Eric Flint: Time spike

Not even the Boomers wanted any part of them. Feeding those remaining inmates had been something of a strain for the colony, since they didn't contribute much in the way of useful labor, until the legend spread through the surrounding villages-Andy suspected Cook was behind that, although he denied it-that the remaining inmates were demons who needed to be placated until they finally went away. Thereafter, quite regularly, small parties of villagers would show up with food offerings for them. The villagers always got a guided tour of the former prison when they brought the offerings, which was an added attraction. For people whose culture was barely beyond the Stone Age, the installation that had once been Alexander Correctional Center was deeply impressive. Sort of a cross between seeing the Pyramids and visiting Disneyland-except Disneyland never had real live demons you could look at, locked behind bars. And, after a while, some of the inmates decided the situation was amusing and started putting on a show in their cells. The one big problem that remained, of course, was that Boom Town's original population was entirely male, except for the former Elaine Brown. And James Cook wasn't about to tolerate his people getting wives by violence. The three men who tried had been executed. Not summarily, either. There'd been no need to use the services of Geoffrey Kidd-although he was always there in the background, just as a reminder to everyone. No, the Boomers had held real trials. They'd even asked Andy to provide the judges. Found guilty by juries, the men had been hung on a knoll just outside the town. Which, of course, promptly got the name Boot Hill. That meant any man who tired of the absence of female company had to go out there, some way or another, and sweet talk the villagers. That turned out to be reasonably easy to do, if a man had any sense and was willing to work. At least, for inmates who hadn't spent a lifetime behind bars and had lost any useful skill-but Luff had murdered most of those anyway. Still, while they were willing enough to accept Boom Town swains-even eager, sometimes, with ex-inmates with certain skills-the villagers retained their own customs. They were usually matrilocal as well as matrilineal, although they didn't insist on the former. Still, any children born to the union belonged to the mother's family, not the father's. And while the former guards in Schulerville might have put up a struggle over that issue, the ex-inmates didn't much care. Most of them had come from dysfunctional families to begin with, and didn't see anything particularly unusual about having a mother instead of a father at the head of the family. Andy stopped ruminating. By now, he thought Rod had had enough time to digest Cook's proposal concerning Bostic. They needed to settle this. Andy had decided from the beginning that James' attitude was the right one to take. Bostic wasn't a threat-and the much larger Cahokian culture might very well turn out to be one. There was a society Andy didn't like at all. A harsh theocracy, essentially, much larger and better organized than any of the village cultures, and with some truly repellent features. They did, in fact, practice ritual human sacrifice. Nothing on the scale of the ancient Aztecs, granted. But it was woven into their customs nonetheless. What made the situation all the more explosive was that, six months earlier, the damn Spaniards had tried to seize Cahokia by brute force and impose themselves on the Cahokians as a new aristocracy. With less than two hundred men, almost no ammunition left-and de Soto killed by a tyrannosaur long before, according to the stories they'd heard. Whoever had wound up in charge of the survivors must have had delusions of grandeur that he was another Cortez. John Boyne, it turned out, knew a lot about the history of Mexico. He'd explained to Andy, once, that the two main reasons Cortez had been able to conquer the Aztecs weren't the much-ballyhooed advantages of having guns and horses-much less the Quetzalcoatl myth-but the fact that disease had already ravaged the Aztecs and most of the soldiers he had were allied Indians who had their own good reasons to hate the Aztecs. Even then, the first time the Spaniards seized their capital, the Aztecs had counterattacked and driven them out. The same thing had happened again. Only, as someone once quipped, history had repeated itself as a farce. These Spaniards had only one horse left. Ran out of ammunition before they got into the capital complex. Had no allies; in fact, they were hated by every Indian village that knew them. And a leadership whose only resemblance to Cortez was ruthlessness. In the end, according to what they'd been able to piece together, probably not more than forty or fifty Spaniards had survived. And those men had disappeared somewhere. For all intents and purposes, de Soto's expedition was simply no longer an important factor in the political equation. Eventually, one way or another, those men who'd survived would just get absorbed into the villages. But, not surprisingly, the attempted conquest had made the Cahokians belligerent and suspicious-and they had a culture for which suspicion and belligerence came easily to begin with. Some day, Andy figured, they might even wind up having to fight another war. If so, why go out of their way for no good reason to make enemies elsewhere?

The day might come when they'd be approaching Bostic for an alliance, not simply a peace treaty. "I think James is right, Rod," Andy said.

"We should draw up a formal treaty and present it to Bostic. And if he agrees, sign it and be done." Andy looked at his own watch, now. "We don't have much time left, people. Any discussion?" That really meant, did Rod still want to hold onto his mulish recalcitrance. Andy knew, from private conversations, that everybody else in the cabinet had already come to the same conclusion he and James had. Hulbert shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Beside, it's your decision, Andy. A cabinet vote's not binding on you, anyway." "Officially, no. Have you ever seen me override a majority of the cabinet, though? Answer: no. That's because I'm not stupid. Any proposal or policy that can't win a majority of the cabinet is not something I figure the people out there will swallow either, if I try to shove it down their throats. This little confederacy of ours is about as far removed from Prussian autocracy as I can imagine." Rod smiled. "True. Okay, I'll vote in favor also. Holding my nose, but I will." Andy rose. "That's it, then.

Let's get down to the church." The moment he finished that sentence, the church bell started to ring. "I love that sound," said Jenny.

"Even if it is tinny." James had just gotten to his own feet. "Give John a break. As he'll tell anyone who asks, he's a machinist, not-toss in at least four expletives here-a metal caster. That bell's the best he could come up with. So far, anyway." Itwas a tinny-sounding church bell. But Andy agreed with Jenny. And, in his case, not simply out of sentiment. He was coming to believe, more and more as time went by, that in the long run that tinny-sounding church bell was more likely to bring down any enemies they might have than all the rifles in the armory. As they left the tower and headed for the big wooden structure just outside the walls of Schulerville, he found himself pondering the matter. Andy had mixed feelings about the church that Brian Carmichael had founded-and which Elaine Cook had then boosted enormously. The colony had two really good singers.

Elaine and Marie Keehn. Personally, for his tastes, Andy thought Marie was a little better. But it hardly mattered either way. Better or not, neither Marie's style of singing nor her own religious beliefs would have allowed her to throw herself wholeheartedly into building Brian's new church the way Elaine had. True, Elaine and Brian got into some ferocious theological disputes, from time to time. She'd belonged to a church that, while fundamentalist in many respects, didn't share some of the extreme views of Brian's church. But since Brian was naturally easygoing and was never willing to force an issue, as long as everyone was willing to respect what he considered "the basics," Elaine usually got her way. The end result was a church that, whatever quirks it might have from Andy's viewpoint, didn't dwell too much on theological fine points. And it was vibrant, lively-and, most of all, cheerful.