Not if I have any say in the matter
, she added mentally.
Keeping people too busy to think was an ancient military tradition, and for very good reason. She hadn’t asked to be stuck in this situation, but things weren’t going to fall apart if she had anything to do with it. The United States Coast Guard, or the Lord God Almighty, or fate, or whatever, had left them in her hands.
The uproar began as she finished speaking. It lasted far into the night, and ended with half a dozen cadets and a couple members of her crew sedated or under restraint.
“But nobody,” she said in the officers’ wardroom, “wants to jump ship.”
“I think it may have struck them that at least they get rations here,” Hiller said.
Like her, the sailing master didn’t have any ties ashore. Well, she had two children, but they’d gone with their father in the divorce and that was going on fifteen years ago. Wouldn’t have done any good to fight for custody, not in South Carolina with what John knew and threatened to reveal if she contested, and it would have wrecked her career when things came out. At least John had warned her first, not just blabbed to the wind.
Some of the other officers still looked as if they’d been hit behind the ear with a sandbag. Most of them did have people back when. Walker, now, Walker looked
excited.
She had her doubts about him, anyway. Intelligent, hardworking, and they even shared a hobby in the martial arts, but there was something . . .
“Speaking of rations, how are we found?” she asked.
The fuel-oil tanks were full—they’d topped up in New London before they left. Thank God for small mercies. The
Eagle’s
auxiliary was a fairly recent thousand-horsepower Caterpillar diesel named Max, practically immortal given that the ship’s own machine shop could make most replacement parts; the generators and freshwater plant ran off the same fuel system. Oil would be the weak point.
Wind only from now on, she
thought
. We use the auxiliary in nothing but real emergencies.
“Ma’am,” the quartermaster said. “We’ll be out of fresh vegetables and the like shortly. Flour, canned and dried goods, and so forth, maybe four weeks. But ma’am, two hundred people take a lot of feeding.”
“Reduced rations immediately then. Use the perishables first, and I’ll talk to Chief Cofflin and see what they can spare from shore. From what Lieutenant Walker says, the fishing and so forth will be very good. We can lend a hand with that right away. We’ll also probably be making a run to England—well, to the British Isles, whatever they’re called here-and-now—to trade for grain. I’d like your ideas on that ASAP, by tomorrow morning, if you please.”
Officers needed to be kept busy too. “Also on how we can convert the ship for operations in a low-tech environment. More fuel’s out of the question, and so are electronics or most machine parts except those we can make in the shop on board or get from the island. We’ll be lucky to get cordage and sails.”
“Captain Alston.” That was the former operations officer, Sandy Rapczewicz, now acting XO. She was a competent-looking woman in her thirties with a weathered, pug-nosed Slavic face; her eyes were red, but she seemed calm enough. A teenaged son ashore, Alston remembered, and a husband. “I was just thinking. We’re in the past, right?”
She nodded. Rapczewicz went on: “But if we, um, do things—make contact with the locals, that sort of thing—won’t we, um, sort of change the way things happened? It isn’t in the history books, thousands of people and a ship appearing in Moses’ time.”
Silence fell around the table. Alston nodded. “Sandy, you’re right.” Some of the officers were beginning to look frightened. “On shore, I talked about that to some of Cofflin’s Council, a history professor and an astronomer, and the town librarian, who’s an amateur archaeologist.” Odd what types ended up on Nantucket, but it wasn’t your average island. “One thing they agreed on—-even if we all dropped dead tomorrow morning, we’ve
already
changed history.”
“How’s that, Captain? We haven’t done anything yet.”
“We’re here. A lot of buildings and so forth are here, including brick and concrete and stone that’ll last. When Europeans arrived, they’d find the ruins. More important, the islanders already sent some people ashore, they had contact with the Indians—and according to the doctor in charge of the local clinic, the one they brought back is dying of the common cold.”
That brought everyone up. “The person with the cold sneezed on one of the others on shore, too, which means their whole tribe probably has it by now. You think that isn’t going to change history? They’ll pass it on, since not all of them will keel over at once. And as a practical matter, everyone on the island isn’t going to drop dead tomorrow. People will try to survive. Even if everything goes wrong, hundreds will be around for years, and everything they do will change things.”
Rapczewicz crossed herself. “Then we could be destroying the future—everyone we know, the whole country.”
“If we have, we’ve
already
done it. Think it through. We’re still here, so the history that produced us is too, somewhere, probably. Arnstein—the history professor—thinks that what’ll happen is that there will be two futures, the one we came from, and the one that happens because we landed here. Rosenthal, the scientist, says that that could be—something to do with quantum mechanics.”
“Yeah, the Many Worlds interpretation. We studied it in physics,” Lieutenant Walker said thoughtfully.
Alston cleared her throat. “In any case, it’s irrelevant. We can’t do anything about it. Even mass suicide, which is not going to happen, wouldn’t change the fact that we’re here and the consequences that follow. But we
do
have to eat, y’all will recollect. So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get down to some serious plannin’.”
The meeting went on for hours. As the officers left for their bunks, Alston signaled to Walker to stay. “Lieutenant, I think you’ve had an idea that you’re not sharing.”
“Ma’am,” the young man said. He hesitated. “It’s just that there are so many
possibilities
here.”
“Including death by starvation, unfortunately. That has to be our maximum priority for the present.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The younger officer had a boyishly open face, green eyes, and a mop of reddish-brown hair; he looked like an overgrown Huck Finn.
And I can believe that as much as I want
to, she thought.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Alston sighed and sat alone, cradling her coffee and wishing for a drink. Coast Guard ships were dry, though, just like the Navy’s. Like the Navy’s had been . . . would be . . . whatever.
She poured another cup. Thinking about what had happened made her head hurt even worse. She’d considered drawing a trank herself, she needed the sleep, but no. She also needed her wits if something happened. Lucky for her she’d never been able to strike any deep roots, anywhere. At least she was used to disadvantages.
What more can the Supreme Ironist do? Let’s see, you’re a woman. A black woman. A black woman who came up through the ranks. A black, ex-ranker, divorced woman. A black, ex-ranker, divorced, gay woman. A black, ex-ranker, divorced, gay woman in charge of a ship. A black, ex-ranker, divorced, gay woman in command of a ship thrown back three thousand years in time with a crew getting more hysterical by the moment. What else could happen?
She had an uneasy feeling she’d find out.
The Nantucket Council was meeting around an office table in the Town Building, on Broad Street down by the Whaling Museum. The building was eighteenth-century brick Georgian on the outside, late-twentieth Institutional Bland inside. Voices sounded through open windows as outside, slippery mounds of fish were manhandled into boxes, garbage bags, and the backs of pickups and the island’s ubiquitous Jeep Cherokees for distribution. The smell was already fairly powerful.
Cofflin rapped his knuckles on the table and spoke: “All right, people, we’ve toted it up, and with strict rationing we’ve got enough food for about two to three weeks from our reserves. Thank God not many of the summer people had arrived, but we’re still up against it. Captain Alston? What’s the fishing situation?”
Marian Alston had been sitting quietly, making notes now and then. Occasionally she would change a small ball of hard rubber from one hand to another, squeezing steadily.
“There are two real trawlers operating out of Nantucket, and another that was here from Mattapoisett, sheltering . from rough weather. As long as the fuel lasts, they can pull in enough to give everyone on the island a pound or more of fish a day—the schools of cod and herring and flounder and whatnot out there have to be seen to be believed. The main problem is breaking nets because the yields are so heavy.”
“Thank God for that,” Cofflin said. “Both Nantucket trawlers were slated to be junked next year,” he went on. He’d been a commercial fisherman himself for a while, between getting out of high school and joining the Navy; he’d gone into police work after that. Like most trades that were really essential, working the nets had paid squat and had zero prospects. Back up in the twentieth, at least. Here the priorities were different.
Alston nodded. “As long as the fuel lasts, they’ll be very useful. When it’s gone, which will be fairly soon, they’re useless. We can adapt the scallop boats to long-line hand fishing—there’s an old man on the island we found who knows the technique, and we’ve got him giving lessons to yachtsmen and they’re teaching others. We can use the sailing yachts too. They won’t be what you’d call efficient, but they’ll do for seine netting. Without fuel to spare, the motorboats are worthless—unless we cut them down and convert them to dories. I’ve got some parties workin’ on that, too, but we’re short of beams, planks, wood of all kinds.”
“No problem there.” Cofflin pushed a pile of papers across the table. “Here’s a list of surplus buildings. Use the materials. Lord knows the island’s got plenty of house carpenters—they’re yours for this. Get in touch with Sam Macy. He’s about the best housebuilder, and everyone knows him.” He paused. “Bottom line, what are the fishing prospects?”
“Good. We’re landing several tons a day already. Even shore fishing is yielding significant amounts. The hand techniques should be coming online about the time we run out of motor fuel for the trawlers, giving us our daily needs and about a quarter or more over for reserves. The problem is preservation. We need salt, and lots of it. Even more when we start bringing in whalemeat.”
“Whales! You can’t kill
whales
!” Pamela Lisketter gasped.
The other members of the Council looked down the table at her. “Why not?” Rosenthal snapped.
“They’re an
endangered species
!”
“Not here they’re not,” Captain Alston said. “They’re a navigation hazard. You can’t sail five miles out there without bumping into the damned things. We need the meat, and we need oil for lighting and cooking, and the rest of them we can grind up and use on the crops.”
She turned to the farm owner. “Ms. Brand, we’ll also be producing a lot of fish offal, by-products. Good fertilizer, I understand.”
Dr. Coleman cut in. “Save the livers of the cod. We’re going to have problems with vitamin deficiencies, too. I’ve rounded up all the supplements and pills on the island, but with the shortage of fresh greens and fruits you’re projecting, we may have actual scurvy by winter.”
Cofflin nodded. “Right now, we’ll eat fresh fish and whale meat, plus perishables, and save all the canned goods and other keepers for the winter to eke out what we salt down and preserve and what we can grow. Doc, we should be able to get wild fruits and berries. Would cranberries and blueberries help? We’ve got a couple of hundred acres of cranberry bog, right enough.”
“If they’re properly preserved, yes, they’ll help with the vitamin problem.”
Martha Stoddard tapped the table in her turn, with one finger. “There are a lot of wild plants that have useful quantities of vitamins, and edible seaweed too. My Girl Scout troop was doing a project on them. Some of the seaweed can be dried, as well. Dulse, for example—health food stores sell dried dulse as a snack. High in vitamin C.”
“Good,” Cofflin said. “Why don’t you and the doctor get together on that?”
“Medicinal herbs too,” Coleman said. “I’m experimenting with producing simple antibiotics, but we’re going to be short of a good deal else.”
“Good. Now that we know we’re not going to starve to death right away, what about the next few months to a year?” Cofflin said. He looked over at Angelica Brand.
“I’m sorry, Chief, but my operation is basically for flowers and luxury vegetables,” she said. “There’s only the greenhouses, and about a hundred acres under vegetables every summer, and that’s a drop in the bucket.”
Cofflin restrained an impulse to run his hands through his hair. Brand Farms was the only real agricultural enterprise on the island. There were a few hobby farms, an herb grower, private vegetable gardens, people who kept a cow or a horse or something, a lone vineyard, and that was it. It had been a long,
long
time since Nantucket fed itself. Even back in the Revolutionary War there had been famine here when the British blockaded the island, and they’d already been trading whale oil and fish for grain. The manager of the A&P had been invaluable in tracking down all the food reserves, but there just wasn’t much. Deliveries from the mainland came three times a week even in winter.
Then Brand struck the palm of her hand to her forehead. “Wait a minute—my off-season cover crop is winter rye. If I don’t plow that up for vegetables, we can harvest it, by hand if we have to. Call it a hundred acres at twenty or so bushels . . . say two thousand bushels of grain. Not until late August, though. That’s about . . .” She punched her calculator. “About one-fifth of our needs for a year, not counting what I’d have to hold back as seed.”