Free On the Oceans of Eternity by S. M. Stirling

American teenagers. Or Nantucketers, to be more accurate. The melting pot was bubbling away merrily around here, of which he heartily approved, but not all the seasoning came from the local shelves.
    The pack of them took off, with the dogs bouncing around them. The door banged shut, and the sound of children’s feet and voices faded down the brick sidewalk.
    “Sorry,” he said to his two guests as he led them down the hallway.
    Sam Macy grinned and shook his head. “Heck, I’ve got five of my own, Jared.”
    Emma Carson smiled politely—it didn’t reach her eyes, which were the same pale gray as her short hair—and accompanied the two men into the sitting room. The Chiefs House had been a small hotel before the Event, and long before that a whaling skipper’s mansion, back in the glory days of Nantucket’s pre-Civil War supremacy in the baleen and boiled-blubber trades. Given a few modifications, that had made it ideal for his new job; among other things, it had a couple of public rooms on the first floor that did fine for meetings, business and quasi-business and the sort of hospitality that someone in his position had to lay on.
    Being chief of police was a lot simpler than being Chief Executive Officer of the Republic of Nantucket, he thought, something that had occurred to him just about every day since the Event landed him with the latter position.
    The meeting room had a fireplace with brass andirons and screen; he took a section of split oak from the basket and flipped it onto the coals. For the rest, it sported the usual decor that antique-happy Nantucket had had back when it was a tourist town: oval mahogany table and chairs, sideboy and armoire, mirrors, flowered Victorian wallpaper, pictures of whaling ships. He felt a small glow of pride at the thought that by now anything here could be replaced from the Island’s own workshops, at need; and there were souvenirs dropped off by Marian and a dozen other Islander skippers. A wooden sword edged with shark teeth, a three-legged Iberian idol, a boar’s-tusk helmet plumed I with a horse’s mane dyed scarlet ...
    One of the paintings was post-Event, of him signing the Treaty of Alliance with Stonehenge in the background.
    Not Stonehenge. The Great Wisdom. That was a better name, for a temple still whole and living. And O’Hallahan left out the rain halfway through the ceremony, and all the umbrellas. And the Grandmothers looked a lot more scruffy than that—opinionated old biddies—and the Sun People war chiefs were scowling, not smiling — God-damned gang of thugs—and a lot of them looked pretty beaten-up, still bandaged from the Battle of the Downs. And Marian would eat kittens before she’d look that self-consciously Stern & Noble. Oh, well... Washington probably didn’t stand up when he crossed the Delaware, either.
    People needed legends. Nations were built on them, as much as on plowland and factories, or gunpowder and ships.
    The oil lanterns over the mantelpiece were quite functional now, too, and he lit one with a pine splinter from the fire before joining the others at the table. Martha came in with a tray bearing cookies, a silver pot of hot chocolate, and cups. She set it down and sat, opening her files; she was General Secretary of the Executive Council, and one of the Oceanic University directors, as well as his wife since the Year 1. She’d been a librarian at the Athenaeum before the Event, back when he was police chief—Navy swabby and fisherman before that, to her Wellesley and amateur archaeologist.
    Odd, he thought happily. Beer-and-hamburger vs. wine-and-quiche. It had turned out to be a good match. She was still rail-thin despite bearing two children and helping raise four, a few more wrinkles and more gray in the seal-brown hair, a long slightly horselike face on the same model as his own. And we make a good team.
    The necessary greetings went around, few and spare as local custom dictated. “Ayup, business,” Cofflin