Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  . “Plus we have to be careful about by-products,” Martha said. “No PCBs or dioxin in the groundwater here, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Both men nodded; Nantucket was a small island, and its water supply was completely dependent on the underground aquifer. Keeping that unpolluted had been hard enough up in the twentieth. The island didn’t have that much fresh water to spare in the first place-if you over-pumped the underground supply it got brackish and then salt-and they couldn’t possibly let poisons filter down through the sandy soil into the reservoir below.

  “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” Leaton said, and Martha nodded. Jared blinked and shrugged; he got the gist, if not the actual reference. “We’re redoing the early Industrial Revolution, only we can’t afford to make the mistakes they did. Anyway, smokeless powder’s out of the question, for a couple of years at least. Black powder we can do-but there the limiting factor’s the raw materials. Charcoal is no problem, but we’re just now getting significant amounts of saltpeter from the sewage works. And sulfur, well, the nearest accessible sources are down in the Caribbean.”

  “Through jungle and up volcanoes,” Cofflin added. He’d taken a look at the reports. “It’s even less popular than the salt-mining detail. Thanks for that mechanical scoop thing, by the way-it’s taken a lot of the heartbreak out of that salt collection.”

  “Plus it’s dangerous,” Leaton went on. “Making black gunpowder, that is, no way to avoid occasional frictional explosions, that’s why Du Pont got out of the business. Once we’re up above the couple-of-pounds-a-batch level, I’m going to move we put the plant out by the old airport.”

  He sighed. “We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got��� I showed you our Hawkeye addition to the ROATS program, didn’t I?”

  “No, actually,” Cofflin said. “With this job and a kid, some details just don’t get through. Captain Alston was satisfied, and I took her word for it.”

  “Ah. Well, come have a look, then.”

  Cofflin suspected that the machinist just liked an excuse to get out of his office and get his hands on some machinery; but hell, he didn’t like sailing a desk much himself. They followed him out into the main shop, and then into the tangle of outdoor projects on the other side of the main building. Leaton dodged into a shed and brought out a weapon, slinging a leather satchel over one shoulder as well.

  “Here it is,” he said with diffident pride.

  “Hmm.”

  Cofflin hefted the rifle��� better check. Yes, spiral grooves down the barrel. Fully stocked in black walnut, looking a little like a hunting rifle except for the hammer and frizzen pan on the side. He swung it up to his shoulder and looked down the barrel; heavier than an M-16, about nine pounds, but well balanced and with a nice solid feel. Mauser-style adjustable sights.

  “Feels sweet,” he said. “A flintlock, I see.”

  “Ayup. We’ve got another model ready to go into production when we finally get the percussion-cap problem licked. We’re going to use a tape primer method, like a kid’s cap pistol, only using sheet copper instead of paper.”

  “How’s it work?” Cofflin asked.

  “Pull the hammer back to half cock,” Leaton said. “Then hold the rifle in your left hand and raise that knob along the back of the stock.”

  “Ah,” Cofflin said.

  There was a plunger-shaped brass tube bolted to the underside of the section that had swung up, set so that the head of it would slide into the rear of the chamber when the lever was pushed back down.

  “Hmm. Will that give you a tight enough gas seal?”

  “Nope,” Leaton admitted. “Not by itself. And drawn-brass cartridges are not feasible, right now; too big an operation. Here’s what we did instead.”

  He opened the satchel hung over his shoulder and handed the Chief a round of ammunition. The bullet was shaped much like the rifle rounds he was familar with. Not jacketed, though, and it looked like���

  “Plain lead?” he said.

  “Slightly alloyed with antimony and tin. Ten millimeter, or point-four-inch, if you prefer.”

  Cofflin snorted, and Martha gave a dry chuckle. The metric-versus-old-style controversy was taking up a lot of time at the more recent Meetings, with the constitution on hold until the expeditionary force in Britain returned. The question of whether or not to hold Daffodil Weekend was a close second.

  The rest of the cartridge was paper, and he could feel the black powder crunching within as he rolled it between thumb and forefinger. The rear felt thicker and stiffer.

  “Go ahead,” Leaton said eagerly. “There’s a wad of greased felt at the base of the round. It packs into the gap between the head of the plunger and the chamber under the gas pressure, and seals it-well enough for one use, anyway.”

  Cofflin slid the cartridge into the chamber with his thumb and snapped the lever back down; an unseen spring held it snugly in its groove atop the rifle’s stock. “Ayup, I see,” he said admiringly.

  “That’s really quite clever,” Martha said, her tone neutral.

  The men both looked at her. She raised a brow and continued: “No, really. I’m just not an enthusiast. Guns are like tractors or can openers to me-tools. It’s a gender thing, I think.”

  “Marian likes weapons,” Cofflin said, feeling slightly defensive.

  “No, she’s interested in them. They’re part of her work, as filing systems were for me when I was a librarian,” Martha corrected. “And swords are her recreation, like squash rackets. Anyway, dear, I wouldn’t deny you the pleasure of firing it.”

  Jared put a hand over his heart. “Cut to the quick,” he said. “Put in m’ place. Range is over there, Ron?”

  They walked to a shooting gallery that ended in a high sand mound with a wooden target. “Prime it like this,” Leaton said. He pushed the pan forward and dropped a measured quantity of powder into it from a spring-loaded flask, then flipped it back.

  Cofflin raised the rifle to his shoulder, snuggled it firmly, and thumbed the hammer back to full cock. The target was only a hundred yards away, no need to adjust the sights. Squeeze the trigger gently���

  Shhssst. Flame and whitish smoke shot out of the pan. Crack on the heels of that, the gap almost imperceptible. The rifle thumped his shoulder, harder than he was used to but not intolerably. More dirty-white smoke shot out the muzzle. Almost at once a gray fleck appeared on the bull’s-eye, where the bullet had punched through the paper to the wood beneath; it was about an inch up and two to the right of center.

  “Not bad,” he said admiringly, lowering the rifle and working the lever again. It slid up, releasing more sulfur-smelling smoke. “I’m rusty, I think, to miss that far on a clout shot. How’d you load the next round?”

  “Just push,” Leaton explained. “The spent wad blasts out ahead of the next bullet, and as a bonus it cleans out some of the black-powder fouling. Insert the next cartridge, prime the pan, and you’re ready to go again. It shoots faster than the crossbows with practice, it’s less muscular effort, and it’s got three times the range. More stopping power, too-that big soft bullet makes some pretty ugly wounds, and the muzzle velocity is up around fourteen hundred feet per second. And it’ll punch through any practical metal armor.”

  He paused, pursing his lips. “It’s not perfect, of course. Flintlocks are vulnerable to wet weather-we can’t help that. You have to watch the fouling buildup in the barrel, clean it regularly, and not let the chamber get too hot between rounds. But it’s a hell of a lot better than the crossbows; about as good as 1860s, 1870s weapons, except for the priming.”

  “Now break my heart,” Cofflin said. Walker can’t have anything like this. Not enough precision machining capacity. “Not enough ammunition?”

  “Not enough ammunition,” Leaton sighed. “The bullets are no problem. We can stamp them out of sections of drawn lead wire, and half the sailboats here had lead keel weights, so there’s plenty of the metal. It’s the powder.”

/>   Cofflin sighed along with the machinist. A wonderful rifle with no ammunition was just a rather awkward club. And you not only had to have enough to Use, you had to have enough for regular practice.

  “Keep the miracles coming, Ron. We’d better get back to our baby and the job,” Cofflin said.

  “What’s next on the schedule?” he asked, as they walked back through the factory and picked their daughter up from the cooing guard. The Indians were gone, leaving only a faint woodland smell and a hackle-raising memory.

  “Lunch at Angelica’s,” Martha said. Brand had stayed in her farmhouse; it was the most practical headquarters for overseeing the island’s agriculture. “Officially, we’re going to discuss who gets the last of the rooted cuttings for the fruit trees. Unofficially, she’s going to nag you about that idea of hers, putting in a farming settlement on Long Island.”

  “Good God,” he groaned. “Doesn’t she ever give up?”

  “Rarely,” Martha said. “It’s a national characteristic.”

  They came out the end door of the wooden extension. A carriage with a single horse between shafts was waiting for them; it looked rather odd, low-slung, with car wheels and a wooden body, but the seats were comfortable and there were good springs and shock absorbers. They climbed into the open passenger compartment and settled themselves. The teenage driver clucked and flapped the reins, and the vehicle set off; up Washington, to avoid some street repairs, down Stone Alley, past the Unitarian church on Orange, up Cherry to Prospect, then out into open country along Milk until it became Hummock Pond Road. Cofflin shook his head slightly as the countryside slid past. Not the same island at all, he thought. Oh, the contours of the land were there, but apart from a strip along the road and some windbreaks, the scrub of bayberry, low oak, hawthorn, rose, and whatever was mostly gone-haggled-off stubs at most. Instead there were open fields divided by board-and-post fences, many with the beginnings of hawthorn hedges planted along them.

  “And it looks good,” he said aloud; Martha nodded in instant comprehension, looking down at the baby on her lap. Young Marian smiled toothlessly and drooled in response, stuffing a small chubby fist into her own mouth.

  “Damn good,” Cofflin said.

  A tourist might not think so. The fields-wheat and barley and rye planted last fall, corn and oats, potatoes and vegetables put in this spring, an occasional young orchard-were a bit uneven and straggly. The long lines of field workers were just barely keeping ahead of the weeds, too. But that was life out there, dearly bought with aching hard work. That waving blue-flowered field of flax wasn’t just pretty; it was rope and sails for the fishing boats that brought in the other two-thirds of their food.

  “You can lose the habit of taking food for granted really quickly,” Martha said. “I love the sight of those cucumbers.”

  “Ayup,” Jared said. “But notice how sensitive we’ve all become to the weather?”

  She looked skyward reflexively-clouds, but no rain today-and they shared a laugh. Everyone did talk about the weather now, and not just because there wasn’t any TV or national newspapers. The weather was important.

  “I hope Angelica doesn’t go on too long about Long Island,” he said, as the carriage turned off onto the appropriately named Brand Farm Road.

  That was unpaved, and gravel crunched under the wheels. Gravel we’ve got plenty of, he thought, making an automatic note to check on how much asphalt they had left in stock for patching streets.

  A piece of gravel bounced off the wooden side of the carriage, flung up by the horse’s hooves; there was a faint smell of dust in the air, despite yesterday’s rain. Spring flowers starred the sides of the road, daffodils and cosmos and the first tangled roses. There was a fair cluster of livestock this close to Brand Farm, on fields planted to ryegrass and clover; Angelica was keeping most of it under her eye, breeding stock being as precious as it was and the new farmers so inexperienced. Last year’s weanling calves brought from Britain were small shaggy surly-looking adolescent cattle now, with budding horns and polls of hair hanging over their eyes; next year they’d be breeding themselves. The young ewes were adults with offspring of their own, tottering beside their mothers on wobbly legs and butting for the udder. A clutch of yearling foals went by, led on halters by young girls; getting them used to the idea of doing what they were told, he supposed. Far too much hauling and pulling was being done with human muscle, and steam engines weren’t really suited for field work. More horses would be a godsend.

  The baby began to complain, wiggling with little snuffles and whu-wha sounds. Martha did a quick check as they passed the brewery, winepress, and small vineyard just before the house; a cleared field off to the right was being planted with grafted rootstocks for more vines. The field was full of people, many of them rising to wave and call greetings as the Cofflins went by; they waved back.

  “She’s not wet. That’s the ‘I’m getting a little hungry’ one,” she said. “I’ll leave you to tell Angelica no about Long Island again while I feed her.”

  Jared nodded; some mothers thought nothing of nursing in public, but Martha didn’t work that way. The carriage slowed as it went uphill to the farmhouse proper, amid its cluster of outbuildings and barns and the great greenhouses. The heavy timber frame of a new barn was going up, with people pulling on ropes and shouting.

  “You might consider the Long Island idea again,” she went on.

  “Not you too! We don’t have the people to spare, and besides-there are the locals.”

  “Only a few hundred on the whole island,” she said with ruthless practicality. “That’s scarcely an impediment. And the climate and soil are a lot better for agriculture. Not this year or next, I grant you, but Dr. Coleman says that with the birthrate the way it is since the Event, our population’s going to double in the next thirty-eight years or less. Not counting immigration.”

  “Immigration?” Jared said, raising his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have thought so, from what we saw this morning.”

  “Oh, I was thinking of Swindapa’s people,” Martha said, rocking the infant to try to calm its growing volume of complaint. “They seem compatible enough. Odd, but compatible, and eager to learn.”

  Now, there’s a thought, Jared mused. He made a mental note of it. More people would be so useful, but not if they caused too much trouble.

  He looked east for a moment. “It all depends,” he said.

  “And we can talk about the university��� again. Never too early to start planning.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “It’s the only way the Spear Mark will listen to you. A lot of them, ah, the Grandmothers sort of��� well, irritate them,” Swindapa had said. “They always have. And the Grandmothers treat them like bad little children.”

  Which leaves me out here in the woods, buck nekkid with mosquitoes biting me, Marian Alston thought, gripping her spear. Well, not quite. I get to wear this knife, too. What was that remark I made last spring, about the bare-assed spear-chuckers of England?

  “Goddam Paleolithic rituals,” Alston whispered, barely moving her lips.

  Literally Paleolithic. The Arnsteins thought this probably went right back before agriculture, two or three thousand years. She gritted her teeth against the chill that raised goose bumps down her dew-slick ebony skin. She was crouched in a clump of tall ferns, with the crown of a hundred-foot beech tree overhead. Most of the trees about her were oaks, though, huge and gnarled and shaggy. Water dripped down from the fresh green of the leaves and the ferns, splashing on her. Dammit, hypothermia and pneumonia are not what I need. She was covered with the juices of crushed plants, too, that were supposed to kill her scent. They certainly itched. The forest was more open than she’d have expected, kept that way by the shading crowns of the big trees and by periodic forest fires that swept away the undergrowth. It was eerily quiet, only a few birdcalls and the buzz of insects.

  She breathed deeply, forcing thought out of her mind as Sensei Hishiba had taught. The
discomfort did not vanish, but bit by bit it became simply another sensation, cramping and cold and hunger flowing without feedback across the surface of her perceptions. Slowly everything faded but her surroundings, rustle of growth, drip of water on the deep soft layer of rotting leaves, the faint cool scents of decay and growth. Outlines grew sharp, down to the feathery moss that coated the gnarled oak bark.

  And��� a rustle. Faint. A footfall, a small sharp clomp. She let her eyes drift closed, focusing. Inch by fractional inch the spear went back and her body shifted balance without moving, feet digging into the softness of the forest floor, pressing until wet clay oozed up between her toes.

  The eyelids drifted up again. Alston made no attempt to focus them, let movement and color flow by and through. Her heart sped, not in excitement but in natural preparation for movement. She took a long, slow breath-

  ��� and lunged.

  The movement was too shocking-sudden for the buck to do more than begin a leap sideways. The long sharp steel thudded into its flank, behind the left shoulder; she followed through, shoving and twisting as the wood jerked in her hands. A moment later the deer pulled free and staggered off sideways, head down. Blood pumped from its flanks and mouth and nostrils, spattered her with thick gobbets; it staggered sideways, tripped, went down by the hindquarters. For an instant its forelegs struggled to lift it, while she waited, panting. Then it laid down its head, kicked, voided, and died.

  She leaned on the spear, panting, so exhausted that her knees began to buckle. Takes it out of you. When you focused like that, there was nothing held back.

  “Time’s a-wastin’,” she said, laying down the spear and kneeling beside the dead animal. Sorry, she thought, touching the soft neck. It was necessary.