"I'm not the hausfrau type, particularly not with wood stoves or whatever we're going to be using. The main building's just across the way for meals. Later on we could put an attached kitchen out back-there's plenty of room."

Ian sighed. Nice to be thinking about something normal… relatively normal. "And it's right downtown," he said. "The location will be convenient while we're working for the government." The term came naturally now.

"You're the head of the State Department," Doreen giggled. Her eyes took on a thoughtful look. "That could be a pretty dangerous job, here. It isn't a nice era, from what Swindapa said. Interesting, in the Chinese sense. We'll be back across the Atlantic in August, maybe September."

Ian nodded uncomfortably. Doreen had spent more time with the Fiernan girl than he. "She's, ah, recovered fairly well, hasn't she?"

"I'm not sure," Doreen said. "She's a nice kid, but weird-well, with that background, you'd expect it. We talked astronomy, did I tell you?"

"You mentioned it. Do they know much?"

"It's all tied up with their religion, but once you strip out the stuff about Moon Woman and her children the stars-and boy, do they believe the stars control your destiny!-they've actually got a pretty good grasp of things. Pre-Copernicus, but very sound. They even know the sun's a star and the planets aren't, although the sun's the bad figure in their mythology."

"The devil?"

"More like a wayward child who needs a lot of discipline," Doreen said. "I'm not sure; the theology's as complicated as the Kabbalah, and I get the feeling this astronomical stuff was overlaid, a long time ago, on an older religion. The thing is, they've got an amazing grasp of stellar motions for people with no instruments to speak of and no way of writing any of it down like the Babylonians did. And their math, geometry in particular. Even something like algebra. No wonder Swindapa's got a good memory-the amount of stuff the poor kid had to memorize! She says some of the mnemonic songs they use are so old the language has changed beyond recognition."

We are made for each other. Make love, lie here with a glass of wine, and talk about anthropology, Ian mused ruefully.

Doreen thought for a second. "It's really odd how much they know, and how little hint of it there is in the history of the field," she said. "Really. They've got a good idea of the size of the earth, for instance, and of the distance to the moon. As good as the Greeks, better in some respects. Yet there's no trace of it in the records at all."

"I don't think that's surprising," Ian said grimly. "Let's put it this way. Imagine everything the same as we saw in Britain, only we didn't arrive. What would have happened to Swindapa?"

"She'd have died, the way they were treating her," Doreen said at once. "Or gone mad. Oh."

Ian nodded. "The Iraiina, or their relatives, are-were- would have-hell, you know what I mean-were scheduled to blot her people out. At least Swindapa's class, the ones who hold their accumulated knowledge. There's no trace of their language in our history, either. All that'll be left is their monuments and burials, which nobody will really understand."

"Poor kid," Doreen said again. "At least that's one thing we improved on." She sighed, then brightened and returned to a more personal subject:

"There's plenty of room here for a nursery, too." Ian stiffened in momentary panic. "No, I'm not pregnant-back a while I got Norplant." She rolled her arm to show the five little tubes under the skin.

"Were you, ah, involved with anyone?" he asked. Odd that I waited until now to ask that. A convention was growing up that you didn't lightly inquire about what links a person had had off-island before the Event. Irrelevant, and often painful.

"Not recently. I was overoptimistic," she sighed. "It'll wear off in another year and a half, and we can decide what we want to do then." Her grin turned wicked. "No reason we can't practice, though, is there?"

"None at all." He finished the sherry and put his glass beside hers on the side table.

CHAPTER TEN

May, Year 1 A.E.

"Ahhh," Swindapa sighed under her breath.

Everyone in the huge building was sitting on padded chairs of stone, like steps ringing the wooden platform ahead of her. Hundreds of people; she did a quick count. Nine hundred eighty-six, with a dozen children carried in their mothers' arms, almost as many as a Midwinter Moon ceremony at the Great Wisdom. The chairs had been enough for wonder, that and the building itself-like a Star-Moon-Sun work, only more vast and stately. Now the banner of white cloth up at the head of it was showing nickering images, colored, with sounds. The sounds of an Iraiina chant, of their magic.

Shivering, she huddled a little closer to the captain sitting beside her, reached down and seized her hand. She and the others were watching the moving shapes of light as if they were…

Something went click inside her head. She remembered the shadows of dancers thrown against the walls of a hut as they leaped and whirled around the fire. Ahhhhhh! The images were shadows of things past, like a memory taken out and put on the banner of white cloth! She relaxed a little. This was a seeming, and the captain wouldn't let the magic hurt her.

Figures walked through a meadow at dawn. Iraiina figures, stalking between two high-leaping bonfires and a double line of warriors. One was huge, heavy-bodied, scarred and hairy, swag belly above pillar legs, barrel chest and bear-thick arms above. Daurthunnicar. Naked save for the kilt and the mask over his face and shoulders, the head and neck of a horse, skillfully tanned and mounted on wicker. Equally naked in his hand was the long sword of silvery metal that he'd been given by the Eagle People. The younger man had designs painted over his body in blue and ocher-red.

The Iraiina priest came forward, with two acolytes leading a chariot; they unyoked the right-hand pony of the team and brought it to the magus, who raised his staff and began to chant. The words were strange, like Iraiina but longer and twisted. Old speech, she decided. The Grandmothers used an old speech for some of the most ancient Star Working Songs; Moon Woman might not like it if any of those were changed. Maybe the Iraiina sky god felt the same way.

Behind the priest and the horse a hole gaped in the earth, with dirt piled up on either side of it. The Iraiina warriors began to dance in a great circle around it, stopping now and then to drink deeply from skins of mead, tossing their heads and neighing; it was the hepkwos-midho, the horse-drunk.

Daurthunnicar danced too; the Dance of the King Stallion, knees flashing high as he pranced. The chant filled the hall, and she could hear the Eagle People murmuring beneath it. Then the Iraiina chieftain stopped, standing straddle-legged. The horse was led forward, and the holders urged it to its knees. The young man in the kilt came forward, and took up a stone-headed maul. With a shout he swept it up and then down into the forehead of the horse, stunning it.

Daurthunnicar struck as well, two-handed. The sword severed the horse's spine; five more strokes cut through its neck, until the head rolled free. Blood splashed the rahax from head to foot, until scarlet dripped from his beard and from the mane of the horse mask. The younger man stooped, then stood with the horse's head held stiffly over his own, corded arms straining at the weight. Both men danced again, younger following older, the muzzles of the horses jerking and swooping in unison.

At last they halted. The young man laid his burden down beneath his feet and faced the rising sun, singing in a strong clear voice with both palms raised. Gradually the arms lowered, but the song went on. It was still ringing out when Daurthunnicar's sword blurred in a horizontal circle.