Meet me at the gray shingle house with white trim, he grinned to himself, remembering a pre-Event joke.
Not totally accurate; there were a few redbrick buildings with white trim. Nantucket's downtown was almost all pre-1860; the town had been too poor to rebuild after the whaling industry collapsed.
Broad was also crowded, as usual. Not quite as much so as it had been before the new channels and piers were opened up down the harbor, but densely enough; horse-drawn wagons nose to tailboard, a half dozen steam-haulers pulling two or three carts each. It was amazing how much noise a town of only ten thousand people could make, when shod hooves hit pavement en masse. This being rush hour, it also had a fair share of commuter traffic-bicycles, mainly, with the odd steam-hauler-and the sidewalks were thronged.
The breeze flickered the leaves of the big elms overhead, letting down stabs of light that flickered off brass fittings on a horse's harness, polished metal on a steamer's frame. Businesses were opening on both sides of the street; mostly trading firms here, dealing in anything from spices to shelled corn, barrel staves, and salt beef. It paid to be near the docks, if your living depended on the sea.
Martha was waiting under the sign of the Brotherhood of Thieves. That had been a restaurant before the Event, and still was. Heating large quantities of water was a lot easier in big batches at a central location, with the equipment available; that helped account for all the bathhouses and steam laundries, too.
Everything was so much more convenient with electricity, Jared thought, not for the first time; all the alternatives were messy, dangerous, or involved far too much hard work.
The Brotherhood's carved and painted sign showed a man in antique clothing, short devil horns on his forehead; a bag of money rested on one palm and a small chained black woman on the other. Nantucket had been big in the Abolitionist movement and Underground Railroad, back before the Civil War.
Cofflin's long bony face went bleak for a moment, with an expression Robert E. Lee's men might have recognized. At Gettysburg, on the faces of the blue-clad New Englanders storming down from the Little Round Top through a hail of bone-smashing rifle fire and grapeshot to break the Confederacy's last hope at the point of their bayonets. Slavery was all too alive in the Year 10…
"Morning, dear," Martha said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. "I paahked Sam and Jenny with the Macys."
That left Heather and Lucy, and his own eldest two, Marian and Jared Jr. They weren't quite jumping with excitement, but close.
A young man in a blue Guard sailor suit and flat cap with RNCGS Chamberlain on its ribbon came up, slight and swarthy and impeccably neat, cutlass and revolver at his belt. He threw off a crackling salute, then stood there at ease, looking wiry and toughly competent and so damned young…
Marian's idea of course, but there wasn't much point in putting someone in charge of security matters and then refusing to listen to them.
"I'm Petty Officer Martinelli, sir," the young man said. "Madam Councilor."
The chief stuck out his hand; the sailor's was strong and dry, rough with callus. "This is Jared Jr.," he said. "And Marian Deer Dancer Cofflin. And.
Martinelli gravely shook hands with Jared Jr. and Marian, then exchanged hugs with Heather and Lucy.
"These two have been getting me in trouble for years, sir," Martinelli said. "Imps of Satan, as the commodore puts it."
"Only our moms can call us that. Petty Officer," Lucy said loftily. Heather stuck out her tongue, and then all three grinned.
Jared nodded, suppressing a sigh. At least looking after the kids made a face-saving excuse for having a hand-holder planted on him.
"Well, make yourself useful, young man," Martha said briskly, handing over one of the suitcases.
Those and the picnic baskets were juggled from hand to hand. At least I don't have to live in a cocoon of Secret Service agents and publicity flaks, Jared thought thankfully. Even so, this term is the last.
Steamship Wharf was even more crammed than Broad Street above it, with ships two-deep on both sides where the ferries had docked before the Event and more waiting their turns out in the Great Harbor or heading down toward the new piers. Cargo-handlers and windlass-worked cranes labored overtime as bales and nets swung through the air. The smells got stronger here, too, fish from the drying sheds, whale from the rendery further southeast where a black plume of smoke tattered against the sky, tar and tarred wood, canvas, salt. A steam tug was pulling a three-master out into the harbor and up toward the dogleg passage to the sea, its paddles thrashing foam white against the blue water and sending a cloud of gulls skyward at the shrill scream of its whistle.
"The Barbee" Martha said, looking at the big square-rigger; she had an encyclopedic memory Jared envied, almost as good as a priestess of Moon Woman. "Clearing for Westhaven, Captain Williamson commanding, under charter to Stock and Rains Exports."
"What lading?" Jared asked. It was a good idea to keep track of things like that.
"Salt cod, two hundred and fifty tons of it," she said. "That we're not short of, and won't be."
Jared nodded; they'd already taken measures-minimum net-mesh sizes, quotas, a ban on dragging and drift nets-to make sure it stayed that way later. Martha went on:
"Let's see… spools of cotton thread, air compressors and pneumatic rock drills for the copper mines on Anglesy and the coal mines at Irondale and that new tin shaft in Cornwall; drill bits, ditto, blasting powder, ditto. Four uniflow twenty-five-horsepower steam engines from Seahaven Engineering, treadle sewing machines, glassware from the Cape Cod works, gearing, a gear-cutter, miscellaneous manufactured goods-needles, scissors, shovels, that sort of thing. Coffee, cocoa beans and manufactured chocolate, chili peppers, sugar, kill-devil rum, cochineal dye, dye-wood, indigo, Shang silk, mahogany and ebony, flamewood planks, jadeite, parakeets, furs."
Jared nodded, conscious of the children soaking it in. It seemed every kid on the Island wanted to be a merchant venturer or explorer these days, the way they'd wanted to be astronauts or fossil-hunters when he was a boy back in the early sixties.
It certainly beats wanting to be rap stars, he thought with an inward chuckle. Hard and dangerous as it was, there were aspects of the post-Event world he preferred, as a parent.
A deck crew were heaving on a line aboard the Barbee, roaring out in unison:
"We will sing to every port of land
Which ever yet was known,
We will bring back gold and silver, mates
When we return to home!
And we'll make our courtships flourish, mates
When we arrive on shore-
And when our money is all gone…
We'll plow the seas for more!"
Neayoruk, Ian Arnstein thought, as the ship that had carried him from Troy efficiently struck her sails and bent home the towrope a small galley tossed her. He pushed down the continual gut chill of fear, pushing his spectacles back up his nose and forcing himself to study the scene around him with a scholar's curiosity.
Well, it's a bit like New York. A lot more like a scaled down Victorian Liverpool, with Mediterranean accents.
The resemblance was heightened by the weather, gray and chill with a drizzling rain-not typical for southern Greece, but common enough in winter. He pulled the raw-wool cloak tighter about his shoulders and shivered slightly.