Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  “I’m afraid it’ll have to be now, John,” Walker smiled, coming closer. “Really.”

  “Man, I can’t go anywhere now. You know how it is, you’re tempering something, it like rilly has to be done in its own time. It’s the flow, man.”

  Barbara was looking up, blinking, an edge of suspicion in her eyes. Something snapped in William’s head. He drew the Beretta from its waist holster under his jacket and brought it around.

  “Now, you dumb fossil hippie bastard!”

  His voice had taken on a crack of command that usually brought results. Martins only blinked again, his mouth setting stubbornly under the walrus mustache.

  “Guns,” he said. “Oh, I don’t like guns. I’m sorry for you, man. Heavy. You’re carrying some heavy power trip there, like, authoritarian stuff? No way am I going to, like, reinforce that sort of negative trip.” He turned away, lifted the blade out of the oil, and began to wipe it down.

  Barbara had given a little scream at the sight of the pistol. Now her eyes flickered to the other two men, the hands resting under their sweatsuit jackets.

  “Johnnie,” she said breathlessly, “I don’t think these guys are kidding. Maybe you’d better go with them.”

  “Hey, Barbs-you can’t let stuff like this divert your energy, you know? It’s Will’s karma. He has to work it through.”

  William Walker smiled bleakly and bolstered his pistol. This had not been altogether unanticipated. The tanto he drew from under his left armpit was one of Marlins’s own, a heavy-backed thing with a blade six inches long, very slightly curved, with a slanting chisel point. The edge was whetted to just short of razor sharpness. He took four lithe steps and grabbed Barbara by the ear, dragging her to her feet with a squeal of pain.

  Martins rounded on him, his hammer going up. “Drop her, man! Drop her now!” His sheeplike face was transformed, forgelight gleaming in his eyes and turning them red. The twenty-pound forging hammer went up as if it weighed no more than a thistle.

  Walker smiled and reached around Barbara from behind, letting the tip of his knife rest just under her eye. “Let’s put it this way, John. You start cooperating, and I won’t cut this stupid cunt here a new set of orifices. You do anything but what I say, and I’ll start taking bits off her; she’s a big girl, and there are lots of bits. You understand this concept, John? Do you grok it?”

  The hammer dropped slowly. “Yeah,” he said hollowly. “Careful, man, that’s sharp.”

  Barbara was crying with short, sharp inhalations, tears gleaming in the red-and-white light of the bed of coals in the forge.

  “Glad we’re communicating at last, John. Here’s what you’re going to do.”

  William Walker swung onto the Eagle’s deck and turned smartly to salute the flag. “Permission to come aboard, Ms. Hendriksson,” he said, turning to the OOD and saluting her in turn.

  “Very well, Mr. Walker,” she said, returning the courtesy. Less formally: “What’s up, Will?”

  “Working party, Greta,” he said. “A few last things the skipper wanted shifted to the Yare before you take her over tomorrow. Thought I’d get them done tonight so you’d have a clear deck in the morning and no distractions.”

  “Thanks,” Hendriksson said, impressed with his zeal-it was a holiday, after all. “You’ve been doing a great job working her up.”

  “De nada,” Walker said with an easy smile. He’d cultivated Hendriksson. In a very comradely way; she had a boyfriend ashore now.

  He looked around the deck. Not much activity, as you’d expect with the ship at anchor and most of the crew on liberty ashore. The swell was slight, and the ship rode easily under a sky ablaze with stars, a frosted band against the night. Not quite deserted, though. There were still enough people to screw things up completely, if the alarm was given. Speed was the ticket, that and acting as if he had a perfect right to be where he was and doing what he was.

  “Sooner done, sooner I can get to sleep,” he said. Hendriksson nodded and returned to her post near the wheel, trotting up the gangway from the waist to the poop deck.

  Walker fought not to wheeze relief. Sweat trickled down his flanks; it could have been very awkward if she’d stayed closer. A dozen men followed him up the companionway, moving with professional briskness; he’d drilled them in the movements often enough, although in fact only about half of them were Coast Guard.

  “This way,” he barked, waving them forward with his clipboard.

  Lights were dimmed below; he led them down to the second deck, and the locked door that held the Eagle’s armory. Full now, since the ship was nearly ready to sail; full with the pick of the island’s firearms, what was left after the warehouse fire back in spring. Gray steel door, and a plain gray lock.

  “Jimmie,” he whispered. Even in a small town like Nantucket you could find appropriate talents, if you looked. A small man eeled his way forward, knelt by the door, and went to work.

  Four endless minutes later it clicked open; all he’d had to do was savagely hiss the restless into silence. The door swung back, and Walker shone his flashlight within.

  “All right, get the light.” A larger battery-powered item went on. “That’s the machine gun. Get that and the ammunition first. Rifles next, then the shotguns, then the handguns, then the cleaning oil and parts. Keep it looking normal, no running, but move.”

  Seconds stretched agonizingly. When two men dropped a box of ammunition they were carrying by the rope-sling handles he had all he could do not to light into them with fists and feet as the deck boomed. Minutes crawled by, and exultation with them. I’m going to do it, by God!

  The last boxes went up the stairwells and out on the deck. He never knew exactly what it was that woke Commander Rapczewicz, only that he heard her voice from above, raised in a sharp tone of command:

  “You there! Yes, you. Who are you? What are you doing on the Eagle?”

  She was the XO. She knew everyone authorized to be on the ship, at least by sight��� and the approximations of uniform he’d slowly, painfully accumulated for his recruits were only that, makeshifts. He went up the companionway in four bounding steps and burst onto the deck. Willpower slugged him to a halt, made him walk over calmly with a smile on his face, extending the clipboard.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. She was hastily dressed-buttons misaligned-and blinking sleep out of her eyes, but narrowly suspicious. “It’s right here-”

  That brought him within arm’s reach. The heel of his right hand rocketed up, punching into the angle of her jaw. Sandy Rapczewicz was a solidly built woman, but his hundred and ninety pounds outweighed her mass by forty. She snapped backward with her heels barely touching the ground and lay in a crumpled heap with blood running from her nose and mouth. Luckily that brought her into the shadows by the bulwark. He looked around. Nobody.

  “Get that crate down to the boat,” he said, forcing himself out of his crouch. “Now, you fools. Move it.” The flat calm of his voice was a better lash than a shriek. They fumbled it up and started down the companionway, feet clattering.

  “Mr. Walker. Is everything all right?”

  Walker turned at the hail from the quarterdeck. Well, there goes any chance of quietly scuttling the Eagle, he thought savagely. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Aloud: “Everything’s okay, just dropped a box,” he said.

  Hendriksson turned to go. It was at that moment that Sandy Rapczewicz crawled into a pool of light and collapsed again, her blood-slick face ghastly in the yellow light of the lamps. Walker responded instantly, pulling out his Beretta and firing. Bullets thunked into teak decking and spanged off steel with vicious red sparks. The lieutenant threw herself flat. Walker whirled and raced down the gangway, half-throwing the two men and their burden ahead of him into the boat and leaping after. The rowboat swayed wildly and shipped water over one side; it was perilously heavy-laden, even for a calm night.

  “Out oars and stroke!” he roared.

  They responded, clumsily at first, then bending their backs
to it. He turned and knelt, holding the pistol in a two-handed range grip, squeezing off the rest of the magazine at the side of Eagle’s quarterdeck, shooting at movement and lights. The boat gathered way, heading for the riding lights of the Yare where she stood out from Nantucket Town’s breakwaters. Voices and shouts were rising on the Eagle��� but he’d put the XO in the hospital for a while, at least, and Hendriksson was a by-the-book type. She’d send for orders; besides, there probably wasn’t anything but a handgun or two left aboard the ship. If that. Damn, I’ve got all the guns in the world!

  The boat came alongside the Yare. Lines came overside, and men made them fast to guns and crates. More hands hauled them up; Walker went up a line himself, hand over hand. Isketerol stood by the wheel, hands on hips, cloak flapping a little in the night breeze. He was grinning, and Walker felt himself answering the expression.

  “We did it!” he said. A bit premature, but they had done it.

  “Arucurtag of the Sea was with us,” the Tartessian whooped.

  Two women huddled behind him; Alice Hong, and what’s-her-name, Rosita. Martins and his girlfriend were securely handcuffed below, and���

  The last boxes came aboard and went below, secured with padlock and chain.

  “A taste of things to come,” he said to the Iberian. “The guns weren’t half as hard to steal as that bastard of a quarterhorse.” As if to punctuate his words an indignant neigh came from the hold, and the drumbeat sound of hooves on wood.

  Turning to his crew: “Start engines!”

  The diesel coughed to life under his feet. That took longer and made more noise than he liked, but there was no point in trying to sail her off in the face of an onshore breeze, not with this scratch crew. They’d be clumsy at it despite the economical nature of the schooner’s rig, much easier to set than a square-rigger of the same size. You’ll all be sailors by the time we reach our destination, he promised himself. A vast wild exhilaration was building in him, and he struggled to keep it under control. Another boat was rocking not far away; smaller than the Yare, but more heavily crewed. Walker walked to the port rail and called across, cupping his hands:

  “Thanks for the help, and good luck!” he called. Thanks for all the fish, he was tempted to say, but he doubted she’d catch the reference. “Also goodbye!”

  Panic-stricken cries rose; the other boat’s engines were turning over as well. That had been the plan, to run the engines dry building up a lead. The plan had been to do it together, though. He laughed, a barking sound.

  “Where are you going?” Pamela Lisketter cried, springing up to the rail and clutching at a line. “We need you!”

  “But I don’t need you,” he chuckled again, and shouted: “And wherever I’m going, it isn’t fucking Mexico, you dumb bitch. Give my regards to the proto-taco-benders and Formative Period bean-eaters!”

  He roared laughter again; it had been the hardest work of his life, putting on a convincing imitation of a would-be tofu muncher and humanitarian weepy for this collection of��� pathetic geeks and tree-hugging wimps, he decided. That had a fair, objective sound to it.

  Give her credit, though, he thought, still chuckling. Lisketter didn’t waste any more time-didn’t even stop for several of her crew, who went overside and began swimming back to Nantucket. She simply put the helm about and headed west��� Isketerol already had the Yare moving east; he’d had a thorough grounding in how to use the wheel.

  Walker went to stand beside the Tartessian. “I see you brought Rosita,” he said to the adventurer��� other adventurer, he thought. Freedom was like wings, like striding over the earth, omnipotent.

  “But of course,” Isketerol said, looking down at where she huddled against the rail. “I promised her that I would take her as a wife. And so I will. Third wife, to be sure-but when we are finished, my third wife will be more than Pharaoh’s great queen.” He jerked his chin without looking around. “Your Alice, as well.”

  Hong got to her feet. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Will? This tame goon of yours comes along and strong-arms us-”

  He swung around, still grinning, and pointed a finger. It didn’t quite touch the young doctor’s nose, but she jarred to a halt. “Shut up,” he said. “You’re along because I don’t intend to entrust my precious personal body to the local witch doctors if I get sick. But I’m a healthy guy, so your value isn’t infinite.” She froze, clasping her arms around her nightgown.

  Restoring order and setting watches took a few minutes. It left him still full of energy, bouncing on his toes, sleep out of the question, like a hit of cocaine-something he’d tried once or twice, on confiscated material that went missing. No more than that-William Walker wasn’t going to wreck himself to make a bunch of Colombian greaseballs rich-but the sensation was pretty much the same. Except that this high was free, and high as the gleaming moon above him. The thudding diesel drove the schooner’s sharp prow eastward at a steady ten knots, water curling back from it in opalescent wings. He grabbed Alice Hong by one arm and pushed her ahead of him down the stairs before the wheel, then sternward and into the captain’s cabin. There were two big bunks on either side of a table, with a semicircle of padded seats under the fantail windows. Out of them he could see the Yare’s wake disappearing behind him.

  The woman rounded on him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you son of a bitch?” she began.

  Crack. His hand took her across the face, just hard enough to leave a red imprint. She staggered back a step and caught herself against the edge of the table.

  “Hey, Will-” Her voice was tremulous. “No need to get rough.”

  “But you like it rough, don’t you, Alice?” he said, sliding off his belt.

  A combination of fear and queasy excitement brightened her eyes and made her moisten her lips. She did; he’d discovered Alice Hong had more kinks than a corkscrew, which made her more interesting��� and more useful, in some respects. Leather whistled in his hand.

  “Please, Will��� what are you doing?”

  “Whatever I want, from now on,” he said. “I told you about it, remember?”

  “I thought you were just bullshitting me, fantasies to get me hot!”

  “No, Alice. I’m going to be a king��� and those who follow me are going to have wealth and power beyond their dreams. As long as they obey me. Turn around.”

  She obeyed. He gripped the back of her nightgown and ripped it off with a single yank that brought a gasp from her. A hand between the shoulder blades bent her over the table.

  Smack. The leather raised a welt across her buttocks. “Isn’t that right, Alice? Anything I want.” Smack.

  “Yes, God, yes!”

  He laughed and unzipped. “There are a lot of things you’d like, aren’t there, Alice?” he said, and thrust into her. She yelped and gripped the edges of the table. Wet, he thought. This is one sick bitch puppy. Wet tightness around him. He began to move, eyes on the moonlit road across the waters behind the ship.

  “You’d like to have a place where you could dish it out, too, when you felt like it,” he said. “Gold and silk, wealth, girls, boys, do some real rough stuff of your own, with no laws and no place you had to stop. Real whips, real knives.”

  “Yes,” she hissed, pushing back to meet him. “Yes, you bastard-you weren’t just-Jesus!-you weren’t just daydreaming.”

  He laughed, one hand gripping the back of her neck with painful force, thrusting into her with a savagery that battered her thighs against the edge of the table.

  “I’m the man who makes dreams come true.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  October, Year 1 A.E.

  “She’s coming ‘round,” Coleman said.

  Cofflin rolled his wheelchair closer. The left leg was straight out before him, the wound a dull ache under the anesthetic. The other pain couldn’t be dulled-he could feel it nibbling at the edges of his mind, roiling with a killing rage. But there was no time for it, not if he w
as to do what had to be done.

  Alston’s eyes fluttered open. They were bloodshot, wandering. Coleman leaned over her and shone a light into one and the other. A long-fingered black hand came up; Swindapa gripped it in hers and bent close. Alston’s eyes closed again for a moment, and she sighed. Cofflin fought down a moment of sickening envy; it wasn’t Alston’s fault that he was the one left alone.

  “Water.”

  A nurse cranked the hospital bed up. “Hospital” was a bit too grand for the little forty-bed clinic that was all the island had-all it had needed, when the mainland’s hospitals and specialists were close. Morning sunlight shone through the open windows, and a breath of sea and flowers. The garden outside was heedlessly, cruelly beautiful with roses.

  Swindapa held a cup to Alston’s lips. The officer felt at the bandages above her left ear. When she spoke, it was quiet but coherent. “Hurts like hell.”

  “You’re a very lucky woman,” Coleman said, in the semi-scolding tone doctors always used in these situations.

  “Ah’m lucky��� the bitch was usin’ a popgun,” she said. “Concussion?”

  “It skipped around the bone,” Coleman said. “Light bullet, as you guessed. Some blood loss, minor concussion”- which was better than a serious one, but that was all you could say for it-“and you’ll have a small scar. White streak through your hair, maybe. It didn’t even need a stitch.”

  Alston sighed again. Her eyes swiveled around to Cofflin. “Fill me in.”

  “It was Lisketter and her gang,” he said. “They took a boat-the schooner, Bentley-and kidnapped Martha. And I couldn’t do a God damned thing.” His fist pounded the arm of the chair, once, twice.

  “Not��� with a bullet through your knee,” Alston responded. “That the whole of it?”

  Cofflin shook his head. “Your��� formerly your Lieutenant Walker was in on it. We got a couple of prisoners, Lisketter’s people who jumped ship. Evidently he and Isketerol, the Tartessian, scammed Lisketter-got her to help them hijack the town’s weapons and create a diversion. Meanwhile Walker got a gang of his own together, some Coast Guard, most townies, and took the weapons from the Eagle’s armory, together with the Yare, its cargo, and John Martins and his lady Barbara. They were kidnapped too, evidently. Lisketter thought Walker was going down to San Lorenzo, Mexico, up the Coatzacoalcos River, to help her, some crazy scheme to arm the Indians there to protect them from big bad us. Then when the Yare and the Bentley were both out beyond the breakwaters, Walker gave her the finger and sailed east.”