Breakthroughs

by Harry Turtledove

  “Never mind that.” Crowder pointed back to the oil slick. “Let’s get over it and pound that boat to death. I’ll want half the ash cans we throw down there fused for a hundred and fifty feet, the other half for two-fifty.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Sturtevant said, and repeated back the order. No back talk now; his thoughts and Crowder’s were running down the same track.

  Like any destroyer, the Ericsson was an agile vessel. She quickly returned to the floating oil. Into the water splashed the new salvo of depth charges.

  Explosions underwater once more roiled the surface of the sea. Enos stood at his gun, ready to pound away at the submarine if she had to surface in a hurry. He was also ready for disappointment; the submersible had tricked the destroyer before. More oil came to the surface, and air bubbles, and bits of wreckage swept up by the bubbles.

  The men at the depth-charge projector cheered and beat their fists against its metal sides. “If he’s shamming this time, he’s a better actor than any Booth ever born,” Lieutenant Crowder shouted. “Set some for two-fifty again, Sturtevant, and some for an even hundred. If we’ve hurt that boat bad enough, it’ll have to surface. Hop to it, you men.”

  Hop to it they did. Depth charges rained into the Atlantic. With a kill so close, Crowder fired them off with reckless abandon. If the Ericsson didn’t sink the submarine, she’d be all but defenseless against it. George caressed the curved metal of the one-pounder’s trigger as if it were his wife’s curved flesh. “Come on,” he muttered. “Come on, you son of a whore.”

  And, like a broaching whale, up the submarine came. She rose bow-first, and was plainly in desperate straits. No sooner had the boat reached the surface than she heeled over onto her side and began to sink once more. Though it was more nearly horizontal than vertical, an officer came out of the conning-tower hatch and threw something into the water: the boat’s papers in a weighted sack, George supposed.

  He fired a ten-round clip of one-pounder shells at the enemy officer. One struck home; the officer’s head exploded into red fog. The fellow—he was a Rebel, for he wore dark gray trousers, not Royal Navy blue—tumbled into the sea. A moment later, the submersible sank, this time for good.

  Carl Sturtevant pounded George on the back. “Good shooting, snapping turtle,” he bawled in Enos’ ear. “You see the name on the boat there?”

  “Bon-something,” George said. “She rolled over too damn fast to get more than just a glimpse.”

  “Bonefish, had to be,” Sturtevant said. “There’s swarms of ’em in C.S. waters; no wonder they’d name a boat after ’em.”

  “We sent it to the boneyard, by God,” Enos answered. Solemnly, the two men shook hands.

  Cincinnatus wished he were driving his truck. Inside the cab of the rumbling, snorting White machine, nobody was watching him. Here in Covington, he wished he had eyes in the back of his head, and one on each side, too. Did that fellow with the gray mustache waiting for the trolley belong to Luther Bliss’ Kentucky State Police? Was that redhead in overalls a member of the Confederate underground that kept on doing its best to disrupt Kentucky’s return to the USA? When he got back into the colored part of town, he wondered whether the woman hawking apples reported to Apicius or some other Red cell leader. All those groups were intently interested in keeping an eye on him.

  And things weren’t simple, either. The colored woman selling apples might have reported to Luther Bliss, or even to the Confederate diehards. Cincinnatus had worked with them; other Negroes could, too. For that matter, white Reds could work with black Reds. Maybe none of those people, nor any others he passed on the street, was interested in him at all. He hoped none of those people was interested in him at all. He had trouble believing it, though.

  Time was when he’d let out a sigh of relief coming up the walk to his house. When he was home with Elizabeth and little Achilles, nothing could bother him. That was what he’d thought then.

  Now…As he went up the wooden steps onto his front porch, his eyes automatically dropped to look at the boards right in front of the door. There was nothing to see. He and Elizabeth had both worked hard to get rid of every trace of Tom Kennedy’s blood. No, there was nothing to see. But he knew the blood was there.

  What he didn’t know was who had blown off a big chunk of Kennedy’s head. He had next to no chance of finding out, either, because everyone thought he was in someone else’s pocket and so didn’t want to give him the time of day. But if he didn’t find out who’d murdered the Confederate diehard and why, whoever it was might decide he needed killing, too. Since he didn’t know whom in particular to worry about, he had to worry about everybody, which got wearing.

  Elizabeth had got home ahead of him. She must have seen him coming, for she opened the door as he was reaching for the knob. Out toddled Achilles, a big smile on his face. “Dada!” he said, grabbing Cincinnatus around the leg. “Dada!”

  “Sounds more like a real word now,” Cincinnatus said, leaning forward over his son to kiss his wife. “Not jus’ babble, babble, babble, way it used to be.”

  Then Achilles tugged on his trouser leg and spoke imperiously: “Up!”

  Laughing, Cincinnatus lifted him. He was a lot lighter than crated rifles and munitions, and there was only the one of him, not unending loads in the back of the truck. When Cincinnatus remarked on that, Elizabeth snorted. “May only be the one,” she said, “but it sure enough seems like there’s about a hundred an’ ten of him sometimes.”

  Cincinnatus carried the toddler into the house. He paused in the front hall and sniffed appreciatively. “What smells so good?”

  “That beef tongue I bought at the butcher’s the other day,” his wife answered. “Your mother threw it in the pot with taters an’ onions while she was watching Achilles. And I’ve got some string beans and salt pork cookin’ up in there, too.”

  “I knew I married you for some reason,” Cincinnatus said. Elizabeth stuck out her tongue at him. When she turned to go into the kitchen, he swatted her lightly on the backside. They both laughed.

  Supper proved to be as good as it smelled, which wasn’t easy. Afterwards, happily replete, Cincinnatus played with Achilles while Elizabeth cleaned up in the kitchen. Achilles liked chasing a little rubber football. Whenever he tried to kick it, he fell on his bottom. He thought that was part of the fun.

  After a while, he tried something different. Cincinnatus had been tossing the ball for him to chase. He went and got it and did his best to throw it back. It went up in the air and bounced off his head. As far as he was concerned, that was pretty damn funny, too.

  While he got the ball and tried again to throw it to Cincinnatus, his father laughed and said, “I wonder if that’s how the Yankees got the notion of throwin’ the ball forwards when they play football.” In the Confederate States, passes toward the other side’s goal line were against the rules. Football in the United States, though, permitted forward passes that were hurled from at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage.

  When Elizabeth finished the dishes, Cincinnatus lighted a cigar (a lousy cigar—tobacco had gone downhill since Kentucky’s forcible separation from the CSA) and read the evening newspaper Elizabeth had—with the white lady’s permission—brought home from one of the houses she cleaned. As usual, the paper claimed extravagant U.S., German, and even Austrian victories. Had a quarter of what the papers claimed been true, the forces of the Quadruple Alliance would have conquered the world ten times over.

  Someone knocked on the door. Cincinnatus and Elizabeth both looked up in alarm. Not so long before, Tom Kennedy had knocked on the door like that—and died on the doorstep a moment later. Was it a neighbor wanting to borrow some molasses, or was it a ruse to get Cincinnatus to open the door and expose himself to someone crouched in the dark with a rifle?

  Only one way to find out. “Who is it?” Cincinnatus asked warily. Before the war, he would have opened the door without asking. Before the war, the door might well have been open anyhow on a warm s
pring night, or Elizabeth and he might have been sitting out on the front porch.

  A deep voice answered: “It sure as hell ain’t the Easter bunny, and it ain’t Father Christmas, neither.”

  Cincinnatus opened the door. There stood Apicius, who was almost certainly the best barbecue cook in the USA. He might have been the best barbecue cook in the CSA, too, but the competition was stiffer there. As fit his trade, the big black man was big in all dimensions. Solid muscle lay under his fat. “You better come in,” Cincinnatus said. “I don’t reckon this is no social call.”

  “And it ain’t,” Apicius said, squeezing past him. “I ain’t here on my business. I’m here on the business of the workers and peasants of the state of Kentucky.” His chuckle was wheezy. “And why ain’t you surprised?”

  “Can’t imagine,” Cincinnatus answered, letting the cook precede him down the hall and into the front room. Apicius and Elizabeth greeted each other. Then she took Achilles back to the bedroom. As far as Cincinnatus was concerned, the less she involved herself in affairs of politics and the various undergrounds with which he was entangled, the better.

  “You got the fine start to a family here,” Apicius said, and nodded at his own words. “Need yourself some more young uns, but that’ll come, that’ll come.”

  “You didn’t come over here to jaw about my family,” Cincinnatus said. “Nothin’s gonna pry you away from the barbecue pit if it ain’t important.”

  “That’s a fact,” Apicius said. “You never was a fool, Cincinnatus.”

  “Yeah, go on and baste me with that big old long-handled brush o’ yours,” Cincinnatus said. “Then you put me over the fire an’ turn me on the spit.”

  Apicius laughed, but he quickly sobered. “All right. I won’t waste your time. I won’t waste my time. What I got to know is this: whose man is you? I can talk with you if you is my man. I can talk with you if you is Tom Kennedy’s man. I—”

  “You know what happened to him,” Cincinnatus broke in, his voice harsh.

  “I know what. I dunno who done it, and I wish I did. But he still have folks left on his side.” Apicius waved a big, thick-fingered hand, as if to make Cincinnatus’ interruption disappear. “I can even talk with you if you is Luther Bliss’ man.”

  Cincinnatus interrupted again: “I ain’t, but you’d be a fool to talk with me if I was. You don’ know how dangerous that Bliss is.”

  “Hell I don’t,” Apicius said. “Ain’t no law says the forces of reaction can’t have people on their side who know what they’s doin’. But I can talk with you if you is Bliss’ man. Have to watch what I say, but I can talk. But if I don’t know whose man you is, Cincinnatus, how can I talk with you? I say somethin’, how do I know who hears it?”

  Apicius’ point made perfectly good sense. Of all the factions still struggling in Kentucky, Cincinnatus had more sympathy for the Reds than for any other—the Reds were, after all, his own people. But a man who’d been struggling to reach what passed for the upper stratum of black society before the war didn’t completely sympathize with the Reds’ leveling aspirations, either.

  The other side of the coin was that, if Apicius didn’t like the answer Cincinnatus gave him, no insurance company in the world would put a nickel on his life. With a sigh, Cincinnatus said, “I never wanted to be nothin’ but my own man. If that ain’t good enough for you, don’t talk with me at all—’cept to say thanks when I buy me some ribs.”

  Apicius sighed, too. “You know too goddamn much to be your own man and nobody else’s. You is mixed up in this. Can’t get yourself unmixed, any more’n you can take the sugar out of the coffee once it’s in.”

  That was probably true, too. Cincinnatus was about to say so when another knock came from the front of the house. Apicius’ had been ordinary. This one was brisk, authoritative. Whoever was out there expected to be let in right away, with no backtalk from anybody.

  “Who?” Apicius whispered.

  “Don’t know,” Cincinnatus whispered back. Apicius’ hand went to a trouser pocket: a pistol in there, no doubt. Cincinnatus wished he had one, too. For the second time that evening, he went to the door and called, “Who is it?”

  “Queen of the May,” the man outside answered.

  Everyone was giving smart answers tonight. Cincinnatus opened the door for Luther Bliss, wondering if he’d get caught in the cross fire between the chief of the Kentucky State Police and Apicius. A glance over his shoulder told him the Red leader had that pistol out and ready. But then, to his amazement, Apicius lowered it. “Evenin’, Luther,” he said.

  “Evenin’, Apicius, you damn Red,” Bliss answered amiably. Cincinnatus stared from one of them to the other. They both laughed at him. Pointing to Apicius, Luther Bliss said, “I know who this son of a bitch is. I know what he stands for. Because I know that, he doesn’t worry me too much. I can handle him—reckon he thinks the same about me. You, though, Cincinnatus—who the hell are you? Who are you really working for?”

  Apicius laughed again, louder this time. He pointed to Cincinnatus. “I come over here to find out the same damn thing, Luther—and I don’t care if you’s here or not. He still could be one o’yours.”

  “Only man I work for is Lieutenant Straubing, who bosses my truck unit,” Cincinnatus said. “I ain’t nobody’s man but my own.” He looked from Apicius to Luther Bliss and back again. One thing was obvious: neither of them believed him.

  In the mid-Atlantic, Sylvia Enos read in the Boston Globe as she rode the trolley to work, the USS Ericsson engaged and sank the CSS Bonefish, a submersible that had for some time tormented shipping in the region. The Bonefish had previously torpedoed the SS Teton, a civilian steamship in U.S. service. Our bold Navy has valiantly swept away yet another vicious scourge of the sea.

  That was George’s ship. If they’d fought a Confederate submarine, he’d surely been in danger. She folded the paper and leaned back in the uncomfortable seat. He was all right now. And with this Bonefish sunk, he’d keep on being all right a while longer. Now that she hadn’t seen him for a few months, her anger was cooling. He might have wanted to be unfaithful, but he hadn’t actually gone and done it.

  And he was all right. Thank you, God, Sylvia thought. Next to that simple fact, the war news on the front page, the mutinies in the French Army and all the rest of it, faded to insignificance. The Ericsson had fought again, and nothing had happened to George. The world looked good.

  When the trolley came to her stop, Sylvia left the Globe on the seat for whoever might want it. She hoped the next person who picked it up would find as much good news as she had, and not a name he recognized in the black-bordered casualty lists.

  She had a spring in her step as she went into the canning plant. It was usually missing in the morning—especially these days, when she had to get George, Jr., off to kindergarten and Mary Jane to Mrs. Dooley’s before she could come to work.

  She was humming a song about coal conservation when she punched in. The words were as stupid as those of most wartime patriotic songs, but she couldn’t get the tune out of her mind. Save your coal for me—Always!/ Says the sailor on the sea—Always! She shook her head in annoyance—not just a stupid song but irritating, too, because it would not leave her alone.

  Mr. Winter, the foreman, followed the war news closely, as befit a veteran wounded in the service of his country. “That’s your husband’s destroyer that sank that Rebel submersible, isn’t it, Mrs. Enos?” he called as she walked to the machine that put labels on cans of mackerel.

  “Yes, Mr. Winter, George is on the Ericsson, that’s right,” she answered.

  “Thought so,” the foreman said, puffing on his cigar. “Well, good for him, by God. I’m glad he came through that safe. Those submersibles are things we didn’t have to worry about in my day. I’ll tell you something else, too: I’m not sorry to have missed them.” He patted his gimpy leg. “I just wish the Rebs had missed me.”

  “I’m sure of that, Mr. Winter,” Sylvia said. When sh
e got to her machine, she checked the paste reservoir, which was full, and the label hopper, which turned out to be almost empty. She quickly filled it. That would have been just what she needed: to get caught by surprise fifteen minutes into her shift, and have to hold up the line while she fed the hopper. Mr. Winter would have made some not so polite conversation with her about that.

  Isabella Antonelli came hurrying up to the machine next door. “I saw in the paper—your husband’s ship, it sank a submarine,” she said. “This is good news. Better news would be for the dannata war to end, but this is good news for you.”

  Before Sylvia could do anything more than nod, the line, which had shut down for shift changeover, started again with the usual assortment of groans and creaks from the belts and gearing. Into the machine went the first brightly tinned can. Sylvia pulled a lever. Three lines of paste flowed onto the can. She took a step and pulled a second lever. On went the label, with the colorful picture of the improbably tunalike mackerel on it. Another step, a third level, and the can went on its way. She went back and did it again…and again…and again.

  The day went smoothly. She didn’t have to think about what she was doing. The labels didn’t jam in the hopper once during the whole shift. That was the machine’s Achilles’ heel, the most common problem that could shut down the line and bring down the wrath of Mr. Winter.

  Not today. Sylvia still felt almost alarmingly fresh as she clocked out and hurried to the trolley stop to catch the next car to George, Jr.’s, school. The streetcar was right on time. A man with a white Kaiser Bill mustache stood up so she could sit down.