'I know, sir, we're all homesick and tired…Horny too.' He elbowed Van Gelder gently in the ribs, then read the thermometer. 'Much better.'
There was another distant rumbling, with a crackling overtone.
The corpsman glanced up at the overhead. 'Must have hit the ice pack that time, in case we went under there. Guess again, Tommy.' He made a rude gesture toward the south. Van Gelder swallowed, with difficulty. 'How, how long'?'
'Till you're out of bed? A couple of days.'
Van Gelder shook his head, then felt himself begin to drift away.
'Oh. Durban. Sorry, sir.' The corpsman's voice was fading, coming from the bottom of an oil drum. 'We'll be inside the bluff three days from now…Once we're fixed up some, we go hunting Challenger.'
Van Gelder jerked awake. 'She's been spotted?'
'Easy, sir, easy…At Diego Garcia, eight thousand klicks from here, just a little while ago. On the surface first, then a battle underwater. Two well-spaced detonations, both atomic. Wreckage from our boats, then heavy bubbles farther off and aircraft searching for survivors. Intel in Pretoria thinks she's dead.'
'Challenger destroyed?'
'The captain won't believe it — says see the beating we just took, forget about Pretoria. Says he knows her CO too, they met before the war. He's sure that they're still out there. Somewhere.'
ABOARD CHALLENGER
When the briefing wrapped up, Jeffrey walked Ilse through a twisting maze of compartments and then up a ladder back to her state-room. Well, make that my closet, she told herself. It was barely two meters on a side, and like everywhere else on Challenger, the ceiling was very low. Good thing she had Jeffrey as a guide — on her own she'd be utterly lost.
'Three people usually live in here?' she said.
'Junior officers,' Jeffrey said. 'I've had to shuffle them around. Some are hot-bunking.'
'Sharing beds?'
'We call them racks. The youngsters are in different watch sections. Different shifts. A few of the junior enlisteds hot-rack too, but it isn't very popular. SSN crew size keeps shrinking, thanks to automation, but they keep installing new gear, so we're actually more crowded than ever.'
'Urn, how big's your crew?'
'One hundred twenty, counting me and the captain. That's down about a dozen from the Sea-wolfs and Virginias, and the 688 (I)s need over one forty…You can put your things in that middle drawer.'
The so-called drawer was less than two inches high. 'What's this?' Ilse said, lifting the little curtains, pointing to the boxes, secured with nylon strapping, that now filled the top and bottom racks.
'Just what the labels say. Xerox paper, printer toner, pens and pencils, scratch pads.'
'Scratch pads?' Ilse tried to imagine what 120 men might do, left to themselves at sea, without even fish or birds for witnesses. An image of Cape buffalo rubbing their butts on tree stumps came to mind.
'Writing tablets,' Jeffrey said. 'Our manuals and charts are all on-line, but we still go through a lot of paper.'
'Oh,' Ilse said. It's like sleeping in a warehouse. She'd noticed that throughout the parts of the boat she'd seen so far, storage cabinets were recessed in every conceivable nook and cranny.
'You're all set for toiletries, and, urn, you know, other stuff?'
'Yes, Commander,' Ilse said. 'The supply officer on Frank Cable made me up a package. She was very helpful.'
'Yeah. There are things we don't stock on submarines.'
Ilse had to look away. He was so coy about it. Men always were.
'There was one other thing,' Jeffrey said.
Ilse looked directly at him. 'Oh?'
'Laundry.'
'That's right.' She hadn't thought of that. 'My clothes are filthy.'
'Did you bring a change?'
'Just what I have on. At Pearl Harbor they made me travel very light. Before I got on the plane they even took my hair dryer.'
'Home appliances don't mix well with seawater and steel,' Jeffrey said. 'We can fit you out. That's not a problem.'
'I like those denim jump suits some enlisted men were wearing.'
'I'll take care of that,' Jeffrey said.
'Also, besides these khakis, those blue shirts and pants are nice.'
'No problem,' Jeffrey said. 'There's, um, there's one other thing.'
'Yes?'
'Could you, um…do you mind…doing your own underwear?' Ilse laughed. 'Don't your laundrymen have wives or sisters?'
'Oh, no, it's not that. It's just that, um, well, the machines are rough on delicate things.' Ilse pointed to the little metal sink, where a pair of panties and a bra were soaking. Jeffrey blushed.
Ilse chuckled. 'We Boers are self-sufficient people. I take it you're not married.'
'No.'
'I thought you might not wear a ring. Safety or something. You know, machines and radiation. Electricity.'
'That's true,' Jeffrey said. 'Sometimes jewelry can be dangerous. But no, I'm single…You just called yourself a Boer.'
Ilse sighed. 'It's still what I am. Murdering my family hasn't changed that. There are many of my generation who want to stop what's happened — older people too. It seems to me sometimes that we live just to try to stop it. But that can't change who we are, Commander.'
'It must be hard for you.'
'Have you ever been to South Africa?'
'No…never.'
'The mountains, the coastlines, the vineyards, and the veld. The cheetahs, the lions, the flowers, and the birds. The native art, the deserts, the Valley of Desolation, the Valley of a Thousand Hills.' Ilse stopped to draw a breath.
'It all sounds very nice.'
'I've been many places, Commander. Research trips, and travel just for…just for fun, I almost said. Nowhere compares to home. I want that back. We'd come so far in recent years, and now we've lost it all. We're shamed before the whole free world for what a few of us made happen. Or let happen. Can you understand?'
'It's like Cuba going communist, or France with the Resistance.'
'Both of which you read about in books.'
'Yeah.'
'Well, this is happening to me. You have your ship, your crew, your relatives back home. Your country is united, now more than in sixty years. I have none of that. I've lost my country. I want it back.'
'I'm sorry. It, um, it, you, you must be lonely' 'It's something no uitlander could understand.' 'A foreigner, you mean?'
'There's no translation.' Ilse yawned, although she didn't want to.
'I see you're tired,' Jeffrey said. 'I'm pretty bushed myself. Some sleep will help. We'll wake you in six hours. I'll post a schedule for the shower.'
'How military of you.'
Jeffrey blinked. He actually seemed hurt. 'The submariner day is eighteen hours,' Jeffrey said. 'Three six- hour watches. One on, two off, usually.'
