Obviously, if these deductions were correct, Joan must know what submarines were assigned to the various patrol areas. Although this sort of information was considered top secret by the submarine force, she would know that at this very moment Eel was patrolling the East China and Yellow seas, along with the Whitefish and Chicolar. She would know of the message about the convoy. It might even be she who had decoded it, or translated it. And she would be aware that it was sending Eel into combat and mortal danger. Now that they had been so close, that she knew Richardson so well, what would she think, or feel, about the risks she was subjecting him to? Would she worry about his safety? Or was it all part of the job? What about Jim Bledsoe and the Walrus? Through some tacit understanding, some regard for her privacy — and Jim’s, though he was dead — he had refrained from bringing Jim up. She had told him what she felt she ought, and he had resolved to be satisfied with that.
Now it occurred to him to wonder whether Jim’s last, fatal attack on Bungo Pete’s decoy freighter could have resulted from a similar message. If so, it meant that it had been planted, and therefore that the enemy had finally realized their convoy routing code had been broken. If so, this convoy Eel was now pursuing might also be a decoy. If so, he and the other boats might be steering at full power into a gigantic trap!
But his mind refused to follow the train of thought. It could not be true. It was too far-fetched an idea. Admiral Small and the Fort Shafter people would have to be trusted not to be taken in. Anyway, it made no difference. No matter what his imagination concocted, Eel and the other two submarines had received an order for battle. They had been pointed toward the enemy, and they had been unleashed. From here on, ComSubPac did not exist. Joan did not exist. Nothing existed but the sea, and Eel’s slender prow cutting it into halves as she sped through it. Only he existed, at the center of the universe, and even he did not exist. There was not even such a thing as the will to do what he was in the process of doing, what he had been trained for so many years to do. There was only the fact of doing it.
Time had been, years ago, when he worried whether he would be able to fire torpedoes set to kill; whether he would be able to nerve himself to see the effects; whether he could hold himself together, still function, disdain the terror of the inevitable counterblow. Before the war a perfect torpedo shot was a professional triumph. It had required meticulous preparation of equipment — the angle solvers, the tubes, the ancillary parts of the submarine which brought them to the firing point, the torpedoes themselves — and lengthy, boring, often lonely practice. Success was achieved when the target signaled the torpedoes had passed beneath her keel. A bull’s-eye: accolades for all, qualifications, promotions, favorable comments in fitness reports, a conspicuous white E on the conning tower. What happened when the bull’s-eye produced instead a catastrophic explosion, a column of white water mixed with death and debris, a shattered hulk which a moment ago had been a fine ship — that was something he had thought of as happening in another world. It was imaginary, not real. It was not part of the prewar drill. He had, of course, known that ships would sink. But, before the war, he had never been able to visualize what it must actually be like.
Now he had seen it. Being the cause of it was easy, for in the process something had happened to him, too. He was split into two people, both of whom were present at the same time inside him, both able to react. But the two, the automaton and the spectator, were entirely different from each other. The automaton had been trained to be a nerveless perfectionist. The devastating result of the automaton’s perfectionism was a clinical certainty it accepted with detachment. The automaton always shouldered the spectator aside, took over the periscope or the bridge TBTs at the start of any action. Beside it, inside it, stood the spectator, observing, marveling, saddened at the destruction and the loss of life. Once in action, the automaton could not be stopped, except by the interposition of some external superior force, and if the opportunity arose, it would inevitably respond with some deadly riposte of its own. It could coldly aim a torpedo that would rip the vitals out of a ship and send it reeling to the bottom of the sea. It would watch the carnage with cool concentration, ready to wrest instant advantage from whatever developments there were.
The spectator, seeing through the same eyes, would always see the dust left floating at the spot where a ship had sunk, would mourn the doomed round black spots — the heads of men — clustering around floating wreckage. The spectator could feel compassion, imagine himself among them, wish they had not, by appearing before his sights, wrought their own destruction. Yet the spectator also had his hardness. These were the enemy. They sought his death. Though the targets of the moment were merchant ships, they were part of the enemy’s total war effort. They would not hesitate to try to bring about his own destruction with depth charges, bombs, any weapons they might happen to possess. They were not above breaking the rules of war. There had not even been a war with the United States on December 7, 1941.
They had killed Stocker Kane in the Nerka, and Jim Bledsoe in the Walrus at a moment of mercy while they were rescuing the crew of an old freighter. Its crew, part of Nakame’s outfit, had desperately signaled for rescue. The torpedo from Nakame’s carefully positioned sub struck just as Jim was bringing the life raft alongside.
What rules could there be in total war, if Stan Davenport and his men had to die in Oklahoma’s enginerooms even before that war existed? Stan’s body was found at his station near the port throttle when the big old battlewagon finally was rolled upright. Japan had initiated the war by an unparalleled act of international treachery. She had thrown away the rule book. Surprise, shock, irresistible power: these were the only currency left between Japan and the United States. The reckoning for that brutally cynical act would be cut from similar cloth. No negotiations could stop it, for whom did Japan have who could be trusted as a negotiator? After Pearl Harbor, who in America would be willing to take a similar risk again?
The spectator could even talk with the automaton, but the conversations were always one-sided, always subject to the superior demands of combat. The night was clear and beautiful, the spectator might say. The sea air was clean; the salt dust blowing was refreshing. The Japanese were admirable seamen. They built fine ships, and they knew how to operate them. He could not say they were a fine, honorable people: not after what had happened at Pearl Harbor, and then later at Bataan and Corregidor; but they were industrious and hardworking. The automaton would grimace frigidly through the TBT or the periscope, call out the crucially important observations, maneuver the critical weapon, the Eel. It never answered the spectator’s observations. It acted, with finality. Its actions were the only answers it ever gave.
Long ago, Richardson had learned that he was as much an instrument of his submarine and its torpedoes as they were of him. There was no room for emotion, no room for thinking. Yet he did think, and observe, in a strange, set-aside corner of his mind. During combat, there was only room for the trained reaction to do what had to be done quickly, effectively, and with precision. After it was over there would be again, as there had always been, a coalescence of personality. The spectator and the automaton would merge into one, and the stern compulsion would disappear. Afterward there might be a reaction to what he had seen and done. But only afterward.