Island in the Sea of Time

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

July – August, Year 2 A.E.

Seahaven Engineering had a sales shop attached to it these days. It was a long wooden structure reaching out from one side near what had been the front entrance, covering a stretch of redundant parking lot. Most of the shop sold metalware to islanders, everything from hardware to eggbeaters, sausage grinders to sheet-steel stoves, but one corner was devoted to the mainland trade. As he came through the door Jared Cofflin suppressed an impulse to hold his breath at the sight of the four Indians there; there was just nothing they could do about diseases, except take a few precautions and otherwise let them run their course. Unless they cut the mainland off completely, and that just wasn't practical.

One of the Indians was a man, hook-nosed in a narrow high-cheeked impassive face, looking weathered and ageless and probably in his thirties; his hair was shaved to a strip down the center of his head and a pigtail behind, the bare scalp on either side painted vermilion in a fashion that seemed common to all the New England tribes in this era- at least, they hadn't met any that didn't do it that way, just as the women all wore theirs in braids. His body was naked except for a hide breechclout and an islander blanket over one shoulder; he had a steel-bladed knife on one hip, and a long-hafted island-made trade hatchet thrust through the back of his belt. The women wore a longer wraparound of soft-tanned deerskin like a short skirt, with ornaments of shell beads and bones around their necks and porcupine-quill work on their clothes. One of them was in her twenties, with a bundle-wrapped baby on her hip, the others in their early teens; they all carried heavy basketwork containers on their backs. Cofflin could smell them, a sort of hard summery odor combined with leather and the oil on their hair.

At a gesture from the man they set their burdens down on the single oak plank that served as a counter, four feet broad and four inches thick. Behind it were racks with the goods that held his eye: steel knives, spearheads, axes, hatchets, fishhooks and line, nets with lead sinkers, metal traps. The women were chattering with each other and pointing as well, at metal pots and pans, awls, scissors, cloth, cards of needles-Cofflin knew from reports that they used tailored and sewn clothing of leather in cold weather. One made a soft exclamation as she picked up a necklace of burnished copper pennies and let it run through her hands, then ducked her head obediently as the man spoke sharply and put it down again. A third looked guilty as she put aside a mirror. The islander behind the counter helped unload the sacks; Cofflin whistled silently at the sight of pure-white winter ermine pelts. Fur coats had become extremely popular over the cold winter months without oil for central heating. Besides that, the packs seemed to contain only small quantities of any one item: bark jars of nuts, crystallized maple sugar, dozens of varieties of herbs and plants and patches of deer, elk, moose, and beaver hide.

"Doesn't seem to be much of anything there, Jack," Cofflin said.

Jack Elkins looked up. "Hi, Chief! No, it's samples. Hardcase here-that's as close as I can get to pronouncing his name-"

"At least it wasn't King Phillip," Martha muttered.

"-brings the samples here, we show him what we've got, we agree on quantities, and he brings the actual stuff to Providence Base over on the mainland and picks up his merchandise. Easier that way. I think he's collecting from a lot of his friends and relatives, sort of an entrepreneur."

Cofflin blinked, surprised. "Mighty fancy deal, since you can't talk to him," he said.

"Oh, he's picked up a little English," Elkins said.

The Indian looked up from sorting his goods. "Hardcase very good talk English," he said with an indescribable accent, then inclined his head in an odd gesture and returned to his work.

"And you can do a lot by holding up fingers and such."

"Ayup," Cofflin replied. Well, they may not have a market economy, but they understand swapping. "Surprised they can spare the time to find all this stuff."

Martha nodded. "Lot of underemployment in most hunter-gatherer economies," she said. "No point in working to get a surplus, because there's nothing you can do with it. We provide an outlet, and the trade will build up fast. Provided there are any Indians left around here to do business with."

Jared winced. Meanwhile Elkins was demonstrating a metal gadget about the size of his hand. He crumbled tinder into a shallow pan. Above that was a steel wheel with a roughened surface; the islander wound up a spring inside it with a spanner key. Then he clicked a holder with a piece of flint in it against the surface of the wheel and pressed a release stud. The wheel spun against the flint, releasing a shower of sparks into the pan. Elkins blew on the tinder softly, then tipped it out into a clay dish on the counter full of wood shavings. They caught and sent a tendril of smoke upward. The islander waited until flames were crackling, then smothered them with a lid.

The Indian's eyes flared interest as he took the fire-starter up, turning it over and over in his fingers. Cofflin wasn't surprised; he'd seen Martha's Scouts demonstrate using a bow-type fire drill. Fifteen minutes to start a fire, if you were lucky-and everything was bone-dry. Evidently the local Indians hadn't even gotten that far. They were still using the older method of twirling a stick between the palms, and that could take hours. This would be a real improvement."

Of course, once they're used to it, they'll be dependent on it, he thought uneasily. The same went for woven cloth and metal tools, even more so. Martha nodded when he voiced the thought aloud, and replied:

"No telling. No telling how that virus epidemic disrupted their society either… Nothing much we can do, dear."

One of the Indian women had looked up with a startled expression at Martha's voice, and she put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of surprise. Cofflin followed her gaze; his daughter was in a stroller in front of his wife, sleeping peacefully. The Indian woman craned her head to see around the hood of the baby carriage, then came over to look down. She unslung her own-well, papoose, I suppose-and held it out to Martha, smiling broadly and speaking in her own fast-rising, slow-falling language. Martha smiled back at her and picked up young Marian; the women held their babies side by side, the Indian fascinated by the pink skin and the cloth diaper with its safety pin. She exclaimed and laughed when the American demonstrated that, bringing her own around to nurse as she did so. The Cofflins' child yawned, waved pudgy hands, and went back to sleep.

Well, only fair, Jared thought, smiling. She didn't do much sleeping last night, and so neither did we.

The man's voice rose behind them. Then he was at the Indian woman's side, pulling her away with a swift hard tug on one braid. She cried out sharply in pain, then stood half-crouched. He cuffed her across the side of the head, then raised the hand again.

"Hold it, dickweed!"

The guard who'd been sitting unobtrusively on a stool in one corner pushed between them. There was a bolt locked into the firing groove of her crossbow, the edges of the three-bladed head glinting cruel and sharp in the sunlight that came through the window behind her. The Indian froze. One hand moved very slightly toward the knife at his belt.

"Back off, shithead!" the guard barked. "Now. I mean it, fucker. Back off or your liver does the shish kebab thing."

Sweat beaded the Indian's forehead; he knew exactly what one of those crossbows could do. The Nantucketers had demonstrated, and also refused to sell them at any price. Behind him the clerk brought another out from under the counter and laid it on the wood with a small deliberate clatter. The Indian drew himself up, turned, and walked back to his bundles of goods, the woman with the papoose following meekly behind him. The bargaining resumed, slow and stiff.

Cofflin let out a breath he hadn't been conscious of holding. Martha put the baby back in the carriage, tucking her in; there was a small protesting murmur.

"You have much trouble like that?" Cofflin asked the guard. Amelia Seckel, his mind prompted him. As far as he knew, she was working for Seahaven's clerical department. "Ms. Seckel," he added.

"Nope, not often, Chief. Just, you know, sometimes with these guys you have to use, like, visual aids to get things across." She patted her crossbow. "It's the universal language. That's why Ron has one of us out here when they're in to trade, me or John or Fred Carter. Hey, cute kid! You want I should watch her while you're in there? Bit noisy on the workshop floor for a youngster."

"Thanks, Ms. Seckel, I'll take you up on that," he said. "Culture clash," he murmured to his wife as they turned for the main entrance.

Martha nodded, her mouth still drawn thin. "Well, that settles Angelica's notion, I think."

"What-oh."

Angelica Brand had been wondering aloud at Council meetings if they couldn't recruit some temporary harvest labor on the mainland. It would be extremely convenient; with enough seed and to spare, they were clearing more land and planting a lot more this year, and every other project was crying out for hands as well. Putting everything on hold while they got in the harvest was an absolute pain in the fundament-and the various crops meant that harvest stretched through most of the summer and on into fall.

On the other hand, the locals didn't look like being the best imaginable braceros, and anyway, it was a bad precedent to start relying on foreign labor, he supposed.

"I see what you mean."

Martha nodded again, a gesture sharp enough to cut hide. "Well, there's always the Sir Charles Napier method of cultural reconciliation," she said. At his raised eyebrow, she went on: "He was a British governor in India, back- you know what I mean-in the 1830s. A delegation of Brahmins came to him and complained that he was oppressing them by forbidding suttee, widow-burning, that it was part of their religion."

"What did he tell them?" Cofflin asked, curious.

"Roughly…" She assumed a British accent; it wasn't too different from her native academic New England:

"It is your custom to burn widows. We also have a custom. When men burn a woman alive, we take those men, tie a rope around their necks, and hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your national custom. And then we will follow ours."

A few people looked up as Cofflin guffawed. "There's British understatement for you," he said. "We're not really in a position to do much crusading, though."

"No, but we'll do what we can where we can." She swallowed. "That's one thing I became quite determined about during the… episode… down south."

He touched her shoulder, squeezing in reassurance.

"I didn't think Indians were so hard on women," he said, changing the subject. "The Iroquois and all that."

"Depends," Martha said, relaxing. "Lots of variation from time to time and place to place, tribe to tribe-well, Sicily and Sweden weren't exactly alike up in the twentieth, were they? Or New England and south Texas, come to that. Offhand, I'd say it was agriculture that made the difference here. When these woodland Indians took-would have taken-up maize and bean farming, women raised the crops and it probably increased their general say in things."

The inside of the machine shop was noisy, also steamy and hot despite the big doors leading to the water being left open. There were four large steam engines going now. Dozens of lathes, grinders, drill presses, and machines more complex whined and growled and screamed. As the Cofflins entered a yell of triumph went up from a crowd at the far end of the building. They walked over, peering at the new machine. It was vaguely shaped like an elongated upright C on a heavy flat base, about twelve feet tall; a cylinder was fixed by wrist-thick bolts to the top, and from it depended a heavy rod with a hammerlike weight at the end. A steel-slab anvil rested below it; Ron Leaton was just placing an egg on that. He stepped back, gripped a lever with a theatrical flourish, and pulled it toward him. The hammer on the end of the piston rod came down on the egg… and stopped, barely touching it. The control lever sent it back upward with a hiss and chunk sound.

Leaton stepped forward, grinning, and picked up the egg. He peeled it-hard-boiled, evidently-and ate it with ostentatious relish. The crowd dispersed back to their tasks, laughing and back-slapping.

"Another masterpiece of invention?" Cofflin asked dryly.

"Naysmith's steam hammer-pneumatic, actually; we're using compressed air," Leaton said cheerfully, wiping his hands on his inevitable oily rag and stuffing it back into a pocket of his overalls. "He did that bit with the egg to show it had precision as well as a heavy wallop, and I thought, what the hell, it worked for him-" He shrugged. "It'll be really useful, now that we're making progress with that cupola furnace. With that and the hammer, we can start doing some real forging work-crankshafts, propeller shafts even."

"Good work," Cofflin said, sincerely impressed. Leaton was a godsend; without the seed of his little basement shop, the island as a whole would be a lot farther behind than it was. "What was it you wanted to discuss with us, Ron?" He had a couple of things to say himself, but it was easier if Leaton started the conversation.

"Well, a couple of things, Jared, Martha," the proto-industrialist said.

The three of them walked over to his office, a plank box built in a corner. They ducked in and lifted tools, samples, plans, and parts off the board chairs before they sat.

"First thing is, I need more lubricants and more leather for drive belts," he said.

"Talk to the whaling skippers and Delms," Cofflin said immediately. Delms had taken over the contract on the whale rendery down by the Easy Street basin, with a tannery as a sideline. Cofflin approved. Let Delms take the continuous flack for the way it smelled. There was a motion afoot to have the whole thing moved farther from town, anyway, and the bonemeal plant and salting works along with it.

His mouth quirked up at one corner. "Government's out of that business, Ron. Thank God."

"And we're getting too much ash built up here," Leaton said. The engines were all wood-fired, and the valuable waste was supposed to go onto the soil immediately.

"Take that up with Angelica and the farmers," Cofflin replied promptly. This time he grinned outright. "It's their fertilizer. Government's out of that, too. Christ, but it's good to be able to say that!"

Leaton laughed ruefully. "All right, what good are you these days?" He shook his head. "The Town still is in charge of unused buildings, isn't it? We could use double the space."

Jared and Martha looked at each other. She cleared her throat. "Ronald, the Council has been considering that. We were thinking that it might be advisable to have some of your people start their own engineering shops, for the simpler work. Town would help them get started, the way it did you."

"Oh." Leaton blinked, surprised. "Not satisfied with the job I'm doing?" he asked, sounding slightly hurt.

"Hell no," Jared said. "You're doing a wonderful job. It's policy. Better to have competition, ayup? And we want to encourage people to set up on their own, not have too many on wages."

"Oh." Leaton frowned thoughtfully. "You know, that's not a bad idea, now that I come to think of it. Must be a bit annoying, only having me to come to when you need something done."

Glad you see the point, Cofflin thought with an inaudible sigh of relief. These days it seemed that everyone on the island had a wonderful idea that needed a machine built to do it, everything from flax-crushing and ropemaking to pressing hazelnut oil, and only Seahaven to do any of it. It was better to have a lot of little firms, where more people had a chance to become their own boss. Speaking of which… He glanced over at Martha.

"We were talking with Starbuck about organizing the financial setup here, too," she said. "Now that things are getting less informal. Organizing Seahaven as a company, that is. You put up your experience and the original machine tools, the Town provides the building and all the raw materials we've furnished, and the staff gets a share too that they hold as a block trust, and anyone can cash their share out if they leave. We thought that forty-thirty-thirty would be a proper ratio, organized as a joint-stock company. It won't make all that much practical difference right away, but for the long term…"

"Ah." Leaton frowned even harder. "Well, to tell you the truth, I've been thinking about organization myself, this last couple of months. Right now we've got everything jumbled up together-splitting up a bit would help, ah, even out the flows all 'round. Save time and effort. For example, we made up the blowers and hearth and so forth for the glassmaking plant, but there's no earthly reason it should be run as part of Seahaven."

"Exactly," Cofflin said, relieved.

Martha nodded. "Wish that glassworks was more useful than it is," she added. "We've got the glass jars, but you need tight lids for heat canning, though, and it's hard to do that without rubber washer rings."

They all sighed agreement. Everyone had gotten extremely sick of salt fish and meat last winter, even if wild greens had kept scurvy and other deficiency diseases at bay. Nobody had wanted to see another piece of dried dulse by spring, either. The icehouses and bigger vegetable crops would help with that this year, and vary the diet, but it would be nice to be able to put up vegetables and fruits in quantity.

"Terri Susman had an idea about that," Leaton said. "She thinks we can reprocess tires to get good-quality sealing rubber. Have to get the steel wire and the cord out, of course, then chop up and reheat the rubber."

"Have her talk to Martha, then," Cofflin said. She was in charge of screening new Town-backed projects. "We should get on to that before summer, when the truck crops start coming in. Plenty of glass jars available now, if we can get the sealing we need."

Martha made a note on a pad she kept with her. "We'll need sulfur to cure raw rubber, won't we?" she said.

Leaton nodded vigorously. "That's getting to be our problem," he said. "Mechanical things, that I and my people can handle. It's chemistry that we're running into bottlenecks with. I could use some sulfuric acid for pickling and cleaning steel, God knows I could, but we can't make it in quantity-and what we do make is cruddy, full of impurities, and the quality is variable as hell. Same with nitric acid. Here, let me show you."

He pulled a scrap of crinkly-looking cotton cloth from a drawer of his desk and put it in a metal pan on the top. Then he took out a fire-starter, snapped it, and dumped the tinder. The cloth went up with a whoosh, a subdued crackling, and a puff of bitter smoke.

"There's our prospect of nitro powder," he said, exasperation in his tone. "If we could do it, we could get blasting explosive and propellants out of sawdust and cloth scraps, anything with cellulose. But we can't. The acid we make's too dirty, and we can't stabilize the results-it goes off if you breathe on it. The chemistry teacher over at the high school, Cynthia Dawes, she's working on it. Probably get it right in a year or two, but it's the old story, not enough people, specialists especially."

. "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.

The sun had fallen, and the air was growing cooler despite the great fire in the ancient pit at their backs and the smaller blazes around the edge of the clearing. "It's a new thing," one of the men grumbled. "A foreigner…"

Swindapa glared at him. Pelanatorn hushed him with a gesture. "Not the first," he said. "Let the forest spirits decide. If she brings her deer, well enough."

A younger man's voice called out, cracking with excitement. "It is the hour!"

Swindapa stood with the others beside the high-leaping fire, beating time on the ground with her spear, listening to the thudding rhythm and the slapping of palms on drumheads that matched it. Sweat ran down her face under the overshadowing tanned mask of a deer, down her flanks beneath its hide. Around her stood the ranks of the Spear Mark, their heads bearing the likeness of deer and boar, aurochs and wolf and bear, the bronze or Eagle People steel of their spears glinting reddish. She strained her eyes into the spark-shot darkness, knowing it was useless-the trees came close here, and nothing was visible under their branches. Wind ghosted out of them, cool and green on her hot skin, smelling of green and damp earth.

The chant broke, but the drums continued under it like a giant's heartbeat, echoing back from the forest edge.

"Terge ahwan!" someone shouted.

That was in the Old Tongue; The hunter comes. The rest of them took it up, making a new chant in the flame-shot darkness. The crowd parted for Marian. The bloody hide of her kill was draped around her flanks, and the open eyes of the head stared out from above hers. The butchered quarters and organs dragged behind her on a travois of poles bound with sinew.

A man in breechclout and leggings stood forth. Gold bands shone around the tusks of his boar mask and on the haft of the ceremonial mace in his hand. He held it up to bar her way.

"Shm' u-ahwa?" he asked. Who comes?

"Na-ahawun't'ngamo sssgama nwn'tu," Marian replied, her voice loud and firm. One who brings meat for the people. She stood tall and let the travois fall, holding out her spear so that the bloodied head could be seen.

"Na-terge ahwan!" the boar-man shouted. It is a hunter who comes!

The crowd shouted it out together: "Na-terge ahwan!"

Swindapa felt her heart swell. Marian was doing everything perfectly-even the difficult sounds of the Old Tongue, the hunter's language, that nobody really spoke anymore. Helpers came forward to take the meat away for preparation, and to throw buckets of water over the initiate-part of the ceremony, more comfortable, and preparation for what must follow. Sleek wetness glistened in the firelight, like a statue of living onyx.

"Is the hunter weary?" the man with the boar said. "Does the hunter seek to rest?"

"The hunter runs faster than the deer, longer than the wolf," Marian answered. "The hunter runs hotter than the breath of fire."

She turned left and began to walk. The Spear Mark formed a laneway for her, in a spiral that led counterclockwise around the blaze again and again. A tense silence, then a spear lashed out-reversed, the butt low to trip her. Without breaking stride she dove over it, in a forward roll that seemed to bounce her back to her feet as if on cords let down from the moon. The Art, Swindapa thought. Ah, if only I could move like that!

To the Spear Mark it seemed like magic. A roar of approval went up. More spearshafts darted out, and sling cords swung to tangle and trip. Beneath the mask, Swindapa bit her lip in worry. She's so hard to see in the dark, someone might slip. Nobody was supposed to be really hurt in this, but accidents were not unknown-particularly if someone had ill-wishers. She'd collected more than a few bruises herself, on the night of her initiation; a lot of men felt annoyed when a woman took the Spear Mark. None landed on Marian that she could see, and the woman of the Eagle People ran faster and faster as the rite prescribed, dancing, jinking, dodging, throwing herself forward in diving rolls over an outstretched shaft or leg. The hunters yelled, egging her on; the sound rose as she disappeared behind the fire, and Swindapa knew she was sprinting up the ramp. And…

She soared over the flames; the Fiernan girl felt the blast of heat as if it were drying her own skin. Landing, standing with legs braced and spear held aloft on widespread arms.

Swindapa grounded her own spear, pulled down the deer mask, and danced out into the cleared space before the fire, taking the part of the prey in the Showing. She was a good enough hunter, and she'd learned warrior's knowledge from Marian-but this was her first skill, the one that had earned her the name Deer Dancer, an adult's name and not a child's. The hard soil was easy as turf beneath the balls of her feet as she sprang, seeming to float in the air as a deer did when it leaped, her long legs flashing in the flamelight. She landed, crouched, stepping light, quivering with the seed of leaps to come, as a deer was, always ready to flash away, turning and darting. She was the deer, and Marian was the hunter-stalking closer, her movements just as swift and smooth but harder, more focused. They spiraled about each other, playing the mime of stalk and flight, until the spear flashed below her last leap. She crumpled around it, lay still as the steel was withdrawn from the earth and thrust upward.

"It is accomplished!" Marian shouted.

"It is accomplished!" the hunters roared, and the drums gave a final flourish and went silent.

The tense hieratic stillness of the moment broke in laughter and cheers. Swindapa hurried forward, snatching up a parcel she'd arranged herself. It held a breechclout and leggings of fine white doeskin, and moccasins; she'd have liked it still better if she could have made them with her own hands, but there hadn't been time and her sisters and aunts had done it for her. She grounded her spear near Marian and began to help her on with the clothes.

"Looks like a goddam diaper," the black woman muttered under her breath… in English, though, glancing down at the breechclout.

"It looks lovely on you," Swindapa said stoutly. The smell of the other's sweat was so familiar, yet still had that trace of sharp musky strangeness that was uniquely hers, alien and exciting. "You did everything perfectly. There's only the Marking, now."

Everyone crouched down on hocks as another man came forward; his mask had boar tusks and wolf fangs and antlers as well, and his helper carried a leather tray with bone needles and little horn cups of pigment. The Fiernan girl squatted on her haunches, confident that Marian would bear the slight pain without flinching. She did, the light of the bonfire running ruddy on her dark skin, the full features motionless as the needles pricked and tiny droplets of blood flowed down between her breasts.

Strange, she thought. Very strange, to be here again- and with Marian; it was like two different worlds meeting. And I not myself, not as I was. She shook off the memory; there was enough sadness without raising ghosts from their barrows.

At least it was getting comfortable to squat naturally again; after a year of sitting on chairs, her legs had started going to sleep after a few hours in the old position. With the ceremony over, people sat about the fires and began the feast-Marian's deer had been set to cook, but they didn't have to wait for that. The finest hunters among the Spear Mark had brought in other deer, boar, rabbit, duck, and geese, and a good deal more easily than the candidate, since they were allowed to use the usual bows rather than the spear that ancient custom prescribed for the rite. There were wild fruits, nuts, and roots as well, but no bread or beer; for this ceremony only forest foods could be used. That didn't mean there was no drink, of course. Beakers of honeymead came out, tall bell-shaped clay pots marked with wavy lines. She accepted one and drank a little; it was a fine dry make, seasoned with meadowsweet and powdered hemp seeds.

"How's everyone taking it?" Marian said, as she sipped in her turn.

"Well, I think-most of them," Swindapa said.

Truly. I can feel the goodwill. The Spear Mark were her people's main defense, and they knew better than the Grandmothers how desperate their straits were.

"Good," Marian said. "We can get to work, then."

"Not tonight," Swindapa warned. "That would be… bad manners."

Strange, she thought. The Eagle People were always pursuing tomorrow, as if it were a precious quarry and they hungry wolves running it down. It was so hard for them simply to be, because they were always thinking of becoming.

A man leaned over. "Your friend Marawaynd is a great hunter," he said, grinning. "She caught a fine deer-both times she came to the White Isle."

Marian raised her brows at the good-natured guffaws, then smiled herself when Swindapa translated. She replied in her slow, accented Fiernan:

"Other way. She"-nudging Swindapa with an elbow- "track, hunt, leap on me like wolf."

Laughter rose into the night, as loud as the cracking of the fires. Men staggered forward with a roast boar and set it down before the chief feasters, and knives flashed in the firelight as they carved. Swindapa watched the sparks rising toward the stars, and felt a bewildering tightness in her throat.

Why should I feel like weeping? she thought, turning her head away from the others. I only wish this could last forever.

That was so strange a thought she ran it over and over in her mind, forgetting the pang in her chest in puzzlement. I too am hunting the future and letting the Now slip past, she thought with a slight chill. It's catching.

Dammit, I'm a sailor, not a diplomat, Alston thought, making her fingers unclench from the rough board table that occupied the center of the HQ hut.

"We've beaten back their raids before," one of the Spear Chosen said.

"When the Sun People come against you, they're going to be coming with every man in their tribes," she replied. "This won't be a war of raids, not after the harvest is in. It'll be a war of-" She switched to English. "Oh, hell, 'dapa, what's the word for battles!"

Swindapa frowned. "I don't… I don't think there is a word, not really," she said at last. "Not if I understand the English properly."

"-of really big fights," Alston went on. "They're going to bring thousands of warriors into your land. You have to match them. Then the armies… the big groups of warrior bands… will fight until one flees. We call that a battle."

The command tent had been replaced by a post-and-board structure; she could see it made the Earth Folk leaders a little uneasy, which was all to the good. All the better to kick them out of their mental ruts. That was why she was holding this meeting at Fort Pentagon. The garrison and the locals they'd hired had done a great deal in the past month. There was a timber-framed rampart all along the edge now, and towers of squared logs at the corners and over the gates. More logs made a rough pavement for the streets, and plank-and-frame barracks had replaced the tents; the little uniflow steam engine that powered Leaton's dart-throwing machine gun could also pump water, grind grain, and saw timber. There was also a log pier, which meant that the ships-even the Eagle-could tie up regardless of the tides and transfer cargo.

"Thousands?" the Fiernan warrior said, scratching at his head. Alston suppressed an impulse to check hers. The locals were a clean enough people, by Bronze Age standards. Those standards weren't anything like twentieth-century America's, and didn't include her horror of resident insect life. He cracked something between finger and thumbnail and continued:

"How can they bring thousands of warriors all together? What would they eat?"

"Your crops," Alston answered. Maltonr, she remembered. Redheaded, the one who'd been with her when they ran head-on into that Zarthani warband. More flexible than most. He'd undone the multitude of small braids he'd worn before and cropped his hair in an American-style short cut.

"That's why they'll come after the harvest," she said. "They'll live off what you've reaped and threshed. And your livestock, to be sure."

The dozen or so Spear Chosen sitting uneasily around the table looked at each other. "But… then we would all starve," he said.

"Exactly. Except the ones the Sun People kept as slaves, of course."

Swindapa winced. Alston restrained an apologetic glance; it was ruthless, but the truth.

Maltonr nodded thoughtfully. "We can't sit behind our walls and wait for them to go away, either," he said.

"Exactly," Alston repeated. Except that that word means something more like running with the same feet, approximately, she thought. Damn, but this is awkward.

"They've got engines to batter down walls," she went on. "They're heavy and slow, but if the Sun People can move in open country, they can bring them up and smash you to sticks. And if you move out of their way and refuse to…" Damn again, no way to say give battle in this language. "… to meet them and have a really, really big fight, they can eat up your settlements one by one."

Maltonr still looked as if he was thinking hard. The others were simply appalled. "What have you Eagle People brought among us?" one whispered.

Alston felt like wincing herself. "Ask your Grandmothers," she said. "The Sun People were eating you a little bit at a time; in the end, they would have destroyed you anyway. Walker the outlaw has taught them how to do it all at once… but we can show you how to smash them all at once, too. Think of being free of their threat, forever."

That had them nodding. Except the redhead, who cast a thoughtful look around at the solid-looking American base. The very permanent-looking American base. Oho, no flies on Rufus, here. Have to talk to him later.

"Hmmm." That was Pelanatorn son of Kaddapal, the local magnate. Very much a trader, and very rich, now. "If we gather a host of thousands, how will we feed them? For that matter, there's always sickness if too many gather in one place for long."

"We can show you ways to stop the sickness," she said.

Boiling water and deep latrines, mostly. Luckily they'd gotten a lot of prestige with the locals by healing diseases their witch-doctors-and-herbs medicine couldn't, so they'd probably go along with sanitation.

"Also, there are ways to feed large groups of people. With the proper-" She stopped again.

Oh, hell. How do I say organization or logistics? She settled down to grind the right meanings out of the Fiernan Bohulugi vocabulary.

After the Spear Chosen had left, Alston slumped in her chair. "Christ, I feel like a wrung-out dishrag," she said.

Swindapa sat looking at her, chin cupped in her hands. "You really have brought a new thing here," she said slowly.

" 'Dapa-"

The girl sighed and closed her eyes. "Oh, I know you- we-must," she said. "But… other change, it's like growing old. You don't notice it every day, and when it comes, it comes to someone that Moon Woman has made ready for it. But this is like a great tree growing up between nightfall and morning. There's no… no time to get used to it, to change the way the Eagle People bring it."

Alston sighed herself, as she rose and put a hand for a moment on the girl's shoulder. There was nothing much comforting to say. In a couple of generations, the Earth Folk way of life was going to be changed beyond recognition. That was better than being overrun and butchered, but it still wasn't easy to swallow.

Andy Toffler came in, checked for a moment, then continued when she nodded. "Goin' pretty smooth, ma'am," he said. With the air survey, we should be able to estimate the harvest pretty close, and do up proper maps of the whole area with updated terrain features. Ian wants to get together with the both of us on it. They're getting records from the local bigwigs, too-seems they've got a sort of tithe system here."

He grinned. "And God Help Us, it surely does impress hell out of the locals, ma'am."

"They haven't seen people fly before," Swindapa said dryly.

Toffler ducked his head, looking surprisingly boyish for a man in his fifties. "No offense, miss. They're good folks, your people, and I'm happy to be here helpin' them against those murdering scumbags."

He scowled; they'd all seen evidence of the way the Sun People made war, and there certainly wasn't a Geneva Convention in this millennium. Seems to have hit Toffler harder than most, she thought. There were hints of a knightly soul under that good-old-boy act… and he'd been scrupulously respectful to her, whatever his private opinions, which she had to give some credit for.

"Tell Ian I can see you at…" She glanced at her watch and read down a mental checklist. The day would have to be forty hours long to get all that done. "… at about eighteen hundred hours."

"See you later," she went on to Swindapa, answering the Pieman's mute nod, scooping up her helmet, and leaving.

Sometimes you need to be alone to think. The guard fell in behind her; it was getting so she hardly even noticed that.

Enough space to drill several hundred had been left in the middle of the fort. As she passed along the edge of the field, Alston watched about that number of Fiernans in Nantucket-made armor learning the rudiments of close-order movement.

"Hay-foot, straw-foot" the Nantucketer noncom screamed, to the pulsing beat of a drum, "Hay-foot, straw-foot!"

That was strange, too. Most of the locals could do any number of intricate, precise dance steps, but simple left-right-left gave them endless problems. They looked rather silly, each with a piece of hay tied to the left foot and a twist of straw to the right, but it worked. What really worries me is keeping them in line in a fight. They were brave enough, but they weren't used to the concept of taking massive casualties all at once, the way you did in open-field massed combat.

She exchanged salutes with the guard at the sea gate, walking through the open portals and under the snouts of the flamethrowers that protruded from the bunkerlike slits in the flanking towers. There was a fair bit of traffic; boots and wheels and hooves boomed on the bridge over the ditch. The smell of stale water came up from it, around the bases of the sharpened stakes that bristled forward from the lower bank around the moat. That mixed with other smells-woodsmoke and horse sweat, leather, cooking from the tangle of Fiernan huts that had gone up outside, dung from the corrals. There were as many locals as Americans in the bustle. Spear Chosen war chiefs coming to learn or take council; traders, scores of them, with little oxcarts or pack donkeys or porters, or hauling stuff up from the beach where they'd landed coracles or canoes or whatever; others come to trade labor for the wonderful things the strangers had, or just to gawk. Even a few weirdly tattooed men from across the channel to the west, from what the locals called the Summer Isle.

The pier was even busier. As she came to the end, a sedated, blindfolded, hobbled, and still rather resentful-looking horse swung up into the air and over to the Eagle's deck on a line and a band slung under its belly.

"Let go… and haul," the line leader barked.

The animal slid down gently, whinnying as its hooves made contact with the decking. Alston paused for a moment, looking up at the clean lines of rigging and clewed-up sails and masts, feeling the familiar rush of love at the sight of her ship. Beautiful as… as Swindapa, by God, she thought, smiling with a slight quirk at the corner of her mouth. Right now the Eagle was leaving her for a while. Heading back home, with a cargo of horses, firkins of butter, and meat pickled and salted and smoked. Plus several small, heavy little chests full of gold bars and dust and some crude silver ingots.

Tom Hiller came up and saluted. "Captain." The sailing master was looking harassed, his long face like a basset hound's expecting yet another kick. "She trims… oh, hell, she trims as well as you'd expect. She wasn't built for carrying horses, Captain."

"She wasn't built for carrying anythin' but people, Mr. Hiller," she replied, returning the courtesy. "Needs must when the devil drives. How are the new hands shaping?"

They'd sworn on two dozen Fiernan deckhands, out of hundreds wild to enlist. Which is a good sign in itself. They're not afraid we're going to roast and eat them as soon as we're out of sight of land. Taking on locals also meant that she could get another transatlantic voyage in without putting too many of her precious trained Americans out of reach. For various reasons, she'd seen that more than half of the recruits were young women, and all from the coastal fishing hamlets.

"Pretty well," Hiller said, turning his cap in his hands. "They're all fit-better than your average cadet was to start with, and they're used to living rough. And they pick up stuff like haul and climb damn quick. That phrasebook was really useful, by the way."

"Thank the Arnsteins. What else is on your mind, Mr. Hiller?"

"Look-" He hesitated. "Look, Captain, I just don't like leaving right now. Couldn't somebody else-"

"No," Alston said bluntly. "You're the best sailor, and you're leaving with the next tide. Everyone else who could command Eagle is doing something I can't spare him or her from. And I need those wagons, and all the rest of it."

"Yes, ma'am," he sighed.