On the Oceans of Eternity by S. M. Stirling Read Free Book Online Page A

something, wasn’t it?” she said.
    “Damn, I knew we couldn’t keep it under wraps for long. No, not quite that bad,” Kathryn said, and gave the details of Raupasha’s offer. “She is only seventeen, still ...”
    “Ouch,” Vicki Cofflin said. Local politics weren’t her department, thank God, but—“Ouch, ouch, ouch.”
    “Mega-ouchies,” Hollard agreed. “Yeah, Kashtiliash hit the God-damned roof. Akkadian is a great language for swearing in, and he nearly blew out the circuits on the radio set we were using ... I don’t blame him for that, or for suspecting that Ken or the Arnsteins put her up to it.”
    “Yeah. My sympathies.” She hesitated. “How does your brother feel about it?” Kenneth Hollard wasn’t married, except to the Marine Corps. She’d had the odd daydream about him herself....
    This time Kathryn Hollard’s laugh was long and loud. “Oh, he thinks he’s horrified, and he thinks she’s a sort of unofficial kid sister,” she said. “You know how men are.”
    “Ayup. Emotional idiots.”
    A nod. “Well, with some exceptions, some of the time. Kash, for instance.”
    Vicki hestitated again. Damn, but I’ve got a bump of curiosity bigger than the Elephant’s Child, she thought. You couldn’t pick up a copy of People magazine these days to find out details, either. The monthly Ur Base Gazette was a feeble substitute.
    “He’s not exactly what I’d have expected, for the son of one of these absolute monarchs,” she said cautiously. “Of course, I’ve only met him a couple of times. Lots of ... ah ... presence.” They both knew what she meant; a maleness that blazed.
    Kathryn grinned. “Oh, yes indeed; smart, too, and likes new ideas. Did you know that his family have run Babylonia for nearly four hundred years? They foster their kids out with their kinfolk who stayed in the highlands, and then put them in the House of Succession—sort of like a strict boarding school, with other grandees’ kids, where they get used to hard work and people saying ‘no.’ Not a bad system.”
    Vicki nodded. She couldn’t imagine marrying a local herself, King or no King, but tastes differed. “What about your kids, if you don’t mind me asking?”
    “Oh, we agreed on a Nantucket tutor, and a spell on the Island with my relatives.” She sighed. “Not that I’m going to have time to be pregnant until this damned war is over, probably.”
    “Yeah, it is inconvenient,” Vicki said. She’d been thinking about a family of her own ... False dawn showed in the east; time to get back to work. “Best of luck, then.”
    “It’s all such a monumental distraction from the real war,” Hollard said.
    “Or at least our part of it,” Vicki replied.
    Hollard chuckled. “Yeah. At least we don’t have the chiefs worries, or the commodore’s.”
     
    “Good to find you on this side of the pond, Ron,” Marian Alston-Kurlelo said.
    It was also good to be full, dry, dressed in a warm kaftan and slippers instead of a sopping uniform and wet boots, eating something because of the way it tasted, not because you were so hungry that hardtack and jerky went down easy.
    “That’s why I dropped by,” she went on. “Didn’t want to pass up a chance of settling some details with you in person.”
    She looked down at her half-finished dessert and pushed it away with a sudden memory of what her older sisters had looked like after forty-odd years of chitterlings, ham hocks, and sweet-potato pie. Swindapa snagged the dish and began to finish it off; it was baked apples with honey and cream, one of her favorites. They were sitting in the snug, a booth by the fire, with Councilor Ron Leaton and the manager of the Irondale Works, Erica Stark. She was a competent-looking woman in her late thirties, with the pale bony face and faded blue eyes of an old-stock Nantucketer. Leaton was as abstracted as ever. despite more gray in his light-brown hair and beard. The long pianist’s fingers with their ground-in