"Sorry about that," Cofflin said, flushing with embarrassment.
"Oh, no problem. They're very athletic little girls, for their ages."
The smile went slightly wider at his look of incomprehension. "I gave them some pointers and told them to ambush whoever gave them serious trouble about their mothers, two on one, and beat the living shit out of them. And if the parents complained-well, they could come complain to me."
He looked into the dark eyes of the person who he knew was, after Martha, his best friend in this post-Event world. And the embarrassment turned, just for a second, to a jolt of pure, cold fear.
Shit, but I'm glad Marian never had any political ambitions.
"Barbarians," Swindapa muttered under her breath.
"What was that?" Martha said.
"Nothin' much," Marian said, smiling slightly. "Swindapa has a low opinion of some Eagle People attitudes, is all."
"Fully justified, in some cases," Martha said dryly.
People started passing things; gravy, bowls of scalloped potatoes, roast garlic, cauliflower au gratin, sliced onions and tomatoes in oil and vinegar, steamed peas, butternut squash, wilted spinach with shallot dressing, lentils with thyme, potato-and-lobster-claw salad, green salad, bread.
"Oh, Mother of God, but I got so sick of edible seaweed," Ortiz said, biting into a piece of tomato with an expression of nearly religious ecstasy.
"Saved us from scurvy the winter of '01," Martha observed, slightly defensive. "My Girl Scouts did a good job there, finding wild greens."
"Oh, they did," Ortiz agreed. "No dispute there. I'm just so glad to see vegetables again."
Murmurs of agreement interrupted the chomping of jaws.
"The economy's doing reasonably well," Starbuck conceded, grudgingly. Christ, and they think I'm stingy, Cofflin thought. The ex-banker went on, "Despite the lavish use of public funds on projects such as yours, young lady."
Vicki looked down at her plate for a second. "Defense takes precedence over affluence, sir," she replied.
Starbuck's shaggy white brows went up. "Nice to hear one of the younger generation quoting Adam Smith at me," he said grudgingly. "Well, I suppose it won't bankrupt us. Not quite yet."
Things had improved. Cofflin spread butter on a piece of the chewy, crusty whole-wheat bread. Butter, for instance. There hadn't been more than two dozen cows on the whole island, at first. The breeding program was going well, though.
"You Eagle People complain about the oddest things," Jairwen said, tossing back her long brown hair. "You've ways to have got vegetables in the middle of winter, and then complain you that they aren't fresh picked as were."
"You've got a point," Doc Coleman said. "This diet is actually healthier than what we had before the Event; a little heavier on salt than I'd like, especially in the winter with all the dried fish, but plenty of fiber and roughage, not much sugar and less fat-look how lean this pork is, even. Plus, I doubt there are fifty people on the Island who don't do more physical exercise than they used to, just getting around." Luxury transport these days was a bicycle. "And no tobacco or recreational drugs, thank God. Pass the gravy."
"It's back to dried dulse for some of us," Alston sighed.
"You're ready so soon?" Cofflin blurted. Hell, I thought I was following things closely!
"Oh, not for the real push," Alston said. "We need more ships, more-sorry, 'dapa, just a little business-but it occurs to me that we just can't wait until we've got enough ships and people to do it directly, so we'd better start laying the groundwork through the back door. Lieutenant Cofflin-sorry, Vicki-has her pet coming along right nice. We can run the tests on her, and then start taking it apart again."
The younger Cofflin glanced between her uncle and the black woman, suddenly alert. Alston smiled slightly and nodded. "Time you were brought into the loop. Everybody here's cleared."
She sketched out a plan, and a little way down the table, Ian Arnstein sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Oh, God," he said. "Another two languages to learn."
He couldn't quite conceal the grin that broke through. His wife hit him with her napkin and groaned.
"The first part, that'll be more in the nature of a long trip than a military expedition," Marian said. "Then…"
"Enough business," Swindapa said firmly. "I will work tomorrow. Today is for play. Dessert, and then we dance."
"All right," Jared Cofflin said, chuckling and leaning back with a cup in his hand. "You know, one of the few good things about this job is that it lets you meet every nutcase in the Republic, and just yesterday I met one even crazier than the gang around this table. Let me tell you about a young man named Girenas over at Providence Base and his weird idea."
Peter Girenas looked at himself anxiously in the small mirror by the washstand, checking his chin and his mottled-leather Ranger uniform. Then, swallowing, he glanced around the room. It wasn't home, just the place he lived when he was in town; the owner of the Laughing Loon was glad to let him have it in return for a deer every week or two. Bed and floor were mostly covered in skins of his own hunting, bear and wolf and wolverine; there was a Lekkansu spirit-mask on one squared-log wall, a coverlet of ermine pelts, a shelf of books, his rifle and crossbow, some keepsakes and a photograph of his mother. And on a table beside the bed was a sheaf of papers.
"Stay, Perks. Guard."
The dog curled up on his favorite bearskin and settled his head on his paws, watchful and alert. Girenas picked up the papers and took a deep breath, then carefully closed the door behind him and trotted down to the taproom of the inn.
It was quiet now, on a weekday afternoon, spears of sunlight through the windows catching drifting flecks of dust, sand rutching under his boots against the flagstone floor. Sally Randon was idly polishing the single-plank bar at one end with its ranks of bottles and big barrels with taps, and the chairs were empty around the long tables. Except for one. Girenas scowled at the sight of the three seated there.
He recognized them all. Emma Carson and her husband, Dick; they were big in the Indian trade. And Hardcase. He was a big man among the Lekkansu, one of the first traders with the Americans-and he'd been pulling together the shattered clans after the epidemics, trying to get them back on their feet after the chaos and despair of losing more than half their numbers for two years running. The Ranger didn't particularly like him, not like some of the Lekkansu warriors he'd hunted with or the girls he'd known, but Hardcase was an important man.
Or would be, if he could stay off the booze. The Carsons had no business encouraging him like this.
"I greet you, elder brother," he said in the Lekkansu tongue, walking over to them. "Have you come to trade?"
"Trade pretty good," the Indian said, in fair if accented English. "Lots of deer hides, maple sugar, hickory nuts, ginseng."
The two Nantucketer traders were glaring at the ranger, and the man made a motion as if to hide the bottle of white lightning the three were sharing. Dick Carson didn't bother Girenas, a beefy blowhard. But Emma… heard a snake bit her once. The snake died.
"Emma, Dick," he said, nodding. Then in the other tongue: "Will you get many knives, hatchets, fishhooks, fire-makers, blankets?"
"Hardcase trades smart," the Indian said, his grin a bit slack. "Other families will pay well for break-the-head water. Easier to carry than lots of heavy things."
"But when the water is gone, you will have nothing-not tools, or weapons, or blankets."
Hardcase's eyes narrowed. "Rifles even better than break-the-head water," he said. "You're such a friend to us, why don't you get us some rifles? Friends do that."