On the Oceans of Eternity

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket

October, 10 A.E.-Near Hattusas. Kingdom of Hani-land

October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket

October, 10 A.E.-Neayoruk, Kingdom of Great Achaea

October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket

November, 10 A.E.-Western Anatolia

October, 10 A.E.-Long Island Sound, Republic of Nantucket

"Morning, Jared," Joseph Starbuck said.

"Morning, Joseph," Jared Cofflin replied; even in the later months of the Year 10, the government of the Republic of Nantucket remained pleasantly informal.

The Councilor for Finance and the Treasury leaned back in his chair. That was in an office of the Pacific National Bank, which was also the headquarters of the Republic's departments of finance and taxation. It stood at the junction where Main Street turned southwest and Liberty branched off from it; the redbrick rectangle with its two white pillars in front had been erected in 1818, to finance the Island's expanding whaling trade in the South Seas.

Nearly two centuries ago, or more than three millennia in the future, but once again Nantucketer ships sailed all the seas of the earth.

You need bold captains for an Age of Expansion, Jared thought. You also need hardheaded bankers and a sound currency.

"Good of you to drop by; I know it's supposed to be a holiday for you," Starbuck said. "But I wanted to catch you before you talked to young Tom Hollard over on Long Island. Might be I could sweeten the meeting… for him, at least."

Jared nodded. He could imagine Joseph on his own quarterdeck easily enough, if you ran him back a half a century or so in biological age. In his late seventies, the pouched blue eyes still reflected a mind of flinty practicality, near-perfect for this job.

And it's my job to find the right people, he thought.

About two-thirds of any leadership position was knowing how to find the right people to delegate to. The other third was knowing when they were wrong.

Of course, the fourth third is knowing when to let them fail a couple of times because it's the only way they'll believe you when you say they're screwing up. And the fifth third-

"It's a busman's holiday," he said aloud. "As for Tom Hollard, well, if you can arrange for the war to be over, and the damned income tax to be abolished, it'll make things sweet as milk. Otherwise, he's going to be unhappy. Hell, I'm unhappy, but we need guns and soldiers and ships and pay for the crews."

The window was open onto Main, letting in bright fall sunlight. They'd had the first frosts, and the cool salt-scented air made him glad enough of the thick raw-wool sweater he wore.

Even this early the sound of iron-shod hooves and wheels on the Main Street cobbles was fairly loud, together with steam whistles from factories and boats down in the harbor.

"I've got the estimates," Starbuck went on. "After you've read these, you can surprise him by saying he's quite right and the taxes won't be going up any more."

As he spoke, Starbuck flicked one long bony finger toward the screen of the personal computer on his desk. It was one of the two dozen or so allowed to assist vital functions at any one time; it would be a very long time before the Islanders could make disk drives, or the new Pentium the magazines had been talking about before the Event. Starbuck's work also rated one of the even more valuable dot-matrix printers, salvaged from an attic. The tapes on those could be replaced with an ink-saturated cotton that did almost as well as the woven nylon originals.

As for toner cartridges for laser printers… About the time we get space shuttles.

"End of the story, Jared, is that there's no more fat to cut into for war production."

Cofflin took the sheets and looked through them. Ayup, he thought. There were times when he disagreed with Starbuck, but he'd never found him to be flat-out wrong yet.

"You're telling me that to get any more for Peter, we have to rob Paul?" he said. Then, deliberately provocative-Star-buck was one of those people who thought better angry: "I thought war was supposed to get economies going? World War II and all that."

"Jared, it's nonsense to think that when you take what people grow and make, lug it to the other side of the world with a lot of sweat and time, and then throw it on a bonfire, it somehow makes you well-off," Starbuck snapped. "I was a teenager in the tail end of the Depression; after Pearl Harbor, the ones who'd been idle got put to work, so everyone felt richer. That's how I got my first job."

Joseph, I happen to know you spent '44 climbing down boarding nets off very unwelcoming Pacific islands, Jared thought to himself. Not that he'd ever heard Starbuck talk about Okinawa. Or the fact that he'd lied about his age to enlist…

The older man spread liver-spotted hands. "Here, though? We were already using every pair of hands, tool, and machine we had before the war started. We can't afford to divert more."

"We can't afford to lose the war, either," Cofflin said.

Starbuck sighed. "I'm not just being cheap, Jared," he said. "With productivity so low, taxes really hurt. Back up in the twentieth, rich countries could afford… sort of, for a while… to pay half their incomes to the government. Half of a great deal is still a fair amount. Half of just enough is not enough to live on."

Cofflin ran exasperated fingers through his thinning, grizzled sandy hair; he'd been fighting this particular battle since the Event, off and on.

"I know… but what'm I supposed to tell Marian and Ken Hollard, Joseph? When they say I'm trading the lives of their troops for money?"

"That we can't do any more except as a temporary last-ditch, all-out burst. Oh, I can switch things around-selling interest-bearing war bonds, things like that-but the bottom line is that we're using all our surplus. If I fiddle the books, all we'll get is inflation."

Cofflin sighed slightly again. "Well, I think we can get our new allies to contribute a bit more, but they can't do a lot of what we're doing; they don't have the industry."

"If they do more of the basics, we can shift around and it'll lighten the overall burden," Starbuck said. "And you could cut down on nonessential projects, like that new settlement in Argentina." He snorted. "New 'Sconset, indeed!"

Cofflin smiled, a slight curve of mouth. "Just planning so far, which is cheap. Got to think long-term." He held up a hand. "Not so much for the direct payoff, though we can always use more food and fiber. But when this war is over, we're going to be mustering out a lot of troops. A lot of them new citizens who'll stay here. A land grant is part of the enlistment package."

"Hmmm." Starbuck rubbed his short, white beard. "Plenty of places in the Republic to homestead already, without annexing new territory."

"Not as many as you might think. We're keeping half of Long Island in wilderness reserve. Mebbe three hundred more farms there. Besides, the Pampas aren't covered in hundred-foot-tall oak trees laced together with wild grapevines thicker than your leg. It's tall-grass prairie; Iowa by the sea, with a better climate."

"Well, that sort of decision is your department, Jared," Star-buck said. "I'm here to take the punch bowl away when your parties are half-done. You run the war."

Cofflin snorted. "At these distances? All I do is look over Marian's plans, keep the home fires burning, and go around shaking people down to pay for it all."

He paused for a moment, looking out the door. -''Ever think how strange it is, Joseph, that we're giving orders here… and on the other side of the world, people we've never heard of are killing each other because of it?"

Starbuck snorted. "They'd be going to war anyway, Jared. We're just giving them a different reason."

The One in whose control are horses, cattle, all chariots;

The One who has caused to be born the sun, the dawn;

The One who is the leader of the waters;

He, O people, is Indara Thunderer!

Raupasha's voice rang out; first in the common Hurrian language, then in the ancient tongue of the ariammanu, the founders of the kingdom of Mitanni. Few here could speak it even in her stumbling, book-learned fashion, but holiness had ensured that the prayers survived in memory:

The One without whom people do not conquer;

The One to whom the warriors call for help;

The One who shakes the unshakable;

He, O people, is Indara Thunderer!

Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna raised her hands to the sky as the ancient, ancient chant echoed across the upland plain; the smell of the sacrificial blood, the fire that consumed it, the oil and pinewood, lifted her with the smoke of sacrifice to the uttermost heavens. Dawn paled the stars, and she felt as one with them-a singing exultation, like that brought by the soma of the oldest tales. Reluctantly she descended from that eagle-aerie of the spirt, down to the common earth of day.

That was well enough, for she liked the place of the encampment, though she had been born and raised far south of here, in the southern Mitannian borderlands. Yet still these Hittite uplands spoke to something in her soul, the vast clear spaces fringed with mountains, the spare beauty of the landscape and the thin pure upland air, even the unaccustomed chill of their early-winter nights. They went well with the sounds and sights and smells of war, barley porridge cooking over the campfires and pigmeat frying, leather, oil, horse sweat and man sweat and the leather of the tents.

Those were being struck even as she watched, the men of her chariot squadrons-hers!-fanning out from where they'd gathered for the sacrifice. She would have preferred a horse, or at least an ox, but a sheep was what they had. Orders were to hoard food jealously.

The Mitannian camp was a little away from the main Babylonian base, and that was half a day's journey southwest of Hattusas itself, for greater ease of gathering supplies. Both were laid out as the Nantukhtar had taught, in straight rows and streets; there was much digging involved in the Nantukhtar way of war, from field fortifications to latrines.

Raupasha brought herself up to attention and saluted as riders from the main camp drew rein in a spurt of dust and a few pebbles shot from under the iron-shod hooves. It was the Seg Kallui; as second-in-command of the Babylonian expeditionary force under King Kashtiliash, Kathryn Hollard was also in charge of the Mitannian vassal troops. Her staff and bodyguards followed her, as the noble Tekhip-tilla and Gunnery Sergeant Connor and the chiefs of the four chariot squadrons did Raupasha.

She spent a second to envy the older woman the neat uniforms of her soldiers, as the gesture was returned. The clothing was drab-khaki of a shade not much different from the Is-lander Marines-but uniforms were part of the New Learning. Symbols of the power of a King who could dress whole armies in his own livery.

"The sacrifice went well, I hope?" Kathryn said.

"Very well, thank you, Lady Ka"-Raupasha made a heroic effort and wrapped her mouth around the maddening th sound-"Kathryn."

She and Kathryn had English and Akkadian in common; they spoke the latter because many of Raupasha's followers knew the Assyrian version of that tongue.

As soon as this war is over, I must see that many of my people learn the English speech and writing, she thought. She herself worked doggedly every day at perfecting her command of it. Perhaps even send some to Nantucket for schooling.

Tekhip-tilla tugged at his gray-shot black beard; he was a Mitannian noble of the old school, not afraid to speak truth before his sovereign; few such had lived through the Assyrian occupation.

"Well enough," he said. "The omens were good and the smoke rose to heaven properly. Although the men might have felt better were it to a more familiar God, like Teshub of the Weather or the Ishtar of the Warriors."

Raupasha knew that, but her foster father had raised her in the most ancient traditions.

"Teshub and Indara are both among the Gods of our ancestors," she said. "Perhaps Indara is merely the older name for Teshub, since both command the storm and thunder. Yet when we worshiped Indara under that name, the kingdom was great."

"A good point, my princess," Tekhip-tilla said. "Let it be as you wish."

"To business," Kathryn Hollard said. She looked to the west. "You understand your mission?"

"Yes, Lady Kathryn." They'd gone over it exhaustively, but it was good to remind the squadron commanders. "We are to fight as the wolf does-slashing and then running swiftly."

"Good," Kathryn nodded. "Yours is not the least of tasks; the main force will be moving west behind you, and then making a fighting retreat back to the east. Eventually we'll have to make a stand. Whether or not the enemy is too strong for us at the final battle may well depend on forces like yours."

Raupasha nodded again, although she didn't altogether believe that; part of it was said to make her men's hearts strong, and to soothe their pride. These things were part of generalship and kingcraft, and she would learn all that the Hollards had to teach her. And…

The two women walked off a little. "Lady Kat'ryn…"

Kathryn laid a finger on her lips for an instant, and smiled. "Some things should not be asked. Not now," she said.

Whether King Kashtiliash will ever let Kenneth be my lord, Raupasha thought. "If not now, when?"

"Sometimes I have to make myself remember you're barely eighteen," she said, infuriatingly. "And other times it's obvious."

"I am old enough to command and rule, you thought. And in this war I may die," Raupasha said. "I feel Yama put his hand on my shoulder, and say 'make haste.''

"And I might die, or Kash… King Kashtiliash might die, or Ken might die. Or the horse may learn to sing."

That startled a giggle out of Raupasha, and Kathryn grinned back, making the years between them seem to vanish.

"But after the war," Kenneth's sister said. "Then we'll either be defeated, hence dead, or the King's heart may be changed. Who knows?"

"I know," Raupasha said vehemently. "I know that it will- King Kashtiliash will see the loyalty and courage of Mitanni's troops fighting beside the men of Kar-Duniash, and his heart will be softened toward me."

"I certainly hope so. Vaya con Dios." At Raupasha's curious look, she went on: "A saying. It means go with God."

"And may your God be with you, Lady Kathryn."

She turned and jumped into her chariot. Her driver Iridmi and Gunnery Sergeant Connor waited there. Connor handed her the rocket launcher, and she slung the blunt flare-ended tube over her shoulder-for show's sake, to hearten the others.

"Forward!" she shouted, and Iridmi flicked the reins.

"See you later, Councilor," Jared Cofflin concluded.

" 'day, Chief," Starbuck replied; he was already turning back to his work.

Cofflin gathered up hat and jacket and ambled through the bank, nodding greetings to the clerks settling in to their jobs- there was already a click of abacus beads, a rattle of adding machines, the tapping of a manual typewriter, a scritching of quill pens on coarse paper and an occasional muttered curse as they blotted. The latest steel nibs modeled on ones found in antique shops did better… slightly… but the government made do with what the birds gave for free.

Would the extra efficiency and saving some sheets of foolscap justify springing for better pens, or would the bureaucrats just have better weapons in their campaign to drown him in paper?

The thought went into the files, along with an infinity of others. Yesterday Doc Coleman had notified him that the last Islander with AIDS had died; they didn't have protease inhibitors to keep the virus in check here and now.

Poor bastard, he thought. Smallpox they had to worry about, evidently, but at least not HIV anymore. You could do something about smallpox…

If only we could spare the people to go looking for the source of that smallpox outbreak in Babylon. Damn the war!

He went out the doors and stood for a moment on the stone steps that led down to the cobbles of Main Street. They were densely crowded, but it wasn't very much like the mob scenes the Summer People had made, back before the Event.

For one thing, there are a hell of a lot more kids, he thought.

Better than half the people on-Island were under fourteen, the Census people told him. A population explosion, and set to get more so when the big post-Event generation, born and adopted, came adult and started having litters of their own. In the meantime…

Swarms of towheaded rugrats. That still stood out, even more so on a school holiday.

Although school holidays didn't mean playtime, nowadays; all the older kids were working. The board tables along the street were piled with boxes of radishes, turnips, sacks of potatoes, stacks of sweet corn, tomatoes glowing like piles of rubies, lettuce, cabbage, onions, cucumbers, melons, apples, peaches- the post-Event orchards were really starting to bear-and pies, jars of pickles and jam, cheeses, butter, homemade sausages and smoked hams, hen- and moa-eggs, baskets of live chickens or the plucked, gutted end product on ice.

The stalls stretched all the way down Main toward the harbor and into the covered market where the old A amp;P and its parking lot and the oil-storage tanks had once stood.

Good harvest this year. He'd read Angelica Brand's reports, but it was nice to see it firsthand as well as in the Councilor for Agriculture's antiseptic prose and columns of figures. Everyone was just a little paranoid about food supplies now.

And everything tastes so much better in season. No more wooden tomatoes bred tough for shipment. On the other hand, nothing's available except when it is in season.

The crowd was dense along the sidewalks, down to the big clot around the Hub halfway down Main; that had gone from being a news-and-magazine store to an information exchange with rows of slate-and-chalk notice boards, and from there to a hiring hall. The usual desperate harvest-season farmers were there, bargaining for extra hands. One finally reached an agreement with an immigrant family, mother and father and four working-age children, loaded them into his buckboard and flicked the ponies into motion; his wife stood swaying in the back hefting a shovel, glaring around at anyone thinking of poaching. Cofflin snorted, eyes crinkling with hidden laughter as they rattled up the cobbles of Main and disappeared, heading westward along Orange toward the Siaconset Road and the farming country there.

His own course went in the opposite direction, over a few blocks to the John Cofflin House-an inn that'd taken over the house of a collateral relative back (or ahead) in the 1840s.

Jared's lips tightened slightly. Ian's place was just across the street in back; he'd been staying in one of the outbuildings the night of the Event, and it had become the Foreign Affairs office as well as his residence by the usual sort of happenstance.

Damn, I'm worried about them, he thought, adding a short prayer to a God he didn't think should be bothered with unimportant things. Ian dead or in the hands of William Walker and his bitch, that was important.

Broad Street, which wasn't particularly broad, ran down from there to the old Steamship Wharf, between buildings in the soberly elegant Nantucket Federal style plus a few plain Puritan saltboxes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Meet me at the gray shingle house with white trim, he grinned to himself, remembering a pre-Event joke.

Not totally accurate; there were a few redbrick buildings with white trim. Nantucket's downtown was almost all pre-1860; the town had been too poor to rebuild after the whaling industry collapsed.

Broad was also crowded, as usual. Not quite as much so as it had been before the new channels and piers were opened up down the harbor, but densely enough; horse-drawn wagons nose to tailboard, a half dozen steam-haulers pulling two or three carts each. It was amazing how much noise a town of only ten thousand people could make, when shod hooves hit pavement en masse. This being rush hour, it also had a fair share of commuter traffic-bicycles, mainly, with the odd steam-hauler-and the sidewalks were thronged.

The breeze flickered the leaves of the big elms overhead, letting down stabs of light that flickered off brass fittings on a horse's harness, polished metal on a steamer's frame. Businesses were opening on both sides of the street; mostly trading firms here, dealing in anything from spices to shelled corn, barrel staves, and salt beef. It paid to be near the docks, if your living depended on the sea.

Martha was waiting under the sign of the Brotherhood of Thieves. That had been a restaurant before the Event, and still was. Heating large quantities of water was a lot easier in big batches at a central location, with the equipment available; that helped account for all the bathhouses and steam laundries, too.

Everything was so much more convenient with electricity, Jared thought, not for the first time; all the alternatives were messy, dangerous, or involved far too much hard work.

The Brotherhood's carved and painted sign showed a man in antique clothing, short devil horns on his forehead; a bag of money rested on one palm and a small chained black woman on the other. Nantucket had been big in the Abolitionist movement and Underground Railroad, back before the Civil War.

Cofflin's long bony face went bleak for a moment, with an expression Robert E. Lee's men might have recognized. At Gettysburg, on the faces of the blue-clad New Englanders storming down from the Little Round Top through a hail of bone-smashing rifle fire and grapeshot to break the Confederacy's last hope at the point of their bayonets. Slavery was all too alive in the Year 10…

"Morning, dear," Martha said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. "I paahked Sam and Jenny with the Macys."

That left Heather and Lucy, and his own eldest two, Marian and Jared Jr. They weren't quite jumping with excitement, but close.

A young man in a blue Guard sailor suit and flat cap with RNCGS Chamberlain on its ribbon came up, slight and swarthy and impeccably neat, cutlass and revolver at his belt. He threw off a crackling salute, then stood there at ease, looking wiry and toughly competent and so damned young…

Marian's idea of course, but there wasn't much point in putting someone in charge of security matters and then refusing to listen to them.

"I'm Petty Officer Martinelli, sir," the young man said. "Madam Councilor."

The chief stuck out his hand; the sailor's was strong and dry, rough with callus. "This is Jared Jr.," he said. "And Marian Deer Dancer Cofflin. And.

Martinelli gravely shook hands with Jared Jr. and Marian, then exchanged hugs with Heather and Lucy.

"These two have been getting me in trouble for years, sir," Martinelli said. "Imps of Satan, as the commodore puts it."

"Only our moms can call us that. Petty Officer," Lucy said loftily. Heather stuck out her tongue, and then all three grinned.

Jared nodded, suppressing a sigh. At least looking after the kids made a face-saving excuse for having a hand-holder planted on him.

"Well, make yourself useful, young man," Martha said briskly, handing over one of the suitcases.

Those and the picnic baskets were juggled from hand to hand. At least I don't have to live in a cocoon of Secret Service agents and publicity flaks, Jared thought thankfully. Even so, this term is the last.

Steamship Wharf was even more crammed than Broad Street above it, with ships two-deep on both sides where the ferries had docked before the Event and more waiting their turns out in the Great Harbor or heading down toward the new piers. Cargo-handlers and windlass-worked cranes labored overtime as bales and nets swung through the air. The smells got stronger here, too, fish from the drying sheds, whale from the rendery further southeast where a black plume of smoke tattered against the sky, tar and tarred wood, canvas, salt. A steam tug was pulling a three-master out into the harbor and up toward the dogleg passage to the sea, its paddles thrashing foam white against the blue water and sending a cloud of gulls skyward at the shrill scream of its whistle.

"The Barbee" Martha said, looking at the big square-rigger; she had an encyclopedic memory Jared envied, almost as good as a priestess of Moon Woman. "Clearing for Westhaven, Captain Williamson commanding, under charter to Stock and Rains Exports."

"What lading?" Jared asked. It was a good idea to keep track of things like that.

"Salt cod, two hundred and fifty tons of it," she said. "That we're not short of, and won't be."

Jared nodded; they'd already taken measures-minimum net-mesh sizes, quotas, a ban on dragging and drift nets-to make sure it stayed that way later. Martha went on:

"Let's see… spools of cotton thread, air compressors and pneumatic rock drills for the copper mines on Anglesy and the coal mines at Irondale and that new tin shaft in Cornwall; drill bits, ditto, blasting powder, ditto. Four uniflow twenty-five-horsepower steam engines from Seahaven Engineering, treadle sewing machines, glassware from the Cape Cod works, gearing, a gear-cutter, miscellaneous manufactured goods-needles, scissors, shovels, that sort of thing. Coffee, cocoa beans and manufactured chocolate, chili peppers, sugar, kill-devil rum, cochineal dye, dye-wood, indigo, Shang silk, mahogany and ebony, flamewood planks, jadeite, parakeets, furs."

Jared nodded, conscious of the children soaking it in. It seemed every kid on the Island wanted to be a merchant venturer or explorer these days, the way they'd wanted to be astronauts or fossil-hunters when he was a boy back in the early sixties.

It certainly beats wanting to be rap stars, he thought with an inward chuckle. Hard and dangerous as it was, there were aspects of the post-Event world he preferred, as a parent.

A deck crew were heaving on a line aboard the Barbee, roaring out in unison:

"We will sing to every port of land

Which ever yet was known,

We will bring back gold and silver, mates

When we return to home!

And we'll make our courtships flourish, mates

When we arrive on shore-

And when our money is all gone…

We'll plow the seas for more!"

Neayoruk, Ian Arnstein thought, as the ship that had carried him from Troy efficiently struck her sails and bent home the towrope a small galley tossed her. He pushed down the continual gut chill of fear, pushing his spectacles back up his nose and forcing himself to study the scene around him with a scholar's curiosity.

Well, it's a bit like New York. A lot more like a scaled down Victorian Liverpool, with Mediterranean accents.

The resemblance was heightened by the weather, gray and chill with a drizzling rain-not typical for southern Greece, but common enough in winter. He pulled the raw-wool cloak tighter about his shoulders and shivered slightly.

Barracks? Baracoons? Tenements? Ian wondered, looking at the long rectangular buildings of mud-colored adobe brick that made up most of the town; each alike, standing row upon row with a terrible impersonality that reminded him of Victorian milltowns. Many of the ships at the docks had the same look of something slapped together with a maximum of haste and no concern but pure function, boxes with blunt wedges for bows and what even his landlubber's eye saw was an almost comically simple rig, dozens of them unloading endless streams of some dark mineral. Three shoreside blast furnaces about the same height as the ships' masts belched smoke that straggled off across the water, smelling of coal and acid. More smoke trailed from smaller smokestacks around them, and across the soot-slick water came an endless thump and rattle and clangor of metal on metal.

Not everything was quite so ugly. There were bigger houses up on the slopes of the hill overlooking the town, sleek galleys oar-striding across the water with their painted eyes glaring above the bronze rams, the greyhound grace of well-built modern sailing ships, and Bronze Age craft from all around the Middle Sea. The mountains above were dark with fir and pine, and the damp air carried a breath of them over the harsh coal smoke and metallic stinks and the tar-fish-wood smells of a harbor town.

In the twentieth this was the outskirts of the Mani, an eroded limestone wasteland where a local joke said a goat would have to bring its own provisions. Here it was more like the coast of California. Parts of Marin County, say.

All in all, it doesn't look much like Gythio, he thought-he'd visited here before the Event. On an island half a mile out was the low-slung hulking shape of a fortress, and a strong stone causeway between there and the mainland. Only the looming triangular peak of Mount Taygetos and the knife-edge ridges that fell away from it were recognizable at all, and that was like looking at a skeleton and suddenly seeing it covered in flesh.

Philowergos bent to touch the stone-block pavement and murmured a prayer after they came down the gangway; Ian thought he caught a promise of a goat to Poseidaion.

The soldiers of the escort exclaimed; Ian recognized the tone if not the slang. He'd heard much the same as men settled down to watch a baseball game on either side of him. The little group stopped, standing in the thin rain and craning to see over the shoulders and slung rifles of the troops who stood in a protective box around a gangplank.

That ship had a sour sewer-and-locker-room reek even in cool weather, and was unloading coffles of filthy near-naked men with shaved heads, wearing iron collars and chained neck to neck. A helmeted officer in Walker's gray uniform stood beside the gangplank, a man with a scar along his jawline showing white through his beard and holding a swagger stick cut from a vinestock. He examined the slaves carefully, stopping now and then to raise a man's chin with the stick and look into the man's eyes.

Every tenth or fifteenth man was tapped with it, and taken out of the coffle. The same sentence was repeated to them, in half a dozen different languages. Most crowded forward eagerly. A few shook their heads, and were sent back to the coffles. One man spat in the officer's face; he took the vinestaff across his cheek and dropped limp as an official explanation, drooling blood and spitting out a tooth on the dockside. The tough wood cracked.

"Fetch me another!" the officer snapped, kicking the man at his feet with vicious efficiency as he wiped a sleeve across his face. A soldier hurried up with another swagger stick.

"And get rid of this carrion. The rest of you, you're the best of a bad lot-begin! Show me if you can do something besides scratch dirt for your betters!"

Ian blinked in astonishment as the rest of the slaves formed pairs and began to fight. None of them had much science by the standards of, say, Marian Alston or Kenneth Hollard, but they all went at it as if they were fighting for their lives; he could hear fists smack on flesh, screams of anger and pain. One pair fell and rolled, grappling and tearing and biting, hidden by the legs of the guards until the vanquished shrieked and the victor rose and spat out an ear, grinning amid the blood that ran down his chin. Laughter and cries of admiration came from the watchers.

The hard-eyed officer went down the row of men again, tapping this one and that-not always the winner, either, although he did take the ear-biter. The rejected were hustled away, and a man with a bolt cutter took the collars off the dozen selected.

"What was that?" Arnstein asked, when they were on their way again.

"First cut," Philowergos repeated amiably. "The Achaean lands don't have enough youths for the King of Men's armies. If they endure through the training camps, those men may"-he tapped the two silver bars enameled on his helmet-"become officers, perhaps even lords with land to the horizon. Even if they're not found worthy of the Army, they may become overseers, or police, or be trained for skilled work. Those sent on, they'll do for the rough work of mines and fields and forges. The chosen are men of spirit, as you saw. Such men make bad slaves."

Possibly, Arnstein thought. Although that guy who spat in the face of Herr Gruppenfuhrer there showed plenty of spirit, in my opinion.

Past the dockyards the streets were paved with asphalt or stone blocks, with raised sidewalks on either side; there were men in green uniforms at the intersections, blowing whistles and holding up white batons to direct traffic; that was everything from Bronze Age oxcarts with solid oak wheels through rickshaws and handcarts to-he did a double take of astonishment-a Victorian-style horse-drawn omnibus. Most of the buildings seemed to be tenements, better than the row-housing he'd seen from the water, with small shops on the ground floor.

More than half the men and women who crowded the sidewalks wore collars, of iron or bronze or silver.

"I've seen the Bronze Age," Ian murmured to himself, in English. "I've seen the changes we make in it. Now I'm getting a firsthand look at Walker's idea of improvements."

He was lost enough in his thoughts to bump into the Achaean officer's broad back when Philowergos stopped suddenly.

Three uniformed men were blocking the way. One Ian knew immediately was from the twentieth… something about the eyes, or the way he stood. A blocky-square man with a square slightly jowly face, in early middle age, short blond-and-gray hair, clean-shaven face with something wrong about it. The uniforms were much like Philowergos's, but with a different waffenfarbe on the collars; a silver death's-head over a black numeral 1.

Uh-oh, his mind gibbered, with a banality that surprised him even now. The lead man's eyes flicked over him. They had none of Hong's gleeful, gloating anticipation. That was like a depraved child waiting for some monstrous Christmas present. These were like a dead man's, or a tired man looking at a fly on a hot day.

"Thank you, Captain Philowergos," the man from the twentieth said, in pelucidly pure Achaean with the slightest guttural undertone. "I will take custody of this prisoner now."

"Ah… Lord Mittler, I don't think…"

"Exactly, Captain Philowergos. You are not paid to think."

Mistake, Ian thought, watching the flush of rage come up over the Greek's collar. Telling an Achaean he was paid to obey was like calling him a slave. That's right, Philowergos, get good and angry, please, for God's sake-

He'd had time to recover from the shock of Troy; time to get his balance back, so he could know just how frightened he should be and to start cursing himself for thinking that getting killed was the worst thing that could happen.

"Lord Mittler," Philowergos said, "I was instructed by the King himself to take this man to Category One confinement in the palace. My head will answer for his."

"Let me see that," Mittler said, taking the orders the Achaean captain was waving. "Hmmm. Yes, these specify Category One confinement; but they don't say anything about maintaining personal custody. I will carry out the King's orders, soldier. Section One is organized for the proper supervision of prisoners. You may return to the front and fight valiantly, as I'm sure you long to do, rather than staying here with the women."

No, no, no! Ian thought. Walker's tame German was being smart again, giving Philowergos an honorable excuse for obedience. And that flush was fear as much as anger. I don't blame you for that, I'm afraid of him… yes I do blame you for it, you cretin! He's manipulating you! Philowergos wavered, until an iron clangor of horseshoes came near.

"Ah," another voice said. "I thought you might be here, Lord Mittler."

It was a man standing in a chariot with two others. This voice's Achaean had a distinct accent; not a foreigner's, but some sort of regional burr, archaic even by Mycenaean standards. Much like a Scotsman's English.

Ian's eyes flickered to him. He saw a stocky man, short by twentieth-century standards, medium here; old white battle scars ran up the hairy, muscular brown forearms. The Achaean was in full nobleman's gear: long crimson cloak pinned at one shoulder; tunic; checked kilt with a fringe; linen gaiters and leather boots; gold-studded sword belt bearing a long double-edged blade. A diadem held long dark hair; trimmed beard with a few strands of gray; and a shaven upper lip. There was a very modern-looking revolver at the belt as well, and the second man in the war-car rested a hand casually on the butt of a break-open shotgun.

"Rejoice, Lord Regent," Mittler said. He bowed from the waist; the others all saluted, right fist to chest and then bowed as well. With a creeping feeling that tightened the skin on his stomach, Ian Arnstein realized who this man must be.

"Rejoice, Lord Mittler," the Greek replied. "This is the awaited one, then?"

"The prisoner Arnstein, yes," Mittler said. "I was just taking him into custody."

"Forgive me-I have gray in my beard and perhaps my ears do not hear as keenly as they did. Telemakhos," he said to the younger man beside him. "What did you hear of the King's will concerning this man?"

"That he be kept in honorable detention, Father," the second Greek said. He was taller than his sire, handsomer, but with something of the same quick intelligence in his eyes.

The first man held out his hand, smiling. After a second's hesitation, Mittler handed over the written order. The regent flicked it open with a swift motion of his wrist, sheltering it from the rain with his other hand.

"Very good," he said, folding it and tucking it into a pouch at his belt. "Thank you for your efforts, Lord Mittler, Captain Philowergos, and I'll take charge of this matter now." Smiling still, he held up his right hand, where a wolfshead signet rested.

Mittler's lips tightened slightly. "Section One is charged with internal security."

"Indeed." The chariot rider's thick arm pointed toward the western mountains. "There are bands of escaped slaves up there, and they raid the settled lands. There should be no distractions from your work."

"Very well, Lord Regent," Mittler said, bowing stiffly again. He turned to go, and hissed to Arnstein: "This is not the last you'll see of me, Jewboy."

In German, which Arnstein understood quite well. Ian bowed in his turn to the man in the chariot.

"Rejoice, my lord. I am Ian Arnstein, Councilor for Foreign Affairs to Jared Cofflin, Chief Executive Officer of the Republic of Nantucket."

The Greek gave him a nod. "Makhawon," he said, to the man driving the chariot. "Get down, meet me at the capital town house. You have silver? Good. Telemakhos, take the reins." The younger Greek did, with an air of quiet competence.

"Lord Arnstein," he went on. "I am Odikweos son of Laertes, Wannax of Ithaka in the West; this is my son Telemakhos. I say in turn, may you rejoice and live happy."

"Pleased to meet you," Arnstein said, and took the offered hand. It felt like a wooden glove inside a casing of cured ham, and helped him up into the chariot with effortless strength.

"But I really don't have much prospect of a happy life. Or reason to rejoice."

Odikweos grinned. Even then, Arnstein felt a returning touch of the glassy unreality people called post-Event-syndrome; he was talking to Odysseus. Or at least to another Greek King of Ithaka of the same name.

"Oh, yes, you do have reason to rejoice, Lord Arnstein," Odikweos said. "Reason indeed."

He looked after Mittler and began to laugh. After a moment, Ian joined him.

The Cofflins and their Coast Guard minder pushed through the crowds along the base of the dock.

Most were in the virtual uniform of raw-wool sweater, flat peaked cap or knitted toque, baggy pants, and sea boots that was working garb these days if you were out on the water in autumn. There was plenty of variety, though. They went past a uniformed customs agent arguing with a supercargo in blue coat and brass buttons; a woods-runner in from the mainland with a backpack of furs over his buckskins and a tomahawk slung through the back of his belt; Albans in kilt and leggings or poncho and string skirt; a Babylonian in spangled flowerpot hat, curled beard, and embroidered ankle-length robe looking about him with an iron control over a visible longing to gawk…

Straight Wharf was the basin over from Steamboat, for pleasure craft before the Event and the inshore fishery now, plus a few family boats like the Cofflins'. He smiled with pure satisfaction as they walked out on the creaking planks of the dock to where the Boojum II lay tethered. Being chief was important work, but he came of a breed with salt water in their veins. Before he went into police work he'd been a deckhand on a trawler himself, then a Navy swabby-brown-water Navy, a Mekong Delta gunboat.

The Boojum II was a simple enough craft, a Cape Cod cat-boat; the design was traditional in these parts, resurrected post-Event. From sheer cutwater to transom stern she measured twenty-eight feet, and fourteen feet of beam at the widest point, a third back from the bows; the shallow rock-elm keel was three and a half feet below the waterline when she was fully laden, considerably less now. Just a foot back from the bow was the one unstayed mast, a sturdy fifteen-foot length of scraped and varnished white pine that carried a single fore-and-aft sail between long boom and shorter gaff spars. There was a small cabin, but most of the boat was a cockpit and tiller.

He stepped down from the dock to the smooth varnished spruce planking of the deck-not far, since the tide was full and just beginning to ebb-and handed Martha down.

"Permission to come aboard?" his son asked solemnly.

Must have picked that up from Heather and Lucy, Jared thought, hiding his grin. The Alston-Kurlelo kids used their Guard associations mercilessly in the children's scuffles for status.

"Permission granted," Cofflin said gravely.

The cockpit filled with children, somehow taking up more room than adults would have. Petty Officer Martinelli handed down their overnight bags and the picnic baskets to be stowed in the compartments under the seats. Jared leaned a hand on the tiller and looked at the small forms scrambling about.

"What do we do first?" he asked.

"Ummm… life-jackets?" Heather said.

"You've got it, girl," Jared said. The cloth-covered cork jackets were produced and laced on. "Next?"

"Uh, the bilges and pump, Dad?" Jared Jr. said.

"Right. See to it, son."

He ran them through the checklist; he wanted his kids to enjoy the sea, but also to remember that you didn't take chances with it. He was also conscious that Martinelli was running a surreptitious check of his own. He didn't mind, much. The boy-young man, he reminded himself-was about nineteen, and conscientious. At that age, sixty must seem ancient beyond conception, just a step short of drooling idiocy. He grinned inwardly, remembering how old the first trawler skipper he'd worked for had seemed.

"Right, let's get under way and out of this madhouse," he said, looking up at the sky. Blue with a slight haze; ought to hold steady, although you might get fog with that. Wind out of the north and a little to the west, about six knots; they'd have to scull clear of the dock. "Martha, you mind if the petty officer here takes the other oar?"

"Not suffering from the side effects of testosterone poisoning," she said, heading for the cabin with a basket in either hand, "I have no objection at all to leaving hard physical labor to someone younger and stronger."

Well, that's put me in my place, Cofflin thought with wry affection. "Prepare to cast off fore and aft," he said aloud.

Lucy sprang for the dock and the stern line, grabbing the davit and casting a look of triumph at Heather. Jared Jr. scrambled to the bows; his sister Marian was kneeling on one of the cockpit seats, looking dreamily at the harbor with her elbows on the coaming and chin propped on the heels of her hands.

"Cast off."

The children freed the mooring lines and hopped nimbly back to the Boojum. Jared and the Guardsman picked the long oars out of their racks and pushed against the timber pilings with their collars of floating weed, then fitted them to the oarlocks and began to scull. Martha took the tiller, looking between them and craning her head a little to see past the mast. The catboat dislodged protesting gulls and sea ducks as it slid out into the millpond-still surface between the piers. He spared a glance for the vane over Fort Brandt.

"Right, sea's medium and the wind's steady," he said.

And fresh enough to raise a little froth on the long sack-shape of the Great Harbor. The lagoon ran northeastward up the Island from here; Nantucket Town was tucked away in the southwestern corner. Traffic was fairly thick… 't

"Let the centerboard go," he said. Martha did, and the wooden fin-shape slid down through the hollow box and slot to project through the center of the hull. The motion of the catboat altered as it bit water and started to resist the sideways slip of the flat-bottomed craft. They racked the oars and tied them down. The Boojum pitched as she lay motionless, the mast making circles against the sky.

"Cast away, loose the sail," he said.

The children were just tall enough to reach the running knots if they stood on the seats. He watched his adopted son prying at the damp hemp, a frown of concentration on his face and his sun-faded tow hair riffling in the breeze, caught Martha's eye, and grinned with the pleasure of being alive. He'd looked much the same himself, when his father taught him how to handle a boat, and Cofflins before him, back to the beginning of time or at least the settlement of the Danelaw over in the old country. Cofflins had been Lincolnshire men before the founding of New England, and fishermen since Noah.

In fact, a remote would-have-been-ancestor was probably teaching his boy how to handle a bullhide coracle, somewhere in barbarian Europe this very day… which was a bit eerie, when you thought about it. For that matter, Jared Jr.'s birth-parents had come from the part of Alba that bordered the fenland marshes, so he was probably a remote ancestor of the American who'd raised him, which was downright weird when you thought about it.

"All right, everyone down, and 'ware boom," he said. Martha came to take the tiller again while he heaved. "Martinelli, lend a hand…"

A spatter of shots came over the low hill ahead. Raupasha nodded and smiled, more broadly as the buzzing of the ultralight grew stronger. They'd only been in the field a few weeks, but she'd grown used to air scouts and the reach of vision they gave you; the older warriors of her band still shook their heads at it, or made covert signs.

It was a bright cool day, the air smelling of damp earth and the not-too-distant sea; the grass was green, starred with some winter flowers. Trees were mostly bare now, except where distant mountains reared blue-green with pine. It would have been a beautiful country, if war had not come by; plumes of smoke scarred the sky, one from the farmstead not far behind her. The horses shied a little as beams collapsed in an acrid smell of ash, and Sabala turned his head and pricked his ears.

"Seha River Land," she read off the map; maps were wonderful things, letting your mind soar like an eagle across the earth.

They were far in the northwest of the thumb-shaped peninsula of land that held the Hittite Empire, north and east of Troy. The Seha River flowed past northward to her right, too deep to ford easily-she must remember that, not to get pinned against it. A farmhouse burned behind her, the plume of smoke one of dozens visible.

The ultralight came over the ridge and swooped downward toward them. More horses shied; some had to be fought down from the edge of bolting. Some of the men were looking more than a little apprehensive, too; Raupasha hopped down from her chariot, took the pole with the red banner, and waved it in a huge circle around her head.

The blue arrowhead drove toward her, then pulled up like an eagle-the eagle whose wings were painted on the fabric. It came by at barely head height, and a package trailing a long ribbon of cloth came down from it. Raupasha could see the pilot's goggles, grin, streaming scarf and glazed sheepskin jacket; yes, it must be cold up there. But how glorious!

One of her men ran over with the message cylinder, turning it over in his hands. Raupasha took it from him and unscrewed it, smiling a little at his gape of awe.

"Thank you, Artatama," she said.

The boy blushed and bowed with hand to forehead. Warriors liked it when their rulers knew their names-both her foster father and Lord Kenn'et had told her that. Sabala relaxed as he left; the hound was never easy when those he considered strangers approached her.

She unrolled the paper and held it beside her map. The notes were scrawled one-handed by the paper, but clear enough. She closed her eyes for a moment, called on Agni and made things clear to her inner eye. Then she called the squadron commanders to her, explaining.

"Now!" she said at last, when all was ready.

The Mitannian chariots fanned out-a hundred war-cars took up a surprising amount of space-and then surged forward. The thunder of a thousand iron-shod hooves would give the enemy some warning, but they would be swift on its heels. Reaching down, she pulled the rocket launcher from its rack, put it over her shoulder, and swung the end toward Gunnery Sergeant Connor.

"Load," she said crisply.

"Up!" he replied, sliding the rocket shell into the tail of the launcher.

She felt a click as the trigger spring took up the tension. So many Nantukhtar things involve clicks, she thought, mouth dry. Soon…

The Mitannians crested the rise, seeming to their enemies to appear from nowhere in a rattling thunder. Iridmi flicked his whip, a delicate touch that did the team no hurt but told them time to run.

The chariots plunged downward, over gently rolling plowland green with winter wheat, flowing around obstacles. Raupasha raised her voice as her foster father had taught her, high and pure and strong in the first note of the war-song, the ancient paean her people had brought with them from the seas of grass. The others took it up, and it spurred the horses on more than rein or whip.

Wind flew past her, and clods of turf torn up by the hooves. Sabala ran baying at the wheel, his usual gentle-foolish face turned into something altogether different, as if he were indeed Guardian of the Underworld-she had named him for that, as well as his fur.

Ahead, the enemy were strung out on a track beside a little stream lined with oleander and poplars. Part of their force was a train of wagons, some big ones of the Nantukhtar type, others commandeered from the people of this land. The rest was a working party, local peasants digging and ditching and throwing dirt and gravel from baskets onto the surface of the roadway. The two groups had fouled each other, a wagon had bogged to the hubs leaving the made section of the road, and extra teams and men had been hitched to free it. Teamsters and laborers ran about getting in the way, oxen bellowed in panic, and the escorting warriors ran for their weapons.

Connor looked back over his shoulder. "Good," he grunted.

Raupasha looked there, too, a single quick glance; yes, those men were following their orders. Hard, hard, to miss the thundering glory of this moment.

Most of the escort were Ringapi, the wild men Walker had seduced. A brace of chariots came out to meet hers, six-she had to admit they had courage, lashing their horses on and bellowing their war cries. Their foot soldiers followed, forming a ragged line to protect their charges. To one side were a half score of men in Walker's uniform, who'd been overseeing the roadwork. They went fanning out in more orderly wise, then fell to their stomachs. The dark-gray of their clothing nearly disappeared against the ground, and their rifles began to speak in puffs of off-white smoke.

She judged distance. "Now!" she shouted to Iridmi. "Wartanna!" Turn!

He leaned back and hauled on the reins. The horses turned, and the war-car followed. Connor and she jumped for the outside rail, their weight keeping the chariot from overturning. Despite practice, one or two of those behind did-or perhaps the bullets began to strike home, and they tumbled in disaster, broken men and horses and yoke-poles.

The chariot settled down again with a thump that resounded from her feet up her spine and clicked her teeth together. Now the Mitannian line was moving parallel to the wagon train, and only fifty yards away. She leveled the rocket launcher.

"Clear!" she shouted, and pulled the trigger.

SSSSSRAAAA WA CK!

A tongue of pale fire lanced out, over the heads of the warriors, and behind her into the air behind the right rear of the chariot. Exultation rose beneath her breastbone as she saw that the curved white smoke trail would come down-yes!

The rocket landed under the front wheel of a large wagon. There was a flash- BAD AMP.

"Ammo wagon!" Connor whooped, yelling into her deafened ear.

Raupasha blinked, shook her head, blinked seared eyes. Where the wagon had been was only a smoking hole and some fragments. Bits and pieces of wagon and ox and man rained down from the sky for scores of yards all about, and the line of Ringapi foot soldiers were panicked. The galloping bar of Mitannian chariots had all opened fire-some of them were galloping very quickly indeed, as if the horses had bolted at the blast. Her men fired shotguns and rifles, pulled the pins and threw the little bombs called grenades. Arrows, slingstones, and a few bullets came back at them, and then she was past the end of the enemy position.

Iridmi pulled the team to the right, back up the slope, then around across it. The rest of the chariots followed, forming a Circle of Yama, keeping up a continuous fire on the foe. Two more chariots fired rockets; one headed over the stream to burst harmlessly, and the second struck turf near Walker's men. The noise and fire and smoke still added to the terror she wanted…

"They run!" Tekhip-tilla shouted to her, his chariot pulling up level with hers. "They flee!"

"Good," Raupasha said. "But-

A bullet went kerwackkk through the space between them.

"-remember the plan!"

Iridmi pulled the horses to a halt. The others did likewise, and from each car two men with firearms leaped down. Outnumbered ten to one, Walker's men died hard but swiftly. Whooping, the Mitannians descended on the supply caravan.

"Only what you can take quickly!" Raupasha reminded them, in a firm, carrying voice.

Gold ornaments were ripped free from bodies and transferred to the victors, along with the occasional silver-hilled dagger or good-looking pair of shoes. The fire-weapons were collected quickly; the Achaeans had been armed with Westley-Richards breechloaders. All others were thrown into a quickly kindled fire, to spoil them. Jugs of olive oil were smashed over boxes of biscuit, sacks of grain, sides of bacon, and soon another pillar of dirty smoke rose to the sky. Jars of flour were shattered and scattered in the rutted mud of the road. Wagons they hacked to pieces, and fed the flames that consumed bandages and medicines, cloth and leather. Most of the wine was spilt as well, although she did not begrudge the men a swallow or two.

Raupasha looked on, her joy tinged with sadness. She had spent all her life until the Nantukhtar came in a little tumble-down manor. Every family of the peasants there had been known to her, the playmates of her youth. Sweat and pain were the price of this food, as well she knew; waste meant somewhere hearths would be cold and children would hunger. With an effort, she shook off the thought.

They would hunger anyway; this was already stolen from them.

"Kill the cattle," she said when the supply convoy was wreckage or a few choice bits lashed to the sides of chariots.

"My Queen?" one man asked, aghast.

"Kill the oxen," she said. "This is true war, not a cattle raid. We cannot take them with us or leave them to work for the enemy, or to feed him."

A great silence fell, men looking at her round-eyed. Was not the ancient word for "war" the same as "to seek cattle"? And these men's families had been impoverished by the Assyrians. There was no wealth so handy as good oxen broken to the yoke…

She drew her pistol. A man made a halfhearted attempt to block her way, then fell back from a gray-eyed glare. Raupasha put the weapon to the beast's ear, steeling herself against the mild expression of its great brown eyes.

Crack. The animal gave a strangled bellow, tossed its head, then went to its knees and fell with a limp thud to the muddy ground.

"Butcher one," she said. "But quickly! The rest, hack them apart, slash the flesh, rub filth in the cuts. Now! Obey!"

While the grisly work went on she saw to the dead and wounded. There were only six dead; a few broken bones from the wrecked cars, to be set and splinted by the Nantucktar-trained Babylonian orderly, a flesh wound or two. It was as Kat'ryn and Kenn'et had said; surprise and speed mattered more than numbers. When they had been loaded and sent off, the destruction was near complete.

"Princess!" Tekhip-tilla said.

He pointed. Raupasha unshipped her binoculars and looked. Yes, Walker's men, several score of them. Mounted riflemen, in the English tongue. The reports said that several battalions were deployed to guard against just such raids as hers. Not very many men, for so huge a land.

"Be ready!" she called to her squadron commanders. Kat'ryn had taught her; if you sounded as if disobedience was impossible, it was. "Remember the plan-every man must act his part."

They did, doing their best to look like heedless plunderers. Walker's men were taught to despise those who fought from chariots… dumb wogs, that was the phrase they used.

The gray-uniformed men came on, deploying into line as they came. "Remember their doctrine," Gunnery Sergeant Connor murmured from close behind her. "They'll dismount at four hundred yards."

She waited, tense. Yes: now they pulled up their mounts, began to swing down. Two could play this game.

"To your chariots," she called.

The Mitannians poured back to their vehicles, slapped leather on rumps, got their mounts moving back over the ridge they'd hidden behind before the attack. They were careful to drive in a disorderly mob, careful to give no hint of stopping as they fled over the brow of the rise. Sabala was the last over the ridge, a heavy ox shank in his jaws.

"Pull up!" Raupasha ordered. Then, in an instant's tender scold: "Plunderer!" to the dog.

The chariots halted a few yards below the crestline; the two fighters jumped from each and turned back to crouch just out of sight from the valley below. The war-cars rolled on a little, waiting with the heads of their teams pointing southeast and the drivers looking over their shoulders. Connor leaped down from hers, and ran to where the mortar team were waiting, checking the elevation on their weapon. The Gatling crew had their hands on the tripod that supported their terrible weapon, ready to run it up to bear on the attackers. Raupasha flopped down on the grass herself, shotgun ready.

"Yes!" she said.

The Achaeans had remounted and were coming on regardless, leaning forward and lashing their mounts into a run. Very sure they would see only the retreating rumps of their enemies when they crested the rise.

"Ready!" she said.

The numbers were about even. With the wonder-weapons the Nantukhtar had given them, though, and the advantage of surprise…

Jared Cofflin kept the Boojum slanting away northwestward on a long tack before turning west, sailing reach with the strong fall wind a little behind his right shoulder. Nobody got seasick this time, thank goodness. Petty Officer Martinelli went forward of the mast, keeping a lookout. Once the spouts of a pod of right whales a hundred strong rose around the catboat, the warm breath-smelling fog drifting around them, and the children stood in wide-eyed wonder.

"They're traveling south from their feeding grounds in the north," Jared said. There weren't any whale-catcher boats in sight. Quota already caught for the year, he thought. "Down to calve in the warm seas."

The tiller bucked in his hand as one rose from the water and crashed down again, sending a wave surging beneath the Boojum's keel, and he laughed aloud at the children's delighted shrieks and the sheer pleasure of the thing.

"Look!" Marian called, pointing. "Oh, Dad, Mom, everybody, look!"

It was one of the small islets off the western shore of Nantucket proper, a low sandy dome rising a few feet above high tide. It was dark with a ring of what looked like moving spotted gray rocks, so thick that the sands were invisible. Jared Cofflin cocked an eye at the wind, craned his head to see by the color of the water if the shoals lay the way he remembered them, and steered closer.

The rocks lifted pointed whiskered noses and their hoarse cries made a rumble of thunder through the bright air. The summer-born pups were fairly large now, their whitish bellies turning blue-gray, craning to see the boat go by with wide-eyed curiosity. Young Marian sighed, and began to recite; then to sing, a tune made recently to suit the poem as it was taught in the Natural History classes of the Republic's schools:

I met my mates in the morning (and oh, but I am old!)

Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground swell rolled,

I hear them lift their chorus to drown the breakers' song-

The beaches of Lukannon-two million voices strong!

"There aren't two million there, are there, Dad?" Jared Jr. said.

"No, son, only a couple of thousand there," his father replied. Jesus, but standards change-a "couple of thousand" seals! "Those are harbor seals; they don't migrate much, just like to congregate. They have their pups in summer."

Martinelli spoke up: "I've seen easy two million-heck, seven or eight, maybe ten, the experts say-up on the St. Lawrence ice, when I shipped on a catcher for the winter harvest. Harp seals-saddlebacks. That's quite a sight, but it's bitter there come February-bitter cold."

Martha got out her guitar, and the young sailor joined in with the children on the next chorus:

The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,

The song of flowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,

The song of midnight dances that churned the seas to flame-

The beaches of Lukannon-before the sealers came!

I met my mates in the morning (I'll never meet them more!);

We came and went in legions and darkened all the shore.

Among the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach

We hailed the landing-parties-we sang them up the beach.

The beaches of Lukannon-the winter wheat so tall-

The dripping, crinkled lichens, the sea fog drenching all!

The porches of our playground, all shining smooth and worn!

The beaches of Lukannon-the home where we were born!

I meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band,

Men shoot us in the water-men club us on the sand;

Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,

But still we sing Lukannon-before the sealers came.

"Dad, you won't let that happen, will you?" Marian asked anxiously. "All the seals gone, I mean, Dad."

"No, I won't." He caught Martha's eye. "That is, we won't- all of us-let anything like that happen again," he said. I hope. All we can do is our best. "The law is that people can't take more than the seals can replace, like the rules for whales or fish, so there will always be more." So your kids can see what you do, sweetness, he thought.

The girl's lower lip pouted slightly. "Why do we have to take any seals?"

Unexpectedly, Martinelli spoke up: "Because we have to eat, missy; same reason the seals take fish and squid," he said. "There's plenty of working folk who're glad of a seal-flipper pie, come February. We need fur and oil, too." He shook his head. "Still, that was really something, coming over the pack

»ice and them stretching out further than you could see-to the end of the world, ice and seals, seals and ice. Loud, too, louder 'n cannon-Lord thundering Jesus, but there were a world of them!" He shook his head again in slow wonder. "I'd hate to think of that… not being in the world, that sight."

Well, there's hope for the younger generation, Cofflin thought, and joined his hoarse bass to the final chorus; he'd gotten a lot less self-conscious about singing over the past ten years. You didn't get compared to recorded professionals anymore, just to the neighbors, or at most to buskers and semi-amateurs at the ceidhles and concerts.

Wheel down, wheel down to southern! Oh, Goover-ooska, go!

And tell the Salt-Sea Viceroy the story of our woe;

For like the empty shark's egg the tempest flings ashore,

The beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!

There were other things to point out; two schooners running home from the Georges Bank with their dories stacked on their decks; the unforgettably vile smell and raucous noise of a cormorant rookery on a tiny island; lobster boats and timber barges…

"I recognize her" he said with a brief grin, four hours later.

It was a smallish craft, ketch-rigged on two masts and about twice the length of the Boojum, with a railed crow's nest on the mainmast. There was another railed enclosure forward of the prow, out on the bowsprit. No harpooner kept station there now; the Kestrel was homebound for Nantucket Town, with the tails of half a dozen giant bluefin tuna hanging in triumph from the rigging. The gutted bodies would be in the hold, lying on crushed saltwater ice…

Cofflin felt his mouth water; it was getting on for lunchtime anyway. "Martha, maybe we'd better fire up the galley," he said. Louder, with his left hand cupped around his mouth: "Ahoy the Kestrel, there!"

The man at the wheel-the tuna-catcher was just large enough to make a tiller cumbersome-nodded and shouted an order to his crew. The Kestrel turned, slanting further south of east, then turned up into the wind in a horseshoe maneuver; her sails came down with a rush except for the jib, and she lay with her bows pitching and pointed into the wind. The gulls who'd been following hopefully made a brief white storm of wings and raucous cries around the two craft.

"Neat as ever, John," Cofflin called as the catboat came close, and pulled on the tiller to bring her closer to the eye of the northeasterly wind.

Facing full into the wind the sail emptied and rattled, its loose edge thuttering-luffing. Two crew from the fishing craft caught the rail with hooks on the ends of long poles and held her steady. That wouldn't be safe for long.

"When're you coming back to real work, Chief?" John Kotalac said.

Cofflin shook his head. He'd spent the first harvest season after the Event harpooning bluefin; he hadn't been more ignorant than anyone else, and hadn't gotten anyone killed-not quite. Since then he'd done it most autumns, when the big fish ran up the coast. That was one of the ways you could pay Town tax, like lending a hand mining Madaket Mall, the old landfill dump, or working in some farmer's harvest gang.

"Time to let nature take its course," he said. "I'm just plain getting too slow. Not too slow to eat 'em, though. How'd it go?"

"Not bad at all," the skipper of the tuna boat said. "Got six-and Sweet can relax, not one of them under fifteen hundred pounds. Three are ton-weighters."

Cofflin nodded. Fifteen hundred pounds was the minimum legal size for bluefin; it meant they were all over thirty-five years old, fully mature and likely to have spent three decades breeding. And all taken with the harpoon. No drift nets here, by God. It wasn't a particular hardship, either. There were a lot of mature bluefin migrating up from the Caribbean spawning grounds in the Year 10. He'd seen a boat about the Kestrel's size knocked on its beam ends once, when it got between a school of them and the mackerel they were chasing.

"Give you a quarter for twenty-five pounds of it," he called. "That's better than you'll get from those pirates 'longshore."

Fresh tuna steak was a seasonal delicacy… but a glut of caviar was still a glut of caviar, in terms of what you could get in a free market. For that matter, caviar was pretty cheap nowadays. Pushcart vendors sold it. Most of the tuna would go into barrels or glass pickling jars for use in winter.

"Sounds good," John Kotalac said. Raising his voice: "Whoever's closest!"

" 'Lo, Tekkusumu," Cofflin went on, waving.

The Indian nodded courteously; he was a short broad man, looking a little incongruous in Nantucketer seagoing sweater and baggy pants and boots, since his hair was still up in a helmet-crest roach with the shaven sides of his head painted vermilion. Many of the tuna boats carried Lekkansu tribesmen from the 'longshore clans as harpooners; they learned the art quickly, since they were used to throwing things in a way few Islanders could match.

"I greet you, elder brother," Tekkusumu said in his own language-Cofflin had picked up a few words of it-and then continued in good English: "The harpoon flew sweet this year."

Several of the seven-foot shafts were racked behind him, and he'd been sharpening a head when they came up, a foot-long steel shaft with a toggle-hinged blade at the tip. Now he laid it aside, drew the long knife at his belt, and jumped down into the well of the boat. When he came back up it was with a dripping chunk wrapped in coarse burlap. He leaned far out over his ship's rail to hand it down to Martha.

"From near the belly," he said to her.

Jared nodded; muscle from around the body cavity was the best. There were plenty of people on Nantucket who liked it as sushi, although barley groats had to replace the rice. Sushi's still raw fish wrapped in seaweed to me, he thought wryly. But lightly grilled, with just a brush of butter and salt… The rest of it would make a good guest-gift at their destination.

"Thanks, Tekkusumu, John! Say hello to Sally for me!"

" 'Bye!"

The crewfolk with the boathooks fended them off again, and the Boojum's sail cracked like a whip as it filled and the boat paid off, turning its bow south of west. The tiller came alive in his hand again; the blunt bow surged up to the top of one of the long slow swells, then ran downward, up again…

A sizzle came from the little cabin, and then Martha's head came out of the door.

"All right, children; make yourselves useful."

The kids scurried around, unpacking the picnic baskets. Martha brought the tuna steaks out herself, and spelled him at the tiller while he ate; an occasional sprinkle of salt spray fell across his plate.

Funny thing, he thought. Before the Event, he'd eaten alone more often than not after his first wife died. He almost never did that now-six of them when it was just a family meal and usually more. There were times it still felt a little odd; like TV, not that he missed the mindless blather, just that it was something gone from the background of life.

The rest of the sail was a straight run with a stiff wind on the starboard beam and the port rail nearly under, clocking ten knots or better all the way down to Long Island Sound. Six hours later he surreptitiously worked his left arm. The adults had all taken turns at the tiller, but his shoulder was still a bit stiff and sore, where they'd taken the piece of shell casing from one of Victor C's mortars out, all those years ago. It hadn't bothered him any then, he'd had what his grandfather called good-healing flesh, like a young dog. At the time, he'd just been mad it wasn't enough to get him back to the World, although he'd enjoyed the R amp;R in Bangkok. The medal he'd flipped into the river the moment his feet were on the gunboat's deck again.

But these last couple of years, if it was cold or he'd pushed it beyond a certain point, the joint ached where the steel had scored bone and tendon. A ghost-pain from a war that would never happen, a memory of steel still locked unmined in Siberian mountains this fall day. Another clutch of years… maybe twenty if he was lucky… and he'd lay his bones beside so many other Cofflins in Nantucket's sandy loam. Those bones would molder away to nothingness before the year men were due to dig those rocks away and other men smelt and shape and fill them and still more launch them at an American gunboat where a bored, lonely, frightened teenager stood behind the spade-grips of an automatic cannon…

I remember being that youngster, Jared Cofflin thought. But in a way he'll never exist at all, except in my memories-I'm here and feeling a wound from a battle that never happened, never will… And that boy was as strange to him as that far-distant year.

He looked up and caught Martha looking at him, fond and dryly amused at the same time. Act your age, then, Jared, he thought for her, giving an imperceptible nod.