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"Greetings, friend," Walker said in mangled Tartessian. Then in English: "Alice, Rosita, here's my friend Isketerol who I told you about-a prince of Tartessos, which is a kingdom in Iberia. Isketerol, Rosita Menendez, and Alice Hong. Dr. Alice Hong."
Isketerol bowed slightly, hand to chest, and flashed his best smile. The women smiled back. He wasn't exactly a prince, if he understood the word rightly, although his family were relatives of the king. There certainly wasn't any need to tell the women the details, though.
"All Tartessos has nothing more beautiful," he said carefully in his best English.
Jared Cofflin smiled as the last of the deck cargo trotted down to Steamboat Wharf. Those waiting with handcarts and a few improvised horse-drawn vehicles managed to raise a cheer as well, although this load was not grain but several dozen loudly argumentative pigs, the last left on the ship.
"I'm surprised they can stand to make any noise, after the homecoming celebration," Captain Alston said. "A few of my cadets and crew still can't, and the aspirin are rationed."
She looked around the dockside. Cofflin tried to see it as she would. Not much had changed in the time away… only six weeks, Christ. The main difference was the absence of motor vehicles. The sailing boats which had ridden at mooring poles in the enclosed basin to her left were mostly out fishing; so were the trawlers and the converted scallop boats. Work went on to turn the cabin cruisers and other motor craft to something useful. Two steam tugs waited over in the Easy Street marina basin, next to an improvised barge they'd towed over from the mainland. Perhaps the smell was the biggest difference, and that had crept up on him so gradually that he hardly noticed anymore. They did their best to scrape up every fragment from the fish landed here, if only because it was needed for the fields everyone else had been laboring to clear. Still, there were scales, and a definite smell.
"The town needed a rest," he said. "And what you brought back, that's going to make a big difference."
"A third of a pound of bread per person per day for a year," she said, and looked around. "Y'all have been busy."
The pigs were being herded into the carts, with barriers of wire netting set up to give them only one route. Enraged squeals sounded, the whack of poles on bristly hides, and the shout of someone whose hand was saved only by the thick glove he left in a pig's mouth.
"If y'all only knew how glad I am to see the last of those things," she muttered; he presumed the remark was directed at the world in general. "I hope we can feed them. Seventy-five sows made it, say three batches of eight piglets per year each, and they start breedin' within a year themselves-"
"We'll manage. Feed 'em alewives, if nothing else," he said. They weren't particularly good eating fish, but they were certainly abundant-no wonder the Pilgrims had used them as fertilizer. "Good thing Steamboat Wharf is deep enough for you to dock," he said.
"It's a menace," she replied absently. "The land around the harbor here isn't really enough to break a first-class storm. We could lose the ship, if she was caught here in a bad norther, and we don't have much warning without a weather service. I'm inclined to park her over on the mainland in the winter. Providence harbor ought to do-it's deep and sheltered up there at the end of Narrangansett Bay. Inconvenient as hell, though."
"Well, we've got a sort of base there," Cofflin said. "The ferry's there now, for one last trip before we lay her up.
We're bringing back timber-you wouldn't believe the quality of the lumber we've been getting. Seems a pity to use so much of it for firewood. We figured it was worth the fuel, and now we've got the tugs on the same run, and some sailboats. They're bringing salt-marsh hay, too, for the livestock."
"You won't regret it come winter," Alston said. Her voice took on a more serious tone: "Look, Chief, that grain will help, but we'll need more."
He nodded. "Farming here never was more than a scramble, and a chancy one at that."
"Damn right," Alston said. "My family were farmers down South; it's a nice hobby and a hell of a way to make a living. I've got some ideas about how we should trade this fall."
"Not with the same crowd?" Cofflin said, one brow arching.
"Not if we can avoid it. I'm not what you'd call squeamish, but…" She shrugged. "Besides, they don't control a big territory as yet, and they're making war. Not the situation to produce good crops."
"Are there any others likely to do better?" he said.
She frowned and clasped her hands behind her back. "I think there may. We could just pick another spot, somewhere else in Europe or even the Mediterranean, but… I told you about Ms. Swindapa?"
"Seems to be a nice girl," Cofflin said cautiously. "Doc Coleman is taking a look at her, as you asked."
"Speak of the devil."
The doctor appeared, wobbling in on a bicycle. He coasted to a halt beside them and dismounted. "Whooo," he panted. "I've known for years that I should get more exercise." Then he looked up at Alston. "Well, I confirmed what your ship's surgeon said. She's in remarkably good condition, for someone who was beaten to within an inch of her life and gang-raped to the point of internal lesions. Anal and vaginal."
Cofflin sucked in his breath. The radiophone report had said "badly abused"; he'd assumed something like this, but…
"I think they make them tough in the here-and-now," Alston said thoughtfully. Only someone who knew her rather well could have interpreted the slight tightening of the skin around her mouth. "The ones that live, anyway."
"And the pelvic inflammation's cleared right up," Cole-man went on. "Nice to see a bug that doesn't sneer at sulfonamides. There's probably fallopian scarring, I'm afraid. I've given her and that Isketerol fellow every vaccine and shot in the armory, just in case, too. Apart from that she's in fine condition. Full set of teeth, not one cavity, twenty-twenty vision…"
"Right," Alston nodded. God, she's a cool one, Cofflin thought. He was angry, himself; policeman's reflex, if you were a good one.
"Ms. Swindapa is co
"Can't Dr. Arnstein translate?"
"Only through Isketerol, and I'd rather not."
Cofflin's eyes narrowed. "You're thinking alliance," he said.
"I'm thinking we should consider it," she said, and held up a pink-palmed hand. "No, I'm not dreaming conquistador dreams. We've only got a couple of dozen real firearms left, with pitiful stores of ammunition. But we could make a difference helping one side or the other… and Ms. Swindapa's people are being attacked without provocation. They also have plenty of what we need: foodstuffs, livestock, linen, wool, and eventually metals. Copper and tin already, and we could show them how to mine and smelt iron. A few simple i
Cofflin whistled silently. "That's something the whole Council will have to talk about, and the Town Meeting too," he said. "You certainly don't think small or dawdle, Captain."
Alston shrugged again. "The iron's hot. But yes, this is all tentative now. We've got photographs and video footage you should see, too."
He nodded. "Let's take this further. We have your baggage moved into the quarters we found for you-we can go there and talk in privacy."
They turned and walked south along Easy Street, then west along the ankle-turning cobblestones of Main. The shops were mostly shuttered and locked, but there were ladders against many of the cast-iron lampposts, and the glass frames had been taken off their tops.