Стивен Стирлинг - Against the Tide of Years

The windows of the private audience room were open; outside, the blue-and-white-checked-marble veranda had an almost luminous glow under the afternoon sun, and the trails of hot-pink bougainvillea that fountained down the sides of man-high vases were an explosion of color. The warm herbal scents of a Greek summer drifted in, and the sound of cicadas, almost as loud as the city-clamor of Walkeropolis beyond. A servant entered and removed the remains of a pizza- Walker had eaten at his desk today, things were moving fast-and another knelt and arranged a tray of hot herbal tea, cold fruit juice, watered wine, and munchies. Bill Cuddy didn't feel at all like eating, even those little pickled tuna things on crackers with capers, which he was usually pretty fond of.

Walker indicated the rifle that lay on his desk, acquired at enormous expense via the Tartessian intelligence service in Nantucket.

"That doesn't look too complicated."

"No, boss, it ain't. It's a fucking masterpiece of simplicity; Martins could make one of these by hand, filing it-parts wouldn't be interchangeable, but it'd work. So, yeah, I can make the rifle, no sweat. It'll cut into our Westley-Richards output, total production'll go down for six months, maybe a year-but not all that bad. Besides the loading mechanism and ammo, it's pretty much the same gun-bit better ballistic performance, is all."

"You're telling me you can, and then you can't?" Suddenly Walker smiled, an open, friendly grin, and thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Oh, wait a minute-it's the ammo, right?"

He spun a brass cartridge on the table next to the rifle; the polished metal caught the sun that came through the French doors and spilled flickering shadows across furniture inlaid in ivory, silver, and lapis lazuli.

"Yeah, boss. Look, I could turn out small quantities, yessir. Machining rounds from solid bar stock, maybe-but that'll eat materials, and Christ, it'll tie up an entire lathe all day to turn out a couple of hundred! The drawing and annealing plant to turn out millions of those fuckers-no way. Not in less than three, four years-and to do that, I'd have to pull all my best people off other stuff, and off teaching. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, boss, I just don't have the range of machine tools that Leaton does, or electric power sources or-and he doesn't have to teach all his trainees to goddam read first!"

"Okay," Walker said grudgingly. "God damn. This is going to hurt morale-the men aren't used to the other side having more firepower." A wry smile. "And I'm used to having you pull miracles out of your hat."

The smile didn't reach all the way to the eyes; Cuddy felt himself beginning to sweat again. "Well, yeah, we can't do that ammo yet, but I've had an idea."

"Oh?" Cool interest this time, complete focus.

"Yeah. Actually I was busting my ass trying to figure out how we were going to do what Leaton did, and it occurred to me-why not do an end run instead? So I looked up some stuff I remembered from that book you've got, the one by the dude called Myatt, some Limey Major or something…"

"The Illustrated History of Nineteenth-Century Firearms!" Walker said, nodding unsurprised. They'd already gotten a lot of use out of that one.

"Yup. So I thought, they must have had a lot of problems with drawn-brass stuff to begin with, maybe they had something else? Something that didn't work quite as smooth but that still did the job?"

Walker nodded again; that was also something they had a lot of experience with.

"So here it is."

He reached down into the leather briefcase at his side and handed over a round of ammunition. Walker took it and turned it over in his hands. It was made a little like a shotgun shell, built up of iron and brass and cardboard.

"The thing like the iron top hat, that's the base," Cuddy said. "Primer we can do-I've been dicking around with mercury fulminate for nine years now; you should crucify me if I hadn't made some progress. Percussion cap in the base, then you wrap a strip of thin brass around that, and then that holds the cardboard tube with the bullet and powder."

The lynx eyes speared him. "Tell me the disadvantages."

"It's not as strong as the regular type. Not completely waterproof, either. And the brass, when the chamber's real hot, it may glue itself to the walls and jam, or tear apart when the extractor hits. But it'll work, boss. I can duplicate this rifle, all it needs changed is the shape of the chamber, and I can turn out this ammo in quantity-simple stamping and rolling, and then handwork assembly-line style."

"Cuddy, you're a fucking genius!" Walker leaned back in his swivel chair, a dreamy smile on his face. "You say it would have screwed us if I'd ordered you to go ahead on duplicating the ammo?"

"Up the ass, boss, totally. Not just losing production, but it would have dicked up our expansion program by tying up my people."

A harsh chuckle from his overlord. "One gets you ten, that's exactly what they planned!" His hand struck the desktop with a gunshot crack. "That bitch Alston thinks she has me typed-and she's smart, I nearly did that."

Cuddy swallowed and looked away. Alston was the only thing that could make Walker's eyes look, for a moment, entirely too much like Alice Hong's for comfort.

Walker went on, "What about the Gatlings?"

Cuddy shook his head again. "No way, bossman. The ammo isn't strong enough to be hopper- or clip-fed." His grin went wider. "But."

"But?"

"But the same book had an idea the Frogs used, back around Gatling's time. You take a whole bundle of rifle barrels, say seventy-five of them, and clamp them together. You load them with plates in a frame-the plates hold the ammo. Load a plate in, wham, hit the trigger, take the plate out, put in another one." He held up a hand. "Yeah, heavier and slower than a Gatling, but it'll work."

"Cuddy, you are my main man! Get right onto both of them. Top priority."

Cuddy rose, nodding; he paused to greet Helmuth Mittler on the way out. He and the head of Section One weren't all that close-the ex-Stasi agent reminded him too much of cops who'd busted him in the past, those pale eyes with the I've-got-the-goods-on-you look. Still, the former East German did good work… and it was just as well to keep on the good side of him, he was important at court too.

Maybe I'm not sorry I listened to Will after all, Cuddy thought. His bodyguard fell in around him as he walked down the corridor. Tonight I'll celebrate. Susie. Yeah, Susie.

Susie-her own name was unpronounceable-was the most enthusiastic girl he'd picked up here; like a demented anaconda in bed and she worshiped him like a god.

Of course, I did win her off Hong, he thought. Probably quite a contrast.

It was all a matter of contrasts. He'd felt hard-done by, that first six months after the Event; now things were fine. Susie felt her life had taken a turn for the better when he won her from Hong… all a matter of contrasts, and of being adaptable.

"Guys, this is crazy," Peter Girenas said.

The tall redheaded man shrugged, smiling. "Pete, crossing North America in the Year 8-9, now-that's crazy. Staying where we like it, that's sensible."

The bluff where the Islanders and their newfound friends had wintered looked better now that spring had melted the last of the snow and green grass covered the mud in fresh growth. The row of log cabins had their doors and windows open to air; they' d been crowded but not impossibly so. Now most of the Cloud Shadow People were back in hide tents; there were plenty of hides, with more pinned to the logs to dry.

Henry Morris was still limping, very slightly; he probably would for the rest of his life. His wife, Raven Feather, stood beside him, smiling, with their baby in her arms. Henry was dressed for the hunt in leggings and long leather shirt; so were the two young men beside him, but they carried bows, rather than atlatls and darts. Bows they'd made themselves, under Morris's skilled direction.