S. M. Stirling - Sea of Time 02 - Against the Tide of Years

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2024-12-20 0 0 1.26MB 611 页 5.9玖币
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Against the Tide of Years
by S.M. Stirling
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. Wil-liam 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 God-damned 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 God-damned 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 things 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."
The scribe was a middle-aged man, which meant mid-thirties
here, with a few streaks of gray in his pointed black beard.
摘要：

ScannedbyUnsungHero.ProofedbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.AgainsttheTideofYearsbyS.M.StirlingToMarjorieTotterdaleStirling,1920-1997.AveAtqueVale.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSLyricsfrom"Fogarty'sCove"usedbypermissionofArielRogers/Fogarty'sCoveMusic,copyright1976,writtenbyStanRogers.Myth...

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