End of the Beginning

by Harry Turtledove

  “Yeah, I know.” Oscar got a flowered shirt and a pair of pants out of the closet and tossed them into the bathroom. He didn’t have a belt that Charlie could use to hold up the pants; none of the ones he owned had enough holes. But a length of rope would keep his pal decent.

  He glanced over at Susie. How . . . sympathetic would she feel if Charlie stayed here all the time? How would she show her sympathy? Like that? Oscar shrugged a mental shrug. If she did, then she did, that was all. And if she did, didn’t that tell him she wasn’t the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with?

  When Charlie got out of the tub, he threw his old clothes out from behind the door. He emerged a couple of minutes later, much cleaner. Maybe because he was cleaner, maybe because of the way Oscar’s shirt and pants hung on him, he looked even scrawnier than he had before.

  Oscar picked up Charlie’s reeking rags with thumb and forefinger, like a fussy maiden lady. He didn’t care how he looked. If he’d had tongs, he would have used those. He took the clothes out to the front door of the building, poked his head outside to make sure no Japs spotted him, and threw everything into the gutter. He frantically wiped his hand against his own trouser leg as he went back to his apartment.

  Charlie was telling Susie what things were like in the Kalihi Valley. She hung on his every word. Well, Charlie could tell stories with anybody this side of Will Rogers. Oscar wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t in Charlie’s league. He shrugged to himself again. He’d see what happened, that was all. Whatever it was, he was glad Charlie had got out of the Kalihi Valley in one piece.

  JANE ARMITAGE HAD MADE A LAIR OF SORTS for herself in the Wahiawa experimental planting station. A stream ran through it, so she had water. Some of the trees had fruit on them, and gave her a little something to eat. Zebra doves weren’t nearly so common as they had been before the Japs invaded, but the little blue-faced birds were still around. Jane didn’t dare make a fire. If you got hungry enough, you could eat them raw. Jane wouldn’t have believed it, but it was true. And she was hungry enough.

  She couldn’t have had a simpler plan: stay out of sight and try not to die till the Americans took Wahiawa. No one seemed to have come after her or the other comfort women who’d escaped from the blasted brothel. Jane knew exactly what that meant: the Japs had more important things to worry about. They were getting screwed now instead of doing the screwing. And they had it coming to them, too.

  Every so often, other people came into the station to gather fruit. Jane hid from them like an animal, cowering in the thick bushes by the stream. That was partly because she feared they might betray her to the occupiers. And it was partly because, after what the Japanese had made her do, she felt unclean. Surely anyone who knew her, anyone who knew what she’d had to do, would think she was unclean, too. From third-grade teacher to whore in one easy step . . .

  The front was getting close to Wahiawa, but not fast enough to suit her. The Japs made a stand in front of the town. They would, the bastards, Jane thought as she got hungrier. Even though they didn’t know she was here, they kept on trying to ruin her life.

  They’d done it, all right. Here she was, not quite thirty, and she hoped to heaven she never saw, never touched, and most especially never tasted another cock as long as she lived. Maybe one day she’d change her mind. She laughed at that. Yeah—when I get to be ninety. Or maybe ninety-five.

  There were times when she wouldn’t have bet she could make it to her thirtieth birthday, let alone to ninety-five. Except by standing and fighting, the Japs didn’t have anything to do with that. American shells had been falling on Wahiawa ever since the brothel got hit. Sometimes they fell in or near the planting station. Those fearsome crashes uprooted trees and sent shrapnel snarling through the leaves and the undergrowth. None of it hit Jane, but some came scarily close.

  She’d been at the station four or five days when machine-gun bullets began snapping past overhead—because the gardens followed the course of the stream, most of the land here was lower than the surrounding countryside. Fletch had told her that when you could hear a bullet snap, it came closer than you wanted it to. She thought these bullets were wonderful. They meant the Americans were almost as close as she wanted them to be.

  Then Japanese soldiers started falling back through the station. Jane hid herself as deep among the bushes as she could. She feared they would fight from the cover the exotic plants offered. The low ground, though, evidently counted for more than that. Some of the Japs paused to fill their water bottles in the stream. Then they trotted south to make a stand somewhere else.

  Before long, their bullets cracked by above her head as they harassed the oncoming Americans. She lay down behind a fallen log and hoped it would protect her. Somebody set up a machine gun on the northern lip of the little valley. Its insane hammering made her fillings ache. She heard shouts that didn’t sound as if they were in Japanese, and then boots padding along the trails tourists had taken to see the elephant apple and the candle tree.

  Ever so cautiously, she raised her head. For a moment, fresh fear shook her. Were these men Americans? They were white men, and they spoke English, but she’d never seen those green uniforms before. The helmets didn’t look anything like what Fletch had laughingly called his tin hat, either.

  She had to nerve herself to speak. “Hello?” she said, her voice not much more than a whisper.

  With frightening speed, two rifles swung to cover her. “The fuck?” one of the apparitions in green said.

  “Son of a bitch! It’s a broad,” the other one said. “Come on out of there, lady. We goddamn near drilled you.”

  “Goddamn near,” the first one agreed. “What the hell you doin’ here, anyways?”

  “Hiding,” she answered. To her, it was the most obvious thing in the world. These—warriors—grinned as if she’d made a joke. “Who are you people, anyway?” she asked.

  “Corporal Petrocelli, ma’am,” one of them said, at the same time as the other answered, “Private Schumacher, ma’am.” Together, they added, “United States Army.”

  The Army didn’t wear uniforms like theirs. No—it hadn’t worn uniforms like theirs. There’d been some changes made. Schumacher (who was shorter and darker than Petrocelli, which only went to show you) asked, “Any Japs around?”

  Jane pointed south. “They went thataway,” she said, as if she had a bit part in a B Western. “I hope you kill ’em all.”

  “That’s what we’re here for, ma’am,” Corporal Petrocelli said. He looked her up and down, not like a man eyeing a woman (thank God!) but more like an engineer wondering how long a badly battered piece of machinery could keep running. Taking a couple of small cans out of a pouch on his belt, he handed them to her. “Here you go. Reckon you need these worse’n we do.” Thus prodded, Private Schumacher coughed up some rations, too.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, on the edge of tears. Then she proved she did have a little common sense left: she asked, “How am I going to open these?”

  “Here—try this.” Schumacher gave her a knife—no, a bayonet, longer and slimmer than the one on his rifle. It looked much too deadly for such a mundane job, but it would probably work. He said, “Took it off a dead Jap a couple days ago. Was gonna keep it for a souvenir, but there’s more. You can get some use out of it.”

  “Toadsticker like that’ll scrag anybody who gets out of line, too,” Petrocelli said.

  If I’d had it back in the brothel, if I’d stuck every man that touched me . . . Jane grimaced. If I’d done that, I’d’ve killed so many, the Army would probably be in Honolulu by now.

  Not far away, somebody shouted. Jane had no idea what he said. It made sense to the soldiers, though. They trotted away. Schumacher looked back over his shoulder and waved. Then they were gone.

  And most of Wahiawa had to be in American hands, and Jane had a weapon and food—my God, real food! She went back into her refuge under the bushes and behind the log. Maybe she’d come out after a while, and maybe she w
ouldn’t. In the meantime . . . She used the bayonet to open a can. It was roast-beef hash. She hadn’t eaten beef in going on two years. She thought it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever tasted, which only proved how long she’d gone without.

  XIII

  THE AMERICANS WERE GOING TO OVERRUN WHEELER FIELD. LIEUTENANT SABURO SHINDO could see as much. The Japanese on the ground were doing everything they could to hold back the enemy. They’d taken gruesome casualties, and the Yankees still moved forward. The Americans had more and better tanks than the Japanese. They had more artillery, plus Navy vessels bombarding Oahu. And they had complete control of the air.

  Shindo knew how important that was. He’d enjoyed it during the Japanese conquest of Hawaii. Having American fighters and bombers overhead from dawn to dusk was much less enjoyable than being up there himself.

  Now he had the chance to get up there again. The groundcrew men at Wheeler Field had cannibalized Zeros and Hayabusas for their weapons. They’d cannibalized half a dozen wrecked fighters to put together one that would—they hoped—fly. Shindo hadn’t even had to pull strings to get to take it up against the Americans. He was, as far as he knew, the last pilot at the field alive and unwounded.

  There was an American movie about a man made from parts of other men. The fighter Shindo would fly against the Americans was a lot like that. Most of it came from Zeros, with occasional pieces from Hayabusas. It was a deathtrap. He knew as much. Under normal conditions, he wouldn’t have walked past it, let alone got into the cockpit. Now . . . The whole Japanese garrison on Oahu would die. How was the only thing that mattered. Shindo wanted to die hitting back at the enemy, hurting the round-eyed barbarians who’d dared strike against his divinely ruled kingdom.

  Before he got into the Frankenstein fighter, a groundcrew man handed him a bottle of the local not-quite-gin. He wouldn’t have drunk before an ordinary mission. What difference did it make now? None he could see. He’d have to be lucky to make a proper attack run. He’d need a miracle, and not such a minor one, to come back.

  “Good luck. Hit them hard,” the groundcrew man said as Shindo handed back the bottle. “Banzai! for the Emperor!”

  “Banzai!” Shindo echoed. He climbed up into the cockpit, closed it, and dogged it shut. The engine fired up the first try. Shindo took that for a good omen. He’d been desperately short of them lately. So had all the Japanese on Oahu.

  One more good omen would be taking off without blowing up. He had a hundred-kilo bomb slung under the plane. What passed for a runway was only enough grass to get him off the ground . . . he hoped. If there wasn’t quite enough grass or if a wheel bumped down into a hole the grass hid—his mission would be shorter than he expected.

  Despite the risks, he wished the bomb were bigger. The fighter could carry 250 kilos without any trouble, but the armorers hadn’t been able to find one that size. He shrugged and adjusted the safety harness. Then he released the brakes. The plane rolled forward. He gave it more throttle. When he neared the end of the grass, he pulled back on the stick. The Zero’s nose came up. He couldn’t have asked for a smoother takeoff.

  He got a panoramic view of the fighting as he climbed. Wahiawa was gone, lost. So were the Schofield Barracks, just north of Wheeler Field. If the mechanics had waited much longer to get busy with their wrenches and pliers and rivet guns, they wouldn’t have been able to do this.

  Below him, Wildcats and the new American fighters dove to shoot up a Japanese ground position. Machine-gun fire rose to meet them, but no real antiaircraft guns opened up. None of the American planes paid any attention to Shindo. If they noticed him at all, they assumed he was one of them. A Zero’s size and shape were a little like a Wildcat’s, but only a little. The biggest help he had was the Yankees’ assumption that no more Japanese aircraft could fly. If he couldn’t be Japanese, he had to be American. Logical, wasn’t it? But logic was only as good as its assumptions. Since those were wrong . . .

  He flew north, toward the waiting American fleet. A flight of southbound planes waggled their wings at him. Maybe they thought he was in trouble. He politely waggled back, as if to say everything was fine. They flew on. So did he. He smiled a thin smile. As he had in air battles past, he could follow their vector back to the carriers that had launched them. “Domo arigato,” he murmured, doubting they would be glad to have his thanks.

  The rest of the U.S. task force—destroyers, cruisers, and battleships—lay close inshore, so their big guns could shell the Japanese. They went at it methodically. Why not? No one could hit back at them. Shindo didn’t intend to. These ships, however impressive (and they put the biggest Japanese fleet to shame), weren’t the ones that really mattered. He wanted the carriers.

  They steamed farther offshore, to make sure nothing from Oahu could reach them. Lieutenant Shindo smiled again. Something from Oahu was heading their way anyhow.

  There they were! They had destroyers around them to protect against submarines and to deliver antiaircraft fire. They must have long since picked him up on radar. Even if they had, though, they didn’t think he was hostile.

  Then he muttered, “Zakennayo!” The carriers still had a combat air patrol overhead. Here came a Wildcat to look him over. Just in case, the pilot was bound to be thinking. Shindo could survive a lot of things, but not close visual inspection. He knew the moment when the enemy flier realized what he was. The Wildcat suddenly sped up and started jinking.

  The American thought he could win a dogfight. A lot of Wildcat pilots made the mistake against a Zero. They hardly ever made it more than once. This Yankee wouldn’t. Shindo turned inside him, got behind him, shot him up, and sent him spinning down toward the Pacific.

  But the Wildcat pilot must have radioed his buddies. They all swarmed toward Shindo. He’d just run out of leisure. Things would happen in a hurry now. He dove toward the closest carrier. The Americans still didn’t space them out as widely as they should have. If the Japanese could have organized a real attack, they might have mauled this task force. As things were, Shindo could only do his best.

  Antiaircraft guns opened up on him as he dove. The ships down below had finally figured out he wasn’t one of theirs. The closest carrier wasn’t a big one. He didn’t care. If he could hit it, he would.

  He pulled the bomb-release lever. The bomb fell free. It exploded on the flight deck. Shell fragments or machine-gun bullets slammed into the Zero as it zoomed away. The engine coughed. Smoke trailed from the plane.

  “Karma,” Shindo said. Sure enough, this was a one-way mission. He would have been angrier and more disappointed if he’d expected anything else.

  He flew on toward the next nearest carrier, hoping his plane wouldn’t go into the drink before he got there. A Wildcat dove on him. He did a snap roll and got away. That changed his direction. There was another carrier, not far ahead. It was landing planes, and had lots of them on the flight deck. Perfect.

  He gained a little altitude, then dove as if landing himself. Inside the cockpit, he braced himself for the impact, not that that would do any good. “ Banzai!” he shouted as the flight deck swelled below him. “Ban—”

  JOE CROSETTI RAN FOR THEBUNKER HILL’S island after scrambling out of his Hellcat. He wondered why some nearby ships were firing AA like it was going out of style. He wouldn’t have believed the Japs had any planes left.

  What he believed didn’t matter worth a damn. He got his nose rubbed in that a moment later. A sailor pointed to starboard and screamed, “Holy fucking shit, it’s a Jap!”

  And it was. The Zero was on fire. It skimmed low over the surface of the Pacific, straight for the Bunker Hill. Joe stared in helpless fascination. What the hell was that pilot thinking? He couldn’t be crazy enough to try to land on an American carrier, could he? He’d get shot to pieces before he could open the cockpit. And even if that weren’t so, he wasn’t lined up anyway.

  He rose a little, then dove for the deck. Crosetti couldn’t believe he was going to crash his plane on purpose t
ill he did it. The Zero went up in a fireball. So did half a dozen Hellcats.

  “Fire!” Joe yelled. “Fire on the flight deck!”

  A flightcrew man came running out of the inferno. His clothes were on fire—he might have been on fire, too. He screamed like a damned soul with devils sticking pitchforks into him.

  “Down!” Joe shouted. “Down and roll!” That was what everybody got trained to do. Remembering the training when things hit the fan wasn’t so easy. Joe was still in his flight suit, with the heavy leather jacket. He wasn’t a big guy, but he dashed across the deck, tackled the flightcrew man, lay atop him and beat at the flames with his gloved fists. When most of the fire was out, somebody turned a hose on them for a few seconds. The man behind the hose had the sense to turn the nozzle to mist, not stream. Otherwise, the high-pressure water might have blasted them off the flight deck and into the drink.

  Medics came up and hustled the burned man below. “How about you, buddy?” one of them asked Joe. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” he answered dazedly. Gloves or not, he’d burned his hands. He had a burn on one cheek, too—he could feel it. But he was in one piece, nothing like the poor bastard who’d come out of that inferno.

  The medic slapped ointment onto his cheek. It stung, then soothed. “You did good,” the guy said, then hustled away to look for more casualties.

  He wouldn’t have to look far. That Jap had been a bastard, but a brave bastard. He’d done as much to the Bunker Hill as he could. Planes were still burning despite the ocean water the hoses poured on them. Burning gasoline and oil floated on top of the water, and had to be drowned or washed over the side.

  If that Zero smashed down half a minute earlier . . . Joe shuddered. He would have been right in the middle of the fireball.

  Now all he could do was help hang on to a hose that tried to defeat the flames. His burned hands screamed at him. He ignored them. The burns weren’t all that bad, and he didn’t think he was making them worse. He’d worry about it later any which way.