If we had a hundred Swindapas cutting this stuff, maybe, Ian thought, bending again with a groan. A bell rang behind him, and he felt like weeping with relief. The second shift.

They were rotating people through the harvesting gangs, so as many as possible would have experience before the much larger fields of spring-planted grain came ripe. A thousand acres of barley alone, Christ on a crutch, I'll never make it. He looked at the sky again. When the time came, they'd have to go all-out. You couldn't count on the weather here, and rain at the wrong time could be a disaster-literally a disaster; it would mean the difference between eating well and going hungry. With the planting so late it would be touch and go, first to harvest, and then to get all the grain under cover.

Then we get to pull the flax and dig up the potatoes. And harvest and shuck the corn. And cut the buckwheat. And cut the last hay and turn it and dig the Jerusalem artichokes and harvest the sunflowers and… Oh, joy, oh, my aching back.

"And I thought 'bust your ass' was a metaphor," he said.

"Come and get it!" the cook at the wagon over by the pines shouted.

"About time," Doreen said.

She was wearing a T-shirt around her head like a headdress, with strands of her long black hair escaping, and a bikini top and shorts. Her skin was tanned to a deep olive brown, flesh firmed up and trimmed down and turned to something more like the opulent shape of a Levantine fertility goddess; even the sweat on neck and breasts and the bits of straw stuck in it merely completed the picture. At the moment he was too tired to really appreciate the sight, except in an abstract way. He trudged over to the wagon and the blessed shade of the trees, dropping his sickle and hook into the racks. Plastic trash barrels full of water stood there. He drank four mugfuls one after the other, almost shuddering with ecstasy as the cool water cut through the gummy saliva and dust in his mouth and throat. Then he poured more over his head; it felt icy as it cut runnels through the sweat. The towel he used to wipe his face and hands was limp and damp, but afterward he felt halfway human-as if he'd been dead for days, rather than months. Human enough that the smell of the stew penetrated and set his stomach rumbling like a wolf trying to claw its way out.

"Surf 'n' Swine, folks! Come and get it!" the cook said again. "Surf 'n' Swine! Come and get it!"

He got in line and took a big red plastic bowl of thick brown pork and lobster stew. The helper added half a loaf of rough dark bread, and Ian filled his mug again. The shade beneath the stubby pines where he and Doreen spread their blanket was infinitely welcome, but he could feel his muscles stiffen further as they cooled. He sank down with a groan.

"The chief is carrying this egalitarianism to extremes," he grumbled. "I notice he's not here."

"He's out harpooning bluefin tuna," Alston said from a few feet farther along the line of shade. "Those things go up to a ton weight; it's hard, dangerous work." She raised herself on one elbow; she wasn't looking particularly tired, although the singlet was plastered to her torso with sweat.

But then, she's an athlete and younger than I am, he thought.

"I know, I know, I'm being unfair," Ian said ruefully. "I'm also being a middle-aged man with blisters and a crick in my back."

"Easy work," Swindapa said, laying down her food and stretching on tiptoe with her fingers pointed at the sky.

Woof, woof, Ian thought. Even gaunt and terrified, the Fiernan had been pretty. Filled out, glowing with health and youth, tanned a light toast-brown that made even more vivid her blue eyes and the sun-bleached hair falling down her bare back… He looked back at his wife. Damn, the view is good here all 'round. Then: I must be recovering. He looked down at himself; he'd never been anything but lanky, but the middle-aged pot he'd added had about vanished. He was fitter than he'd been. He just wished it didn't hurt so much.

"Not what I'd call easy," he said.

"Try doing it with a wooden sickle with flint blades, Ian, or even a bronze one," Swindapa said. She frowned when he moved and then winced. "Lie down on your front."

Curious, he obeyed. The blond woman walked over and knelt beside him. "You Eagle People do some wonderful things, but you aren't much as farmers," she said, beginning to knead along his spine with strong skilled fingers. She sang under her breath in her own language as she worked, timing the motions of her hands to the slow chant.

He gave a small whimper of mixed pain and pleasure. "We had machines to do this sort of thing," he said. "With any luck, we will again-next year."

Leaton's attempt at a horse-drawn reaping machine had been a spectacular failure, jamming itself every second step. He swore that he could perfect it now that he had fields to test adjustments on, but the crop wouldn't wait. Cradle scythes would have been more efficient than the sickles and easier to make than the McCormick-style reaper, but it turned out that they required both unusual strength and a lot of practice to use. They'd have to solve the grain problem this first year by simple brute force and massive ignorance, throwing every pair of hands not catching fish into the fields for a brace of weeks. At least the threshing machine looked like it would work, so they wouldn't have to spend the winter beating this stuff with flails in the intervals between digging potatoes.

Swindapa finished the massage on the muscles of his neck, then drummed the heels of her hands down from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine. The knots loosened, and he gave a groaning sigh of relief. She moved over to Doreen and began to repeat the process; Ian sat up and spooned down the stew. He was beginning to understand why farmers usually ate their main meal at midday; it seemed like a long time since breakfast. A few dozen feet away another bunch of resting harvesters was singing to a flute and guitar:

Corn ricks and barley sheaves-

And garlands of holly;

No, I'll ne're forget the nights I spent

Among the sheaves, with Mollie…

He wasn't surprised at the plaintive-cheerful Old English tune. Nantucket was just the sort of place for acoustic-guitar folkie enthusiasts who drank home-brewed beer and did Morris dancing.

Come gather golden honey

Come reap the tender corn;

And with me lay in new-mown hay

Before the winter's bourne…

It was the fact that they had the energy to sing that astonished him.

He mopped the bowl with a heel of the bread, and belched with something approaching contentment.

Swindapa shook out her hands and moved back to Alston's blanket. "You next, Captain," she said cheerfully.

There was a moment's silence; Ian looked over at the sudden tension in the air. After a long instant Alston nodded and laid her head face-down in her folded arms. Swindapa moved beside her and crooned the same minor-key chant under her breath; she was smiling as she began to work, a slow dreamy expression.

"No rest for the wicked," he said to the air, rising and helping Doreen fold the blanket. As they walked toward their bicycles he inclined his head slightly back and raised an eyebrow.

"No, I don't think so," Doreen said. "The captain has a… highly developed sense of scruples. Almost as hyper-thyroid as her sense of duty."

They picked up their cycles and began walking them down the dirt road out toward the pavement. Nantucket had had a system of bicycle trails before the Event, but the whole road system belonged to it now. The thickets along the path were mostly uncleared, and they had a wild sweet smell of feral roses. The blossoms starred the green undergrowth with red, with a few clusters of blushing-pink phlox for contrast. The main road had a narrow strip of brush and trees along it, and on the far side of that was a broad field of flax already eight feet tall, its blue flowers only a memory. Ian looked at it and winced in prospect. You harvested flax by pulling it up by the roots.