all'd be a couple of really rich niggers. When it was the Confederate States down there, most of us hardly had nothin' but our one name. We had to pack everything we could into it.'
Sims and Dunnett glanced at each other again. 'We've had hard times, too,' Dunnett said. He sounded a little defensive. Cincinnatus didn't answer. Dunnett had reason to sound defensive. White men had patrolled the Ohio to keep blacks from the Confederate States out of the USA. Nobody had ever needed to patrol the Ohio to keep blacks from the United States out of the CSA. Blacks in the USA knew perfectly well the distance between the frying pan and the fire.
Sam Carsten would sooner not have had the new stripe on his sleeve that showed he was a petty officer second class. He hadn't lost his ambition-far from it. But he'd earned that stripe by doing a good job as head of his gun crew after Willie Moore got killed. It had blood on it, as far as he was concerned.
The USS Remembrance steamed west across the Atlantic toward Boston harbor. Sam didn't have to worry about taking shellfire here. He didn't have to worry about renegade Confederate submersibles, either. What he'd learned about the C.S. boat that had sunk the U.S. destroyer after the war was over filled him with rage. Under that rage lay terror. A Rebel boat could have stalked his old battleship, the USS Dakota, just as readily.
A deck hand jerked the prop on a Wright fighting scout. The two-decker's engine thundered to life. The prop blurred into invisibility. The Remembrancers steam catapult hurled the fighting scout into the sky.
'Bully,' Sam said softly. Launching aeroplanes had fascinated him even aboard the Dakota. The fascination had changed to urgency when land-based aeroplanes bombed his battleship off the Argentine coast. He'd imagined air power on the sea then. He lived it now, and still found it awe-inspiring.
Behind him, a dry voice spoke: 'I wonder how long we'll be able to keep them in the air.'
Sam turned. If Commander Grady had wanted to stick a KICK ME sign on him, he stood close enough to do it. 'What do you mean, sir?' Sam asked, thinking he knew and hoping he was wrong.
'How much longer will we be able to keep them in the air?' the gunnery officer repeated. 'You're not stupid, Carsten. You understand what I mean. Will the Socialists put enough money into the Navy to keep this ship operating? Right now, your guess is as good as mine.'
'Yes, sir,' Sam said dully. His guess was that the Socialists would shut down as much as they could. Except when the war dragged some into the Navy, Socialists were thinly scattered aboard warships: almost as thinly scattered as colored people in the USA. He didn't know a great deal about what Socialist politicians thought, except that they didn't think much of the Navy or the Army.
He looked at Commander Grady. Grady had always been as proud of the Remembrance as if he'd designed her himself. Now, looking from the flight deck to the conning tower, his eyes were dull, all but hopeless: the eyes of a man who expected a loved one to die. Sighing, he said, 'It was a good idea, anyhow. It still is a good idea.'
'It sure as hell is, sir,' Carsten said hotly. 'It's a swell idea, and anybody who can't see that is a damn fool.'
'Lot of damn fools running around loose in the world,' Grady said. 'Some of them wear fancy uniforms. Some of them wear expensive suits and get elected to Congress or elected president. Those fools get to tell the ones in the fancy uniforms what to do.'
'And the ones in the fancy uniforms get to tell us what to do.' Sam's laugh was harsh as salt spray. 'It's the Navy way.' He couldn't think of another officer to whom he would have said such a thing. Grady and he had been through a lot together.
'Damn it,' Grady said in a low, furious voice, 'we proved what this ship can do. We proved it, but will we get any credit for it?'
'No way to tell about that, sir,' Carsten answered, 'but I wouldn't bet anything I cared to lose on it.'
'Neither would I,' Grady said. 'But I tell you this: we did show what the Remembrance can do. Congress may not be watching. President Upton goddamn Sinclair may not be watching. You can bet, though, the German High Seas Fleet was watching. The Royal Navy was watching. And if the Japs weren't watching, too, I'd be amazed. Plenty of countries are going to have squadrons of aeroplane carriers ten years from now. I hope to God we're one of them.' Before Sam could say anything to that, Grady wheeled and rapidly strode away.
Carsten tried to figure out where he'd be ten years down the line. Likeliest, he supposed, was chief petty officer in charge of a gun crew. He could easily see himself turning into Hiram Kidde or Willie Moore. He'd just have to follow the path of least resistance.
If he wanted anything more, he'd have to work harder for it. Mustangs didn't grow on trees. And, if he aimed at becoming an officer, he'd have to get lucky, too. He wondered how much he really wanted that kind of luck. What was good for him might turn out to be anything but good for other people. He thought of Moore again, Moore writhing on the floor with his belly torn open.
The steam catapult hissed like a million snakes, hurling another fighting scout into the air. The crew of the Remembrance kept honing their skills. They were, at the moment, the best in the world at what they did, whether Congress appreciated it or not. They were also, at the moment, the only ones in the world who did what they did. Sam wondered how long that would last. He remembered the German sailors in Dublin harbor staring and staring at the aeroplane carrier. Kaiser Bill's boys built better aeroplanes than the USA did; the Wright two-deckers were Al- batros copies. Could the Germans build better aeroplane carriers, too?
One of the Wright machines roared low over the flight deck. Had it shot up the deck, Sam would not have cared to be standing there. On the other hand, the flight deck bristled with machine guns and one-pounders. Had that fighting scout been painted with the Stars and Bars instead of the U.S. eagle in front of crossed swords, it would have got a warm welcome.
It zoomed above the Remembrance again, this time even lower and upside down. A couple of the sailors on deck saluted the pilot with upraised middle fingers. Sam didn't, but he felt like it. He hadn't had a whole lot to do with the pilots aboard the aeroplane carrier: they were officers, and pretty much kept to themselves. But what he had seen made him wonder if their marbles had spilled out of their ears as they flew, because they didn't seem to give two whoops in hell whether they lived or died.
Staring after the fighting scout after it finally rolled back to right side up, Sam decided that made a certain amount of sense. The rickety contraptions the pilots flew had a habit of falling out of the sky by themselves. The pilots had to take them into harm's way, and had to land them on the rolling, pitching deck of a warship. You probably needed to be crazy to want to do any of that. And, if you weren't crazy when you started doing it, you'd get that way after a while.
As if to prove the point, the pilot of the other fighting scout dove out of the sky on the Remembrance like a sparrowhawk swooping on a field mouse. In an impossibly short time, the aeroplane swelled from buzzing speck to roaring monster. It seemed to be heading straight for Sam. He wanted to dig a hole in the deck, dive in, and then pull the planking and steel over himself: an armored blanket to keep him safe and warm. A couple of sailors started to run. Their comrades screamed curses at them. He understood why, but had to work to hold his own feet still.
At the last possible instant, the Wright two-decker pulled out of the dive. Sam couldn't help ducking; he thought one wheel of the landing gear would clip him. It wasn't quite so close as that, but he did have to snatch at his cap to keep it from blowing off his head and perhaps into the sea. Had it gone into the drink, the price of a new one would have come out of his pay.
The two-decker almost went into the drink, too, off to port of the Remembrance. Carsten would have sworn its lowest point was lower than the aeroplane carrier's deck. The landing gear didn't quite touch the wavetops, but a flying fish might have leaped into the cockpit. Then the Wright started to gain altitude again, much more slowly than it had shed it.
'That bastard's nuts,' somebody said, shaken respect in his voice.
'That bastard's nuts almost got cut off him,' somebody else said, which was also true, and made everybody who heard it laugh to boot.
A fellow with bright-colored semaphore paddles strode out near the edge of the deck to guide the aeroplanes in to the controlled crash that constituted a landing aboard ship. His wigwagged signals urged the pilot of the first fighting scout up a little, to starboard, up a little more… Sam had learned to read the wigwags, just as he'd picked up Morse as a kid.
Smoke spurted from the solid rubber tires as they slammed against the deck. The hook under the fuselage caught a cable. The aeroplane jerked to a halt. Watching it, Carsten understood why the fighting scouts had needed strengthening before they came aboard the Remembrance.
