by John Boyd
“Skoal,” he answered, commenting to himself on her precision of movement and her easy but definite manner of speech. “Am I looking at the future CNO?”
“No,” she answered flatly. “I’m looking at the future CNO. You’re looking at the future Mother Presiding. Henrietta’s too fat. Obesity presupposes overindulgence. Overindulgence presupposes lack of self-discipline. She’s setting the wrong moral tone for the country. Between you and me. Papa, I’m giving her sixteen years of office, then I’m moving into the civilian establishment. As old Merryweather Dippynose used to say, If your aim is power, you can’t operate from a military base.”
She sipped her drink reflectively. “Old Sug could fire off more ideas per minute than a rapid-fire machine gun.”
“Sug was fanciful,” Hansen said, “but he did have the good sense to make me Vice Admiral.”
“Congratulations, Papa. Keep it, for what it’s worth. By the way, they got all the girls off the ship and are towing it to Thule. I hope they don’t melt the ice cap tonight.”
“How long have you been in contact with Shiloh?”
“Almost from the day the Government in Exile landed.”
“Sug never mentioned to me he was talking to you.”
“He couldn’t. He was violating Shiloh regulations by not going through channels.”
“One thing intrigued us, up there, JP. What’s happening to all the men in the country?”
“Oh, you can thank Mother Carey for that. You have to hand it to the slob, she knows her chemistry. She devised a diaphragm armed with a needle dipped in a compound of curare and cyanide. At least eighty percent of all males over fourteen have committed involuntary suicide.”
“That’s savagery!” Hansen exploded.
“Oh, no, Papa. All men must die, and how could a man die better?”
Her logic was so immaculate that his beginning indignation evaporated, but he was struck by a sudden fear.
“Are the Greenland girls armed?”
“Of course not, Papa. Sug’s too smart. He’d cause a blow-back in the firing chamber with a belaying pin, and after that there’d be no stopping him. This way, he’ll delay for dalliance and I’ll have time to stop the operation.”
Obviously Joan Paula knew as much about Primrose’s Plans and Operations as Hansen knew, and he said flatly, “Joan Paula, you’re a double agent.”
“No and yes, Papa. No, in that I don’t intend to let myself be vaporized for the greater glory of the male. Yes, in that I, too, am a member of the Men’s Preservation League, but never for the reasons Mother is. I’m sparing a few men for demonstration in anthropology classes and a few will be thrown to the PL’s as a sop for their support. Some may be preserved for heavy menial tasks.”
“What if the men object?” Hansen asked.
She flashed him a Helgalian smile. “Then I’ll stick ’em in zoos… but back to military matters, Papa. We’re turning the airports into used-car lots, so there’ll be no landings by air, and I’m setting up a counteroperation to Meat Cleaver.”
Hansen was dismayed by her war aims, but he was essentially a tactician and he felt the grand design for any military operation was a civilian responsibility. As a tactician, acutely aware that his advice might be that of the future CNO to his future Commander in Chief, he said, “You’re aware. Commander, that the Gluckstag can be rendered seaworthy by early April and that landings could be effected on our coast by the Greenland insurrectionists.”
He recalled, now, his wonderment at the map for Operation Meat Cleaver in Primrose’s office. The amphibious landings had been predicated on the admiral’s possession of the SS Gluckstag.
Joan Paula waved his advice aside. “I thought of that, Papa, before the Gluckstag left. That’s why I installed Operation John Paul Jones to get you home. There are two phases to my counteroperation: Phase One is Operation Tethered Bull.”
She got up and pulled down a wall map showing the area of Greenland. “With six destroyers, manned by crews you’ll train, you’ll set up a blockade screen, here.” Her hand swung in an arc from Cape Parry to Cape York. “This should bottle up the Gluckstag until you are ready to commence Phase Two, in late spring.
“Phase Two will commence with the arrival of an attack transport, whose crew will also be trained by you, carrying two battalions of women Marines, now in training at Quantico. When the transport arrives on station, you will then commence Operation Jelly Roll. You land and attack.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You will be Chief of Combined Operations, Afloat and Ashore. Now, this should brief you on the strategy. You can work out the details with Plans and Operations when you return from leave.”
She snapped the map up, walked back to her desk, and stood behind it, very erect and so briskly military that she exuded motion while standing still. “Now, as to our official relationship, Papa—I won’t tolerate gold-bricking. I don’t give a royal encapsulation for any excuse ever invented. When I give an order, I want you to hoist ‘execute’ promptly.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She didn’t smile at his reply. Instead, she placed her knuckles on the desk and leaned toward him. “To avoid the disruptive influence of an obvious male on my staff, and to give Mother vent to her tailoring talents, your uniform of the day will be a skirt. Keep aloof from your sister officers and the ratings, or you’ll give Lesbianism a bad name.”
She glanced at her watch, dropped her official manner, and smiled as she extended her hand for a farewell handshake. “Lieutenant, I know you’re anxious to commence your leave, so welcome aboard and carry on.”
“Thank you. Commander.” Hansen rose, shook hands, and left.
He walked slowly down the passageway, unnerved but undaunted by his audience with the lieutenant commander. Although he didn’t relish the task of rounding up his old comrades as museum pieces or wearing a jockstrap under undies, once the area in which he was to perform had been defined, he knew he could bring a greater professionalism to his job than any other officer in this woman’s Navy.
Hansen walked into the cold and humid night, shoving behind him the thoughts which had invaded the area of his expertise and outraged his sense of order. In all fairness, he could not generalize about the ladies as long as one Helga, the ever-loyal, remained. Out yonder, waiting in the light of the sentry gate, he could see the family jalopy with its side door open, and his pace quickened.
Helga intended to drive. By pushing it, she could reach the cottage on Hatteras before dawn so they could stand, hand in hand, and watch the sunrise over the dunes and the gray Atlantic. He had not seen the sun for six weeks.
On Ocean Front Drive, in the town of Virginia Beach, stands a rectangular building which survives from the days before the Women’s Democratic Republic. In spring and summer, its lawn is kept neatly trimmed. Above the structure, during the daylight hours, is raised a blue flag with a triangular grouping of three white stars that signifies a Vice Admiral is aboard. Inside the building is a room reserved for exhibits—old sabers, a telegram yellowed with age, photographs, a black and white third-repeater pennant, and a faded Bonnie Blue ensign of the Confederate Navy. In a roped-off cornet of the room stands the highlight of the exhibit, a tall, erect figure wearing the uniform of a Vice Admiral, USN, old style, with trousers. Beneath the figure is a plaque which reads:
IT SERVED US
Here stand the mortal remains of Benjamin Franklin Hansen, Vice Admiral, USN, last survivor of the male epoch, whose skills were instrumental in the rescue of 1,700 girls stranded on the Greenland Ice Cap after the successful completion of Operation Mousetrap.
Antiquarians have pointed out a flaw in the exhibit. On the specimen’s hat, the eagle above the shield looks left. In actual fact, during the admiral’s term of service the eagle looked right. In 1942, two years before the specimen’s birth, the Navy eagle looked left, but it was altered to look to the right. The flaw in an exhibit otherwise regarded as a triumph of taxidermy was not considered signif
icant enough to correct. In heraldry, the left-looking eagle denotes a bastard house.
