Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  Swindapa looked down at her oyster and blinked dubiously. Then she primed it with a drop of the Tabasco, slid it into her mouth, and swallowed, imitating the others. “These things are��� interesting, you’d say?”

  “You don’t have them in Britain?” Ian asked, surprised.

  “Not where I was live then-when-there-lived then, I mean, by the Great Wisdom. And I never visited the coast while they were in season.”

  She looked at the next he handed her. Her eyes went wide, and she began to giggle helplessly. Alston bent her head, and the Fiernan whispered in her ear.

  “��� better warm.” He caught the last words; with the full message, Alston was fighting not to laugh.

  Cofflin cut another slice from the loaf. Every couple’s entitled to their own private jokes, he thought-slightly irked, because the Arnsteins had also caught the byplay, and they were laughing too. So was Martha���

  “Later, dear,” she said. “I’ll tell you later.”

  The driftwood fire crackled, flames running blue and green, and the wind was full of the clean scent of the sea. Cofflin sank back on one elbow and watched the sun going down over the waves and headland to the west; Martha handed out blankets from the picnic hampers, and those in swimsuits wrapped them around their shoulders.

  Pretty good day, Cofflin thought contentedly. It was amazing how much better all that wheat and rye and barley and beans and flax and dried fish in the warehouses made everyone feel. Maybe quiet isn’t so bad, after all.

  The knock was loud and insistent. “Ignore it and it’ll go away,” Cofflin advised. The three couples tried, but it came louder and louder.

  “I’ll get it,” sighed Martha. “The doctor says walking is good for me.” She pushed herself to her feet, kissed Jared on the top of his head, and walked over to the curving staircase that led to the ground floor of the Athenaeum.

  Marion Alston relaxed, tired after the long day at the beach, full from the clambake. She smiled with drowsy contentment, looking across the table at Swindapa. Her love life hadn’t been much; the disastrous marriage with John, the even more disastrous affair with Jolene that had ended it��� and since then the extreme discretion that someone in uniform had to practice, in her position. Discretion so complete it made any real relationship difficult to impossible.

  Of course, Martha and Jared and Doreen and Ian were in the same boat. Had to leave the twentieth to find the right one. Truly odd. Even odder that now I am the one who sets personnel policy for the Guard. Now it’s the bigots who have to keep their mouths shut for fear of consequences. That was intensely satisfying.

  They were sitting at one of the tables in the lecture hall of the Athenaeum, a big room covering the second floor of the white neoclassical main building; a desk was to their rear, shelves of old books to either side, and at the head a stage where Frederick Douglass had once spoken.

  Ian and Doreen were sitting side by side and holding hands, discussing anthropology or something of that nature. There were times when she was very glad she wasn’t an academic.

  “We’re closed.” Martha’s voice came up, muffled by the distance to the front door. “Tomorrow.”

  “I know, Ms. Cofflin,” a voice said from below. “Please let us in, though.”

  “I’ll go down and help her run them off,” Jared said, pushing himself upright and walking away with a sigh. “Damn, doesn’t anyone realize we have to sleep too?”

  Alston’s mind divided between the final cargo loads that would have to be swung onto Eagle tomorrow and the way Swindapa was tickling her behind the knee with one bare foot under the concealing table. If humans could purr, I would, she decided. Love was wonderful; so was humping your brains out as an end to the perfect day, and when you put the two together���

  Something in the voices from downstairs brought her back to full wakefulness with a cold jolt. She sat up and signaled Swindapa’s suddenly alert face to silence with a finger across the lips.

  “What-” Ian began.

  “Quiet.” He shut up as if she’d slapped him.

  She didn’t have a gun with her-nobody in the Guard wore one on the island except on duty, and that rarely-but their swords were bundled in a pair of blankets with the other things from the picnic, taken along to do a few kata. She slid the long steel free of its sheath.

  “Wait here,” she whispered in the blond girl’s ear. “Be careful. Get help if things go wrong. Look after Ian and Doreen, and do not come charging in. Go that way.”

  She jerked her head at the sash window and drew the blade. “Understand?”

  Unwillingly, Swindapa nodded. Just then a gun barked, a small flat crack; there was a cry of pain, and angry voices raised. Her mind clicked it off; pistol, very light caliber.

  “Ian, Doreen, stay out of this,” she said. Doreen had some training, Ian none. Damn, this would have to happen with civilians around.

  She walked to the head of the stairs and looked down. Nothing. Down the stairs and the circulation desk’s to the left. Main entrance to the right, only a few feet away.

  She kicked off her sandals and padded barefoot down and out into the entranceway, the sword held in her left hand with the blade not exactly concealed, but not forcing itself on anyone’s attention, either.

  Pamela Lisketter was there, with her brother and a few more of her followers. Her brother had the gun. It was a.22 Hammerli auto target pistol, of all absurd things, looking oversized in his hand. His eyes glared behind the thick glasses, jumping from one point to the next, and the muzzle jerked around at her as she walked into view. A round cracked off, ricocheted somewhere to her right, and ended in a tinkle of glass.

  Cofflin was down on the ground, swearing softly, and his big fisherman’s hands squeezed a bleeding wound just above his knee. Either Dave Lisketter was a very good shot-unlikely-or he’d been dead lucky. Incapacitating a determined man with one light bullet was not easy, and from the way Cofflin was glaring at them he had all the determination you could want.

  One of those little bullets between the eyes and you’re as dead as if it was a rifled shotgun slug, she reminded herself. Everything was very bright and clear.

  Martha was backed up against a desk, quivering with the anger she was keeping off her face, except for the two red spots on her cheeks. Pamela Lisketter looked out of her depth, but grimly determined to carry through. Her brother’s twitching eyes and bared buck teeth gave him the look of a gopher on pure crystal meth, capable of anything, one way or another. Other figures moved behind Lisketter, taking boxes of books out of the Athenaeum.

  “You’d better put that-there down, white boy,” she said, conscious in some remote corner of her mind that the Gullah accent she’d fought so long and hard to control was back in full force. “Y’might hurt yoselfs wit it.”

  “Drop that sword!” he barked, shrill. She continued to walk forward, slow and soundless, then halted just beyond arm’s reach. “Drop it.”

  “No, doan’ think I’ll do that thing,” she said carefully.

  “Drop it!” He looked bewildered and waved the gun. “You have to drop it!”

  “That there’s a gun, white boy. It ain’t no magic wand,” she said, and turned her head to Martha. “What’s goin’ on here?”

  “Ms. Lisketter,” Martha said, her voice frigid with contempt, “is going to-save the Indians-”

  “Native Americans!”

  “Native Americans. By taking them our guns and a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

  Alston laughed deliberately, a deep rich sound. “Even crazier than Ah thought,” she said. “Lisketter, tell your brother that if he puts that there gun down now, I won’ hurt him.” Much, she added to herself. These people didn’t have any experience with violence, or much confidence in their use of it. If she could shake them enough���

  Her senses expanded, taking in the room and the positions of everyone in it. One long controlled breath. Another.

  Lisketter spoke: “Your own Lie
utenant Walker is helping us,” she said.

  Alston laughed again. “Walker doan’ help nobody but Walker,” she said. “So���”

  Lisketter wasn’t going to back down. Her brother had so much adrenaline in his system he was on the verge of going berserk, which would make him an utterly unpredictable factor. Time to act.

  A number of things about swords were surprising to those who’d never trained with them. The first was how far a yard-long blade at the end of an arm could reach. A drawing cut sliced through David Lisketter’s flesh, through the radius and ulna of his arm, hardly slowing at all. He shrieked and whirled, the stump of his forearm sending up twin jets of deep-crimson blood halfway to the low ceiling as the hand clutching the gun spun away.

  In the instant that followed, Marian Alston knew two things with angry certainty. The first was that her training had betrayed her; she stepped forward into stance and whipped the blade back and around for the finishing stroke in drilled reflex, leaving Pamela Lisketter a crucial moment to react. The second was that Pamela Lisketter also had a gun, and that she’d fired it through the pocket of her coat.

  Blackness.

  Isketerol smiled as he pushed through the door and over to the desk. The partition-the plastic partition-had been taken down; the Amurrukan who lived here year-round didn’t fear each other much. There was only one police officer sitting there yawning. Probably feeling resentful that he wasn’t off-duty and celebrating the harvest like most of the island. It was dark on the street outside, save for the noise and lamplight spilling down from the Ocean Cafe half a block away.

  “What can I do for you?” the policeman asked.

  “You can die, foreigner,” Isketerol said in Tartessian.

  His left hand flashed out and clamped in the Amurrukan’s hair, jerking the man forward, while his right flashed out from behind his back with the steel dagger the smith had made for him. It was double-edged and needle-pointed, about seven inches long, and sharper than anything he’d ever held before. The point punched into the side of the Amurrukan’s neck just behind the windpipe; he could feel the stiff tissues crunching and popping as the broader shoulders of the weapon sliced in. He jammed the man’s head down on the desk as he wrenched the blade forward. Blood spurted, covering the short tunic-the T-shirt-he was wearing. His victim’s movements went spastic for an instant, then slumped away. Bowels and bladder released their smells to the iron-copper tang of blood.

  “To You, Arucuttag of the Sea, I dedicate this offering. Take what I give, Hungry One, and grant my desire,” Isketerol said. A wet finger outlined a red wave on his forehead.

  He turned to the door and signaled the others in. One of them took a single look and bent over, vomiting, Isketerol hid his contempt. Despite their powers the Amurrukan are womanish, he thought.

  “Get moving,” he said, raising the barrier between the entranceway and the night officer’s desk.

  He pushed the body backward, so that it slumped off the chair and onto the floor. No sense in taking unnecessary chances. A moment served to strip off the gunbelt and buckle it around his own waist; he cleaned and sheathed the dagger, then took the crossbow one of Lisketter’s followers handed him, instead of drawing the pistol as he longed to do. Best to use a weapon he’d practiced with, and one that made no loud noise.

  “Harry? What’s going on out there?” someone called from within the building.

  Isketerol’s lips skinned back from his teeth. So. There is a second one. He waited until the doorknob began to move; the panels were thin wood. Then he shot.

  Whunng. The crossbow spoke its single musical note. There was a sharp crack as the bolt punched through the door, hardly slowing, then a heavy grunt from the other side. The door swung open toward him and the policeman toppled out, the stubby arrow sunk to its fletchings through his breastbone. The body sprattled and leaked, then went still.

  “Quickly!” Isketerol snapped, reloading.

  Lisketter’s followers and Walker’s men had come prepared, on the assumption that a sixteen-pound sledgehammer and a pry bar were the most versatile keys ever invented. They pushed through into the police station, where the shotguns were in racks, padlocked closed. Three ringing blows disposed of the locks, and the long arms went into crates and were manhandled out to the handcart. Ammunition was in locked boxes beneath; they simply carried those out, since they could be opened later. The door of the storeroom where the private firearms were being kept yielded to two strong men with sledges in less than a minute of battering. Isketerol nodded approval. The best password is an ax, he thought. That was an old saying of the Sidonians, and he’d found much value in it.

  Inside was the smaller type of gun, pistols. Each was neatly labeled with its owner’s name; they were due to be returned to the private citizens soon, perhaps within the week-that had been one reason they decided on this night to make their strike and flee. Hands dragged in two large boxes, padded with blankets. Walker’s man, the gunsmith, began to toss weapons into each, carefully segregating out the magnums from the Saturday-night specials, and seeing that Walker’s box for the Yare got the former. Isketerol did the same for the long arms, where the differences were less subtle and the pictures he’d memorized made the work easy. Most of the best ones had already been sent aboard Eagle-that was Will’s task-but there were two that were especially formidable; Garands, Will called them, weapons with which the Amurrukan had fought a great war in Walker’s grandsire’s day. Improved somehow, something about twenty-round magazines. Lisketter’s people accepted the others, the.22 popguns and the kiddie can-plinkers, without dispute. Few of them were familiar with firearms, less than he was, even; and those who knew anything were away with Liskettef herself.

  Metal clattered on metal. Seconds crawled by like minutes, minutes like hours. Like a battle, Isketerol thought, working a dry mouth. Or rather like the waiting before one; he could remember feeling like this as a stripling, out with the city levy to fight off a raid by mountain tribesmen on the valley farms tributary to Tartessos.

  At last they were finished. Isketerol chivvied them out, turning to check that all the other doors to the building were locked from the inside. Then he shut the last one and stuck a strip of soft brass into the slot for the key, hammering the end home with the butt of his dagger and then breaking it off with a sideways blow. That would delay whoever came to check on the station, and moments might be crucial. He took a coat from the handcart and draped it over his shoulders, hiding the weapons at his belt. The crossbow went within, his hand on it as he stood beside the cart in the position he would walk.

  A quick glance up and down the street. Nobody was looking this way. “To the docks,” he said. “Walk as if you own the world.”

  If this plan succeeded, Isketerol son of Elantinin would own a good deal of it. His part had begun well. He could only ask the Powers that the others might do as well, and keep alert.

  “Go!”

  “Told you the blacksmith would be working,” Walker said, looking down at his watch. “Right where we need him.”

  Time to go for it. Three coordinated strikes. Yeah, Isketerol will bring his off. Lisketter��� fuck it, I’m committed. Go for it.

  He could smell the fear-sweat on the men behind him, Rodriguez and McAndrews. Casual, you dumb bastards, act casual, he thought. We’re just some friends out for a stroll. There were a fair number of people out tonight, dropping in on neighbors or heading for parties or whatever. Theirs wasn’t the only lantern drawing a yellow light through the dark streets away from the streetlamps of Main. He could smell the clean hot scent of burning charcoal from the big shed up ahead of them, hot metal, sneeze-making cinders, the heavy frying smell of the oil bath used for quenching and tempering.

  Dumb bastards. This is the safe part. You’re not committed till we go through that door.

  You took what material was to hand, but he wasn’t impressed with either. The Puerto Rican sailor thought with his balls, and McAndrews had more nonsense stuffe
d into his thick head than one of Lisketter’s flakes, just a different flavor. On the other hand, neither was a coward. McAndrews was even fairly bright, when his brain wasn’t focused on the Glories of Africa; squeamish, though.

  They could hear the clang of the hammer from the shed; it was a converted truck garage near Seahaven Engineering, chosen for its concrete floor. Smoke floated up from the new forge chimney, ghostly in the star-sheening night sky. Sheet metal had been laid around the brick of the stack, to lessen the risk of fire. Red light leaked out around the edges of the doors and through the big propped-open windows.

  Good. Only Martins and his bimbo there. There were six separate hearths inside, and a selection of special-purpose anvils. Walker pushed open the door just enough for a man’s body and slipped through. Even with good ventilation it was hot inside, and Martins’s bare skin shone with sweat. He was standing by the oil bath, and it hissed and bubbled smoke as he plunged the bright metal into it. Over by the forge his girlfriend, Barbara, rested at the pedal-worked bellows, her inevitable cat in her lap. She was a comfortable-looking woman in her late thirties, given to wearing long scarves; she’d run an herb store, before the Event.

  “Hey, man.” Martins looked up and smiled, his round-lensed glasses looking absurd on his long-nosed face. “Like, what’s happenin’? It ain’t the time for your regular lessons.”

  Walker jerked his head at the other two men. They spread out behind him, covering the entrances. I really need this turkey, he told himself. Martins knew his work; he was even a good teacher, and Walker had put himself out to learn the basics over the summer. Knowledge was always valuable, and among other things he now knew how the smith thought.

  “Your friends want some lessons too?” Martins said, his voice full of its usual dreamy mildness.

  “Actually, John,” Walker said, “what I’d like is for you to come along with me. Right now.”

  The mild brown eyes blinked at him. “Okay, but like, I’m sorry, man, I got some work I have to do. Another time, Okay?”