Off on the other side of the big room Swindapa's voice rose and fell musically: "It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeconee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across four tumbling, squealing cubs-like you little ones-and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived."

The children yipped and growled, pretending to be wolf cubs, and then settled down for the rest of the story. Jared looked at his watch.

"Speaking of Ron, we ought to duck over to Seahaven; he wants to show us some of his newest toys," the Chief said. "Swindapa? Martha?"

Swindapa shook her head. "I'm not back on duty until tomorrow, Doc Coleman says," she said, looking up and holding her place with a finger while the children tugged at her. "I want to find out what happens in this story too."

"And I'm going to go over these tax proposals for the Warrant," Martha said. "See you two at dinner."

"See you then," Alston replied, "and next Friday it's our turn to have y'all over."

They took their sou'westers and slickers from pegs in the front hall and ducked out into the steady drizzle. The streets were fairly busy; Nantucket was a working town now and didn't let a little water slow things down on a weekday afternoon. A hauler went by as they turned onto Center Street, and a string of horse-drawn wagons passed in the opposite direction. Cofflin nodded at them.

"New business," he said. "Taking down spare houses, then shipping 'em out to Long Island or Providence Base and putting 'em back up."

"Sensible," Marian said.

Nantucket's year-round population had increased, over ten thousand now, but there were still empty houses, and everything had to be built from scratch in the outports, as they were coming to be called.

They turned onto Main and waved to Joseph Starbuck, who was going into the Pacific Bank at the head of the street. Cofflin shook his head as they eeled through the dense crowds amid an odor of damp wool and fish from carts delivering to the eateries.

"Every time I see that place, I remember my first speech, up on the bank steps," he said. "The night of the Event, when we had all those lights in the sky and everyone was panicking. I might have myself, if I hadn't had to calm them down. And then the stars came back, and I thought everything was all right… until I noticed where the moon was."

"Same with me," Alston said. "It was the stars did it."

They turned right at Candle Street where it led into Washington, running southeast parallel to the line of the harbor and back from the new dredged channels and solid-fill piers. A leafless forest of mast and spar and an occasional smokestack showed over the tops of the buildings to their left; pre-Event boutiques converted to sail-lofts and chandlers' shops and warehouses, with a crowd dressed mostly in seagoing oilskins, with sweaters and rough pants and seaboots below that. They stopped for a moment while a dozen people manhandled a huge sausage of canvas onto a cart, and listened to a quartermaster dickering over the price of twenty-five barrels of salt beef.

"Salt whale, more like," the quartermaster said, her face going red. "Sell it to the fucking Marines, Andy! Four-fifty is piracy, nothing but. Three seventy-five a cask, and I want a written warranty."

"Three seventy-five? The staves are worth more than that. Have a heart, McAndrews, have I ever stiffed you before? Look, let's-"

Cofflin grinned as they walked on. "You know, that's something I don't regret," he said. "That we're making our own history again, instead of living off selling the image of it. The way this town was put under glass for the tourists always sort of got me, before."

"Not anymore," Alston said. "Smelling's believing."

The Chief gave a small snort. It was a little thick down here, especially since the rendery and tanneries had been moved out to this part of town. Fish, the collecting tanks for the offal-useful for fertilizer- and half a dozen crafts added to the aroma.

The buildings on their right were mostly post-Event, factories and workships in big timber-built shingled boxes, many with tall brick smokestacks, their plumes of woodsmoke adding a thick tang to the air. They passed signs: Washington mills sailcloth and cordage and zero main sewing machines; that one had a cart at the loading bay, with crates of its treadle-powered wonders being moved onto it-they were turning into a major export. Through the open bay doors they caught a glimpse of belts and shafting and whirring, clattering lathes and drill presses.

EAGLE EYE KNITTING, DON'S MARINE STEAM ENGINES AND GEARING, smiths and carpenters and plumbers and more; merchants' offices, SUN ISLAND SHIPPING, CHAPMAN AND CHARNES, TELENATRO AND FELDMAN… then the turnoff to the new shipyards on their left. That was where the Chamberlain was under repair in the spanking-new dry dock, and a second was being constructed.

Cofflin's face reflected a sober satisfaction at what his people had accomplished; this was prosperity, as the Year 9 defined it. Hard, demanding work, although God knew any sort of in-town labor was safer and softer than the fisheries. It all put food on the table and clothes on the back. Plus paying to keep civilization alive-schools and police and national defense…

"I'm worried about having Ian out so far," he said. "Missed him more than I anticipated; the man's right smart."

Alston nodded. "But he's doing a fine job where he is," she said. "I couldn't have negotiated that treaty with Babylon, and from the reports"-she'd spent several days reading the backlog as soon as the Chamberlain limped into Nantucket Harbor with her prizes at her heels-"he's building something solid there."

A spell of thoughtful silence, and then Cofflin spoke: "What are our chances, if it does come to an all-out fight?"

"Pretty good, but they'd be better in a few years," Marian said. "Walker and Isketerol both have less technological depth than we do, but they've got more breadth-much bigger populations to draw on, which compensates for the lower productivity. We're starting to pull ahead, though, and soon we'll have stuff that will take them a lot longer to match. Speaking of which, here we are-the magician's lair."

Cofflin snorted. "Let's see what rabbit Ron's pulled out of the hat for us this time."

Seahaven Engineering had started out its post-Event career in a big boat shed down by the end of Washington Street, near the shipyard. Much of the production had moved to a big new plant out by the Bessemer casting plant, but there was still a ceaseless bustle here. It smelled of hot metal, and whale-oil lubricant, and a little of the tingle of ozone from electric welders powered by the wind generators around town.

Jared Cofflin and Marian Alston created a bit of a stir when they walked in together and hung their dripping oilskins on pegs over a trough. A clerk showed them through the long showroom where Islanders and foreign merchants placed orders; through the great, hot, echoing brightness of the main machine shop, lit by sputtering, popping arc lamps high above.

The clerk opened a door, letting the noise of the shop floor into the wooden cubicle where Leaton had his office, and yelled their names over it. Cofflin hid a smile; he'd always liked Ron's management style, too.

The office was as cluttered as ever but bigger-an extension had been added for more bookshelf space, a draftsman's table with the rarity of an electric light. On a desk stood an even greater one-a working computer, under special license from the Town. It would be generations, if ever, before the Islanders could replace any of its components beyond the casing and the on-off switch, but Seahaven had need of it now.