"Positively superhuman self-control," Ian said dryly. "And Swindapa has a powerful crush."
Doreen frowned. "I wouldn't exactly put it that way. She's not a kid, you know, not by the standards of her own culture."
Ian shrugged. "I don't want to let this sweat dry," he said, changing the subject. He liked them both as well, they were good people, but there were certain things that individuals just had to work out for themselves.
"Smith's?" she said.
"How about Quigley's?" he asked.
"You're not as tired as you looked," Doreen laughed. Quigley's was a new place, giving Smith fierce competition; it had individual cubicles for soaking after you scrubbed down.
"Let's see when we get there," he grinned.
They reached the pavement and swung into the seats of their cycles. I may not have the captain's nobility of character, he thought, looking at Doreen's hair flying in the wind. On the other hand, my life's a good deal less complicated, and there's something to be said for that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
August-October, Year 1 A.E.
"She's a fine ship," Isketerol said. "What does this name mean, Yare?"
William Walker thought. He'd heard the word in a movie once… yeah, HBO Classics. The one with Katharine Hepburn? What a fox, he thought irrelevantly, then concentrated. "Yare means… fit, ready, eager," he said.
"Ah, a good name for a ship!"
The yacht had about a hundred feet at the waterline, two-masted and flush-decked except for a low cabin directly ahead of the wheel and binnacle, with a burden of a hundred and ten tons. Not as fast as the Eagle, of course, Walker acknowledged to himself. Twelve knots at most, given optimum winds; she was a topsail schooner, fore-and-aft-rigged except for two square sails at the top of the foremast. On the other hand she could go three or four points closer to the eye when tacking upwind, and she drew only six feet to the big windjammer's seventeen. That was why she was scheduled to go along on the next voyage to Europe, for scouting and inshore work. Plus she was wooden-built, thirty years old but still as sound as the day when the boatyard in Nova Scotia had sent her down the ways. Injury to her hull need not be an irreparable disaster, with tools and carpenters along.
The deck was broken by a low coaming, its cover aside for the present. Hammering and sawing noises came from within, where carpenters were installing a proper hold. The cargo for it waited on the dockside where the ship was moored, under an improvised loading crane also under construction. There were ingots of pig iron from the Eagle's ballast, barrels of salt fish and meat, barrels of hardtack, and others to hold extra water. A complete set of black-smith's tools and forge-furnishings, including Martin's best homemade anvils, and bar stock for it. Drills, planes, augers, axes, sledges, kegs of nails, two-man saws. A small lathe, and a set of measuring gauges run up on Leaton's Swiss instrument-making machine; knocked-down metal-work for a sawmill and gristmill. Books, most of them bound photocopies, carefully wrapped in multiple layers of green plastic garbage bag to make them thoroughly waterproof; books on shipbuilding, metalsmithing, agriculture and mining. Trade goods, useful and ornamental, rounding out the heavier load the Eagle would be carrying.
Couldn't have done it better myself, Walker thought. Of course, he had done much of it himself. With a crew of fifty and the cadets, Eagle was grossly overmanned for routine work; Alston had them all working half a dozen projects ashore as well, herself more than any. Getting the schooner ready was his job. He'd impressed the captain with his zeal and perfect discipline, but it was Hendriksson who was slated to command the Yare. Alston still wanted him close under her eye.
"Bitch," he muttered to himself.
But a smart bitch-she didn't miss much. He was still kicking himself for blurting out his half-formed dreams that first night after the Event. Granted he'd been dazed and disoriented, everyone had, but it had still been a stupid thing to do. Hmm. Victor would like the Yare too… could I recruit him over that? No, probably not. The Cuban-American lieutenant was too much of a straight arrow.
"Come on," he said to Isketerol.
Careful, careful, be very careful. He hated Captain Alston, but he respected her brains and courage thoroughly. He'd have been more than ready to follow her on an expedition such as the one he planned… but she'd never do that. She'll stick with shepherding these sheep on this damned island.
They walked up the gangplank onto the ship, dodging men and women with tools and materials for the refit, and walked back to the little fantail behind the wheel. There was an awning stretched over it like a tent with the mizzensail boom as a ridgepole, and a couple of chairs. The day was hot and clear, with little trace of yesterday's fog; the breeze off the harbor smelled of fish and salt and tar. Gulls went noisily overhead, their harsh cries thick in the air. A big load of barrel staves and planks sat on the wharf not far from him, just in from Providence Base, adding the vanilla tang of fresh-cut oak to the mixture; beside it were oozing casks of pitch and turpentine from Cape Cod. A chattering party of junior high students were sitting around mending twine nets. Hammering and the hiss of the last cutting torches sounded from the ferry's upperworks as teams labored to disassemble it from the top down; carts were going back and forth with loads of steel plate, beam, and girder as the work went on. Other working parties were ripping the air-conditioning and partitions out of Eagle, undoing her last refit in '79.
Isketerol sat and accepted a bottle of beer from the cooler; he went on in the Mycenaean Greek that Walker now spoke well, since Iraiina lacked the concepts and vocabulary for much of what they had to discuss.
"I have confirmed what you told me," Isketerol said. "They plot to keep me here, always among strangers, never to return to my home, fearing what I might do with the knowledge I've gained." He bared his teeth. "By Arucuttag of the Sea, they'll regret that."
"So they will," Walker agreed.
Actually they haven't decided to screw you over, good buddy, they're just thinking about it, he mused. In Alston's position he would have put Isketerol over the side with a stone tied to his ankles as soon as he'd told all he knew, but Alston was squeamish, to a point. Only to a point. Don't forget that. Underestimating your opposition was stupid, and stupidity was the only real sin he recognized.
"We can help each other, then," Walker said. "You need a friend who will guard your back, and so do I." Solemnly, they clasped hands. "Now, tell me more of the lands of Mycenae. How would they welcome a stranger with powerful gifts?"
"No, I don't think you should seek out the Achaean lords right away," the Tartessian said thoughtfully. "They're too hard and greedy, and not very forethoughtful, most of them… But they hire many mercenaries from the barbarian lands."
Walker sipped at the beer. It was too sweet without the hops, but otherwise not bad; only middling cold, though. There were plans for ice pits to store frozen lake ice over the summer; that could probably be done in the Aegean, too.
Greece looks like the best bet. The Hittite Empire was too big and too tightly centralized, a god-king autocracy. He'd learned Troy was a prosperous city-state that controlled the approaches to the Black Sea; but he'd have to learn yet another language to operate there. Greece, now- Greece sounded a lot like Renaissance Italy, or the more turbulent medieval European countries, say the Holy Roman Empire. He grinned like a wolf. According to the reference books, in about fifty years or so the whole Aegean basin was due to go under in a mad-dog scramble of internal warfare and barbarian invasions, with refugees and savages squatting in the ruins, a Dark Age. In other words, a perfect situation for an able, realistic man like himself- provided he had an edge, so that he could establish himself among the locals and work up to a position of strength gradually.