S. Stirling: Against the Tide of Years

He tugged harder as he read on. The Keyaltwar tribe over in Alba were building boats… probably war-boats for raiding abroad. Some bright boy in a leather kilt had figured out that while under the Treaty of Alliance they couldn't hitch up their chariots, take down their tomahawks, and hit the neighbors up for cattle and women in the old style-several punitive expeditions had driven that lesson home- third parties weren't covered.

Those people are like the fucking Energizer Bunny. There was a map of Alba in one corner of the room. A line ran from roughly what would have become Portsmouth to what would have become southern Yorkshire. Everything east and south of it was the various teuatha of the Sun People, the Indo-European-speaking newcomers William Walker had enrolled in his attempt at conquest; these days they were Nantucket allies in theory, a resentful protectorate in fact. West and north of that were the Fiernan Bohulugi, allies in fact.

Dotted lines marked individual tribes. "Keyaltwar… right, north bank of the Thames." The Sun People tribes weren't much for commerce. What they did understand was raiding, rustling, rape, and slaughter; and now they were playing Viking.

"Blond Proto-Celtic Comanches of the Bronze Age," Ian muttered, turning pages to look at the sketch of the ship. Up front was a figurehead that looked for all the world like a dragon's head. Some passing Islander trader or priest of the Ecumenical Church might well have told them about the Vikings, like dropping a catalyst into a saturated solution. As if they didn't get enough ideas of their own. Have to be careful not to push 'em too hard, though.

First, radio Commandant Hendriksson to send out more agents. The treaty forbade hindering traders and missionaries, which was convenient for espionage. Find out who exactly was doing this. Note: we might use bribes and economic threats to lean on the Keyaltwar high chief, if he's not involved. Then see which of the Keyaltwar's neighbors had the most blood feuds with them-inevitable that some would. They could complain to the Alliance Council at Stonehenge, saying that they felt threatened, and that would put it under the treaty's purview… if you stretched that deliberately ambiguous document a point or two.

"Note," he wrote at the bottom. "Consult with Doreen"-his wife treated Gordian knots the way Alexander had, and that corrected his tendency to on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other himself into paralysis-"then talk it over with Marian, Jared, and Martha." He brushed the feather tip of the quill over his nose.

"Note," he went on. "Talk to Prelate Gomez. Missionaries?"

For a moment he chuckled at the thought. A thoroughly secular Jew, helping to spread religion among the pagans of Bronze Age Britain. Ecumenical Christianity at that-the federation of denominations here, something rather like very High Church Episcopalian with Unitarian overtones. Another dry chuckle; the snake was biting its own tail with a vengeance, with Americans bringing the Anglican faith to Alba.

Then he began writing up an appreciation for the Chief; they'd have to explain things to the Town Meeting. How the ancient Athenians had gotten anything done with all decisions made by a committee of thousands baffled him, all the more so now that he'd seen direct democracy in action.

He sanded and blotted the paper, rose, stretched, and looked at his watch, Four-thirty, and he'd been working since eight. "Christa," he said to his second assistant, ambling out into the sitting room and then down the corridor to her office. "Get fair copies of these typed up, would you? And run one over to the Chief's, and one to Commodore Alston-Kurlelo at Guard House."

Almost unfair, he thought, looking around at the filing cabinets and map boards. Preliterate cultures just didn't appreciate the advantage that being able to store and collate information like this gave you. But then again, as Marian Alston-Kurlelo is wont to say, fair fights are for suckers.

Ian trotted up the first flight of stairs, to one of the converted bedroom suites that served as Doreen's office. The former student astronomer looked up; she was sitting across a table from a short, dark man in a long woolen robe, flowerpot hat, and curled beard, repeating a sentence in something guttural and polysyllabic. Papers were scattered on the surface, some covered with ordinary writing, others with what looked like Art Deco chicken tracks.

Akkadian, Ian knew, with a shudder-the Semitic language spoken in Hammurabi's Babylon; he had to learn it too. Akkadian was the diplomatic language in today's Middle East, the way French had been in Louix XIV's Europe. At least they'd been careful with their language teacher this time, after the nasty experience with Isketerol of Tartessos in the Year 1. Shamash-nasir-kudduru-the God Shamash is Guardian of the Boundary Stone, or Sham for short-was a weedy little Babylonian date merchant whom one of the Islander ships had picked up in a brief initial survey of the Persian Gulf; he' d been living on Bahrain (Dilmun to the locals) and not doing very well. In fact, he looked a lot like Saddam Hussein after a long, strict diet.

"My lady," he said in a thickly guttural accent, with a sidelong glance at Ian, "here we have the… it is to say… symbol, meaning 'day.' " He drew one wedge with the broad end upright, and two more springing off to the left and slanting upward. "It to be is able also to be the symbol for a sound."

"Which sound?" Doreen asked with a sigh.

"It is sound ud," the Babylonian said. "That is first sound. Also symbol is for tu or tarn or par or likh or khish…" He drew another, with an upright wedge, three horizontal to the side, and an arrowhead to the left. "It is sound shu, qad, qat. Can mean quatu, it is meaning in your speech, 'hand.' Also emuqu, 'strength,' or gamalu, 'protection,' or…"

Ian cleared his throat. "What say we commit some dereliction of duty?" he said.

"God, yes," she groaned. "Sham, you can knock off too. Same time tomorrow."

The Babylonian made a bobbing gesture over folded hands and collected his writing materials. Doreen tidied her own desk; she was neater than Ian, perhaps because as Doreen Rosenthal before the Event she'd been a budding astronomer in her late twenties rather than a bachelor-well, widower-professor of classical history just past fifty. She also looked extremely good bending over like that in a light summer dress, with her long black hair falling down and half hiding a wonderful view of decolletage. She'd been positively chunky when he'd first seen her, back the day after the Event. That was when she was working as an intern at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, where she'd used the little reflector telescope to pinpoint the real date from the stars. Of course, we all lost weight those first six months, and God knows we're not likely to sit around watching TV anymore. Nowadays she could have modeled for a statue of Ishtar, one of the sexier kind.

"Let's pick up David and grab something to cook down at the docks-couple of lobster, we'll boil 'em up and throw together a salad."

Their housekeeper-nanny had the boy in the kitchen with her while she sat with a cookbook, reading slowly, her lips moving. Back at the end of the Alban War the Islanders had insisted that the defeated Sun People tribes let all their slaves go free. Denditwara had been one of many who came to Nantucket, since she had no surviving family. The gap in living standards was so enormous that even the most lowly job here was luxury by Bronze Age standards.

Sort of like Mexico and California, only more so, Ian thought. "If you haven't started dinner yet, Denditwara, don't bother," he said. "We'll handle it-Quigley's Baths first, and then the evening's yours."

"Thank you, boss," she said, dipping her head; she was half his age and short, a round-faced blonde who looked extremely English, physical types evidently being much more constant than culture or language. The Alban gave them a shy smile of gratitude for the free time; she was seeing a young man who worked in the whalebone mill.