And opening him like a can of sardines,
Cofflin thought with a shudder. He’d seen men blown open by flying shards of steel, and a lot of accidents with heavy machinery. It didn’t take much imagination to fit those memories to what he’d just watched.
Swindapa nodded. “But what if he has armor?” she asked. “Or a shield?”
“Good point. Then you redirect
here
—” she turned the blade back to its starting position and swung it higher, across throat level—“or down at the thighs, or you use his thrust to turn yourself three-quarters ’round.” The circling motion of the sword pushed the spear aside, and Alston’s feet landed in a cramped-looking position that moved her eighty degrees with a fluid speed he could see even in the slow-motion mime. “And that puts you in position to strike here, here, here.” The sword tapped at the armpit, the back of the knee, stabbed toward the inner thigh and groin. “Again, use speed and precision against his weight.”
Swindapa frowned. “What if he’s just as fast and skilled, and still stronger and heavier?” she said.
Alston met her eyes. “Then you probably die,” she said quietly. To the young man: “Full-speed, please.”
The spear came punching forward.
Crack
. The
bokken
snapped up and met it with a sound like a gunshot. There was a whirling and a clang as Alston pivoted on her bent front leg, the knee half-collapsing as she went, her left leg coming around like a scythe. It struck the man behind his knees, and he flipped backward to land on his back. That left him looking up at Alston as she came down in a wide-footed straddle stance. The point of the
bokken
came down and stopped precisely over the hollow of his throat.
“Well, that’s your lesson, Middleton,” Alston said, smiling slightly. “Don’t focus on the weapon. There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people. Fight the whole enemy.” She gave him a hand up. “See you later,’dapa.” She tossed the wooden sword back to her.
“Does that work as well as it looks?” Cofflin asked as they walked away. “It
looks
as impressive as hell, but then so does Olympic fencing, and that’s got damn-all to do with real fighting, I understand.”
“Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Alston said. “I think so. The unarmed parts do work; I’ve used them in real-life situations a few times, back before the Event and here too.”
She reached over her shoulder and touched the hilt of the
katana.
“The Japanese were in their equivalent of the Middle Ages until one long lifetime ago, and men fought to the death with these almost within livin’ memory. My
sensei
learned in a school that’s been—would have been—in operation continuously in the same place since the year 1447, at a shrine to the Shinto sword god. It teaches
bujutsu,
the war arts, not the sport or spiritual-learning versions. So, chances are it’ll work in practice.”
She held up crossed fingers. “Best we can do. I’d rather win by intimidation than fighting any day, but you have to calculate on the worst possible case.”
She turned her head slightly. “I wonder why Middleton looked like I was going to cut out his liver for a moment there, though?” she added.
Cofflin coughed and looked away. Martha touched Alston’s elbow and said gently: “Ah, Captain, there have been, well, certain rumors about you and Ms. Swindapa.”
“Oh.” She paused for a moment. “He thought I was going to annihilate him for beating up on my girlfriend? Oh. Hell, and here I thought I’d kept everyone in the dark by avoiding the softball team and not leavin’ old copies of
Deneuve
around.”
Her mouth quirked at his expression. “Sorry, in-joke.” She shook her head. “What really annoys me is the idea that anyone would suppose I’d be unfair like that.”
“Umm—”Cofflin began. He could see Alston’s face take on a set calmness, like a mask carved from obsidian. By now he knew her well enough to realize what that meant: total determination. When she went on, it might have been a machine speaking.
“If you’re asking, the rumors are wrong in particular—she’s, ah, not suitable—but true in general. Yes, I’m gay. You might even use the dreaded l-word.” The eyes met his, dark within dark, seemingly all pupil in the smoky whites. “Do you have a
problem
with that, Chief Cofflin?”
“Myself? Absolutely not,” Cofflin said.
I think
, he added to himself. You met the occasional queer in the Navy, of course, and while he had no objection in principle he didn’t like the reality. On the other hand, those were men. Women just didn’t bother him like that, which was illogical and probably unenlightened, but what the hell. . . . And Alston was simply too valuable to alienate, besides being damn likable in her chilly way. The thought of trying to handle this mess without her was enough to give him the cold willies.
“But some other people might, eh?” she said, relentless.
“If they do, that’s
their
problem,” Cofflin said. “I’m behind you. You’re doing your goddam job, lady, and as long as you do I don’t give a flying . . . curse whether you sleep with men, women, or sheep.”
“Mostly by myself, actually, worse luck,” Alston said, with a slow grin. She offered her hand. “Here’s to the league of people who do their jobs, then.” He took it in his, and Martha laid hers on top.
“Amen,” she said.
“More?” Alston said politely, indicating the venison ragout and the single remaining new potato; they’d fallen on those pretty ravenously.
The cadets shook their heads. “Great, Captain,” one of them said. “But I’m stuffed.”
“Clear up, then, please,” she said, turning and pulling a roll of mapping paper from a sideboard.
The three young men and two women made short work of cleaning the table. She’d made a regular thing of these off-duty meetings, to keep in touch with the cadets. Dining-in on
Eagle
was a little too formal, considering the gap in rank, not to mention the cramped quarters. For that matter, cruises on the
Eagle
had been a small part of a cadet’s education, just enough to familiarize them. The Academy at New London was a very long way away, now.
A whale-oil lamp in the center of the table gave a glow good enough for reading, quite passable if you made yourself forget what electric light was like.
“Take a look at this,” Alston said, leaning over the table and unrolling the plans.
She weighted the corners down with saltshakers and candlesticks. The upperclassman cadets picked up their cups of sassafras tea and leaned over it.
“It’s the
Bluenose
, isn’t it, Captain?” one of them said, interested.
The plans showed a two-masted schooner with a long sleek hull curving up to a prow like the point of a laurelleaf spearhead. The design breathed speed, but not the fragile swiftness of a racing yacht—there was hard work in every line of her.
“Not quite, though it’s based on it,” Alston said. She nodded to the ship model. “That’s the
Bluenose
. This here—” she tapped the plans—“is a little smaller, two hundred tons displacement; she’s shallower-draft, with a longer straight run below, and doesn’t carry as much mast. Probably not quite so fast, but even better suited for inshore work. Look at it well, ladies and gentlemen, because you’ll be officers on something like this in the not-too-distant future.”
The cadets sat down slowly. Alston smiled at them. “I’m not deaf. Now that we’ve a little leisure to think, you’re all afraid that you’ll spend the rest of your lives hauling ropes and reefing sails on the
Eagle . . .
and you signed up at the Academy to be officer-trainees, not deckhands.”
“Yes, some of us have been thinking about that, ma’am,” one of the cadets said slowly. McAndrews, a big soft-spoken black kid from Memphis. “We didn’t like to complain, though. Not your fault, after all.”
“That’s appreciated.”
Another half-raised her hand. “Won’t we be building more steamboats?”
“Certainly, for tugs, whale-catchers, ’longshore work generally. But it’ll be a long time before we can make deep-sea steamers. For long-distance work we need ships that don’t need fuel or machine shops and that can be repaired with local resources where they make landfall, at a pinch. The
Eagle
’s a fine open-ocean ship, but she wasn’t built to haul cargo, and she’s too deep in the keel for inshore work in this era, without made harbors.
“This”—she nodded her head at the drawings—“is just right. Wood-built, and we’re not short of good timber and masts. Big enough to go anywhere on earth and haul a useful amount of cargo, fore-and-aft-rigged, nimble, and not requirin’ a heavy crew. Eventually we’ll have a dozen or more, in the carrying trade, exploring, swapping our manufactures for food and raw materials. Guarding the island, too, and whatever settlements we make elsewhere. I’ve talked it over with the chief, and we’ll be putting a proposal to start building to the Town Meeting, fairly soon. There’s enough seasoned timber on hand now.”
Alston saw enthusiasm kindle. “Since we’re stuck here, it’s better to think of it as an opportunity, not exile.”
“Sort of like Francis Drake and those guys, ma’am?” one of the cadets asked.
“Mmmm, not quite, I hope. But lots of exploration, yes.”
The conversation broke up some time later. “Stay for a moment, McAndrews,” she said. “You had something you wanted to say?” She leaned back, watching the young man twist a little. “I won’t bite y’head off for speaking your mind.”
“It’s . . . we’re going back to England, right, ma’am?”
She nodded.
“What I was wondering was, why England, ma’am?”
“Trade,” she said. “We need to develop a secure base for it.”
“Yes, ma’am, but why
England?
”
“Oh,” Alston said. “Ah, I see what you’re driving at. You’d rather we try, say, Africa?”
“Yes, ma’am!” McAndrews beamed.
“You’re thinking that instead of giving the buckra a leg up, we should sail to Africa and get in contact with the great kingdoms and empires there? Ghana, Mali, Dahomey, the Ashante? And with our technology, they’ll grow to dominate the world?”
“Yes
ma’am
!”
Alston sighed. She reached up and removed an invisible hat. “All right, Cadet, for just this once I’m going to take off my captain’s cap and speak to you as sister to brother.” She leaned forward. “You ever heard the saying ‘Free your head and your ass will follow’?” He nodded.
She went on: “Well, I’m afraid your head’s gotten stuffed with something that’d fit in better down below, boy. None of those empires and kingdoms exist now, and they won’t for a long long time. Thousands of years. South of the deserts it’s mostly still hunters, with a few farming villages in the grasslands. Sail to West Africa and all you’ll find is jungle and pygmies. And maybe malaria and yellow fever.”
McAndrews’s face fell. Alston sighed internally.
I won’t ask him who he thinks
sold
our ancestors to the white slavers
, she thought. That had been one of her more disillusioning personal discoveries. At least, the West African kings and merchant princes were the ones who’d sold
her
personal ancestors, seeing as she was black as tar. McAndrews was a sort of rye-bread-toast color; more than a few buckra in his own personal woodpile.
Let him down easy. He’s probably stuffed with shit about ancient Tanzanian jets and the black Cleopatra and suchlike.
“North Africa is mostly filled with people who look like Isketerol, only they’re savages,” Alston went on. “The only place in Africa that isn’t full of savages is Egypt.” At his look, she continued: “Have you ever
been
to Egypt, Cadet?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I have. Up in the twentieth, the Egyptian slang for a black person is
abdeed,
which means slave, in case you hadn’t guessed. Look, when Isketerol first saw me, he thought I was a Medjay. Ever hear of them?” He shook his head. “Neither had I. They’re mercenary soldiers from Nubia at Pharaoh’s court. The only other black folk there are black slaves.”
At his look of shock, she pushed on ruthlessly: “Who do you think
started
the slave trade, Cadet? You go to Egypt as of 1250 B.C., you’re just another nigger barbarian, as far as they’re concerned, and so am I. Of course, they’d consider Isketerol a nigger too, or Lieutenant Hendriksson.
Anyone
who isn’t an Egyptian is a nigger to them.”
“I . . . suppose I see,” he said after a long minute’s thought.
“Don’t take it so hard, Cadet,” she said kindly. “If things work out well here, there’ll never be a Middle Passage. And we’ve got plenty of
real
heroes. Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth is worth a dozen imaginary African princes any day.”
He frowned. “Then what’s going to happen to us, here, ma’am? I mean, as a people.”
The island had less than two hundred black residents, and fewer still of other minorities; she’d checked the figures, discreetly. The population was 96 percent white. She’d always regarded white people as sort of like the weather; they were
there
, sometimes pleasant, often not, and you had to deal with them as best you could. Here-and-now they were pretty well the whole damn climate, and that was just that, whether she liked it or not.
Alston shrugged. “What happens when you squeeze a drop of ink into a glass of milk and shake, Cadet? It mixes in and pretty soon it’s gone.” Alston spread her hands. “From now on, you’d do best to think of this island as home and everyone who lives here as your people. We really don’t have much choice.”
Seahaven Engineering was getting more crowded by the day, even though Martins and his forge had been moved out to their own quarters, and the sound of metal on metal was deafening.
Ronald Leaton and Cofflin stood in one corner, looking at the latest development, and occasionally moving aside as someone went through with a handcart of materials or parts. Sweat ran down their faces; the sun was bad enough, beating down on the sheet-metal roof, and the steam engines turning shafts and pumping compressors added to the heat and noise. The machine shop stank of hot metal, hot whale oil, sweat, and smoke. The big doors to the water were open, giving an occasional draft of welcome cool air, and you could see smudges of black woodsmoke drifting out over the smaragdine brightness of the harbor. Sails speckled it, and the ocean beyond; closer too a Guard officer was overseeing the loading of a large handcart, yelling out his checklist to the Seahaven clerk: