Breakthroughs gw-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Lieutenant Crowder was lecturing the crew of the depth-charge projector, which meant he was also lecturing George Enos, who, standing nearby at the one-pounder, could hardly escape the officer’s words. “We must maintain our vigilance,” Crowder declared, as if someone had suggested that the whole crew of the USS Ericsson should lie down and go to sleep. “The Confederate States may be out of the fight, but the Royal Navy is still in it.”

  Carl Sturtevant’s sigh was visible but not audible. Out of the side of his mouth, he muttered, “Good thing he gives us the news, ain’t it, Enos?” George’s nod was half amused, half annoyed.

  Crowder didn’t notice. When he was talking, he didn’t notice anything but the sound of his own voice. “And we must remain alert against submersibles from the C.S. Navy even now,” he said. “Some of them may have defective wireless gear, and so be ignorant that their government has at last given up its hopeless fight. And others may claim ignorance and seek to strike one last blow against the United States in spite of the armistice now in force.”

  It was Enos’turn to roll his eyes. Sturtevant’s answering snort was almost as quiet as his sigh had been. As far as George was concerned, the lieutenant hadn’t a clue about how to keep the men wary. Talking about the Royal Navy was a decent idea, because England was still in the war. Talking about imaginary Confederates who wouldn’t surrender, though, made no sense at all. And, if the sailors decided Crowder didn’t make sense about one thing, they were apt to decide he didn’t make sense about anything, and so not keep an eye peeled for the limeys.

  On second thought, George decided it didn’t matter so much. Most of the depth-charge projector crew, from everything he could see, had already concluded Lieutenant Crowder didn’t make sense about anything. They’d keep an eye on the Atlantic anyhow, for the sake of their own skins.

  After a while, the all-clear sounded. Crowder hurried away from the depth-charge projector as if he had a beautiful blonde waiting under the covers back in his cabin. Thinking about a beautiful blonde made George think about Sylvia. “Christ, I want to go home,” he said.

  Hearing the longing in this voice, Carl Sturtevant burst out laughing. “You want to kick your wife’s feet out from under her, is what you want.”

  “What the devil’s wrong with that?” Enos said. “It’s been a hell of a long time.”

  “Some ships, you could cornhole some pretty sailor if you really felt the lack,” Sturtevant said. “The Ericsson’s pretty good about that, though-pretty careful to make sure it doesn’t happen, I mean.”

  “I should hope so,” George said. “I don’t want a pretty sailor. Hell, I don’t think there is such a thing as a pretty sailor. I want to go to bed with my wife.”

  “I wouldn’t mind-” The petty officer stopped abruptly. He’d probably been about to say something like, I wouldn’t mind going to bed with your wife, either. He was smart not to have said that. Giving a sailor of higher rank a fat lip would have got George in a lot of trouble, but he would have done it without hesitation. After a couple of seconds, Sturtevant tried again. “I wouldn’t mind going to bed with anything female. Like you said, it’s been a hell of a long time.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean.” Enos remembered that day along the Cumberland when he’d been about to go to bed with a colored whore for no better reason than that he was half drunk and more than half bored. As he’d been going from the ramshackle saloon to the even more ramshackle crib next to it, the Confederates had blown his river monitor out of the water. If he’d been aboard the Punishment, odds were he wouldn’t be breathing now.

  He drew a mop and bucket and started swabbing a stretch of deck. By now, he understood perfectly the pace he had to use to keep passing petty officers happy. Once, when he fell below that pace, one of those worthies barked at him. Even then, he had an answer ready: “Sorry, Chief. I guess I was paying too much attention to the ocean out there.”

  “Yeah, well, pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing,” the veteran sailor growled.

  “Aye aye,” George said. But he noted that, as the petty officer paraded down the deck, he made a point of peering out into the Atlantic every few paces. What was he doing, if not trying to spot a periscope? The limeys were still struggling to get freighters from Argentina across the ocean, and their submersibles still prowled: Lieutenant Crowder had been dead right about that. They’d have to quit sooner or later, but they hadn’t done it yet.

  That evening, attacking corned beef and sauerkraut, the sailors hashed over what they’d do when the war ended. They’d done that a good many times before, but the talk had a different feel to it now. In the midst of the grapple with the enemy, they’d just been blue-skying it, and they’d known as much. Now, when the war would end in days-weeks at the most-life after it seemed much more real, and planning for it much more urgent.

  George was one of the lucky ones: he had no doubts. “As soon as they let me out of the Navy, I find me a fishing boat and go back to sea,” he said. “Only thing I’ll have to worry about is hitting a drifting mine. Otherwise, things’ll be just like they were before the war for me.”

  “Before the war,” somebody down the table echoed. “Jesus, I can’t hardly remember there ever was such a time.”

  “Christ, what a load of horse manure, Dave,” somebody else said. “You were here on the Ericsson, same as me.”

  Dave was unabashed. “Give me a break, Smitty. All we were doing here before the war was getting ready to fight the damn thing. Wasn’t hardly different than what we’re doing now, except nobody was trying to kill us back then.”

  “Nobody but the chiefs, anyways,” Smitty said, which got a laugh. He went on, “We stay in the Navy, what the hell you think we’ll be doing? Getting ready to fight the next war, that’s what.”

  “Well, what’s a Navy for?” Dave returned. “You better be ready to fight if you get into a war. Otherwise, you lose. Our dads and grandpas had their noses rubbed in that one.”

  “Look at the clever fellow,” Smitty said. “He learned about Remembrance Day in school. Give him a hand, boys. Ain’t he smart?”

  “Ahh, shut up,” Dave said. Since he was half again as big as Smitty, the other sailor did.

  Changing the subject looked like a good idea. George said, “Wonder how long it’ll be till the next war.”

  “Depends.” Dave, it seemed, had opinions about everything. “If we forget what we have an Army and Navy for, probably won’t be long at all. That’s what we did after the War of Secession, and Jesus, did we pay for it.”

  “We do that, half of us’ll be on the beach,” Smitty said, which turned things back toward what the sailors would do after the war.

  Then somebody said, “No Democrat would ever be that stupid. We’d have to elect Debs or whoever the Socialists put up three years from now.” That touched off a political argument, the Socialist minority loudly insisting they were Americans as good as any others.

  “And better than a lot of people I can think of,” one of them added. “The first thing some of you want to do after the war ends is put the workers and farmers into another one.”

  George asked his question again: “All right, Louie, how long do you think we’ve got till the next one?”

  “If we keep electing Democrats, fifteen years-twenty years, tops,” the Socialist answered. “We finally get wise and put in some people who understand what the class structure and international solidarity really mean, maybe it won’t happen at all. Maybe this’ll be the last war there ever was.”

  “Yeah, and maybe the Pope’s gonna run off with my sister, too,” Dave said. “I tell you, Louie, I ain’t holding my breath on either one.” He got a bigger laugh than Smitty had a couple of minutes before, and preened on account of it.

  Fifteen years. Twenty years, tops. Nobody said peace could last longer than that. Well, Louie had, but even he didn’t sound as if he believed it. No Socialist had ever even come very close to getting elected president. George didn’t see
any reason for that to change soon. If war came when people thought it would, his son would get dragged into it. He didn’t like that for beans. Hell, if war came again in fifteen or twenty years, he might get dragged into it, too. He wouldn’t be an old man. He liked that even less. Wasn’t once enough?

  He didn’t have any duty after supper, so he wrote a letter to Sylvia. If the Ericsson went into port before a supply ship met her, he was liable to get into Boston before the letter did, but that would have to mean England was quitting right away, which didn’t look likely. I sure will be glad to sleep in a bed that doesn’t have one on top of it and another one underneath, he wrote. If they packed us in oil we might be sardines.

  Some of that was exaggeration for dramatic effect. Arrangements aboard a fishing boat were just as cramped, and those aboard the river monitor on which he’d served had been even more crowded. However…I sure will be glad to sleep in a bed that has you in it.

  One of the officers would have to censor the letter before it could leave the destroyer. Most times, George didn’t worry about that. Now he wondered if the fellow, whoever he was, would start breathing a little faster if he read something like that. After a moment, George laughed at himself. The Ericsson had a war complement of better than 130 men. If the censor hadn’t seen anything hotter than what he’d just written, he didn’t know anything about horny sailors’ imaginations.

  He finished the letter, then read it over. He didn’t know about the censor, but he was breathing faster by the time he finished. To wake up in a soft bed with his wife beside him…he couldn’t think of anything better than that. He addressed an envelope and put the letter inside, but didn’t seal the flap. The censor would take care of that. George carried the letter to a collection box and put it in.

  “Hey, Enos, you want to get into a card game?” the Socialist-Louie-called.

  George shook his head. “Go suck in some single guy. I got a wife and two kids at home. Gotta save my money.”

  “You might win,” Louie said.

  “Yeah, I might,” Enos allowed, “but I usually don’t, and that’s why I don’t get into card games much any more.”

  He went back to the bunkroom. He didn’t usually hit the sack till lights-out, but tonight he stripped to his skivvies and lay down. A fan was doing its best to keep the warm, muggy air moving. Its best wasn’t very good; George always woke covered in sweat. But the stuffiness helped him fall asleep fast. He yawned a couple of times and dozed off, smiling as he thought of waking up in bed with Sylvia.

  XIX

  From the conning tower of the Bonefish, Roger Kimball stared gloomily out into the blackness of night on the tropical Atlantic. A million stars hung overhead. The moon’s lantern floated low in the east and spilled a long track of pale yellow light across the dark water. It was as beautiful a seascape as God ever made.

  He was blind to the beauty. That afternoon, the wireless telegraph had picked up orders directing all Confederate submersibles to return to their home ports, as the Confederate States had been forced to seek an armistice from the United States. Ever so reluctantly, he’d shaped course for Habana.

  He’d wondered how the crew would take the news. Most of the sailors had taken it the same way he had: they’d been furious and heartsick at the same time. “God damn it, Skipper, we didn’t lose the war!” Ben Coulter had cried. “It was those stupid Army bastards who went and lost it. Nobody ever licked us. Why do we have to go and quit?” Several other men had shouted profane agreement.

  Since Kimball felt like that, too, he’d had trouble answering. Tom Brearley had done it for him: “If the damnyankees lick us on land, we have to give in. Otherwise, where do we go home?”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” Coulter had answered. “Ain’t had a home but for my boat the past twenty years anyways.”

  Kimball chuckled, remembering the startled expression on his exec’s face, as if Coulter had hit him in the side of the head with a sack full of wet sand. The captain of the Bonefish agreed with the petty officer. For that matter, he still wasn’t sure whether or not the Arkansas farm on which he’d grown up remained in C.S. hands. He hadn’t heard from his mother in a long time. And whether it did or not, he didn’t want to go back. The Navy was his life these days…he hoped.

  Brearley joined him atop the conning tower. The exec stayed silent for several minutes, accurately guessing Kimball did not care for conversation. But Brearley, as happened sometimes, didn’t keep his mouth shut long enough. “Sir, once we get to port, what are they going to do with us?”

  “Don’t know,” Kimball said shortly, hoping the exec would take the hint.

  He didn’t. “The damnyankees are liable to make us cut way back on submarines. We’ve hurt ’em bad; they won’t want to give us the chance to do it again.”

  “Worry about that if it happens.” But Kimball had already started worrying about it. He’d been worrying for weeks, even since word of the first Confederate peace feelers came to his ears. He was liable to end up on the beach, not because of what he wanted but because of what the United States decreed. He enjoyed that idea about as much as the idea of a kick in the balls.

  A fragment of a curse floated up through the open hatch: “-it, we fought the bastards to a draw out here. Hell, ain’t close to fair we have too-”

  Brearley broke into it, as he’d broken into Kimball’s silence: “The Yankees could cripple our Navy for years. They could even-”

  “Shut up.” Now Kimball spoke in a flat, harsh tone: the voice of command. Brearley stared, his face a white oval in the moonlight. He opened his mouth-a dark circle in the white oval. “Shut up, damn you,” Kimball snapped. He pointed off toward the east, where a ship was suddenly visible against the moon’s track.

  He raised binoculars to his eyes. The ship leaped closer. How close? Estimating range at night was as tricky a thing as a submersible skipper could do, but he didn’t think it was more than a couple of miles. And that silhouette, seen against sky and moonlit ocean, was all too familiar.

  “Take it easy, sir,” Brearley said as Kimball stared hungrily toward the ship that steamed along unaware he was anyplace close by. “The war’s over for us.”

  “Shut up,” Kimball said again, now almost absently. “You know what ship that is, Tom? It’s that fucking destroyer that’s given us nothing but trouble since she came out here.”

  “Is it?” Brearley said. “That’s too bad, sir. Shame we didn’t spy her last night instead of now.”

  Kimball went on as if the exec hadn’t spoken: “And do you know what else? I’m going to sink the son of a bitch.”

  “My God, sir!” Brearley burst out. “You can’t do that! If anybody ever found out, they’d hang you. They’d hang all of us.”

  “No doubt about it,” Kimball agreed. “But England’s still in the war. The damnyankees’ll blame it on a limey boat-as long as we can keep our mouths shut. To hell with me if I’m going home with my tail between my legs. I’m going to hit ’em one more lick, and I’m going to make it the best one I know how.”

  “You can’t, sir,” Brearley repeated.

  “Go below, Mr. Brearley,” Kimball said. “I can and I goddamn well will. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to play. You can lay on your bunk and suck your thumb, for all I care.” He leaned close to the younger man. “And if you ever breathe one word of this to anybody, I don’t know what’ll happen to me, but you’re a dead man. You won’t die pretty, either. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brearley whispered miserably.

  “Then go below.” Kimball followed the executive officer down into the stinking steel tube that was the Bonefish’s fighting and living quarters. Brearley headed toward the stern: he really didn’t want any part in what Kimball was about to do. Kimball didn’t care. He was going to do it anyway. In conversational tones, he told the rest of the crew, “Boys, we’ve got the USS Ericsson a couple miles off to starboard. Load fish into tubes number one and two and open the water-tight doors.
I aim to put a couple right in the whore’s engine room.”

  Had the sailors hesitated, they might have made Kimball think twice, too. But they didn’t. After brief, incredulous silence, they let loose with yells and howls so loud, Kimball half feared the Yankees on the destroyer would be able to hear them. He made frantic shushing noises. Discipline returned quickly, discipline and a fierce eagerness for the kill much like his own.

  He took the helm himself, sending a sailor up to the conning tower to watch the destroyer while he made his attack approach. “Give me fifteen knots,” he said. “They’re just lollygagging along. I want to get out in front of them and double back for the firing run.”

  “We’re in the dark quarter of the sea,” Ben Coulter remarked, as much to himself as to Kimball. He grunted in satisfaction. “They’ll never spot us.”

  “They’d damned well better not,” Kimball answered, to which the petty officer nodded. Kimball went on, “We’ll make the firing run coming in at a steep angle, too, so they won’t pick up the reflection of the moon from the paint on the conning tower. And we’ll be going in with the wind at our back, pushing the waves along to help hide our wake in the water.”

  “You don’t want to make the angle too steep, though, Skipper,” Coulter said. “Easy to think it’s smaller than it is, and to miss with your fish on account of it. Don’t want that, not now we don’t.”

  “Not hardly,” Kimball agreed with a dry chuckle. From the bow, a sailor waved to let him know the torpedoes were loaded into the forward tubes. He waved back, wishing he could be two places at the same time: he wanted to be at the helm and up on the conning tower both. He peered through the periscope, which at night was like making love wearing a rubber, for it took away a lot of the intimacy he wanted.

  Despite that annoyance, everything went smooth as a training run in the Gulf of Mexico outside Mobile Bay. The destroyer, which could have left him far behind, kept lazing through the sea. He pulled ahead of the U.S. ship and swung the Bonefish into the tight turn for the firing run. “Bring her down to five knots,” he ordered, not wishing to draw attention to the boat as he closed in.