Chatham, among naval officers of my acquaintance, had been one of the most vigorous in his opposition to the introduction of women into ships. This was not anything against him, or in any way unusual. If there had been a fleet-wide plebiscite on the matter, no woman would have got within a thousand leagues of a ship, and she would have had to swim that. So had I been counted in their number. My attitude after they had been aboard awhile had become more complex than formerly. Chatham, I was certain, had changed not in the smallest degree in this matter. On the other hand—and this was much to his credit—once they arrived, he had neither said nor done anything against them; in the realization, I felt, that their being here at last and nothing in the world to be done about it, however stupid the entire idea, not to accept it and work with the fact would threaten, perhaps disastrously, the welfare and even the mission of the ship. He was much too much a sailor to allow himself to behave in that direction; and especially embodying as he did that mission on this particular ship more than any other single officer. One could observe in him no difference whatsoever between his conduct toward the men and the women officers aboard, or in his treatment of the men and the women enlisted personnel; if anything, aware of them, perhaps compensating for his own now-suppressed opinions, being less abrupt with the latter than he sometimes was with the former. So circumspect was he in the matter of the women—the bending over to be fair, to display no antagonism toward them that might be taken as related to the fact of their not being men, almost as if to say they couldn’t help that—that I was as certain as I could be of anything that the dislike Chatham and Girard had, and just of late, taken to each other had nothing to do with their gender difference.
As to its actual cause I had given little thought, had but indifferently wondered why. A ship’s captain is a busy man. He has little time for nonsense. Such dislikes, as a rule temporary, between members of a ship’s company, especially officers, enlisted men being much more sensible in this area, are not all that unusual, may crop up from time to time in the best of ships, often as not from unbelievably trivial causes, as suddenly disappear. A captain’s wisest course is often not to interfere, to let the matter work itself out—until if and when it begins to affect the operations, the essential harmony of the ship. If that happened, you undertook to straighten it out by bringing the two officers together in your cabin, closing the door, and knocking their heads together: That, in my experience, usually put a stop to it. If that didn’t work, you saw to it that one or both were transferred. Hardly an available option now.
I had commenced by telling him that I wished to go over the inventory of all the weaponry, the armory and ammunition list, from sidearms to missiles, in his books and also on-site inspections, a routine duty of a ship’s captain to be carried out from time to time, not done lately due to the press of circumstances, and had set a date. We had completed the on-site part. It was late in the day, the sun moving down the sky and not far from its nocturnal home in the expectant waters. We were about to return to my cabin, over the weather decks rather than down to the main deck and inside. For no reason we paused a moment to gaze at the after missile launcher, its honeycomb of blast doors closed, its capability scarcely touched, only six cells empty. Fifty-five missiles—Tomahawks, ASROCs, Harpoons, Standard SM-2’s—remaining. The same with the forward missile launcher. We continued forward to the cabin. I shut the door and we settled in.
When one thought of Chatham physically the adjective “round” immediately occurred: moon-faced, imbedded in it close-set eyes seeming also perfectly round and as unrevelatory as an owl’s, a ball of a head on which grew a burry meadow of buff-colored needles kept always so close-cropped as each individual hair to seem razor-sharpened, atop a body whose further suggestion of roundness probably came from the feeling that he could lose twenty pounds of weight. That part, anyhow, had begun to change lately, as it had with all of us, I thought as I looked at him, on the reduced rations I had instituted. That decidedly circular appearance further accentuated by his being distinctively short. He was one of those men who carry through life the high advantage of looking much less intelligent than they actually are; the gift of appearing far less formidable than is in fact the case. In Navy terms he would be thought of as an officer who went by the book; while fair, an officer not to be messed with. If matters came to that, ready to hit back about twice as hard as he had received. He was as much of a loner as life on a destroyer will permit. Where other officers off-watch might be found in the wardroom shooting the breeze, Chatham was likely to be in his stateroom or the department office, studying tactics or systems, always attending everlastingly to his lethal charges. Even on liberty—when we had had that luxury—where both officers and bluejackets customarily go ashore in pairs or more, he went alone if he went at all, and as to whether his destination in Naples, for example, was the Museo Nazionale or a whorehouse off the Galleria I don’t think anyone on the ship could have said. He was not easy company. I often had no idea what he was thinking. And never the slightest notion of what his inner life might be; his cautious air, not infrequently verging on the hubristic, effectively shutting off any remote view of such a territory. He projected a sense of seeming a rather uncomplicated, readable human being where I knew the opposite to be the case. I had long since given up on insofar as “knowing” him as I did my other officers. He was not to be known. Talking with him one had the feeling that he himself knew exactly what was in his own mind; that he was thereby entirely freed up to concentrate exclusively on what was going on in yours, your purpose, with the object of turning matters, whatever they might be, to his own preferences. He was unusually successful at these intricate, talent-requiring exercises. I got right to it.
“The small arms,” I said. “I note how accessible they are, ready to use.”
“Accessible? Yes, sir.” Chatham had a habit of repeating the operable word one had just used. “So they can be got at in an emergency. To repel invaders. Hostile boarding parties.”
I could hear my voice modulate if only a notch from ease to firmness.
“Hostile boarding parties?” I said. I decided, rather small-mindedly, to use it on him. What an odd phrase it seemed anyhow, I thought, in respect to any members of the race of human beings thus far encountered—for some reason a memory of those helpless wretches on the beaches of Amalfi for a moment stabbing at me. “I don’t think we’ll have many of those to repel. I want the small arms put under lock and key. Along with the ammunition. Remove them from the ready service lockers and put them in the high security lockers in the armory.”
I could see the quick startlement in his eyes, a flash of anger, both as quickly, consciously, it seemed, quelled, return to impassive countenance. One advantage of being a captain is that one does not have to give reasons.
“As you say, sir.”
I wished he did not say, “As you say, sir.” Somehow it came across as a faintly reluctant compliance, especially so in that uninflected, mono-tonic voice he possessed that drilled in a kind of inflexible droning on the ear. It occurred to me how petty I was becoming in regard to Chatham, and made a note to watch that.
“When you’ve done that,” I said, “bring me the locker keys.”
It lasted but a moment, came and went as lightning does. But during it something malignant seemed to hang in the air, naked, a palpable tenseness, suggestive of something anarchic not just here but loose on the ship, exhaling the scent of menace, and but personified by the officer across from me. The response not coming with quite the automatic alacrity to which ship’s captains are accustomed. For one suspended instant I felt he might be about to step across that most rigid of all Navy lines, insubordination. Not the first time for this series of impressions, of speculations—suspicions—from this same source, but more intense, stronger now, than ever before. I should have known better. Whatever lay in him, Chatham would never be the one to act rashly, let anger betray him into letting out a thing before the time he, not another, chose for it to be let
out; far too self-controlled—and shrewd—an officer for that. I had caught myself fancifying, I decided. It was not exactly the kind of order any officer would find excessively pleasing. His reaction was but a natural one. He said only, “As you say, sir.”
For that moment the cabin had been filled with a tense atmosphere so discernible as to surprise me. Then it was I who, sensing the possible high danger an inch away, pulled back from it. I added, wanting actually to soften it for him, to bend in his direction by a gesture of emollience, to give him a perfectly plausible and false reason for my action, face-saving for himself: “I intend that the keys shall at all times be in the custody of the officer of the deck. If needed suddenly.”
He remained solemn; unspeaking; fooled, I knew, not in the slightest.
Keys. Perhaps reaction from that inner stab, perhaps partly from his attitude, his suppressed belligerence, it came surging up then from my mind. Other keys. That fact that only he held in his possession the key necessary to launch our missiles, jointly with myself, the familiar dual-key system, protection alleged against derangement or accident. And that in respect to those we carried for a total now of 704-H’s, and whose fate and disposition I had not yet decided upon . . . I would not want them to come under Lieutenant Commander Chatham’s control. For one implosive moment I fancied to ask for that second essential key; then stepped back, astonished at having it, frightened myself of the thought. That shared custody: It stood protected by the most inflexible of Navy directives, so that even for his captain to make such a request—demand—would be unthinkable, and should he do so, he entirely in his right to refuse—indeed, would normally face a GCM if he did not; and himself wholly aware of this circumstance. I dared not risk the confrontation. I was too certain that, the matter put to him, refuse he would. Indeed it would take a general court-martial instituted by myself to separate him from the key; some extreme act on his part, nothing remotely like any he had shown. I was startled to hear him say:
“Would the captain object if we ran a missile drill?”
As if reading my thoughts. This was a routine exercise, running through the complex procedure, identical in every detail to the real thing save only for the actual launching, the final instant, which we normally conducted about once a week; suspended by myself due to circumstances: other pressing matters, high unlikelihood of any imminent real application. The suggestion for renewal of the exercise might itself be taken as alerting the mind to something. It was almost as though Chatham, in riposte to my order concerning the small arms—an order about which he could do nothing—were reasserting, specifically to remind me of it, his other legal joint control of the missiles as something about which, in the exact same manner, I could do nothing. To remind me that he had most considerable power already, and of a nature untouchable by myself. He now added, almost in educatory tones:
“Otherwise the missile crew is certain to get rusty.” His voice curiously tilted then, in it the faintest touch of condescension. “And we don’t want that, do we, Captain?”
I looked at him steadily. “I hardly think we’ll be sending anything off in the way of missiles in the immediate future, Mr. Chatham.”
“With all respect, Captain. Is that the point?”
I did not even think of the impertinence. I was too occupied with a horrible unaccustomed feeling of being trapped, pushed into a corner by a subordinate reminding his captain of Navy doctrine, in this case that no one could predict in these matters what might happen even tomorrow, even today; hence, eternal state of readiness, indispensable to this condition what he was now suggesting.
“Very well, Mr. Chatham.” I could feel a tightness in my voice; feel he was out-maneuvering me; felt helpless, decidedly not in the habit of feeling so, not at all liking it. I spoke crisply.
“Presently all hands are going to be too busy for drills of any kind for a while. With extensive lookout and other duties down this African coast. So make it tomorrow. So we can have done with it.”
After all, my key canceled his. He could do nothing without it. I knew this was not a solace I would forever be content with; meantime feeling myself, by way of the keys each worthless without the other, locked inside a single, no-exit cage with Lieutenant Commander Chatham, with no visible or imagined means of either of us ever escaping this life’s sentence of confinement with each other.
At least from this encounter I was about to acquire that other key, to the small-arms armory. Even that achievement was diluted by the clear sense I had that the very asking for it had alerted that exceptionally cunning mind of his to what was going on in my own; this in turn seeming to give him some unspecified advantage he had not had when this session began.
“As you say, sir.”
There was one other thing I had been meaning to attend to. Now seemed suddenly an excellent time to do it. My voice had a captain’s tone.
“By the way, Mr. Chatham. You and Lieutenant Girard. Whatever problem it is the two of you have, it’s beginning to show, if you understand my meaning. It would be best all around if you worked it out. In fact, I shall expect you to do so, by which I mean sooner rather than later. I don’t have to know what the problem is unless you wish to talk about it.”
He smiled that smile of his that I sometimes thought was the worst part about him.
“Well, sir. As a general comment I’d say she figures everything out too closely for my taste. A calculating, uppity bitch I always had her in my book—if I may say so only to yourself, sir. I never liked uppity bitches, in uniform or out. Otherwise, in brief: It has to do with her keeping her nose out of other divisions’ business. Specifically that of combat systems. I would have thought supply and morale should keep her quite busy. Beyond that I’d prefer you ask her.”
“As you say, Mr. Chatham. I shall do so.”
4
Africa
Foraging
Nothing. The destroyer creeping in toward shore, a lookout having fancied he may have noticed a suggestion of a movement through the Big Eyes, the 20-powered binoculars—a human being, an animal perhaps, a bird—where the white strand ends and the vegetation line begins; a stirring of the branches and leaves of trees by the wind it must have been. We return to the parallel course, generally staying close inshore. The ship ringed with lookouts; on the starboard side, the shore, for signs of life; on the port, the sea, for other ships. Steaming as we have been for days now at a bare six knots, a crawl for this destroyer, the better to pick up life to starboard; the ship’s propulsion system muted like all else as she parts the stilled waters. The speed also fuel-saving, our reserves a matter on which my consciousness increasingly dwells with every turn of the twin screws. Slow ahead for another unrevealed reason: to give me all time possible to reach the decision that has laid siege to me, never truly ceasing to torment me out of that pool of anguish which has taken up a permanent abode in my soul. The continent passes by, voiceless both as to human sound and to any of that immense repertoire of sounds made by animals, by birds, in this land more blessed by their varieties than any on earth; a silent land, even the winds and the mirroring sea hushed in a sympathetic quiescence; one listens for a heartbeat from it, as one might from a patient hovering between life and death.
Our interest, however, extends beyond animal life. We have begun to think in terms of objects useful to our future. The drill is, if a lookout spots anything appropriate, we stop the ship, lower a boat, a small party goes in, accompanied always by Lieutenant (jg) Selmon, who must first vet the object with his counter as not having an unacceptable level since above all we must not introduce contamination into the ship—Selmon, without whom we now go nowhere, anymore than a blind man would leave behind his seeing-eye dog; if approved, the bluejackets loading the item into the boat and returning, the boat hoisted back aboard, the ship getting underway again. The first acquisition a wheelbarrow near Temoushant. Since then, among other objects, near Tetouan a bicycle, Mostaganem a windlass and some rubber tires, El Asnam a canvas umbrella, Mers-e
l-Kebir beach chairs and table. And most important of all our foragings, these: Chief Gunner’s Mate Delaney, having started his shipboard garden, whenever we stop, for whatever purpose, goes ashore and spends the time scouring the near countryside. Plants, when found promising and provided they have passed Selmon’s counter, he meticulously uproots and places in cut-down cans from the galley, carefully loads into the whaleboat, sees them aboard, and installs them in his growing racks.
Our full attention now turned to Africa’s north shores. Any hopes we had as to these being hospitable to us are being rapidly dispelled on Selmon’s counters, forays in the boat continuing to show prohibitive readings for any stay. I suppose I should have known. It is only that hope—and without that we cannot continue—so often gets in the way of confronting the probabilities. I should have known—perhaps I simply blocked the fact out—that the great oilfields would be near the top of somebody’s list, deserving of the most massive treatment: Whose list is now hardly an object even of curiosity. The only thing of importance is that the further easterly the ship moves, the higher the readings.
Still, generally Selmon’s readings have been no higher than were those on the European side of the Mediterranean. Why then have we seen no human beings, even standing on the beaches?
Amelioration
It was about 1700 hours, the sun moving steadily down a blue sky decorated prettily here and there with long streaks of cirrostratus, about to present us with twilight. We were proceeding on our parallel course, four thousand yards offshore, somewhat beyond Sidi Lakdar in Algerian waters. Barker had the Big Eyes watch on the starboard bridge wing. I had stepped out there from the pilot house to study the shore, idly almost by now, as I nevertheless continued to do, seeming to spend more of my time than anywhere on the starboard wing simply tracking it as the ship moved slowly by. I saw Barker raise his head.
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