“Excuse me, Chief.” He looked down the table; it was Lisa Gerrard. Might have known.
“Yes, Lisa?” He tried to keep the coldness out of his voice. Gerrard wasn’t a bad person, exactly. She did good work on the School Committee, though the closest she came to children of her own was seven cats. Just can’t keep her mouth from flapping when she hears certain words. What was that Russian doctor���Pavlov?
“Why do we need to include, um, sexual orientation? Isn’t that special rights for some and not others? Those people are covered by the general rights, aren’t they?”
Alston touched him on the arm, and he nodded to her. She leaned forward, looking coolly down the stretch of mahogany. “As one of those people, Ms. Gerrard-three times over, black, gay, and female-it’s my experience that we’re not covered by general provisions unless it’s made quite plain. Which is why, fo’ example, I lost custody of my children, in fact couldn’t even ask for it. Accordingly I’m for that provision. Strongly. Very strongly.”
“All in favor?” Hands went up; close enough this time that he had to count. “Abstentions? Opposed? Passed.”
He made a mental note to start talking people around.
About sixty-forty. If it was that close, it might not pass the Meeting without some work-mainly on getting people to attend; the constitution was being passed in chunks, and not everyone bothered to attend every session, so a small band of enthusiasts could be disproportionately influential if he didn’t watch out. Maybe we should make voting compulsory, like the Aussies did? Ian Arnstein had brought that up a couple of sessions ago. On the other hand, no. People too damned lazy to vote didn’t deserve a say. He’d pass the word to Sandy Rapczewicz, and she’d see that the Guard people showed up en masse; most of them would vote for legally protecting cream-cheese three-way llama bondage if they knew Captain Alston favored it, but Marian’d never dream of using her position to influence the turnout. Cofflin had no such inhibitions, and neither did the XO. Hmm. Father Gomez, he’d noticed, abstained-which might mean either���
Christ, I hate politics. Even when you were doing the right thing it could make you feel like you had rancid oil on your soul.
“And that’s the last item on tonight’s agenda. The minutes’ll be posted at the Hub and the Athenaeum as usual, copies of the proposed articles in the Warrant, and we’ll all vote on this chunk next Meeting. Thanks, people.”
“What my husband means is that he’s ready for dinner and would all those who aren’t eating here please leave,” Martha said.
Cofflin’s stomach rumbled again in counterpoint, which brought a general laugh. He stood at the door, shaking hands as people opened their umbrellas and Martha helped them find their coats. The chill night air crept in, raw with the fog and rain.
The door closed finally, leaving only himself, Martha, Alston, and the Fiernan; the Arnsteins were going to settle for sandwiches at a meeting of their chess club. Cofflin winced slightly; he’d taken on Ian in a friendly game once, and it had lasted a whole six moves. Doreen beat him in three. Doc Coleman could give either of them a run for their money, though, and the game had become quite popular over the winter. The four remaining looked at each other and sighed, then a thin wail came from upstairs.
“Our overlord’s voice,” Martha said resignedly. “Now if only I could learn to tell the ‘I’m hungry’ cry from the ‘I need to be changed’ cry. Or the ‘Pay attention to me’ sub-variety.”
“I come too,” Swindapa said eagerly, joining the older woman on the stairs.
Cofflin smiled to himself; according to Martha, the Fiernan thought cloth diapers were the greatest invention since matches.
“Better you than me, Martha,” Alston said. “I’m going to check the roast. Lordy, how some of those people love to hear themselves talk.”
He busied himself clearing and setting the table, taking out the middle leaves that had extended it for the committee meeting and rummaging in the sideboy for the plates and cutlery. The carving knife and sharpening steel rasped together; the pigs the Eagle had brought back from Britain last spring had thrived-there were nearly a thousand of them now-but you couldn’t say they were tender eating. Flavorful, yes. Tender, no. Then he uncorked a bottle of the island’s red wine, which Martha told him needed to be done to let the stuff breathe. I can’t tell the difference, myself.
“Drink?” Cofflin said, when Alston came back.
“Wouldn’t say no,” Alston replied. “The roast’s standing. Ready to carve in about five minutes.”
“Thanks for making the time to attend these meetings. It’s pretty dull stuff,” Cofflin said, handing her a bourbon-and-water. This was her sixth committee meeting, but the first time she’d spoken more than a few words.
“No, I wouldn’t say dull,” she said, her voice remote as she sipped at the drink and bared her teeth at the bite. “Interestin’, more like. Seeing history up close.” She paused for a moment and then went on: “You know, before��� all this, I’d never met many Yankees. The real thing, I mean, not just people who live no’th of Mason and Dixon’s line.”
The silence stretched. They leaned back in their chairs, looking into the low blue-red flicker of the heartwood coals. At last he looked over at her. “Penny for ‘em,” he said.
She turned and looked into his eyes. “Jared, I love this place.”
Cofflin blinked surprise; that was a bit effusive, for her. “Well��� thanks.”
“No, I mean it.” Her voice was still remote and calm, but there was a flat intensity of purpose in it. “I was in the Guard a long time, since I turned eighteen, a lot of it down in the Gulf. DEA liaison shit, Columbians, refugees��� when we weren’t pulling drunken speedboaters out from under after a three-day lovefest with the eels and crabs. Staring up the ass end of the world.”
“I was a cop too��� well, ayup, you’ve got a point. I was a small-town cop, here.”
“Still and all, I started out thinking I was doin’ something worthwhile for the country, you know? And that meant a lot to me, because the country did-does, for that matter, or I wouldn’t have kept wearin’ the uniform��� After a while, I got convinced I was standing at the bottom of the sewer drain, tryin’ to push the flow back up with a plumber’s helper. A while more, and I got to thinkin’ the whole country had flushed itself right down that drain and we were just waiting to hit the septic tank. Got posted to Eagle, training duty, and sometimes at night I’d think��� am I just giving these kids a shuck-and-jive?”
They sat listening to the crackle and soft popping sounds from the hearth, and the rippling tap of rain on the windows.
“Here���” she said.
“Here���” Cofflin went on. “No gangbangers, no Wall Street downsizers, no nutcases on a mission from God, no ‘national media,’ no redneck black-helicopter paranoids, no multi-cultis, no animal rights lunatics-not anymore, thanks to the Jaguar God-no trial lawyers, no Beltway crowd with their collective head so far up their butts they’re looking at their tonsils from the rear. Our own share of natural-born damn fools as Martha likes to call ‘em, but they’re nothing by comparison.”
She raised her glass. “Exactly, my friend. Exactly.” The full lips quirked in a wry smile. “No damnosa hereditas like the foundin’ fathers had on their backs, either. Tom Jefferson talked about havin’ the wolf by the ears, but hell, the wolfs ears get mighty sore too. Here we don’t have all that.”
Slowly, he said: “That’s why you finally gave in and started coming to these committee meetings?”
Alston nodded. “But Jared, I’m��� not qualified. Oh, I can give advice on stuff in my area, but basically what I do is kick ass and take names. I’m a hammer. To me, all the problems look like nails, and they aren’t.”
“We’re none of us qualified. I was a fisherman and a cop; Martha was a librarian; Macy’s a carpenter turned contractor; Starbuck was a small-town businessman turned town clerk; the Arnsteins barely knew or cared tha
t the real world existed.”
“Christ, that’s better than a bunch of sociologists and politico lawyers. Ian and Doreen are as bright as anyone I’ve ever met, and between ‘em it seems like they’ve read every book in the world, sometimes; Martha’s about as smart, and less naive. Macy drives me nuts, drives ever’body crazy, but he’s got a conscience like a bedstead carved out of granite rock-uncomfortable, but it’s solid to the core. And Jared, you know people, and you’ll do what you think is right if you have to head-butt your way through a brick wall to do it. Plus you’ve gotten really good at persuading, in your own way.”
“Ah-” He flushed, looking down into his glass uncomfortably. “I’ll do my best.”
“Know you will. Just��� be careful, okay? Because it’s for the whole world.”
That thought had occurred to him, now and then. It was a sobering one. “Bargain on that, lady.” They touched their glasses.
Alston sighed. “I wish my kids were here, you know? I really do. For their sakes.”
As if on cue, Martha and Swindapa came down from the second-floor nursery. “She’s asleep, at last,” Martha said, wiping her hands on a towel. “For a while. As much as half an hour, if we’re lucky.”
“She’s a beautiful baby-very good, as sweet as new butter,” Swindapa said, smiling. “If I had a baby as good-natured, I’d���”
Then the expression ran away from her face, and she stood with her eyes closed, tears squeezing out from under the lids. Poor kid, Cofflin thought. Evidently having children was real important to her people. A fully equipped fertility lab back up in the twentieth might have been able to do something, but weeks of a raging untreated pelvic inflammation had probably put her beyond any benefit from the island’s clinic.
Martha put an awkward arm around her shoulders. Alston came over and led her to the seat by the fire, pressing the glass of bourbon-and-water into her hand and perching on the arm of the easy chair beside her.
“Your older sister has some children, doesn’t she, honey-bunch?” the black woman said gently, stroking her hair. “What’re they like? Tell me.”
Martha drew him out into the kitchen, snagging the long knife and fork along the way. “She’ll be all right by the time you’re finished carving,” she murmured.
“It’s called division of labor,” Walker said to Ohotolarix.
The phrase was in English; Iraiina didn’t have the words for it, not without a paragraph of circumlocutions. You couldn’t say mass or table of organization in it either, not really.
The long shed was filled with men and women and children at work; most of them wore iron collars with a loop at the back for attaching shackles. At one end of the building thin rods of metal went into a machine of wooden drums and crank handles. Four strong men heaved on levers, and the iron rod was drawn through cast-iron dies until it became wire wound on a length of smooth round oak. There was a smell of hot iron and stale sweat, and the raw timbers the shed was fashioned of.
The wire went from bench to bench; some of the slaves cut the links into circles, others flattened the ends, still others fitted the rings together into preset shapes. At last the rivets were closed by lever-operated presses, and the end product was tumbled in boxes of sand to polish it, then washed and wiped down with flaxseed oil and rolled up for packing and transport. Chain-mail hauberks, in six standard sizes that he’d found would fit nearly everybody; knee-length, with short sleeves and a slit up before and behind so that the wearer could ride a horse. Not quite as good as the plate suits Leaton made back on the island, but almost infinitely better than the local equivalents.
“I see, lord,” Ohotolarix said thoughtfully when he’d explained further. “Because each task is division among many.” The Iraiina frowned in puzzlement for a moment.
“But why is this better than having each of these slaves and workmen make a whole set of this fine armor?” He wore his own now, did so virtually every waking moment, in fact.
“If a man does only one thing, he works faster,” Walker said. “And if you only have to teach him one thing, he can learn it quickly-little skill is involved in doing only one step over and over again. And if he does only that one thing, it’s easier to check that he does it well and quickly, and to drive him on.”
A sort of primitive assembly-line system, although he’d gotten the idea from Adam Smith’s description of how pins were made in the eighteenth century.
The young Iraiina frowned, thinking the matter through. “I see it must be as you say, lord,” he said at last. “Eka, truth, I’ve never seen so many work so swiftly for so long. It’s like���” He searched for words. “It’s like the spokes of a wheel, going ‘round and ‘round.”
Walker nodded, unsurprised; these people were burst workers. At crisis times like the harvest they labored at a pace that would kill most residents of the twentieth, but much of the rest of their working days they spent loafing along, stopping when they pleased. None of them had any precise time sense, either, and they absolutely hated working regular hours at high intensity as a steady thing.
Not as much as they hate flogging or the hotbox or the cross, though, he thought with some satisfaction. Or Hong’s patented special gelding without anesthesia, although that was reserved for extreme cases. He grimaced a little; he wasn’t what you’d call a squeamish man, but there were times when Hong’s kid-in-a-candy-store approach to torture made him a little uneasy, not to mention this cult she’d started, with herself as the avatar of the Lady of Pain���
Outside a bell rang to mark the noon hour, echoing across the buildings and fields. At a shout from an overseer the workers in the shed downed their tools. Wheeled carts came in with tubs of food: porridge for the slaves, meat and bread and beer for the skilled freemen and overseers, a covered plate of ham and eggs for the American supervising the whole operation-Rodriguez, today. That would probably get a little cold; the sailor had taken one of the women back into the little wicker cubicle where the accounts were kept the minute the bell went, and the grunts and moans and rhythmic rattling were already loud. Walker grinned; Rodriguez was becoming something of a legend for the amount of action he got.
Still thinks with his balls, he thought, slightly contemptuous. But he’s learned to keep it out of working hours. And he’d become downright devoted to the boss.
Walker and his chief Iraiina follower walked out into the courtyard. Walkerburg had grown considerably over the winter; he had sixty full-time warriors and retainers now-some from the new allied tribes, as well as Iraiina-plus their wives and children and dependents and the Americans and their women; most of them had a steady squeeze now, or more than one. And the slaves, who outnumbered all the rest put together. Plus the horses, milch cows, and draft oxen they needed, with corrals on the pastures downwind toward the river, and the watermill, the workshops, the warehouses. They’d logged off most of the heavy timber in the area over the cold months, and muddy ground interspersed with stumps spread around. New leaf was showing on the trees he’d left for shade and appearance, and a haze of grass and grain across the fields; the sun shone on wind-ruffled puddles and cuffed at the hair he’d let grow long in accordance with local custom.
Warriors drilled, marching, thrusting in unison with their spears or firing crossbows under McAndrews’s direction, or rode their horses around an obstacle course. An Iraiina he’d taught was breaking horses to the saddle in a corral, cowboy-fashion. Laborers unloaded a broad-wheeled Conestoga wagon full of iron bars and barrel staves and charcoal and tanned hides. Another was being loaded with small barrels full of the output from his latest project, a still for homemade white lightning. That was wildly popular among the natives despite being rawly undrinkable; he supposed that was because they’d never been exposed to distilled liquor before, but it was another hold on the chiefs.
“Can we plow and herd enough to support so many?” Ohotolarix said, worry fighting with pride in his tone. None of the native settlements was as big as this; they didn
’t have the organization to feed large numbers, and disease was a constant threat to any substantial group.
“No,” Walker replied. “We don’t need to.”
They walked across toward the main house; he nodded to followers of his about their errands, and took a deep breath of the fresh early-spring air. Apart from woodsmoke and the odors of baking and cooking, there was little taint in it. Alice had seen to the sanitation, with his full power behind her. He’d even set up a bathhouse, and made the slaves wash regularly with soap, another of his innovations. The natives were already talking in awe of how few died here, particularly children. The place was certainly swarming with rug rats.
“No, we won’t plow that much,” he went on aloud. “But we’ll get ample grain and beans and beef from our share of the rahax’s levies on our tributary folk, and from our Earther tenants. Here we’ll raise just enough for garden truck, and fresh grazing for our beasts. Thus we’ll be freed to fight, and work on other things.”
And he’d had Martins run up a few plows and nineteenth-century-style seed drills, miles better than the simple wooden crook with a stone share the locals used. Nobody here had much grasp on stuff like liming the soil or rotating crops, either. Not that he intended to spend his time on agriculture, but he’d spread that sort of thing around, first of all on the lands the rahax had given him directly to work with slaves and tenants. It ought to be easy enough to double or triple productivity, which would be essential when he got around to the sort of building he had in mind. You could round up all the slaves you pleased, but they weren’t much good if you couldn’t feed them; that went double for armies. He was a young man; plenty of time.
Ohotolarix nodded and strode off to his own house; he had a growing family, and his youngest son was named Hwalkarz. The American walked into the hall of the two-story log dwelling, waiting while a servant knelt to take off his muddy boots and fit felt slippers. Alice Hong looked up from her papers on the table in the dining room and rang a bell for more food, then rubbed out some notes on a flat slate and chalked in others. Keruwthena’s young sisters sat on either side of her; Hong was training them up, easier than with someone older. That was the main drawback of ruling primitives. You could make them do things, but you had to show them how first.
Island in the Sea of Time Page 50