On the Oceans of Eternity Read online

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  The list went on; all that her father had acquired in a not particularly prosperous lifetime. It ended with: "-all the goods to be inherited by my daughter Azzu-ena as hers for her life and as her seriktum-dowry in the day of her marriage; to descend to her children or on her death childless to pass to my brother Tab-sa-Dayyan and his sons. Sworn in the temple of Ishtar, witnessed by Ah-kalla, cultic official; Lu-Nanna, priest; Uselli son of Ku-Ningal, Sig-ersetim son of Silli-Ema; and the judge Ellu-musu; 23rd day, Month of Sabatum, year Shagarakti-Shuriash King of Kar-Duniash smote the hosts of the Subartu."

  The faces of her uncle and aunt had grown longer and longer as they listened to the catalog of property they had confidently expected to inherit themselves, or at least pass to their children. At the end of the discussion they glanced at each other.

  "Still, most irregular," Tab-sa-Dayyan said. "Where is the go-between, the negotiations between myself and the groom's family, the-

  "Excuse me if I, an ignorant foreigner, offend," Clemens cut in. By local standards, he has a point. Marriage here was a link between kindreds, not just individuals. "My parents are dead, and none of my kin reside in this city. In my own land I am an awelum"-which was as close as you could get to citizen in this language; it had originally meant nobleman, and had worked its way down to "mister," just as "mister" had-"and of age, and so authorized to deal in this matter."

  The scribe nodded. "There is precedent. The law-stele of Hammurabi-

  Clemens thought for a moment as the man went on that his own Akkadian wasn't as good as he thought, until he saw that the locals were equally baffled; evidently legalese was another universal constant of civilization.

  "-and so, as long as the marriage follows form, in this case the parties have the right to act for themselves. I will admit that it is unusual, most unusual, but not unprecedented, no, not by any means. Not unknown for a widow to do so, for instance." The scribe's eyebrows rose. "Unless the worthy awelum Tab-sa-Dayyan son of Aham-Nirsi knows of an impediment?"

  Tab-sa-Dayyan's wife spoke, a minor breach of protocol in itself:

  "A bride who is not a widow or divorced must be a virgin!" she said triumphantly. "If a bride is not a virgin, a contract of engagement may be broken! Is it not so? This woman"-she pointed at Azzu-ena-"it was bad enough before, when she dwelt alone like a harlot save for those useless lazy slaves of her father's that should have been sold for what they would fetch years ago and she should have lived here, respectably, weaving for her kin. But for the past year and more, she has been traveling, unescorted, in the company of this man, like a public woman of the streets!"

  Clemens felt a sudden hot jet of anger, until he realized that Azzu-ena was shaking with suppressed laughter. The scribe's assistant chortled audibly, Azzu-ena's father's helper hooted toothlessly, the scribe smiled, and Tab-sa-Dayyan turned an interesting shade of angry purple.

  "Worthy wife of the awelum" the scribe said gently. "That argument is usually raised by the groom's relatives who wish to break an engagement, not thrown at the bride by her kinfolk."

  The woman gobbled, and Azzu-ena leaned aside to take a tablet out of the satchel of the helper who had served her father, where it lay atop the bundled herbs and tools-those including a stethoscope, now.

  "Most learned one, if you would read this?"

  "I, Habannatum, who am naditum-nun, roughly-of Marduk in the City of Babylon, in the first year of King Kashtiliash of Babylon, the year after the plague of the small pockmarks, swear by my Lord, with my hands clasped, that the woman

  Azzu-ena daughter of Mutu-Hadki is batultu, a virgin who has not known man. I swear this by my own testimony on examination, and by that of Sin-nada the midwife, in the presence of Ninurta-ra'im-zerim the judge."

  Tab-sa-Dayyan's wife sank back, glaring again. That gambit for disallowing the marriage wasn't going to work, obviously. Azzu-ena smiled sweetly and returned the tablet to her doctor's basket.

  Her uncle spoke gravely: "I must know that this foreign gentleman is able to properly care for my niece. Has he no wife of his body in his home country, no children or household?"

  Clemens sighed, and settled down to work. Yes, I have no other wife. Yes, I am chief physician to the great general Lord Hollard-whose sister married King Kashtiliash, may the Gods grant him many years and the increase of his realm-and my wage is so-and-so many shekels weight of silver every month. In my homeland I own a house and land-

  When they got to that stage he noticed a sudden perking of ears in the Tab-sa-Dayyan family. That turned into outright respect when he mentioned that his elder brother owned six hundred and forty acres of farmland in the Republic; when you translated that into Babylonian iku, it sounded formidable; the sort of holding a solid minor member of the landed gentry would have; a class at least one ratchet up from Tab-sa-Dayyan's.

  He didn't feel he had to mention that most of it was uncleared temperate-zone climax forest on the Long Island frontier, and that his brother and family were working it with their own four hands and an occasional hired immigrant when they were lucky.

  Tab-sa-Dayyan clapped his hands. "Woman! Bring date wine and strainers!"

  Oh, Lord Jesus, Clemens thought as the middle-aged servant scurried back in-the stuff tasted like alcoholic cough syrup. Still, it beat the earlier hostility. f suppose he isn't such a bad sort. A man has to look out for his own, here. Apart from the charity of relatives, there was no safety net short of selling yourself into slavery or starving.

  The scribe opened his set of jointed waxed boards. Those could be smoothed down and overwritten, which was why they were the medium used for first drafts of documents. "This is the riskatum," he said. The marriage contract. "I will read the terms."

  He did. Clemens swallowed, feeling his mouth dry again, and took a long gulp of the thick sweet drink. I'm doing it, I'm actually going through with it. Remarriage; the triumph of hope over experience. And I'm marrying another doctor again. Enough people had told him he was being an idiot, for those and a dozen other reasons.

  He glanced over at Azzu-ena. Her eyes shone in the dimness, and he fought down a grin; that wouldn't be seemly, to local eyes. He fought down an impulse to grab her and kiss her as well; that really wouldn't be seemly. The scribe cleared his throat, and Justin Clemens jumped.

  "Oh, sorry," he said. "Here. The, ah, the terhatum, yes." The bride-price.

  The little chamois bag was heavy, and it clinked. Azzu-ena's uncle took it, weighed it in his hand, took out one of the coins. Coined money was a novelty here, but the Republic's expeditionary force had been paying in it since they arrived. The local merchant community was thoroughly familiar with it now, and with the fact that Nantucket's money was exactly as advertised in weight and fineness of precious metal. Tab-sa-Dayyan smiled broadly as he let some of the dime-sized silver coins trickle into his palm. It was more than enough to pay the groom's share of the marriage-feast, considerably more.

  "I see that my prospective nephew-in-law is a man of substance, a man of honorable means," he said. "Indeed, it would be a sad thing if my brother Mutu-Hadki's seed were to altogether vanish, or live only in his brother's sons. May you live many years, with many children-the bride-price is accepted."

  "Good," the scribe said dryly, shaking the cloth back from his right arm and taking up his stylus. "My clay would be spoiled if we waited much longer."

  His assistant took out a board with a slab of wet clay on it, its surface kept damp by a sodden cloth. He held the board up, turning it deftly as the scribe wrote with a wedge-headed bronze stylus. When the writing was done the scribe ran his seal across the bottom as witness and handed it to Tab-sa-Dayyan; the Akkadian merchant did the same, and handed it to Justin Clemens, who nearly dropped it. Then he fumbled in a pocket and brought out the seal he had commissioned for the occasion, a winged staff with a snake twined about it, the same as the branch-of-service flash on the shoulder of his khaki uniform.

  "This is a duly executed contract," the scrib
e said. "My apprentice will make a copy-" The skinny youth had already formed a new tablet of clay and was writing with fluid speed, using a cheaper stylus of cut reed. "Yes. Here, we will seal this as well. Compare them, that you may swear each is identical."

  Clemens could no more have read Akkadian cuneiform than he could have flown to the moon, but he examined the chicken-track patterns of wedge-shaped marks gravely. One of the few advantages of clay tablets was that they couldn't be altered after they dried; they made perfect legal documents.

  "The contract is good," he said, echoed by Tab-sa-Dayyan. "I swear so, by the lives of the Gods Shamash and Marduk and Ishtar…

  "-and Jesus," Clemens added on impulse. -and by the life of the King."

  Then the Nantucketer took the tablet of Azzu-ena's dowry and tucked it into the haversack attached to his webbing belt, wrapped in cloth beside his copy of the marriage contract. He turned to Azzu-ena, lifted the shawl from her shoulders, draped it over her hair, then took her hand between his.

  "I will fill your lap with silver and gold. You are my wife. I am your husband."

  She blinked back tears; even then he was astonished, a little. He'd seen her calm while they were doing triage sorting, with an occasional stray rocket-bomb landing near the hospital tent. Her voice was steady as she replied:

  "I will do you good and not evil all your days. I am your wife. You are my husband."

  The witnesses cheered. The scribe nodded and quoted, this time from memory:

  "If a man hold a feast and make a contract with her father and mother-or other kin, in this case-and take her, she is a wife." He smiled benignly. "So is the law laid down, from the days before the Flood. He is her husband. She is his wife."

  The skipper of the Merrimac had guessed what was intended for his ship from the cargo delivered to her in Westhaven, the armor and steam engine and cannon. He was part-owner- about a one-sixteenth share-but from his expression it would take more than compensation money from the government to make up for what was going to happen to her. The coal smoke from the side-wheeler tug towing them out into the Severn estuary was no blacker than his mood, and the mournful steam whistle no gloomier than his tone.

  "I hope you didn't pick her because of her name," he said to Marian Alston, after he'd introduced his first and second mates-son-in-law and nephew respectively. Formally, they were Reserve Lieutenants Stendin and Clammp, now that the ship and crew had been called up for military service.

  "No, it wasn't the name," she said, feeling a sympathy that it would be patronizing to show. "If anything, the reverse." At his look she went on: "Macy consulted with us on the design for this class."

  Historic marine architecture had been a hobby of hers before the Event; afterward it was useful in the extreme. Nantucket had also held plenty of documentation, plus experienced boat-builders whose skills could be scaled up with a little experimentation-and a few embarrassing, expensive failures. The craft that followed the fuming steam tug away from the squared-log piers of Westhaven's harbor, under the guns of Fort Pentagon, was the latest fruit of that ongoing collaboration. Alston's eye swept her long sleek lines with a pleasure that held more than a tinge of sadness, knowing her fate.

  Only a single voyage across the Atlantic for you, poor bitch, she thought; the slight working of the hull against the tug's pull seemed to bespeak an eagerness to be away.

  The design wasn't quite as sleek as the Guard's frigates; it was still long and lean, a smooth curve two hundred and forty feet from rounded stern to hollow-cheeked knife bows and long bowsprit, forty foot in the beam amidships, with three towering masts square-rigged save for the jibs, staysails, and a gaff mizzen. The long sweep of the ninety-foot poop was unbroken except for a low deckhouse before the wheels. In the waist were four cannon on a side, eighteen-pounders sold as surplus by the Guard when Leaton started delivering his cast-steel Dahlgrens, just the sort of thing for convincing a Bronze Age chief not to try ripping off the foreign merchants. The hold was twenty feet deep.

  You can go anywhere with a ship like this, she thought. Anywhere, with over a thousand tons of cargo-the Merrimac displaced fourteen hundred tons-and fast, as well. Four hundred miles a day with a strong following wind, and careful design had made her an economical ship. Twenty-five hands could sail her 'round the world, or fight her if some local Big Man in an outrigger canoe decided to get unpleasant, or repair any but the most extreme damage anywhere there was wood and a quiet cove.

  And I feel like a murderer, knowing what they're going to do to her. Her mouth quirked in an expression that was half bitterness; sending beautiful youngsters into harm's way wasn't anything new, at least.

  "Carry on, then, Mr. Clammp," she said, feeling the swell of the river mouth giving way to the harder chop of the Bristol Channel.

  "Aye aye, Commodore," he said. "We'll be joining the Fleet in Portsmouth Water before the end of the week.

  He turned to the rail. "Prepare to cast off," he said quietly. Then, louder: "Lay aloft and loose all sail!"

  "John Iraunanasson," the rahax of the Irauna said in English, extending his hand. "An honor, Commodore Alston-Kurlelo. Lieutenant Commander Kurlelo-Alston."

  "The Republic thanks you for your people's cooperation," Alston said politely, taking the hand. It was strong but soft against the sword-callus on hers, the nails neatly trimmed and clean.

  Inwardly, she blinked a little. The mannerly smooth-shaven young man with his spectacles, brown crew-cut hair, pants and jacket, laced shoes and tiny silver crucifix on a chain around his neck, faint smell of soap … is Daurthunnicar's great-nephew, she remembered. A boy of eight or so when Eagle had arrived in Alba, right after the Event, and "guest"-hostage- in Nantucket Town for three years after that.

  Invaders from the mainland only a year before the Event, the Irauna had lost most of their land except for a patch around the Base in the post-war settlement. They'd put the advice of their mentors to enthusiastic use, though.

  Now the land outside the five-sided fort that guarded Portsmouth Base was a checkerboard of neat fields colored straw-yellow, furrow-brown, pasture-green. They were divided by good graveled roads and surrounded by hedges, well-tended woodlots, houses of white-painted frame and plank or dark brick, and red hip-roofed barns. They centered on a thriving hamlet built in New England style, steepled church and foursquare Meetinghouse and school around a green, houses set among gardens beside a grid of streets, workshops and warehouses under the gates of the Base and down by the docks.

  In fact, the shrunken teuatha of the Noble Ones had become the most eager of all the Sun People tribes to learn the new ways. They'd converted en masse to the Ecumenical Christianity-not being pleased with how their own Gods had treated them-and in recent years had produced a number of homegrown priests and missionaries for the Church, often of a terrifying earnestness. The Irauna had contributed more than their share of recruits for the Guard and crewfolk for Nantucketer vessels, too, and many did stints as temporary workers back on the Island. According to the Intelligence reports they'd even taken to holding Town Meetings, conducted in English with clerks of their own writing down the minutes and women allowed to vote. Perhaps the thoroughness of their defeat had helped. The Irauna had lost most of their fighting-men during the Alban War; they'd been Walker's first followers here when he arrived in the autumn of the Year 1, and suffered cruelly for it. A fair number of the survivors had fled with Walker and his Tartessian ally after the Battle of the Downs, and some of the remainder had ended up in Nantucket, children particularly. A leaven of those had returned to settle here after years in the Republic, like yeast in bread.

  Slightly to Marian's surprise, Swindapa willingly shook the young chief's hand. Only someone who knew her well could have detected the chilly edge to her smile.

  "That was good of you," Marian said softly, when they'd walked past the local welcoming party and were among the uniformed Islanders beyond.

  "No, it wasn't. It was cruel," Swindapa said.

 
Marian made an interrogative sound, and the Fiernan continued: "The men who hurt me are dead; how could hurting their children soothe my heart? But in a generation or two the Irauna will be gone, as if they had never been-they'll be Eagle People-and they will have done it to themselves. I am well avenged."

  There are always new depths to you, Alston thought, shaking her head slightly, then turning to look out over the base.

  The tented camps were mostly down now, and there were a good thirty sail riding at anchor in Portsmouth Base's harbor. Five of them were major warships, Lincoln-class clipper frigates, just under a thousand tons, with twenty-four eight-inch Dalghrens each, and half a dozen smaller armed schooners. They rode at anchor in deeper water, decks shining and sails furled, the diagonal red slash and fouled-anchor symbol of the Coast Guard bright on their sea-gray sides. Beside them was the Farragut, the newest addition to the Republic's fleet. It was slightly smaller than the frigates, lower-slung, also with three masts but with a long slender smokestack forward of the mainmast. On either side were boxes for the paddle wheels, armored to the front by wedge-shaped timber frames sheathed in bolted steel plates, and more of the same on her ax-shaped bows; her armament consisted of two four-inch rifled cannon at bow and stern, mounted with pivots to the rear and wheels forward running on circular steel tracks set into the deck. That let them be turned rapidly in any direction.

  Good ship to have in a fight. It was a pity that she sailed like a pig of cast iron, but you couldn't expect every design to work perfectly the first time, the more so as this was something genuinely new, not working to a pre-Event historical model.

  The rest of the fleet were civilian ships mobilized for the war, or hired transports for hauling troops and equipment. The Marines had gone aboard the troopships in neat files, packs on their backs and rifles slung, gear boxed to be swung from dock to hold. Embarking the native irregulars was something else again.