On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  I am just one woman of the land to them, she told herself. They will not see my face among so many.

  To her, the differences between her people and these dwellers in the sunset lands were obvious, easy to see at a glance- her people were taller, with a different cast of face. But the enemy would see what they expected and no more.

  Tidtaway was trudging beside her, carrying a hide sack over his shoulder. She didn't like Quick Tongue. He'd kept trying to get her to lie with him, which was bad manners if the husband did not make the offer. Still, he is brave and has guided us well. It would be too odd for a strange woman to come here unaccompanied; that would make them really look at her.

  The roadway grew crowded as they approached the great fortress of the Tartessians; occasionally she stole a look at the immense log that speared up into the sky from its center. The people of the land walked to either side, leaving the center of the roadway free for riders and wagons. She glanced nervously aside at those, and up at the ramparts ahead of her.

  This is as nothing before the arts of the Eagle People, who are wise and strong, she told herself. She was one of the Eagle People herself now; when they went to Pete's home she would see far stranger, far greater things. All this the Tartessians learned from us, like a child following her mother and imitating the roots she gathers.

  For a moment it daunted her; if this was just a child's copy, a poor imitation, what was Nantucket itself like? No real picture had formed in her mind of the Island, the stories were too wild and strange…

  "Now I must be as a still pool, to reflect, and to remember," she muttered to herself.

  The roadway rose above the crop fields on either side. Men and women were working in those, some Tartessians, some tribesfolk captives driven to work with blows. Horses pulled machines with wheels and many iron teeth down rows, and the teeth turned the soil like a digging stick but far faster. Another machine with long wooden arms that turned around and around stood and groaned, and water poured out of its base, to run off through ditches between fruit trees; workers tended the ditches with hoes, piling up earth here and tearing it down there. Beneath an open shed, men were struggling with animals-sheep, they were called-the long hair of their coats being cut off with iron shears. The near-naked beasts looked comical as they were driven away, giving bleating cries, and women carried off the hair-the wool-to great bins.

  They neared the gate. She looked for the details the others had told her to observe. Squat towers bulked on each side of the massive log portal, and the snouts of cannon, which were like rifles but vastly larger, poked out. Lower down were long slim tubes through narrow slits in the walls. Those would be the throwers-of-flame; she shuddered at the thought. Many enemy warriors, all dressed curiously alike in green and brown, paced on top of the palisade above the sloping turf of the earth wall. More waited by the gates; there was a broad flat place with tables, and Tartessians sitting behind them on chairs. She recognized both from what the expedition had made for the cabins where they wintered in the mountains. The sitting men were differently dressed, in long tunics but with their legs bare, and strapped sandals on their feet. They waved and shouted, and she followed Tidtaway over to them.

  A man of the land stood beside the seated official. He spoke sharply to Tidtaway, and the guide walked humbly to them and spoke. Eyes on the ground, Spring Indigo tensed. This was a dangerous part of the plan. The interpreter was of this area. Tidtaway could not pretend to speak his language anything but badly. He was to claim he came from far up the valley to the north, where the tribute caravan had passed through. They both turned so that the little round puckered scars of the vaccination could be seen.

  It seemed the Tartessian accepted Tidtaway's story. He grunted and took the little leather bags from the guide's satchel and poured them out. Dust and nuggets panned from streams piled up, a dull yellow color against the smooth pottery on which they lay. There was a machine before the official, a metal stand with pans on either side, pivoting in the center of the arm that bore them. The seated man took one of the pans from its nest of chains, scraped nuggets and dust onto it with a spatula, replaced it, put little metal weights on the other side until they balanced. Then he consulted notes on paper; she recognized the signs, the al-pha-bet she had been learning herself, but of course in the foreign language of Tartessos. His fingers flicked stone beads strung in columns on another pottery square.

  Her eyes tracked movement. The warriors in green cloth and brown leather were tensing. Very slightly, but it was the tension of men ready for a fight. They held their rifles across their chests, the sun bright on the knives clipped to their ends to make them spears as well.

  They think that perhaps Tidtaway will become angry, she thought. She thought of remarks she'd heard translated as Peter and Sue and Jaditwara discussed. Ah… because he will be cheated. An angry man might forget he was alone.

  The Tartessian pushed round metal disks-coins such as she'd been shown by Peter and the others-across the table. Two were of gold, but shining much brighter than the nuggets. Others were of what must be silver, and more still of copper, a metal she knew from small ornaments brought in trade from the far north to her birth-people. All bore fascinating pictures; of a beak-nosed man, of a woman in a fanciful headdress; of a dreadful figure with three legs and a single eye. She didn't understand how these beautiful things could be worth less than a handful of dust and heavy rock.

  But I don't have to understand. Someday, yes, but not now. For now, I am a mirror.

  Tidtaway carefully put the coins in a pouch at his belt, and the official signaled to Spring Indigo to put down her load. She did, and the man pawed through it in a desultory fashion. The trade goods had come from their local allies; dried smoked salmon from the spring run, together with bundles of cammas roots, red clover for teas, scraped willow bark, wild onions, dried berries, and walnuts. Her "husband's" bundles held golden beaver pelts, otter, martin, ermine, colorful feathers…

  One of the soldiers reached out and grabbed her breast, laughing at her squeal of surprise and protest. Then he looked down and saw that some of her milk had spurted out onto his hand, and backed away, cursing and swearing, shaking the hand as if the white droplets had burned it. The other Tartessians backed away from him, dodging and cursing in their turn…

  Peter Giernas looked up scowling from the notes and map he was compiling from her story. Jaditwara laughed softly, and the man scowled at her. The Fiernan spoke:

  "Tartessians are so funny. They think that if a woman's milk touches a man, and he was not the one to quicken her, he may become impotent and sterile-unclean, with his semen turned to milk." She laughed again. "He will have to undergo a cleansing ritual from their priests and priestesses. I don't know exactly what, but I hear that it's expensive. And painful, in ways that will make him not interested in women for a while."

  Spring Indigo laughed aloud. So did several others; Eddie threw back his head and barked amusement, slapping his thigh.

  "And it's so silly," Jaditwara added, shaking her head. "After all, how can a man ever really know who fathers a child? A mother is a mother, a father is an… an opinion."

  Eddie Vergeraxsson stopped laughing abruptly, then gave a pained smile when the others continued. Spring Indigo hugged her knees to her, a little embarrassed but flushing with pride as all eyes waited on her, all ears listened to her. She stared into the fire, watching the low red flame over the coals, an occasional spark spitting out and drifting skyward. Her hand rested on Perks's flank, where he lay gnawing on the thighbone of a pronghorn. Jared cuddled against her, between her and the dog's back.

  I am speaking at the council fire, she thought. Very strange. Among the Cloud Shadow folk, only strong hunters and women with living grandchildren could do that… formally, at least.

  "Well, after that, this happened-" she went on.

  The seated official snapped a command, and the soldier who had grabbed her handed his rifle to a comrade and shuffled away; then he irritably wav
ed them on through, after marking her forehead with a daub of yellow paint, and Tidtaway's hand with a slash of red. They edged through the gateway, amid a slow stream of others. Now it was safe to gawk around, as if in wonder; many others were doing so. In fact, she did feel wonder. Not even the Bison Hunt Festival had ever gathered this many people together-she used the technique Jaditwara had taught her and quickly estimated that there must be at least three hundred and fifty here, not counting visitors. A broad street ran all around the inside of the wall-and-parapet defenses, covered in gravel. A network of others centered on a central plaza, where large houses stood; several were of two stories, with the ends of beams supporting floors coming out through the thick walls of adobe brick. One had a square tower three floors high, with a flat roof on top where men walked. More cartloads of sun-dried brick came in as she watched, to be unloaded by sweating workers. The low-pitched roofs were of red-clay tile, and colored designs had been drawn on some of the whitewashed exteriors, showing warriors and Gods and beasts. Verandahs upheld by wooden pillars carved into grotesque colored shapes marked the grander buildings.

  One structure was open to the street, with wooden doors pulled back. In it men and women toiled at benches and beehive-shaped ovens. Some took white dust, mixed it with water, kneaded and pounded. Others took lumps of beige-white stuff and thrust it into the ovens; others were taking out round loaves the size of beavers. The smell was intoxicating, bringing the water of hunger to her mouth.

  Bread, she realized. Peter said he sometimes woke from dreams of eating it. Now I know why!

  A section of the plaza had been set apart as a place where people exchanged things. She unrolled her mat and set out the goods in her basket with Tidtaway's furs beside it, knelt, sat back on her heels, and waited. Folk wandered about, looking and dickering. Soon she would be able to wander herself…

  "Okay," Peter Giernas said, with a grin that was half relief. "Good job, honey."

  Spring Indigo beamed back at him. Tidtaway was sitting sullen; he'd been frightened by what he saw in the Tartessian encampment, evidently putting it together with what he'd learned from the expedition, and not liking the implications.

  The ranger leader spread the map on the bearhide blanket that was lying fur-side-down before him. "All right, what we've got here is a fortified square, call it three acres. Log-and-earth bastions at each corner, and two beside the gate. Each bastion has two twelve-pounders with overhead cover, and a four-tube rocket launcher on the roof. Perimeter road, then a grid, with the main road in from the gate on the north. Around the plaza are the commander's residence, the main armory, these buildings that seem to be temples or churches or whatnot-that three-legged one-eyed thing with the teeth is definitely Arucuttag. And this school, and what sounds like an infirmary."

  His finger moved to the southern edge of the settlement. "Now here, this smaller building Indigo described as sunk into the ground, I'd say that's probably the main powder store. These bigger buildings along the west wall seem to be barracks for the soldiers, stables, and cottages for the married men. More of those along the south for the farmers and craftsmen, and then these workshops-smithy, carpentry shop, weaving and spinning sheds. They don't seem to bring most of the livestock inside the fort, but they could, using these open areas for pens. Honey, could you describe that machine you saw again?"

  Spring Indigo frowned. "I only caught a glimpse, on my way to the jakes." The Tartessians had been very insistent about outsiders using those. "There was a very large stack of firewood against the wall, many cords all split very neatly-it looked like ax work. A chimney through the roof, and white vapor. Inside I saw a large wheel of iron, perhaps four feet tall, spinning fast. And an arm of iron moving back and forth, thus." She made a fist of her right hand and pumped her forearm back and forth.

  "Ouch," Sue said. "That's a surprise."

  "Yeah, sounds like a small stationary steam engine," Giernas said. "Pretty much like the ones Seahaven turns out. That'd be useful if they've got a machine shop, and for pumping water, maybe grinding grain and sawing wood, that sort of thing. Damn, didn't know they'd gotten that far with their mechanical stuff."

  "That building was new," Indigo said. "They were still plastering the outside wall."

  Giernas turned to their local guide. "What did you manage to get?" he said. Sue leaned closer to him, ready to help out with the halting tale.

  Tidtaway put his palms on the knees of his crossed legs and leaned forward. "I went to a place where they exchanged the juice of the grape-bushes for money. There were many there- Tartessians, some of the people of this land come in to trade, even a few of the prisoners the Tartessians keep to work… slaves, is that the word? Hupowah! That juice is strong! After only one cup, I felt stronger than Bear and wiser than Raven! But I had only one, as you advised me. Others had more; some puked, or fell on the ground, or acted like they'd been eating crazyweed. I heard many talking, many in the language I know from trading here. There is a very big boat of the Tartessians in the river, far downstream… in the delta. Many things came with it. The crew was sick, the sickness of the small pockmarks, and could not bring it closer. Instead a few men came, and the big boat that lives in the house by the river there went down to it. They have hidden the great boat among the marsh reeds."

  Giernas stroked his beard. He could feel the information sinking in, then stirring like seeds planted in damp earth in the spring. "Good. Now we know a lot more," he said.

  Tidtaway grunted. "Now we know our enemies are very strong," he said.

  "Not as strong as they would be if they knew that we knew," Giernas said, not certain that it got across. He bent his brows in thought. Easy enough to say, but exactly how was he going to use the information. Oh, well, if I'd wanted a quiet life with no problems, I'd have joined the Marines…

  * * *

  "I don't think cottonwood's best for this," Eddie Vergeraxsson said.

  "It's not," Peter Giernas replied. He took a step back, surveyed the cut, spat on his hands and took up the adze again. "If I was building something to last. This only has to be used once, and black cottonwood works easy."

  It was a hot spring day in the California lowlands, and both men had stripped to breechclouts and moccasins for the work despite the mosquitoes. Sweat ran down their bodies as they straddled the edges of the cut in the big cottonwood log, a familiar enough sensation to both of them as they swung the adzes with full-armed overhead cuts. The soft wood came free in big wedges, flying to join the piles of chips on either side. Occasionally they would pause to throw handfuls more out of the growing trough, or to touch up the edge on an adze. The air was heavy with the balsam odor of the sap in the fresh wood.

  He'd decided on this spot because there was a grove of the cottonwoods near the banks of the river. They'd cut four, each with a good straight section fifty feet long and at least a yard across. The locals' eyes had gone wide at how fast the felling went with good steel axes, and even wider when the Nantucketers broke out the two-man ripsaw and used it to trim the trunks to size and give them a rough point at the front. Then they'd braced each with stakes driven deep into the soft ground and trimmed off the scaly bark; their volunteers had helped with that. Now they were cutting out the interiors of the big canoes, highly skilled work that would take months to teach anyone else to do. Both of them had learned to handle wood the hard way, working in sawmills and timber camps around Providence Base.

  He worked until the strain began to throw his eye off, then stopped for a brief rest, hopping down and reaching for his canteen where it hung on one of the bracing stakes; it was a two-liter plastic pop bottle salvaged from Madaket Mall on the Island, encased in thick boiled hide molded around the shape, the best you could get. Sweat ran down into the mat of gingery blond hair on his chest, itching, and he scratched absently. The water was tepid but delicious as he threw back his head and drank, then wiped a callused palm across his face and looked around the camp. Locals were finishing off the other three canoes, s
moothing inside and out with knives, pieces of sandstone and small hatchets, or arranging poles down the paths they'd take to the water. Sue and Jaditwara were over toward the camp proper, where they'd set up an improvised workbench and sawhorse, roughing the oars from red alder wood with saws and axes, finishing them with handadze, pullknife, and spokeshave before handing them over to tribeswomen to smooth by rubbing with sand and leather. For variety they trimmed plank seats from sections of split alder, drilling holes and whittling out treenails to fit from black oak sticks.

  He noticed more than a few envious looks at their tools- drills, gouges, chisels-as tribesmen went by. Well, looks like I'm doing Gardner Tool amp; Hardware's sales pitch for them again. The more complicated Islander machines might appear magical and distant from ordinary life; they evoked wonder rather than a fierce lust to possess. But show people a tool that would really ease their daily work, and that was another matter altogether. You could cut down trees with a polished stone ax, and shape them with fire, flint, and obsidian, but it was hard. The Tartessians evidently hadn't more than scratched the surface of local demand.

  Spring Indigo looked up from the main campfire and waved to him. There was a big trough there, a sort of large bucket of hide slung from a pole frame, nearly full of water. Venison and wild onions and roots and greens were cooking in it, heated by dropping in hot rocks and then stirring them around to make sure they didn't burn through the leather. It was a little more cumbersome than a metal cauldron, but a lot lighter, and easier to carry unbroken than pottery. The wind brought him a whiff of it, and his belly rumbled. He waved back to her and rubbed the ridged muscle over his stomach, grinning. She pointed up to where the sun would be in an hour and a half.

  The expedition's two leather tents were set up on either side of a big live oak that offered convenient branches to hang things from, and their horses were grazing not far away; the locals were camped a bit downstream. The river to the east was the Sacramento, not the Feather, so there was little chance of Tartessians happening by, but he'd made sure that nothing was visible from the water itself-they would cut paths for the canoes at the last minute-and he had plenty of sentries about. The locals might not have much notion of consistent effort, but they understood keeping watch very well indeed.