Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  I am not what I was, she thought, standing and looking around. That was both bad and good; more good, perhaps. The Earth Folk would have to become other than they had been, or they would cease to be at all. Moon Woman has turned time itself to give us this.

  The land lay green and bright about her, beneath a hazed-blue sky empty of all but a few high clouds and swirls of wings as birds took flight from the reeds to the southwest. There was a hamlet not far away, several compounds, one quite large. She’d been here before; it was an important place, boats from the Summer Isle-Ireland-came here, and people from inland to trade. Long ago the bluestones for the Great Wisdom had been brought this way, from far in the Dark Mountain Land-what the Eagle People called Wales. The soil was firm right down to the water’s edge here, not like the tidal flats and marsh to either side; and not far north two rivers met, the long Hillwater and the shorter Glimmerfish. There were beaten tracks through this pasture, and between the square fields of the settlement. Young wheat and barley cast bluish-green waves over those; farther away were cattle with red-and-white hides and long horns, and youngsters watching over them. Between the grainfields came others hurrying toward the strangers-light blinked off metal, spearheads, and the bronze rivets of shields.

  Marian came up beside her. “Hostile?” she said.

  Swindapa shook her head, touching the other’s arm briefly for reassurance. “No, making sure of us,” she said.

  They were talking the Fiernan Bohulugi tongue; Marian worked doggedly at it even though the sounds were hard for one of the Eagle People.

  “There must be war in the land, or they wouldn’t turn out in arms without sending a scout first.” She looked around at the Eagle, lying at her anchors well out on the broad waters. The Douglass spread her white wings beyond it, cruising inland cautiously. “Or, well, the ship may have frightened them.”

  Crewfolk were forming up around them as they spoke; the Earth Folk party slowed and then halted as they saw so many spears. A cadet trotted up with a green branch, and the Eagle’s emissaries moved forward, waving it in sign of peace. Light twinkled as the Fiernan spoke among themselves, waving arms and spears; then some of them trotted back to the huts. The sun beat down, warm enough to make you sweat under armor. More of her people came from the settlement, hesitated, then came closer once more, and halted in speaking distance. One of them bore a branch as well, and several young men carried a wicker chair padded with blankets, holding an aged woman in a long patterned cloak. The rest were men in their prime, some with the Spear Mark on bare chests, others in tunics and leggings; one with gray in his beard wore a sword and a belt with gold studs, and a necklace of bear teeth and gold and amber. They flinched back at the strangeness when Marian took off her helmet and showed her black face and alien features, then visibly nerved themselves to come on again. Sweat shone on their faces. Their eyes flickered over the foreigners, and then out over the water to the great ship and its smaller consort.

  “Greetings, if you come in peace,” the sword-bearing man said in the charioteers’ tongue.

  “A fortunate star rule our meeting,” Swindapa replied in Fiernan. “Moon Woman send it so.”

  A gasp went up from the little group, and an excited babbling.

  “You speak like one of ours!”

  “Like one of those turn-up-the-nose snobs from the downland country,” someone muttered toward the back of the group.

  “I am Swindapa of the Star Blood line of Kurlelo,” she said.

  The old woman exclaimed, then hobbled close. Swindapa bent her ear to the other’s whisper, and whispered in her turn, exchanging certain words.

  “She is as she says,” the Grandmother said to the men, probably her son and grandsons. “The Kurlelo line who dwell by the Great Wisdom.”

  “Don’t you know my face, Pelanatorn?” Swindapa said. Not really fair, she’d been four years younger the last time they’d met, and that had been brief. Who paid attention to one youngster among many?

  As far as the Grandmother was concerned the Words settled matters, since Swindapa was obviously not a captive. No line was wiser or older than the Kurlelo. Her son looked dubiously at the twoscore or so foreigners already ashore.

  “Who are these?” he said to her. “Yes, I am Pelanatorn son of Kaddapal,” he added, remembering his manners, and naming his mother to her in the same sentence.

  “These are the Eagle People, from across the waters beyond the Summer Isle,” she said. “They come friends. Last little planting season they rescued me from the Sun People-the Iraiina, the new tribe, caught me, they held me captive-and I have been a Moon Year in their land, guesting. This is their��� Spear Chosen,” she said, touching Marian on the shoulder. “Marian Alston. My lover,” she added proudly.

  More gasps and murmurs; she might as well have claimed to have spent the year among the stars and brought back Moon Woman’s heart.

  “They come friends?” the man said, looking at her with respect shaded with awe, taking half a step back. “That is well. We have need of friends.”

  “There is war?” she asked anxiously.

  “When hasn’t there been, since the Sun People came?” the man said bitterly. “But since last year, it’s worse in all ways. They have a sorcerer to lead them now, a child of Barrow Woman’s own suckling. Instead of fighting each other mostly, they beat us like threshers nailing out the grain. And their Tartessian friends raid along the coast in their ships.”

  Swindapa’s eyes went wide in fear as she turned to translate.

  The captain of the Eagle looked down at the picture again. It had been taken with a telephoto lens, from the deck of a moving ship, but it was clear enough.

  “Will you look at that,” she said, throwing it down on the folding table with a tightly controlled gesture of disgust.

  It was growing dark, the sun a fading crimson in the west, but the sides of the tent were still rolled up and the lantern hanging from its peak made the inside bright enough. The officers gathered round and leaned over the glossy photograph, exclaiming. Alston scowled out through the open side of the tent as they pointed out the details.

  With three hundred and fifty pair of hands working, the American camp was going up rapidly. She’d had it laid out in the shape of a pentagon; there had been a few smiles at that, but it wasn’t really a joke. The five-sided figure gave you enfilading fire on the flanks from all the points where the lines met. A few locals-Do not think of them as “natives, ” she reminded herself firmly-stood by and watched, gaping. They’d picked a stretch of firm meadow not far from the high-tide mark, and the ditch went in quickly, dirt flying up. It was six feet deep and twelve across, with the earth piled on the inner side to make the rampart; inside went laneways flanked by ditches, with tents in neat rows and a clear central space for a parade ground. Working parties carefully cut squares of turf and laid the grass on the soil of the embankment; without cover the whole thing might well erode into a mudpie at the first hint of rain.

  Time for refinements later, Alston thought, hands clasped behind her back. A palisade, of course, when they had time to cut the necessary timber; huts for stores��� and a central platform for Leaton’s pride, the centerpiece of the ROATS program.

  “That’s the Yare, isn’t it?” Ian Arnstein said, peering at the photograph. “And that other one doesn’t look at all like the Tartessian ships we saw this time last year.”

  The Coast Guard officers looked at him, silent. “Well, I’m not an expert,” he said defensively.

  “It’s a bloody brigantine,” Alston said. “Look at the thing, the way it’s rigged. Oh, she’ll have a lot of leeway sailing close and she’s too beamy to be really fast, but that bastard Isketerol didn’t waste his time on Nantucket, if he could build that from scratch.”

  She saw his incomprehension. “Remember what I said, about sailing across the Atlantic in the ships they had?”

  He nodded. She stabbed a finger into the picture and went on: “With this, he could sail acr
oss the Pacific. He probably broke up a couple of those ships we saw last spring to make it. You could circumnavigate the world in this-Magellan did it, in somethin’ less seaworthy-or carry a hundred men to Nantucket.”

  “This brig isn’t just a copy, either,” she continued. “It’s a clever adaptation of our ideas for local use. That shallow draft���”

  “You can beach it without damage,” Sandy Rapczewicz-she’d kept her maiden name in her second marriage too-said mournfully. “That’d be handy, for inshore work.”

  “Or an invasion,” Alston said, nodding. “Well, taking Isketerol with us-I made a bad mistake, there. We’ve got to put a stop to this now, if we can.”

  She looked up at Lieutenant Commander Hendriksson. The young Minnesotan drew herself a little more erect. “What did you make the water there, Ms. Hendriksson?”

  “I had twelve feet, but that was quarter of a mile offshore,” she said. “From the color and the look of the bottom on the lead line, it shelves quickly.”

  Alston picked up the photograph again and measured with her eye. A man was standing upright beside the beached hull of the Tartessian brig to give her some idea of the size. Somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred tons displacement, she decided. Slightly less than half the size of her two schooners, but much stubbier and tubbier than the Tubman or Douglass. Which meant���

  “This thing may draw less than four feet,” she said.

  “And the brig’s got oar ports,” Hendriksson pointed out. “That could be useful, inshore, given a calm or a wind right in her teeth.”

  “Well, at least we know the range of those rock-throwers,” Alston said. “What did you make of their camp?”

  “Ma’am, that wall and ditch they’ve got��� I wouldn’t like to try and storm it.”

  “No, you’re right on that,” Alston said. “If I know Walker, he’s had the Tartessians put underwater obstacles in, too.”

  She spread her fingers on the table and looked around at the others. “I hope I don’t have to say keep a careful lookout,” she said dryly.

  There were somber nods. Together the Yare and this brig could carry almost as many fighters as the expeditionary force numbered, at least for a short coasting voyage.

  “From what Ms. Swindapa’s people were able to tell us, Walker has a strong position in the east-either he’s in charge, or nearly so, with a real army under his control. Plus we’re not nearly as completely in command of the sea as we’d hoped. We obviously need better intelligence, and we need help. This is the back crick of the beyond, by local standards. We’ll have to send a party inland.”

  She smiled, a shark’s expression. “And perhaps we’ll give him a surprise or two, busy little bee that he’s been.”

  “Ma’am? Lieutenant Commander Ortiz is back.”

  She ducked her head out of the tent for a second; the commander of the Frederick Douglass was coming up from the improvised dock. She returned his salute.

  “I’ve got ‘em,” Ortiz said. “And ma’am, you’re welcome to them.”

  Alston nodded, hands clasped behind her back, watching the livestock coming ashore from the schooner. All of it safely dead, at least; there was slaughter stock for sale a few hours’ run up the channel. They’d put in a small wharf, enough for the ships’ boats, and wheelbarrows and handcarts and strong young backs began trundling the carcasses up into the camp. Several dozen locals were among them, led by Pelanatorn’s sons and nephews, daughters and nieces.

  “No problems, Mr. Ortiz?”

  “Well, the locals are damned light-fingered, ma’am,” he said. “Anything metal particularly. And, ah, some of them are so friendly that it creates problems. Otherwise no; once we convinced them we weren’t pirates, they were eager to trade.”

  “Good. Have a look at this, Mr. Ortiz-Ms. Hendriksson hasn’t been idle.”

  He exclaimed over the picture of the Yare and the Tartessian brig. Alston stood deep in thought, rising and sinking slowly on the balls of her feet with her hands clasped behind her.

  “Which brings me to a matter of standing orders,” she said. “Now, you’ve all read the briefing sheet. These people here don’t have anything like what we’d call a government. If we want to get them on our side-and we need them-we have to win them over small group by small group. Ms. Swindapa and the Arnsteins and I are working on the, ah, the Grandmothers-fairly soon we’ll be taking a party off to consult with more of them inland. However, they’ve also got a series of local councils and another great council covering most of the southwestern part of England that meets near Stonehenge. It’s a more of a religious institution, in charge of what they call the Sacred Truce, but it has a lot of influence. It’s composed of men, but they’re selected by the Grandmothers. On top of all this, there are the Spear Chosen, who are the closest thing the Fiernan have to military leaders. They’re not elected or appointed at all; anyone who gets a good reputation as a leader and who throws a lot of parties gradually becomes accepted as one-sort of a potlatch thing. Land here is owned by lineages; trading or owning a lot of cows is the only way you can become really rich. Evidently among themselves the Fiernan Bohulugi don’t really fight, they skirmish in a sort of ritual way with livestock as the prize.”

  “Jesus, what a marvel of organization,” someone muttered. “Real Prussian stuff.”

  Alston frowned; Swindapa was scowling at the slight on her people. “So if we want to get the Spear Chosen on our side, the way is to lavish hospitality and plenty of gifts. Hence this series of barbecues. Clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ortiz said. “Ah, the locals, they evidently have a rather, ah, wild idea of a party.”

  Alston smiled thinly. “Well, that brings me to the next order of business. As you know, I’ve always insisted on enforcing the nonfraternization and public-displays-of-affection orders strictly on board ship. I intend to continue to do so.”

  Nods went around the table. Shipboard was enough of a pressure cooker as it was.

  “However, onshore, that’s a different matter. We have nearly four hundred healthy young people here, and they aren’t going to live like Cistercians indefinitely. Never give an order you know will be ignored.” Emphatic nods; doing that made the next one more likely to be ignored as well.

  “I’d like to emphasize, however, ladies, gentlemen, and have you pass on to your commands, that any misuse of rank, in fact any fraternization up or down the chain of command, is going to be goddam painful for all involved. In short, I’ll come down on it like a ton of wet cement, and so will each and every one of y’all. Ditto anythin’ else that interferes with discipline or combat readiness. Every officer will take a personal interest in seein’ that any such individual will suffer. Clear? Off-duty, however, we’ll apply the consentin’-adults rule.”

  She relaxed slightly. “However, that brings up another problem. Our expeditionary force is about two-thirds male, as you know. This can cause��� awkwardness.”

  More nods; in fact, it had created fairly serious problems back on Nantucket. The cadets were numerous enough in the island’s small young-adult population to throw the balance between the genders off, and there had been fights and tension over it,

  “I anticipate that our position vis-a-vis the locals will, ah, lessen the problem.”

  “God, yes, ma’am,” Ortiz said. “Like I said-very, very friendly around here.”

  And we’ll probably end up with a fair number of war brides, Alston reflected. Nothing wrong with that; I could scarcely complain even if there was, all things considered.

  She smiled secretly to herself behind an impassive face. Swindapa had also said, privately and emphatically, that if they were going to do this monogamy thing they could at least do, it frequently. Not much danger of Lesbian Bed Death there.

  “Now, as soon as a fair number of locals come in,” she went on, “we’ll have to start outfittin’ and trainin’ them.”

  A crewman saluted. “Ma’am. The locals are at the gate.”

/>   “Very well,” she said, returning the courtesy. “Ladies, gentlemen, we have guests.” Alston drew on her gloves; dress uniform again, even if it meant nothing to the locals. Strange. Last time here it was for Daurthunnicar. And hadn’t that been a total fuckup��� she looked at the Fiernan girl. Well, not quite. Not at all, personally speakin’.

  She ducked out of the tent, returning the sentries’ salutes, and toward the gate; it was local courtesy to greet guests at the door.

  “So Walker is a king already, as he wished,” Swindapa said, while they walked toward the inland apex of the pentagonal fort.

  “I’m sorry, ‘dapa,” Alston said quietly. “If we could have come again last year���”

  “That wasn’t the way the stars moved,” Swindapa replied in a murmur. “It’s Walker’s fault, not yours.”

  “Besides”-Swindapa shrugged-“if things weren’t bad, they might not listen to you. They might not anyway.”

  They’d certainly talked a good fight here, full of anger against the Sun People, but Alston didn’t know how much of that was telling her what she wanted to hear. From what the Arnsteins and Martha had told her, most primitive people took hospitality very seriously-if you traveled at all, it had to be as a guest. No Ho Jo’s here.

  The locals were back-not the old woman in the intricately checked and embroidered cloak, but the middle-aged man and his sons, and this time some girls as well, dressed in string skirts and short-sleeved knitted shirts and colorful shawls. They looked around in awe, and there was well-hidden fear in the older man’s eyes. Pelanatorn, she remembered. The younger Fiernans called greetings to the sentries on the walls, and seemed surprised and a little hurt at being ignored; even more surprised at the way the gate guard braced to attention and saluted as Alston came up.