It was hot, even in the shade of the trees surrounding the parade ground where the lesson was under way. Abel Cook, his most avid student, leaned forward to view the structure. Abel was thirteen, and he’d long since grown out of the clothes he’d been wearing during his evacuation from Surabaya aboard S-19. Most of the other boys who’d been similarly saved had applied to become midshipmen in the American Navy. Abel had too, but of all of them, he was the only one who’d shown an interest in the natural sciences. Bradford couldn’t-and wouldn’t-try to prevent the boy from serving, but he saw in the blond-haired, fair-skinned, somewhat gangly teen a much younger version of himself. “We need more of me around here,” Courtney had argued with Captain Reddy, and to his surprise, Matt had agreed. Abel was still a midshipman, and naval dungarees had replaced his battered clothes, but Courtney would have him as an apprentice. For a while, at least.
“I believe you’re right,” the boy replied, his voice cracking slightly. “And that must be the gallbladder,” he said, pointing. “It is quite large!”
“The better to digest the dreadful things they eat, I shouldn’t wonder!” Bradford beamed.
Other students attended the dissection as well, ’Cat corpsmen trainees, and they shuffled forward to look. The cadaver was that of a local variety of skuggik, a much smaller but clearly related species to the Grik. Skuggiks were vicious little scavengers, mostly, and their arms had evolved away, so their external physiology bore marked differences to that of their enemy. Internally however, they were virtually identical smaller versions. Courtney had attempted to save actual Grik for the demonstrations, but there was no means of cooling them. His modest hoard of postbattle corpses had been revealed by their stench and he’d been forced to surrender them. For now, his little open-air class on comparative biology would have to make do with skuggiks.
“And what is that lobed structure it is attached to?” Bradford asked. “Be silent, Abel,” he admonished. “Let someone else answer for a change.”
“Lungs!” proclaimed one of the young Lemurians triumphantly. Most of the others snickered.
Bradford sighed. “Would you like another try?”
The ’Cat looked more intently and wrinkled her nose. “You say that other st’ucture is a spleeng? I thought you say spleeng is on lungs?” There was chittering laughter this time.
“Perhaps, my dear, you might consider applying for another posting?”
“It is liver!” burst out another voice. “Big, ugly Grik-like liver!”
“Precisely!” exclaimed Bradford, his gentle chastisement instantly forgotten. His eyes narrowed and he looked at the organ in question. “A rather dry, reeking liver, in fact. Perhaps it’s time we called it a day. Our specimen is withering before our very eyes… and noses!” He nodded at his assistants. “Please do dispose of this chap with all proper ceremony. We’ll continue the lecture tomorrow with a fresh, um, subject. Weather permitting, we may start before the heat of the day!” With that, all but Abel scampered away, glad to escape the stench.
“Well!” said Bradford, still fanning himself and gauging the height of the sun. “Still some hours before dinner, I fear. Most barbarous, this local custom of eating only twice a day! Most barbarous. I’ll never grow accustomed to it, and I may not survive.” Secretly, he was glad Abel hadn’t scurried off with the others. He didn’t know why, exactly. He’d always generally loathed children: silly, mindless little creatures. His own son had been different, of course. A rare, exceptional specimen, most likely. He doubted he’d ever see the boy again, or even know if he was alive. He’d gone to fly Hurricanes for the RAF back in ’39, and Courtney was slowly growing to accept that pining over his son’s fate was pointless. In his heart, the boy would live forever. His ex-wife never entered his thoughts. That left Abel. Maybe that was it? Perhaps the boy was becoming something of a surrogate son? He was clearly unusually bright: unlike the other children who’d been aboard the submarine, he had the sense to seek Courtney’s company and he had an insatiable curiosity.
Abel seemed to commiserate with him for a moment about the local customs, but then brightened. “Well, sir, if you’re hungry, I’m sure we could find something at the Castaway Cook.”
Bradford arched an eyebrow and looked at the boy. The Castaway Cook was a ramshackle, abandoned warehouse a short distance from the shipyard. It had suffered serious damage in the fighting and was really little more than a standing roof when Walker ’s cook, Earl Lanier, appropriated it as a kind of enlisted men’s club. It currently had little value as a warehouse, since there was no pier. In fact, it sported one of the few actual beaches on the Baalkpan waterfront. Earl was a ship’s cook, and that was all he was. With his galley underwater, he’d decided he better get back to doing what he knew before somebody made him do something he didn’t. Besides, “the fellas is always hungry,” he’d explained. He was right. The American destroyermen and submariners he fed were still accustomed to three meals a day, and with all the work there was for everyone, the Lemurian destroyermen and other naval personnel were often hungry too. It was good for morale. The various army regiments were beginning to establish haunts of their own, and with Captain Reddy and Adar’s approval had come the stern warning that Marines would also be welcome at Lanier’s establishment. Or else.
Earl did a booming business. Besides Pepper, he had five more cooks and half a dozen waitresses. There were also several bartenders and that was what made Bradford’s eyebrow rise. The Castaway Cook had another, possibly more common name: the Busted Screw. The entendres of that name were too numerous to count, but the accepted reference was to the party they’d held after replacing Walker ’s damaged propeller with Mahan ’s at Aryaal.
Bradford studied the boy’s innocent expression. “Well, I suppose,” he relented. Together, they dodged the ’Cats and marching troops, stopping now and then to admire various sea creatures on display in the bazaar. Coastal artillery crews drilled on their guns behind reinforced embrasures with augmented overhead protection. Abel watched it all, fascinated, and Courtney felt a growing benevolent affection for the lad.
“Do you ever miss the other children, the ones you were stranded among so long?” Bradford probed.
Abel cocked his head to the side. “I see them now and then,” he said thoughtfully, “but we never had much in common, you know. The girls were all-mostly all-ridiculous, squalling crybabies. Miss, uh, Princess Rebecca was the exception, of course.”
“Indeed she was. And is. Most extraordinary.” Even though Rebecca was also clearly a child, Bradford actually admired her. She had a quick mind and was utterly fearless. With a flash, he suddenly realized that Abel Cook obviously “admired” her as well. “Indeed,” he repeated. He motioned toward the martial exercises under way. “Do you wish you had more of that to do? Your, ah, other comrades, the ones old enough, are quite involved in it, you know. Of course you do.”
“I do miss it some,” Abel confessed. “I’d like to be a soldier or a naval officer.” He paused. “I think my father would expect it. Did you know, of all the children aboard S-19, I am the only one whose father was a military man? He was a naval attache and interpreter for Admiral Palliser.” He paused again, and continued more softly. “He was liaison aboard DeRuyter when she went down. I don’t… I’ll never know what happened to him.” The boy’s lip quivered ever so slightly, but his voice didn’t. Bradford knew then that he had far more in common with this lad than he would ever have imagined. “All the other children-the boys, at least-were the sons of important men, but I think Admiral Palliser got me on the submarine himself. Mum was supposed to come, but there wasn’t enough room there at the end. Sister Audry offered to leave the boat, but Mum wouldn’t have it. The captain, Ensign Laumer, even Mr. Flynn wanted to take her anyway, but that Dutch cow,” he said, referring to a somewhat dumpy Dutch nanny in charge of most of the girls, “said it just ‘wouldn’t do.’ Things were ‘quite cramped enough as it was.’” Abel’s tone turned bitter. “There would have been room for several more people if they’d have just set that one ridiculous woman ashore. I’m sure she weighs as much as a torpedo and occupies three times the space!”
“Now, now,” admonished Courtney gently, “I can certainly see your point. But one mustn’t be unkind.”
Besides Sandra and Karen Theimer Letts, only two other Navy nurses had survived: Pam Cross and Kathy McCoy. Pam was engaged in a torrid part-time affair with Dennis Silva, and for a time that had left only one known, and… wholesomely unattached female in the entire world: Kathy McCoy. This intolerable situation had resulted in the increasingly desperate “dame famine.” That famine still existed to a degree. The only practical means of truly breaking it seemed to lie in establishing good relations with the Empire, but there were a few more women in Baalkpan now. There’d been four nannies, not counting Sister Audry, on S-19 to care for the twenty children of diplomats and industrialists aboard the sub. Two of them, one British and the “ridiculous” Dutchwoman, dropped all pretense of nannyhood and had taken it upon themselves to “thank” as many of their destroyermen rescuers as they could in the best way they knew how, as soon as they returned to Baalkpan after the battle. Both women were rather plain and had probably landed right in the middle of their version of heaven. Perhaps the dame famine was broken, but in spite of terrible losses, the male-to-female ratio was very considerably out of whack. They were only two women, after all, and their energy and gratitude had limits. For now, the dame drought still smoldered.
“Besides,” Courtney continued, “your mother surely found a far safer transport, in retrospect.”
