On the Oceans of Eternity

Alston put her fists on her hips and slowly shook her head. "Return to your closing the Straits against our ships, skirmishing with us and then calling it overzealous private actions by your captains, to your helping Walker? After you invaded our country last spring for no better reason than you wanted to take it? I don't think so."

"If you fight Walker in the east without passing through my waters, traveling around Africa and through the Gulf as your other expeditions have, I will not interfere," he said. "That much I can in honor say. No more. I will not turn on a guest-friend and blood brother who helped put me on my throne, simply because it would spare me effort and expense. And if you destroy King Walker, what check will there be on your power? How do I know you will not turn on me, next? Already you claim half the world and say we may trade and settle only in those scraps you deign to allow us."

"Do you doubt that Walker would turn on you, without us to worry about? Does your honor require that you see all that you've built up"-she waved about-"cast down?"

Isketerol's eyes narrowed. "You have not the strength to conquer Tartessos," he said. "I hold far more land than your Republic does in fact, claims of just nothing but words aside, and I have twenty times more people. I can afford to lose battles-you ca

Well, he's grasped that principle, Alston thought. Wordlessly she pointed to the ultralight, to the gunboat. Isketerol shrugged.

"Yes, you have better weapons," he admitted. "But I have more weapons, many more. If they are not as fine as yours, still they are not spears and bows. We destroyed one of your great ships in the battle."

"You lost a dozen."

"I can spare a dozen, build anew, and find new crews; you ca

"Perhaps not. But there are enough of us to destroy the Tartessos you have made, I think." She went on: "Tell me, King Isketerol, do the words command and control decision loop mean anything to you?"

Narrow-eyed, Isketerol shook his head. Rosita Menendez frowned, as if something was tugging at her memory, then shrugged. Alston's face remained a basalt mask, but inwardly something bared its teeth. Walker would have known-would have understood the importance of forces being able to transmit information faster, and act on it more rapidly. He was a product of Western civilization and its military-technic tradition.

Isketerol wasn't.

Yes, Isketerol's smart. He's a genius, I think. But he'd grown to adulthood in this world. Doubtless he'd learned a great deal from the books. It would still be filtered through the worldview built into the structure of his mind from childhood. Doubtless he'd learned a good deal from Walker, and Rosita, too, but the one would be careful not to teach too much and the other wasn't particularly intelligent or well educated…

Snidely, to herself: And Rosita was a really close friend of Alice Hong, which says something about her standards of taste and judgment.

"Why do I have a feeling," Isketerol said, an edge of whimsy in his voice, "that what you just asked me was like one of those oracles that only make sense after the disaster has happened?"

Got to be careful not to underestimate him, though. Slowly and deliberately she smiled, spread her hands.

He sighed. "Well, then, what are your terms for ending this war? I might pay…" He turned to the interpreters and fell into Tartessian. Swindapa supplied the word: she'd had ten years with Marian Alston and her tastes in reading matter.

"… weregild for the invasion last spring, yes, blood price. Beyond that I ca

Alston began to tick off points. "First, you must pay, as you said, damages-partly in cash, and partly in supplies." She held up a hand. "Not guns or powder to be used against Walker, no."

"No, food and cordage and timber that will free your shipping space for guns and powder," Isketerol said dryly.

"Of course. Next, you must be neutral in this war-and to guarantee that, disarm your war fleet and give us hostages. You must give us bases-the island my fleet's on now, the Rock of Gibraltar, and another south across the Pillars. And you must swear that in future…" She pulled up a phrase Swindapa had suggested, as more like the Tartessian equivalent than noninterference in our sphere of influence "… that in future you will keep your spoon out of our stewpot."

The Iberian's smile was unpleasant, and a dark flush had risen under his tan. "The world is to be yours, then; but of your gracious favor, you will allow us to keep our own homes… or most of them. What, do you not demand also that we free all our slaves and adopt… what's the word… an equal rights amendment and universal suffrage? As if we were naughty children who piddled on the floor, to be spanked and taught better."

"I'd like to demand just that," she said frankly; and saw him blink and nod.

This was a man who appreciated hearing what you thought, not soul-butter. Although how long will that last, Isketerol-me-lad, if this absolute monarchy you're setting up continues? She went on aloud:

"But I don't set policy, I just carry it out. First, it's not within our power to force those reforms on you. We couldn't make you want those things-you in the plural, your people-and it would be pointless if you didn't. By offending your people's pride, we'd make them more likely to move in the opposite direction, in fact. Second, while we may use our power for that sort of thing where we have it, we don't go a-conquering just so we can spread enlightenment. We certainly couldn't hold down Tartessos tightly enough to redo your… customs… without an effort which would destroy us. No, what I listed is the whole of our terms. Our terms now."

"Meaning they'll get worse, if you win," Isketerol said tightly. "So will mine, once you've broken your teeth on our defense." A pause, and he seemed to push away anger with an exhalation of breath. "The old King, the one I cast down and slew, he was my kinsman.

"Yes," he went on frankly, "I wanted the Throne for the glory and power and wealth. Yes, also to hand that down to my own sons and bloodline. But also, I struck for my people- for their glory and power, for the heritage of their sons, and the sons of their sons, that our tongue and Gods and customs would not go down into dust and be less than dust as I read on Nantucket all those years ago. Your books could not say if we even existed at all! Then I wept and raged at the Gods; yet later I came to see that this was the gift that the Gods had given me, a glimpse of a different course to be steered through the oceans of eternity. And since then I have worked and pla

Alston nodded soberly. She understood that, well enough. Her thoughts went to ancestors of hers; and to the systems analysts of Bangalore, India, and the suit-wearing Parliamentary deputies of Taiwan, and here… Mmmm-hmmm, John Iraunanasson, for instance. You may find that you're destroying what you're trying to preserve, in the long run. King Isketerol. And that the only way you can fight us is to become us.

Since the Event she'd come to appreciate just how weird and wide and wonderful this ancient Earth was; it wasn't altogether pleasant to think of it being remade on a single pattern, no matter how dear and much-loved that pattern was. On the other hand, I've also learned damned well that all customs and ways-of-doing and thinking are not equal. Some are just flat-out better than others. Freedom was better than slavery; the Town Meeting was better than a God-King.