Against the Tide of Years

Table of Contents

 

 

“A book you won’t want to—and won’t be able to—put down. An outstanding piece of work.”

—Harry Turtledove

 

“A perfectly splendid story . . . endlessly fascinating . . . solidly convincing.”

—Poul Anderson

 

“A compelling cast of characters . . . a fine job of conveying both a sense of loss and of hope.”

—
Science Fiction Chronicle

 

“Meticulous, imaginative. . . . Logical, inventive and full of richly imagined characters, this is Stirling’s most deeply realized book yet.”

—Susan Shwartz, author of
The Grail of Hearts

 

“Utterly engaging. This is unquestionably Steve Stirling’s best work to date, a page-turner that is certain to win the author legions of new readers and fans.”

—George R. R. Martin

 

“Stirling’s imaginative foray into time travel should please fans of alternative history.”

—
Library Journal

 

“An enormously entertaining read.”

—Virtual North Woods Website

ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Roc, an imprint of Dutton NAL,
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

First Printing, May 1999

Copyright © Steven M. Stirling, 1999

All rights reserved

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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.

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, 57 A.E.)

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-iam 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.”

 

 

“G
et 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 2.
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 baled 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.