Against the Tide of Years n-2 Read online

  Against the Tide of Years

  ( Nantucket - 2 )

  Стивен Майкл Стирлинг

  Against The Tide Of Years continues the adventures of the Nantucket residents who have been transported through time to the Bronze Age. In the years since their arrival, the fledging Republic of Nantucket has strived to better the primitive world in which they now exist. Their prime concerns are establishing a constitution and handling the waves of immigrants from the British Isles. But a renegade time traveler plans his own future by forging an empire for himself based on conquest by modern technology. The Republic has no alternative but to face the inevitable war brought on by one of their own….

  S. M. Stirling

  Against the Tide of Years

  To Marjorie Totterdale Stirling, 1920-1997. Ave Atque Vale.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Lyrics from “Fogarty’s Cove” used by permission of Ariel Rogers/Fogarty’s Cove Music, copyright 1976, written by Stan Rogers.

  My thanks again to the people of Nantucket (individuals too numerous to name), to the U.S. Coast Guard, and to the historians, linguists, and archaeologists.

  Thanks also to Suzanne Feldman and Anne-Marie Talbott for their help, and to Lawrence H. Feldman, Ph.D. (anthropology) and M.L.S., for help-and help with the beer.

  PROLOGUE

  Since the Event, everything has changed. We’ve had to just accept it-those who didn’t go into shock and never come out-like time itself, a mystery we’d never solve. Many couldn’t accept it, and I think that accounts for a lot of the craziness that bubbled up in the first year or two. On top of it all, William Walker headed off to England with his band of thugs, to set himself up as a king, and we had to fight a war to stop him. If he’d stayed up in the twentieth, maybe Walker would never have been more than a mildly amoral officer in the Coast Guard instead of a warlord and emperor, and his bitch-queen Hong would certainly never have had the opportunity to rival Elizabeth Bathory and Giles de Rais in the atrocity league.

  God knows, I like to think the rest of us have improved on the original history a bit, where we could-spreading potatoes and sanitation, putting down human sacrifice and slavery. Mind you, there are still times when I wake up and expect to hear radios and cars! Now we’ve had a few years of comparative peace, and things are looking up. For now. What really worries me is that we couldn’t finish Walker off.

  From the personal journals of Founding Councilor Ian Arnstein, as quoted in David Arnstein, An Introductory History of the Republic of Nantucket.

  Ch. 4, the Crisis of the Second Decade

  (Nantucket Town: Oceanic University/Bookworks Press, 57A.E.)

  (May, Year 2 A.E.-After the Event)

  Agamemnon, son of Atreus, King of Men, High Wannax of Mycenae, and overlord of the Achaeans by land and sea, decided that he loved cannon.

  “You did not lie,” he said, smiling like a wolf at the shattered section of fortress wall. He inhaled the stink of burnt sulfur as if it were perfumed oil. “You can make more of these?”

  The outlander bowed. “If I have the metal and workmen I need, Lord King,” he said in fluent Greek with a whistling, nasal accent.

  “By Zeus Pater, Zeus Father of Gods and men,” Agamemnon swore. “You shall have what you require-and besides that, you shall have land of me, houses, gold, comely women, fine raiment, weapons-yes, and honor in my house among my ekwetai, my sworn companions!”

  The outlander bowed again. William Walkeearh, that’s his name. Hard to remember the foreign sounds… there were murmurs at the king’s back, from nobles displeased at seeing an outlander raised so high among them mere weeks after he arrived at Tiryns, Mycenae’s port. Fools.

  “Never have I seen or heard of anything like this,” he said, as the gathering began to disperse. “Not even among the Hittites or the clever Sudnu, the Sidonians.”

  Agamemnon’s personal guard fell in behind them, sunlight breaking red off the bronze blades of their ready spears, eyes wary under their boar’s-tusk helmets.

  “And to find such among the savages of the northlands…” The king shook his head. “Where comes this knowledge of throwing thunderbolts?”

  “Ah, my lord king,” the tall stranger said. “That is a very long story.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  March, Year 8 A.E.

  (June, Year 2 A.E.)

  Get that Goddamned moa under control!” a voice shouted from the street. It was a quarterdeck soprano, trained to carry mast-high through a gale; the accent was pure Carolina sea-island gumbo.

  Marian, Jared Cofflin thought as he joined the councilors crowding to the windows, using his six feet two of lanky height to peer over their heads. One of the big birds was sprinting down Broad Street, heading for the harbor-or just away from the handlers with poles trying to catch it. People tumbled out of its way, bicycles toppled, ponies reared, a cart overset and bags of stone-ground flour burst in a beige mist.

  “Damned funny-looking things, aren’t they?” someone said.

  Jared Cofflin agreed. And they were a lot cuter as chicks, he thought. Sort of fuzzy and about the size of a turkey; the Eagle had picked them up in a New Zealand that the Polynesians had yet to reach, during her survey voyage in the Year 1 But, oh, how fast they grow. The head still looked fairly chickenlike, although it was bigger than a German shepherd’s, now; the eye bore a look of fixed stupidity leavened with terror. The bird itself stood twelve feet tall and weighed more than a cow, with a long neck, a bulbous body, and absurd, enormous three-toed feet-pile driver feet, and a man threw himself out of the way of a kick that could have snapped his neck. The ponies drawing another cart bolted, spilling barrels of whale oil, and the slipping, sliding chaos that followed would have been funny if it hadn’t been so dangerous.

  A steam-hauler puffed out onto Broad from Easy Street, pulling three wagons under tight-laced tarpaulins; it looked a little like an old-time locomotive, with the wheels of a heavy-hauler truck. The driver and fireman took one look and bailed out the other flank of their open-sided vehicle to get out of reach of the moa’s six-foot neck, but they tripped the brake and exhaust valves first and it coasted to a halt in a huge whuff of white vapor that made the giant bird flinch and slow.

  Then someone vaulted onto the tarpaulins, a tall slender black woman with a long curved blade in her hands.

  Marian, all right, Cofflin thought. Which explained why she wasn’t here already; it took a genuine emergency to make Commodore Marian Alston-Kurlelo late for anything. For a Southerner, she had a positively Yankee attitude toward punctuality. Maybe it was the twenty years she’d spent in the Coast Guard before the Event.

  The katana flashed in a blurring arc as the huge bird tried to stop, turn, and peck at the annoying human all at the same time. Another flash of sunlight on steel, and there was a crack sound; Alston went to one knee on the tarpaulin, and shavings of beak spun free. The moa braked frantically on the slippery asphalt, then fell on its rear with an audible thud and an ear-stunning cry of SKWAAAK!

  “Get that Goddamned thing under control befo’ it hurts somebody, Ah said!” she shouted again.

  Before the moa could scramble upright the keepers were on it, and one of them clapped a bag on the end of a long pole over its head. A yank on a cord drew the bag tight, and the fight went out of the cow-size mass of gray feathers.

  “CHHHHirrrr-aaak,” it sounded in muffled protest, following meekly as the keeper hauled on the cord. Two more came behind and to either side, carefully avoiding the reflexive kicks.

  “Come on, Tastes Like Chicken,” the keeper said. “You’ve got an appointment with an ax.”

  “Whose bright idea was it to let one of those t
hings loose in town?” Cofflin asked. Actually they taste more like veal, he added to himself.

  Angelica Brand coughed discreetly. “Well, Chief, we’re roasting a couple of them for the Event Day festivities, and… well, it’s a lot easier to get tons of bird into town if they walk, and they’re usually quite docile, this was just a little trouble…”

  “Someone could have gotten hurt,” he said sternly to the Councilor for Agriculture. He could hear Marian’s quick step in the hallway outside. “Let’s get back to business.”

  “Executive Council of the Republic of Nantucket will now come to order,” the recording clerk droned. “All are present. Fourth meeting of the Year 8 After the Event, March twenty-first. Chief Executive Jared Cofflin presiding.”

  Damn, but we’ve gotten formal, Jared Cofflin thought. And single-digit years still sounded funny; granted, using “B.C.” and “A.D.” was just plain silly, since nobody knew if or when-when, if you listened to Prelate Gomez of the new Ecumenical Christian Church-Jesus Christ was going to be born in this mutant history. The younger generation found the new system natural enough.

  He brushed a hand over sandy blond hair even thinner on top than it had been at the Event; he was fifty-six now, honest, straightforward years even if he had looped around like this. Fisherman, Navy swabby, chief of police… and since the Event, head of state.

  Christ.

  “Okay,” he said at last, when the reading of the minutes was over. “Let’s get down to the serious stuff. Martha,” he went on to his wife, smiling slightly, more a movement of the eyes than the lips.

  Martha Cofflin, nee Stoddard; ex-librarian, now Secretary of the Council, with a long, bony Yankee face like his and graying brown hair.

  “First item is immigration policy,” she said. “Before the Council are petitions to allow increases in the yearly quota of immigrants and temporary workers to the Island from Alba.” The White Isle, what this era called Britain.

  Odd, Cofflin thought again. There were plenty of islands, but everyone knew what you meant when you said the Island these days. I suppose it was inevitable we’d develop our own slang.

  And our own feuds, he thought as hostile glances went up and down the Council table. On the one hand, Nantucket needed the hands. Everything took so much work, with the limited technology they had available; on the other hand…

  Angelica Brand of Brand Farms nodded; so did half a dozen others.

  “I’m trying to get sugar-beet production started, and-”

  “We need that next dry dock badly-”

  “If we could only get some coal, there are surface deposits up in Nova Scotia-”

  Our budding plutocrats, Cofflin thought. People on the Council tended to have useful knowledge and to be more energetic than most-that was why he’d picked them. Good people, mostly, but you had to watch them.

  “Wait a minute!” said Lisa Gerrard of the School Committee, static crackling from her silver-white hair. “We’re already overburdened. All these immigrants are illiterate-what with the adult education classes my people are working around the clock, the teacher-training program is behind schedule, and the crime rate’s up!” Thoughtful nods.

  Cofflin looked at his younger cousin George, who’d taken over his old job as head of the Island’s police. “Ayup. Mostly Sun People. Can’t hold their liquor, and then they start hitting. Or if a girl tells them to get lost, or they think someone’s dissed them…”

  “And besides that,” Martha said, “if we’re the majority, we can assimilate them. Too many, and it’ll start working the other way ‘round, or we’ll end up as a ruling class with resentful aliens under us. And as George says, many of them just don’t understand the concept of laws.”

  “Or why it’s a bad idea to piss up against walls,” someone laughed.

  “Actually,” a voice with the soft, drawling accent of the Carolina tidewater cut in, “we may have something of an outlet for their aggressions.”

  A couple of the Councilors looked over sharply; Marian was usually extremely quiet at Council meetings, except when her defense and shipbuilding specialties came up.

  “From the reports,” she went on, “Walker is leavin’ us no choice but another war to put him down.”

  Thank you, Marian, he thought, letting one eyelid droop slightly. Her imperceptible nod replied, You’re welcome.

  “Well, perhaps we should move on to item two,” he said neutrally.

  “Item two,” Martha said dryly, giving him a glance.

  All right, all right, so I’ve learned to be a politician. Someone has to do it.

  “William Walker,” she continued.

  This time the expressions down the table were unanimous. Nobody liked the renegade Coast Guard officer, or any of the twenty-odd other traitors with him. Nantucket had had to fight an expensive little war to stop him over in Alba-and had ended up with a sort of quasi protectorate-hegemony-cum-alliance over most of southern England.

  Cofflin cleared his throat and looked at the Councilor for Foreign Affairs and his Deputy-Ian Arnstein and his wife, Doreen. They handed around their summary, and Ian began, sounding much like the history professor he’d once been.

  “Our latest intelligence reports indicate he managed to get all the way from the English Channel to Greece, arriving about three months after the end of the Alban War, and-”

  There were long faces at the table when he finished; many had hoped they’d seen the last of Walker when he fled Alba years ago. Someone sighed and said it out loud.

  “Wishful thinkin’,” Alston snapped. “We should have made sure of him, no matter what it took. I said so then.”

  “And the Town Meeting decided otherwise,” Cofflin said. The Republic was very emphatically a democracy. Back then they’d decided that the margin of survival was too thin to keep hundreds under arms combing the endless wilderness of Bronze Age Europe.

  And they were right, Cofflin thought. Not much prospect of catching Walker, and if they’d chased him hard back then he’d have settled somewhere deep in the continental interior, where the Islanders couldn’t touch him. Leave him alone, and his arrogance and lust for revenge would make him stop within reach of salt water-planning to build a navy someday and come back for a rematch.

  Marian had once said she was unsuited to Cofflin’s job because she was a hammer… and saw all problems as nails. But she’s a very good hammer, and some problems are nails, he mused, and went on aloud: “I think we can prod the Sovereign People into some action now, though.” His statement was only half ironic. The people were sovereign here, very directly. “The screaming about how we’re spending too much on defense ought to die down a little, at least. Marian?”

  Marian Alston pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Here’s what I propose,” she began.

  Little of it was a surprise to him. Contingency planning cost nothing, and he had a limited discretionary fund to work with for more concrete preparations. At least we could lay the groundwork, since the Alban War. The new Marine regiment was coming along fairly well, from the reports-young Hollard was a doer, and the Republic had grown enormously over the last eight years, in numbers and capacities.

  Cofflin wondered grimly what Walker and his renegades had been doing in those same years. Walker wasn’t the kind to let grass grow under his feet, damn him. If they didn’t do something about him, eventually he would do something about them.

  “Oh, sweet fucking Jesus Christ on a Harley,” William Walker muttered in English, before dropping back into archaic Greek. “Seventy alternative meanings?”

  Thick adobe walls kept the heat at bay, but light lanced in like spears of white through small, high windows. The room was a rectangle, whitewashed plaster on the walls and hard-packed earth covered in gypsum on the floor; it smelled of the damp clay in a tub, and of clay tablets drying in wicker baskets.

  The Achaean scribe sat patiently on his stool. “Yes, lord,” he said, humoring the newly-come stranger the High King had set him to serve. “There are
seven tens of meanings for this sign.”

  His pen was a reed with a sharp thorn set in the tip, and his writing surface moist clay pressed on a board. The thorn scratched a circle divided by two straight lines, like a four-spoked wheel.

  “This is the sign ka,” he said. “Also the sign for ga, kha, kai, kas, kan…”

  And you have to figure out which from context, Walker thought. What an abortion of a writing system.

  The real joker was that the script wasn’t even well suited to Greek. The main ancestors of these clowns had arrived in Greece as illiterate barbarian war bands from the north; they’d picked up writing from the Minoan Cretans, along with most of what other feeble claims to civilization they had. The original script had been designed for a completely different language; all the signs for sounds ended in a vowel, and there were a whole bunch of Greek sounds that didn’t have a sign at all.

  Pathetic. Which was all to the good, of course. Not a day went by that he didn’t bless Whoever or Whatever had caused the Event.

  “Thank you, Enkhelyawon,” he said to the scribe. No fucking wonder nearly everyone’s illiterate here. “Now, how have you progressed with my people’s script?”

  In the original history, if “original” meant anything here, Mycenaean civilization was going to go under in another fifty years or so in a chaos of civil war and barbarian invasion; this writing system would be completely lost, and when the Greeks became literate again after their Dark Age it would be by borrowing the ancestral alphabet from the Phoenicians. The Romans would get it from the Greeks and then pass their version down to Western civilization… and here he was, teaching it to the ancestors of the Greeks. More weird shit.

  “Lord, a child could master that script you showed me,” Enkhelyawon said tolerantly. “Twenty-six signs? That is nothing.”

  He picked up another slab of prepared clay and quickly wrote out the Roman alphabet. “It is interesting, lord-I have yet to find a word that cannot be written in it.”

  “You won’t,” Walker said dryly. “And it can be learned by a child-that’s the whole point.”