Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in an��� unprecedented situation. There is no United States Coast Guard. There is no United States. We’re marooned, adrift in time.”

  She pointed. “A little more than seven thousand of us altogether, and the rest of the planet in a state of savagery. However, we still need discipline and organization. Accordingly, anyone who wants to take his or her chance ashore may do so now. Those who wish to remain with the ship will be under orders as before, and I’m placing the ship at the disposal of Chief Cofflin and the Council in Nantucket. There may be no United States, but these people are still Americans-and helping them is what we’re in this uniform for.”

  “What about our families?” someone called.

  Alston clamped her hands behind her back. “There’s nothing to be done about that. Everyone and everythin’ we knew is gone. People, either this��� whatever it was will reverse itself, or it won’t,” she said. “If it does, everything is back to normal-except that y’all make your fortunes on the talk-show circuit.”

  That brought a shaky laugh. She went on: “But we have to operate on the assumption that it won’t. Because if it doesn’t, and we sit down and wait for a return that doesn’t happen, we’re all going to die. If we work, we may pull through. As for our people ashore��� they’ll have to assume we were lost, somehow. Nobody knows what happened back up in the��� future.” It was still a little hard to say it. “At a guess, the year 1998 got the Nantucket that should be here, in which case they’ll have some inkling of what happened to us. Grief is natural, but we’ve no time to sit down and cry.”

  Not if I have any say in the matter, she added mentally.

  Keeping people too busy to think was an ancient military tradition, and for very good reason. She hadn’t asked to be stuck in this situation, but things weren’t going to fall apart if she had anything to do with it. The United States Coast Guard, or the Lord God Almighty, or fate, or whatever, had left them in her hands.

  The uproar began as she finished speaking. It lasted far into the night, and ended with half a dozen cadets and a couple members of her crew sedated or under restraint.

  “But nobody,” she said in the officers’ wardroom, “wants to jump ship.”

  “I think it may have struck them that at least they get rations here,” Hiller said.

  Like her, the sailing master didn’t have any ties ashore. Well, she had two children, but they’d gone with their father in the divorce and that was going on fifteen years ago. Wouldn’t have done any good to fight for custody, not in South Carolina with what John knew and threatened to reveal if she contested, and it would have wrecked her career when things came out. At least John had warned her first, not just blabbed to the wind.

  Some of the other officers still looked as if they’d been hit behind the ear with a sandbag. Most of them did have people back when. Walker, now, Walker looked excited. She had her doubts about him, anyway. Intelligent, hardworking, and they even shared a hobby in the martial arts, but there was something���

  “Speaking of rations, how are we found?” she asked.

  The fuel-oil tanks were full-they’d topped up in New London before they left. Thank God for small mercies. The Eagle’s auxiliary was a fairly recent thousand-horsepower Caterpillar diesel named Max, practically immortal given that the ship’s own machine shop could make most replacement parts; the generators and freshwater plant ran off the same fuel system. Oil would be the weak point. Wind only from now on, she thought. We use the auxiliary on nothing but real emergencies.

  “Ma’am,” the quartermaster said. “We’ll be out of fresh vegetables and the like shortly. Flour, canned and dried goods, and so forth, maybe four weeks. But ma’am, two hundred people take a lot of feeding.”

  “Reduced rations immediately then. Use the perishables first, and I’ll talk to Chief Cofflin and see what they can spare from shore. From what Lieutenant Walker says, the fishing and so forth will be very good. We can lend a hand with that right away. We’ll also probably be making a run to England-well, to the British Isles, whatever they’re called here-and-now-to trade for grain. I’d like your ideas on that ASAP, by tomorrow morning, if you please.”

  Officers needed to be kept busy too. “Also on how we can convert the ship for operations in a low-tech environment. More fuel’s out of the question, and so are electronics or most machine parts except those we can make in the shop on board or get from the island. We’ll be lucky to get cordage and sails.”

  “Captain Alston.” That was the former operations officer, Sandy Rapczewicz, now acting XO. She was a competent-looking woman in her thirties with a weathered, pug-nosed Slavic face; her eyes were red, but she seemed calm enough. A teenaged son ashore, Alston remembered, and a husband. “I was just thinking. We’re in the past, right?”

  She nodded. Rapczewicz went on: “But if we, um, do things-make contact with the locals, that sort of thing-won’t we, um, sort of change the way things happened? It isn’t in the history books, thousands of people and a ship appearing in Moses’ time.”

  Silence fell around the table. Alston nodded. “Sandy, you’re right.” Some of the officers were beginning to look frightened. “On shore, I talked about that to some of Cofflin’s Council, a history professor and an astronomer, and the town librarian, who’s an amateur archaeologist.” Odd what types ended up on Nantucket, but it wasn’t your average island. “One thing they agreed on-even if we all dropped dead tomorrow morning, we’ve already changed history.”

  “How’s that, Captain? We haven’t done anything yet.”

  “We’re here. A lot of buildings and so forth are here, including brick and concrete and stone that’ll last. When Europeans arrived, they’d find the ruins. More important, the islanders already sent some people ashore, they had contact with the Indians-and according to the doctor in charge of the local clinic, the one they brought back is dying of the common cold.”

  That brought everyone up. “The person with the cold sneezed on one of the others on shore, too, which means their whole tribe probably has it by now. You think that isn’t going to change history? They’ll pass it on, since not all of them will keel over at once. And as a practical matter, everyone on the island isn’t going to drop dead tomorrow. People will try to survive. Even if everything goes wrong, hundreds will be around for years, and everything they do will change things.”

  Rapczewicz crossed herself. “Then we could be destroying the future-everyone we know, the whole country.”

  “If we have, we’ve already done it. Think it through. We’re still here, so the history that produced us is too, somewhere, probably. Arnstein-the history professor-thinks that what’ll happen is that there will be two futures, the one we came from, and the one that happens because we landed here. Rosenthal, the scientist, says that that could be-something to do with quantum mechanics.”

  “Yeah, the Many Worlds interpretation. We studied it in physics,” Lieutenant Walker said thoughtfully.

  Alston cleared her throat. “In any case, it’s irrelevant. We can’t do anything about it. Even mass suicide, which is not going to happen, wouldn’t change the fact that we’re here and the consequences that follow. But we do have to eat, y’all will recollect. So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get down to some serious plannin’.”

  The meeting went on for hours. As the officers left for their bunks, Alston signaled to Walker to stay. “Lieutenant, I think you’ve had an idea that you’re not sharing.”

  “Ma’am,” the young man said. He hesitated. “It’s just that there are so many possibilities here.”

  “Including death by starvation, unfortunately. That has to be our maximum priority for the present.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The younger officer had a boyishly open face, green eyes, and a mop of reddish-brown hair; he looked like an overgrown Huck Finn. And I can believe that as much as I want to, she thought.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Alsto
n sighed and sat alone, cradling her coffee and wishing for a drink. Coast Guard ships were dry, though, just like the Navy’s. Like the Navy’s had been��� would be��� whatever.

  She poured another cup. Thinking about what had happened made her head hurt even worse. She’d considered drawing a trank herself, she needed the sleep, but no. She also needed her wits if something happened. Lucky for her she’d never been able to strike any deep roots, anywhere. At least she was used to disadvantages.

  What more can the Supreme Ironist do? Let’s see, you’re a woman. A black woman. A black woman who came up through the ranks. A black, ex-ranker, divorced woman. A black, ex-ranker, divorced, gay woman. A black, ex-ranker, divorced, gay woman in charge of a ship. A black, ex-ranker, divorced, gay woman in command of a ship thrown back three thousand years in time with a crew getting more hysterical by the moment. What else could happen?

  She had an uneasy feeling she’d find out.

  The Nantucket Council was meeting around an office table in the Town Building, on Broad Street down by the Whaling Museum. The building was eighteenth-century brick Georgian on the outside, late-twentieth Institutional Bland inside. Voices sounded through open windows as outside, slippery mounds of fish were manhandled into boxes, garbage bags, and the backs of pickups and the island’s ubiquitous Jeep Cherokees for distribution. The smell was already fairly powerful.

  Cofflin rapped his knuckles on the table and spoke: “All right, people, we’ve toted it up, and with strict rationing we’ve got enough food for about two to three weeks from our reserves. Thank God not many of the summer people had arrived, but we’re still up against it. Captain Alston? What’s the fishing situation?”

  Marian Alston had been sitting quietly, making notes now and then. Occasionally she would change a small ball of hard rubber from one hand to another, squeezing steadily.

  “There are two real trawlers operating out of Nantucket, and another that was here from Mattapoisett, sheltering from rough weather. As long as the fuel lasts, they can pull in enough to give everyone on the island a pound or more of fish a day-the schools of cod and herring and flounder and whatnot out there have to be seen to be believed. The main problem is breaking nets because the yields are so heavy.”

  “Thank God for that,” Cofflin said. “Both Nantucket trawlers were slated to be junked next year,” he went on. He’d been a commercial fisherman himself for a while, between getting out of high school and joining the Navy; he’d gone into police work after that. Like most trades that were really essential, working the nets had paid squat and had zero prospects. Back up in the twentieth, at least. Here the priorities were different.

  Alston nodded. “As long as the fuel lasts, they’ll be very useful. When it’s gone, which will be fairly soon, they’re useless. We can adapt the scallop boats to long-line hand fishing-there’s an old man on the island we found who knows the technique, and we’ve got him giving lessons to yachtsmen and they’re teaching others. We can use the sailing yachts too. They won’t be what you’d call efficient, but they’ll do for seine netting. Without fuel to spare, the motorboats are worthless-unless we cut them down and convert them to dories. I’ve got some parties workin’ on that, too, but we’re short of beams, planks, wood of all kinds.”

  “No problem there.” Cofflin pushed a pile of papers across the table. “Here’s a list of surplus buildings. Use the materials. Lord knows the island’s got plenty of house carpenters-they’re yours for this. Get in touch with Sam Macy. He’s about the best housebuilder, and everyone knows him.” He paused. “Bottom line, what are the fishing prospects?”

  “Good. We’re landing several tons a day already. Even shore fishing is yielding significant amounts. The hand techniques should be coming online about the time we run out of motor fuel for the trawlers, giving us our daily needs and about a quarter or more over for reserves. The problem is preservation. We need salt, and lots of it. Even more when we start bringing in whalemeat.”

  “Whales! You can’t kill whales.” Pamela Lisketter gasped.

  The other members of the Council looked down the table at her. “Why not?” Rosenthal snapped.

  “They’re an endangered species!”

  “Not here they’re not,” Captain Alston said. “They’re a navigation hazard. You can’t sail five miles out there without bumping into the damned things. We need the meat, and we need oil for lighting and cooking, and the rest of them we can grind up and use on the crops.”

  She turned to the farm owner. “Ms. Brand, we’ll also be producing a lot of fish offal, by-products. Good fertilizer, I understand.”

  Dr. Coleman cut in. “Save the livers of the cod. We’re going to have problems with vitamin deficiencies, too. I’ve rounded up all the supplements and pills on the island, but with the shortage of fresh greens and fruits you’re projecting, we may have actual scurvy by winter.”

  Cofflin nodded. “Right now, we’ll eat fresh fish and whale meat, plus perishables, and save all the canned goods and other keepers for the winter to eke out what we salt down and preserve and what we can grow. Doc, we should be able to get wild fruits and berries. Would cranberries and blueberries help? We’ve got a couple of hundred acres of cranberry bog, right enough.”

  “If they’re properly preserved, yes, they’ll help with the vitamin problem.”

  Martha Stoddard tapped the table in her turn, with one finger. “There are a lot of wild plants that have useful quantities of vitamins, and edible seaweed too. My Girl Scout troop was doing a project on them. Some of the seaweed can be dried, as well. Dulse, for example-health food stores sell dried dulse as a snack. High in vitamin C.”

  “Good,” Cofflin said. “Why don’t you and the doctor get together on that?”

  “Medicinal herbs too,” Coleman said. “I’m experimenting with producing simple antibiotics, but we’re going to be short of a good deal else.”

  “Good. Now that we know we’re not going to starve to death right away, what about the next few months to a year?” Cofflin said. He looked over at Angelica Brand.

  “I’m sorry, Chief, but my operation is basically for flowers and luxury vegetables,” she said. “There’s only the greenhouses, and about a hundred acres under vegetables every summer, and that’s a drop in the bucket.”

  Cofflin restrained an impulse to run his hands through his hair. Brand Farms was the only real agricultural enterprise on the island. There were a few hobby farms, an herb grower, private vegetable gardens, people who kept a cow or a horse or something, a lone vineyard, and that was it. It had been a long, long time since Nantucket fed itself. Even back in the Revolutionary War there had been famine here when the British blockaded the island, and they’d already been trading whale oil and fish for grain. The manager of the A amp;P had been invaluable in tracking down all the food reserves, but there just wasn’t much. Deliveries from the mainland came three times a week even in winter.

  Then Brand struck the palm of her hand to her forehead. “Wait a minute-my off-season cover crop is winter rye. If I don’t plow that up for vegetables, we can harvest it, by hand if we have to. Call it a hundred acres at twenty or so bushels��� say two thousand bushels of grain. Not until late August, though. That’s about���” She punched her calculator. “About one-fifth of our needs for a year, not counting what I’d have to hold back as seed.”

  “Potatoes,” Ian Arnstein said. The others looked at him; he flushed slightly and went on: “Potatoes are a pretty complete diet, they grow well in a sandy soil, and an acre will support two people. They keep well, too. The Irish used to live off potatoes and skim milk. We could live on potatoes and salt fish over the winter, probably.”

  Angelica Brand went into a huddle with the A amp;P manager and her secretary and pecked at her calculator. At last she said:

  “It’s pretty elementary farming, and we’ve got our usual shipment of seed potatoes on hand at my place. We could plant a couple of hundred acres, although that will cut down on the
period for living off stored food,” she said. “Plus I can put in a few hundred acres of corn and vegetables, drawing on my own stocks and the stuff from the gardening and supply shops. But I don’t have the equipment to cultivate that much, even counting the relics used as lawn ornaments and such I’ve been tracking down. There isn’t that much cleared land on the island, in fact, even if we use lawns and flowerbeds. Incidentally, we should use some of the lawns for fodder, grazing and hay, if we can.”

  Chief Cofflin closed his eyes, then opened them in decision. “People are going crazy sitting around with nothing to do, anyways.” Most of the island’s economy depended on tourists. The demand for real estate agents, store clerks, waiters, and cooks had taken an abrupt nosedive. “We’ll do the clearing and planting by hand if we have to.” He went on, “We’ll divide them into teams. Ms. Brand, you use your tractors to do the heavy clearing, plus what earthmoving equipment we can dig up. Then we’ll have the teams move in and get ready to plant with hand tools. Anything else you’ve got seed for, too. Carrots, beets, turnips, you name it. Find the best land and we’ll worry about compensation for the owners later, if we live.”

  “How are we going to pay people to work? It’s just sinking in that money isn’t worth much anymore,” the town clerk said.

  That was a good question. “Any ideas?”

  Starbuck nodded. “Food. I say anyone who wants to eat, works. We can run a sort of chit system, so many hours drawing so much, and then juggle it. Of course, we’ll have to figure out something different for people who can’t work, and eventually we’ll need a money of our own. But that’s going to have to wait.”

  Martha Stoddard cleared her throat. “The older people, we’ve got a lot of retirees, they can do things like child-minding. We’ll need a day-care system with everybody able-bodied working.”

  “Good idea, Martha. Yours too, Joseph: work if you want to eat. Damn, you know, that sounds pretty good��� Any objections?” Cofflin didn’t see any. “Speaking of money, we’ll have to make a register of houses, land, and cars and suchlike owned by coo��� by people who weren’t here when the Event happened. We’ll have to commandeer property owned by residents, too, but let’s make it clear from the beginning that there’ll be compensation eventually.”