Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"I wonder what it's like here come winter," Henry said.

"Foggy, I warrant," Smith replied. "All this warm water striking cold air…Might make London look to its laurels."

"Have you ever seen London?" Henry asked.

The mate shook his head. "Why on earth would a Hastings fisherman want to go and see London? Have you, skipper?"

"No, never once," Henry admitted.

"Well, there you are," Bartholomew Smith said. "And I've been a New Hastings fisherman as long as you have, and I don't much want to go back across the sea any more, either. By God, I like it here."

"So do I. Any land where no lord can tell you what to do and you don't owe taxes to anybody…I like that fine," Henry said.

When they found a good-sized stream flowing into the ocean, they rowed the water butts ashore to refill them. A gaggle of honkers stared at them in mild curiosity, as if to say, You're the strangest-looking birds we've ever seen. They were the strangest-looking honkers Henry had ever seen. They were a pale gray, with orange feet and beaks. Their wings were bigger than those of any variety near New Hastings, though still utterly useless as far as getting them off the ground was concerned.

One of the honkers puffed up its chest and flapped its silly wings at another. "Honnnk!" it screeched. The other bird skittered away, as well as something as tall as a man and considerably heavier could skitter.

Getting the water butts back onto the boat once they were filled was slow, careful work. If you made a mistake, you could put one right through the bottom. Henry was calling out instructions when the rambunctious honker ambled up to him. Perhaps because he was making noise, it seemed to think him some kind of rival. It went through the same sort of display it had with the other honker, puffing itself up, flapping its wings, and making a noise like a badly played horn full of spit.

Henry straightened up. He was, he noted with satisfaction, a couple of inches taller than the orange-legged honker. He jumped up and down. He waved his arms. "Yaaah!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

The honker started at him in bird-brained disbelief. Then, with a piglike grunt of dismay, it backpedaled, turned, and hastily retreated. The fishermen cheered Henry to the skies. "Well done, skipper!" Sam cried. "I didn't know you spoke its language!"

Laughing, Henry answered, "Hell, it's got to be easier to learn than Basque. And if it decided to give me more trouble, I could always clout it over the head."

"That works pretty well with the damned Basques, too," Sam said.

"It does," Henry agreed. "But they've got harder heads than honkers, and they're liable to try and clout first."

"You're right about that. Can't trust any of those foreign folk," Bartholomew Smith said. It never occurred to him, or to Henry, or to Sam, or to any of the other Englishmen, that foreigners might feel the same way about them. In fact, the mate added, "Bugger me blind if we can trust those bloody Dover bastards, either. Freetown? Free, my arse!" He spat to show what he thought of the neighboring settlement.

Sam nodded. "The Bretons are a better bargain than the Dovermen, even if Kersauzon's getting old. Your father's right about that, skipper."

"Yes." Henry tried not to sound too glum. Thinking that Francois Kersauzon was getting old reminded him that his father was, too. The graveyard back of the church already had its share of headstones and more. He didn't want to think about its having one more in particular. And thinking about death and dying reminded him of something else. "Keep an eye out for eagles," he called. "Wherever we find honkers, chances are we'll find them, too."

They'd grown scarcer around New Hastings-and, from everything he could see, along the rest of the eastern coast as well. But men were new in these parts. The red-crested eagles would think they were nothing but strange honkers-nothing but food.

To his relief, the work party got the water butts loaded and back to the Rose without trouble. Honkers watched without understanding as the cog weighed anchor and sailed south.

Fishing in the warm current that ran up the west coast of Atlantis wasn't anywhere near so fine as it had been farther east. There were fewer sea birds to nab, too; their numbers depended on those of the fish they ate. Every so often, then, the Rose would come in close to shore. Honkers were never hard to find, and never hard to kill. Their smoked and salted meat fed the fishermen on the journey south.

"Don't know what we'd do without them," Henry Radcliffe said, cutting a slab of meat from an enormous thigh.

"We'd go hungry, that's what," Sam said. Grease ran down the fisherman's chin.

"I'm glad they're so stupid," Henry said. "It makes hunting them so easy, you almost feel ashamed."

Sam shook his head. "Not me. I'd be ashamed of starving when you can just knock them over the head."

The men who went ashore to kill the honkers also came back with pine cones, which had tasty seeds. Other than that, though…"No berry bushes," one sailor grumbled. "You'd think there'd be swarms of them, too, in weather like this. Nice and damp, but not too cold-feels like spring every day."

Henry nodded; that was nothing but the truth. "I wonder why there aren't," he said. "None by New Hastings, either-only the ones we brought from England."

"Not many proper trees, either," the sailor said. "No oaks, no elms, no chestnuts, no willows, no apples or pears or plums…Bloody pines and these redwood things. And ferns, like there should be fairies flitting through them."

"Haven't seen any, God be praised," Sam said. "No more wee folk in Atlantis when we got here than men."

"Don't let Bishop John hear you talking of fairies and wee folk, or he'll give you a penance you won't fancy," Henry warned them. They both nodded. You might believe in such things, but you didn't talk about them where churchmen could overhear. They'd make you sorry if you did.

Up in the crow's nest, the lookout sang out: "There's an inlet ahead!"

Before long, Henry could see it from the deck, too: an opening a couple of miles across, with the sea entering to some considerable distance. He nodded to Bartholomew Smith. "We'd better go in and see what we have there."

"Aye, skipper." The mate nodded. "Could be a prime harbor." He laughed. "Could be, I mean, if there were any people here, and if there was anything to ship from here, and if there was any place you'd want to ship it to from here."

"Damn it, Bart, if you're going to grumble about every little thing…" Henry said. The mate and the rest of the fishermen laughed.

A few minutes later, a breeze from out of the northwest wafted the Rose through the inlet and into the calm waters of the bay. Everyone looked around, trying to see every which way at once. "Oh, my," Sam said softly, and that summed things up as well as anything.

The bay widened out to north and south beyond the inlet, leaving the best and biggest natural harbor Henry had ever seen. He nodded to Bartholomew Smith. "Well, you were right," he said.

"I couldn't have been much righter," the mate replied. "Almost makes me want to settle here, just to make sure nobody else does."

"Right again," Henry said. "By Our Lady, what an anchorage! You could put a navy here."

"Or a flock of pirates," Smith said.

"You named the trouble there," Henry pointed out. "What would they have to steal? This is a bare shore." He paused thoughtfully. "Well, it's a bare shore now. Maybe it won't be one of these days, but not yet."

Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, white wings flashing in the sun. Ducks and geese bobbed in the green-blue water of the bay. A shag plunged from on high, emerging with a fish in its beak. Ashore, redwoods taller than a spire speared the sky. The more Henry looked around, the more he too wanted to stay.