or enough markets. But if we can trade widely, we can have those specialists, and exchange what they make for what we need. The question is, do you want your grandchildren to have something like a decent life, or do you want them to be illiterate peasants?”

  A thoughtful silence fell. “Ms. Lisketter.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a simple life! We should all learn to lower our expectations and walk lightly on the earth, not kill its whales and cut down its trees and��� We’ve got an opportunity to escape from a culture dominated by machines, and cultivate our skills and the spiritual-”

  A chorus of whistles, catcalls, and boos shouted her down. “I’ve had all the fucking simple-life b
listers I want or need!” someone shouted, and there was a roar of approval.

  Cofflin kept his face impassive as he hammered for order. Inwardly he was grinning; Lisketter had a hard core of supporters, but the numbers had dropped off drastically. Imagining a world without internal combustion engines and electricity and actually living in one were two entirely different things.

  “Let’s keep it polite here. This is a Town Meeting, not a football game. Ms. Lisketter has a right to say what she believes whether anyone else likes it or not.”

  Lisketter was quivering, but the tears in her eyes were rage, not chagrin. “You’re making exactly the same mistakes that people back home did, wrecking the earth and any chance of living in peace with each other!” she said. “Please, please don’t be so blind! There aren’t very many of us now, but if you start the same cycle all over again that won’t matter. The real frontier isn’t out there.” She waved at the world beyond the darkened windows. “It’s in ourselves. If we’re not at peace with ourselves and the earth, what does it matter if we have material wealth?”

  “Dane Sweet?”

  The manager of the bicycle shop-nowadays he was more like assistant secretary for transportation-stood. “Pamela, you and I go back a long way. We agree on a lot of things. But can’t you understand that we’re not back home any more?”

  “This isn’t Kansas anymore, Toto,” someone said.

  Sweet waved them to silence and went on: “If you want to preserve the environment and the Native Americans, and I do too, you’re not going to do it by making the people here want to lynch you. It’s one thing to tell people who’ve got too much to cut back, but you may not have noticed we’re not exactly living in the lap of postindustrial luxury here.”

  “Anything more to say, Ms. Lisketter? Then I suggest you sit down.” She sat. “Joseph?”

  Starbuck stood. The town clerk was as near to a minister of finance as they had. “And we’re not doing as well as Mr. Macy thinks, either. We’re living off our capital-off what we had before the Event. Yes, we’re growing and catching our own food, but we’re not building our own houses, making our own clothing, or shoes, or even tools for the most part-and what we are making, we’re largely making out of accumulated raw materials that were here before the Event. Consider the effort needed to find and smelt metals, for example. Or to find fiber and leather to replace what we’ve used, or glass. What Dr. Arnstein said is quite correct.”

  That brought a thoughtful silence. He’s got a point, Cofflin mused. He pointed his gavel into the midst of the crowd. “Professor?”

  “We do have an opportunity to do things better,” Arnstein said. “That doesn’t mean sitting on our behinds and finding infinite Mandelbrot sets in our navels. Let me tell you, people have never lived in harmony with nature. Goats and axes and wooden plows can ruin countries every bit as surely as bulldozers and chemical plants; it just takes a little longer. We’ve got three thousand years of knowledge to apply to a fresh world. Let’s do it right this time.”

  There was a smattering of applause, growing louder and then dying away. Cofflin saw another hand raised. Surprise held him for a moment, and then he pointed the gavel. Can’t let Swindapa speak and can him, he thought.

  “My hosts,” Isketerol said, bowing in several directions. His guttural English flowed, as fluent as a native speaker’s apart from the accent and an occasional choice of words. “I, a poor foreigner, cannot advise you��� except that if you wish to trade, why deal with the poor and warlike savages of the White Isle, the island you call Britain? Instead, send your wonderful ships to the Middle Sea, where men dwell in cities obedient to law, not like bears in the forests. In Tartessos, my home, or Mycenae rich in gold, or splendid Egypt. Grateful for your many favors, I will be ready to advise and guide in whatever small way I can. You will find rich return, I promise you.”

  That is one smart son of a bitch, Cofflin thought. Yes, he was a slave trader and probably a pirate when occasion offered, but this was the thirteenth century before Christ-you couldn’t expect him to act any other way. He’d lived up to every bargain he made with the islanders, that was for sure. Nobody had any complaints about the way he’d behaved since he arrived, either. But that proposition has its own risks.

  “I think Captain Alston has something to say to that,” he said aloud.

  Alston stood, her face the usual impassive mask she wore in public. “Once we’re in regular contact with the more��� advanced peoples of this era,” she said, “they’re going to be able to sail here; that’s why we’ve been drilling our new militia. We have a military edge, but not a very large one, frankly. Consider the numbers, as well. And this island is a glittering prize, by local standards. If we wave that relative wealth in front of the locals who can come and make a try for it, I won’t answer for the consequences. It’s my opinion that we should limit our contact with the higher civilizations for the next few years at least. The British peoples of this era are no such threat.”

  That caused an uproar; Macy was on his feet demanding to know why they couldn’t seal off the island from all outside contact.

  “Because the ocean is a very big place,” Alston replied. “And we have only one large ship to date. Buildin’ others means we have fewer people growing food.” She indicated Arnstein with a jerk of her chin. “It’s the professor’s point again. Everyone we have do anything but produce essentials means fewer essentials, unless we can get resources from elsewhere.”

  Cofflin tapped the gavel again, “We need trade,” he said. “We need to trade somewhere where the locals won’t be a menace to us. We could use allies, and extra hands, as well. Ms. Swindapa tells us, and our own experience in Britain bears out, that her people are basically peaceful-not saints, mind you-and they can produce most of what we need. Especially if we give them some help. That’ll include some military help, but not much; more a matter of showing them how to do things.”

  Advisers and military aid, he thought with a wince. Well, by God, we can do better than LBJ and McNamara. At least I hope so. Aloud: “Ms. Swindapa.”

  The Fiernan girl rose again. “My people don’t have a, a government,” she said. “There is nobody who can order everyone to do things. But there are families and Spear Chosen who many will listen to. My family, the line of Kurlelo, is a family like that. We welcome peaceful traders, and we need strong friends. Please, be the friends we need.”

  Another hand shot up. Cofflin sighed and pointed the gavel. This was bad enough, and they were only discussing a hypothetical situation. Wait until they got the report about the Indians approaching Providence Base and offering to trade. That was going to send Lisketter and her crowd completely ballistic.

  The core of the Nantucket Council stood and watched the new militia at practice.

  “Big turnout,” Jared Cofflin said, surprised. Wouldn’t have thought so many people would volunteer for more sweat, he thought. Of course, with harvest still some time off and the fishing going so well, people weren’t nearly as hard pressed as they had been in the spring. And this was a novelty.

  Alston nodded, her armor rustling and clanking slightly as she moved. “It’ll thin out when it sinks in how much work it is, I expect,” she replied cynically.

  “I’m surprised we have the time,” Martha Cofflin said thoughtfully. “I assumed that without machinery, we’d be working every hour of the day and night.”

  Cofflin the fisherman-turned-policeman chuckled; so did Angelica Brand the farmer, and Marian Alston the farmer’s daughter.

  “I said something funny?” Martha inquired tartly.

  “My daddy used to say that farming is two kinds of butt work,” Alston said. “Bust your butt working fit to kill yourself, then sit on your butt ‘cause there’s nothing to do.”

  “Fishing’s a lot like that, too,” Cofflin added.

  “Seasonal,” Martha said. “So there’s time for this.”

  The big sandy field held several hundred men and women. All the Eagle�
�s cadets and off-duty crew, of course, for whom it was compulsory, and nearly as many volunteers. The islanders present were a mixed bag, mostly younger; a good many were friends the cadets and crew had made in the months since the Event. There were enough crossbows for practice, and shields with foam rubber bound around their rims, spears with blunt cloth-bound tips, extra-weight wooden short swords. A few worked with bokken, wooden replicas of the katana. Nearly half the Eagle’s complement were in the new armor Leaton was turning out, getting accustomed to the weight and heat. Trainees attacked wooden posts and practiced simple formations.

  Grunts, Rebel yells, and the thump and clatter of wood on wood and metal sounded across the dust raised by so many feet. The Eagle’s instructors were busy hammering home the basics of close-order drill. Cofflin watched with interest as a column of about thirty countermarched, each pair’s spears crossing in an X as they turned. A little farther off two rows with crossbows faced a hastily-erected wooden wall backed by earth.

  “Front rank!” the officer drilling them shouted. “Ready!” crossbows came to port-arms position, held across the chest. “Aim!” The weapons came up to their shoulders with a unified jerk. “Fire!”

  WHUNNGGGG! The strings released in near-unison.

  “Reload! Second rank, fire!”

  The first rank braced the butts of their weapons on their hips and pumped the levers built into the forestocks. The second rank took half a step forward and fired in their turn. By the time they stepped back, the first rank were clipping bolts into the firing grooves of their weapons.

  “Think that’ll do much good?” Cofflin asked.

  “I think so,” Alston said; she’d been looking at her watch, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. “It’s what Maurice of Wassau originally developed drill for. Few of us can match”-she pointed eastward-“for individual ferocity and skill at arms just yet, but the Iraiina aren’t much at coordination, which can be more important. From what I saw and can get out of our guests, battles are a series of individual brawls here.”