On the Oceans of Eternity (59 page)

Clemens went on: “In a pile of wool blankets or clothes, the infection could linger indefinitely. It’s a sit-and-wait pathogen, lying around on surfaces.”

“Well, Jus, that’s damned bad news,” Hollard said, and shook his head. “After the war, we’ll have to do something about it, if we can.”

Clemens looked at the general, jaw dropping. “After—” His voice broke in a squeak. “Sir, they’ve got the disease there right now. This news is months old! We have to do something
now.”

The lamplight brought out the planes and angles of Hollard’s bony face. “Out of the question,” he snapped. The blue eyes speared Clemens’s. “I have a war to run, in case you hadn’t noticed, Doctor, and it’s at a critical point. Every ship and sailor and Marine is needed.”

The doctor looked at the general for a long moment, silent with horror. “But sir ... Ken ... for the love of God, Meluhha’s a major trade center! I’m pretty sure, I’ve been tracing it, somehow we managed to get it to Babylon—from the African coast, or somewhere along the Red Sea, maybe. Now that it’s in Meluhha, it’ll spread all through continental Asia, maybe to southeast Asia as well. Virgin field epidemic—a quarter of the human race could die.”

Hollard’s face might have been rough-cast in an Irondale foundry. “And if I divert our resources, the Republic may die. I know my duty, Doctor. So should you.”

“I’m a doctor, dammit. People are dying and I know how to keep them alive!”

“You’re also a soldier of the Republic of Nantucket,” Hollard said. “What do you think we should do? Send a fleet and a regiment to Meluhha? Because that’s what it would take; they’re not going to allow us to stick needles into them on our say-so. And then
another
fleet and more regiments to track down all the places people from Meluhha
might
have gone? All the Coast Guard and Marine Corps together wouldn’t be enough to lock that barn door. The horse is out. That’s very bad, and I’m sorry it happened, but it has.”

Appalled, Clemens stared. “You’re not going to do
anything?”

“I’ll recommend we step up the vaccination program at every outport and base, and encourage all the people near ’em to come in and get it,” Hollard said. “And just between me and thee, we let Walker know about the epidemic while it was on, and the Tartessians. They’ve got their own vaccination programs going, according to Intelligence. More we cannot do, not until the war is over. I’m sorry, Justin.”

“Sorry,” Clemens said. “Thank you very much, sir,” he said.

He stood, saluted, and turned on his heel. Behind him Kenneth Hollard dropped his head into his hands, unseen.

Clemens stalked to the tent he’d been assigned. Azzu-ena was busy within, setting out their gear; she looked up at his approach and wordlessly folded him into her embrace.

“You did what you could, beloved,” she said softly in his ear.

“I did
nothing,”
he groaned. “I could ... I could appeal to the chief, to the Town Meeting, launch a petition ...”

“Would they listen, where the general would not?”

A sigh went out of him, and the rigid tension of anger. “No,” he said. “They wouldn’t ... if I was them, I honestly don’t know if I’d do anything either ...
why,
dammit,
why?”
His fist struck the canvas-covered dirt where they sat.

“Ah, beloved, that is something not all the arts of your people or mine can answer,” she said softly.

“What can I do?”

Her tone became a little sharper: “You will save those lives you can,” she said.
“The regimen I shall adopt,
remember? Your patients are here. They are those you can assist. You will do them no good if you waste the strength of your spirit brooding on what you cannot do.”

He sighed, straightened, ran a hand over his cropped hair. “I suppose ... no, you
are
right.” He smiled into the dark eyes. “What would I do without you?”

“I will do you good and not evil all your days,” she said softly, quoting the marriage ceremony. Then she laid a hand on her stomach and her smile grew wider. “And you have already done something with me you could not do without. I was going to wait another week, but ...”

He folded her in his arms, feeling joy blaze. The haunting thought of blankets and baskets traveling from one port to the next didn’t quite fade, but it was enough. It was reason to keep going.

A
fter so long in tunic and leggings like those of the rangers, it felt a little odd to Spring Indigo Giernas to go once more in nothing more than a brief wraparound skirt of deerskin, much like what she would have worn in summer as a young woman of the Cloud Shadow people. She leaned into the tumpline that held the big carrying basket on her back, both hands gripping the rawhide just past the padded section that rested across her forehead. How quickly you got used to having horses to carry things! The burden made it natural to keep her eyes down on the graveled surface of the road. It also made it easier to hide the smile that threatened to break through when she remembered how Peter—Sue had told her the name meant “rock,” which was very good—had bellowed and roared when she told him that she had to be the one to scout the enemy encampment.

She hid a chuckle behind a decorous face. Oh, he had bellowed, yes, roared and pawed the earth like a bison in the rutting season ... which he was like, and in more ways than on the blanket. She and Sue had worn him down though; for he was a fair man and just. It was well for a strong chief to have two wives who worked in concert—they could usually make a man see reason, which was better for everybody.

Spring Indigo licked dust from her lips, putting down fear. The fort of the Tartessians came nearer with every step, growing from a description, a shadow, to a thing like a mountain made by men.

I am just one woman of the land to them,
she told herself.
They will not see my face among so many.

To her, the differences between her people and these dwellers in the sunset lands were obvious, easy to see at a glance—her people were taller, with a different cast of face. But the enemy would see what they expected and no more.

Tidtaway was trudging beside her, carrying a hide sack over his shoulder. She didn’t like Quick Tongue. He’d kept trying to get her to lie with him, which was bad manners if the husband did not make the offer.
Still, he is brave and has guided us well.
It would be too odd for a strange woman to come here unaccompanied; that would make them really
look
at her.

The roadway grew crowded as they approached the great fortress of the Tartessians; occasionally she stole a look at the immense log that speared up into the sky from its center. The people of the land walked to either side, leaving the center of the roadway free for riders and wagons. She glanced nervously aside at those, and up at the ramparts ahead of her.

This is as nothing before the arts of the Eagle People, who are wise and strong,
she told herself. She was one of the Eagle People herself now; when they went to Pete’s home she would see far stranger, far greater things.
All this the Tartessians learned from us, like a child following her mother and imitating the roots she gathers.

For a moment it daunted her; if this was just a child’s copy, a poor imitation, what was Nantucket itself like? No real picture had formed in her mind of the Island, the stories were too wild and strange....

“Now I must be as a still pool, to reflect, and to remember,” she muttered to herself.

The roadway rose above the crop fields on either side. Men and women were working in those, some Tartessians, some tribesfolk captives driven to work with blows. Horses pulled machines with wheels and many iron teeth down rows, and the teeth turned the soil like a digging stick but far faster. Another machine with long wooden arms that turned around and around stood and groaned, and water poured out of its base, to run off through ditches between fruit trees; workers tended the ditches with hoes, piling up earth here and tearing it down there. Beneath an open shed, men were struggling with animats—sheep, they were called—the long hair of their coats being cut off with iron shears. The near-naked beasts looked comical as they were driven away, giving bleating cries, and women carried off the hair—the wool—to great bins.

They neared the gate. She looked for the details the others had told her to observe. Squat towers bulked on each side of the massive log portal, and the snouts of
cannon,
which were like rifles but vastly larger, poked out. Lower down were long slim tubes through narrow slits in the walls. Those would be the
throwers-of-flame;
she shuddered at the thought. Many enemy warriors, all dressed curiously alike in green and brown, paced on top of the palisade above the sloping turf of the earth wall. More waited by the gates; there was a broad flat place with tables, and Tartessians sitting behind them on chairs. She recognized both from what the expedition had made for the cabins where they wintered in the mountains. The sitting men were differently dressed, in long tunics but with their legs bare, and strapped sandals on their feet. They waved and shouted, and she followed Tidtaway over to them.

A man of the land stood beside the seated official. He spoke sharply to Tidtaway, and the guide walked humbly to them and spoke. Eyes on the ground, Spring Indigo tensed. This was a dangerous part of the plan. The interpreter was of this area. Tidtaway could not pretend to speak his language anything but badly. He was to claim he came from far up the valley to the north, where the tribute caravan had passed through. They both turned so that the little round puckered scars of the vaccination could be seen.

It seemed the Tartessian accepted Tidtaway’s story. He grunted and took the little leather bags from the guide’s satchel and poured them out. Dust and nuggets panned from streams piled up, a dull yellow color against the smooth pottery on which they lay. There was a machine before the official, a metal stand with pans on either side, pivoting in the center of the arm that bore them. The seated man took one of the pans from its nest of chains, scraped nuggets and dust onto it with a spatula, replaced it, put little metal weights on the other side until they balanced. Then he consulted notes on paper, she recognized the signs, the al-pha-bet she had been learning herself, but of course in the foreign language of Tartessos. His fingers flicked stone beads strung in columns on another pottery square.

Her eyes tracked movement. The warriors in green cloth and brown leather were tensing. Very slightly, but it was the tension of men ready for a fight. They held their rifles across their chests, the sun bright on the knives clipped to their ends to make them spears as well.

They think that perhaps
Tidtaway
will become angry,
she thought. She thought of remarks she’d heard translated as Peter and Sue and Jaditwara discussed. Ah ...
because
he
will be
cheated.
An angry man might forget he was alone.

The Tartessian pushed round metal disks—coins such as she’d been shown by Peter and the others—across the table. Two were of gold, but shining much brighter than the nuggets. Others were of what must be
silver,
and more still of copper, a metal she knew from small ornaments brought in trade from the far north to her birth-people. All bore fascinating pictures; of a beak-nosed man, of a woman in a fanciful headdress; of a dreadful figure with three legs and a single eye. She didn’t understand how these beautiful things could be worth less than a handful of dust and heavy rock.

Tidtaway carefully put the coins in a pouch at his belt, and the official signaled to Spring Indigo to put down her load. She did, and the man pawed through it in a desultory fashion. The trade goods had come from their local allies; dried smoked salmon from the spring run, together with bundles of cammas roots, red clover for teas, scraped willow bark, wild onions, dried berries, and walnuts. Her “husband’s” bundles held golden beaver pelts, otter, martin, ermine, colorful feathers ...

One of the soldiers reached out and grabbed her breast, laughing at her squeal of surprise and protest. Then he looked down and saw that some of her milk had spurted out onto his hand, and backed away, cursing and swearing, shaking the hand as if the white droplets had burned it. The other Tartessians backed away from him, dodging and cursing in their turn....

 

Peter Giernas looked up scowling from the notes and map he was compiling from her story. Jaditwara laughed softly, and the man scowled at her. The Fiernan spoke:

“Tartessians are so funny. They think that if a woman’s milk touches a man, and he was not the one to quicken her, he may become impotent and sterile—unclean, with his semen turned to milk.” She laughed again. “He will have to undergo a cleansing ritual from their priests and priestesses. I don’t know exactly what, but I hear that it’s expensive. And painful, in ways that will make him not interested in women for a while.”

Spring Indigo laughed aloud. So did several others; Eddie threw back his head and barked amusement, slapping his thigh.

“And it’s so silly,” Jaditwara added, shaking her head. “After all, how can a man ever really know who fathers a child? A mother is a mother, a father is an ... an opinion.”