Island in the Sea of Time Read online

  Everyone nodded. Angelica Brand returned to her specialty:

  “Chief, this island is just a big sand dune out in the ocean. There’s not much in the way of nutrients in this soil, and I don’t have much fertilizer, either. What’s more, the best land has the thickest scrub cover.”

  “Plant everything you can, and you’ve got the stuff from the composting sewage works.” He silently thanked God they’d managed to keep that going, for a few crucial hours a day at least. Without it they might have had plague already. “We can use sludge from septic tanks too, if it’s treated-find out how. I’m putting you in charge of food production. Levy the people you need. From now on we’re farmers, like it or not.”

  “Brush,” Arnstein said. The others looked at him, and he hurried on: “We have to clear the brush anyway, so we burn it and turn under the ashes. Slash-and-burn farming. The ashes should enrich the soil for a year or two.”

  Brand nodded and began to make notes. “We’ll be short of hand tools. I’ll get on to the machine shop. Seahaven Engineering ought to be able to handle what we’ll need, them and the plumbers. And seed’s going to be a problem next year-these hybrids don’t breed true��� And I suppose we’ll have to keep all the livestock for breeding.”

  “Everything that can breed,” Cofflin agreed.

  Martha Stoddard spoke again: “You might try locating wild Jerusalem artichokes, here and on the mainland. They’re a native plant. Yield and methods are about like potatoes, and they like a poor sandy soil. They keep well right in the soil overwinter, too.”

  Cofflin looked at her with respect. “Now, that’s an excellent idea, Martha. Perhaps your scout troop could start in on that as well.”

  “And this being March, the stores would be full of packets of garden seed,” Martha went on thoughtfully. “The feed stores might have whole unmilled oats, too. Some of them might sprout.”

  She paused for a moment. “And get on to Paul Hillwater, the botanist-he’s been doing a study of Nantucket’s historical ecology for years now. He can advise us on what not to clear, to keep wind erosion down and block salt spray. That used to be quite a problem here when the island was mostly bare.”

  Angelica Brand nodded and started to speak; Cofflin held up a hand. “Hold off on that for a moment, Angelica. The Professor suggested something. Ron, you heard anything yet you can’t handle in the way of toolmaking?”

  Ron Leaton, the owner of Seahaven Engineering, was a slender man in early middle age, with long-fingered hands like a violinist. “Oh, I can work up anything you want,” he said. “Give me power and bar stock or sheet steel. The problem is there’s only one of me. I can do anything, but not everything.”

  That was a problem. Nantucket simply didn’t have much industry. Seahaven was a one-man quasi-hobby; most of Leaton’s living had come from his computer dealership, with the machine shop in his basement. At that, it was the sole and singular metalworking facility on the island, unless you counted the high school shop classes and the Eagle’s onboard machine shop.

  Cofflin pressed his ringers to his forehead. “Let’s look at it this way. What have you got, what can it do, and what can you do to do more of it?”

  “Ah���” Leaton frowned. “Well, I’ve got a 1956-type Bridgeport milling machine, with digital controls added on, an old Atlas twelve-by-thirty-six engine lathe, an Atlas horizontal milling machine, a seven-inch Ammco shaper, and I just got in a Schaublin eight-by-eighteen precision toolmaking lathe, a real beauty-Swiss. All light-to-medium stuff. There may be more on-island. I’ll start looking.”

  The head of the Nantucket Electric Company cut in: “You made those flanges for us, and some other fairly heavy work. The turbocharger, for instance.”

  “Yup, but I sort of cheated-used the Bridgeport as a vertical lathe with a rotary table.” He looked around. “Forty-eight inches by twenty-nine, machined out of solid five-eighths plate-”

  Cofflin cleared his throat. Leaton flushed and continued:

  “Bottom line, Chief, is that I could make just about anything, including more tools; a lathe is one of the few tools that can make a copy of itself. It’ll be a little awkward without a foundry, but I could make a round bar bed lathe, the Unimat type; it’ll work perfectly well, just not as durable as a cast or forged bed. I’m making a tool cutter of my own right now, or was before this all happened.”

  “Excuse me,” Arnstein cut in. “You’re saying that eventually you could duplicate your operation, and then duplicate it again, and so forth? And that you can do pretty well any metal shape?”

  “Yup,” Leaton said, obviously puzzled. “Give me the metal, and yes. Wasn’t that what I was saying?”

  “You could make, for example, a steam engine?”

  “Well, I do that all the time-little ones, and they’re working scale models. I’ve got machinery that can work to ten-thousandths of an inch, and Watt did it with tolerances of an eighth of an inch. I’ve got a nice set of Weber measuring-gauge blocks, after all. I could turn out, say, a twenty-five-horsepower model in a week, maybe convert an old VW flat-type engine. Need a welder to help me with the boiler��� maybe use a propane tank��� but hell, we’ve got half a dozen top-notch welders and some heavy bending rolls. Bit difficult to make really big cylinders without a foundry or casting plant, but I could if you gave me a month or two to tool up. Up to a couple of hundred horsepower. But we don’t have the fuel for many of those. Hell, we can’t keep the town power plant running for more than six months, no matter how we ration, right, Fred?”

  The head of the Electric Company nodded, abstracted; he was making frantic notes.

  Cofflin let out a long sigh. “Well, you’ll need more space than that basement, and more people. Look up anyone with experience, and, hmm, you and Joseph here scout for a building that’ll give you room to expand.”

  He noticed Lisketter scowling. “Ms. Lisketter, what about your artisans?”

  She tapped the edges of the papers in front of her. What are we going to do when we run out of paper? he thought.

  “There are dozens of weavers,” she said. “And���”

  Cofflin was surprised at the cogent, well-organized list that followed. He nodded at the end of it. “Good work, Ms. Lisketter. So we’ll be well enough off for clothing when our current stores run out?”

  They’d also have a large surplus of silversmiths and graphic artists. And, thank God, a number of metalworkers, farriers, three genuine blacksmiths; one who specialized in blades, a visitor caught here. Plenty of pottery makers, and there was even a glassblower who’d just moved his studio to the island last year.

  She shook her head. “We don’t have the raw materials.

  We need flax and wool-cotton if you can get it. I know it’s not our top priority, but���”

  Arnstein cleared his throat. “Cotton might be available in the Caribbean or Mexico,” he said. “Flax and wool certainly from Europe.”

  “We could grow flax here-the climate’s right. It’s a useful oilseed as well. We could get the flax seed along with grain from Europe,” Brand said thoughtfully. “Grinding grain might be a problem-”

  “Ayup,” Cofflin said. “Remember the Old Mill? We’ll finally get some use out of the damned tourist trap.”

  There was a chuckle around the table, particularly from the native islanders. The Old Mill was a shingled windmill, kept functional for the tourist trade.

  Brand spoke: “Chief, get me seed and tools and people and I can produce grain. But I’d have to have the seed soon, for spring planting-it looks like the growing season’s longer here, but even so, it’ll be tight. We could use more animal breeding stock as well. There’s some poultry, and those will reproduce fast. It’s the larger stock that are the problem. We have a small herd of sheep, good dual-purpose Corriedales; and four stallions, forty-two mares, twenty-one geldings; and some cows, several of them in calf, thank God, so we should get a bull calf or two, but not a pig on the island. Pigs would be ideal-they
breed so quickly and eat anything-and we could use ewes, mares and cows as well. They’re the limiting factor.”

  Cofflin looked at Alston. She spread her hands. “I can take the Eagle across the Atlantic easily enough,” she said. “Assumin’ the winds and currents are basically similar, in about two weeks on the northern route, with a little more to get back. Plus whatever time it takes to dicker with the locals and to load. The Eagle wasn’t designed to carry cargo. My only real problem is the stars, now that we’re back to celestial navigation as our only means of finding where we are. Everything’s slightly off. We can compensate, but it’ll take time to figure out how.”

  Rosenthal spoke: “I can get you a new set of data, complete tables. I’ll have the printout to you in a couple of days.”

  The chief gnawed at his lip, wishing he’d been able to get more sleep. Risking the Eagle was not something he wanted to do, not at all. It was a priceless asset��� but an asset had to be used.

  “Let’s see if we can get some figures here,” he said.

  They consulted, punched calculators-oh, those are going to be missed when the batteries run out-argued. In the end the results showed that there might be enough to keep them through winter from what they could grow and catch with the resources already on the island��� if their assumptions weren’t wrong, and everyone pitched in.

  “No margin,” he said. “That settles it, we need more food.” He turned to the Coast Guard officer. “When were you planning on going whaling?” he said.

  “We’re rigging for it now, and Mr. Leaton has done a fine job, a harpoon gun that ought to work. Tomorrow we start, and we don’t think it’ll take more than a few days to get all the dead whales you can handle, using a plane for spotting. Some of your people are getting the rending tubs and whatever out of the Whaling Museum right now. Lookin’ like they’ll be functional.”

  Cofflin nodded. “Where can we get bulk salt? Anyone know?”

  Arnstein cleared his throat. “The Bahamas-Inagua island, down at the southern tip. There are big salt lagoons there, or at least there were in our time. You can scoop it up around the edges with shovels.”

  Cofflin chuckled. “Damn, but that education of yours is turning out useful.”

  “Actually I honeymooned there with my late wife. The tour guide told me.”

  Alston spoke: “That’s shoal water. I’d hate to take the Eagle in close there.”

  Cofflin nodded. “What’s that two-master sailing yacht called���”

  “The Yare,” Alston said. “Wooden-hulled topmast schooner, about a hundred tons burden, Canadian-built, old but still sound. Small auxiliary engine. It’s a replica-the original design was a revenue cutter. There’s another tied up, the Bentley, seventy-foot schooner, about three-quarters her displacement, but the masts and rigging need work. The Yare can leave anytime. I’ll put one of my officers in command.”

  “All right, we’ll send the Yare to Inagua. We send the Eagle east for grain. Everyone draw up your wish lists of things to get that might be there.” He paused and thought. “Professor, what should we take for trade goods?”

  “Almost anything,” Arnstein said. “Cloth, ornaments-with the number of jewelry stores on the island, that should be no problem-metal tools, anything like that. Bits of glass would probably do, wire���”

  “I’m putting you in charge of it,” Cofflin said. “Incidentally, you’re going.” Arnstein yelped. “You’re the closest thing to an expert on dealing with primitives we have.”

  “But I won’t even be able to talk to them!” Arnstein protested.

  “I thought you knew ancient languages?”

  “I know Latin, which isn’t spoken yet, and Greek, classical Greek, and I’ve read Homer and looked at the Linear B stuff. But even the classical period’s seven hundred years in the future! Homeric Greek is to classical what Shakespeare’s English is to ours, and Mycenaean is five hundred years before that, call it Chaucerian. And they won’t be speaking Greek on the shores of the English Channel, anyway.”

  “Neither will anyone else be able to talk to the locals, will they?” Cofflin said.

  “Not unless we have a Lithuanian,” Arnstein admitted. The others looked at him. “Lithuanian is a very conservative language,” he said. “About like Sanskrit, which is being spoken in northwestern India at this date. Indo-European languages should be spreading through western Europe about now, defining now as being the last millennium and a half or so, unless you believe Colin Renfrew’s nonsense��� sorry, academic squabble. But someone who spoke it would probably be able to pick up any of the early versions of Indo-European fairly quickly, other things being equal.” He shrugged. “But how likely are we to find-”

  Doreen Rosenthal cleared her throat, twisting a lock of hair around a finger. “My mother came from Vilnus. I speak it,” she said.

  Martha Stoddard looked up from her notepad. “There’s a fairly good languages section at the Athenaeum,” she noted. “And I know at least one retired linguist on island. Speaking of which, Jared, we’re going to be doing a fair bit of research on one thing and’t’other. Old-style ways of doing, and such.” She frowned. “Plus we ought to print out some things on CD-ROM, right now, while we can.”

  “Good idea, Martha. You’re in charge of research projects, of course.” Cofflin turned his head to the manager of the Nantucket Electric Company. “Fred, how are we fixed for energy?”

  “I’ve got about one month’s fuel,” he said. “Fuel barge was tied up at the��� Event, topping up to take us through to the switchover to the mainland cable. According to the gas stations and boating people, there’s enough gasoline for, say, two weeks at normal usage. After that, well, we might be able to get those windmills going again. Remember that wind-farm idea?” Everyone nodded. The tall frames of the wind generators still stuck up out of fields around the town. “That would give us, oh, five, eight percent of our usual output indefinitely.”

  Cofflin nodded. “We’re closing down all private autos as of now,” he said. “Official use, ambulances, fire engines, and Angelica’s tractors only. The trawlers have first priority. How many bicycles do we have?”

  “About thirty-five hundred, counting private, in the rental places, and in the stores.”

  “Good, that’ll help.” One advantage of being a tourist trap. “Fred, you get together with Doc Coleman, and we’ll arrange an essential-uses-only electricity schedule. That ought to stretch the fuel oil. The rest of us will have to go to bed with the sun until we get whale-oil lanterns. Next���”

  It was a relief to be finally doing something.

  “We’re working like slaves!” the man complained.

  He was thirty-something, and from the look of his jeans and plaid shirt, wealthy. Certainly coof-that New York accent was a dead giveaway. Not liking the work much, from the way he straightened and rubbed at his back and threw down his billhook.

  I can’t blame him, Angelica Brand thought. This is something out of a made-for-TV special. She was a farmer from twelve generations of farmers, but her generation used tractors and genetic engineering.

  Pictures of Nantucket from back in her great-grandfather’s day showed a landscape that looked like North Dakota, hardly a bush over knee-high, but most of the island was overgrown now with a thick head-high spiny growth of scrub oak, bayberry, beach plum, red cedar, honeysuckle, pitch pine, and God knew what, all laced together with wild grapevines and Rosa rugosa.

  The tractors, bulldozers, and earthmoving equipment from construction sites had knocked down much of the aboveground brush. The machines left the scrub still chest-high to head-high, many of the main stems still unbroken. The clumsy untrained labor of hundreds was scarcely sufficient to cut the brush loose and drag it into windrows for burning, especially when most of them had never lifted anything heavier than a computer mouse or a squash racket in their lives. The smell of it was acrid in her nostrils, but the ash would be useful. Clumps of men and women were scattered th
rough the scraggly-looking wreckage she was supposed to turn into a field, hacking and levering and dragging at the roots. Tools were in short supply, too.

  Other squads were slumped resting near the truck with the water, hardly even bothering to lie in its shade despite the unseasonable heat. A few were putting a better edge on their tools at the portable grindstone someone had dug out of an attic. It was the foot-powered type, and worth its weight in gold.

  The man thrust his hands under her nose. “Look at this!”

  Shreds of skin hung down from broken blisters, and bits of the cloth he’d used to wrap his hands clung, sticky with the lymph. Angelica Brand nodded sympathetically. “We’ve got a tub of ointment back at the house,” she said. “When your shift’s off, come on up. There’s some cider, too.”

  “I’m a certified public accountant!” the man half screamed. Spittle flung from his lips. “I’m finished with this!”

  He’d picked up the billhook again. It had a wooden shaft five feet long, with a steel blade socketed onto the end, like an arm-long single-edged knife with an inward-curving tip at the end.

  “You can take this fucking thing and ram it up your ass, bitch!”

  Angelica planted her hands on her hips and glared back. “Don’t you use language like that to me, mister!” she snapped, fatigue and irritation flaring. “I don’t care if you were a rocket scientist. We have to eat this winter. Or do you think somebody’s going to dock with a ship full of bananas and Big Macs?”

  “I’m an accountant, not a farmer!”

  “We don’t need accountants right now. And if you don’t work, you don’t get any rations. No exceptions for the able-bodied.”