After a moment, my uncle’s golden voice asked, “Well, Jim? Do you want it?”
I said: “Uncle Stewart, I want it more than anything else in the world.”
And then, in spite of being ten years old and a grown man for the day, I think I did cry.
The six years did pass, just as my uncle had promised.
Not quickly or easily, but with that letter locked in my trunk all the time I was at school, the years passed. I had to learn a great many things to be ready for the Academy—mathematics and English and science of a dozen varieties, and languages and history and much, much more. Six years was none too long a time for the job.
But I learned them. And I learned a few other things too.
Among them I learned just who my quiet, soft-voiced Uncle Stewart really was.
2
Cadet Eden Reports for Duty
The Bermuda sun was blindingly bright. The car from the airport let me out at the coral gates as a submarine cadet, in full sea-red dress uniform, presented arms sharply.
I stood there, my bag in my hand, wondering uncertainly if I should salute. The grinning cab driver roared off, and the cadet took the decision out of my hands.
“Advance and be recognized,” he rapped out.
I tried to stand at attention. “James Eden reporting,” I said. “Here are my orders.”
I handed over the travel documents that had come to me in the mail the week before. The cadet scanned them briskly.
“Proceed, Cadet Eden,” he ordered, martinet-like. Then, for a moment, the ramrod formality dropped from his face and he smiled. “And good luck,” he added, as he returned to his post.
That was my first sight of the Sub-Sea Academy.
When I walked in that gate, Jimmy Eden disappeared. Cadet Eden, J., U.S.S., was born.
The first hours went by like seconds. It was a scramble of physical examinations and questionnaires and interviews and instructions and drawing gear and equipment and finding my quarters. In the barnlike supply shed the spidery fingers of the fitting-servo roamed over my body, clicking and twittering; and in the delivery hatch of the servo my first uniform took shape.
It was the dull sea-green fatigue uniform of the submariners. Now that my patterns were on record, I could draw the rest of my uniforms as they were needed. As the arms of the tri-dimensional pantograph sketched in the blouse, and the plastic spinnerets weaved in and out to translate it into fabric, the Stores quartermaster bellowed: “Hurry up, Mister! Put it on. The tides don’t wait!”
But he could have saved his breath. As soon as the hatch opened and the uniform swung out, still sparkling with drops of the chemical rinse, I was climbing into it. As the glass hatch closed again I caught a glimpse of myself. It was hard to keep a grin off my face: Now anybody could plainly see it, I was a submariner!
But the next storesman was barking at me already; I had no time to admire my reflection.
I stumbled out of the Stores shed, grunting under almost a hundred pounds of gear, the tools and badges of my new life. As I reached the door the Caribbean sun seemed like a furnace door gaping a yard above my head. The heat, after the cool, large shed, was like a physical blow.
It was a hundred yards across the quadrangle to the dormitory to which I had been assigned. By the time I got there I was staggering.
Perhaps the sweat in my eyes was the reason I didn’t see the scarlet-tuniced upperclassman who made a shipshape right turn and started up the steps just ahead of me.
I stumbled into him.
My gear fell all over the steps. I groaned, but I said, “I’m sorry,” although a little grouchily, I admit. I bent down to pick up my cap.
“Atten-HUT!”
The whiplash of the word cleared my foggy brain like magic.
I leaped erect. “Sorry, sir!” I said smartly.
The cadet on the steps above me looked down with an expression of distaste. He was as tall as I, and heavier in build. His eyes under the flat scarlet dress cap were cold; somehow they seemed almost dangerous.
“Keep your mouth shut, Mr. Lubber!” he rapped. “When an officer or am upperclassman wants to know if you’re sorry, he’ll ask you. Don’t volunteer the information. And stand at attention, Mister! Full attention—your arms at your sides.”
“But I’ll drop my cap,” I objected.
“Mis-ter Lubber!”
“Yes, sir!” I let my arms drop. The cap slipped to the ground again. My luck had held once, but on the second fall the crystal visor shattered.
The upperclassman paid no attention.
He stared coldly at me for a moment, then descended the steps and walked slowly around me. When he had made a complete circle, he shook his head.
In a conversational tone, he said:
“I have seen a great many undesirable specimens in my life, Mr. Lubber, but I have never in two years, three days and thirteen hours at the Sub-Sea Academy seen any person, beast or thing—and I may say that I am by no means certain which of these classifications you belong in—which showed as little promise of ever becoming anything close to barely possible material for making a third-rate pump-hand’s second assistant helper as you.” He shook his head. “If I were to call you a disgrace to the country, to the Service and to the Academy, Mr. Lubber,” he went on, “I would be guilty of gross flattery. It is on the face of it clearly impossible that you will last as long as two weeks in this Academy. I should not bother to take an interest in you at all. I am wasting the Service’s good time by doing so. But, Mr. Lubber, a good submariner is charitable. My kind heart forces me to do what I can in order to protract your useless and unpleasant stay with us as much as possible. Therefore, I will take an interest in your education.” He planted his hands on his hips and stared at me. “To start out with, Mr. Lubber, I invite you to learn Rule One. Would you like to learn it? You may answer in two words, each of one syllable, the second being ‘sir.’”
My jaw muscles were trembling—whether from rage or nervous laughter I couldn’t tell. Obediently I said, “Yes, sir.”
He nodded briskly. “Very good—that is, very good for you, considering. You answered me in more or less proper form, and it was the first time you tried it, at that. I congratulate you, Mr. Lubber. There may be some hope for you after all. It may be as long as three weeks, perhaps even three weeks and two or three days, before the Fitness Board is forced to the conclusion that you are utterly unfit to touch the sludgeboots of a real submariner and, throws you out. However, let us get on with Rule One. Attention to orders, Mr. Lubber! Rule One is: ‘Whenever in the presence of an upperclassman, you will stand at strict attention until he either gives you leave to do otherwise or signifies, by departing to a distance of at least five yards, that he no longer has any interest in what you do.’ Do you understand that?”
I started to say, “Yes, sir,” but closed my mouth again in a hurry. He had not given me leave to speak. I was learning the rules.
But I wasn’t quite fast enough. He stared at my jaw in an absorbed way.
“Facial tic,” he mused to himself. “This person is physically sub-normal too, it would appear—as well as mentally, morally, emotionally and otherwise.” He sighed. “Well, enough of this.
Mr. Lubber, it is well known that memorizing difficult rules, particularly those containing forty-five words, requires absolute concentration. To help you achieve this condition, I am permitting you to walk off fifteen tours around the quadrangle. Don’t thank me; I’m glad to do it for you. It’s for your own good. It has nothing to do with punishment, but is only designed to help you concentrate.” He nodded with an expression of cold satisfaction. “However,” he went on, “the question of punishment must also be considered. For conduct unbecoming a sub-sea cadet—to be specific, trampling an upperclassman—you may walk five additional tours. And for wanton destruction of government property—” his eyes flitted to my crushed visor—“ten tours more. You have wasted enough of my time, Mr. Lubber; kindly start on this at once. The tides don’t wait!”