Breakthroughs

by Harry Turtledove

  “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.

  Like any submarine skipper, he would have made a hell of a pool player, for he was always figuring angles. Here, though, players and balls and even the surface of the table were in constant motion.

  He took his eyes away from the periscope every so often to check the compass for the Bonefish’s true course. Gauging things by eye didn’t work at night—too easy to be wrong on both range and angle. He swung the submersible’s course a couple of degrees more toward the southeast. Ben Coulter had been right: if he was going to do this, he couldn’t afford to miss.

  The lookout on the conning tower called softly down the hatch: “Sir, I reckon we’re inside half a mile of that Yankee bastard.”

  “Thanks, Davis,” Kimball called back. He’d just made the same calculation. Having the lookout confirm the range made him feel good. Inside six hundred yards…Inside five hundred…Inside four hundred…“Fire one!” he shouted. If he couldn’t hit the Ericsson now, he never would.

  Clangs and hisses and the rush of water into the emptied tube announced the torpedo was on its way. Even in moonlight, Kimball had no trouble making out the white track of air bubbles the fish left behind it. Maybe somebody on the destroyer’s deck also spotted it. If he did, though, he was too slow to do anything about it. Less than half a minute after the Bonefish launched it, the torpedo slammed into the U.S. warship just forward of amidships.

  “Hit!” Kimball screamed, and the sailors howled out Rebel yells. The Ericsson staggered on her course like a poleaxed steer. Water foamed as it poured into the hole better than two hundred pounds of guncotton had blown in her flank. Already she was listing to port and appreciably lower in the water than she had been a moment before.

  Up on the conning tower, Davis the lookout whooped for joy. “We-uns is goin’ home, but not them Yankees!”

  Taking his time now, Kimball lined up the second shot with painstaking precision. “Fire two!” he shouted, and the torpedo leaped away. It broke the destroyer’s back and almost tore the stricken ship in two. She went to the bottom hardly more than a minute later. Kimball scanned the sea for boats. Spotting none, he grunted in satisfaction. “Resume our course for Habana,” he said, and stepped away from the periscope. “We’ve done our job here.”

  Ben Coulter spoke earnestly to the sailors: “Remember, boys, this ain’t one where you get drunk and brag on it in a saloon. You do that, they’re liable to put a rope around your neck. Hell, they’re liable to put a rope around all our necks.”

  “You do want to bear that in mind,” Kimball agreed. He wished he could tell Anne Colleton. If she ever heard he’d gone right on killing Yankees even after the armistice, she’d probably drag him down and rape him on the spot. Warmth flowed to his crotch as he thought about that. But then, slowly, regretfully, he shook his head. He didn’t think with his crotch, or hoped he didn’t. If she found out what he’d done here, it would give her more of a hold on him than he ever wanted anyone to get. He’d have to keep quiet.

  The log would have to keep quiet, too. Kimball went back to an earlier attack and neatly changed a 3 to a 5 on the writeup of the run. That would make the number of torpedoes listed as expended on this cruise match the number he’d actually launched.

  He strode toward the stern. Sure enough, Tom Brearley sat on his bunk, looking glum and furious. He glared up at Kimball. “How does it feel to be a war criminal—sir?” He made the title into one of scorn.

  Kimball gravely considered. “You know what, Tom? It feels pretty damn fine.”

  Sylvia Enos threw a nickel in the trolley-care fare box for herself and another one for George, Jr. Next year, she’d have to spend a nickel for Mary Jane, too. She sighed. Even though she was getting her husband’s allotment along with her salary at the shoe factory, she wasn’t rich, not anywhere close. Nickels mattered.

  She sighed again, seeing she and her children had nowhere to sit during the run from Mrs. Dooley’s to her own apartment building. She clung to the overhead rail. George, Jr., and Mary Jane clung to her.

  As the trolley squealed to a stop at the corner closest to her building, she sighed yet again. Who could say how long she’d keep the job at the shoe factory? With soldiers coming home from the war, they’d start going back to what they’d done before. Women would get crowded out. It hadn’t happened yet, but she could see it coming.

  She wondered when the Navy would let George loose. He’d have no trouble getting a spot on a fishing boat operating out of T Wharf. As long as he was home with her, she wouldn’t have to—she didn’t think she’d have to—worry about his chasing after other women. They could try getting back to the way things had been before the war, too. Maybe she’d have another baby.

  Mary Jane would be heading to kindergarten next year. If Sylvia didn’t get pregnant right away, maybe she could look for part-time work then. Extra cash never hurt anybody.

  She paused in the front hall of the apartment bui
lding to pick up her mail. It was unexciting: a couple of patent-medicine circulars, a flyer announcing a Fishermen’s Benevolent League picnic Sunday after next, and a letter to the woman next door that the postman had put in her box by mistake. She set the last one on top of the bank of mailboxes for her neighbor to spot or for the mailman to put in its proper place and then took the children upstairs.

  “What’s for supper?” George, Jr., demanded. “I’m starved.”

  “Pork chops and string beans,” Sylvia said. “They’ll take a little while to cook, but I don’t think you’ll starve before they’re ready. Why don’t you play nicely with your sister till then?” Why don’t you ask for the moon, Sylvia, while you’re at it?

  Rebellion came not from George, Jr., but from Mary Jane. “I hate string beans,” she said. “I want fried potatoes!”

  Sylvia swatted her on the bottom. “You’re going to eat string beans tonight, anyhow,” she answered. “If you don’t feel like eating string beans, you can go to bed right now without any supper.”

  Mary Jane stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. Sylvia swatted her again, harder this time. Sometimes she practically needed to hit her daughter over the head with a brick to get her to behave. Now, though, Mary Jane seemed to get the idea that she’d pushed things too far. She looked so angelic, any real angel who saw her would have been extremely suspicious. Sylvia laughed and shook her head and started cooking.

  She’d just set supper on the table and was cutting Mary Jane’s pork chops into bite-sized pieces when someone knocked on the door. She muttered something she hoped the children didn’t catch, then went to see which neighbor had chosen exactly the wrong moment to want to borrow salt or molasses or a dollar and a half.

  But the youth standing there wasn’t a neighbor. He wore a green uniform darker than that of the U.S. Army; his brass buttons read WU. “Sylvia Enos?” he asked. When Sylvia nodded, he thrust a pale yellow envelope at her. “Telegram, ma’am.” He hurried away before she could say anything.

  Scratching her head—delivery boys usually hung around to collect a tip—she opened the envelope. Then she understood. “The Navy Department,” she whispered, and ice congealed around her heart.

  DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU, read the characterless letters, THAT YOUR HUSBAND, GEORGE ENOS, WAS AMONG THE CREW ABOARD THE USS ERICSSON, WHICH WAS SUNK LAST NIGHT BY AN ENEMY SUBMERSIBLE. DESPITE DILIGENT SEARCH, NO TRACE OF SURVIVORS HAS BEEN FOUND OR IS EXPECTED. HE MUST BE PRESUMED DEAD. THE UNITED STATES ARE GRATEFUL FOR HIS VALIANT SERVICE IN THE CAUSE OF REMEMBRANCE AND VICTORY. The printed signature was that of Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy.

  “Your pork chops are getting cold, Ma,” George, Jr., called from the table.

  “If you don’t eat your green beans, you have to go to bed right now,” Mary Jane added gleefully.

  Sylvia kept staring at the words of the telegram, hoping, praying, they would twist into some different shape, some different meaning. Twice now, when George had been captured by a Confederate commerce raider and when he’d survived the sinking of the Punishment, she’d feared the worst. This wasn’t like those times. She didn’t fear the worst now. She knew it. She felt it in her bones.

  “What am I going to do?” she said, though no one could answer. “What am I going to do without George?”

  “I’m right here, Ma,” her son said. “I didn’t go nowhere. Your pork chops are still getting cold. They’re no good if they get cold. You always say that, Ma. You do.”

  She turned back to the table. She didn’t realize tears had started running down her face till Mary Jane asked, “Why are you crying, Ma?”

  “Don’t cry, Ma,” George, Jr., added. “What’s wrong? We’ll fix it, whatever it is.”

  They depended on her. She had to be strong, because they couldn’t do it for themselves. And she had to tell them the truth. They needed to know. She swiped her sleeve over her eyes. Then she held up the telegram. “This says—” She had to pause and gulp before she could go on. “This says your father…it says your father’s ship got sunk and he isn’t…isn’t alive any more. He isn’t coming home any more, not ever again.”

  They took it better than she had imagined possible. Mary Jane, she realized, hardly remembered George. She’d been very little when he went into the Navy, and he’d come home but seldom since. How could she miss what she hadn’t truly known?

  George, Jr., understood better, though he plainly didn’t want to. “He’s…dead, Ma?” he asked, his voice trembling. “Like Harry’s father at school, the one the dirty Canucks shot?”

  “That’s right,” Sylvia said. “That’s…sort of what happened.”

  A noise in the hallway behind her made her turn. There stood Brigid Coneval and several of her other neighbors. Somehow, almost as if by magic, everyone knew when a Western Union messenger brought bad news. Had anyone doubted the news was bad, the look on Sylvia’s face would have told the tale.

  “Oh, you poor darling,” said Mrs. Coneval, who, if anyone, knew what Sylvia was feeling at the moment. “You poor darling. What a black shame it is, with the war so near won and all.”

  People crowded round her, holding her and telling her they would do what they could to help. Someone pressed a coin into her hand. She thought it was a quarter. When she looked at it through tear-blurred eyes, she discovered it was a gold eagle. She stared in astonishment at the ten-dollar goldpiece. “Who did this?” she demanded. “It’s too much. Take it back.”

  No one said a word. No one made any move to claim the coin.

  “God bless you, whoever you are,” Sylvia said. She started crying again.

  Mary Jane said, “You’re going to have to go to bed without any supper, because you aren’t eating your pork chops.” Small things mattered to her; she didn’t understand the difference between what was small and what was not.

  Sylvia wished she didn’t understand that difference, either. Not understanding it would have made life much simpler and much easier…for a little while. Life wasn’t going to be easy, not ever again. Life probably wouldn’t be comfortable, not ever again. If she lost her job at the shoe factory, she’d have to find another one, and right away. If she didn’t find another one right away, her children would go hungry, and so would she. Even if she did, money was going to be tight from now on.

  What could she do if she lost the factory job? She had no idea. She couldn’t think. Her wits felt stunned, strangled. She knew she had to use them, but they didn’t want to work.

  “Mourning clothes!” she exclaimed suddenly, out of the blue. “I have to fix up some mourning clothes.”

  Brigid Coneval put an arm around her shoulder and steered her back to the sofa in the front room. When the Irishwoman pushed her down, her legs gave way and she sat. “You wait right here. Don’t move, now. Don’t even twitch. Back in a flash, I’ll be.” She hurried out of the apartment.

  Sylvia didn’t move. She didn’t think she could move. George, Jr., and Mary Jane, seeing their mother upset, picked their way through the crowd of neighbors and crawled up into her lap. She did manage to put her arms around them.

  “Out of my way, now. Move aside.” Brigid Coneval spoke with as much imperious command as General Custer or some other famous war hero might have used. She thrust a tumbler of whiskey at Sylvia. “Drink it off, and be quick about it.”

  “I don’t want it,” Sylvia said.

  “Drink it,” Mrs. Coneval insisted. “He was a good man, your George, sure and he was. Hardly ever a cross word from him did I hear. But he’s gone, darling. You may as well drink. What could you do that’s better, pray?” She rolled her eyes. “Drink!”

  Without much will—without much anything—of her own, Sylvia took the glass and gulped down what it held, choking a little as she did. As far as she could tell, it didn’t do anything. Her head was already spinning. “What am I going to do without George?” she asked again, as if one of her neighbors might know.

  No one answered. As Mrs. Coneval had, peop
le kept praising her husband. He would have been a happier man had they said all those nice things about him while he was there to hear them.

  Then Sylvia started to cry again as another thought struck through the walls of grief and liquor. “He won’t even have a funeral,” she said. “He would have hated that.” Fishermen dreaded being lost at sea. They ate of its creatures, and did not want those creatures turning the tables.

  After a while, even in the midst of disaster, routine reasserted itself. Sylvia had to put the children to bed. After she did that, she went to put the pork chops she hadn’t been able to eat into the icebox. She discovered a couple of silver dollars and a tiny gold dollar on the kitchen table, along with some smaller coins. When she opened the icebox, she found a dressed chicken in there she had not bought, and also a package wrapped in butcher paper that might have been sausage or fish.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank—” She couldn’t go on. Brigid Coneval put her to bed, much as she’d taken care of George, Jr., and Mary Jane. She lay awake and stared and stared at the ceiling. What will I do? she thought, endlessly, uselessly. What will I do?

  When his name was called, Jefferson Pinkard marched up to a pair of officers, his Tredegar on his shoulder. “Pinkard, Jefferson Davis,” he said, and then his pay number. He tossed the rifle down on a growing pile of weapons.

  “Pinkard, Jefferson Davis,” echoed a Confederate captain from divisional headquarters. He had a list of the soldiers in Jeff’s regiment. After lining through his name, he turned to the other officer and spoke in formal tones: “Jefferson Davis Pinkard has turned in his rifle.”

  “Jefferson Davis Pinkard has turned in his rifle,” the other officer agreed. He was also a captain, but wore a uniform of green-gray, not butternut. He lined through Pinkard’s name on his copy of the list.

  Yankee officers freely crossed the line between their positions and those of the CSA these days. Confederate soldiers had to obey them as they obeyed their own officers. Confederate officers, even those of higher rank, had to obey them, too. The Yanks didn’t sneer or gloat, but they didn’t take any nonsense, either.