Against the Tide of Years (34 page)

“I presume this isn’t a violation of Article Seven, Major,” he said coldly.

A blow to his chest startled him. It was the Babylonian; she’d slugged him at eye level to her, she being about five nothing and wearing neither shoes nor anything else except sweat and a few hickies. This close, he was suddenly aware of her scent, a musky smell that made him momentarily but acutely conscious of how long he’d been celibate. She had probably hurt her fist a lot more than she had hurt him, but she was winding up to try again; a plumply pretty young woman, round-faced and olive-skinned, her blue-black hair falling to the small of her back.

“Whoa!” he said, holding up his hands. This time she punched him in the stomach; her small, hard knuckles rebounded off the muscle.

“
Stop
that,” he went on, remembering to use Akkadian. Kat cleared her throat and seconded him, and the woman . . .

“What’s your name?” he asked. That seemed to surprise her, at least enough to stop her hitting him.

“Sin-ina-mati, lord,” she said automatically.

“Sin-ina-mati, do not strike me,” he said. “Instead, explain why you are here with this officer. You do understand that you need not lie with anyone you would not?”

Sin-ina-mati looked as if she was going to hit him again. “I am here because the good Kat’ryn praised my beauty and my singing, and gave me sweet wine to drink, and
talked
to me! All my life lords have said, ‘Woman, come here!’ or ‘Slave, bring me this!’ You looked upon her with the eyes of wrath; you will not harm her. I say it, Sin-ina-mati!”

Well, I guess the self-esteem classes paid off,
Hollard thought.

“Ah, assuredly, I shall not harm her,” he went on aloud. “Yet we have business of war to attend to. Perhaps you should leave.”

The Babylonian seemed to shrink a little as her eyes lost the brilliance of exaltation and she realized what she’d done. She gave a quick bow, scooped up her robe, and left—into the other room, he noted, not into the street.

“Sorry, Kat,” Hollard said. “I just lost my temper—too many goddam Article Sevens. And . . . ah, I was a bit surprised.”

“Well, so was I,” she said frankly, buttoning her shirt and tucking it in. “I just got so damned
horny,
and there
isn’t
anyone else here of my rank, and . . . Mati’s a sweetie, though. This is business, I presume?”

“Yup.” He handed over the note. “From Councilor Arnstein’s office in Dur-Kurigalzu. The Assyrians have attacked, and according to King Shuriash’s spies the Elamites are mobilizing. There are rumors of strangers from the far north at both courts.”

A grin. “Well, we
are
going to be busy bees tomorrow.”

 

“No, sir,” Vicki Cofflin said. “Ten days minimum. I won’t swear to anything under fourteen. It’s a big job, and we don’t have the facilities we did back on the Island.”

“Damn,” Kenneth Hollard said, looking up at the cone-shaped forward section of the
Emancipator
’s frame. They’d shipped it in from the Island knocked down, since it was far too large for a ship’s hull, and putting it back together was a long job. Particularly since building a landing shed here at Ur Base would take even longer.

Most of the rest of it lay scattered in carefully calculated pieces over the vast level field; the engines were up on frameworks, with the maintenance crews going over them. Bundles of oil-soaked reeds burned in metal cups on poles, giving light for round-the-clock labor. It was cool, almost cool enough to be chilly, and despite the lamplight of the Nantucketer camp, the stars were many and very bright. Two dozen laborers heaved on ropes under the ungentle direction of a pair of Marine noncoms, and the bow section swayed upright.

“Do the best you can, then,” he said. “I think we’re going to need it soonest.”

 

“Belay! ’vast heaving!”

A hundred and fifty of the
Chamberlain
’s crew collapsed into the sand and scrub grass of the beach or around the capstan on deck. The spiderwork of cable that connected the ship to half a dozen of the bigger trees that grew nearly to the high-tide mark went slack. Stripped to shorts and singlet, Marian Alston waded through the thick mud around her ship; it squelched up to her knees, smelling of dead fish, mangrove, and seaweed.

She’s steady. Thank you, Lord Jesus,
she thought, reflex of a Baptist childhood.

The ship creaked, groaned a little, and settled into the improvised cradle; her gunports were all open and the deck covers off, letting the sun and air in and a waft that smelled strongly of spoiled barley out—rather like a brewery gone wrong, with heavy overtones of badly kept Chinese restaurant kitchen from the sesame oil.

That ought to hold her,
Marian said to herself.
And we can use the raw wool for caulking, better than oakum.

Hmmmm . . . if we find a tree of something like the right size, we could use it for a jury-foremast.
Then they wouldn’t have to stop long at Mandela Base, just head for Nantucket and the dry dock for full repairs.

“All hands,” she said to the second lieutenant. The crew gathered, exhausted but cheerful, and the commodore stood on a barrelhead to look out over them.

“Well, gentlemen, ladies,” she went on, “you’ve done it. Now we can get her ready and go home.”

“Three cheers for the skipper!” someone shouted.

Marian ducked her head and endured it. She expected discipline and precise obedience; it always surprised her when she turned out to be popular.

“We’ll spend the rest of today and tomorrow getting the camp shipshape,” she went on doggedly. “Right now, I suggest we call it eight bells—and splice the mainbrace with lunch. Dismissed!”

There was another cheer. She looked at the sun; about noon. Swindapa came up as she jumped down from the barrel, herding their children.

“Marian,” she said—in informal, family mode then. “Could we take a minute?”

“I think so,” Marian said. Her quarters weren’t far away, a tent made of sailcloth over spars and oars, and another smaller one for the children. They ducked into the hot beige canvas-smelling gloom.

Swindapa went on, “Heather and Lucy want to apologize.”

I very much doubt it,
Marian thought, forcing her face to sternness.

“What for?” she said.

“Uhhh . . .” Heather said. “Um, we went for a little walk.”

“In the woods.”

“Just a
little
walk—honest, Mom.”

“But we didn’t tell Seaman Martinelli. We’re sorry.
Real
sorry.”

Swindapa cut in. “They told him they were going to the latrine,” she said.

This time it took less of an effort to scowl, despite the frightened, guilty faces. “This is serious, both of you. This isn’t a prank. There are leopards and lions out there; you could have been
killed.
”

“Yeah,” Lucy said in a small voice. Heather nodded. “We heard stuff, so we came back fast as we can. We remembered to mark our way. And we’re
really
sorry.”

Marian nodded. “And you
lied
to Seaman Martinelli. You could have gotten him into serious trouble.”

Heather sniffled, and a tear ran down her cheek. “Sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough. Come here.”

Swindapa’s lips firmed into a thin, furious line. She glared at her partner and then turned her back.
I know, I know,
Marian thought angrily. The Fiernan Bohulugi thought spanking was stupid and barbaric, the sort of thing the Sun People did. Children were shamed or talked into behaving.

This isn’t Alba. We don’t have thirty grandmothers and aunts and cousins and siblings and whatnot around to watch every breath they take and talk them into the ground,
she thought.

Neither of them needed to say it aloud; they’d been over the same ground too often. Marian’s own parents in rural South Carolina had thought an occasional clip to the ear or swat across the bottom to be as essential as food and love to bringing up a child. They’d brought up six, and
none
of them had ended up in jail or on welfare.

She and Swindapa didn’t quarrel about it in front of the children, though. Marian turned one small form over her knee and administered six carefully measured whacks, striking just hard enough to sting without bruising. Then she repeated the process.

“Now go and say you’re sorry to Seaman Martinelli,” she said to the tear-streaked faces. “You stay where he can see you, you don’t get lunch, and if you
ever
do this again, this is the last time you’ll ever get on a ship. If you can’t be trusted to obey the rules, you’ll have to stay home on Nantucket when your mothers are away. Understand?”

“Yes, Mom,” they said, their voices trembling and wrenching at her heart. Heather was feeling her rear with two careful hands, but the threat affected her more than the spanking had.

Lucy went on, “Mom . . . do you still love us, Mom?”

She sighed and hugged them both close. “Of course I do, punkin. Your momma loves you more than anything. I just want to keep you safe, that’s all. Now give Swindapa a kiss and scoot.”

She sighed again after they had left. “I know, love,” she said softly to her partner’s back. “But I’d rather they had sore bottoms now than get dragged off by a leopard—or have to leave them behind every time we set foot off the Island. It’s bad enough when it’s a fighting voyage and we
have
to leave them.”

An imperceptible nod. “Let’s go have lunch,” Swindapa said in a neutral tone.

 

“Well, how do we know for
sure
that Marduk and Ishtar and all the other ones they talk about aren’t really running things?” David Arnstein said. “Making stuff like the weather happen, I mean. Or what Auntie ’dapa says about Moon Woman? You can’t see them, but you can’t see atoms and currents and co-ri-olis . . . that stuff . . . either.”

“We don’t know for sure,” his father said.

The steamboat was making good time downstream, past the endless rows of date palms and the equally endless long, narrow fields and dun-colored villages of flat-roofed, mud-brick huts. After several months, fewer of the peasants ran screaming at the sight of the little side-wheeler, although they were still flinching. The Arnsteins were sitting under an awning, resting their feet on the track-mounted twelve-pounder gun and sipping herb-flavored barley water.

This has to be the butt-ugliest country the notional gods ever made,
he thought. The palms could look romantic and beautiful . . . for about fifteen minutes at sunrise and sunset. And it was
hot,
even in May. At least he didn’t have to wear a robe of state now; shorts and a T-shirt were bad enough.
Thank God everyone in this family tans.

“We don’t know for sure because you can’t
prove
a negative,” he went on to his son, laying down his pen. Doreen gave him a smile, as her quill went scrutching on over the paper before her. “That means you can’t—”

“Yeah, I got that part, Dad,” David said, kicking his sandals against the legs of his chair. “It’s the rest I don’t get.”

“Okay. Well, first, when you’ve got an idea about why things are the way they are, a
hypothesis—
” The seven-year-old silently shaped the word. “—a
hypothesis,
you’ve got to
test
it. If things in the real world, things you
can
prove, work out the way your hypothesis says they should, then chances are your hypothesis is right.”

“Yeah,” the boy said, frowning in concentration. “Yeah, but what about stuff we
can’t
test? Negatives, like you said.”

“Well, we’ve got two rules for that,” Ian went on patiently.
God, I’ve got a sharp one here.
“The first is that the simplest way to explain something is best, if it explains everything you can see. That’s called Occam’s razor. Don’t make things more complicated than you have to.”

“Hey, that makes a lot of sense!” David said, his face lighting up.

Sharp, indeed.
There were a lot of adults who didn’t get that; on the other hand, it would have been more flattering still if his son hadn’t sounded very slightly surprised. David was moving from the parents-are-infallible stage toward the parents-know-nothing stage earlier than most kids, obviously.

“What’s the other rule, Dad?”

“Well, this is a little more difficult,” he hedged. “It’s called finding out whether your hypothesis is
falsifiable
or
nonfalsifiable.
”

He was still deep in the toils of Sir Karl Popper’s epistemology when the whistle beside the tall smokestack tooted. They were coming in to Ur Base, and it was time to get back to work.

“Hey, I can explain all this staff to the other kids!” David said enthusiastically.

Ian nodded, wincing inwardly; he could see the same expression in Doreen’s eyes. They’d both liked doing that too, as children. David would have to learn for himself exactly how popular it made you.