On the Oceans of Eternity

Table of Contents

 

 

“Fully lives up to the promises made in
Island in the Sea of Time.
It feels amazingly—often frighteningly—real. The research is impeccable, the writing excellent, the characters very strong. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.”

—Harry Turtledove, bestselling author of
Guns of the South

 

“Mixing two parts historical fact with one part intelligent extrapolation, S. M. Stirling concocts another exciting and explosive tale of ambition, ingenuity, intrigue, and discovery.
Against the Tide of Years
is even more compelling than
Island in the Sea of Time
—but just as much fun.”

—Jane Lindskold, author of
When the Gods Are Silent

 

“Against the Tide of Years
confirms what readers of the first book already knew: S. M. Stirling is writing some of the best straight-ahead science fiction the genre has ever seen.”

—
Amazing

 

“A perfectly splendid story ... endlessly fascinating ... solidly convincing.”

—Poul Anderson

 

“A compelling cast of characters ... a fine job of conveying both a sense of loss and hope.”

 

“... quite a good book ... definitely a winner.”

—
Aboriginal Science Fiction

 

“Meticulous, imaginative.... Logical, inventive and full of richly imagined characters, this is Stirling’s most deeply realized book yet.”

—Susan Shwartz, author of
The Grail of Hearts

 

“Utterly engaging. This is unquestionably Steve Stirling’s best work to date, a page-turner that is certain to win the author legions of new readers and fans.”

—George R. R. Martin, author of
A Game of Thrones

 

“One of the best time travel/alternative history stories I’ve ever read, period. Stirling combines complex, believable characters, meticulous research, and a fascinating setup to produce a book you won’t want to—and won’t be able to—put down. An outstanding piece of work.”

—Harry Turtledove

 

“The adventure that unfolds, powered by Stirling’s impressive stores of knowledge and extraordinary narrative skill, is an enormously entertaining read.”

—Virtual North Woods Website

ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore,
Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First Printing, April 2000

Copyright © S. M. Stirling, 2000

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

 

 

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

eISBN : 978-1-101-12736-0

Many thanks to the cadets and staff of the Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut, for their hospitality and interest; special thanks to Professor Faye Ringle of the Academy; and to the officers and crew of
Eagle,
for the guided tour.

 

My apologies to her captain for the unspeakable things I did to his cabin.

 

“Wenlock Edge” by A. E. Houseman,
A Shropshire Lad,
1887, XXI

 

Excerpts from “March of Cambreadth,” Heather Alexander,
Midsummer,
copyright © 1997 Sea Fire Productions

 

Thanks to William Pint and Felicia Dale for permission to quote from their beautiful songs in
Hearts of Gold, ©
1994,
Round the Corner, ©
1997,
When I See Winter Return,
© 1997, Waterbug Records: available at
http://
members.aol.com/Pintndale/

 

And to Tony Goodenough, for permission to use lyrics from “Pump Shanty.”

 

Thanks also to Ms. Margarita Booker of Ronald Wharton Rifles, and to Mr. Geoffrey Boothroyd.

 

My thanks to Bobby Hardenbrook for his help with the website
www.av.qnet.com/~fourts/island/island.htm

 

All errors, omissions, infelicities, and lapses are purely mine.

“B
ut Lord Cuddy,
why
does the interior of this furnace have to open out?” Augewas asked. “It made the construction much more complex than the earlier ones.”

William Jefferson Cuddy, onetime corporal in the United States Marine Corps, onetime machine-tool operator with Seahaven Engineering, and currently
ekwetos
and Master of Engineers to the High King of Great Achaea, stopped his thoughtful pacing. Production scheduling for something as big as a steel mill was a nightmare, even for this miniaturized antique ... especially when even the executives he had to rely on were mostly ex-peasants who could barely comprehend that “on time” didn’t mean “in a while, maybe.”

Even if you explain twice about the big hand and the little hand, with diagrams and a boot up the ass,
Cuddy thought. A simple technical question was a relief.

“Ummmm,” he said, racking his brain and looking up. The interior of the furnace was dimly lit by a shaft of light from above, more brightly by the kerosene lamp the slave behind them held. It smelled of rock and fresh brick and mortar, and the special firebrick and calcinated limestone that lined it.

“Ah, stuff gets bigger when it gets hot, right?”

The Achaean architect nodded.

“So when we put the ore and flux and coal in at the top, they’re pretty cold ...”

Behind Augewas Cuddy could see the Achaean’s son and apprentice Philhippos rolling his eyes, left hand resting proudly on the cased slide rule at his belt, and fought down a grin. The younger Greek was at the stage where you just couldn’t believe the ignorance of your old man ... just about the age Cuddy had left home in Milwaukee to enlist in the Crotch with parental curses and a flung beer bottle following him.

Of course, Philhippos had grown up in the new world Cuddy and the other Americans of William Walker’s band were making of this Bronze Age kingdom. He really
did
know a lot more about this stuff than his dad. Hard to remember they’d been here most of a decade now.

The young man spoke: “And this
coal
”—he used the English word, there being no equivalent in Mycenaean Greek—“is it better than charcoal because it bums hotter, or because it is a stonelike ore and can support more weight, or what?”

However grimly the
telestai
might cling to old usage on their baronies, language had grown less formal among the new elite of Great Achaea under the influence of twentieth-century English. Philhippos’s father disliked that particular trend; he raised a hand, and the boy added hastily: “Lord Cuddy.”

“Both, and because there’s more of it,” Cuddy said. “Now that we’ve got the mines up in Istria going, we can ship it down by sea cheaper than burning charcoal up in the hills; and besides, eventually we’d run out of trees.”

He whistled, and the workers at the top let down the inspection platform. The overlords stepped onto it, and it rose smoothly up to the summit and the heavy iron-coated collar of timbers around it. From there Cuddy could look down on the raw, brawling town of Neayoruk, down to the smoke and thronging masts of the harbor enclosed by a mole running out to an island half a mile from shore, and to the hammered-metal brightness of the Laconian Gulf beyond. Sweat sprang out on his forehead and he turned gratefully to a cooling wind from the water, bringing the tang of salt, coal smoke, the hot metal of the forges whose hearths sent trails of smoke up to the azure Mediterranean sky.