Free Island in the Sea of Time by S. M. Stirling

light-to-medium stuff. There may be more on-island. I’ll start looking.”
    The head of the Nantucket Electric Company cut in: “You made those flanges for us, and some other fairly heavy work. The turbocharger, for instance.”
    “Yup, but I sort of cheated—used the Bridgeport as a vertical lathe with a rotary table.” He looked around. “Forty-eight inches by twenty-nine, machined out of solid five-eighths plate—”
    Cofflin cleared his throat. Leaton flushed and continued:
    “Bottom line, Chief, is that I could make just about anything, including more tools; a lathe is one of the few tools that can make a copy of itself. It’ll be a little awkward without a foundry, but I could make a round bar bed lathe, the Unimat type; it’ll work perfectly well, just not as durable as a cast or forged bed. I’m making a tool cutter of my own right now, or was before this all happened.”
    “Excuse me,” Arnstein cut in. “You’re saying that eventually you could duplicate your operation, and then duplicate it again, and so forth? And that you can do pretty well any metal shape?”
    “Yup,” Leaton said, obviously puzzled. “Give me the metal, and yes. Wasn’t that what I was saying?”
    “You could make, for example, a steam engine?”
    “Well, I do that all the time—little ones, and they’re working scale models. I’ve got machinery that can work to ten-thousandths of an inch, and Watt did it with tolerances of an eighth of an inch. I’ve got a nice set of Weber measuring-gauge blocks, after all. I could turn out, say, a twenty-five-horsepower model in a week, maybe convert an old VW flat-type engine. Need a welder to help me with the boiler . . . maybe use a propane tank . . . but hell, we’ve got half a dozen top-notch welders and some heavy bending rolls. Bit difficult to make really big cylinders without a foundry or casting plant, but I could if you gave me a month or two to tool up. Up to a couple of hundred horsepower. But we don’t have the fuel for many of those. Hell, we can’t keep the town power plant running for more than six months, no matter how we ration, right, Fred?”
    The head of the Electric Company nodded, abstracted; he was making frantic notes.
    Cofflin let out a long sigh. “Well, you’ll need more space than that basement, and more people. Look up anyone with experience, and, hmm, you and Joseph here scout for a building that’ll give you room to expand.”
    He noticed Lisketter scowling. “Ms. Lisketter, what about your artisans?”
    She tapped the edges of the papers in front of her. What are we going to do when we run out of paper? he thought.
    “There are dozens of weavers,” she said. “And . . .”
    Cofflin was surprised at the cogent, well-organized list that followed. He nodded at the end of it. “Good work, Ms. Lisketter. So we’ll be well enough off for clothing when our current stores run out?”
    They’d also have a large surplus of silversmiths and graphic artists. And, thank God, a number of metalworkers, farriers, three genuine blacksmiths; one who specialized in blades, a visitor caught here. Plenty of pottery makers, and there was even a glassblower who’d just moved his studio to the island last year.
    She shook her head. “We don’t have the raw materials. We need flax and wool—cotton if you can get it. I know it’s not our top priority, but . . .”
    Arnstein cleared his throat. “Cotton might be available in the Caribbean or Mexico,” he said. “Flax and wool certainly from Europe.”
    “We could grow flax here—the climate’s right. It’s a useful oilseed as well. We could get the flax seed along with grain from Europe,” Brand said thoughtfully. “Grinding grain might be a problem—”
    “Ayup,” Cofflin said. “Remember the Old Mill? We’ll finally get some use out of the damned tourist trap.”
    There was a chuckle around the table, particularly from the native islanders. The Old Mill was a shingled windmill, kept functional