"Both our moms."
"Went down and talked with them, and they got really mad. I could tell, even if they weren't shouting."
"That's when they had the battle?"
"No, that was a couple of days later," Heather said. She quelled a memory of cold fear. "Our moms went off into the woods with a lot of the hands. We stayed in the camp."
"We could hear the shooting, though," Lucy said.
"Yeah, and then our moms came back and then in the morning they had the big fight in the bay. That's when we… well, they… captured the two Tartessian ships. And a whole lot of gold. And ivory and silk and, oh, tons of wonderful cargo. I got this little cat carved out of jade, I'll show you."
"Plunder!" Chuck said. "Hey, cool."
"Plundering is against regulations," Lucy said pedantically. "Only pirates plunder. This was prize money."
"What's the difference?" Chuck asked, intrigued.
"We're the good guys," Lucy said. "So when we capture the bad guys' ships and take all their stuff, it's okay. And that's how we're going to buy that land down near the water."
"And have ponies and stuff," Heather finished triumphantly.
"I'm sort of busy, Doctor," Kenneth Hollard said. They were usually on first-name terms; the formality backed up the meaning of the words.
"I know, sir," Justin Clemens said. "It's about the smallpox, sir."
Hollard's long face changed from tightly reined impatience to a fear kept under equally close control. Nobody who'd been there when the disease broke loose in Babylon's teeming warrens could react otherwise.
He rose, silencing Clemens with a hand, and went to the door flap of his tent. A murmured command sent the sentries further from the tent, and posted others around it. Then he ducked back into the cooling olive-tinted, canvas-smelling gloom and turned up the kerosene lantern that hung from the central ridgepole.
"Now, let me have it, Doctor. I thought we had it under control?"
"We do, sir, in Kar-Duniash," Clemens said. He sat forward in the folding chair, knotting his hands together. "And we've got a good start on a vaccination program here in Anatolia. I thought we had reason to celebrate."
"So did I," Hollard said. "Like your wedding, Doctor."
Clemens smiled for a second; Hollard had arranged for a wedding feast in the palace, with his royal brother-in-law dropping by with a substantial golden gift. Tab-sa-Dayyan had been flabbergasted, and Azzu-ena had cried. Then his naturally cheerful face turned grave again.
"No, it's the news from Meluhha, Brigadier," he said. At Hollard's blank look-nobody could keep up with everything-
"Meluhha. India, what'll be Bombay. There's a steady trickle of trade between there and the Gulf, via Dilmun."
He moistened his lips, chapped with the long hard journey up from Mitanni. "There's been an outbreak there."
"Damn!" Hollard said, knotting his sun-faded brows. They were a startlingly light color against the teak-dark tan of his face. "How did that happen?"
"It's the damn smallpox bug, it's tough-great big mother of a thing for a virus, with a hard sheath, you can actually see it under a microscope. It'll stay infectious for years at room temperature under the right conditions. I think… I think what must have happened is that someone saw they could make a killing by stealing and selling clothing from the victims, instead of burning it. Remember how we gathered it in big heaps by the fires, toward the end there?"
Hollard nodded grimly. Thousands had died in Babylon, tens of thousands throughout the country, before quarantines and compulsory inoculation got the brushfire under control. Good cloth was valuable here, relative to most other things, because the whole process of making it from sheep to sewing was so labor-intensive. A good cloak or tunic would take a third of a year's wages for an ordinary man. A shipload was a fortune.
Clemens went on: "In a pile of wool blankets or clothes, the infection could linger indefinitely. It's a sit-and-wait pathogen, lying around on surfaces."
"Well, Jus, that's damned bad news," Hollard said, and shook his head. "After the war, we'll have to do something about it, if we can."
Clemens looked at the general, jaw dropping. "After-" His voice broke in a squeak. "Sir, they've got the disease there right now. This news is months old! We have to do something now."
The lamplight brought out the planes and angles of Hollard's bony face. "Out of the question," he snapped. The blue eyes speared Clemens's. "I have a war to run, in case you hadn't noticed, Doctor, and it's at a critical point. Every ship and sailor and Marine is needed."
The doctor looked at the general for a long moment, silent with horror. "But sir… Ken… for the love of God, Meluhha's a major trade center! I'm pretty sure, I've been tracing it, somehow we managed to get it to Babylon-from the African coast, or somewhere along the Red Sea, maybe. Now that it's in Meluhha, it'll spread all through continental Asia, maybe to southeast Asia as well. Virgin field epidemic-a quarter of the human race could die."
Hollard's face might have been rough-cast in an Irondale foundry. "And if I divert our resources, the Republic may die. I know my duty, Doctor. So should you."
"I'm a doctor, dammit. People are dying and I know how to keep them alive!"
"You're also a soldier of the Republic of Nantucket," Hoi-lard said. "What do you think we should do? Send a fleet and a regiment to Meluhha? Because that's what it would take; they're not going to allow us to stick needles into them on our say-so. And then another fleet and more regiments to track down all the places people from Meluhha might have gone? All the Coast Guard and Marine Corps together wouldn't be enough to lock that barn door. The horse is out. That's very bad, and I'm sorry it happened, but it has."
Appalled, Clemens stared. "You're not going to do anything!"
"I'll recommend we step up the vaccination program at every outpost and base, and encourage all the people near 'em to come in and get it," Hollard said. "And just between me and thee, we let Walker know about the epidemic while it was on, and the Tartessians. They've got their own vaccination programs going, according to Intelligence. More we cannot do, not until the war is over. I'm sorry, Justin."
"Sorry," Clemens said. "Thank you very much, sir," he said.
He stood, saluted, and turned on his heel. Behind him Kenneth Hollard dropped his head into his hands, unseen.
Clemens stalked to the tent he'd been assigned. Azzu-ena was busy within, setting out their gear; she looked up at his approach and wordlessly folded him into her embrace.
"You did what you could, beloved," she said softly in his ear.
"I did nothing," he groaned. "I could… I could appeal to the chief, to the Town Meeting, launch a petition…"
"Would they listen, where the general would not?"
A sigh went out of him, and the rigid tension of anger. "No," he said. "They wouldn't… if I was them, I honestly don't know if I'd do anything either… why, dammit, why?" His fist struck the canvas-covered dirt where they sat.
"Ah, beloved, that is something not all the arts of your people or mine can answer," she said softly.
"What can I do?
Her tone became a little sharper: "You will save those lives you can," she. said. "The regimen I shall adopt, remember? Your patients are here. They are those you can assist. You will do them no good if you waste the strength of your spirit brooding on what you cannot do."