else lobbyists. Important people, yes, but Bartlett wasn't much interested in pension law. He wished he had more money now, sure, but he wasn't going to worry about fifty years down the line, especially not when his life expectancy once he got back to the front was more likely to be measured in weeks than in years.
Gribbin returned with salami and radishes on rye bread, a couple of devilled eggs, fried oysters, pickles, and pretzels. Reggie went and got some food for himself. The spread the Ford Hotel set out was another reason to come here, and the congressmen or lobbyists or whatever they were didn't have too much pride to keep them from raiding it, either.
A tough-looking fellow in a foreign naval uniform came up and stood at the bar next to Bartlett. He ordered scotch, which, with his accent, gave a pretty clear notion of his nationality. Nodding affably to Bartlett, he said, 'Confusion to the Yankees, what?' and lifted his glass.
'I'll drink to that.' Reggie proceeded to prove it.
The Englishman made his drink disappear so fast, he might have done it by magic or inhalation. He got another, then raised his glass again and proceeded to elaborate on his earlier toast: 'To the Empire and the Confederacy, and to keeping the United States in their place.'
'And out of ours,' Bartlett added, which made Alec Gribbin laugh and the naval officer smile wide enough to show a pair of front teeth a rabbit would have been proud to claim. He drank his second shot of scotch as fast as he had the first. Emboldened by his friendly manner, Reggie asked, 'How's it going, out on the ocean?'
Before replying, the Royal Navy man ordered a third scotch. Then he said, 'Damned if I know how it will all turn out. Damned if anyone knows how it will all turn out. Honours about even thus far in the Atlantic. Argentina 's coming in on our side, I'd say, outweighs Chile 's joining the Americans and Germans, though none of the South American navies is important enough to swing the balance in any decisive way.' Then, seeming to contradict himself, he went on, 'I do wish the Empire of Brazil would come to a decision of one sort or the other.'
'They damn well better come in on our side when they come,' Reggie said angrily, to which Alec Gribbin gave an emphatic assent. Bartlett went on, 'Hell, they held on to their slaves longer than we did.'
He had thought that a convincing argument. He kept on thinking it a convincing argument. The Royal Navy man called for yet another drink and gulped it with the same alacrity he'd shown with the ones before. 'Allies,' he muttered, but it didn't sound like a toast. Mostly to himself he went on, 'The South and the czars. God have mercy on a free country.'
'And what the devil is that supposed to mean?' Alexander Gribbin demanded. He sounded a lot hotter with whiskey in him than he had without. 'You saying we aren't free? Is that what you're saying? Go up to the USA and see how you like it there. The Confederacy is the freest country in the world, and that's a fact.'
'Is it?' The Englishman had taken on whiskey, too. He pointed to the bartender. 'Would you agree with that statement, sir? The statement that this great nation is the freest country in the world, I mean.'
The bartender looked from the English officer to the two Confederate privates and back again. He didn't say anything, though his eyes were wide in his dark face. 'Oh, hell, what are you asking him for, anyway?' Bartlett said with a dismissive wave of his hand. 'He's just a nigger. He doesn't know anything.'
'Something more than one man in three of your populace falls into that category,' the Royal Navy man said. 'In spite of that, you still call yourself the freest country in the world?'
'Of course we do,' Reggie said. 'We are.'
He and the Englishman stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. 'Enjoy it, then,' the fellow said at last. He called for one last drink, drained it, and left after adding a tip for the bartender.
Bartlett shook his head. 'Can't figure out what's chewin' on him. I'd say lice, but he's never seen the inside of a trench, not the likes of him.'
'Don't worry about it, soldier,' one of the prominent men in dark suits said. 'There's a certain kind of Englishman who thinks that if you're not English, you're sort of halfway to being a nigger yourself.'
'Is that a fact? Well, to hell with him, then,' Gribbin said, and started after the naval officer. 'Anybody who thinks I'm halfway to a nigger, he's halfway to the hospital.'
Reggie grabbed him by the arm. 'Ease off, Alec,' he said urgently. 'You beat on an ally, you get yourself in more trouble than you can shake a stick at.'
'That, in essence, is correct,' the man in the suit said. 'It doesn't matter whether we love the limeys and they love us. What matters is that, no matter what else we do, we don't do anything to make them like us less than they like the USA. Should that misfortune ever strike us, boys, you can buy a coffin, on account of we are dead and buried.'
'I don't want to buy me a coffin,' Reggie said. 'All I want is another schooner.' He raised his voice to call to the Negro tending bar: 'Boy, another beer!'
'Yes, sir,' the bartender said, and brought him one.
After he paid for it, he turned to Gribbin and said, 'You know what's nice about niggers? You don't have to waste time bein' polite with 'em.'
'I'll drink to that,' Alec said, and did.
The bartender picked up a rag and polished the gleaming surface of the bar, over and over again. He did not look up at the two soldiers.
Sam Carsten slept in the middle bunk on the Dakota, which made him feel like the meat in a sandwich. You had a guy on top of you and a guy underneath, to say nothing of a whole bunk room full of guys all around. Your skinny mattress creaked and groaned on the iron frame, as did those of your two bunkmates. Everybody snored. Everybody farted. Nobody washed his feet often enough.
And, half the time or more, you didn't even notice, not from lights-out to the klaxon that yanked you from your bunk as if it physically grabbed you and threw you down on the deck. If you weren't dead beat when you lay down, you'd figured out how to screw around so well, it looked as if you were working to some chief petty officers who'd long since seen every kind of screwing around known to man.
This particular morning, Sam really resented the klaxon. In his dream, Maggie Stevenson had just started doing something highly immoral and even more highly enjoyable. If she'd kept on for another few seconds His feet hit the iron deck before his eyes came open all the way. When they did, they saw not voluptuous Maggie but skinny, hairy, snaggle-toothed Vic Crosetti, who had the top bunk. 'You ain't no beautiful blonde,' Carsten said accusingly.
'Yeah, and if I was, I wouldn't want nothin' to do with the likes of you,' Crosetti said, scrambling into his trousers.
Sam got dressed, too, and staggered down the hall to the galley for break fast. After oatmeal, bacon, stewed prunes, and several mugs of scalding, snarling coffee, he decided he was going to live. He went up on deck for roll call and sick call.
The sky was brilliantly blue, the sea even bluer. The sun blazed down. He could feel his fair skin starting to sizzle, the same way the bacon had on the griddles down below. No help for it, he thought ruefully. He'd smeared every ointment under the tropic sun on his hide, and that tropic sun had defeated them all. He thought longingly of San Francisco, of mist, of fog, of damp. He'd been happy there; that was the country he was made for.
'Romantic,' he muttered under his breath as he started chipping paint, stopping rust before it got started. 'The South Pacific is supposed to be romantic. What the hell's so romantic about looking like an Easter ham all the goddamn time?'
Chip, chip, chip. Chip, chip, chip. The Dakota plowed through light chop, several hundred miles south and west of Honolulu. The only way to find out what the limeys and the Japs were up to- if they were up to anything- was to go out on patrol and look around.
With the Dakota steamed the Nebraska and the Vermont, as well as a pair of cruiser squadrons and a whole flotilla of speedy destroyers. The fleet could handle any probe the English and the Japanese tried, and could damage a full-scale assault against the Sandwich Islands, meanwhile warning Honolulu of impending danger. 'We caught the limeys napping,' Carsten said, chipping away so industriously, no one could give him a hard time about it. 'They won't give us the same treatment.'
As if to underscore his words, a high-pitched buzzing, as if from a gnat made suddenly bigger than any eagle, rose from the bow of the Dakota. Sam stopped what he was doing and looked that way. The buzz rose in volume, then steadied. It was followed by an enormous hiss that might have come from an outsized snake alarmed at the
