Slave Ship

by Frederik Pohl

  The orders were headed MOST SECRET, and consequently it was inevitable that everyone we saw on Project Mako stopped us to say good-by. We reported in to Commander Lineback, who made the most sensible suggestion of the day. "Go out," he said, "and get drunk. It may be a long wait for the next time."

  So we headed off base and wound up in the Passion Pit—but not, this time, without shots of our own. When the waiter finally made it to our table, Semyon ordered ginger ale and I ordered chicken broth setups, and we got set to enjoy the floor show.

  The stripper went through the whole act without interruption, and I must say it was worth it. She was a lovely woman, golden-hatred, blue-eyed, tall and shapely; she had a figure that no woman deserved; and it was incontrovertibly natural, she went to some trouble to prove it. Because Semyon made a point of those things, we were seated at ringside, and he invited her to our table when she paused right in front of us near the end of her number. I was surprised she didn't have us thrown out. I was even more surprised when, five minutes after she made her last bow, she showed up at our table.

  "Lovely," said Semyon sentimentally, looking at her costume. It was civilian clothing, rare enough on a young girl; you could see the fall-away zippers and clippers that marked it as part of her professional wardrobe. "I have not seen many such dresses in your country. May we offer you a drink?" He reached for his flask as I reached for my case; we both held them out at the same time.

  "Thanks," she said with a warm smile. "I'll pop, please?" Semyon shook his head in sad resignation.

  "Mad," he said. "However—waiter!"

  The waiter came over and took our orders—the same setups for Semyon and myself, beef bouillon for the girl. "My name," she said, "is—"

  "Caresse O'Nuit," said Semyon promptly. "I have seen the billboards."

  "But my name," she said, "is Nina Merriam, Ensign, USWNR."

  "Of course," Semyon said humbly. "I am sorry, Nina. It is a much more lovely name."

  "Which is?"

  "Nina Merriam is."

  "Is it?" She thought about it. "No, I think you're wrong," she decided. "But it's my real name, so let's use it, shall we?"

  Semyon said: "I would use any name that would bring you to me."

  She looked at him. "Down, boy," said Nina Merriam.

  "Chicken broth," said the waiter, arriving. "Ginger ale. And here's your beef bouillon, Nina. Better take it easy; the old man's out back."

  "Don't worry about me," said Nina, and looked at me expectantly. I took out the case again and offered her her choice. She hesitated, then picked a flat green one.

  "They're doubles," I warned her.

  "So we'll live a little." She popped the pastille into her mouth and swallowed it expertly, dry. She sat for a moment before she took the first spoonful of the chaser. "Good stuff," she said.

  I was feeling my first one by then; but, after all, as Commander Lineback had said it might be a long time before we had another chance to hoist a few. I took a double too—but unlike sweet, blonde, young Nina Merriam, I had to wash it down with half the chicken broth.

  They say that you don't really get any physical kick out of popping for at least half an hour—it takes that long for the build-up. But I swear I get a tingle as soon as it slides down my throat. Call it psychological and maybe it is; but I can feel my temperature go up, I can see things begin to take on that lovely, fuzzy, dreamy look, I can feel that funny hot tingle go through my body.

  Semyon, of course, disapproves. He sat glumly sipping his Scotch and ginger ale and watched us. "Filthy custom," he grumbled. "Thank heaven is not found in Russia."

  "They used to say the same thing about alcohol," I said dreamily. "'S just a poison, alcohol. Why would anybody want to poison himself?"

  "Be easy on him, Lieutenant," Nina broke in, pushing away the balance of her chaser. "I kind of wish I could get as big a charge out of liquor as I do out of bios. I'm getting fat as a pig on the chasers."

  "Oh, no, no," said Semyon at once, dropping the whole discussion. "I have seen many pigs, Nina Merriam. Truly, there was none of them who was not much, much fatter than you."

  "Thanks."

  "You are welcome," said Semyon proudly. "You have in no respect a figure like a pig's. Observe that in hog, the middle section bulges out like watermelon. Your middle section is slim—two-hands slim, I estimate. Utterly unlike pig. I have covered waist; now I proceed upward. Pig—"

  "No you don't," said the girl. "Forget about the pigs."

  "Of course," said Semyon. "But pig—"

  "I think pigs are dirty animals," said the girl definitively.

  Semyon giggled and slopped more Scotch into his glass. "So you say of pig," he observed. "And pig says of you—" And he told her, in Pig, what pigs called humans. It was the same term as they used for portions of their swill; it sounded like a hay fever patient blowing his nose.

  The girl looked suddenly interested. "I didn't know you were a farmer," she said.

  "Farmer? Timiyazev is no farmer! Logan here and I we—"

  "Semyon! Shut up!" I had been half asleep in my chair, dreamily listening to them, thinking how far away and curious everything was; but Semyon brought me to with a bang.

  He said angrily, "Do not shut me up, Logan! I was not going to speak of Project Mako!"

  "You better not," I told him, and went back to examining my own sensations. I was beginning to see things through a haze. I looked down at the floor, where a cigarette was smoldering far, far away; it reminded me to take a drag on my own cigarette, and when I raised my fingers to my lips there was no cigarette in them. It posed an interesting problem. Cigarettes appeared from nowhere on the floor, cigarettes disappeared from my hands; it was all incomprehensible and suspicious. Was it possible that the Caodais were up to tricks with my cigarettes? I thought it over, and rejected the possibility. The pacifists, yes; that might be it. But it couldn't be the Caodais, because they were too far away. It had to be pacifists. However, I had a plan to outwit them; it involved bending over and picking up the cigarette on the floor. It took a little thinking, but it was workable: It would restore the balance.

  While I was working out the details, Nina Merriam said, "How about another round?" The waiter appeared and disappeared, and new setups were on the table.

  "Logan," Semyon was saying insistently. "Logan, why don't you answer me?"

  "What is it that you would like an answer to?" I asked him carefully.

  "I asked you if I might tell Nina about Josie's puppies."

  I touched my finger tips together, "I see," I said. "You want to know if you can tell Nina about Josie's puppies."

  "That's right."

  "Don't interrupt me, Semyon. I'm thinking." I closed my eyes to concentrate. The problem had many ramifications, and I couldn't help wondering how Semyon had got onto that subject in the first place. Lineback would throw a tizzy if he even knew that Semyon had so much as admitted he'd ever seen a dog. But Lineback, of course—

  "Logan!" Semyon sounded angry. "Wake up!"

  I opened my eyes and smiled at him forgivingly.

  "Well?" he demanded. "What is your verdict?"

  "This is my verdict," I announced. I paused to frame the thing in exactly the right words. I was feeling a little woozy from the double shots, there was no denying it. Not only was I flushing hot all over, but I could feel my skin getting dry and my pulse thudding; it was time to take it easy for a while. I said carefully: "You can't tell her about the puppies. You can tell her about Josie herself, all right; but you mustn't mention talking to her, or the Weems."

  He shook his head disgustedly. "Curse this security," he said.

  "Don't say anything about our shipping orders either," I warned him.

  "Of course not, Logan! Do you think I am a loose-tongue? Well, Nina, I cannot discuss the puppies, so do not ask me. I won't do it."

  I nodded approvingly, and closed my eyes to listen better.

  This time it was the girl who said, with a touch of irr
itation, "Wake up, Lieutenant Miller. The chaser's getting cold."

  "Sorry," I mumbled, and found my case. She grabbed it, apparently under the impression that I was going to spill its contents. "No need to get excited," I protested.

  She said, "You've only got one anthrax left. Maybe you'd better lay off for a while."

  I sat up straight. "Help yourself," I said cordially. "Officer of the Line can mix his shots. Don't expect girl to do as much."

  She took the flat green pastille and swallowed it, making a face as she sipped the lukewarm bouillon. I took one at random and popped it. "Hey!" she cried, but I already had it down and was choking on the chicken broth.

  "You shouldn't have done that," Nina said worriedly. "Do you feel all right?"

  "I feel ferfec—perfectly fine." It wasn't entirely true, and I avoided her eyes, not so much because they were accusing as because they were attached to her face, and her face was moving. I didn't want to look at any moving objects just then. I stared at the ceiling, waiting for the slight tremor inside me to go away.

  It didn't. I took a deep breath and sat up straight—it seemed hard to stay erect for any length of time—and smiled at Semyon and the girl. "Dance, Miss Merriam?" I invited.

  "There isn't any music," she pointed out.

  But Semyon responded, even if the girl was a spoilsport. His eyes jerked open. "Dance!" he said. "Timiyazev will dance lesgilka for you?"

  "Oh, no you won't," said Nina Merriam, and between us we got him back in his chair. I had had only one more shot than the girl, but I was frankly reeling and she seemed as fresh as a daisy. I don't know how women do it. She reminded me of my wife: Elsie and I had pub crawled three nights a week for half a year before we were married, and it was always I who began getting disorderly.

  Semyon resisted only briefly, then he sat back, sprawled in his chair, and smiled lovingly at us. "Good party, Logan," he said.

  "The best," I said.

  I sneaked a look at my watch; it was hard to make it out, and even harder to perform the necessary subtraction, but as near as I could figure it was two hours since I had taken my first shot. The anthrax colonies in my system were pretty well established; I had a fine building case of fever and approaching delirium. Any minute now the second layer of the pastille would dissolve and the antibiotics would take over, cleaning out the bacteria and sobering me up. It was about time, I thought fuzzily, computing the time to get back to base and the amount of sleep I would have before our transportation arrived the next morning.

  And I completely forgot the trouble with mixing your shots. For the antibiotics are specifics; the cores that will sober up your case of anthrax in an hour don't touch pneumococcus or the others. I was in for a double-jointed hangover—still drunk on the second dose while I was being sobered up from the first. I didn't know it, and it was just as well. But I knew it the next morning. Oh, yes.

  XII

  "DO WHAT I DO," I told Semyon, who was rubbernecking at the big ships in the wash. He glowered resentfully, but he followed orders.

  We stepped into a submersible whaleboat and sat ourselves in the sternsheets while a couple of efficient seamen disposed of the crates containing the animals in the cargo space. They were almost all the baggage Semyon and I had between us; the orders had specified strip-ship condition. It meant battle stations; it meant the big-ship Navy and a combat mission; it meant, perhaps, getting somewhere near the east coast of Africa and Elsie.

  We boarded Monmouth, a 40,000 ton carrier, by one of the three after gangways, and Semyon was so preoccupied watching the whaleboat carrying our animals to a forward gangway for loading that he almost forgot to salute the colors. I nudged him, and he looked at me blankly for a moment before he remembered our careful rehearsal. Josie and the apes were easier to train than Semyon Timiyazev.

  Our quarters were small but comfortable; we shifted into dress blues and reported to the Executive Officer, and were sent immediately to see the Captain. I had almost forgotten such niceties of the naval service as the Captain's call. I would have felt like the wanderer coming home, except that I wasn't feeling much of anything except a queasiness in my stomach and a throbbing like Monmouth's main-drive engines in my head. But I got through the interview with the Captain all right, and so did Semyon. Having a hangover is not, after all, the worst thing that can happen to a naval officer on his first day at a new ship; it tends to make you concentrate on what you are doing.

  But as soon as we had a moment to ourselves, we headed for the sick bay and wheedled vitamin shots out of one of the surgeons. He thought it was very funny. They helped, but I did not enjoy the surgeon's prescription for "helping to re-establish the intestinal flora" which he claimed the antibiotics had pretty well knocked out. It was yogurt, and I forced it down, but I almost lost it again when Semyon cried delightedly, "Schav! Please, Doctor—me too," and proceeded to swallow a pint of the stuff.

  All in all, we were in pretty good shape for the briefing at 900 hrs, the next morning, except for Semyon's nagging worry about his beloved dogs. "Josie, of course," he told me fretfully. "They understand Josie, she is on the orders. And Sammy is all right, and the apes. But the little puppies, Logan, will they be all right? No orders for them, you know."

  I chased him down to the whaleboat level to look them over.

  Before sunrise we got under way. Monmouth slipped lines and stood out into the channel—on the surface, since Caodai radar didn't matter on our initial course in the Gulf. I was on deck in officer's country as we sailed, feeling useless, with reason. I had no part in the complicated task of getting a war vessel on course.

  Faint dawn light was coming up behind us. Monmouth blinkered good-by to the harbor monitor through a gentle drizzle, and then the hailer gave all of us idlers the warning, Stand by to submerge. I found a spot out of the traffic lanes, near a running port; and I watched through the glass as the deck parties stripped and stowed the outboard gear. They did their job and disappeared in well under sixty seconds. Monmouth was a taut ship.

  There was a hoot and jangling of bells, and Monmouth slid downward into the water. Green and blue waves bubbled up over my port; turned brackish gray; and then there was nothing at all to see, nothing but a faint sourceless light through the water outside.

  I went to the briefing in a thoughtful mood, and was astonished at the number of officers there—nearly sixty.

  The ship's Executive Officer rapped his knuckles against the standing microphone and called us to attention.

  He looked at us queerly for a moment before he spoke. Then he waved a red-sealed envelope and said:

  "Welcome aboard, gentlemen. You've all got quarters and you all know you're on a crash-priority mission, and half of you have been haunting my office ever since we got under way. Well, I couldn't tell you anything. I've been in this Navy for forty-six years, and I've heard of sealed orders, and I always thought they were something you read about in books." He slapped the envelope against the mike, and the amplified thud rolled around the room. "That's what we got here. Sealed orders. In—" he glanced at his watch—"in one minute the Captain's going to be opening his copy of these, and then we'll all know what we're up to. Until then, hold your breath."

  He rocked back on his heels, calmly observing his watch. Then he leaned forward again, and I guess we all really did hold our breaths. He said: "I forgot to tell you, those of you that don't know it already, that Captain's Calls are suspended for the time being, so don't bother me for appointments."

  There was a groan from the sixty of us, and he said: "All right, gentlemen. Here it is." And he stripped the seals off the envelope and began to read.

  It was a crash-priority mission, all right. Even the weary old Exec stood straighter and seemed to come alive as he read the formal phrases from the orders.

  It was—the Glotch—though that wasn't what the orders called it. Intelligence had come up with the conclusion that the Caodai Headquarters for the new weapon was not on the interdicted mainland, but on
the island of Madagascar. Our sortie was to make reconnaissance, to find out what was there—and, if possible, to pulverize it.

  "Target Gamma." That's what the orders called it—a point fixed with grid markings on a map. Something was there, something which the Caodais were trying as ably as they could to hide. We were going to take a look.

  The Exec finished reading the orders, and folded the sheet.

  "Specific assignments will be given out later, by sections," he said after a moment. "Gentlemen, this has been as much of a surprise to me as to you, as I mentioned earlier. But I suppose we all had an idea that it might have something to do with the Caodai weapon.

  "I only want to add one thing to what you've just heard. It's no secret that the Cow-dyes have been hitting us pretty hard. Well, it's been worse than you think. Worse than we can stand, in fact." He licked his lips. "Gentlemen, you're in for some rough times, and only a fool would try to tell you that you're all going to come through them alive. But keep this in mind: This is for keeps. I have it from the Captain. If this doesn't work, the JCS's next recommendation to the President will be a declaration .of war. It's as serious as that.

  "We've got to come through. Or else it means the satellite bombs for everybody."

  That was that; we were dismissed. We left the briefing room silently, all of us too busy thinking about what the Exec had said and its implications to talk. . But we were not all thinking of the same implications. I raced from the briefing room to the chartroom, to confirm what I already knew but could hardly believe.

  Our target was Madagascar, a long, fat island hanging off the east coast of Africa. And next above it, inches away on the map, another island—

  Zanzibar!

  And Zanzibar meant Elsie.

  Semyon came chortling to me: "At last we are equals! I have been promoted, I am now considered as valuable as you and the animals!" He displayed what had just been issued to him, an aluminum helmet, protection against the Glotch. The whole ship was being fitted with them.