Book Read Free

Island in the Sea of Time

Page 71

by S. M. Stirling


  “Dirty trick, making us ambassadors plenipotentiary,” Doreen said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. The work was sort of fun, actually,” Ian answered. Laying the foundations of a country, and who’d have thought he was flying from California into that when he left LAX, two years ago almost to the day on his personal world-line.

  “Making us stay through the English winter-now that was a dirty trick.”

  Of course, they’d also gotten Walker’s mansion as their own in fee simple, and the surviving Iraiina and their new chief had insisted on throwing in a tract of land around it.

  “Come on, everyone’s waiting-we’ve got all the gossip since last September to catch up on,” Doreen said.

  In theory the dinner tonight was supposed to be a surprise anniversary party for them, combined with Event Day and coordinated by radiophone. Doreen wormed it out of Sandy Rapczewicz on the trip back from Fort Pentagon.

  He had an uneasy feeling that the chief and Marian had something else in mind, too, like the role he was going to “volunteer” for in this Mediterranean expedition everyone was talking about. Oh, we’re off to see the Pharaoh, the wonderful Pharaoh of���

  Ian Arnstein began to laugh as they turned onto Broad, looking around and drawing a deep breath of air pungent with whale oil from the street lanterns, woodsmoke from hearths, the delicious scents of cooking and the not so pleasant but infinitely familiar smells of horses and their by-products.

  “What’s the joke?”

  “That time travel forward can bring you back full circle just as surely as time travel backward,” he said, and shook his head at her puzzled frown. “Later. I’m hungry.”

  They hurried up the street past whalers and fishermen, Indians in blankets and Fiernan Bohulugi Moon Priestesses wrapped in dignity, past kilted Sun People warriors gawking about in wonder, past carts and steam carriages and running whooping children. Some things didn’t change. They still served a mean seafood dinner in the basement restaurant at the John Cofflin House, even in the Bronze Age.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: fbd-d293a9-fcbd-c74f-898e-25df-3b19-f7cc36

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 9/21/2008

  Created using: Fiction Book Designer software

  Document authors :

  Source URLs :

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon’s FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it’s usage)

  �������� �������� ������������ ������ ������������ �������������������� FB2EPUB ������������ 1.1.5.0 ���������������������� Lord KiRon.

  (������ ���������� ���������� ������������������ ���������������� �������������� �������������� ������������������ ������������, ���������� �������������������� ���� ���������� ������������������������������ ���� ������ ��������������������������)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/

 

 

 


‹ Prev