"Yes, sir." George was always pleased when somebody remembered his mother's first name.
"I read her book," the officer said. "It was one of the things that made me decide to join the Navy. I thought I ought to help do things right, so people like her didn't have to pick up guns and take care of it themselves."
"Yes, sir," George repeated, less enthusiastically this time. Whenever he thought about I Shot Roger Kimball, he couldn't help also thinking about the hard-drinking hack who did the actual writing. His mother should have known better than to have anything to do with Ernie except for the book. She should have, but she hadn't, and so she was dead, and so was he. And if Ernie hadn't shot himself, George would gladly have killed him.
The lieutenant seemed to run out of things to say, which might have been a relief for him and George both. "Well, carry on, Enos," he said, which was strictly line-of-duty. He hurried back toward the Oregon's towering bridge. George returned to the gun mount.
Some of the men on the gun crew already knew who he was and who his mother had been. Unlike the lieutenant, they also knew better than to make a fuss about it. "Officers," one of them said sympathetically.
"Yeah, well…" George spread his hands. "What can you do?"
"Jack diddly," the other sailor said. "Put up with 'em the best way you can. Try not to let 'em fuck you over too bad."
"They're like women," a shell-jerker said. "You can't live with 'em, and you can't live without 'em, neither."
"Nope." George shook his head. "If you could get pussy from officers, they'd be good for something. Way things are, too many of 'em are-"
"Good for nothing!" Three guys on the crew said the same thing at the same time. They grinned at one another, and at George. The banter about what officers would be like if they were equipped the way women were went on and on. It got louder and more hilarious and more obscene with each succeeding joke as each sailor tried to top the fellow who'd gone before him.
George's grin stretched wider and wider. It wasn't just that the guys were funny. Everybody was all loosey-goosey. Unless some Confederate diehard hadn't got the word, nobody would be shooting at the Oregon or bombing her or trying to torpedo her. They'd made it through the war.
"Now all we got to worry about is the crappy cooks in the galley," George said.
"See? They should be broads, too," one of the other guys put in. "Then they'd know what they were doin'."
"And if they did feed us somethin' shitty, they could really show us they was sorry," somebody else said. It went on from there.
They spotted another surfaced submarine later that day. This one flew the Union Jack, not a blue surrender flag like the Confederate boat. "I have no quarrel with you gentlemen," the captain called through a loudhailer, "but I will not go to one of your ports. I have received no such orders. We have an armistice with Germany and you, but we have not surrendered."
"We can blow you out of the water," warned the U.S. officer with whom he was parleying.
"No doubt," the British sub skipper replied politely. "But we have done nothing provocative, and have no intention of doing any such thing. Are you really so eager to put the war on the boil again?"
Muttering, the young U.S. officer got on the telephone to the bridge. He was muttering louder when he hung up. "You may proceed," he told the Royal Navy officer.
"Thanks ever so." The limey actually tipped his cap. "May we meet again-and not in our professional capacities."
"We ought to blow him up anyway," the U.S. officer growled-but not through the bullhorn.
Sailors in the British submarine were bound to be thinking the same thing about the Oregon. As long as the boat stayed surfaced and didn't aim either bow or stern at the battleship, George figured he wouldn't flabble. If the submarine dove…
It didn't, not till it was out of sight. George hoped the Oregon's Y-ranging set watched it even farther than that. Since no Klaxons hooted, he supposed everything stayed hunky-dory. Thinking about women officers was a lot more fun than worrying about getting sunk.
"I bet the limeys never do surrender, not the way the Confederates did," Wally Fodor said. The gun chief went on, "I bet they just bail out of the fight on the best terms they can, same as they did in the last war. Long as they got their navy in one piece, they're still a going concern."
"Till somebody drops a superbomb on their fleet, anyway," George said.
"Yeah, but the Kaiser's got to be sweating about how big Japan's getting. Hell, so do we," Fodor persisted. "The Japs don't have the superbomb yet, so England's the only one who can give 'em a hard time-unless we want to go through the Pacific one goddamn island at a time."
Nobody at the twin 40mm mount wanted anything like that. George, who'd already had a long tour in the Sandwich Islands, really didn't want anything like that. He'd paid all the dues against Japan he felt like paying.
"Tell you one thing," he said. "All this bullshitting is a lot better than sweating out bombs and torpedoes for real."
"Amen!" That went up from several sailors at once.
"We licked Jake Featherston, and the limeys look like they've had enough, anyway," George went on. "Pretty soon, we'll be able to get our old lives back again." Did he look forward to going after cod from T Wharf? He wasn't so sure about that, but coming home to Connie more often sounded mighty good.
XIV
D r. Leonard O'Doull donned a professional scowl and glared at the unhappy young PFC standing in front of him. "That's one of the most disgusting chancres I've ever seen," he growled. It was red and ugly, all right, but he'd run into plenty just like it. The kid didn't have to know that, though.
Quivering, the PFC said, "Sorry, sir." He looked as if he was about to cry.
"Were you sorry while you were getting it?" O'Doull asked.
"Uh, no, sir." The youngster in green-gray turned red.
"Why the hell didn't you wear a rubber?"
"On account of I didn't figure I needed to. She was a nice girl, dammit. Besides, it feels better when you're bareback."
It did. O'Doull couldn't quarrel about that. He could ask, "And how does it feel now?" The PFC hung his head. O'Doull went on, "Do you still think she was a nice girl?"
"No, sir," the kid said, and then, apprehensively, "What are you going to do to me, sir?"
"Me? I'm going to fix you up, that's what." O'Doull raised his voice: "Sergeant Lord! Let me have a VD hypo of penicillin."
"Coming up, Doc." Goodson Lord produced the requisite syringe.
The PFC stared at it with something not far from horror. "Jeez Louise! You could give an elephant a shot with that thing."
"Elephants don't get syphilis. Far as I know, they don't get the clap, either." O'Doull nodded to the kid, who wasn't far wrong there, either-it was a big needle. "Bend over."
Most unwillingly, the U.S. soldier obeyed. "Shit," he muttered. "I went through the last year and a half of the war. I got a Purple Heart. And I'm more scared of your damn shot than I was of the screaming meemies."
He wasn't the first man to say something like that. With bullets and shells and rockets, you could always think they'd miss. When somebody aimed a hypodermic at your bare ass, he'd damn well connect.
And O'Doull did. The PFC let out a yip as he pressed home the needle and pressed in the plunger. "You get one on the other side three days from now. If you don't show up, you're in a lot more trouble than you are for coming down venereal. You got that?"
"Yes, sir," the kid said miserably. "Can I go now, sir?"
He really did want to escape if he was that eager to return to the clutches of his regular superiors. O'Doull couldn't do anything but stick him, but they could-and would-give him hell. Still, he wasn't quite finished here. "Not yet, son. You need to tell me the name of the woman you got it from, where she lives, and the names of any others you've screwed since. We don't want 'em passing it along to any of your buddies, you know."