Rafferty pressed the binoculars into Anthony’s chest. “See what I’m talkin’ about?” moaned the chief mate, pointing south as Anthony lifted the Bushnells and focused. “I think those are classic SBD-2 Dauntlesses over near the belly, and meanwhile we got ourselves a squadron of TBD-1 Devastators zooming ’round the throat — all of ’em built, I swear, Captain, all of ’em built in the late thirties. It’s like some goddamn Twilight Zone episode!”
“Steady, sir?” called An-mei Jong from the wheelhouse.
“No — turn!” bellowed Anthony, cheeks reddening, eyes darting in all directions. “Left full rudder! We’re taking evasive action!”
“You can’t evade this” Cassie insisted.
“Marbles, get on the sticks! Flank speed!”
“Aye!”
As the mate sprinted into the wheelhouse, Anthony seized Cassie’s forearm, squeezing so hard she felt the pressure through the goose-down stuffing. “What do you mean, I can’t evade this?” he said.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Do you know where these planes are from?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“Let go of my arm,” Cassie insisted. He did. “Pembroke and Flume’s World War Two Reenactment Society.”
“Pembroke and who? What?”
“They’re working for hire.”
“Who hired them?”
“Some friends of mine.”
“Friends of yours? Oliver, you mean?”
“Try to understand, Anthony — dead or alive, this body’s a menace. If it ever becomes public, reason and women’s equality go out the window. Entombment’s not enough — it must be dumped in the Mohns Trench and left to decompose. Tell me you understand.”
He faced her squarely, lips curled, teeth clenched. “Understand? Understand?!”
“I don’t think that’s asking too much.”
“How could you betray me like this?”
“The patriarchy’s been betraying my gender for the past four thousand years.”
“How could you, Cassie? How could you?”
She looked him in the eye and said, “A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.”
For a moment Cassie’s lover stood frozen on the bridge wing, immobilized by anger.
Checkmate, she thought.
He spun toward the wheelhouse. “Evasive action!” he yelled to Jong. “Left full rudder!”
“You already gave that order, sir!”
Locked in a tight V, five Devastators swung around from the west and flew straight for the neck, releasing their payloads as they drew within a thousand feet of the target. Swiftly, smoothly, the torpedoes made their runs, bubbly white lather spuming from their propellers. One by one, the warheads hit flesh and detonated, sending up fountains of boiling lymph and geysers of pulverized tissue. Cassie laughed: a long, low whoop of delight. At last she was getting it. This was why men took such trouble to arrange for fire and chaos in their lives — the rush of destruction, the imperial nonboredom of war, history’s intoxicating grease. There were probably highs of equal caliber on earth, certainly less violent ones, but, oh, what lovely theater it made, what a hell of an opening night.
At last the tanker began her turn, carving a great crescent of foam in the Norwegian Sea, God inexorably following.
“Now hear this!” cried Anthony, grabbing the PA mike. “Now hear this — two squadrons of hostile warplanes are presently harassing our cargo! The Val herself is in no danger, and we’re taking evasive action! Repeat: the Val is in no danger!”
Cassie released a contemptuous snort. He could call it evasive action if he liked, but at nine lousy knots the stiff was a sitting duck.
“I pulled you out of the sea!” Anthony brandished the binoculars, holding them before Cassie as if he meant to smash her across the face. “I fed you my mescal worms!”
She couldn’t decide whether she was madder at Anthony or herself. How naive, how stupefyingly naive, to have imagined he might sanction her agenda. “Damn, I knew you’d miss the point, I just knew it.” Tearing the binoculars from Anthony’s hands, she aimed them at a PBY flying boat currently orbiting above their cargo’s brow. For a brief instant Oliver materialized before her eyes — sweet, weak-chinned Oliver, sitting by a starboard window and looking like a roller-coaster rider on the verge of throwing up. “You know, Anthony, you’re taking this attack much too personally. It’s beyond your control. Relax.”
“Nothing’s beyond my control!”
At 0935 an echelon of six dive bombers struck, engines screaming as they peeled off and hurtled downward, lobbing their payloads against the stomach like a flock of blue-footed boobies defecating on Saint Paul’s Rocks. With each direct hit, a ragged column of melted ice and vaporized skin shot skyward.
“What’s going on here?” demanded a perplexed Father Thomas, striding onto the starboard wing in the company of an equally baffled Dolores Haycox.
“The Battle of Midway,” Cassie replied.
“Jesus H. Christ,” muttered Haycox.
“Is the Vatican behind it?” asked Father Thomas.
“You don’t belong here!” shouted Anthony.
“I warned you not to mess with Rome,” said the priest.
“Get out!”
“The Church can’t take credit,” said Cassie.
“Who, then?” asked Father Thomas.
“The Enlightenment.”
“I said get out!” Anthony, sputtering, lurched toward the third mate. “I want to see Sparks — on the double!”
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Haycox again, starting away.
The next two attacks occurred simultaneously, a V of torpedo planes methodically expanding the breach in God’s neck while another echelon of dive bombers doggedly augmented His belly wound.
“I’ve never boasted a particularly sophisticated grasp of politics,” Father Thomas confessed.
“This isn’t politics,” snarled Anthony. “It’s feminist paranoia!” Again he squeezed Cassie’s arm. “Has it occurred to you that if your little friends succeed, the body will drag us all down with it?”
“Don’t worry — they’ll be bombing the chains soon. Kindly remove your dung forks from my person.”
Lianne strode onto the wing, face lit by a wide, meandering smile. “You rang, sir?”
“Those planes are destroying our cargo,” wailed Anthony.
“So I see.”
“I want you to raise the squadron leaders.”
Aye-aye.
“Hi, Lianne,” said Cassie.
“Morning, sweetie.”
“Shit, did you have a hand in this, Sparks?” asked Anthony.
Lianne winced. “I’ll confess to harboring a certain sympathy for what those planes are trying to do, sir,” she replied, sidestepping the question. “That body’s bad news for women everywhere.”
“Look on the bright side,” Cassie told Anthony. “Normally you’d have to pay sixty dollars to see a Pembroke and Flume extravaganza.”
“Raise those leaders, Sparks!”
Oliver hated the Battle of Midway. It was noisy, confusing, and manifestly dangerous. “Do we have to be so close?” he asked Ensign Reid over the intercom. The third Devastator attack had just gotten under way, five planes zooming across the deckhouse of the circling supertanker and lobbing their torpedoes straight into God’s neck. As each payload exploded, Strawberry Eleven responded to the shock wave, twisting and rocking like a shot goose. “Why don’t we watch” — Oliver extended a trembling index finger — “from over there? Over there by that big berg!”
“Don’t listen to him, Ensign,” said Pembroke, tearing into a pint of macaroni salad.
“Oliver, you gotta get into the spirit,” said Flume, popping a deviled egg into his mouth.
“That’s some golem, huh?” said Pembroke.
“Bet you could drive a Pershing tank down his urethra and not even scratch the fenders,” said Flume.