Island in the Sea of Time (26 page)

“It is cramped,” he said, and sighed. “For the first time since this whole thing started, I feel as if I’m really
here.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” Doreen purred into his ear. “The feeling’s mutual.”

A thought jarred him. “Wait a minute—you’re protected, aren’t you?”

“It’s a bit late to ask, but yes.”

Ian sighed relief. “It’d be a shame to waste this waist.” He ran a hand down the damp smooth skin of her back. “Many happy returns of the night,” he said, then checked himself.

“Mmmm-hmm,” Doreen said affirmatively, nuzzling into the curve of his neck. “Hoped you’d say that.”

Silence ticked away. “I’m a bit, well,
old,
middle-aged really, and—”

“I’m not a teenager either, I’m nearly thirty,” she said. “Well into spinsterhood, by Bronze Age standards, I suppose.” A chuckle fluttered across his skin, cool on the dampness. “Besides, you’re certainly the most eligible Jewish man around. Even if you’re not a
medical
doctor. Unless I sail east and put the make on Moses.”

“We’ll see how it goes, then,” he said drowsily, feeling an enormous peace. A minute later he tugged his eyelids open. “God, we can’t go to sleep, or she’ll tow us at the end of a rope at dawn!” Captain Alston had impressed him as the type who enforced regulations with an old-fashioned absolutism.

“Mmmm, no. I asked. She said as civilians all we had to be was discreet.”

They rearranged themselves with some effort, smoothing the sheets a little and drawing up the blanket, then settling down spoon fashion. It was a long while since he’d slept—in the go-to-sleep sense of the term—with a woman, and never in a bed so narrow. After a half hour his drowsiness faded.

“My, for a middle-aged man . . .”

 

“W
ell, people, we have a problem,” Jared Cofflin said.

He looked out over the crowd. Attendance at Town Meeting was certainly up from the days before the Event; of course, the stakes were a lot higher now.
But I don’t like the look in their eyes,
he thought.
They’re still scared.
Deubel’s crazed arson plot had put the fear of death into them, like nothing since the Event. He could smell it in their sweat, and hear the shrill undertone in the murmurs as they adjusted their folding chairs. A few young children cried in their mothers’ arms, ignoring the patting and shushing.

“The trial’s over,” he went on. “Judge Gardner can testify it was fair.”

The judge nodded. “However, under the circumstances, sentencing is a problem. Arson generally carries a fairly long term of imprisonment.”

“It’s time we faced some facts. Look, we want a government of laws, don’t we?” There were nods throughout the crowd. Cofflin felt sweat running down his collar, and was extremely glad that Martha Stoddard was sitting next to him at the table on the dais, spare and precise in a gray dress and single string of pearls.

“But let’s face it, the laws of the United States don’t run here any more. There isn’t any United States, no Congress, no president, no Supreme Court. Sure, we want the same
sort
of laws—”

“Like hell,” someone said from the ranks of townspeople. “The IRS can stay lost for all I care.”

That brought a gust of laughter; Cofflin joined in for an instant. “Generally speaking, I mean. In the end, though, this—this Town Meeting here—is the source of law on this island.
You
are. You’re the Congress, you’re the Senate. You can make peace and declare war; you decide what the penalties for crimes are. You bind and loose.”

That brought silence for a long moment, except for the angry hiccuping of a fretful baby. “All right, then. Here we’ve got eighteen men and women who tried to burn down the town, which would probably have killed us all, one way or another.” There had been twenty to start with, but two had managed to follow their ex-pastor into suicide.

“We’ve given them a fair trial, and they’ve mostly confessed anyway. The question is, what do we do with them?”

“Hang ’em!” someone shouted, and there was a menacing snarl from the crowd. Together on a bench before the dais the prisoners shrank together.

Cofflin hammered his gavel. “That’s one solution,” he said calmly. “And you’re the ultimate authority here. If you vote for it, it’ll be carried out. Now, I just want you to think about that. Eighteen nooses. Eighteen people with broken necks hanging there—if we don’t botch it and just strangle them slowly. I’ll insist that it be done publicly; people should see the results of what they order. And then I’ll resign.”

There was an uproar at that. Cofflin gaveled it into silence. He recognized the woman with the crying baby. She stood, anger crackling off her:

“I’m not going to let those . . . those
lunatics
loose to threaten my baby again.” A growl rose from the crowd.

Cofflin nodded. “Ms. Saunders, I agree completely. I’m not against the death penalty as such in the ordinary course of events. This is a little different. We need to come up with a way to keep ourselves safe from these people here, without killing them. You’re also right; they
were
acting like lunatics. Haven’t most of us felt like running mad lately, now and then? Hell, a couple of us
have
run mad.”

With a Glock, in one case.

Saunders blinked. “What do you think we should do?”

“Well, we can’t just keep them in jail. For one thing, it’d cost too much—we’d have to feed them. What I had in mind was a productive form of exile.”

Martha leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “You’d better listen carefully,” she said. “Jared Cofflin’s the best man to head our Council, and you’d be well advised to keep him.”

“You’re partial, Martha,” someone said from the crowd. “You’re engaged to him, after all.”

Cofflin felt a small glow at the thought, even then. He’d enjoyed the engagement, too; all three days of it, so far.

“John Detterson, if you think I’d flatter a man just because I’m going to be married to him, you’re more of a fool than I thought you,” Martha said tartly.

The tension he could feel in the air crackled a little lower; there was not quite a laugh, but a relaxation.

“Everyone hates the salt-gathering detail,” Cofflin went on. “We’ve been drawing lots for it. What I’m saying is that we should send these people down there, for a year at least and then further until they’re safe to have back among us. We can send a boat down to pick up the salt and drop off supplies every month or so. It’s a hard sentence, yes, but we don’t have to kill any of our own, and we don’t have to waste time and resources we can’t spare on them.”

More murmurs. Cofflin pointed the gavel. “Winnie McKenzie.”

“That’s an indefinite sentence, Chief,” she said. “How are we going to tell if they’re really safe? What’s to prevent them lying about it and getting up to the same tricks when they get back?”

“I’ll let Father Gomez answer that,” Cofflin said.

“These poor people were deluded by a man who was deluded himself,” the priest said, rising from his seat in the middle of the meeting. “I have volunteered to go with them to Inagua and help them. Father Connor can run the affairs of the Catholic parish here while I’m gone. With God’s help, I think I can bring these unfortunate people back to reason, or at least tell if they haven’t changed their thinking.”

“And I have full confidence in Father Gomez’s judgment,” Cofflin said.
Since he suggested this whole scheme in the first place,
he added to himself. “What’s more, I think a year spent shoveling salt and eating flamingo down on Inagua is at least equivalent to ten in a mainland jail. No way to escape, either.”
No way to escape and live,
he amended. If they chose to drown themselves, that was their problem and a solution to his.

“Anyone second the motion?” he asked. A double dozen of hands went up. “Let’s put it to the vote. All in favor, raise their hands. Now, all opposed.” He swung his head from one end of the crowd to the other. “Joseph?”

“Carried,” the town clerk said. Nobody objected; the ayes had outnumbered the nays by at least five to one.

Cofflin looked down at the prisoners; one or two defiant, a woman weeping softly, most of them simply stunned. “By vote of the Town Meeting of the island of Nantucket, you are hereby sentenced to exile on the island of Inagua for a period of not less than one year. Your exile will continue until Father Gomez, as authorized by the Meeting, determines that you are safe to live here again. You’ll have one day to say your farewells, and the
Yare
will leave with the evening tide tomorrow. That’s all.”

The police officers shepherded the prisoners out.
Well, that’s a hell of a lot simpler than it used to be,
Cofflin thought. Aloud: “All right, let’s get on with it.” He pointed the gavel. “Sam Macy.”

Sam Macy was a house carpenter, and a very good one, island-born. “Chief, it’s the way we’re running things,” he began, setting himself stubbornly. “This telling everyone where they have to work and such. It’s too much like communism for my liking.”

“Sam, you’re one hundred percent right about that,” Cofflin said. “The problem is, it had to be done—still will, for a while. Joseph”—he pointed at the town clerk—“and a couple of our potato-planting bankers—”

That
did
get a laugh, a rueful one.

“—are working on getting a money system going. After we’ve got the crops planted and the fishing steady, we can start swapping things around more as we please. People will still have to work or contribute stuff to the Town, though—otherwise we just can’t pull through. Next year we can loosen up some more, and more still the year after that. Believe me, the last thing I want is to be a tin-pot Mao. If anyone can come up with a better way of doing it, they’re welcome to ask the Meeting to give them this job . . .
more
than welcome,” he added sincerely, running a hand over his hair.

Angelica Brand spoke: “We’ve been running most of the plantings as a single unit because there wasn’t time to do otherwise,” she said. “But I’d be just as pleased to split them up into smaller farms. Trouble is, not many of us know how to run a small farm with hand tools and animal traction. One thing I
can
tell you, it’s damned hard work.”

There was a general murmur of agreement on that. Cofflin went on: “We can reopen some of the stores pretty soon now, too, as soon as Joseph gets this chit system going. Satisfied, Sam?”

“Not altogether,” Macy said. “There’s that order collecting up all the guns.”

The townsfolk groaned; Macy was a bit of a monomaniac on the subject of the Second Amendment.

“Sam, you know what happened at the Cappuccino Café. Everyone thought Don Mansfield was as sane as any of us and he goes and kills three people—one of ’em a kid. Then there was Johnstone—”

“Guns don’t—”

“—kill people, people do. Ayup, I agree—but guns make it so much
easier.
By the way, Sam, if you want a crossbow, you’re welcome to one. Once things settle down, all the firearms will be handed back to their owners, unless the Town needs them—we’re going to have to handle our own defense, and from what Captain Alston says there are some mighty rough people out there over the water.”

“We’d have more if you hadn’t—”

Cofflin nodded. “Putting near all of them in one place was a bad mistake; I’ll say that myself. But imagine what Deubel would have done with automatic weapons!”

Macy looked around, hesitated, and sat down; he was an opinionated man, but far from stupid.

“And hell, Sam,” Cofflin went on, “if you want to make a motion, propose it and we’ll vote.”

Macy stayed down, unconvinced but aware that the Meeting was moving from boredom to irritation.

“All right, next item. Ron Leaton here needs more people who want to apprentice as metalworkers and machinists. The worst of the clearing is about over, so we can spare some hands. I’d like to suggest . . .”

When the Meeting was over, Cofflin ran a handkerchief over his face. “I’d rather face a half-dozen drunk coofs on the spree anyday,” he grumbled.

“You did very well,” Martha said. “Very Athenian, really.” Cofflin raised his brows. “Aristotle thought about three thousand citizens was the largest number who could meet in assembly and decide issues,” she went on. “Well, we’re about the right size for his ideal city-state, aren’t we?”

“Greek to me,” Cofflin grinned. The librarian slapped his shoulder in mock reproof.

“Come along to supper, then,” she said, sliding a hand into his. “And maybe we can do something about that bundling you mentioned.”

“Er—” he said, flushing slightly.

Martha smiled. “This
is
the twentieth century,” she said. “Or at least it was.”

 

“You do, what is?” Swindapa asked.

Nearly mash my toes, that’s what I do,
Doreen thought, wiping her palms and picking up the length of wood she’d dropped.

“Practice,” she said aloud, running through another slow form. Trying to get the rhythm back where breath and movement, body and feet and hands, united into a single flowing unity. Instead her thighs and shoulders ached and her eyes stung despite the terry-cloth headband she was wearing.

The deck was stable as the ship ghosted along at a crawl, creeping past the edge of a Sargasso that seemed to be larger in this era. Part of the crew were busy swabbing, painting, and chipping, but the rest were doing unarmed combat drill, under the tutelage of Lieutenant Walker and the captain—Doreen supposed that Alston had ordered it on the principle that the devil made work for idle hands. Ian was infuriatingly reading a book in a deck chair, smugly satisfied with his argument that he was a civilian and far too middle-aged for all this “chucking about.” It was hot, too; they were down about the latitude of Bermuda. Doreen panted as she rested on the
bo,
the T-shirt sticking to her breasts and shoulders. The deck was full of yells and thuds as the fit, limber nineteen-year-old cadets ran through holds and throws or hammered at each other through padding.