"Yeah, you're gorgeous," Alice said, collapsing onto her side. "Sure you don't want to try it from this side? It can be fun."

He stepped over to the bed and jerked her head back by her hair. She gave a gasp, smiling at him. The sweat running into the marks the cane had made across her back had to sting too, but she didn't look any the worse for it.

"I'm strictly a pitcher S amp;M-wise, darling," he said. "Not a catcher, and you shouldn't have been quite so honest on why you got blacklisted in every pain club on the East Coast. Besides, I'm on duty in a while. The captain has an uncivilized attitude toward unpunctuality."

"Mmm," Alice said, the tip of her tongue touching her lips. "You're a workaholic too…"

"It's how you get places, babe." He pulled her head back a little farther; she shivered and clenched her teeth. "How'd you get that medical degree?"

"Took a five-year holiday from life," she said. "Everyone needs holidays. What's the captain like, anyway? Everyone talks about her. Real mysterious. Cute, too."

"I don't think you're her type, Alice," he said. "She's surprisingly straitlaced, if you know what I mean." They both laughed.

"And you get to go back to those fascinating places with her," Alice said enviously. "That sacrifice, that was wild. Sure looks like more fun than dancing around in nightgowns with a bunch of middle-aged hausfrau geeks who think they're witches. All the stupid bitches ever want to do is bless the crops, anyway. Dull."

"Why, I don't think Pamela Lisketter would like to hear you talking that way," Walker chuckled.

"Fuck Lisketter-on second thought, no thanks."

"You know, Alice, I really like you. You're my kind of lady. How'd you like to travel to beautiful Bronze Age Europe yourself?"

"Oh, yeah," she said, skeptical.

"I mean it. Can't you see yourself as the Great White Queen-Great Asian-American Queen-of a tribe of adoring barbarians? Stone palaces, silk blowing in the wind, some really kinky stuff. Sacrifices. Flames in the dark. Screams. No more make-believe, no taking turns…"

She gave a complex shudder. "Tease. Now let me loose, c'mon. Rosita's coming back any minute, and Isketerol will be with her."

He buttoned his shirt and tucked it in, tying his tie and picking up the uniform cap from a dresser. "I'm sure all three of you will enjoy that thoroughly," he said. "Hasta la vista, and call me when you're not all tied up."

"Asshole!" she cried after him.

He stopped, turned, and stuck his head back around the doorjamb.

"Yes," he said, with a brilliant grin. "I am. But I am no ordinary asshole."

Walker went down the stairs two at a time, chuckling, with the woman's curses ringing in his ears. She is my kind of girl, he thought. And maybe… A doctor could be very useful, in a number of different ways.

"Hunff!"

The katana flashed in the evening sunlight, halting just above the ragged surface of the grass. Marian Alston looked critically out of the kitchen window; Swindapa was still hard at it, doing the kata long after Alston had gone in to oversee dinner. Saturday afternoons were supposed to be free time; she'd been doing paperwork until noon herself. Doreen was running through staff forms doggedly. She'd never be really good, no natural talent, but she'd improved considerably. Ian was watching from a deck chair, his thumb keeping place in his book.

The Fiernan flicked the sword aside to shed imaginary blood, sheathed it, and went to one knee. A long quiet moment and then she drew and thrust straight back without turning, flicked the blade up for a straight cut, blocked, blocked, backing… Alston looked at her feet and the set of her shoulders.

"You're forcing it," she called through the open kitchen window. "Relax. No tension until the end of the stroke. Let the sword do it."

"Do," Swindapa panted. "I that."

She stood, relaxing and shaking out one wrist and then the other, then began the kata again.

Still hasn't got English syntax quite down, Alston thought, smiling. She caught her own expression in the slanted glass of the window. Uh-oh, she thought. Watch it, woman. There was enough grief in life without courting it.

Instead she looked down at the loaves, tapping them out of the sheet-metal pans with a cloth to protect her hands. The bottom of the bread was light honey-brown; she tapped it with a fingernail. Just the right sound, slightly hollow.

The kitchen door opened. "Damn, but that smells great, Skipper," Sandy Rapczewicz said. "What is it?"

Rapczewicz and Lieutenant Victor Ortiz went over to one of the sinks and washed their hands, using economical dippers of water from the buckets beside it. Both the Coast Guard officers looked worn-everyone did-and their working blues were stained with engine oil.

"Duck," Alston said. "Bread-and-sage stuffing." That didn't get the groans that seafood would have. "Sea lettuce and pickerelweed salad, courtesy of the Guides. Cattail stalks and dock. And fresh bread, of course."

"Good," Rapczewicz said, sitting down at the kitchen table and slumping wearily. "Max is up and running, Skipper," she went on. "But God alone knows for how long. Those bearings…"

"We're almost out of diesel oil anyway," Ortiz said.

"Worth it, to keep the trawlers running as long as we could," Alston said, wrapping a corner of her apron around her hand and opening the oven door, blinking through a cloud of fragrant steam. She prodded a serving fork into the birds and looked at the color of the juice. "Ah, just about-"

Swindapa bounced up the steps into the kitchen, ducking into the sunroom for a second to rack her sheathed sword.

"I help can I?" she said. The two scholars followed her, Doreen still panting.

"That's can I help, 'dapa. Toss me those potholders, and get those cattail stalks ready, would you?"

They worked in companionable silence for a few moments as Alston finished the gravy and began to dismember the ducks.

"Shouldn't-" Alston began. Then: "Speak of the devil."

Dr. Coleman came through the door; Sandy had invited him again. Hmmm. Seeing a lot of each other, Alston thought.

"Not exactly the devil," he said. "Been mistaken for Daniel Webster, though." His long nose quivered. "Smells wonderful."

"All the more dishes to wash," she said. "And it's served."

Everyone carried plates to the pinewood table, and for a few minutes there was no sound but concentrated eating. Long days of hard physical labor had taught them all exactly what hungry was, and it wasn't much like just being ready for dinner. The duck was good if she said so herself, and the boiled dock tasted hauntingly like spinach, or like spinach with a squeeze of lemon; cattail turned out to have a flavor a little like sweet corn. Alston sat next to the Fiernan girl, conscious of a slight summery odor of clean sweat; more agreeable than a lot of islanders, with soap and hot water both difficult to get.

Coleman plied his fork with a will. "Wouldn't have thought you were a chef, on top of everything else," he said to the Coast Guard officer.

"I'm not fancy enough to be a chef," she said. "I'm a cook… it's, mmm, relaxin'. Everyone should have a hobby."

"Better this butter-" Swindapa stopped and frowned.

"This would be better with butter," she went on carefully, dipping a piece of the bread into the fat.

"So it would," Alston said. "We don't have enough cows yet."

Swindapa frowned. "Why not?" she said. "Understand that the island Nantucket is-and-was only part of-United States, here, but every part of the White Isle has always cows-how could not? Everyone needs butter, and cheese and milk and hides and meat."

"We had ways of keeping those from spoiling, and of sending them a long way very quickly," Alston said.