That brought complete silence. The sheer weirdness of what had happened had overwhelmed most, to the exclusion of practical matters. Cofflin was impressed. This one is a thinker, he decided. Then the thought struck home.
"You have any ideas, Professor Arnstein?" he said calmly, while he scribbled a note: Get the guards back on the stores SOONEST. He handed the note to his assistant. The man nodded and hurried out.
"Well, yes. I've, ah, I've read a lot of speculative fiction about things like this, and I'm a historian. We need to get organized. Supplies will have to be rationed. We have to get working on inventory so we know what it is we've got, and then we have to conserve everything that can't be replaced. We need to start building up our food supplies. It ought to be possible to fish-the fishing grounds around here should be fantastically rich-and we should see what can be grown. There will be whales. We could get firewood and so forth from the mainland-and maybe we could trade, as well."
"Indians!" someone shouted. "We could get corn from the Indians, like the Pilgrims."
"If you hadn't shot at them," Pamela Lisketter said.
Cofflin recognized her too, a member of the flake-and-nut contingent, a weaver who sold fantastically expensive handmade blankets to support a "simple" lifestyle. She was a tall thin woman, her only noticeable features large green-gold eyes and an air of intense conviction; she was involved in every good cause, and a great many marginal ones as well.
"Ms. Lisketter," Cofflin said, "I assure you we acted strictly in self-defense. Now please let Professor Arnstein finish."
Arnstein shook his head. "We can trade for hides and game, maybe, but not corn. If this is the thirteenth century B.C., the local paleo-Indians will still be pure hunter-gatherers. Maize hasn't gotten far out of Mexico yet. There were farming villages… ah, there are farming villages away down in Mexico and Central America, but even the Olmecs haven't happened yet, or maybe they're just starting. I'd have to look it up."
A hand went up, and Cofflin nodded. The chief librarian of the Athenaeum rose, Martha Stoddard, a spinster lady of about forty, dry and spare; archaeology was her hobby.
"The Olmecs built… are building…" For a moment uncharacteristic puzzlement showed on her slightly horse-like Yankee face. "Well, the first Olmec ceremonial centers were started about the thirteenth century B.C. at San Lorenzo, yes, and the first Chavin temples in Peru. Dr. Arnstein is right about the local Indians, I'm afraid. Not paleo-Indians, late Archaic phase. No farming to speak of. Possibly some gardens with squash and gourds, but no corn. You said that there was forest down to the water's edge near Boston?"
"Ayup, Ms. Stoddard."
"There you are, then. When the Puritans arrived, that was all open land around there-cleared by Indians for cornfields and fuel. That hasn't happened yet."
She sat down again, and Arnstein continued: "Europe, though, Europe is in the Bronze Age. We could get grain there. We do have a ship."
Everyone looked at Captain Alston. "I'm willing to help," she said. "But Dr. Arnstein is right-we need to get organized."
Arnstein nodded vigorously. "We need an executive-a president, a coordinator, something like that. And a council. I don't exactly know the procedures for your Town Meetings, but I'd like to propose-"
"Hey, he's not a registered voter in this town!" Lisketter exclaimed. "He's an off-islander!"
You're one to talk, Pamela Lisketter, Cofflin thought.
Granted she'd been on the island ten years, and was quite popular with her own crowd, but she was a coof nonetheless.
Cofflin knocked his empty water glass on the podium as a makeshift gavel. "We're all locals now," he said sharply. "Think about it for a moment, people."
Arnstein had stopped, uncertain. He cleared his throat and went on: "I'd like to propose Chief Cofflin as… ah, as chief executive officer for the duration of the emergency or until we come up with something better."
The town clerk shot to his feet. "Seconded!"
"Now, wait a-" Cofflin began. Hands shot up all over the room.
"Carried by acclamation," the man said.
You're going to regret this, Joseph Starbuck, Cofflin thought with a glower.
Arnstein spoke again. "I'd also like to propose that the chief executive officer appoint a council to propose measures to get us through this emergency. We can elect a… a legislature later, but we need to do things right now if we're going to pull through."
"Seconded!" Joseph Starbuck said again.
The hands shot up again. Cofflin's neck bristled slightly; he could feel the mood of the meeting shifting, turning from unfocused rage to an equally unbalanced hope. It could turn again as quickly, if he disappointed it.
"All right," Cofflin said. "And you're one, Joseph. Captain Alston, you're another; Professor Arnstein, Ms. Rosenthal, Ms. Lisketter, Ms. Brand"-who owned Brand Farms, the island's main nursery and truck-garden operation- "and the rest of the selectmen."
"Chief," Dr. Coleman said, touching his sleeve as the last of the townsfolk straggled out. "A word."
"Mmm-hmm?"
"The Indian's dying," he said.
Cofflin blinked surprise. "You said his leg was stable?" he said mildly.
"It is," Coleman nodded. "That's not it. As far as I can tell, he's dying of the common cold. Possibly the flu, but it looks more like a monster cold on steroids, and that's what Ms. Rosenthal has. I thought it might be better to tell you quietly."
"Nobody dies of a cold, Doc."
"I know that, but he's managing it somehow. Progressive congestion of the nasal and bronchial passages, faster than I can drain, fever over a hundred and seven. Nothing I've got works." He shook his head. "It came on like wildfire. It's as if his immune system had no resistance at all, as if he were a petri dish full of a growth solution."
Arnstein had come up while they were speaking. "Virgin field," he murmured.
Cofflin's eyes flew open. He remembered Rosenthal sneezing. Coleman was nodding somberly.
"It's what they call it when a disease hits a population with no previous exposure," he said quietly. "The results can be… unpleasant. Minor diseases, childhood diseases, they become killers."
Arnstein bobbed his head; he was six-six, and seemed accustomed to directing his body language downward. "Ninety percent of the Indians in the Americas died within a century of Columbus," he said. "Never been exposed to the Afro-Eurasian disease environment. It might be even worse here."
"Why?" Cofflin whispered.
"Well, we don't have smallpox, thank God, but these Indians-they're a lot more thinly scattered, less numerous than the ones the European discoverers met, would have met, three thousand years from now. There probably aren't any epidemic diseases at all, and not many endemic ones. But now…" he shrugged. "Measles… I wonder if anyone here has measles? We'd better check. That could be very bad. Even in Europe and Asia, it didn't arrive in the Roman Empire until the second century, but when it did a quarter of the population died of it. Hmmm…" He trailed off, mumbling.
"Jesus," Cofflin said.
Coleman's face had turned pale. "I'll… we'll have to be very careful, very careful, with anyone who touches shore off this island. I'm going to start checking to see if anyone has measles."
"Measles, syphilis, anything like that," Arnstein said. "Otherwise, we could exterminate whole groups just by breathing on them."
"Jesus." Cofflin kneaded his eyes in a vain attempt to dislodge what felt like hot sand.
"I should test," Coleman said. "For everything. AIDS, too… of course, I can't test the entire…" Suddenly a grim smile lit his face. "Wait a minute. I can do that. Can't I?"