"Wouldn't say no," Alston replied. "The roast's standing. Ready to carve in about five minutes."

"Thanks for making the time to attend these meetings. It's pretty dull stuff," Cofflin said, handing her a bourbon-and-water. This was her sixth committee meeting, but the first time she'd spoken more than a few words.

"No, I wouldn't say dull," she said, her voice remote as she sipped at the drink and bared her teeth at the bite. "Interestin', more like. Seeing history up close." She paused for a moment and then went on: "You know, before… all this, I'd never met many Yankees. The real thing, I mean, not just people who live no'th of Mason and Dixon's line."

The silence stretched. They leaned back in their chairs, looking into the low blue-red flicker of the heartwood coals. At last he looked over at her. "Penny for 'em," he said.

She turned and looked into his eyes. "Jared, I love this place."

Cofflin blinked surprise; that was a bit effusive, for her. "Well… thanks."

"No, I mean it." Her voice was still remote and calm, but there was a flat intensity of purpose in it. "I was in the Guard a long time, since I turned eighteen, a lot of it down in the Gulf. DEA liaison shit, Columbians, refugees… when we weren't pulling drunken speedboaters out from under after a three-day lovefest with the eels and crabs. Staring up the ass end of the world."

"I was a cop too… well, ayup, you've got a point. I was a small-town cop, here."

"Still and all, I started out thinking I was doin' something worthwhile for the country, you know? And that meant a lot to me, because the country did-does, for that matter, or I wouldn't have kept wearin' the uniform… After a while, I got convinced I was standing at the bottom of the sewer drain, tryin' to push the flow back up with a plumber's helper. A while more, and I got to thinkin' the whole country had flushed itself right down that drain and we were just waiting to hit the septic tank. Got posted to Eagle, training duty, and sometimes at night I'd think… am I just giving these kids a shuck-and-jive?"

They sat listening to the crackle and soft popping sounds from the hearth, and the rippling tap of rain on the windows.

"Here…" she said.

"Here…" Cofflin went on. "No gangbangers, no Wall Street downsizers, no nutcases on a mission from God, no 'national media,' no redneck black-helicopter paranoids, no multi-cultis, no animal rights lunatics-not anymore, thanks to the Jaguar God-no trial lawyers, no Beltway crowd with their collective head so far up their butts they're looking at their tonsils from the rear. Our own share of natural-born damn fools as Martha likes to call 'em, but they're nothing by comparison."

She raised her glass. "Exactly, my friend. Exactly." The full lips quirked in a wry smile. "No damnosa hereditas like the foundin' fathers had on their backs, either. Tom Jefferson talked about havin' the wolf by the ears, but hell, the wolfs ears get mighty sore too. Here we don't have all that."

Slowly, he said: "That's why you finally gave in and started coming to these committee meetings?"

Alston nodded. "But Jared, I'm… not qualified. Oh, I can give advice on stuff in my area, but basically what I do is kick ass and take names. I'm a hammer. To me, all the problems look like nails, and they aren't."

"We're none of us qualified. I was a fisherman and a cop; Martha was a librarian; Macy's a carpenter turned contractor; Starbuck was a small-town businessman turned town clerk; the Arnsteins barely knew or cared that the real world existed."

"Christ, that's better than a bunch of sociologists and politico lawyers. Ian and Doreen are as bright as anyone I've ever met, and between 'em it seems like they've read every book in the world, sometimes; Martha's about as smart, and less naive. Macy drives me nuts, drives ever'body crazy, but he's got a conscience like a bedstead carved out of granite rock-uncomfortable, but it's solid to the core. And Jared, you know people, and you'll do what you think is right if you have to head-butt your way through a brick wall to do it. Plus you've gotten really good at persuading, in your own way."

"Ah-" He flushed, looking down into his glass uncomfortably. "I'll do my best."

"Know you will. Just… be careful, okay? Because it's for the whole world."

That thought had occurred to him, now and then. It was a sobering one. "Bargain on that, lady." They touched their glasses.

Alston sighed. "I wish my kids were here, you know? I really do. For their sakes."

As if on cue, Martha and Swindapa came down from the second-floor nursery. "She's asleep, at last," Martha said, wiping her hands on a towel. "For a while. As much as half an hour, if we're lucky."

"She's a beautiful baby-very good, as sweet as new butter," Swindapa said, smiling. "If I had a baby as good-natured, I'd…"

Then the expression ran away from her face, and she stood with her eyes closed, tears squeezing out from under the lids. Poor kid, Cofflin thought. Evidently having children was real important to her people. A fully equipped fertility lab back up in the twentieth might have been able to do something, but weeks of a raging untreated pelvic inflammation had probably put her beyond any benefit from the island's clinic.

Martha put an awkward arm around her shoulders. Alston came over and led her to the seat by the fire, pressing the glass of bourbon-and-water into her hand and perching on the arm of the easy chair beside her.

"Your older sister has some children, doesn't she, honey-bunch?" the black woman said gently, stroking her hair. "What're they like? Tell me."

Martha drew him out into the kitchen, snagging the long knife and fork along the way. "She'll be all right by the time you're finished carving," she murmured.

"It's called division of labor," Walker said to Ohotolarix.

The phrase was in English; Iraiina didn't have the words for it, not without a paragraph of circumlocutions. You couldn't say mass or table of organization in it either, not really.

The long shed was filled with men and women and children at work; most of them wore iron collars with a loop at the back for attaching shackles. At one end of the building thin rods of metal went into a machine of wooden drums and crank handles. Four strong men heaved on levers, and the iron rod was drawn through cast-iron dies until it became wire wound on a length of smooth round oak. There was a smell of hot iron and stale sweat, and the raw timbers the shed was fashioned of.

The wire went from bench to bench; some of the slaves cut the links into circles, others flattened the ends, still others fitted the rings together into preset shapes. At last the rivets were closed by lever-operated presses, and the end product was tumbled in boxes of sand to polish it, then washed and wiped down with flaxseed oil and rolled up for packing and transport. Chain-mail hauberks, in six standard sizes that he'd found would fit nearly everybody; knee-length, with short sleeves and a slit up before and behind so that the wearer could ride a horse. Not quite as good as the plate suits Leaton made back on the island, but almost infinitely better than the local equivalents.

"I see, lord," Ohotolarix said thoughtfully when he'd explained further. "Because each task is division among many." The Iraiina frowned in puzzlement for a moment.

"But why is this better than having each of these slaves and workmen make a whole set of this fine armor?" He wore his own now, did so virtually every waking moment, in fact.

"If a man does only one thing, he works faster," Walker said. "And if you only have to teach him one thing, he can learn it quickly-little skill is involved in doing only one step over and over again. And if he does only that one thing, it's easier to check that he does it well and quickly, and to drive him on."