Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  Strange. Where is the smoke-mark? Smoke was useful-it kept vermin out of your thatch as it soaked through, and dried the straw. A hearth like this should leave a broad band of smoke up the wall and on the roof, but that was smooth and white, looking like the gypsum plaster used to coat some Star-Moon-Sun workings. She went over and knelt, looking up. There was a tunnel of bricks leading away upward for the smoke. The room didn’t smell of smoke, and the hearth only very faintly.

  It smelled like flowers. Swindapa followed her nose. Yes, a bowl of dried petals on the wooden shelf over the hearth. That was homelike; bunches of dried herbs and flowers hung around any Earth Folk dwelling. There were flowers on the rug that warmed the floor, too, somehow drawn in cloth.

  A big wooden box on short legs stood by the bed. It had real metal fastenings on it, polished bronze. I wonder if this might be like the thing in the wall on the ship? She tugged on one brass handle, and a sliding box within the larger box came out, filled with things of fine cloth. She pulled one out. It was an Eagle Folk loincloth, the type made from two triangles of cloth and an odd stretchy belt that clung and stayed up by itself. You could put one of the little pads inside it to catch your Mourning blood, too, when your womb wept with Moon Woman. Another wonderful thing of the Eagle People.

  “Surely even Tartessos has nothing this fine,” she murmured to herself, looking around the room. “Not even Egypt.”

  It was getting dark, and she remembered something the captain had showed her. This place didn’t have the ship-magic that made a little star glow when you touched the wall. The lamp screwed to the wall was almost as delightful. You took off the tall glass bulb-carefully, carefully, the clear stuff was as fragile as a snowflake-and lit a match. That was a pleasure in itself, when you thought of how long and uncertain using a fire drill was; no wonder the Eagle People didn’t have to keep a fire going all the time for folk to take splinters from. Then you touched the flame to the flat strip of thick cloth that ran down into the cup of oil below. She put the chimney back on the lamp and turned the brass knob. Warm yellow light filled the room. A fire in the hearth would have been good too, even though the night was warm, but the lantern was pleasant.

  She yawned, full and sleepy, remembering to cover her mouth in the way the Eagle People considered polite. A whole bed that size to myself. She’d gotten used to lying so far off the ground, and no longer worried about rolling off the edge in her sleep, but she’d never expected to have so much space to herself. That’s good, though. Outside your kin, it was extremely bad manners not to share pleasure with someone sleeping in the same bed if he wanted to, and she didn’t think she could stand to have anyone touch her that way right now. Even the gentle old healer’s impersonal hands had made her struggle not to weep and scream.

  Her teeth ground together in rage. Another thing the Iraiina had stolen from her. She forced herself to relax again. Vengeance was coming. Moon Woman had taken her out of the world to find it; or brought this place into the world, perhaps. She couldn’t quite understand what the Eagle People had tried to explain about that yet, but she would.

  She padded down the corridor to the washing place, and did the Eagle People ritual of tooth-scrubbing. Many of them seemed to have trouble with their teeth, so chewing a cedar twig wasn’t enough for them. Although the captain’s are beautiful, shining like pure salt.

  Perhaps the Powers which gave the Eagle People so much sent them that trouble to balance things.

  “It is fun to have more room,” Doreen said.

  Ian laughed as he came back to the big four-poster bed with two glasses of sherry. He’d had to turn over all the provisions he’d accumulated on that panic-stricken morning right after the Event, but the Council’s regulations had let everyone keep his booze. The island was out of bottled beer, although the local microbrewery was ready to start malting the barley they’d brought back. God knew what it would taste like with the supply of hops so limited, but it ought to be drinkable. That was all you could say about Nantucket’s own wine, though. The real surprise was that grapes would grow here at all, probably because the island sat in the middle of the Gulf Stream!

  He checked half a step, then climbed back into the bed.

  “Penny for them,” Doreen said, snuggling close and taking her glass.

  Ian propped pillows up against the headboard and leaned back into them. “I was just thinking that when things settle down, it might be an idea to look into a wine-importing business,” he said. “That Tartessian wine wasn’t half bad-it reminded me of sherry, which is why I thought of it just now-and with a few hints, they could probably do even better.”

  Doreen tweaked his chest hairs. “It reminded me of Manischewitz,” she said.

  “Oh, not that bad-well, actually, that was my first thought too.”

  “You’re just looking for an excuse to go do historical research in the first person personal,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing a few things,” he admitted. Isketerol had let fall a few hints about Egypt that made his scholar’s mind drool; and the thought of seeing Agamemnon’s Greece��� God! To get there with a camera! “But there’s still the matter of making a living.”

  He glanced down. “Making a living for us?” he said tentatively.

  Did I really say that? he thought. Yup.

  Doreen grinned up at him through the fringe of her abundant, rather coarse black hair. “Trying to make an honest woman of me?” she said. He nodded.

  “Thank you, Ian,” she said. After a long moment. “Yes.”

  They clinked the glasses gently together. “Strange,” Ian said. “I’ve only done that once before, and the results weren’t all that great.”

  Doreen knocked her knuckles against one of the posts of the bed. “Avert the omen. I’ve never said yes before��� haven’t been asked all that often, either.”

  “I can’t think why,” he said sincerely. “Smart, agreeable, good-looking.”

  She laughed ruefully. “Zaftig,” she corrected. “A lot better looking on this enforced diet and exercise program God’s sent us on.”

  She had lost a good twenty pounds, in the right places, although she’d never be the ballerina she’d once wanted to be. He ran a hand down her back to her hip. “I’ve got no objections at all,” he said. “When?”

  “Well, Chief Cofflin’s getting married��� after that?”

  He nodded. That would be a town-wide blowout; they could have a quiet ceremony with only a few friends. Odd. I actually have more friends here than in California. A thought struck him. “Should we apply for a house of our own?”

  “Why bother?” Doreen said. “There’s nobody else in this building. We could convert the other rooms to office and library space, and there’s a nice living room and solarium downstairs.”

  “No kitchen, though,” Ian pointed out. The place was part of the John Cofflin, with three suites on each of its upper two floors. Each held a bedroom, bathroom-largely inoperable now-and sitting room, of variable sizes.

  “I’m not the hausfrau type, particularly not with wood stoves or whatever we’re going to be using. The main building’s just across the way for meals. Later on we could put an attached kitchen out back-there’s plenty of room.”

  Ian sighed. Nice to be thinking about something normal��� relatively normal. “And it’s right downtown,” he said. “The location will be convenient while we’re working for the government.” The term came naturally now.

  “You’re the head of the State Department,” Doreen giggled. Her eyes took on a thoughtful look. “That could be a pretty dangerous job, here. It isn’t a nice era, from what Swindapa said. Interesting, in the Chinese sense. We’ll be back across the Atlantic in August, maybe September.”

  Ian nodded uncomfortably. Doreen had spent more time with the Fiernan girl than he. “She’s, ah, recovered fairly well, hasn’t she?”

  “I’m not sure,” Doreen said. “She’s a nice kid, but weird-well, with that background, you’
d expect it. We talked astronomy, did I tell you?”

  “You mentioned it. Do they know much?”

  “It’s all tied up with their religion, but once you strip out the stuff about Moon Woman and her children the stars-and boy, do they believe the stars control your destiny!-they’ve actually got a pretty good grasp of things. Pre-Copernicus, but very sound. They even know the sun’s a star and the planets aren’t, although the sun’s the bad figure in their mythology.”

  “The devil?”

  “More like a wayward child who needs a lot of discipline,” Doreen said. “I’m not sure; the theology’s as complicated as the Kabbalah, and I get the feeling this astronomical stuff was overlaid, a long time ago, on an older religion. The thing is, they’ve got an amazing grasp of stellar motions for people with no instruments to speak of and no way of writing any of it down like the Babylonians did. And their math, geometry in particular. Even something like algebra. No wonder Swindapa’s got a good memory-the amount of stuff the poor kid had to memorize! She says some of the mnemonic songs they use are so old the language has changed beyond recognition.”

  We are made for each other. Make love, lie here with a glass of wine, and talk about anthropology, Ian mused ruefully.

  Doreen thought for a second. “It’s really odd how much they know, and how little hint of it there is in the history of the field,” she said. “Really. They’ve got a good idea of the size of the earth, for instance, and of the distance to the moon. As good as the Greeks, better in some respects. Yet there’s no trace of it in the records at all.”

  “I don’t think that’s surprising,” Ian said grimly. “Let’s put it this way. Imagine everything the same as we saw in Britain, only we didn’t arrive. What would have happened to Swindapa?”

  “She’d have died, the way they were treating her,” Doreen said at once. “Or gone mad. Oh.”

  Ian nodded. “The Iraiina, or their relatives, are-were- would have-hell, you know what I mean-were scheduled to blot her people out. At least Swindapa’s class, the ones who hold their accumulated knowledge. There’s no trace of their language in our history, either. All that’ll be left is their monuments and burials, which nobody will really understand.”

  “Poor kid,” Doreen said again. “At least that’s one thing we improved on.” She sighed, then brightened and returned to a more personal subject:

  “There’s plenty of room here for a nursery, too.” Ian stiffened in momentary panic. “No, I’m not pregnant-back a while I got Norplant.” She rolled her arm to show the five little tubes under the skin.

  “Were you, ah, involved with anyone?” he asked. Odd that I waited until now to ask that. A convention was growing up that you didn’t lightly inquire about what links a person had had off-island before the Event. Irrelevant, and often painful.

  “Not recently. I was overoptimistic,” she sighed. “It’ll wear off in another year and a half, and we can decide what we want to do then.” Her grin turned wicked. “No reason we can’t practice, though, is there?”

  “None at all.” He finished the sherry and put his glass beside hers on the side table.

  CHAPTER TEN

  May, Year 1 A.E.

  “Ahhh,” Swindapa sighed under her breath.

  Everyone in the huge building was sitting on padded chairs of stone, like steps ringing the wooden platform ahead of her. Hundreds of people; she did a quick count. Nine hundred eighty-six, with a dozen children carried in their mothers’ arms, almost as many as a Midwinter Moon ceremony at the Great Wisdom. The chairs had been enough for wonder, that and the building itself-like a Star-Moon-Sun work, only more vast and stately. Now the banner of white cloth up at the head of it was showing nickering images, colored, with sounds. The sounds of an Iraiina chant, of their magic.

  Shivering, she huddled a little closer to the captain sitting beside her, reached down and seized her hand. She and the others were watching the moving shapes of light as if they were���

  Something went click inside her head. She remembered the shadows of dancers thrown against the walls of a hut as they leaped and whirled around the fire. Ahhhhhh! The images were shadows of things past, like a memory taken out and put on the banner of white cloth! She relaxed a little. This was a seeming, and the captain wouldn’t let the magic hurt her.

  Figures walked through a meadow at dawn. Iraiina figures, stalking between two high-leaping bonfires and a double line of warriors. One was huge, heavy-bodied, scarred and hairy, swag belly above pillar legs, barrel chest and bear-thick arms above. Daurthunnicar. Naked save for the kilt and the mask over his face and shoulders, the head and neck of a horse, skillfully tanned and mounted on wicker. Equally naked in his hand was the long sword of silvery metal that he’d been given by the Eagle People. The younger man had designs painted over his body in blue and ocher-red.

  The Iraiina priest came forward, with two acolytes leading a chariot; they unyoked the right-hand pony of the team and brought it to the magus, who raised his staff and began to chant. The words were strange, like Iraiina but longer and twisted. Old speech, she decided. The Grandmothers used an old speech for some of the most ancient Star Working Songs; Moon Woman might not like it if any of those were changed. Maybe the Iraiina sky god felt the same way.

  Behind the priest and the horse a hole gaped in the earth, with dirt piled up on either side of it. The Iraiina warriors began to dance in a great circle around it, stopping now and then to drink deeply from skins of mead, tossing their heads and neighing; it was the hepkwos-midho, the horse-drunk.

  Daurthunnicar danced too; the Dance of the King Stallion, knees flashing high as he pranced. The chant filled the hall, and she could hear the Eagle People murmuring beneath it. Then the Iraiina chieftain stopped, standing straddle-legged. The horse was led forward, and the holders urged it to its knees. The young man in the kilt came forward, and took up a stone-headed maul. With a shout he swept it up and then down into the forehead of the horse, stunning it.

  Daurthunnicar struck as well, two-handed. The sword severed the horse’s spine; five more strokes cut through its neck, until the head rolled free. Blood splashed the rahax from head to foot, until scarlet dripped from his beard and from the mane of the horse mask. The younger man stooped, then stood with the horse’s head held stiffly over his own, corded arms straining at the weight. Both men danced again, younger following older, the muzzles of the horses jerking and swooping in unison.

  At last they halted. The young man laid his burden down beneath his feet and faced the rising sun, singing in a strong clear voice with both palms raised. Gradually the arms lowered, but the song went on. It was still ringing out when Daurthunnicar’s sword blurred in a horizontal circle.

  Very sharp sword, Swindapa thought. Cutting through a neck like that was hard, even for a man of Daurthunnicar’s huge strength. She gritted her teeth and wished it were the chieftain’s head falling.

  The images showed men laying the body of the horse in the grave. Dirt went over it, then the body of the man-sacrifice, with the horse’s head in place of its own. Lights came up, and Swindapa breathed out a long sigh of wonder.

  The captain gently disengaged her hand, putting Swindapa’s firmly back on her own side of the gap between the chairs. She rose and went to the front of the room, with the Spear Chosen of the Eagle People beside her; he was very tall, with thinning blond hair cut short like a mourner’s. They began to speak; Swindapa strained to hear the language. She could follow it pretty well now, and make herself understood on all ordinary matters.

  Strange people, the Americans, the Eagle People. Strange but wonderful.

  Pamela Lisketter spat to clear her mouth, then rinsed it with water from the bucket by the sink. The image of the horse, falling, falling, blood spurting over the man with the sword, and then the sword flashing again and interrupting the song��� her stomach nearly rose again, but she pushed the scene away until it was distant-words, images on TV, not so real.

  She walked back
out into her living room. The house was mostly that single long space, furnished with futons and her own creations, smelling faintly of incense��� and now of whale oil. The loom stood by one wall, the windows next to it flooding it with light. Her friends were scattered about. She’d been planning to have a few over for dinner, and ready to sacrifice the last of the tofu, until the revelations tonight. They’d hit some of the others even harder; Cindy Ganger was still sitting silent, with her face crumpled in behind her thick glasses, but then, she was a Wiccan and really believed that her religion went back to ancient times. The only ones who looked at all collected were the Coast Guardsman, Walker, and his friend from Europe, Isketerol. They were sitting with Alice and Rosita. Lisketter frowned a little. The two young women were dilettantes, in her opinion; Hong dabbled in pagan circles for the sexual aspects. Also feckless, as witness who they’d taken up with-but that could be useful now.

  “Shocking,” she said at last. “Obviously sexist, patriardial in the worst way, abusive of animals. And we did business with them.”

  “The Iraiina are savages,” Isketerol agreed.

  Lisketter felt her lips thin, then forced herself to remember that the��� indigenous person, she decided��� had learned his English in the wrong place, among people no better than police. “Savages” was a Eurocentric term. Or Nantucket-centric, I suppose, she thought with an attempt at gallows humor.

  “They are the ancestors of the technolators,” her brother David said. “Remember, oh, what was the book, The Chalice and the Blade?”

  “Yeah, they’re pretty hard-assed, the Iraiina,” Walker nodded, sipping at his bottle of homemade beer. He looked down at it and grimaced slightly, then continued: “We shouldn’t be selling them weapons.”

  “I should hope not,” Lisketter said. “Or anyone else, for that matter.” Thoughtfully: “Perhaps we should talk to Ms. Swindapa about her people. They seem more��� more harmonic. If we could get her away from Captain Alston.”