Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  Like home, he thought sardonically. Minus a couple of millennia or so. He’d been raised on a ranch up in the Bitterroot country of western Montana, a miserable little cow-calf spread that had swallowed his father and his older brothers and broken his mother in a lifelong losing battle with the bank and the weather. Back to the cowshit, but not for long. He’d gotten out at eighteen, working harder to make the Academy than he’d ever done roping or branding.

  There was an additional factor drawn up on the beach. Tartessian ships, two of them. They were the ships that’d been there last year, he recognized the horse heads at the bows. Isketerol must have been extremely persuasive back last spring to get his cousin to bring ships north this late in the sailing season; Walker didn’t like the thought of taking one of those glorified rowboats through a winter blow in the Channel, or the Bay of Biscay. The Tartessians didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere either, since they’d run up substantial-looking huts on the shore above the high-tide mark.

  “They’ll be here for the winter?” he asked Isketerol.

  The Tartessian nodded. “Sail home this near the storm season?” he said. “In the Yare, yes. In those, never. The Hungry One eats enough of us as it is, without tempting Him.”

  Now, just how far can I trust my good buddy Isketerol? Walker thought. Oddly enough, rather far, I think. For one thing, the Tartessian seemed to take certain types of promise very seriously; for another, their ambitions ran in concert. Or so I think. But he’s from a completely different background. His logic may be my madness. For that matter, look at how differently he and Alston thought, and they did come from the same background, more or less. Well, nothing ventured���

  “You go set up the meeting with Daurthunnicar,” he said. They clasped wrists. “This is the beginning of something good.”

  He watched the Tartessian depart, then called McAndrews and Cuddy; they stood quietly, waiting for him to talk. The voyage across the Atlantic had established discipline, at least. He stood, pressing his palms together and tapping the bunched fingers on his chin. Then, spearing a forefinger at each:

  “All right, this is going to be tricky. We have to get in good with the locals; and incidentally, we have to watch our Tartessian friends, just in case they decide to get a jump on their part of the bargain. McAndrews, you’re going to be in charge of the ship while I’m ashore.” The black upperclassman was the most reliable of them all. He was in this to save his beloved black Egyptians; Walker had promised to send him to Pharaoh’s court with a ship and a selection of goodies, when he was well set up. “I’ll leave you Smith, Gianelli���”

  He rapped out the orders, most of his mind on the dickering ahead, and a fraction wandering westward. If his luck was very good, Lisketter would manage not only to get killed-that was more or less inevitable-but to take the captain and the Eagle with her. Alston would certainly go after Lisketter first, with Chief Cofflin’s wife along on that particular Ship of Fools; that was why he’d persuaded Lisketter that Ms. Martha Cofflin would be indispensable. With only moderate luck, it would be spring before the captain arrived in England-and by then he planned to be ready to depart for points south, or to have an unassailable position here. He’d read up a little on Lisketier’s destination, and without her blinkers. They were going to be very unhappy when they got there.

  Good luck with the People of the Jaguar God, Skipper, he thought ironically.

  “Duck!”

  Everyone on the decks of the Bentley did. The booms swung across the deck and sails slapped taut as the schooner’s bow swung through the eye of the wind onto the other leg of her tack southwestward. Martha Cofflin felt her stomach heave again and forced it down by an effort of will. She closed her eyes on the painful brightness of the day and sipped again at the cup of broth.

  When she opened them again, Lisketter was standing near her, clutching at a stay.

  “It won’t work,” she said to the kidnapper.

  “I know it probably won’t,” Lisketter said with a sad smile. That was enough to surprise a raised eyebrow out of Martha. “But I have to try.”

  “Try what!” Exasperation drove out anger and even nausea. “Do you really think seven thousand people on Nantucket are going to overrun a continent and��� and shoot all the buffalo?”

  Lisketter shook her head. “It’s not that simple, although who knows what might happen in a few generations? But you’ve already begun trading with the Europeans, and they’ll learn things from you. Alston said it herself-in a few years, they’ll be able to sail here. What do you think they’ll do, if we don’t give the Native Americans some defense? They’ll conquer the Americas, three thousand years earlier than in the world we left. I know the people on Nantucket aren’t genocides, not really. But the��� the Iraiina, or the Tartessians, what about them?”

  Martha finished the broth and crossed her arms. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that you might persuade the Town Council to open peaceful contact with the more advanced Amerindian cultures? There would be profit in it for the island, as well. No, you have to hare off on this crazy stunt-”

  “They never listened to me! I was silenced!”

  “You and Andrea Dworkin,” Martha said scornfully. “They listened to you, all right; they just didn’t agree with you. Which isn’t surprising, considering the way you treated them like idiots or bad-mannered children. Did you think you could scold them into agreeing with you?”

  “I told them the truth,” she said quietly. “Now, Martha-”

  “That’s Ms. Cofflin to you, Pamela Lisketter.”

  “Ms. Cofflin. We’re here, you’re here, and I hope you’ll be reasonable and help us. You have knowledge that will be crucial.”

  Martha regarded her bleakly. “I’ll do my best to keep you alive,” she said, laying a hand on her stomach in unconscious protective reflex. “I daresay you won’t listen to me about that, either.”

  “I-we-intend to consider carefully anything you can tell us. Making contact with the Native Americans-”

  “Olmecs, isn’t it?” At the surprised look: “I do note what research people do.”

  “Yes, they seem to be the most likely to benefit from what we have to offer. In any case, making contact will be a very delicate matter. We don’t want to frighten them, or disrupt their culture more than absolutely necessary.”

  Oh, Lord have mercy, Martha thought. Does she really think that the Indians are so fragile that twenty people in a boat can bring them crashing down? Their bacteria might, of course, but Lisketter seemed to have been very careful about that.

  Instead Martha switched back to practical matters. “Do you really think you can get away with it? Think, will you? The Eagle is probably on our track right now.”

  “Unless they’re following that��� that��� Walker to Europe,” she said. “In any case, what can they do? We took the guns.”

  “Those that Walker didn’t hijack to Europe,” Martha said with malice aforethought. There was a certain satisfaction in seeing Lisketter flush. “You shot Jared and Captain Alston, Lisketter, but you didn’t kill either of them. Never do an enemy a small injury.” Particularly if the enemy is smarter and tougher than you’ll ever be. You and your brother both seem to think firearms are Evil Magical Talismans that you can wave and everyone has to obey you. No use telling her it didn’t work like that.

  It was amazing what a combination of strong emotion, faulty assumptions, and inexperience could do. Make a high-IQ type act like an utter natural-born damned fool, for instance.

  The one good thing about this, Marian Alston thought, is that tacking broad means we cover more ocean and are more likely to blunder into ‘em.

  The Eagle lay hard over with her port rail nearly under and white water foaming from the bow and hawse holes; the wind was out of the south-a little to the east of south-and they were making sixteen knots with all sail set. She locked her hands behind her back and gritted her teeth, taking little of her usual pleasure in the dolph
in grace of the big windjammer’s passage or the blood-flogging breeze and spindrift in her face. Sixteen knots by the log, but they were tacking, zigzagging up into the teeth of the wind and making more mileage left and right than forward. Eagle was square-rigged on her two forward masts, which meant she couldn’t point anything like as near to the wind as a schooner. That gave the Bentley a two-knot advantage in actual sea miles covered southward, overall, sailing straight into wind like this. She looked up into a cloudless sky. If the wind were to back and come out of the north, she could cannonball down at twice the Bentley’s best rate; schooners were at a disadvantage running before the wind, and the one she was chasing was no greyhound, nor was it well manned, probably.

  On the other hand, if I could run her straight before the wind, I might well simply sail past Bentley. The ship’s radar had a limited coverage, and it was a big, empty ocean. If Lisketter changed her plan and ran the Bentley into the Chesapeake or one of the big Gulf rivers, there wouldn’t be the chance of a Klansman at a Black Muslim convention of finding them. Everyone was keeping an eye out, too, not just the posted lookouts; that was an old Coast Guard tradition.

  Tom Hiller cleared his throat. “Very well, Mr. Hiller,” she said.

  “Aye aye, Captain.” Louder: “Ready about!”

  The orders echoed louder than they had before the Event, without the continual burr of generators and fans; those were secured for emergency use only, now.

  Feet thundered across the deck. At least they had a full crew-overfull. Walker had taken only six of the Eagle’s complement with him, thank God. None of them were men she would miss, except McAndrews, and she could guess how Walker had scammed the black cadet; no women among the deserters, she noted without surprise. As it was, there were a hundred and fifty sets of hands available for this maneuver where thirty would do at a pinch.

  Commands cracked out, to the helm, to the hands on the lines across the decks. Everything had to be adjusted throughout the maneuver, and precisely, with split-second timing.

  “Fore manned and ready,” shouted the foremast captain.

  “Main manned and ready.”

  “Mizzen manned and ready.”

  “Helm’s alee!” she ordered. “Right full rudder.”

  The four hands standing on the platforms beside the wheels heaved at the spokes. Down in the waist and on the forecastle deck came a chorus of heave��� ho as the lines controlling the yards that held the square sails braced to starboard were paid out and their mirror images drawn taut.

  “Ease the headsail sheets!”

  The ship’s bowsprit began to move from port to starboard, left to right. Dacron thuttered and flapped in thunder-cracks up aloft. She could feel the ship’s deck swaying back toward the level as the wind lost leverage on the sails. This was the critical part of the maneuver; unless they were hauled around sharp and the vessel’s momentum was sufficient to carry her through the dead spot, she could be taken aback and held in irons-sliding humiliatingly sternward.

  “Haul spanker boom amidships!”

  “Rise tacks and sheets!” Clewlines hauled the square sails up, spilling wind.

  “Mainsail��� haul!”

  The Eagle was through the eye of the wind, and the orders continued:

  “Shift headsail sheets!”

  “Ease spanker!”

  “Ease the helm!”

  The wheels spun, pointing her rudder amidships.

  “Let go, and haul! Set the main!”

  Eagle tilted to starboard. The sails swung, set, braced, filled out into lovely white curves. Feet moved across the deck in a dance more neatly choreographed than any ballet, making lines fast to belaying pins, cleats, and bits.

  “On the port tack, ma’am,” Hiller said, satisfaction in his voice.

  Alston looked at her watch and the clinometer, and overside. They were almost back up to speed, slicing southeast instead of southwest. “Six minutes forty-five seconds. Very good, Mr. Hiller.”

  He nodded. That had been very good. There was an easier way to come about onto the other tack, but it meant going the wrong way for a few minutes, and took a bite-sized chunk out of your forward passage.

  And there was no time to spare. One small consolation was that they knew, pretty well, where the Bentley was headed. The other was that Cofflin knew better than to nag her over the radio; she’d had superiors in uniform who hadn’t grasped the futility of jogging a subordinate’s elbow nearly so well. Even as it was, she felt an impatience that seemed strong enough to urge the Eagle faster through the water by a sheer effort of will.

  Swindapa came bounding up the gangway stairs from the waist, where she’d been helping out on the line teams. You never have to tell her twice, or find her work to do, Alston thought, fighting back a grin she knew would be both unprofessional and silly. The impulse faded quickly, driven out by worry. There would probably be fighting at the end of this trip, one way or the other.

  Loving means giving hostages to fortune, she told herself grimly. Do your best; it’s all anyone can.

  “That’s the Coatzacoalcos River,” the yachtsman among Lisketter’s followers said.

  Silence fell as the Bentley ghosted forward under an unmerciful noon. The air here where the Isthmus of Tehuantepec narrowed was hot, hazy and hot and damp, still and full of the smell of vegetable rot. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico-Martha supposed it should be called that, for want of another name-beat on the shores as the schooner coasted down along them; sometimes on beaches of white sand, as often on marsh and forest growing tangled to the water’s edge. They had stopped at islands for wood and water, never seeing a dweller. There were Indians in the Caribbean, she knew, but they were few and scattered. Farming hadn’t penetrated there yet, and wouldn’t for some centuries. Mile after mile, white beaches that turned jungle-green at the high-tide mark, islands like lush emeralds in the unbelievably blue sea.

  Martha listened to the conversation behind her at the wheel with half an ear, already convinced that the sailor was right. The maps were unreliable for the smaller things, lesser streams, shoals, reefs, the precise outlines of coasts; such had changed too much in the three millennia between now and the day the charts were drawn. That said, mountains and the great rivers were much the same as they’d be in the twentieth. This river was broad and deep, fringed by mangrove and marsh along the coast, rising up to dense jungle behind. Ebony, mahogany, dyewood, great buttressed trunks coming into view as the schooner slowed still more and breasted into the current. Vines laced them together, thicker than her thigh and running up to the tops of the canopy nearly two hundred feet above.

  The engine of the Bentley burbled into life for the first time in weeks. Sails came down with a rattle, to be roughly lashed to the booms. As the diesel blatting echoed back from the near bank of the river, birds exploded out of it. There were thousands of them, showers of feathered shapes in canary yellow, red, blue, sulfur gold, and sunset crimson. Parrots, macaws, others she couldn’t name, their cries loud and raucous in the heavy air. Alligators slipped off mudbanks into the water with little rippling splashes like low-slung dragons. Insects rose from the river and the swamps along it in clouds, and without the sea breeze to scatter them soon had everyone on the schooner’s deck slapping and scratching.

  “Do you have a depth sounder on this ship?” Martha asked.

  “No,” the yachtsman said. “But this looks pretty deep.”

  Oh, God, Martha thought, wiping at her face with a handkerchief. Sweat lay oily, refusing to dry. At least she’d stopped getting so sick.

  Most of the crew-she supposed that was the way to describe Lisketter’s followers, after a couple of weeks at sea-were resting along the rails of the schooner, pointing and chattering. Everyone was tanned dark, and they looked shaggy and ragged, but they’d managed to get here without sinking or running onto something, rather to Martha’s surprise.

  She turned to Lisketter. “You should have someone checking the depth,” she said. “And sh
ouldn’t you break out the guns, after all the trouble you went to to steal them?”

  Lisketter had been staring out at the passing wilderness of wood and jungle, transfixed. She came to herself with a start. “Whatever for?” she said. “There’s nobody here but the Native Americans we’ve come to help.”

  Martha reined in her sarcasm with a massive effort of will. “They might��� they might misunderstand you,” she said. “After all, we can’t talk to them until someone’s learned their language. How do you expect them to know you’re friendly?”

  “Well, they’d certainly misunderstand any show of force,” Lisketter said, shrugging. “We’ll demonstrate them when we get to their leadership. From what I’ve read, the Olmecs had a deep spiritual relationship with nature, so it’ll probably be priests or priestesses of some sort.”

  Martha closed her eyes and sighed, sinking back on the blanket, only to come alert again when voices rose in excitement. The river had narrowed, though it was still hundreds of yards across. On the north side was a village in a clearing, set on the natural levees that always flanked a lowland river like this, given to seasonal floods. Fields surrounded it; plots of maize stood green, overgrown with bean vines, and interspersed with cotton and other plants she couldn’t begin to identify. The houses were rectangular, thatched, with sides of mud and wattle to waist height and rolled-up screens of matting below. Canoes were drawn up on the dirt beach that fronted the slow-moving river, some of them quite large; others were out on the water, fishing. The buildings straggled, except for some larger ones grouped in a square of beaten dirt around a rectangular earth platform in the center. That held something much larger atop it, still timber and thatch but with corner posts intricately carved. Smoke drifted up from hearths outside the doors of huts and from a larger fire on the platform.

  Must be a few hundred people at least, Martha thought. They were dressed simply, a twisted loincloth for the men and a short skirt for the women; otherwise their brown skins were bare to the late-day sun. As the Bentley came into sight they stood for a moment stock-still and amazed. They were almost close enough to see expressions, more than close enough to hear the terror that sent men and women pelting screaming back toward their homes, that drove canoes ashore with flashing blades. A warbling, bellowing sound came from the low earth platform in the center. Conch-shell trumpet, she knew with a tremor that chilled even in this steam-oven heat. From there, order spread through the panic and chaos of the village. A small knot of men descended from the mound, the sun bright on their cloaks and masks and vestments, on nodding plumes and banners. They moved among the villagers, pushing and shoving them into silence, shouting, haranguing, slapping faces. Men dashed off to their huts, returned with spears and other weapons she couldn’t make out. They moved down to the shore.