Sunrise Lands

"That's good ta

Singh nodded. "There are three or four families in each of the houses, Captain, from the bedrolls. The tools are mostly from before the Change, but look at this."

It was a hoe, with a skillfully shaped handle; the head was a large shell, probably adequate in this light sandy soil.

"Right." Another deep breath. "Let's talk to them."

He walked beyond the buildings. They all held up open hands, yelling about their peaceableness and wav ing come on. Eventually people did, moving out of the thick brush along the forest edge with a skill that made him blink. A dozen men in hide breechclouts led, aged from early teens to their forties; their hair was shaved on either side of the head and gathered up into a standing roach, with a pigtail behind, and they held light javelins settled in the groove of a yard-long throwing stick ending in a hook. They had steel knives, too, and hatchets.

Behind them came an older man in similar dress, and a woman in a buckskin tunic that reached to her knees; as they got closer he saw that her braided hair was gray streaked yellow, and she was the man's age or nearly, looking a bit older because she'd lost most of her teeth. He was Injun, though of no tribe Ingolf knew, with ruddy light brown skin and flattish features, stocky and looking very strong for his size, with thick scarred forearms.

Hmmm, he thought, looking at the younger folk again. A couple looked like white men, a couple like Injuns, and the rest mixed. Nothing odd there; I've seen enough blue eyed Sioux out west, and redheaded Anishinabe up north. People had shifted around a lot, right after the Change, and settled where they could.

The woman looked at him steadily. When she spoke, it was as if the English language came haltingly to her, the sound a little rusty; and there was a trace of an accent he didn't recognize, one that turned are to aaah.

"You are… not…"

The man beside her was probably her husband; he spoke himself, in a complex-sounding language full of quick-rising, slow falling sounds, then made a crook-fingered grabbing gesture with his right hand.

"The Eaters of Men," she said, probably translating; it sounded that way, not quite English phrasing.

The other locals lowered their weapons, a few smiling at the strangers.

"No, we're not, ma'am. We're from the Midwest-Wisconsin, me. We're

… explorers."

Suddenly tears were ru

"… came out here from I

The Day? She must mean the Change, Ingolf thought, nodding.

"My father and mother, my uncle John and aunt Sally and Mr. Granger and Lindy, the Smiths, and us kids… I was fifteen. Things were already very bad, and the rumors…"

She licked her lips again, then took Ingolf's bowl and reached out to spoon more fish stew into it with a wooden ladle; the cauldron was made from the bottom half of an aluminum trash barrel. It was good stew, full of chunks of white cod meat and scallops and vegetables. The firelight shone on the faces-the warriors closest, and the two-score of women and children behind. He caught glimpses of a naked toddler huddled up against her mother, of another younger one at the breast. They murmured among themselves; mostly the odd-sounding language, but in it were English words he caught or half caught.

It was cooler now that the sun was down, not chilly but close enough to it that the fire's warmth felt grateful on his skin. A couple of the older people had cloaks or blankets around their shoulders, made of glossy pelts.

"Later we realized they must be true. A few times in the years after that, boats came here… hunting… and we had to run or fight. Dad and Uncle John loaded ev erything we could find, the tools and seed and the three goats from Uncle John's place we'd hidden from the Committee, and we headed out. I don't know where Dad was really hoping for-he talked about going north to Maine. But there was a storm, and we were cast ashore here; we managed to get most of our stuff out but the boat was wrecked."

She frowned. "I haven't thought about it for a long time… I knew about Nantucket. I'd been there. This isn't Nantucket. It looks a little like it, but the trees… and the people. They're the… we're the…"

Another word in that language; she smiled and thumped her forehead with the heel of her hand.

"The People. Or the Sea-Land People. They're In dians, and they'd never heard of white men. Or metal, or growing corn, or… or anything. They said nobody had-they used to visit the mainland before the Day, only they say it was all forest too, and relatives of theirs lived there, not cities and things. Then there was a dome of fire, colored fire, and when it went away they were here. When my family got here they were sick; someone had already come here and left… I think it was chicken pox. Most of the People died of it. There'd been about a hundred, but only two dozen lived."

All the watchers shuddered at the words chicken pox; some of them made signs that were probably for protection against evil magic.

"But they're good people… and they had food; they knew how to fish and hunt. We stayed, and we helped with the sick, and learned to talk to them, and showed them things, and they showed us… My dad died six years later, drowned while he was out fishing. Mom got sick with some thing a year after that, I don't know what, it was awful; she had this pain in her stomach… Uncle John built boats for a hobby, so he knew how…"

Ingolf finished the food and set the plastic bowl aside as Sun Hair rambled through her tale of years, of children born and folk dying, of learning and forgetting.

I don't think she's really wandered in her wits, he thought. Just a little strange, like a lot who had a hard time in those years. Hers wasn't as hard as some. But Christ, this is weird!

He knew the history of America before the Change, at least in outline; he was a sheriff's son, after all, an educated man who could both read and write fluently and cipher well. He'd read through an entire book on it, the Time-Life one, and another bound together from several carefully preserved National Geographic s with wonderful pictures. This island was near where the first English had settled, four hundred years ago. And the Injuns they met had been farmers, albeit without iron or cattle or horses. How long since Nantucket had been covered in oak trees, peopled by folk who'd never seen corn?

His mind quailed at the gap of years. Of course, it must be possible. It's here, isn't it? And if God made the Change, why not this?

Kaur and Singh were looking bewildered. Kuttner looked like he was three sheets to the wind, and had been smoking something strong along with it. His eyes glittered, a look like lust. He leaned forward and cut in: "And Nantucket town? There?" he said, pointing east.

Sun Hair began to cry; her husband put an arm around her. "That's where my boy Frank went!" she sobbed. "And he never came back! He never came back to me!"

"I don't like doing this to them," Ingolf said, looking back at the Sea-Land People.

This was as close as they came to the great fishhook harbor where the maps said Nantucket town should stand. So far all they'd seen was forest and game trails, weaving to avoid patches of marsh and a few open old-field meadows. They were lamenting, weeping and throwing their hands rhythmically into the air at this act of suicide by their guests.