Island in the Sea of Time

Another mutter of agreement, louder this time. Swindapa's hand went up. She stood as Cofflin pointed the gavel.

"My people are not savages like the Iraiina," she said simply. "They come to take our land for no better reason than they want it, and to make us slaves because they would rather take our crops than work to grow their own." Her face was flushed, but she spoke firmly under the lilting singsong accent her birth tongue gave to her English. "We don't ask them to walk the stars with Moon Woman. All we want is that the Sun People leave us alone."

Silence fell after she sat, crossing her arms on the dark-blue sweater with Nantucket woven on it in yellow cord.

Poor kid, Cofflin thought. Still comes up and bites her when she thinks about it. Post-traumatic stress disorder, a fancy name for very bad memories that wouldn't leave you alone.

"Pamela Lisketter," Cofflin said.

"That's all very well," the thin woman said. On most people the results of hard work and a fish diet were an improvement, but she'd started out gaunt; that made her yellow-green eyes seem enormous by contrast. "But isn't it true that the real reason you want to interfere in the affairs of these people is to exploit them?"

"Nope," Cofflin said. "Fair exchange is what we've got in mind. Professor?"

Arnstein stood and stroked his bushy reddish-brown beard. "This island can't produce enough to do more than keep us alive," he said. "It doesn't even have much timber, much less metals or fuel. Seven thousand-odd people-call it five thousand working adults and teenagers-that just isn't enough to keep civilization going, if most of us have to spend all our time producing food. We can't have teachers and engineers and clerks and, oh, silversmiths and everything else, all the specialists, because there won't be enough food or enough raw materials or enough markets. But if we can trade widely, we can have those specialists, and exchange what they make for what we need. The question is, do you want your grandchildren to have something like a decent life, or do you want them to be illiterate peasants?"

A thoughtful silence fell. "Ms. Lisketter."

"There's nothing wrong with a simple life! We should all learn to lower our expectations and walk lightly on the earth, not kill its whales and cut down its trees and… We've got an opportunity to escape from a culture dominated by machines, and cultivate our skills and the spiritual-"

A chorus of whistles, catcalls, and boos shouted her down. "I've had all the fucking simple-life blisters I want or need!" someone shouted, and there was a roar of approval.

Cofflin kept his face impassive as he hammered for order. Inwardly he was gri

"Let's keep it polite here. This is a Town Meeting, not a football game. Ms. Lisketter has a right to say what she believes whether anyone else likes it or not."

Lisketter was quivering, but the tears in her eyes were rage, not chagrin. "You're making exactly the same mistakes that people back home did, wrecking the earth and any chance of living in peace with each other!" she said. "Please, please don't be so blind! There aren't very many of us now, but if you start the same cycle all over again that won't matter. The real frontier isn't out there." She waved at the world beyond the darkened windows. "It's in ourselves. If we're not at peace with ourselves and the earth, what does it matter if we have material wealth?"

"Dane Sweet?"

The manager of the bicycle shop-nowadays he was more like assistant secretary for transportation-stood. "Pamela, you and I go back a long way. We agree on a lot of things. But can't you understand that we're not back home any more?"

"This isn't Kansas anymore, Toto," someone said.

Sweet waved them to silence and went on: "If you want to preserve the environment and the Native Americans, and I do too, you're not going to do it by making the people here want to lynch you. It's one thing to tell people who've got too much to cut back, but you may not have noticed we're not exactly living in the lap of postindustrial luxury here."

"Anything more to say, Ms. Lisketter? Then I suggest you sit down." She sat. "Joseph?"

Starbuck stood. The town clerk was as near to a minister of finance as they had. "And we're not doing as well as Mr. Macy thinks, either. We're living off our capital-off what we had before the Event. Yes, we're growing and catching our own food, but we're not building our own houses, making our own clothing, or shoes, or even tools for the most part-and what we are making, we're largely making out of accumulated raw materials that were here before the Event. Consider the effort needed to find and smelt metals, for example. Or to find fiber and leather to replace what we've used, or glass. What Dr. Arnstein said is quite correct."

That brought a thoughtful silence. He's got a point, Cofflin mused. He pointed his gavel into the midst of the crowd. "Professor?"

"We do have an opportunity to do things better," Arnstein said. "That doesn't mean sitting on our behinds and finding infinite Mandelbrot sets in our navels. Let me tell you, people have never lived in harmony with nature. Goats and axes and wooden plows can ruin countries every bit as surely as bulldozers and chemical plants; it just takes a little longer. We've got three thousand years of knowledge to apply to a fresh world. Let's do it right this time."

There was a smattering of applause, growing louder and then dying away. Cofflin saw another hand raised. Surprise held him for a moment, and then he pointed the gavel. Can't let Swindapa speak and can him, he thought.

"My hosts," Isketerol said, bowing in several directions. His guttural English flowed, as fluent as a native speaker's apart from the accent and an occasional choice of words. "I, a poor foreigner, ca

That is one smart son of a bitch, Cofflin thought. Yes, he was a slave trader and probably a pirate when occasion offered, but this was the thirteenth century before Christ- you couldn't expect him to act any other way. He'd lived up to every bargain he made with the islanders, that was for sure. Nobody had any complaints about the way he'd behaved since he arrived, either. But that proposition has its own risks.

"I think Captain Alston has something to say to that," he said aloud.

Alston stood, her face the usual impassive mask she wore in public. "Once we're in regular contact with the more… advanced peoples of this era," she said, "they're going to be able to sail here; that's why we've been drilling our new militia. We have a military edge, but not a very large one, frankly. Consider the numbers, as well. And this island is a glittering prize, by local standards. If we wave that relative wealth in front of the locals who can come and make a try for it, I won't answer for the consequences. It's my opinion that we should limit our contact with the higher civilizations for the next few years at least. The British peoples of this era are no such threat."

That caused an uproar; Macy was on his feet demanding to know why they couldn't seal off the island from all outside contact.