Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  Which had been virtually extinct in these waters since the eighteenth century.

  By the time they overflew a Cape Cod empty of roads and houses and reached Boston, he was almost unsurprised at what they found. There was still a bay and islands, but only roughly like the maps. Dense forest grew almost to the water’s edge, huge broadleaf trees towering hundreds of feet into the air, and birds rose in their tens of thousands from salt marsh and creekmouth, enough to make the pilot swerve. Toffler circled for a few minutes, aimlessly. What clear spots there were on dry land looked to be the result of old forest fires. Under his numbness Cofflin thought how beautiful it was, with an unhuman comeliness that made Yosemite look like a cultivated garden.

  “Well,” he said, “I think you were right, miss.” Rosenthal nodded and sneezed into her Kleenex.

  Walker pointed. “There.”

  A stretch of shingle beach edged a seaside clearing where a creek ran into the sea. In it were a score or so of shelters made by bending saplings into U-shapes, and then covering the sides with bark and brush, like Stone Age versions of Quonset huts. Fires trickled smoke, and human figures pointed upward. When the plane came lower overhead they scattered like drops of mercury on dry ice; a few pushed big log canoes into the water and paddled frantically away along the shore. Lower, and they could see a woman turn back, scoop up a crying infant, and scuttle for the edge of the woods with the child in her arms.

  “Can you take us down there, Andy?”

  “Sure,” the pilot said. “Water’s calm, and that looks like a sloping surface-I should be able to ground the floats.”

  The seaplane turned into the wind and sank. There was a skip��� skip��� skip sensation as the floats touched; the airplane surged forward, then sank back to a slightly nose-up position as Toffler turned it toward the shore. Cofflin cracked the door and looked down.

  “Sand and gravel��� getting shallow, any minute now���”

  Toffler killed the engine and the plane coasted forward. The aluminum of the floats touched bottom; they slewed about slightly and stopped. Cofflin picked up his shotgun and stepped down, onto the float and then into knee-deep water. He wiped his brow.

  “Hot for March,” he said, looking inland.

  Walker followed him, using his binoculars again. “Can’t see any of the��� Indians, I suppose. Looks like they’ve cleared out.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Toffler asked. “Let’s get the plane secured. We need to stake down some lines.”

  The men occupied themselves. Rosenthal took some items from her backpack and fiddled with them. “You’re right, Chief Cofflin. It’s eighty Fahrenheit.” That was unusual for Massachusetts in early spring. “And look at the trees, the other vegetation.”

  Cofflin straightened up and did. “Season’s pretty far along,” he said. “But how do we know it’s March?”

  “I worked on my calculations,” she said. “It’s March, all right. Early spring, at least, but I’m morally certain it’s the same day, down to the hour, that it, ah, would have been. Sunrise was at exactly the right time.” She paused. “The climate may well be in a warmer phase.”

  Cofflin nodded, feeling his stomach twist with a sensation that was becoming unpleasantly familiar; sheer whirling disorientation, as if the ground kept vanishing from beneath his feet. He clicked off half a dozen pictures of the shore, then handed the camera to the astronomer.

  “Let’s take a look. Andy, you take the left; Lieutenant Walker, you’re right; I’m point; and Ms. Rosenthal, you keep behind me, and get plenty of pictures.”

  “Why?” she said, with a flicker of spirit, and a sneeze.

  “Because you’re not armed,” he replied, glad to see the stunned depression leaving her face.

  The air was not only warm, it was fresh like nothing he’d ever smelled. Closer to the huts it wasn’t as pleasant; evidently whoever lived there had never heard of latrines. From the look of it they kept dogs, too. The primitive wickiups were even cruder than they’d looked at a distance; inside were hides and furs, bedding made of spruce branches and grass. All around was a scattering of tools made of bone, stone, horn, and wood, and shallow lug-handled soapstone dishes. Hide stretchers, fire-carved bowls, wooden racks lashed together with thongs that held drying fish��� He picked up a flint scraper somebody had abandoned beside a raw deerhide. Not a museum piece, he realized suddenly. It was still warm from the hand of whoever had left it.

  “Incoming.’”

  Cofflin hit the deck with old reflex, and something went shunk into the ground ahead of him. A spear, he thought. It seemed pretty slender for that, though, more like a huge arrow. His hands racked the slide of the shotgun automatically. Five rounds, mixed rifled slugs and deershot, he thought.

  Then he saw the men. Six, maybe ten of them running forward in dashes from cover to cover, short brown men with queues of shoulder-length black hair, naked except for hide breechclouts looped through belts around their waists. One of them fitted another of the slender javelins into a wooden holder with a curved end piece to hold a shaft in position and a butterfly-shaped stone weight on its end. He ran a few steps, half-skipping sideways, and swept his arm forward. The spear came forward, pivoting out on the end of the flexing stick.

  Spear-thrower, Cofflin realized. Atlatl. He’d read about it in a National Geographic article. The stick extended the length of the thrower’s arm, giving enormous leverage. The spear blurred through the air and someone shouted with pain-Andy, he realized with a sudden stab of panic. Their pilot. The surge of adrenaline cut through the glassy barrier insulating him from the world. Suddenly everything became real again, and he knew that he could die here.

  “Over their heads!” he shouted, and let a round off. Walker followed suit, the M-16 giving its light spiteful crack over the dull thump of his shotgun.

  One of the Indians screamed and threw away his spears, pelting back toward the woods. The others dropped to the ground. Cofflin twisted to look over his shoulder; Rosenthal was next to Andy, working on his leg. A spear was through the pilot’s calf, but from the way he was swearing it wasn’t immediately fatal.

  “How’s he look?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” the astronomer said. “There isn’t much bleeding.”

  “Hurts like hell, but it’s through the muscle,” the pilot said, his voice tight with control. “Miss, get my knife out and cut it off here-that’s right. Now let’s pull��� Christ, woman��� sorry. Okay, okay, now pack it with the handkerchief.” He looked up at Cofflin. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in the plane. Should be all right, but I’m not going to be runnin’ any marathons soon.”

  “I doubt they hold ‘em here,” Cofflin said, voice tight with relief.

  “Heads up,” the young Coast Guard officer said.

  The Indians were getting up��� and moving forward, fitting more javelins to their spear-throwers. Their voices sounded, a shrill yipping broken with howls like wolves. Deliberately like wolves, he realized.

  “Damn, but they’ve got guts,” Cofflin said. Thinking straight, too. Saw that the noise didn’t hurt anyone, and now they’re coming to clear the strangers out of their homes. Probably their families’re waiting back in the woods.

  Maybe in their stories the hero always beat the evil magician in the end. It still took guts to attack outlandish men who climbed out of a great metal bird.

  “I hate to hurt them,” Toffler said, echoing his thought. “It’s their home.”

  “Them or us. That Mighty Mattel is more accurate than my scattergun, lieutenant. Try to wound.”

  Walker set himself, exhaled, and squeezed his trigger. This time one of the Indians fell, screaming and clutching at his leg. The others wavered. Walker fired again, and dirt spurted up at another’s feet. That was enough for most of them; they followed the first and ran yelling into the woods. The last man threw down his javelins and spear-thrower and charged, a longer stabbing spear in one hand and a flint hatchet in the
other, dodging and jinking like a broken-field runner. His face was a contorted mass of glaring eyes and bared teeth.

  “Damn, he’s not stopping for shit,” Cofflin said, Navy reflexes taking over from peacetime habit. “Take him down, lieutenant.” Poor brave bastard.

  Crack. The Indian fell.

  The islanders waited tensely, but there was no sound save the birds and insects. Nothing moved. At last Cofflin stood. “Let’s take a look at them,” he said. “Ms. Rosenthal, could you get the aid kit from the plane, please?”

  The wounded Indians were short men, neither over five-six; they wore a long roach of hair on top of their heads, braided at the back, but the sides of their heads were shaved and painted vermilion. Their skin was a light copper brown, their features sharper than Cofflin would have expected. The first one to fall had a gouge over the big muscle of his thigh; he stopped trying to squeeze it shut with his hands and started crawling when they approached, naked terror on his face. He pulled a stone knife from a birch-bark sheath at his waist and swiped at them; he was chanting, something high-pitched and rhythmic.

  Death song, Cofflin guessed, dredging at bits of old knowledge. Okay, let’s see if we can communicate.

  He put down his shotgun and spread his open hands. The Indian waited, tense and wary. His eyes widened as Rosenthal came up beside the other man. Cofflin glanced aside at her. Oh, he thought. The astronomer was wearing a T-shirt under an open jean jacket, and her gender was entirely obvious.

  “I think the fact that you’re a woman makes him less frightened, Ms. Rosenthal,” he said. “Wait a minute. Get out one of the rolls of bandage.”

  Slowly, Cofflin mimed a wound on his leg, and binding it up, then pointed to his companion. After a moment, the Indian made an odd circular motion of his head that seemed to correspond to a nod. His bloody hand began to return the flint knife to its sheath. Cofflin shook his head, then made a waving motion with his hands. He took the scraper from his own belt, tossed it aside, and pointed to the Indian as he recovered it.

  Reluctantly, the Indian did the same with his own weapon. “All right, doctor,” Cofflin said. “Move slowly, and be careful. I’ve got you covered. Put some of the antiseptic powder on it, then bandage it up.”

  He held the shotgun ready. Rosenthal licked her lips and moved in, motions slow and careful. The narrow black eyes of the wounded man went wide for an instant as the astringent powder struck the wound, but he moved the leg to let the woman finish bandaging it. She sat back, sneezed, and looked helplessly at her blood-covered hands.

  “All right, back off again,” Cofflin said. Maybe the gesture of goodwill would help. “Lieutenant, what about the other one?”

  “He’s bad,” the Coast Guardsman said. “Sorry. Thighbone’s broken, compound fracture. I’ve stopped the bleeding and put him out, but without a good doctor and antibiotics, he’s a dead man.”

  Cofflin watched the other wounded Indian drag himself backward toward the woods. If we leave him, he’ll die. On the other hand, if we take him away, they’ll think God knows what. On the third hand, we can patch him up, maybe teach him a little English, and he can interpret. Give him some presents, knives, pots and pans, costume jewelry. Squanto R Us.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s get out of this screwup.”

  The limp weight of the unconscious man brought back other, unpleasant memories for Cofflin. He thrust them aside; manhandling the dead weight into the airplane was hard enough as it was. As an afterthought, he taped the man’s wrists and ankles together. Having him wake up and freak in midair was not something he wanted to experience. Then they returned for the pilot; with an arm over each man’s shoulder he made a slow hopping way back to the airplane.

  “Goddam,” he sighed, settling into the pilot’s seat. “You know, I was feeling pretty lousy coming here. As if nothing was real, you know. But this, this feels damned real. Shot in the leg by an Indian. Goddam.”

  Cofflin nodded. So did Walker, and Rosenthal sneezed agreement. He picked up the radiophone.

  “Might as well have an ambulance waiting,” he said, looking down at the wounded man lying unconscious at his feet. The bandage around his thigh was glistening red. “And then there’s that Town Meeting.”

  “Captain, it’s the XO. I think you should come at once, ma’am.”

  Marian Alston cursed silently and tore herself away from the radiophone. “Take down anything they say,” she said to the operator.

  The cadet who’d brought the news looked scared green. Lieutenant Commander Roysins, her executive officer, had excused himself half an hour ago, when Walker reported the news from��� where Boston ought to have been but wasn’t. No way to keep it secret, not on shipboard; the rumor was running through the hull like a fire, and she’d have to do something-say something to the crew-soon.

  “Ma’am.”

  The wind on the quarterdeck was fairly stiff, and the Eagle pitched at her anchors, bows into the whitecaps.

  “Captain on deck!”

  “As you were.”

  She returned the officer of the deck’s salute and went down the companionway behind the radio shack. The officers’ cabins were tiny cubicles on the deck directly below. The largest was the flag cabin at the rear, usually empty except for important visitors. Hers was just ahead of it to the left, little more than a glorified closet, something she’d often thought confirmed her conviction that God was an ironist. The rest of Officers’ Country stretched ahead and to the wardroom on the other side.

  The XO’s cabin door was shut. “He won’t answer, ma’am. I tried.”

  “Stand easy,” she said, and pounded on the metal with her own fist. “Mr. Roysins, open this door! That’s an order!”

  Silence. Fear dried her mouth. She slammed at the door again. “Roysins!”

  Still nothing. She licked her lips. “Beauchamp,” she said to the cadet. “My regards to the officer on watch in the engine room, and someone with a toolkit to this cabin, on the double.”

  “Ma’am!” The cadet bolted, glad of an order.

  Alston waited, expressionless, until he returned. With him was a bald man in stained blues with a toolbox and a squared-away baseball cap with EAGLE across its front in gold letters.

  “Ma’am?” he said.

  “Let’s have this open, Chief,” she said. Baker, a CPO and a reliable man.

  He nodded phlegmatically and went to work. Thirty seconds later the door swung open. There wasn’t any of the smell she’d feared, the sort that happened when a man hung or shot himself. Roysins was lying on his back in the bunk, staring open-eyed at the low ceiling of the cabin. One arm trailed down, moving with the motion of the ship, and an empty glass rolled beside an equally empty plastic pill container. The other arm clutched something to his chest. Alston ducked in and put her fingers to the man’s neck, just to be sure. The skin was already cooling. She gently pulled the framed picture of Roysins’s wife and children free, then crossed the man’s arms on his chest and closed the eyes, holding them shut for a moment to make sure they’d stay that way. A coverlet went over his face.

  God damn you, Roysins, she thought sadly. I needed you, dammit. She was going to need all the officers, to keep things going. This was no time to bug out. Roysins wouldn’t have suicided if a car crash or a tornado had lost him his family, she felt fairly sure. It was the feeling of absolute separation. But that’s an illusion. Nobody’s died, they just got��� unavailable. Still, she was beginning to realize why the old buccaneers had used marooning as a punishment, instead of just knocking someone on the head and pitching him overboard.

  “My compliments to the operations officer, and I’ll see her in my cabin,” she said. “Chief, get a sailmaker and some cloth in here.”

  She looked at her watch. 1000 hours. Christ.

  CHAPTER TWO

  March, 1250 B.C.

  March, Year 1 After the Event

  Ian Arnstein wandered down the street, pushing the bicycle he’d just bought
with his last two-hundred-dollar traveler’s check; he always felt ridiculous riding one of the things-another of the drawbacks of being several inches over six feet. And I never even liked basketball. It was a cruelly pretty day, blue sky and wisps of cloud, warm enough that he was comfortable in a long-sleeved shirt and no jacket. There were daffodils set out in pots, and the whole town had the scrubbed, fresh-painted air that it always did��� and nothing was the same. He wheeled the bicycle into the guesthouse where he was staying and up the stairs into his room, and stood looking at the fireplace.

  “Still functional, I suppose,” he said to himself, stroking his bushy reddish-brown beard; it had stayed luxuriant while the hair vanished from the top of his head. Except for that he might have been a face off an Assyrian bas-relief, heavy hooked nose and strong features, apart from the mild scholar’s eyes.

  When winter came, a working fireplace���

  The bags and boxes from the grocery store nearly hid-it-nearly hid the whole wall, come to that. Spare clothing, canned food, dried peas, everything he could think of. There hadn’t been many people in the stores, and he’d still been able to write traveler’s checks, which proved that nobody had thought through the implications of the rumors. He looked at his watch. Nearly noon. Unbelievable rumors, but they accounted for what had happened better than anything else.

  Time for the Town Meeting. That was going to be crowded. It was also probably going to determine whether or not he met a long, nasty death in the coming months. Possibly whether he was killed for the meat on his bones. He shivered. That was the problem with the sort of reading he did for recreation. History undermined certain comfortable assumptions about how human beings acted���

  He sat at the desk, slumped with his head in his hands. At this point in the type of novel that was his favorite reading the hero would be brimming with ideas, getting people moving, organizing things, providing some leadership.